Contact Imminent, page 41
The smile vanished. The knife dangled.
Micah edged out of the blasted room, strained for any sound. He thought he’d heard the whoosh whoosh of exos again, but the noise had come from reactivated airflow pushing its way through a crumpled outlet grating.
“Walkin’in Jesus’ footsteps.” This part of the embassy had been hit the hardest—Micah stepped over rubble, fallen sections of wall, pieces of furniture. Splashed through the flooding caused by damaged pipes. He’d found an idomeni clock in one of the blown rooms and tried to figure out how long he’d been inside the embassy, but he couldn’t make heads or tails of the display and smashed it as the anger took him.
Walkin’… one, two, three…. Counting his steps.
“Fifteen minutes? Twenty?” Had it been that long since he’d sent the lakespray flying? Felt that first gorgeous recoil of his mid-range?
He turned the corner, pausing first to look around and check if anyone was in the hall. He hadn’t seen anyone for a time, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. He heard them through the walls, with their whines, hisses, tremors. They’d find him eventually, since no one had taught him how to get out. It was like Pascal said, damn him.
Walkin’…. Four…five…six….
He walked past one empty, blasted room. Another. Then he heard voices as he neared the third, and his step slowed.
“They promised they’d take care of you.” Jani tried to will her limbs calm. The pink had dissipated, and she sensed that the twitching had lessened. The spasms. “Train these nonessentials, give them just enough skill to be dangerous, but not enough to do the job right. We don’t want to make it look like the real Service wants the idomeni out, after all. But an offshoot? A submerged couple of percent? We can explain that away to Cabinet Row. Not our fault. Nothing we could control.”
The knife shook. “Filth. You should have died years ago.”
I did, in theory. Jani tried to bend her leg, jam her right knee into the woman’s side. But she couldn’t find the leverage, and the woman’s body weighted her like stone. “You may as well talk, because they aren’t going to help you. They’ll probably kill you, in fact, when they find out you lived through the assault.”
The woman’s eyes were small, mud brown, bright as if with fever. They clouded momentarily, as though she actually heard what Jani told her. But it didn’t last. She hadn’t come to the embassy to talk.
She raised the knife and her upper body at the same time. Pushed off Jani’s helmet, then grabbed a fistful of hair and forced her head still.
“’Night, kitty.” The woman’s smile widened as she brought her blade up.
Jani felt her left arm still for just long enough. Curled her fingers and brought up the heel of her hand, jamming it against the woman’s chin, pushing her head back, pushing, pushing. The woman struck, the blade came down—once—twice—hitting Jani’s left wrist, slipping between skin and the edge of armor. Pink carrier spattered—the more that flowed, the more the arm steadied.
Jani kept pushing up, until she felt the weight atop her ease. Brought up her right leg, then kicked out, pushing the woman off. “Niall!” She tried to roll over to her hands and knees, tried to stand, but her animandroid limbs still betrayed. They trembled as she put weight on them. Buckled. She fell back to the floor, made slick with rose-pink carrier.
The woman careened backwards, then rolled into a crouch like a cat. She still held the blade. “No one can hear you.” She tensed as she made to spring.
“Walkin’ in Jesus’ footsteps.”
They both stilled, and looked to the entry.
“That’s what you said.” A young man walked into the room. He wore base casuals, sweat-stained and torn, and held the woman’s discarded shooter in a loose grip.
Jani fixed on the pointed, pale face. I’ve seen him before. The lance from the bunker, whose coat she’d worn. Faber.
“That’s what you said, Sergeant.” Faber’s voice came quiet, like he spoke to a child. “You trained us and drilled us and told us how special we were, and every time we stormed the embassy in the sims, you said the same thing. Walkin’.” His eyes, in contrast to his voice, looked stone-carved. There was a disconnect between how he looked and sounded, what he said and the way he said it. “Well, where is he?”
The woman’s breathing had gone shaky, as though she tried to hoist a weight that was too heavy for her. She held out a hand to Faber. “At ease, Tiebold. Stand down.”
