The Summer Queen

KHAREMOUGH: Orbital Habitat #1

“How did it go, Commander?” Vhanu rose from his seat, putting back the headset he had been using to pass the time as Gundhalinu stopped beside him. The conference had run overlong, as usual, and Vhanu had arrived here promptly, as usual.

Gundhalinu smiled. “It was just what Faseran and Thajad wanted to hear. I think everything is going to work out exactly as Pematte predicted.” They began to walk, threading their way through the workers, human and servo, who were laboriously fitting a new series of murals into place in the hallway of the Hegemonic Coordinating Center. “It will still take almost two years of preparation before they send the expedition to Tiamat—that’s if the ship production continues on schedule too, of course—” He looked back over his shoulder as they were forced to go single file. “But Faseran actually told me today that I can have the Chief Justiceship if I want it.”

Vhanu started in surprise. “Father of all my grandfathers! That is good news… . I do hope you’ll consider my application for a place on your provisional staff, Commander. That is, as you know, I—”

“After all you’ve done to help make this happen, NR,” Gundhalinu said, “you can name your position in the new government.” He smiled. “Even Commander of Police, if you still want it.” His smile widened as he saw sudden pleasure light up Vhanu’s face.

“Yes, sir. Very much—” Vhanu’s own smile widened; his fist tightened at his side like a surreptitious shout.

“Then consider it a—” Gundhalinu collided with the body that backed suddenly into his path. Hands flew up to steady him; the youth he had run into met his gaze with urgent gray eyes, and he felt the brush of a familiar handsign as a piece of paper was pressed into his palm.

His fingers closed over it, he opened his mouth—noticing just in time the registry numbers printed on the young worker’s forehead, that marked him as an Unclassified. Gundhalinu swallowed the words he had been about to speak as the day-laborer’s expression became deliberately abject fear. The worker flung himself flat in an abasement. Gundhalinu looked down at the dark, unkempt curls of the youth’s hair, and kept silent. By law Technician and Unclassified could not even speak directly, without an interpreter of intermediate rank. Even an apology was impossible, on either side. And no matter who was right, the Unclassified was always wrong.

“Look out, you dumb bastard—” A Nontech foreman caught the laborer by the neck of his coveralls as he began to rise, hauling him out of Gundhalinu’s path. “He begs your pardon, Commander-sathra—” the foreman said, shoving him; the worker grunted as his face collided with the chiseled stone images of their mutual ancestors on the wall.

“It was my fault,” Gundhalinu said, feeling the paper crumple as he tightened his fist. The laborer turned to look at him, with one cheek red, leaving a red smudge on the wall as he turned away from it. There was no expression at all in his eyes now.

“No, sathra. It was his fault.” The foreman shook his head. “You—!” The worker flinched as the foreman’s voice caught him. “You’re fired.” He nodded, head down, and started away without looking back. “Sir,” the foreman said, pleased with himself. He bowed and backed out of their way.

“Thank you,” Gundhalinu muttered as he started on, because it was expected.

“Gods,” Vhanu said, glaring at the laborer’s retreating back, “why do they even let these people work on such an expensive project?”

“Because they work for almost nothing,” Gundhalinu answered wearily, looking straight ahead as they went on toward the tram stop. “Vhanu, did you ever imagine how it would feel to live as a lowborn?”

Vhanu glanced at him. “Certainly not.”

Gundhalinu touched a sequence on the glowing plate of the tram’s callbox. “What if it had happened? Do you think you’d like it?”

Vhanu laughed. “I think I’d rather die.”

“That’s what I always said.” Gundhalinu smiled ruefully, remembering when his own convictions had been as rock-hard, and as simplistic. He turned away as he opened the crumpled piece of paper the worker had pressed into his hand. He swore.

“What is it, Commander?”

Gundhalinu turned back, handing him the note. Vhanu read it, reacting as he saw the cryptic symbol scrawled at the bottom. “Survey … ?” He passed it back again, uncomprehending. “What does it mean?”

“Trouble.”

Vhanu looked back down the hallway, where the day-laborer had already disappeared. “Do you want me to notify security—?”

“No.” Gundhalinu’s fist tightened, crumpling the paper again. “This is a family matter. Call ahead for a shuttle. I have to get across to Hub Two.”

“The starport complex? But what about the meeting with Jarsakh-bhai and the board, and the inspection of the—”

“Cancel everything.” The tram arrived, he held the door. “Say … say it’s a family emergency. You won’t be lying.” He got on board. “I’ll be in touch.”

