Infiltrator t2-1

by S. M. Stirling

  The outside world was… messy.

  The 1-950 thought that Lieutenant Zeller was of Ethiopian descent, going by her

  bone structure and general shape. She was a very attractive woman, but remote, and very smart, no buts about it. Gonzales, the corpsman, was Hispanic and had a profile like a Mayan prince. He was also cheerful, amazingly kind, and utterly devoted to Corporal Ortez. Ortez was about twenty-four, small and wiry, humorless, and utterly straight. He ignored poor lovesick Gonzales, but like everyone else in the unit protected him assiduously.

  When Serena commented on it Krigor had explained, “Gonzales is like our mother. If anything happens to him then any one of us could die, because we don’t know the stuff he knows. God knows when we’d get another medic and God knows if they’d know anything—training’s still pretty hit-or-miss; they’ve got the interactive simulators up but some people still come out cack-handed.

  You know how it goes. He’s the one that patches us up and looks after us. Next to the lieutenant he’s the most important guy here.

  “As for Ortez,” she went on to say, “he probably couldn’t care less which way Gonzales swings as long as he’s not swinging his way. But unfortunately”—she paused to bat her eyes comically—“he’s so obviously smitten.”

  The 1-950 took note of the teasing that went on about this unrequited love, noting that it was low-key and sporadic, almost gingerly. And that it almost always took place out of earshot of Ortez, who had a quick temper as well as the reputation of being one of the dirtiest fighters in the army.

  The group of humans went in for teasing and wisecracking, most of it very broad and quite funny; anyone and anything could become a target. They laughed a lot when they had the chance.

  With the exception of Ortez, of course, who genuinely didn’t seem to get any of

  the jokes. It wasn’t lack of intelligence; he was obviously very bright. He just didn’t see why things were funny. He has less of a sense of humor than I do, Serena thought. That was fascinating. Humans have such a wide degree of variation.

  “It’s like everybody’s drunk,” he told her when she asked him about it. “But when the bottle gets to me it’s empty. There’s just nothing there. It doesn’t bother me, I just don’t see it. Never have.”

  “I don’t think he’s ever said that much to me in the whole time I’ve known him,”

  Gonzales confided after Ortez moved off. “I was starting to wonder if he’s part Terminator or something.” He sighed heavily and moved off himself.

  One of the men loaned her a lice comb.

  “You got hardly any!” Krigor exclaimed over how few nits she had. “How come?”

  “I don’t imagine my blood tastes all that good right now,” Serena said. “Between the infection and that stuff Gonzales is giving me. The little bastards will be back in force when I’m feeling better.”

  They all laughed at that. Serena found pleasure in their company; she found that she enjoyed laughing. Their little quirks, their jealousies and friendships and the occasional flare of temper, quickly suppressed under Zeller’s cold glare, fascinated her. She could have asked them endless questions and found the answers stimulating if the mission didn’t forbid such unbridled curiosity.

  She’d see every one of them dead and feel nothing except a profound sense of

  accomplishment.

  But for now she would enjoy her work.

  CHAPTER TWO

  LOS ANGELES: THE PRESENT

  Jordan!” Tarissa opened the door wider and offered a hug; she’d gotten used to the feel of the shoulder holster on her brother-in-law’s visits. “Well, this is a surprise.”

  “Uncle Jordie!” Danny cried, and ran down the hall, with more excitement than he usually allowed himself to show these days. Having an uncle in the FBI still held some allure for the twelve-year-old.

  “Good to see ya, buddy.” Jordan leaned down to hug the boy. Finding he didn’t have to lean very far, he asked, “You have a growth spurt?”

  “Did he?” Tarissa closed the front door. “Outgrew a brand-new seventy-dollar pair of Nikes in three weeks.”

  “Sorry, Mom,” Danny said with an impish grin.

  “You keep this up you’ll never be a fighter pilot,” Jordan said. Danny’s most recent ambition.

