Have you ever felt that shock when you’re swimming and put your foot down but the bottom’s no longer there? Have you ever experienced a catastrophic malfunction of your suit motor that blasts you tumbling away at high velocity through the vacuum with no reference points, just the unlimited emptiness of space? Or that look of glee on your so-called friend’s face when they tell you how much of the drug they’ve laced your drink with in the moment before the hallucinations hit?
Add all of those together, put another zero on the end, and that’s the kind of ‘disoriented’ I felt.
I tried grabbing at the metal armrest of my chair, which helped a little, and when I heard snapping metal, I didn’t let go, didn’t look down. I couldn’t. I was seeing through Silky’s alien eyes now.
Then my brain found traction and I was locked in and gripped by Silky’s report. I was an atmospheric fighter jet bursting through the fog bank and out into an intense vista of colors and smells I had never experienced before. I could smell emotions, see memories of spoken conversations, hear colors in wavelengths beyond the rainbow. But this was no nightmare. I was in control of this synaesthetic dream.
A pulsing engine note announced itself by abruptly calming from angry growl to smooth purr. I realized with a start that the sound had been the grunting exertions of my ghosts as they strained every effort to protect my sanity and tame this wild experiential ride.
Then one-by-one Silky’s alien senses were remapped more accurately to my human norms and I was down on the ground, in the archive office next to Denisoff’s, to be precise, rifling through hard-paper records.
Her memories were mine for the time being, other than an unnatural gloss to everything I saw, and a pungent undersmell that was already annoying me,
Well, there was one other thing. Silky was right. She had ripped her flesh apart and let me see inside to her soul.
I felt every emotion Silky had; her anxiety mixed with professional pride rang loud and clear from my spine. There was something too underpinning her every thought. A drive. A need to push forward in headlong flight because if she ever stopped or looked behind, her past would engulf her in darkness. Her need to keep running was connected with me at a profound level that I couldn’t interpret. Hell, I had no skill at interpreting my own emotions. I left that kind of drent to my ghosts.
Even I couldn’t miss her terror, though. I caught echoes of memories from previous nocturnal visits as the Ninja Skulk. Silky had hidden them from me at first because she was scared I might disapprove, and then frightened of my reaction if I discovered she had been acting behind my back, and on my behalf. Oh, Silky, why hadn’t you told me? I thought you were the well-grounded one. She didn’t answer, but she didn’t need to because I was in her memories, and I knew that as much as she desperately needed me to be the fixed point in her life, she didn’t fully trust me.
You might think that made her outward appearance of calm competence an act. It wasn’t. My wife was a fizzing ball of anxiety that she made no attempt to hide, but I had been too human to see. I was getting her fears full blast now, enough that my stomach was cramping.
You are here to see my report, her mind told me.
I forced myself back into her memory, and felt my clever alien fingers rifle through the same hard-paper files that I had seen myself a short while later. I deployed cyber-knowhow far beyond NJ McCall’s abilities to hack into low level data stores. Hell, she was smart, my new wife.
Maybe not wise, though, because her first target was data on me. I skipped through those memories, not daring to read my file, or Silky’s reaction to what she discovered there.
I flicked faster through her memories as I became more adept at this, flipping forward to the interesting parts where she had the greatest gut reaction.
By now she was in Denisoff’s office – growing ever closer to the moment when I surprised her.
Patterns were beginning to form from the mass of mundane details she was unearthing. Connections suggested between the federal authorities and criminal gangs. Suggestions of links between gangs too, even those whose rank and file considered themselves blood enemies. No smoking guns here – not yet – but the weight of circumstantial evidence was building.
I suddenly felt enormously satisfied with myself… until I realized I was feeling a memory of Silky’s satisfaction. By locating the digital data secreted within the hard-paper, she had broken through its outer security layer and into the juicy dirt that lay beneath – just as she’d hoped. Everything I’d seen until this point was sacrificial fluff. Now we were advancing!
I realized I was seeing the dirt Denisoff was himself digging on Revenge Squad. That idea sent a chill through me – or maybe I was remembering Silky’s shiver. What did that say about Revenge Squad if my potential commander didn’t trust them?
At first I saw more of the same. Connections and sightings that linked Revenge Squad with corrupt officials who were themselves linked to organized crime. I was getting the feeling that if I had the complete map of influence and connections, Revenge Squad, the federal and state authorities, Volk’s outfit, and most of the heavyweight gangs on the planet would pyramid up to a single individual.
Then I came across a photograph.
It was Holland Philby and Volk arm-in-arm. Buddies. Surrounded by armed men and women – all humans – in military garb but not bearing the insignia of Legion ranks nor even Human Marine Corps, Free Corps, or any of the other factions in the Civil War.
This was too slow. I was only replaying Silky’s voyage of discovery. I had my own questions. I pushed the memories to one side and asked Silky through the cable: Did you find anything on Michelle?
The woman with the stuffed head in the feast hall? Hold on… I felt her mind grow distant as she accessed her stored memories of everything she had learned.
Only one, she said. You’re looking at it.
Where?
