Contact Imminent (7 page)

“That's changed,” Niall said quietly. “The reg now states that assistance is to be provided free of any financial consideration.”

Jani studied his profile in the half-light. Too sharp to ever be bland, too wary to ever count as unassuming. “Had reason to look it up recently, did you?” She tried to feel angry, but settled for a vague dissonance. The echo of that last shoe hitting the ground. “And your duty is?”

“Observe the situation in Karistos. Report same.” Niall held up a hand, let it fall. “Better me than anyone else, like I said before.”

“Yet you'll do your duty as you see fit.”

“So will you, Jan. So will you.”

It was still many hours to sunrise. The wind had picked up, driving spray over the skimmer. They'd left the lights of the enclave behind, and the glow of Chicago had not yet come into view. The only light was the moon through the clouds and the skimmer headlamps shining off the black water.

 

They pulled into Jani's drive to find two skimmers had beaten them there. Jani recognized Val's sportster, and assumed the nondescript brown four-door as yet another of Lucien's refugees from the vehicle pool.

“Sounds like a reunion,” Niall said as they entered the house, voices raised in loud discussion reaching them from the library.

John, Lucien, and Val had staked out separate corners of the room—they rose as one when Jani entered. She tried to catch John's eye, but he had fixed on Niall, his pale skin reddening.

Niall nodded in brusque acknowledgment. “Doctor.”

John didn't nod back. “You might have come to me first before sending in the Judge Advocate's rep with a writ.”

Niall walked to the bar. He hefted the scotch decanter but set it aside and took a soft drink from the inset cooler instead. Duty called, after all. “I might have.” He popped the cap, took a long swallow. “And you would have agreed without any argument whatsoever, wouldn't you have?”

John opened his mouth to dissent but thought better of it and turned to Jani. “Bad weather moving in.” His look gentled. “Our departure's been shuffled. We leave before sunrise.”

“Doesn't leave a body any time to say good-bye,” Lucien said. He stood at the far side of the room, out of range of the trio of male glowers that greeted his veiled comment. “I'll keep an eye on the place.”

“Thanks.” Jani burned a mental image of the boyish grin she received in reply, to savor as needed. “I can sleep on the shuttle, I guess.” She backed out of the room. “I'll get my gear.”

She mounted the stairs and entered her bedroom, walked to her closet and opened the door. Pushed aside a rack of Lucien's clothes, revealing the shelf hidden behind. The narrow ledge contained one thing only, a small blue duffel of the sort the Service had issued twenty years before.
Jani's Noah bag
, Lucien had dubbed it. C
ontains two of everything, in case of disaster
. Coveralls, underwear, bandbras, socks. Other essentials she'd added as the date of the trip grew closer. One scanpack, however. And one shooter, nestled in the scanproof depths.

She pulled the bag off the shelf and hitched it over her shoulder. Rearranged Lucien's clothing, then slid the door closed. Trotted down the stairs and back to the library. Four examining stares moved from her face to her bag, then back again, none showing the least surprise at the lightness of her load.

“OK,” she said. “Let's go.”

Micah Faber keyed into his flat, waiting until the door opened completely before stepping inside. A minor point for some, but important to him. His training dictated that door panels were to be rammed aside, punched through, demolished, if necessary, that they were barriers to be breached rather than portals to be entered. His home, he had decided from the start, needed to be treated differently.

The lights came up, revealing a sitting room in disarray from the previous night's panic. Contents yanked from drawers and shelves and strewn across the floor, cushions pulled from the small couch and single armchair and tossed about like playing cards. In the far corner, the holo Vee display, an indestructible one-piece panel spot-molded to the wall, flashed and fluttered in silent cacophony. A woman, weeping and gesticulating, the CapNet reporter who stood beside her nodding in professional concern, while behind them bystanders waved, made faces, or yelled as the spirit moved them.

Micah groaned. He'd seen the same story a half-dozen times since returning to the base that morning. The woman spoke for a group that had banded together to protest the proximity of the Vynshàrau Haárin enclave to the city. Only
one Spacer had died as a result of this accident, but what if there were more accidents, and what if more humans died? She couldn't sleep at night for the fear. None of her friends could sleep.

Micah walked to the console and shut it off. “Spare me.” If the Weeping Madonna, as he'd dubbed her, wished to protest the enclave, there were things she could do, and sobbing to a reporter wasn't one of them.

He turned away from the holo Vee and stumbled over one of the chair cushions. He picked them up and rammed them back in their wrought-wire framing, then did the same with those for the couch. Rust-red polycanvas, water and stain-proof, identical to the cushions one would find in any of a dozen flats in the wing. The other dozen units lay claim to cushions in a green so moldy looking that it served as the deciding factor when Micah had gone flat-hunting that previous summer. He'd had to cough up a ten percent lease premium for a corner location, but considered the resulting cramp to his financial style an acceptable price to pay for cushions that didn't look like they'd been liberated from a damp cave.

