Kira wanted to run across the centerline to tell him it was all a mistake. She’d believed Lotila was conning her. She would’ve done something different if she’d known . . .
“You may approach the judge, if you are able.” The lead ward sounded like he was a thousand miles away. Kira moved to holster her weapon, succeeding on the second try. Head down, she walked to the judge’s table. Diana’s greeting and the judge’s statement melded into a blur. The only part that penetrated the fog was: “this judgment is final and there can be no further appeals.”
Protocol kept Kira at the judge’s table, despite a desperate desire to go shower. It was going to take a lot of hot water and soap to remove the filth from her skin.
The judge addressed Lotila’s second.
“Mr. Sims, I see here Lotila was covered by a lifetime services contract. Do you want to receive the death certificate yourself, or would you prefer the Association provided it directly to the contract holder?”
The man raised his head, confused. “My other daughter and I still have them . . .”
The judge’s voice was gentle. “Mr. Sims, I understand. Those contracts are unaffected, but Lotila’s is canceled by her death.”
Kira’s gorge rose. She ran for the exit door, desperate to be out of sight when her scanty breakfast made its return appearance. Behind her, Diana shouted something, but Kira couldn’t tell what it was.
Chapter 29
Kira pushes to stand nearly upright so she can see what’s happening to Niles for herself. In addition to being bent over far enough to test the limits imposed by the motion sensor, he’s obscured by his second, the EMT, and the ward. He coughs violently, and his second reaches out to steady him.
Kira straightens a little more. “Hey, did you see—”
Diana is off her knees and on her feet, pointing across the field and addressing the ward. “That was contact. I call foul.”
The ward says something into his mic in a low, urgent voice. After a few seconds, he responds to Diana. “The ward in place says no contact.”
Diana shakes her head. “I want a judge’s ruling. Now.”
The pain pulls Kira down before she can see more. “What’s happening?”
Diana kneels again, still exuding calm but unable to banish an excited edge from her voice. “That’s one hell of a screwup, but it’s our ticket out of here. Hang on until the judge rules, just in case.”
The news floods through Kira like anesthetic, numbing her pain. She’s going to get out of this. She’ll fix whatever Niles’s bullet has done to her body, and everything her creditors have done to her life. All she has to do is stay on her feet.
She adjusts her stance, ready to face the challenge.
Chapter 30
Kira entered the Gunslinger’s Lounge, and the sparse, midmorning crowd fell silent. People might have stopped talking because of her soiled uniform, the faint whiff of vomit about it, or her look of unrestrained fury. Maybe they’d watched the whole thing play out on the vid screens. It didn’t matter. Lotila’s unfurled body bag burned in Kira’s retinas, and the bereaved father’s wail echoed in her ears.
She crossed the Lounge by the shortest possible route and mounted a barstool. Steve Olsen, the assistant manager, waved the server away and stood in front of her, his hands braced against the bar’s mahogany surface. He started to say something but stopped when he got a good look at her face.
“Jack Daniels. Straight.” She paused. “Make it a shot.”
Steve produced both a bottle and a shot glass from beneath the bar, filled the glass, and set it in front of her. He refused eye contact.
Kira tossed back the whiskey and tapped the glass on the bar.
“Again.”
Silently, Steve poured.
Kira downed the shot and tapped the bottle. “Tell you what, just sell me that whole thing.”
Steve hesitated, and Kira stared him down. In the end, he slid the bottle to her, and she poured herself another shot. The scattered buzz of conversation resumed.
A flash appeared in the mirror behind the bar. The main door had opened, and Diana’s silhouette filled the entrance. Still in her second’s uniform, she duplicated Kira’s track across the Lounge, shoved a stool out of the way, and planted herself in the space. Again, the room fell silent.
“Do you care to explain why you’re skipping your debrief and getting shit-faced in company colors?”
Kira downed the shot. Heat from the drink fused with the heat from her anger. She turned to face her trainer.
“She was a goddamn kid, Diana. She was a sweet, gullible, wonderful little girl and I put a bullet through her heart, all for the greater glory of T fucking K fucking C Insurance.”
Diana folded her arms. “So, what are you going to do about it?”
Kira pointed to her bottle. “I’m going to drink this until I’m numb. Then I’m going to hunt down the biggest, meanest, ugliest, dirtiest man I can find. I’m going to straddle his chair and shove my tits in his face and tell him to take me home and do whatever he wants with me. If I’m too damn drunk to make it out the door, I’ll settle for Jenkins down there.” She jerked her thumb toward the redheaded investigator at the far end of the bar.
Diana paused a few seconds before she replied. “So, when you wake up tomorrow with a sore head, a sorer ass, and a mouth that tastes like a monkey took a crap in it, how will things be better? Who will you have helped? Answer me that.”
Kira looked at the floor. “I don’t know who I’ll help, but the person who killed Lotila Sims will get what she deserves.” Her voice trailed off, finishing in a mumble.
Kira grabbed the bottle, started to pour another shot, and stopped. Other possibilities existed. Possibilities Diana could give her. She stared straight ahead as she spoke. “I want out.”
