Crossover (35 page)

"How many'd you get?" With expectant trepidation.

"Twenty-one." Mahud looked far from surprised. She was almost flattered.

"Jesus, no wonder it fell apart..." and stared back at her, almost accusatory. "What the hell were you doing in the President's convoy?"

Sandy cocked her head to one side, calmly surveying him as she leaned against the railing. Brought up a knee, and hooked her arm around it.

"Mahud, what do you think I'm doing in Tanusha?" He blinked.

"You're asking
me
?" With evident disbelief. Sandy frowned.

"Who else would I ask?"

"Why the hell do you think I'm sitting here with you now?" he retorted. "I want to know, Sandy. I want to know why you went AWOL."

Sandy blinked. Trying to figure exactly what Mahud knew about it all. What he might have been told. What they might have tried to convince him of and what he might have believed. She suddenly wondered at her wisdom in sitting here so unafraid, thinking that nothing had changed between them. She wondered many other things too.

"What did they tell you?" she asked then. Mahud looked perplexed. For a moment, as he gazed at her, he looked almost ... lost. Confused. Frightened, she guessed, of the possible answers to this most pressing of questions. It could turn his world upside down. It could tear down everything that he had ever believed in. Or perhaps ... perhaps, she thought, that had already happened. Perhaps that had happened when he'd first been told that she'd left the League.

"I didn't believe them at first," he said. His voice sounded small. "I didn't think you'd ever have done it. But ... it was pretty clear eventually that they weren't kidding. They didn't try to make us hate you or anything, I reckon they knew it'd never happen ... they just said you'd cracked. They said ..." He took a deep breath. "They said that we'd all always known you'd been ... different ... that they'd been scared you were a bit mentally unstable for a while now, and that when you'd been told we were dead, you'd cracked.

"Hell, they even apologised to us, admitted they were partly to blame ... but they said they hadn't given up on getting you back, once you'd gotten over it..." He stopped, seeing that Sandy was shaking her head.

"No, Mahud." She looked at him sadly. "I left because they're a pack of lying, murdering bastards. I left because I knew that if I'd stayed, I'd have ended up killing them all, and getting killed in the process."

Mahud blinked, looking ... blank. Utterly expressionless. Stunned. Sandy folded her other leg beneath her, leaning forward on her upraised knee.

"Mahud, what's the purpose of this op?"

"To kill the President," he said faintly.

Sandy shook her head, eyes narrowed dangerously.

"No, beyond that. What's the FIA doing here?" No response. "They're covering up the operation they've had here for ages now, the research agreement they've had with Tanushan biotech firms. Why did they leave it so late?"

Mahud's eyes remained blank. To Sandy's night-adjusted vision, he looked almost pale. GIs rarely looked pale. He shook his head very faintly at her question.

"Because they knew I was here. Somehow they found out I was coming to Tanusha. The Tanushan project had never had an opportunity to study a live GI before. Regs, maybe, but nothing like me. They left it so late because they wanted to grab me, and study me. And that's what they did." She leaned forward, staring him intently in the eyes. Her voice was hard.

"That's how I got captured, Mahud. I was free before that, living as a civilian. Your strike on the President gave the Governor an excuse to use his override powers and block all ongoing CSA investigations subject to Federal review, that's all it did. The Governor's in the FIA's pocket, you understand? He's one of them, or as good as. Are you following this? Do you realise what this means?"

Mahud's eyes reflected only desperation. He shook his head. Sandy leaned forward a little more, her body tense.

"Mahud, the League doesn't give a stuff about me, about you, about any of us. Maybe they did once, but that all changed when the war started going badly. We became a liability. This whole ridiculous business in this city was about sending me to some Tanushan biotech firm for study, like a lab rat. That's all I meant to them. And as for Sergei's orders and that rig explosion, that was no Federation trap, that was a League trap ... they set us up, Mahud. They set up their own people and they killed us, they killed Tran, they killed Raju ..."

"
No!!
" Mahud shouted, leaping to his feet, trembling all over ... Sandy leapt up to, facing him, every muscle tensed. Her eyes were blazing.

