Rules of Conflict

by Kristine Smith

  Chapter 14

  Brigadier General Callum Burkett proved the taller, greyer edition of Colonel Derringer. And more frazzled. Seeing Derringer arrive at the embarkation zone with Hals and Jani in tow did nothing to calm him down.

  “Goddamn it!” He slid into his seat in the rear of the Diplomatic steel blue triple-length and glared across the compartment at the three of them before settling on Derringer. “Intelligence is stepping on our necks for even talking to the idomeni about the Strip, the PM is mixing up Family politics and defense policy again, and now you take it upon yourself to jettison the only firm decision we’ve been able to make in three months!”

  “Who drove the decision?” Jani looked from Derringer to Burkett. “It was a bad decision. Who drove it? Ulanova?” She flinched as the skimmer passed beneath the Shenandoah Gate. It wasn’t political opinion, but a shocklike tingle that radiated up her right arm. “It’s in her interest to destabilize colony-idomeni relations. One way to do that is to blow systems here, and let the backflash take out a few of the Haárin-colony arrangements that have formed over the years.” She flexed her arm, then rested it in her lap instead of on the armrest.

  “The origin of the decision isn’t your concern, Captain.” Burkett didn’t bother to look at her, or even turn her way.

  “Captain Kilian raised some valid points, sir.” Derringer sat with the tense nerviness of a man who wanted with all his heart to punch out the canopy and go out over the shooters but had been ordered to go down with the demi instead. “Major Hanratty’s been pushing for months to allow dexxies into the negotiations.”

  “Hanratty’s a xenolinguist, Colonel.” Burkett’s sarcastic tone bit almost as much as the pain in Jani’s arm. “Are you suggesting we let someone who watches sceneshots of conversations for a living decide Commonwealth defense policy?”

  “Can’t do any worse than you’re doing now.” Jani’s right arm throbbed now—she tried massaging it and barely suppressed a cry. “Hantìa and her skein-sharers are attempting to treat Colonel Hals and her skein-sharers as equals. She assumes Colonel Hals is playing coy, and she wants to shake her up by challenging us all. She doesn’t expect you to drop the colonel like a hot rock; she expects you to stand behind her. If you show her that isn’t the case, you’ve only reinforced the Vynshàrau opinion that humanish are disordered and unseemly, and you’ve done it by insulting a documents examiner, which just triples the injury. Is battling for a strip of airspace so important that you’re willing to risk an irreparable fracture between the Commonwealth and the Shèrá worldskein?”

  “You’re suggesting we allow an alien race with whom relations are tenuous at best the unfettered ability to scan any flyover that cuts through that slice of sky?” Burkett’s voice twinned Evan’s—level, deep, and sharp. Reason enough to dislike him. “It’s—”

  “A primary corridor into and out of O’Hare, yes, I know.” Jani struggled to keep from yelling, to keep from responding to Burkett’s voice. “Are you naïve enough to believe they aren’t already doing just that?”

  Derringer shot her a “please shut up” glare. “Publicly admitting the fact could set a nasty precedent.”

  “With whom? The colonies? Are we so independent that you need to worry about negotiating treaties with us?” She tried to work her fingers, and her thumb cramped. Augie, cut me some slack. “You want some advice from someone who’s negotiated with the idomeni for years? Give them the Strip. Show them that you acknowledge that Exterior Minister Ulanova’s actions were insulting and that you want to repair the damage.” Their skimmer floated down a wooded lane—the trees met over the top to form a leafed canopy. I’m sure this is lovely. She wished she could appreciate it.

  Burkett glowered across the compartment at Derringer, who tried to sink into his seat. They’d reached the first low-rise complexes that marked the northern outskirts of Chicago. The driver exited the thoroughfare and ramped onto the Boul artery. It wouldn’t be long now.

  Hals tapped her window softly with one knuckle. “Maybe we can talk to the ambassador about Hantìa, and he can order her to back down. The consensus, as I understand it, is that if we can convince him of something, he’ll drive the point home to the Oligarch.”

  “No, ma’am—we definitely do not want to do that.” Jani tried to filter the impatience out of her voice. Trying to find the words to explain the obvious aggravated her anyway, and her aching arm didn’t help. “You have been challenged, and you must meet that challenge openly.”

