“Boussaid, Commander. They know who you are. Follow them to the middle gate, they’re expecting you.”
The Sakhran driver, who had given no sign of being able to speak Commonwealth, but was fluent in the language of levelled and lowered guns, did not wait for instructions. He lashed the team forward just as the sixwheel directly in front gunned its engine—it squealed, like a metallic chimaera—moved aside, let them pass through the outer gate, and followed close behind.
A half-mile in silence, with the swivelguns on the outer fence tracking them all the way, and with the tall waving grasses of Blentport looking as though any minute they would crash down in torrents to engulf the road which so tentatively parted them, and then came the middle fence, as high as the first; then a gatehouse, bigger than the first; and another assembly of military vehicles and soldiers, also bigger than the first. They were passed through quickly and politely, and escorted another half mile to the third fence and gate. The third fence was thirty feet high, partly chainlink and partly stone. From the amount of visible and conventional defences covering it (swivelguns, heat and motion sensors, lasers, arclights) Foord could imagine what else was hidden inside it, or, because it was camouflaged or microminiaturised, simply invisible on its surface.
Everything about the third fence area was bigger: the gate and gatehouse (both large, solid, real stone constructions, unlike their more makeshift equivalents on the two inner fences), the military vehicles, and even the soldiers themselves.
Boussaid, however, was not big; he was about Thahl’s height, balding, and plumpish. He was standing alone in front of the gate in the third fence.
“Commander Foord! You’re very welcome.”
All around him were lights and sirens, troops running to and fro, military vehicles gunning their engines, crews barking out orders; yet somehow, without shouting, Boussaid’s voice carried to the landchariot.
Foord got out, followed by Thahl, and went over to Boussaid, who shook hands. His face seemed open and amiable and generous, which normally would have made Foord instantly suspicious.
“The only real person on Blentport. Did Smithson really say that?”
“I’m told he did. He also said you can get us back to my ship. Can you?”
“Of course, Commander.”
“And the landchariot?”
“You can ride it right up to your ship, if you wish…But first,” he motioned casually towards the gatehouse, “let’s go in and talk. I need to brief you on this situation. I keep a small room or two in some of these gatehouses, and I have one just here. Come in, come in…”
The gatehouse was a two-storey stone building, blocky and squat, not unlike some Sakhran buildings. Foord noticed as they approached it that its outlines were softened by creepers trained along its walls and even—he did a doubletake at this—some hanging flowerbaskets and windowboxes. Three plates and three water-dishes were placed in an orderly line outside the main door, where a large tortoiseshell cat, orbited by two silently fighting kittens, surveyed them impassively. They walked through a couple of anterooms and into a small inner office.
“The kittens are Dollop and Globule. I haven’t thought of a name for their mother yet.”
“Fundamental Particle?” suggested Thahl.
“A nice idea, but not a name for a cat. I could give you a whole dissertation on the naming of cats…perhaps when you get back.”
“Perhaps,” agreed Thahl.
“Do all your gatehouses have hanging baskets and cats and windowboxes?”
“Most have cats, Commander. Members of the garrison make pets of them, or vice-versa. Flowerbaskets and windowboxes, no—only the gatehouses where I keep a small room, as here.”
There was a desk but no other obvious office furniture, only a couple of armchairs and a sofa. Standing in front of the desk, Foord saw several documents arranged neatly—nobody would ever completely eliminate paper—which were annotated in red, green and blue, in a hand which, even upside-down, Foord could see was regular and careful. Boussaid’s writing implements were set out on the desk; they were old-fashioned, functional, devoid of personal insignia, but well maintained. Foord’s own personal possessions were similar. He began to like Boussaid.
Apart from the documents and several comms, the only other object on the desk was a still photograph, in a plain wooden frame, of a woman and two children, all three slightly plump, amiable and open-faced. Boussaid let Foord look at it for a while before he spoke.
“Ever see people after a really bad brawl, Commander?”
“Oh no, Colonel, never. When we put into a port, nobody is ever less than totally welcoming.”
“Usually,” Boussaid continued imperturbably, “the aftermath of a brawl here on the Port is messy. Cracked heads and broken bones; blood; missing teeth; people battered from head to foot, usually in an area equidistant from each.”
Foord’s smile began just as Boussaid’s vanished.
“But not this time, Commander. I’ve just visited some Horus crew members who were involved in this incident with your people. They’re all badly injured, one of them very badly. Probably you know this. I certainly expected it. What I didn’t expect was the way they’d been injured. It was neat and clean and deliberate, and very vicious; and totally disproportionate.” He shifted his gaze, from Foord to Thahl. “It’s as if you attacked them, apart from the bit about Vicious and Disproportionate.”
Unusually, Thahl was taken unawares. He became suddenly and diplomatically absorbed in the indicator board on the walclass="underline" nineteen lights, one per grid.
“Or as if,” Boussaid went on, “Faith was already here, disguised as two of your crew. That’s how clean.”
Sixteen of the lights, Thahl noted, flashed red, indicating a ship present. This included the light for Grid Nine, which housed the Charles Manson.
“I’m sorry it happened, Colonel. But it does happen every time.”
Thahl saw Foord and Boussaid lock eyes and remain so for some time without either speaking. Finally Boussaid broke contact. He flipped open his wristcom, said “Confirmed. Start now,” snapped it shut and said to Foord “I’ve just activated certain plans, Commander.”
Before Foord could reply, he noticed a red light go out on the indicator board; a small ship lifting off from one of the minor grids. Through a window he watched it ascend, noiselessly and vertically.
His wristcom buzzed.
“You’d better answer it, Commander. It’s connected with my call.”
Foord did so. “Commander, it’s Cyr. I’ve just received a call from the garrison commander’s staff, with orders which they say have your authority.”
“What are the orders?”
“To be ready for your arrival here in about thirty minutes, and to be ready, at any time from now until you arrive, to go to Armed Shutdown. Are those orders confirmed?”
Even Thahl could no longer maintain the polite pretence of interest in the screens. Armed Shutdown was the last resort of a grounded ship under heavy attack; it made it impregnable and immovable. To Foord’s knowledge it had never been used before by a Commonwealth ship in a Commonwealth port; not even by an Outsider.
Foord glanced briefly at Boussaid.
“Yes,” he said. “Confirmed.”
“I hope Boussaid knows what he’s doing, Commander.”
“I’m with him now,” Foord said drily, “and I believe he does.”
He closed his wristcom, slowly and thoughtfully. From a distance, another ship lifted off and another of the red monitor lights went out. This one was a very large ship, a Class 097. For the first few hundred feet of its ascent it rode on its noiseless magnetic drive; then its atmosphere boosters cut in, their multiple trails looking—and sounding—like a set of giant fingernails screeking across the grey slate of the sky. Foord waited until the noise receded.