Vhanu stared at him; pushed forward suddenly, boarding the tram just as the doors squeezed shut. “Commander.” He glanced down, up, touched Gundhalinu’s arm briefly. “I don’t understand what this is about, but you shouldn’t go alone.”

Gundhalinu nodded, not sure whether he was grateful or only annoyed to have that pointed out to him.

“Is it your brothers, again?”

“Yes.” Gundhalinu sank into a seat as the tram began to move.

“What have they done?” This time.

“I don’t know yet, but it’s bad. I don’t even care what it is—by all our ancestors, this time is the last time. I won’t bury any more ‘mistakes.’ I’ll have them arrested, stripped of rank—” He looked up, bleak-eyed, into Vhanu’s stare. “I don’t mean that, do I?”

“You never have before,” Vhanu said quietly.

“It’s not even the memory of our ancestors that stops me anymore, NR. It’s politics… ‘how would it look’.…”

“Soon it will be over,” Vhanu murmured. “You’ll be where you want to be, in your Chief Justiceship. And then it won’t matter, you can let them go hang.”

“I’ll leave them plenty of rope.” He shut his eyes.

The waiting shuttle carried them between artificial worlds, backtracking across Kharemough’s cislunar space, which was dotted with the false stars of other habitats and industrial hubs. Gundhalinu spent the trip in silence, imagining scenarios of shame, scenarios of furious outrage, a hundred different gut-knotting confrontations, until the vast, whitely-gleaming torus of the starport slowly filled their view. A wheel of habitat connected by transparent access spokes to a central island that was the port itself, Hub Two was the largest of all the orbitals. He stopped brooding long enough to stare out at the chains of coinships where they lay strung across the vacuum, in safe harbor within the wheel—at their flattened forms designed for Black Gate transit. Already they looked alien, almost primitive to his eyes, which had grown accustomed to visualizing the organic forms of the new hyperlight fleet that was taking shape; even though he knew coinships with converted drives would continue to be the foundation of interstellar trade into the indefinite future. The future… He sighed, watching as they closed orbit with the station below.

Three figures stood waiting for him inside the access as the small, manually operated lock cycled discreetly behind them. He recognized Donne, one of his on-line metallurgists from the shipyards, and two other workers—a chief ngger and a powersuit operator, from the datapatches on their coveralls.

Vhanu frowned as they came forward, with incomprehension and annoyance. “Why are you—?” He broke off as Gundhalinu gestured him silent.

“I’m grateful for your message. Can you tell me what’s happened, Donne?” Gundhalinu touched the woman’s upraised hand briefly, in a silent acknowledgment between equals.

She nodded. “ ‘Fraid so, Commander. But we’ve been waiting here for you a long time; we’d better move, if you don’t mind. You know Zarkada and Tilhen—?”

Gundhalinu nodded, looking from one man to the other. Both were offworlders, he realized, and appreciated her discretion once again—two big men, who looked as if they solved most of their problems the hard way. But they were reliable and steady on the job, from what he remembered. “Gods. Is it that bad?” he asked Donne.

She grimaced, and nodded again. “We’re headed for a low-gee neighborhood.”

Gundhalinu looked back at the two men, feeling as though he had swallowed stones. “Thanks for coming.” They ducked their heads. Tilhen showed a trace of smile, and shrugged. “Sorry to hear you need us, Commander.”

“Right,” he said.

Donne led them to an anonymous-looking hired van. They climbed in and she activated the controls. A map grid came up on the display; Gundhalinu saw two red lights blinking, side by side, somewhere deep inside it; realized there must be a trace acting on his brothers. He watched the light that was their own vehicle start to move as he felt motion around him; they appeared as a spot of green, entering the grid.

“There’s work clothes in the back, Commander. You ought to put them on,”

Donne said. “Half the people where we’re going will be afraid to speak to you dressed like you are, and the other half will want to cut your throat. No offense,” she added, as Vhanu glared at her.

“None taken.” Gundhalinu urged Vhanu ahead of him into the back of the van, and pushed faded coveralls into his hands.

“Commander,” Vhanu murmured, clutching the coveralls as if they might be alive, steadying himself as the van rose suddenly and steeply. “This is madness. We can’t do this; call in the Police—”

“We are the Police, Captain Vhanu.” Gundhalinu shrugged off his uniform jacket and held it up, dropped it. He unsealed his tunic and stripped it off.

