Benjamin McIlhenny looked up from a sheaf of hard copy as a hatch hissed open aboard the battlecruiser HMS Antietam, then rose quickly as Sir Arthur Keita stepped through it. Keita wore the green-on-green of the Imperial Cadre with the golden harp and starships of the Emperor below the single starburst of a brigadier, and if he was a head shorter than the colonel, he was far thicker and broader. "The Emperor's Bulldog" might be pushing a hundred years old, but he remained powerfully built and physically fit. He also exuded hard, ruthless competence, and his arrival had been something of a shock. The colonel suspected they would have seen someone far less senior if Keita hadn't been right next door in the Macedon Sector, anyway.
The man behind him could have been specifically designed as his antithesis. Inspector Ferhat Ben Belkassem, well short of his fortieth year, was small, neat, and very dark, with liquid brown eyes and a strong, beaked nose. His crimson tunic's collar bore the hourglass and balance of the Ministry of Justice, and he seemed pleasant enough—which was far from sufficient to reconcile McIlhenny to his presence. This was a job for the Fleet and the Marines. By McIlhenny's lights, not even Keita had any real business poking his nose in—not that he intended to say so to a brigadier. Particularly not to a Cadre brigadier, and especially not to a Cadre brigadier named Sir Arthur Keita. Which, because Colonel McIlhenny was an intrinsically just man, meant he couldn't say it to Ben Belkassem, either. Damn it.
"Sir Arthur. Inspector."
"Colonel," Keita returned crisply. Ben Belkassem merely smiled at the omission of his own name—a lack of reaction which irritated the colonel immensely—and McIlhenny waved at two empty chairs across the conference table.
Ben Belkassem waited for Keita to seat himself, then slid into his own chair. It was a respectful enough gesture, but the man moved like a cat, McIlhenny thought. Graceful, poised, and silent. Sneaky bastard.
"I've downloaded all of our data to Banshee," he began, "but, with your permission, Sir Arthur, I thought we should probably begin with a general background brief."
Keita nodded for him to continue, and McIlhenny switched on the holo unit. A display of the Franconia Sector appeared above the table, like a squashed quarter-sphere of stars. An edge of the Empire appeared along its flattened side, green and friendly, but the scarlet of the Rishathan Sphere crowded its rounded upper edge, and a sparkle of amber Rogue Worlds and blue systems claimed by the Quarn Hegemony threaded through its volume. McIlhenny slipped into his headset, connecting the display controls to his neural receptor, and a single star at the sector's heart blinked gold.
"The sector capital." The announcement was probably redundant, but he'd learned long ago to make sure the groundwork was in place. "Soissons, in the Franconia System. Quite Earth-like, but for rather cool temperatures, with a population just over two billion. A bit high for this region, but it's one of the old League Worlds we retook from the Lizards more or less intact."
His audience nodded, and he cleared his throat.
"We really should have organized a Crown Sector out here a century ago, but with the Rishatha hanging up there to galactic north it seemed reasonable to turn our attention to other areas first. God knows we had enough to worry about elsewhere, and the Ministry of Out-World Affairs decided not to draw Rishathan attention south until we'd firmed up the central sectors. As you can see—" skeins of stars suddenly winked to life beyond the sector's curved frontier, burning the steady white of unsurveyed space "—there's a lot of room for expansion out there, and once we start curling around their southern frontiers, the Lizards are likely to get a bit anxious. We didn't want them extending their border to cut us off before we were ready."
He glanced up at the others. Ben Belkassem was watching the display as if it were a fascinating toy, but Keita only grunted and nodded again.
"All right. The Crown began providing incentives for colonization about eight years ago, and formally announced the organization of the Franconia Sector three years ago. Out-World Affairs sent Governor General Treadwell out a year later. It's a fairly typical Crown Sector in most ways: ninety-three systems under imperial claim—twenty-six with habitable planets—and thirty-one belonging to someone else in the same spatial volume. We've got five Incorporated Worlds besides Soissons, though one of them, Yeager, just elected its first senators this year. Aside from them, we've got fifteen Crown Worlds with Crown Governors, or—" his mouth twisted, "—we had fifteen Crown Worlds. Now we only have twelve."
Four stars pulsed lurid crimson as he spoke, wide-spaced, almost equi-distant from one another. One was the primary of Mathison's World.
