Rules of Conflict (47 page)

Jani looked at the eerily silent man, who had taken a piece of
paper from his pocket and now noiselessly unfolded it. “You’re the Judge
Advocate General?” He nodded. “You want me to hand my sergeant over to save
myself?”

“
Your
sergeant?” Mako smiled coolly. “He’s dead, Jani. I
hardly think he’ll mind.”

“He didn’t do it!”

The JA held up his piece of paper. “Even the most cursory glance
at the late Sergeant Burgoyne’s record would give one pause, Captain.” He again
reached inside his tunic and removed a stylus. “All we need to close the case
is a signed statement from you that you witnessed such threats, but failed to
report for fear Sergeant Burgoyne would turn on you as well.”

Jani looked from Mako to the JA. “Are you familiar with the
concept of untoward influence?”

The snake didn’t blink. “We have a Service to protect.”

“I trusted Borgie at my back.”

Gleick snorted. “You consider that a recommendation?”

“I wouldn’t trust
you
out of my sight!” She felt her eyes
grow heavy. “He was worth twelve of any one of you.” Her shoulders slumped. “He
was worth twelve of every one of you.”

Pierce touched her shoulder. “Kilian, take the deal.”

Jani shook him off. “‘Ease would recant vows made in pain,’ Niall.
Book Four, again. That’s another way of saying I don’t want to wind up like
you.” She sat forward. The room darkened. “I stood here. Neumann stood”—she
stretched her aching arm, and sighted down—“four paces in front of me.”

“Five.” Neumann sat on the arm of Carvalla’s chair, detached leg
swinging sideways from his hip, back and forth like a pendulum. “And I was a
little off to the right, but keep going, keep going. I’ll dance at your
execution yet.”

“Not with one leg, you won’t.”

“Captain?” Carvalla glanced at the chair arm in alarm. “Are you
all right?”

“
Five
paces.” Jani pointed her finger at Neumann. “He told
me about the patients.” She squeezed the imaginary charge-through. “He made me
an offer, too.” Neumann blew her a kiss.

Mako and Carvalla looked at one another. Mako’s eyes widened, and
Carvalla sat back.

“I understand guilt,” Mako said.

“No, if you did, you’d have locked down Niall long ago. He kept
turning up, and I had to ask myself why?” Jani kept her finger pointed at
Neumann—it felt as weighty as a long-range. “I shot Neumann. I didn’t know
whether he had drawn his weapon, and I didn’t care. I’d have killed him if he’d
been unarmed. If he’d been sitting at his desk. If he’d been asleep.”

“Brava.” Neumann stood, bowed to her and clapped his hands. “Do
you want me to kick my leg across the room for emphasis?”

“I killed him. Then Yolan died. Then the patients. Because of me.
Then I killed the Laum. Then Borgie and the rest of the Twelfth died. Because
of me.” She stopped to breathe. “I almost died, but John stuck his nose in. I
wish he hadn’t.”

Pierce whispered, “Jani—”

“I admit to murder, yet you’ll hand me the lie to save myself.
Why?”

Mako had the gall to look humble. “Because you are a good Spacer
who deserves a second chance.”

“And you’re the honorable man who’ll give it to me.” She watched
him watch her. “I’m not honorable. I’ve known that for years. It’s difficult,
at first, admitting that you’re no better than what you are, that you’ll do
whatever it takes to survive. Deal with whatever devil rears his head. But it
gets easier as time goes on. Doesn’t it, Roshi?”

“I’m offering you a new life.”

“And all I have to do is abet the libel of a dead man.” Jani held
up her left hand so she could shake her finger. Since the arm felt numb to the
shoulder, she had to watch to make sure she did it. “No, I’m wrong. You can’t
libel the dead. Supposedly.” She let the arm drop. “I killed Neumann.”

“The evidence doesn’t exist.”

“I admit it freely.”

“The court will not accept your word as anything but the
guilt-ridden ramblings of a traumatized woman,” Mako said. “The world outside
court is, of course, a different story.”

“You have paper proof concerning Borgie?”

“Of sufficient scope that guilt can be assumed, yes.”

“Where is it?”

The snake glanced up from his paper. “Hidden, Captain.”

Jani nodded. Across the room, Neumann clucked his tongue, then
stuck it out at her. She stood up slowly. “Good evening.”

