Crossing the Line

by Karen Traviss

  The isenj had landed, and he had cut them down. The last landing had nearly cost his isan her life.

  He had no intention of letting invaders touch the soil of Bezer’ej again. He decided Shan might have felt the same way.

  She should still have told him.

  Actaeon’s armory was aft of the habitat section and Lindsay needed Okurt’s security approval to enter it on her own.

  He handed the manual key-stick over to her with a sullen expression. “Here,” he said. “I’ve even cleared the weapons technicians out. Rayat’s boss’s boss has spoken to my boss’s boss so I’m playing nice. But let me tell you I think it stinks.”

  Lindsay wasn’t cut out for this keeny-meeny stuff, as Becken called it. She was a team player. She liked cooperating with fellow officers and delegating to subordinates and having meetings. She wasn’t Shan.

  She clenched the key in her hand, and suddenly realized she hadn’t thought of David once that day.

  “I’ll take responsibility for this,” she said. “Wess’har seem only to want to punish those directly involved in anything. Executing Parekh saved the Thetis mission.”

  Okurt exploded briefly. “Oh Christ, don’t go all frigging Titus Oates on me, Lin.” He shook his head. “I’m driving this bloody tub. I don’t think that gets me off the hook with the wess’har.”

  “We have to be ready to do this.”

  “If you’re thinking of using serious ordnance on anyone’s planet, we’re going to have to get out of here bloody fast afterwards. What about Umeh Station, for Chrissakes?”

  Lindsay felt a pang of guilt. Okurt had no idea what he didn’t know. Her strategy ended at destruction. His had to take account of the safety of civvy and service personnel, a half-finished base and a ship.

  “It’s a priority.”

  “Yeah, that’s been made clear to me. Just make sure we get this tech.”

  “We will. Rayat obviously knows what he’s doing.”

  “Lin, love, you’re a good managerial officer but sometimes you really haven’t got a clue.” Okurt turned to go, but then he stopped. “What happens if they crack our coded ITX? We can’t encrypt.”

  “Maybe they already have.”

  He strode off. Lindsay stood in the armory lobby staring out at the space where Okurt had been. When you were stuck halfway up a cliff, all you could hope for was to scramble higher. Wess’har, isenj and ussissi didn’t encode, encrypt or play spook games: if they were monitoring all the ITX channels, they would be hearing some nonsensical conversations. She hoped their cultural ignorance of cryptography would buy some confidentiality.

  The weapons compartment looked remarkably dull considering that it was Armageddon’s supermarket. She waited for Bennett and Rayat to join her.

  “Come on, then,” said Rayat behind her. He was very good at appearing on cue. Voices carried in passages. “Let’s see the kit.”

  “What are we doing?”

  “Assessing our options. For when we have a target.”

  “To do what?”

  “Asset denial.” Rayat was consulting his handheld. Then Bennett stepped over the hatch coaming into the lobby. “Let’s have your excellent sergeant’s view of what we can transport.”

  Some of the bombs looked like cartoon bombs, with pointed noses and red stripes. And some didn’t. Some of the racked ordnance here looked like IT equipment, anonymous and box-shaped. Rayat was messaging rapidly from that handheld and then reading, his lips almost moving. Then he looked up, evidently relieved.

  “I want to know if we can get at least six ERDs down to the surface in the Once-Onlies,” he said.

  Bennett looked at Lindsay for a nod. He got it. Lindsay was trying to recall what ERDs were.

  “Yes,” said Bennett.

  “Expand on that.”

  “Yes, we can do it. They’re about twenty or thirty kilos each. If you’re asking should we, I’d say no.”

  “I’m not asking.”

  Lindsay finally remembered what ERDs were. She knew them as neutron bombs, not enhanced radiation devices. “Oh no, not that,” she said. “No.”

  Rayat walked over to racks with handles that pulled down and out, like mortuary drawers made of steel bars. He pressed the handle and they powered open with a pneumatic ee-uurrrr sound.

