Iron Sunrise

INTERLUDE 3

Several new passengers had joined the Romanov at New Dresden. One of them had taken an imperial suite with the nobs on A deck while the rest were accommodated variously in business- and tourist-class staterooms, but all of them had these things in common: they had booked rooms on the liner at short notice roughly a day after a private yacht, the Heidegger, had briefly called at Dresden station, and they were all traveling under false passports.

The luxury suite was not an extravagance, but a necessity. As was the way Lars swept it regularly for transmitters and the various species of insect that might creep into a room aboard a luxury liner that had been booked by an arms merchant from Hut Breasil. Portia wanted the cubic volume for conferencing and a base of operations, and the cover identity excused some of the rather more alarming contents of her personal luggage. Which was why Mathilde, answering the invitation to visit the imperial suite, was startled to find the door being held open for her by an armed bodyguard and the room’s occupant seated on a chaise longue in front of an open crate of self-propelled gun launchers.

“U. Mathilde Todt. Come in.” Hoechst inclined her head. “You look confused,” she said.

“Ah. I was expecting—”

Hoechst beamed at her. “An austerity regime?” She rose. “Yes, well, cover identities must be maintained. And why would a rich arms dealer travel in cabbage class?”

Marx let the door close behind the woman. She stepped forward, as if sleepwalking. “It’s been too long.”

Hoechst nodded. “Consider yourself under direction again.”

Mathilde rubbed her face. “You’re my new control? Out here in person?” A note of gratified surprise crept into her voice.

“Unlike U. Scott, I don’t believe in letting things slide,” Hoechst said drily. “I’ve been running around for the past two months, tying ligatures around leaks. Now it’s your turn. Tell me how it’s going.”

“It’s—” Mathilde licked her lips — “I’ve got everything in place for both the scenarios I was given, the abduction or the other one. Everything except the primary strike team. We’ve scoped out all the critical points, and the necessary equipment is on board. We had to suborn three baggage loaders and one bellboy to get it in place, but it’s done, and they swallowed the cover story — there was no need to get technical with them.” Getting technical was a euphemism for sinking a tree of nanoelectrodes into their brain stems and turning them into moppets — meat puppets. What it left behind afterward wasn’t much use for anything except uploading and forwarding to the Propagators. “Peter is my number two in charge of line ops, and Mark is ready with the astrogation side of things. In fact, we’re ready to go whenever you give the word.”

“Good.” Hoechst was no longer smiling. “Now tell me what’s gone wrong. I want to know everything.”

“With the plan? Nothing’s—”

“No, I mean everything. Every little thing that might have drawn attention to you.”

“Uh, well, um. We’re not used to working undercover or in feral conditions, and I think we made one or two mistakes in the early days. Luckily our ops cover is just about perfect; because they know we’re ReMastered, they make allowances for our being odd. It’s astonishing how willing they are to believe that we’re harmless passengers. Nobody even questioned that we were a youth leadership group! I thought it was absurd—”

Portia cleared her throat pointedly. Mathilde nearly jumped out of her skin.

“Let’s get something straight.” Hoechst’s gaze drilled into the young task group leader. “If you’ve done your job right, you have nothing to fear. If you’ve made honest but noncritical mistakes, and admit them and help remedy the situation, you have nothing to fear. What you should be afraid of is the consequences of covering up. Do I make myself clear? So cut the nervous chatter and tell me. What went wrong? What should I be aware of?”

“Oh.” Mathilde stared at her for a moment as if she’d sprouted a second head. Then her shoulders slumped very slightly. “Hans made a scene with one of the passengers on our first night aboard ship. We were all in one of the social areas — a bar, I believe they call them — when one of the ferals attempted to poison him with some sort of intoxicant. Nobody hurt, though. There is a small but vociferous group of passengers who appear to dislike us for some reason. But apart from that, not much has happened that I would classify as untoward. Hans I disciplined, and I consider the matter closed. The others—” She shrugged. “I cannot control what feral humans think of our program. I was uncertain I should even draw it to your attention…”

“I understand completely.” Hoechst bent her head over the cargo case, inspecting the boxy black plastic contents within. “The, ah, excesses of some of our predecessors have cast ReMastery in a very poor light, I’m afraid, and our overall goal of extending its benefits to everyone can only make them more suspicious.” She brooded for a moment. “I don’t intend to aggravate the situation.” She looked up, catching Mathilde’s gaze: “There will be no reports of atrocities or excesses arising from this intervention. One way or another.”

