Almonzeia, the capital of the MT Corporation's colonies on Almonzis
Axel hung up. His ear ached and his temple throbbed — the head of security from the MT Express directorate had spared neither tone nor language when she called him and unleashed her full fury upon his head. Fontaine managed to insert a few words in his defense while she paused for breath between phrases, but diplomatic relations were not restored. Ax didn't blame her — he wouldn't have been thrilled either if SS officers from the directorate were rummaging through his train and interrogating his crew.
"But why yell so much?" He swallowed a painkiller and called the kitchen to order lunch, then, hoping for some interesting reading, opened Guy Montelu's personnel file, which had been sent to him by HR.
His hopes were immediately justified: Guy Montelu was Claude Reneal's maternal uncle, which didn't surprise Ax — radicalism often ran in families like an inherited disease. Nor did it surprise him that uncle and niece both worked for MT; nepotism among employees was encouraged.
"Ah, I'm getting old, my memory's going to hell," Ax thought ruefully — he'd probably found out about the girl's uncle when she was hired, and then forgotten... But that usually worked in a new employee's favor, especially an intern who'd just won the lottery of a job on one of MT Express's finest trains.
"Time to get better acquainted," Fontaine scrolled to the end of the personal data tab. Mr. Montelu was single, childless, lived alone, and his religion was listed as "atheism." Either he wasn't religious, or he was good at hiding it.
The "Education" tab contained such a long list of retraining and advanced training courses that it was hard to imagine when Montelu had time to work. All the courses were related to one field: working with surveillance systems. Fontaine quickly scrolled to the "Work Experience" tab.
Montelu had spent almost his entire career in the video surveillance development and implementation department. The list of job duties didn't tell Ax much — he didn't understand half the words — but he gathered that Montelu was precisely the kind of person who could have advised Claude on how to fake the surveillance footage. Deciding not to torture himself but to ask someone who actually knew, he was about to call Kellerman when his personal phone rang. Fontaine pressed it to his other, still-undamaged ear with some apprehension.
"Hello?.."
"Fucking bastards!!" Phan roared with such force that Ax's skull nearly cracked. "Damned scumbags! Cockroach-brained morons!"
"What happened?" Fontaine asked cautiously. The last time he'd seen her this angry was ten years ago, when faulty intelligence had led to the deaths of sixty hostages in Campo-del-Pilar.
"Half-witted, underdeveloped degenerates!"
"I hope you're not referring to..."
"The local police are a herd of worthless idiots! The terrorists' car has been driving around the city for three days! And I only found out about it now because some dim-witted creature from the police accidentally cc'd me on an email they forwarded to their boss!"
Ax closed his eyes. A number of choice phrases came to mind, but instead he asked, almost meekly:
"Do you have the routes?"
"I'll send them..."
"No need. This isn't a phone conversation. I'm coming to you. Are you at the police station?"
"Yes. We've commandeered a couple of rooms. They'll meet you downstairs."
"Excellent. I'll be there in twenty minutes."
Fontaine threw on his jacket and hurried to the door, nearly colliding with István, who was rushing towards him with his lunch.
"You're leaving already, sir?"
"I... uh... yes," Ax stared greedily at the plates. The salmon steak smelled divine, and there was a pile of donuts for dessert. "Um... could you possibly pack all this to go?"
The poor man jumped so badly he nearly spilled the soup all over the parquet.
"P-pack it? What do you mean, pack it? Like... takeout?.."
"Yes. I have urgent business in the city; I'll eat on the way."
"God," István whispered, profoundly shocked by the request. "Very well, sir. I'll try to find some containers and disposable cutlery."
***
At the police station, Ax was met by an oppressive silence, a tense atmosphere, and Captain Lidmann, pale as a sheet, who immediately began muttering apologies. Like many an unfortunate before him, he had clearly underestimated Major Phan and the destructive force of her rage. In twenty-five years of knowing her, Fontaine had seen her angry three or four times, so the deathly silence at the station and the captain's nervous twitch didn't surprise him.
"How did you find their car?"
"You informed us, sir, that they might have a decommissioned or stolen police car. We launched a tracking program using data from the city's surveillance cameras."