To the left of the picture, stepping out the cab of that armored truck.
And there she was, wearing the same gunmetal hair as the head mounted on the wall of the Great Hall. Sorry, Michelle-Leanne. Didn’t recognize you with your body on. What the hell did you get yourself mixed up in?
Silky reached back and squeezed my hand. “More to the point,” she said aloud. “What have we gotten ourselves mixed up in?”
Cool and scaly, her hands were inhuman, but I drew strength from them all the same. They were smaller and finer than mine but not delicate. They made a good fit inside my meat shovels.
One more thing, I said. Did you find anything on a ship called the Phoenix? Arrived here from Esoba-3 in 2746. Big Boss Docking Tube was aboard. Possibly Volk too.
I felt Silky’s excitement manifest as warmth and an increased vividness to every color. The Phoenix. Samarkand-class freighter modified to increase cryo-frozen passenger capacity to 3,500. Operated by Dark Nebula Shipping. There’s a record of Phoenix departing Esoba-3 2732. Arriving Klin-Tula 2746.
A passenger manifest?
Negative. I think Denisoff looked. His file lists ten names. Here, see for yourself.
I did. Silky’s memory of the secret document listed eight human-sounding names that meant nothing to me, but two more that sure as hell did: Holland Philby and Michelle-Leanna Odeku.
Silky said nothing but when I caught a hint through the cable of how much I had impressed her, I felt like a hero basking in the adulation of his peers.
I almost felt close to her, but then her mood abruptly soured with anger and disappointment that flowed across the cable like poisoned vinegar. I gagged with overload to experience the emotion from her memories at the same time as what she was feeling now.
“McCall,” she said, “there is one more matter we must discuss.”
I took a deep breath. I knew exactly what was coming. I returned to her memories and fast forwarded them until they ended with a bang that made me jump when a fist came from out of nowhere and hit me right between the eyes.
— CHAPTER 53 —
Shut up!
I shut up.
All I had to do was unplug that damned cable and escape this hell. And hell it was. Pain and trauma I was numb to, but not like this. At Silky’s request, I was looping through the moment of shock and betrayal as my fist slammed into her head.
The experience was amped up by the fusion-hot intensity of her emotions. The shock and anger at least felt human, but her sense of betrayal was laced with alienness. I could taste smoke and ash in that feeling, enough to make me gag.
Our marriage might be a sham to me, an act I’d allowed Silky to play along with as a favor. It clearly wasn’t to her.
My fingers rested on the cable connector.
This was stupid. If I hadn’t knocked her out she would have stood her ground out of some misplaced sense of loyalty. I’d probably saved her life. What would the damned alien prefer, a bruise or a court martial followed by execution for desertion?
My fingers drifted away from the cable.
Logic said I’d done the right thing. Everything else violently disagreed.
I sat patiently and endured her displeasure. She needed to trust me. She had to or her fears would paralyze her. I would endure anything to earn my way toward that trust.
I think she had been waiting for my resentment to die away, because a few moments after my resistance faded she said through the cable: if I look at what you did last night dispassionately and objectively – if I could distance myself light-years from the events – you did the right thing in stunning me.
Yeah, I noticed the ‘if’s too.
But you did it for entirely the wrong reasons. I am glad we are sitting back to back, because I do not wish to look upon you. NJ McCall, you have a serious anger problem.
Yes, I said.
No, I added.
I felt Silky’s confusion come down the cable like a squadron of angry wasps. Well, which is it?
Yes, I do have a problem. But it’s not anger. I have a fist problem.
If something isn’t right, you hit it until it’s better.
Something like that.
Not because you’re angry.
Correct. Emotion doesn’t come into it.
Unacceptable. You are more than a primitive stimulus response machine. Your constant self-depreciation is a coping mechanism, not an excuse. Your fist-first philosophy could have killed me.
Sorry.
It’s not even as if you have been given more than a few hours of training in how to stun and disable safely. You could have caused brain damage. You need more training.
I’ll ask Denisoff, I replied, adding carefully, when he’s calmed down a little.
I didn’t mean for him to train you. I meant me! I know a hundred ways to disable and stun your species. That’s what I did in the war, NJ. I was an infiltrator. You would probably call my unit special ops.
I shook my head in disbelief until the cable threatened to pull free. Special ops? I had no idea…
Yep. Sure enough, she let that one ride. I had no idea because I’d never thought to ask.
I’m sorry, I repeated.
Your repeated apologies are worthless unless they lead to a change of behavior.
So what do you propose? That I should try hugging people?
NJ, the war of armies and fleets is over. We are in a different kind of conflict now. First of all, I want you to keep your powder dry. Identify threats and allies with care because they are no longer wearing a uniform to make that easy.
So I should figure out the bad guys and then ask them politely to play nice?
No. You identify the bad guys, then you hit them so they don’t get up again. Can you do that, NJ?
Yes, sir. Thank you.
She half-turned her head toward me, which pulled mine around in her wake. I wasn’t being snarky when I called her ‘sir’. It just slipped out.
I think it was the ‘sir’ that had initially confused her, but when she sensed I was genuine, she asked instead: Why ‘thank you’?
