Rules of Conflict

by Kristine Smith

  “What did you do, Niall, blow them apart with a long-range?”

  “They deserved it!” His beautiful eyes described the ugly details. He held out the glass to Jani with a tentative hand. As if whether or not she took it from him would forever define something between them.

  Jani took it. “I can’t argue with that.” She sipped the metallic-tasting water and set it down. “I can’t argue with that at all. But the problem isn’t whether I agree or disagree, the problem is that I know.” She looked at Mako, Carvalla, and Gleick in turn. “So, that’s my side. I’m assuming you asked me here to give me yours.”

  Gleick’s lip curled. “We don’t owe you any explanations.”

  Mako closed his eyes. “Gunter.”

  “Damn it, Roshi, stop coddling her! She didn’t do it for the good of the Service, like—”

  “Like we did?” The eyes that opened held the dimming light of a suddenly older man. “No, Spacer Kilian didn’t kill for the good of the Service. She killed because people were dying horribly, and she wanted to make it stop.” Mako tipped his glass back and forth. It had been empty since Jani entered the room. Looked, in fact, as though it had never been filled. “Isn’t that true?”

  Jani listened to the sound of ragged breathing behind her. Pierce, reliving Hell. “Does it matter?”

  Mako held out a hand, palm facing up. “Perhaps not.” But something in the way he looked at her indicated that it did. When he donned his uniform and appraised himself in his mirror, he no longer felt the way he wanted to. And he blamed her for it.

  Jani read his single thought easily, followed its flarelike track. “You’d have me executed, if you could. But I’ve become a symbol. The Channel Worlds would make trouble, and that could increase the dissension between the colonials and Earthbounders in the ranks. And you know a fragmented Service would lose against the idomeni. Nema’s hinted at that, hasn’t he? War. I think you blinked where that was concerned. He couldn’t have convinced Cèel to go to war over me. But you had seen the Haárin fight in Rauta Shèràa. You didn’t want to chance battling them with divided troops.”

  “You credit yourself with formidable influence, Kilian.” Gleick still couldn’t let go the old standard. “You’re nothing.”

  Jani breathed, but couldn’t sense her chest rise or fall. Her legs felt numb. She wondered if Pierce had poisoned the water. “If I’m nothing, then have Pierce escort me to the brig. Process me. Treat me the way I should have been since you nailed me on Felix. Prosecute me—for Neumann’s death.” She stopped to catch her breath. “Stop throwing roadblocks in the way of Colonel Veda’s investigation. Then watch her reach the same conclusion I did, because any investigation of Knevçet Shèràa will lead her right back to Rauta Shèràa Base on the Night of the Blade.”

  Gleick’s mouth moved, but no sound emerged. Carvalla tossed back the balance of her vodka. The silent two-star, whom Jani had forgotten about, watched her unmoving, like a snake on a rock.

  Mako finally spoke. “What do you want?”

  “What do I want?” Jani tried to shrug. “Nothing.” Her limbs felt leaded. “To be left alone.”

  “A job befitting your training?”

  “Anyone with a scanpack can earn a living.”

  “But people will still think you a killer. They’ll think you got away with it.”

  “I don’t care what people think of me.”

  “Don’t you?” Mako cocked an eyebrow. “This isn’t some Outer Circle backwater, Jani, this is Chicago. The Commonwealth capital. Home base for all us Earthbounders of whom you think so little. You’re the Eyes and Ears, a famous woman. Nema has formally declared you. Your days of hiding are over. What some people in this city think of you will shape your life.” He touched fingers to forehead in a mock salute. “The Prime Minister and the Exterior Minister, for example. Let me commend you. You’ve managed to acquire some very powerful enemies in a very short time.”

  “I’ll leave Earth.”

  “Your medical condition prevents that. The only facilities that can treat you properly are located here. From what Sophia tells me, if you left Earth now, you could be dead in a month.”

  “That’s ridiculous.” Jani paused to breathe. “I feel fine.”