  There were just little things inside, smaller than Lindsay remembered from her weapons engineering ad-qual course. They were about the size of an old-style A-Triple-F fire extinguisher, no more than a meter long, blunt-nosed. They looked exactly the same as the BNO “Beano” bombs, anti-biohaz neutralization ordnance, except for the turquoise-colored bands on the screw-plate. And they were the same, except for the BNO’s cobalt-salting component. Beanos had been banned for Earth-side use, but they were stand-by worst-scenario kit in sealed environments.

  It was all deceptively banal. They were stock items and they were ultra-shielded, safe to handle and easy to use. It was just being on the receiving end of one that made them nasty.

  “You can’t use neutron weapons on Bezer’ej,” she said. “Or Beanos.”

  “Why?” asked Rayat. “If we need to destroy organic material, this is the best way to do it.”

  Lindsay thought of Shan. She thought of her own agenda of assassination, not retrieval. She had no idea if Shan would succumb to radiation alone. “It’s a landlord bomb. Kill the tenants and the woodworm, leave the building standing.”

  “Ah, that’s if you need to leave the building standing. We don’t. Not necessarily. This is still a damn big bomb with a kiloton yield.”

  “We can’t deploy tacticals and expect the wess’har not to go apeshit.”

  “And they’re not going to go apeshit if we trash the place with conventional ordnance like FAEs?” Rayat looked at Bennett as if to tell him to clear off. It wasn’t the sort of thing that worked well with Royal Marines. Bennett just stood there, boots planted in the deck.

  “You want me to thin out, ma’am?” asked Bennett, looking at Rayat, lips pressed tight.

  “Yes, go and have a cuppa,” she said. It wasn’t fair to burden Bennett with the detail. It put him in the position of having to judge if her orders were reasonable. She was pretty sure they wouldn’t be.

  She dogged the hatch closed after him.

  “What’s your problem with this?” said Rayat. “What’s the point of getting hold of some of the biotech if you leave the rest where it is?”

  “I find nukes a bit extreme. Maybe it’s a girl thing.”

  “Why so squeamish?”

  “Well, putting aside the reaction of the Wess’ej armed forces, it’s an act of war, whether there’s a lab facility on Christopher or not.”

  “So is landing in someone else’s sovereign territory with armed troops.”

  “And the environmental damage will really provoke the matriarchs.”

  “And you think massively destructive conventional ordnance is more ecofriendly, do you? Ask the German Federation or Vietnam. Or the Afghani Collective.” Rayat slapped his palm flat on the dull lovat casing, and Lindsay flinched irrationally. “This is the whole point of ERDs. Localized tactical kill. You wait forty-eight hours and then you can walk in.”

  “You can’t walk in after a BNO’s sprayed cobalt all over the place. Not for a few years, if I recall my course notes.”

  “All we need is a big scouring blast and a big burn and whatever survives that will be cleaned up by the neutron emission. We don’t really need Beanos.”

  “You know a lot about this.”

  “If you’d worked on biotech projects, you’d want to know the fire drill too. But a straight ERD will do the job just fine.” He must have caught the distaste on her face. “I can do all this. You leave the ordnance to me. We can leave your Royal Marines out of the messy ethics too.”

  Rayat was right. It was all chilly logic, and Lindsay was kidding herself if she thought that simply removing Shan Frankland was the end of the matter, or that her arrest would not provoke some reaction from
the matriarchs. They wouldn’t care how it was done. The legal niceties of ethical and unethical weapons were a hypocritical human preoccupation.

  If there was a separate source of this contagion, then it had to be destroyed too.

  “You sure you know what…um…Spook HQ is planning to do with your sample of Shan Frankland?” said Lindsay.

  Rayat nodded. “Sticking it somewhere safe, in case we ever need it really badly.”

  “That makes sense,” said Lindsay. The hell it did: the intelligence services employed no more paragons of virtue than any other large organization.

  Rayat could sterilize Bezer’ej, if he was right about the location. But she would eradicate Shan Frankland.

  “Okurt’s furious,” said Lindsay.

