Iron Sunrise

SHOWTIME

With the ship docked and resupply under way, Steffi was annoyingly busy. In addition to spending some of her off-hours with Wednesday — the kid had problems and needed a shoulder to unload on, but it was remarkably draining to be in the firing line — she was filling in for Max and Evan, running errands between Bridge and Engineering, generally acting as understudy and gofer for the executive team, and minding the shop while her superiors were dealing with the port authorities. If it went on this way, she’d be lucky to get any time on the surface at all — and after three weeks of constant work she needed to get out of the ship for a while very badly indeed. If she didn’t do her share on the surface, Svengali would have harsh words for her; of that, she was certain. Which was why Elena’s call from the purser’s office came as an unwelcome distraction.

“Lieutenant? We have a situation here. I’m on tube four, northside. Can you come up right away?”

Steffi glanced at the two engineering auxiliaries who were hooking up the ship’s external service cables — power, so they could strip down the number two generator, and crypto, so they could dump the bulk mail spool. “I can give you five minutes. That’s all. On my way. What’s the situation?”

“I can’t tell you until you get here.”

“What do you mean, ‘can’t’?” Steffi was already moving toward the nearest crew lift capsule. Got to sign off the cable hookup, then see Dr. Lewis gets her transport for the new surgery unit …

“It’s very irregular.” Elena sounded apologetic. “I’ve got an override B-5.”

“A—” Steffi blinked. “Okay, I’m on my way.” She twitched her rings to a different setting, then told the lift to take her to the lock bay. “Max? Steffi here. I’ve got a problem. Do you know something about an override B-5 coming up?”

Max sounded distracted. “A B-5? No, I haven’t heard anything. You can try to field it if it’s within your remit. If it goes over your head, get back to me. I’m covering for Chi right now, so I’ve got my hands full.”

“Uh, okay.” Steffi shook her head. “B-5, isn’t that a diplomatic exception?”

“Diplomatic, customs, police, whatever. If they’ve got a warrant for a passenger, it’s the purser’s office. If it’s to do with shipboard ops, get back to me.”

“Okay. Steffi out.” The elevator slowed, then opened its doors on the passenger country side of docking tube four. This level of the tube — a pressurized cylinder the diameter of a subsonic trash-hauler jet — was a wide corridor, ramping up at the far end into the arrivals processing hall of the station. At the ship end, various lock doors and high-capacity elevators opened off it. Just then, a trickle of passengers were idling on their way portside. Elena and a crewman from the purser’s office were waiting by the barrier with a passenger — no, wait, he was on the wrong side, wasn’t he?

“Hello, Elena. Sir.” She smiled professionally. “How can I help you?” She sized him up rapidly: dark hair, nondescript, young-looking with the self-assurance that came with age, wearing sandals, utility kilt, and a shirt in a style that had been everywhere back home. Then he held up a small booklet. With a white cover.

“My name is Martin Springfield,” he said diffidently, “and I’m attached to the UN special diplomatic mission currently in residence in Sarajevo.” He smiled faintly. “Nicky didn’t look like this last time I was aboard, I must say.”

“Nicky? Excuse me?” Elena was trying to catch her eye, but too late.

“That’s what we called her back in the yard. Must have been eight or nine years ago.” Springfield nodded to himself, as if confirming something: “I’m sorry to have to pull this on you, but I’m here because Ambassador Cho needs some questions answered urgently. Is there somewhere private we can talk?”

“Private—” Steffi’s eyes nearly crossed as she tried to reconcile conflicting instincts: Get this annoying civilian out of the way so I can go back to work; and oh shit, government stuff! What do I have to do now? “Um, yes, I suppose so.” She cast a warning glance at Elena, who shrugged and looked helpless. “If you’d be so good as to step this way? Can I have a look at that, sir?”

“It’s genuine,” Elena volunteered. “Carte blanche. He’s who he says he is. I already checked.”

Steffi forced herself to smile again: “I’m sure you did, or you wouldn’t have called me.” She looked at Martin. “Follow me.”

