Ammonite (22 page)

Something moved.

She looked up, blinked, tried to focus. There, behind a tree. Sweet gods. It must be seven feet tall. Goth? Cyarnac? Had she come all this way just to get eaten by something like a huge teddy bear?
I know a teddy bear, silver eyes and lots of hair,
zipping ripping on the plain, kitting until we’re all slain
… Maybe she was imagining it. Yes, she had imagined it. No such thing as giant teddy bears. She crawled on.

A woman stepped out from nowhere.

Marghe blinked again, waited for the mirage to disappear. When it did not, Marghe reached slowly, painfully for her knife. The woman’s taar skin boots and cap, the sling and palo on her belt, were all too familiar, even if the carved disk of bone at her belt was strange and her face was one Marghe had never seen before.

She would kill, the woman or herself, before being taken hostage again.

The woman stepped closer, but not within knife range.

“I am Leifin. Daughter of Jess and Bejuoen and Rolyn. Soestre to Kristen.”

“Where are you from?” Marghe’s voice was a whispery croak.

Leifin leaned forward, trying to catch what she said. “I am Leifin. There is no need for your knife.” She took another step forward. “How are you named, stranger? Who are you?”

Marghe thought about that. Who was she? She was not sure. “Where are you from?” she croaked again. The knife point glittered before her eyes.

“Where am I from?” Leifin gestured behind her. “Ollfoss. Three days’ walk away or more.”

The knife point wavered. Ollfoss. Ollfoss. Marghe fell on her face in the snow.

«
^
»

THE GYM’S NEON strips were too bright after the cool grays of Jeep’s winter light. Danner stripped out of her fatigues and into fencing whites. Time now, she thought, to lay aside the question of what trap to set for the spy in their midst, Kahn was already warming up, whipping her foil back and forth, shadow-lunging. Danner pulled a foil free of its holding field on the wall, tested it. She had been mulling over the spy problem for weeks now, getting nowhere. She clipped on her face guard.

Later.

Kahn waited, her
en garde
perfect but for a slight overextension. Danner studied her. That overextension had to be bait—but if she did not take it, she would never learn the lesson that Kahn obviously intended. She could take the blade in a bind,
quarte
to
sixte;
that should at least make her seem not wholly naive.

Neon swam down her blade, twitched as Kahn effortlessly cut over and landed the buttoned tip against Danner’s throat guard.

“The derobement,” Kahn said. “I’d like you to try it with a disengage, then lunge.”

This time it was Danner who assumed the slightly overextended
en garde
.

“You’re bending your wrist again.” Danner straightened it. “Better. Don’t lean forward so much.”

The world focused down to the two blades, her own steady, waiting, Kahn’s moving closer, reflecting light like the scales of a predatory pike. Danner moved.

Point under, feint, lunge. Kahn parried, beat aside Banner’s foil, bent her own blade against Danner’s chest.

They parted.

“Again.”

Kahn’s mesh mask glittered like the compound eye of an insect. Metal mask, metal foil. Metal.

Danner assumed the
en garde
mechanically, thoughts elsewhere.

Metal. If Company abandoned them, these foils would be useful, not as weapons but as trade. She extended her arm. The blades were steel, on these foils at least.

Some of the others were composites, some energy blades, some smart blades. Kahn was a traditionalist: learn the basics first, she had said, you can always adapt a sound technique. So they used steel-bladed foils with aluminum bell guards and brass pommels. Three different metals.

Kahn laid her foil alongside Danner’s. Danner started the automatic derobement.

All different kinds of metal: different trade values. And there were other metals available, like the chain-link of the fence.

Kahn beat aside her blade, thrust hard. “You’re not paying attention.” She feinted and thrust again, forcing Danner to parry and retreat. Then she came in with a corkscrewing motion. Double bind. Danner disengaged, managed to parry Kahn’s thrust to the low line, riposted. She was panting.

“Better.” Kahn drove her back.

The fence. It was important, but she could not concentrate with Kahn’s blade flashing. The fence. Metal. If they took it down, melted it…

Kahn’s button punched into Danner’s solar plexus. Kahn tapped her foot. “You need to—”

Danner held up her left hand, trying to get her breath. “Wait.” Kahn stepped back, head tilted to one side.

Danner transferred the foil to her left hand and used her right to pull off her mask.

