Rules of Conflict (32 page)

“—and the colonel requests I let you know that as soon as
these rather intense meetings are over, she will be back in her office, just in
time for our annual performance evaluations.” Vespucci grinned at the chorus of
mock moans and groans that greeted that portion of his announcement. His
pleasure seemed genuine. He liked being the center of attention and the
fountain of all Service wisdom, and his delight filled the room.

The group dissolved into happy gabble. Three of the techs jostled
to sort the mail, while two others disassembled the brewer.
And peace
reigned again in the valley.
All Jani had to do was roll over on her back,
expose her throat, and point out the targets.

Ischi wandered up to her, his face lightened by a subdued grin.
“Thank you, ma’am.”

“Major Vespucci is second-in-command here, Lieutenant.”

“Yes, ma’am.” His eyes shone with wisdom beyond his tender years
as he jerked a thumb toward the gurgling brewer. “Coffee?”

Jani bit her lip to keep from smiling. “Why, thank you,
Lieutenant. Just let me get my cup.”

Jani sipped from her Central United mug, and grumbled foul
words in Acadian as she scanned the report she had transmitted to Hals’s system
the night before. Vespucci, now sufficiently persuaded as to his worth to do
his job, had taken it upon himself to make changes that would have resulted in
the document being bounced back from Legal within the time it took an outraged
paralegal to smash his fist into his touchboard. She deleted one of his
“corrections,” ignoring her bleating comport until the fifth squawk.

Lucien’s face in no way resembled the sunny visage she had come to
know. More overcast, with a threat of storm. “Where were you this morning?”

“I peeled out early.” She tapped her board again, deleting a
phrase that would have resulted in twelve crates of cabinets being classified
as small arms. “I was nervous.”

“
You
?” He wadded a sheet of paper and bounced it off his
display. “How did it go?”

“Hals had spoken to Vespucci yesterday morning. He sat on it the
whole damned day.”

“A pouter. I knew it.” He smiled proudly, a professor watching his
valedictorian strut across the stage. “But you charmed it out of him.”

“I feel like I need a shower.”

“Want some company?”

“Good-bye.” Jani thumped the disconnect with a fast chop of her
open hand, then returned to debugging her report.

Her comport squawked again. This time, she caught it on the first
alarm. “Damn it, Lucien, leave—!” She choked back the balance as she found
herself staring at Frances Hals’s puzzled countenance.

“Good morning, Captain.”

“Ma’am!”

“I’m still alive.”

“We were beginning to have our doubts.”

Hals offered a tired grin. “So was I.” She massaged the back of
her neck. “Things started out badly. But once Eiswein realized you were right
and Foreign Transactions had legitimate cause to complain about how Diplo
treated us in this matter, it was all over but the drafting of the formal
report.” She stared out of the display. “You look surprised, Captain.”

The only thing worse than taking the shot is finding out you
took it for nothing.
“I only heard about a meeting with Eiswein and a
revamp of FT, ma’am.”

Hals ran a hand across her eyes. “
When?
”

“This morning, ma’am. I spoke with Major Vespucci and requested he
address the department. People were starting to get edgy, if you know what I
mean.”

“I told him to use his discretion. Unfortunately, he takes that as
permission to keep his mouth shut.” Hals’s look of tired disgust didn’t bode
well for Vespucci’s future in FT. “Things are in the draft stage, so I can’t be
too specific about details. Suffice it to say, General Eiswein was extremely
interested to hear all the things I had to say about how the idomeni regard
documents examiners. I haven’t spent the past day and a half getting my ass
chewed on. I’ve spent it helping to assemble a proposal that should, if it gets
past the Administrative flag, result in FT being reclassified as a Diplomatic
adjunct.”

Jani laughed. “Burkett will flip.”

“Serves him right. The day the first of my people start Dip School
is going to be one happy day for me.” She stared off to the side, her
expression pensive. “Do you understand any German, Kilian?”

“Very little, ma’am. Enough Hortensian to get by.”

“Does
Scheißkopf
mean what I think it means?”

Shithead!
Luckily, coffee beaded nicely on summerweight
polywool. “Yes, ma’am, I believe it does,” Jani said as she dabbed at her
trousers with a dispo.

Hals nodded. “Eiswein muttered that a lot when I told her how
Burkett tried to lock us down.” She yawned again. She looked like she’d been
wrung out and tossed in a corner to dry. “I’m exhausted. I need a shower and a
hot meal and about ten hours’ sleep.”

“Would you like me to do a room sweep and bring you some gear?”

“No, thank you. My husband brought me a kit. He’s a civilian, but
he’s learned to pack in a rush with the best of them.”

Jani started. “I didn’t know you were married, ma’am.”

“Nineteen years.” Hals’s face closed. “The past few weeks have
made for an interesting time.”

“Children?”

“Three. All in prep school.” The dulling in her eyes hinted at the
pressure the situation had brought to bear on her life outside Sheridan. “We’re
on our way to getting this straightened out. Can’t come soon enough. I hope to
be back in the office in a few days.”

“My Office Hours with Burkett is scheduled for tomorrow.” Jani
knew she couldn’t discuss the matter with Hals
per se
, but a hint that
she could anticipate a cancellation of the little get-together would have done
wonders for her mood.

“Yes.” Hals’s dour countenance gave away nothing. “He may try to
get his last licks in. I understand he’s working up a head of steam over rumors
he has heard that aren’t really rumors a’tall.” Her thin smile allowed a
glimpse of an agreeably vile sense of humor, but the curtain soon fell. “We
didn’t do our careers any favors, but we did our jobs, and the entire
department is going to benefit from it. It’s a good feeling.” She nodded.
“Captain.”

