Crossover (29 page)

"Can't." A small sigh. "Sorry."

"Can't or won't?"

"What's the difference?"

Vanessa looked at her critically. "You know, for a glorified pocket calculator, you can be pretty stubborn sometimes." Sandy blinked. The corner of her mouth twitched briefly. Thunder rumbled again, then boomed, a deep bass vibrato.

"Where were you born, Vanessa?" Vanessa paused, seeming surprised at the question.

"Hospital five Ks from here." Frowning, face framed by gusting dark hair. "Why?"

"And you don't remember anything about it?"

Vanessa thought about it, then half grinned, looking puzzled.

"Us straights can't remember back that far, Sandy. Brain's not developed enough, never stores anything it takes in. What about you, you remember anything from when you were ... whatever you were?"

"Nup. Not a thing. I don't remember most of my training, and only bits and pieces of my first ... maybe five years in actual combat. My first real memories are of killing people." A sideways glance. "You believe that?"

"Damn." Vanessa was staring. "That's unbelievable." Crackle and boom of thunder, followed by more lightning. The flicker of blue light was continuous now, only the intensity varied. "And despite all that you still managed to turn out a basically decent person. How about that?"

"Why do you think I'm decent — you barely know me?"

"Hey, I'm a SWAT leader. My character judgment's not perfect, but it's better than most." Glaring with good-natured intensity. A common expression for her. "You wanna argue with me?"

Sandy exhaled hard. "I'm better than some straights, I'll give myself that much credit."

"You saved the President's life," Vanessa interjected somewhat sarcastically. "You hadn't killed or even hurt anyone while you were AWOL ... I don't know how many straights would be able to say that much if they had your capabilities at their disposal for a year."

Which was interesting. She hadn't thought of that.

"From what my briefing reports showed," Vanessa continued with that aggressive, slightly exasperated smile of hers, "you've been pretty much travelling around the place, meeting people, playing tourist, trying to earn an honest wage, touring art galleries and screwing pretty much anyone who's not female." Sandy couldn't help but smile. "More's the pity." The smile grew a little broader.

"And maybe it's stupid of me," Vanessa continued just as forcefully, "but I just don't find you very intimidating."

"Maybe I'm slipping," Sandy suggested wryly.

"That," Vanessa said, levelling a finger at her, "is exactly what I'm talking about." Sandy looked away again into the storm, smile fading. Aware that Vanessa was still watching, looking puzzled.

"I don't remember anywhere near as much as I should," Sandy said, voice barely carrying above a resounding boom of thunder very near by. "Tape softens the memories, disconnects them from the emotions."

"Right," Vanessa said, nodding, "everyone gets that. Every time some cop in a downtown precinct has to shoot some gangbanger, they get tape to help the trauma. No shame in that — it helps them get on with their lives. Hell, it happens so rarely here, there's no comparison to what you've been through."

"I don't know," Sandy replied. Vanessa blinked as lightning lit the near sky. Sandy's eyelids never flickered. Boom and crash, rolling onward as if tumbling down a long slope. Faded, overlapped by another, more distant rumble. "I don't know how much I really need it. I go into a different state when I'm in combat. I process so much information. I suppose you'd call it surreal. I don't think it ever really impacts me emotionally like it might a straight human." Pause. "Killing people, that is."

Vanessa brushed hair from where it stuck to her lips. Staring, with evident concern.

"And that bothers you?" she asked.

"It fucking scares me," Sandy replied, still gazing outward, arms folded, her shoulder harness tight beneath her jacket. "We still have ethical debates about the overuse of trauma tape. People say that as human beings we're
supposed
to suffer trauma, that it makes us learn and improves our behaviour. So imagine what I am." Pause for more thunder. She made no effort to brush the hair from her face. "I've personally killed hundreds. And it deserves a hell of a lot more trauma than I've ever suffered, tape or no tape. I'm quite certain of that."

She turned to look at Vanessa.

"So you tell me," she said, "am I decent? I don't bloody deserve to be."

Vanessa shook her head, vehemently.

