‘And she just jumped out?’ Seated behind his enormous, dark wood desk, Governor Dali looked perplexed. Evidently, Vanessa thought disparagingly, he hadn’t considered it possible that someone should choose not to heed his instruction.
‘Yes sir.’ Vanessa stood calmly before the desk, hands clasped behind her. The Governor’s senior aide stood to Dali’s side, frowning darkly. An African of short, sturdy build, his beard was incongruously thick. Vanessa thought she ought to remember his name from one briefing or another but couldn’t. Typical of her political attention span.
‘And you made no attempt to stop her?’ Dali’s voice was melodiously incredulous. Long, brown fingers folded on the desk before him. A long, brown face, hair impeccably parted. The suit was stylish and expensive. Everything about him, and his office, was tastefully conservative. In her duty jacket, worn cargo greens and sneakers, Vanessa felt decidedly self-conscious.
She shrugged. ‘What could I have done?’ Dali’s perplexion grew.
‘I do recall that you are the SWAT commander, Lieutenant. You tell me.’
‘Nothing, sir.’ Dali stared at her. Vanessa bit the inside of her lip to restrain a smirk. He looked like an owl.
‘Nothing?’
‘Nothing,’ Vanessa confirmed.
‘You could have pulled your gun on her,’ opined the short, bearded aide. His accent was strong. African, but not African-Tanushan. Offworlder. Like Dali.
‘But I would not have been prepared to pull the trigger,’ Vanessa said easily. ‘She knew that. Besides, I’m not actually sure if the gun would have worked on her. Maybe a shot through the eye … but the calibre is probably not high enough for her skull. An incapacitation shot elsewhere would only make her angry.’
‘And so you just let her jump?’ Dali seemed to be having great trouble getting his brain around that concept. Bloody bureaucrat.
‘Yes sir.’
A pause. Dali seemed to be calculating the implications of this new development for his schemes. And not, by appearances, doing a very good job of it. He looked highly disturbed.
‘Where exactly,’ said the aide, ‘did she jump?’
‘I don’t know exactly.’ Further incredulity. Vanessa smothered another smirk, this one more difficult than the last. ‘She scrambled the navcomp. I couldn’t see where we were because of the rain. And besides, my attention was elsewhere.’
‘Where else, precisely?’ asked the aide with dark suspicion.
‘On asking her why she was jumping.’
‘And what did she say?’
‘That she believed you were going to detain her. That she wished to continue with the investigation. She has bad memories of detention. As you could imagine.’
‘Lieutenant Rice,’ Dali interjected, leaning forward in a very concerned, very earnest manner, ‘you do realise that with circumstances being as they are, I myself am now the Acting President of Callay and Tanusha? And that as such, you are obliged to carry out my instructions, through your commander Mr Ibrahim, as though they had come from President Neiland herself?’ Vanessa blinked.
‘Yes, of course,’ she said. Meeting his eye with a mild, unbothered expression. Dali still looked incredulous. Vanessa wondered how he could maintain that expression for so long.
‘I am worried, Lieutenant, that you do not appear to comprehend the full gravity of what has transpired. You yourself swore the oath of loyalty that now binds your actions to the will of this office.’
Ain’t that a giggle, Vanessa thought sourly. Her expression remained deliberately blank.
‘Mr Governor,’ she said with repressed but building frustration, ‘the first thing I was taught in training is to only point a weapon at someone if I am prepared to use it. The only people who do otherwise are terrorists.’ Dali blinked in consternation.
‘Lieutenant, surely in your oath you swore to fulfil the orders of your superiors completely and without question? If people were allowed to pick and choose their orders according to personal preference, then where would we be?’
‘Even when those orders could at best achieve nothing, and at worst get me killed?’ And shut her mouth abruptly, wishing that hadn’t come out at quite that volume. Dali’s frown remained unaltered.
‘We all have our duties, Lieutenant,’ he told her in a tone of most patronising disapproval, ‘however unpleasant we may find them.’
‘I’m going to fuckin’ kill him,’ Vanessa muttered to Sharma as they met in the main corridor outside the entrance to the Governor’s wing.
‘You will have to join the queue,’ Sharma replied with mild amusement, eyeing the massively armed security by the main doors. ‘Death threats have passed the hundred mark and climbing. Gamma Team have got this place completely locked down, Five and Seven are on callup … say, do you really feel like doing security for this guy?’
Vanessa eyed the nearby guards, and the steady flow of traffic through the corridor. ID clearance at the entrance points was particularly tight, even for parliamentary staff. She took Sharma’s arm and led the tall Indian woman along the corridor toward the inner courtyards.
‘We shall do our duty, Rupa,’ Vanessa overpronounced in Dali’s Indian-English.
‘That’s very good!’ Sharma commended her, smiling broadly. ‘You’re finally learning to speak properly.’
‘Another triumph for the great Indian cultural conquest.’
‘For goodness sakes, Ricey,’ Sharma scolded mildly, ‘just because you Europeans have been foolish enough to misplace your heritage, you shouldn’t take your unenlightened frustrations out on me.’
‘We didn’t misplace anything — it’s too big to misplace.’
‘Of course, darling,’ Sharma soothed. ‘Have you looked under your bed?’
Vanessa snorted.
‘That’s the problem with you Indians, Rupa — a ring in your nose, a chip on your shoulder and a goddamn pole up your ass.’ Sharma nearly collapsed with laughter and Vanessa had to slow down for Sharma to catch up.
Her purported dislike of things Indian was a fraud and her close friends knew it. The music was wonderful, the food delicious, the people no more or less objectionable than any others … and the omnipresent sense of style, colour and aestheticism played a dominant role in making Tanusha the fascinating city it was. It was just that there were so damn many of them. And the arrogance of numbers could at times become stifling.
‘Not to worry,’ Sharma said with amusement as they approached the end of the gleaming corridor and the light that flooded the far end, ‘there’s now an Indian bad guy in charge. You’ll feel right at home — you can blame it all on him.’
‘That’s not fair.’
The corridor opened onto the front of the Parliament East Wing. The cross-corridor ran directly across the front of the building, and the two women paused there, hands resting on the heavy safety rail, and gazed out at the view.
Before them was a transparent shield of reinforced glass many stories high. Just beyond, huge Corinthian pillars supported the front of the building. Vanessa and Sharma were in the eighth-storey cross-corridor. The typically self-indulgent Tanushan architects had designed the entire interior behind the enormous pillars as a cut-away, exposing internal corridors to the outside view, protected by the enormous glass wall in between. Beyond were the Parliament lawns. Off to the far left, and barely visible behind the convergence of pillars, the breathtaking reddish arches and spans of the main Parliament, towering above the wet-green lawns and gardens.
Far across the gardens and the access roads that linked the entire, three-sided Parliament grounds, security staff quartered the lawns and security vehicles cruised the roads. At least one armoured flyer circled somewhere above — Vanessa could dimly hear the familiar keening of multi-poster engines through the soundproofed transparent wall. A crush of vehicles had emerged at one access road, blocked by security vehicles with flashing lights as uniformed personnel with bulky sensor equipment searched each one.
‘No,’ she murmured, ‘I can’t pin this one on the Indians. It’s those nasty, good-for-nothing offworlders, Rupa. Can’t trust ’em. Ship ’em all home I say. No birth visa, no stay.’
