“Me and a married man? Yeah, right. I’m old enough and self-respecting enough not to go there.”
“You and a man on the verge of divorce, you mean. He and his wife have been estranged for many years. As you well know.” She scooped up his towel with her foot and launched it at him. Still crouched, the act of catching it almost unbalanced him.
“If you took self-defense seriously, I might actually have time for a love life, Mr. Ambassador,” she said. “That and if we could stay in one place for a while.” She pointed to the bathroom entry off to the side and nudged his carry bag with her foot. “Grab a shower, put on your casual clothes and meet me at the shooting range in thirty.”
“Weapons prac?” he asked. She nodded. He groaned. “I hate firing guns more than I hate kicking leather pads.”
“You hate cauliflower too, but I’ve seen you eat it.”
“Because it’s good for me.”
“So is firing guns. So is kicking leather bags. Firing range, thirty minutes. You’re a minute late, I get an hour’s bonus pay.”
“Yes, boss,” he said, rising. “And when we’re done, remind me of something?”
“What’s that?”
“Never to pry into your love life again.”
April 14th , 3014, Old Earth Calendar
8
“Can your arm be repaired?” Buoun asked Vazak as he sat beside her bed in the Assured’s C-deck medcenter.
In the corner of the white room, a human “doctor” observed two Tluaan medtechs while they stood at a counter, preparing the treatment for Vazak’s injuries. The repair-cell injection was something the Humans could not reverse engineer simply by watching—not without access to the morphology and programming of the cells within the injector. In Buoun’s opinion, the doctor and her staff had performed an admirable job treating Vazak’s non-Human physiology in the wake of the Moon-Surface violence. But he was sure that neither Vazak nor the medtechs would allow any blood or tissue collection from the warrior from this point forward.
The warrior turned her head toward him and flattened her ears in friendly welcome. She lay on her back. Although the bed was doing its best to contain her, her feet poked from the far end, and both shoulders spilled over the sides. Her right arm was strapped to her side now, its stump wrapped tightly in bandages. It had been severed just above the elbow. A second dressing, square and hand-sized, adhered to her chest where the laser burst must have nicked her. Two tubes protruded from her intact left arm, another from beneath the sheet which the Humans had only draped across her lower body and legs. He had only ever seen Vazak in a combat suit, of course, but her upper body was now undressed, its fine orange fur and defined musculature naked to the air.
Buoun itched to drag the sheet higher, to afford her greater dignity. But such a gesture would likely be even less dignifying, the type of thing an adult child would do for an elderly parent, or a lover for their mate. Besides, Vazak seemed unconcerned about her exposure. Buoun supposed warrior minds worked differently to the normal person’s … No, he knew they did.
“The arm will regrow,” she told him. Her voice was husky but strong. “You honor me with your visit.”
“You are my sibling’s friend,” he replied, recalling Vazak’s earlier role as his sister’s bodyguard and chief of security. “And an important member of our delegation.”
“I’m grateful for your interest.” She cleared rust from her throat. “And you, Envoy? And our councillors? How do you all fare?”
“I am unharmed, as are they. Hnnnh, Councillor Pi does have some bruising on her shoulder where they bumped her into the hatchway as they … Never mind. She is okay.”
Vazak siss-ed in quiet humor. “‘Okay?’ I recognize that Human word. You know I’m not Human, don’t you?”
“That is fairly clear,” Buoun said with a chuckle of his own. “Things are so chaotic these days, I constantly forget which language I should be speaking.”
“I like the word ‘okay’,” she told him. “It expresses much in a short double syllable. With the software you provided, I have mastered many English words and phrases. Hello, how are you? I am fine. Water, please. Fire. Cease fire. This is fun. Wait for my signal.”
She had pronounced the last word shiknal, but he wasn’t motivated to correct her.
She added another phrase, drawing a shocked look from the Human doctor. “Damn it to hell, you pissant hackers.”
“I … am sure I did not teach you the last one.”
