Rules of Conflict (24 page)

“The origin of the decision isn’t your concern, Captain.” Burkett
didn’t bother to look at her, or even turn her way.

“Captain Kilian raised some valid points, sir.” Derringer sat with
the tense nerviness of a man who wanted with all his heart to punch out the
canopy and go out over the shooters but had been ordered to go down with the
demi instead. “Major Hanratty’s been pushing for months to allow dexxies into
the negotiations.”

“Hanratty’s a
xenolinguist
, Colonel.” Burkett’s sarcastic
tone bit almost as much as the pain in Jani’s arm. “Are you suggesting we let
someone who watches sceneshots of conversations for a living decide
Commonwealth defense policy?”

“Can’t do any worse than you’re doing now.” Jani’s right arm
throbbed now—she tried massaging it and barely suppressed a cry. “Hantìa and
her skein-sharers are attempting to treat Colonel Hals and her skein-sharers as
equals. She assumes Colonel Hals is playing coy, and she wants to shake her up
by challenging us all. She doesn’t expect you to drop the colonel like a hot
rock; she expects you to stand behind her. If you show her that isn’t the case,
you’ve only reinforced the Vynshàrau opinion that humanish are disordered and
unseemly, and you’ve done it by insulting a documents examiner, which just
triples the injury. Is battling for a strip of airspace so important that
you’re willing to risk an irreparable fracture between the Commonwealth and the
Shèrá worldskein?”

“You’re suggesting we allow an alien race with whom relations are
tenuous at best the unfettered ability to scan any flyover that cuts through
that slice of sky?” Burkett’s voice twinned Evan’s—level, deep, and sharp.
Reason enough to dislike him. “It’s—”

“A primary corridor into and out of O’Hare, yes, I know.” Jani
struggled to keep from yelling, to keep from responding to Burkett’s voice.
“Are you naïve enough to believe they aren’t already doing just that?”

Derringer shot her a “please shut up” glare. “Publicly admitting
the fact could set a nasty precedent.”

“With whom? The colonies? Are we so independent that you need to
worry about negotiating treaties with us?” She tried to work her fingers, and
her thumb cramped.
Augie, cut me some slack.
“You want some advice from
someone who’s negotiated with the idomeni for years? Give them the Strip. Show
them that you acknowledge that Exterior Minister Ulanova’s actions were
insulting and that you want to repair the damage.” Their skimmer floated down a
wooded lane—the trees met over the top to form a leafed canopy.
I’m sure
this is lovely.
She wished she could appreciate it.

Burkett glowered across the compartment at Derringer, who tried to
sink into his seat. They’d reached the first low-rise complexes that marked the
northern outskirts of Chicago. The driver exited the thoroughfare and ramped
onto the Boul artery. It wouldn’t be long now.

Hals tapped her window softly with one knuckle. “Maybe we can talk
to the ambassador about Hantìa, and he can order her to back down. The
consensus, as I understand it, is that if we can convince him of something,
he’ll drive the point home to the Oligarch.”

“No, ma’am—we definitely do not want to do that.” Jani tried to
filter the impatience out of her voice. Trying to find the words to explain the
obvious aggravated her anyway, and her aching arm didn’t help. “You have been
challenged, and you must meet that challenge openly.”

“But the ambassador understands us.”

“Nema
is
different than the rest of his sect-sharers,
ma’am, yes. He likes us. He finds us fascinating.”
He has plans for us, too,
but if Gene Therapeutics has its way, that won’t be my problem anymore.
“He
understands our concerns to some extent, but only on an abstract level. Just
because he looks you in the face when he talks to you doesn’t make him an
honorary humanish. He’s not your addled Uncle Arthur, he’s the chief priest of
his sect. I’ve watched him accept and offer
àlérine
. I’ve watched him
fight and I’ve seen him bleed.”

“I’ve seen the scars on his forearms. They look like he’s wearing
lace sleeves under his robe.” Derringer winced. “But
àlérine
are only
ceremonial fights. Acknowledgments of your enemies. They’re not real battles—no
one dies.”