  “Why are you so determined to make it hard for yourself?” Mako gestured to the silent two-star, who set down his glass and reached into his inner tunic pocket. “Li Cao is agreeable to releasing you, but to appease some of her more vocal critics, she needs a victim. It’s a matter of record that the late Sergeant Emil Burgoyne threatened the late Colonel Rikart Neumann on several occasions. The Judge Advocate is prepared to make a ruling that all evidence points to him as Neumann’s killer.”

  Jani looked at the eerily silent man, who had taken a piece of paper from his pocket and now noiselessly unfolded it. “You’re the Judge Advocate General?” He nodded. “You want me to hand my sergeant over to save myself?”

  “Your sergeant?” Mako smiled coolly. “He’s dead, Jani. I hardly think he’ll mind.”

  “He didn’t do it!”

  The JA held up his piece of paper. “Even the most cursory glance at the late Sergeant Burgoyne’s record would give one pause, Captain.” He again reached inside his tunic and removed a stylus. “All we need to close the case is a signed statement from you that you witnessed such threats, but failed to report for fear Sergeant Burgoyne would turn on you as well.”

  Jani looked from Mako to the JA. “Are you familiar with the concept of untoward influence?”

  The snake didn’t blink. “We have a Service to protect.”

  “I trusted Borgie at my back.”

  Gleick snorted. “You consider that a recommendation?”

  “I wouldn’t trust you out of my sight!” She felt her eyes grow heavy. “He was worth twelve of any one of you.” Her shoulders slumped. “He was worth twelve of every one of you.”

  Pierce touched her shoulder. “Kilian, take the deal.”

  Jani shook him off. “‘Ease would recant vows made in pain,’ Niall. Book Four, again. That’s another way of saying I don’t want to wind up like you.” She sat forward. The room darkened. “I stood here. Neumann stood”—she stretched her aching arm, and sighted down—“four paces in front of me.”

  “Five.” Neumann sat on the arm of Carvalla’s chair, detached leg swinging sideways from his hip, back and forth like a pendulum. “And I was a little off to the right, but keep going, keep going. I’ll dance at your execution yet.”

  “Not with one leg, you won’t.”

  “Captain?” Carvalla glanced at the chair arm in alarm. “Are you all right?”

  “Five paces.” Jani pointed her finger at Neumann. “He told me about the patients.” She squeezed the imaginary charge-through. “He made me an offer, too.” Neumann blew her a kiss.

  Mako and Carvalla looked at one another. Mako’s eyes widened, and Carvalla sat back.

  “I understand guilt,” Mako said.

  “No, if you did, you’d have locked down Niall long ago. He kept turning up, and I had to ask myself why?” Jani kept her finger pointed at Neumann—it felt as weighty as a long-range. “I shot Neumann. I didn’t know whether he had drawn his weapon, and I didn’t care. I’d have killed him if he’d been unarmed. If he’d been sitting at his desk. If he’d been asleep.”

  “Brava.” Neumann stood, bowed to her and clapped his hands. “Do you want me to kick my leg across the room for emphasis?”

  “I killed him. Then Yolan died. Then the patients. Because of me. Then I killed the Laum. Then Borgie and the rest of the Twelfth died. Because of me.” She stopped to breathe. “I almost died, but John stuck his nose in. I wish he hadn’t.”

  Pierce whispered, “Jani—”

  “I admit to murder, yet you’ll hand me the lie to save myself. Why?”

  Mako had the gall to look humble. “Because you are a good Spacer who deserves a second chance.”

  “And you’re the honorable man who’ll give it to me.�
� She watched him watch her. “I’m not honorable. I’ve known that for years. It’s difficult, at first, admitting that you’re no better than what you are, that you’ll do whatever it takes to survive. Deal with whatever devil rears his head. But it gets easier as time goes on. Doesn’t it, Roshi?”

  “I’m offering you a new life.”

  “And all I have to do is abet the libel of a dead man.” Jani held up her left hand so she could shake her finger. Since the arm felt numb to the shoulder, she had to watch to make sure she did it. “No, I’m wrong. You can’t libel the dead. Supposedly.” She let the arm drop. “I killed Neumann.”

  “The evidence doesn’t exist.”

  “I admit it freely.”

  “The court will not accept your word as anything but the guilt-ridden ramblings of a traumatized woman,” Mako said. “The world outside court is, of course, a different story.”

