Chaos Space - Marianne de Pierres [122]
Thales stared out at the markets that hugged the rim of the shaft: hundreds of stalls and booths selling food and trinkets and filter masks. A stretch of catoplasma tubes like the ones in the Heijunka, advertised as cheap sleeping compartments.
Tekton got off the conveyor and directed them to a tube entrance bearing a humanesque-shaped hand as its symbol. The tube was almost opposite Insignia but nearly a full mesur away.
Thales pointed to the symbol. ‘A good omen,’ he said to Bethany. ‘It’s a Jain symbol called Ahisma.’
But she had stepped off the conveyor to the other side and was standing on her toes, peering back towards Insignia.
Both Tekton and Thales went across to her.
‘You have a special friend whom you do not wish to leave?’ Tekton enquired politely.
‘Yes, in a way. At least, I would like to have seen him and ... Oh! There! Thales, it’s Josef.’
Thales followed the line of her out-thrust arm to where Insignia was docked. He could see Jo-Jo Rasterovich and the three mercenaries gathered around the mouth of the biozoon’s tube.
‘Josef!’ Bethany shouted and waved her hands. ‘Jo—’
Rasterovich saw her and waved back. He began to run towards the conveyor on his side but the white-haired mercenary blocked his escape, grabbing him roughly.
Tekton clamped his hand over Bethany’s wrist. ‘This is not a time for problematical goodbyes, and anything that might require your deliberation means you will miss departure.’
‘Beth!’ pleaded Thales. ‘Don’t complicate this.’ The Ahisma symbol had begun to flash. ‘The liner is leaving.’
Beth swallowed as if relieving a dry throat and then nodded.
Tekton removed his hand.
She gave Jo-Jo one more wave and turned and followed after Thales.
JO-JO RASTEROVICH
‘Beth! Wait! Don’t go anywhere with that prick!’ Jo-Jo tried to bellow but his throat was thick with allergy again. He started across the docks towards the conveyor but Rast Randall apprehended him in an untidy head-lock before he could set foot on it.
‘What are you doing?’ She wrestled him to a kneeling position before she loosened her hold. Her white hair was plastered to her head as if she’d been running -not just to catch him—and she stank of her sweat.
‘She’s—leaving—on that—liner with—Berniere and—’
Rast shook him. ‘Listen! So what! We’ve got other problems. Fedor is still missing and the biozoon’s prepping itself to depart.’
Jo-Jo glanced back, still panting from his exertion. His eyes were streaming and he dashed the moisture away. The Tau Crux symbol flashed the docked craft’s intention to leave. ‘But it’s got no pilot.’
‘It’s a ‘zoon. When their biologies start to buzz the station’s just got to let them go.’
Jo-Jo looked back the other way. Bethany was disappearing into the tube with Thales and a slim Lostol wearing a bulky hat. Jo-Jo hadn’t seen Tekton since Belle-Monde but he knew him in an instant. ‘Fedor might be with them.’
‘No. She’s not.’
Jo-Jo frowned. ‘How so sure?’
‘I talked to every damn thing on this dock with a heartbeat—and to some without. The Extras took her. That’s a fact. I’d say the ‘zoon’s following her. What are you going to do?’
Never—even in those terrible moments afloat in the vacuum of space—had Jo-Jo ever felt so utterly torn.
Tekton was the reason he was alive, the reason he hadn’t ripped off his face-mask out in space and let his lungs flatten. Revenge had given him a reason to live and he’d grabbed it with utter and complete conviction. Every blink, every twitch of his muscles since then had been about achieving it.
Not only that, but something that he’d thought to be a small annoyance was turning into a large concern: his throat, the itch and the watering of his eyes. Lasper Farr had given him something in that inhaler back on Edo. As a priority he needed to get back into the Junction proper and find a booth where he could renew his HealthWatch and scan his immune system.
But Mira Fedor ... he found it impossible to breathe even thinking that she was hurt or in pain.