The strangeness had begun with a summons from Galaxy Commander Anastasia Kerensky, bringing him post-haste from sickbay up to her quarters, where the body of Star Colonel Nicholas Darwin lay sprawled across the wide bed in a welter of blood. Anastasia Kerensky stood nearby, a silent presence in black leather.
Murchison checked the body for breathing and pulse, and found neither. Darwin’s throat had been cut brutally and efficiently, with his arms trapped in his clothing to give him no chance for resistance. “He’s past anything I can do for him.”
Anastasia said, “That was the general idea.”
“What happened?”
“You were right.”
He suppressed the urge to say that he was sorry. The Galaxy Commander had the look, at the moment, of someone who would kill the first person who expressed sympathy. Instead, he asked, “What do you need me to do, then?”
“Help me get him outside and up to the observation deck. I want to make it crystal-clear what happens to people who think they can sell out the Steel Wolves.”
Why me? Murchison wanted to ask, but he knew better.
He had already figured out that his relationship with Anastasia Kerensky, as her personal Bondsman, possessed levels of complexity that—as one not raised in the Clan culture—he could not truly understand. This was apparently one of those levels. Beyond that, however, he had pointed Anastasia’s suspicions in Nicholas Darwin’s way to start with; and he could not help but feel that the act made him, in some way, complicit in Darwin’s death. It was fitting, therefore, that he be involved in the sticky aftermath.
He considered the technical aspects of the problem. At least no one was trying to hide the body… “The easiest way is probably to roll him up in the bedsheets and carry him out between us. Those sheets are going to be a write-off anyhow. And the mattress.”
“There are other beds to sleep in,” she said curtly. “Wrap him up.”
Together, they heaved the body and the sheets off the bed and rolled them up into an ugly bloodstained sausage of flesh and blood-soaked fabric. Murchison had pulled on a pair of latex examining gloves by habit when he first approached Darwin’s body—he carried them in his belt pouch along with shears and a screwdriver, much as Kerensky and her Wolves habitually carried knives—but Anastasia worked barehanded. It made sense, he thought; there was already blood on her hands.
He took one end of the finished bundle, and Anastasia the other. In death, Darwin made a limp, ungainly weight. They didn’t need to go far to get to the observation deck—down the corridor, down the cross-corridor, into the elevator, up and out—but it was too great a distance to cover unnoticed. They only encountered one person along the way, another from the general forgettable mass of Steel Wolf Warriors, who said nothing while watching them, avid-eyed—but by the time they emerged with their burden onto the observation platform, a small crowd already stood waiting.
Anastasia Kerensky was full of a magnificent disregard. Murchison, for his part, was grateful that nobody expected a Bondsman to explain anything. She let her end of the Darwin-bundle fall to the platform’s surface with a muffled thud, and he lowered his a bit more gently.
“Rope,” she said. “Or chain, it doesn’t matter.”
Murchison didn’t ask questions. He went in search of rope and left Anastasia standing over Nicholas Darwin’s sheet-wrapped body, with the wind off the land whipping her red-black hair back from her face like a bloodstained sable banner. More Warriors had gathered on the observation platform. Gossip moved as fast with the Steel Wolves as it did with anyone else, and by now every soul on the rig probably knew that something had happened.
Nobody said anything to Murchison. He was the Galaxy Commander’s Bondsman, after all, and what he did was her business and not theirs.
He found the rope—a coil of nylon line hanging from a hook next to one of the emergency lifesaving stations—and brought it back to Anastasia. As he came up to her, she bent down, grabbed the edge of the sheet in both hands and jerked. Darwin’s body rolled out onto the deck.
“Tie it around his feet,” she said.
Her voice wasn’t particularly loud, but it rang out in the silence like a bell. The Steel Wolves on the observation deck weren’t watching or listening to anything else but her, and she was paying them no attention at all. Murchison squatted down next to the body and worked with the nylon line until he had a snug loop fitted around Darwin’s ankles. He stood up again and waited, holding the coil of line in his hand.
Anastasia said, “Make the other end fast to the rail.”
Her voice never changed, her face remained an impassive mask, and there was blood drying red and sticky on her hands. Murchison was torn between cold-to-the-bone fear of her very presence and a reluctant admiration. God only knew, he thought, what her Wolves felt at the sight of her.
He tied the other end of the line to the top bar of the safety railing that surrounded the observation platform, and stepped back.
“Good,” she said. She stooped then, knees bent, and took Darwin’s body under the armpits. “Get his feet.”
Murchison obeyed. He didn’t need to be told anything further—they both rose, lifting Darwin’s body up with them, and the change of direction in her gaze was enough. They held Darwin between them, raised him shoulder-high to clear the railing, and threw him over. The line paid out, whistling, and snapped taut.
“No one sells out the Wolves and lives to spend the money they got for it,” said Anastasia Kerensky.
“No one.”
She stood at the rail, her back to her assembled Warriors, staring fixedly out to sea and gripping the rail in her bloodstained hands. There was a long silence. The Warriors were waiting for her order to disperse, and she wasn’t saying anything.
Then Murchison saw her eyes widen. She was looking at something now, not gazing blankly out at the landward horizon. He followed her gaze.
A dot. No, two dots, moving rapidly and growing larger, one of them following the other. Aircraft.
Anastasia Kerensky spoke. Her voice had a different tone to it now, the snap of action rather than the measured beat of judgment. “How many birds do we have up on patrol? Anybody?”
“One, Galaxy Commander,” a voice replied out of the watching crowd.
“Then we have been found. Pass the word to the VTOL pilot: Weapons free, eliminate pursuit if possible.” She swung away from the railing to face the assembled Wolves. “For a little while, we still have the element of surprise. Prepare to lift the DropShips and attack.”
30
South of Benderville
Oilfields Coast
Northwind
February 3134; dry season
Brigadier General Griffin’s task force continued southward in the reported direction of the Steel Wolf VTOL. The day continued eerily quiet, with nothing to look at but the sea and the grassy sand hills and the cloud of dust thrown up by the reconnaissance column. Despite the apparent calm, Griffin’s muscles were tight with worry and the need for action. He wanted to be fighting something, releasing his tension by putting the Koshi through moves designed to cause death and destruction, rather than continuing his steady pace forward while he listened to the running reports from Balacs One and Two.
“Command, this is Balac One. Our Wolf is definitely making for that oil rig. Balac Two is on his tail.”
Griffin keyed on the circuit. “Balac One, this is Command. Does the Wolf know Balac Two is on him?”