Rules of Conflict

by Kristine Smith

  Every object she looked at, every surface, every blue-and-grey uniform, told her where she was, and what waited for her. My name is Jani Moragh Kilian, Captain, United Services. Eighteen years ago, at a place called Knevçet Shèràa, I killed Colonel Rikart Neumann, my commanding officer. Now I’ve been brought here to pay. He had deserved to die, but that wasn’t the point. The Service frowned on the individual Spacer making that judgment, and they had a time-honored method for showing their displeasure. The firing squad. “I’m scared, Piers.”

  Friesian eyed her in puzzlement. “I’m not saying you have nothing to worry about. But considering the state of your health, you’re doing yourself no favors holding back from me.” He stood as Lieutenant Forceful came into view, a Security guard in tow. “We’ll talk after we get checked in at Sheridan. After you check in at the hospital.”

  Shutting down the doorscan worked as Jani said it would, much to Forceful’s disappointment. Their journey to the lower-level parking garage was punctuated by his comments as to how he could have jazzed the mech if only he’d had the time.

  He made up for the loss, however, by brute-forcing the side conversion panels of their skimmer so the passenger opening could accommodate the skimchair. His joy multiplied manyfold when Friesian asked him to expand the interior space by pulling out one of the seats. Rearguard and the driver, a corporal with a squint, struggled to keep from laughing as they fielded the components that came flying out the door.

  Jani eyed the pearl grey, triple-length that had been provided for their transport. The enamel coating shone wetly, even in the dull light of the garage. “What’s with the chariot?” she asked Friesian.

  He pointed to her seat. “It was the only vehicle available that could hold a skimchair.”

  “What about a brig van?”

  Another look of puzzled appraisal. “Jani, why would you expect a brig van?”

  Jani fell silent. They stuck me with an idiot, she thought as Forceful and Rearguard loaded her into the skimmer. The Judge Advocate was required by charter to provide for her defense, but the charter said nothing about the quality of defense they had to provide her with. Friesian obviously had no idea what crime she’d committed or what the Service planned to do to her after they convicted her. He’d sit at the Officers’ Club bar after her execution and wonder where the hell it all went wrong.

  As they departed the garage, the sudden change from half-light to full glare of summer caught them all by surprise. Jani shut her eyes to stop them tearing, while Rearguard exploded with a sharp burst of sneezing. The Boul artery on which they rode seemed to glimmer in the heat. Chicago had been buried beneath mountains of snow the last time Jani had visited. Now, she could see the verdant patches of parkland and clusters of low houses, backed by the distant skyline.

  Their driver took them on a route that skirted the city—within minutes, they left the crowding traffic behind. The four-lane skimway they rode cut along a line of homes obscured from view by large stands of trees.

  “The South Bluffs.” Forceful gazed out the window and sighed. “This is the low-rent section, and still all I can afford to do is look.”

  “Why would you want to live here, Don?” Rearguard sniffed as he took in the view.

  “Because it’s the Bluffs, Lou. Once a man can call this place home, he knows he’s arrived.”

  Jani caught the look that passed between Friesian and Rearguard Lou, the chins-up camaraderie of those who had scaled the barriers of opinion since they decided to make the Service their career. That opinion originated in the homes they passed now. All you with the wrong parents, wrong names, wrong accents, raise your hands. Friesian looked down at his lap, while Lou concentrated on the view out his window.

  The skimmer exited down a corkscrew ramp, then turned onto a two-lane road that ran along a massive fence built of arched whitestone and metal bridging. The five-meter-high barrier stretched ahead as far as Jani could see.

  “Have you ever seen the Shenandoah Gate, Captain?” Rearguard Lou asked her. “It was erected to honor the tens of thousands who died at the Appalachian Front during the Greatest War.” That those thus honored had died for the Earthbound side could be discerned from the gleam of resentment that lit his eyes.

  “This year’s the seventy-fifth anniversary of its completion.” Don seemed oblivious to the other man’s displeasure. “The archivists are working night and day researching names for addition to the Placement Rolls.” He shook his head in wonder. “It took the artisans eleven years to encode the grid-work and apply the coatings. Isn’t it gorgeous?”