"Is there only one old Paona in the whole city?"
"No, of course not, sir. But only one that isn't being picked up by our tracker chip reader."
"Because the cutter removed the chip," Ax murmured.
"Precisely, sir. Cross-referencing the video footage with the routes of chipped cars took some time, and Major Phan somewhat misinterpreted the reason for the delay."
Axel could have said a great deal on the subject, but after a good lunch, he always became more good-natured and lenient, even towards irresponsible idiots. Besides, these idiots had still done a considerable amount of work, essentially manually searching for the Paona Delma without a chip: they had to compare the routes of countless cars from the surveillance footage with the tracker logs and, by process of elimination, find the one car that appeared on video but was absent from the route logs.
"This way, sir. Major Phan is expecting you."
Ax crossed the threshold into a spacious hall that Phan had commandeered for her exclusive use. The major's team consisted of about a dozen people, almost all of whom were now monitoring live video feeds. Phan stood in the middle of the hall, grimly overseeing her subordinates' work.
"Want a donut?" Ax asked.
"Can you sometimes not eat?"
"I can. When I'm asleep. Take this one — it's got cherry jam. What are you working on?"
"Trying to pinpoint their lair. Judging by the Paona's routes, it's somewhere in the southeast of the city, near the old industrial zone. But there are no cameras there, so the car literally vanishes into thin air once it crosses the boundary."
"What about drones? Aerial surveillance?"
Phan nodded towards one of the guys at a monitor connected to a sensor panel:
"We've started. So much time wasted because of those idiots!"
"Didn't they launch police drones?"
"No," Phan hissed. "They were afraid of scaring off the terrorists. Our drones fly higher and in stealth mode."
"Find anything?"
"Not yet. They've probably gone underground — into basements — so we can't get a thermal trace, and the drones' x-ray scanners aren't powerful enough to see through tons of reinforced concrete. For now, we're hoping to track their car."
"And where is it?"
"Running errands," Phan led Ax to a large wall panel. On the screen, a red line jerked across a city map, encircling the neighborhoods around the industrial zone. "They need to eat, just like you. So I assume that while some of the terrorists are holding out in the industrial zone, one or two are driving around getting supplies, medicine, and toilet paper."
"A risky venture," Ax said thoughtfully.
"They have no choice. They know perfectly well that even if they get out of the city, they won't be able to board a passenger train and leave Almonzis."
"So what's the plan? Stock up on supplies, steal a couple of cars, and head for the local pampas, hoping to lose themselves there?"
"Quite likely. In three days of active raids on markets and shops, they could have amassed a decent stock of food, water, clothing, tools, even weapons."
"And then? Sit in the pampas until we forget what this gang looks like?"
"I don't know," the major replied tensely. "Maybe they're hoping to reach some provincial station that serves freight trains."
"Can I see all the Paona's routes for the last three days?"
Phan swiped her finger across the console, sweeping the map to the left. Another map appeared, where several colored lines intertwined into a wreath around the industrial zone in southeastern Almonzeia. Fontaine took the console and zoomed in until street names, houses, shops, and other establishments appeared.
"Do you have a map of camera locations? Can you overlay it on top of this?"
"Samvel!" Phan called out. "Send us the surveillance camera schematic!"
A scattering of yellow dots blazed over the Paona's routes — a pulsing halo around each marked the surveillance zone. Ax began slowly scrolling the map, moving in a circle.
"What are you looking for?" Phan asked.
"They're not leaving the city."
"Afraid to take the risk and get too far from their base."
"Then why drive specifically along the streets with the most cameras?"
"Well, surely they wouldn't deliberately..." Phan stared at the map, beginning to catch Ax's drift.
"Knowing that everyone from the beat cop to an epsilon-class major is hunting them, they've been driving back and forth in a stripped car for three days? One trip would have been enough to stock up on food and water."
"You think they're luring us?" the major asked doubtfully.
"What other explanation is there for their actions?"
"But why?"
Ax stared at the map thoughtfully. Years of dealing with terrorists had taught him that they could be equally divided into sincerely deluded idealists, genuine fanatics, and cunning, calculating bastards — but which type were they dealing with now?