As if everything wasn’t complicated enough, as she turned, a small clot of people were coming down the tube — a couple of staff entertainers, one or two business travelers, a handful of tired-looking recently thawed steerage customers with their shipping trunks, and Wednesday. Wednesday noticed her at the same time and couldn’t leave well alone. “Uh, Lieutenant Grace? Are you busy? I just wanted to say, I’m sorry about the other day—”

“It’s all right,” Steffi said tiredly, wondering how she was going to talk her way out of this. “Are you all right? Going groundside, I see — do you have anything in mind? Some sightseeing?”

Wednesday brightened slightly. “I’m sightseeing, yeah.” Then she was abruptly sober. “There’s a memorial ceremony tomorrow at the, the embassy. In the capital. Anyone from Moscow who’s in-system is invited. It landed in my mailbox this morning. Thought I ought to go. It’s been five years, empire time.”

“Well, you go,” Steffi said hastily. “If you need to talk when you get back to the ship, feel free to call me — I’m just a bit snowed under right now.” To her relief Wednesday nodded, then hurried off to catch up with the flock of day-trippers. What did I let myself in for? she wondered. After that devastating breakdown on the first night, she’d sat with Wednesday for a couple of hours while she poured out her grief. It had left Steffi wanting to strangle someone — starting with whoever had killed the kid’s family, followed by the kid herself when she realized how much of a time sink Wednesday could be. But she’d filed a report with the stewards, disentangled herself carefully, and when she checked the next day Wednesday seemed to be fine. And she was spending a lot of time with the troll from B312. They were resilient at that age. She’d been made of rubber herself, back when her parents were splitting up; but she didn’t remember collapsing on a total stranger’s shoulder and spilling her soul, or trying to pick a fight over supper. Spoiled, like most rich kids, she figured. Wednesday had probably never had anything to worry about in her life.

Steffi reached the crew elevator and realized with a start that the man from the embassy was still with her. What is he, the human glueball? she wondered.

“We can find a corner of the executive planning suite, or maybe a conference room. Or if it’s okay with you, I can go check on a couple of jobs I’m meant to be supervising.” Let’s get you out of my hair, huh?

“If you can check those jobs in person, I’ll just tag along and stay out of your way while you’re doing it.” Springfield leaned against the side of the lift car. He looked either tired or worried — or both. “But I’m afraid I’m going to be generating a lot of work for you. Ambassador Cho sent me to poke around here because I’m the nearest thing to a shipping specialist he’s got. We have a bit of a needle and haystack problem, I’m afraid. Specifically, we have reason to think that one or more of the long-stay passengers have been using this vessel as a vehicle for serial naughtiness at the last few ports of call.”

The elevator began to slow as it neared the power hookup bay. “Are we talking about smuggling, sir? Or barratry, or hijacking? Because if not, I don’t see what this could possibly have to do with WhiteStar. It’s been a remarkably peaceful voyage so far.”

The doors hissed open, and Steffi stepped out. Yuri was leaning against the wall beside the big gray switchbox. “All hooked up, ma’am. Would you like the tour?”

Steffi nodded. It took her only a minute to confirm that Yuri and Jill — who had hurried off, needed elsewhere — had done a good job. “Okay, let’s test it, turn it on, and sign it off.” She waited while Yuri called down to the engine room and ran through the checklist before tripping in the circuit. The cabinet-sized switchbox hummed audibly as it came under load, nearly fifty megawatts of electricity surging into it through superconductor cables no fatter than Steffi’s thumb. “Okay, here’s my chop.” She signed off on Yuri’s pad, then sealed the cabinet.

“Let’s go find a conference room,” she told Martin. “If you still feel you need to check our records … ?”

“It’s not whether I feel any need, I’m afraid,” he said quietly, then waited for the lift pod doors to close: “I don’t expect you to have any trouble in flight. The person or people we’re looking for are more likely to be causing trouble ground-side.”

“Trouble? What kind of trouble?”

Springfield looked grim. “I can’t tell you. But it’s bad enough to get a full-dress diplomatic mission out here to paper over the cracks. If you want confirmation, wire Victoria McEllwaine in Legal back at WhiteStar head office and ask her what you should do. Meanwhile, I need to go over your entire passenger manifest since the current cruise began. And your temporary staff, for that matter — anyone who’s been here for less than six months. I may also need to gain access to staterooms. If you can’t authorize a search, point me at someone who can. Finally, I need to make an inspection tour of your engineering spaces and check cargo consignments for certain destinations — any small to medium items that have been drawn out here by passengers, checked in from Earth, Turku, and Eiger’s World.”

