Cherryh, C J - Alliance-Union 08 (76 page)

"Somebody's going to sit all night with the Mare, too," Andy said. "When we've got something we don't know about, we just hold on to the ropes and stay ready. But there's a chance the Mare will want this baby. And if she does, she's the best help we could get."

They were
very
late getting back up the hill. Florian wouldn't trade the time with sera and the filly for his own sake, but he was terribly sorry when he got back to the room, in a dark and quiet apartment, and said to Catlin: "It's me," when he opened the door.

"Urn," Catlin said, from her bunk, and started dragging herself up on an arm. "Trouble?"

"Everything's fine. The baby's doing real well. Sera's happier than I've ever seen."

"Good," Catlin said, relieved. So he knew Catlin had been worrying all this time.

"I'm sorry, Catlin."

" 'S all right. Shower. I'll tell you the stuff."

He shut the door, asked the Minder for the bathroom light and started stripping on his way to the bath while Catlin got herself focused. He hardly ran water over himself and pulled on clean underwear and came out again, cut the light and sat there on his bed while Catlin, from hers, a calm, coherent voice out of the dark, told him how they were going to have one bitch of a problem tomorrow, they had to break past a Minder and get a Hostage out alive.

They said there were going to be three Enemies, but you never knew.

You never knew what the Minder controlled, or if there wasn't some real simple, basic wire-job on the door, which was the kind of trap you could fall into if you got to concentrating too much on the tech stuff.

They had to head down the hill at 0400. It was drink the briefing down, fix what could happen, and sleep for whatever time they could without getting there out of breath, because you never knew, sometimes they threw you something they hadn't told you about at all, and you had to cope with an Enemy attack before you even got to the Exercise.

Catlin never wasted time with what and where. She had showed him a lot in the years they had worked together, about how to focus down and think narrow and fast, and he did it now with everything he had, learning the lay of the place from maps he scanned by penlight, not wanting to shine light in Catlin's eyes, learning exactly how many steps down what hall, what the distance was and what the angles and line of sight were at any given point.

You hoped Intelligence was right, that was all.

It was eighty points on the Hostage, that was all they were saying. That meant in a hundred-point scale at least one of them was expendable. They could do it that way if they had to, which meant him, if it had to be: Catlin was the one who had the set-up best in her head and she was the one who would most likely be able to get through the final door, if he could get it open. But you didn't go into anything planning what you could give away. You meant to make the Enemy do the giving.

He did the best he could, that was all.

It was Catlin on the phone.
Catlin
made a phone call; and Ari flew out of Dr. Edwards' classroom and down the hall to the office as fast as she could run.

"Sera," Catlin said, "we're going to be late. Florian's in hospital."

"What happened?" Ari cried.

"The wall sort of fell," she said. "The hospital said I should call, sera, he's real upset."

"Oh, God," she cried. "Catlin, dammit, how bad?"

"Not too. Don't be mad, sera."

"Catlin, dammit, report! What happened?"

"The Enemy was holding a Hostage, we had to get in past a Minder, and we did that; we got all the way in, but the Hostage started a diversion while they were trying to Trap the door. The Instructor is still trying to find out what happened, but their charge went off. The whole wall went down. It wouldn't really do that, it would blow out, but this was a set-up, not a real building, and it must have touched off more than one charge."

"Don't they
know?"

"Well, they're dead. Really."

"I'm coming. I'm coming to the hospital right now. Meet me at the front door." She turned around and Dr. Edwards was there. So she told him. Fast. And told him call uncle Denys. And ran.

"He thinks it's his fault," Catlin said, when she got there, at the front door, panting and sick at her stomach.

"He didn't tell me you had an Exercise today," Ari said. That was what she had thought all the terrible way down the hill. "He didn't tell me!"

