Contact Imminent (2 page)
Authors: Kristine Smith
“I'm the hybrid. I'm what all those questioning humanish fear they'll see one day when they look in the mirror.” Jani swallowed a howl of frustration. “I'm not contagious, Niall. It took months of medical intervention to get me this way.”
“I know that.”
“So whyâ” Jani fell silent as a sharp
thunk
sounded from outside. Another.
They all looked to the door of the bunker as the panel slid open. A young man decked out in Service raingear blew in, escorted by a gust of chill wind.
“I'll have those relays retimed in a minute, sir.” He swept back his hood and undid his coat fasteners as the water dripped and puddled around him. The cold had bitten his ears and noseâthey flared red against his pale skin and dark hair. “I spoke with the techs down at the truckâthey said the sub-Misty's functioning normally. What we're seeing up here is what's really happening down there.”
“Thank you, Faber.” Niall's face lightened, his relief at
the interruption obvious. “What's the mood like down there?”
“Irritable, sir.” Faber hung his coat in the gear alcove at the far end of the bunker. “Everyone's wet. Cold. Waiting for something to happen.” He turned to face them and hesitated, his gaze passing over Tsecha and Jani before settling on Niall. “At the rate things are going, they're going to be there awhile.”
“And every hour spent here translates to a month's worth of follow-up investigation.” Niall shot Jani a questioning look. “Aren't you supposed to be going on a trip soon?”
Jani nodded. “Outer Circle. Day after tomorrow.”
“Hmm. Looks like you may miss most of the fun.” The flatness in his voice gave away nothing. “How long will you be gone?”
“Six weeks out, same back. Week or two to do what I have to. Close to four months.”
“We'll be well into spring by the time you get back.” Niall stood, then walked across the bunker to the gear alcove. “Probably about the time the first reports get issued.” He dragged on his field coat. “I'm going to take a walk. See what I can see from out here.” He activated the door panel and pushed through the gap without a backward glance.
“I do not believe, nìa, that he wants you to leave.”
Jani turned back to Tsecha, who had cocked his head to one side, a gesture of curiosity more humanish than Vynshà rau. “He will have to get used to the fact, inshah.”
“Yes. As will you.”
Jani hesitated. “I'm going outside.” She walked over to Faber, who stood bent over the console. “Excuse me.”
Faber straightened, then slowly lifted his gaze to look Jani in the face. “Yes, ma'am.” The top of his head only reached her shoulder, and the difference in height seemed to rattle him.
Among other things
. Lance Corporal Micah Faber of Supreme Command Communication Systems, Jani decided, didn't like her. She'd run into it more and more often as of
late, this sense from some humanish that they didn't want her to get too close.
If I kissed him atop his pointy little head, would he run screaming into the rain?
Given the tension around the place, maybe now wasn't the time to experiment. “Could I borrow your coat?” she asked, knowing full well that to him the request might constitute the same sort of invasion. “I need to talk to Colonel Pierce, and my coat isn't keeping me warm as it is.”
“Ma'am.” Faber led her back to the alcove. He lifted his coat from its hook, shook off the remaining droplets of water, then held it out for her.
Jani took the coat and flung it across her shoulders like a cape. “I promise I'll touch it as little as possible,” she said, leaving him to redden like an alarm as she slipped out into the rain.
She found Niall huddled in the shelter of a nearby stand of evergreens. He turned when he heard her approach, but didn't speak.
“You want to go down there, don't you?” Jani wedged into the shelter beside him. The rain fell about them in a steady patter, but the canopy of branches slowed the flow-through to the occasional drop. “Go aheadâwe're fine up here.”
“I have been ordered to remain with you and Tsecha, and remain with you and Tsecha I will.” Niall had already flipped open the top of his nicstick case and removed a long, white cylinder. He bit down on the bulbed endâthe tip flared blue-white in the cold wind. “Tell me about this trip of yours.” He stuck the other end in his mouth and took a long drag, then released a stream of smoke with a groan of relief.
Jani pulled Faber's coat more tightly around her shoulders. “I told you about it last week, during lunch. It crossed paths with
Coppélia
âthey must have cancelled one another out.”
“Humor me,” Niall replied, not amused.
“I'll be paying a courtesy call on the Haárin at the Karis
tos enclave on Elyas. Their dominant, ná Feyó Tal, is a favorite of Tsecha's. He wants me to deliver a gift to her.” Jani knew how inadequate the explanation sounded, but Tsecha had given her little more to go on.
