Lord Banshee- Fugitive Read online

  Leilani sounded stunned. “What the hell was that about?”

  Toyami came over and started unclipping me from the helmet. “Leilani, I am sorry. That had nothing to do with you. Brian, I should have taken your advice to move Com Thieu back to her original place when you first made it. Marin arrived early and was waiting for us in a perfect rage. And she is right, I should never have brought Com Thieu over here.”

  “No, stop, Doctor Toyami, I am very glad you did, and not just for her and Raul. Our conversation may have cracked a couple of mysteries and opened a new line of investigation. I suspect we really need her expertise if we are to avoid another attack like the last one. The Earth has spent too much time in the last ten years building walls and needs to start tearing some of them down.

  “It is probably true that we are cesspools of disease, but if we had to complete the process in a hurry, is there a way to speed up the process? Even if it is just for a few people at a time?”

  She looked distressed. “Yes, but it is a punishment that we rarely inflict. We would have to flush your entire digestive system, filter your blood, spray your lungs, and scrub your skin with extremely nasty chemicals. We would then have to rebuild your system with benign bacteria. You would be violently ill the whole time. After the process is complete, you would be safe to work with for other people in space, but it takes another two weeks to fully recover. I would not willingly force that on anyone. Please do not make me do it to Raul or Sergei.”

  Sergei? I had not been aware of anything involving Sergei. Except with Leilani, which had been my fault, and she was not crew.

  She continued, “Everyone is brittle right now. I have known Virginia for years and can assure you she is not normally this crabby. When the real emoji attack started, we were all affected. We doctors had a terrible row about coloured uniforms. I gather most of the senior officers on the Mao were arguing and close to fighting when you finally turned off the external comm. It was not just Wang and Molongo and the ministers.

  “And then yesterday we found out how close we had come to catastrophe. The Manila Bay has scared all of us. Please do not ask for anything that will put us under more stress without thinking very carefully whether it is justified.”

  Leilani asked, “Did anything happen between them?”

  Toyami answered, “No. They just lay there watching the news feeds and talking quietly. They did not want to wake you. Just being together was all they needed this morning.”

  Raul replied, “It is true. We are both injured and cannot do anything, but all I wanted was to hear her voice and know that she was well.”

  Leilani replied, “I will talk to Doctor Marin later. Her concern is legitimate, but the reaction was excessive.”

  I sifted what Toyami had said while she pulled the helmet off and started unclipping my restraints. My arms and legs had bruises where the restraint had held them. I guessed that the marines had had to hold me still to prevent me from doing myself more damage, because I could not imagine breaking free from restraints designed to hold panicking marines. But why had the doctors been attacked when all MI communications containing emojis had already been turned off?

  When the question was properly phrased, the answer was obvious. The captain and ministers had been using encrypted streams from the admiralty and council.

  “Doctor Toyami, how many encrypted streams do you receive?”

  “About five. I checked the logs and as far as I can tell, only the stream from the Medical Board of Standards was sending hateful emojis. That may be why we argued about clothes, but we could equally have fought over competency or certification, which would have hurt more and been harder to forgive.

  “And Brian? I do forgive you. I fear you, and I cannot trust someone so capricious, but I am very grateful that I am not like the survivors of the Manila Bay. Without your warning, we would have been part of that disaster.”

  “Doctor Toyami, that is exactly the correct attitude right now. I do not trust myself, and I think you are beginning to understand why.”

  2357-03-06 03:00

  Once upon a Time

  I had only been in the infirmary to sleep, but everyone else had real injuries, including some radiation sickness, cuts, deep bruising, and trauma. Raul and Leilani had to wait until Marin had checked them over, but I was free to head back to our rooms, escorted as always by a marine but under my own power. I did a short, intense workout. There were a few marines in the room, but we did not speak and kept on opposite sides of the room.

  One by one, the team returned, except for Katerina with her stomach wound and Sergei who was apparently receiving a special, custom tirade about acceptable behaviour. The others told me that on arrival back on the Mao, he had hugged the Com and both marines he had worked with, everyone still in their armour, and had promised all of them a soldier’s celebration with lots of drinking. I was coming to like Sergei and to admire his flamboyant style, but under the circumstances Marin did not.

  When Sergei arrived back, seriously chastened, we ordered lunch. It was a very sombre occasion, with everyone haunted by the fate of the survivors and almost afraid to touch each other. As we ate, Katerina joined us, still strapped into a frame and unable to eat because of her stomach wound, but grateful to be out of the soul-killing misery of the infirmary. I think she was also a little loopy from the painkillers, which were much stronger than we usually needed. She kept trying to cheer us all up, and finally demanded that we continue to tell each other stories of our youth, starting with me this time.

  There was a thin wail in the back of my head, and Toyami drifted over to monitor me more closely, but the Kid was the least dangerous of my personae and I knew which parts of the story to avoid. I could even tell it, carefully, out loud.

