Power Play - Anne McCaffrey [113]
“Very well, gentlemen, if that is the order of the court, as a law-abiding citizen of this galaxy, I submit.” There was nothing at all submissive about Dr. Matthew Luzon as he smartly passed his would-be captors on his way to the corridor and to the personal vehicle that should have been waiting to transport him.
But the vehicle awaiting him was not his personal one. It was a drab and very official one, and matters proceeded downhill with astonishing speed after that.
Nor was he at all reassured to discover that the plaintiff who had leveled these charges against him was none other than the secretary-general of Intergal, Farringer Ball, and that the warrant had originated from Intergal’s Petaybean installation.
“The planet’s corrupting everyone,” he shouted as he was led off to a holding cell. The last glimpse he had of his well-paid, highly trained and motivated legal department was of their slightly bemused expressions. Bemused at his expense.
Nor was his incarceration in any way mitigated by the fact that he was led past a cell containing Captain Torkel Fiske, who was sitting in abject dejection on the spartan bed of the accommodation.
“Fiske? What’s the meaning of this?”
“Now, now, sor,” the senior officer said, hurrying him to the next section of the prison and his own quarters. “No talking. That’s not allowed to prisoners on remand.”
What Torkel Fiske could not figure out was how he had been implicated in the Algemeine-Maddock-Rourke-Metaxos kidnappings. Unless, of course, Captain Louchard had been captured and had taken revenge on what he considered to be Torkel’s perfidy by deciding to turn galactic evidence to gain a reduced sentence. Kidnapping demanded a fate far worse than death: imprisonment in a space capsule, which was then released beyond the heliopause of the local star system with sufficient oxygen to keep the criminal alive long enough to regret both crime and life.
Some took as long as weeks to suffocate, depending on the amount of oxygen supplied, and there was no legal amount specified, so a person never knew how long he or she would keep on breathing. If you were claustrophobic, maybe you went mad first. If you had agoraphobia, the torture would be equally severe. No one had ever been rescued.
Torkel had managed to get a message off to his father, although he wasn’t sure if that would do any good. Why, his father might even have told the officials where to find him: Whittaker was scrupulous about obeying the law, and Marmion was an old and valued associate.
What Torkel had counted on was Captain Louchard’s piratical expertise, as well as an ignorance of the Gentlepersons’ Agreement on kidnapping. There hadn’t been an abduction of someone of Marmion de Revers Algemeine’s social prominence in so many years that the pact was no longer common knowledge. Besides, Torkel would have been happy enough with the abduction of the minor personalities, to pay back Yana, and indirectly Sean, as well as those obnoxious kids. Caveat emptor! Even a pirate should know where to draw the line in dastardly deeds.
Odd, if Louchard was responsible for Torkel’s arrest, that there had been nothing on the net reports about the capture of pirate and crew. That would have given Torkel sufficient warning to make for parts unknown and to undergo a complete identity change. He’d some tentative plans made in that direction, but he’d been taken so by surprise that he hadn’t a chance to put them into use. He’d opened his door and there they were!
And the complaint had originated not from Dama Marmion de Revers Algemeine but Farringer Ball. That didn’t make much sense to Torkel Fiske, who had last seen Farringer Ball on a screen at SpaceBase in Petaybee. And the man was physically on that wretched iceberg now. How under the suns had he managed to end up there? Of all