Feyó requires an assistance, nìa.
“You're leaving at a time like this to deliver a
gift
?” Niall exhaled another cloud of smoke, which the wind sliced to nothing. “Haárin shuttles leave Luna once a week. Let one of them play errand boy.”
“You just finished saying that I require protection to continue to work in Chicago. I think my getting away for a few months might be a good idea.”
I cannot leave this damned cold place, nìaâShai will not allow such. But you may go, and go you must.
Niall shook his head. “On the contraryâI think it will make matters worse. You'll be acting as the intermediary between two Haárin enclaves. How is that going to dispel the perception that you're not human anymore?”
“But I'm not human anymore.”
“That's news to me.”
“Only because you don't listen.”
They lapsed into edgy silence. In the distance, dim illumination shown through the trees. Every so often a shout would carry. A flash of light from a piece of equipment.
Yes, it is dangerous here for Haárin. It is dangerous everywhere, nìa. You must go.
The bunker door opened a crackâFaber's head emerged.
“Wode's started to move the mine, sir!”
“About damned time.” Niall extinguished his 'stick against the wet trunk of a tree and shoved the spent cylinder in his pocket.
Jani followed him into the bunker, to find Faber sitting at the console, Tsecha looming over him. She returned Faber's coat to the alcove, then joined them.
“They just got started, sir.” Faber glanced over his shoulder at Jani before switching his attention to Niall, who had
dropped into the chair next to him. “Wode's decided to use a biobot to hoist it. He must be too worried about signal cross-up to use a standard comwave.”
“Jack up the mag on this,” Niall replied. “I want to see what's going on.”
Faber worked comtech magic on the console. The outer edges of the image disappeared as the area of the cordon itself expanded. As if on cue, Pullman glanced upâJani could see the droplets of rain that dotted his armor and ran down his face like sweat.
“Drop that face shield, Pull,” Niall grumbled.
“Sir.” Pullman flipped down the poly barrier. “Wode's ready to lift the thing.”
“Will wonders never cease.” Niall braced his elbow on the edge of the console and covered his mouth with his hand, his eyes fixed on the scene playing out before them.
Wode looked even younger than Faber. Colder, too. The wind had nipped his cheeks as well as his nose, so that he looked flushed with fever. He stood thirty meters from the exposed mine, his hands gloved with the translucent sensor web that enabled him to control the cylindrical biobot. He stood still, straight, his arms bent at the elbow and hands facing in as though he held a box by the sides. Every few seconds one finger would move, then another. Each time he moved, the biobot would edge closer to the mine.
The mine itself seemed a puny thing. A blank silver oval the size of a man's hand, it vanished like an eclipsed moon as the biobot rolled over it.
“The 'bot's hollow,” Niall said, eyes still locked on Wode's every move. “Once it's settled above the mine, it will hoist it up inside.”
“Then the bottom of the 'bot will close,” Pullman added. “The mine will be encased until it can dry out. Wode figures fifteen minutes with some warm air circ, and he'll be able to identify the signal.”
“Why's he standing so close to the mine?” To Jani, Wode appeared like a man entranced, eyes closed, shoulders
slumped, fingers twitching. “Can't he do that from outside the cordon?”
“He says that the problem with bio signals is that they're weaker than standard comwaves.” Pullman's voice held a skeptical edge. “He says he has no choice.”
As they watched, one of the Vynshà rau broke away from the crowd and walked inside the cordon to stand by Wode. A young male, his thin frame padded by armor, his face covered by a shield.
“It is Feres,” Tsecha said, “Elon's suborn.”
Niall stood and bent over the console. “Pull, what the hell is going on?”
“Feres is a witness, sir. The Vynshà rau don't trust our transmissions. They want one of their own to watch the mine be contained.”
“That's bullshit!”
“We tried to block it, sir, but Dubrovna overrode.”
“Well, I just trumped her. Stop everything
now
! Get that Vynshà rau out of there
now
!”
“Yes, sir!” Pullman stepped inside the cordon.
“Wode, pull up now!”
Wode and Feres both turned.
Light travels faster than sound. The flash filled the image space like a miniature sun. Yellow-white. Blinding.
Then came the thunder of the explosion. The bunker shook, the light fixture trembling as though a giant set down his foot.
They had all dropped to the floor. Now Niall bounded to his feet and ran for the door.
“Faberâstay behind and watch them!”
he shouted as he pushed through the gap.
Jani lay on her stomach, the echo of the explosion still sounding in her ears. “NÃ Tsecha?”
