Corridors and skeletons—not Fragile carcasses, but something else: bodies flensed of superficial mechaflesh, hard-skinned and bony with nightmare claws, optimized for weight and speed and killing. Then the body of a boarding crewman, batwings slashed and back broken. Sondra’s accomplices had better bodies and equipment, but Rudi’s people had more experience of this kind of action. A sudden flare of light in the shadows, and a cutting charge opened up a path through into a new chamber.
Then it was over. Or rather, Marigold was in front of me, trying to get my attention. “Ms. Alizond? Come with me. We need you to identify . . .”
The captain’s quarters aboard the Vengeance were more austere than I would have expected: a far cry from the luxury and pomp which was all I had known Sondra to travel with. At least they’d restored air pressure, so I no longer had to blink away the shards of ice that formed on my eyeballs. The spaces of the starship were cramped and cold, so dark that I was abruptly relieved that I had not had my eyes restored to their previous size. A mob of piratical bat-boarders proudly surrounded a hunched figure, spot-glued to an acceleration couch from which she roared imprecations. They’d poured a blob of quick-setting foam over her clawed hands and feet: Judging by the contusions and damage on display, they hadn’t taken Sondra without a struggle.
I took a step forward, bouncing slightly in the dreamlike tenth-gee acceleration. “Hello, Sondra.”
The nightmarish features of her warbody looked up at me and she bared her fangs, hissing.
“That’s not very constructive!” I said brightly, forcing up a shield of lighthearted disdain from somewhere: Truth be told, I felt light-headed, almost sick, gripped by the kind of numbness that takes hold when one’s neurohormonal emulation is spiking into overload. “Don’t you want to get this over with? Then we can be on our way.”
“Hsss—” Sondra shuddered in her restraints. Then she went very still. After a few seconds, she flexed her skeletal chest. Then she looked at me. “Which one are you?”
I stared. “I’m Krina, Mother. Don’t you recognize me?”
“Krina. The little historian? Traitor, I call you.” Her contempt was palpable. And it still stung, more palpably than I had expected. “You owe me—everything you are—”
“I owe you nothing! A debt does not exist merely because you wish it to. If anyone is a traitor here, it’s you—to the people of Atlantis, whose trust you betrayed.” I caught myself, forced myself to count to ten in silence before I continued. “You could have had it all, Mother, if you’d done your job in good faith, managing their systembank. But you didn’t, which is why we’re here now, to hold you to account.”
She made a strange, muffled noise. After a moment, I recognized it for a snort of laughter. “So the little thief comes home to charge her mother with a bigger theft? Nobody’s going to believe you! It’s your word against mine, and I speak loudly, for money talks. Anywhere you try to go in Dojima System, my process servers will follow you. And don’t think you can get away with murder here, either: I have backups. They’ll come after you, too.”
“Not if they don’t have any assets.” I watched her, but she didn’t seem to understand what I was saying. I tried again. “How do you think we learned what happened in Atlantis, Mother? You cashed out too early, and you didn’t follow the job through. Risk management: That’s all banking is about. And now that everyone has come here to wind up the last of the assets left over from your fraud, the citizens of Atlantis have decided to take a place at the table and discuss the small matter of the debt you created.
“It’s over, Mother. The branch manager back there”—I gestured at the wall, the empty gulf of space beyond it, and the Branch Office Five Zero—“is broadcasting a full transcript of Ana’s and my investigation into your fortune to everyone who has an antenna to receive it. And a full description of the entanglement teleporter, although it’ll doubtless take a bit longer for that to turn everything upside down.
“But the upshot is this: Right now, the value of slow money is effectively collapsing, in a wavefront traveling outward at the speed of light. It’s a Jubilee, on an interstellar scale: the end of the debt slavery of worlds. While you’re sitting here, almost out of fuel, your beacon laser disabled and your credit rating trashed.”
She stared at me, uncomprehendingly. “You raised me to always pay my debts,” I explained, making one last attempt. “And I’m done, so I’ll be going now.” I reached over and carefully deposited the cylinder containing a copy of the full transcript on the desktop beside her couch. “I don’t expect we’ll be meeting again, so good-bye, Mother.”
I turned and waited for my bodyguard to make way for me. And then we went home.