“Ma’am.” Jani waited for the display to blank before turning back to her workstation. She dumped a few more of Vespucci’s edits, then set the unit to standby. She had picked up her cup and was just about to leave in search of fresh coffee when her comport alarm bleeped again.
“Jani.” Friesian’s face held the contented fatigue of a workman who had taken a step back to admire his handiwork. “Could you be at my office within the hour? I have some news for you.”
“If this goes as planned, with no paper snafus or further visits to the idomeni embassy, your hearing should take place late next week, and your discharge early the following.” Friesian tapped a happy drumbeat on the tabletop. “A week and a half from now, you’ll be a civilian again.”
Who are you kidding, Jani thought. I’m a civilian now. They sat in the breakroom down the hall from Friesian’s office. The room faced the lake. Brightly colored sails of assorted watercraft shimmered like pearly scales on the water’s calm surface, while lakeskimmers whizzed in all directions like skipping stones.
“Try to restrain your excitement.” Friesian pushed back in his chair. The flexframe hummed as his weight shifted.
“I’m sorry.” Jani felt genuinely contrite. He had looked so proud as he described the terms of her discharge. “I just have a difficult time accepting that I’m being let off the hook.”
“Off the hook for what?” Friesian took a swallow of his black coffee. “The missing-movement charge is a harsh one. You’re losing half your pension, many of your benefits, and if not for the medical aspects, you’d be facing a dishonorable discharge. Hell, they’re even letting you go out a captain—they had every right to bust you to lieutenant!” Dark circles rimmed his eyes, and his skin had greyed. He looked as drained as Hals.
It’s the pressure of their jobs. Had to be. It couldn’t have anything to do with the fact they worked with her. Could it? She looked at her hands. They had grown so cold that the nail beds looked blue. “It’s not that I’m not grateful. But compared to some of the things I’ve gone through in the past few years, this didn’t make the top one hundred. I expected . . . much worse.”
“Well.” Friesian got up and walked across the room to the vend coolers. “The only thing you have on your plate now besides the hearing is to provide some info to Colonel Chandra Veda. She’s the SIB investigator assigned to your case.” He patted his pockets in search of a vend token. “I pledged your cooperation in some other investigations she’s closing out. She just wants some information about Rauta Shèràa Base. She also mentioned some questions about Emil Burgoyne.”
“Borgie.” Jani looked toward the window. The reflection of the bright sun on the lake made her films draw and her eyes water, forcing her to squint. “We called him Borgie.”
“Borgie had problems with Neumann, from what I could glean from your ServRec. Some were rather serious.”
“Neumann pushed him. He enjoyed tormenting him.”
“He pushed him into at least one assault on a superior officer.”
“Trumped-up charge.” Well, not really. Jani had helped Borgie wash Neumann’s blood out of his short-sleeve herself.
“Borgie admitted to having an affair with his corporal. Nothing trumped-up there.”
“Yolan Cray.” Jani could see them now, the short, dark-haired Borgie and the willowy blond Yolan. “At Rauta Shèràa Base, a good-looking body belonged to whichever member of base command laid claim to it. Yolan was attractive. She went to Borgie for protection, and things took off from there.”
Friesian’s lip curled. “He worked the situation to his advantage, you mean?”
Jani recalled the light in Yolan’s eyes the day she showed Jani a ring Borgie had given her. It hadn’t been expensive—Borgie had his pay docked so many times, he barely cleared enough to cover his incidentals. A plain silver band—you’d think he’d given her the Commonwealth Mint. “They loved one another. Maybe to you, it was a threat to order and discipline. You have a different measuring stick against which to judge it. To me, it came as a relief. At least it was clean.”
Friesian plugged his token into a cooler slot and removed a sandwich. “You can say things like that to me. It won’t go beyond these walls. But keep your opinions to yourself when you talk to Veda—she tends to be a little straight-laced.”
“I’m glad she can afford to be.” Jani wedged her hands beneath her thighs to warm them. “I assume you’re going to sit next to me when I talk to her, too.”
