25
CYBELE INCIDENT REPORT AE-5362-H

A crowd had formed at the center of Bazaar. Tycho pushed at the backs of the people standing in the outer ring, yelling for them to let him through and finally shoving past them.

Carlo was lying on his back in the center of the dome. A Cybelean constable with a staff intercepted Tycho as he tried to get to his brother’s side.

“Get back, boy!” the constable said, grabbing the front of Tycho’s jacket and pushing him back. “This don’t concern you!”

“That’s my brother!” Tycho said, and the man let go of him in surprise. Tycho shoved past him and sprawled beside Carlo. He reached for the charred hole in the center of Carlo’s jacket, then drew his hand back when he saw the terrible wound underneath.

Tycho buried his head in his hands, struggling to breathe, to think, to do anything. He could hear the constables issuing orders, the muttering and murmuring of the crowd, the rattle of shutters on the reopening shops, and the faint tinkle of the chimes high above.

“All right, you lot, it’s done,” a constable barked at the crowd, rapping his staff on the floor. “Get back and let us do our jobs.”

Tycho lifted his head as the crowd began to break up. A constable leaned down to him.

“Sorry for your loss, lad,” he said. “Jovian, are you? We’ll have to look at the security feeds since—as usual—there were no witnesses. But we’ll find out who did this.”

Tycho looked through the thinning crowd and saw Elfrieda’s guards standing impassively in front of the Last Chance. Two clerks were struggling with a jammed shutter, while Elfrieda herself was standing just within the depot, arms folded.

Her eyes met Tycho’s and widened in surprise. She took a step forward, then stopped, looking down at Carlo’s body. Her hand flew to her mouth.

“I didn’t recognize . . . I had no idea that he was . . . I didn’t think that . . .”

“You didn’t think it was any of your business?” Tycho asked, his hands balling into fists, his voice rising to a scream. “You didn’t think you might help someone who needed it?”

All at once he began to sob, an explosion of tears that left his cheeks wet and his chest heaving. He reached out for Carlo and pulled his brother’s head and shoulders into his lap. He could feel the stubble on Carlo’s jaw and the ridge of the scar on his cheek.

Elfrieda stood frozen. Her mouth moved, but no sound came out. Then she turned, her steps slow and uncertain, and shuffled back into the shadows of the Last Chance.

After the Cybelean authorities took Carlo’s body away, a hulking constable accompanied Tycho back to the Southwell, walking in silence a step behind him. Vass was waiting outside the fondaco with a pair of Gibraltar cyborgs. He rushed forward when he saw Tycho.

“My boy,” the minister said, reaching up to put his hands on Tycho’s shoulders. “I heard what happened. I can’t tell you how much this awful news grieves me and every member of the Jovian delegation.”

“Is my sister safe?” Tycho asked.

“Yes. But I’m afraid your family doesn’t know yet. I wanted to make sure you were safe first.”

Tycho nodded numbly. He turned and thanked the constable, then followed Vass through the fondaco’s corridors until they reached the door to their quarters. He could hear the buzz of his family’s voices inside.

“Do you want me to tell them?” Vass asked.

“No. It’s my duty.”

He opened the door. A trio of Comets had piled duffel bags and stacked boxes in the small living room, next to Huff’s empty tank. Mavry was peering into the coffeemaker, while Diocletia and Huff were chatting at the kitchen table.

“Arrr, tole yeh the lad wouldn’t be late,” Huff said with a grin as Diocletia looked up.

“Did you get a strange message like the one Yana got?” Diocletia asked, then frowned at the sight of Vass standing behind Tycho.

This was the last moment before everything would change forever, Tycho thought. Before he would leave everything in ruins.

Yana came out of her room, her dark eyes wide.

“We weren’t expecting you, Minister,” Diocletia said, puzzled. And then Tycho heard her voice change. “What’s happened? Where’s your brother?”

“It happened in Bazaar,” Tycho said, having to force each word out of his mouth. “I got there as fast as I could, but . . .”

He shook his head, unable to go on.

His mother stared at him, not blinking. Mavry fumbled for a chair and sank into it, his eyes glassy.

“Carlo?” Huff asked, his living eye wild, his voice strangled. Yana’s head went back and hit the wall with a dull thunk. The Comets looked up in shock and dawning horror.

“You all have my deepest sympathies,” Vass began, but Diocletia waved her hand to silence him.

“Who was it?” she asked in a quiet but firm voice. “You know by now, Minister. Who was it?”

“Captain Hashoone, I know this is a terrible shock. Perhaps—”

Diocletia slapped her hand down on the kitchen table, silencing him. “Tell me who it was.”

“We received the security feed from the Cybelean authorities a few minutes ago. I haven’t seen it.”

“But you have it.”

Vass said nothing.

“You’re going to show it to me. Right now.”

Diocletia got to her feet and walked into her bedroom. Vass followed reluctantly and shut the door behind him.

“He was jes’ a lad,” Huff managed, his forearm cannon still and silent at the end of his arm. The coffee-maker had begun to beep insistently.

Mavry looked up from the table. His face was ashen. His eyes turned to Tycho, barely seeing him, then moved to the shocked Comets.

“Gentlemen, would you please bring our gear to the gig?” he asked quietly.

The Comets hoisted the bags and withdrew with knuckles to foreheads and mumbled expressions of sorrow. Huff was repeating “jes’ a lad,” three words thick with grief and barely intelligible. Tycho shut off the beeping coffeemaker and slumped against the counter.

The bedroom door opened. Diocletia took two steps away from it and then stopped, as if she didn’t know where to go. Vass came to a halt behind her.

“It was Mox,” she said, her voice flat. “Mox and his thugs. Nobody helped our son. A dome full of people, and not one of them helped him.”

She regarded Vass. “Please leave us, Minister.”

“Your family’s sacrifices will never be forgotten,” Vass said. “Not by our president, or by the Jovian Defense Force. And certainly not by me.”

He bowed to each of them, eyes lingering on Tycho for a moment, and then he was gone.

“Mr. Grigsby will retrieve the body and bring it to the gig,” Diocletia said when the door had shut. “And that’s where we need to be too.”

“Mom?” Yana asked tentatively. “Are you okay?”

“No,” Diocletia said, still motionless in the middle of the room. “No, I’m not. But this is a bridge crew. And I just gave that bridge crew an order.”

Mavry got to his feet, moving like he was sleepwalking or couldn’t see where he was going. One arm fumbled for Tycho, found him, and pulled him into his chest, clutching him there. Yana came to stand by her mother, her fingers clenching and unclenching.

“He was jes’ a lad,” Huff said again, his voice cracking.

Diocletia slowly turned her head to look at her father where he was sprawled in misery at one end of the kitchen table. She reached up for her hair, her hands trembling slightly, and bound it into a ponytail.

“Not you,” she told Huff. “You’re not going.”

“What did yeh say?” Huff asked, the flesh-and-blood side of his face going pale.

When she spoke again, Diocletia’s voice was low and deadly.

“You let Mox go. You helped him escape the gibbet. Which led to Comets dying at Saturn, and now to this.”

“Dio, yeh don’t understand—”

“Don’t you tell me what I don’t understand,” Diocletia said. “Because I understand this: your grandson is dead and you’re to blame. So ask one of your pirate friends for a hole to hide in. Because you’re never seeing the inside of Darklands or my ship again.”