Lord.For a moment, Qiwi just stared in astonishment. The corridor was the size that she remembered. Ten meters farther on, it curved right, toward the Captain's living quarters. But Ritser had pasted wallpaper on all four walls, and the pictures were a kind of swirling pink. The air stank of animal musk. This was a different universe from theInvisible Hand that she had known. She grasped wildly at her courage, and moved slowly up the hallway. Now there was music ahead, at least thethump thump thump of percussion. Somebody was singing...sharp, barking screams, in time with the beat.
Like they had a life of their own, her shoulders cramped tight, aching to bounce off the wall and race back the way she had come.Do I need anymore proof? Yes. Just a look at the data system with a local override. That would mean more than any number of hysterical stories about Ritser's choice of video and music.
Door by door, she moved up the corridor. These had been staff officer quarters, but used by the Watch crew on the voyage from Triland. She had lived in the second room from the end for three years—and she really didn't want to know what that looked like now. The Captain's planning room was just beyond the bend. She flicked her passkey at the lock, and the door slid open. Inside...this was no planning room. It looked like a cross between a gym and a bedroom. And the walls were again covered with video wallpaper. Qiwi pulled herself over a strange, gauntleted rack and settled down, out of sight of the doorway. She touched her huds, asked for a local override connection to the ship's net. There was a pause as her location and authorization were checked, and then she was looking at names and dates and pictures.Yes! Ol' Ritser was running his own small-scale coldsleep business right here on theInvisible Hand. Luan Peres was listed...andhere she was listed as living, on-Watch!
That's enough; time to get out of this madhouse.But Qiwi hesitated an instant longer. There were so many names here, familiar names and faces from long ago. Little death glyphs sat by each picture. She had been a child when she last saw these people, but not like this...these faces were variously sullen, sleeping, terribly bruised or burned. The living, the dead, the beaten, the fiercely resisting.This is from before Jimmy Diem. She knew there had been interrogations, a period of many Ksecs between the fighting and the resumption of Watches, but...Qiwi felt a numb horror spreading up from the pit of her stomach. She paged through the names. Kira Pen Lisolet. Mama. A bruised face, the eyes staring steadily back at her.Whatdid Ritser do to you? How could Tomas not know? She wasn't really conscious of following the data links from that picture, but suddenly her huds were running an immersion video. The room was the same, but filled with the sights and sounds of long ago. As if from the other side of the rack, there came the sound of panting and moaning. Qiwi slid to the side and the vision tracked with near perfection. Around the corner of the rack, she came face-to-face with...Tomas Nau. A younger Tomas Nau. Out of sight, beyond the edge of the rack, he seemed to be thrusting from his hips. The look on his face was the sort of ecstatic pleasure that Qiwi had seen in his face so many times, the look he had when they could finally be alone and he could come in her. But this Tomas of years ago held a tiny, red-splattered knife. He leaned forward, out of sight, leaned down on someone whose moans changed to a shrill scream. Qiwi pulled herself over the edge of the rack and looked straight down at the true past, at the woman Nau was cutting.
"Mama!"The past didn't notice her cry; Nau continued his business. Qiwi doubled up on herself, spewing vomit across the rack and beyond. She couldn't see them anymore, but the sounds of the past continued, as if they were happening just on the other side of the rack. Even as her stomach emptied, she tore the huds from her face, threw them wildly away. She choked and gagged; gibbering horror was in charge of her reflexes.
The light changed as the room's door opened. There were voices. Voices in the present. "Yeah, she's in here, Marli."
"Phew. What a mess." Sounds of the two men quartering the room, coming closer to Qiwi's hiding place. Mindlessly she retreated, floated down beneath the nightmare equipment, and braced herself against the floor.
A face coasted across her position.
"Got h—"
Qiwi exploded upward, the blade of her hand just missing the other's neck. She slammed into the wall partition behind him. Pain lanced back along her arm.