Sharma managed a weak smile. And for the next minute they gazed at the commotion across the picturesque grounds, and wondered what the hell it all meant.
‘You’d think it would all be very easy,’ Sharma said after a moment with quizzical irony. ‘Move the centre of administration from that building,’ pointing off to the Parliament, ‘to this building. This is too much fuss. There must be a tac-fix.’ SWAT slang. Vanessa managed her own weak smile.
Sharma’s understatement hit the mark very well. It was chaos. The media were in a state of delighted, gleeful panic. The Parliament the same, only without the glee. Neiland supporters screamed for answers, justifications, explanations for this most undemocratic removal (or temporary sidelining, as the official spin now put it) of the democratically elected President. Her own Union Party were howling outrage, threatening legal action, mass popular uprisings and eternal hellfire and damnation. The Settlers First extremists in the Senate were applauding the removal of an ‘out of touch and dictatorial President’. The main opposition Progress Party were not commenting. Neither were the mainstream senators. No wonder, Vanessa thought. They’d helped it happen. They knew about Sandy, as the general public did not. They knew she was helping the CSA in their investigations. They questioned Neiland’s judgment following her traumatic recent experience. They questioned what the Federation would have to say about all kinds of things, from Sandy to the investigation into the FIA, and reiterated the dangers of such an investigation, which could uncover too much and cause unbridgeable rifts between the Neiland administration and the Federation Government itself. Such a prospect had politicians of all shades running scared. They feared Neiland’s hard line, her practical, no-compromise approach. They wanted her out.
Such were the rumours that now ran through the corridors of power, here in the Parliament complex, and back at CSA HQ, where new lines of command and control were being hastily improvised, and department heads were scrambling for the necessary clearances from their new bureaucratic masters to continue their work. Dali had played the angles. With so many politicians behind him out of fear or for personal advancement, it was difficult to see Neiland getting back in charge any time soon. First a Federation task force would arrive and assess the situation. They would determine if their dutiful little colony had indeed acted against the best interests of the broader Federation, as Dali claimed. Neiland’s reappointment would probably follow. But by then the investigation into the FIA infiltrators would have been sufficiently tied up with bureaucratic red tape, and all the incriminating evidence would have been neatly swept under the nearest available carpet.
Well, at least they didn’t have Sandy. Vanessa held to that thought, gazing out across the orderly confusion to lawns and gardens that appeared to glow luminescently after the recent rains.
‘And I thought this was a democracy,’ Sharma sighed, breaking their contemplative silence. Urgent footsteps and voices echoed through the corridors behind them. More bureaucratic commotion. Vanessa ignored it. She wished she could ignore it all.
‘Not much point in a Governor if he doesn’t have override powers,’ Vanessa replied glumly. ‘The tyranny of distance. The modern Federation only really came into existence about the time the League was being formed — they wanted to formalise the political structure but needed to keep control of each member world, just in case.’ It made so much sense at the time. ‘Governors can’t consult with a four-week timelag. They have to be able to act immediately if they reckon the Fed’s interests are threatened. But of course the rules were written so long ago that everyone’s forgotten them. And they’ve never been used anywhere, until now. Everyone supposed they were just ceremonial. Symbolic.’
‘Callay makes history,’ Sharma said with irony. ‘Fancy that. Most Callayans don’t even read history.’
More footsteps in the corridor behind them, but something about these made Vanessa turn. She was only half surprised to see CSA director Ibrahim walking toward them. That he was alone did not surprise her either. Ibrahim needed no guards, and would tolerate no chaperones.
‘Lieutenant Rice.’ Very sombrely, coming to a halt before the pair of them. ‘Agent Sharma. How is your knee?’
‘Um … very well,’ said Sharma past her surprise, ‘fully healed now.’ She’d damaged an augmentation implant a month ago in training and had reached active duty status just last week, in time for the raid on the FIA who’d abducted Sandy. Ibrahim not only knew the names of all his staff, he also knew their status. Cybernetic memory and uplinks definitely helped, but Vanessa suspected he’d have known anyway.
She studied him now … as always looking slightly uncomfortable in his dark suit. She was so accustomed to seeing Arabic or Indian men in more comfortable salwar kameez or other traditional garb, she wondered why he felt the suit necessary, besides the formal implications of office. Not a tall man — face to face, she did not need to tilt her head far to look him in the eye. But no less imposing for the lack of stature. His eyes now seemed darker than usual, his gaze more penetrating. He did not, Vanessa thought, have the appearance of a man in a good mood. Ibrahim rarely let his mood show, good or bad. If she could tell, then something was very wrong.
‘And how is your other team member, Lieutenant?’ Very blandly, and very formally. Not Ibrahim’s usual tone, whatever his implacable nature. And he glanced up briefly and to either side, clearly indicating that the corridor was being monitored, or at least that he feared so.
‘Recuperating and ready for duty,’ Vanessa replied. ‘Very hard at work right this minute, I believe.’ A monitor would be an automated program, set to alert its users only if key suspicious phrases were uttered. Bland, non-specific conversation was the key. ‘But then she was always a very hard worker. And very committed. I think she’ll be fine.’ Ibrahim’s eyes appeared to flicker in response. A brief, positive gleam, as if a weight had been lifted, a major concern erased. He took a slightly deeper breath than usual before replying.
‘That’s good. That is very good. I am on my way to see the Governor. You should head back to your unit, Lieutenant, Agent, and await my further instruction.’ Something about that did not sound right. Vanessa suffered a slow, cold raising of hairs on her scalp and down her spine.
‘Sir …’ and she paused, wondering how to put it. Ibrahim waited patiently. She wanted to uplink directly, but that could be monitored even more efficiently than verbal communication, and would attract more attention. At least verbally she had the option of being obtuse. ‘Sir, is the present strategic circumstance … acceptable?’ Ibrahim shook his head, very calmly and with no doubt or hesitation. Vanessa’s cold chill got worse. ‘Are these circumstances … likely to change?’ Ibrahim nodded with great assurance, and her heart rate accelerated appreciably. ‘Are you aware that the aforementioned of my … hardworking and dedicated agents … considers the … the …’ Jesus, bloody word games — one of her great delights in SWAT was the simplicity of just blowing stuff up rather than having to worry about stupid bloody words and diplomatic sophistry, ‘… considers that the present dominant personality in this mess could in fact be playing for the wrong team?’ Ibrahim’s eyes gleamed. He understood that one all right. Worse, he appeared to find it amusing. Bloody Sunnis — whatever the man’s intellectual composure, he just loved a good fight. It was in his genes.
‘I believe, Lieutenant, that the mouse is chasing the cat. That your aforementioned agent suspects as much only confirms my opinions.’ Vanessa blinked.
‘What should we do about this?’
‘Patience, Lieutenant. The mouse should show great care. The cat will not run for ever, and it has very sharp teeth.’ He inclined his head briefly, the faintest of dangerous smiles playing upon his lips. The expression suited him. ‘To your unit, Lieutenant. More shall follow. The game has only just begun.’ He turned and set off with calm, measured strides down the polished corridor, brown leather briefcase in one brown hand. Vanessa and Sharma stood together and watched him go.
‘What did he just say?’ Sharma murmured beneath her breath.
