Rules of Conflict (31 page)

“You probably know what’s going on here.” Memories of ChanNet’s
scandalmongering reputation dampened her enthusiasm. “It’s not all true, what
they’re saying. I hope I can explain it all to you soon.” She struggled to think
of a neutral topic, something as far removed from Knevçet Shèràa and Evan van
Reuter as possible.

“
Vive Le Rouge!
” Well, the supposed nonpolitical status of
the Commonwealth Cup was a joke, but she had to say something. “They drew a
first-round bye. I wish they didn’t have to depend so much on Desjarlais,
though. One-man teams don’t win the Cup. I wish Gilles would get off the
disabled list. If they knew his leg wouldn’t heal in time for the prelims, they
should have signed Stewart. He was worth the money. Good halfbacks are always
worth the money.” OK, that did it for sports. What was next . . . ?

“It’s very hot here.” She saw half her paychit disappearing under
a sea of banality, and berated herself for not planning the call better. “I
don’t mind it, though.” She watched the timer blink, studied the controls
rimming the display. She had trouble looking at the display directly. Too much
like looking someone in the eye.

“There’s a tag line that runs along the bottom of the message—you
need to use same systems to reply. So you can’t go to Vickard’s—he used
out-of-date equipment when I still lived home, and I doubt he’s changed. Go to
Samselle, or Fredericka.” It struck her that it had been over twenty years
since she’d walked down a Ville Acadie street. “If they’re still in business,
that is.

“I couldn’t—” Her throat ached, thinning her voice until it
sounded like the clerk’s. “I couldn’t contact you before now. I wanted to. I
even tried a few times, but—” She looked into the grey depth of the display.
“I’ll explain, someday soon.” She dropped her gaze. “If you want to listen.

“Say hello to Mirelle. And Yves. And tell Labat that if he’s
making book on my sentence, whatever he guessed, he guessed high.” She doubted
that line would get past the censors, but no harm in trying, especially if the
thought of a light sentence might give her parents some peace of mind.

The timer light pulsed faster. An alarm chirped. “I have to go.”
She forced a smile. “I’m going to watch a friend’s match tomorrow. Everyone
plays soccer when the Cup rounds are on. But I understand he’s quite good. He
told me so himself, so it must be true.” She watched the timer count down,
concentrating on the colors as she struggled to keep her voice steady.

Yellow.
There’s this man, Maman.

Orange.
I thought he died because of my mistakes, but now I
think he’s alive, and I don’t know what to do.

“I love you.” She waved weakly. “
Au revoir.
” She watched
the timer flutter red and wink out.

She sat in the dark and tried to collect her thoughts. Her heart skipped
as a pounding knock fractured the silence.

Lucien dogged her elbow as soon as she stepped into the hall. “He
told me so himself, so it must be true. I agree with your remark about
halfbacks, though—small thanks for little favors. Who the hell is Yves?”

“What did you do, flash your Intelligence ID at the control room
door and muscle in?”

“Better me than standard censors.” He leaned close. “I let through
the line about the short sentence. Feel free to thank me again.” He eyed her
expectantly. “Yves?”

Jani brushed past the Communication annex’s single lift and pushed
open the door to the stairwell. “I went to school with him. Just a friend.”

“He must have been some friend if you’re saying hello after twenty
years.” Lucien’s voice bounced off the painted walls, drowning out the clatter
of their hard soles on the stairs.

“Mirelle’s an old school friend, too.”

“Hmm.” Mirelle didn’t interest him.

“Labat runs the local off-track.” Jani led the way through the
building’s clunky double doors. “When I joined the Service, he laid four to one
I wouldn’t make it through OCS.”

“Did he ever give you a reason why?”

“He said I never met an argument I didn’t like.” Jani ignored
Lucien’s not-so-muffled guffaw.

Noise and officers packed the South Central from wall to wall.
Casuals and summerweights stood three deep at the bar—Lucien executed cuts and
weaves that offered an enlightening preview of the next day’s match. Jani,
meanwhile, staked out the sole empty table, a wobbly two-seater with a
commanding view of the men’s room door.

