Contact Imminent (8 page)

“Raven had no choice. Foxy's the only one who can activate the Death Cruiser's killcode.” Hough, a new addition to the ComSys bullpen, kicked his feet back and weighed in. “The virus affected her memory—if she can't remember the code, they'll never be able to stop the Cruiser from destroying the Queen's homeworld.”

Cashman's head popped up once more. “But—”

“Good morning.”

Cashman fell silent. Hough's feet hit the floor.

Micah stood.

“I need to find the Lakeside One-B conference room, but the one I found has been gutted.” A captain stood in the bullpen entry, decked out in dress blue-greys, his brimmed lid tucked under his arm. Tall. Blond.
Famous for all the wrong reasons
, as Lieutenant Bloch, the bullpen wrangler,
once said.
They don't give medals for what he's good at
. Lucien Pascal, who sometimes rivaled Raven and Foxy as the topic of bullpen conversation.

No one answered him. They all just stared. Then Micah gave himself a mental kick.

“You need One-B Junior, sir. The interim conference room.” He cut through the cubicle maze and past Pascal into the hall. “The directions are a little convoluted. If you'd follow me, please.”

“Thank you, Lance Corporal.” Pascal fell in behind him. “
Raven's Raiders.
Poor Foxy's virus is the hot topic everywhere, it seems.”

“Yes, sir.” Micah tried to keep the sharpness out of his voice. He'd bailed out of the bullpen to get away from the endless yammer. Even talking about talking about it made him want to break something.

“Gives them something else to talk about, I suppose.”

Instead of the death of a good Spacer?
“Yes, sir.”

“You're not a fan?”

“No, sir.” Micah looked back over his shoulder to find Pascal eyeing him. Pascal, who jumped everything from old ladies to guys to hybrids.
Shit
. He turned around and quickened his step. “Some friends took me to try to cheer me up, but it didn't work very well.”
Shut up, shut up, shut up—he couldn't care less and it's none of his business anyway
.

“I saw the first installment. I didn't find it very coherent.” Pascal's French Provincial accent broke through with his r's, that peculiar, throaty sound that every female who'd met him seemed to comment on.

Sounds like gargling
. Micah rounded one corner, then another. “Just down this hall and make a left, sir. Second door on the right.” He stepped to the side so Pascal could pass him.

“Thank you, Faber.” He blew past Micah, a pair of majors in his sights, catching them up just as they entered the conference room.

Micah stared at Pascal's back, his heart tripping. Then he
looked down at his winterweight shirtfront. “My nameplate reads ‘Faber.' He read it. That's what they're for.” He flicked the gold rectangle with his finger, then double-timed it back to the bullpen.

 

“I heard Bloch call him ‘the CMO.' Chief of Mattress Operations. He'll do anything once, and most things as often as possible.” Cashman leaned forward and kept his voice low so no one at the surrounding tables could hear him.

Micah smashed a cracker inside its packet and poured the resulting crumble atop his chili. Lunch at Far North Enlisted Mess—table after table of chatter in a glass-walled cavern designed to magnify every sound.
Wode's memorial service today
. But he hadn't dared go. Couldn't even send a note to Wode's parents. Members of the Group weren't supposed to know one another. He and Wode should never have even met. It had been happenstance. Accident. Almost a year ago. Cold spring rain, much like today, and a mess filled to bursting. No place to sit but with a stranger.

So they talked, and found they had more in common than they possibly could have imagined. A hatred of the idomeni as fierce as their love for their humanity, deep as marrow, vital as blood. A determination to do whatever they could to drive the alien from their homeworld, their Earth, their Commonwealth. A disgust for the attraction Chicago seemed to feel for the idomeni ambassador, Tsecha.

And as time went on and the trust between them grew, the realization that they both belonged to an organization that until then had seemed like a figment of their imaginations, a wish not quite come true.

Micah grabbed another pack of crackers from the pile on his tray. If he kept mucking about with his food, maybe no one would notice he wasn't eating.

“Bloch's going to get his ass creamed if he doesn't keep his mouth shut.” Hough stabbed the air with his soup spoon. He looked like a lecturer—too skinny, with thin hair and
pinched features. Someone who loved the sound of his own voice. “Everybody knows Pascal has an in with Old Man Mako.”

“Who's everybody?” Cashman singsonged. “You's everybody?” He batted his lashes until Hough chuffed in disgust and started eating again. Then he glanced sidelong at Micah. “Fabe's a somebody, is what he is. Did bunker duty with some pretty special people night before last.” He paused. “Well, one of them is people, anyway.”