‘Bad news for mice,’ Vanessa breathed. ‘Of any colour.’
Getting a room in Tanusha was easy — one of the things the CSA had given her, along with her pistol, was a cashcard. Transaction databases could hypothetically be accessed, Sandy pondered while waiting in the foyer of the Chennai International, despite the illegality. But the CSA card was foundationally encrypted, which was a very common custom job by Tanushan standards, but entirely impenetrable. The benefit of a very basic format with minimal complication. What many data-illiterate people did not realise was that technological advancement meant simplicity, not complexity.
The woman behind the desk handed her card back with an obligatory smile.
‘Thank you,’ Sandy said and tucked the card back into her wallet. CSA issue also. She was careful not to reveal that besides the card, the wallet was empty.
All any records searcher would find on a scan of hotel databases, she thought as the glass-sided elevator whisked her soundlessly upward above the broad atrium floor, was the name she had given the receptionist. Even that could not be verified by the card-entry — personal verification was a thumb scan on the card itself, ensuring she was the only person who could use it. Otherwise, the card was self-contained. If tampered with, it self-destructed, so the stored-value was guaranteed as genuine. Only a recharge would register on the network to any searcher … otherwise, there was nothing anyone would know except that a person by the name of Stephanie Dravid was booked into room 903 of the Chennai International Hotel in Anambaro, north-western Tanusha.
Among the million or so hotel guests in Tanusha on any given night the name would mean nothing. But someone might know. Someone who had known her direct superior in Dark Star and wondered if the similarity between Stephanie and Stephano was merely coincidental. That someone might check the name out of curiosity. If such an accessor used the network codes she thought they would, her own hidden package would activate, and reveal more code, which using further League-issue breakers ought to be simple enough to decode. The answers there ought to provide the searcher she hoped was out there with enough clues to be sure of her identity. And a five-star hotel was a moderately obvious place to stay. So, she mused as the elevator slid to a smooth halt, she’d finally found a use for Colonel Dravid after all.
She hit the lights when she went through the door and checked out the room. When satisfied that it was secure she stripped naked, laid out her clothes on the bed, the shoulder harness conveniently on top, then dropped to the floor and started stretching.
It was painful. She held herself in the air, back arched, supported on shoulders and feet. Muscles tensed hard, pulling tightly, rippled under the skin, snake-like, bulging and tightening to density far beyond steel. Sandy gritted her teeth and arched further. Her body trembled, shuddering. She felt the pain grinding along her spine, pulling tight at her hips and the small of her back, wrenching through her thighs, knees and buttocks. Shot briefly through her stomach, a memory of recent horror … she pushed harder, and the pain got worse.
Synth-alloy myomer strained ferociously on ferro-enamelous bone, a creaking, shuddering climax of tension of mega-force scale. She felt as if she might explode. Surely a regular human would, a red smear of shattered organic matter smeared evenly about the walls and ceiling. A high-speed train crash would have involved similar force. A small asteroidal impact. She held herself like that until the clinging, grinding, grating stiffness had completely dissolved, and then collapsed to the floor with a gasp. Rolled onto her stomach, muscles holding to critical density. They flexed and rippled at the slightest movement, a feeling like a thousand steel fingers massaging her bones. It felt good, in a hard, ungentle sort of way. She lay there for a moment, wriggling and twisting slightly as the tension slowly diffused. She felt like she was melting. Pleasantly. And it reminded her, as always, of the release immediately following orgasm.
She rested her forehead on the carpeted floor for a moment, breathing deeply. Lucky, she reflected with a smile, that she’d learned not to tense so much during sex with straights. The coital embraces she’d frequently exchanged with her Dark Star team-mates would have been horribly, messily lethal to any straight, even an enhanced one. She’d been so damn scared of that the first time that she had almost completely failed to enjoy it. Which was the first time that had ever happened, to her memory.
She remembered lying on her bunk during one of her internal planning sessions about leaving the League, and being thankful that she’d learned how to handle that situation, or leaving might not have seemed worth the price. That amused her now, smiling to herself with her cheek to the carpet. God, she could be shallow sometimes. Telling Ibrahim of her high ideals, her political inspiration, her reasoned humanity … damn, give her good food, nice surroundings and a decent, hard shag at least five times a week, and she was happy. Let the universe rot, she just wanted to get nailed …
She rolled onto her back and sprawled there, gone completely limp, waiting for her muscles to recover. Trying to think of who that had been, her first non-GI bunk-partner. Not Sevi Ghano. Oh yes … she suddenly remembered, through a haze of indistinct recall that suggested it had been a long while ago. She’d been … nine. It’d taken her four years of active duty to even get to know any straights besides the Intel, command and psych officers.
Only she hadn’t known this guy very well … the name escaped her, but he’d been command crew on one of the assault ships. They’d briefed and debriefed together, shared input … and she’d become curious enough to want to do something about it. He’d been giving her looks too, which might have been inspiration. So they’d gone straight back to his quarters and had it out.
She smiled again, remembering. She’d been terrified. Kept interrupting to ask if he was okay, refusing to embrace him in case of injury, not wanting to be on top in case she bucked too hard, not wanting to be on the bottom in case she flexed her legs too much, and above all, desperately wanting not to come in case she locked him in tight, orgasmic grip, and found herself in bed with a mass of red, pulpy tissue and broken bones.
God. Even now she suppressed a shudder through the humour. The control she’d guaranteed Vanessa applied only to sane and lucid moments … which, in her experience, often ruled out sex.
But the spirit of adventure had driven them on, along with his assurances that he trusted her and wasn’t frightened (fool, she remembered thinking), and they’d finally settled on doggy style, which seemed safest… Sandy found herself laughing aloud at the memory, shaking lightly as she lay on her back on the floor. Even then, she’d still had an orgasm. Mahud had once remarked that you only needed to sneeze and the Cap’n would come. Not that GIs ever sneezed, but it had been funny at the time.
At which thought she got up, went to the shower and took care of that particular urge for the next few minutes. Emerged after a good half hour’s further soaking, wrapped in the white hotel bathrobe, and sat on her bed to gaze out over the night-time city view.
Her trick with the name at the front desk was a long shot, at best. But the possibility that Dali would have compelled certain sections of the CSA to look for her, however unwilling — or maybe the regular police, or those irritating SIBs — made her cautious about accessing the net herself. Her codes were difficult to recognise, she knew, but even so, some of the local people were evidently very good. Technology might not matter to them. They might just have an attack of intuition.
Damn Dali. She wondered if Ibrahim had guessed by now that Dali was probably a part of the FIA operation, whether he actually realised it or not. FIA. Federal Intelligence Agency. Dali’s face on the TV … ‘Federate concerns must lawfully take precedence over regional and state concerns …’ She wondered how they’d roped him in. Dali’s personal background was readily available on any number of Tanushan netsites … pure bureaucracy, from Indian civil service on Earth to Federal, not an uncommon leap by any means. Nothing to suspect FIA ties. The Governor’s personal diplomatic staff, though, were less visible, and their background data was not readily available at all. She wondered who was really in charge in the Governor’s office. If Dali truly made his own decisions. Or if he was merely following orders through a more obscure conduit that did not necessarily lead directly back to the Federal Government, but rather to FIA command and associated interests. They did have a very large say in the appointment and function of Federal Governors throughout the Federation, after all. She knew they did. She’d read the documents.