Mathilde smiled slowly.

Wednesday ran through abandoned hab spaces in the high-gee rings of an ancient station. Doorways gaped like empty eye sockets to either side of her; the floor sucked at her heels like molasses, dragging her backward. Something unseen ran behind her, dogging her footsteps like a nightmare — the skitter of claws, the clack of boots. She knew it was sharpening knives for her, but she couldn’t remember why — everything behind her was blank. Ahead of her was bad, too. Something hidden, something waiting. The pursuer was catching up, and when it caught her a fountain of red pulp splattered across her face. She was in the entrance to a toilet block on the admin deck, and there was a body and when she tugged at it, saying, “Come on, Dad,” it looked round and it wasn’t her father, blue-faced with asphyxia; it was Sven the clown, and he was smiling.

She came awake with a gasp. Her heart felt as if it was about to burst, and the sheets under her were cold and clammy with sweat. Her left arm was numb, trapped under her because she lay on her side and behind -

A grunting snuffle that might have been a snore. She shifted, and he rolled against her back, curled protectively around her. Wednesday closed her eyes and leaned back. Remember, she thought dreamily, and shuddered. She could still almost smell the hot metallic taste of blood on her lips, the fecal stink of ruptured intestines. She’d gone to her stateroom and scrubbed for half an hour in the shower, but still felt as if she was soiled by the visceral fallout. Then he’d called, from the sick-bay, checking out. She’d told him she wanted to see him, and he’d come to her. Opened the door and dragged him inside and down onto the floor like animals. His urgency was as strong as hers. She smiled, still sleepy, and shuffled her hips back toward him until she could feel his penis against the small of her back.

“Frank?” she said quietly.

Another mumbled snore. He moved against her in his sleep. He’d been very careful: aware of his physical bulk. Not what she’d expected, but what she’d needed. Afterward, they’d clung together as if they were drowning, and he’d cried. Is this wise? she wondered. And then: Who cares?

Sleeping, Frank surrounded her. The slow rumble of his breath and the huge bulk of his body made her feel safe, really safe, for the first time since the terrible night of the party. She knew it for a bitter illusion, but it was a good one, and comforting. I hope he doesn’t want to pretend this never happened, she mused.

An indefinite time later, Wednesday carefully crawled out of bed to go to the bathroom. Almost as soon as she was upright, her earlobe vibrated like an angry bee. “Hello?” she said angrily, trying to subvocalize. “What kind of time do you call this?”

“Wednesday.” It was her own voice, weird and hollow-sounding as usual when it came from outside her own head. “Can you hear me?”

“Yeah. Herman? It’s middle of night shift here. I was trying to sleep.”

“Your motion triggered a callback to alert me. The ship you are on has already undocked and is now accelerating toward its primary jump point. Once it jumps, the causal channel I am currently using will decohere, and you will be on your own. Normally the Romanov’s flight plan would take it via two hops to New Prague, but a number of new passengers joined the ship at Dresden station, and you can expect a diversion.”

“A diversion?” Wednesday yawned, desperately wishing she was awake, or back in bed. She glanced through the door wistfully: Frank was a dark mountain range across the spine of the sleeping platform.

“The ReMastered group aboard your vessel has been exchanging coded communications with the office of an arms dealer from Hut Breasil. The arms dealer and their bodyguards are now aboard the Romanov. At the same time, the arms dealer has exchanged message traffic with the office of one Overdepartmentsecretary Blumlein on Newpeace, the de facto chairman of the Planetary Oversight Directorate and maximum leader of the Ministry of State Security. I lack informants on the ground, but I believe the arms dealer is a cover identity for a senior MOSS official who is taking personal control over the mop-up operation arising from their internal conflict over the incident at Moscow.”

