Was Bast.
Emry stormed over to the threesome, and the she-cat promptly snarled and splayed her claws. Kwan held her back as Emry cried, “What the vack is she doing here, Kwan? I thought you told me her bunch had been kicked out.”
“Indeed they were, my dear, and Bast here was instrumental in that defeat.” He reached up and skritched the panther-woman under her chin to calm her. “A cat’s primary loyalty is to her own comfort. Bast has no deeper ideology than that. She sniffed out the way the wind was blowing and switched to the winning side.”
“You think that’s reassuring? She’s one of the ones responsible for killing my mentor!”
“My dear Emerald, I have already extended you Neogaia’s deepest regrets for that tragedy,” Kwan said in dulcet tones, though Bast simply looked bored. “Let me remind you that she was simply following the orders of more dedicated fanatics. And that she herself was incapacitated at the time of the disaster—thanks, so she tells me, to your own actions. If anything, you spared her the burden of being a conscious party to such regrettable events. Isn’t that right, my sweet?” he asked, stroking the silky black fur of Bast’s shoulder.
“Whatever,” Bast said, following it up with a prodigious yawn. “Where’s the food?” She moved off without another glance at Emry—although the tip of her tail twitched fiercely as she moved past. Emry resisted the urge to give it a good yank.
“Oh, you know cats,” Kwan said, laughing it off. “Always having to save face. Believe me, underneath, she regrets the acts she committed under the old regime. And she doesn’t hold a grudge. I do hope the same is true of you.” He began stroking Emry’s shoulder much as he had Bast’s. “After all, she’s not the only one who’s been manipulated into doing unfortunate things by an unscrupulous superior.” He leaned closer to speak more softly. “I believe you’ll see a case in point if you subtly direct your attention thirty degrees eastward, at the top of the rock face.”
Emry blinked in surprise, but didn’t betray it beyond that. She casually looked around the amphitheater, casting a split-second glance in the specified direction. Noticing Kwan gazing down her blouse, she pretended to be annoyed with him and walked away, enabling her to get a glance from another angle. While Kwan followed and continued to flirt, she called up the images on her retinal HUD, ran an image analysis, and noticed a subtle distortion in a bulge in the rock face. Once she knew what she was looking for, she was able to spot the telltales; the bulge was actually a person-sized metamaterial cloak, virtually invisible and morphed to blend in with the contours of the rock. Hijab? No doubt there were others with comparable camouflage tech, but few could remain as still and soundless. And the figure’s size was right. Besides, who else would it be? Of course Tai would want to spy on this conference, maybe sabotage it. But is Maryam a dupe or a willing conspirator? She didn’t know the woman well enough to judge.
“How did you know?” she whispered to Kwan.
“A little bird told me.”
Fine, be that way. “Have you told anyone else?”
“I only just noticed it myself.”
“Well … don’t.” This was her responsibility. She’d have to find Maryam and whoever else was with her—they’d probably snuck in with the Ferdinandea delegation, come to think of it—and stop them from disrupting the conference. Hopefully she could reason with them, convince them—
Not likely. What reason do they have to trust me? Most likely, they’d try to arrest her and do whatever they planned to do anyway.
So it’ll be a fight, then. Well … I’m ready.
* * *
Emry lost Hijab’s trail before long, but it was easy enough to surmise where the Troubleshooters would be hiding; after all, she’d been trained by the same people they had. Before long, she tracked them down to the free-fall industrial sector in Neogaia’s hub, between its two counterrotating wheels. She considered calling in Vanguardian backup, but decided against it. She had to at least try to reason with them first. Maybe her chances of being heard would be better with Psyche at her side, but both Thornes were busy with the negotiations. So that left her on her own. For now.
The T-shooters were holed up in a large warehouse bay adjacent to the spacedock, its volume crisscrossed by a lattice of cables to which crates and bins of various sizes were clipped to keep them from drifting. Emry made her way gingerly through the three-dimensional grid, trying not to set off vibrations in the taut cables as she snuck around the containers, edging closer to her erstwhile colleagues. Soon, she grew close enough to hear their voices. “Why are we still waiting here?” That was Paladin, a no-nonsense Troubleshooter who made no secret of his ambition to run the Corps one day. Figures Auster would be Tai’s golden boy.