In the corner of Kira’s vision, Diana responded with a curt nod. “You still owe the company three matches on your contract extension, but if you pay the penalty, we can work something out.”
“That’s not what I mean, and you know it. Put my name in.”
Diana leaned back. Although her face remained perfectly composed, her body language and the tension in her voice betrayed her shock. “For the intercompany match?”
“It gets me out, and I don’t have to do anything worse than shoot somebody who’s just as dirty as I am.”
“Except maybe die trying.”
“That sounds good, too.”
Diana bent down close, her face only inches away. “OK, baby girl, if that’s what you want, I’ll put you in for it. But I need to see you cleaned up, showered, and in Conference Room B in fifteen minutes.” She pointed at the whiskey bottle. “Don’t bother to show up unless you can be straight, sober, and at the top of your game for the next three weeks. Got it?”
Kira put steel in her voice. “Got it.”
Diana slapped the bar and stood upright. “I’ll be waiting.” She left the Lounge without looking back.
Kira remained on the barstool. She wasn’t going to trail out behind Diana like a whipped dog. She could sit here for a minute, preserve some dignity, and still have time to shower and make the meeting. She could even have another drink if she felt like it. Her hand brushed the bottle. One more shot would be about right to take the edge off being trapped in a tiny room with Diana.
She checked the ornate brass clock above the bar. Less than eleven minutes remained. If she took another shot, she might as well heft the bottle and suck it down straight until Jenkins looked good.
She closed her eyes and breathed. On the stage behind Kira’s lids, Lotila crumpled to the ground like a marionette with her strings cut, shock and betrayal on her face.
Kira could drown that vision right now, or she could hold it in her head while she arranged her life to ensure she’d never see anything like it again.
Pushing herself away from the bar and off the stool was harder than she expected. She caught Steve’s eye and pointed to the bottle. “Keep that for me.”
<
br /> Kira’s damp, sloppily combed hair itched, her blouse stuck to wet spots on her torso, and her outfit looked as though it had been wadded up before being worn, but she entered Conference Room B with two minutes to spare.
Diana looked up from her data pad, her voice hard. “Feeling better?”
Kira sat, hitting the chair with enough force to make it scoot back from the worktable. “No.”
Diana pushed the data pad to one side and focused on Kira. “What the hell happened to you out there? You told me you were being played, shot your opponent, ran off with no explanation, and now you’re telling me she was just a kid.”
Kira folded her arms across her chest. Where to start? “In the waiting room, she told me if she didn’t win the duel, they’d foreclose on her and her family.” Kira shuddered. “I was ready to throw the match. We even talked about it.”
Diana raised an eyebrow. “Go on.”
“As soon as I thought about it, I knew it couldn’t work. I was ready to take the door.” Another shudder ran through Kira’s body. “Then I thought she was feeding me a line to slow me down or get me to quit.”
Kira stared at the floor.
“What changed your mind?” Diana still sounded like an interrogator.
Kira pulled the range card from her pocket and slapped it on the desk.
Diana picked it up and glanced over it. “This is amazing, but it’s not how she performed on the field.”
“Turn it over.”
Diana looked at the other side of the card, where the range logo was almost obliterated by the words Tom Bucknell, scrawled in heavy black marker. Diana’s brow furrowed. “I don’t understand.”
“It was a goddamn souvenir.” Kira’s voice came out ragged, as if she were ready to cry. “It must have fallen out of her autograph book when I signed it.”
Diana didn’t move, but when she spoke, her voice was softer. “She had you sign her autograph book? I don’t know what to say.”
Kira’s shrug nearly reached her ears. “There’s nothing to say. She was a fan.”
Diana took a deep breath and leaned on the table, her hands folded and her focus on Kira. “I realize it was bad. There are things that happen on the field nobody likes. We all do things we regret, sometimes very deeply. But everyone who was there chose to be there.”
“Choice.” Kira spat the word. “Death, slavery, or murder. That was my choice. Lotila’s, too.” She glared at Diana.
“It’s the way things are.”
Kira rubbed her nose on her sleeve. “Then how come I feel like a piece of shit?”
“Probably because you’re still a decent person.” Diana paused. “I’ve had clients who could have walked away from the field today, cleaned up, debriefed, and gone out to celebrate without a second thought. In some ways, they’re easy to work with, but they always scared the hell out of me.” She shook her head. “You aren’t like that. You try to ignore what you’re doing, but you leave a piece of yourself on the field every time, and sometimes it’s a big piece.”
Kira sagged in her chair. “I don’t know if I have enough pieces left to keep going. I really don’t. I feel like I’m going straight to hell, and I’m not even sure I believe in it.”
Diana took a deep breath and squeezed her hands together. “Try to hear me when I say that while I know what you’re feeling right now is terrible, I also know it’s survivable.”
Kira curled in on herself. “There’s no way you can know that.”
Diana leaned closer across the table. “All right, it’s true that if anyone tells you they know how you feel, they’re talking shit. Even if the situations are identical, the feelings are different.” Diana paused again, as if to weigh her words before speaking them. “But I am going to tell you that you aren’t the only person in this room who shot a kid in front of her parent.”