Friesian tore the wrapping off his sandwich and tossed it into the trashzap. “You’re damned right,” he said, as the polycoat paper flashed, then flamed to powder.
Chapter 20
Jani checked in at FT after her meeting with Friesian, and found the desk pool scrubbed and straightened to its former glory. She finished editing her report back to its earlier pristine state, and forwarded it to Hals’s system on a delay that would guarantee it wouldn’t be opened until the colonel herself was at her desk to read it. She checked out for the day to sounds of Vespucci singing along with an opera recording someone had inserted into systems. He proved a remarkably sound tenor. Jani considered sticking her head in his office and recommending he transfer to the Entertainment Corps, but after some thought, she decided against it. Unaccustomed restraint on her part. She felt extremely pleased with herself, as though she’d passed a grueling test.
She returned to her rooms to find her comport message light fibrillating. A clerk from the Misty Center confirmed that they’d transmitted her communication to her parents, and that her salary account had been billed accordingly. Since she had yet to receive any salary, she owed them money. They had therefore applied to garnish her account, but she was not to worry since this was standard practice and would not reflect negatively on her credit rating.
“I didn’t know I had a credit rating.” Jani erased that message and went on to the next one.
“Hello, Captain!” Sam Duong appeared much happier than he had earlier, which probably meant his supervisor was somewhere else. “Can we meet tomorrow? I have news that may interest you.” He fiddled with an object below display level. “I have entered the time into my handheld. I hope twelve up is fine. We can meet in front of the SIB. Please reply if not possible; otherwise, I will assume you will be there.”
“Damn.” Jani held her finger on the response pad, and debated sacrificing Lucien’s soccer game. She would have liked to barge in on Duong and see what he information he had. And to see how he was doing. Whether he enjoyed his shrimp tea. If he remembered anything now, rather than just knew.
“Lucien would kill me.” He had, after all, sacrificed his relationship with Sports and Activities in order to bring her Niall Pierce. Pierce, who kept turning up. Who followed her. Who stared into his beer like a man with a rip in his soul. Yes, she needed to meet Pierce.
She hit the pad for the last message.
“Hello, Jani.” Pimentel glowered at her. “You missed your appointment today—”
Damn again.
“—so I’ve rescheduled you for tomorrow at sixteen up. Please be sure to stop by, or else I will track you down using every tool at my disposal.” The display blanked, leaving Jani to stare at the slow fade to standby blue until a glance at her clock told her she needed to get moving.
She showered, then donned her base casuals for the first time. The trainers were dull white, with removable sock liners. The T-shirt fitted more snugly than she’d have liked, and the shorts, while attractive and comfortable, were above all, short. She couldn’t recall the last time she’d shown her legs in public. Baggy clothing and no makeup had been her uniform of the day for almost two decades. Unattached women attracted unwanted attention in the places in which she’d been forced to earn her keep. She’d learned to avoid trouble.
But that isn’t an issue anymore. That sort of trouble had become something to welcome, to embrace with open arms. Somebody nice and safe, I think, like a test pilot. Much more dependable than any I-Com lieutenant o
f her acquaintance.
Just before she left, she buzzed the Misty Center and asked if any messages had arrived for her. It was ridiculous to expect a reply so soon. If nothing else, the laws of physics dictated against it. But it didn’t hurt to make sure she had given them the right code. Just as it didn’t hurt to turn her comport on its base so that she could see whether the message light blinked as soon as she opened the door.
Jani found a seat on the end of the half-filled bank of bleachers, away from the bulk of the crowd. Both teams still warmed up. She could see Lucien’s towhead flash in the sun as he trotted downfield and lifted a soft pass to one of his teammates. He spotted her as soon as he turned upfield, and froze just long enough to catch a return off the side of his head. Amid rude laughter, he ran to the sideline.
“Where were you?” His face was flushed, his blue-and-gold striped jersey already sweat-soaked. “I waited by the field house for over an hour.”
“I had things to do.”