“We don’t want to rush in without getting the lay of the land first.” Oh, Goddess. That was Kari! Not her! Ohh, she has to be a dupe!
“Hijab didn’t have to come all the way back here to report.”
“I didn’t want to risk breaking radio silence.”
Emry didn’t have to see Auster to know he was shaking his head in disapproval. “This is an inefficient strategy. I still don’t see why Tai put you in charge instead of me.”
Kari’s voice was subdued. “I guess he thought I had something to prove.”
“I don’t get it. What?”
He wants her to prove her loyalty by arresting her best friend, Emry realized. Well, I might as well make it easy for her.
“Kenny, what you don’t get would take weeks just to list,” she called, pulling herself out from behind the last crate. Four Troubleshooters turned their heads in surprise. In addition to Kari, Hijab, and Paladin, Vijay Pandalai was there too. Aside from Maryam, who wore her black cloaking garment with the face mask folded back over her hair, they were all in plain clothes.
Paladin drew his sidearm. “Emerald Blair, you are under arrest! Drop your weapons immediately!”
“Cool your jets, Pal! A, I’m unarmed, and B, I’m here to talk.”
Arjun had his weapon out now too. “A Troubleshooter’s never unarmed, even when she isn’t carrying a weapon. We all know that, Blaze. You want to talk, you’ll do it in restraints.”
“Any other circumstances, Veej, I’d be game for a little bondage with you. But you know that requires trust, and right now I don’t have much to spare.”
“And how can we trust you?” Kari cried, smoothly drawing and opening her tessen, the high-tech Japanese war fans that were her preferred weapons. “After what you’ve done? After you abandoned us?”
“It’s not like that!” She reached a pleading hand forward.
It was a mistake; Paladin took it as an aggressive move and fired. Her enhanced reflexes made her dodge the shockdart before she was consciously aware of it, but her mind quickly caught up. She pushed off the crate and fled into the maze, flipping backward to look behind her. She caught a glimpse through the crates of Kari intercepting Auster, blocking his path with a spread fan. “Let’s not be rash! We split up. You and Arjun go that way, circle around.” Emry could imagine the glare on Auster’s square-jawed face, but Kari was already leading Maryam down the path Emry had taken. And Maryam was becoming harder to see as she resealed her suit and activated its camouflage.
Emry tried to keep tabs on Hijab, but she had to watch where she was going in the maze of crates and containers, and she soon lost track of the veiled one. Kari remained close on her tail, knowing her moves too well. She used her flexible tessen as airfoils, letting her swim and curve through the air more deftly than Emry, who had to pull herself along by the cables. It was like being chased by a fan dancer. “Kari, will you stop and listen to me?” she called.
“Listen to this!” A graceful flick of the wrist folded one of the tessen shut and thrust its tip toward Emry. A shock laser discha
rge barely missed her, forcing her to grab a mooring cable and dodge right.
Wait a minute, she thought as she followed this new path. From the way Arjun and Paladin went … shouldn’t she be herding me to the left? Still, she followed an evasive path away from the two men, on the assumption that Kari had simply missed the shot.
But Kari doesn’t miss shots!
Suddenly a dainty but solid body collided with her and drove her into an open cargo container. Hitting the boxes inside knocked some of the wind out of Emry, and Kari pushing off her to reverse direction finished the job. Emry braced herself against the wall of boxes, catching her breath for Kari’s next strike.
But Kari wasn’t striking. She was loosely closing the door of the container and holding a finger to her lips, the tessen folded and held nonthreateningly against her forearms. “It’s all right. We can talk here,” she said in a serene, detached voice. The battle peace was upon her.
And confusion was upon Emry. “What, now you want to talk?”
“It wasn’t safe before. We had to make it look convincing for Paladin. His loyalties are unclear.”