“Not usually.” Jani rested her head against the seat back. The
pain had stabilized to a steady pulsation. “Nema fought many of those battles
for the right to come here as ambassador. His religious skein-sharers followed
him here because he’s their dominant and his way is their way. Same for the
diplomatic seculars who owe primary allegiance to Morden nì Rau Cèel, the
Oligarch. They came here because it was their leader’s wish. But we’re the
disordered humanish who do not know our food, and they believe that in living
with us, they’ve sacrificed their souls. Your refusal to concede them the strip
tells them you do not consider that sacrifice important. Give them the Strip.
They will give it back. That’s not what they want—what they want is an
acknowledgment of what they’ve lost.” Even though she answered Derringer, she
looked at Burkett. “You’re thinking like a humanish soldier, and in doing so,
you’re making a mistake.”

Their skimmer ramped off the Boul and down a two-lane access road
lined by thick hybrid shrubbery that served the dual purpose of absorbing sound
and obscuring idomeni property from prying humanish eyes. As they wended down
the road, they passed the first of the manned checkpoints. A tall, ropy
Vynshàrau stood in the guardhouse, a long-range shooter hanging by a
cross-strap across her back.

“Is that the sort of being you want to allow access to our nav
paths, Captain?” Burkett snorted softly. “It’s obvious you aren’t much of a
soldier.”

Jani looked him in the eye. He lifted one brow in surprise—he must
have thought he’d insulted her. “No, sir, I am not. I will be the first to
admit it and the last to deny it.”

“You have no business participating in this matter.”

“They just need to see me, sir.”
After that, I can go back to
being your private shame.

After the gate guards checked the skimmer through, it
pulled inside the embassy courtyard, an austere, sunstone-tiled space lined
with shoulder-high silverleaf shrubs. The small triangles of sunstone, colored
in shades of creamy gold, had been laid in whorled patterns. The courtyard
surface looked as though huge fingers had pressed down from above, leaving
their prints behind.

As junior officer in the happy convoy, Jani disembarked first. Her
arm still ached, and her stomach had joined the chorus, yet she took the
opportunity to stroll around. The late-afternoon sun warmed her; the glare of
its reflection off the light-colored stone hurt her eyes.

This brings back memories.
The bare façade of the embassy
was featureless but for a set of banded bronze doors. The poured scancrete
fence that barred their view of the sweeping grounds and the city beyond was
three meters high and topped with crosshatches of ornamental blades.

At least, they’re supposed to be ornamental.
Jani wouldn’t
have wanted to be the one to determine whether the edges had actually been
dulled. Idomeni steel cut deep, and the hair-thin wireweave that ran down both
sides of the edge ripped flesh and left nasty scars.

A few minutes later, the people-movers bearing the rest of Foreign
Transactions and Diplo lumbered into the courtyard. Disembarkation began
immediately, but it still took time. Jani had plenty of opportunity to bask in
Major Vespucci’s scowling regard as he watched her through the FT mover’s rear
window.

As soon as the vehicles had emptied, the embassy doors swung open
and a brown-robed Vynshàrau diplomatic suborn beckoned to them. The Service
personnel lined up single file, lowest-ranking first, with the civilian techs
inserting themselves at predetermined points according to their number of years
in the department. Jani looked at Hals, who stood off to one side. The woman
walked over to her, her face grooved with tension.

“Burkett told me I’m to remain out here.” Her eyes glistened with
barely contained tears. “Sit in the FT mover and wait for you.” She blinked
rapidly, then turned away.

“And your response is what, ma’am?” Jani edged away from the
gathering of closed mouths and open ears. “I will back you to the wall, for
what it’s worth.”

Hals looked across the courtyard, where Burkett stood in huddled
conversation with Derringer and another mainline officer. They’d changed their
trousers in the interim, switching out their crimson stripes for slashes of
dark green. Nema would be the only being in the embassy allowed to wear red in
his clothing. The idomeni considered it a holy color.