“That’s not my name,” Faber responded, “just like Chrivet isn’t yours.” He raised the shooter, and sighted down. “Where is he?”
“I said—” The woman’s voice stopped in her throat as the shooter crack sounded. The impact knocked her backwards, sending her sprawling, her limbs jerking as the pulse packet dissipated throughout her body.
“Lance Corporal.” Jani had worked into a sitting position, left limbs still twitching. “Stand down.”
Faber paused to look at her. Then he turned back to Chrivet, and sighted down once more.
“Drop the shooter, then raise your arms. Above your head. Slowly.” Niall entered, shooter fixed on Faber. “Now!” The young man slowly lowered the weapon—Niall stepped forward and plucked it from his grasp. “Pull! Get the hell in here!” He powered down the shooter and holstered it, then flipped up his faceplate and looked to Jani. “You’re bleeding.”
“It’s just carrier—I’m all right.” Jani watched Faber, who still stood in front of Chrivet’s body, his eyes fixed on nothing.
Pullman blew in, followed by a mixed bag of human and idomeni equipped with scanners and gurneys. Niall stepped out of the way of a pair of humanish medics who headed toward Chrivet, and came to a halt next to Faber. “Pull, this is Lance Corporal Micah Faber. It was his late buddy made mincemeat out your left kidney.”
“Is that a fact, sir?” Pullman flipped up his faceplate. “I’ll bear that in mind.” He closed in behind Faber, yanking back his arms and binding his wrists with restraints he’d pulled from his weapons belt.
“All right.” Niall walked to Jani’s side, and crouched down. “What happened?”
Jani raised her shaky left hand. “The pink blitzed my animandroid limbs—”
“Before that.” Niall reached down and detached the armor plate that covered her left forearm, then examined her wound. “I order you back to the challenge room, look around two seconds later and find you gone.”
Jani jerked her chin toward the place where two physician-priests administered to Pashé’s corpse. “She was on our team. When you ordered us to pull back, she didn’t want to go. She didn’t want anything to do with humanish.”
“So you went after her?” Niall dragged off his helmet, revealing sweat-flattened hair and a reddened groove across his forehead where the stabilizer band had rested. “You want to play on my team, you follow my rules. Stick that in your documents case for future reference.” He straightened, then turned back to Pull. “Get him out of here,” he said, pointing at Faber.
Pullman took Faber by the elbow and steered him toward the entry, only to stop as they reached the door. “Sir.”
Jani looked up in time to see Lucien walk in. He still wore the slashed and bloody casuals from his challenge, to which he’d added a stripped-down assortment of body armor and a packed weapons holster. He looked around the room, gaze fixing first on the two teams of medics before coming to rest on Jani. “You’re hurt?”
Jani shook her head. “The pink took out my left side.”
Niall grimaced. “I told you to report to Medical, Pascal.”
“I’m afraid you were superceded, sir.” Lucien approached Faber, a change coming over him as he drew close to the young man. His voice lightened. He even managed a smile. “Good morning, Lance Corporal.”
“Good morning, sir.” Faber drew up straight, his shoulders working as though he tried to salute. “You were right. You said they didn’t show us how to get out. You were right.” He fell silent. “You said—” His expression lightened again. It did so only when he spoke, fading to blankness as he quieted. “You said that anytime I wanted to talk, I’d be able to find you.”
Lucien moved in front of him. Someone had wrapped his à lérine wounds in light gauze through which the blood had managed to seep. “Yes, Faber. You are correct.”
“You’re not—” Faber hesitated. “You’re not the Jesus Sergeant Chrivet told us about.”
Niall emitted a harsh laugh. “Not even close, boyo.”
Faber looked down at the floor. “Maybe…” This time when he spoke, his face remained blank. “Maybe you’re the only one I get.”
Lucien looked to Niall—the two men fought a stare-down until Niall gave in with a grumble and a sharp nod. Lucien motioned for Pullman to back away, then took his place at Faber’s side. “Let’s go, Micah. Anything you want to talk about, I’m ready to listen.” He ushered the young man into the hallway, Pullman bringing up the rear. Then the medics departed, gurneys in tow—first the humanish, then the Vynshàrau, leaving Jani and Niall alone.