“Who?” someone downtable asked.

“Kitty-eyes Kilian, and Tse-cha-cha-cha.” Cashman rocked his shoulders in time. “And Ol' Scarface.”

“Pierce is good.” Hough shook his head. “Scares the hell out of me, man.”

“My mother scares the hell outta you,” Cashman muttered, interrupted again and ticked about it.

“Too bad she didn't scare the hell outta your dad,” shot the downtable interrogator, to the amusement of some.

Micah took the sugar round from the table service and shook some into his hot tea. His mother had always given him hot tea when he felt bad, with lots of sugar and lemon. He knew it would take more than hot tea to make him feel better now, but anything was worth a try at this point.

“Pierce left this morning on a long haul,” Hough said when the laughter died. “I shoved through a billet privilege chit first thing I signed on.” He exhaled through his teeth. “He's tighter with Mako than Pascal is, and Pascal's bad enough.” He buttered a roll, pressing it so hard that crumbs tumbled to his tray. “Everybody should just learn to shut up.”

“Including you, maybe?” Cashman took a too-big bite of his sandwich. “Where were you before you came to ComSys?”

“Finance. Time-reporting.” Another chorus of jeers greeted that admission. “Laugh all you want,” Hough said, coloring. “All expense reports go through there so we can charge trip time to projects. Pascal traveled more than any looie that wasn't a courier, and all the time got buried in
places where you couldn't follow up. No classes, training, meeting minutes. Just billets, meals, and miscellaneous.” He looked from face to face to see who listened, but he needn't have bothered. He had everyone's attention now. “His spec's communications matrix design—how best to lay out an array to gather info—but you'd never know it from how he spends his days.” He took a bite of his roll, butter shining his lips as though he licked them. “Sometimes specs got nothing to do with what you do, and sometimes rank's got nothing to do with what you are.”

“He's in on the mine thing now.” That from a full corporal named Chou who did scheduling. “That was the room he asked about—Junior's where they met to talk about how the full-bore Slager got confused for a trainer.”

Micah's spoon hit the side of his cup, splashing tea. No one noticed, luckily. They'd all fallen into a Hough-induced funk, eating in silence, their eyes fixed on their food.

He checked the view outside. The rain still fell, needling cold. Craving the solitude, he'd walked to work that morning, and found he'd needed every bit of warmth his duffel coat provided.
Maybe it'll stay cold for the next couple of weeks
. Until he saved enough for a new field coat. After returning home from the Veedrome, he'd stayed up half the night incinerating the hacked remains of his old one in his trashzap. The unit charger had gone dead twice, and toward the end he'd had to make do with charring the scraps, then tearing them apart with this fingers until only fine black fluff remained. And thinking about Kilian as he did so, because for all he loathed the idomeni and their intrusion into his humanity, her medically induced hybridization sickened him even more. Saved her life, he'd heard someone say once. Better she'd died above the sands of Knevçet Shèràa, an honorable Spacer's death.

“So, Fabe?” Cashman gave Life of the Lunchtable one last try. “What's Jani Kilian really like?”

“Tall,” Micah replied, to the biggest laugh of the day.

 

Micah stepped out the side door of the Supreme Command C-wing, one arm of the multilimbed sprawl that comprised Fort Sheridan's brain. The sky hung low and smoke-hued. The wind had picked up as well, stealing the ends of his muffler from the confines of his coat and whipping them about.

“It's supposed to be spring soon, damn it.” But the cold rain still fell, its soft
pat-pat
against his garrison cap interspersed with the occasional icy
tick
of sleet. He broke into a trot, weaving through the end-of-shift crowd that filled the walkway. He thought for a time to catch a shuttle to his flat block, but each shelter he passed was packed with fellow Spacers who'd had the same thought. He'd have to stand and wait in the rain anyway. May as well keep moving.

The crowds thinned as he left the lakeside office buildings and reached the flat expanse of the Quad. Less shelter from the wind now—he hunched his shoulders and wiped a hand over his tearing eyes.

“Good afternoon, Lance Corporal Faber.”

Micah slowed, despite the fact that every muscle and bone in his body urged him to run. Run and not stop until he'd put as much distance as possible between himself and the pounding footsteps that drew closer with every stride. “Good afternoon, Captain Pascal, sir.” He drew his hand out of his pocket to salute.

“Never mind that. Hands are for pockets today.” Pascal drew alongside. He looked as cold as Micah felt, his face half hidden behind the turned-up collar of his field coat. “I hear rumors that it will dry out eventually.” Rain dripped from his lid brim, spattered his face like sweat.