“He’ll change his pants for them, but not his mind.” Hals shook
her head. “If I buck him on this, he’ll level me.”

Jani dragged her toe along a whorl of stone. “One Service dictum I
remember—and I don’t remember many—states that if you value your career more
than you value your job, you’re the wrong person for both. Now if you stay out
here like a good little sideliner, you’ll still have a career. You may pass
some of it in a shelter waiting for the idomeni shatterboxes to stop falling,
but you’ll still have your scanpack if the pink doesn’t eat it and you’ll have
a pension if we’ve reestablished a viable monetary system by the time you
retire. Assuming you’re still alive.”

A flare of temper erased some of the strain from Hals’s face.
“Kilian, has anybody ever told you you’re a judgmental pain in the ass?”

“Good, ma’am, I hope that made you feel better.” Jani reclaimed
her place in line, one step ahead of the stone-faced Vespucci. “Doesn’t do a
damned thing to answer the essential question, but one should take every
opportunity to vent one’s frustrations, I’ve always believed.”

Hals adjusted the set of her garrison cap. “You honestly feel my
not participating in these negotiations could alter the tone of idomeni-human
relations for the worse?”

“Yes, I do.”

“I will have to deal with the consequences of this much longer
than you will.”

“It will affect your
career
, yes. It may even end it. But I
can give you the names of four people who would be more than happy to take on a
dexxie who knows how to do her job.”

Hals hesitated. “Senna, Tsai—”

“Aryton and Nawar. Yes, ma’am.”

A small grin brightened Hals’s features. “Not you?”

Jani shook her head. “You don’t want to work for me—I’m a
judgmental pain in the ass.”

The grin flashed. Then Hals reset her cap once again and slipped
into line behind a stricken Vespucci.

“She could be court-martialed for this,” he rasped in Jani’s ear.

“Thanks for the support, Major,” Jani tossed over her shoulder as
the line started to move.

The first thing that struck her was the heat, followed by the
stark, ascetic look of the unadorned hallways and rugless, tiled floors. The
Vynshàrau favored the colors of the desert in their interior decoration—cream,
white, and tan predominated. But in deference to their allied sects, they
allowed some splashes of variety, such as the leaf green and sky-blue curlicues
inset in all the lake-facing windows.
Pathen,
Jani recalled. The
silver-and-copper wireweave chandeliers, however, that resembled the blades
lining the top of the fence, were of Sìah design, since the Sìah were renowned
for their metalwork.

So stark, yet so beautiful. Jani struggled to remain in formation
as exhilaration washed over her. She felt drunk. Ecstatic. She wanted to skip
down the hallway and pound on all the doors.
That would go over big.

“
Colonel!
”

Jani heard Hals groan. She turned in time to see Burkett storm up
the hall.

“You will return to Sheridan immediately.” He drew alongside Hals
and beckoned for her to accompany him.

Jani sidestepped out of line to stand beside Burkett. “You’re
making a mistake, sir.”

He turned on her, his voice deadening. “You are expected to defer
to the trained diplomats on this team, Captain. After you make your token
appearance, you’re out of here right behind her.”

Jani nodded. “Yes, sir. I’ll go,” she said in a voice loud enough
to echo down the cavernous hall. She pointed to Hals. “She. Stays.”

The faint buzz of humanish and Vynshàrau voices reached them as
Cabinet and Council officials filled the open doorways. Burkett’s sweat-slicked
face showed his extreme displeasure at putting on a show. “This discussion is
finished, Captain. You have your orders.” He gestured to one of his staffers,
who had drifted uneasily into the hallway. The woman immediately beckoned to a
larger, less timorous-looking Service Security officer, who started toward them.

“Glories of the day to you, my dear-rest friends!”

The familiar singsong stopped the Security officer in his tracks.
Hals gasped. Burkett closed his eyes. The other members of FT and Diplo buzzed
and whispered.