"Why the
fuck
do you think I left, man?!" she hissed to his face. "Don't you remember me trying to warn you? Don't you remember how upset I was?"

"Then why didn't you tell us
then
?"

"Because you wouldn't have believed me, just like you don't want to believe me now!"

Mahud spun away, clutching the safety railing. In the clear, cold night came the groaning sound of metal bending.

"I'm not a traitor, Mahud. And I'm as sane as I ever was, probably more so. You know that I'm not disloyal, you know how much I can be trusted. You know more than anyone left alive. I left the League because the League murdered my friends. I thought they'd murdered all of you. I thought you'd have wanted me to live, that... that you'd have wanted me to be happy, and there were all these things I'd always wanted to see, and I just had to get away. Mahud, I had to leave."

She broke off, pained and trembling, staring at Mahud's back. Scared of what he might do, or think. That she might have found him, only to lose him again so quickly.

"Come on, Mahud," she said more quietly. Pleading. "You must have suspected something. That I just happened to be left out of the raid, that they wouldn't tell me anything ... they knew I was suspicious. They knew I wouldn't have bought it. And if I'd started dissenting with you guys around, they couldn't have got rid of me without going through all of you, and that would have been nearly impossible. They wanted to save a few of you for special purposes, Mahud, they wanted the most loyal and dedicated, and that was always you ... Pesivich and Rogers too. And Chu, but Chu couldn't tie her shoelaces without my instruction, so they screwed up there ... and they needed Stark to lead the raid, otherwise they would have kept him too ... but Tran asked too many questions, Raju was too irreverent, Keelo was too arrogant, Neddy was a troublemaker ... it all fits. Doesn't it."

"No." Mahud turned about. Looked her in the eye. His jaw was tight and he kept his composure with an effort. "I can't believe that. You'll always be Captain to me, Sandy, but... but I can't believe that. I just can't."

It was more forthright than she'd ever have expected from Mahud. He had grown up a lot since she'd last seen him. Six years old, she remembered him. A year would make a lot of difference. He no longer accepted everything she said as automatic truth. Not without evidence.

She took off her jacket. Unclipped the shoulder holster and dropped it to the metal floor, pistol heavy. Untucked her shirt and pulled it up over her head. And stood topless before him, cold night wind against her bare skin. Mahud stared at the sharp, red lines about her shoulder joints. At the sharper, thick red mark that encircled her waist, just below her navel.

She turned about in a slow circle, arms held out from her sides. Showing him the long, red scar up the centre of her spine, where skin had been flayed from bone and muscle, peeled away, leaving all bare beneath. Completed her circle, and stood silently facing him, shirt in hand.

Mahud wore much the same expression as she had previously seen on civilians confronted suddenly by the death of a loved one. Utterly stricken.

"This is what your FIA man did to me," she told him quietly. Her voice was trembling. "I'm betting it's the same guy you mentioned. I remember him clearly. They cut me up on a table, Mahud. I was screaming. Even the buffers broke down, I never knew pain until that... that..." She met his eyes, her own vision blurring.

"Sandy." Mahud reached out a hand to her face, stepping forward. Tears rolled freely down his cheeks. There was terror in his eyes. "Oh God, Sandy. I'm ... I'm so sorry." He was crying, quite openly. Sandy had never seen that before, from a GI other than herself. Chu had shed tears. Mahud was sobbing. "I didn't know, Sandy, I didn't know..."

He buried his face against her hair, shoulders heaving. Hands reluctant to touch her, as if scared of her offence, or anger ... Sandy put her arms around him and held him tightly. He hugged her back, sobbing into her hair as the wind blew cold upon her bare skin, and the incision scars throbbed a dull, prickling pain at the temperature change. About them, and from far below, the city murmured.

CHAPTER 14

Sunlight through the window of Mahud's apartment. Sandy lay in bed, gazing out at a bright gleam of light reflecting off a glass tower face. The gentle murmur of morning traffic, muted through the glass.