“I am most well, nìa.”
“Good.” She boosted to a running crouch and headed for the door, then fell to one knee as a hand gripped her coat sleeve.
“You're not supposed to leave.” Faber's eyes were wide.
His hands encircled her arm without clamping down, as though the thought of contact repulsed him.
“Stop me.” Jani shook him off and bolted.
The rain fell harder now. Jani coursed through it, following the light and the equipment sounds. The cries.
Then she broke through a ring of trees, and the console image filled her eyes. The vehicles. The humanish. The idomeni.
She took one step. Another. Tried to avoid the shattered branches, the flecks of red in the snow. Watched medics hoist Pullman atop a gurney and cover him with a medblanket.
They're taking care with himâhurrying
âThat meant he lived.
Please.
“What the hell are you doing here!”
Jani turned to find Niall bearing down on her from the other side of the cordon.
“Who let her in here!”
He waved toward a figure in body armor. “Morton! Get her out of here now! Carry her if you have to!”
“I'm going!” Jani held up her hands like a surrendering prisoner, two steps ahead of the advancing Morton. “I said I'm going!” She broke into a run, didn't stop until she stood amid the trees again. She looked behind her to find Morton had returned to the site. Emergency illumins flashed yellow and orange against the night sky. An ambulance siren wailed.
Jani checked every room and alcove as she walked down the aisle of Service Medical's Trauma Center, keeping one eye toward collision avoidance as doctors and nurses darted around her and orderlies pushed past her with skimgurnies and carts bearing equipment.
She found Niall in a waiting area within sight of the main nurses station. He sat in a darkened corner, hunched over a spent nicstick, the floor in front of his chair wet and mud-streaked from the mess shed by his boots.
He looked up as she entered. A streak of mud coated his left cheek, smoothing over his scar, erasing his sinister air. Indefinable dark stains spotted the coat he'd draped over the back of his chair, as well as the front of his fatigue shirt and trousers. They might have been blood, but it was impossible to tell in the poor lighting. “You made it out of the madhouse.”
Jani lowered into the chair next to his. “I saw Tsecha back to the enclave, then hitched a ride on one of the equipment trucks. The last ambulance had just left.” She glanced toward the hall in time to see two nurses break into a sprint. “How's Pull?”
Niall started to speak. Stopped. Licked his lips. “Something hit his right side hard. Part of the biobot casing. A
piece of Wode or Feres. Medical doesn't know for sure yet, but there may have been a fault in his armor.” He patted his left side. “Kidney's gone. Liver's banged up. Even though his augmentation had kicked in, he bledâ¦a lot.” He exhaled with a shudder. “They got to him in time. They don't need to break out the brain boxes and make sure he's still hitting on all boards.”
“So the tally is?”
“Two dead, Feres and thatâ¦
tech
.” Niall slumped back. “Twenty-seven wounded, including two Haárin and three deputy ministers.”
“I heard on the way in that Mako just left to see the PM.” Jani tried to imagine the mood in that meeting, and found she didn't want to. She despised Admiral-General Hiroshi Mako, and though he preferred to deny it, he felt the same way about her. But a member of his Service had made an error that threatened to kneecap humanish-idomeni relations already crippled by recent tensions, and it fell to him to explain what had happened. Jani almost felt sorry for the man. Almost, but not quite. She ached for Niall, however. He was the A-G's man-on-the-scene, and even though it hadn't been his show to run, she knew he'd blame himself for every error and miscue. “So what went wrong?”
“Where do I fucking start?” Niall held up his closed fist, then raised his index finger. “We should never have let Diplo make the calls.” The middle finger. “We shouldn't have allowed all those observers on-site.” Ring finger. “Like Pull said, we should have cut all the crap off at the pass by doing a remote disinter-disarm from Sheridan, and told Shai to kiss our collective ass when she howled.” He glanced at Jani sidelong. “In so many words.” He let his hand drop and lay his head back. “Of course, none of this would have happened if whoever had been in charge of the initial land clearance had done their job. A lot of brass is going to go over the side before this investigation is signed off.”
Jani rose and walked across the alcove to the vend machines, digging in her trouser pockets for tokens. “You're
using some pretty nasty training mines now compared to what they used in my day.” She found the coffee selector and ordered two cups.
