“What made you suspect?”
“A tip.”
“Anonymous?”
“No, ma’am. A very reliable source.” Yance hesitated in mid-scan. “I don’t like this either, ma’am. But if he’s a threat to the paper, we have to shut him down.”
Jani looked at Lucien, who responded with a shrug. “I’d like two copies of these docs. Send one set to Major Piers Friesian, Defense Command, this base. Send the other to me at the South Central TOQ.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Yance entered a notation in his handheld, then returned to his scanning.
Lucien left the bullpen with the light step of a newly released prisoner. “I didn’t know you spoke Bandan.” He slipped a finger between his tunic collar and his neck and cursed the uniform designer responsible.
“Enough to get by.” Jani felt a twinge of self-reproach as she recalled the excitement on Duong’s face as he conversed in his native tongue. It was pathetic how little it took to win a person over.
She strode ahead of Lucien up the stairs and through the lobby. As she burst through the lobby door, she barely missed colliding with a man trying to enter. The red trouser stripe combined with the hardware blared “mainline colonel.” She was treated to a surprised glare as he brushed past her.
Jani stood in the entry and watched him snap across the lobby and down the stairs. Typical hard-ass brass, but he had a couple of distinctive features. Hair the color of bronze, and a long, weathered face cut from edge of nose to end of mouth by a deep, age-whitened scar.
Chapter 9
The incident with Sam Duong nibbled at Jani’s tenuous calm as she readied for her first day as a reactivated Spacer. After a scanner-approved breakfast in her rooms, she strode the walkways to Documents Control, adjusting the tilt of her garrison cap until it mimicked everyone else’s. She slung her black-leather briefbag over her left shoulder, again in imitation, and rested her arm across the top. Everything the same as everybody else. Just another way to disappear into the crowd.
The morning air held a metal tang, as though it had been on the fire too long. The hot wind desiccated everything it touched. She savored the heat as she followed the signs and markers, finally pulling up in front of a building that, but for the rimming of hedges, could have twinned the TOQ.
Jani trotted up the Doc Control steps as quickly as her weakened right leg would allow. She paused in front of the doorscanner, waited for it to read her retinas, then held her breath as the lock whirred and the door clicked open and she entered a close-controlled building as Jani Kilian for the first time in eighteen years. She listened to the echo of her tietops as she strode across the tiled lobby, and wondered at the firm tone of her oh-so-Service voice as she asked a passing lieutenant the location of the Foreign Transactions Department.
Before she entered the anteroom leading to Lieutenant Colonel Hals’s office, Jani dug her orders out of her briefbag and checked the date and time against a wall clock. Right day? Check. Right time? Check. So where is everybody? All of the office areas she had passed on the way had been empty. She scanned the doorways and desktops for clues to explain the lack of human occupation, but no scrawled note informing all that the department meeting had been moved or that someone down the hall had brought in doughnuts surfaced to clarify the situation.
At the sound of the half hour, she stepped up to the adjutant’s desk, positioned just outside the colonel’s door. Lieutenant Ischi, who according to the nameplate should have been manning same, was nowhere to be seen.
Then Jani heard sounds emerge from the inner office. Sharp rises. Sudden falls. The cadences of argument. Either the voices were very loud, or the office soundshielding very poor. She’d have bet her ’pack the quality of the shielding was just fine.
She knocked on the door, and the voices cut off abruptly. One beat later, a woman called out, “Come in.”
Jani touched the entry pad. The door swept aside to reveal two men and one woman standing around a large goldwood desk. The woman stood on the business side, hands braced on the edge. The men, one older, one younger, stood opposite her. The older man looked angry. The younger looked like he wished he were somewhere else.
“Colonel Hals?” Jani remained in the open doorway, looking from one worn face to another. “Captain Kilian reporting, ma’am.” What the hell have they been doing? Their summerweights were sweat-stained and rumpled, their hair, matted, the older man’s face alarmingly flushed.