"Typee, Mawli, Brigadoon, and Mathison's World," McIlhenny said grimly, one of the stars blinking brighter with each name. "Mawli, Brigadoon, and Mathison's World are complete write-offs; Typee survived . . . barely. It was the first world hit, and it's been settled for over sixty years—a freeholder colony from Durandel in the Melville Sector—and apparently their population was too spread out for the raiders to hit anything smaller than the major towns. The others—"
He shrugged, eyes bitter, and Keita's mouth tightened.
"Things started out quite well, actually," McIlhenny went on after a moment. "Governor Treadwell's got three times the normal Crown Sector Fleet presence because of the Rishatha and the Jung Association, so we—"
"Excuse me, Colonel." Ben Belkassem's voice was surprisingly deep for such a small man, almost velvety, with the cultured accent of the mother world. McIlhenny frowned at him, and the inspector smiled. "I didn't have time for a complete update on the foreign relations picture out here. Could you give me a little detail on this Jung Association? Am I correct in remembering that it's a multi-system Rogue World polity?"
"Pocket empire, more like," McIlhenny said. "These three systems—" three closely-clustered amber lights flashed "—and two treaty dependencies, MaGuire and Wotan." Two more lights blinked. "When the Lizards blitzed the old League, a League fleet commander—a Commodore Wanda Jung—managed to hold Mithra, Artemis, and Madrigal. The Lizards never even got their toenails into them," he added with grudging respect, "and for somebody their size, they still pack a lot of firepower. All three of their main systems have Core World population levels—about four billion on Mithra, I believe—and they're very heavily industrialized. Until we got ourselves organized, they and El Greco were the major human power bases out here."
The inspector nodded, and McIlhenny returned to his original point.
"At any rate, what with the Rogue World odds and sods left over from the League and the proximity of the Rishathan Sphere, the Crown decided Governor Treadwell might need a big stick, so the Franconia Fleet District is unusually powerful. Soissons is very heavily fortified, and Admiral Gomez commands three full battle squadrons, with appropriate supporting elements, which one should think ought to have been enough to prevent things like this."
He paused, brooding over his display's crimson cursors, then sighed.
"What we seem to have here is a highly unusual bunch of pirates. They're not terorrists—not even the FALA is stupid enough to pull this kind of crap, and we haven't had a single communique from anyone claiming responsibility for any 'liberation front' ops. But if they aren't terrorists, that only leaves pirates . . . which doesn't make a lot of sense, either.
"We've always had some piracy in the marches, of course. There are so many single-system Rogue Worlds out here that the mercenary business is fairly lucrative; some of them go wolf's-head from time to time, and we've had the odd hijacker outfit get too big for its vac suits, but most of them raid commercial traffic before the freighters go FTL or after they drop intra-systemic. Even the occasional bunch idiotic enough to hit a planet are usually smart enough to avoid wholesale slaughter rather than force the Fleet to go after them in strength. More than that, most of them don't have anywhere near the firepower to mount a planet-sized raid.
"This bunch has the firepower, and there's something really sick about them. They come barreling in, take out the starcom, then send down their shuttles to take everything. Usually, pirates stick to low-bulk, high-value cargoes, grab whatever's handiest, and pull out; these bastards steal anything that isn't nailed down. Power receptors, hospital equipment, satellite communication gear, machine tools, precious metals, luxury export items . . . it's like they have a shopping list of every item of value on the planet.
"Worse than that, they don't care who they kill. In fact, they seem to enjoy killing, and if their window's big enough, they take their time about it."
McIlhenny's face was grim.
"This is the worst raid yet, although Brigadoon was almost as bad. I doubt we'd've had any survivors at all from Mathison's if not for Gryphon, and her presence was a total fluke. Her skipper isn't even assigned to Admiral Gomez—he was just passing through on his way to Trianon and decided to stop off at Mathison's to pay his respects to Governor Brno. She'd been his first CO, and since a lot of his crew were fairly green and he was well ahead of schedule, he thought he'd surprise her with a visit and kill a few days on sublight maneuvers. He was two days into them, well outside the outermost planet, when the raiders took out the governor's residence, but she knew he was out there and got off a sublight message and fired out her SLAM drone before they killed her. The bastards caught the drone before it wormholed, but Commander Perez picked up the message—after a six-hour transmission delay—and went to maximum emergency power on his Fasset drive. He was well over drive mass redline, and it seems clear he came whooping in on them long before they expected anyone to turn up."