  “Yeah, but I might make the NBA,” his nephew countered.

  Jordan pursed his lips. “More money,” he said judiciously.

  “More glory and fame,” Danny pointed out.

  “More injuries, too.”

  “Yeah, but they probably won’t be fatal.”

  “Well, I can’t argue with that,” Jordan said with a smile.

  “And on that note I’d like to change the subject. Can you stay for dinner?”

  Tarissa asked.

  “Well”—he looked a bit shy—“I was wondering if I could stay a few days, actually. I’ve got a job in the area and you folks are about equidistant from all the places I’ll need to go…”

  “Yes!” Danny cried, punching his arm into the air. “How long can you stay, Uncle Jordie?”

  “Only for about a week,” Jordan looked apologetically at Tarissa.

  And well he might, she thought.

  Tarissa loved her brother-in-law, but he should know better than to show up like this without calling. What if they’d had plans?

  She took a deep breath. Well, then he’d go to a hotel, and they never had plans.

  At least no plans that couldn’t include him. Still, it wasn’t right; what if she had a boyfriend?

  Miles and Jordan were living alone together in the family homestead when they met Tarissa. Money hadn’t been a problem; their parents, killed in a car accident along with their little sister, had been heavily insured.

  Miles had been pursuing his master’s in math while she’d been taking courses in accounting with CPA as her goal. They’d hit it off right away.

  In three weeks they were engaged and they married over the semester break.

  Jordan had been sixteen when she’d married Miles. He’d been a peach from the time he was introduced to her, more like a brother than a brother-in-law.

  The day she’d moved in Jordan had insisted, near purple with embarrassment, on turning the finished den in the basement into his new bedroom. It had taken him two weeks after that to be able to actually look at Tarissa when he talked to her.

  But Jordan was a manager. He’d managed things then, he managed things now.

  She’d first realized it when she discovered that by “sacrificing” his bedroom, he’d acquired unheard-of privacy for a sixteen year old. A private entrance to his basement domain, with the upstairs door locked.

  “He’s fine,” Miles had told her. “Just leave him alone, he won’t do anything foolish.”

  Tarissa had thought that wildly optimistic advice given Jordan’s age. But he had never given them reason to worry.

  After Miles’s death, Jordan had taken a leave of absence from the FBI and moved in with them. Though it had never been mentioned, this had its practical

  aspect; it allowed the Bureau to pursue its unavoidable investigation of the brothers without embarrassing anybody.

  And shattered as she was, Tarissa had really needed him. He’d done everything, taken care of all the arrangements, shopped, cooked, kept them all going.

  Once he was cleared and even before that, Tarissa suspected, he’d devoted countless hours to the hunt for the Connors, and as far as she knew, he continued to do so.

  Danny thought the world of him. And Jordan was always there for the kids.

  Tarissa knew that he and Danny sometimes talked for an hour at a time on the phone, and on Jordan’s nickel.

  It made her feel guilty that she resented his just showing up like this.

  Jordan looked around. “Where’s Blythe?” he asked.

  “Away at school!” Tarissa said. “She got that scholarship, remember?”

  “Oh yeah,” he managed to say before Danny began to drag him aw
ay.

  Watching her son and her brother-in-law moving toward the kitchen, laughing and high-fiving, she thought it was a miracle that Danny had never told his uncle the truth.

  “Danny,” she called out, “set another place.”

  “Mo-om! Don’t call me that!” he said with a frown. “I’m not a little kid anymore.”

  “Sorry,” she said to her son. “Oh, yes,” Tarissa answered Jordan’s raised eyebrow. “It’s Dan or Daniel now.”

  “Then maybe you should call me Jordan,” he said to Dan.

  Daniel looked at his uncle for a moment, then nodded slowly. Tarissa’s lips tightened; his father had done just the same thing when he was thinking something through. Jordan nodded, too. She stifled a sigh; the men in her family were all so much alike.

