Revengers Page 10

  The door to the bar slid open, and Laodicean glided into the bar and came towards them. Mero turned around to look. His grip on the back of the chair visibly tightened and his ears fell back against his head. His tail was tense.

  “Our newest recruit,” said Rurthk.

  Mero turned to stare at him. “You've gotta be kidding me.”

  “Mero,” said Laodicean as he reached the table. “Hello. It is a pleasure to meet you in less formal circumstances.”

  “Shall we go and look at those shuttles, then?” Rurthk said cheerfully, standing up.

  Mero took a deep breath, then laughed. “I knew I was going to regret this.”

  He took them outside to a small street where the shuttles were parked amid a few cars. There were two of them. They were clearly military grade, angular and clean, with polished black hulls that seemed to repel all dirt and grease. “Like the ones you stole from us,” he told Laodicean.

  “It was illegal for you to possess them,” Laodicean said. He seemed to take that as sufficient justification.

  Mero and Rurthk looked at each other.

  “I think the same goes for these,” Rurthk said. “I'm hoping that's not going to be a problem?”

  Laodicean was silent for a few seconds before answering. “No.”

  “Anyway,” said Mero. “These are just the sort of thing you want. Laser turrets, small scale kinetics,” he said, pointing to the nose. “High-level stealth. Acceleration, almost a kilogee.”

  Rurthk walked around them, studying them. “Yeah,” he said. “I think you can come back.”

  “So, what next?” said Mero.

  “We get these back to the Fire Strider. They should fit in the cargo hold,” said Rurthk. “So let's get started.” He looked up at Laodicean. “Go do your thing.”

  “Of course,” said Laodicean, gliding away.

  *

  Back aboard the Fire Strider, Mero was positively bouncy. The three shuttles were lined up side-by-side. “Whoa,” he said, scrambling around Enoch Chase's luxury shuttle. “It looks like someone beat me to the punch.”

  “That's my contribution,” said Olivia, stepping out of the corridor. “Stole it from my father.”

  “You should've got one with guns,” said Mero, and laughed. His tail flicked joyfully from side to side. “Welcome back, kit.”

  “Same to you,” Olivia said with a laugh. She made to hug him, then held back, and shook his hand.

  “I hope your skills haven't deserted you,” Eloise said, also shaking his hand. Wolff gave Mero a barely perceptible nod, more to acknowledge his existence than welcome him back. Mero showed off some of the equipment he'd brought with him, which included a small armoury inside one of the shuttles.

  Rurthk was examining this when he got a call from his comms. It was Laodicean.

  “I have completed the signal and am returning now.”

  “Good,” said Rurthk. He told Laodicean to go to another small town. “We'll meet you there.”

  Chapter 27: Attracting Attention

  Rurthk hoped this would work.

  They had moved back around the planet, so it was still before sunrise here. The stars were bright and sharp in the black sky. Fast-moving patches of cloud dropped hail on them momentarily before moving on. The rocky ground outside the town was covered in a thin sheen of ice.

  With Dr. Wolff looking after the Fire Strider, Rurthk, Eloise, Mero and Olivia met Laodicean in the town's plaza.

  “So,” Mero said, “just to be clear, if she'd not watching, then we'll just be messing about for nothing … except maybe attracting the attention of Vihan Yvredi.”

  “That's right,” said Rurthk.

  There was a station below the plaza, quick similar to the one where Laodicean had cornered them the last time they were here.

  Rurthk led them down into the station, which was active but empty. Together, they took a pod back and forth across the same length of tube three times, replaying the motions Eloise and Rurthk had taken when searching for a secret entrance to Vihan Yvredi's base.

  “This is kinda fun, actually,” Olivia commented.

  “And entirely ridiculous,” grumbled Mero in a good-natured way.

  Back at the plaza, Rurthk said, “Find the station's control systems. Lock the station down.”

  Mero took maybe two seconds to look around the plaza, then bounded away across the stonework. Rurthk and the others followed him to a hatch in the ground beside a small fruit and vegetable shop. Olivia joined him, and with the help of some of his new instruments, they got the hatch open.

