Crossover (34 page)

"God," she gasped eventually, her voice tight, almost trembling. "I thought you were dead." Her voice cracked, tears blurring her vision.

"I'm not dead," he told her, chin against her shoulder. Sounding almost calm, by comparison. And stating the obvious, Sandy realised, as always. She nearly laughed, but her throat seized up. She hugged him harder, a forceful rippling of shoulders and biceps, and felt a similar, steely tension in return. It'd been so long since she'd felt that from anyone but herself. She hadn't realised how much she'd missed it.

She released him, and he followed suit. Sat back, staring him in the eyes, hands on his shoulders. Accumulated moisture spilled down her cheeks. Mahud was still grinning. Wiped the tears away with firm, gentle fingers.

"You're crying," he stated. Sandy bit back a laugh with great effort. She felt totally unstable.

"I'm so glad to see you," she explained. Mahud nodded knowingly, still grinning. Brushed hair back from her forehead with great affection.

"Damn, you're pretty," he said. "I'd nearly forgotten how pretty you are." Sandy did laugh.

"What about you? You look like some local millionaire's son," she tugged at the collar of his jacket. "What a stud!"

He kissed her firmly on the lips. Sandy responded, kissing back deeply, wrapping her arms about him as his went about her, pulling each other close once more. It felt warm, and passionate, and desperately emotional, and it was a while before she could bear to stop.

"Damn, this is hardly the place for a reunion," she gasped as they finally parted, and rested her head on his shoulder.

"We could go some place warm," he suggested. Sandy laughed again, holding him close.

"Maybe later." A pause, as the issues at hand began to sink back in. "Dammit Mahud, what are you even
doing
here? And how the hell are you still alive? I didn't fucking
believe
them when they told me everyone was dead, I hacked their files, I stole codes, I looked at
everything
! The entire fucking C&C thought you were dead. They'd
confirmed
it."

Mahud sighed, resting his cheek on her hair. For a long moment he didn't reply. Sandy waited, struggling between impatience and the pleasure it gave her just to hold him a little longer.

"You won't be mad at me if I tell you?" he asked finally.

"Mad at you?" Sandy pulled away, staring him in the eyes. He looked very sombre, she thought. Almost thoughtful. From Mahud, that wasn't expected. Not that he was stupid. Just that... well, he was a GI. GI-43AU, she remembered his designation. In the higher range — not that that was a reliable indication of anything, intelligence-wise. He could be damn smart sometimes. He just wasn't much given to thoughtful introspection. Apart from herself, very few were. "What could I possibly be mad about?"

"Kiss me again and I'll tell you." Which also surprised her. Subtle humour. She gazed at him, her mind spinning in circles, her world turned on its head once more ... she'd lost track of how many times that had happened in the past forty-eight hours alone. She was so used to being in control, and this ... this just wasn't fair.

"It is you, isn't it Mahud?" she asked a little warily. "League admin haven't made some copy or something?" Mahud laughed outright, reaching into his shirtfront and pulling out a small symbol on a chain ... a silver crescent moon. A quick zoom showed his name engraved on the surface.

"You gave it to me when the Indians were celebrating the month of Shravan," he told her, smiling broadly at the memory. "You said it wasn't exactly a
rakhi
, and I wasn't exactly your brother, but I was the closest thing to it so I might as well have it anyway." Sandy looked at it for a long moment. Remembering. And looked up.

"And you remember what I told you about it?"

"That the crescent moon was an Arabic symbol, and since my human ancestry is based on Arabic people, I ought to have it so it would remind me of my human origins."

"And what did you think of that?"

Mahud gave a wry, self-deprecating grin.

"I thought you were nuts." Grinning wide as she smiled. "I mean, I'm a bloody GI. I don't
have
any ancestry. They just give us features and skin colours and names to make us fit in. It's just a bloody custom job."

"And what do you think now?"

Mahud's smile faded slightly. "I don't know. I think I know what you were trying to say. I don't know if I agree with it, but I think I know why you said it."

"Mahud ..." Sandy grasped his hands with her own, holding them tightly, "what the hell happened to you? Are you the only one here?"

"Yes." Mahud nodded sadly. "I'm the only one."