She wondered. Wondered what Vanessa was doing. What Neiland would no doubt be scheming. What Judge Guderjaal would do, faced by legal challenge to Dali's actions. And what Dali was up to, pretending to run a government for which he — if she read him correctly — possessed little expertise. Not to mention the totally unexpected and growing political activism from the general Callayan public, which in itself had certain politicians hopping frantically either to define or to obscure their favoured positions ...

Probably, she thought, she ought to check the news or tune in to some local network connection to see how far the protests had spread during the night, and what the various politicians generally suspected of supporting the Governor were now saying, faced with mounting outrage from the public and thus the populist media. But the bed was comfortable, her eyelids heavy and her mind wandered unavoidably to other, less grave matters.

She rolled gently onto her other side. Mahud's young, soft features nestled against the pillow. A firm, proportioned build that was very pleasing to her eye. Light brown skin. He looked peaceful. She watched him for a while, head upon the pillow alongside. Thinking everything ... and nothing, a strange, calm confusion of emotion and possibility. His eyes blinked open, gazing directly into hers. Immediately aware and alert, as if he had never been asleep.

"You're staring at me," he said. Sandy shook her head against the pillow.

"I'm not staring."

His lips widened into a slight smile. "What would you call it then?"

"I wouldn't call it anything. I just like looking at you. You're nice to look at." Mahud's smile grew wider. He put a hand to her side beneath the sheets, feeling down to her hip. Sandy grabbed his arm and rolled over, pulling him up close behind her, the arm coming around her as she desired. Mahud got the idea and pulled her close, a smooth, warm weight pressed up against her bare back. His breath stirred at her hair. Sandy smiled, and gave a long, satisfied sigh.

"I suppose you've been getting nailed a lot as a civilian," Mahud suggested. Sandy restrained a laugh, and it came out as a giggle instead. She bit her lip, mortified.

"I'm just so very talented, Mahud, I even make a better civilian than most civilians." Mahud ran his hand down across her hard, flat stomach.

"You're just weird, Cap. I actually found the word for you — it's called 'nymphomaniac'. I found it in a dictionary."

Sandy snorted. "Must have been one of those damn lousy Chinese-English dictionaries," she retorted. "A nymphomaniac is a woman whose uncontrollable sexual urges dominate every facet of her personality to the point of dysfunction. It's actually a throwback to the pre-diaspora days when male and female gender roles were so wildly different that the sexual politics became very extreme, and sex was considered the defining element of interpersonal relationships between men and women, in some societies to the exclusion of much else.

"My sexuality's just a matter of getting horny a lot, that's just the way my brain is. There's nothing cultural or psychological about it at all."

A silence from Mahud. Then, "I thought that's what it meant."

Sandy gave him a frowning look over her shoulder. "That was in the dictionary?"

He shrugged. "Pretty much."

"What were you doing reading dictionaries anyway?" she asked with a smile as she resettled herself, a comfortable wriggle of buttocks against Mahud's pelvis. Felt movement there, which perked her interest considerably. He shrugged again.

"We were going undercover. I'd never done an op like that before. I read up on lots of civilian stuff. Kept running into words I didn't know. That kind of thing." Sandy thought about that for a moment. Gazing out at the spreading gleam of sunlight, a slow crawl across tower glass. Busy morning air traffic, cruising and gliding the skylanes. Towers stretching off into the distance.

"D'you like this city?" she asked him then.

"Yeah." A short, comfortable pause. Sandy could almost feel him thinking without seeing his face. She'd almost forgotten how well she knew him. How well she'd known all of them. "Yeah, I do. I think I understand a bit more why you were always so interested in civilian stuff. I mean ... no, it's an interesting place. I'd like to see more of it."

"It's not just civilian stuff," she replied, matching her palm to the back of his hand, absently toying. "That's an artificial distinction, civilian stuff, military stuff. It's all the same thing. What we do ... did, anyway, was a result of what went on here. Any military is just a reflection of civilian society, Mahud. We're no different." Mahud rested his mouth on the back of her head. Blew softly into her hair, a gentle sigh.

