Nemesis

She had at least hoped they could escape the security dragnet. But if they were captured, their failure would be total and complete. Beye knew that the patrol flyers carried nine-man teams with cyber-mastiffs and spy drones. The first icy surges of panic bubbled up in her chest as she imagined the interior of a dank interrogation cell. She would never see Capra again.

Grohl broke into a run and she followed him with Pasri at her heels, listening for the metallic barks of the enhanced dogs. He slipped through a gap between two waste skips and down towards a side road. Ahead of him, a woman in a sun-hood and sarong stepped out from a doorway and looked up at them. Beye was struck by the paleness of her face; Dagonet’s bright sunshine tanned everyone on the planet’s temperate zone, which meant she was either a shut-in noblewoman or an off-worlder; and neither were likely to be seen in this part of the inner city.

‘Pardon,’ she began, and her accent immediately confirmed her non-Dagoneti status. ‘If I could trouble you?’

Grohl almost missed a step, but then he pressed on, pushing past the stranger. ‘Get out of my way,’ he growled.

Beye came after him. She heard the yelps of the mastiffs in the distance and saw Pasri looking back the way they had come, her expression unreadable.

‘As you wish,’ the woman said, spreading her hands. Beye saw the glint of metal nozzles at her wrists just as she pursed her pale lips and blew out a long breath. A vaporous mist jetted from the nozzles and engulfed them all.

The ground beneath Beye’s feet suddenly became the consistency of rubber and she stumbled, dimly aware of Grohl doing the same. Pasri let out a weak cry and fell.

As Beye collapsed in a heap, her limbs refusing to do as she told them, she saw the pale woman smile and lick beads of the spray off her fingertips. ‘It’s done,’ she heard her say, the words drawing out into a liquid, humming echo.

Beye’s senses went dark.

2

The acrid chemical stink of smelling salts jolted her back to wakefulness and Beye coughed violently. Blinking, she raised her head and peered at the room she found herself in, expecting the pale green walls of an Arbites cell; instead, she saw the gloomy interior of some kind of storehouse, shafts of daylight reaching down through holes in a sheet-plas roof.

She was tied to a chair, hands secured behind her back, ankles tethered to the support legs. Grohl was in a similar state to her right, and past him, Pasri looked back at her with an expression of tight fear. Grohl met her gaze, his face a mask of rigid, forced calm. ‘Say nothing,’ he told her. ‘Whatever happens, say nothing.’

‘Right on schedule,’ said a new voice. ‘As you said.’

‘Of course.’ That was the pale woman. ‘I can time the actions of my toxins to the second, if need be.’

Beye focussed and saw the woman in the sarong talking with an odd-looking youth wearing what looked like some form of combat gear. He was working a device mounted on his forearm, a gauntlet that grew a flickering holoscreen. Both of them glanced at their prisoners – for that was what they were, Beye realised belatedly – and then past their heads.

She heard motion behind her and Beye sensed someone standing at her back. ‘Who’s there?’ she said, before she could stop herself.

A third figure moved around the captives and came into view. He was tall, clad in a black oversuit with armour patches and gear packs. A heavy pistol of a design Beye had never seen before hung at his hip. He had a hawkish face that might have been handsome if not for the hardness lurking in his gaze. ‘Names,’ he said.

Grohl made a derogatory sound deep in his throat. The youth with the wrist-device sniffed and spoke again. ‘Liya Beye. Terrik Grohl. Olo Pasri.’

‘The nobles have files on all of you,’ said the hawkish man. ‘We took these copies of their database on the resistance when we destroyed the Kappa Six Communicatory.’

‘You did that?’ said Pasri.

‘Shut up,’ Grohl snarled. ‘Don’t talk!’

Beye kept silent. Like the rest of them, she’d been wondering just what had happened at Kappa Six ever since the newsfeeds had announced the ‘cowardly, treacherous attack by terrorist militants’ a few days earlier. In the end, Capra had suggested that it was either the work of an independent cell they weren’t aware of, or just some accident the nobles had decided to blame on them.

‘We’re nothing to do with those resistance radicals,’ insisted Pasri. ‘We’re just citizens.’

The youth sneered. ‘Please don’t insult my intelligence.’

‘Things are going badly for you, aren’t they?’ said the man, ignoring the interruption. ‘They’re getting close to finding your hideaway. Close to finding Capra and all his cell leaders.’

Beye tried not to react when he said the name, and failed. He turned to her. ‘How many of your people have surrendered in the past few weeks? Fifty? A hundred? How many have taken the offer of amnesty for themselves and their families?’