"In a destroyer?" Keita's was exactly the harsh, gravelly voice one might have expected. "That took guts."
"He may not've been assigned here, Sir, but Commander Perez had done his intelligence homework. He knew about the raids—and that we haven't been able to get a sensor reading on any of their units. Analysis suggests they must have at least a few capital ships, and if we knew who'd built them we might be able to figure out where the raiders originated. He also knew the governor's drone hadn't made it out, and he had three SLAM drones of his own."
"Which," Ben Belkassem murmured, "is presumably why they didn't just polish Gryphon off and get on with their business?"
"We believe so," McIlhenny agreed, upgrading his opinion of the inspector slightly.
"Continue, Colonel," Keita said.
"Actually, there's not a lot more to say about their operational patterns, Sir. Even with her Fleet strength, Admiral Gomez doesn't have the ships to cover this volume of space effectively. We've tried picketing more likely target systems with corvettes, but they don't have the firepower or speed to deal with whoever these people are, and they only carry a single SLAM drone each. We had a picket at Brigadoon, but the raiders either took her out before she got her drone off, or else nailed it before it wormholed. Either way, she wasn't able to get her report to us, and Admiral Gomez isn't happy about 'staking out more goats for the tigers,' as she puts it."
"Don't blame her." Keita shook himself like an Old Earth bear. "No commander likes throwing away his people for no return."
"Exactly. We're trying to find some pattern that'll let us put heavier forces in likely target systems, but no matter where we put them, the raiders always hit somewhere else." McIlhenny glared at the display again.
"Do they, now?" Ben Belkassem said softly. "I'd say that's a pattern right there, Colonel."
"I don't like what you're suggesting, Inspector," Keita growled, and Ben Belkassem shrugged.
"Nonetheless, Sir, four straight hits without any interception aside from one corvette—destroyed without getting out a contact message—and a destroyer with no official business in the vicinity, stretches well beyond the limits of probability. Unless we wish to assume the raiders are claivoyant."
"I resent that, Inspector." The edge in McIlhenny's quiet voice was sharp enough to suggest he'd considered the same possibility.
"I name no names, Colonel," Ben Belkassem replied mildly, "but logic suggests they must be getting inside information from someone. Which," his own voice hardened just a bit, "is why I am here."
McIlhenny started to retort sharply, then pressed his lips together and sat back in his chair, eyes narrowed. Ben Belkassem nodded.
"Precisely. His Majesty has expressed his personal concern to Minister of Justice Cortez. Justice has no desire to step on the military's toes, but if someone is passing information to these pirates, His Majesty wishes him identified and stopped. And, with all due respect, you may be a bit too deep into the trees to see the forest."
McIlhenny's face darkened, and the inspector raised a placating hand.
"Please, Colonel, I mean no disrespect. Your record is outstanding, and I'm certain you're checking your internal security closely, but if the hare is running with the hounds, so to speak, an external viewpoint may be exactly what you need. And," he smiled with genuine humor for the first time, "your people are bound to see me as an interloper. They'll resent me whatever I do or don't do, which means I can be as rude and insulting as I like without damaging your working relationships with them."
The colonel's eyes widened, and Keita gave a bark of laughter.
"He's got you there, McIlhenny! I was going to suggest I might help you out the same way, but damned if I wouldn't rather let the inspector take the heat. I may have to work with some of your people in the future."
"I . . . see." McIlhenny rubbed a fingertip on the table, then raised it and inspected it as if for dust. "Are you suggesting, Inspector, that I should simply hand my internal security responsibilities over to you?"
"Of course not—and if I did, you'd be perfectly justified in kicking me clear back to Old Earth," Ben Belkassem said cheerfully. "It's your shop. You're the proper person to run it, and your people know you'll have to be looking very closely for possible leaks. They'll expect a certain amount of that, and I couldn't simply take over without undercutting your authority. I'd say your chances of finding whoever it is are probably about as good as mine, but if I stick in my oar in the role of an officious, pig-headed, empire-building interloper—a part, may I add, I play quite well—I can do a lot of your dirty work for you. Just tell them Justice has stuck you with an ass-hole from Intelligence Branch and leave the rest to me. Who knows? Even if I don't find a thing, I may just scare our hare into the open for you."