  “You have paper proof concerning Borgie?”

  “Of sufficient scope that guilt can be assumed, yes.”

  “Where is it?”

  The snake glanced up from his paper. “Hidden, Captain.”

  Jani nodded. Across the room, Neumann clucked his tongue, then stuck it out at her. She stood up slowly. “Good evening.”

  Carvalla tried to rise as well, but Mako held up his hand, and she sat back. “Good evening, Jani. You know where we are if you should change your mind.”

  Pierce caught up to her just outside the door. “They’re giving you a chance.” He grabbed her sore arm and spun her around. “Take it and run!” Jani stifled a scream, and he released her like hot metal and backed away.

  She waited for the haze in front of her eyes to clear. “I said I couldn’t argue with you about killing them. I meant that. But there are limits—you know that better than I do.” She pulled the slip of paper from her pocket. “I had to write this down. No time to memorize everything. We’re still in Book Four. It seemed to describe you so well.” She blinked at the paper until the words came into focus.

  “‘Horror and doubt distract his troubled thoughts, and from the bottom stir the Hell within him.’” She heard Pierce speak the words as she read them, and slowed her voice to pace his. He knew it better than she did, after all. “‘For within him Hell he brings, and round about him, nor from Hell one step, no more than from himself, can fly by change of place.’” She paused to breathe, and heard Pierce pause beside her. “‘Now conscience wakes despair that slumbered; wakes the bitter memory of what he was, what is, and what must be worse; of worse deeds worse suffering must ensue.’” She folded the paper and slipped it back into her pocket. “I think that means it’s only going to get worse from here. I think it means Sam Duong and Borgie are only the beginning.” She looked past Pierce’s sliced face, and spoke to the unscarred man. “Smearing Borgie bothers you the most, doesn’t it? It should. Shame on you, Sergeant. He was one of yours.” She turned her back on him and walked slowly down the hallway.

  “So, what do we do now?” Neumann crab-walked beside her, cartwheeling his arms, pushing the right one back up his sleeve every time it slipped.

  “SIB.”

  “Oh, Christ, I hate that place.” As they walked through the foyer, he looked toward the door leading to the party tent. “Where’d your rent boy run off to?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Guess it’s just you and me, Kilian. At each other’s throats, just like old times.”

  “Just like old times.”

  Chapter 30

  The other techs had gone on break. Sam sat at his desk and picked through his perfunctory task. Alphabetize these lists, Sam, Odergaard had told him, while strangers guarded his dead.

  “Mr. Duong?”

  Sam looked up. Kilian leaned against the wall of one of the other cubicles. Hanford’s, the gum-chewer. He wanted to warn her that if she wasn’t careful, she would stick to the partition, but something about the expression on her face told him she wouldn’t appreciate the joke.

  “Captain.” He stood slowly, one eye on the entry, on the lookout for breaktime returnees. “How was your party?”

  “Can you get into secured records?” Kilian’s light brown face was purpled, as though she’d been running. Yet she didn’t sweat—her skin looked papery, as though it would tear if Sam touched it. She stepped forward, dragging her right leg. She had undone the collar of her dress tunic—a crescent of white shirt showed in the V. “I need—Sergeant Burgoyne’s record.” She stopped to breathe. Her eyes glimmered with fever. “Can you get it?”

  “I—don’t have the codes.”

  “Can you find them?”

  “I need to break into Odergaard’s desk.”

  “What kind of lock is it?”

  “A single-finger.”

  “Those are easy.”

  They both smiled, in spite of the odd tension, and her strange behavior.

  “They’re going to smear him.” Kilian’s smile faded. “Borgie. They’re going to say”—again, she stopped to take a breath—“he killed Neumann. But he didn’t—I did.”

  “Because of us?”

  “Yes.” Kilian stared at him, her eyes filling. It was a terrifying sight, that abject vulnerability in one so contained, like watching the ground fissure at your feet. “You’re Simyam Baru, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.” Sam sagged against the desk. He felt so weak, but just on one side. He touched the right side of his face, tracing the jagged outline where the skin had peeled. Up to his temple, then alongside his ear, the line of his jaw, to his chin. “I wondered when you’d recognize me.”

