In Fury Born (ARC)
Page 52
"Of course not—and if I did, you'd be perfectly justified in kicking me clear back to Old Earth," Ben Belkassem said cheerfully. "It's your shop. You're the proper person to run it, and your people know you'll have to be looking very closely for possible leaks. They'll expect a certain amount of that, and I couldn't simply take over without undercutting your authority. I'd say your chances of finding whoever it is are probably about as good as mine, but if I stick in my oar in the role of an officious, pig-headed, empire-building interloper—a part, may I add, I play quite well—I can do a lot of your dirty work for you. Just tell them Justice has stuck you with an asshole from Intelligence Branch and leave the rest to me. Who knows? Even if I don't find a thing, I may just scare our hare into the open for you."
"I see." McIlheny examined Ben Belkassem's face intently. The inspector had placed an unerring finger on his own most private—and darkest—fear, and he was right. An outsider could play grand inquisitor without the devastating effect an internal witch hunt might produce.
"All right, Inspector, I may take you up on that. Let me run it by Admiral Gomez first, though." Ben Belkassem nodded, and the colonel frowned.
"Actually, something we hit here on Mathison's leaves me more inclined to think you have a point than I would've been," he admitted unhappily.
The inspector quirked an eyebrow, but the colonel turned to Keita.
"We owe it to your Captain DeVries and her family, Sir Arthur. I'm sure you've read my initial report on the affair at the DeVries Claim?"
"I have," Keita said dryly. "Countess Miller personally starcommed it to me before her henchmen shoved me aboard Banshee and slammed the hatch."
McIlheny blinked. He'd expected his report to make waves, but he hadn't anticipated that the Minister of War herself might get involved.
"At any rate," he shook himself back to the affair at hand, "we still haven't been able to figure out how she happened to survive, and I'm afraid she's a bit . . . well—" He broke off uncomfortably, and Keita sighed.
"I said I've read the report, Colonel. The questions you raised are the main reason I got sent along with Major Cateau's medical team, and I understand about Ali—Captain DeVries' . . . mental state." He closed his eyes briefly, as if in pain, then nodded again. "Go on, Colonel."
"Yes, Sir. We got a couple of intelligence breaks out of it. For one thing, she's been able to identify the assault shuttles—or, at least one type of shuttle—these bastards are using. It was one of the old Leopard-class boats, which is the first hard ID we've gotten, since none of the other survivors who actually saw the shuttles were military types. A Leopard tends to confirm that we're dealing with at least one capital ship, of course, but Fleet dumped so many of them on the surplus market when the Bengals came in that anyone could have snapped them up. We're running searches on the disposal records to see if anyone out this way was stupid enough to buy up a clutch of them and leave us a paper trail, but I'm not very optimistic.
"But, more importantly, she and her father and grandfather took out the entire crew of the shuttle which went after her family. We've picked up a few dead pirates before, but they never told us much. Whoever's running them sanitizes his troops pretty carefully, and we haven't had a lot to go on for IDs, aside from the obvious fact that they've all been human. In this case, however, Captain DeVries nailed the assault team commander. He didn't have much on him, either, but we ran his retinal and genetic patterns and got a direct hit."
He still wore his synth-link headset, and the star map disappeared, replaced by an unfamiliar red-haired man in a very familiar uniform.
"Lieutenant Albert Singh, gentlemen." McIlheny's voice was light; his expression was not.
"An Imperial Fleet officer?!" Keita exploded. The colonel nodded, and Keita glared at the holo, teeth bared. Even Ben Belkassem seemed shocked.
"An Imperial Fleet officer. I don't have his complete dossier yet, but what I've seen so far looks clean—except for the fact that Lieutenant Singh has now died twice: once from a fourteen-millimeter slug through the spine, and once in a shuttle accident in the Holderman Sector."
"God!" Keita muttered. One large, hairy hand clenched into a fist and thumped the table gently. "How long ago?"
"Over two years," McIlheny said, and glanced at Ben Belkassem. "Which, I very much fear, lends point to your suggestion that there has to be someone—possibly several someones—on the inside, Inspector. That shuttle accident happened, all right, but when I poked a bit deeper, I found something very interesting. Singh's personnel jacket says he was aboard it and killed, but the original passenger manifest for the shuttle—which was, indeed, lost with all hands—doesn't include his name. Sometime between then and now, someone with access to Fleet personnel records added him to it as far as his jacket was concerned, which gave him a nice, clean termination and erased him from our active data base."
"Very good," Ben Belkassem approved. "How did you find him, then?"
"I wish I could take the credit," McIlheny said wryly, "but I was exhausted when I set up the data search, and I didn't define my parameters very well. In fact, I requested a search of all records, and I was more than somewhat irritated when I saw how much computer time I'd 'wasted' on it—until the search spit out his name."