  “But the ambassador understands us.”

  “Nema is different than the rest of his sect-sharers, ma’am, yes. He likes us. He finds us fascinating.” He has plans for us, too, but if Gene Therapeutics has its way, that won’t be my problem anymore. “He understands our concerns to some extent, but only on an abstract level. Just because he looks you in the face when he talks to you doesn’t make him an honorary humanish. He’s not your addled Uncle Arthur, he’s the chief priest of his sect. I’ve watched him accept and offer àlérine. I’ve watched him fight and I’ve seen him bleed.”

  “I’ve seen the scars on his forearms. They look like he’s wearing lace sleeves under his robe.” Derringer winced. “But àlérine are only ceremonial fights. Acknowledgments of your enemies. They’re not real battles—no one dies.”

  “Not usually.” Jani rested her head against the seat back. The pain had stabilized to a steady pulsation. “Nema fought many of those battles for the right to come here as ambassador. His religious skein-sharers followed him here because he’s their dominant and his way is their way. Same for the diplomatic seculars who owe primary allegiance to Morden nì Rau Cèel, the Oligarch. They came here because it was their leader’s wish. But we’re the disordered humanish who do not know our food, and they believe that in living with us, they’ve sacrificed their souls. Your refusal to concede them the strip tells them you do not consider that sacrifice important. Give them the Strip. They will give it back. That’s not what they want—what they want is an acknowledgment of what they’ve lost.” Even though she answered Derringer, she looked at Burkett. “You’re thinking like a humanish soldier, and in doing so, you’re making a mistake.”

  Their skimmer ramped off the Boul and down a two-lane access road lined by thick hybrid shrubbery that served the dual purpose of absorbing sound and obscuring idomeni property from prying humanish eyes. As they wended down the road, they passed the first of the manned checkpoints. A tall, ropy Vynshàrau stood in the guardhouse, a long-range shooter hanging by a cross-strap across her back.

  “Is that the sort of being you want to allow access to our nav paths, Captain?” Burkett snorted softly. “It’s obvious you aren’t much of a soldier.”

  Jani looked him in the eye. He lifted one brow in surprise—he must have thought he’d insulted her. “No, sir, I am not. I will be the first to admit it and the last to deny it.”

  “You have no business participating in this matter.”

  “They just need to see me, sir.” After that, I can go back to being your private shame.

  After the gate guards checked the skimmer through, it pulled inside the embassy courtyard, an austere, sunstone-tiled space lined with shoulder-high silverleaf shrubs. The small triangles of sunstone, colored in shades of creamy gold, had been laid in whorled patterns. The courtyard surface looked as though huge fingers had pressed down from above, leaving their prints behind.

  As junior officer in the happy convoy, Jani disembarked first. Her arm still ached, and her stomach had joined the chorus, yet she took the opportunity to stroll around. The late-afternoon sun warmed her; the glare of its reflection off the light-colored stone hurt her eyes.

  This brings back memories. The bare façade of the embassy was featureless but for a set of banded bronze doors. The poured scancrete fence that barred their view of the sweeping grounds and the city beyond was three meters high and topped with crosshatches of ornamental blades.

  At least, they’re supposed to be ornamental. Ja
ni wouldn’t have wanted to be the one to determine whether the edges had actually been dulled. Idomeni steel cut deep, and the hair-thin wireweave that ran down both sides of the edge ripped flesh and left nasty scars.

  A few minutes later, the people-movers bearing the rest of Foreign Transactions and Diplo lumbered into the courtyard. Disembarkation began immediately, but it still took time. Jani had plenty of opportunity to bask in Major Vespucci’s scowling regard as he watched her through the FT mover’s rear window.

  As soon as the vehicles had emptied, the embassy doors swung open and a brown-robed Vynshàrau diplomatic suborn beckoned to them. The Service personnel lined up single file, lowest-ranking first, with the civilian techs inserting themselves at predetermined points according to their number of years in the department. Jani looked at Hals, who stood off to one side. The woman walked over to her, her face grooved with tension.