"Strictly speaking," he said quietly, "they've already failed their mission. Whoever their client is, they won't be pleased. And considering a significant portion of the operation was funded by the king of the Averon drug cartels, then... maybe they've decided that going out with a bang is easier than trying to escape unsuccessfully."
"Martyrdom as an inspiration for the rest of the anti-slavery fighters," Phan said. Though for some reason, Dominica da Luna, the author of that saying, hadn't been in a hurry to follow her own creed and had preferred a prison sentence to a bright, inspiring death.
The major coughed, and Ax felt a soft, delicate touch against his mind. He focused on the void and heard Phan's Mindvoice:
"Have you ever been reading someone's dossier and gotten a persistent feeling that you're being lied to?"
Fontaine started in surprise, and such a vivid image flashed through his mind that the major exclaimed indignantly:
"Him again?! Ax, you're obsessed!"
"I can't help it! Every time I look at that pastry chef, I can't shake this feeling!"
"He can't be a terrorist accomplice; we've already discussed this. I was inside his head; there were no traces... Oh, never mind, I wasn't talking about him at all. I requested Aviles's dossier, and they sent it to me in full, supposedly from the archive of the unit where he served."
"Where did he serve?"
"At a garrison on Meneran, in the Frontier. It's one of the planets at the very edge of the explored galactic arm. Meneran is a small colony of the Averon Union; it's got a few research stations and a small garrison."
"Let me guess," Ax said grimly. "The dossier says Aviles spent his entire time in that garrison as a private or some kind of sniper?"
"Exactly. The dossier is as smooth as a billiard ball — training unit in Inara, then at twenty, sent to Meneran, served there as a private for ten years... until he deserted at thirty. How the hell," Phan asked irritably, "did he manage to desert from a garrison located literally in the middle of nowhere?"
"Of course, they gave you all the certificates from his training and the garrison commander himself remembered him?"
"I even got hold of his fellow soldiers," Phan hissed, and Axel felt a flash of her irritation. "Oh yes, they remember him, but they can't provide any specifics; it was all so long ago, you understand."
"You're describing a case almost identical to the pastry chef's."
"But I'm dealing with a terrorist, not a pastry chef, so I contacted the leadership of the military district that includes Meneran and started asking questions."
"And?"
"I was told to shut up and be grateful for what I have," the major replied gloomily. "And the order didn't come from the district commander, but from our own Inquiry Service, from higher up."
"How high?"
"I don't know. I just got a call telling me that Aviles's dossier is perfectly complete, and to keep quiet."
"Damn," Ax hissed. "And what happened after that? With Aviles, after he deserted?"
"He resurfaced in Acosta, about a year later. Acosta, in case you didn't know, is as far from Meneran as the local police chief is from common sense. It's a fairly large, well-colonized planet that had a cell of anti-globalist terrorists, which Aviles joined. He was alone back then."
"But from what I can see, he didn't stay idle and formed his own group pretty quickly?"
"Yes. He managed to flip Alma Barrera in a single night. She was part of an operation to capture terrorists on Acosta and, according to her last report to headquarters, was pursuing Aviles. Half a day later, she disappeared."
Fontaine was silent, thinking. He sensed that Phan didn't like his train of thought, but it was foolish to deny the obvious...
"I think he's epsilon-class, first category. I don't know who else could brainwash another epsilon-being so quickly and effectively. The dossier is obviously fake."
"That's bad, Ax."
"I know. If Aviles is one of those, then his entire service record, training, abilities — all of it is classified. And he's a terrorist. No wonder the higher-ups were furious."
"Maybe he's part of a covert operation..." Phan began uncertainly, but didn't finish the thought.
"If that were the case, you'd have been told as soon as you started planning the intercept."
"Well, maybe not; maybe he's supposed to get as close as possible to some high-value target among the radicals, or even to Enrique Salvador, whatever his name is."
"Or maybe he's one of them."
"One of who?"
"You know."