“Whoa — stop! What do you mean? What mop-up? MOSS? What internal conflict?” Wednesday clutched her head. “What’s this got to do with me?” I want to go back to bed!

Herman kept his tone of voice even and slow, patient as ever. “I am developing a hypothesis about the destruction of your home, and the motivation behind the assassinations. Moscow system, and New Dresden, lie along the ReMastered race’s axis of expansion. Newpeace and Tonto are merely their most recent conquests, and the closest to Earth. They lie close to both Moscow and New Dresden, and those worlds would be logical targets for subversion and conquest. However, the ReMastered are prone to internal rifts and departmental feuding. They can be manipulated by outside influences such as the Eschaton. It is possible that one such department within the Ministry of State Security on Newpeace was induced to exploit their growing influence over domestic political figures in Moscow to use them as a proxy agency in a side project, the development of a causality-violation weapon. Such devices are hazardous not only because the Eschaton intervenes to prevent their deployment later up the time line, but because they tend to be unstable—”

“Later up the what? Hey, I thought you were the Eschaton! What is this?”

“Can a T-helper lymphocyte in a capillary in your little finger claim to be you? Of course I am part of the Eschaton, but I cannot claim to be the Eschaton. The Eschaton acquires most of its power by being able to harness causality violation — time travel — for computational purposes. Working causality-violation devices in the hands of others — whether designed as weapons, or as time machines, or as computers — would threaten the stability of its time line. That is why agencies such as I exist — to monitor requests from the oracle to take action that will defend the Eschaton’s causal integrity. In the case of Moscow, the most reasonable explanation is that the Muscovite government was experimenting with weapons of temporal disruption and blew their own star up by accident. But there was absolutely no rational explanation for why they might want to develop such weapons, left to their own devices. Which is why evidence of ReMastered infiltration would be most interesting. Especially in conjunction with the silence of the oracle.”

Wednesday was silent for a minute. Then: “Are you telling me that some asshole in the military destroyed my world by accident? Or because the ReMastered asked them to?”

“Not exactly.” A few seconds’ silence. Wednesday’s emotions churned, aghast and outraged. “When acquiring a new planet, the ReMastered do not walk in and take everything over at gunpoint. They infiltrate by inducing a crisis and being invited in to calm things down. Their main tool is their expertise in uploading and neural interfaces. While blackmail is often used for indirect leverage, they frequently work by abducting key midlevel officials — pithing them, copying their existing neural architecture, then installing an implant. Sometimes they leave the personality in place, just add an override switch — or they wipe everything and turn the body into a remote-control meat puppet. By using a causal channel to control the body, they can ensure that nobody will be able to tell that it’s being run by a ReMastered agent unless it is subjected to a brain scan or forced to make an FTL transit. The ReMastered are patient; frequently they will arrive in a system, take fifty to a hundred low-to-mid-ranking officials, then wait twenty or thirty years until one or more of their moppets is promoted into a position of influence. It is a very slow and labor-intensive process, but far cheaper and safer than attempting an overt war of interstellar conquest.”

“You mean they do this regularly?”

“Not often. They have fewer than twenty worlds, so far. My models do not predict that they will become a major threat for at least two centuries.”

“Oh.” Wednesday fell silent. “But none of the diplomats are puppets,” she pointed out. “They’d have made FTL transfers to get to their embassies. So there’s no evidence, is there?”

“There is evidence,” Herman pointed out. “The ReMastered focus on you, and the items you found aboard Old Newfie before its evacuation, suggest that it was used as a point of entry for some years, and that the insurgency group operating in Moscow were careless. The ReMastered focus on assassinating Muscovite diplomats is itself suggestive, although I am not yet certain of their motives. The faction responsible appears to want to force the Muscovite diplomatic corps to send the irrevocable go code to the R-bombers, thus precipitating a political crisis on New Dresden with implications elsewhere. But it is difficult to be sure.”