  Dan said good night reluctantly and dragged himself upstairs as though there were weights on his feet.

  Jordan grinned at Tarissa as she handed him a glass of wine, patting his stomach comfortably.

  “Now, that was what I call steak! Not surprised Dan isn’t fading away… but he’s grown so much! I hardly recognized him.”

  “Since he’s like a miniature Miles I find that hard to believe.” Tarissa settled herself on the couch. “So what brings you to town?”

  “He is like his dad, isn’t he?”

  She nodded, holding his eyes and waiting patiently.

  He waved his hand at her look as if to wipe it away.

  “You know I can’t talk about business with you, Tarissa.”

  “Well, okay, can you at least tell me where you’re working?”

  He heaved an exaggerated sigh.

  “Escondido.”

  Tarissa’s eyes widened.

  “That’s over a hundred miles from here!” She cocked her head. “From what you said, though, I gather you’re working somewhere else, too. Somewhere that puts us in the middle. So, where else?”

  “San Marcos,” he mumbled around a sip of wine.

  “San Marcos.” Her eyes danced. “Isn’t that right next door to Escondido?”

  He cocked an eye at her. “So sue me. I haven’t seen you guys for almost a year. I think it’s worth getting up early for, all right?”

  She reached over and patted his hand.

  “Thank you,” she said. “It’s good to see you again, and Danny’s on cloud nine.”

  She took a sip of wine.

  He looked at her for a moment.

  “What?” Tarissa said at last.

  “I found out that Cyberdyne has started up again.”

  “Well, I knew that,” she said. “They started up again about a month after the plant was destroyed. I can’t see why they wouldn’t.”

  “I meant that they started Miles’s project,” Jordan said, looking grim.

  Tarissa felt her muscles knot up. They’d destroyed everything; there was no way that Cyberdyne could start up Miles’s project again. Especially after six years.

  She shifted in her chair, bringing her legs up and folding them to the side.

  “Why shouldn’t they, Jordan? Cyberdyne is a business. They probably started again as soon as the insurance company gave them a check.” Giving him a searching look, she asked, “Did you expect them to just close their books and forget about it?”

  “They started up again in a secret installation on an army base,” her brother-in-law said.

  He was insistent, as though he was making a point that she just wasn’t getting.

  Unfortunately she was getting the message all too clearly. More clearly than Jordan. She wished she knew how to contact the Connors; this was something they’d want to know. If they were even alive.

  A surge of anger surprised her. Miles died to stop that damned thing! They have no right.”

  “Can’t be too secret if you know about it,” she said aloud.

  He made an impatient, dismissive gesture.

  “I’m an investigator; finding things out is what I do, Tarissa. But the important thing is they might be using Miles’s work. Which means that they might owe you and the kids some kind of royalty or something.”

  Shaking her head, she told him, “No. Of that I’m sure. Miles was developing something that they had already started. It wasn’t his original work, so they could hardly owe him anything for it.”

  “Didn’t he ever talk about it?” Jordan leaned toward her, his eyes growing intense.

  “Just that it was fascinating and he loved what he was doing and that it wasn’t like anything he’d ever worked on before. You know all this, Jordan. I’ve told you this before.” She turned away.

  “But didn’t he ever mention details?”

  “As much as you do,” she said, giving him a significant look. “You boys always knew how to play your cards close to your chests. For all I knew, you were running a bordello out of that basement apartment of yours.”

  “I was not running a bordello,” Jordan said with a little half smile.

  “Well, there were squeals of girlish laughter that might have given argument to that,” Tarissa said with a grin.

  “Or a numbers racket,” he added. He held his hand up, stopping her laughing response.

  “Please don’t change the subject.” Jordan said, his eyes deadly serious.

  He put his wine aside and leaned his forearms on his thighs, totally focused.

  Wearily, Tarissa leaned her head against the back of her chair and closed her eyes.