“Do we look that bad, Captain?” Hals asked. Her voice held tired humor, along with the barest trace of New Indiesian singsong. She was shorter, heavier, and lighter-skinned than Jani, her curly, dark brown hair twisted in a tight bun. Pleasant-looking, if you ignored her heavy-lidded eyes and fatigue-drained complexion. “Please. Come in.”
The younger man gestured toward the older. “This is Major Vespucci, ma’am,” he said to Jani. “Our Procedural specialist.”
Vespucci nodded. He was dark-haired and fleshy, his small eyes set in a permanent squint. It was Procedural’s job to make sure a department had access to the latest form revisions—Vespucci had the humorless look of a man who liked controlling the codes.
“And I’m Lieutenant Ischi,” the young man added with a smile. “Tech wrangler and department dogsbody.” He was Eurasian, tall and trim, with big, bright eyes and good bones.
Jani removed her orders from her briefbag and walked across the office to hand them to Hals. “Ma’am.”
Hals accepted the documents with a small smile. “We’ll start you off by having Lieutenant Ischi show you to your office, Captain. I’d like to see you back here at oh-ten.” She acknowledged Jani’s “good morning, ma’am,” with an absent nod, and resumed her conversation with Vespucci, this time at a lower volume.
Ischi bounded out of Hals’s office, his relief at escaping evident in his wider grin and expansive gestures. “This way, ma’am.” He led Jani down one short hall, then another, finally pulling up in front of an unmarked door. “I’m expecting your doorplate in this afternoon’s delivery from Office Supply. They drop off three times a week—let me know what you need, and I’ll add it to the next list.”
Jani stepped past him into her office, close enough to catch a whiff of deodorant on the cusp of failure. If an A&S-hole catches sight or scent of you, Lieutenant, you’re a goner. What had he and Hals and Vespucci been up to?
The office was long and narrow. No furniture except for a desk and couple of chairs. Inset bookcases, so at least she had shelves. A single-pane window centered the far wall. Through the portion not blocked by tree branches, she could see the edge of a charge lot. Pimentel was right—Sheridan did have windows to spare.
“Sorry about the view, ma’am.”
“At least I’m not looking through bars.”
“Ma’am?”
“Nothing.” Jani wandered over to her desk. The workstation, comport, and parchment imprinter all looked like they’d just been removed from their cartons—the workstation touchboard still bore its protective plastic wrapping. “Has Systems initiated this yet?”
“This afternoon, ma’am.” Ischi’s grin tightened. “My apologies.”
“Hmm.” Having an uninitiated system meant she’d be spending the morning straightening her desk. She walked to the window, looked out at her tree, then turned back to Ischi. “Do you mind if I ask . . . ?” She gestured toward his unkempt uniform.
The light left Ischi’s eyes. “We spent last night at the idomeni embassy, ma’am. They keep it pretty warm in there.”
“The whole night?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“What time did you arrive?”
“Nineteen-up, ma’am.”
Jani counted. “You spent over twelve hours there? Doing what?”
“Verifying and cataloging instruments of negotiation, ma’am. Concerning the Lake Michigan Strip.”
“I’ve never heard of that.”
“You will,” Ischi replied flatly. He nodded sharply and turned to leave. “By
your leave, ma’am. I’ll nudge Systems about getting you up and running.”
Jani watched the door close. Her door. In her old department. In a close-controlled building. On a Service base. And everyone’s fighting, they look hot and confused, and the idomeni have them back on their heels. Almost two decades and six GateWays removed . . . and nothing had changed a bit.
“Come in, Captain. Have a seat.”
Jani walked slowly across Hals’s office to disguise her residual limp, and lowered into the visitor’s chair.
Across the desk, Hals continued to page through her ServRec. She had showered and changed her uniform. The ends of her bound hair were tightly curled from damp, the creases of her short-sleeve sharp enough to cut parchment.
Jani tensed each time the woman’s gaze was arrested, then raked her memory to recall which item could have claimed her attention. The SIB-decimated file held little useful information. Jani’s Rauta Shèràa job history. Her specs. Her education and training. She knew it didn’t contain what Hals no doubt most wanted to know.
So, Captain Colonel-Killer, what did I do to deserve you?