“The fence,” she said. “That’s how we’ll do it. It’s perfect. And it’s metal.”

“So when we take down the perimeter fence,” Danner explained to Sara Hiam, who peered out from the tiny screen in Danner’s mod, “our spy, whoever she is, should find that worrying enough to call the
Kurst
. We’ll be listening—Sigrid up there, Letitia down here—we’ll catch her. Or them. And… well, it would just make me feel better if we took down that perimeter. There’s no history of violence from these natives; it simply serves to make us feel like we’re trapped inside, while they have the run of the entire planet. Makes good sense from a psychological point of view.”

“You don’t need to sell it so hard.”

Danner leaned forward. “But you know what the real beauty of it is? The fence is metal. Tons and tons of metal we can use as trade goods. If we get stranded here. I thought about it while I was fencing with Kahn. All the metal in those foils. We could melt it down—”

“I’m surprised you didn’t think of sharpening up the foils and using them as weapons.”

Danner did not know how seriously Hiam meant that. “The metal would be more useful as trade goods, I think,” she said carefully. “And we have plenty of other material available for weaponry. Projectiles are our best bet in a world like this: bows, slings, spears. All of which can be made without metals. And we have ceramics people who can figure out how to work this olla, for blades, if we need them. What metal we do use will go on things like plows, adzes, scissors, needles, chisels… tools.” Sara was looking at her with a curious expression, almost fondly, and suddenly Danner felt embarrassed. All her ideas suddenly sounded like the fantasies of a young girl who had once dreamed of riding a horse over the plains, yelling, waving her bow and arrows, and challenging the wind.

“You’ve done a lot of thinking.”

“Yes.”

“Good. So have I. Danner, you need to find a way to get the three of us off this platform without the
Kurst
finding out. Just in case. I have one or two ideas, but there are problems.”

It was night, and Vincio was off duty, when the call from Sara aboard
Estrade
came through to Danner’s office.

“Hannah, we have the signal.” The doctor looked over her shoulder, said something. Danner’s screen split: Hiam on one side, Sigrid on the other. Sigrid was a pale woman, with washed-out eyes.

“It’s the same frequency, Commander.”

“Hold on.” Danner used her wristcom. “Dogias. It’s coming through. Same frequency. Keep this channel open.” She spoke to Sigrid. “Any direction yet?”

“No. But a preliminary scan shows it at the north end, maybe northwest end of Port.”

Danner spoke into her wristcom. “Dogias, Sigrid says north, northwest.”

“I hear and obey.”

Danner sighed.

“Problems?” Sara asked from the screen.

“No. Just Dogias being herself.” She shook her head. “Hold a moment.” She punched up Lu Wai’s call. “Sergeant, we have the signal.”

“Yes, ma’am. I heard. I’m here with Letitia. I’m on it.”

“Initial direction is north, or northwest. Take Kahn.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And keep this channel open.”

“Yes, ma—”

Dogias interrupted. “I think the signal originates about three hundred meters in from the perimeter.”

Danner pulled up a map of Port Central. “There are a lot of buildings there.”

“Not all on the net.”

Danner looked at the screen. “Sigrid, can you tell us whether it’s a net signal or personal relay?”

Sigrid smiled faintly as she worked. “Not net,” she said eventually.

“Damn,” Dogias said. “Could be anywhere, then.”

Danner knew better than to tell her to keep looking. Dogias knew her job.

“Lu Wai here. Suggest Officer Kahn and I run standard enter-and-search pattern.”

“Negative. Repeat, negative. Leave it to Letitia and Sigrid to pinpoint. Where are you now?”

“About five hundred meters from the perimeter. Between guard posts six and seven.”

“Any activity?”

“Plenty. We’re right by Rec.”

“Status?”

“Conspicuous. Both in full armor.”

That was not good. She wanted this action to be inconspicuous. Two armored Mirrors were unusual enough to excite comment from the women going to and from the bars and screen theaters of Rec. “Keep Kahn armored up but out of sight. You strip to usual guard attire. I want this kept quie—”

Sigrid interrupted. “I have a bearing. Using you as zero, signal emanating from north 336, west 42. Give or take five meters.”

Danner split her screen again, added the coordinates to her schematic of the complex. Three small buildings directly behind Rec. “Dogias, we have a possible in the Rec area storage and office row. Can you confirm?”