"What happened?" Sandy's hands gripped his own, hard enough to damage. Mahud's fingers flexed slightly in reply, steely tension. "What happened to everyone?"

Mahud sighed, looking down at her hands. Reluctant. Somewhere in the broad, city-lit night, a flicker of lightning.

"All right." Another sigh. "All right, I'll tell you."

"The guys were worried when you warned them, you know," Mahud began, sitting propped against the railing, his fingers toying idly with the silver crescent on the chain about his neck. Sandy sat opposite, watching him. The platform was barely two metres wide, cold metal grid. About them was empty space, cold and whistling in all directions. Suspended in empty air, far above the city. Even the towertop looked small and far below. Most Tanushans would only ever see such views from the windows of aircars, and even then rarely from these lofty altitudes.

"We talked about it," Mahud continued. He sounded bleak, almost distant. Against the empty, limitless night, his voice seemed strangely small. "Tran was worried. She kept saying that she wished you hadn't been dragged off the mission, and wondering why they'd done it ... Stark told her to shut up — you know what he was like. But Tran ..." he shrugged.

Sandy nodded faintly. "I know."

"Yeah." Mahud looked down at the crescent, turning it over and over in his fingers. "She was ... anyway, we got to position, made the approach, no big deal ... then Stark tells us his orders have changed, and we're to keep a reserve team on the destroyer while the main team proceeds to target. Backup, he says." Looking at her quizzically.

Sandy felt cold in a way that had nothing to do with the wind. She never used backup. The team was a single, integrated unit. Backup only divided forces. Backup was what generals did, not special ops unit commanders. In a small team, it didn't make any tactical sense.

Mahud took a deep breath. "We asked him about it. He said he's Captain now, and we'd never have questioned you about it. Tran says that's because you'd never have ordered us to do it. Pizano says, yeah, that's great Stark, but you ain't Sandy. Stark tells everyone to shut up and obey orders." He shrugged. "So we do. I mean, what are we going to do?" Looking at Sandy questioningly. Faintly desperate.

Sandy nodded. "Stark was a good officer," she murmured. "You did right." It was only half true. Stark had been an excellent second. She would never have trusted him with command of a unit though, least of all hers. He knew the rulebook backwards, right down to the punctuation, and followed it religiously. She'd worn armour more flexible than Sergei. Every tactical sim she'd played him at, she'd ripped him apart.

"So," Mahud continued, with difficulty, "me, Chu, Rogers and Pesivich get left behind ... we take the second boat, hold off in support as the first boat goes in ..." He paused, swallowed hard, clearly struggling. Not meeting her eyes.

"They blew the whole rig, didn't they," Sandy said softly. "That's what the reports said." Mahud nodded.

"Yeah." A deep breath. Sandy felt the pain in her throat once more, just watching him. His eyes were moist too. "Yeah, it blew real fast. Reactor rig, one small bang, then the fusion went ... thermonuclear. Big Shockwave." He coughed. "Lot of effort for one team."

"They were worth it," Sandy said quietly. "They were worth a whole fucking station." Mahud nodded. A lone aircar passed, a middle-distant whine above the background hum of city noise. Cruising a high lane, but still some distance below their perch.

"Shockwave messed us up a bit," he continued then. Gazing out at the city lights spread wide and far below. "The destroyer never came. We found out later they'd blown it. Never saw it ourselves ... our scanners whited out at the blast. This other ship picked us up."

Sandy felt her jaw tense, a tight, involuntary reaction.

"What other ship?"

"League ship. Cruiser, Kali-class. Never found the name. Don't know if it had one. Didn't really care at the time." Sandy knew what that meant.

"Spook?"

"Yeah." Mahud nodded absently, face profiled against a gleam of light. Youthful and handsome, like any GI. So familiar. Sandy watched him, entranced. "Big spook. Had military people on board though. Treated us real nice. Gave us tape, said how sorry they were, how they wished they'd only gotten there a bit earlier and maybe saved the destroyer at least... said it was a big Fed trap, the rig was bait, the 'Kowloon' was hiding on the system blindside, timed on high V approach, closed after the rig blew and nailed the destroyer when they tried to run, never had a chance, they'd had it all worked out. But they hadn't managed to target the destroyer and the second boat simultaneously, so they missed us on the first pass and the spook scared them off before they could come about."