"I see." McIlhenny examined Ben Belkassem's face intently. The inspector had placed an unerring finger on his own most private—and darkest—fear, and he was right. An outsider could play grand inquisitor without the devastating effect an internal witch hunt might produce.
"All right, Inspector, I may take you up on that. Let me run it by Admiral Gomez first, though." Ben Belkassem nodded, and the colonel frowned.
"Actually, something we hit here on Mathison's leaves me more inclined to think you have a point than I would've been," he admitted unhappily.
The inspector quirked an eyebrow, but the colonel turned to Keita.
"We owe it to your Captain DeVries and her family, Sir Arthur. May I assume you've read my initial report on the affair at the DeVries Claim?"
"You may," Keita said dryly. "Countess Miller personally starcommed it to me before her henchmen shoved me aboard Banshee and slammed the hatch."
McIlhenny blinked. He'd expected his report to make waves, but he hadn't anticipated that the Minister of War herself might get involved.
"At any rate," he shook himself back to the affair at hand, "we still haven't been able to figure out how she happened to survive, and I'm afraid she's a bit . . . well—" He broke off uncomfortably, and Keita sighed.
"I said I've read the report, Colonel. The questions you raised are the main reason I got sent along with Major Cateau's medical team, and I understand about Ali—Captain DeVries' . . . mental state." He closed his eyes briefly, as if in pain, then nodded again. "Go on, Colonel."
"Yes, Sir. We got a couple of intelligence breaks out of it. For one thing, she's been able to identify the assault shuttles—or, at least one type of shuttle—these bastards are using. It was one of the old Leopard-class boats, which is the first hard ID we've gotten, since none of the other survivors who actually saw the shuttles were military types. A Leopard tends to confirm that we're dealing with at least one capital ship, of course, but Fleet dumped so many of them on the surplus market when the Bengals came in that anyone could have snapped them up. We're running searches on the disposal records to see if anyone out this way was stupid enough to buy up a clutch of them and leave us a paper trail, but I'm not very optimistic.
"But, more importantly, she and her father and grandfather took out the entire crew of the shuttle which went after her family. We've picked up a few dead pirates before, but they never told us much. Whoever's running them sanitizes his troops pretty carefully, and we haven't had a lot to go on for IDs, aside from the obvious fact that they've all been human. In this case, however, Captain DeVries nailed the assault team commander. He didn't have much on him, either, but we ran his retinal and genetic patterns and got a direct hit."
He still wore his synth-link headset, and the star map disappeared, replaced by an unfamiliar red-haired man in a very familiar uniform.
"Lieutenant Albert Singh, gentlemen." McIlhenny's voice was light; his expression was not.
"An Imperial Fleet officer?!" Keita exploded. The colonel nodded, and Keita glared at the holo, teeth bared. Even Ben Belkassem seemed shocked.
"An Imperial Fleet officer. I don't have his complete dossier yet, but what I've seen so far looks clean—except for the fact that Lieutenant Singh has now died twice: once from a fourteen-millimeter slug through the spine, and once in a shuttle accident in the Holderman Sector."
"God!" Keita muttered. One large, hairy hand clenched into a fist and thumped the table gently. "How long ago?"
"Over two years," McIlhenny said, and glanced at Ben Belkassem. "Which, I very much fear, lends point to your suggestion that there has to be someone—possibly several someones—on the inside, Inspector. That shuttle accident happened, all right, but when I poked a bit deeper, I found something very interesting. Singh's personnel jacket says he was aboard it and killed, but the original passenger manifest for the shuttle—which was, indeed, lost with all hands—doesn't include his name. Sometime between then and now, someone with access to Fleet personnel records added him to it as far as his jacket was concerned, which gave him a nice, clean termination and erased him from our active data base."
"Very good," Ben Belkassem approved. "How did you find him, then?"
"I wish I could take the credit," McIlhenny said wryly, "but I was exhausted when I set up the data search, and I didn't define my parameters very well. In fact, I requested a search of all records, and I was more than somewhat irritated when I saw how much computer time I'd 'wasted' on it—until the search spit out his name."
"Never look serendipity in the mouth, Colonel." The inspector grinned. "I don't—and I'm afraid I don't always give it credit for my successes, either."
"But a Fleet officer," Keita muttered. "I don't like the smell of this."