Vhanu looked down; began, selfconsciously, to take off his own jacket.

Gundhalinu turned his back, remembering a time when he had been equally prudish. He pulled the coveralls on in awkward silence and semidarkness as the van banked sharply. Vhanu turned back at last, selfconsciousness warring with discomfort on his face.

“NR—” Gundhalinu said gently, to the look, “thou’re not under orders. Thou don’t have to get involved in this. Thou can leave us anywhere, with my gratitude… . My brothers may be stupid but they’ve never been suicidal; this will ruin my day, but it’s not going to kill me either.” He settled a battered dockhand’s helmet onto his head.

Vhanu glanced toward the three semi-strangers waiting for them, forward of the partition wall. His expression did not improve. “Damn it—”

“They’re all Survey. So was the one who passed me the note. All doing me one hell of a favor.”

Vhanu looked back at him, incredulous. He nodded, accepting it, and sighed. “At least it makes more sense that way.”

“More sense than what?”

Vhanu’s mouth twitched. “Than that you let Nontechs and laborers address you as equals for no reason at all.” He finished fastening his coveralls and put on a helmet.

Gundhalinu went forward again, stood behind Donne’s seat. “Tell me about it. What in seven hells have they got into, to drag them into a place like this?”

Donne glanced up at him in a brief moment of understanding. She looked out again at the featureless artificial terrain of the lower level warehouse district, rubbing her cropped, graying hair. “It’s not pretty, Commander. It looks like your brothers are trying to sell restricted program codes, giving access to classified production specs on the starship fleet—”

“Damnation!” Gundhalinu’s hands tightened on the seatback. “How could they even get such a thing? They have no clearances—”

“Looks like your brother SB hired someone to deepsearch your family codes, and got a key on you. Used one of your security clearances to fool some program here upstairs, just long enough.”

Gundhalinu swore, feeling as if someone had kicked him in the stomach. He shut his eyes against the awareness of everyone else’s eyes on him, like spotlights. “Who? Who are they dealing with … ?”

“Certain factions whose rules you also play by, but who are playing an entirely different Game with them.”

Gundhalinu forced himself to take a deep breath, hold it; forced himself to concentrate. “It won’t do them any good. The codes won’t work—they all change automatically, every shift.”

“I know that, Commander.” Donne nodded. “But I guess your brothers didn’t.”

His deathgrip on the seatback loosened. No damage done. No real damage. But there could have been. This time it had gone too far. This time he could not afford to ignore it, rationalize it, forgive it… cover it up. What they had done was not simply a betrayal of him, but betrayal on an entirely different scale. This was greater than any personal humiliation, private or public—

Donne stopped the van; Gundhalinu saw a blinking barrier ahead, the drift symbol of a low-gravity environment. “We’ll have to walk it from here, Commander,” she said. “It’s not far.”

He glanced at the twin lights on the display that marked his brothers’ position. He touched them with his hand. “They haven’t moved,” he said.

“Probably waiting. With any luck, they’ve been stood up, their contacts found out the codes were worthless and didn’t even bother to show.”

“You’re sure there’s no one else there?”

“No one’s registering, Commander.” She shrugged and got up; passed him a handgun. “Rough neighborhood.” He checked the charge automatically, and pushed it into an easy access on his coveralls, as she silently handed out more weapons. Vhanu put his own weapon into a pocket, looking uneasy.

They left the van behind and walked toward the barrier, no one straying too far from the others; went past it, into the vast, slowly rising curve of the low-gee area. Gundhalinu felt his footsteps begin to slide and drift, changed the way he was moving in response as his weight suddenly dropped to a fraction of what it had been. The gravity here changed from place to place, moment to moment, depending on what was being done in the factories and warehouses. He had become accustomed to moving in low-and zero-gee environments since coming to the shipyards. He let his body function on habit, thinking ahead, watching the red lights bum steady on the map display he had called on inside the shield of his helmet.

Vhanu swore beside him, obviously lacking similar experience with variable gravity. Donne and the two men watched him flounder without comment. They kept moving, in long, arcing strides, forcing him to make the adjustment. Vhanu was about to get an education, Gundhalinu thought, and it was one he could use, if he bothered to remember it afterward.