“No. Corporal Westermann taught me that the first time I was on Assured.”
“Hnnh,” Buoun replied. “Then she is a very good teacher. Just don’t say that around senior personnel. Or angry Human warriors.”
He glanced over his shoulder as the medtechs approached. They were carrying a tray of new swabs and dressings plus the injector. It was quite a large injector. To make space for them, he stood.
“You can stay,” said the Human doctor—her nametag read Nkembe. Her teeth were very white as she smiled at him. “Drag your chair to the end of the bed.”
Buoun did so, fascinated again by the differences in Human interactions and dynamics. In another setting, a Human would have carried the chair for him. And yet her non-verbal signals and her tone hinted at a kind of professional friendliness, rather than superiority.
He did as suggested, moving the chair to a position past Vazak’s feet as the medtechs discussed the best places for the series of injections.
“You should grow a serviceable limb in thirty cycles,” one of them told Vazak as they unwrapped the Human bandages from her stump. Exposed, the amputation wound was wet and red and angry. Buoun didn’t know if Vazak had been drugged or not, but she showed no sign of pain as they inspected the injury. The other medtech raised the injector and said, “I would expect full hand function again in seventy cycles.” Vazak made a dismissive noise as if they were discussing nothing more important than reupholstering a chair, or repairing an old pair of shoes.
She had raised her head, watching him, Buoun realized and flushed with mild embarrassment. “Envoy Buoun’nyimiun’t, you’re handling this well; most non-warriors or non-medtechs would whimper and faint at the sight of an injury like this.”
“Perhaps I am getting used to new sights and new situations.”
“Especially bad ones,” Vazak said with a touch of unexpected empathy.
“I cannot argue against the truth of that.”
“The Human medtech tells me the majority of her crew-fellows are updeck from here, at a ceremony remembering their dead. Our domain lost no one. But I would like to send a message of respect to the family of Warrior Gheff.”
“The Ocean warrior?”
“The same. If I state it now, would you honor both Gheff and me by sending it for me?”
Buoun adjusted settings on his wristwrap, readying it to record. “I am ready when you are ready.”
Vazak gave her message in halting tones, while the medtechs injected her arm in six places and treated the stump, and the Human doctor looked on.
Once Vazak was finished, Buoun found the appropriate channel through which to send the message, attached an explanatory note, and sent it. The medtechs dressed the stump again and checked her physiological readings. They told her they would be back in three fifteenths to check on her again.
They left with Peacekeeper Bradstock escorting them. While the doctor Nkembe got busy with incomprehensible data on her workstation, Buoun found he had an opportunity for private conversation with Vazak. He wanted to ask, Do you think we should be doing this? Should we still be lobbying the Humans to take us to Kh’het? Should we not just ask them to leave us to our own petty squabbles? But he did not speak these thoughts aloud. She might report him. She might lose respect for him. Such a conversation could not happen.
Feeling acutely alone, he stood and tugged his tunic straight. “If you need anything, please call for me. The Humans have created a tiny suite for me, not so far from here.”
She
had raised her upper torso from the bed, studying the dressings on her injured arm. She asked him, “You still want to go?”
“To Kh’het?”
“Yes.”
“I … Yes, I will go. If the Humans even agree to take us now.”
I might hope they do not. But if they do, I need to be a part of it.
“Braver than a mining surveyor should be,” she said with ears flattened, indicating mild jest. “If we go, Envoy, would you put in a recommendation for me? Would you ask them to take me too?” She indicated her half-arm. “I’ll get this back again. But I’d like the inconvenience to have been worth something.”
With the doctor glancing at them, frankly curious as to what they were saying, Buoun met Vazak’s gaze. Many might say her effectiveness as a warrior had been diminished, but Buoun thought she could still fire weapons with one hand. More importantly to him, she had fought alongside Humans and demonstrated an affinity with and affection for them. In that way, he was not so alone.
“Yes,” he said. “The next time I speak with Councillor Pi, I will do exactly as you ask.”