“Like what?” Before she could answer, he jerked his head toward the opposite sideline. “He’s over there.”
Jani looked across the field. Pierce stood near the cooler bank. He wore base casuals—his arms and legs were as tanned and hardened as his face. Sunshades shielded his eyes—Jani couldn’t tell whether he watched them or not.
Lucien glared at her. “He was standing there when I arrived. He took off his shades to watch me stretch. He hasn’t budged. I don’t know whether to water him or ask him out.”
Jani wrinkled her nose. “He’s not your type.”
“Ha-ha. Laugh, I thought I’d die.” He wiped his face with the hem of his jersey, flashing an attractive expanse of flat, tanned stomach in the process. “I should have fitted you with audio pickup. He’s the wound-up type that blurts incriminating details, I know it.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“You will? Good. I’ll tell Nema you said that. Maybe it’ll buy me a ten-minute head start.”
Jani watched Lucien fidget with his sleeves. It would have been a stretch to call him jumpy. Concerned, more like. Definitely concerned. “What are you so worried about?”
Lucien bent close to her ear. “Because before I thought he was just a hard-ass, but now I know he’s strange, and you can’t predict what strange will do.” One of his teammates called to him. “Don’t let your guard down.” He loped back to the middle of the field to join the referee and the Specials’ captain.
The Specials, clad in plain green, won the token flip and elected to receive. Both teams huddled, broke, then spread out in formation. The starting whistle blew. The crowd whooped as the ball sailed.
Jani followed the arc of the ball’s flight. As she did, she caught a flicker of motion out of the corner of her eye.
“Excuse me.” Pierce brushed by her, stepping over her bench seat to the one behind. His voice fit him—rough, middle-pitch, nasal. Victorian accent. He wasn’t much taller than she was. Solid muscle, though—the bench creaked when he sat.
Jani waited.
“He’s not your type.”
Jani turned and looked up at him. Against the ruddy, worn skin of his face, his scar glinted like something polished and new. “Are you talking to me?”
“Pretty boy.” Pierce’s sunshades obscured his eyes—even up close, Jani couldn’t tell whether he looked at the field or at her. “He knows it, too.”
“So do you, apparently.”
“What makes you say that, Jani?”
“He told me you’ve been watching him.”
“Bugs him, does it?” Pierce grinned. Nobody would ever call him pretty. “Good to know.”
“You did it on purpose?”
“Pretty Boy’s been asking questions about me. I traced back his comport calls.”
“You have a search lock on your name?” One that could override any protections Lucien with all his I-Com knowledge had most assuredly put in place. “Isn’t that excessive?”
“I have a right to know if people are talking about me.”
“Sounds like you’re concerned with what they’re saying.” Jani searched Pierce’s face for a twitch of muscle, any movement that would betray fear or nerves. “Now why would that be?”
Pierce hesitated. “Because they’d miss the point.” His grating voice dropped to a whisper. “They wouldn’t understand.” He removed his shields to rub his eyes, then quickly shoved them back on. “Take your Service record,” he said, speaking normally. “Anyone reading it would assume you to be a willful, arrogant, insubordinate screwup. Would they be right?”
Jani glanced toward the field in time to see Lucien look in her direction. He almost missed a pass in the process—one of his teammates yelled at him to wake up. “To an extent.” She tried to think of something to say that would drag the conversation back on course without spooking Pierce. “Sounds like you’ve been asking questions, too.”
Pierce crawled down from his seat to the open space next to her. “Actually, I have a few that only you can answer.” His voice turned lighter, sharper. “You’ve been in and out of the PT ward as much as I have lately.” His bare knee brushed hers as he leaned toward her, the reddish hair glinting like finest wire. “What’s the verdict?”
Jani edged down the board away from him, rubbing the place where their skin had touched. “You read my ServRec. You tell me.”
“Well, there are your physical difficulties, caused by your hybridization. The rumored bioemotional problems—same cause.” Pierce’s Victorian twang had softened. Now he sounded thoughtful. Scholarly. “Do you remember the transport explosion?”