"Damn you're smart," he murmured. "I don't see any of that stuff. I just see towers and things, and people dress different and act different."

"D'you like that?"

"Yeah. I think so. I mean, I don't really get the point of a lot of it ... and, I mean, they waste so much time on stuff, y'know? They need to get themselves organised or something, this whole city's running way below capacity."

"But leisure time's a part of the economic system," Sandy replied, still fiddling. Mahud shook his hand clear, but Sandy retrapped it, entwining fingers. "It's an incentive for people to work harder, so they can play harder. Entertainment's worth more cash than a full fleet expenditure each year in this city. And it recharges brain cells. People here do knowledge-based work. They use their brains a lot, not like weapons drill where everything's automatic. They need more time off to recharge or they burn out. So it's all just as sensible as military systems really, it's just a different focus.

"They're creating wealth here. We're just what they spend it on, like one of their infrastructure projects. We don't create anything. We just kill things."

She could feel Mahud tense behind her. His hand stopped resisting her attentions.

"But the war ... I mean, the war was ..." He trailed off. Sandy sighed. It was too much, she realised. Too much to dump on him like this. He respected her too much. Respected her opinions, valued her judgments. Trusted her, more than she would have considered healthy if their positions had been reversed. It was a great responsibility. She felt compelled to live up to it and show some compassion for the moment.

"We did okay in the war," she sighed, rubbing his arm affectionately. "We did fine."

Mahud tightened his arm about her, pulling her firmly back against his chest. His naked body pressed against her. Warm breath in her ear, face rested against her hair, watching the span of visible sky. They lay together for several lingering, unspeaking minutes, watching as the sun-gleam crawled to higher panes of tower glass and the air traffic soared and murmured.

It felt very nice, that company, Sandy considered, warm against his skin and the soft, covering sheets. Perhaps too nice. Other thoughts swam to mind unbidden. Urgent and pressing. She sighed, feeling very, very reluctant.

"What?" Mahud murmured by her ear.

"Just... everything." An executive coupe slid by on a near lane, wide, curved and shark-looking. Her right eye tracked and zoomed, reflexive curiosity on a model she had not seen before. Impressive-looking design. Very Tanushan. "I mean, what are you going to do?"

A brief, unhappy silence from Mahud.

Then, "We have to talk about that now?"

"When else should we talk about it?"

"Come on Cap, this is good down-time. I'm not expected to be anywhere until midday. We can't move around when we're trying to lay low. And now you're here." He trailed a hand back down her stomach again. "Don't spoil it."

"Mahud, are you going to keep working with these people?" The hand strayed lower, reaching between her thighs. "Hey." Sandy's voice was firm, although she made no attempt to move his hand. "I'm serious."

"Me too." The fingers probed, gently stroking. Sandy winced. He knew exactly what she liked, and how. Bastard. She twisted half about within the covers, and gave him a very flat, very sombre stare. Mahud looked pained. The fingers withdrew. He sighed.

"Mahud," she said gently. Firmly. "What are you going to do?" A moment of brief thought.

"What do you think I should do?"

"Mahud, I can't be your Captain for ever. You know what I'd like to see you do — I'd hope you'd leave these bastards and stay here with me. But it has to be your decision."

"You said Dali wants to lock you up," he pointed out. "You want me locked up with you?"

"Dali won't be in power for long. Six weeks at most. Hiding for six weeks is easy when everyone from the head of the CSA down are all determined not to find me."

Mahud stared at her, realisation dawning slowly in his eyes, what she was asking. His look was disbelieving.

"You want me to become a
civilian
?"

"You make it sound like a disease."

"Jesus Cap, I ... I dunno." Very unconvinced. Sandy rolled over to face him, head on the pillow alongside. "I'm a soldier." With pained conviction. "I don't
know
anything else."

"I'm with SWAT right now. It's practically the same thing, just the uniform's different. I mean, I was kind of hoping for a nice, quiet programming job, but hell, I'll take what I can get." Mahud looked very dubious. And worried. And confused.