“Is that all?” Steffi asked disbelievingly. He’d outlined enough work there to keep someone occupied for a week. With passenger churn approaching 40 percent per destination, they’d gone through six or seven thousand embarkations, not to mention the Entertainments staff: they’d shipped an entire chamber orchestra from Rosencrantz to Eiger, never mind the other irregular performers that Ents kept hiring and firing. “I’d better get you sorted out right away. If you don’t mind, I’m going to boot you upstairs to my CO — I’m due off duty in two hours with shore leave tomorrow.”

“Well, I won’t keep you — but let’s get started. I’m supposed to report back within twenty-four hours. With results. And then I may have to call on you to help me arrest someone.”

Meanwhile, Frank was groundside and frustrated. “Can you explain why they won’t see me? I made this appointment forty-three days ago; it’s been cleared via the consulate in Tokyo. Is there some kind of problem?”

“Problem.” The man on the small screen cleared his throat. “You could say that.” He eyed Frank curiously. “I’m afraid we’re in the middle of a staff training drill right now, and Minister Baxter isn’t available. Also, all embassy engagements have been scaled back, and I can’t find any mention of you in our workgroup diary. Would you like to make a fresh appointment for sometime next week?”

“My ship leaves the day after tomorrow,” he said as calmly as he could manage. “So next week is right out. Would Minister Baxter be available for a phone interview instead? If security is a concern, there’s no need for face-to-face contact.”

“I’ll just check.” The screen blanked for a moment, then: “I’m sorry, sir, but the Minister isn’t available at all until next Thursday. Can I help you make any alternative arrangements? For example, by long-range channel?”

“I’ll have to check my budget,” Frank admitted. “I have a limited bandwidth spend. Can I get back to you on that? Would you mind just double-checking that I’m not on your list anywhere? If the Minister’s unavailable, would it be possible to arrange a chat with Ambassador Morrow instead?”

“I’m sorry, but the Ambassador’s busy, too. As I said, sir, this is about the worst possible week you could have asked for an interview. If you leave things with me, I’ll see what I can do, but I’m making no promises.”

Frank put his temporary phone away and stood up tiredly. At times like this he felt as if he was walking blindfolded along a corridor pre-greased and strewn with banana skins by a cosmic jester. Why now? Why did they have to lose the fucking thing now, of all times? A quote from Baxter, or even Morrow, admitting that their colleagues were being stalked — that would be explosive. Only they weren’t playing ball. The whole thing smelled like a discreet security lockdown: scheduled interviews canceled, public appearances held to carefully controlled zones with vetted guest lists, the bland stench of denial hovering over the rotting corpse of business as usual. Just like one of Mom’s dinner parties when she’d been trying to break back into the charmed circle of political movers and fixers who’d dropped her the first time around, after her electoral defeat.

The air was still cool and slightly damp in the park, but the heated benches were dry enough to work on. Frank folded up his mobile office and stood up. The poplars were flowering, and he walked slowly under a ceiling of catkins, bouncing and shedding in the morning breeze. The path merged with two others at one of the bronze war memorials that were heartbreakingly common hereabouts. Frank paused for a minute to scan it with his glasses, capturing the moment forever. Almost a hundred years earlier, at this very spot, an enemy battalion had put up a spirited resistance to the forces of the All-Conquering. Their souls, large and warlike, had gone to Valhalla: the victors had raised the stele not out of magnanimity but with the more subtle intention of magnifying their own prowess. Nobody likes to boast that they massacred a bunch of terrified, starving, ill-equipped conscripts, Frank reminded himself. It’s easier to be a hero when your vanquished enemies are giants. Something he’d have to bring up if he ever got close enough to interview the honorable Elspeth Morrow. “So how does it feel sentencing to death 140 million children, 90 million crumblies, and another 600-million-odd ordinary folks who were content to mind their own business and don’t even know who you are?”