Carvalla tried to rise as well, but Mako held up his hand, and she
sat back. “Good evening, Jani. You know where we are if you should change your
mind.”

Pierce caught up to her just outside the door. “They’re giving you
a chance.” He grabbed her sore arm and spun her around. “Take it and run!” Jani
stifled a scream, and he released her like hot metal and backed away.

She waited for the haze in front of her eyes to clear. “I said I
couldn’t argue with you about killing them. I meant that. But there are
limits—you know that better than I do.” She pulled the slip of paper from her
pocket. “I had to write this down. No time to memorize everything. We’re still
in Book Four. It seemed to describe you so well.” She blinked at the paper
until the words came into focus.

“‘Horror and doubt distract his troubled thoughts, and from the
bottom stir the Hell within him.’” She heard Pierce speak the words as she read
them, and slowed her voice to pace his. He knew it better than she did, after
all. “‘For within him Hell he brings, and round about him, nor from Hell one
step, no more than from himself, can fly by change of place.’” She paused to
breathe, and heard Pierce pause beside her. “‘Now conscience wakes despair that
slumbered; wakes the bitter memory of what he was, what is, and what must be
worse; of worse deeds worse suffering must ensue.’” She folded the paper and
slipped it back into her pocket. “I think that means it’s only going to get
worse from here. I think it means Sam Duong and Borgie are only the beginning.”
She looked past Pierce’s sliced face, and spoke to the unscarred man. “Smearing
Borgie bothers you the most, doesn’t it? It should. Shame on you, Sergeant. He
was one of yours.” She turned her back on him and walked slowly down the
hallway.

“So, what do we do now?” Neumann crab-walked beside her,
cartwheeling his arms, pushing the right one back up his sleeve every time it
slipped.

“SIB.”

“Oh, Christ, I hate that place.” As they walked through the foyer,
he looked toward the door leading to the party tent. “Where’d your rent boy run
off to?”

“I don’t know.”

“Guess it’s just you and me, Kilian. At each other’s throats, just
like old times.”

“Just like old times.”

The other techs had gone on break. Sam sat at his desk and
picked through his perfunctory task.
Alphabetize these lists, Sam
,
Odergaard had told him, while strangers guarded his dead.

“Mr. Duong?”

Sam looked up. Kilian leaned against the wall of one of the other
cubicles. Hanford’s, the gum-chewer. He wanted to warn her that if she wasn’t
careful, she would stick to the partition, but something about the expression
on her face told him she wouldn’t appreciate the joke.

“Captain.” He stood slowly, one eye on the entry, on the lookout
for breaktime returnees. “How was your party?”

“Can you get into secured records?” Kilian’s light brown face was
purpled, as though she’d been running. Yet she didn’t sweat—her skin looked
papery, as though it would tear if Sam touched it. She stepped forward,
dragging her right leg. She had undone the collar of her dress tunic—a crescent
of white shirt showed in the V. “I need—Sergeant Burgoyne’s record.” She
stopped to breathe. Her eyes glimmered with fever. “Can you get it?”

“I—don’t have the codes.”

“Can you find them?”

“I need to break into Odergaard’s desk.”

“What kind of lock is it?”

“A single-finger.”

“Those are easy.”

They both smiled, in spite of the odd tension, and her strange
behavior.

“They’re going to smear him.” Kilian’s smile faded. “Borgie.
They’re going to say”—again, she stopped to take a breath—“he killed Neumann.
But he didn’t—I did.”

“Because of us?”

“Yes.” Kilian stared at him, her eyes filling. It was a terrifying
sight, that abject vulnerability in one so contained, like watching the ground
fissure at your feet. “You’re Simyam Baru, aren’t you?”

“Yes.” Sam sagged against the desk. He felt so weak, but just on one
side. He touched the right side of his face, tracing the jagged outline where
the skin had peeled. Up to his temple, then alongside his ear, the line of his
jaw, to his chin. “I wondered when you’d recognize me.”

“You don’t look the same.”

“Neither do you, Captain.” He felt a rush of compassion for her,
this woman who lived only to dash herself against rocks. “But people are more
than their faces, are they not?”

Kilian slumped against the partition, then edged along it and
around the corner, finally scrabbling for purchase on the brink of a vacant
desk. “How did you get away?” She squinted at him and blinked repeatedly, as
though she had trouble focusing.

Her vision is going.
He felt for his comport pad. “I should
call the hospital—”

“
Answer the question
.”

