“Lady Nohamapetan tells me that not too long before her house’s ship was attacked, you and your mother the countess threatened Amit Nohamapetan over a business dispute.”
“We didn’t threaten him. We just made very clear our displeasure over certain actions his house undertook against us on End, but offered to settle those issues out of court. You can ask him yourself.”
“I would love to do that, except that he was with the emperox when the attack happened. The emperox survived. Amit Nohamapetan, alas, did not.”
“Well, fuck,” Kiva said, after a minute.
Limbar nodded. “I can show you the pictures if you like. There’s not much left, however. Most of what wasn’t smeared onto the ship deck was ejected out into space.”
“You don’t think we did that, do you?”
“Well, Lady Kiva, you tell me. You arrive from End with a business dispute against the Nohamapetans and with a ship full of emigrants from a planet whose rebels have been attacking targets all around the Interdependency—and who have attempted to assassinate the emperox before. So now here is an assassination attempt that not only targets the emperox but also gets rid of the heir to the head of the House of Nohamapetan, and incidentally does immense financial damage to his house by destroying its new tenner just before it’s deployed into service. Do you not see how I could imagine that you and these terrorists from End might have decided to assassinate two birds with one stone?”
“You can imagine anything you like,” Kiva said. “It doesn’t mean that it’s true. And it wouldn’t make sense anyway. We needed Lord Amit alive to push through the settlement we wanted from him. Killing him before we got that wouldn’t do us any good. Now they’re not going to have a goddamn thing to do with us, especially if they think we’re involved.”
Limbar smiled. “That much I expect is true. Lady Nadashe is in a rage, and only the fact that she’s currently whipping up support to send a troopship to End is keeping her full attention from the House of Lagos.”
Kiva opened her mouth to say something about the Nohamapetan involvement with the rebels on End and why the fuck wasn’t Limbar looking into that, when she snapped her mouth closed so fast that her teeth actually clacked together.
“Yes, Lady Kiva?” Limbar said, noticing. “Something just occur to you?”
“I was wondering whether you have any evidence to back up your hunch here.”
Limbar motioned around him. “There is a reason we’re here. I don’t imagine you or your mother is stupid enough to commit any plans like this to recordable media, if you were involved. But perhaps not everyone in your employ is that aware. In which case, we’ll find out. In the meantime, Lady Kiva, you’ll understand that I’ve restricted your movements to Hubfall for now and that you’ll be discreetly monitored in your movement. It’s not just you, of course. Your mother, Lord Pretar, and most of your executives here on Hub and on Xi’an are also being restricted.”
“That’s not going to go over very well with my mother.”
“Then you may tell the countess, and you may quote me fully, that I don’t give a fuck. Someone just tried to kill my emperox for the second time on my watch. You can be assured that I will find out who it is. And if it is you, or your mother, or anyone involved with the House of Lagos, I won’t care how high and mighty you are, or how much you intimidate your underlings. I’ll take you down, and your entire house, if I have to.”
“I’ll let her know.”
“Do that. And now, Lady Kiva, if you’ll excuse me, my people have to get back to work.” He went and opened the door to let his guards and investigators back into the room. Kiva watched them file in and then got out of the chair, left the office, and headed toward the elevator bank. As she did so a guard detached herself from her duties and walked toward her.
“Oh, come on,” Kiva said, to the guard. “Your asshole boss said you would be discreet.”
“This is discreet,” the guard said, standing next to her.
Kiva resisted the temptation to roll her eyes. “What’s your name?”
“Sergeant Brenja Pitof.”
“Well, Sergeant, am I going to get a moment to myself between now and whenever the end of this is?”
“Not really, no.”
“So you’re going to watch me when I take a dump.”
“No.”
“Good.”
“As long as the bathroom doesn’t have a window or a second exit.”
The elevator door opened and Kiva stepped inside. Sergeant Pitof followed.
“Press the ‘Ground’ button,” Kiva said.
“I’m supposed to follow you, Lady Kiva, not be your servant,” Pitof said. Then she pushed the button anyway.
*
“Where are you?” Captain Blinnikka said to Kiva, over her tablet, the one the Imperial Guard hadn’t confiscated.
“I’m in my hotel room bathroom,” Kiva said.
“What’s that noise?”
“It’s the shower.”
“You’re calling me from the shower?”
“No, I’m running the shower so I can talk to you. I have a fucking guard in my hotel room.”
“What’s the guard doing?”
Lying on the bed after a particularly exhausting bout of screwing, Kiva thought, but did not say. Kiva decided that as long as she was going to be that closely watched, she might as well get something out of it. “Waiting for me to be done showering, so maybe let’s get to the subject. Which is, what the fuck happened with our shuttle?”
“It was coming back from Imperial Station when the communications went dead and it piloted itself to the dock where the Sing Out was being built and rammed itself into the damn thing. Imperial Guard craft opened up on it as it came in but they didn’t manage to destroy it before it hit.”
“Who was the pilot?”
“Ling Xi.”
Kiva grimaced. Xi was completely competent and wholly uninteresting and had no personal politics as far as Kiva knew. “It doesn’t make sense she would jam a shuttle into that ship.”
“I don’t think she did,” Blinnikka said. “We have the data from the shuttle’s control panels. It shows a lot of activity during the trip, but not piloting data—or more accurately piloting data that corresponds to the trip. Everything we see is what you’d see from a pilot trying to take control of the shuttle, not actively piloting it.”
“So you think it was hijacked.”
“Yes. I think it was hacked into somehow and then either autopiloted or remotely piloted to the Sing Out.”
“Did you tell that to the Imperial Guard?”
“They didn’t ask, and I decided I’d let them figure it out. They just came onto the ship, downloaded everything they could, and set up shop in one of the cargo holds. They’re still there. They questioned me and the senior staff, but that was hours ago. We’re not allowed to leave. I don’t know what they’re up to right now.”
“There was no one else on the shuttle except Xi?”
“No.”
“What about before? She piloted the shuttle to Imperial Station, yes? Was anyone with her then?”
“Hold on,” Blinnikka said. Kiva waited, and while she waited, decided that she really did need a shower; she and Sergeant Pitof had been pretty exuberant. She stripped down, put her tablet into speaker mode, and got into the shower.
“There were a couple of passengers,” Blinnikka said when he came back on. “Three, actually. A husband and wife named Lewyyn, and a man named Broshning. They were departing the Yes, Sir for good.”
“Do we know where they were going?”
“I have no idea.”
“But someone does, yes? Isn’t there some way to find out?”
“I don’t know. I’m a captain, not a private investigator.”
“Ask Gazson Magnut. If they had cargo in the holds that they didn’t take on the shuttle with them they would have to arrange to have it sent somewhere.”
“We just offload it. Imperial Station handles it from there.”
“Then have someone ask them.”
“Easier said than done.”
“We’ve got the fucking Imperial Guard thinking we are trying to assassinate the emperox,” Kiva said. “I think we can make a little effort.”
Blinnikka was quiet for a moment. “Do you have me on speaker?”
“Maybe.”
“I thought you said you were trying to avoid being heard.”
“I decided I needed an actual shower more.”