“That was no trainer. It was a live and kickin' Slager with an intact detonator sensitive enough to respond to the biobot signal. Once Wode pulled it out of the ground and enclosed it in the 'bot compartment, a heartbeat could have set it off.” Niall took the dispo cup of coffee Jani handed him, but instead of drinking it he just stared into the steam rising from the liquid. “I'm going to see his face in my sleep. Looked like a damned twelve-year-old. Should have been operating a remote control skimmer in his parents' backyard, not a mine removal device in the woods in the middle of the night.”
“It's not your fault.”
“Yeah.”
Jani returned to her seat. Sipped her coffee, and winced at the taste of the sour machine brew. “So what was a live and kicking Slager doing buried on the grounds of the Haárin enclave?”
Niall tried his coffee. He swallowed it without a change in expression. Either he was made of hardier stuff than she or he was simply too numb to taste. “You remember the drill. Sometimes the demo techs play it too smart and put the real stuff out there to practice on.” He scratched at the dried mud on his face, then stared at the dirt under his nails. “That's against procedure, however, because, well, people can get hurt. So they fudge the records, which then means that they can't always depend on them to tell them what's out there. The old hands know that. But they didn't send an old handâfresh-out-of-the-box Wode got the call. By the time they got someone out of bed who realized what that could mean, it was too late.” He rose and walked to the vend area, still scratching at his muddy cheek. He grabbed a dispo napkin from the dispenser next to the machines, then soaked it in the stream from the water fountain. “Not to change the subject, but what are you doing here?” He leaned against the
wall as he cleaned his face. “I thought you'd stay with Tsecha.”
“I wanted to find out about Pull.” Jani peeled an advertising sticker from her cup, a pass good for two free tickets to a midweek showing at the base Veedrome. “Tsecha and Dathim are administering to the injured Haárin.”
“I thought that was the sort of thing he'd been teaching you over the last few months. How to act as a priest.”
Jani nodded. “I've learned some of the ceremonies and protocols. But there are a few Haárin who haven't adjusted to me yet. One of them was among the injuredâTsecha and I both figured that the last thing she wanted to see was my face bending over her, muttering prayers.”
Niall finished cleaning his face, then checked the results in the smooth metal surface of one of the coolers. “I wouldn't have expected Tsecha to give in like that. He's a great one for shoving things down people's throats.”
“He's starting to feel discouraged.”
“Welcome to the damned club.” Niall tossed back the last of his coffee, then crumpled the cup into a ball and banked it off the wall into the trash. “Not to change the subject again, but how do you feel? My augmentation's activated. People keep backing away when I try to ask them questions.”
Jani watched Niall kick at the floor like a restless horse pawing the ground. She couldn't imagine backing away from him for any reason, but she nursed the same Service-made gland in her head that he did, and the synthetic neurotransmitters it pumped out had much the same effect on her as they did on him. “I feelâfocused. Like I have things to do, and I can't rest until I get them done. Colors are sharper. Sounds seem louder. Everyone else moves too slowly. The usual.”
“Started to come down yet?”
“No.” Jani paused and tried to get a sense of herself. “Maybe a little. The hybridization has made it less predictable than it used to be.” Or rather, less predictable in its unpredictability. At one time, her augie caused her senses to jumble. Sounds became aromas, while touch and scent sang
to her in a range of tones. Now she simply grew tired and jittery as her brain and body said “Enough” and battlefield alert gave way to moody exhaustion.
“Sometimes I think I should take all that medical advice I've received over the years and have the thing taken out. I feel like hell.” Niall gathered his coat. “If you contact Special Services, one of them can see you home. I have to check on Pull. Then I need to contact his parents.”
Jani watched her friend move with the heavy-footed gait that spoke of exhaustion and the emotional bottoming-out that in his case went along for the ride. “Niall, stop hammering yourself. Pull will be all right.”
Niall looked at her and nodded, his predator's face reddened from rough washing, his poet's eyes dull. “Yes. I can tell his folks with complete confidence that the Service is up the spout with the finest medical staff in existence anywhere.” He walked out into the hallway in the direction of the nurses station, shoulders bowed. “And idiots aplenty to ensure they keep in practice.”
Â
Jani walked out into the night to find the rain had finally stopped. The sky had cleared as well; only some fast-moving clouds remained to obscure Luna, and hide the few stars that could be seen through Fort Sheridan's blaze of outdoor lighting.
“I'm not calling Special Services,” she said to herself. She'd never tell Niall, but his regard didn't buy her much in the way of acceptanceâexcept for Pullman, no one else on his staff liked her very much. A silent ride into the city lacked appeal under the best of circumstances. With humanish-idomeni tensions now thick on the ground, the word
best
did not apply.
