They anchored the chip with surgical glue rather than nerve solder. They couldn’t risk using anesthetic, the neurosurgeon told Jani, because of her history of idiosyncratic reactions to common medications. Instead, after they clamped her arm into the surgical sleeve, they applied pin blocks that supposedly disrupted nerve transmissions just as well. They didn’t. Not without the magnetic-pulse adjuncts, which they couldn’t use because a magburst could blitz the new chip. Pimentel stood behind her and massaged the knots out of her shoulders, and they gave her a dental appliance to bite down on so she wouldn’t damage her teeth when she clenched her jaw.
After the neurosurgeon finished, she recommended cold packs for the pain. Jani’s street Acadian reply drew blank stares from both her and Pimentel. The sergeant major, however, betrayed her origins by chewing her lower lip and staring at the display until her eyes watered.
As soon as Jani had been settled with a cold pack and instructions for caring for the incision, everyone left. Except Pimentel.
“I’m sorry about that, Jani.” He dragged a stool near her surgical chair and sat. “I’ve scheduled you for an appointment with someone from Gene Therapeutics tomorrow.”
Jani repositioned the cold pack. “I thought you wanted to wait.”
“I don’t think we can.” Pimentel stared at his hands. For the first time, his voice sounded tentative. “I ran a routine liver-enzyme scan while we were waiting for your imaging analysis. I’m seeing values I’ve never seen before, and I’m not seeing things I should see.” He looked at Jani, eyes pitted by circles, skin grey. The self-confident physician of only a few days ago seemed never to have existed. “Internal Medicine has a team of med techs working to develop assays that can identify and quantify your enzymatic activity. Hepatology has advised we farm your liver immediately so we can start growing a replacement, and so we can assemble an adjunct in case you go into failure.”
“I feel fine.” Jani forced her voice to be strong. “Not great, but not that sick. My department is required at the idomeni embassy tomorrow morning. I have to go.”
“Not if I feel you’re in danger,” Pimentel replied, in a voice that sounded surer than it had all afternoon.
Jani spent over three hours in Gene Therapeutics being sampled, scoped, and scanned. More pin blocks, this time augmented by the magnetic pulse. Together, they deadened the pain, though not the eerie sensation of things being removed from her abdomen.
The med techs’ cobbled assays told the hepatologist some of what he needed to know about the state of her internal organs. That allayed Pimentel’s fears sufficiently that he agreed not to admit her. He did, however, make her spend a few postop hours in the sunroom. Just to be on the safe side, he said, which didn’t make Jani feel safe at all. She cheered up a little, though, when Ischi stopped by on his way home to the BOQ to drop off her paper mail.
“You didn’t have to do this, Lieutenant,” Jani said as she laid out the few thin envelopes before her on the table. One contained an offer to join the South Central Players, while another held an invitation to the All-Base Volleyball Tournament.
“Oh, yes I did, ma’am.” Ischi leaned down and with one finger, tapped a crimson-edged white envelope out of the stack like a trickster picking his card. “Read the front.”
“One North Lakeside.” Jani felt her tender stomach clench as she peeled the envelope seal and removed the stiff, gold-edged card. “Admiral-General and Mrs. Hiroshi Mako cordially invite you and a guest to attend an Open House . . .” Her voice faded.
“How about that!” Ischi bubbled. “Some people wait for years to get their invitation. But you’ve only had your number a couple of days.”
Oh, I think someone’s had my number for longer than that. “Yeah,” Jani replied. “How about it.”
Chapter 24
The next morning dawned, as had all the previous ones, clear and hot. Jani stood by the people-mover, dispo of fruit drink in hand, and watched the rest of Foreign Transactions gather. She’d had an early night—Pimentel’s dour pronouncements concerning the state of her health, combined with the lack of news from the Misty Center, had made her too grumpy to socialize. She’d remained in her rooms. Read newssheets. Debated calling Lucien and decided against. Discussed Niall Pierce’s odd behavior with Val the Bear.
She had also waited for Neumann to reappear. He hadn’t. At least something had gone right.
