Angolin, p.21
Angolin, page 21
They made love once, then twice. And almost silently.
Dharmen shut his eyes for sleep after some of the most powerful and potent sex he’d ever had, but Willem’s voice forced them open. “So who chose tonight for your proposal? Whose idea was it really?”
“Are you really not ready for bed, after all that?”
“Whose idea was it? Theus’s I imagine.”
“Actually, it was your cousin’s. You can thank her when she’s safely back with us, which she will be.” Dharmen leaned over for a long kiss, noted Willem’s surprise-widened eyes afterward in the dim but waxing moonslight, and smiled. “Good night, love!”
Willem tossed and turned. His partner had just become his fiancé, and his favorite cousin was missing. Who could possibly sleep through any of that? He reached for Dharmen.
He wasn’t there.
Across the argent-lit room, the lavatory doorway was dark. Another late-night snack raid downstairs, Willem assumed, sitting up. Rior, do I need to put a lock on the thing?
The sleep-in door slid open. A figure stepped in from the blackened corridor. Willem sighed contentedly . . . until he saw the hand lift, and the faint flash of metal in the moonslight.
The blast lit the room like a white fire. Willem had never heard a gun fire in his life; the sound of the particle beam pierced his ears. He stumbled out of bed, heart pounding. “Lights!”
Clera 6 stood in front of the sleep-in chair. Seemingly unaware of anything else, it stared blankly at Dharmen’s tunic and the smoke curling from it. Slowly, its head swiveled toward Willem. He noticed for the first time just how mechanical the movements were. Fear froze him as the gun arm swiveled to him.
The room blazed again with another ear-splitting shot. Shrapnel flew. He crouched for protection, and was surprised to find himself whole. How had it missed? He looked up. The answer emerged from the lavatory doorway with his own sidearm pointed at where Clera 6 had stood. Scorched simulated bone protruded from the remains: the low stumps of two shoe-fitted feet. The rest lay in charred, smoking pieces around the room.
“You okay, love?” Dharmen asked.
Willem rushed over, stared answerless at what had been his new housekeeper. He hugged Dharmen so tightly that he forgot his fiancé was holding a gun.
“Well, that’s one way to cap an oversynthed synth,” Dharmen said, nearly as passionless as the synth he’d just destroyed. Willem had never seen Dharmen in combat mode before. He was quietly amazed.
Feet shuffled up the corridor. Dharmen shoved Willem behind him and aimed at the door.
“What in Krone’s name is going on in here?” Nüren demanded, barging in.
Dharmen gestured to the sizzling synth remains and the smoking seatback beside them. Nüren eyed the dinner-plate-sized hole shot clean through it and the tunic, and went speechless.
“Look what she did to my chair!” Willem finally noticed. “That was a gift from my brother Naeus. It’s the only real furniture piece I own and . . . Oh, Dharmen, my gods! She must have thought—”
“Didn’t do my uniform any good either,” Dharmen said. “I guess it thought I like to sit in the dark fully dressed. Good thing I don’t!”
Willem watched Dharmen’s eyes flutter. He knew Rem-E was prompting him. Dharmen had programmed heat and motion sensing into every meter of the house, inside and out. A proximity alarm must have been tripped.
Dharmen activated an upright and requested a diagram of pod and grounds. He shook his head at the results. “Right on time. Excuse me a minute.”
Before anyone could ask, he threw his gun-free hand into the bureau, yanked out another tunic, and darted from the room.
Quickly but stealthily, Dharmen left the house, leaving the door open for two Guardsmen rushing in from a patrol sloop exiting TimeSpace across the canalside way. He went around podside. In the small rear garden, he found what he expected—and whom he expected.
The enemy fumbled with some kind of odd device, furiously tapping buttons on an attached datapad, trying to get it or its dependent unit to work. “Rior damn it, what’s wrong with this thing?” The lanky, floppy-haired youth was too engrossed in his problem to see Dharmen walk right up next to him, even beneath the floating porch light. He turned his head to a gun barrel.