Micah swallowed hard. “Yes, sir.”

“I didn't realize.” Pascal looked down at him, eyes shadowed by his lid and the angle of the walkway lighting. “You'd said this morning that your friends had taken you to the Veedrome to cheer you. You're a comtech. You ran the bunker com-array at the enclave night before last.” A flash of white teeth, framed by the dark blue collar. “You were there.”

“Yes, sir.”

“We went over the site roster during my meeting this morning. I saw your name.” Pascal paused. “You met a friend of mine, I'm sure. Jani Kilian.”

“Yes. Sir.”

“Funny how things go. We all know someone who knows someone. No one ever remains unknown for long.” Another flash of teeth. “
Au revoir,
Lance Corporal.” Pascal broke into a lope. “That means ‘until later.'”

“Good afternoon, sir.” Micah slowed and watched the man dart around scattered pedestrians, turn a corner and disappear. His jaw ached from clenching, and he didn't quicken his pace until someone jostled him and told him to wake up.

Elon stood outside the entry to nìaRauta Shai's rooms and awaited the summons that she had expected for two humanish days. Her right hand ached, the healing of her finger and wrist bones not yet complete. Her physician-priest had offered her relief from the pain, but she had denied such. Pain focused the mind, and she had much this day on which to focus.

“Elon?”

She looked in the direction of the voice, tilting her head in regard even as she raised her left hand in question. “Ghos. You have taken leave of the journey room?”

Her suborn moved next to her against the wall, then took a half step forward so that Elon stood behind him, as was seemly. “When there is no journey to take place, it is unseemly to remain. We pray, but to what end? We wait, but to what purpose? We know what the decision must be, yet we delay.” He had finally discarded the soiled and torn outdoor uniform he had worn that night at the enclave, and now dressed as Elon had, in the garb of his skein and standing, the pale green trousers and overrobe of embassy security.

Elon contemplated the color, savoring its calming blend with the pale sand of the walls and floor, the metal tones of
the ceiling lamps, the pale brown of Ghos's braided hair. “Ní Tsecha believes the decision should be as different.”

“Ní Tsecha is no longer Chief Propitiator of the Vynshàrau. If he came to such a decision as Chief Propitiator, he would be made as outcast as he already is.” Ghos's shoulders rounded in anger. “Why does Shai allow him here? His place is over the water.”

“Shai has asked nìaRauta Sànalàn to prepare an argument and use such to debate ní Tsecha. Such is Sànalàn's first attempt to define a point of theology. As Chief Propitiator, it is something she must learn, and truly.”

“The priests debate, and delay Feres's godly death.” Ghos brought up his arms and crossed his wrists so that he hid his face. “Anathema.”

“Perhaps.” Elon flexed her injured fingers, spread them wide, and savored the throbbing spasms that resulted. A self-punishment for her belief in theology. “But there are those in Council who consider times as they once were, Tsecha as the propitiator and Sànalàn as his suborn. Tsecha is Haárin now, and Sànalàn speaks for us to the gods. Such is as it must be. Such is as they must accept. Therefore, nìaRauta Shai will ensure that they do so.”

Ghos slowly lowered his arms. He stood hunched, his wrists still crossed before his chest. “Feres must die.”

“Yes.” Elon enclosed her right hand in her left. Her physician-priest would berate her for damaging his handiwork, but such could not be helped—she tightened her grip until her heart stuttered and her stomach felt emptied of her soul. “But first, there is theology.” She heard the door open behind her, and drew up straight. She felt as though she floated upon water, the coolness of sweat trickling beneath her shirt.

“NìaRauta Elon.” Shai's suborn stepped aside, and held the door for her to pass.

“Go to Feres.” Elon gestured in departure to Ghos, raising her right hand and turning it palm out, so that it obscured the side of her face. “I will bring word.” Shai's suborn stared at
her hand, and she hid it within the folds of her overrobe before she entered the room.

 

NìaRauta Shai's workroom comforted the eye as none other in the embassy. Rectangular in shape, each curved display niche in one long side had been set perfectly opposite a narrow window on the other. The two short sides each contained a doorway, again in perfect opposition. Little furniture marred the fineness of the space: Shai's worktable, a semicircle of chairs in sufficient number to seat those attending, a sculpture stand in one far corner.

“You must sit, Elon. I have heard from many that you sustained injury in the explosion.” Shai sat to the left of the midpoint of the semicircle, in the second lowest-level seat, as befitted her penultimate status. She glanced up in Elon's direction, then waved her hand in the vague, unreadable manner that she had adopted for use with humanish and unfortunately employed in her dealings with her own. “Sit, Elon.”