"Never look serendipity in the mouth, Colonel." The inspector grinned. "I don't—and I'm afraid I don't give it credit for my successes, either."
"But a Fleet officer," Keita muttered. "I don't like the smell of this."
"Nor do I," McIlheny said more seriously. "It's possible he did it himself, and I've starcommed the Holderman Fleet District for full particulars on him, including anything he might have been into before his 'death.' I'm also running a Fleet-wide personnel search to see if any other bogus 'deaths' occurred in the same shuttle accident. I hope I don't find any, because if Singh didn't arrange it, someone else did, and that suggests we may be looking at deliberate recruiting from inside our own military."
"And that whoever did the recruiting may still be in place," Ben Belkassem murmured.
Alicia looked up as a shortish woman stepped through her hospital door. The newcomer moved with the springy stride of a heavy-worlder in a single gravity, and Alicia's eyes widened.
"Tannis?" she blurted, jerking upright in bed. "By God, it is you!"
"Really?" Major Tannis Cateau, Imperial Cadre Medical Branch, turned her name tag up to scrutinize it, then nodded. "So it is." She crossed to the bed. "How you doing, Sarge?"
"I'll 'Sarge' you!" Alicia grinned. Then her smile faded as she saw the shadow behind Tannis' eyes. "I expect," she said more slowly, "that you're about to tell me how I'm doing."
"That's what medics do, Sarge," Tannis replied. She crossed her arms and rocked on the balls of her feet, surveying Captain DeVries (retired) very much as Corporal Cateau had once surveyed Staff Sergeant DeVries. But there was a difference now, Alicia thought, noting the major's pips on Cateau's green uniform. Oh, yes, there was a difference.
Five years, she thought. Has it really been that long?
"Sarge—Alley," Tannis said, "you know how sorry I was to hear about your mom, Clarissa, Stevie —"
Alicia flinched. She held up one hand, half-shaking her head, and Tannis stopped. She gazed at the friend she hadn't seen in so long, and then she inhaled deeply had nodded.
"So," Alicia said after a moment, her conversational tone sounding almost natural, "how am I?"
"Not too bad, considering." Tannis accepted the change in town and cocked her head judiciously. "Matter of fact, Okanami and his people did a good job on the repairs, from your records. I may not even open you back up to take a personal look."
"You always were a hungry-knifed little snot."
"The human eye," Tannis declaimed, "is still the best diagnostic tool. You've got several million credits' worth of the Emperor's molycircs tucked away in there—only makes sense to be sure they're all connected more or less to the right places, don't you think?"
"Yeah, sure," Al
icia said as lightly as she could. "And mentally?"
"That," Tannis acknowledged, "is a bit more ticklish. What's this I hear about you talking to ghosts, Sarge?"
Leave it to Tannis to dive straight in. Alicia rubbed the upper tractor collar on her thigh. They should be taking that off soon, she thought inconsequentially, and lowered her eyes to it as she considered her answer.
"Well," Alicia said finally, looking back up at Tannis, "I guess maybe I was a bit shaky when I woke up. Blame me?"
"You didn't sound shaky, Sarge. In fact, you sounded a hell of a lot calmer than you should've. I know you. You're a cold-blooded bitch in combat, but you come apart after the fire fight."
Yeah, Alicia reflected, you do know me, don't you, Tannis?
"So you think I've gone buggy?" she said aloud.
" 'Buggy,' " Tannis observed, "is hardly a proper technical diagnosis suited to the mystique of my profession, and you know I'm a mechanic, not a psychobabbler. On the other hand, I'd have to say it sounds . . . unusual."
Alicia shrugged. "What can I tell you? All I can say is that I feel rational—but I suppose I would, if I've really lost it."
"Um." Tannis uncrossed her arms and clasped her hands behind her. "That doesn't necessarily follow—I think it's one of those self-assuring theories cooked up by people worried about their own stability—but I'd be inclined to write it off as post-combat shock with anyone else. And if we didn't have you on chip still doing it in your sleep."
"Not a lot. In fact, you tend to shut back up right in mid-word. Frankly, I'd prefer for you to run down instead of breaking off that way."
"Oh, come on, Tannis! Lots of people talk in their sleep."
"Not," Tannis said at her driest, "to figures out of Greek mythology, they don't. I didn't even know you'd studied the subject."
"I haven't. It's just—Oh, hell, forget it." Tannis raised an eyebrow, and Alicia snorted. "And get that all-knowing gleam out of your eye. You know how people pick up bits and pieces of null-value data."
"True." Tannis hooked a chair closer to the bed and sat. "The problem, Sarge, is that most people who talk in their sleep haven't dropped right off Fleet scanners for a week—and they don't have weird EEGs, either."
"Weird EEG?" It was time for Alicia's eyebrows to rise, and her surprise was not at all feigned.