  “Done,” Mero announced a short time later.

  “Wait a minute or so, then unlock it and shut down the power.”

  Mero did so. “What now?”

  Rurthk looked around. This was as far as his plan went. “We wait,” he said.

  So they waited. Hail came and went as they sheltered into the shop's facade. Ten minutes passed. No pods arrived at the station. The plaza remained empty.

  “Turn the power back on and do the same thing again,” said Rurthk. “Lock, unlock, power off.”

  “Whatever you say, Cap,” said Mero.

  Rurthk looked at the working Petaur and smiled faintly to himself. How easily they had fallen into the old pattern again. He was, oddly, glad to have Mero around again.

  Ten minutes passed. They repeated the cycle, waited, and did it again. After the third attempt, a pod arrived in the station, but it was just a lone harried-looking Petaur on his way to work. They kept trying. The sky began to lighten.

  “Maybe she's not as observant as we thought,” said Eloise.

  “Or she's noticed that we failed to actually stop Vihan Yvredi,” said Rurthk, “and given up on us.”

  Mero's ears fell back when he heard this. He looked at Eloise for a moment, then turned away. Spending the better part of an hour in the cold seemed to have dulled his enthusiasm.

  Still, they kept trying. The occasional Petaur walked through the plaza. More arrived at the station.

  “We're becoming conspicuous,” said Eloise.

  “I hope so,” muttered Rurthk.

  Shortly after the sixth attempt, a small group of Petaur dressed in the black and yellow garb of Cantor Law Enforcement arrived. Mero quickly closed the hatch in the floor the moment they arrived, and Rurthk stood awkwardly with his crew beside the closed fruit shop.

  The police didn't seem in a hurry to move on either. A few of them seemed to be talking into their comms.

  “What are the chances they're after us?” Rurthk muttered to Eloise.

  “Well, if there's anyone else looking at the maintenance records, they must be more than a bit confused,” said Eloise.

  “They're not being obvious about it, but they're watching us,” said Mero.

  “Let's take a walk,” Rurthk said.

  “We can deal with law enforcement no, no problem,” Mero said.

  “It's not the police I'm worried about,” said Rurthk. “It's whoever's keeping an eye on their records.”

  “Ah … good point. Let's move.”

  Rurthk led them away from the shop and down one the roads radiating out from the plaza.

  “They're following us,” said Laodicean.

  “I know,” growled Rurthk.

  Behind them, the police had started to move across the plaza. One of the was speaking into his comms. Rurthk looked down the road. It was still largely empty, aside from a few cars moving back and forth, the red glow of their effector fields standing out in the dim light. A multi-species group of five was impossible to miss.

  Rurthk saw a black and yellow car up ahead coming towards them, and led the team down a narrow alley between the buildings. Up ahead, there was a sign for another transport pod station nearby. Another cloud passed overhead, bringing strong hail.

  “This way,” he said. With any luck, they might be able to get to the Fire Strider and away before the police got to them.

  They came out the alley onto an adjacent street.
Another black and yellow car moved through the hail towards them. Behind them, the original group was gaining on them.

  A white car with darkened windows stopped beside them suddenly, and its doors swung open.

  “I suggest you get in quickly,” said a female voice from inside.

  Chapter 28: It's Her

  Their benefactor, whoever she was, was not in the car, it turned out. Once again, the voice was a recording. It was being driven remotely.

  The interior of the car was warm and gently lit, with a lush carpet, a row of soft seats to the front and back, and grips in the ceiling for Petaurs to hang from. For a moment after the door closed Rurthk thought it wasn't moving. Then he caught sight of the scenery racing past through one of the windows, and realised the car must have gravity neutralisation fields.

  He checked the back window. There was no sign they were being followed.

  “It appears you do indeed have a mystery benefactor,” said Laodicean. “I was starting to doubt her existence.”

  “Our Lady of deus ex machina,” Eloise murmured, peering out the window.