Hals closed the ServRec, then traced along its sides with her fingertips. “So—”
Jani squeezed the arms of her chair.
“—you’re Two of Six. The Eyes and Ears.” The woman offered a quick half smile.
“Yes, ma’am,” Jani replied carefully.
“I’d just begun my sophomore year at Montserrat when the news arrived that six humans had been chosen to study documents sciences at the Rauta Shèràa Academy. That made my decision to major in paper rather than law easier for my parents to swallow.” Hals tipped back her chair and tapped her fingertips together. Index to index, middle to middle. “How did that bit of doggerel go? One of Six for Tongue of Gold, Two for Eyes and Ears, Three and Four for . . . for—”
“Hands of Light.” Jani felt the heat crawl up her neck. “Five and Six for Earthly Might.”
Another fleeting smile. “The late Hansen Wyle was your mouthpiece. He was One of Six.”
“Yes. Ma’am.” Jani glanced around the lieutenant colonel’s spare office. Of all the things she expected to be questioned about, this hadn’t even made the top twenty. “Gina Senna was Three. Carson Tsai was Four. They were musicians—musicians impressed the idomeni. That’s what Hands of Light means.” She waited for Hals to respond, but the woman only watched her silently. “Dolly Aryton was Five. Her mother was a Neumann. Ennegret Nawar was Six. He’s the N in SCAN. Hence the Earthly Might.” She wished she had the nerve to sit quietly, wait out Hals’s silences. Memories of past calls-on-the-carpet returned en force. The dry mouth. The ragged thoughts. The gabbling to fill the relentless quiet. “We were eighteen when we wrote it. We thought it sounded very enigmatic.”
“I’m not asking you to defend it, Captain.” Hals paused and held a hand to her mouth. Her jaw flexed as she suppressed a yawn. “As you no doubt recall,” she continued, eyes watering, “Foreign Transactions covers a rather broad range of dealings. These usually involve records and equipment transfers to the colonies. We do, however, occasionally monitor transactions with the idomeni. Unfortunately, as you also no doubt recall, that five percent of our duties can take up eighty percent of our time.”
Jani nodded. “Food shipments into Rauta Shèràa Base used to result in some marathons. I remember the one time we tried to ship in beets. The idomeni have beetlike vegetables, but they’re grown in the Sìah valleys in the central plains. They don’t grow in the northern regions, so the Laumrau didn’t want to let them in.”
Hals leaned forward. “So what happened?” She spoke quickly. More than polite interest—she wanted to know.
“We gave up after three straight days with no breaks. Nobody liked beets that much.” Jani could still remember the hot, stagnant air, the simultaneous collapse of everyone’s deodorant, her CO at the time nodding off in a corner. “Sometimes, you have to give them what they want. It usually pays off. They gave in to us later when we wanted to bring in peanut butter. Of course, we were willing to fight for peanut butter. I think they knew that.” She chuckled, until a glance at Hals’s blank expression silenced her.
“You make it sound so homey, Captain.” She fingered a corner of Jani’s file. “Why are they so picky about their food?”
Ask me something easy, like the meaning of life. “They place great value in order—that significance cuts across sect lines. Order that nourishes the body also nourishes the soul. Eating certain types of food at certain times maintains that sense of order. Exposure to certain foods only during certain seasons of the year. A balanced diet taken to the extreme.”
“Don’t they ever eat anything just because it tastes good?”
“They’re not a very sensual people when it comes to appetites, ma’am. One theory has it that their brains work similarly to those of humans who’ve been stressed to the point of burnout. They only feel extremes. Nuance escapes them.”
“Do you believe that?”
“I’m not a xenoneurologist.” Jani wavered under Hals’s probing gaze. “No, ma’am, I don’t believe that. They’re alien. We just don’t understand their nuance.”
Hals’s eyebrows arched. “Do you include yourself in that we, Captain?”
Jani hesitated, then shook her head. “No, ma’am. However, I also don’t underestimate their capacity to surprise.”