"He was fine," Catlin said. "He didn't make a mistake. They shouldn't have been where they were, that's first." She pointed down the hall, where a man in black was talking to the doctors. "That's the Instructor. He's been asking questions. The Hostage—he's a Thirteen, he's the only one alive. It's a mess. It's a real mess. They're asking whether somebody got their charges mixed up, where the explosives kit was sitting, they think it was up against the wall right where they were working, and they hadn't Trapped everything they could have, so that was two charges more than they were using on the door. The whole set-up came down. Florian kind of threw himself backward and covered up, or he could have been killed too. Lucky the whole door just came down on him before the blocks did."

Ari walked on past the desk with Catlin, down where the doctors were talking with the Instructor, and past, where Florian was, in the hall, on one of the gurneys. He looked awful, white and bruised and bleeding on his shoulder and on his arms and hands, but they had cleaned those up and sprayed them with gel.

"Why is he out here?" Ari snapped at the med who was standing there.

"Waiting on X-ray, sera. There's a critical inside."

"I'm all right," Florian muttered, eyes half-opening. "I'm all right, sera."

"You—"
Stupid,
she almost said. But a Super couldn't say that to an azi who was tranked. She bit her lip till it hurt. She touched his hand. "Florian, it's not your fault."

"Not yours, sera. I wanted to go. With the filly. I could have said."

"I mean it's
not your fault,
hear me? They say something blew up." She went over where the doctors and the Instructor were, right up to them. "It wasn't Florian's fault, was it?" Her voice shook. "Because if it was, it was mine, first."

"This is sera Emory," Dr. Wojkowski said to the frowning Security Instructor who looked at her like she was an upstart CIT brat. "Florian and Catlin's Supervisor."

The man changed in a hurry. "Sera," he said, Catlin-like, stiff. "We're still investigating. We'll need to debrief both of them under trank."

"No," she said.

"Young sera, —"

"I said no. Let them alone."

"Sera is correct," a hard voice said, from a man in ordinary clothes, who had come up on the other side of the group, a man a little out of breath.

It was Seely. She never thought she would be that glad to see Seely in her whole life.

Uncle Denys couldn't run. But Seely had, clear from Administration. And Florian and Catlin were right: Seely was Security, she knew it the minute he launched into the Instructor.

It was a
lot
better. Florian had had a piece of metal driven into his leg, that was the worst, but they had gotten that out, and he had sprains and bruises, and he was going to be sore, because they had pulled a lot of building blocks off the door that had fallen on him.

"Fools," was what Seely said when Ari asked him what he had found out, talking to Catlin and talking to the Instructor and the Hostage, when he came around, what little he could. When she heard it she drafted Seely into the room where Florian was starting to come around. "Tell
him,"
she said, while Catlin came into the room behind Seely and stood there with her arms folded.

So Seely did. "Are you hearing me?" Seely asked Florian.

"Yes," Florian said.

"The Instructor is under reprimand. The amount of explosives allotted exceeded the strength of the set-up. The Hostage attempted a distraction according to his orders, while the team inside was Trapping the door. The Hostage doesn't know what happened at that point. He took out one team member. Apparently the two working with the door had set their kit close to them, probably right between them, and possibly the distraction, or the third boy falling against them—dropped the charge they were working with into two others they had in the kit."

"They didn't start Trapping the door they were behind until we got in past the Minder," Catlin said, walking close to the bed. "They thought they could get out and score points, because there was a third team coming in at our backs. They didn't tell us that. They were working with the Enemy and they were supposed to hit us from behind. But they were sticking to the Instructor's timetable and we got past the Minder too fast. . . ."

"Too
fast
?" Florian murmured, with a flutter of his eyes. "That's crazy. What was I supposed to do?"

"... so the other team tried to improvise and tried to Trap the door when they knew we were ahead of what they expected. And the Hostage followed his orders, kicked the guard, but the guard fell into the two at the door and they dropped the charge right into their kit. Wasn't your fault. We couldn't fire into the room because of the Hostage. He was supposed to be on our side and cause
them
trouble. It was a double-team exercise. So it was the set-up that went wrong."

"You didn't Trap the door," Seely asked Florian.

"I can't remember," Florian said. Then, blearily: "No. I wouldn't. No reason. Not in the plan."