“Indeed, sit, Elon.” NìaRauta Sànalàn, possessing the highest standing as the guardian of the soul of every Vynshàrau, sat at the midpoint of the semicircle, in the lowest-level seat. As Shai, she wore trousers, shirt, and overrobe in palest sand. Only the red banding that adorned the cuffs of her overrobe served as disruption. Her light brown hair she still wore gathered in the tight napeknot of an unbred. That would change, though, for an overture had been made by Shai's suborn and the pairing had been deemed seemly. Soon, Sànalàn would wear her hair in the braided fringe of a breeder, as did Shai and Elon.

Elon walked to one end of the semicircle. Because of her lesser standing, her chair stood higher than Shai's or Sànalàn's—the height of her seat required her to brace her feet against a crossbar and boost up. To do so required two hands to grip the chair arms—she set her right hand atop the cold, hard metal, to use it as guide without putting weight on it.
Her pain was her own. There were those in the room with whom she did not wish to share it.

Yet they understood anyway, as was their way.

“I will not ask you to sit, Elon.” Tsecha spoke Vynshàrau Haárin, his voice stripped of gesture. “It seems to pain you to do so, and truly.” He sat at the end of the semicircle opposite her, in a chair at a level slightly below hers, yet higher than Shai's. Such was a compromise position, since as an Haárin, he had no right to a place of respect behind any bornsect, but as former Chief Propitiator, he had once held the dominance over every idomeni, as Sànalàn now did.

Elon eased into her chair, her hand throbbing with a sharpness that spoke of a bone rebroken. “What pain I feel, Tsecha, is made even greater by the sight of your clothes.” Shirt and trousers of differing hues of purple and a headwrap of dull green, discordant as chemical fire against the sand and stone hues of the walls and floor.

“We know you despise one another.” Shai sat slightly slumped in her chair, her hands pressed together at the fingertips, another conflicting display of humanish posture and gesture. “The whole of the embassy knows you fought in the circle prior to the war of Vynshàrau ascension, that you each bear scars inflicted by the other. Even nìaRauta Sànalàn, who was as youngish at that time, knows your story. Spare us further, if you would. I have sat these last days amid carping humanish, each blaming one for the existence of the other. I have no patience left.” She uncurved, but only a little. “I speak here now as Suborn Oligarch. If we sat now in a meeting room in Temple in Rauta Shèràa, the chief propitiators of all the bornsects would preside over this debate and cast final judgment as to the soundness of argument. But this is damned cold Chicago—they are not here, and the issue is such that we have no time to send a transmission and await their response. Thus will I act as Temple conclave, and decide.” She tugged at the edge of her overrobe, straightening a fold. “The technicians record this, Tsecha.”

“Yes, Shai.” Tsecha sat in a humanish posture, his elbows on the chair arms, his fingers interlaced.

“After I have cast my decision, this meeting will be transmitted to Temple. There, the chief propitiators will determine whether I decided properly.”

“Yes, Shai.”

“I explain this to you now, so that you have no reason to dissent later.”

“I will dissent if I need to, Shai, now or later. Such is my way.”

“Then you will look as a fool.”

“As is my name. ‘Tsecha' is as ‘fool' in Sìah Haárin.”

“It is as fool in every language.” Shai pressed her fingertips against her forehead just above the bridge of her nose and held them there. “I will begin by saying that Admiral-General Mako has informed me that he regrets this incident with his entire heart and soul, for whatever such regret is worth. The fact that Dathim Naré and his facility suborns have uncovered no other weaponry thus far supports the Admiral-General's claim that the mine uncovered two humanish days ago was an aberration, and that his Service left no other weapons behind on the enclave property.” She lowered her hand. “Is this not true, Tsecha?”

“It is indeed the case, Shai.” Tsecha nodded in an annoyingly humanish manner. “It would be most helpful, of course, if you permitted us to allow Service Ordnance to screen the area with their equipment. It is their weaponry, after all. Who better to scan for it? But we do what we can.”

Shai's shoulders rounded. “Such is not the reason for this meeting, Tsecha.”

“No.” Tsecha raised his right hand, then let it fall, another of his meaningless gestures. “The reason for this meeting is to decide upon a death.”

Time passed. Shai may have believed that Tsecha wished to speak further. When he did not, she exhaled heavily and pointed to Elon. “Let us begin.”

Sànalàn hesitated. Then she stood, her posture most straight in honor of the gods, and pronounced the opening prayer. An invocation to Shiou, a plea for order.