“According to my ServRec, I wasn’t on the transport.”
“I’ve heard that rumor—I don’t believe it. I don’t think Shroud could have gotten his hands on you any other way.” Pierce tilted his head. Jani still couldn’t tell what he looked at. “‘Hurled headlong flaming from th’ ethereal sky, with hideous ruin and combustion.’”
What? Jani felt a gnaw of curiosity. Coupled with her wariness, it made for an interesting combination, like admiring the snake while waiting for it to strike. “I don’t think you got that from my ServRec.”
Pierce cracked a smile. His scar contorted his curved upper lip, exposing the jagged point of his eyetooth. “Milton. Paradise Lost. Book One—the expulsion of Lucifer from Heaven.” One shoulder jerked. “I wasn’t drawing any comparison. The imagery just seemed particularly apt.” His head dropped. No problem determining where he looked now. “Your arms and legs don’t look different. They’re the same color. Same shape.”
I should have worn the damned pants. And a long-sleeved shirt. “The leg had to be switched out earlier this year,” Jani snapped as she crossed her arms in front of her chest. “The arm’s new, too.”
Pierce detected her annoyance, and pulled away from her. “I didn’t mean to be forward. Just making an observation.” He nodded toward the field just as the crowd noise ramped. “Pretty Boy just made goal.”
Jani watched Lucien run across the field, arm pumping. She took her cue from his display—times like this didn’t call for subtlety. “You’re framing an innocent man for documents theft. Why?”
Pierce drew close again. “If you ever got to know me, you’d see we have a lot in common.” He held one hand in front of him. “‘Full of doubt I stand, whether I should repent me now of sin by me done and occasioned, or rejoice much more that much more good thereof will spring.’” The open hand closed to a fist and lowered to his knee. “Book Twelve. The archangel Michael shows Adam the future of the human race just before he’s cast out of the Garden, the eventual triumph of good over evil. Adam is comforted. He realizes his suffering has a purpose.” His voice grew harsher, scolding. “You should read more, Kilian. It soothes the soul.”
He just admitted he set up Sam Duong. It wasn’t the sort of admission that was worth a damn legally—for one thing, she didn’t think Pierce was emotionally stable enough to testify. But it was enough for her. “Do you really believe that it’s wor
th destroying a man’s reputation to save yours and Mako’s?”
“What’s one man’s reputation? We have a way of life to protect.”
“You broke the law at J-Loop RC when you forced out the Family hacks. Fine—nothing wrong with that. But now you’re attacking an innocent. You call that honorable?”
“For the good that thereof will spring.” Pierce thumped his fist against his knee. “Yes, I do.” He flinched, muttered a curse, and reached into the pocket of his shorts, pulling out a handcom. “I have to go.” He muttered a few words into the device, then stuffed it back in his pocket. “I can send you a reading list, if you’d like. To your office or your TOQ suite, whichever you prefer.” He stood and nodded to her. “Let me know.” He looked as though he practiced for the parade ground as he strode away, back straight and arms swinging, around the end zone and down the steep incline that sloped from the Yards toward the base proper.
The game continued past sunset, the usual combination of blown calls, sloppy play, and outright confusion. The Wonderboys, unfortunately, weren’t. Final score: five to four in favor of the Specials.
Jani joined the crowd of players and spectators that milled around the coolers. She found Lucien standing by the ice dispenser, scooping melt out of the drain with a dispo and pouring it over his head. “You had a good game. Scored twice.”
“Three times. Glad to see you paid attention.” He slipped into soft-spoken French. “I saw him take off. What happened?”
“Nothing. He got a call.”
“Did he say anything interesting?”
“He thinks we have a lot in common.” Jani filled a dispo with ice chips and popped one into her mouth. “He thinks I should read more.”
“Strange—I knew it. Anything about Duong?”
“He admitted he framed him.” He seemed to have admitted other things, too—Jani just couldn’t figure out what they were.
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