  “Burkett told me I’m to remain out here.” Her eyes glistened with barely contained tears. “Sit in the FT mover and wait for you.” She blinked rapidly, then turned away.

  “And your response is what, ma’am?” Jani edged away from the gathering of closed mouths and open ears. “I will back you to the wall, for what it’s worth.”

  Hals looked across the courtyard, where Burkett stood in huddled conversation with Derringer and another mainline officer. They’d changed their trousers in the interim, switching out their crimson stripes for slashes of dark green. Nema would be the only being in the embassy allowed to wear red in his clothing. The idomeni considered it a holy color.

  “He’ll change his pants for them, but not his mind.” Hals shook her head. “If I buck him on this, he’ll level me.”

  Jani dragged her toe along a whorl of stone. “One Service dictum I remember—and I don’t remember many—states that if you value your career more than you value your job, you’re the wrong person for both. Now if you stay out here like a good little sideliner, you’ll still have a career. You may pass some of it in a shelter waiting for the idomeni shatterboxes to stop falling, but you’ll still have your scanpack if the pink doesn’t eat it and you’ll have a pension if we’ve reestablished a viable monetary system by the time you retire. Assuming you’re still alive.”

  A flare of temper erased some of the strain from Hals’s face. “Kilian, has anybody ever told you you’re a judgmental pain in the ass?”

  “Good, ma’am, I hope that made you feel better.” Jani reclaimed her place in line, one step ahead of the stone-faced Vespucci. “Doesn’t do a damned thing to answer the essential question, but one should take every opportunity to vent one’s frustrations, I’ve always believed.”

  Hals adjusted the set of her garrison cap. “You honestly feel my not participating in these negotiations could alter the tone of idomeni-human relations for the worse?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “I will have to deal with the consequences of this much longer than you will.”

  “It will affect your career, yes. It may even end it. But I can give you the names of four people who would be more than happy to take on a dexxie who knows how to do her job.”

  Hals hesitated. “Senna, Tsai—”

  “Aryton and Nawar. Yes, ma’am.”

  A small grin brightened Hals’s features. “Not you?”

  Jani shook her head. “You don’t want to work for me—I’m a judgmental pain in the ass.”

  The grin flashed. Then Hals reset her cap once again and slipped into line behind a stricken Vespucci.

  “She could be court-martialed for this,” he rasped in Jani’s ear.

  “Thanks for the support, Major,” Jani tossed over her shoulder as the line started to move.

  The first thing that struck her was the heat, followed by the stark, ascetic look of the unadorned hallways and rugless, tiled floors. The Vynshàrau favored the colors of the desert in their interior decoration—cream, white, and tan predominated. But in deference to their allied sects, they allowed some splashes of variety, such as the leaf green and sky-blue curlicues inset in all the lake-facing windows. Pathen, Jani recalled. The silver-and-copper wireweave chandeliers, however, that resembled the blades lining the top of the fence, were of Sìah design, since the Sìah were renowned for their metalwork.

  So stark, yet so beautiful. Jani struggled to remain in formation as exhilaration washed over her. She felt drunk. Ecstatic. She wanted to skip down the hallway and pound on all the doors. That would go over big.

  “Colonel!”

  Jani heard Hals groan. She turned in time to see Burkett storm up the hall.

  “You will return to Sheridan immediately.” He drew alongside Hals and beckoned for her to accompany him.

  Jani sidestepped out of line to stand beside Burkett. “You’re making a mistake, sir.”

  He turned on her, his voice deadening. “You are expected to defer to the trained diplomats on this team, Captain. After you make your token appearance, you’re out of here right behind her.”

  Jani nodded. “Yes, sir. I’ll go,” she said in a voice loud enough to echo down the cavernous hall. She pointed to Hals. “She. Stays.”

  The faint buzz of humanish and Vynshàrau voices reached them as Cabinet and Council officials filled the open doorways. Burkett’s sweat-slicked face showed his extreme displeasure at putting on a show. “This discussion is finished, Captain. You have your orders.” He gestured to one of his staffers, who had drifted uneasily into the hallway. The woman immediately beckoned to a larger, less timorous-looking Service Security officer, who started toward them.