"I don't know anything," Phan replied irritably. "And I have no desire to discuss cadet rumors about the most top-secret, super-special forces unit of super-special beings."
"But it's possible, admit it?"
"I won't. In any case, until I'm ordered to stand down, I intend to see this through to the end. Has Lavrova changed her mind about your participation?"
"No. So, since Aviles is so insistent on inviting us — we'll drop by, and we'll bring our own drinks and snacks."
***
Teddy lay in bed, scrolling through Claude Reneal's social media. The lights were off; it had been dark outside the porthole for a long time, but he couldn't sleep. Aguilar had dosed him with a sedative as soon as he'd dragged him back to the compartment, and the journalist had spent the next day and a half in a fog. But now the medicine had worn off, and Ross was scrolling through the girl's posts on MyTime — photos, GIFs, funny captions. Her last post had been published today, or rather yesterday — in the morning, just a few hours before... before the shot.
Teddy tossed his phone aside and left the bedroom. The curtains in the living room were open, and the depot's floodlights illuminated half the room. The sofa had been moved into deep shadow, and Ross could barely make out the pastry chef's silhouette. He walked over and coughed quietly.
"Yes, Teddy?"
"I can... I don't want to disturb..."
"Sit down."
The upholstery rustled; Aguilar shifted over, and the journalist sank into the newly vacated space.
"Why aren't you sleeping, Teddy?"
"I can't."
A heavy, warm hand suddenly landed on Ross's shoulders, and he shuddered.
"It's not your fault," Aguilar said softly. "He didn't kill that girl because of you."
"Who else then?" Ross muttered thickly. A lump rose in his throat again, and Teddy blinked several times. "If I hadn't been standing in the vestibule like an idiot, if I'd refused to go..."
"Then he would have found another way. That's all."
"What's the point!" Teddy cried out furiously, and the pastry chef tightened his grip on his shoulder. "Fontaine already knows who he is! Why kill..."
"Because she'd probably met him in person or corresponded with him."
"What could she have told him that was so important?"
"Who knows," Aguilar replied thoughtfully. "Maybe nothing special. He was just covering his tracks."
"Covering his tracks," Teddy repeated. "As if she meant nothing!"
His eyes stung, and he squeezed them shut, swallowing repeatedly to keep from disgracing himself by crying like a child.
"He would have killed you too," the pastry chef said. "You were just the bait to lure the girl out; the second shot was meant for you."
The journalist began to tremble. He'd tried not to think about it, about how one second was all it would take. He wouldn't even have realized... Maybe he'd have seen a flash, and then he would have been gone. Just an end, nothing more, never! One second, God!
"Why did you do it?" Ross whispered.
"Do what?"
"Stand in front of me. He could have killed you!"
"No," Aguilar replied with a smirk.
"What do you mean, no?! Beings can be killed, can't they?"
"Of course they can. But some are harder to kill than others."
"And you're one of those?" Teddy asked, trying to make out Aguilar's face in the darkness. The man was silent for a long time, then said:
"Yes."
"What does that mean? Do you have armored skin?"
"Oh, no, not that special," the pastry chef replied with a chuckle. "No armored skin, no lasers from the eyes. But I can dodge a shot, and besides, I was expecting something like this."
"Why?"
"Miss Reneal's behavior raised some suspicions."
Shadows flickered past the porthole. Aguilar walked over to the side of the window and looked out at the platform.
"They're getting ready," the pastry chef murmured after a few seconds.
"Fontaine's soldiers?" Ross shrank back. "They're not... not all of them will go, will they?"
"No, of course not. Don't worry, Fontaine won't leave the express undefended, especially now. There are about thirty of them, no more."
"Will they take them tonight?"
"Yes. Soon, Teddy," Aguilar added gently. "Soon this will all be over."
Ross stared at his hooked-nose profile, trying to calm his racing heart. What if there was another sniper out there in the darkness, just waiting for someone to get too close to the window!
"Please step back," he whispered. The pastry chef turned his head, and a bright flash of light from a floodlight swept across his face, illuminating his eyes. The journalist let out a piercing cry and recoiled.
"What is it, Teddy?"
"Y-your... your eyes..." Ross choked out. "What's wrong with them?!"