I wish people didn’t keep asking these things. I didn’t know. But a long-instilled habit of answering dumb questions from superiors kicked in and I gave a reply. I thanked you because I don’t know why you bother with me. I’m not sure I’m worth your interest.
She reached for my neck and ripped out the cable, making my eyes pop. With the cable still dangling from her neck, she came before me and placed her alien hand over my heart.
“I don’t know whether you are worth my interest either, NJ. It’s up to you to prove that to me, one way or the other. As for why I bother, I have no choice since I married you. I am Kurlei and that means I am stuck with you, for better or worse, until the day you die.”
The way she phrased that wasn’t lost on me either.
— CHAPTER 54 —
“I have good news,” announced Denisoff. He bared his animal grin at his paraded recruits. “And great news.” His eyes lit with feral energy. A welcome break in the clouds opened up to bathe the parade ground in light. As Denisoff let the moment extend, he seemed to draw the light about himself until he was wreathed in gilding.
He was a tiger, a guinshrike, an eagle. Magnificently sleek and untameably dangerous.
I felt a lurch in my back.
“Sorry,” I mumbled in apology to my jealous late wife.
“The good news is that our new ‘C’ Section is called upon early to carry out our first mission as agents. This is earlier than planned, but ‘A’ Section has seized an opportunity and we must deploy to support them.”
Not for the first time it was obvious this wasn’t the military. Instead of a martial cheer or disciplined silence, anticipation rustled through the paraded recruits in the form of shuffled feet and whispered speculation.
Not me, though. I was bottom of the scoreboard, a woeful failure in Denisoff’s eyes.
I cast my gaze right to where Silky stood at attention alongside me.
Was I a failure in her eyes too?
“The even better news,” continued Denisoff, “is that in my new role as ‘C’ Section Assistant Squad Leader I have picked my agent selections, and have associate roles to offer the others. Former Corporal Xeene, step forward.”
The old Wolf did as ordered, just a single step but Xeene put immense menace and challenge into it. I hadn’t thought I could feel any worse, but I did to see the proud old warrior humiliated this way. Her age had hampered her physical scores, her Wolfish mental faculties limited her more academic exercises. If not for the demerits Chikune and I had been given, Xeene would have come a poor last on the scoreboard.
“Congratulations, Agent Xeene.”
I blinked. What had Denisoff just said?
“Your experience and attitude made you a shoe-in from the start. Even so, your performance impressed me even more than I expected.”
There were a few mumbled remarks from the recruits. I wasn’t the only one to be surprised.
Denisoff didn’t seem to care. He continued: “The top-ranked recruit is former Sub-Captain Sylk-Peddembal. Step forward please.”
Silky’s mind was locked up too tightly for me to share her feelings. I expected she felt the same pride and relief that I did, but there was no way she was as surprised as me. She’d never mentioned she was an officer. Not that that mattered now.
But that does matter, said Sanaa.
I didn’t know what she was driving at. Sanaa sounded almost wounded.
You could have been her senior sergeant, she said.
She’s alien! I replied. Even if she were a human officer, that rank is just a line of code in her uniform programming.
Who cares about her rank, now or previously? agreed Sanaa, at least I thought at first she was agreeing. It’s how she’s thinks and acts that matters. Is not easy for me to say this, Ndeki, but even if I were alive I’d say you need her more than she needs you.
I laughed inside at the thought of me racing around town in Silky’s wake as her ever-dependa
ble sidekick.
Don’t know what’s so funny, said Sanaa. You’re not going with her. You’ll be lucky if they even let you stay here and dig trenches.
Don’t wilt on me, I growled. If they want Silky they have to include me too. You wait and see. Have faith.
Oh, shut up with your frakking optimism, Bahati snapped. Everything will work out all right, she sneered. Easy for you to say, you’re still alive. You blew it for all of us, NJ.
But I thought you were… I stepped around the word ‘jealous’ I thought you were unimpressed by Silky, I said instead. Denisoff too.
I am, Bahati replied. But if you let them go, you’ll wither away. I’m not ready to die a second time, NJ. Not yet.
I gave up. Only Denisoff could give Bahati the answer she wanted. Nothing I could do now.
Conduit and César had been awarded agent status by now. Then came Shahdi Mowad. Normally that would have filled me with pride, but I was too busy being anxious.
“There’s one major position left,” announced Denisoff.
The bastard said nothing, just grinning to draw out the moment. Nerves prickled me. Come on, Denisoff!
Silky suddenly gave off nerves too.
Denisoff fixed me with a stare.
Come on…
“My final agent selection is…”
Just say it, already. Say my name.
“Our very own fly boy. Former Flight-Corporal Nolog-Ndacu. Congratulations.”
Someone turned down the volume of the world, and moved it so far away I forgot where I was. I hovered there in numb confusion for about one second. Then waves of despair assaulted me from the pale-skinned and squid-topped agent to my front and right.
“I have made offers of associate roles for some, and auxiliary roles for others,” stated Denisoff. “You should see them through your Aimees within a few seconds.”
After War Page 29