  Jani caught the iridescent flickers of the names of the fallen as the sunlight played over the holoetching in the stone. “Lieutenant, in case you haven’t noticed, you’re talking to three colonials.”

  “It’s a Service monument, ma’am.” Don smoothed the front of his short-sleeve. “Besides, well, I hate to state the obvious, but the reason you’re touchy is because your ancestors were asked to leave after the dust settled. Because they lost.”

  “‘Asked to leave’?” Jani smiled. “I like your choice of words, Lieutenant. Just for clarification, what words does your side use to refer to the internment camps and prison ships?”

  Friesian tugged at his collar. “I read an editorial in Blue and Grey requesting a reevaluation of the Gate,” he said hurriedly. “Over two-thirds of Service recruits come from the colonies. It does seem counterproductive to risk alienating them before they set foot on the base.”

  Don’s eyes widened in surprise. “But sir—!”

  “It’s a matter of perspective, Lieutenant,” Jani interrupted. “You’re honoring yourselves because you won. You had the biggest governments and the richest companies behind you. You won control of the technologies and the freedoms and the privilege to dole them out. You won the right to send my ancestors to the colonies to work in your friends’ factories and fields. You were quite happy with the outcome—you didn’t need to examine it further. It was left to us as the losers to figure out the hows and whys, and after we did, we felt a little irked.” She ignored Piers’s warning look. “What do you know about the Battle of Waynesboro?”

  Don frowned, as though she’d insulted his intelligence. “It was the turning point in the battle for eastern North America, ma’am. Major Alvin Cao came to his senses and brought his fifty thousand over to hook up with van Reuter’s Fourteenth Armored out of Philly.”

  Jani nodded. “And if he hadn’t come to his senses, as you say—we prefer the phrase turned traitor, the C in NUVA-SCAN was his price—Everhard would not have lost DC and the rest of the Eastern Seaboard wouldn’t have dominoed in response. And there would have been no March to Albany.”

  “Yes, ma’am, but—”

  “Seven thousand four-hundred eighteen losers died during that march. Their bodies were sprayed with dissolvant and tossed in ditches because your side judged them the traitors, undeserving of proper burial. A many-times-great-grandfather of mine was one of those losers. The only place his name is inscribed is in a Bible my father keeps in his workroom. Like I said, it’s a matter of perspective.”

  Don nodded. He actually seemed to be listening, which was more than many Earthbounders did. “Can you say your side wouldn’t have done the same thing if they’d won?”

  Jani hesitated. She was colony, yes, and proud to be so. But life had left her few illusions about people, especially after the blood started flowing. “No, I can’t. But that’s not the point. The point is, all the dead merit remembrance. Even the ones who lost. Because first you forget who, and then you forget why. And then it happens all over again.”

  The skimmer turned onto the Fort Sheridan entry and passed beneath the Gate’s main archway. The cabin darkened; the names inscribed inside the arch winked and faded. Then the view lightened; the sight of the numerous shade trees and multicolored shrubbery decorating Sheridan’s rolling lawns dissipated the tension.

  Borgie would have been in heaven, Jani thought as they passed teemi
ng walkways that joined row after row of low-slung white-and-tan buildings. Her late sergeant hadn’t been the most conventional of Spacers, but if you’d scratched him, he’d have bled blue and grey. He’d often told her that the only reason he’d ever visit Earth would be to walk the paths at Fort Sheridan. I wish you were here. She would have enjoyed listening to his blunt-edged take on her current predicament. She could have used the laugh.

  “We’ll be checking you into the Main Hospital first.” Friesian leaned close to Jani so he could speak softly. “If you’re through with the history lecture, that is.” He sat back, eyes slitting as though a headache had placed a call.

  In contrast to the glass-walled grandeur of every Neoclona facility Jani had ever seen, Fort Sheridan’s Main Hospital showed squat and homely. Its white-cement surfaces were smooth and squared off, its windows short and narrow. Only ten floors, but what it lacked in height, it made up for in sprawl. Patients undergoing fitness therapy could get their day’s exercise simply by trotting around its circumference.

