Crossover (17 page)

Neiland found herself unaccountably nervous, in a way that dealings with important politicians or bureaucrats never made her feel. She did not, at that moment, know what she was going to say. It was an unaccustomed feeling.

"I'm sorry about the restraints," she said then. Her voice sounded strange in the quiet, subdued hush.

"The restraints don't bother me so much as the drugs," Kresnov replied. She spoke in a soft, mild voice that somehow carried an authority far surpassing its volume. Neiland forced a soft, painful sigh.

"I'm sorry about the drugs, too," she said.

"The drugs don't bother me as much as the sensor plug in the back of my head," Kresnov added. There was a subtle note in her voice that might have been wry, sarcastic amusement. But it was difficult to tell.

Neiland gazed at her for a long moment. And on a sudden, frustrated impulse strode forward to Kresnov's side, and felt for the insert socket beneath the tail of blonde hair. Kresnov frowned, but did not move. And let out a small, sharp gasp as the sensor plug came out, the shock sequence deactivated in the presence of hand restraints. Neiland pocketed it, and sat beside Kresnov's drawn-up knees on the edge of the mattress, looking back at her face. Kresnov gazed at her, eyes puzzled ... more than puzzled. Alive and aware, of a sudden, where they had been distant before. The change was remarkable. And always lurking, that subtle, indefinable gleam of intelligence, in the faint narrowing of eyes, the minuscule change of expression. It was several more moments before Neiland realised she was staring.

Kresnov raised a mild eyebrow and cast a meaningful sideways glance back up the length of the room. Neiland looked. One of the guards was standing with his rifle levelled, a clear shot to the side of Kresnov's head. The other was speaking into a comlink, tense and worried.

"Son," Neiland said loudly, "you've got three seconds to put that rifle away before I personally walk over there and shove it up your ass." And on the next thought, "And tell your backup to stay where they are. This woman risked her life to save mine, dammit. If she was going to hurt me, she'd have done it already."

She had no idea if it would work — arguing with Mishima on security matters had often seemed as useful as banging her skull against a bulkhead. But Mishima was dead now, like all the others. The thought abruptly hit her, like a hammerblow between the eyes. For a moment the room seemed to spin, and her heart accelerated to a racing panic. And eased, just as quickly, as her control restored itself — more an act of habit than an assertion of will. At the far end of the room the guard had lowered his weapon. No support arrived. Which surprised her. She had said that Kresnov would not hurt her. Maybe someone in security actually agreed with her.

But they would be watching her. In this ward more than any other, the security cameras were very active.

And she looked back to Kresnov. The GI was watching her, blue eyes narrowed with sombre consideration.

"I take it," Kresnov said calmly, "that you've never been shot at before?" Neiland moved to shake her head, but thought the better of it. She felt weak, and the neighbouring bed looked very inviting.

"No," she replied. And on an impulse, "I take it you have?" A faint shift of reaction in Kresnov's eyes. And her lips pursed lightly with faint, considered humour.

"Perhaps," she said. "In my youth." Glanced down at the small space between them, seated together on the same mattress. And back up. "You do know that you're making the guards nervous? I could probably kill you where you are now, even drugged."

Neiland blinked. "And why would you do that?"

Kresnov frowned. "You really think I'm that harmless?"

"Aren't you?" To which Kresnov gave a sharp tug at the restraints, achieving nothing.

"Why these then?" she asked mildly. Neiland sighed, and glanced back towards the windows. Then back again, to find that Kresnov's gaze had not wavered a millimetre. It was disconcerting. But somehow, surprisingly, it was not threatening.

"Security provisions," she said tiredly. "You know how it is."

Kresnov gave a faint shake of her head. "No," she said, gazing back out of the windows. And sighed, eyes suddenly distant, tuning away to the colours and light beyond. "I don't know."

Neiland pursed her lips, not knowing what to think. Kresnov confused the hell out of her. She remembered seeing her that first time in the staff office that the media were now calling 'the final stand' in their countless, repetitive and mostly inaccurate computer sim reruns of the attack, or what they knew of it. Barefoot, clad only in grey tracksuit leggings and a white T-shirt supplied by her security for the transfer to the airport. Covered in blood, most of which Neiland now knew had not been her own. Eyes narrowed beyond the dead-steady rifle, but only a little. Alert, aware and lethal.