“No help here, eh?” Dharmen said, snatching the PTS generator stuffed into the other’s trousers, stupidly blinking standby. “And if I were you, I’d drop that and get my hands up.”
Still startled, Kerbentha let the controller fall to the ground and grabbed air.
“It’s been a while, kid. I wondered when you’d be back. Nice of you to drop in and pay us a follow-up!” Dharmen heard boots round the corner.
Sentinels moved in, flanked Kerbentha, and forced him to the ground. The young woman affixing his manacles gave Dharmen a quick salute.
“Didn’t know the general had a Vinc on the watch effort. Nice to see you, Shipman.”
“Likewise, sir,” said Leatra. “Though he didn’t assign me. I volunteered.”
Willem, Nüren, and more uniforms entered the garden. “Father, look after Will tonight.” Dharmen shot a hard look at the arrestee lying on his face, shivering on the dewy turf. “I’ve just been given some early morning business to attend to.”
The subject sat fidgeting. Dharmen watched, pleased. Perhaps the floating bots hovering overhead with their small but bright klieg lights menacingly shifting beams on him from multiple angles did the job. Or maybe it was the two uniformed men sitting across from him: one white with sleep-tousled black hair and looking thoroughly incensed at having sacrificed the wee hours of his morning over a saboteur, and the other, an older Yoruban, as Black ancients once self-identified, looking equally unrested and just as intimidating. Dharmen and General Gennet tapped at uprights and discussed him as though he weren’t present. Until Dharmen looked up with a long, dark gaze.
Kerbentha avoided eye contact by staring down at his clamped arms and at another small, conical robot floating around the interrogation room. The detention monitor bot frightened him. Dharmen saw that through the put-on, cocky face the kid wore.
“Right!” Gennet boomed so loudly that the youth jumped in his seat and yanked his restraints. “We’re ready to begin. Release the prisoner.”
The metal confinement chair’s arm clamps desynthed. Kerbentha rubbed his wrists and stood.
“Sit down!” said Gennet. “You will not leave that seat until this session is over. Do not get up until we tell you, and don’t even think of trying to run out of here.”
Kerbentha’s rear end hit the chair before the order finished. “How long will this take?” he asked in a timid trill that betrayed his on-again, off-again tough front.
“We ask the questions here! And until we do, keep your mouth shut!” Dharmen barked. Through shadowy, unblinking eyes, he watched Kerbentha fixate on his hand resting casually on his sword pommel. He wore it scabbardless in his belt—its long, naked threat fully displayed and its tip scraping the floor.
“I was told I’d get counsel,” said Kerbentha.
Dharmen glared fire. He rose, circled Kerbentha slowly.
“You’ll have representation at your hearing,” Gennet said. “Until then, the monitor bot is your counsel. It’ll record everything said and done here before it returns you to your cell.”
“I’m allowed one communication,” Kerbentha said, defying Dharmen again.
“You’re also allowed to keep quiet when told,” Dharmen said from behind him. “As for your comm, you’ve already made it. Thought we forgot that quickly? Its destination was traced, including any mesh shunts. We’ll have that information soon enough.”
“And I made mine before you were brought in here,” said Gennet, “to your parents.”
The room’s bare nemurite walls magnified Kerbentha’s gulp. “They’ll bail me out. I know they will.”
“You’re here for sabotage and attempted murder,” Dharmen said, “of me, a Guard officer, which makes the charges much more serious. No one’s going to bail you out of anything. Put that out of your hopes.”
He watched that erode Kerbentha’s facade. The kid’s eyes misted.
“But how long you remain in detention, and where, depends entirely on you,” said Gennet. “Your cooperation will determine how this goes.”
“Wh-what does that mean?” Kerbentha asked.
“It means you can either stay here on this base where you’ll be treated properly,” said Dharmen, “or we send you to Northrealm Lockup.”
“The inmates up there are the Realm’s most hardened. They hate Angolin, but they hate its traitors no less,” said Gennet. “The prisoners we’ve sent there lately have been beaten and occasionally worse.”
