Rules of Conflict (35 page)

She terrified him physically—so tall and straight, a woman of
line, not of curve. Still, he found himself appreciating her with a bolder eye
than he normally would have dared; he felt a surge of pride as he watched other
men’s gazes follow her.
My Captain of Dark Ice.
He stood as she
approached the bench.

“Mr. Duong. I hope you’re well.” She smiled. “We don’t have a lot
of time. I’m scheduled for an important meeting at thirteen up. I didn’t
arrange it, so I couldn’t move it. Sorry.”

“You have so many meetings.” Sam remained standing, finally
gesturing for her to sit down first. “This one must be very important. You look
very nice.”

“Thank you.” Kilian dropped her briefbag to the ground. She
lowered to the edge of the bench, then moved down with a start as though
something surprised her. “It’s Office Hours. With a mainline general. I might
live.” She tensed, hunching her shoulders like Sam did when people pressed
around him in the lift.

He leaned toward her. “Are you feeling all right, Captain? You
don’t look well.”

“I’m fine.” She had lost her smile. “Would you mind if we went
somewhere else?”

“Where?”

“Not indoors.” A loud blast sounded from the ranges, and she
flinched. “The covered walkways, maybe? I know you don’t like the beach.”

“I will walk on the beach.” Sam injected his voice with a
confidence he didn’t feel and hoisted his briefbag to his shoulder. “If you’re
with me.” He looked down at her—was it his imagination, or did she shiver?
“It’s the noise from the weapons ranges, isn’t it?”

She stiffened, then nodded. “That’s not helping.”

“We could go in—”

“
Not inside
.” She offered a sheepish curve of lip that was
more grimace than grin. “I’m feeling a little crowded today.”

They walked silently across the East Yard, then down the flights
of steps that descended to the beach. Sam held his breath as he stepped onto
the sand and sank in up to his shoe tops. He stopped. Took another step.
Stopped again.

Kilian reached out to him. “Give me your hand, Sam.”

Sam held out his hand, sighing as Kilian closed her fingers around
his. They felt cool. Dry. She had a strong grip for a woman. He felt her strength
course up his arm, through his body.

He looked up the shore and saw the red, blue, and green splashes
of sun umbrellas, running children, a group in base casuals struggling to right
a volleyball net.
There’s nothing to be afraid of here.
Not on this sand.
Not now.

Kilian led him to a round wireframe table that was sheltered from
the relentless sun by a red-and-white-striped awning. “You said you had some
news that would interest me?” She released him, dragged a chair into the center
of a wide strip of ruby light, and sat heavily.

Sam looked at the place where she’d touched him—he imagined the
imprint of her fingers, like a signet. He slid into the chair opposite her and
reached into his bag. “I found this in the city.” He tucked the transfer into
the fold of that morning’s issue of
Blue and Grey
, and pushed it across
the table toward her. “Early morning is the best time to search through Active
Vessel Archives. The security is not all it should be.”

Kilian opened the newssheet—her eyes widened as she studied the
document nestled within. “Cargo transfer.”

Sam nodded. “Check the date/time stamp.”

Kilian did. “Well, well.” Her voice emerged stronger, surer. She
didn’t look cold anymore. “You wanted to see how my idomeni-made scanpack
worked—that’s the story if anyone asks, OK? I scanned the newssheet.” She
waited for Sam to nod before she reached to her belt and removed the device
from its pouch. “Where did you find this?”

“In an unsecured bin, while I searched for something else.” Sam
glanced up and down the beach, on the lookout for spectators. “There’s nothing
on the document that identifies it as Service paper. That’s why they let it
go.”

“All they had to do was check the date.” Kilian activated her
scanpack; the palm-sized unit’s display shimmered bright green. “That tells me
that whoever took the other records had little or no experience with documents.
Covering the main doc trail is a snap, it’s the peripherals that’ll trip you up
every time.” She brushed the ’pack’s bottom surface over the document in a regular
left-to-right, top-to-bottom pattern. When her scanpack display flashed green,
she deactivated it and returned it to its pouch. “It’s the real thing,” she
said as she fingered a browned corner. “Not high-quality paper. I’m amazed it
held up for eighteen years.”

Sam nodded. “I don’t think that bin was opened much. We got
lucky.”