  Lou took it upon himself to maneuver Jani’s chair to the hospital entry as Friesian supervised Don’s refit of the skimmer. “Bienvenu à Chicago, Capitaine,” he whispered as he leaned forward to adjust the lift settings, touching his fingers to his forehead in a surreptitious salute.

  “Vous êtes un Manxman, Lieutenant?” Jani didn’t need to ask—the harsh tones of Man French branded him easily.

  “Oui, Capitaine.” He backed away as Friesian approached. “Vive la Manche,” he mouthed, using the Channel Worlder’s nickname for their network of planets.

  A subversive Manxman. Jani touched her own forehead in return. Quite a happy family the Service has here. She sat back with a jolt as Friesian propelled her a shade faster than necessary into the cool depths of the hospital.

  “Turn slowly, and walk back toward me.”

  As Jani tried to reverse her course, her right knee buckled. She grabbed the rails of her treadway just in time to keep from falling. “This thing is hard to walk on.”

  “There has been motor-nerve axon damage,” a voice piped from behind the large analyzer that received signals from both the treadway and the numerous sensor buttons that studded Jani’s arms, legs, trunk, and back. “I’m downloading the specific sites into her chart now.”

  The doctor who stood at the far end of the track offered Jani a quiet smile. Tall, thin, tired-looking—Hugh Tellinn’s blond brother. “We’ll be starting rebuild immediately. Along with digestive-enzyme adjustment and heme infusion.” He held out his hand and helped her down the two short steps to the floor so the waiting nurse could pluck the buttons. “Are you feeling all right, Jani? You look dazed.”

  “I didn’t expect to get herded into myotherapy so quickly.” She glanced at the man’s name tag. R. Pimentel. No rank designator visible on his medwhite shirt. Jani had yet to hear a title other than Nurse or Doctor over the past few hours, but she figured Pimentel for at least a major, judging from the way the other white coats deferred to him. Possibly even a colonel.

  “We’ve been receiving your MedRecs via message central transmit for the past ten days, so we had a good idea what to expect. The Reina’s medical officer had a lot to send—let’s just say this department’s Misty account has topped out for the quarter.” He continued to support her as they walked out of the therapy room and into an adjoining office. “Now, we need to ascertain your current status, judge whether it has improved or worsened, and commence the appropriate treatments as soon as possible.” He helped Jani lower into a visitor’s chair, then took a seat on the other side of the cluttered desk.

  Jani looked around. Two filled bookcases, double-stacked with bound volumes and wafer folders. Holos of Admiral-General Hiroshi Mako and Prime Minister Li Cao. A watercolor of a pleasant-looking woman holding a little girl. “So what happened to me, Colonel?”

  “Colonel?” Pimentel’s brows arched. “How did you arrive at that conclusion?”

  Jani pointed behind him, to the narrow window. “You have a view.”

  “Well, I hate to break it to you, Captain, but this is Fort Sheridan, and we have windows to spare.” Pimentel sat back. “But yes, I am a colonel.”

  “Full?”

  “Yes. But I’m also a psychotherapeutic neurologist. Owing to the types of conditions I treat, I find it easier for both me and my patients if we leave the ranks in the lobby.” Pimentel picked up a stylus from his desk and regarded the unlit tip. “We think the drug used to subdue you on Felix triggered this idiosyncratic reaction of yours. We may be dealing with a disease called porphyria, but thus far, we’ve been unable to identify the specific genetic mutation.”

  “A human genetic mutation?”

  Pimentel hesitated. “For now. Until we have more data.”

  “Neoclona has a lot of data—why don’t you request my file?”

  Pimentel tapped the stylus on his knee. “Heme is manufactured in the bone marrow and the liver. Heme in the bone marrow is incorporated into hemoglobin; heme in the liver is incorporated into electron transport proteins, some of which metabolize drugs. The synthesis of the molecule is complicated; several intermediates and enzymes are involved. When a person possesses lower than normal activity of one of the enzymes, the precursors build up in either the bone marrow or the liver, depending on the enzyme involved.”