"Nor do I," McIlhenny said more seriously. "It's possible he did it himself, and I've starcommed the Holderman Fleet District for full particulars on him, including anything he might have been into before his 'death.' I'm also running a Fleet-wide personnel search to see if any other bogus 'deaths' occurred in the same shuttle accident. I hope I don't find any, because if Singh didn't arrange it, someone else did, and that suggests we may be looking at deliberate recruiting from inside our own military."
"And that whoever did the recruiting may still be in place," Ben Belkassem murmured.
* * *
Alicia looked up as a shortish woman stepped through her hospital door. The newcomer moved with the springy stride of a heavy-worlder in a single gravity, and Alicia's eyes widened.
"Tannis?" she blurted, jerking upright in bed. "By God, it is you!"
"Really?" Major Tannis Cateau, Imperial Cadre Medical Branch, turned her name tag up to scrutinize it, then nodded. "So it is." She crossed to the bed. "How you doing, Sarge?"
"I'll 'Sarge' you!" Alicia grinned. Then her smile faded as she saw the shadow behind Tannis' eyes. "I expect," she said more slowly, "that you're about to tell me how I'm doing."
"That's what medics do, Sarge," Tannis replied. She crossed her arms and rocked on the balls of her feet, surveying Captain DeVries (retired) very much as Corporal Cateau had once surveyed Staff Sergeant DeVries. But there was a difference now, Alicia thought, noting the major's pips on Cateau's green uniform. Oh, yes, there was a difference.
Five years, she thought. Has it really been that long?
"Sarge—Alley," Tannis said, "you know how sorry I was to hear about your mom, Clarissa, Stevie—"
Alicia flinched. She held up one hand, half-shaking her head, and Tannis stopped. She gazed at the friend she hadn't seen in so long, and then she inhaled deeply and nodded.
"So," Alicia said after a moment, her conversational tone sounding almost natural, "how am I?"
"Not too bad, considering." Tannis accepted the change in tone and cocked her head judiciously. "Matter of fact, Okanami and his people did a good job on the repairs, from your records. I may not even open you back up to take a personal look."
"You always were a hungry-knifed little snot."
"The human eye," Tannis declaimed, "is still the best diagnostic tool. You've got several million credits' worth of the Emperor's molycircs tucked away in there—only makes sense to be sure they're all connected more or less to the right places, don't you think?"
"Yeah, sure," Alicia said as lightly as she could. "And mentally?"
"That," Tannis acknowledged, "is a bit more ticklish. What's this I hear about you talking to ghosts, Sarge?"
Leave it to Tannis to dive straight in. Alicia rubbed the upper tractor collar on her thigh. They should be taking that off soon, she thought inconsequentially, and lowered her eyes to it as she considered her answer.
<Deny it,> Tisiphone suggested.
<Won't work. She'll have heard the recordings by now, and I'm sure Okanami's staff psychologist has already briefed her. It would've been nice if you'd let me know I didn't have to talk out loud before I opened my mouth.>
<I had not considered the need. When last I had dealings with humans, there were no such things as recorders. Besides, people who spoke to themselves were thought to be touched by the gods.>
<Yeah? Well, times have changed.>
<Indeed? Then who are you talking to?>
"Well," Alicia said finally, looking back up at Tannis, "I guess maybe I was a bit shaky when I woke up. Blame me?"
"You didn't sound shaky, Sarge. In fact, you sounded a hell of a lot calmer than you should've. I know you. You're a cold-blooded bitch in combat, but you come apart after the fire fight."
Yeah, Alicia reflected, you do know me, don't you, Tannis?
"So you think I've gone buggy?" she said aloud.
" 'Buggy,' " Tannis observed, "is hardly a proper technical diagnosis suited to the mystique of my profession, and you know I'm a mechanic, not a psychobabbler. On the other hand, I'd have to say it sounds . . . unusual."
Alicia shrugged. "What can I tell you? All I can say is that I feel rational—but I suppose I would, if I've really lost it."
"Um." Tannis uncrossed her arms and clasped her hands behind her. "That doesn't necessarily follow—I think it's one of those self-assuring theories cooked up by people worried about their own stability—but I'd be inclined to write it off as post-combat shock with anyone else. And if we didn't have you on chip still doing it in your sleep."
<Damn! Am I doing that?>
<At times.>
<So why didn't you stop me?>
<I was built by the gods, Little One; I am neither a goddess myself nor omniscient. All I can do is quiet you after you start to speak.>
<Damn.> "Have I had a lot to say?"
