Code of Conduct

by Kristine Smith

  “You have no choice, Doctor!” Another man’s voice. No panic, but you could fuel transports with the anger. “Look at the liver enzymes! When did you ever see values like those!”

  The doctor countered, voice lower, shaky. “Are you sure you calibrated the blood analyzer properly?”

  Silence. Which spoke volumes. “I ran the drug screen,” the angry man finally replied. “She’d been dosed with Ascertane sometime in the past seventy-two hours. Her blood contains metabolite NCH-12. The last bulletin we got stated that if any patient turned up positive for that metabolite, we were to notify the nearest facility chief immediately. Now, Doctor, are you going to call Cal Montoya, or am I?”

  The doctor spoke, his voice softer, words impossible to discern. Jani left Borgie standing by the door and walked back to her bed. Near the headboard, a wheeled IV rack stood like a skeletal sentry. She hefted it, checked it for balance, swung it back and forth like a baseball bat.

  “Heavy, Captain?” Borgie had started poking through the dispos on the low table, wrinkling his nose at what he found.

  “Nope. Under control, Sergeant.” Holding the rack in her right hand, Jani headed for the door. It swept open for her, revealing a larger room, an examination table, lab furniture, and assorted analyzers. The doctor and his angry colleague leaned over a desk, their backs to her, still arguing. The desktop was cluttered with readout cards, sheets of notes, and stacks of textbooks.

  The angry man turned. Jani recognized him. Vaguely. The duty nurse? His eyes widened. He reached out to her just as she swung the rack around.

  Both men wore medwhites. Jani stripped off the doctor’s. Fewer bloodstains. She put them on, then scrounged through the glass-fronted cabinets, uncovering bottles of film former, a white medcoat, scuffed white work shoes. She washed away blood, dressed, refilmed her eyes. Light brown filming. Poor coverage. The greenness shown through—her eyes appeared phosphorescent in the office lighting.

  “You look like a crazy wonko, Captain,” Borgie said dryly as they left the infirmary. “Get the urge to drop ’em and bend over just looking at ya.”

  “Control yourself, Sergeant.” Jani tried to smile, but one look at Borgie’s face stopped her. It had changed in the past few minutes. Blackened in places. Blistered in others. One ear was gone. The peculiar odor that followed the man like a faithful hound had grown stronger. “Am I dying, Borgie?” she asked. “Or am I just cracking up?”

  Her sergeant, her dead sergeant, stared at her through cloudy eyes. Cloudier eyes. His dark brown irises grew milkier as he spoke. “Captain, I can’t help you. It’s all you.” His voice rasped with desperation. “Your questions! Your answers!”

  They paused so Jani could get a drink of water from the hall cooler. After the fifth dispoful, Borgie began to fidget, so Jani reluctantly tossed the cup in the ’zap and fell in behind him. The people they passed in the halls looked at Jani’s clothing, never at her. No one challenged them, or tried to stop them. I mean, me. No one’s tried to stop me. Her sergeant had nothing to worry about. He possessed his own unique brand of camou.

  Good ol’ Borgie, Jani thought as she watched the man’s smoking back. “Sais-tu ou nous allons, Sergent Burgoyne?” she asked him. Do you know where we are going?

  “Mais oui, ma Capitaine.” Borgie looked back at her as he spoke. His other ear, along with most of his cheek, had burned away. White and yellow blisters glistened in the light.

  The acid rose once more in Jani’s throat. She recognized the smell now.

  Borgie led her through an anteroom and into an office. Expensive paintings. View of a lake. Nighttime. Moon reflecting on rippling water. Jani expected to see a man sitting at the desk, but instead, she saw a woman. A friend. Dead, of course, like Borgie. Funny how that fact seemed to concern her less and less.