  “You don’t look the same.”

  “Neither do you, Captain.” He felt a rush of compassion for her, this woman who lived only to dash herself against rocks. “But people are more than their faces, are they not?”

  Kilian slumped against the partition, then edged along it and around the corner, finally scrabbling for purchase on the brink of a vacant desk. “How did you get away?” She squinted at him and blinked repeatedly, as though she had trouble focusing.

  Her vision is going. He felt for his comport pad. “I should call the hospital—”

  “Answer the question.”

  He pulled his hand back. “Orton had been our driver during our previous expeditions. She had never handled a people-mover of that size before, but—”

  “Orton couldn’t see. They’d severed her optic nerves so they could input directly into her visual cortex.”

  “The best pilots handle a craft by feel.”

  “Not to that extent.”

  “I was her eyes. I told her where to steer.”

  “Right over a blind jump and into the path of a Laumrau scout.” Service disgust for all reasoning civilians dulled Kilian’s overbright eyes. “I saw the flash from the roof of the hospital.”

  “I was never a soldier, Captain.” Civilian disgust for all things Service darkened Sam’s voice. “I did not understand the concept of ambush until too late.” He touched his face again. “Orton died. Fessig. I was the only one to survive the crash.”

  “Any injuries?”

  “My left arm.” He flexed it. “Broken.”

  “How did you get—to Rauta Shèràa?”

  “I walked for hours. The sun at my back. Toward the city. Just when I thought I could walk no farther, I was rescued by a group of xenoanthropologists. They had been conducting research in the central plains, and had received the evac order from their inpost in the city.” Sam watched as Kilian’s shoulders rounded, slumped. She’s too weak to sit up. “How did you get here from the party?”

  “I swiped a scoot and don’t change the subject!” Again the pause to breathe. “Who were the xenos affiliated with? A university? A collective?”

  “I was in no condition to inquire.”

  “Can you recall any of their names?”

  “No.” He had tried to remember. He recalled snatches of faces—dark eyes, kind smiles—but he could never remember more. “They bandaged my face and arm as best t
hey could and took me to the shuttleport in Rauta Shèràa. From there, I begged passage from a merchant transport bound for Phillipa.”

  “How did you pay? Did your rescuers pass the hat?”

  “No.” Details had always been fuzzy there, too, but considering the circumstances . . . “I begged. They let me on.”

  “No one would have given a billet to a broke and injured incoherent.”

  “Compassionate people exist, Captain, even in shuttle-ports.”

  “Name one.” Kilian squinched her eyes shut. Opened them. Shook her head. Then she paused, tensed, as though she heard a far-off sound and was trying to place it.

  “Do you hear something?” Sam watched the doorway, on the lookout for returnees.

  “No one important.” She muttered under her breath, as though she argued with someone close by. When she finally looked at him, rage glittered in her fevered eyes.

  “Everyone says—you’re sick.” Her voice shook. “You have a tumor in your thalamic region that induces—a type of amnesia. You can’t recall your own past, so you substitute other people’s. For some reason, you’ve fixated on Knevçet Shèràa—and Simyam Baru. It makes sense. You’re both Bandan. Similar, physically. But he’s dead, and you are, and have always been, Sam Duong.” She wiped her hand across her cheek, and looked down at the floor. “Too much coincidence, otherwise. Why, after all these years—would you wind up here?”

  Why, indeed? That area of Sam’s life had always been fuzziest of all. Why am I here? “So I could thank you.” Yes, the relief that flooded him as he spoke told him those were the right words. “For trying . . . for trying to save us. I knew, if I waited here along enough”—his voice quickened as his assurance grew—“if I waited here long enough, you’d show up. Eventually.”

  Kilian stared. “Thank me—?” Her voice cracked, and she pressed a hand over her eyes.

  Sam fixed his attention on the door to allow her some privacy. And to watch for his officemates, who would be filing in any moment now.

  Kilian wiped her eyes with her tunic sleeve, and looked across the gulf of years at him. “Could we try to get hold of Borgie’s—”