  “What’s your phrase? Face aft and salute. He’ll carry out his orders.”

  “I would have preferred a way of keeping him and Actaeon out of this.”

  “Do you really think the wess’har will give a toss about which monkey did what?”

  “Yes,” said Lindsay, and she thought of the moment when she dutifully cleared up a surprisingly small pool of blood and body-bagged Surendra Parekh, executed by—no, not by Shan, by Aras. Two hollow-tip enhanced 9mm rounds to the head, and that was the end of it. Dissecting a live alien child should have got them all killed. It hadn’t. Morality was different out here. “They care about personal responsibility.”

  She followed Rayat out of the armory and locked the hatch again. They went their separate ways.

  Neither of them had discussed the obvious fact: even if the wess’har didn’t hold Actaeon to account, they would certainly come after Dr. Mohan Rayat and Commander Lindsay Neville. And they would be angrier than anyone had seen them—at least since the erasure of Mjat.

  They were his friends.

  In Constantine, Aras had seen them born, and he had seen them grow, and he had seen them marry. They had raised families. He had eaten at their tables. And he had also watched them die.

  He knew he would watch them die again, and he wondered if it would really matter how that came about, naturally or hastened by conflict.

  Eddie was asleep on the sofa that Shan had sacrificed as a temporary bed for him. He still couldn’t get used to the idea that Aras and Shan saw the cover as brilliant blue when all he could see was white. Aras stretched out on a sek mattress on the terrace, hands meshed behind his head, staring up at the stars and waiting for Shan to return. It had been an unpleasantly challenging day even by comparison with recent events.

  The sound of familiar heavy boots carried on the still air and then became slower and softer as Shan walked carefully past Eddie and through the house to the terrace.

  “I bet you’re bloody angry with me,” Shan said. She stood over Aras, hands on hips. “Go ahead. Bawl me out.”

  He couldn’t pick up any scent from her: that was odd, and it threw him for a few seconds. “I can’t be angry with you,” he said. “But I’m angry that you didn’t tell me what you were thinking of doing, and only because we have shared so much that I expected you to tell me your plans.”

  Shan knelt down and kissed his forehead, more like a benevolent parent than a lover. “If I’d told you, and you tried to talk me out of it, I’d have had a very hard time.”

  “But you would still have done it.”

  “Sorry, but yes.”

  “Opposition has never concerned you before.”

  “Yeah, but you’re different.” Her lips moved as if she was about to say something, but she paused. It was one of those few times when she looked completely vulnerable. Then she braced her shoulders visibly, composed her expression, and again became someone else entirely. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you what I was doing. Fancy a quickie, then?”

  “It might wake Eddie.”

  “Eddie’s been here three nights and I’m getting a bit restless.”

  “Then we will keep the noise down.”

  Human ecstasy was a more intense and overwhelming sensation than the wess’har state of our, but it was fleeting. It was still a fine experience. Shan fell asleep briefly, head on his shoulder, and he thought about Constantine.

  The news would devastate the colonists.

  Shan woke with a start. “Bugger. What time is it?”

  “You’ve only been sleeping for a matter of minutes.”

  She sat up and raked her fingers through her hair before tying it back into a tail. “I’m going to head back to Constantine next week and get them used to the idea that they’re leaving.”

  “I’ll do it.”

  “No, it’s my call. You can come too, but I do the business.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they’ll hate the person who does it, and that won’t even shift the needle for me. But they’re your friends. Besides, it was my idea.”

  Aras let out a long sigh that he had learned more than a century before from Ben Garrod. “They have worked so very hard.”

  “You can’t think that way, sweetheart. This is a long game.”

  “You seem to be accepting c’naatat very well lately.”

  “Best thing that ever happened to me.”

  “A change of view.”

  “It just dawned on me that you were right. The more injury I’m exposed to, the stronger I get.” She looked at her hands and flexed them, sending not only blue and violet light sparkling through her fingers, but also reds and greens and golds. “And I can control this now.” She gave him a big grin, and that wasn’t very Shan. “Can you detect any scent from me?”