"That's bullshit, Sandy. There are people on both sides who've been in exactly the same situation. It's no one's fault. You're just better at it than they are. And beating yourself up about it means just one more life gone to waste. The situation killed them — personal responsibility means squat."

"At what point did that line get drawn?" Sandy asked. Staring at Vanessa, her gaze unblinking, despite knowing that it made most straights uncomfortable. "I know I'm not legally responsible for anything I did early on — I can't even remember it. At that age, GIs just do what they're told, no choice at all. But later on? Even when I knew the cause was pointless and possibly immoral? I was having doubts for three full years." Pause to let that sink in. "That's a long, long time to keep fighting for something you're not certain you believe in any more."

Vanessa exhaled hard, staring out into the blinding grey veils of rain.

"You did it for your guys, didn't you?"

Sandy glanced down. The cold feeling was stronger than ever. And she didn't know from where this sudden need to confide had come from, except that it seemed like the right time, and Vanessa was the first non-bureaucrat she'd been able to talk with about it. Vanessa was the closest thing to a fellow soldier she was likely to find in this entire, civilianised city.

She nodded reluctantly.

"When there's a lot at stake," she said quietly, "then some things just don't bear much questioning. You know?" Looking up, meeting Vanessa's brown, concerned eyes. Hopefully.

Vanessa nodded. "I know. And you might think it's weird, but it's that kind of imperfect logic that gives me hope for you, Sandy. If you were emotionally and logically perfect, you'd scare the hell out of me. I don't like people like that. The people who allow some damn concept of technical logic, or honour code, or whatever they call it, to come before their gut instincts ..." and she rapped herself hard in the midriff with her knuckles, "... those are the ones I'm scared of.

"The people I like are the ones who agonise over things. Who
get
affected. Who care, Sandy, that's what it comes down to. You care." Vanessa shivered, wrapping her arms more tightly about herself. "Hell, if you didn't care, you'd be sitting inside where it's warm, and not dragging my skinny butt out here into the cold to see what's wrong."

"You didn't have to come out," Sandy said, not unkindly.

"Bullshit I didn't. You're in my team now. I'm your squad commander, remember?" Sandy nodded, considering that. "So come inside, huh? Before some lightning bolt turns the end of your life into the ultimate anticlimax."

Sandy smiled. It
would
be a damn silly way to go, after everything else. Vanessa put a hand on her shoulder, and squeezed.

"If it means anything to you, I actually like you." Sandy looked at her in surprise. Vanessa looked very sincere. And she felt a sudden, unfamiliar emotion and her throat was suddenly tight again, but for a different reason. "And it's not just 'cause I like girls, either." Sandy smiled, painfully. Put a hand on Vanessa's.

"Thanks," she said.

"You don't have to hug a gay woman if you don't want to," Vanessa said slyly, "but I'd recommend it." Sandy's smile grew broader, and when Vanessa put her arms around her, she returned the embrace gladly enough. Vanessa was small, and not at all broad, but she didn't feel particularly delicate either.

Sandy took a deep breath. The embrace felt nice, in the way that she'd always enjoyed such affectionate gestures, rare as they'd been. And she decided that all her concerns could wait another hour or two. Everything could wait. She let the breath out, feeling measurably better.

"So," she said with forced playfulness, "you think I'm sexy, do ya?"

"Don't tease," Vanessa retorted against her shoulder. "I'm very vulnerable."

CHAPTER 12

"Ow." She sat straight-backed and topless before the balcony view through the windows, legs crossed firmly beneath her, maintaining rigid muscle pressure. Vanessa sat behind on a footstool-cushion, and dug small, hard fingers into Sandy's shoulders and neck.

"Ow yourself," Vanessa retorted. "You're practically made of steel, you can't tell me that hurts."

"Until you get a full body-transplant," Sandy replied, "I'll keep my own council on what hurts and what doesn't, thank you. Besides, you've got full arm augmentation — I can feel it."