“But you — you” — Wednesday struggled for words — “You’re part of the Eschaton. Can’t you stop them? Don’t you want to stop them?”

“Why do you think I am talking to you?” Her own voice, calm and sympathetic. “I cannot undo the destruction of Moscow because the accident did not trigger the Eschaton’s temporal immune response. Higher agencies are investigating the possibility of a threat to the Eschaton itself. I am trying to prevent the ReMastered from achieving their goal of taking New Dresden, or whatever else they want to achieve. I’m also trying to stop them from acquiring the final technical reports from the weapons project on Moscow. And I’m trying to ensure that the diplomatic corps from Earth is alerted to the threat. This is a low-level response by the standards of the Eschaton. The ReMastered belief system requires the destruction of the Eschaton. They are nowhere near acquiring that capability, and have not yet triggered the Eschaton’s primary defense reflexes, but if they do … you would not wish to live within a thousand light years.”

“Oh.” It came out sounding weak, and Wednesday hated herself for it. “And what about me? What am I going to do afterward? My family…” A huge sense of loss stopped her in her tracks. She glanced at the sleeping figure in the bed and the sense of loss subsided, but only a fraction.

“You are old enough to make up your own mind about your future. And I cannot accept responsibility for events that I was not forewarned about or involved in. But I will ensure that you do not lack money in the short term, while you sort your life out, if you survive the next few days.”

“If?” Wednesday paced over toward the picture wall. “What do you mean, if?”

“The ReMastered group from MOSS is aboard this ship for a reason. Sometime after the next jump I expect them to do something drastic. It might be as crude as an attempt to snatch and puppetize you, but there are too many witnesses aboard this ship to whom you might have spoken. A more sensible approach would be to ensure that this ship never reaches its destination. You should prepare yourself. Learn the crew access spaces and the details I downloaded into your ring. One other thing: three diplomats from Earth’s United Nations Organization have joined the ship. You can trust them implicitly. In particular, you can talk to Martin Springfield, who has worked for me in the past. He may be able to help protect you. And one other point. If you get the chance to reacquire the documentary evidence of ReMastered weapons tests in Moscow system, turn it over to the diplomats. That is the one thing you can do that will cause the most damage to the ReMastered.”

“I’ll bear it in mind.” Her voice wavered. “But you said they’re going to break the door down and kidnap me — what am I supposed to do about that?”

“Simple: don’t be in your cabin when they come for you.” Herman paused. “Too much time. I have downloaded some further design patterns into your rings. Keep your jacket by you at all times.”

“My jacket?”

“Yes. You never know when you’ll need it.” Herman’s tone was light. “Good luck, and goodbye. Oh, and if by some chance the Romanov ends up at New Prague, talk to Rachel before you decide to take a day trip to the surface. Otherwise, it might come as a shock…”

Click. The call ended. Wednesday cursed quietly for a moment, then noticed a change in the room. She glanced up.

“What was that about?” asked Frank, his expression grave. “Was someone picking an argument?”

She stared at him, her heart suddenly pounding and her mouth dry. “My invisible friend—” she began. “When do we jump?”

“Not for at least a day. Why don’t you come here and tell me about it?” He moved to one side of the bed, making a space for her.

“But I—” She stopped, the sense of dread receding somewhat. “A day?” Long habit and ingrained distrust told her that mentioning Herman to anyone would only get her into trouble. Logic, and something else, told her that concealing him from Frank would be a mistake. “I’m not supposed to talk about it,” she said. “And you’ll think I’m crazy!”

“No.” He looked at her thoughtfully. “I don’t think you’re crazy.” His expression was open and surprisingly vulnerable — which only made him harder for her to read. “Why don’t you start at the beginning?”

She climbed into bed and leaned against him. He put an arm round her shoulders as she took a deep breath. “When I was ten I had an invisible friend,” she admitted. “I only discovered he worked for the Eschaton after home blew up…”

Martin glanced up as Rachel opened the door to the cramped office cube, off to one side of the executive planning suite. His face was lined and weary. “You’re all right?” he asked.