“Place is a madhouse.” Lucien set down the drinks, followed by a
basket of popcorn. “You should have told your parents hello from me. Let them
think
you’re having fun.”

Jani stared glumly at her fruit soda, interspersed with a few
envious peeks at Lucien’s beer.
I wish I could get drunk.
Hoot and
holler and roll up the rugs. Find a warm, hard body who’d be as happy to vanish
with the dawn as she would be to let him.

“Heard anything about Hals?” Lucien shifted his chair so he could
watch the door, the ’Vee match, and the room panorama all at the same time.

“No.” Jani picked at the popcorn. “I wish Eiswein would tell us
something—the pressure’s building, and people are starting to snap.”

“Who’s next in line?”

“Guy named Vespucci. Major. Doesn’t like me a bit.”

“What did he have to say?”

“Nothing. I don’t think he left his office all day.” Jani had been
relieved that she didn’t have to put up with Vespucci’s accusing glares, but it
did bother her that he didn’t try to rally the troops behind their absent
leader.

“Think he’s a pouter?” Lucien clucked in disgust. “It’s always fun
to have a pouter in the department. They want people to come to them, and when
no one does, they crawl in a hole and seal the entrance.” He took a swallow of
beer. “Funny he didn’t send Hals’s adjutant around with the ‘I’m in charge’
announcement. That kind usually does.”

Jani squinted in the direction of the ’Vee screen to try to see
who played. But the haze from multiple flavors of nicsticks hung in the air and
seeped into her films, stinging her eyes and blurring her vision. “Ischi came
to see me, but he said he hadn’t checked with Vespucci about anything.”

“He came to
you
?” Lucien’s arm stopped in mid-swig.
“Really?” He set the bottle down slowly. “Hals talk to you a lot?”

“Not too much.”

“She took your advice about bucking Burkett, though, didn’t she?”
He nodded knowingly. “And your advice ran opposite Vespucci’s, I bet.”

“Yeah, but—”

“He thinks you’ve end-arounded him. He’s jealous.”

“Oh, come on!”

“I’ve seen it before.” Lucien waved a sage finger. “You have to
nip this in the bud. If Hals doesn’t show up tomorrow morning, you need to go
to Vespucci and ask his advice.”

“He won’t give me the time of day.”

“Nah, he sounds like the gloating type. You’ll want to punch him
in the mouth by the time you’re through, but at least people will know order’s
been restored.” He shrugged at the look of profound dismay on Jani’s face.
“Sorry, that’s the way it is.”

Oh goody—something to look forward to.
Jani sipped her
fruit juice. Carbonated, which did nasty things to her still-achy stomach, and
much too sweet. She stood up and surveyed the surrounding tables in search of a
spice dispenser, her eye scanning for shape without transmitting details to her
brain. When she finally realized who sat across the room at the far end of the
bar, she barely ducked in her seat in time to avoid being seen.

Niall Pierce was alone. People crowded him from every side, but
that didn’t make a difference. You could always tell. The eyes focused straight
ahead. The hunched shoulders. The only communication between him and what
filled his glass.

You look the way I feel.
It crossed Jani’s mind that he
might have waited outside Documents Control for her to emerge and then followed
her to the Misty Center, then here. The thought didn’t bother her as much as it
should have. She watched him sit still and silent, then tipped her soda
imperceptibly in his direction, a toast to their shared misery.

Jani left Lucien on her doorstep, pleading fatigue and the
need to prepare herself to play supplicant to Vespucci. He looked dubious but
departed quietly, leaving her with the promise to stop by at 0730 to take her
to breakfast.

She talked to Val the Bear about Sam Duong. Wondered what Borgie’s
take on Lucien would have been. Slept fitfully. Dreamed of drowning again,
Neumann’s jolly chuckle providing background music.

Oh-five up found her suffering the wide-awake lassitude of the
truly exhausted—too numb to sleep, too enervated to rise. She got up anyway,
showered and dressed in a plodding daze, and departed the TOQ just as the sun
began its creep above the lake horizon.