  “Only your female enthusiasm.”

  “I’ve got my scent reactions under control too. Makes life a lot easier. I don’t accidentally depose matriarchs now. Hey, I might even be able to play poker with Mestin. Can you imagine how much better I would be as a copper these days? Doesn’t bear thinking about.”

  She looked as if she wanted him to share her satisfaction. He had hoped she would say that her delight at being host to the parasite was connected to him, but it seemed it was all about how much more efficient it would make her for her mission in life, whatever that was. She never said what she felt about the inescapably permanent partnership with him.

  It was foolish. Wess’har only cared about what was done, not what was intended: and she certainly treated him as if she cared for him, even if her manner was brisk. It was just the nagging little human part of him that wanted reassurance. He tried not to listen to its insecure voice. He knew that the unique biochemical bonds oursan generated were as strong for her as they were for him. It was enough.

  “If you were on your own, you might feel differently,” he said.

  “Sorry. I wasn’t making light of what you’ve been through. I just try to make the best of a bad job.” She screwed her eyes shut. “That’s not a criticism. But isn’t that what you’re doing too?”

  “Making the best of a bad job?”

  “Well, you don’t have much choice either. I’m the only female c’naatat around.”

  “Did you ever ask why you’re the only female c’naatat? It was a choice. I made it.”

  Shan stared at him and was silent. Not having those scent cues made it hard now to work out what was happening. He fell back on human body language. That didn’t help much either.

  “I’ve hurt you and I really didn’t mean to,” she said. Her voice was level, her expression neutral. “I’m still working out what I am right now. That’s not easy when you’re used to being certain about yourself.”

  “I have experienced this, remember.”

  “But you didn’t enjoy it.”

  “There were a few compensations, but not many.”

  “I’m finding it quite invigorating.”

  “You’re a solitary person. I had family and friends and I lost them all. I’m sure it looks very different to you.”

  “Ouch,” said Shan. But she didn’t expand on that, and there was still no scent from her at all. She got to her feet, pulled on her clothes and went back into the
house.

  He regretted offending her. But there was no point apologizing for saying what was true and obvious.

  Eddie was scheduled to return to Actaeon in the morning. It seemed appropriate to have a final dinner with him: Shan had no idea when—or if—he would ever be back, despite the fact that he seemed remarkably able to talk everyone into allowing him free access.

  And she still had a task to set him. She hadn’t thought of a way to ask him to collect tissue samples from the isenj, or even how he might do it, but she’d think of something when the time came. There was always the risk that he would be offended and she would lose his goodwill and with it his propaganda: but the stakes were high. A working bio-deterrent against isenj would mean peace for the bezeri without further lives being lost or resources being committed.

  And Eddie wasn’t the only one whose heart and mind she feared she might risk losing.

  Aras wasn’t actually ignoring her, but he did seem preoccupied. She knew she’d wounded him. It upset her, but it had been necessary.

  Sod it, he was wess’har. He had to be used to females going their own way on things. A year ago he was a miracle of creation’s diversity, a rare kindred spirit: now he was a partner who had opinions on how she should do her job and who—to be frank—got on her proverbial tits at times. He was turning into a regular man.

  “Are you listening, Shan?” said Eddie, drumming his fingers on the table.

  “Sorry. Miles away.” She glanced at Aras, who was topping up plates and cups, and caught his eye. There was no hint of anger: he simply gave her a slight smile—the best approximation of a human one that he ever managed—and added a few slices of bread to her plate.

  “I was saying that the isenj stand to gain from a human presence on Umeh. They’re really interested in terraforming.”

  “Well, they’ve fucked their own environment,” Shan said. “So why stop there?”

  “For them, it isn’t actually devastated,” Eddie said. “Just overcrowded. They have to spend a lot on maintaining it, but they do manage to feed and breathe with a certain degree of ease.”

  “They destroyed everything they didn’t need for their own use,” Aras said suddenly “It’s a world that revolves around their needs.”