“Never been better.” Rachel pulled a face, then yawned. “Damn, need a wake-up dose.” She looked at the table, glanced at the young-looking Lieutenant sitting at the other side of it from Martin. “Introduce me?”

“Yeah. This is Junior Flight Lieutenant Stephanie Grace. Just back from ground leave. While she’s been away I’ve been working with her boss, Flying Officer Max Fromm. Um, Steffi? This is my wife, Rachel Mansour. Rachel is a cultural attache with—”

“Not that introduction.” Rachel grinned humorlessly as she held up a warrant card. Her head, surrounded by the UN three-W logo on a background of stars. “Black Chamber. That’s Colonel Mansour, Combined Defense Corps, on detached duty with the UN Standing Committee on Interstellar Disarmament. Purely for purposes of pulling rank where appropriate, you understand. I’d rather the passengers and crew outside your chain of command didn’t learn of my presence just yet. Do we understand each other?”

The kid — no, she was probably well out of her teens, quite possibly already into her second or third career — looked worried. “May I ask what you think is going on? Because if it’s anything that threatens the ship, the Captain needs to know as a matter of urgency.”

“Hmm.” Rachel paused. “Until six hours ago, I thought we were looking for a criminal — a serial killer — who was traveling aboard your ship and killing a different victim in every port.” She stopped.

The Lieutenant winced, then met her eyes. “I hardly think that would normally warrant a Black Chamber investigation, would it, Colonel?”

“It does if the victims are all ambassadors from a planetary government in exile that has launched R-bombs on another planet,” Rachel said quietly. “That stays under your hat, Lieutenant: our serial killer is trying to precipitate a war using weapons of mass destruction. I’ll brief your Captain myself, but if word of it gets back to me through other channels—”

“Understood.” Steffi looked worried. “Okay, so that’s why your husband” — Her eyes flickered toward Martin — “has been dredging through our transit records for the past six months. But you said there was something else.”

“Uh-huh.” Rachel met her eyes. “It’s a motive thing. I don’t think it’s a lone serial killer; I think we’re up against a professional assassin, or a team of assassins, from an interstellar power. And they’re intent on obscuring their tracks. Now they know we’re onto them, they could do anything. I hope they won’t do anything that threatens the ship, but I can’t be sure.” She shrugged uncomfortably.

Steffi looked alarmed. “Then I must insist you tell the Captain immediately. If there’s any question that the, uh, killer might do something aboard her vessel, she’s responsible for it. Master and commander and all that. And so far” — her gesture took in the mound of open windows and entity/relationship diagrams in the table-sized screen — “we’re not getting very far. We have about two and a half thousand passengers, and seven hundred crew. We generate over three thousand personnel movements every time we berth, and frankly, the two of us are snowed under. If you’ve got something solid to tell the skipper, it’ll make it easier for me to get you more help.”

“Okay, then let’s go see the Captain.” Martin stood up. “Want me to come along?” he asked.

Rachel took a deep breath. “Think you can carry on without us for a while? I don’t expect it’ll take long to fill her in…”

“I’ll keep at it.” Martin shook his head. “I’m still working through the tourist-class passengers. I thought it was going to be simple, then Steffi here asked what if a passenger disembarked and checked out, did the job, then took passage under a different name in a different class? It’s a real mess.”

“Not totally,” Steffi volunteered. “We have some biometrics on file. But we’re not geared up for police-style trawls through our customer base, and pulling everyone’s genome out for inspection would normally take an order from—” She glanced at the ceiling. “So shall we go visit the skipper?”

Captain Nazma Hussein was not having a good day.

First departure had to be delayed six hours because of some stupid mess downside, delaying a couple of passengers who had diplomatic-grade clout-enough to hold the ship, even though each hour’s delay cost thousands. Then there was a problem with mass balance in one of the four ullage tanks that ringed the lower hemisphere of the liner’s hull, a flow instability suggesting that a stabilizer baffle had been damaged during the last docking maneuver. She’d managed to get away from the flight deck, leaving Victor in charge of the straightforward departure, only to find a queue headed by the deputy purser waiting in front of her desk for orders and/or ruffled-feather smoothing. And now this …

“Run that by me again,” she said, doing her best to maintain the illusion of impassive alertness that always came hard after a twelve-hour shift. “Just what do you expect to happen aboard my ship?”