The memorial service was over. Most people had left the Rec Hall. The lights remained dimmed. The only Assured crew left in the room were the honor guard of Assured’s last four Peacekeepers, standing with rigid backs and rigid faces behind the row of gloss-black coffins—and the two able spacers who would transport the coffins to whatever cold storage they’d be consigned to. The spacers waited back by the exit. Ana glanced over her shoulder to see Fowler and the other Tacticals pass between them, headed into the passage.
None of her colleagues had seemed interested in the fact that she was staying, lingering at the far end of the second row of chairs. Stines, standing between Chipper and Bradstock, looked away when she returned his stare; his expression conveyed that she had no right to be here for this next part, for their final goodbyes.
Yes, I do. I damn well do.
Bradstock cleared his throat and raised his chin. “For fallen fellows, we beseech whatever gods there be. Grant them rest, grant them reward. To fallen fellows, brave and true, felled by wicked hands and hostile minds, we will not forget you, we bear you in our hearts forever. Fallen fellows, we salute you.”
The escort party barked, “We salute you!”
One by one, they peeled away from their formation, starting with Westermann, ending with Chipper. Each took a few moments to lay a hand on Wepps’s coffin and Chandra’s, to whisper their private farewells or blessings or whatever it was Peacers believed in. All had shining eyes and clenched jaws as they filed past her. Westermann and Bradstock gave her a stiff nod as they went, Stines a glare and muttered imprecation, but Chipper paused long enough to say, “I’ll wait by the door.”
Even with his voice subdued, she could hear him okay, lucky that the damage to her hearing had been temporary, leaving her with nothing more than some irritating tinnitus.
“No need,” she replied.
“I’ll wait anyway.”
She went to Wepps’s casket and lay a hand on it the same way the others had. And why shouldn’t she? The sergeant had been her team leader on two occasions. And he was the reason she was still standing here rather than …
Her mind called up the image—the last thing she wanted to ever see again, the mess of body fragments and pieces of shuttle hatchway spread into the passenger compartment—along with the memory of the stink of it.
She blinked it all away and punched her thigh, forcing concentration, forcing control.
Murmuring, she said, “Sergeant, I just need to get some things straight before you … go wherever you’re going next. I know you think it was my fault I stunned you that time when we were after the Warlord. That was all Hecate, tripping me and making that happen. And I know you hated me calling you sir … sir. But you’re ‘sir’ in my book. You did right by me. You … You did more than right.” She checked around her—no one had come any closer; neither Chipper nor the spacers were looking her way. “You can be damn sure the colonel wouldn’t’ve done that for me. Not Umbrano, not Manolo, definitely not Hecate. Well … maybe Hecate since I helped her in the … Never mind. I guess I’m sayin’ they would’ve been runnin’ out the ramp, not tackling that guy to … to save me. If this is what a Peacekeeper is, if this is what a Peacekeeper does, then you people have a buttload more honor than my people do.” She turned side-on so she could reach Chandra’s coffin with her other hand. “We lost two of you yesterday. Maybe, if you’ll both hang around for a while and help me, I could try to replace you. At least a little bit.” She came to attention the way the Peacekeepers had and jammed a hand against her forehead in salute.
Somehow. Someway. I’ll join the Peacers. And I’ll do something to make your sacrifice worth it, Sgt. Wepps. I promise you that.
She dropped her hand and slouched away from the coffins.
Chipper waited by the door. The Moon-Surface attack had interrupted their drinks the night before. As she approached him, she recalled a term she’d heard in an old Confed movie their Tactical Trainers made them watch over and over.
“Come on, big body,” she told him. “Let’s find the enlisted bar and get seriously shitfaced.”
The scented air that greeted Gregory made him pause in his cabin doorway.
Lilac. Nice.
Grace must have slipped down here and adjusted the settings during the funeral service. After walking him back, she was already in her cabin. Gregory was ready to go say thanks for her thoughtfulness when soft music came drifting from the speakers above him.