  “I was born into a small industrial town, economically depressed and backward. Our whole region was proudly conservative, sticking with one- and two-story buildings and dirt roads in the smaller towns like ours. Our whole town was dominated by a large manufacturing plant, a food distributor, and a construction company, each controlled by one of three global corporations. The plant was in financial trouble, although I did not learn about that until long after we left. It was a rough, dying place, with drugs and violence on the streets, bad schools, and little hope of escape for its desperate citizens. The streets after dark were controlled by three gangs, whom I chose to call the vipers, thunderbirds and chickens.

  “When I was five, in kindergarten, the region sponsored tests that would stream our paths through the school system. They were a joke, of course. There was only one stream in the local schools. We would have had to move to the wealthiest neighbourhood in town to register in an enriched program. Mom and Dad could not afford to live there. Joke or not, I had enormous fun with the tests. I topped my class, topped the neighbourhood, scored better than anyone in the town.

  “After the tests were over and we had been dismissed to play outside, the bullies came over and beat me up. One of my friends, Diego, tried to save me, but he got beaten up too. Diego had a brother, Pedro, who was three years older, much bigger and already getting good at fighting. Better than that, he knew some kids who were junior members of the chicken gang, so he called them to settle the score. The bullies were themselves beaten, and Diego and I became little brothers to the toughs in the gang. After that, Diego and I were best buds forever and Pedro became the big brother I never had.

  “The school could not afford an enrichment program for one kid, but my teachers did what they could to enliven the program. I drank it in. When Diego struggled with tough ideas like arithmetic, I helped him as best I could. In a while, I was better at arithmetic than Pedro. The gang had entrusted him with collecting small amounts of money from some of their “business” ventures. Pedro thought he was taking advantage of me, but I helped him keep the totals correct, checking his arithmetic and keeping track of the clients who routinely tried to cheat. After a while, Pedro started to join us in our homework sessions, so I learned his mat
erial as well as my own. The gang liked us because Pedro collected his money promptly and always came with the correct amount.

  “One day, early in third grade, a member of the school board visited our class. She was a very officious lady with stiff, formal manners and a crisp suit. I admired her suit, which looked very professional.

  “My teacher introduced me as the best student in the district, worthy of a full enrichment program by myself. He added that I was one of a growing number of bright students in the school, including Diego and Pedro. It was an exaggeration, of course, but the lady was sufficiently impressed that our school started to receive extra funds for the library and an enriched math and reading program.

  “After school that day, I got beat up again, but Pedro had been teaching me how to fight so I was better able to defend myself. I figured I won half the time and lost half the time, so it all worked out. Pedro was proud of me, Mom and Dad were proud of me, and my teachers were proud of me, so I felt like the king of third grade.

  “Those years, it was like I had two families. Diego and Pedro would come to my place after school. Half the time they would stay for dinner, half the time I would go to their place to eat with his parents and little sister. Either way, Diego’s father would escort us home after dinner, when the streets were no longer safe for children. We did not tell him that Pedro had the whole chicken gang looking out for us.

  “Things started to get more complicated when the school board decided I had to go into an enrichment program. They wanted money from the district and wanted to use me to convince the district that they were not just catering to the children of rich corporate officials. Dad had taken a second job, but we still could not afford to move to the expensive neighbourhood. I refused to leave Diego and Pedro and flattered myself that anyone cared. The lady from the school board tried to pressure us, but soon realized the impossibility and finally decided to push for a full enrichment program in our school.

  “I remembered the next year as almost heaven. I was a local hero. All my teachers thought the sun rose when I arrived in the schoolyard. There were still bullies who wanted to beat me up, but mostly they were too scared to try.

  “Off the school grounds, things were even more fun. Pedro was working up to petty larceny within the gang, who also entrusted him to handle the accounts for the neighbourhood. He was already better than the thug he replaced, who had died in a knife fight. He taught me how to handle the accounts, both the legitimate bank accounts they used as well as the pawn shops, loan sharks and bags of cash stashed under the counters. It required a good memory, and memory was something I had in spades.

  “We played a running game of hide and seek with the local police. They were poorly paid and quite corrupt, but not actually hostile so long as no one outside the gangs got injured in our fights. We regarded them as another gang with bigger guns. We called on them when one of our rivals got too aggressive, but there were so few of them that we just ignored them most of the time.

  “Mom had to quit her job, because the school board would not permit me to register in the enrichment program unless there was one parent at home after school. It was a stupid rule, but she used her spare time to get into school board politics. I learned a lot about policies and how they are set, about how and why to start an argument, and when to end it. Mom was persuasive, good at organization, and quick to spot political advantage when it flitted past. She finally got the rule revoked but was so busy with political activism that she did not take another job until after we had to leave.

  “Dad realized that I was getting in a lot of fights, not on the school grounds but out in the streets where the other gangs were vying for control. He found a day job that paid better and used the extra money to enrol me in a local judo club. This was a whole different world of fighting than what I saw amongst the gangs! Dad would pick me up from school between his two jobs and drop me at the dojo. I would step through the doors into a world of honour, grace, agility and strength. My sensei was humble, gentle and wise, but could dump anyone on their back without looking like he had even touched them. Ken shiki became my guide to life.

