Dark Space - Marianne de Pierres [131]
The Galiotto nodded tearfully.
Mira put her face close to the servant’s ear. ‘The mercenaries must not know that she is alive. Go to her now and tell her what I have said to you. Stay hidden until we have gone. Whatever happens, her son must not stay here. He must go further south. Capisci?’
‘Si. Capisco.’
Mira helped the woman to her feet.
‘Are you a traditrice, Baronessa?’ the Galiotto asked hoarsely.
‘Not traditrice, Galiotto. Incinta.’ She touched her belly with a trembling hand. ‘Tell the Principessa that if I survive she will have a nipote. The Pellegrini line will continue.’ Tell her that her son is a rapist. ‘Now go to her without being seen.’
Mira left the woman and struggled up the red beach, across the patches of sand-thorns to the paths around the chalet. Heat exhaustion was upon her, the nausea greater with each step, the headache more intense. But now she had something to keep her going. Insignia’s voice was back in her mind. Its return was like a feast to someone who was starving.
She threaded her way through several archways until she found Rast and Catchut in the chalet’s infirmary. They were removing Latourn from a blood-sluice.
‘Why is everything here so primitive?’ Rast stormed.
Mira took a long, steadying drink of water from a faux spring by the window. It tasted faintly briny, as though the desalinator needed servicing. ‘This is not the Palazzo; it is a holiday retreat. The Ciprianos spent their fortune to purchase Araldis. They could not afford unlimited technology.’ Mira was not sure why she bothered to speak at all. This mercenary had just killed familia for little reason.
‘Where’s the servant woman?’ asked Rast.
‘On the beach still. She wished to stay with her fratella . . . with the body,’ said Mira.
‘She might know something useful. I’ll get her,’ said Rast.
Mira’s heart fluttered in panic.
‘Capo? He’s slipping away.’ Catchut’s tone came close to pleading.
Rast hesitated. ‘You said the ship had decent medic?’
Mira nodded. ‘Si.’ She led them back through the arches, across the polished iron courtyard to the spiral outside paths.
Rast and Catchut carried Latourn between them. As before, he was too weak to stand.
The hangar doors opened at the touch of the lozenge. Inside, the kite-shaped black Insignia craft with its golden Cipriano emblem seemed to suck the light from the air.
‘Open her up and then prepare for lift-off,’ ordered Rast. ‘You do know how?’
Mira glanced around the hangar. It was like a miniature version of the Fleet’s base on Mount Pell. ‘Of course.’
Rast nodded. ‘I’ll be back to help you when we’ve got Latourn hooked up. And hurry. I got a feeling that I don’t like gnawing at me.’
What gnawed at Rast, Mira thought, was the guilt about those she had murdered because they had got in her way.
While Rast and Catchut carried the dying Latourn on board, Mira limped across the hangar to elevate the launch pad. The pseudo-skin’s anaesthetic had worn off and her elbow throbbed painfully in an ugly, pulsing rhythm.
She placed the lozenge in the seal on Insignia’s hull. Bonjourno, bella, she whispered to the ship.
You are here?
With Insignia’s words Mira’s mind came alive. Things she needed to account for streamed into place: weather conditions, stabiliser integrity, g-thrust analysis, environmentals. The Insignia was rated for deep space but it had been many years since it had seen such a journey. Had the res-shift been hummed recently? Was the ship’s grown still healthy? Degradation from neglect was a possibility. Had the shipskin retained suitable integrity?
The hangar flattened, settling into its lift-off position while Mira stood in the flooding sunlight. Quotes from her instruction-manual download whispered to her. The result of an inexact res-shift is catastrophic and will have an irrevocable impact on humanesque tissue. Vibration calibration must be precise or molecules in the tissues will implode the flesh.
A shiver of anticipation finished in