And now, thanks to the tyranny of distance, it was going to be at least a month until the situation resolved itself in the form of a Federal delegation from Earth.
She was, as Raju once used to say, really in the shit this time. Raju. She wondered if he was here. If any of them were. She missed him suddenly. She missed them all. She hoped like hell they were looking for her, and guessing she would no longer be staying with the CSA under present circumstances, and searching those most obvious of alternative accommodations … five-star hotels. A logical thought process for one of her guys. The Captain. Loose in a civvie city, with ample credit and her usual expensive tastes. Five-star hotels indeed. She nearly smiled.
She sat on the edge of her bed and considered the city view. It was staggering, as always. Far below was a broad courtyard, at the foot of the building, with what looked like a food court, rides for the children. Beyond, streets, shopping, endless avenues of blazing light, and people strolling. As if nothing had happened, the government had not been disconnected and all was right in the world.
Something else caught her eye, perhaps a kilometre off to the right, on the far side of a broad, grassy park, not unlike the one in which she had crash-landed just that afternoon. Commotion on the street beyond, visible only because of the park and the lack of intervening buildings. Masses of people, flags waving, lights blazing, holographic, pyrotechnic and otherwise. Police lights too, staccato flashes of red and blue that danced across the park and glared off nearby windows. A protest march. Blocking traffic. Doubtless the traffic planners were furious.
She sat and watched them pass for the next half hour, and still the column did not end. At various other spots across the city vista, she spotted other commotions, flashing lights and the odd circling aircar with security or special media clearance. The numbers of security flyers airborne seemed far greater, too, than she recalled haying seen before. Back at the march, the crowds seemed even thicker, spilling onto the lawns of the park as they marched. She zoomed to full maximum, and studied the ordinary Tanushans, of many different ethnicities and modes of dress, marching, shouting, sometimes even dancing. No surprise there. If enough Tanushans got together in one spot, it usually turned into a party. The fact they were marching at all did surprise her, though. And so many. The apolitical city … how many times had she heard that since she’d arrived? And yet there they were, out in the streets, blocking the traffic and doubtless sending the automated traffic systems into fits of inspired improvisation.
Had she done this? The possibility was stunning. No. No, she really didn’t think she had. These people didn’t know she existed, even if the politicians did. No. The universe had finally come to Tanusha, and indeed to all of Callay. The politics of humanity were finally knocking on their door. And she severely doubted, with a feeling somewhere between sadness and relief, that they would ever be quite the same again.
She was awoken by a knock on the door. Pistol in hand and automatically angling across the room with stiff-armed precision. The time was 3:38. Night light filled the room through the windows.
‘Minder, who is at the door?’ Night light turned to coloured shades, abruptly distinct, as the room transformed around her.
‘There is no one at the door,’ the minder informed her in a pleasant, unworried voice. Sandy considered a fast scan of the hotel networks, and decided against it.
‘Who just knocked at the door?’
‘I am not equipped to answer that question,’ the minder said. ‘Would you like me to call the front desk?’
‘No,’ Sandy murmured. ‘Shade the windows.’ The night light faded to black as the windows lost their transparency. To Sandy’s combat-activated vision it made no difference. She pulled the covers aside, rolled smoothly off the bed and dropped to the floor, fully dressed except for her shoes. Moved forward to angle the pistol up at the door, propped on an elbow.
‘Minder,’ she repeated, ‘is there anyone at the door?’
‘There is no one at the door,’ the minder replied. Sandy knew better than to trust it. Mentally accessed the door control, and fed it the correct code … which was readable for a network observer, but she preferred that to opening the door herself. The door swung open, and showed her an empty corridor wall.
She rolled forward, propped her back against the hall side. And ducked her head out and back, barely long enough to flash her eyes left and right. Delay-stored and processed those images, and found that the minder was right. Moved cautiously out into the corridor, back to the wall by her doorway. Using her peripheral vision to scan both directions while staring directly at the wall opposite.
There was a piece of paper on the floor outside the door. She spared it a brief consideration. It was harmless — and a quick vision shift showed it free of contaminants. A single-word message, ‘downstairs’.
Well, she had asked for it, she supposed. Whoever they were. Downstairs it was. But first she went inside to put on her shoes.
From only nine storeys up she took the stairs. Faint heat traces showed on the steps, pressure marks, but indistinct. Someone had been wearing suitable shoes.
Emerged onto the second-floor balcony overlooking the atrium, beside the elevators. Tucked her pistol away as she went to the head of the main staircase, scanning the atrium. Two staffers were on duty at the main desk. A lone woman crossed the broad patterned carpet, past the smoothly carved wooden elephants. Besides her, the elephants and an idle luggage robot, the atrium was as empty as she’d have expected at this early hour.
She descended the curving staircase, all senses primed. The water tinkling in the atrium fountain assaulted her eardrums, a sound like smashing glass. She noted the desk staff’s demeanour. Even heat distribution, steady pulses. Not alarmed. She performed a brief, casual turn at the bottom of the staircase then walked to the desk. The woman on duty looked up with a customer-friendly smile.
‘Hi, I’m Stephanie Dravid from room 903. Have there been any messages left for me?’ The woman appeared surprised.
‘Er … yes, just ten minutes ago a handsome young man left you …’ She searched for a piece of notepaper. ‘… this.’ Producing the paper. Sandy took it. ‘He said his name was Mahud.’
Despite her control Sandy’s heart nearly stopped. Resumed again, a fast, desperate thudding. Her fingers unfolded the notepaper, unhesitating. It was an address, written in pen. 113 Jardeja Road, Jardeja. She flashed the woman a smile.
‘Thank you.’ She pocketed the paper as she walked off, headed for the main exit. A quick scan of a city directory would have been safe enough, being a heavily travelled route, but she decided against it. She walked out the sliding main doors of the Chennai International Hotel and into the cold Tanushan night. Jardeja, the maglev station display told her, was in the northern development zone. Uninhabited. Somehow that didn’t surprise her.
She took the maglev to the nearest stop. From there, a connecting lightrail line performed a loop out near to the inhabited perimeter. From there she started walking.
Meticulously planned city that it was, Tanusha’s perimeter construction progressed in neatly outlined zones. At one point, a single main tower stood tall and proud, agleam with sophisticated lighting. To the south, metropolitan Tanusha, a seamless feast for the eye. To the north, all construction.
Sandy walked along a deserted street under a recently completed ped-cover. An aircab stand stood new and empty. Work holes dotted the pavement, surrounded by barriers of orange safety tape — traffic control infrastructure being laid. The small-scale buildings to either side looked like regular, middle-density urban zoning, much like Vanessa’s suburb of Santiello. That part of it anyway. Already, though, the large trees had been transplanted to line the roadside, missing in sections where the crews had not yet reached.
All looked eerie and silent in the sporadic, yellow streetlight. Sandy’s footsteps would have echoed, if she’d let them. She walked in the shadow of the ped-cover, hands buried deep in jacket pockets as she stepped around sections of incomplete paving, breath frosting in the cold night air.