“But I can’t go there!” Kerbentha gasped. “You have to protect me. You can’t just put me with dangerous men and look the other way!”
“Sure, we can,” Dharmen said, leaning into his face. “You caused me and my family a problem tonight; I might like to cause you one.”
Kerbentha tried to look tough again but apparently couldn’t form the face.
“What’s wrong?” Dharmen asked. “Don’t think you can survive up there on your own?”
Wide, terrified eyes answered.
Gennet remained silent, and Dharmen joined in the deliberately long moment. They watched their prisoner’s face revert to its fearful baseline. “If you want to make it through this, you will give us answers—truthful, complete answers,” Gennet finally said. “And only when asked. The lieutenant commander has told you twice now to speak only when requested. Keep disobeying him, and you’ll find yourself up north before daybreak.”
Through hard sniffs, Kerbentha nodded acquiescence.
“State your full name for the record,” Gennet ordered.
“I already gave it when I was brought—”
“Give it again,” Dharmen demanded. “Give it a thousand times if we tell you to.”
Kerbentha rattled his full name in Angolinian fashion: given, middle, mother’s family, father’s family.
“Very good,” said Gennet. “See how easy it is to comply? Remember that, and things just might go well.” He waved his upright aside and reached down to a rectangular case beneath his seat.
“What’s in that?” Kerbentha asked in a panicked heave. “You two aren’t going to torture me, are you?”
“Would you like us to?” Dharmen dryly retorted.
Gennet produced the improvised item confiscated at arrest. “Tell us what you were doing with this before you were apprehended.”
“I . . . I don’t know what that is.”
“Of course you do. And so do we,” said Dharmen. “It’s an anthrosynthetic brain—or part of one—taken from a synth similar to the one working in my house. You had it in your possession. Don’t forget that I caught you with it, and a Guard-issue PTS generator. Where did you get it?”
“I created an uplink. That’s all.”
“Yeah, I know you did. Where did you get it?”
“It’s for a new game I’m designing. I didn’t expect it to cause anything bad to happen.”
Dharmen noted the red beacon on his upright, identical to the one flashing on the hovering monitor bot. It mattered little. “You’re telling me you were standing behind my pod at 0200 gaming? What’s the game called, Murder in the Night? But you still haven’t answered my question. Where. Did. You. Get it?”
Kerbentha didn’t answer.
“We’ve already analyzed this item,” said Gennet. “Your uplink was to the housekeeping synth. Don’t try to deny it, because even without the monitor bot, we can see through you. You’re as bad a liar as you are an assassin.” He held up and shook the evidence for emphasis. “You were caught using this brain part, rigged as a master to send commands to the Tate house synth.”
Dharmen would have smiled had he not been so peeved. Kerbentha was trapped. He had gotten away the first time, so capture never occurred to his young mind on this one. He had no alibi ready.
“All right.” Kerbentha broke. “Yes, the brain part is nearly identical to the one in the housekeeper. The datapad controls the uplink. With it, I could program the synth to do whatever I—”
“You wanted it to kill me—or someone wanted me killed, more like,” Dharmen said. “Which brings me to my original question that you will answer because I won’t take a fourth round of silence. Where did you get this? And who are you working for?”
Silence. A fourth time.
“And with this kind of advanced anthrotech knowledge,” Gennet interjected. “Who gave you this part and this datapad? These are not items that fall into a teenager’s lap so easily.”
Kerbentha’s eyes wandered faster than the klieg beams. Dharmen could almost read his feigned search for thought. “Uh, it’s from another general,” Kerbentha prevaricated. “I’ve only dealt with him remotely. I don’t . . . I don’t know his name.”
The monitor bot and uprights registered more falsehoods, though it made no difference. The answers given really didn’t merit need for sensory lie detection.
“You’re saying someone you never met gave you these items?” Gennet challenged.
“You may be handy, but you’re no engineer. Someone gave you these personally, showed you how to use them, and on whom,” Dharmen said, resting casually against Kerbentha’s seatback. “And it wasn’t some general, remotely or in person. There’s someone else more directly involved here.”
Kerbentha said nothing.
