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She was stunned at the question and his calm, disarming manner. She felt a something rise at the back of her neck, something that she’d felt tingling there before the killing started groundside.
“You want none of them?” he answered for her. “How fickle.”
He pulled her aside and signaled the men behind them to fire. In seconds nearly a quarter of the Orbiter’s token security force lay dead on the deck.
“Dispose of them through the shuttle airlock,” he told his men. “If you kill one in a room, kill all in the room. I don’t want to see any bodies. Beatriz will announce that there is a revolt in progress aboard the Orbiter and the Voidship. We’ve been sent to stop it.”
“Why do you do this to me?” Beatriz hissed. “Why do you tell me I have a choice when I don’t? You were going to kill them anyway, but you have to include me …”
He waved his hand, a dismissal gesture that she’d long associated with Flattery.
“A diversion,” he said. “Part of a game … but see, you are stronger for it already. It amuses me, and it strengthens you.”
“It’s torture to me,” she said. “I don’t want to get stronger. I don’t want people to die.”
“Everybody dies,” he said, motioning his men aboard. “What a waste when they don’t die for someone’s convenience.”
Chapter 27
Anyone who becomes master of a city accustomed to freedom and does not destroy it may expect to be destroyed by it.
—Machiavelli, The Prince
Spider Nevi’s favorite color was green, he found it peaceful. He jockeyed Flattery’s private foil across the green-tinged seas and allowed the plush command couch to soothe the tension out of his back and shoulders. Green was the color of new-growth kelp, and tens of thousands of square kilometers of it stretched out around them as far as the eye could see.
Some sunny days Nevi spun a foil out of moorage just to drift a kelp bed, enjoying the smell of salt water and iodine, the calm of all that green. He didn’t like red, it reminded him of work and always seemed so angry. The interior of Flattery’s foil was finished in red, upholstered in red. The coffee cup that Zentz handed him was also red.
“What’s so special about this Tatoosh woman,” Zentz gurgled, “the Director got the hots for her?”
Nevi ignored the question, partly because he wasn’t listening, partly because he didn’t care. He was about to have his first sip of coffee for the day when the Navcom warning light flicked on. He almost didn’t notice it because the light, like everything else, was red. An abrasive warning tone blatted from the console and he started, spilling hot coffee into the lap of his jumpsuit. He doubted that he would have missed that tone if he were comatose. Their foil slowed automatically with the warning.
“Go ahead,” he told Zentz, “let’s hear it.”
Zentz turned up the volume on the Navcom system. Nevi couldn’t stand the radio chatter while he was trying to relax, so he’d had Zentz shut it down when they hit open water.
“… you are approaching a ‘no entry’ area. Sector eight is disrupted, kelpways not secure. Code your destination and alternate routes will appear on your screen. Be prepared to take on survivors. Repeat—warning, ‘code red,’ you are …”
Nevi took the foil down off its step and kept the engines idling. “Fools!” Nevi muttered. “They were warned to keep her away from the kelp.”
“Do you think they’re in there? Maybe they made it through before …” Zentz cut himself off when he saw the anger in Nevi’s eyes.
“Get a display up,” Nevi ordered, “I want to get a look at this ‘disruption.’“
He coded in the private carrier code for Flattery’s quarters. The waters around the foil had already gone from choppy to rough, and in the offshore distance Nevi could make out portions of a large sub train bobbing the surface.
“Yes?” It was a female voice, curt.
“Nevi here, get me the Director.”
The display that Zentz had been working on spread across their screen. It reminded Nevi of a weather picture of a hurricane—everything on the outside swirling toward the center. But this was kelp, not clouds, and it was happening undersea, almost within sight of their point. He was not happy with the delay from Flattery’s office.
The woman’s voice came back as curt as the first time.
“The Director is busy, Mr. Nevi, we are in full alert here. Someone blew up one of the outer offices, a security detachment has attacked the Kalaloch power plant and there is some problem with the kelp in sector eight …”
“I’m in sector eight right now,” he said, his voice as even as he could make it. “If he can’t talk, get me a direct line to Current Control.”
“Current Control has been incommunicado for nearly an hour,” she said. “We are attempting to find out the meaning of—”
“I’ll keep this frequency open,” Nevi snapped. “Get him on the air now!”
Her only response was to close the circuit. Nevi pinched the bridge of his nose for a moment, staving off one of his headaches.
“You should’ve kept her on,” Zentz said. “What did she mean, ‘A security detachment has attacked the Kalaloch power plant’? We defend the Kalaloch power plant.”
“We need to figure out where the Galli woman is and we need to get our hands on her fast,” Nevi interrupted. “She’s our bargaining chip no matter what’s going on.” He tapped their Navcom screen with a well-manicured finger and traced the spiral pathway that wound from edge to center.
“I’m guessing she’s in there somewhere,” he mused, “and anything in there is heading for the center. There isn’t time to bring in any hardware. We’ll have to chase them down or intercept.”
“You mean … follow them in there?” Zentz asked. “What about the attack on the power plant? Something’s coming down in the ranks and my men—”
“Your men seem to be undecided about their loyalties,” Nevi said. “They can work that out among themselves. But I’ll put you out here and radio for a pickup if you’d prefer.”
Zentz’s massive face paled, then flushed.
“I’m no coward,” he said, puffing himself up. “There’s just something going down at the Preserve, where I …”
Flattery’s carrier frequency sounded its tone and his voice crackled in their speakers.
“Mr. Nevi, we’re having some urgent problems here that need our full attention. What do you want?”
“I want a direct line to Current Control. The kelp out here is going berserk, and if you want the Galli woman we need to straighten it out or knock it down.”
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“I’m monitoring their actions,” Flattery said. “They’ve applied full power to that sector and the subs have all surfaced. Things here are getting sticky. A bomb went off in my outer quarters about a half hour ago. Killed my staff girl, Rachel, and that guard, Ellison. Looks like he brought the damned thing inside. Mop up out there as soon as you can and get back here. We may go Code Brutus on this one. Our Chief of Security has some answering to do.”
The connection was broken at Flattery’s end.
Code Brutus, Nevi thought. So, it’s starting already. At least out here, right now, we don’t have to choose sides.
He had no doubt which side Zentz would ally with. For Zentz, a return to Flattery meant sure execution. Too many errors, too little strategy.
Maybe he’s already in on it, he thought.
Zentz was on the radio to his command center at the Preserve, chewing out some major. If this was a coup from the security side, he didn’t believe Zentz was in on it.
Nevi kept his attention on the screen, where the kelp configuration didn’t seem to change.
Would it be worth it, going in after them?
He thought it probably would. The different factions of Pandora only needed a symbol to bring them together, and Nevi knew Crista Galli was ready-made for the job. Better his hands on her than Shadowbox. Besides, he’d maneuvered around troublesome kelp in the past and never had problems that he couldn’t handle. And if a coup did come down, Nevi could be seen as rescuing Crista Galli, along with the very popular Ozette. That would get the media on his side.
Either way, that LaPush has to go, he thought. That one’s been too much trouble for too damned long.
Nevi didn’t want to be the one to rule Pandora, if that was what all of this came to. He was happy being the shadow, being the arranger of possibilities. His distaste for Flattery and his style grew more unbearable by the year, but he had no desire for the hot seat himself.
Code Brutus, he thought. A coup attempt from within.
Nevi didn’t think that Zentz was capable of carrying off a coup, though he had to admit that he was in the middle of the perfect alibi—at sea with the Director’s highest-ranking assistant, a known and effective assassin.
