Jani reached for one of the dispos—Friesian took that as a cue to pour her some water. She let him. Her hands had started to shake—if she tried to serve herself, who knew where the water would end up? “What other stories do you need? I’m admitting I killed Neumann.”
Friesian handed her the cup. “On the Reina, when you were still holed up in the infirmary and giving the medical officer fits, you insisted you had sneaked out during a shift change and disabled the fire extinguishers. Your accounting of your movements was so accurate, the chief engineer ordered a ship-wide inspection. You hadn’t touched a thing, of course. You’d never left the infirmary.”
“You don’t believe me.”
“What I believe doesn’t matter. What anyone else believes doesn’t matter. Solid proof, paper proof, proof that can be researched and confirmed, is what the prosecution needs to support this or any charge and the only thing against which we need to mount a defense. And so far, they’ve shown me nothing to connect you with Neumann’s death.”
“You’re—” Jani loosened the neck of her robe. She felt much warmer now. Her heart pounded. “You’re saying they won’t charge me, that I spent all these years running for nothing. You’re saying they have no case.”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
“Because the paper’s gone missing.”
“If it ever existed at all.”
“I don’t understand any of this.”
Friesian leaned forward and selected papers from the various piles. “I had a long talk with Roger before coming to see you.” He grinned at Jani’s puzzled look. “Dr. Pimentel. He feels you’re under a great deal of stress. Much of it, he adds, is self-imposed.” He handed her one of the documents requests, along with a stylus. “I want to do what’s best for you, Jani. I wish I felt you trusted me more.”
Jani braced her hand on the arm of her chair. In spite of the support, her hand still shook so badly that her normally crisp signature showed blurred and crooked. “Do I have a choice?”
“That is not what I want to hear.” Friesian took the document and handed her another. “Roger did tell me he feels you’re improving. The muscle weakness may last for a few more weeks, but you’re responding well to the diet they’ve put you on and the other therapies they’re trying out. You could be released in the next few days.”
“To do what?” Jani stared at the paper she held. Extended Residence Agreement. A Transient Officers’ Quarters contract. “Work with you?”
“Such a luxury, the Service cannot afford. They have an Academy-trained documents examiner in their grasp, and they can’t afford to let her go unutilized.” Friesian pointed to the TOQ contract. “You’re being returned to duty, Captain Kilian. With restricted movement, I should add. You’ll be confined to base until we close the book on this.” He reached into another pile and removed an official-sized steel blue envelope, its flap crosshatched with white security seals. He smiled cautiously and handed it to Jani.
She traded the TOQ contract for the envelope. The crisp parchment snapped like plastic between her fingers. “Do you know what’s in here?”
“Um-hmm.”
“Are you going to tell me?”
“No. You have to open it.”
She held her breath as she broke the threadlike seals, removed the sheets of pale blue parchment, and unfolded them.
“What do you think?” Friesian’s smile strengthened. “You’ve been assigned to your old outfit. First Documents and Documentation.”
Reporting to Lt. Colonel Frances Hals. Foreign Transactions, third floor, Documents Control. Simple wording for simple actions. Three days from today, at 0830, she would present herself to Lieutenant Colonel Hals, dressed out, scanpack in hand. The Service’s Oldest Living Sideline Captain reporting for duty.
Friesian gathered the documents and returned them to his case. “Roger feels it’s in your best interest to work again. Use your skills. ‘Chip off the rust,’ he calls it. In the meantime, I’ll work my end, and we’ll meet regularly to discuss any developments.”
Friesian insisted on playing the gallant, so Jani let him escort her back to her room. On the way, they passed a patient leaning against the wall, arms crossed in front of his chest, staring at nothing. He looked like he’d been through a war himself—bronze-haired and lean, with a long, weathered face cut from edge of nose to end of mouth by a deep, age-whitened scar. He looked at them as they passed—his eyes held confusion and bewilderment and mute question. Takedown malaise. Jani knew how he felt. The next time she looked in a mirror, she’d see the same eyes staring back.