The low-gee areas existed like knots in the intestines of the starport’s habitat ring; they were used primarily for storage and processing of materials that would be impossible to work with otherwise. There were warrens of living quarters here too, climbing the walls, jammed into crannies among the looming warehouses, the cranes and machinery in this gray, echoing, twilight world. They were housing for the lowest of the lower classes. He saw the eyes of a child peering out at him from a makeshift doorway as they passed, and looked away again, with an ache in his gut. Kharemough supplied most of the Hegemony’s high-grade technological equipment, and did most of its manufacturing out in space; which meant that most of its population and thousands of immigrant workers were out here too, crammed into too little space, sometimes under conditions no sane person would want to think about. Only the most wealthy, the most powerful, still lived down on the planet’s surface—or could afford to.

Gundhalinu rubbed his arms, remembering the pernicious chill in these places as they stopped for an automated gateway and Donne punched in a code. A tow drifted by over their heads, the deep throb of its engines echoing eerily off the hard surfaces everywhere around them. Other noises invaded his consciousness: distant shouting, the sound of heavy machinery grinding, the whine of cutters, some vibration so deep that he felt more than heard it, that made his teeth hurt. The work here never ceased; neither did the noise, always changing but eternal, echoing and distorting in ways he never heard anywhere else; as if sound was somehow warped and dysfunctional too, like gravity.

They moved on again like awkward swimmers, passing workers who drifted like shadows across their vision, in small groups or alone, variously empty-faced, wary, dull-eyed. The meter-thick rails of a transport track rose up across their path, leading toward the access door of an airlock that could have admitted half a ship. Gravity increased abruptly, and they stumbled the succession of painfully clumsy steps to the other side, only to drift and collide with each other when the gravity faded again. Gundhalinu righted Vhanu, saw the disonentation growing into panic in his eyes. “It gets easier,” he murmured. Vhanu nodded and took a deep breath, starting on unaided.

A gang of Unclassified workers came up alongside them; Gundhalinu heard mocking laughter and muttered insults. “Hey, fresh meat,” a voice called out. “Maybe you need a little help—” Someone’s elbow struck Vhanu, sent him caroming into a wall.

Vhanu recovered his balance; his hand darted toward the pocket that carried a concealed weapon, his face full of sudden fury. Gundhalinu caught his arm, held him back as Zarkada took hold of their harasser, towering over him, and shoved the man away into his companions. “Maybe you’d like me to help you find out which way you bend, scumbag … and which way you don’t.” Tilhen moved forward until they were shoulder to shoulder.

“Hey, just having a laugh, that’s all,” the worker said, raising his hands, dancing backwards away from them. “Welcome to Kharemough, you miserable assholes. Hope you like it here. Foreigners—” He spat. The rest of his group was already moving on, getting out of range.

Gundhalinu watched them go with his hand casually deep in his pocket, feeling the comforting solidness of his own stun weapon. Their voices already seemed to reach him from some unimaginable distance; their laughter drifted on down the tube, always echoing, and was gone.

Donne started on again. The others followed, silent now. Vhanu stared at the faces of the people they passed, as if he were looking for something he didn’t find. Gundhalinu realized he was still expecting the strangers to somehow perceive an indefinable difference in Gundhalinu’s appearance, or his own. Something which set them apart. None of the workers glanced at him twice.

“How much farther, Donne?” Gundhalinu asked, his unease increasing with every stranger who passed.

“That warehouse section right up there, Commander.” Donne pointed.

Gundhalinu pushed off from the building wall beside her, taking the risk of a faster, longer move. He pushed off again, not looking back to see how well the others managed to follow; focusing on two small pinpoints of red that still had not changed, on the motion of his own body closing the distance to them.

He could not believe it had come to this, that he was about to confront them in a place like this about an act of such obscene stupidity. He felt his anger come back, a blind, murderous, fever heat that seared everything from his mind but the need to find them, confront them, give them what they deserved. This time nothing would stop him, nothing would change his mind. He had warned them over and over again, those ingrates, those shitbrained, honorless fools—

He reached the base of the warehouse. There were no workers anywhere near it, no sign that anyone had made any regular use of this place in months. He looked up the looming face of the building, seeing the designation codes, most of them meaningless to him, glowing red and yellow on its grimed, metallic skin. Before him was the five-story door of the cargo entrance, solidly sealed shut; but like a rat hole in its base there was a narrow door sized for human access. He took out the stunner, checked its charge again with compulsive care.