Kresnov in combat had not swaggered, had not yelled with bloodlusting fury, had not made strong, heroic gestures or even looked fierce. She merely killed everything that came within reach that she deemed to be threatening, and killed it fast. The debriefing simulations had shown four Dark Star GIs in that room, with the last of Alpha Team dead. Kresnov had blown the ceiling with a shaped charge stolen from a dead GI and dropped through the hole with a pistol in each hand and the rifle slung over her shoulder.

Point two nine seconds later all four Dark Star GIs were dead or incapacitated. They'd simply made the fatal mistake of being in the same room as Kresnov when she had a weapon in each hand, initiative on her side and was looking to kill them. That being so, numbers were of no relevance. Twelve point four seconds later the last of the Dark Star GIs on that entire level was dead. As one of the Secret Service people who had analysed the tapes had said, at the risk of stating the obvious, the performance was simply inhuman.

And yet here, sitting on the bed alongside Kresnov, Neiland sensed nothing of threat or intimidation. Only a mild, intelligent woman with a subtle sense of humour whom she suspected would much prefer to be at a concert, or smelling flowers, or making love, than gunning down marauding hordes of her ex-comrades in arms. There were those among her staff who believed such simplistic analyses were misleading. That it was dangerous to judge a GI in human terms. Neiland truly did not know — it only confused her more. And she was almost surprised at herself for reaching out a hand, and resting it upon the GI's white robed forearm. Kresnov looked at it, as if it was some strange kind of butterfly that had landed upon her arm, and aroused her bemusement. Then looked up to Neiland, her eyes seeking an explanation.

"Captain," Neiland said softly. There was some deep, heartfelt emotion welling up from somewhere inside, but she was not certain what it was, or where it came from. "Captain, you saved my life. I ..." and she swallowed hard. Kresnov watched, unblinkingly curious. "I know you didn't do it just for me, that it's just for my office and I shouldn't take it so personally... but I can't help it."

She gripped the arm tightly. It was firm and human feeling beneath the robe. "I suppose I'd just like to say thank you," she finished lamely. Much to her amazement, Kresnov smiled. It was a small, sad little smile, and for a brief moment the fifteen-year-old GI looked as old and wise as the Louban Sea.

"You're welcome," she said.

"Why did you do it?" Neiland removed the hand and used it for support as she twisted round on the mattress.

Kresnov's smile slowly faded. "Why?"

Neiland nodded. "You're so good at tracking targets, you could have just avoided them. You might even have used the confusion to escape, possibly shoot your way out. You might have been free right now if you'd done that."

Kresnov's brows drew together in a pained expression. "And where would I have gone? Lived in some alley somewhere? Stolen some money, gotten some illegal surgery to change my appearance? I sure as hell couldn't get off the planet if everyone was looking for me, face or no face. I'd be stuck here. So I'd have to try and make a life of it."

"If anyone could have done it," Neiland countered, "I bet you could."

Kresnov shrugged. "Sure. I could have been a fugitive, always on the run, always looking over my shoulder. I couldn't have got a real job, or done any of the things I wanted to do. I'd have nothing."

"You were a fugitive before." Kresnov shook her head.

"No," she said quietly with the dawnings of a faint, sadly wistful expression. "I wasn't a fugitive at all. I was April Cassidy, cognitive software technician. I was going to have a nice job, and a nice apartment, and I'd go out nights and see bands, and meet people and make ordinary friends who knew all kinds of interesting things. Maybe I'd even get a boyfriend ..."

She trailed off, gazing with sad, blue eyes at the blinking motion of lights beyond the windows. Neiland felt her breath catch in her throat, watching her. And she had no idea why Kresnov should affect her so greatly, except that the expression she wore now was as sorrowful as she'd ever seen on someone without the presence of tears. Not upset. Just deeply, deeply sad.

"And so you thought what?" Neiland said quietly into that silence. "You thought that if you saved the President, you'd get a pardon?"

Kresnov sighed, a short, silent heave of broad, white-robed shoulders. And shot Neiland an unreadable sideways look.

