Angel of Destruction Read Free Page A

efficient, over almost as soon as it had begun. Fisner scanned the load-in docks outside the dock-master’s office with the remote monitors, counting the bodies.
    Everyone seemed to be accounted for.
    The dock-master was to be shot over her boards, as if in the act of trying to call for help. She was still alive, standing under guard with two raiders in Langsarik dress as the plunder of the warehouse commenced. The hand of the Holy Mother was clearly discernible in the fortunate circumstance that had brought the Langsariks to Port Charid. They were a perfect cover for the Angel’s fund-raising activities, and once they were shown guilty — too guilty for the Bench to overlook their faults and let them live free, this time — Port Charid would go begging for labor once more.
    Labor that the Combine was in a position to provide, at a premium, of course.
    Labor that would only solidify the hold the Holy Mother held over trade at Port Charid and access to the Sillume vector alike.
    Meanwhile the Angel stood in need of goods to convert into funds, because the righteous were not welcome in the debased Church of the Autocrat’s court. The Angel of Destruction had been outlawed through the malice of its enemies and the weak-spirited failings of the Autocrat himself octaves ago, when even Chuvishka Kospodar — the man who more than any other had nurtured their holy order, and welcomed it as the hand of the Holy Mother on Sarvaw — had been forced publicly to repudiate the Angel and its fearless defense of Her honor.
    The money had to come from somewhere.
    Just now it was coming out of the Okidan Yards, and the Langsariks would be blamed — two blessings in one devotion.
    After a while the raiders in Langsarik dress came to the door of the dock-master’s office, and Fisner opened the door. They had the dock-master with them, and her eyes brightened with sudden hope when she saw him.
    Hadn’t she figured it out yet?
    No, for they had been coached very carefully, Langsarik phrases, Langsarik swear words, Langsarik songs. Langsariks were responsible for the slaughter here, not honest Dolgorukij.
    “Here?” raid leader Dalmoss asked Fisner, gesturing toward the broken master console with a tilt of his chin. A shot could serve to disguise the previous damage that had been deliberately inflicted on the communications console; with enough blood, people would be discouraged from looking very closely. It wouldn’t be a problem. There were good reasons for the Langsariks to have first smashed the console and then shot the dock-master, if anyone felt honor-bound to establish a precise sequence of events.
    Fisner nodded.
    Dalmoss bowed his head and glanced toward his people. They pulled the dock-master over to her console and turned her so that she faced Fisner and the raid leader alike; but the venom in her expression, the hatred in her eyes, the acid in her voice was all for Fisner.
    “You. I should have known better.”
    It was as if she no longer even saw the others, staring at Fisner with baffled rage. “Sharing spit with Langsariks, you might as well have been one of them all along. Imagine you working for the Combine. I guess you must have grown to like the life, is that what happened?”
    He could snatch Dalmoss’s weapon and kill her himself.
    But that would have been a gesture of anger, an act of violence done with a resentful heart. The Angel killed without mercy, but without malice. The Angel was only the humble tool of the Holy Mother, blessed by Her toward the furtherance of Her sacred plan; and therefore when the Angel killed it was without anger, without fear, without hatred or joy in cruelty.
    It was for that reason that the Angel could kill, and not sin in doing so.
    Therefore, Fisner simply nodded to Dalmoss. The raiders in Langsarik dress who had brought the dock-master to her console backed away; she was so focused on Fisner that there was no need to watch for any sudden moves on her part. She was paralyzed with