"Yep. 'Weird' is Captain Okanami's term, but I'm afraid it fits. He and his team didn't know what they had on their table till they twanged your escape package, but they had a good, clear EEG on you throughout. Spiked just like it's supposed to when you flattened that poor Commander Thompson—" Tannis paused. "They tell you about that?"
"I asked, actually. I knew they'd hit something, and most of the docs were too busy staying out of reach to get anything done. I've even apologized to him."
"I'm sure he appreciated it." Tannis' eyes gleamed. "Nice clean hit, Sarge, just a tad low." She grinned, then shrugged. "Anyway, there was the spike and all those other squiggles I recognize as lovable old you. But there was another whole pattern—almost like an overlay—wrapped around them."
"Ah?"
"Ah. Almost looked like there were two of you. Mighty peculiar stuff, Sarge. You taking in boarders?"
"Not funny, Tannis," Alicia said, looking away, and Tannis inhaled.
"You're right. Sorry. But it was odd, Alley, and when you tie it in with all the other odd questions you've presented us with, it's enough to make the brass nervous. Especially when you start talking as if there were someone else living in your head." Tannis shook her head, eyes unwontedly worried. "They don't want a schizoid drop commando running around, Sarge."
"Not running around loose, you mean."
"I suppose I do, but you can't really blame them, can you?" She held Alicia's gaze levelly, and it was Alicia's turn to sigh.
"Guess not. Is that the real reason they've kept me isolated?"
"In part. Of course, you really do need continued treatment. The incisions are all done, but they had to put a hunk of laminate into your femur, and about four centimeters of what they managed to save looked like a jigsaw puzzle with missing pieces. You know how quick-heal slows up on bone repair, and you ripped hell out of your muscle tissue, too."
"I realize that. And I also know I could've been ambulatory in this thing—" she tapped the upper tractor collar "—weeks ago. Okanami's 'have to wait and see; we're not used to drop commandos' line is getting a bit worn. If he weren't such a sweet old bastard, I'd have started raising hell then."
"Is that why you've been so tractable? I was afraid you must really be messed up."
"Yeah." Alicia ran her hands through her amber hair. "Okay, Tannis, let's get right down to it. Am I considered a dangerous lunatic?"
"I wouldn't go so far as to say 'dangerous,' Sarge, but there are . . . concerns. I'm taking over from Captain Okanami as of sixteen hundred today, and we'll be running the whole battery of standard diagnostics, probably with a bit of psych monitoring cranked in. I'll be able to tell you more then."
Alicia smiled a crooked smile. "You're not fooling me, you know."
"Fooling?" Tannis widened her eyes innocently.
"Whatever your tests show, they're going to figure I'm over the edge. Post-combat trauma and all that. Poor girl's probably been suppressing her grief, too, hasn't she? Hell, Tannis, it's a lot harder to prove someone's not loopy, and we both know it."
"Well, yes," Tannis agreed after a moment. "You always liked it straight, so I'll level with you. Uncle Arthur came out with me, and he's going to want to debrief you in person, but then you and I are Soissons-bound. Sector General's got lots more equipment, so that's where the real tests come in. On the other hand, I have Uncle Arthur's personal guarantee that I'll be your physician of record, and you know I won't let them crap on you."
"And if I don't want to go?"
"Sorry, Sarge. You've been reactivated."
"Oh, those bastards!" Alicia murmured, but there was a trace of amused respect in her voice.
"They can be lovable, can't they?"
"How long do you expect your tests to take after we hit Soissons?"
"As long as they take. You want a guess?" Alicia nodded, and Tannis shrugged. "Don't make any plans for a month or two, minimum."
"That long?" Alicia couldn't quite hide her dismay.
"Maybe longer. Look, Sarge, they want more than just a psych evaluation. They want answers, and you already told Okanami you don't know what happened or why you're alive. Okay, that means they're going to have to dig for them. I'm sorry, but that's the way it is."
"And while they're looking, the scent's going to freeze solid."
"Scent?" Tannis sat up straighter. "You in vigilante mode, Sarge?"
"Why not?" Alicia met her eyes. "Who's got a better right?"
She held her friend's eyes levelly, her own suddenly cold and hard. After moment, Tannis looked away.
"No one, I guess. But that's going to be a factor in their thinking, too, you know. They won't want you running around to do something outstandingly stupid."
"I know." Alicia made herself step back and smile. "Well, if I'm stuck, I'm stuck. And if I am, I'm gla
d I've got at least one friend in the enemy camp."
"That's the spirit." Tannis rose with a grin of her own. "I've got an appointment with Uncle Arthur in ten minutes—gotta go give him my own evaluation of your condition—but I'll check back when it's over. I may even have more news on your upcoming, um, itinerary."
"Thanks, Tannis." Alicia leaned back against her pillows and smiled after her friend, but the smile faded as the door closed. She sighed and looked pensively down at her hands.