  “Glories of the day to you, my dear-rest friends!”

  The familiar singsong stopped the Security officer in his tracks. Hals gasped. Burkett closed his eyes. The other members of FT and Diplo buzzed and whispered.

  Jani smiled.

  Nema stalked toward them, his off-white overrobe billowing behind him like a churning wake. “Such argument. I left Cabinet Ministers in order to hear more.” In person, his skin appeared darker than Jani remembered from the winter, gold-brown rather than ocher, the result of frequent trips to the Death Valley enclave.

  Burkett stood at attention. “NìRau, permit me to apologize—”

  “For what, General? Open disputation is most seemly. Most as idomeni. Otherwise, humanish are so as walls, we do not think you alive.” Nema looked each of them in the face, a born-sect taboo he seemed determined to topple single-handed. His eyes widened as he bared his teeth, resulting in a startling, and to some, unpleasant expression.

  They don’t see what I see. To Jani, Nema’s rictus sardonicus was the welcoming grin of an old friend. An aggravating old friend. Presumptuous. But nevertheless . . .

  Nema stepped between Jani and the rattled general and gripped her chin between his thumb and forefinger. “You have brought me my Eyes and Ears.” He tilted her face back and forth. “alète onae vèste, Kièrshiarauta,” he said to her, voice pitched higher than normal as a show of regard. Glories of the day to you, toxin.

  “alète ona vèste, Nemarau.” Jani pitched her voice high as well, and added a greeting gesture, crossing her left arm over her chest, palm twisted outward. She tried to tilt her head to the left and offer the traditional single nod, but Nema’s firm grip prevented her. “NìRau, I can’t move my head.”

  “Apologies, nìa.” His hand dropped away, and he stepped back. “So, you have come to assist me with this stupid food business. Such ignorance. You are most well?” His voice held a touch of skepticism, but he restrained the gestures that would have clarified his feeling. Whatever Lucien had been telling him, he either didn’t believe, or didn’t like it.

  “NìRau Tsecha.” Burkett’s eyes held that wild look most humans acquired after they’d been around Nema for more than five seconds. “We didn’t expect to see you this afternoon.”

  “I know that, General.” The glint in Nema’s amber-on-amber eyes indicating that dashing the expectations of humanish Burketts was all part of the fun. “But when I heard my Eyes an
d Ears was to be here—” His gaze fell on Hals, and he bared his teeth again. “Ah, Colonel Hals, you have met challenge! Onì nìaRauta Hantìa will be most pleased—she thought you dead.” He took her by the arm and towed her down the hall and into the documents examiners’ meeting room.

  Burkett bent close enough to make Jani flinch. “This does not end here, Captain.” He turned and whispered something to the Security officer before disappearing into the Diplomatic meeting room.

  Jani followed the still-stunned stragglers down the hall to the examiners’ room, realizing after a few steps that the Security officer shadowed her. She probed her arm again. The ache had intensified in the last few minutes—the muscles in her lower arm had started to twitch. What the hell is this? Delayed reaction to Pimentel’s prodding and poking?

  “My, my, my.”

  Jani turned. Exterior Minister Anais Ulanova stood in the nearest doorway, regarding her with the cool arrogance Jani recalled from her first visit to Chicago. In deference to idomeni religious sensibility, she wore a wrapshirt and trousers in dark brown rather than the usual Exterior burgundy. A younger woman stood next to her. Ivory skin and hair. Pale blue eyes glittery with nerves. She wore black and grey, the official Interior colors. McEnnis, Jani recalled from news reports. Evan’s interim replacement.

  “Captain Kilian.” Ulanova nodded. “Although I recall you went by the name ‘Risa Tyi’ when you visited us last.” She leaned toward McEnnis and whispered something in her ear. The woman’s eyes widened.

  Jani smiled at McEnnis, who took a step backward. “I can imagine what she’s told you about me. Some of it might even be true. I hope for your sake you can figure out which is which—you need that skill dealing with her.” She waved farewell and started down the hall. “I’ll give Lucien your regards, ma’am, the next time we come up for air.” The look of outrage that Jani saw on Ulanova’s face just before she slipped into the examiners’ room was worth the little fib.