Chapter 8
They discharged her two days later.
“You’ve shown marked improvement.” Pimentel said. “But you’re to check in every other day until further notice. The noise from the firing range occasionally entertains us—if it bothers your augie, come in and we’ll fit you with hearing protection.” He handed her a rectangular blue bag that looked like a Service toiletry kit. “Your scrips and instructions are in here. If you have any questions, anytime, call or stop in.” He reached into the front pocket of his medcoat and pulled out a small, cartridge-tester-like device.
“This is your diet monitor. It’s like a scanpack for food. Run it over every item you want to eat—it determines kcals as well as fat grams, protein, etc, and it keeps a running tally. If it squeals, you can’t have what you just scanned.” He held the small box out to her. “We’ll be able to tell if you cheat and trust me, so will you.”
Jani accepted the device with a grudging nod. “I know what it’s going to tell me. More fruit milk shakes.” The sweet sludge had remained a staple of every meal. She had run through the kitchen’s entire supply of hot sauce in a day and a half, and had been forced to resort to plain black pepper to kill the taste.
Pimentel led Jani out to the lobby and was about to show her out the door when a woman standing near the entry desk raised her hand. He ran a hand over his rumpled medwhite V-neck. “Jani, I’d like to introduce you to someone.”
The woman made no move to meet them, but remained by the desk. She was perhaps twenty years older than Jani, with steel grey hair trimmed in a blunt, chin-length style. Her eyes were dark, her skin, olive. She wore summerweights and a crisp white medcoat, and cradled a recording board.
“Ma’am, it’s good to see you.” Pimentel executed the straight-backed sharp nod that took place of a salute indoors. “Captain Kilian, I’d like to introduce Dr. Carvalla, our chief of staff.”
Dr. Major General Carvalla, Jani amended, taking note of the twin silver stars adorning the sides of the woman’s short-sleeve. “Ma’am.”
“Captain.” Carvalla’s broad face broke into a genuine smile. “You have been giving my people a workout.” She glanced at Pimentel, who looked starstruck. “It’s not often I meet someone who served on Shèrá. We’re contemporaries of a sort. I served as medical officer on a ship stationed in that area. The Kensington. You may not have heard of it, considering the circumstances at the time.”
Jani’s grin froze. “The flagship of the group that evac’d Rauta Shèràa Base—yes, ma’am, I had heard of it.” After she escaped John’s stifling care, she had spent several nerve-wracking days evading the crews that took over the human sector of the Rauta Shèràa shuttleport as she tried to wangle a billet on a civilian ship. Everywhere she had turned, she had seen someone sporting the names Kensington, Hilfington, or Warburg on a jacket or lid. “I’m sure the evacuees recall you fondly.”
“Perhaps,” Carvalla replied dryly. “Quarters were close, and supplies were scarce. I think the fondest memory the evacuees have of us was saying good-bye.” She glanced at her timepiece. “Well, it’s time for rounds. Take care of yourself, Captain. I’m sure I’ll see you again.” She nodded to Jani and Pimentel in turn, then walked to the rear of the lobby to join a doctor cluster waiting near the lift bank.
“She’s wonderful. The best thing that ever happened to Service Medical. Fair. Forward-thinking.�
�� Pimentel’s bounciness lasted until he walked out of the hospital and into the full blaze of summer. “God, it’s hot! Are you sure you don’t want someone to drive you to the TOQ?”
“No. I looked it up on the base map Morley gave me—it’s not that far.” Jani took a deep breath of hot, dry air, felt the chill leave her for the first time since her arrival, and waved good-bye to Pimentel.
She walked down the long drive leading from the Main Hospital, then turned down a series of shorter, tree-lined streets named after famous generals. Hillman Avenue. Dragan Row. Starcross Way. Earthbound generals. She could imagine Borgie’s peeved Man French mutterings as to the inequity of the situation. She could sense him walk beside her, as he had a hundred times at Rauta Shèràa Base.