The diplomat looked as tired as she felt. “One or more of your passengers or short-term crew have been bumping off people at each planetside port of call,” she explained again. “Now, I’ve been ordered to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Which is all very well, but I’ve got reason to believe that the killer is acting under orders and may try to cover their tracks by any means at their disposal.”

“Disposal?” Captain Hussein raised one sharply sculpted eyebrow. “Are you talking about a matter of killing witnesses or passengers? Or actions that might jeopardize the operational safety of my ship?”

The woman — Rachel something-or-other — shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said bluntly. “I’m sorry I can’t reassure you, but I wouldn’t put anything past these scum. I was downside yesterday, and we managed to abort their latest hit, but the trap misfired, mostly because they demonstrated a remarkable willingness to kill innocent bystanders. It looks as if they started out trying to keep a low profile, but they’re willing to go to any lengths to achieve their goals, and I can’t guarantee that they won’t do something stupid.”

“Wonderful.” Nazma glanced sideways at her overflowing schedule screen. Numerous blocks winked red, irreconcilable critical path elements, overlapping dependencies that had been thrown out of balance by the late departure. “Do you know who you’re looking for? What would you have me do when you find them?” She looked past the diplomat. The trainee kid was doing her best to melt into the wall, clearly hoping she wouldn’t dump on her for being the bearer of bad tidings. Tough, let her worry for a few minutes. Nazma gave her a grade-three Hard Stare, then looked back at the spook. It hadn’t been so many years that she had forgotten what the kid would be feeling, but it wouldn’t hurt to make her ponder the responsibilities of a mistress and commander for a while. “I really hope you’re not going to suggest anything like a change of destination.”

“Ah, no.” The woman, to her credit, looked abashed. Bet that’s exactly what you were about to suggest, Nazma told herself. “And, um, the safety of your ship is paramount. My main concern is that we identify them so that they can be discreetly arrested when we arrive at the next port of call — or sooner, if there’s any sign that they’re a threat to anyone else.” Nazma relaxed slightly. So, you’re not totally out of touch with reality, huh? Then the diplomat spoiled it by continuing: “The trouble is, you generate so many personnel movements that we’ve got a pool of about 200 suspects, and only ten days to check them. That’s the number who’ve been downside on all of the planets where an incident occurred — if we’re looking for a team, alternating targets, the pool goes up to 460 or so. So I was wondering if we could borrow some more staff — say, from the purser’s office — to help clear them.” She forced a tense smile at Nazma.

Give me patience! Captain Hussein glanced back at her display. The red bars weren’t getting any shorter, and every additional hour added to the critical path added sixteen thousand to her operating overhead. But the alternative … “Lieutenant Grace.” She watched Steffi straighten her back attentively. “Please convey my compliments to Commander Lewis, and inform her that she’s to provide you with any and all personnel and resources from her division that you deem necessary to requisition for, for Colonel—”

“Mansour,” offered the woman.

“—Colonel Mansour’s search. When you have a final suspect list I want to see it before any action is taken. File daily updates with Safety and Security, cc’d to my desk. I also want to know if you don’t find a murderer aboard my ship, of course.” She nodded at the spook. “Satisfied?”

Rachel looked surprised. “More than,” she admitted. This time her smile was genuine. “Thank you!”

“Don’t.” Nazma waved it away. “I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t take murderers running around my ship seriously.” She sniffed, nostrils flaring as if at the scent of skullduggery. “Just as long as you keep it low-key and don’t frighten the passengers. Now, I trust you will excuse me, but I have a ship to run.”