She took a shortcut across an open courtyard, surrounded by the multiple levels of a shopping complex and what would soon be outdoor café seating. For sale signs and exhibition schedules stood by the empty glass shopfronts. It was dark away from the streets. She kept her vision tuned for any sign of movement as she walked. Some birds had made a nest in a nearby tree. A red line of tiny paw-prints across a walkway marked the recent passing of an urban bunbun. Bats flitted overhead sporadically. Their sonar pulses felt strange to her ears. One species, she’d discovered, gave her a bad twitch, a signature that felt uncomfortably similar to a Federate-model personnel hand-tracker. Thankfully that species was uncommon. These were chasing insects. If she concentrated, she could hear the thrumming of leathery wings.
A sign by a pathway displayed a local map. 113 Jardeja Road was clearly marked — it was a major tower. She glanced up. The tower loomed overhead, standard height for A-level Tanushan office space. That meant enormous. It looked complete, but no interior lights showed, only exterior navigation lights.
Interesting. With combat reflexes raised, she allowed herself no more than that one, mildly curious thought. She did not ponder the possible identity of the man who had left her the message, or what it might mean. She knew it would distract her. She pulled the pistol from its holster, deactivated the safety and continued.
113 Jardeja Road was, in typically Tanushan fashion, designed for style rather than security, although both were evident. Multi-level shopping malls stood deserted in the pale yellow streetlight opposite, newly installed windows blank and empty. Pedestrian walkways linked malls with the tower, in anticipation of the crowds, shoppers and retail commerce to come. In other districts workers toiled all night on generous benefits. Only weeks from opening, this subregion about Jardeja Road was slowly approaching completion. Things progressed more leisurely here. At this hour all was deserted.
Everything was linked below ground, through the usual maze of malls, walkways and shopping thoroughfares that proliferated about Tanusha’s commercial districts. Sandy got in through a road underpass, the only barrier some red tape and a warning sign. Beyond, the floor was bare concrete, messy with sand and recent construction. She walked softly, pistol in hand, vision-scanning the way ahead.
Past empty recesses that would soon be shop-stalls, dark and echoing. Many were under development, shelves, counters and displays installed. Unadorned glass in the windows, reflecting no light. All dark and off-limits to casual wanderers.
Several corners and bare corridors brought her to a web of security tape, making a red plastic wall of the way ahead. She paused, squatting against one wall, pistol ready. Parted the tape with the other hand, scanning on multiple spectrums. Beyond the tape were laser-trips, a series of red lines across the floor at knee height. Those were easy. The molecule-sniffer implanted in the wall beyond wasn’t.
She hooked into the local network, a quick rush of data-sensation … frequency was bad here, underground, and the network incomplete, but she could get in as quietly as the League infiltration keys in her implants had ever allowed her to. Found the correct security branch and made a fast, clean access past the unimpressive civilian barriers, turning off the relevant systems. Quietly and without fuss or alarm, the red lines on the floor vanished. Sandy ripped the tape aside and strolled through. No alarm.
More perils of an integrated network, she thought as she moved silently down the corridor beyond. If all systems were connected, then all systems could be accessed, legally or not. Military systems were frequently independent. It made info-networking a problem, but where security systems were concerned it was more important that they simply performed their job of preventing unauthorised access. The convenience of the user had to be balanced against the need to inconvenience the opposition. The latter was clearly more important.
Up a long flight of steps from what she guessed would eventually become a food court and she was in the tower’s main entrance foyer. Paused, scanning the broad, open floor. Tall glass on all sides, a huge, typically ostentatious space. Dark, but for the pale yellow streetlight beyond the glass, a splash of colour across the broad, shiny floor.
An infrared scan moved across a nearby wall, and Sandy aimed her pistol… security droid, she guessed by the steadiness of the light, and the speed that it moved. Headed this way. She moved quickly and soundlessly across the floor, heading for a point where the foyer gave way to tall, marble walls and broad glass elevators. She jogged toward the stairway entrance. The door was locked. She hacked the system and opened it in barely three seconds flat. A long, steady climb up flight after flight. No more security though, which made things faster. If someone was using this tower as some kind of base, or was merely occupying it temporarily, they would probably be at the top. It had the best strategic view. And long drops were of little concern to a GI.
Ten minutes later she was at the top. The top-level doors had not yet been installed. She stepped calmly through the opening, pistol tracking, all senses keen … nothing. She was standing in the middle of the big, open, entirely deserted top floor. Up here at the tower’s narrower top the windows went around in a broad, 360-degree circle. Beyond the yellow-specked darkness of Jardeja, and the shadows of middle-distant, neighbouring towers, the lights of Tanusha proper sprawled with undimmed brilliance. Her shadow cast along the bare floor behind her at a hundred different angles, half of the window-circle alive with colour.
She moved soundlessly across the deserted floor, turning in slow, gentle circles. Alert for traps — the floor rigged to blow, soldiers suspended above a window outside, ready to drop in and surprise her. She breathed through her nose, but smelt no explosive, no recent working of relevant tools. Her vision showed nothing but bare floor and windows … and a doorway that led to the roof. She headed that way, moving cautiously. In Dark Star, she would have gone up out a window, or blasted through the ceiling, anything to avoid the deathtrap of a single entrance. But this was not Dark Star. Everything was different.
The door was newly installed. Safe, her vision told her. She opened it fast, dropping to a knee, pistol straight-armed up the stairs. Empty stairwell. She followed it up, covering each turn, moving fast and without sound. Paused at the step by the door, listening. Tuned to the clear navi-beacon, a pulse from directly above. Active trackers, part of the aerial traffic network. And recalled the radio tower she’d observed from the ground. Formed that mental picture clearly and pushed open the door.
Stood back from the doorway, cool in the night breeze. Braced for fire, crouching low, back to the wall a metre from the doorframe — a high-calibre weapon and a good guess from its wielder could have nailed her through the wall, and thus have lost the initiative. He who fired first against Sandy, and missed, was dead. One of her guys would have known that. One of her guys would be unlikely to take the risk.
‘Mahud!’ she shouted. The stairwell interior made her voice echo, and pinpointing impossible. ‘Are you out there?’
‘Course I’m bloody out here!’ a male voice replied, high above. ‘Where else would I be?’
Combat nerves or not, Sandy’s heart nearly stopped. She felt cold all over. Her skin prickled. The voice sounded familiar. She could hardly believe her ears.
‘I’m coming out!’ she called. ‘If you shoot me, I’ll be very angry!’
‘What do you think I am?’ came the reply. ‘Stupid?’
Sandy stepped out from the doorway. The tower rooftop was mostly flat, and mostly empty. Some nearby plant-holders suggested the beginnings of a garden. Railing ringed the perimeter. And in the middle, a broad gridwork transmission tower fenced with wire and warning signs.
Up on a platform near the top sat a man. A long way up, legs swinging, leaning on the protective rail within the tower structure. Sandy stared, vision zooming … oh God. Night breeze ruffled hair about her face as she stared upward, pistol dangling limply by her side. For a long, long moment, she could not move.