  “I was, of course, formally forbidden to engage in street fighting or to use my judo skill outside the dojo, on pain of being expelled. Tough as I was, I found the judo moves useful for defusing fights that I could not avoid. To my surprise, I discovered that many of the worst fights had started as friendly tussling matches that escalated when one of the combatants got hurt. Being able to win or lose the fight without hurting anyone let us all walk away laughing at an afternoon of good sport. It was never clear whether this was ‘using my judo skills’ or just good ethics. Ethics was a confusing subject.

  “I was not even there when one of my routine tormentors was caught fighting behind the school. He gave the usual explanation that it was just a friendly wrestling match, but then asked why the school did not have a wrestling club. The next year, they hired a new coach who introduced us to wrestling, gymnastics and athletics. I was too small to prevail very often in wrestling, but excelled in gymnastics, a skill that served me well in space when I had to learn zero-G dancing.

  “The chicken gang realized about then that I was better than Pedro at most things, and tried to draw me in, even though I was younger than their nominal minimum. Half of me wanted to join, to become a warrior fighting for honour and wealth. I admired the capos, idolized the dons, and listened eagerly to tales of heroism, gang fights in the back alleys at night where scores were settled and debts paid permanently. The other half of me remembered the peace of the dojo, the love and pride of my Dad as he dropped me off, and the fierce support of my Mom as she fought the school board to get more value for our local schools. The gangsters lived short dazzling lives, at least as seen by a kid, but I knew that Mom and Dad were fighting in their own way to give me something better, bigger, more important.

  “And the school was fighting for me as well. They were grateful for the support that had won them an enrichment program and gave me every challenge they could afford to ensure my success. I felt like a real somebody.

  “One other thing changed about then. I did not talk about it much except with Diego, but I decided I wanted to become a spacer. Spacers wore neat, white pajamas, much like the judoji we wore in the dojo. Spacers were graceful and smart. Most importantly, spacers were filthy, stinking rich. Buy your own corporation rich. Buy an island and live on it with servants and airplanes rich. For a poor kid from a bad neighbourhood, the dream was impossible, but I did not realize that at the time. I studied even harder, trained my puny body to grade-five perfection, and dreamed of rocketing to the Moon, to Mars, off into the asteroids. Ceres, Vesta and Psyche became real places to me, somewhere I could go to make tons of money.

  There were a few snorts around the room, and someone muttered, “That didn’t work out too well, did it?”

  “And then there was Ignacio Valparaiso.”

  His name brought hoots from the spacers.

  “He was a celebrity when I was a kid, rich, flamboyant, exotic, and a former spacer. He owned big houses, hot cars, and always had four or five beautiful babes hanging off his arms. I was just approaching puberty, and this was fascinating. The neighbourhood girls mooned over him all day long. Half the boys imitated his hair styles, wore clothes that were cheap imitations of his, and sang his songs to try to impress the girls.

  “And then he died in an assassination. The girls mourned him hysterically at school for a week, until the principle took steps to stop the public display of sorrow. Even then, they cried themselves to sleep every night. As the police investigated, one of his many girlfriends was identified as an accomplice in the assassination, although nothing was ever proven. All the girls were hotly indignant, each secretly believing that if she had been there, her love could have saved him. I was hugely impressed.”

  Katerina asked, “You do know that was all a crock, don’t you? The guy only sang songs written by other people, could not invest in even the safest bonds, and
squandered five years of savings in the two years after he returned to the Earth.”

  I told her to stop interrupting. This was my story, and I was telling them what I understood as a barely pubescent boy.

  “Ignacio’s death to me was riveting. I lived on the borders of gangland, was familiar with heroes who lived fast and died young. To be rich, famous, promiscuous, and die in a blaze of violent glory, what could be better?

  “Yes, I found the truth later. Ignacio Valparaiso was a stage name, chosen by the recording company because it sounded better than Jose Miller. Most of the women were hired escorts. They despised him and never slept with the jerk.

  “The assassination was an elaborate hoax he had concocted to boost his sales and wangle a better deal with his recording company. He had arranged to fake a shooting with three crooked cops. They were waiting outside the house, along with an ambulance hidden just around the corner. Ignacio had loaded a handgun with blanks and left it out on a table near the front door.

  “One of his few live-in paramours knew he was in financial trouble and became worried by the heavy police presence. She feared that the loan sharks who supplied him with quick cash were demanding a repayment that day. She locked the gate on the driveway and all the doors around the house, hid the gun in a drawer with his other guns, and slipped out a back window. When the appointed hour arrived, the cop who was the fake assassin could not get in, so Ignacio had to unlock the door himself. He grabbed the wrong gun out of the drawer and handed it to the assassin, who shot a real bullet through his heart. The other two cops vaulted over the fence when they heard the gunshot. They were supposed to chase the assassin until he ‘lost them’ in the back alleys. Instead, they found him trying to revive Ignacio. The home security system was running as planned but recorded their panicky attempts at first aid instead of the rehearsed shouting of the assassination. The ambulance could not get through the locked gate, so Ignacio died from a fake assassination.