Hals nodded wearily, as though she’d had the idomeni capacity to surprise up to there. “Ask Lieutenant Ischi to provide you the background information concerning our involvement with the Lake Michigan Strip. I’ll be interested to hear your take.” She tapped absently at her comport pad. “By the way, during your time in Rauta Shèràa, did you ever know a female named Onì nìaRauta Hantìa?”
“Hantìa?” It had been years since Jani had heard that name. She recalled a smooth, arrogant voice, like barbed satin. “She was member of a scholarly skein, training to be a Council Historian. The equivalent of an archivist.”
“She may have been an archivist then. She’s the Vynshàrau’s chief documents examiner now.” Hals opened, then closed Jani’s folder. “Did you know her?”
Yes. Jani watched Hals fidget. But I think you knew that. It looked as though her new CO possessed a capacity to surprise, as well. “We were at the Academy together.”
Hals nodded. “I thought it might be likely, judging from your ages.” She looked at Jani. Through the fatigue in her eyes, a hard light shone. “It will be nice to have someone with your experience in this department.”
“Ma’am.” Jani knew a dismissal when she heard it. She stood, rubbed her damp palms against her trousers, then came to attention. “Good morning, ma’am.” She backed up one step, executed about-face, and headed for the door.
“Captain.”
Here it comes. Jani stopped. Turned slowly. What would it be? A question about Neumann? Evan?
Hals sat back, her brow furrowed. She wanted to ask Jani something—that was obvious. Maybe she was having trouble deciding where to start. How do you question mutiny, when you’re on the business side of the table? “Never mind,” she said. “Make sure you see Ischi about the background report.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Jani walked out of the office, left a note for the absent dogsbody requesting the report, then cut through the anteroom into the desk pool. Most of the chairs were filled; a few of the uniformed occupants paused in their work to cast her curious glances.
She entered her office to find someone from Systems bent over her workstation. She fled to the quiet of the women officers’ lounge, locked herself in a toilet stall, and slumped against the cold metal partition. Crazy. Her heart pounded. Her stomach ached. They want the wait to drive me crazy.
By the time Jani felt settled enough to return to her office, the Systems tech had departed. The presence of a steel blue folder in the middle of her desktop told her that Ischi had delivered the background report.
She closed the door and sat at her desk. Paged through t
he file. Inserted the attached data wafers into the workstation slot. The mechanics of work calmed her. She slipped the report on like a favorite shirt, and read. Eventually, she sat back and propped her feet up on the desk. Laughed out loud a few times.
It was the funniest story she’d read in years.
“Ma’am?”
Jani glanced up to find a freshly fitted-out Ischi standing in the doorway, holding a steaming mug in one hand and a covered plate in the other.
“I thought you might want something to eat.” He held up the plate with the hopeful air of a father trying to persuade his child to come out from under the bed. “You’ve been in here for over five hours.”
“I have?” Jani checked her timepiece, and whistled. “I have.” She lowered her feet to the floor. “Time flies when you’re having fun.”
“A couple of us did hear you laugh once or twice.” Ischi walked in and let the door close behind him. “Three times, maybe.” He set down the cup—the heavenly aroma of true-bean drifted across the desk. “We tried to figure out what was so funny.” He removed the protective cover from the plate to reveal a sandwich and a piece of cake, and placed it before her.
Jani wrapped her hand around the mug, then motioned for Ischi to sit. “What the hell was Anais Ulanova thinking?” She sipped the coffee. Black. No sugar. Strong enough to warp enamel. She almost moaned in rapture. “She orders a lakeskimmer to transport mixed foodstuffs to the Commerce Ministry, even though the idomeni embassy sits smack between them and the verandas where all the idomeni take meditation facing the water.”
“Exposure to unknown food.” Ischi perched on the edge of his chair, elbows on knees. “Breaking the sacred plane. Those phrases have been ringing in our ears since this began. Tsecha and the other priests spent three months decontaminating the embassy, and they’re still not happy.”
“And to keep it from happening again, all they want are land, sea, and air rights to a two-kilometer strip stretching from their embassy proper, across the lake, to the eastern side of the Michigan province.”
Rules of Conflict Page 11