"Oh come on, Mahud!" Exasperated, she put her hands on his shoulders, looking him intently in the eyes. "You can't go back to the League. They killed our guys. Murdered them. How can you ...?"

"That's what you say," Mahud interrupted stubbornly.

Sandy's eyebrows arched. "You don't believe me?"

The confused look gave way to exasperation.

"Christ, Cap ... I know your stuff about the reasons for this op is true, it all fits. What they did to you sucks." His eyes were fixed on hers, full of emotion. "But the other thing ... that's a lot to ask. You know that."

Sandy did know that. He was right. It was a lot to ask of him. Probably too much.

"Hell with that then," she said, climbing on top and straddling him, gazing into his eyes. "What about you, you want to keep working for these people? Knowing what you know now?"

He looked up at her kind of distantly, as if remembering things. The pain never left his expression. And she wondered, not for the first time, exactly what it was that he was thinking.

"No," he said then, very quietly. "But I don't know what else I can do."

"Mahud ..." she leaned down, forearms to either side of his head. Breasts touching his chest, nearly nose to nose. Her eyes were gleaming. "You can learn to
live
."

Mahud stared. Nearly frightened. Concerned certainly. He looked so vulnerable. She didn't know whether to laugh at his confusion, scream at his indecision, or burst into tears at his poor, helpless expression. Highly trained, lethal combat-GI that he was, he still made her heart melt with his unassuming innocence. She didn't know whether to hug him or hit him.

"It's good here, Mahud," she told him, her eyes alive with enthusiasm. "There are so many things to see! So many new things to learn. Some of the people I've met are really good. Once they realise you won't hurt them, they'll like you. You'll like them too, I promise. You could probably get a job training them on weapons and tactics — they're pretty good here, but they'd still learn a lot from you. They'd value you. It's completely different from Dark Star. People will respect you for more than just your rank, they'll like you for who you are. You'll never know what it's like until you experience it ..." She broke off as Mahud began to shake his head helplessly.

"I just don't know if I..."

"Shhhhh," Sandy told him, putting a gentle finger to his lips. "Just think about it. You've got a few hours. We can talk about it some more. I'll tell you anything you want to know."

Mahud nodded silently. Not looking any less confused, but now focused more on her than the things she said. She kissed him gently on the lips and pulled back to consider him again affectionately. His eyes were so nice from this range. All of him was. But mostly, it was what she saw on his face, and in his eyes in particular ... he was Mahud, her comrade, her longtime friend and companion. He understood her rarely. But he was honest and conscientious, and whatever his shortcomings, he always tried to do the right thing.

It was more than she could say for many of the straights she'd met. The ones who lacked the courage to confront their flaws. The ones who were smarter and ought to have known better, but didn't. The ones who should have grasped more than a limited, tape-trained mind like Mahud's, the ones who possessed intellectual faculties and training that far exceeded his limited experiences, but failed to put them to any good use. Given more years, and more experiences, she was certain that Mahud could grow in many ways. But even now ... well, she liked him fine just the way he was.

Impulsively she kissed him again. Like a grown woman petting an irresistibly adorable puppy, the thought occurred to her and she nearly laughed. Smothered it with another kiss, and another. Mahud was hardly responding as she might have hoped. She paused, gazing down at him from a more comfortable range.

"Sandy?" His voice was quiet.

"What?"

"I'm scared." She nodded, with a small, sad sigh.

"I know." And settled down on top of him, wrapping him firmly in a warm, comfortable embrace, his arms enfolding her in return. "We all get scared sometimes. I know it's tough. But sometimes we just don't get a choice."

"Will you look out for me?"

"Of course," she murmured gladly against his shoulder. "I'll always look out for you. We've got something no civilian can understand. Probably no straight either. I'll always be there for you. Don't ever doubt it."

They made love amid the tangled sheets as the golden morning spilled across the room and gleamed on the windows. Perhaps, Sandy managed to think as their bodies locked pleasantly together, she had been too prescriptive, too commanding, too Captain-like in her approach ... and recalled having told him, just moments before, that he would need to make up his own mind, and that she could not be his Captain forever.