The furniture seen to, Micah moved on, picking up the magazines, training manuals, and other things he'd emptied from the drawers of the storage cabinet. Within a few minutes he'd restored the room to its former order, and celebrated the feat by braving the mayhem of the corner kitchenette to liberate the half-liter of vodka he'd bought a few days earlier. He cracked the seal and took a long, hard pull, the alcohol heat burning down his throat and rattling his sinuses.

“Don't know why the hell I did this.” He picked up a few pieces of cutlery, the first things that he'd strewn across the floor after he received Wode's call. Wode should have known better, of course. Flat-to-flat comport calls were a definite thumbs-down. Common sense dictated that Service Investigative couldn't possibly bug every enlisted housing unit at Sheridan, but Wode and Micah had been taught not to
take chances.
Use public at all times
had become their mantra since they each learned of the other's existence.

Micah stepped around a scatter of plastic bowls and leaned against the counter, bottle still firmly in hand. The last thirty-six hours had ripped past in a blur—the mine site evac, the return to Sheridan, the report-filing, the interviewing. Qualified personnel had been in such short supply that Micah had set up the recording for his own debrief. He'd been tempted to leave the wafer out of the recorder, but he knew somebody would figure it out eventually, and the next time around they might not go so easy on him. As it was, no one had asked the right questions. Interrogators from the vaunted Service Investigative Bureau, and they missed every clue.

It had all been there for them to see, plain as the sun in the sky. Wode's stupid errors, the too-peaceful look on his face as he worked the biobot. Hell, it had been his idea to have the Vynshàrau witness the actual excavation—Micah had been standing near the tech truck pulling parts for the bunker console when he overheard Wode put the bug in Dubrovna's ear!
Ask the Vynshàrau to appoint a witness, ma'am
. And Micah had remained by the truck, his heart pounding until he thought his chest might burst, and kept his mouth shut for the good of them both.

Fabe?

Micah took another swig of vodka. He hated alcohol, the fact that he poisoned himself, but it was the only thing that seemed to help him sleep lately. Help him work. Get through the day.

Fabe, there's a problem
.

Micah closed his eyes, and heard Wode's voice in his ear. Heard it as he had that short day and a half earlier, soft and preternaturally calm.

The mine. Someone screwed up—they found the mine. I switched tags with Ling. I'm taking the call
.

That's what staggered Micah—the calm. As though Wode
talked of home, his favorite lake for fishing, the girl he thought he loved.

Can't let them find it. Can't blow the Group. I just wanted you to know. They'll probably call you in to run com-arrays and you'll know what's happening and I want you to please, please leave me be. I know what I'm doing.

Another swallow of vodka, even though his gut ached already.

You don't know me. Remember that
.

No food since that morning. He knew he asked for trouble.

They'll be there. The frog-eyes. Maybe I'll take some of them with me
.

But some things just needed to be washed down as quickly as possible, and this was one of those things.

I wanted you to know that I regard you as the truest of friends, that knowing you has meant the world and all to me.

Another gulp. Another.

Good-bye, Fabe
.

Micah leaned against the counter, his breath coming in fits and starts, blood roaring in his ears. His stomach lurched—saliva flooded his mouth. Only a stride away, yet he barely made the sink in time. He vomited until his abdominal muscles cramped. Tried to rinse his mouth from the tap, but the touch of liquid on his tongue set him off again.

After he finished, his nose ran and his eyes teared, a mockery of grief. “That's all the break you get, Faber,
all
the break you get!” If he lived to 150, he'd always despise himself for what he did after Wode disconnected. “Worried about my own cheap ass!” Smashed the comport, then tore his flat from one end to the other, searching for any trace that Wode might have left behind during his infrequent visits, ripping and shattering from kitchenette to sitting room to bedroom and bath in a paranoid rage so fierce he knew that if anyone had come upon him then, he'd have killed them.

“Coward.” He filled his hand from the tap, sluiced it over his face. Then put his head down on the cool countertop, sheltering himself with his arms as though the ceiling shook down. Breathed.

Heard the knock eventually. The entry buzzer. The voice.

“Fabe! Hey—open up!”

“Damn.” Micah straightened as quickly as he dared. Wiped his face with a dispo cloth. Walked from the kitchenette through the sitting room to the entry, fought for control of his rubbery knees, checked his reflection in the mirror by the door and saw the red-rimmed eyes and blanched face of a ghoul staring back. Opened the door, because the knocking and buzzing rattled his head like artillery and he wanted it to stop. “Yo, Cash,” he said, turning his back immediately on his visitor. Of all the people he didn't want to catch him in the middle of a private flameout, that meddling pain-in-the-ass Cashman had to head the list.

“Where the hell you been?” Cashman squirted inside and hurried after him, round-faced and springy of step, bobbing at his shoulder like a balloon. “I heard you leave Saturday night. Figured you got lucky, but then I saw Court at the Veedrome later and she said you switched on-calls with Howie earlier in the week and you got reeled in.” He grabbed Micah by the shoulder and spun him around to face him. “You were
there
.” He looked Micah in the face, and took a step back. “What happened to you?”

