“Poor Brigdis,” Skoterin said, looking right at her. Sirkin felt her heart falter in its beat. “You must continue to be the scapegoat awhile longer, I fear. Pity that you went mad and murdered Lady Cecelia and the prince—or his clone, it doesn’t much matter.”
“But I didn’t do any of it!” That burst out of Sirkin’s mouth without any warning.
“Of course you didn’t, though I rather hoped you wouldn’t figure that out until whatever afterlife you believe in.”
“But you were on her ship! How can you do this to her? To the others?”
Skoterin grimaced. “It is distasteful, I’ll admit. I have nothing against Captain Serrano, even though she did manage to ruin my career as a deep agent. It’s certainly not personal vengeance for having managed to arrange the deaths of two of my relatives—”
“Who?”
“Relatives I didn’t particularly like, in fact, though we do take family more seriously than some other cultures. Who scratches my brother—or cousin, as in this case—scratches me. You were there, Brigdis: surely you remember the terrible death by poisoning of poor Iklind.”
“But you—”
“Enough. You two by Haidar—move back over there.” Mr. Smith and the medical team member—Sirkin had not even had a chance to learn their names or positions—moved back near Lady Cecelia. “You, Brig—you stand by Haidar.”
She was moving, under the black unseeing eye of that weapon, despite herself. She could hardly feel her body; she felt as if she were floating. Her foot bumped something; she looked down to find her shoe pressed against Haidar’s head. He was breathing; she felt the warm breath even through the toe of her shoe. Her mind clung to that, like a child clinging to a favorite toy in a storm. One thing was normaclass="underline" Haidar was alive.
“Take one of those weapons from the rack, and hit him.” Sirkin stared at Skoterin. “Go on, girl. They’re not loaded; you can’t hurt me with it. I want your fingerprints on it, along with his blood. Whack him in the head with it, hard.”
“No.” It came out very soft, but she had said it. Skoterin’s face contracted.
“Do it now, or I’ll shoot your precious Lady Cecelia.”
“You will anyway.” Sirkin felt the uselessness of her argument, but she also felt stubborn. If she was going to die anyway, she wanted to die without her fingerprints on a weapon which had killed someone else. “Why should I help you?”
“I don’t have time for this,” Skoterin said, and levelled the weapon at Sirkin. Sirkin panicked, grabbed the nearest object in the rack, and threw it at Skoterin, just as Mr. Smith made a dive for her, and Skoterin fired.
The noise was appalling; Sirkin heard screaming as well as the weapon itself. When it was over, she felt very very tired, and only slowly realized that she had been hit . . . that was her blood on the deck now . . . and she had to close her eyes, just for a moment.
Meharry smelled trouble before she got anywhere near the weapons lockers. An earthy, organic stench that had no business wafting out of the air vents. She knew it well, and proceeded with even more caution thereafter, taking a roundabout route she hoped no one would expect. She had her personal weapons, just as Arkady had—hers were the little knives in their sheaths, and the very small but very deadly little automatic tucked into her boot. If Sirkin thought she was going to take Meharry by surprise . . . She paused, listening again. A faint groan, was it? Real or fake? Scuffing feet, difficult breaths . . . really she didn’t know why everyone didn’t carry a pocket scanner. Much more sensible than sticking your head around corners so that someone could shoot it off. Carefully, she slid out the fiberoptic probe, and eased its tip to the corner . . . then checked her backtrail and overhead before putting her eye to the eyepiece.
Carnage, she’d suspected. Bodies sprawled all over the deck near the weapons lockers. And on his feet, cursing softly as he applied pressure bandages as fast as he could, Petris. Why hadn’t he reported? Then she saw the ruin of the nearby pickups. He must have found this and simply set to work to save those he could. She retrieved the visual probe, and hoped she was right in her guess—because if Petris was the problem they were in a mess far too bad for belief.
“Petris—” she called softly, staying out of sight.
“Methlin! Tell Heris to get the rest of the medic team down here fast. Lady Cecelia’s still alive.”
“You all right?”
“I got here late,” Petris said, not really answering the question. Good enough. Meharry backed up to the first undamaged intercom and called in. Multiple casualties, what she’d seen.
“What?”
“Just get the medics down here, he says. I’m going to help unless Arkady needs me—”
“No, we only have three ships after us now.” Only three, right. “I’ve put Oblo with Arkady.”
Meharry walked around the corner, still wary, and found a situation that didn’t fit her theories.
“Here—” Petris shoved rolls of bandaging material at her. “See what you can do with those three; they’re alive. The clone’s dead; so is Skoterin, and I think Haidar and Sirkin, but now you’re here I can look.”
Meharry continued Petris’s work, glancing at Lady Cecelia—clearly alive, though bloody, but lying against the wreck of her chair as if stunned. She took a quick look at Skoterin, startled to see her wearing personal armor—it hadn’t saved her from a shot to the head.
“Damn Sirkin,” Meharry said. “I didn’t think she could shoot that straight.”
“She didn’t,” Petris said. “I did. It wasn’t Sirkin after all.”
“Skoterin?”
“Yep. The dumbass wasted time explaining it to them—if she’d gone on a bit longer, I’d have nailed her without the rest of this. But she started to shoot Sirkin, and the clone jumped her, and that’s when I arrived.”
Meharry shook her head. “I didn’t know you could shoot that straight.” Whatever else she might have said was cut off by the arrival of the others in Lady Cecelia’s medical team.
Chapter Twenty-one
On the bridge, Heris heard Meharry’s first report with disbelief; she located the rest of Cecelia’s staff and sent them down. Meanwhile . . .
Meanwhile the Compassionate Hand ships continued to close, but did not attack.
“What are they waiting for?” Ginese asked. “Do they think we can take them?”
“Nice thought. Let’s hope they think so until Meharry gets back up here. Maybe they think we’ll surrender if they give us time.”
Issi Guar said, “There’s something coming into the system—something big.”
“Not Labienus and the Tenth Legion again,” Heris said. They had been dragged through innumerable ancient texts on warfare in the Academy: ground, sea, air, and space. One of the clubs had put on a skit about Labienus and the Tenth Legion—the way the Tenth Legion kept showing up like an adventure cube hero in the nick of time—which they all thought very funny until one of their professors reminded them of Julius’s career stats. Nonetheless, it had become a byword among officers of her class.
“No . . . I doubt it.” His fingers flew over the board, trying on one screen after another. “I wish we’d gotten that VX-84 you found, Oblo.”
“She said nothing stolen,” Oblo said, with a sidelong glance at Heris.
“I said nothing illegal,” Heris corrected. “But you didn’t pay any attention to that—what stopped you this time?”
“Guy wanted more than I wanted to pay . . . I don’t like messy jobs.” Messy, to Oblo, could have several meanings. “Let him take care of his own family problems,” he continued. Heris let it roll over her and tried to figure out what the Compassionate Hand commanders were doing. The yacht was running flat out, on a course that the gas giant and its satellites would curve into a blunt parabola. They had emerged from jump too close to its mass to do anything else. The two larger C.H. vessels paralleled it, slowly catching up; the signal delay from them was down to five seconds. The third had been unable to gain on them.