He looks like a gorilla, Martin thought apprehensively as he approached the warblogger across the half-empty lounge. The journalist was slouched in a sofa with a smile on his face, one arm around a pale-skinned young woman with a serious blackness habit — black hair, black boots, black leggings, black jacket — and a big baby blue dressing on her left temple. She was leaning against him in a manner that spelled more than casual affection. Isn’t that sweet, Martin thought cynically. The blogger must have been about two meters tall, but was built so broadly he looked squat, and it wasn’t flab. Close-cropped silver-speckled black hair, old-fashioned big horn-rimmed data glasses, and more black leather. The woman was talking to him quietly, occasionally leaning her chin on his shoulder. The gorilla was all ears, grunting agreement from time to time. They were so wrapped up in each other that they didn’t seem to have noticed Martin watching them. Here goes, he thought, and walked over.

“Hi there,” he said quietly. “Are you, um, Frank Johnson of the London Times?”

The gorilla glanced up at him sharply, one eyebrow rising. The young woman was also staring. Martin barely noticed her, fine-boned alarm and black nail paint. “Who’s asking?” said the big guy.

Martin sat down opposite them, sprawling inelegantly in the sofa’s overstuffed grip. “Name’s Springfield. I’m with the UN diplomatic service.” That’s odd, he realized distantly. Both of them had tensed, focusing on him. What’s up? “Are you Frank Johnson? Before I go any further—” He held up his diplomatic passport, and the big guy squinted at it dubiously.

“Yeah,” he rumbled. “And this isn’t a social call, is it?” He rubbed his left arm meditatively and winced slightly, and Martin put two and two together.

“Were you at the Muscovite embassy reception yesterday evening?” he asked. He glanced at the young woman. “Either of you?” She started, then leaned against the big guy, looking away, feigning boredom.

“I see a diplomatic passport,” Frank said defensively. He stared at Martin. “And I see some guy asking pointed questions, and I wonder whether the purser’s office will confirm if the passport is genuine when I ask them? No offense, but what you’re asking could be seen as a violation of journalistic privilege.”

Martin leaned back and watched the man. He didn’t look stupid: just big, thoughtful, and … Huh. Got to start somewhere, right? And he’s not top of the list by a long way. “Could be,” he said reflectively. “But I’m not asking for the random hell of it.”

“Okay. So why don’t you tell me what you want to know and why, and I’ll tell you if I can answer?”

“Um.” Martin’s eyes narrowed. The woman was staring at him with clear fascination. “If you were at the Moscow embassy in Sarajevo, you probably saw rather a lot of bodies.” The journalist winced. A palpable hit. “Maybe you weren’t aware that the same thing also happened before. We have reason to believe that the responsible party” — he paused, watching the implication sink in — “was probably aboard this ship. Now, I can’t compel you to talk to me. But if you know anything at all, and you don’t tell me, you’re helping whoever blew up all those people to get away with it.” Holed below the waterline: the journalist was nodding slightly, unconscious agreement nibbling away at his resolute dedication to the cause of journalistic impartiality. “I’m trying to put together a picture of what happened that night to aid the investigation, and if you’d like to make a statement, that would be very helpful.” He gave a small shrug. “I’m not a cop. It’s just a case of drafting every warm body who can hold a recorder.”

Frank leaned forward, frowning. “I’m going to check your passport, if you don’t mind,” he said. “Do you?” He held out a hand. Martin thought for a moment, then reluctantly handed the white-spined tablet over. Beside him the woman leaned over to look at it. Frank glanced at the passport then snapped his fingers for a privacy cone and said something muffled to the ship’s passenger liaison network. After a moment he nodded and snapped his fingers again. “Okay,” he said, and handed the passport back. “I’ll talk to you.”

Martin nodded, his initial apprehension subsiding. Frank was going to be reasonable — and having an experienced journalist’s view of affairs would be good. He pulled out a small voice recorder and put it on the low table between them. “This is an auditing recorder, write-once. Martin Springfield interviewing—”

“Wait. Your name is Martin Springfield?” It was the young woman, sitting straight up and staring at him.

“Wednesday—” The big guy started.

“Yeah. I’m Martin Springfield. Why?”