Aguilar tilted his head and covered his eyes with his hand.
"Don't be afraid, it's not contagious," he said. "Just... not very pretty."
"Not very pretty?!" Teddy shuddered. He'd never seen anything like it, even in horror movies!
"What's inside them?! Why is it... why is it moving?!"
"I told you, some beings are... special."
"But... but..." Ross swallowed several times. "Is that why you wear lenses?"
"Yes. I just took them out so they wouldn't get in the way. You never know who might decide to visit."
"But how did it happen?" the journalist asked, utterly bewildered. "I mean, how can something like that be grown? Genetically programmed, or whatever they do with the genome during recombination? What would you even need to recombine to make eyes..."
"This is not eyes," Aguilar admitted with a sigh.
Al-Haiyan, the capital of the Sultanate of Er-Rummal's colonies on Tar-Mariat
Murad did not approve of the terrorists' apparent preference for hiding underground. For one thing, he disliked enclosed subterranean spaces; for another, they always smelled bad. The drainage system wasn't a sewer, but there was still a faint stench of staleness, dampness, and decay.
AlNilam divided the Al-Shadiyar soldiers into groups and sent them to seal off all the tunnels leading to the terrorists' suspected location. The young freedom fighters had abandoned their car in the bushes near an old tunnel entrance; Al-Shadiyar specialists were now processing it. The Wad-Prince himself descended underground with only his Yakzan — AlNilam disliked working in company. One never knew what they might notice.
"They're not exactly hiding," Murad said, his voice set to minimal volume through the microphone in his kaita. He couldn't whisper, of course — the neuromodulator only allowed him to adjust his voice's volume.
"A trap," AlNilam murmured.
"Killing a Wad-Prince of the Sultanate would be stupid. The consequences..."
"If they've risked too much already, they might not care about consequences. Honestly, I can't remember a single successful attack on MT in the last twenty-five years. A successful one, I mean. Except for the Dorothea bombing."
Murad was thoughtfully silent. They moved down a corridor, dimly lit by the streetlights filtering through grates in the vaulted ceiling. It was a good spot for an ambush, but the Wad-Prince hadn't detected anything suspicious yet. He walked slightly ahead, eyes half-closed — scanning the corridor with echolocation, like a bat. His kaita was pulled down to his chin, and he was intently sniffing and listening.
Suddenly, AlNilam stopped and raised his hand. Murad froze.
"Someone's crying," the Wad-Prince said quietly, pointing to a dark, narrow branch off the main corridor. "A woman."
"Gemma?" Murad asked, though he could neither see nor hear anything.
"Perhaps."
"Left her as bait?"
AlNilam tilted his head slightly forward, frowning in concentration.
"No," he whispered. "There's no one with her. She's alone. Let's go."
He pulled his kaita up over his face, opened his eyes, and unclipped the neuro-lash from his belt. When he lowered his visor and activated the darkening feature, he became a narrow black figure that almost immediately dissolved into the darkness. Not for Al-Fayyaz, of course — he could still see the Wad-Prince thanks to his night-vision system and followed behind him.
AlNilam glided silently down the corridor like a ghost. The Yakzan activated his scanner to check for hidden traps, but found nothing. There was literally nothing in the corridor but dirt, and Murad was starting to find it unnerving. A mine or an ambush somewhere would almost be a relief...
"Stop," AlNilam ordered, barely audible. Now the Yakzan could hear the muffled sobbing too and could make out the figure of a woman ahead. She was on her knees, her face in her hands, crying inconsolably.
"It's not Gemma," Murad said. The girl was small and plump, while Nightbird was tall and slender. The prince rushed toward her. She had no chance of noticing him — a dark figure emerging from the darkness behind her, stinging her neck with an injector loaded with a fast-acting sedative and neuro-paralytic agent. The girl toppled sideways; AlNilam caught her, laid her down, and beckoned Murad.
The Yakzan approached. The prince pointed to a kaita lying nearby. The girl was wearing a coverall with protective coating to repel florofauna and heavy-soled boots. Her black hair was pulled into a flat knot at the back of her head; her small face was red from crying.