Abruptly she sheathed the pistol in the shoulder holster, walked briskly to the tower and leapt … cleared the fencing comfortably with a grab at the metal cross-supports, and swung herself inside to the personnel ladder. Scrambled up at high speed, feet and hands flying over the rungs. Past one level, then another, approaching the third …
And stopped, half emerged onto the top platform, staring at the man sitting directly before her. Light brown skin. Youthful, handsome features. An interesting nose … she recalled, in a daze, that she had always thought so. Dressed in civvies, jeans and sports jacket, neatly groomed, the weight of a hand weapon in one pocket … God, he looked like a Tanushan yuppie. His eyes were unblinking, intent.
And slowly a broad, delighted smile spread across his face. Sandy swung around the ladder grip, slid in beside and hugged him, ferociously hard. Mahud hugged her back. For a long time they sat on cold, bare metal, locked together with force enough to bend steel, alone in the cool night air. Sandy’s heart hammered frantically against her ribs. Combat reflexes all dissolved, barely able to breathe past the lump in her throat.
‘God,’ she gasped eventually, her voice tight, almost trembling. ‘I thought you were dead.’ Her voice cracked, tears blurring her vision.
‘I’m not dead,’ he told her, chin against her shoulder. Sounding almost calm, by comparison. And stating the obvious, Sandy realised, as always. She nearly laughed, but her throat seized up. She hugged him harder, a forceful rippling of shoulders and biceps, and felt a similar, steely tension in return. It’d been so long since she’d felt that from anyone but herself. She hadn’t realised how much she’d missed it.
She released him, and he followed suit. Sat back, staring him in the eyes, hands on his shoulders. Accumulated moisture spilled down her cheeks. Mahud was still grinning. Wiped the tears away with firm, gentle fingers.
‘You’re crying,’ he stated. Sandy bit back a laugh with great effort. She felt totally unstable.
‘I’m so glad to see you,’ she explained. Mahud nodded knowingly, still grinning. Brushed hair back from her forehead with great affection.
‘Damn, you’re pretty,’ he said. ‘I’d nearly forgotten how pretty you are.’ Sandy did laugh.
‘What about you? You look like some local millionaire’s son,’ she tugged at the collar of his jacket. ‘What a stud!’
He kissed her firmly on the lips. Sandy responded, kissing back deeply, wrapping her arms about him as his went about her, pulling each other close once more. It felt warm, and passionate, and desperately emotional, and it was a while before she could bear to stop.
‘Damn, this is hardly the place for a reunion,’ she gasped as they finally parted, and rested her head on his shoulder.
‘We could go some place warm,’ he suggested. Sandy laughed again, holding him close.
‘Maybe later.’ A pause, as the issues at hand began to sink back in. ‘Dammit Mahud, what are you even doing here? And how the hell are you still alive? I didn’t fucking believe them when they told me everyone was dead, I hacked their files, I stole codes, I looked at everything! The entire fucking C&C thought you were dead. They’d confirmed it.’
Mahud sighed, resting his cheek on her hair. For a long moment he didn’t reply. Sandy waited, struggling between impatience and the pleasure it gave her just to hold him a little longer.
‘You won’t be mad at me if I tell you?’ he asked finally.
‘Mad at you?’ Sandy pulled away, staring him in the eyes. He looked very sombre, she thought. Almost thoughtful. From Mahud, that wasn’t expected. Not that he was stupid. Just that… well, he was a GI. GI-43AU, she remembered his designation. In the higher range — not that that was a reliable indication of anything, intelligence-wise. He could be damn smart sometimes. He just wasn’t much given to thoughtful introspection. Apart from herself, very few were. ‘What could I possibly be mad about?’
‘Kiss me again and I’ll tell you.’ Which also surprised her. Subtle humour. She gazed at him, her mind spinning in circles, her world turned on its head once more … she’d lost track of how many times that had happened in the past forty-eight hours alone. She was so used to being in control, and this … this just wasn’t fair.
‘It is you, isn’t it Mahud?’ she asked a little warily. ‘League admin haven’t made some copy or something?’ Mahud laughed outright, reaching into his shirtfront and pulling out a small symbol on a chain … a silver crescent moon. A quick zoom showed his name engraved on the surface.
‘You gave it to me when the Indians were celebrating the month of Shravan,’ he told her, smiling broadly at the memory. ‘You said it wasn’t exactly a rakhi, and I wasn’t exactly your brother, but I was the closest thing to it so I might as well have it anyway.’ Sandy looked at it for a long moment. Remembering. And looked up.
‘And you remember what I told you about it?’
‘That the crescent moon was an Arabic symbol, and since my human ancestry is based on Arabic people, I ought to have it so it would remind me of my human origins.’
‘And what did you think of that?’
Mahud gave a wry, self-deprecating grin.
‘I thought you were nuts.’ Grinning wide as she smiled. ‘I mean, I’m a bloody GI. I don’t have any ancestry. They just give us features and skin colours and names to make us fit in. It’s just a bloody custom job.’
‘And what do you think now?’
Mahud’s smile faded slightly. ‘I don’t know. I think I know what you were trying to say. I don’t know if I agree with it, but I think I know why you said it.’
‘Mahud …’ Sandy grasped his hands with her own, holding them tightly, ‘what the hell happened to you? Are you the only one here?’
‘Yes.’ Mahud nodded sadly. ‘I’m the only one.’
‘What happened?’ Sandy’s hands gripped his own, hard enough to damage. Mahud’s fingers flexed slightly in reply, steely tension. ‘What happened to everyone?’
Mahud sighed, looking down at her hands. Reluctant. Somewhere in the broad, city-lit night, a flicker of lightning.
‘All right.’ Another sigh. ‘All right, I’ll tell you.’
‘The guys were worried when you warned them, you know,’ Mahud began, sitting propped against the railing, his fingers toying idly with the silver crescent on the chain about his neck. Sandy sat opposite, watching him. The platform was barely two metres wide, cold metal grid. About them was empty space, cold and whistling in all directions. Suspended in empty air, far above the city. Even the towertop looked small and far below. Most Tanushans would only ever see such views from the windows of aircars, and even then rarely from these lofty altitudes.
‘We talked about it,’ Mahud continued. He sounded bleak, almost distant. Against the empty, limitless night, his voice seemed strangely small. ‘Tran was worried. She kept saying that she wished you hadn’t been dragged off the mission, and wondering why they’d done it … Stark told her to shut up — you know what he was like. But Tran …’ he shrugged.
Sandy nodded faintly. ‘I know.’
‘Yeah.’ Mahud looked down at the crescent, turning it over and over in his fingers. ‘She was … anyway, we got to position, made the approach, no big deal … then Stark tells us his orders have changed, and we’re to keep a reserve team on the destroyer while the main team proceeds to target. Backup, he says.’ Looking at her quizzically.
Sandy felt cold in a way that had nothing to do with the wind. She never used backup. The team was a single, integrated unit. Backup only divided forces. Backup was what generals did, not special ops unit commanders. In a small team, it didn’t make any tactical sense.
Mahud took a deep breath. ‘We asked him about it. He said he’s Captain now, and we’d never have questioned you about it. Tran says that’s because you’d never have ordered us to do it. Pizano says, yeah, that’s great Stark, but you ain’t Sandy. Stark tells everyone to shut up and obey orders.’ He shrugged. ‘So we do. I mean, what are we going to do?’ Looking at Sandy questioningly. Faintly desperate.