Pärt’s Spiegel im Spiegel for Piano and Cello.
“Aha,” he said. Not Grace, but Piers. With a smile, he closed the door and leaned his back against it. Grace might think of aromatherapy, but she’d never lower her musical standards to classical.
He let his eyelids close, while the lilac air and graceful, understated music leeched poison from his soul. Many a time back home in Yajna, he’d selected this very piece before laying his head on Tabitha’s thigh. The combination of her presence and Pärt’s composition had usually been enough to salve his psychological wounds and affronts sustained in diplomatic life.
“No diplomatic crap today, Tabi,” he whispered, trying to imagine the touch of her hands in his hair. “Nothing trivial as that. It was a funeral. Another one.” Opening his eyes, he raised the glass he’d half-filled with scotch in the lounge and took a belt. The whisky was room temp, the way he liked it. And the immediate burn and subsequent spreading warmth felt very, very good. “Everyone on Assured seems to think I’m good at running them. Me, love? I think I’m getting too much practice.”
He bent over his data tablet and called up her image, gave her a smile. Onscreen, she smiled back. “You know, Tabi, I was thinking on the way back here that we should never have come to Suuchaat. Then, goddammit, clear as a town hall bell, I heard you say, ‘If you hadn’t come, you wouldn’t know the danger they pose.’” He paused to sip scotch again and hiss his pleasure, swirling the liquid within the glass, admiring the pattern. He raised it a second time, staring into Tabitha’s clear, green eyes onscreen. “Right as ever.”
A chime sounded, muting Pärt’s music.
“Someone at the door,” he said and swiped his wife’s photo away. He was moving to the cabin intercom when Grace—quick off the mark as always—spoke through it first.
“Boss, your best friend’s here to chat.”
Gregory frowned and flipped on the feed from a hull camera. Buoun stood there with hands clasped, shifting from one foot to another. The hangar deck around him was devoid of people. No one had escorted him here, a sign of the trust the mild-mannered Tlu engendered—even in the wake of other Tluaanto murdering five humans. Gregory pressed the button that activated the ramp, causing Buoun to scamper comically out of the way.
“Come on up,” he told him through the intercom and took another belt of scotch.
Buoun waved acknowledgement at the exterior speaker. Fifteen seconds later, Gre
gory met him in the lounge.
“This is your first time onboard, Buoun. My house, your house, as we say. Drink?”
“Water, please. And thank you.” Buoun looked around him as Gregory filled a glass from the drinks station. “A fine ship.”
“Comfortable enough. Luckily. I wasn’t intending to live in it for such an extended period.” He handed his counterpart his glass. “But then, I didn’t expect an invitation from the Tluaanto.”
Buoun swallowed half his drink and smacked his lips. “An invitation I issued over forty human years ago. We seem to spend much of our life waiting for something to happen. And then many somethings happen in a short space of time.”
Gregory laughed humorlessly. “A universal truth. Noted by many humans over the years.”
“May I sit?”
Gregory indicated the couch at Buoun’s side. “Please.”
He waited while the Tlu slid around the small, semicircular table and onto the seat. Gregory planted his ass on the opposite half-moon table, his scotch beside him. “Forty-two years ago, you signaled us. It hadn’t really sunk in just how long you waited. You, personally. And you must have been very young!”
Buoun tilted his head left. “Young, but not so young. Generally speaking, we live longer than humans.” He winced. “Sss. I wasn’t referring to the recent … Sss. I apologize.”
“All right, Buoun. It’s all right. You caused no offense.”
“I’m glad for that. Very much.”
“In some of our cultures, I would be the one giving offense in this conversation.”
“How?”
“Well, some communities on Centauri and Foucault consider it rude to mention someone’s age. At least in formal relationships.”
“Hoh. Interesting. And you consider our relationship formal. Still?”
“You do not? We are our respective species’ envoys.”
“Envoys who are sharing drink and quiet conversation in a private place.”
Assured (Envoys Book 2) Page 9