"Which makes me nearly a hundredth as strong as you." Thumbs pressing hard behind the top of her shoulder-blade. Tension resisted. And fled pleasantly. Another hard twinge, muscle knots slowly coming undone. That was what hurt, not Vanessa's pressure. But it was a good pain, and she enjoyed it. Rhythmic Latino drumming reverberated from the room speakers — Vanessa's favourite music, she insisted. Brazilian rumba, Spanish flamenco, Argentinean tango ... and not a Hispanic bone in her body, she insisted further. The guitars sounded wonderful, the drumming hypnotic and set her swaying invisibly, irresistibly from side to side. The male baritone quavered and cried, full of passion. The massage relaxed her shoulders, the gentle loosening spread downward through her body. Beyond the windows and the balcony railing green suburbs glistened wetly beneath the grey sky. Lightning flickered in the middle distance. For the first time in what seemed like an age, she felt calm and relaxed, and basically happy.

Vanessa's fingers worked down to her left shoulder joint, probing more gently. The red line of recent incision formed an angry, perfect circle about the joint.

"How's that feel?" Vanessa asked with concern. Sandy shook her head.

"It's fine. Harder — that's too soft, I can't feel that." Stretching her spine, shoulders back, ankles pulled in tightly beneath her buttocks. Vanessa's fingers pressed harder, muscles twinged, tendons releasing, and she felt the whole combination of arm, shoulder and shoulder-blade across to spine begin to loosen further. She flexed again, a ripple of muscle across her shoulders, a wriggle of spine.

"Wow." Vanessa worked at the shoulder joint, feeling about the circumference with penetrating fingertips. "Wish I had shoulders like yours. And hips. You're nearly as broad as a man."

"I'll choose to take that as a compliment," Sandy returned, eyes half closed as she held her posture firm, "even though I'm deeply offended."

"Why should you be offended?" said Vanessa. "I hadn't thought your sensibilities would be so shallow as us superficial civvies."

"Oh crap, I like being a woman. Here grab." She held her left arm up over her head. Vanessa took the wrist and pulled across. Sandy winced as the joint stretched, and muscles popped loose down her left side, knots melting away. "I like looking good, I like the way my body's put together even though it's occasionally been inconvenient in an armour harness, and I definitely like multiple sexual positions and multiple orgasms. I also like my breasts, even though they do me no good whatsoever as a soldier and I've often wondered why they even gave me any, except that the people who thought me up were men and couldn't stand the idea of their most advanced GI being flat chested. Harder." Vanessa pulled more and the stretching became intense. Vanessa had arm augmentations all right. No unaugmented human packed that much power with so little leverage, male or female, let alone a Vanessa-sized female. "Luckily I'm strong enough that it makes no difference if I've got them or not. But I'm thankful for it. How superficial is that? Enough." Vanessa let go and started work on the other shoulder.

"Multiple orgasms?"

"Yep."

"That wasn't planned, was it?"

Sandy repressed a smile. "No. Just developed that way I guess. Funny things, brains, synthetic or otherwise. Can't ever tell how they're going to grow."

"How many are we talking about here?"

"What, orgasms?"

"No, Sandy, blackhead warts." Sarcastically. "Of course orgasms, what else d'you think I'd be so interested in?"

"Why?" Challengingly, flexing the right shoulder now as Vanessa worked. "Don't you?"

"God no." Exasperatedly. "Not in this marriage. I guess I did a few times before ..."

"With men or women?" Suddenly very curious, in spite of herself. Vanessa frowned.

"Women, I think. Mostly. And very rarely then ... Come on, how many are we talking about? You didn't answer me."

"Oh ..." Sandy made a face, thinking about it. "No real limit. It just takes progressively more time to get there until I figure it's no longer worth the effort."

"How much more time?" With great suspicion, pressing hard with the fingers of both hands.

Sandy smiled, guessing the reaction in advance.

"Oh ... could be a couple of hours on a slow day." The massage stopped.

"You're joking."

Sandy shrugged. "Or ten minutes if I'm in a rush. No matter." Wriggled her shoulder admonishingly. "More." Vanessa resumed work.

"And there were GI companions of yours who could last a couple of hours?"