Elon glanced at Tsecha, and saw that he mouthed the prayer as Sànalàn entoned. She touched a scar on her left forearm, a ridged hack he had given her so long ago, and rejoiced in his downfall.

Sànalàn finished the prayer and lowered to her chair. Shai then gestured to Elon. “Tell us of Feres's injury.”

Elon sat up most straight. She had already described the circumstances many times, yet each instance felt as the first. She labored to recall the details, yet could only call up sensation. The cold rain that numbed her. The sound of the wind through the bare trees. The low hum of equipment. “At the time the mine detonated, I stood with Ghos beside the enclave vehicles, just outside the boundary set by the humanish technician. Colonel Dubrovna, General Burkett's suborn, had advised that one of our number act as witness to the removal of the mine from the ground. ‘An act of good faith' is how she referred to such. I watched Feres enter within the boundary and approach the humanish technician. The technician spoke to him, and Feres moved closer, until he stood within reach. Then I heard a shout—one of the humanish soldiers sought to halt the excavation. ‘Wode,' he shouted. ‘Pull up now.' Feres and the humanish technician, Wode, both turned toward the soldier.” Elon drew her right hand over her soul and pressed her left hand over it.

“I saw a flash, heard the detonation. I lay on the ground. Ghos lay atop me—he bled from shrapnel that would have struck me. I fell atop my hand, and broke bones.” She raised her hands before her, as though to push. “I ordered Ghos to move so I could rise. He did not understand. He could not hear. I could not hear. I pushed him from me and rose, and looked to the center of the boundary circle.” All she could recall. Red upon white. The disruption. “I could not see the humanish. I saw Feres. His legs. One arm. Gone. Blood. I
pulled Ghos to his feet, behind the Haárin vehicles. I sought to run to Feres, but Dathim Naré blocked my way and said he was for the priests.” She lowered her hands. “That is all.”

“Feres also received an injury to the forward third of his brain. A fragment of the mine.” Sànalàn spoke. Her voice seemed at youngish, as wind through a pipe. “The physician-priests administered to him most quickly. In a physical mode, he lives, but great damage has been done to his processes of thought. I have consulted with them, and determined thus. If Feres recovers as he is, he will be not-Feres. If Feres becomes not-Feres, he cannot continue the journey to the Star, for Feres had no proper death, and not-Feres had no proper birth. They would each be as half-beings, without sequence to their lives, neither with a clear path to the Star. Feres must therefore be allowed to die, to complete his path in the way the gods intended.”

Elon listened, each word Sànalàn spoke touching her soul.
He must die…his soul is as lost now, for it can no longer think and knows not the path
. She shivered as from cold, imagining its wanderings.

Tsecha still sat with his hands linked. Even during Sànalàn's invocation, he had not altered his position. “When I still dwelled within Temple, before the Vynshà ascended to rau, I knew Feres. As a youngish, he took his place in Temple school, in the classes taught to seculars.” He bared his teeth. “Once, he took colored rounds of plastic and hung them from the branches of all the garden trees. When we sought to reprimand him, he climbed to the top of the tallest tree and could not be compelled to lower himself down. Aeri, my then-suborn and Sànalàn's body-father, had to request a skimmer from the warrior base that could rise as high as the treetop. Thus did we bring Feres down.” He unlinked his fingers, then spread them wide, yet another unfathomable gesture. “Vynshàrau evaluation of brain function is not of sufficient depth to ensure the proper decision is reached. Many of the parameters for assessment have not altered since the time of my predecessor, Xinfa nìRau
Cèel, at a time when Pathenrau ruled and the first colonies had just been founded. John Shroud once calculated the time as over 150 humanish years. Such is stagnation!”

“You now confer with humanish physicians concerning matters of idomeni medicine, Tsecha?” Shai's hand chopped the air in an Haárin gesture of dismissal. “You have conferred also with Feyó of the Elyan Haárin, this I know and truly, one who should be made outcast from outcast if such were possible.”

“If you wish to enter this debate, Shai, you must complete the exams you failed when we were both at Temple. Otherwise, it is to Sànalàn that I speak.” But even as Tsecha spoke thus, he positioned himself as though he lectured at Temple and spoke to no single idomeni, for it was well-known at the embassy that he despised his former suborn as weak, and disdained any contact with her. “Feres is, possibly, not-Feres now. But if time is allowed, if he heals, he may return to that which he was. Methods of evaluation must be improved. More intensive testing must be performed. It is not enough to say ‘the wound is here, therefore the damage must be thus,' for each brain is as different, and at times wounds thought grave may be strangely overcome.”