Emry studied her friend, but the heiwa rendered her inscrutable. “And where are your loyalties?”
“With the truth. And I would like to hear it from you, for I am not hearing it from Mr. Tai.”
The tension drained from Emry’s body. “Oh, I am so glad to hear you say that.”
Kari smiled … and a moment later the smile became much wider and more intense as the heiwa subsided. “Ohh, Emry!” Kari pushed off the doors and into Emry’s arms, hugging her with all her might. “You don’t think I’d ever hurt you, would you, sweetie?”
“No, it’s not that, it’s just … oh, Kari, it’s just been such a mess … you really didn’t believe the things Tai said?”
Kari lowered her eyes in shame. “I believed most of it. The things he offered … ending the chaos, bringing order … the arguments he made for escalating our tactics … it was all so persuasive. I had my doubts, but I wanted to believe in him. I was willing to do anything that could bring down … the mobs. You know.”
“I get it.”
She clasped Emry’s hands. “But when he accused you of arranging an assassination … he went too far. I’d never believe that of you. I knew he was lying, and I wanted to know why. Besides … he started to get a bit creepy. Like he got off on having power over me.” She shuddered a bit and said in a small voice, “He fondled my hair.”
“Ohh, Kari.” Emry squeezed her hands supportively. “I understand, honey, but that could be dangerous! You become a liability to him, he finds a way to get rid of you.”
“I noticed. So I took it slow, talked to some of the others. A lot of us have doubts about the new policies. And I wasn’t the only one who didn’t believe him about you.”
“Vijay? Marut?”
Kari nodded. “Never doubted you for a second.”
“Nor did I.” Emry’s eyes widened as Hijab’s black-shrouded form faded into view. She hadn’t even noticed the door opening for the older woman to slip through.
Emry’s eyes darted back and forth between Maryam and Kari. “You two are together in this?”
Maryam nodded, pulling up her mask to let Emry see her dark eyes. “Tenshi recruited me. She believed—rightly—that she could rely on my discretion. And that she’d need me if she wanted to gain incriminating evidence on Tai. It didn’t take much convincing. I’ve had my eye on him all along. You know I don’t trust easily.”
“But … you trusted me?”
“Of course. You’ve earned it.”
“Tai really screwed up when he tried to frame you,” Kari said. “It was just too unbelievable. It got people wondering, asking questions. I hardly had to seek out anybody—they came to me, since I’m your best friend. And we compared notes about the secret missions we’d been sent on.…” Kari lowered her head. “A lot of us did things we weren’t proud of. Thought they were justified at first … but now we’re not so sure.”
Emry touched her friend’s shoulder. “Oh, honey … not…”
“No, nothing as bad as what Cowboy did. Not … by the people who talked to me, anyway. But some pretty unethical stuff. Blackmail, sabotage, dirty tricks…”
“Tai sent us here to discredit Eliot Thorne and stir up hostilities among the delegates,” Maryam said.
“I was wondering how to get out of having to do that,” Kari went on. “Now you’ve given us an excuse. Since you found us before we could do anything, we can say we had to retreat.”
“Why bother?” Emry asked. “Just go public, testify that Tai ordered you to sabotage things here. You have that in your buffer, don’t you?”
Kari grinned. “He told me to turn it off first … but I guess I was a bad girl.”
“Yeah! So bad you’re good!” Emry crowed.
Kari shook her head. “It’s not enough. Tai has a whole organization backing him up—with lots of lawyers. You saw how easily they twisted things against you. They could say I faked it.” That was a good point. It was possible to fake virtually anything these days, and the law was still trying to catch up. Different jurisdictions had different standards of proof. “We need a more solid case. We need more hard evidence, different kinds of evidence and testimony that all corroborate each other. We need to show a whole, consistent pattern if we want to convince people.”
“So who else is in on it?” Emry asked.