“Let’s get you out of here.” Niall dragged a gurney over to Jani, shaking his head as he stepped into a wet patch of carrier. “Now I know for a fact that both John and Val have been after you for months to trade in those half-mechanical limbs of yours for full-tissue replacements, but you always put them off.” He glared down at her. “This is what you get for sticking with outdated technology.”
Jani felt the anger rise, then bit back her retort when she caught the light flash in Niall’s eyes. She smiled—he grinned back. Then the laughter took them both, and wouldn’t let go.
“Niall.” Jani finally gasped, her stomach aching. “They’re going to come in here and see the blood and us laughing and lock us both up.”
Niall wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “They tried that. More than once. Never worked, did it? Never did, and never will.” He straightened slowly. “We’re immune in that regard.”
Jani held her good hand out to him. “Please get me out of here.”
“As my Captain wishes.” Niall bent to her, positioning himself so she could drape her right arm around his neck for balance, and lifted her up.
“Bird bones.” He lay her atop the gurney like and infant, then escorted her out of the room.
CHAPTER 32
Jani sat silent as Niall drove them past the shattered midsection of the embassy. He’d seconded a wheeled scoot from one of the damage survey teams, but could only approach within a few meters before the shrub-strewn rubble that had been the walled garden made further exploration impossible.
“They came in off the lake, sheathed to the gills thanks to the latest masking technology, and punched through here.” He pointed to the gaping hole where there’d once been a set of triple-width doors. “Exterior scan picked up something big coursing over the water’s surface, but before they could analyze the image, it vanished. They chalked it up to an artifact. Morons.” He shook his head, then glanced at Jani. “You feeling better?”
“Fine.” She forced a smile.
“Fine.” Niall reversed the scoot, jerking it into a tight turn. They rumbled over the churned-up lawns and past the smoking outbuildings into the stretch of wilderness that marked the boundary between the idomeni and Exterior lands.
As soon as they passed through the eyescan and were cleared to cross the border into humanish territory, Niall reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out his nicstick case. He shook out a ’stick and with careful one-handed maneuvering bit the bulbed ignition tip, then turned it around, leaning forward so he could put it in his mouth.
He steered across the Exterior lawns and rimmed the edge of the main charge-lot, on the lookout for an empty space amid the triple-lengths of a dozen ministries. “They’re all inside,” he said. “Cao, every other minister on the block, Shai, Mako.”
“Tsecha?” Jani had been on the lookout for her old teacher since Niall floated her out of the blasted office, but she hadn’t seen him anywhere.
“They dragged him over first of all,” Niall said through a haze of smoke. “Some of the ministers would still rather deal with him than Shai, especially under the circumstances, and don’t think that didn’t go over like a lead balloon.”
They trundled around the ministry building to the lakeside enclosed terrace, which, judging from the various medblanket-covered shapes that filled the area, had been designated the temporary morgue. As they drew close, Jani caught sight of Val sitting on the terrace outer railing, head hanging, hands braced in his knees. He glanced up when he heard their approach, but he didn’t smile.
“Doctor Parini.” Niall braked to a stop. “So far…?”
“Forty-four dead. Ten Vynshàrau, the rest humanish.” Val jerked his chin toward Niall’s nicstick. “Can you spare one of those?” Niall tossed him the case; he shook out a stick and ignited it, then drew on it as though it was his last breath.
Jani watched her friend raise the ’stick to his lips. Did his hand shake or was it simply a trick of the breeze? “When was the last time you smoked?”
“The last time I saw something like this.” Val glanced at Niall. “Inform your weapons designers, Colonel, that the V-790 leaves something to be desired. After we cracked the third charred corpse out of the remains of their smoking exo, we christened it the ‘Lobster.’” He took another drag. “I’ll be fine, it’s just been a while is all.” He looked at Jani again, and something of the old kindness returned to his face. “How are you?”
“The new-gen pink took out my left side.” Jani raised her shaking left hand. “Walking is quite the adventure.”