Dharmen shot around into his face. “Enough of this—give us names! Give ’em now!”
“I don’t have names,” Kerbentha muttered, trembling. “I’m working alone.”
“Alone! Your teleconned general suddenly doesn’t exist,” Dharmen shouted. “And you expect me to believe a teenager half my age, whom I’ve never met before, is out to kill me all on his own? Just what kind of taroc crap is that? What do you take me for?” He took Kerbentha’s fright and ran with it. “I know a lie when I hear one. I was lying before you were born, and I was better at it then. Now do we get the truth, or do we ship you to lockup right now and get the information after you’ve been served up a dozen times? It’ll be easy once you’ve been softened.”
“You . . . y-you won’t do that,” Kerbentha spluttered.
“After surviving two of your attempts on me, I most certainly would!”
“You can’t. I don’t believe you. You don’t have the right. This is Angolin, we’re a democracy! People don’t get p-put in prison that easily here. You’re j-just threatening me with all of this to s-scare me.”
Dharmen’s rabid stare morphed into a dark grimace centimeters from Kerbentha’s face. “Maybe I have the right. Maybe not. Do you really want to find out?”
Kerbentha looked ready to vacate his skin.
“Never underestimate the Hidden Realm’s ability to keep secrets, and not just from the Outside World,” Gennet said in the deepest, calmest tone Dharmen had ever heard from him. “You have no idea of what goes on all across Angolin that no one ever sees or hears of. Things that democracy never finds.”
Dharmen reached into his belt pouch. Kerbentha closed his eyes, began hyperventilating, and braced. He opened them. Dharmen held nothing beyond a casual ruse. He retook his seat and tapped his upright. In the empty space beside the trio, a holographic scene appeared in miniature, full of people, lights, and music: the Zuidenmarkt. A figure ran through the crowd, towering over everyone he shoved out of his path.
Dharmen paused the holo. “This was retrieved from a public surveillance cam-bot five months ago. Take a look at the face and hair. That’s you, making your escape.”
Kerbentha started a denial, but Dharmen stomped on it.
“Tall. Gangly. Ugly! The computer easily matched every feature with yours, from every visible hair strand to that burn I blasted across your ear. Note the time stamp. It’s 1942, four minutes after my dine-in was bombed. Now look again.” He resumed the holo, paused it at another figure running eight seconds behind. “The stunningly handsome one chasing after you is me.” He sat back and folded his arms. “The DNA on your controller matches that from my dine-in windowsill: solid evidence linking you directly to that night’s events. You didn’t complete the assignment of killing me the first time, so you were put up to it again—”
“But this can’t be happening!” Kerbentha shot out of his seat and interrupted. “Armetrian said South C would have easy escape paths. He never said anything about cam-bots! He told us we’d never get caught, and if we somehow did . . .” His eyes fluttered.
The men opposite him sat like contented stones, watching him as the roving monitor bot recorded his words.
“Armetrian,” Dharmen mewed. “I wondered when that name would come out. Now we really are getting somewhere. Sit down before I knock you down!”
“I’m not working for him. We’re friends! W-we’ve known each other for many years.”
“You don’t have many years under your tunic, kid, skip it!” Dharmen pointed to the seat, watched Kerbentha collapse into it and stew in his own lying juice. “Now, we know you’re working with others because my esteemed colleague, Armetrian, didn’t give you this brain part any more than some general did. And he didn’t teach you how to program it either because he knows even less about anthrotech than you do. I actually have known him for years. Getting under people’s skin and treason are all he does. But I do know of someone else who’s skilled in these areas, someone from the same order your confiscated items came from. Their serials weren’t properly erased, so she must’ve had to get them to you in a hurry.”
He watched Kerbentha squirm, unable to contain himself under the bright lights and the pressure. Or contain his bowels. Krone, what a smell!
“We’ll get to all your accomplices one by one,” Dharmen continued. “But first, you’ll stop protecting this person and give us her name, you’ll give each and every detail of Armetrian’s involvement, and whether you want to or not, you will tell us everything we want to know.”
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