"Oh no. God, GI men are even worse than straights, takes a great effort to slow down. Mostly. No, if I had a few hours to spare I'd take turns ..." Strangled sound from Vanessa. Sandy grinned, and tried an unsuccessful glance over her shoulder. "What?"

"You weren't kidding with Ibrahim?"

"No, of course not." Patted Vanessa's hand reassuringly, as if to a slow child. "I'm a GI, Vanessa, I'm not conditioned to get jealous, neither were my comrades. When you can have anyone you want, there's nothing to get jealous about. Pull." Holding the right arm up over her head. Vanessa grabbed and pulled across. More luscious unwinding down her side and back. Something popped near her hip.

"Sounds like fun." With what Sandy thought might be genuine envy.

"Oh it was. I could go into details if you liked?" Vanessa, she thought, might find it entertaining. Most civilians seemed to Sandy woefully inexperienced in such matters.

"No," Vanessa said firmly. "With my sex life like it is now the last thing I need is visions of wild, lustful frolicking in my head."

"You'll change your mind." Windmilling both shoulders together.

"Smug."

"More so by the minute. Now, what I want you to do ... get that stool out the way, get a knee into my lower back here," gesturing with one hand, "put a forearm around my shoulders and pull back hard." Vanessa frowned, pushing aside her footstool seat, knelt on one knee and positioned the other against Sandy's spine, as indicated. Wrapped the forearm across the front of her bare shoulders.

"How hard?"

"Hard as you can."

"Um ... that's pretty hard, you'd be surprised." Repositioning for a firmer grip, the knee digging in.

"Unless you can break ferrous alloy barehanded, I'll be fine. Go." Straightening her back to its fullest. Vanessa settled once more, braced and yanked back hard. Sandy felt her spine crack, an abrupt wrench through her back muscles, and let out a hiss. Which turned to relief as more tension evaporated and the looseness spread further, into midriff and buttocks.

"Okay?" Vanessa asked, still holding on to prevent her from overbalancing backward.

"Fine." Easing back to upright, flexing some more. "Fantastic. That's much better." The smaller aches and pains were largely gone for the moment. She'd been getting them everywhere lately, both from the usual stiffening reflex and the obvious recent trauma.

"You fit back together pretty well, huh?" Vanessa suggested, reading her mind as she sat back on the footstool and returned to the shoulder massage.

"They get straight amputation human patients back ninety percent functional in a couple of weeks these days. I'm far easier — organic systems are so messy."

"You can generate a lot more power than any straight human," Vanessa pointed out. "Makes any weakness more difficult."

"Yeah, well, I won't be punching holes through ferrocrete any time soon. Head please." Indicating her neck.

"What, like this?" Vanessa wrapped her head with both arms, a basic neck-breaker hold, hands positioned for a fast rotation,

"That'll do. Not so hard, that's my one vaguely vulnerable bit. Don't tell anyone."

"Wow, I found one," Vanessa replied with humour, and pulled her head gently around to the right, increasing pressure gradually. "You mean I could actually hurt a GI doing this hard enough?"

"Um ..." Sandy considered, face half wrapped in Vanessa's tense arms, "... you could strain a neck muscle at a connection ... the connections are the key, that's where the FIA got me. Muscle bundles come apart at the connection ends and reseal again super-hard. That's why I healed so easily, it's partly designed that way. Bone joints too. Muscles themselves you can't separate mid-length short of an industrial laser. But if I overstrain a connection joint ... yeah, that can be trouble." Vanessa reversed the pressure, pulling her head the other way. "A guy I served with popped several simultaneously trying to lift something he shouldn't have. Collapsed like a string puppet. But that was silly — he was working on five tons at the time."

"Oh man." Vanessa laughed in disbelief. "What about your throat? That's gotta be vulnerable?"

"Jugular's in the spinal column, I don't have a pulse there. If the windpipe's severed ... well I don't need as much oxygen. And it's well protected, the main neck tendons here ..." she tapped with a hand, under Vanessa's arm, "... here, feel this." Vanessa released and took Sandy by the throat right-handed. Sandy rolled her head, arched her neck and tensed up. "Squeeze," she said. Vanessa did. And gasped.