Kilian studied the transfer. “Agers. Two of them.” She looked
across the table. “Feeding those evacuees well, weren’t they?” The act of
examining the paper had energized her—her dark eyes glittered.

Sam swallowed. When Yance looked at him the way Kilian did now, it
never boded well for some poor would-be paper fiddler. “The evacuees were
Family. I suppose they were entitled.” He scraped the soles of his shoes
against the scancrete. “I think I wasted your time—that document means
nothing.”

Kilian stared out toward the lake, where a couple of wave-gliders
banked and wove across the still surface. One
glider cut a turn too sharply—his iridescent board shot out from under him and
tumbled through the air. “Mako faced a court of inquiry when he returned to
Earth.” She waited for the board to strike the lake surface before turning
away. “He mishandled remains. Ebben’s, Unser’s, and Fitzhugh’s.”

“Caldor’s.” Sam squirmed under Kilian’s startled stare. “Her death
cert had gone missing, too.”

“So it did.” Kilian crossed her legs and locked her hands around
her knee. The red light that filtered through the awning rouged her complexion,
making her look sunburnt. “How many died during the evac, total?”

“Sixteen.”

“That’s a lot of bodies to store in three cramped ships.”

“The morgue coolers—”

“Three per sick bay. That’s nine bodies—what did they do with the
other seven?”

Sam rubbed his stomach. The conversation made it ache. “Body bags
in the hold?”

“Want to know what I think?” Kilian smiled, a frosty twist of lip
that reminded Sam uneasily of Pierce. “I think they ran out of body bags. And
someone thought, oh aren’t these convenient, and emptied out the meat and
shoved the bodies in the agers. They probably thought they were reefer units.”
She chuckled. “I’d have hated to be the poor bastard who cracked those seals
after two months.” Her happy expression vanished when she looked at Sam.
“Sorry. My sense of humor.” She sat forward and spread her hands out on the
tabletop, spacing them so that they both were bathed in red-tinged light.

Sam imagined the shadowing as the thinnest film of blood.
“Captain, are you an augment?”

“Yes.”

“Dr. Pimentel told me things, too. About agitation and feeling
sick.”

She smiled brilliantly. “You remembered that!”

“Yes.” Sam tried again. “Should you be sitting in the red like
this?”

The smile turned strange. “I find it energizing.” She grew
serious. “Has a mainline colonel with a nasty facial scar been turning up at
the SIB over the past few weeks?”

“You mean Niall Pierce?”

“
You
know him, too?”

Sam shook his head. “I know of him, from the Rauta Shèràa Base
files.”

“He was part of the evac.”

“Yes. And I saw him at the hospital once. He was there to pick up
scan results. I haven’t seen him at the SIB.”

“I have.” Kilian stood up and walked out into the blazing sun. In
the distance, the booms of the Y-40s shook the air, but she didn’t seem to hear
them anymore. Her timorousness had disappeared—energy seemed to ripple from her
now, like heat from a roadbed. “Do you think you’re being watched?”

“Yes.” Sam’s hands shook—he braced them against the table.

“Do you own a weapon?”

“No. You think I’ll need one?”

“If you don’t know how to use it, it may do you more harm than
good.”

“I’m very good at running and hiding.”

“Not bad skills to have.” The grim smile again. Then Kilian
glanced at her timepiece. “I have to get going.” She walked back to the table
and hoisted her bag, then gestured to Sam with that childlike backward wave.
“Let’s go.”

“No.” Sam shook his head. “I want to sit here a while.” He looked
out over the water, at the lakeskimmers and sailboards. “Maybe I’ll even walk
in the sand.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

The dark in Kilian’s eyes softened. The goddess touched. “You’re a
very brave man.”

“As long as I know you’re here.” Sam smiled up at her. “I couldn’t
do it alone. I could never do it alone.”

Kilian started to speak, blinked, turned away. She strode across
the sand, her step hurried. As though there were someplace she needed to go. Or
someplace she needed to leave behind.

Evan slept fitfully and awoke feeling restless. As
pink-orange wisps of cloud drifted through the sunrise sky, he tended his
roses, following the checklist Joaquin had given him to the letter. Hours
passed as he applied nutrients and fungicides, cut back straggly branches,
slaughtered the weeds that had dared poke through the raked and treated soil.