  “Yolan.” Jani approached the desk slowly. Her old corporal still wore her usual startled-deer expression. Her lazored blonde hair was as neatly combed as ever. Her steel blues appeared battered, though. But it was brick dust, not smoke, which puffed from the material as Yolan nodded weakly. The rubble had buried her fairly deep, after all. Oddly enough, her gamine face had remained untouched, but her body…

  Bones in a bag. All that had been left. Borgie had waited for Jani to turn her back before he fell to his knees and gathered that limp body in his arms. Yes, his relationship with Yolan had crossed every line. Yes, Jani had known, and kept it to herself. The one time she got involved was when Borgie asked her to persuade Neumann not to leave Yolan behind at Rauta Shèràa Base. Neumann hadn’t wanted to take her to Knevçet Shèràa. He trusted her even less than he had Jani. “I killed her, Captain,” Borgie had cried. His weeping had seemed to sound from the walls themselves, following Jani as she left that section of the bombed wing, dogging her down every hall, echoing around every corner.

  I helped, Sergeant.

  “We had to come here,” Yolan explained to Borgie, who loomed over her in his still-futile effort to appear domineering. “She got scared out in the open. Didn’t want to risk seeing him again until she knew she could take it.” Her delicate features set in stern lines, Yolan turned to Jani. “Captain or not, you say anything mean to her and I swear, I’ll air you out. She’s been through enough.” The corporal leaned her head back. The chair rocked back as well. It dawned on Jani that Yolan had yet to move from the neck down.

  “Fine, fine,” Jani nodded. “Bossy-assed mainliner.” A flash of movement captured her attention. She turned. “You!”

  Betha Concannon stood in the middle of the office, her clothing rumpled, her hair tangled. She tried to speak, then winced and held a hand to her throat. Jani saw the steel blue scarf knotted around her neck and looked at Yolan, who regarded her levelly. “She wanted something to cover the bruises. She’s sensitive about them.”

  “Well, bully for her,” Jani replied. “She’s left her best friend to be accused of her murder. She betrayed everyone she worked with and for. She’s a liar and a cheat and an accomplice in Lyssa van Reuter’s murder! And she’s one of ours, damn it! She should have known better!”

  “Being colony’s no guarantee of goodness, Captain.” Yolan spoke slowly, as though reprimanding a child. “You’ve lived out there long enough to know that. Besides, you knew what Betha was about, deep down. That’s why you worried about her. But you cut her slack because she was colony. Because she was a dexxie. Maybe if you’d trusted her less, she’d still be alive.”

  “Not fair, Yolan,” Borgie protested. His words came muffled and slurred, spoken as they were through lips now swollen and blistered. “Don’t put that on her, too.”

  “But she wants it that way.” Yolan’s eyes never left Jani’s face. “She wants to be nailed to the cross. She’ll even pass out hammers and spikes to all comers, with instructions where to pound.” The corporal’s head lolled against the back of her chair. Borgie propped it upright with a gentle hand. “Doesn’t help, does it, Cap? Won’t help till the day you die, and after that, it won’t matter.” She looked at Betha. “No one deserves to die like she did. Do something about that. Take care of what you can.”

  Jani looked out the window, to the floor, the walls, everywhere but at the three people who stared at her silently. The three dead people. How far gone are you, when the ghosts are more human than you? Her right arm itched to the point of pain. Pinkish yellow seepage stained the medcoat sleeve. Her right shoulder felt hot. Breathing had become difficult, as though she wore a clogged respirator. She forced herself to look at Betha. “It was Ridgeway.”

  Betha nodded slowly, using her hand to stop the movement.

  “You’d been working for him. All along.”

  Another labored nod.

  “Ridgeway helped you bugger the docs Lyssa took to Nueva. He had an accomplice at the hospital, a doctor who purposely botched Lyssa’s regularly scheduled take-down. Lyssa made it to Chira before hallucinating herself into the rocks, and Ridgeway thought the one person who knew Evan had transmitted the order
to bomb my transport was dead.” Jani paused to look at Borgie. What did she expect to find on his charring face, an expression of surprise?

  “But you had friends at the PM’s,” she continued. “They told you what Cao and Ulanova suspected. You made friends with Lyssa before she left on that final trip, and she entrusted the proof she had compiled to you. At first, you planned to turn it all over to Ridgeway, in exchange for whatever. Then you got greedy. It never occurred to you he could kill you, too.”

  Betha’s mouth moved in mute pleading. She managed a sharp squeak when sounds of activity reached them from the anteroom.