He pulled his hand back. “Orton had been our driver during our
previous expeditions. She had never handled a people-mover of that size before,
but—”

“Orton couldn’t see. They’d severed her optic nerves so they could
input directly into her visual cortex.”

“The best pilots handle a craft by feel.”

“Not to that extent.”

“I was her eyes. I told her where to steer.”

“Right over a blind jump and into the path of a Laumrau scout.”
Service disgust for all reasoning civilians dulled Kilian’s overbright eyes. “I
saw the flash from the roof of the hospital.”

“I was never a soldier, Captain.” Civilian disgust for all things
Service darkened Sam’s voice. “I did not understand the concept of ambush until
too late.” He touched his face again. “Orton died. Fessig. I was the only one
to survive the crash.”

“Any injuries?”

“My left arm.” He flexed it. “Broken.”

“How did you get—to Rauta Shèràa?”

“I walked for hours. The sun at my back. Toward the city. Just
when I thought I could walk no farther, I was rescued by a group of
xenoanthropologists. They had been conducting research in the central plains,
and had received the evac order from their inpost in the city.” Sam watched as
Kilian’s shoulders rounded, slumped.
She’s too weak to sit up.
“How did
you get here from the party?”

“I swiped a scoot and don’t change the subject!” Again the pause
to breathe. “Who were the xenos affiliated with? A university? A collective?”

“I was in no condition to inquire.”

“Can you recall any of their names?”

“No.” He had tried to remember. He recalled snatches of faces—dark
eyes, kind smiles—but he could never remember more. “They bandaged my face and
arm as best they could and took me to the shuttleport in Rauta Shèràa. From
there, I begged passage from a merchant transport bound for Phillipa.”

“How did you pay? Did your rescuers pass the hat?”

“No.” Details had always been fuzzy there, too, but considering
the circumstances . . . “I begged. They let me on.”

“No one would have given a billet to a broke and injured
incoherent.”

“Compassionate people exist, Captain, even in shuttle-ports.”

“Name one.” Kilian squinched her eyes shut. Opened them. Shook her
head. Then she paused, tensed, as though she heard a far-off sound and was
trying to place it.

“Do you hear something?” Sam watched the doorway, on the lookout
for returnees.

“No one important.” She muttered under her breath, as though she
argued with someone close by. When she finally looked at him, rage glittered in
her fevered eyes.

“Everyone says—you’re sick.” Her voice shook. “You have a tumor in
your thalamic region that induces—a type of amnesia. You can’t recall your own
past, so you substitute other people’s. For some reason, you’ve fixated on
Knevçet Shèràa—and Simyam Baru. It makes sense. You’re both Bandan. Similar,
physically. But he’s dead, and you are, and have always been, Sam Duong.” She
wiped her hand across her cheek, and looked down at the floor. “Too much
coincidence, otherwise. Why, after all these years—would you wind up here?”

Why, indeed? That area of Sam’s life had always been fuzziest of
all.
Why am I here?
“So I could thank you.” Yes, the relief that flooded
him as he spoke told him those were the right words. “For trying . . .
for trying to save us. I knew, if I waited here along enough”—his voice
quickened as his assurance grew—“if I waited here long enough, you’d show up.
Eventually.”

Kilian stared. “Thank me—?” Her voice cracked, and she pressed a
hand over her eyes.

Sam fixed his attention on the door to allow her some privacy. And
to watch for his officemates, who would be filing in any moment now.

Kilian wiped her eyes with her tunic sleeve, and looked across the
gulf of years at him. “Could we try to get hold of Borgie’s—”

The alarm klaxon blatted. It pounded eardrums with physical force,
pressing around them with walls of sound.

“It’s a fire drill.” Sam swept the work orders into a drawer, and
locked it. “Only a fire drill, Captain.” He looked over at her. “Follow me—”

Kilian sat rigid on the edge of the desk. Her eyes had gone black
glass, her skin, dun clay.

“Captain.” He stepped up to her, nudged her arm, then grabbed her
shoulder and shook. “It’s just a drill!”

“You have to get out.” Her breath smelled like sweet vinegar.
“They’re coming—”

“
Duong!
Move your ass!” Odergaard stuck his ever-red face
in the door. “It took us three minutes to clear the floor last time. You know
we need to break two!” His voice rang down the hallway. “
Move! Move! Move!”