  “Hello?” said Rurthk loudly. “Can you hear us? I mean, I appreciate the lift, but I'd appreciate some information even more.”

  He wasn't expecting a reply, but after a moment the voice said, “You've left someone in your new ship. Shall I send someone to pick him up? I can look after the ship while it's empty.”

  Rurthk hesitated. Then it struck him that if this person already knew where to find the Fire Strider, he had no choice but to trust her. “Yes,” he said. “Go ahead.” He waited for a reply that didn't come, then added, “What are you doing here?”

  This time, there was response.

  The car hurtled out of the town and across the cold, desolate landscape. When it was clear of all signs of civilisation, it revealed itself to be a shuttle in disguise, taking to the air and accelerating.

  The shuttle took them on a high arc over Cantor. The sky glowed blue below them and turned black above. The landscape of ice fields and rolling plains and small seas lay mapped out on Cantor's curved surface. The shuttle descended again closer to the temperate regions, where there were fields of fluffy pink blossom and forests of bulbous trees with red leaves.

  The shuttle slowed. At last, a structure came up on the horizon. It was shaped like a prism: A long mansion with a steep roof that reached all the way to the ground. A lot of early Petaur architecture was like that, Rurthk knew – having no style of their own, the Free Petaurs tried to get away from the Albascene dodecahedrons they had lived with for so long, but ended up designing building in other geometric shapes because that's what they were used to.

  Mero gazed out the window. His eyes widened. His tail fell still. His voice was for once rendered soft in amazement. “By the Ancestral Abyss,” he muttered. “It's her.”

  “Her who?” said Rurthk.

  “This is the home of the first president of the Free Petaurs,” Mero said. “Yilva Vissin Avanni.”

  Chapter 29: Security Systems

  The shuttle landed in a berth connected to the mansion. Its door opened directly to the inside.

  “Well, then,” said Rurthk. “Let's go and meet the former president.”

  The inside of the mansion looked more like a workshop than a living area. The lights were dim. There were half-disassembled machines, bits of smart matter, and extended tablets scattered everywhere. Rurthk ducked under a bundle of cables hanging from the ceiling.

  “Hello?” he said.

  “Captain?” The reply was unexpected. It was Doctor Wolff. He came walking through the workshop. “Ah, so you are here. I was starting to get worried.”

  “Have you seen her?” said Rurthk.

  Wolff shook his head. “I've only just arrived.”

  They continued together through the workshop, coming at last to a door which slid open at a touch.

  Beyond it there was an actual living space, well lit, with carpets and chairs. Even here there were still trinkets scattered about on the tables and shelves. But on the soft green chair opposite, an elderly Petaur sat regarding them with wide-awake eyes.

  “You failed,” said Yilva.

  *

  “It's nice to meet you too,” said Eloise.

  “It was foolish, messing about like that,” said Yilva. “You could have easily been caught. As it is, I had to erase some police records.”

  “Well, if we knew another way of getting in contact with you,” said Rurthk, shrugging.

  Yilva gave him a hard look for a few seconds, then laughed. “You have a point,” she said. She gestured at the chairs. “Sit, sit, please. I don't like people standing up to meet me. It feels too formal.”

  The chairs were on the small side, for Rurthk at least, but they had smart components and enlarged slightly to fit the occupant. The humans, at least, seemed perfectly comfortable. Mero chose to hang from a grip on the ceiling.

  While they settled, she got up slowly and ambled off into another room, returning with a plate of what looked like candied fruit. She cleared a table of the open tablets and trinkets on its surface and put the tray down. “Sorry about the entrance,” she said, pushing the table on a cushion of effector fields to the centre of the room. “They insisted I have this house, but I didn't need that much space. I thought I might do something useful with it, after all.”

  She sat down and appraised them all again. “What a motley group you are. Rurthk, is it?”

  Rurthk nodded. Beside him, Mero was busying himself with the candied fruits After a moment, Olivia tentatively tried one and then joined in.

  Yilva went through the group, murmuring their names, until her gaze alighted on Laodicean. “Who are you?”