"Not a lot. In fact, you tend to shut back up right in mid-word. Frankly, I'd prefer for you to run down instead of breaking off that way."
"Oh, come on, Tannis! Lots of people talk in their sleep."
"Not," Tannis said at her driest, "to figures out of Greek mythology, they don't. I didn't even know you'd studied the subject."
"I haven't. It's just—Oh, hell, forget it." Tannis raised an eyebrow, and Alicia snorted. "And get that all-knowing gleam out of your eye. You know how people pick up bits and pieces of null-value data."
"True." Tannis hooked a chair closer to the bed and sat. "The problem, Sarge, is that most people who talk in their sleep haven't dropped right off Fleet scanners for a week—and they don't have weird EEGs, either."
"Weird EEG?" It was time for Alicia's eyebrows to rise, and her surprise was not at all feigned.
"Yep. 'Weird' is Captain Okanami's term, but I'm afraid it fits. He and his team didn't know what they had on their table till they twanged your escape package, but they had a good, clear EEG on you throughout. Spiked just like it's supposed to when you flattened that poor Commander Thompson—" Tannis paused. "They tell you about that?"
"I asked, actually. I knew they'd hit something, and most of the docs were too busy staying out of reach to get anything done. I've even apologized to him."
"I'm sure he appreciated it." Tannis' eyes gleamed. "Nice clean hit, Sarge, just a tad low." She grinned, then shrugged. "Anyway, there was the spike and all those other squiggles I recognize as lovable old you. But there was another whole pattern—almost like an overlay—wrapped around them."
"Ah?"
"Ah. Almost looked like there were two of you. Mighty peculiar stuff, Sarge. You taking in boarders?"
"Not funny, Tannis," Alicia said, looking away, and Tannis inhaled.
"You're right. Sorry. But it was odd, Alley, and when you tie it in with all the other odd questions you've presented us with, it's enough to make the brass nervous. Especially when you start talking as if there were someone else living in your head." Tannis shook her head, eyes unwontedly worried. "They don't want a schizoid drop commando running around, Sarge."
"Not running around loose, you mean."
"I suppose I do, but you can't really blame them, can you?" She held Alicia's gaze levelly, and it was Alicia's turn to sigh.
"Guess not. Is that the real reason they've kept me isolated?"
"In part. Of course, you really do need continued treatment. The incisions are all done, but they had to put a hunk of laminate into your femur, and about four centimeters of what they managed to save looked like a jigsaw puzzle with missing pieces. You know how quick-heal slows up on bone repair, and you ripped the hell out of your muscle tissue, too."
"I realize that. And I also know I could've been ambulatory in this thing—" she tapped the upper tractor collar "—weeks ago. Okanami's 'have to wait and see; we're not used to drop commandos' line is getting a bit worn. If he weren't such a sweet old bastard, I'd have started raising hell then."
"Is that why you've been so tractable? I was afraid you must really be messed up."
"Yeah." Alicia ran her hands through her amber hair. "Okay, Tannis, let's get right down to it. Am I considered a dangerous lunatic?"
"I wouldn't go so far as to say 'dangerous,' Sarge, but there are . . . concerns. I'm taking over from Captain Okanami as of sixteen hundred today, and we'll be running the whole battery of standard diagnostics, probably with a bit of psych monitoring cranked in. I'll be able to tell you more then."
Alicia smiled a crooked smile. "You're not fooling me, you know."
"Fooling?" Tannis widened her eyes innocently.
"Whatever your tests show, they're going to figure I'm over the edge. Post-combat trauma and all that. Poor girl's probably been suppressing her grief, too, hasn't she? Hell, Tannis, it's a lot harder to prove someone's not loopy, and we both know it."
"Well, yes," Tannis agreed after a moment. "You always liked it straight, so I'll level with you. Uncle Arthur came out with me, and he's going to want to debrief you in person, but then you and I are Soissons-bound. Sector General's got lots more equipment, so that's where the real tests come in. On the other hand, I have Uncle Arthur's personal guarantee that I'll be your physician of record, and you know I won't let them crap on you."
"And if I don't want to go?"
"Sorry, Sarge. You've been reactivated."
"Oh, those bastards!" Alicia murmured, but there was a trace of amused respect in her voice.