She bought breakfast at a kiosk, then dumped it in the trash
untouched. Watched a frazzled lieutenant endure an impromptu inspection by two
A&S-holes with recording boards. Kept a weary eye open for Pierce as she
trudged to Documents Control, arriving just in time to meet Vespucci coming
from the opposite direction. She saluted. “Good morning, Major.”

“Captain.” Vespucci returned the salute grudgingly, then hurriedly
mounted the steps.

Oh no, you don’t!
Energized by a jolt of anger, Jani chased
him up the steps and through the entry, finally catching up to him by the lift
bank. “I wondered if you’d heard anything from Colonel Hals, sir.”

Vespucci’s face brightened in surprise. “You mean she hasn’t been
in touch with you?” He drew up straighter, the first glimmerings of smugness
imbuing his fleshy features. “She called me first thing yesterday morning.
Meetings with General Eiswein all day yesterday. Hammering out proposals for a
revamping of Foreign Transactions.”

Jani stepped aboard the lift, her benumbed brain struggling to
wedge that tidbit amid all the others.
You were in contact with her
yesterday and you didn’t tell anyone!
Lucien had overestimated her tolerance.
They hadn’t even entered the office, and she already felt like punching
Vespucci.

Instead, she stepped to the front of the car and concentrated on
the control-panel lights. Red, of course. Not the smartest decision to stare at
them, considering her current state.
Screw it,
she thought, as the
indicators flickered. The fatigue faded from her limbs as she rode the glow.
“What else did she have to say, sir?”

“That’s confidential, Captain.”

“Can you at least say if she’s—”
—under arrest?
“—if she’s
well, sir?”

“As well as can be expected, considering the trouble you
stage-managed her into.” The lift stopped—Vespucci crowded out the door as soon
as it opened wide enough and bustled down the hall. “You may think that Academy
mystique of yours fools people, but some of us know a destructive malcontent
when we see one.”

Jani’s tietops slid on the slick flooring as she wheeled around
the corner. “Whatever you think of me, sir, the rest of FT deserves to hear
something. Is the department breakup on hold? Are folks going to be shipped out
to colonial postings tomorrow?”

“We were ordered to sit tight and continue at our jobs, Captain.
That’s all anyone needs to know right now.” Vespucci strode through the desk
pool, ignoring the hopeful “good morning, sirs” that greeted his appearance.

Jani glanced around the desk-pool area. Already, the paper mail
had piled up in the collection boxes, and dirty dispo cups and plates littered
desktops and tables. The coffee odor permeating the air had that sharp, stale
tang. The high gloss had dulled already, and Hals had only been gone a little
over a day.
Ah, shit.
Vespucci showed his worth by allowing it to
happen, but he was all they had to work with right now, and it was apparently
up to her to nudge him into his designated mooring.
I’ve become a diplomat.
And she had about two seconds to figure out the drill.

I hate this.
She pulled up beside Vespucci as he palmed his
doorlock. “Sir, if I could be allowed to make a suggestion?” She waited, her
teeth grinding as Vespucci hesitated in his open doorway. She could see the
mechanisms turning, his eyes flicking back and forth as he weighed his options.
You self-serving son of a bitch.
“I don’t possess the authority to speak
to them, sir. They’re waiting to hear something from you.”

“Ischi spoke with you yesterday.” His voice held the barest tinge
of verbal pout. “I saw him go into your office.”

“Lieutenant Ischi brought me my mail, sir, as I’m sure he did
yours.”

“I didn’t—” Vespucci stopped.

You didn’t let him in the door because you’re mad at him for
liking me.
“Sir, this is your department until Colonel Hals returns. I
understand completely that I am in no position to presume any sort of
authority. I am, of course, available to provide any advice you might wish—”
the words ran together as he stiffened “—but I know where I stand.” Her head
pounded. “
Please
, sir.”

That was the magic word. Vespucci shot her a superior smile. “A
little different, dealing with a real department instead of that fly-by-night
collection of losers you worked with, isn’t it, Kilian?” He sauntered into his
office and tossed his briefbag on his desk. “Give me a few minutes. Have
everyone gather in the anteroom.”

Jani flexed her left hand, the one hidden from Vespucci’s sight.
Formed a fist. Forced it open. “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”