"You didn't," Catlin said. "I was covering your back, in case the third Enemy was behind. You were going to blow the door and gas the room, remember?"

Florian grimaced as if it hurt. "I can't—remember. It's just gone. I don't even remember it blowing."

"Happens," Seely said, arms folded, just like Catlin. Ari sat there in a straight chair and listened. And wondered at Seely. "You may never get those seconds back. The shock jolted you. But you're all right. It wasn't your fault."

"You don't put your charges—" Florian said thickly, "under where you're working."

"You don't exceed your building limits with the charges in a training exercise, either, or set up a double-team course with a Murphy-factor in it like that in a dead-end room. You exceeded expectations. The other team fell below. End report. You'll be back in training next week. They won't."

"Yes, ser," Florian said quietly. "I'm sorry about them, though."

"He needs tape," Seely said, looking at Ari. "He shouldn't feel that way. That'll give him trouble in future."

That made her mad; and shouldn't. Seely was trying to help. "I'll decide," she said, afraid he was going to say that to uncle Denys too.

Seely nodded, very short, very correct. "I have business," he said, "if that's all, sera. You're doing everything right here."

"Thank you, Seely. Very much. Tell uncle Denys I might be over here for supper."

"Yes, sera."

Seely left.

Catlin walked over to the chair, arms still folded, and sat down.

"Catlin," Ari said. "Did
you
get hit?"

"Not much," Catlin said. "Most of my end of the hall was still standing." She flexed her left arm and wrist. "Sprain from moving the blocks. That's all."

"I went
too fast,"
Florian said, like he was still a little tranked. "That's crazy. It was an old-model Minder."

"They made the mistake," Catlin said firmly, definite as the sun in the sky. "We didn't."

Ari bit her lip.
Florian
got to use the House library. Florian got into the manuals for the House systems. Florian knew a lot of things they didn't, down in the Town, because Florian and Catlin never stopped learning.

She went out in the hall, got permission for the phone, and called uncle Denys herself.

"Uncle Denys," she said, "Florian worked the course too fast. That's what they're saying. He got hurt for being better. That's lousy, uncle Denys. He could have gotten killed. Three people
did.
Aren't there any better Instructors down there?"

Uncle Denys didn't answer right off. Then he said: "I've got Seely's report up now. Give me a while. How is he?"

"He's damn sore," she said, forgetting not to say
damn
to uncle Denys. And told him what Dr. Wojkowski had said and what Seely and Catlin had said.

"I agree with you. If that's borne out in the report, we're going to have to do something. Do you want to spend the night down there, or is he going to need that?"

"I want to do it. With Catlin."

"All right," uncle Denys said, without arguing at all. "Make sure you get something to eat. Hear?"

Uncle Denys surprised her sometimes. She went back to the room, feeling a little like she had been hit with something too. Everything had been so good, and then everything went so bad. And then Seely and Denys both got reasonable, when she least expected it.

"They're going to fix things," she said to Catlin, because Florian's eyes were shut. "I just called uncle Denys. I think there's a foul-up somewhere higher up than the Instructor. I think you know too much for down there."

"Sounds right," Catlin said. "But it makes me mad, sera. They keep saying we're a little better than they expect. They wasted those azi. They were all right. They weren't the best in Green, but they didn't need to get killed. They lived right across the hall from us."

"Dammit," she said, and sat down with her hands between her knees. Cold all over and sick at her stomach, because it was not a game, what they did was never a game, Catlin was right from the start.

Florian was still limping a little, but he was doing all right when he came into the barn with Catlin and Amy and the other kids. Ari watched him, watched a smile light his face when he saw the Mare and the filly—two fillies. One with a light mane and tail, that was Ari's; and one with black—that was Horse's daughter.

"Look at her!" Florian exclaimed. And forgot all about his limp; and came and patted the Mare on the shoulder, and hugged her around the neck. Which impressed hell out of the kids. Except Catlin, of course, who knew Florian wasn't scared of horses.