  Jani slipped behind the shelter of a shoulder-high plant. Betha, Borgie, and Yolan remained where they were. Durian Ridgeway burst in, walking through his cowering victim on the way to the desk. He began a frenzied search, opening and slamming drawers until, with a bark of relief, he pulled a grey documents pouch from the bottom drawer and tossed it on his desktop. With Borgie and Yolan as fascinated bookends, he dumped out the contents and flipped through the pages, muttering under his breath.

  Jani stepped out from behind the plant, ignoring Borgie’s frantic gesturing for her to stay put. “It’s not in there, Granny.”

  Ridgeway tensed. He looked up slowly. “Risa.” His hands dropped below the level of the desktop. “I thought you were in the infirmary.”

  “I was.” She took a step toward the desk in an attempt to circle around to Ridgeway’s side, but he quickly countered, edging away in the opposite direction. “The Consulate comlog. The one that shows the call Evan made to the fuel depot. It’s not there.” Jani sidled closer to the desk, but stopped as Ridgeway backed away in the direction of the door. “It’s in the hands of whoever Ginny Doyle is really working for. Judging from your behavior, that person isn’t you.”

  “Captain Kilian. Jani. The call recorded on that log does not constitute proof. Our personnel at the depot were in constant communication with Consulate staff. Quite necessary, considering the circumstances. Surely you remember?”

  “The way you’re acting bitches that argument to hell, Durian. You raised the alarm that Betha was missing. Then you steered Doyle after Steve. When Steve disappeared, you shifted everyone’s sights toward me. Anything to deflect attention from Evan. He told me you’ll do what you think you have to. You’re not stupid. If everything’s green, why bother with it? Why clean it if it ain’t dirty?” Jani watched Ridgeway’s hands, still below desktop level.

  He has a shooter. She glanced at Borgie, who now stood by a sofa on the other side of the room. Betha stood beside him, one hand at her throat, the other over her mouth. Yolan sat on the sofa, her legs propped on the low table in front of her, her arms limp, hands in her lap. “He’s armed, Cap,” she said.

  “I know,” Jani replied.

  Ridgeway stiffened. “Still talking to yourself, Jani? Who answers? Riky Neumann?”

  “Never. Why waste a good hallucination?” The burning itch in her arm had receded to a dull scratchiness. “I see Betha. She’s over there, by the sofa.” She raised her arm to point and Ridgeway flinched to one side as though anticipating a blow. He brought the shooter up and pointed it at her chest. Direct line of fire. One shot. Crack the sternum. Stop the heart. Not even augie could fight this one off.

  This time, it would take.

  Here’s the hammer. Jani took another step toward him. The spikes. Another. What are you waiting for?

  Betha’s mouth opened in a soundless scream.

  The shooter rasped. Jani stumbled to her left as the impact half spun her around. A fleeting pain, in her left shoulder, just above the joint. Then numbness. Her lungs cleared, her breathing eased. She looked down. Her arm jerked uselessly. What remained of it. The exit wound had obliterated the hand. Half the forearm. Rose pink carrier dripped through gaps in the heat-sealed stump, splattering over the synthetic flesh that now soiled the carpet. She looked at Ridgeway, who stared back in stunned silence. “You missed, you goddamn office boy. Point-blank range, and you fucking missed.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Is that your challenge, Jani?” She could smell the hate as he raised the shooter again.

  So slow. He moves. So slow. Jani feinted to her right, then darted close. Right hand raised, fingers straight. Her sudden movement distracted Ridgeway. He discharged the shooter off target—the pulse packet brushed her left cheek just as she thrust at his neck just above the base of the throat. He collapsed to his knees, eyes goggled, grabbing at his throat as his breath wheezed and whistled like air being sucked through a cracked pipe.

  “How does it feel, you son of a bitch?” she asked softly as she stepped behind him. The time for ritual had passed. The curve where his neck joined his shoulder whispered, here. This time, she listened. Felt augie’s strength reinforce her own. Raised her right hand. Brought it down.

  “Cap’n?” Borgie drew alongside her. They watched Ridgeway’s body until it stopped twitching. Then Jani turned to her sergeant. His face was a crusted mass now. Eyes glazed white. He crackled when he moved. “Wuh be’er go.”