Sandy nodded. ‘Stark was a good officer,’ she murmured. ‘You did right.’ It was only half true. Stark had been an excellent second. She would never have trusted him with command of a unit though, least of all hers. He knew the rulebook backwards, right down to the punctuation, and followed it religiously. She’d worn armour more flexible than Sergei. Every tactical sim she’d played him at, she’d ripped him apart.
‘So,’ Mahud continued, with difficulty, ‘me, Chu, Rogers and Pesivich get left behind … we take the second boat, hold off in support as the first boat goes in …’ He paused, swallowed hard, clearly struggling. Not meeting her eyes.
‘They blew the whole rig, didn’t they,’ Sandy said softly. ‘That’s what the reports said.’ Mahud nodded.
‘Yeah.’ A deep breath. Sandy felt the pain in her throat once more, just watching him. His eyes were moist too. ‘Yeah, it blew real fast. Reactor rig, one small bang, then the fusion went … thermonuclear. Big Shockwave.’ He coughed. ‘Lot of effort for one team.’
‘They were worth it,’ Sandy said quietly. ‘They were worth a whole fucking station.’ Mahud nodded. A lone aircar passed, a middle-distant whine above the background hum of city noise. Cruising a high lane, but still some distance below their perch.
‘Shockwave messed us up a bit,’ he continued then. Gazing out at the city lights spread wide and far below. ‘The destroyer never came. We found out later they’d blown it. Never saw it ourselves … our scanners whited out at the blast. This other ship picked us up.’
Sandy felt her jaw tense, a tight, involuntary reaction.
‘What other ship?’
‘League ship. Cruiser, Kali-class. Never found the name. Don’t know if it had one. Didn’t really care at the time.’ Sandy knew what that meant.
‘Spook?’
‘Yeah.’ Mahud nodded absently, face profiled against a gleam of light. Youthful and handsome, like any GI. So familiar. Sandy watched him, entranced. ‘Big spook. Had military people on board though. Treated us real nice. Gave us tape, said how sorry they were, how they wished they’d only gotten there a bit earlier and maybe saved the destroyer at least… said it was a big Fed trap, the rig was bait, the ‘Kowloon’ was hiding on the system blindside, timed on high V approach, closed after the rig blew and nailed the destroyer when they tried to run, never had a chance, they’d had it all worked out. But they hadn’t managed to target the destroyer and the second boat simultaneously, so they missed us on the first pass and the spook scared them off before they could come about.’
Sandy bit her lip. Wondering how much of that terribly convenient story Mahud had believed. But not wanting to interrupt him now. Wanting the full story before she tried to spring anything onto him.
‘They blew the boat after they picked us up,’ Mahud continued, ‘left the wreckage floating. Made it look like a high V strike, used Federate ammo, the works. They said they wanted everyone to think we were all dead. They said they had a special mission for us. Something that’d give us a chance to get back at the Feds, get revenge for Tran and Raju and everyone. Everyone thought that sounded good. Really good.
‘We kept asking them about you, wanting them to get you to join us. They said you were needed where you were. Said we couldn’t even send messages, that you had to think we were all dead too, just like everyone else. No one liked that. Chu especially. She called them stupid, said if we were going to do a good job on this we’d need you along with us. She said that if it was that damn important, they ought to put their best leader onto it.’
Sandy listened helplessly. Mahud didn’t say anything more, just stared out into the cold, empty night.
‘What happened?’ she prompted him softly. Mahud looked at her. She could see the pain in his eyes. The fear. A straight might have missed it, not knowing GIs, and not knowing how the likes of Mahud would hide it. But she could always tell.
‘Cap’n, I didn’t know what to do,’ he whispered. His voice barely carried above the gentle keening of wind through the tower struts. Beneath them, the metal gave a slight shiver, as if at the cold. ‘They said it was important. I mean, they weren’t just officers… they were real, real heavy brass, you know? Suits too, not just soldiers.’
Sandy nodded faintly. The picture was forming very clearly in her head, and it was not a pleasant one. She gazed sadly at Mahud, imagining his confusion. His fear. And damning all her ex so-called superiors to the hottest, nastiest hell that any of the motherworld’s ancient cultures had ever devised.
‘Chu got reassigned,’ Mahud continued, hoarsely. ‘She was real pissed. I should have said no … should have protested or something but … but they were officers! His gaze was almost desperate. ‘I mean, I could never … not the way you did, all those times. And I wanted to hurt the Feds. I really missed the guys and they said I was going to be able to really get some payback, and that sounded real good.
‘So we went to some station somewhere, I didn’t even know where that was. We trained a lot. There were a bunch of mid-twenties there, nothing worth talking to. We trained with them a lot — me, Rogers and Pesivich. They weren’t that bright, but they got it done. Barely. We stayed there a long time. Then this thing came up and we get assigned this mission. This is the big one, they tell us. Payback. Kill the President of Callay. I got command over Rogers and Pesivich, they stayed behind. And the regs, they get stupid-tape. They come out of that and suddenly they’re all determined to get themselves killed. That wasn’t fun… I mean, they’re only regs, but still…’
He broke off. Sandy let the silence linger for a moment, absorbing that information.
Then, ‘So this whole thing … you’re not top chief, right?’
He shook his head. ‘No, that’s an FIA guy.’ Looking back to her, unworried at what would have been treason just twenty-four hours earlier. ‘You know about it, right?’
‘Most, yeah. So you just came down planetside, stayed low, moved around under cover from all these shady types the FIA have in the corporations here, and plan a way to kill the President?’
‘Pretty much. Nearly worked too. Probably would have if I’d been there myself. Damn regs just got themselves smeared.’
‘I’m damn glad you weren’t there.’
Mahud shrugged. ‘Yeah, well … I’m not a suicide type. The brass weren’t stupid enough to ask me. And the stupid-tape won’t work on me anyway, I’m a 43.’
‘That’s not what I meant,’ Sandy said. Mahud looked at her. Her gaze was very firm, very direct. His expression turned puzzled. ‘I meant that if you’d been on that op I might have ended up killing you too. Or you me.’
Mahud blinked. And stared, eyes suddenly widening. Questioning disbelief. Sandy nodded confirmation. Mahud’s eyes grew even wider and his jaw dropped. For a long moment he just sat there, totally rigid.
‘Oh fuck!’ he said then loudly. ‘What the fuck were you doing there?’
‘I was in the President’s convoy. Fourth car.’ A further realisation dawned in Mahud’s eyes, horrified.
‘Fourth? You mean after it crashed …?’
‘I got out. I got free and I got armed. I ran a counter against their sensors. They had me on a lower drugs dose than they thought they had …’
‘How many’d you get?’ With expectant trepidation.
‘Twenty-one.’ Mahud looked far from surprised. She was almost flattered.
‘Jesus, no wonder it fell apart…’ and stared back at her, almost accusatory. ‘What the hell were you doing in the President’s convoy?’
Sandy cocked her head to one side, calmly surveying him as she leaned against the railing. Brought up a knee, and hooked her arm around it.
‘Mahud, what do you think I’m doing in Tanusha?’ He blinked.
‘You’re asking me?’ With evident disbelief. Sandy frowned.
‘Who else would I ask?’
‘Why the hell do you think I’m sitting here with you now?’ he retorted. ‘I want to know, Sandy. I want to know why you went AWOL.’