“Ma’am.” Jani waited for the display to blank before turning back
to her workstation. She dumped a few more of Vespucci’s edits, then set the
unit to standby. She had picked up her cup and was just about to leave in
search of fresh coffee when her comport alarm bleeped again.

“Jani.” Friesian’s face held the contented fatigue of a workman
who had taken a step back to admire his handiwork. “Could you be at my office
within the hour? I have some news for you.”

“If this goes as planned, with no paper snafus or further
visits to the idomeni embassy, your hearing should take place late next week,
and your discharge early the following.” Friesian tapped a happy drumbeat on
the tabletop. “A week and a half from now, you’ll be a civilian again.”

Who are you kidding
, Jani thought.
I’m a civilian now.
They sat in the breakroom down the hall from Friesian’s office. The room faced
the lake. Brightly colored sails of assorted watercraft shimmered like pearly
scales on the water’s calm surface, while lakeskimmers whizzed in all
directions like skipping stones.

“Try to restrain your excitement.” Friesian pushed back in his
chair. The flexframe hummed as his weight shifted.

“I’m sorry.” Jani felt genuinely contrite. He had looked so proud
as he described the terms of her discharge. “I just have a difficult time
accepting that I’m being let off the hook.”

“Off the hook for
what
?” Friesian took a swallow of his
black coffee. “The missing-movement charge is a harsh one. You’re losing half
your pension, many of your benefits, and if not for the medical aspects, you’d
be facing a dishonorable discharge. Hell, they’re even letting you go out a
captain—they had every right to bust you to lieutenant!” Dark circles rimmed
his eyes, and his skin had greyed. He looked as drained as Hals.

It’s the pressure of their jobs
. Had to be. It couldn’t
have anything to do with the fact they worked with her. Could it? She looked at
her hands. They had grown so cold that the nail beds looked blue. “It’s not
that I’m not grateful. But compared to some of the things I’ve gone through in
the past few years, this didn’t make the top one hundred. I expected . . .
much worse.”

“Well.” Friesian got up and walked across the room to the vend
coolers. “The only thing you have on your plate now besides the hearing is to
provide some info to Colonel Chandra Veda. She’s the SIB investigator assigned
to your case.” He patted his pockets in search of a vend token. “I pledged your
cooperation in some other investigations she’s closing out. She just wants some
information about Rauta Shèràa Base. She also mentioned some questions about
Emil Burgoyne.”

“Borgie.” Jani looked toward the window. The reflection of the
bright sun on the lake made her films draw and her eyes water, forcing her to
squint. “We called him Borgie.”

“Borgie had problems with Neumann, from what I could glean from
your ServRec. Some were rather serious.”

“Neumann pushed him. He enjoyed tormenting him.”

“He pushed him into at least one assault on a superior officer.”

“Trumped-up charge.” Well, not really. Jani had helped Borgie wash
Neumann’s blood out of his short-sleeve herself.

“Borgie admitted to having an affair with his corporal. Nothing
trumped-up there.”

“Yolan Cray.” Jani could see them now, the short, dark-haired
Borgie and the willowy blond Yolan. “At Rauta Shèràa Base, a good-looking body
belonged to whichever member of base command laid claim to it. Yolan was
attractive. She went to Borgie for protection, and things took off from there.”

Friesian’s lip curled. “He worked the situation to his advantage,
you mean?”

Jani recalled the light in Yolan’s eyes the day she showed Jani a
ring Borgie had given her. It hadn’t been expensive—Borgie had his pay docked
so many times, he barely cleared enough to cover his incidentals. A plain
silver band—you’d think he’d given her the Commonwealth Mint. “They loved one
another. Maybe to you, it was a threat to order and discipline. You have a
different measuring stick against which to judge it. To me, it came as a
relief. At least it was clean.”

Friesian plugged his token into a cooler slot and removed a
sandwich. “You can say things like that to me. It won’t go beyond these walls.
But keep your opinions to yourself when you talk to Veda—she tends to be a
little straight-laced.”

“I’m glad she can afford to be.” Jani wedged her hands beneath her
thighs to warm them. “I assume you’re going to sit next to me when I talk to
her, too.”

Friesian tore the wrapping off his sandwich and tossed it into the
trashzap. “You’re damned right,” he said, as the polycoat paper flashed, then
flamed to powder.

Jani checked in at FT after her meeting with Friesian, and
found the desk pool scrubbed and straightened to its former glory. She finished
editing her report back to its earlier pristine state, and forwarded it to
Hals’s system on a delay that would guarantee it wouldn’t be opened until the
colonel herself was at her desk to read it. She checked out for the day to
sounds of Vespucci singing along with an opera recording someone had inserted
into systems. He proved a remarkably sound tenor. Jani considered sticking her
head in his office and recommending he transfer to the Entertainment Corps, but
after some thought, she decided against it. Unaccustomed restraint on her part.
She felt extremely pleased with herself, as though she’d passed a grueling
test.

She returned to her rooms to find her comport message light
fibrillating. A clerk from the Misty Center confirmed that they’d transmitted
her communication to her parents, and that her salary account had been billed
accordingly. Since she had yet to receive any salary, she owed them money. They
had therefore applied to garnish her account, but she was not to worry since
this was standard practice and would not reflect negatively on her credit
rating.