“This is it,” I said. “If anyone is on this ship, they’re in here. Are you ready?”
“The sooner we’re done here, the better. I have a man to bury.”
Li Fei took position off to the right and I did the same to the left. He leveled his weapon and signaled. I tapped the access panel and the doors opened onto the bridge of the Havisham.
I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t a middle-aged blonde woman in a nanosuit. She was looking at us with the faintest hint of a smile on her face, and my first thought was of how much she reminded me of Andrea Capanelli.
“Welcome to the Havisham. What can I do for you gentlemen?”
“Sol Federation Arbiter Force.” Li Fei had switched over to his digitally amplified intimidation voice, a standard tool for Arbiters everywhere. “We have a warrant to search this vessel. You are ordered to cooperate.”
Her smile got bigger when she heard that. “I am ordered to cooperate? By an Arbiter, no less?”
“Comply and this will be much easier,” I told her.
“I’m sure it would be, for you, but I’m afraid you don’t understand the situation here.”
She had the nerve to turn away from us and tap a command into the ship’s console. Something in the way she moved recalled an image to my mind—an assassin in a nanosuit, deftly beating Jonathan and Andrea in hand-to-hand combat.
“It’s you,” I said.
She raised her head slightly and leaned on her palms against the console. “Have we met before? You’ll need to be more specific.”
Li Fei was staring at me. He sent me a dataspike message. What are you talking about?
I chose to ignore him. I needed to buy time to record her facial topography. “How many of those people are in Artorias?”
Back when the boson aperture was first being developed, the city of Artorias was a major research center. Now it was nothing but a radioactive ruin inhabited by outcasts, dissidents, and desperate fugitives. It’s not a place the average person would ever consider visiting, but it was where we finally found Julian Huxley. It was where he was killed by someone with the same nanosuit as this woman.
“Artorias?” She turned to face me. “Isn’t that just an empty ruin?”
I couldn’t be sure she was who I thought she was, but I couldn’t take the risk either.
I messaged Li Fei. We need to arrest this woman.
This time he didn’t bother to use the dataspike. “On what charges? I haven’t seen any evidence of human trafficking.”
“Human trafficking?” She laughed. “Is that what they told you?” She took a step to her left, and I noticed her helmet resting on a seat in front of the console. If she got that on, she would be fully armored. I pointed my gun at her. “Don’t take another step.”
Li Fei didn’t seem to know what to do. To him, I was a traitorous former Arbiter who had murdered a fellow officer and gotten away with it before reemerging under a false name with Section 3. He had no idea about Huxley, the assassin, or the Eleven.
“She attempted to evade arrest,” I pointed out. “That’s reason enough, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, I suppose It is. You’ll have some questions to answer when we’re done here.”
“Oh, I’m sure he will,” the woman said. “Starting with how I succeeded in capturing the both of you.”
Like an amateur, I had turned toward Li Fei instead of keeping my focus on her. Now I was staring down the accelerator of an energy weapon pointed straight at my face.
9
I wasn’t going to just drop my weapon and surrender. “You’re making a huge mistake.”
Li Fei’s weapon was still pointed right at the woman, so it wasn’t likely she’d survive long if she pulled the trigger. In fact, the bridge wasn’t big enough for the beam to fully bloom out and lose power. If she fired, it would probably pierce the Havisham’s hull.
“A mistake you say?” Her voice was cool, and still faintly amused. Like she still didn’t understand how much danger she was in.
“Drop your weapon, or you’re going to die.” Li Fei sounded as perplexed as I felt. Her behavior was suicidal.
“Do you fear death, Arbiter?” She took a step to her left. “Living without realizing one’s purpose is cowardice, and that’s where the fear of death comes from. It’s the creeping doubt whispering to you in the quiet moments, reminding you that your life is a study in unfulfilled potential. You fear death because it marks the end of a wasted existence spent desperately clinging to the empty hope of a better tomorrow.”
The arrogance was almost breathtaking.
“If you shoot me with that beam weapon, you’ll pierce the hull,” I told her. “This cabin will decompress, and you will die along with us.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the tension in Li Fei’s body language. He wanted to pull the trigger, but he wasn’t sure he could kill her before she could fire. He might have been thinking about doing it anyway. From his perspective, it wouldn’t be so bad if both this woman and I ended up dead.
If I intended to survive, I was going to have to change this situation myself.
I considered just ducking down, but if this woman was really Huxley’s assassin, her speed was nothing short of transhuman and I wouldn’t get the shot off in time. I wasn’t even sure Li Fei would make it. It was time to do something unexpected.
“I’m not an Arbiter,” I told her. “I’m with Section 9.”
Her reply was smooth, like everything else she did. “I already knew that. Section 9 always uses Section 3 as cover for this sort of mission.”
What the hell is she talking about? asked Li Fei.
“You killed Julian Huxley.”
“I’ve killed too many to remember every name.” She raised both eyebrows, feigning total innocence. “All I want is for you to leave this ship. If you can agree to that, no one has to die.”
For such a cold-blooded killer, she seemed strangely reticent to kill us. “Even if we could do that,” I pointed out, “there’s an Arbiter drop ship trailing you right now. You can’t possibly escape.”
“This is a luxury yacht,” she replied. “It’s a much faster vessel than any Arbiter drop ship. As soon as I break orbit, I’ll disappear like the snow of years gone by.” She took another step to the left.
Li Fei sent me another message. I have to take the shot. We won’t get another chance.
I messaged him back. No, just wait.
He didn’t pull the trigger. Telling her the truth about how I recognized her was just a desperate attempt to mess with her head and change the situation somehow, but she had taken it in stride. What else could I do? Her weapon was still aimed at my face. Her muzzle hadn’t drifted off target even a little since this standoff began. She was still moving slowly toward her helmet, though. If she wanted to get it on, she wouldn’t have any choice but to divert her attention from me for a fraction of a second. That was all I’d need.
Let her go for the helmet, I told Li. I’ll drop when she goes for it, and you can take the shot.
Copy that, he answered, which surprised me a little. I’d been assuming all along that he wanted me dead, but he was giving me the chance to survive this encounter. I didn’t understand why, but maybe he was just a decent Arbiter. Maybe we were enemies only through a sequence of events I didn’t choose and couldn’t control.