Judas Unchained

“What are you doing?” Paula tried to push the diagnostic away, but he caught her hand and held it. She had no strength to stop him.

“Finding out what the hell’s the matter with you.” The array’s little screen began to fill with data. Her pulse was alarmingly rapid.

“Don’t,” she groaned, sucking air through her teeth.

“Christ, you’ve hardly got any blood pressure. Concentrate for me. If there was a Starflyer agent on the Carbon Goose, why didn’t they blow it up?”

“Good question. Simplest solution applies: they didn’t because they couldn’t. They had no access to suitable heavy-duty weaponry.”

“Cat’s Claws and the Paris team did. So do most of my Guardians.”

“That’s good; we can start eliminating people now. Out of the Guardians traveling with us, who doesn’t have an aggressor armor suit?”

“Rosamund and Jamas.” The array finished its review of Paula’s body. “It can’t detect any viral infection.” Adam paused. “It reads like you’re in shock.”

“Good verdict,” she croaked. “I am undergoing a physical reaction to a traumatic experience.” Her eyes fluttered shut, then snapped open again. “Now…none of the three navy people with us had aggressor armor, Nelson gave them protective suits.”

“What about you?”

“Same as the navy three, my armor is protective; I do have weapons but nothing that can take out a Carbon Goose, certainly not with a couple of shots. You must have access to weapons.”

“I do.” He gritted his teeth. “What trauma? What’s doing this to you? Christ, Paula, your body can’t take this kind of punishment.”

“You,” she said with a mocking smile. “Now think, if the Starflyer agent is with us in the Volvos, it has to be either myself, Wilson, Anna, Oscar, Rosamund, or Jamas.”

“What do you mean, me?”

“I wanted to arrest you, but I had to let you come here where you’ll be able to elude me when the mission is over. I can’t do that. It’s wrong. Completely and utterly wrong. You’re a mass murderer, I cannot put that aside. Thought I could, but I can’t. My body is reminding me of that.”

He stared at her in growing horror. “You’re in shock from letting me walk free?”

“Yes.”

“Fuck, Paula, this has to stop.” His e-butler began to display treatment routines for shock. He pulled an oxygen mask from the medical kit, and switched on the little extractor filter pump as he pressed it over her mouth. “Start breathing as regular as you can, I’m going to give you a sedative to try and calm your body down.”

Paula groaned. She pushed the mask aside. “It was Kieran’s truck that broke down; he really should have noticed something was wrong before it got bad enough to catch fire.”

“Fuck that! Your life is a damn sight more important.”

“It’s not. We must find out who the traitor is, the criminal. If they’re with us, they’ll strike again.”

“Not this instant they won’t. How could this happen to you?”

“I’m driven, remember? It’s in my genes.”

“Is everyone from the Hi—Huxley’s Haven like this? How can a whole planet be so flawed? You don’t get to do what you want and you just keel over with a fever? It’s insane!”

“My profession is unique even among the general population of Huxley’s Haven. There are not many police officers. The Foundation sequenced in our need to see cases to their conclusion. Admiral Columbia claimed it to be an obsessive compulsive disorder; I believe it was in fact originally derived from that.”

“So what the hell happens to the police if they don’t catch the bad guy?”

“They keep on going. No case is ever closed until it has been solved and the criminal arrested. The difference here is that I was forced into letting you go. It simply doesn’t happen on Huxley’s Haven. There is no such thing as political pressure to protect criminals.”

“You said you’d come after me. Doesn’t that help?”

“No. I’m not arresting you now, which is what I know I should be doing.” Her voice had faded to almost nothing. She closed her eyes.

Adam pulled an applicator tube out of the case; its sedative was close to what the e-butler’s medical program was telling him to use. “Hang on, you understand me? We’ll get you through this. Don’t you give up on me now, don’t you fucking dare.”

***

An angel walked into the mansion without any warning, causing a ruckus with the security staff on duty that morning. They didn’t want to let her in. She ignored their protests with the casual aristocratic disdain that was the heritage of any senior Dynasty child.