"She can't be more than eighteen," Murad said.
"The bastard started recruiting children," Effendi hissed, then paused and added: "Further on, the corridor widens. There are three more there."
"Three? That's all?"
"All. No one else."
"A smoke screen," the Yakzan thought, looking at the girl with pity. If the passage ahead wasn't mined to lure them into a trap, then Magrinha had simply used the children as a decoy. If it was mined, then they were the bait.
AlNilam carried the girl to one wall, nodded to the Yakzan to take the other, and they crept toward where the other three terrorists were holed up. Murad kept scanning the corridor but found no tripwires, no heat or motion sensors, no pressure-triggered bombs — nothing he expected to find.
A weak electric light glowed ahead, forcing them to stop. Murad touched the sensor strip on the edge of his visor, adjusting the zoom and amplifying his audio sensors.
A generator hummed faintly in the corridor. Nearby stood a stream-communication module, three backpacks, and a small pile of boxes and crates. And in the middle of it all: Gemma, bound in magnetic bracelets, and two boys in kaitas.
"You're lying!" a hysterical cry cut through the air. "They couldn't, they couldn't! We don't kill our own!"
"Only traitors," another boy said, much calmer.
"Diego wasn't a traitor!"
"How would you know?"
"He doesn't know," Gemma said coldly. "But I do. Ramos didn't betray anyone. He's not on any list of infiltrated agents or informants."
"You're lying!"
"Then check. You still have truth serum."
"But why would any of our people kill Ramos?" the second boy muttered.
"No idea; I wasn't there," Nightbird shrugged. "Ask your senior colleagues... if they'll answer."
"Oh, Gemma!" the Wad-Prince whispered admiringly.
"Oh yes," Murad thought proudly. If she'd been a trained special agent, they could afford to wait and see how far she'd push the young terrorists. But Gemma was only an SS administrator, and waiting was too risky.
"Cover her," AlNilam ordered. "I'll take the pups and the stream module."
"Yes, Effendi."
The Yakzan moved slightly forward, ready to lunge toward Gemma. The prince drew his pistol, took aim, and with a precise shot, severed the connection between the generator's power supply slots. The terrorists naturally noticed the muzzle flash, but immediately afterward, the generator chirped pitifully and died. Absolute darkness fell, broken only by a cry:
"Hey, what the hell?!"
The darkness was, of course, absolute only for the terrorists; Murad could see everything clearly through his visor. The Yakzan rushed toward Nightbird, shoving one of the boys away from her as he ran and dropping to one knee beside her. He activated his energy shield bracelet in "dome" mode and raised his arm. A pale-golden umbrella unfolded above them, illuminating his face.
"Murad!" Gemma breathed. "Oh, Murad, it's you!" Tears welled in her voice. The Yakzan wrapped his free arm around her shoulders and pulled her close.
"It's all right, Gemma. Don't be afraid."
While the terrorist Murad had knocked aside was trying to get to his feet, the second one drew a pistol and foolishly fired at the shield. Nightbird cried out and squeezed her eyes shut against the flash, while both boys were thrown back against the generator by the shockwave.
"Cease fire!" the Wad-Prince commanded authoritatively.
"Who's there?!" wailed the boy who hadn't believed in Ramos's murder. He scrambled away from the generator, blindly patting the floor. AlNilam, invisible in the darkness, glided silently past him.
"Don't come closer! Freedom above..."
The prince jabbed an injector into his neck. The boy gave a weak cry and sprawled on the floor. AlNilam threw a net over him and turned to the second.
"Don't kill me!" the second terrorist suddenly shrieked. "I surrender! I surrender, do you hear me!"
He raised his hands, still holding his pistol, and swiveled his head, trying to spot his enemy in the dark. The Wad-Prince appeared behind him, crushed the gun hand in a vice-like grip, and stung him with another injector. As the second body crumpled to the floor, AlNilam netted him and touched his earpiece sensor.
"Al-Saghir, we're in the southwest corridor. Only three terrorists here. Sweep the remaining tunnels and send us a support team. Saida Nightbird is with us."