  When he’s angry, he spouts techno. Jani decided to play good girl. He seemed to mean well—if she was nice to him, maybe he’d tell her why she was talking to him in his office with his family’s picture on the wall instead of in a locked room in the brig infirmary. “I’m deficient in one of these enzymes?”

  “Yes. Porphobilinogen deaminase, to be precise.”

  “Your wife married you because of your way with words, didn’t she?”

  Pimentel looked startled for a moment. Then he grinned bashfully. “PBG deaminase, for short. That makes your flavor acute intermittent porphyria. Its cardinal symptoms are the abdominal pain you developed at Fort Constanza, the psychotic episodes you experienced on the Reina Adelaida, and the neuropathy, or muscle weakness, you’re showing now. It’s extremely rare these days. Not life-threatening, usually—most people who have it don’t even realize it. We normally only find it in the far-flung colonial outposts, where things tend to slip through the cracks.”

  “So people are usually born with it?”

  “Always born with it. It’s a genetic disorder, not something you acquire.”

  “That depends, doesn’t it?”

  Pimentel tossed the stylus back on his desk. “You know, whenever two or more doctors get together in the same room, the talk eventually turns to Neoclona’s first patient. ‘S-1.’ Shèrá-1. The woman John Shroud wanted to make live forever.” He seemed to stare past the painting of his wife and daughter, to someplace far away. “I’ve never met a legend.” He looked at Jani. “Do I think something he did to you in Rauta Shèràa has come back to haunt you? I’m by no means Dr. Shroud’s greatest fan, but I’d like to keep an open mind, for now. First, we need to stabilize your diet and repair the nerve and liver damage you’ve sustained.” He reached for his comport pad. “You look exhausted. I’m going to have you taken to your room.”

  “My room?”

  “I’m admitting you, Captain.” The tired eyes grew steely. “I’ll make it an order, if that’s the only thing you’ll accept.”

  They gave her a private room, owing to her rank. Dinner consisted of a fruit milk shake and dry toast; when she complained about the sweetness of the shake, they scrounged hot sauce to kill the flavor. She waited for Pimentel to burst in and order her out of his hospital for the murderer she was, but all he did was poke his head in and say good night. She waited for the guards to be posted outside her door, but they never came. She waited for Friesian to come and inform her of the charges against her, but the second-shift head nurse, a no-nonsense blonde named Morley, told her Pimentel had asked him to hold off until tomorrow.

  They’re not going to shoot me for N
eumann’s murder; they’re going to shock me to death. Jani lay back against her soft Service-issue pillows, in her dove grey Service-issue pajamas, and worried herself to sleep.

  Chapter 7

  “Good morning, Jani.”

  Jani looked up from her magazine to find the morning nurse standing in the sunroom doorway.

  “You have a visitor.” He stepped aside. “You can go in now.”

  “It’s about time.” Lucien Pascal brushed past the man and strode into the room. When his eyes locked with Jani’s he smiled broadly, at first glance the walking equivalent of a bright summer day.

  “Hello.” He dragged a chair over to the sunny corner Jani occupied, white-blond hair flashing in the diffuse sunlight. He’d acquired a tan since she’d last seen him—his grey short-sleeve looked silver against his skin, now almost as brown as hers.

  “How did you get in to see me ahead of my lawyer?” Jani watched his shoulder muscles flex beneath the fitted shirt as he positioned his chair. The southerly view wasn’t bad, either. “They’re not going to let him in until this afternoon.”

  Lucien held up his arm to show her the thin silver band encircling his wrist. “Outpatient monitoring.”

  “They let you come here for your takedowns? An Intelligence officer?” Augmentation was one thing she and Lucien had in common, although his prototypical version had boosted the nonempathetic aspect of his personality in addition to adjusting his panic response. “I thought they’d put you in secure lockdown in case you started talking.”

  “No, I only come here for psych evals.” Lucien’s eyes, rich brown and normally as lifeless as spent embers, flared with disdain. “I had my last takedown at the Intelligence infirmary. Before that, they were supervised by Eamon DeVries—he’s Anais’s personal physician.”