  Jani edged out into the hall and looked at herself in one of the safety-dome mirrors set in the ceiling. She had folded the empty documents pouch over her ruined forearm. The shooter graze had left a reddened brush burn on her cheek. I look like a lab accident. She smiled grimly. I am a lab accident.

  “See anything, Cap?”

  Jani checked the mirror, saw nothing behind her. Then she turned. Yolan smiled up at her, broken body bundled into a wheeled office chair. Betha pushed. Borgie brought up the rear, T-40 raised and ready. Tiny gouts of flame licked from beneath his flak jacket. His face was…unrecognizable.

  Jani remembered where she was now. Interior Doc Control. She led the way, past the offices, toward the elevators. At every junction, she’d look up at a dome mirror and chart her solitary progress. When I look up and don’t see myself, I’ll know I’m dead.

  Empty elevators. Deserted hallways. No one to challenge her, to stop her. Like they’re giving me room to maneuver. Jani and her silent trio bypassed empty offices, entered a large anteroom, stopped before a door. Like they want me to come here.

  “Once you go through that door, you’re on your own, Cap,” Yolan said. She’d become spokesman for the trio, seeing as she was the only one who could talk. “We can’t help you.”

  “I know.”

  “Decision time, Cap.”

  “I know.” Jani gripped the door handle and twisted. Sand shifted beneath her feet. Desert wind brushed her face and riffled her hair.

  CHAPTER 32

  Evan stood at the bar in his dimly lit office. “Excuse me,” he said peevishly when he realized he had company. “I don’t recall requesting a med—” He tensed as Jani stepped forward. “Jan.” He offered a weak smile. “Glad to see you’re up and about.”

  Jani let the doc pouch fall to the carpet. Tried to let it fall. The nappy material had stuck to the carrier that had crusted on the end of her stump; she wound up having to rip it away. Cloth parted company from synthetic flesh with a keening rasp. Evan moaned and gripped the edge of the bar with both hands. His eyes squinched shut.

  “No one even tried to stop me, Evan. Did you ever get the feeling you were being set up?” She walked to the sitting area near his desk. “Have a seat. Bring your bottle. You may need it.”

  Evan remained in place for a time, breathing slowly, eyes still closed. When he opened them, he looked at Jani sidelong, sighing when he saw her settled into a chair.

  “What did you think I was, Ev, a symptom?”

  “No.” He gathered up a glass and decanter. “That would have implied good luck. Mine ran out long ago.” He sat in the chair across from her and deposited his glassware on a side table. “What’s this about a setup?”

  “I think certain people wanted me to come here. Tie up loose ends, save them the trouble.”

  “I hope you listened to the message I sent last night. It’s true, you know. I do love you.”

  “You’re a
liar.”

  “You think so? You wouldn’t say that if you’d heard the fights Durian and I had over you. When we figured out you might be alive, he wanted to send someone to Whalen to kill you. I had to bribe him to leave you alone. I promised to wangle him a spot on the ballot in the next general election. Seems he has dreams of a deputy ministry. For starters.” His hand shook. Ice rattled like chattering teeth. “I tried to convince him he operated better behind the scenes, but he insisted. I’m afraid exposure to the voting public is going to prove a shock for old Durian.” He looked at Jani, taking care to avoid her mangled arm. “I’m hanging my janitor out to dry. That alone should convince you I’m sincere.”

  “You may have had a sincere moment or two in your life, Evan. I doubt they involved me.” Without warning, Jani’s left shoulder jerked. A sharp pain sang down her arm, flicked around her wrist, cramped her fingers. “I was just something to shake in your father’s face.” She looked down at her left thigh. Her left hand rested there. She could feel its weight, its trembling. She just couldn’t see it.

  “As I recall, you enjoyed upsetting your colony friends with me, as well.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” She watched the hand that wasn’t there. Gradually, the shuddering eased to an occasional twitch. “It was a long time ago.”

  “I didn’t think you’d trust me right away. I’m not an idiot, Jan.” Evan emptied his glass. “I thought after you settled in, got used to things, realized how I felt, you’d see how good you could have it here.” He cast a longing look toward the decanter. “Now, here it is, three days later. Plaster’s flaking off the ceiling, and knickknacks are clattering on the shelves. The end is near.” His eyes grew liquid as tears brimmed. “How much longer do I have?”