Kira responded with a puzzled frown. “What are you talking about? There’s nothing like this on your kill list.”
“I’m not talking about dueling. I’m talking about southern Iran. Some little village—I can’t even remember the name. After we secured an area, they had us use female troops for house-to-house searches.” Diana sighed. “Scrambled the hell out of assignments, but they told us it offended local sensibilities less.”
Kira uncurled a bit. This was more than Diana had ever said about her time in the war.
Diana continued. “Anyway, there were never enough women, especially officers, so I’m out there constantly, filling in for squad leaders even though I’m running a staff. Eventually, I get to the point where coffee to wake up and whiskey to sleep isn’t enough. But, when you’re a wounded war hero, medical people will give you things you really shouldn’t have.” A rueful smile crossed Diana’s face. “I learned to use that.”
Kira blinked. Diana as an out-of-control addict seemed both cosmically wrong and completely inevitable.
Seemingly oblivious to Kira’s expression, Diana went on. “One day, we go into this house. It’s run-down, even by local standards. The place looks as though it’s barely holding together, the door doesn’t close right, and the roof’s a mess. My translator’s trying to explain to the lady of the house we just want to look around and make sure there are no weapons. She’s being difficult and the squad is getting jumpy. Then this bag of rice falls in the corner of the kitchen and something’s moving toward us. Before you can blink, I’ve got my sidearm out and I’m firing.”
Diana held her breath steady. “Turns out to be the lady’s daughter. She’s eight. She was hiding behind the rice bag, got scared, and decided to run to Mom. We do the whole first aid thing, but it’s useless. She was a tiny kid to begin with, and I put two rounds in her chest. She was probably dead before she hit the floor.”
Kira stared. “So, what happened?”
“Shooting the kid was bad enough. When my drug tests came back positive for unprescribed stimulants, it was worse. Riots are breaking out all over, people are getting killed on both sides of them, and we had to call off an offensive just to put the lid back on. The locals are screaming for justice, command needs a guilty party, and there I am with a gun in my hand and shit running through my veins. The court martial was just a formality.”
“So that’s your manslaughter conviction?”
“I pled down to that.” Diana sagged a little. “It probably should have been murder, but my friends hired a good lawyer.” She looked around the room. “When I got out, I became a gunfighter. There aren’t a lot of employers who don’t care if you’ve killed someone.”
“I guess I thought . . .” Kira trailed off into silence.
“It’s not a story I tell a lot of people. And not just because the details are still theoretically classified.”
Maybe Diana did know what it was like. Kira faced her mentor. “Does it get better?”
“No. But eventually, you notice it less.”
Kira stared at the floor again. “I’m not sure I can live with that. I know I can’t keep doing what I’m doing.”
“I think you’ll be surprised at what you can live with.”
Diana probably did have it worse. In her trainer’s mind, embarrassing the Corps, derailing the offensive, and getting Marines killed during the riots probably weighed on her just as heavily as the girl’s death, if not more. But still . . .
Kira moved to the table and begged. “Diana, you have to put me in for this. I have to get out.”
Diana’s face remained calm, but tension practically radiated from her shoulder muscles. “You’re wrong about that. Neither one of us has to do anything.”
Kira slumped. “You thought I was going to stay in the Lounge and drink it away, didn’t you?”
“I knew that was a possibility.”
“But I’m here.”
Diana sighed. “Yes, you are.”
“So that means I’m ready.”
“It means you want it. That’s not the same thing.” Diana rubbed the bridge of her nose. “This isn’t a good time to make thi
s kind of decision. Take your forty-eight hours off. Go see Dr. Davis and have her help you sort it out. Then come back, and we’ll talk.”
Kira’s throat tightened. How could Diana be so obtuse? “Will you listen to me? I can’t do this anymore. I can’t keep killing other people to keep myself safe. I can’t drive them into slavery to keep myself out. I can’t come up with a good enough story to make that OK. I just can’t do it.” She put her elbows on the table and cradled her head. “I know you keep saying it’s legal, but just because it’s legal doesn’t mean it’s right.”
Diana reached across the table, her voice full of sympathy. “My first couple days in the brig, I just wanted it to stop. I would have signed an agreement calling for my own execution if the Marines had put one in front of me.”
“And you’ve got the wrists to prove it.”
Diana pulled at her uniform sleeves.
Kira continued. “One of the girls I roomed with in New York tried to kill herself when she was in school. I know what the scars look like when someone’s serious and knows what she’s doing.”
Diana responded with a few seconds of silence, then she spoke in a firm, gentle voice. “Then you know when I say this passes, I know what I’m talking about. Take your time off. Let it cool. Decide with a clear head.”
Faced with an unfavorable decision, Diana was angling for delay. A good strategy, but Kira wasn’t going to succumb. Not today. She had to stand her ground, push back, and make Diana see things her way for a change. Kira searched for a lever big enough to move her second and keep the conversation going. “Tell me what the payoff is.” Kira straightened as her memory of the Gunfighter Rights session became clear in her mind. “The Guild requires you to tell me the estimated payout for all prospective matches.”
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