The sound of laughter brought her back to the present; she watched the rising sun illuminate her coworkers’ sleepy eyes and sheepish grins. Dressed in T-shirts, shorts, and trainers, scanpacks hanging from belts and shoulder slings, they looked like Sheridan’s first team in the all-dexxie Olympics.
“What do you think, Captain?” Colonel Hals gestured toward the milling group. Ischi, athletic-looking enough to appear at home in the abbreviated uniform of the day, busied himself checking off names on a recording board. Meanwhile, the less toned Vespucci, red-faced and fidgety, assisted a couple of underlings with last-minute ’pack assessments.
Jani eyed assorted flaccid limbs. “I think there’s going to be a stampede on the gym when we get back.” She looked at Hals, who regarded her impatiently. “When word of this leaks out, the self-appointed arbiters will have plenty to say.”
“That’s a given.” Hals sipped her steaming coffee. “What about the Vynshàrau?”
Jani bit into a slice of carefully scanned breakfast cake. The smell of the coffee hadn’t agreed with her stomach, but otherwise, she felt good. Not one bit sleepy. Hyper, actually. Floaty, as though she’d drunk a glass of wine. “Officially, I think they’ll be relieved. I can’t predict individual reactions.”
“But you went to school with them?”
“Yes, but we didn’t mix.”
“Except for Hantìa?”
“Only because she approached us.”
“Wasn’t that unusual? I would have thought they’d have waited for you to come to them. I thought that except for Tsecha, all the idomeni felt themselves superior to you.” Hals coughed out Nema’s official name. A good job, as though she’d practiced.
Jani shrugged. “The Vynshà hadn’t yet ascended to rau, so they still had room to maneuver. It was up to the Laumrau to hold the snobbery standard.” She flashed a smile she didn’t feel. “Hantìa was disputatious, even by Vynshà standards. She liked sticking her fingers between the bars.”
“Did any of you ever bite?” Hals grew restive as the silence lengthened. “I’d like an answer, Captain.”
Oh hell. It never failed. Why did the events from your past that you hoped remained buried forever always disinter themselves at the worst possible time? “I . . . hit her, once.”
“You hit her!” Hals lowered her voice as people turned to look. “Define hit.”
Jani mimed a right uppercut. “It was our first term at Academy—”
“I don’t need a history lesson.”
“Yes, ma’am, you do. She found out that Hansen Wyle and I had been sneaking food into our study carrels. We stayed in the equivalent of a dormitory, but we couldn’t eat or even store any food there. If we wanted to eat, we had to travel to the human enclave, two kilometers outside Rauta Shèràa’s perimeter. It took an hour or more to skim there on an average traffic day. Three or more hours to make the round-trip. We already traveled there twice a day for regular meals. We had so much work to do, we couldn’t spare the extra time.” Jani felt a sick chill. “And we just got tired of being hungry.” Even decades later, the episode bought back feelings of guilt. Fear. Anger. “We tried our best to follow their dictates, and only bring in the kinds of foods that were sold on the futures markets on a given day.”
“She threatened to fink?”
“She would have gotten us expelled. Not even Nema could have saved us from that one.” Jani clenched her hand. “She came to my room and told me what she was going to do. She has a very aggravating laugh, even for an idomeni.” She heard it in her head now, that monotonic staccato. “I was scared. Upset. I tho
ught I’d blown it for everybody. Before I knew it, I had knocked her to the floor.”
“What did she do?” Hals’s voice was flat.
“Blinked. Stared right at me, which surprised me. Picked herself up off the ground and left.”
“That was it?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Jani worked her fingers. She could still remember her aching knuckles, Hansen trying to console her as he packed her hand in ice.
Hals shook her head. “And you think that in spite of that run-in, she accepts you now?”
“She knows I killed twenty-six Laumrau at Knevçet Shèràa. They all do. They accept it. Like I’ve said before, they’d be insulted if you tried to hide me or pretend I didn’t exist. It would be an affront to their intelligence.” Jani sighed at Hals’s confused look. “It’s difficult to explain. Honoring the unpleasant isn’t a sensibility most humans are familiar with.”