  “Did he ever mention being followed—”

  “Stop right there,” she said, holding up a finger. Tarissa matched his posture and lowered her voice. “I’ll tell you right now, Jordan, when I opened my front door and saw you on my porch tonight, my heart sank. Because I knew that at the first opportunity you would do this.”

  “I just want to find out what happened!” he said reasonably. “You might remember something if I ask the right question.”

  “Do you think that I haven’t gone over and over this in my mind?” She glared at him. “Do you think I will ever forget one moment of that night? Maybe you don’t think I’ve asked myself if I’d done something different would Miles still be alive? Well, I have.” She nodded fiercely. “I’ve thought, I’ve questioned, I’ve wondered. And every time that you come here and we have one of these sessions, I lie awake for weeks afterward wondering about it all over again. I wonder if what you’re really asking is why didn’t you do something to save my brother? Why are you alive while he’s dead?”

  “That’s not true!” Jordan sat straight in shock. “I never thought that!”

  “I’ve never stopped grieving for him, Jordan. I never will. But I tell you right now, I can’t keep doing this. It feels like punishment and I won’t stand for it

  anymore. Do you understand?”

  After a moment of staring at her openmouthed, he said, “No. I don’t understand. I just want to find the people who killed my brother. I owe him that, Tarissa. I owe him.” His eyes pleaded for understanding.

  “If you found those people tomorrow and put them on trial, I really can’t say that I’d even go to watch,” she said. “I’m tired, Jordan, tired and heartsore. But it’s time to move on. I can’t take this anymore.”

  He looked at her in disbelief.

  “Don’t you want to know who killed him?” he asked.

  “I know who killed him,” she said. She looked away from him for a moment and composed herself, stifled the tears that filled her eyes. “The SWAT team killed Miles.”

  ” What?” Jordan found himself on his feet and slowly sat back down. “Who the hell told you that?”

  “The team commander,” she said, looking him in the eye. “He had cancer and he had Miles’s death on his conscience.” She began to fiddle with the arm of her chair. Then she looked up at him. “They saw him, they shot him. They didn’t cry out a warning, no drop your weapons, hands up, none of that. They basically came in shooting. He never had a chance.”

  Jordan looked sick as well as shocked.

  “I didn’t w
ant to tell you,” she said, closing her eyes. “I knew it would hit you hard. But it wasn’t the terrorists that killed him, it was the police.”

  “Oh, my God,” Jordan whispered. “They covered it up.”

  He flopped back in his chair then took his wine and tossed the rest of it down.

  For a while he sat staring into space, his hands caressing the glass. Then he put it on the table and buried his face in his hands, elbows on his knees. “No,” he said, shaking his head. “He wouldn’t have been there except for the terrorists. They have to be punished.”

  “I’m going to bed,” Tarissa said angrily.

  She pushed herself up -from her chair and moved rapidly toward the stairs, then stopped and turned around.

  “I’m never going to talk to you about this again, Jordan. Never. If you can’t keep from asking, then I guess we won’t be seeing each other anymore. And I don’t want you torturing Danny with questions either. He was just a baby when it happened, and he can’t tell you anything new.”

  She came back toward him a few steps, once again lowering her voice. “And every time you stir this up, it gives him terrible dreams. When he was younger he woke up screaming. So I’m telling you once and for all, I want you to stop this!” She brought her fist down to pound her thigh. “I want you to stop torturing us. It wasn’t our fault, we couldn’t do anything but what we did, and all the questions in the world won’t bring Miles back!”

  Tarissa turned away and mounted the first few steps, and then she let out her

  breath. “I love you, Jordan,” she said. “I love you like you were my own brother.

  I really, really hope that you can see my side of this, because I want you in my life.” She gave him one last tear-filled look and then walked up the stairs.

  Jordan sat there for a few moments; he heard the door to her room close, then slowly let out his breath as he leaned back and put his hand over his eyes. He felt incredibly tired and sad.