Sandy bit her lip. Wondering how much of that terribly convenient story Mahud had believed. But not wanting to interrupt him now. Wanting the full story before she tried to spring anything onto him.

"They blew the boat after they picked us up," Mahud continued, "left the wreckage floating. Made it look like a high V strike, used Federate ammo, the works. They said they wanted everyone to think we were all dead. They said they had a special mission for us. Something that'd give us a chance to get back at the Feds, get revenge for Tran and Raju and everyone. Everyone thought that sounded good. Really good.

"We kept asking them about you, wanting them to get you to join us. They said you were needed where you were. Said we couldn't even send messages, that you had to think we were all dead too, just like everyone else. No one liked that. Chu especially. She called them stupid, said if we were going to do a good job on this we'd need you along with us. She said that if it was that damn important, they ought to put their best leader onto it."

Sandy listened helplessly. Mahud didn't say anything more, just stared out into the cold, empty night.

"What happened?" she prompted him softly. Mahud looked at her. She could see the pain in his eyes. The fear. A straight might have missed it, not knowing GIs, and not knowing how the likes of Mahud would hide it. But she could always tell.

"Cap'n, I didn't know what to do," he whispered. His voice barely carried above the gentle keening of wind through the tower struts. Beneath them, the metal gave a slight shiver, as if at the cold. "They said it was important. I mean, they weren't just officers... they were real, real heavy brass, you know? Suits too, not just soldiers."

Sandy nodded faintly. The picture was forming very clearly in her head, and it was not a pleasant one. She gazed sadly at Mahud, imagining his confusion. His fear. And damning all her ex so-called superiors to the hottest, nastiest hell that any of the motherworld's ancient cultures had ever devised.

"Chu got reassigned," Mahud continued, hoarsely. "She was real pissed. I should have said no ... should have protested or something but ... but they were
officers
! His gaze was almost desperate. "I mean, I could never ... not the way you did, all those times. And I wanted to hurt the Feds. I really missed the guys and they said I was going to be able to really get some payback, and that sounded real good.

"So we went to some station somewhere, I didn't even know where that was. We trained a lot. There were a bunch of mid-twenties there, nothing worth talking to. We trained with them a lot — me, Rogers and Pesivich. They weren't that bright, but they got it done. Barely. We stayed there a long time. Then this thing came up and we get assigned this mission. This is the big one, they tell us. Payback. Kill the President of Callay. I got command over Rogers and Pesivich, they stayed behind. And the regs, they get stupid-tape. They come out of that and suddenly they're all determined to get themselves killed. That wasn't fun... I mean, they're only regs, but still..."

He broke off. Sandy let the silence linger for a moment, absorbing that information.

Then, "So this whole thing ... you're not top chief, right?"

He shook his head. "No, that's an FIA guy." Looking back to her, unworried at what would have been treason just twenty-four hours earlier. "You know about it, right?"

"Most, yeah. So you just came down planetside, stayed low, moved around under cover from all these shady types the FIA have in the corporations here, and plan a way to kill the President?"

"Pretty much. Nearly worked too. Probably would have if I'd been there myself. Damn regs just got themselves smeared."

"I'm damn glad you weren't there."

Mahud shrugged. "Yeah, well ... I'm not a suicide type. The brass weren't stupid enough to ask me. And the stupid-tape won't work on me anyway, I'm a 43."

"That's not what I meant," Sandy said. Mahud looked at her. Her gaze was very firm, very direct. His expression turned puzzled. "I meant that if you'd been on that op I might have ended up killing you too. Or you me."

Mahud blinked. And stared, eyes suddenly widening. Questioning disbelief. Sandy nodded confirmation. Mahud's eyes grew even wider and his jaw dropped. For a long moment he just sat there, totally rigid.

"Oh fuck!" he said then loudly. "What the fuck were you doing there?"

"I was in the President's convoy. Fourth car." A further realisation dawned in Mahud's eyes, horrified.

"Fourth? You mean after it crashed ...?"

"I got out. I got free and I got armed. I ran a counter against their sensors. They had me on a lower drugs dose than they thought they had ..."