"They can be lovable, can't they?"
"How long do you expect your tests to take after we hit Soissons?"
"As long as they take. You want a guess?" Alicia nodded, and Tannis shrugged. "Don't make any plans for a month or two, minimum."
"That long?" Alicia couldn't quite hide her dismay.
"Maybe longer. Look, Sarge, they want more than just a psych evaluation. They want answers, and you already told Okanami you don't know what happened or why you're alive. Okay, that means they're going to have to dig for them. I'm sorry, but that's the way it is."
"And while they're looking, the scent's going to freeze solid."
"Scent?" Tannis sat up straighter. "You in vigilante mode, Sarge?"
"Why not?" Alicia met her eyes. "Who's got a better right?"
She held her friend's eyes levelly, her own suddenly cold and hard. After moment, Tannis looked away.
"No one, I guess. But that's going to be a factor in their thinking, too, you know. They won't want you running around to do something outstandingly stupid."
"I know." Alicia made herself step back and smile. "Well, if I'm stuck, I'm stuck. And if I am, I'm glad I've got at least one friend in the enemy camp."
"That's the spirit." Tannis rose with a grin of her own. "I've got an appointment with Uncle Arthur in ten minutes—gotta go give him my own evaluation of your condition—but I'll check back when it's over. I may even have more news on your upcoming, um, itinerary."
"Thanks, Tannis." Alicia leaned back against her pillows and smiled after her friend, but the smile faded as the door closed. She sighed and looked pensively down at her hands.
<This will not do, Little One,> Tisiphone said sternly. <We cannot allow these friends of yours to stand in our way.>
<I know. I know! Tannis will do her best for me, but she's a stone wall where her medical responsibilities are concerned.>
<Will she conclude you are truly mad, then?>
<Of course she will. That 'psychobabbler' was a load of manure, and let's face it—by her standards, I am buggy. And one thing the Cadre doesn't do is let out-of-control drop commandos run around loose. Terrible PR if they accidentally slaughter a few dozen innocent bystanders in a food-o-mat.>
<So.> Mental silence hovered for a moment, broken by a soundless sigh. <Well, Little One, in this instance I have little to offer. Once I might have spirited you out of anyone's power, but those days are gone, and friends are always harder to escape than enemies.>
<Don't I know it.> Alicia wrapped herself in consideration for a long moment, thinking too quickly for Tisiphone to follow, then smiled. <Okay. If they won't let me go, we'll just have to bust out. But not yet.> She rubbed the tractor collar again. <Not till we get to Soissons, I think. Nowhere to hide if we tried it here, anyway. Unless you'd care to take me back to that place where 'time has no business' of yours?>
<I could, of course. But we could not stay there forever, and when I released you, you would return to the exact spot you had left.>
<To be grabbed by whoever sees us. Hell, what if they knock down the hospital and clear out entirely? Freezing my keister in the snow in a hospital gown isn't my idea of a Good Thing.>
<It would seem to have drawbacks,> Tisiphone agreed.
<Indeedy deed. All right, it'll have to be Soissons. And if they think I'm crazy anyway, we might as well use that.>
<Indeed? How?>
<I think I'm going to become extremely buggy—in a harmless sort of way. Something I learned about the brass a long time ago, Tisiphone: give them something they think they understand, and they're happy. And happy brass tend to stay out of your way while you get on with business.>
<Ahhhhhhh, I see. You will deceive them into lowering their guard.>
<Exactly. I'm afraid I'll be talking to you—and the recorders—a lot. In the meantime, I think you and I had better figure out exactly what capabilities you still have to help out when the moment comes, don't you?>
<I do, indeed.>
There was a positively gleeful note to the mental whisper, and Alicia DeVries grinned. Then she lowered her bed into a comfortable sleeping posture and smiled dreamily up at the ceiling.
"Well, Tisiphone," she said aloud, "it doesn't sound like they're going to be too reasonable. The Cadre can be that way, sometimes. In fact, this reminds me of the time Flannan O'Clery's pharmacope got buggered on Bannerman and pumped him full of endorphins. He got this glorious natural high, you see, and there was this jammed traffic control signal downtown. Now, Flannan was always a helpful soul, and he had his plasgun with him, so—"
She tucked her hands behind her head and babbled cheerfully on to Tisiphone's invisible presence . . . and the recorders.