Sandy blinked. Trying to figure exactly what Mahud knew about it all. What he might have been told. What they might have tried to convince him of and what he might have believed. She suddenly wondered at her wisdom in sitting here so unafraid, thinking that nothing had changed between them. She wondered many other things too.
‘What did they tell you?’ she asked then. Mahud looked perplexed. For a moment, as he gazed at her, he looked almost … lost. Confused. Frightened, she guessed, of the possible answers to this most pressing of questions. It could turn his world upside down. It could tear down everything that he had ever believed in. Or perhaps … perhaps, she thought, that had already happened. Perhaps that had happened when he’d first been told that she’d left the League.
‘I didn’t believe them at first,’ he said. His voice sounded small. ‘I didn’t think you’d ever have done it. But … it was pretty clear eventually that they weren’t kidding. They didn’t try to make us hate you or anything, I reckon they knew it’d never happen … they just said you’d cracked. They said …’ He took a deep breath. ‘They said that we’d all always known you’d been … different … that they’d been scared you were a bit mentally unstable for a while now, and that when you’d been told we were dead, you’d cracked.
‘Hell, they even apologised to us, admitted they were partly to blame … but they said they hadn’t given up on getting you back, once you’d gotten over it…’ He stopped, seeing that Sandy was shaking her head.
‘No, Mahud.’ She looked at him sadly. ‘I left because they’re a pack of lying, murdering bastards. I left because I knew that if I’d stayed, I’d have ended up killing them all, and getting killed in the process.’
Mahud blinked, looking … blank. Utterly expressionless. Stunned. Sandy folded her other leg beneath her, leaning forward on her upraised knee.
‘Mahud, what’s the purpose of this op?’
‘To kill the President,’ he said faintly.
Sandy shook her head, eyes narrowed dangerously.
‘No, beyond that. What’s the FIA doing here?’ No response. ‘They’re covering up the operation they’ve had here for ages now, the research agreement they’ve had with Tanushan biotech firms. Why did they leave it so late?’
Mahud’s eyes remained blank. To Sandy’s night-adjusted vision, he looked almost pale. GIs rarely looked pale. He shook his head very faintly at her question.
‘Because they knew I was here. Somehow they found out I was coming to Tanusha. The Tanushan project had never had an opportunity to study a live GI before. Regs, maybe, but nothing like me. They left it so late because they wanted to grab me, and study me. And that’s what they did.’ She leaned forward, staring him intently in the eyes. Her voice was hard.
‘That’s how I got captured, Mahud. I was free before that, living as a civilian. Your strike on the President gave the Governor an excuse to use his override powers and block all ongoing CSA investigations subject to Federal review, that’s all it did. The Governor’s in the FIA’s pocket, you understand? He’s one of them, or as good as. Are you following this? Do you realise what this means?’
Mahud’s eyes reflected only desperation. He shook his head. Sandy leaned forward a little more, her body tense.
‘Mahud, the League doesn’t give a stuff about me, about you, about any of us. Maybe they did once, but that all changed when the war started going badly. We became a liability. This whole ridiculous business in this city was about sending me to some Tanushan biotech firm for study, like a lab rat. That’s all I meant to them. And as for Sergei’s orders and that rig explosion, that was no Federation trap, that was a League trap … they set us up, Mahud. They set up their own people and they killed us, they killed Tran, they killed Raju …’
‘No!!‘ Mahud shouted, leaping to his feet, trembling all over … Sandy leapt up to, facing him, every muscle tensed. Her eyes were blazing.
‘Why the fuck do you think I left, man?!’ she hissed to his face. ‘Don’t you remember me trying to warn you? Don’t you remember how upset I was?’
‘Then why didn’t you tell us then?’
‘Because you wouldn’t have believed me, just like you don’t want to believe me now!’
Mahud spun away, clutching the safety railing. In the clear, cold night came the groaning sound of metal bending.
‘I’m not a traitor, Mahud. And I’m as sane as I ever was, probably more so. You know that I’m not disloyal, you know how much I can be trusted. You know more than anyone left alive. I left the League because the League murdered my friends. I thought they’d murdered all of you. I thought you’d have wanted me to live, that… that you’d have wanted me to be happy, and there were all these things I’d always wanted to see, and I just had to get away. Mahud, I had to leave.’
She broke off, pained and trembling, staring at Mahud’s back. Scared of what he might do, or think. That she might have found him, only to lose him again so quickly.
‘Come on, Mahud,’ she said more quietly. Pleading. ‘You must have suspected something. That I just happened to be left out of the raid, that they wouldn’t tell me anything … they knew I was suspicious. They knew I wouldn’t have bought it. And if I’d started dissenting with you guys around, they couldn’t have got rid of me without going through all of you, and that would have been nearly impossible. They wanted to save a few of you for special purposes, Mahud, they wanted the most loyal and dedicated, and that was always you … Pesivich and Rogers too. And Chu, but Chu couldn’t tie her shoelaces without my instruction, so they screwed up there … and they needed Stark to lead the raid, otherwise they would have kept him too … but Tran asked too many questions, Raju was too irreverent, Keelo was too arrogant, Neddy was a troublemaker … it all fits. Doesn’t it.’
‘No.’ Mahud turned about. Looked her in the eye. His jaw was tight and he kept his composure with an effort. ‘I can’t believe that. You’ll always be Captain to me, Sandy, but… but I can’t believe that. I just can’t.’
It was more forthright than she’d ever have expected from Mahud. He had grown up a lot since she’d last seen him. Six years old, she remembered him. A year would make a lot of difference. He no longer accepted everything she said as automatic truth. Not without evidence.
She took off her jacket. Unclipped the shoulder holster and dropped it to the metal floor, pistol heavy. Untucked her shirt and pulled it up over her head. And stood topless before him, cold night wind against her bare skin. Mahud stared at the sharp, red lines about her shoulder joints. At the sharper, thick red mark that encircled her waist, just below her navel.
She turned about in a slow circle, arms held out from her sides. Showing him the long, red scar up the centre of her spine, where skin had been flayed from bone and muscle, peeled away, leaving all bare beneath. Completed her circle, and stood silently facing him, shirt in hand.
Mahud wore much the same expression as she had previously seen on civilians confronted suddenly by the death of a loved one. Utterly stricken.
‘This is what your FIA man did to me,’ she told him quietly. Her voice was trembling. ‘I’m betting it’s the same guy you mentioned. I remember him clearly. They cut me up on a table, Mahud. I was screaming. Even the buffers broke down, I never knew pain until that… that…’ She met his eyes, her own vision blurring.
‘Sandy.’ Mahud reached out a hand to her face, stepping forward. Tears rolled freely down his cheeks. There was terror in his eyes. ‘Oh God, Sandy. I’m … I’m so sorry.’ He was crying, quite openly. Sandy had never seen that before, from a GI other than herself. Chu had shed tears. Mahud was sobbing. ‘I didn’t know, Sandy, I didn’t know…’
He buried his face against her hair, shoulders heaving. Hands reluctant to touch her, as if scared of her offence, or anger … Sandy put her arms around him and held him tightly. He hugged her back, sobbing into her hair as the wind blew cold upon her bare skin, and the incision scars throbbed a dull, prickling pain at the temperature change. About them, and from far below, the city murmured.
