The inner airlock hatch slammed shut and Bracknell felt through the thick soles of his boots the pump starting to chug the air out of the darkened metal chamber. In less than a minute the pump stopped and the outer hatch swung open silently.
Bracknell saw the cold distant stars staring at him. On unsteady legs still twitching from the stun charge, he clumped to the lip of the hatch. Peering out along the ship’s skin, he saw a set of cleats within arm’s reach. For a moment he thought of refusing to go outside. I’ll just stay here in the airlock, he told himself. Then he realized that the captain would simply have a few men suit up and throw him out, maybe without even the tether. So, like a man going through the motions of a nightmare, he attached the end of his tether to the nearest cleat and then stepped out into nothingness. The airlock hatch slid shut behind him.
He glided silently as the tether unreeled, then was pulled up short. A sardonic voice in his head mocked, You’re at the end of your tether. A helluva way to die. He realized that despite his contemplation of suicide, despite Addie’s tutoring him in the desirelessness of the Buddhist path, he very much wanted to live.
Why? Why not just open the seal of this helmet and end it all here and now? The answer rose in his mind like the fireball of a nuclear explosion: Vengeance. Victor and Danvers had betrayed him. And Yamagata was the biggest bastard of them all. Yamagata had brought down the skytower, and that had given Victor the opportunity to steal Lara from him.
Molina. Danvers. Yamagata. He would live to work his vengeance on them. But you won’t live long enough to succeed, that mocking inner voice told him.
Looking around as he floated in the emptiness he saw, on the far side of Alhambra’s curving hull, that the other ship was still linked. What was its name? Hiryu, the captain had said. Flying dragon. Why would it still be connected? If they intend to bring Toshikazu back to Selene they ought to light off as quickly as they can.
Then Bracknell remembered that Hiryu was a Yamagata vessel. And Yamagata certainly wasn’t here to help Toshikazu recover from his wounds.
The silent explosion blinded him, but it did not surprise him.
DEATH AND TRANSFUGURATION
Whirling blindly through space, Bracknell knew for certain that he was a dead man now.
He could feel himself spinning giddily. The explosion must have torn my tether free of Alhambra, he thought. I’ll twirl like this forever. I’ll probably be the first man to reach Alpha Centauri, even though I’ll be too dead to know it.
Then the realization hit him. Addie! The captain. All the people on Alhambra. Did the bastards kill everybody? Madly he tried to paw at his tear-filled eyes; his gloved hands bumped into the thick quartz visor of his helmet. Blinking furiously, he tried to force his vision to return. All he saw was the searing after-image of the explosion’s fireball. They wouldn’t have blown up the whole ship, he said to himself. Why would they? They wanted Toshikazu and they got him. Why the explosion? An accident?
No, he realized. They suspected that Toshikazu had been talking to us. They wanted no witnesses, nobody left alive. Dead men tell no tales. Neither do dead women, even if they’re only seventeen years old. His eyes filled with tears again, but now he was sobbing for Addie, killed because of me. The final casualty of the skytower. They killed her and everybody else because of me.
Then he thought of Yamagata. I didn’t kill them, Bracknell reminded himself. He did. Yamagata. He’s back on Earth, living in luxury, with the blood of millions on his hands.
Slowly his vision returned. Eventually he could see the wreckage of Alhambra spreading outward like dandelion seeds puffed by the wind. It was dwindling, dwindling as he himself spiraled away through space.
Yamagata did this. Bracknell kept the image of Saito Yamagata in the forefront of his mind. It kept him alive, gave him a reason to keep on breathing. He had never met the mighty founder of Yamagata Corporation, but he had seen vids of the man on the news net. Yamagata was supposed to have retreated to some monastery in Tibet, Bracknell remembered, but the newscasters smugly reported that this was just a ruse. The old man was still running his interplanetary corporate maneuvers, they assured their watchers.
Saito Yamagata, Bracknell told himself as he tumbled endlessly through space. Saito Yamagata. When he finally lapsed into unconsciousness he was still burning with hatred of Saito Yamagata.
He opened his eyes and almost smiled. Bracknell found himself lying on an infirmary bed, safe and warm, with a crisp sheet over his naked body. It was all a dream, he thought. A nightmare.
But the dark-skinned, slightly plump nurse who stepped into his view was a stranger. And she wore a white uniform with the crescent logo of Selene on her left breast, just above a name tag that identified her as norris, g.
Bracknell blinked at her, then croaked, “Where am I?”
She smiled pleasantly at him, white teeth gleaming in her dark face. “A classic question.”
“But where—”
“You’re in the hospital at Selene. A salvage team picked you up when they went out to claim the wreck of Alhambra.”
“Alhambra?”
The nurse fussed over the intravenous drip inserted in Bracknell’s arm as she replied, “From what I hear, Alhambra collided with some Yamagata ship and they both blew up. You’re lucky to be alive.”
Raising his head anxiously, Bracknell asked, “Did anybody else … are there are any other…”
“No, you’re the only one who survived. What were you doing outside in a spacesuit?” Without waiting for an answer the nurse went on, “Whatever, it saved your life. Were you outside doing some repairs, or what?”
He sank back onto the pillow. “I don’t remember,” he lied.
The nurse cast him a doubtful glance. “There wasn’t any ID on you when they brought you in. What’s your name?”
Bracknell started to reply, then caught himself. “I… I don’t remember,” he said.
“You don’t remember your own name?”
Trying to look upset about it, Bracknell said, “I can’t remember anything. It’s all a blank.”
“Posttraumatic shock,” muttered the nurse. “We’ll have to run some scans on you, then, and check them against the files.”
She left Bracknell’s bedside. He raised himself up on his elbows and looked around. He was in a cubicle created by portable plastic partitions. His clothes were nowhere in sight. And he knew he had to get out of this hospital before the computer scans identified him as Mance Bracknell, the criminal who’d been sentenced to lifelong exile.
In his office in New Kyoto, Nobuhiko Yamagata watched the image of the white-haired servant as he delivered his final message. It’s finished, then, he said to himself. At last it’s finished. I can breathe freely again.
Within an hour the news came that a corporation ship named Hiryu had been destroyed in an accident that also wiped out the freighter Alhambra. No survivors were reported.
Nobu’s first instinct was to uncork a bottle of champagne, but he knew that would be incorrect. Besides, he found that he didn’t feel like celebrating. Instead, a profound sense of gloom settled upon him like a massive weight.
It’s finished, he repeated to himself. This terrible business is finished at last.
BOOK IV
VENGEANCE