They’d both acquired reputations by then, Jani as the stiff-necked anti-Family doc jock who reacted to threats by making her own, Borgie as a quick mind ruined by a quicker temper and the penchant for the freelance deal. Jani had uncovered evidence of one such operation, an attempt to divert scanpack supplies to a Pearl Way broker. She had quietly shut it down, then had taken Borgie aside and explained why it was in his best interest to keep his damned hands out of her patch. Struck by the fact that she had figured out his plan so easily, and that she declined to turn him in to Base Security, he had decided to adopt her. Hers was a worthy mind, he had told her, for an officer. From then on, he took her on rounds of his own, and explained to her the things he felt a deskbound paper-pusher needed to know to survive in the Old Service. Much of the information had come in handy during her years underground. To say she owed Borgie her life didn’t say enough. To say she’d let him down . . . well, that didn’t say enough, either.
Jani took her time examining the Sheridan grounds. The rolling lawns. The locations of intersections and main drives. She walked easily, her discharge summerweights and relaxed manner marking her as a new release on her way home.
She and Borgie had talked about many things over the months. The fine art of breaking and entering. How to plan an escape. Primary routes. Back-up plans. Acquiring and secreting provisions and weapons. And other preparations.
They get us with that damned chip, Captain. They can track us anywhere with that thing. All they have to do is enter your code into systems and activate. How you deal with that depends on how desperate you are.
Jani checked her trouser pocket, the one that contained the scalpel she had swiped from a supply cart. In another, she’d stashed the half-used tube of incision sealant she’d found sitting atop the nurses’ station counter, along with the topical anesthetic and a bandage pad. She’d operated on her scanpack often enough. She wasn’t squeamish, and thanks to augie she had a high tolerance for pain.
The most important thing, Captain, is to choose your moment well. They won’t give you a second chance.
“Frankly, Sergeant, I’m surprised they’re giving me a first one.” Jani slowed to a stop in the middle of the road and considered the strangeness of it all. Piers thinks I’m lying about Neumann. Because Veda needed paper to back up charges, and Jani’s records were missing. Where are they? Who was responsible for their disappearance? Why were they involved? What did they expect to gain? Did they think to lull her into a false sense of ease, only to spring charges on her later? The unexpected attack was the hardest to fend off—she didn’t want to be caught unawares. I need to know who’s been fiddling with my records. And her records were stored at the SIB.
She started walking again, reaching a nameless cul-de-sac and trudging up a path leading to a five-story whitestone box set well back from the road, surrounded by low hedges. South Central Transient Officers’ Quarters. Her home for the duration, however long that turned out to be.
The TOQ lobby proved just as plain as the exterior. The cheers and excited commentary that sounded from a side room indicated a well-attended Cup broadcast in progress.
Jani found her room on the mezzanine floor, a quick ten-step flight up from the lobby. Three small partitioned spaces: a sitting room cum office equipped with a desk and comport, a bedroom, and a bath. Spare furnishings of honey-colored polywood. Cream walls. A single narrow window in the sitting room, looking out over the cul-de-sac.
Her enthusiasm ramped when she laid eyes on her old duffel, resting small and lonely on the frame couch. “They really worked you over,” she said as she dug through the depleted contents, removed her scanpack from its half-fastened pouch, then fingered the ragged edge of what had once been the scanproof compartment. They’d confiscated her shooter and gadgets. Someone, however, had taken the time to wrap her keepsakes in a tissue envelope.
She stashed her stolen medical supplies, the scalpel in the catch-all tray on her desk, the anesthetic, glue, and bandage, in her bathroom cabinet. Hide in plain sight. A nosy visitor would think she had a strange taste in letter openers and the tendency to cut herself with same, not that she planned to make a run for it as soon as circumstance allowed.
She opened her small closet to find the Clothing Elf had seen to her gear. She perused the six different styles of uniforms hanging within, then removed her unmarked hospital summerweights and donned a fresh set of her very own.