For the first time, he found himself enjoying the work. Sweat and
repetition helped him think.

“So, Quino would rather think me brain-impaired than believe Mako
killed the charges against Jani to save Pierce.” Evan yanked at a stubborn
pig’s ear, breaking the plant at ground level. “He controls my access to
secured information, which means I can’t investigate further without his
buy-in.” He knelt and dug into the ground with his hands. After a few strong
tugs, he wrenched the root free, spraying clods of dirt in all directions.
“Shroud was right. Quino wants to cut me loose—he’s tossing up that Haárin option
as a smoke screen.” Well, he had learned a lot about the esteemed Mr. Loiaza in
the thirty years of their acquaintance. “You snake me, I may just make some
notes about you, too.” He wiped smeared earth from his face and hands and
continued weeding.

“So who got to him, Anais or Roshi?” Evan paused in front of a
creeping Charlie that had taken over a shady corner near the Wolfshead
Westminster. “I’d bet Anais. Quino doesn’t give a damn about the Service, but
he sure as hell cares about Cabinet Court retainer fees.”

He tore out the creeping Charlie with a hand rake, then collected
the round-leafed tendrils and stuffed them into a decomp bag. In a few days,
he’d remove the rotted plant matter and fold it back into the soil to nourish
the roses, the vanquished enemy reworked for his purpose. Government in a
nutshell, part two.

He collected his implements and concoctions, trudged to the small
shed adjoining the house, and returned them to the appropriate hooks, racks,
and shelves. Pulled the flask from his trouser pocket and took a draw.

The
breep
of the front-entry buzzer greeted Evan as he
entered the house. Halvor had already departed to run errands, and Markhart
worked upstairs before lunch, which left him with the unusual task of answering
his own door.

He didn’t check the security display to see who waited outside. If
the door system announced a visitor, then his jailers must have already cleared
them. So he released the panel, swept it aside, and found himself nose to nose
with an agitated Hugh Tellinn.

“Mr. van Reuter.” Tellinn looked over his shoulder, then back at
him, his movements as stiff and awkward as they had been in Shroud’s parlor.

Who does he want to pound into the carpet now?
“Dr.
Tellinn.” Evan looked past the man to see if either of his neighbors had
wandered to their front yards to check out the action in person. Both areas
looked clear, which meant they had stayed inside and used scanners instead.
“Come in.”

The physician stepped inside. “Thank you for seeing me,” he said
softly. “I understand this isn’t the best time for you.”

“Not your problem, Doctor. Don’t give it a second thought.” Evan
regarded Tellinn with a critical eye.
So, Val, you forsake young and dumb
for old and smart and look what happens.
He gets jittery and seeks out the enemy
. “Is this a medical visit?”
he asked for form’s sake.

“Only officially. So I could get permission to come here.” Tellinn
took a tentative step toward the sitting room. “I—I need—I need your help.”

“I’m not in the position to help myself, much less you.”

“Just hear me out. I think after you do, you’ll change your mind.”
Tellinn walked around Evan into the sitting room, then glanced back at him in
nervous expectation. “I’m here about Jani Kilian.”

Oh no
. Evan fell in behind him and sat in his usual lounge
chair. “Val didn’t send you here in an effort to bypass John, did he?”

Tellinn perched on the edge of the sofa. “No. If Val knew I’d come
here, he’d kill me.” He started to rock, a slight forward-and-back motion, like
a continuous nod of the head. “I need you to contact Jani the next time you go
to Sheridan. I need you to give her something.”

Evan studied Tellinn’s face for some sign he joked, but saw only
dour sincerity laced with panic. “I won’t be returning to Sheridan for some
time.”
If ever.
“The most serious charges against Jani are to be
dropped, and she’s to be given a medical discharge. Since that’s the case, the
SIB no longer needs what information I have to offer.”

“But surely you can think up some excuse. Perhaps tell
your attorney that you’ve remembered something important.” Tellinn stilled his
rocking long enough to reach into his inner shirt pocket and pull out what
looked like a cigar case. When he snapped it open, however, steam puffed—he
removed a frosted cylinder the size of Evan’s index finger. “She needs to have
the contents of this syringe injected as soon as possible.” He slowly inverted
the cylinder, displaying the straw yellow liquid contained within.