Before Hals could respond, a stiff-looking young woman approached them. She wore dress blue-greys cut with a mainline stripe, and eyed the bare limbs around her with distaste bordering on horror. “Lieutenant Guid, ma’am.” She saluted Hals. “Judge Advocate’s office.” She offered Jani only a vague nod, in acknowledgment of the fact that she represented the prosecution while Jani embodied the prosecuted.
Hals gestured for them both to follow her to the other side of the people-mover, away from prying eyes. “Lieutenant Guid is here to see about your chip, Captain.”
“I was starting to wonder about that.” Jani held out her still-sore right arm to the pinched young woman, who removed a tiny blip scanner from her trouser pocket.
“This release is on a timer.” She ran the scanner along the inside of Jani’s arm. As soon as it beeped, she tapped it against the bandaged area, leaving a red dot behind. Then she removed a stylus from her shirt pocket, activated it, and placed the glowing orange tip against the dot.
Jani felt a warm tingle at the site, followed by a painful jolt as feedback from the chip radiated through incised tissue and nerve. Her arm jerked.
Guid struggled to hold the stylus in place. “You must return to Sheridan within four hours, Captain.” The stylus emitted a sharp squeak, and she released her grip as though Jani burned.
“I asked for six, Lieutenant.” Hals had paled when Jani’s arm started twitching. She stood a long pace back and declined to draw closer. “I distinctly remember petitioning Incarceration for six.”
“Four hours, ma’am. That’s standard.”
“This is a decidedly nonstandard situation.”
“Then you need to take it up with Incarceration, ma’am.” Guid repocketed her devices. “Someone will be available at oh-nine.”
“You—” Hals struck her bare thigh with the flat of her hand—the impact sounded like a slap. “Thank you, Lieutenant. That will be all.” She grudgingly acknowledged the young woman’s salute. “Damn it,” she said as the representative of justice disappeared over the rise, “that’s cutting it close.”
Jani flexed her arm. Liberated felt no different than trapped. Not yet, anyway. “If what I felt before was any indication, when it kicks in, it kicks in full-force. It won’t increase gradually.”
“Should we have a medic standing by?”
“Do you believe we’re going to be there more than four hours?”
Hals paced in a tight circle. The casuals accentuated her plump roundness—she looked like she should have been carrying a trowel and a flat of seedlings rather than a scanpack and the weight of an entire department. “Burkett’s been good about making sure our time isn’t wasted. According to what I’ve been told, we’re just supposed to validate the provenance of some survey grids and maps being used in the talks.”
Jani ran the toe of her shoe along a hairline fissure in the walkway. “Hold off for now. If it looks like our visit will run over, we can call. It shouldn’t take them long to get there. All they have to do is blow the chip out with a magburst.” She peeked around the mover just in time to see the amused sergeant who would serve as their driver amble down the walkway.
Two orderly lines formed in front of the vehicle’s fore and aft doors. Hals hung back, gesturing for Jani to remain with her. Ischi bustled past them, recording board tucked under his arm, eyes shining at the prospect of diplomatic derringdo. “We’re going to Camp Ido!” he sang as he leapt aboard the mover. “We’re going to Camp Ido!”
Vespucci approached them, white knees flashing in the sun. “Everything’s airtight, ma’am.” He remained with Hals, waiting pointedly until Jani broke away and headed for the mover.
Jerk. Jani took a seat near the rear, one row up from where Hals and Vespucci would sit. As they pulled out of the charge lot, she glanced out her window. Lucien sat alone on a bench beneath a stand of trees, a place hidden from view from the charge lot, but visible now. He looked up just as the mover passed by, a morose expression on his fallen-angel face. He wore summerweights. And a packed holster. Jani watched him track the vehicle until they floated around the corner of an Admin building and out of sight.
Everyone seemed relaxed as the trip began. Ischi even tried to organize a sing-along, but as soon as the mover passed beneath the Shenandoah Gate, the first verse of “All Around the Campfire” dwindled to a few halfhearted warbles. Then one of the civilian techs said, “Shut up,” very softly. Ischi shot her a hard look, but kept his protests to himself. Jani looked over her shoulder at Hals, who stared back, face set.