“I was sick.” Micah patted his stomach, and almost doubled over again.

“Hey, no disgrace there, my friend, no disgrace at all.” Cashman trundled to the chair and flopped down. He wore winterweights, and had already yanked out his shirttail and undone his collar. “So what happened? All we heard was the official accident report, then that garble on CapNet.”

“Afraid I can't add anything.” Micah sat on the couch, forcing thoughts of Wode from his mind as he struggled to construct a reply to Cash's question. Nothing too informa
tive, just a tidbit or two sufficient to get the creep off his back and out the door. “I didn't work at the site. I was holed up in a bunker outside the cordon.”

Cashman sat forward, all goggle eyes and messy shirt. “Oh, a bunker. Fabe hits the big time. Only VIPs hole up in bunkers—who'd you pull to baby-sit?”

Micah coughed, groaning as a gut muscle cramped. The idea of him, of
anybody
, having to baby-sit Colonel Pierce turned his head inside out. “Scarface, for one.”

“The Pierced One?” Cashman winced in sympathy. “Bet that was a party. Who else?”

“Just two others.” Micah tried to swallow the names in the hope Cashman wouldn't catch them. “Tsecha. Kilian.”

“You were holed up in a bunker with Jani Kilian!” Cashman's mouth gaped. With his round eyes, he looked like a fish. “I saw her once. Last summer, when she was still in. Walking across South Central on the way to the Doc building.” His mouth slowly closed, his eyes narrowing.

Micah's throat tightened. He'd seen the same reaction all too many times and it made him sick. The wondering. What she looked like. Felt like. As if any man who called himself “human” would lay a finger on her.
“And?”

Cashman raised his head, blinking as though he came out of a daze. “Nothing. Just saw her once is all.” He sniffed. “Tsecha too, huh. Saw him make a speech once.” The thought of the Haárin dominant didn't make him quite as dreamy-eyed. “Aren't you hot?” he asked, pointing to Micah. “You still got your coat on.”

Micah looked down, saw the belt ends of his field coat curled in his lap like dead snakes. How could he have forgotten?
Haven't been back here since that night—had to wear it—then I got here, had to clean up first—
“I had just come in when you stopped by. Didn't have a chance to take it off.” He shook his shoulders, felt the coat slide down, pulled his arms out.
She wore this
. He tried not to think about it.
I'll get it cleaned
. What he wanted to do was burn
it, but then he'd have to pay for a replacement, and his rent was due next week.

I promise I'll touch it as little as possible
.

Micah felt the heat rise up his neck at the memory. Kilian standing over him, with her giraffe neck and frog eyes. The disdain in her voice, so matter of fact, as if she talked to everyone that way.
Hero of Knevçet Shèràa
, he'd heard someone call her last week. Another colonial, of course. Figured. They always stuck up for one another.

“Fabe?”

Micah glanced over at Cashman to find the man staring back, his chin propped on his fist.

“You need to get out, my friend. They finally got the latest installment of
Raven's Raiders
at the Veedrome, and Court thinks the gang should see it together.” Cashman pointed at him. “And Court has a friend.”

Micah groaned inwardly. Court was a civvie clerk at Base Admin. A frustrated general, with more friends than hairs on her head. “Really.”

“Yeah, you need to get out. We all need to get out.” Cashman leaned over and patted Micah's shoulder. “Nasty deal, man. I wouldn't want to be whoever put that mine there. But we're just a couple of Supreme Command comtechs, and the weight of the world is not ours to carry.” He headed for the door. “I need to clean up. Be back in a half.”

Micah waited until he heard the door slide closed. Then he slumped forward, his head in his hands, and tried to push all thoughts of Wode from his mind, as he'd been taught. “Some will die. Don't think of their deaths as an end. Don't even think of the sacrifice. Instead, think of what the act accomplished, of the good that resulted.” One dead Vynshàrau, or as good as dead, according to CapNet.

He reached around and dragged the field coat onto his lap. Stood and walked to the kitchenette. Picked up a knife from the floor. Held the coat in front of him with one hand, punched the knife into the back seam with the other, and ripped down.

Like gutting an animal, really. Sleeves off. Collar. Separate the back from the sides.

“One little two little dead little frog-eyes.” Micah cut and kept cutting, rendering the coat into smaller and smaller scraps. He could wear his duffel coat to the Veedrome, and he'd think of something to cover the rent.

He thought of Kilian standing over him, inserted the knife in a seam and yanked.

 

“Now if you'd been Raven, would you have trusted the Star Queen when she said she'd cure Foxy's alien virus if you turned over the plans to the Death Cruiser?” Cashman's head popped above the divider that separated his cube from Micah's. “I mean, come on, you haven't been able to believe a damned thing she says for nineteen episodes, all of a sudden you're trusting her with your girlfriend's life?”

Micah adjusted his workstation display to block as much of Cashman's face as possible. “Cash, give it a rest. You've been moaning since we got in this morning.”

“I'm going to write a letter to the producer.” Cashman's head vanished. A few seconds later the chiming sound that heralded the activation of his workstation rang out.