“New limbs coming up. As soon as I see whether they need me anymore here.” Val stood. “Vehicles…?”
“You can’t get into the embassy lot.” Niall struggled out of the scoot’s tight cabin. “Stake out a spot here, and I’ll find you something.”
As he strode off, Val walked to the scoot and inserted himself as replacement driver. “I never imagined this.” He took a last pull on the ’stick, then tossed it. “Not in a hundred years could I have.”
“Not even after that last night in Rauta Shèràa?” Jani watched two orderlies bear another blanketed form onto the terrace. “The Night of the Blade?” She studied her hands, then flexed her fingers, the steady and the trembling. She looked toward the lake and imagined a line of exo-clad forms coursing toward her over the chop, a pale, pointed face among them. Walking. Walking.
Jani and Val arrived at Neoclona Chicago to find the level of tension ramped to warning levels. Jani sensed the looks that followed her as they navigated the hospital halls. Some held curiosity, others concern. But there were enough hostile glares scattered about to drive the two of them to use the stairs instead of lifts when possible, and to avoid telling anyone where they went. They arrived at Orthopedics to find a pair of doctors standing by. Val dismissed them and switched out Jani’s animandroid limbs himself, running through the post-installation examination in record time. They then departed the hospital by a different, circuitous route.
“Think the lid will stay on for a week?” Val steered his Service loaner out of the underground garage and blended into the evening traffic.
“I think I’m glad my parents aren’t here to see this.” Jani saw a group of people standing around a storefront, watching a holo Vee display. As the skimmer passed, she could see what they watched—the sweep of the embassy grounds, the shattered main building, the gurneys laden with blanketed mounds that it seemed couldn’t possibly be entire bodies but were.
“The idomeni are going to leave.” Val edged around a disabled skimmer and drove on. “My prediction. Their embassy is a shambles—they can’t stay there. The Haárin are no longer safe at the enclave. Cèel wants them back in the worldskein, so back in the worldskein they will go.”
“Except for Tsecha,” Jani said, “And the other Haárin. They’re going to Elyas.”
“How the hell are you going to swing that?” Val slowed as they approached his apartment building, then floated down the ramp to the parking garage. “I remember Cèel—I dealt with him often enough. He was bad enough when he was younger, and by all accounts he’s gotten worse.” As he approached his private bay, he stiffened, then struck the steering mech with the flat of his hand. “I’ll be—”
Jani followed his gaze and felt her own flavor of wonderment when she saw Lucien sitting atop a skimmer charge station console, his duffel on the floor beside him. “I’ve been ordered to remain under medical supervision, so I thought…?” He tried to shrug, but injury forced him to settle for a borderline flinch. “I’ll leave, if you want me to.”
Jani felt Val’s stare, willing her to look in his direction. “Of course you can stay.” She heard him sigh, and pretended she didn’t.
“Sheridan’s a war zone.” Lucien broke eggs into a bowl, then whisked in various spices. “I had to get the hell out. Medical put me on two weeks’ leave, so I thought, why not decamp to someplace sane?”
Val sat up and craned his neck as he tried to see what Lucien mixed. “Omelets again?”
“Crepes.” Lucien smiled. “There are plenty of fillers in your cooler—fresh fruit, whipping cream, mushrooms. Your kitchen’s much better stocked than Jani’s.”
“You’re too cruel.” Jani took a lemon slice from a garni plate and bit one end. “You mentioned a war zone?”
Lucien nodded as he ladled batter onto a flat pan. “The wafer Veles lifted from Micah Faber contained a lot more than the training scenarios. There was some background coding that revealed where some of the scenarios were constructed. The first round of arrests took place about three hours ago.”
What timing. Jani chewed the lemon slice to the rind. “What happened to Veles?”
Lucien hesitated. “He’s dead. They found his body in the garage of Faber’s building. A professional kill—Faber wasn’t capable. Someone simply wanted to make sure that he got to his outfit.”
Val sat back and crossed his arms. “Now, I’m no expert in these sorts of assaults—I’ve only lived through a few. But the question that occurs is, why? I’m trying to follow all the convolutions, and I just don’t get it.”