"You can't pardon me from being a GI," she said. "It's a life sentence."

"No," Neiland agreed, "but hell, it's got me sitting this close to you without having a division's worth of security dragging me away by the armpits. Your popularity rating among some of the people I've spoken to recently has skyrocketed."

Kresnov snorted. "I
was
bottom-dwelling river sludge," she retorted. "Now I'm only pond scum."

Neiland fought down a smile.

"That as may be," she said with what she hoped was a reassuring touch of humour, "but people are beginning to accept the possibility that you might not be evil. A lot of them thought you were. Or otherwise just not to be trusted. But you've got them wondering. So if that's what you were intending, I'd commend you for picking a good option."

Kresnov thought about it for a moment. Her lips pursed, twisted slightly to one side. Neiland found that intriguing, and again could not say precisely why. It was like in those movies of first contact she'd occasionally seen, back in that earlier life when there had been such a thing as leisure time, where the alien and the human finally met face to face, and discovered that they shared a common facial gesture. An awe-inspiring point of similarity, of togetherness. Neiland's brain said that Kresnov was not human. And yet everything,
everything
she saw in Kresnov said utterly otherwise.

Which simply did not make any sense. There was not a single organic cell in Kresnov's body. There was a strong thread of philosophical argument, particularly common in the wartime Federation, that GIs were not even life forms. They were imitations. Reflections of humanity's self-perception made real through the organs of commerce, technology and politics. The philosophers claimed that as such they had more in common with works of art than genuine life forms.

But damn, how could you argue with a deadpan sense of humour, an active libido and that damnably subtle little wrinkle above the left eyebrow that she got whenever she considered something difficult? Neiland watched that wrinkle now, an intelligent narrowing of the eyes, considering her last statement. Then she shook her head as the conclusion arrived.

"That's not why I did it," Kresnov said. And looked at her, as if slightly puzzled by her own conclusion. "I think I did it because I could." Neiland frowned. And Kresnov sighed again, in that very human way of hers.

"I know, it probably sounds a little odd. But they were trying to kill the President of Callay, and I was in a position to stop them. And ... I don't know, maybe that's just what I am, and the way that I operate. Maybe I just need to be useful. I just can't imagine having found myself in that position, knowing that I could stop them, and not doing anything." She shrugged helplessly. "That's just the way I am."

"And I'm very glad of it," Neiland added with feeling. Kresnov glanced away, eyes calmly scanning. Her report said that she enjoyed sensory pleasures, Neiland remembered. Certainly she seemed reluctant to turn her eyes away from the view.

"I don't know if you should be thanking me for that," she said a little sourly. "I'm probably just designed that way."

"Oh God," Neiland sighed painfully, getting to her feet and stretching, "no more philosophy of human free will, please. I'll die." Walked two steps to the head of the neighbouring bed, took a pillow, and settled it against the end frame. Climbed gingerly up, and leaned back, half seated against the pillow, long stockinged legs stretched out before her. Kicked off her shoes on an impulse, and settled properly with a long sigh, tugging the dress hem firmly to her knees.

Looked back to Kresnov, and found her watching, looking surprised. And a little amused.

"You're just like me after two days with no exercise," she said. "I creak like a rusty gate every time I sit down."

"You don't mind if I stay here for a moment, do you?" Neiland thought to ask her. As President, she wasn't much in the habit of asking." This is probably the only room in the hospital I can go without being mobbed by panicking administrators or officials wanting to show their unutterable relief that I'm still alive."

Kresnov shrugged. "I could use the company, I suppose."

"Good." Neiland nodded to herself absently. Thinking about what she'd just said, and how lucky she was to actually be alive. Very, very lucky, she supposed. It ought to have been a thought that stuck, and stuck hard. But it floated, and was impossible to pin down, however hard she sought to focus.

It had yet to fully strike her, she knew. But she knew that it would, sooner or later. She was not looking forward to it.

"How badly were you hurt yourself?" she thought to ask Kresnov then.

"A few bits of shrapnel," Kresnov replied, gazing off out the windows again. "Mostly grenade fragments from the landing pads. Dug them out with tweezers, no trouble." Like a gardener talking about trouble with insects in her rose garden. No trouble. Just routine really.