Instead, she followed the walkways from the hospital to a less-traveled area of the base. On the way, she passed office buildings in the semidark of graveyard shift. Maintenance sheds. Rolling landscape buried beneath melting snow, broken up by stands of bare trees and winter-stripped shrubs.
Before long South Central Bachelor Officers Quarters came into view, a multistory cement block devoted to the housing of male officers in various stages of transition. Jani walked in the front entry, ready to avert her eyes on the off chance she encountered anyone in the halls or the stairwell.
I should have applied film to them
. But her identity as a human-idomeni hybrid was well-knownâall of Chicago knew what her eyes looked liked. What good did it do to apply a film to make them appear human, when everyone knew what lay beneath?
She keyed into the stairwell, took the steps two at a time. Stopped at the fifth floor. Negotiated the familiar twist of hallways before coming to a stop in front of the door marked
WEST
-1, the name
L. PASCAL
etched into the metal nameplate.
Jani reached for the buzzer, but the panel slid open before she had a chance to press the doorpad.
Lucien Pascal stood in the doorway, a disheveled vision in Service blue pajama bottoms, white-blond burr diffusing the backlight to a pale aura around his head. “I've been trying to track you down for the last hour.” He stepped back to allow her to pass. “You have a real talent for falling off the map.”
“A talent I worked at for years. Nice to know I'm still in practice.” Jani caught the barest whiff of cologne as she entered the spare three-room flat. A peppery scent, lighter than the throaty musk Lucien favored. She looked toward the bedroom. The door was open, the corner of the bed that she could see was rumpled. “How much have you heard?”
“Good morning. It is officially morning now.” Lucien stepped in front of her, blocking her view of the bedroom. “I'm fine. I'm not hurt. Tsecha is fine. So is Dathim. Everyone you know is all right. If any of those comments are incorrect, could you tell me now so that I'm not caught by surprise later.” He moved closer. The light fell across his neck and chest, accenting scattered red blotches, along with several fresh bruises that formed a characteristic pattern.
Jani touched a red mark near the hollow of Lucien's throat.
“I'm fine. Tsecha is fine. Dathim. Everyone you know.” She pressed her fingertips against the bruises, gauging themâyes, they had been left by someone who had gripped far harder than they had to. “You, on the other hand, look a little roughed up.”
Lucien gripped Jani's wrist and eased her hand away. In contrast to Niall, his face was the poet's, fine-boned and full-lipped, with just enough softness about the jaw to imply a vulnerability that in truth had never existed. Again in contrast to Niall, his eyes were the predator's, chill brown and calculating, windows to a mind that saw life as a gameboard and all others as pawns, to be played, or sacrificed, as the situation demanded.
“You want to know how much I've heard?” He backed away and walked about the sparsely furnished sitting room, picking up clothes, straightening couch cushions. “Demiskimmer on lake patrol flew too close to the Haárin enclave. Picked up a choppy transmission that spelled âone of our mines.' They informed Ordnance, who said âoops' and informed the world, who converged on the enclave. The demolitions tech they sent to pull the mine misread the signal, killed himself and a Vynshà rau.” He stopped in mid-pillow fluff and looked at Jani. “Anyone you knew?”
“Feres. One of Elon's security suborns.”
“One of the hardcore elite. That should play well back on Shèrá.” Lucien resumed his housekeeping. “Have I missed any of the high points?”
“Not really. Except that they thought the mine was a trainer, but it turned out to be live and fully armed.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah.” Jani started her own walkabout, poking through the places Lucien had yet to straighten. “For someone who looks like he just rolled out of bed, you sure do know a lot.” She arrived at a chair one step ahead of him, grabbing for the object that lay in a small heap beneath.
“That's not yours.” Lucien bumped her and tried to pull the thing from her hand as she reached down for it.
“It's not yours, either.” Jani held the article up for inspection. It proved to be a man's Service-issue T-shirt. “Wrong size.” She sniffed the neck and detected the same spicy odor she had when she entered the flat. “Wrong scent, too. Besides, you don't fling your clothes around the room.”
“Not unless someone asks me to.” Lucien plucked the shirt from her grasp and folded it. “He works for the Public Affairs Office. When the first calls came in, his admin tracked him here. It's his job to head up damage control, which in turn means he has to know what damage needs to be controlled.” He glanced at her beneath his lashes. “I can be very persuasive when I want to be.” He lay the shirt over his arm. “Another memento to add to the others,” he said as he smoothed his hand over it. “Are you even a little jealous?”