Vincenzo gave Andrew a look. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I never doubted her for a second.”
Thomas Young came in, glanced over at Andrea, and said, “You’re missing an arm.”
“Thank you, Thomas, I’m aware.” She closed her eyes for a moment, as if trying to cope with either exhaustion or pain.
“I can’t be the only one,” said Andrew. “Thomas, aren’t you as amazed as I am?”
“I am rarely amazed by anything. You’ll need to be more specific about whatever has… captured your imagination.”
“Really? I’m talking about Katerina.”
“Katerina?” Thomas furrowed his brow.
“Katerina Capanelli!”
“Oh, yes. The old commander. What about her?” From the look on his face, anyone would have thought that Thomas was completely unconcerned.
“Andrea captured her,” Vincenzo clarified. “That’s how she lost her arm.”
Thomas shrugged. “That only makes sense, as Katerina was always an excellent fighter. Even so, Andrea’s skill set is essentially the same, but Andrea is younger and in her physical prime. Anyone would have guessed she would probably win.”
“Wow.” Andrew shook his head. “This is one of the single greatest feats in the history of Section 9, and you two are taking it completely for granted.”
“If you ask me, what she’s done here is simply amazing,” said Raven. “Andrea went out on her own and brought back someone we had all agreed was the most dangerous person in the system. I’m with Andrew.”
“Ridiculous.” Thomas was looking at his fingernails, as if he found us all too embarrassing to look at directly.
“How did you find her?” I asked.
Andrea opened her eyes. “Hmm? Is someone asking me a question, instead of arguing about my skills right in front of me?”
“I asked how you found her.”
“The crew report submitted by a shipping vessel from Ganymede just after the crash mentioned bringing aboard a woman fitting Katerina’s description. It made a stop when it crossed into The Belt, and she boarded a commercial flight.”
“She had to know she’d get pinged with facial recognition once she did that, didn’t she?” Given everything I’d heard about Katerina Capanelli, I found that slightly disappointing.
“She did.” Andrea waved her hand as if to dismiss the thought. “She altered her appearance so much that I had to lower the filter threshold to twenty percent before I spotted her. I must have gone through hundreds of possible matches, but I know her face better than any AI ever could. The hard part came after I finally caught up with her on Venus.”
“Hard seems like an understatement,” said Veraldi.
Andrea shrugged, as much as she could.
“Where is she now?” I asked.
“Manacled in the secure car park, while the androids process her. I want to make sure she doesn’t have anything before we bring her into the facility.”
“It makes me a little nervous to think that she’s still alive.” Andrew scratched his head, staring down at his feet. “After all, she’s known the location of this place the entire time.”
“That’s an important point,” Vincenzo added. “We’ll need to discuss that.”
“Yes, but first we need to get her secured. A safehouse would not be enough. She needs the highest level of security we can leverage.” Andrea was talking with her eyes closed, and occasionally gritting her teeth.
“I’ll get it taken care of.” Veraldi left the room.
“Do you need anything?” asked Raven.
Andrea shook her head. “Let’s go out and watch the proxies bring Katerina in. That way I’ll know the job was done, and done right.” I was faintly impressed by the idea of a person so dangerous you couldn’t trust machines to bring them in even if they were already restrained.
“I’ll help you up.” Raven offered Andrea her hand, and Andrea pulled herself up to stand. None of the rest of us stepped forward. We waited patiently as she made her way out of the room before quietly falling in line behind her.
She was limping but still held her head high and her back straight. It almost looked like she still had something to prove, and allowing herself to appear as weak as she must have felt would only undo what she’d accomplished so far.
We took the elevator down to the car park, where a few technicians and several android proxies stood guard around a black sedan. A proxy approached Andrea as we neared.
“We have confirmed the subject does not possess explosives,” it said. “We have confirmed the subject does not possess transmission devices.”
Andrea eyed the sedan. “Augments?”
“The subject is not augmented.”
“Form a semicircle around the door,” Andrea ordered. “Be ready for anything, and maintain a two meter distance at all times.”
The technician by the car door asked, “Are you ready, ma’am?”
She nodded. “Open it.”
The door swung open, and the blonde woman from the Havisham stared right at me. Her mouth was gagged with a strip of cloth wrapped like a bandage around the lower half of her face and down to the nape of her neck. Her arms were restrained behind her back with a slip-tie above her elbows, another at her wrists, and a third binding her thumbs together. Her legs were restrained in a similar fashion. Despite all of this, she sat with her legs folded under her looking as relaxed and beatific as a statue of Maitreya.
If Katerina was surprised to see that I was still alive, she didn’t show it. Her eyes narrowed in what I somehow knew was a smile beneath the gag.
Andrea looked her up and down. “Take her away,” she ordered, and the proxies moved in. As they unstrapped one arm and secured it with a pair of handcuffs, Andrea drew her gun and aimed it at her mother’s head. This seemed to delight Katerina, who offered no resistance at all. The proxies cuffed her other hand, then carefully undid the restraints on her feet.
As they stood her up, Katerina’s eyes sparkled as if she found the whole scene unbearably amusing. She’d been hunted down and dragged back to the unit she once commanded. Whatever plans she may have had were now dead in the void. And yet, there was that smile. A kind of arrogance that survived any situation she could ever find herself in.
The proxies pushed her forward, and Katerina let them lead her away. It made me think of my own story—once an Arbiter, then hunted down by other Arbiters. If they’d caught me, I would have been interrogated in my own headquarters just as she was about to be.
“You’re looking thoughtful.” Andrew’s voice was quiet, and oddly sincere.
“I fought that woman on the Havisham. She’s a frightening person. Fearless. Practically a demon in combat, but it still seems sad.”
“Trust me, Tycho, she made her own choices every step of the way.”
“What was she like, before...” I gestured towards the elevator. “Everything.”
“Extremely capable. Reckless, but so good at everything that it didn’t matter. High expectations no one could ever seem to meet. Ultimately, she’s just a narcissist. We all respected her skill, but she was a slave to her own ego.”