Jani found her ribbons and badges in a small box atop her dresser. She attached her bronze sideline captain’s tabs to her collar, then clipped the silver scroll and quill of Documents Services to her shoulder tabs. They’d awarded one-year colonial service ribbons back in her day; she pinned the two green-and-gold-striped rectangles over her left pocket, where they glistened like pieces of spun-sugar candy.
They’d even allowed her the gold marksman badge she’d worked so hard to win when her mainline cohorts had told her she had no chance. Expert. Short shooter. You’d think they’d have held that one back. Might as well shout it to the worlds. Hi, I’m Jani. Shot twenty-seven—killed them all. And you are . . . ?
She applied makeup. Spritzed her hair with water and trimmed her more straggly curls with the nail cutters that came in her toiletry kit. Captain Paragon girding for the File Wars. She smiled despite her disquiet.
Her feelings toward the Service made about as much sense as her feelings for John Shroud. Pride in her Commonwealth had nothing to do with it—she’d been too much a colonial to feel patriotic and too much of a skeptic to see Acadia’s rebel factions as any more than self-serving delusionaries. I joined up for the same reasons that receptionist joined Neoclona. To get away from a deadend homeworld. To meet different people. To learn. She’d never resented the routine, since working with the idomeni guaranteed things never remained routine for long. She’d even liked the uniforms; she’d never been an avid follower of fashion, and had been quite happy to turn the clothes part of her life over to someone else.
Give me a scanpack and a stack of paper, and I’m happy. If they’d assigned her anyplace but Rauta Shèràa Base, she might have even made the Service a career. I like to fade into the background, and there’s no place you can fade better than the Service.
The one time she had broached that opinion to Borgie, however, he had laughed till he cried. You’re an action person, Captain, he told her after he recovered sufficiently to speak. You like digging into things you shouldn’t. Turning over rocks. You don’t toe the line—hell, you’re a peacetime nightmare. You’re one of those poor souls who needs a war.
As it turned out, she was a nightmare even then.
She was in the middle of brushing her teeth when the doorscanner buzzed.
“Hello!” Lucien pushed past her into the sitting area, laden with packages. “I unpacked your gear this morning,” he said as he tossed his brimmed lid on the couch and set a basket of cut flowers atop the end table. “I hope you appreciate it.”
“So you’re the Clothing Elf.” Jani stood by the door, toothbrush in hand, and watched him unpack and store disposable cups and wipes, sundries and supplies for the desk. Instead of summerweights, he wore dress blue-greys. A black-leather crossover belt cut a diagonal swath across his steel blue tunic. His grey trous
ers were cut down the sides with the requisite mainline red slash, and the holster on his belt was fully packed. “Was today ‘take your idomeni ambassador to university’ day?”
“Yeah. His security picked the time at the last minute. Most propitious, they said, but I think they just wanted to shake the reporters. Nema was as excited as hell. He got into everything.” Lucien reached into one of the bags and removed a small glass-and-gold clock. “This has a good alarm,” he said as he set in on the desk. “The one on the comport isn’t loud enough, and you can’t set it to repeat.”
Jani ducked into the bathroom to finish her teeth. “I found soap, hairwash, and toothpaste in here. I’m surprised they couldn’t stick a clock somewhere.”
“They used to. Stopped last year. They said it was the officers’ responsibility to keep their own time.”
“Are you sure it wasn’t because the clocks were getting swiped by the occupants?”
Lucien poked his head around the bathroom entry. “We are talking about officers and gentlepeople, not occupants. And the word is reappropriated, not swiped.”
“They must have been good clocks. How many got reappropriated in a year, on average?”
“One hundred fifty-three. They could even survive direct shooter fire. When magnebolting them to the tables didn’t work, Housekeeping called it a wash. You really do have a suspicious mind, you know that?”
“Only because people keep living down to my expectations.” Jani rinsed her mouth, then fixed the damage the toothpaste and water had inflicted upon her makeup. “I doubt human nature gets checked at the Shenandoah Gate.”
Rules of Conflict Page 9