"Oh Jesus. That's like steel." Sandy could barely feel the pressure past her own tension. Tension always reduced sensation, sometimes entirely.

"Stronger. That's the wonder of synthetic myomer, it changes consistency to match the required stresses. Flexible structures are always stronger than fixed and brittle ones." The old basics. She'd explained it many times to straights in the League. Some had received it with more interest than others. "If you put me under a guillotine, you'd only blunt the blade."

"And if you used proper striking technique ..." Vanessa broke off, as if something was just occurring to her. "Jesus Christ, Sandy, just how dangerous are you? If you can control and release tension at the right moments when hitting something ..."

Sandy didn't like the tone of her voice, turned to face the small SWAT lieutenant and rested hands on her knees. Looked her directly in the eyes. Vanessa gazed back with no small incredulity.

"What?" Sandy asked, frowning slightly. "What does it matter how much damage I can do? What matters is what I choose to do with it, surely?"

"But, I mean ..." Vanessa blinked rapidly, as if not knowing quite how to put it, "... control's not a problem? I mean ... so much
power
! It's unbelievable."

Sandy sat back on her haunches, back straight and stretching. Head to one side, considering her for a moment. Deliberate provocation, topless, clad only in SWAT-issue cargo pants, an elastic waistband that barely managed a proper fit over her hips. Vanessa stared back, watching her
eyes
, she noted with that much admiration for Vanessa's self-control. And on that moment's inspiration she got up on her knees, put her hands firmly on Vanessa's knees and parted them wide. Shuffled forward into the space that provided, and moved both hands to Vanessa's slim shoulders. Looked her very directly in the eyes at point blank range. Vanessa looked back suspiciously, but made no attempt to move or protest the proximity.

"Vanessa." With amusement. Something about the situation just struck her as amusing. The differences that sprung up between herself and every straight she'd ever met, and ever would meet. Such enormous differences. So inescapable, and all-encompassing. And so trivial. "Don't think of me as a body, Vanessa. That's just the package. I'm in here." She tapped her temple with a forefinger. "Just like you're in there." And patted the side of Vanessa's head with her hand. "Can you see me? When you look at me? Or is it just the package?"

Their gazes locked. Blue eyes gazing into brown. So close, Sandy thought, of the eyes and the lovely, almost girlish face before her. So very close. If only distance could measure understanding. If only...

"I can see you." Vanessa's voice held the faintest touch of a smile. It showed on her lips. "It's in your eyes."

"And in yours." Smiling crookedly in return. Vanessa held her gaze without effort. Shared her humour, even though she remained uncertain of what precisely was funny. It was rare. So rare, to find a straight ... a non-GI ... who would do that. Meet her gaze without flinching. She felt inexplicably warm. "I like you, Vanessa. That's not a GI thing, that's one of those messy, unfathomable human things. I'll never be any more dangerous to those people or things I like and value than you will. I'm only dangerous to those who'd hurt them."

"Yeah, but that's the thing," Vanessa said soberly, her smile fading. Beyond the delicate features, she looked suddenly mature, wise and calm. A SWAT commander. "Who defines 'threat'? And how? In a civilian world? A lot of things threaten me, Sandy. A review board could threaten my job, internal politics could threaten my standing and reputation, my goddamn husband could threaten my emotional stability and sanity ... they all could be dangerous, in one way or another. You gonna be dangerous to all of them? In this city? It's not a war any longer, Captain. You're a civilian. Have you had time to figure out yet what kind of civilian you want to be, with your abilities?"

Sandy blinked, softly. "What kind of civilian do you think I'll be?"

"Whatever kind you choose. S'up to you, girl. Who d'you want to be?"

"The kind whom good people feel safe to be around." It was such an obvious answer. It emerged from her lips the instant Vanessa finished the question. Vanessa sighed. Brushed some stray hair back from Sandy's ear.

"Well, that's not so hard, I suppose. In the CSA. And a few other places. But..." she glanced aside, lips twisting wryly, "... I mean, given what you are ... there'll always be someone." Looked her back in the eyes again. "I reckon you'll just have to learn to live with it."