The nervous backward glances started as soon as the mover ramped onto the Boul. Jani felt them like gnat bites, and did her best to ignore them. But the growing tension managed to wend around her calm—she started when Vespucci touched her shoulder.
“I hope you know what you’re doing, Kilian.” He tugged at the neck of his T-shirt as though it choked him.
“This was Eiswein’s call, Major.” Hals’s voice was tight. “Kilian may have suggested, but it was Eiswein’s call all the way.
Vespucci’s mouth opened, but one glance at Hals and it snapped shut.
Jani turned around to face the front. Everyone else did, too.
The mover traversed the same route as had Burkett’s skimmer. Through the Bluffs, then onto the Boul artery that ran within view of the lakeshore. Soon, the Chicago skyline filled the windscreen; some of the older, reflective-glass towers flashed the light of the rising sun.
Temporarily blinded, Jani didn’t spot the demiskimmers at first. But as the mover veered toward the lake and her viewing angle changed, she saw them glide over the water toward the city, metal skins gleaming. They banked in groups of three, first rising, then swoop-landing out of sight amid the buildings lining the shore.
“I’ll bet my ’pack they’re coming from HollandPort,” Vespucci said. “That’s the shuttleport on the eastern shore that’s set aside for idomeni use.”
Idomeni, coming to their embassy. Jani counted the demiskimmers, and lost count after thirty. Lots and lots of idomeni. Important idomeni, to command demis. Along with the rest of FT, Jani watched the graceful craft bank and glide.
Whatever it was, it looked big, and she hoped like hell that it had nothing to do with her.
The fingerprinted courtyard felt almost cool, sheltered as it was from the morning sun. Quiet, too, like the vestibule of a church.
“By the way,” Hals said to Jani as she stepped down from the mover, “keep your fists to yourself in there.”
Jani nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”
They fell into their rank-line and walked up the short flight of steps and through the door. Six Vynshàrau diplomatic suborns bookended the entry this time instead of the single female who had stood for them before. Three males on one side, three females on the other.
Oh . . . shit. Jani looked past them down the hall, where even more suborns lined the way. Five on each side, lined up by sex. A total of eight paired escorts, one for each major god. Her mind stumbled over itself as she tried to determine the reason for the formality. So intent was she, she didn’t feel Vespucci nudge
her until he prodded her aching arm.
“Do you have any idea what’s going on?”
Jani nodded, her stomach roiling. “Someone plans to offer challenge.”
“À lérine?” He surprised her by pronouncing the term properly. Ah lay-reen, with a trilled r.
“Yes, sir.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know, sir.” Someone who had arrived in one of the demis, perhaps. But whom would they fight?
They passed through the silent gauntlet to find Burkett waiting for them by the documents-room entry. Even dressed in casuals, no one could mistake him for anything other than highly polished brass. “Morden nìRau Cèel is here.”
The Oligarch? A vague image of lanky height and dark hair formed in Jani’s mind. She had never seen him in person, even though he had studied at the Academy at the same time she had. He didn’t like humanish then. He still didn’t.
“Just flew in from the Death Valley Enclave.” Burkett’s eyes were on Jani. “The PM is here with half the Cabinet. They’re playing catch-up because no one can figure out what Cèel’s doing here. He and Tsecha holed up in the main altar room as soon as he walked through the lakeside door—no one’s heard a word from them since.” He turned to her, his dislike swamped out by his need to know. “It’s a challenge, isn’t it, Kilian? A big one.”
“Yes, sir,” Jani replied tiredly. It figured that the knives and fighting part of the idomeni philosophy would be the part Burkett would get right.
“Think Cèel challenged Tsecha?”
“I hope not, sir.”
“That would explain the number of demis, though—a formal bout between the Vynshàrau’s secular and religious dominants would definitely draw a crowd.” Burkett stood tall, hands clasped behind his back. “Not to mention precipitate an intrasect rift that would cripple the Vynshàrau’s power and influence over their affiliated sects.” His nostrils flared, giving his narrow face a snorting-stallion cast. Confusion to the Vynshàrau held definite appeal for him.
Rules of Conflict Page 27