  “Investigator – that is, former Investigator – Laodicean.”

  “Ah … Yes.” She sighed. “My information is good, but it isn't perfect. The GEA is a tough one.” She sighed. “So, Captain Rurthk, what do you want from me?”

  “Help. We have to stop Vihan Yvredi,” said Rurthk.

  “A bit late, isn't it?” said Yilva. “They've already made their move. Hundreds are dead. The Glaber are at war with the humans and the Varanids.”

  When she said this, Mero froze for a moment, holding a half-eaten piece of candied fruit. His tail went tense.

  “That's why we have to stop them,” Rurthk said. He thought again of Kaivon, of the war. “I'm going to gut them. Tear them apart and expose them for the world to see. When I'm done with them, there will be nothing left.”

  He finished his spiel to see that everything was looking at him.

  “We've got a vendetta,” said Eloise. “But more importantly, if we can expose Vihan Yvredi, we might be able to change the course of the war.”

  “It's a long shot,” Yilva said. “I tried to get rid of them several times, but I never managed it.” Her tail snaked forward to pull the tray closer to her so she could get a piece of fruit. “But, I suppose, one more shot couldn't hurt.”

  “If I may, Ms. Avanni,” said Dr. Wolff, “what is your history with them?”

  Yilva was silent for some time. “When the Free Petaurs settled on Cantor, we had nothing but this half-frozen planet, some stolen Albascene ships, and our own ingenuity. We knew what it was like to be indentured workers. So we had to protect ourselves.”

  “Yeah, all the shipbuilding, we know about that from history class,” said Mero.

  “But there was more than that,” said Yilva. “When we were putting together the government, some of us in the ruling council wanted to create a secret government organisation, beyond the normal intelligence service, with the remit to ensure the Petaurs remained free by any means necessary. I argued against it, of course, but I was voted down. In a fit of patriotism, we called it Vihan Yvredi – Glass Beach – in honour of an early rebel group.”

  “It's part of the Petaur government?” said Rurthk. That, he supposed, explained why it had access to a military base in the ice fields.

  “To a degree,” sa
id Yilva. “As time went on, Vihan Yvredi began to consolidate its position. It became even more secretive and more powerful. By the time I saw what was happening, it was too late for me to do anything about it.” She closed her eyes and sighed. “Now it is accountable onto to itself. The electorate know nothing about it. The ruling council knows nothing about it. The president knows nothing about it. It retains access to many Petaur facilities, but by now it is very much an independent organisation.”

  “And what does it want?” asked Laodicean.

  Yilva gave him an ironic smile. “That hasn't changed. It wants to ensure the Petaurs remain free. Believe me, everyone in the organisation is a true patriot for the Free Petaurs. They wouldn't be invited unless their psych tests showed the to be completely dedicated. But to fulfil its remit, it needs power.”

  “And you can always gain more power,” said Eloise.

  “Exactly,” said Yilva.

  “Do they have military protection?” asked Rurthk.

  “No,” said Yilva. “Too much of a footprint. That's one of the prices of secrecy. If they did, some parts of the armed forced would know what they were doing, and others would begin to ask questions. They have some limited control of the military and that's about it.”

  “Well, that makes it easier,” said Mero. “Just tell us how to get to their headquarters and we'll go and shoot them all.”

  Yilva tittered. “They don't have any headquarters, for exactly that reason. Too vulnerable. They're spread across space, always on the move, keeping in contact by encrypted bulkwave transmissions. When they do set up shop, it's in the cracks of normal society.”

  “Like that old northern base,” said Rurthk.

  “Or the Information Broker's shop hidden in the back room of a bar,” added Olivia.

  Yilva nodded. “Yes. They always have escape routes and bolt holes planned. And they're always ready to leave at the drop of a hat.” She paused to smile faintly. “I like that phrase. I learned in in the Alliance Navy. Anyway – their power lies in the connections They have links in the GEA, in the governments of every power except the Tethyans and Glaber, and recently they seemed to have gained influence over Sweetblade.”