Farther along the path Frank passed a patrolling gardener ’bot. Judging from the smell, it was collecting and fermenting either slugs or waste from the citizens who walked their dogs at dawn. The trees were farther apart on this walk, with park benches between them and fields stretching away beyond. Each bench bore a weathered pewter plaque, stained almost gray by age: In loving memory of Private Ivor Vincik, by his parents, or Gone forever but not forgotten, Artillery Sergeant Georg Legat. The park wore its history as proudly as a row of medals: from the memorials to the fallen to the white charnel house built from the skulls and femurs of the enemy battalion, used by the groundskeepers to store their lawnmowers.

The trees came to an end, and the path began to descend toward a concrete underpass that slid beneath the road that separated park from town center. If you could call it a town center, these days. First there’d been a small rural village. Then there’d been a battle. Then there’d been another village, which grew into a town before the next battle flattened it. Then the town had been rebuilt and turned into a city, which had been bombed heavily and rebuilt again. Then the Mall that Ate Vondrak had turned into the Arcology that Absorbed Vondrak, all concrete towers and gleaming glassy Penrose-tiled roof, a groundscraper sprawled across the landscape like a sleeping giant. The place was heavily contaminated by history, war memorials marking off the worst pollution hot spots.

It was a quiet day, but there was still some traffic and a few people about at ground level even that early in the morning — a couple out for an early-morning run together, three kids on walksters, an old woman with a huge backpack, worn boots, and the wiry look of a hiker poring over an archaic moving map display. A convoy of local delivery vans hummed past on the road deck, nestling behind their long-haul tractor like a queue of ducklings. A seagull, surprisingly far inland, circled overhead, raucously claiming its territory.

“When’s the next train to Potrobar?” he asked aloud.

“You have twenty-nine minutes. Options: Make a reservation. Display route to station. Rescan—”

“Reservation and route, please.” The ubiquitous geocomputing network there was crude compared to the varied services on Earth, but it did the job, and did it without inserting animated advertorials, which was a blessing. A light path flickered into view in front of him, strobing toward one of the arcology entrances. Frank followed it across the ornamental cobblestones, past a gaggle of flocking unicyclists and a fountain containing a diuretic-afflicted Eros.

The train station was on level six, a glazed atrium with sliding doors along one side to give access to the passenger compartments. Frank was slouched in a seat, pecking at his keyboard in a desultory manner (trying to capture the atmosphere of a chrome-and-concrete station was like trying to turn a burned lump of charcoal back into a tree, he thought dispiritedly) when his phone bleeped for attention. “Yeah?” he asked, keeping to voice-only — too easy for someone to snatch his window/camera in this crowded place.

“Frank? It’s me. I’m here. Where are you?”

“You’re—” His eyes crossed with the unexpected mental effort of trying to figure it out, then he hit on the caller’s geocache location. “Eh. What do you want, Wednesday?”

“I’ve, uh, I’ve only just got off the ship, but I was wondering, are you busy this evening?” It came out in a rush. “See, there’s this wine-and-cheese reception thingy, and I’ve been invited to it, says I can bring a guest, and I haven’t done one of these things before, but I have been strongly advised to go—”

Frank tried not to sigh. “I’ve just had an interview fall through. If I can’t refill the slot, I guess I might be free, but probably not. Just what kind of do is it?”

“It’s some kind of fifth-anniversary dead light get-together, a reunion for any Moscow citizens who’re on Dresden. At the embassy, you know? My, uh, friends said you might be interested.”

Frank sat bolt upright, barely noticing the other commuters on the platform, as they began to move toward the doors. “Wait, that’s excellent!” he said excitedly. “I was wanting to get some local color. Maybe get some interview slots with ordinary people. When is it, you said—” The doors were opening as passengers disembarked: others moved to take their place.

“The Muscovite high consulate in Sarajevo. Tonight at—”

Frank started. The platform was emptying fast, and the train was waiting. “Whoa! Mail me? Got to catch a train. Bye.” He hung up fast and trotted over to the doors, stepping aboard just as the warning beeper went off.

“Potrobar?” he muttered to himself, glancing around for an empty seat. “Potrobar? What the fuck am I going there for?” He sighed, and forced himself to sit down as the PA system gave a musical chime and the train lifted from the track bed and began to slide toward the tube entrance. “When’s the next train from Potrobar to Sarajevo?” he asked plaintively.