The girl licked her lips. “Are you a friend of Herman?”

Martin blanked for a moment. What the fuck? A myriad of memories churned up all at once, a hollow voice whispering by dead of night over illicit smuggled causal channels. “I’ve worked for him,” Martin heard himself admitting as his heart gave a lurch. “Where did you hear the name?”

“I do stuff for him, too.” She licked her lips.

“Wednesday.” Frank glared at Martin. “Shit. You don’t want to go telling everyone about—”

“It’s okay,” said Martin. He raised his recorder. “Recorder. Command delete. Execute.” He put it down. What the fuck is going on here? He had a hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach. This couldn’t be a coincidence, and if Herman was involved, it meant the whole diplomatic ball of string had just gotten a lot knottier. “Ship, can you put a privacy cone around this table? Key override red koala greenback.”

“Override acknowledged. Privacy cone in place.” All the sounds from outside the magic circle became faint and muffled.

“What are you doing here?” Wednesday asked, tensing. Martin glanced from her to Frank and back. He frowned; their body language told its own story. “Back downside—” she swallowed. “Were they after me?”

“You?” Martin blinked. “What makes you think you were the target of a bombing?”

“It wouldn’t be the first time,” rumbled Frank. He looked at Martin warningly. “She’s a refugee from Moscow, one of the survivors of the peripheral stations. She settled in Septagon, except someone murdered her family, apparently for something she’d taken, or left behind, or something. And they tried to follow her here.”

Martin felt his face freeze, a sudden bolt of excitement stabbing through him. “Did Herman send you here?” he asked her directly.

“Yes.” She crossed her arms defensively. “I’m beginning to think listening to him is a very bad idea.”

You and me both, Martin agreed silently. “In my experience Herman never does anything at random. Did he tell you my name?” She nodded. “Well, then. It looks like Herman believes your problem and my problem are connected — and they’re part of something that interests him.” He looked at Frank. “This isn’t news to you. Where do you come in?”

Frank scratched his head, his expression distant. “Y’know, that’s a very good question. I’m roving diplomatic correspondent for the Times. This trip I was basically doing a tour of the trouble spots in the Moscow/Dresden crisis. She just walked up and dumped her story in my lap.” He looked sideways at Wednesday.

She shuffled. “Herman told me to find you,” she said slowly. “Said that if you broadcast what was going on, the people hunting me would probably lay off.”

“Which is true, up to a point,” Martin murmured, more to himself than to anyone else. “What else?” he demanded.

Wednesday took a deep breath. “I grew up on one of Moscow’s outlying stations. Just before the evacuation, Herman had me go check something out. I found a, a body. In the Customs section. He’d been murdered. Herman had me hide some documents near there, stuff from the Captain’s cabin of the evac ship. I got away with it; nobody noticed that bit.” She shuddered, clearly unhappy about something. “Then, a couple of weeks ago, someone murdered my family and tried to kill me.” She clung to Frank like a drowning woman to a life raft.

“I don’t believe in coincidences,” Martin said slowly, the sweat in the small of his back freezing. Herman’s involved in this. A dead certainty, and frightening enough that his palms were clammy. Herman was the cover name that an agent — human or otherwise — of the Eschaton had used when it sent him on lucrative errands in the past. So there’s something really serious following her around. Wait till I tell Rachel! She’ll shit a brick! He caught Wednesday’s gaze. “Listen, I’d like you to talk to my wife as soon as possible. She’s — you probably saw her on stage. At the embassy.” He swallowed. “She’s the expert in dealing with murderous bampots. Between us we can make sure you’re safe. Meanwhile, do you have any idea who’s after you? Because if we could narrow it down or confirm it’s the same bunch who’re after the Muscovite diplomatic corps, it would make things much easier—”

“Sure I do.” Wednesday nodded. “Herman told me last night. It’s a faction of the ReMastered. There’s a group of them aboard this ship, traveling to Newpeace. He reckons they’re going to do something drastic after the first jump.” She grimaced. “We were just trying to figure out what to do…”