“A lot of us. Marut, Juan, Melanie, Firass…”
Emry grew deeply moved as the list stretched on. She hadn’t thought most of the Troubleshooters even took her seriously. She’d thought the Vanguard was the one place where she’d ever felt at home in the past nine years. Suddenly she didn’t know what to think anymore. But what she felt was great warmth … and renewed hope.
17
Sex and Violence
December 2107
Neogaia
Emry found Psyche in a garden surrounded by butterflies. “It’s a perfume Hanuman gave me,” Psyche explained as they fluttered around her, alighting on her outstretched arms. “A pheromone that draws them. Appropriate, don’t you think?”
It was a beautiful sight, but Emry couldn’t pause to enjoy it. As the butterflies danced around them, Emry told Psyche about her encounter with the Troubleshooters. “With their help,” she finished, “we can expose Tai and the Sheaf, blow the whole thing wide open! We don’t have to worry about them going up against us. The Sheavers won’t risk it if they don’t have the TSC to give them legitimacy. Maybe we can even get the Corps to back our alliance!”
It took her a few moments to realize through her excitement that Psyche didn’t share it. If anything, she looked wary. “I don’t know, Emry.” She laid a hand on the side of Emry’s head, gazing into her eyes. “Are you sure you can trust them?”
“I trust Kari.”
“But you know how shrewd Tai is. He’s a master manipulator. He could have turned her against you.”
“Then she would’ve just arrested me when she had the chance!”
“She couldn’t know you didn’t have backup. It could’ve been a ploy to win your trust. Maybe to gain intelligence the Troubleshooters could use to destroy everything we’ve worked for.”
Psyche’s words sounded so plausible. But Emry shook them off. “No, no, I thought about that, and I don’t buy it. Kari’s never been any good at keeping things from me.”
“Not when it was just between friends. This is different. Tai’s convinced her you’re a threat, a killer.”
“Psyche, we don’t know that! Listen, even if there is a risk, isn’t it worth taking the chance? Without Sensei, this could be our best bet of exposing Tai!”
Psyche’s brow furrowed sadly and she stroked Emry’s hair. “Oh, Emry … I know how much you wish you could get the Troubleshooters back. But there’s too much at stake to be sentimental. They’re just too deep in Tai’s pocket now.”
“I don’t believe that. You weren’t there, Psyche. You
didn’t feel … the trust they had in me. The trust I have for them too. They’re my friends.”
“And we’re your family!” Psyche said, taking Emry’s head between her hands. “Sweetie, you have to make a choice about where your loyalties lie. Things have gone too far for you to straddle the fence anymore. You need to decide. Are you a Vanguardian? Are you with Eliot and me?”
“Of course I am! I love you! But—”
Those quicksilver eyes flashed, catching and holding her gaze. “There can be no ‘buts,’ Emry. If you truly love us, that love has to be unconditional.”
She couldn’t look away from those eyes. They were so very beautiful. “It is. I love you, Psyche. I love you so much.”
“Then trust me, Emry.”
“… I do.”
“Really?”
“Absolutely.”
“That’s my girl!” Grinning again, Psyche nuzzled her forehead against Emry’s.
But Psyche was speaking again, so Emry ignored the distraction. “Now,” the beautiful Vanguardian went on, still stroking Emry’s hair, still holding her gaze with those shining, unblinking eyes. “You said the TSC team was going to leave. Have they gone yet?”
“No. They don’t want to be conspicuous, so they need to arrange what looks like a courier run to Ceres.”
“Good. Good, we can’t let them get away with whatever intelligence they may have gathered. We need to act now, take them prisoner before they can get away. You’re the key to that, Emry. They think you trust them now, so you can take them by surprise. You get them into place, and we’ll send in a security team to take them into custody. Okay, honey?”
Emry wasn’t happy with the idea. She knew Psyche meant well, of course she did, but the plan seemed a little rash. “I don’t know, Psyche. I mean … they’d fight back. We’d have to use force, and … well, don’t you think it could trigger the, the very conflict we’re trying to avoid? And what if … what if somebody got hurt, or…”
Only Superhuman Page 28