He felt more than saw Donne and the others come up beside him. Donne made a move to stop him as he started forward; suggesting with a look that he should let someone else go in first. He shook his head. The control panel beside the door said that it was unlocked. He pushed the black-painted metal inward; the door gave with a grating screech, opening on shadows. He stepped inside, wary but unhesitating now, aware that his heart was beating too hard, his brain singing with adrenaline; and that the emotion causing the reactions had nothing to do with fear. His own slow, drifting footsteps echoed hollowly, overlapping the sounds his companions made like ripple rings on dark water.

“HK!” he shouted, seeing no one, hearing nothing else. “SB!” The others followed him, through a cavernous storage area half full of cryptically labeled bins, and then another, half full of house-sized crates. The green lights that marked their presence on his map closed inexorably with two stable points of red. He shouted his brothers’ names again, still getting no response. He wondered what in the name of a thousand ancestors they thought they were doing. Why didn’t they answer … why didn’t they run—? Instead they were just standing there: silent, waiting; caught red-handed but still humiliating him, forcing him to come to them.

He pushed off, too hard, trying to reach the access to the next storage area. He collided painfully with the metal doorframe; steadied himself, blinking his vision clear. His hand was slippery on the butt of his gun as he pushed through into the next room, and the pinpoints of light on the map converged.

In front of him the floor of the room was red: a lake of red, wet, shining, as if someone had spilled a vat of paint. He wrenched his body with his sudden attempt to stop moving; still landing with both feet in the spillage. A drop of red hit the sea of redness in front of him, from somewhere above; and then another. The gun slipped from his nerveless fingers, hit the floor, splattering his pantslegs with red. He raised his head, moving in slow motion, as time itself seemed to redshift around him, as compulsion closed its inexorable fingers around his throat, forcing him to look up.

His brothers were up there. Hanging from the ceiling, suspended high out of his reach. They hung from a chain like meat, the spine of a grappling hook driven clear through each of their chests, stone dead. He watched as two more drops fell, watched them hit the sea of blood in front of him like silent tears.

He turned, stumbling, collided with the mass of bodies directly behind him. He saw then-faces—the stunned disbelief of Donne and Zarkada and Tilhen, the horror in Vhanu’s eyes. Vhanu turned and bolted back through the doorway.

“Get them down,” Gundhalinu muttered, forcing his eyes to stay on Donne. “Find somebody … get them down.”

Donne nodded, gesturing to Tilhen and Zarkada. They went out. Her eyes left his face fleetingly, glanced upward, fell again. Gundhalinu pushed past her. She followed him out; following the blood-red tracks his boots made every time his feet came down.

They were outside. He stopped moving, staring in surprise at the unchanged light, the unchanged view his eyes found in front of him. Vhanu stood against the building wall, wiping his mouth, his eyes red-rimmed. Gundhalinu looked away from him. His own eyes felt as dry as sand. He couldn’t blink. “Why—?” he murmured to Donne.

Donne pressed her hand against her mouth, shook her head once, before she could meet his gaze. “Don’t know, Commander. …” Her voice was matter-of fact, when she answered. “My best guess would be, they did it to make a point.”

He frowned. “Because the codes my brothers had were useless?”

“Or because they were your brothers,” she said. “Maybe the whole thing was a setup. To prove that even if the Brotherhood doesn’t dare lay a hand on you, they can still … hurt you. I’m sorry, Commander. …” Her voice faded to a whisper.

Gundhalinu took an unsteady breath, watching his own hands become fists. The sound of process and progress boomed and reverberated and clattered and whined, nearby, far away, echoing echoing hollowly all around him, through him, inside his head where no meaningful thought would form.

“BZ—” Vhanu said hoarsely, and came back to his side; he was aware of Vhanu’s hand laid hesitantly on his shoulder, although there seemed to be no feeling at all anywhere in his body. “I’m going to call for help. I’m going to—”

“No,” Donne said. “We’ll take care of it, Vhanu. No Police involvement. No scandal. No one wants that for the Commander. It will all be taken care of. You understand?”

Vhanu stared at her for a long moment, his jaw set. At last he nodded. “Understood,” he murmured.

Gundhalinu turned back to Donne, trying to find words adequate to thank her, and failing. He put a hand on her arm, meeting the gaze of her clear, dark eyes. “In your debt…”

Donne smiled briefly. “Let’s go, Commander. We’d better go.”

He turned away from them, from the warehouse door still gaping like an open wound, and started back toward the streets.