“A moment.” Dogias hummed to herself. “Well, well, well,” she said, sounding pleased. “I can tell you exactly where she is. Tell Lu Wai she’ll find the spy hiding behind the beans.”

Danner bit back her irritation. “Sergeant, Dogias—”

“Understood, ma’am. I overheard. Suspect in dry goods storage. We’ll apprehend.”

“Negative. Take containment positions, and hold.” She hesitated, then reached for her helmet. “Sara, Sigrid,” she said, as she checked her equipment, “I’m going out there. Keep monitoring. All communications from now on come via my command channel.” She clipped down her helmet, pulled on gauntlets, and tongued on the in-suit comm system. “Dogias. Keep monitoring. All comm through command.”

“Thought you sounded like you’re talking from the inside of a garbage can. Will do. She’s still talking, by the way. Want to hear what she’s saying?”

“It’s not coded?”

“Well yes, but I’ve had a couple of minutes. She’s used a fairly simple variation on—”

“Negative on that suggestion.” Talking would only distract her. “Record only.

Unless in your judgment the communication suggests immediate danger to any of my personnel.” She thought of Sara. “Or those aboard
Estrade
.”

It was snowing. Her suit warmed rapidly, and the starvision visor turned the world smoky gray, ethereal, with the snow drifting down in black flakes. The grass was frozen, but she could not hear the crunch of her footsteps: all sound, all vision, all sensation was filtered by her suit. She was isolated from the world, just as though this were one of her first virtual-reality training missions as a cadet.

She walked through the night, her mouth dry with the familiar taste of adrenaline.

Once she saw a small mammal scuttle through the grass, a lighter gray against the grainy background.

Kahn was standing perfectly still by the north wall of Rec. Without Danner’s starvision, she would have been invisible.

“Kahn, I see you.” Kahn slowly scanned the area, then raised a hand in acknowledgment. “Stay put. From now on, if you see anyone pass by here, detain her.”

“Acknowledged.”

Lu Wai was crouched underneath one of four lit windows.

“I’m fifty meters behind you,” Danner said quietly, walking. “Is she in there?”

“Yes.”

“Exits?”

“Just one, east of the building. And the windows. We need Kahn up here.”

Danner squatted next to Lu Wai and slid up her visor. “Agreed.”

On the command channel, tinny now because of the outside air, she heard Lu Wai ordering Kahn to join them beside the window. The sergeant turned to her. “Suggest Kahn and I take the entrance, bring the spy into custody.”

Danner nodded. “I’ll send Kahn along when you’re in position. Wait for my signal before you proceed. And do it quietly.”

Lu Wai nodded, and slipped into the dark. With her visor up, it seemed to Danner that the sergeant disappeared. Good. The whole thing should be contained. She risked a look over the windowsill. The light was dim; she saw vague shapes—sacks, she supposed—and what had to be the spy, holding a comm to her mouth. Talking.

She could not see who it was.

She tongued for a channel change. “Sara. She’s still talking. Is the
Kurst
talking back?”

“Sigrid says there’s definitely two-way communication. She also says, and you should find this interesting, that the
Kurst
transmission comes directly from their bridge.”

Danner nodded to herself. It was the confirmation she needed: whoever was in there was talking to and spying for Company hierarchy, with everyone’s full knowledge and consent, except the command on Jeep. It was a relief; now she would no longer wake up in the night, wondering if she was being paranoid. Danner was surprised at the sudden bitterness she felt at the confirmation. After all, she had expected this.

Kahn arrived. Danner sent her to join Lu Wai.

The spy had not moved. What did the woman have to talk about for so long?

Danner began to wish she had had Dogias patch it through. Was the spy talking about her?

“Dogias, do you recognize the voice?”

“Nope. No one I know. But judging by the way she’s talking to the first officer up there, she’s a Mirror, and not a lowly foot soldier either. Lieutenant, maybe.”

Danner only had six lieutenants. She knew all of them, had promoted all of them personally. The betrayal bit deep. She wanted to know who it was,
now
, but she restrained herself. They had to let the woman finish her message; the longer the
Kurst
was kept in the dark about Danner’s discovery of their duplicity, the more Danner could learn, the more time she would have before… whatever was going to happen happened.