Rules of Conflict (38 page)

“Not all the way.” Jani massaged the crook of her right arm, from
where William Tell Pimentel had withdrawn about half her blood. “My arm hurt
like hell as soon as I passed through the Gate. By the time we returned from
the idomeni embassy, it had gone numb.”

The internist waved a hand. “Captain, trust me, ‘hurt like hell’
doesn’t begin to describe the pain restrictees feel when they try to leave
their allowed area. Prisoners pass out. We’ve even had a few try to cut the
chips out themselves—luckily, we got to them first.” She wandered up to the
imaging display. “Has anyone notified the Judge Advocate?”

Jani had been thinking longingly of sleep, but mention of the JA
jarred her alert. “Why do you need to call them?”

“Your chip’s security function needs to be reset. Only someone
from the JA can do that.” Pimental studied the image again, and shook his head.
“Judging from the looks of this thing, they’ll need to insert a new chip. We’re
going to have to keep you here until we can perform the surgery.” He walked to
the door, the rest of the medicos falling in behind him. “Major Friesian is
holed up in the sunroom. I’ll speak with him. Under the circumstances, I think
he should notify the JA.”

The removal of Jani’s calcified ID chip and the
implantation of her new one were performed in a cramped operating theater,
under the official eye of a blasé sergeant major who observed the magnified
interior of Jani’s lower arm without a blink of discomfort.

They anchored the chip with surgical glue rather than nerve
solder. They couldn’t risk using anesthetic, the neurosurgeon told Jani,
because of her history of idiosyncratic reactions to common medications.
Instead, after they clamped her arm into the surgical sleeve, they applied pin
blocks that supposedly disrupted nerve transmissions just as well. They didn’t.
Not without the magnetic-pulse adjuncts, which they couldn’t use because a
magburst could blitz the new chip. Pimentel stood behind her and massaged the
knots out of her shoulders, and they gave her a dental appliance to bite down
on so she wouldn’t damage her teeth when she clenched her jaw.

After the neurosurgeon finished, she recommended cold packs for
the pain. Jani’s street Acadian reply drew blank stares from both her and
Pimentel. The sergeant major, however, betrayed her origins by chewing her
lower lip and staring at the display until her eyes watered.

As soon as Jani had been settled with a cold pack and instructions
for caring for the incision, everyone left. Except Pimentel.

“I’m sorry about that, Jani.” He dragged a stool near her surgical
chair and sat. “I’ve scheduled you for an appointment with someone from Gene
Therapeutics tomorrow.”

Jani repositioned the cold pack. “I thought you wanted to wait.”

“I don’t think we can.” Pimentel stared at his hands. For the
first time, his voice sounded tentative. “I ran a routine liver-enzyme scan
while we were waiting for your imaging analysis. I’m seeing values I’ve never
seen before, and I’m not seeing things I should see.” He looked at Jani, eyes
pitted by circles, skin grey. The self-confident physician of only a few days
ago seemed never to have existed. “Internal Medicine has a team of med techs
working to develop assays that can identify and quantify your enzymatic
activity. Hepatology has advised we farm your liver immediately so we can start
growing a replacement, and so we can assemble an adjunct in case you go into
failure.”

“I feel
fine
.” Jani forced her voice to be strong. “Not
great, but not that sick. My department is required at the idomeni embassy
tomorrow morning. I
have
to go.”

“Not if I feel you’re in danger,” Pimentel replied, in a voice
that sounded surer than it had all afternoon.

Jani spent over three hours in Gene Therapeutics being sampled,
scoped, and scanned. More pin blocks, this time augmented by the magnetic
pulse. Together, they deadened the pain, though not the eerie sensation of
things
being removed from her abdomen.

The med techs’ cobbled assays told the hepatologist some of what
he needed to know about the state of her internal organs. That allayed
Pimentel’s fears sufficiently that he agreed not to admit her. He did, however,
make her spend a few postop hours in the sunroom. Just to be on the safe side,
he said, which didn’t make Jani feel safe at all. She cheered up a little,
though, when Ischi stopped by on his way home to the BOQ to drop off her paper
mail.

“You didn’t have to do this, Lieutenant,” Jani said as she laid
out the few thin envelopes before her on the table. One contained an offer to
join the South Central Players, while another held an invitation to the
All-Base Volleyball Tournament.

“Oh, yes I did, ma’am.” Ischi leaned down and with one finger,
tapped a crimson-edged white envelope out of the stack like a trickster picking
his card. “Read the front.”

“One North Lakeside.” Jani felt her tender stomach clench as she
peeled the envelope seal and removed the stiff, gold-edged card.
“Admiral-General and Mrs. Hiroshi Mako cordially invite you and a guest to
attend an Open House . . .” Her voice faded.

“How about that!” Ischi bubbled. “Some people wait for
years
to get their invitation. But you’ve only had your number a couple of days.”

Oh, I think someone’s had my number for longer than that.
“Yeah,” Jani replied. “How about it.”

The next morning dawned, as had all the previous ones,
clear and hot. Jani stood by the people-mover, dispo of fruit drink in hand,
and watched the rest of Foreign Transactions gather. She’d had an early
night—Pimentel’s dour pronouncements concerning the state of her health,
combined with the lack of news from the Misty Center, had made her too grumpy
to socialize. She’d remained in her rooms. Read newssheets. Debated calling
Lucien and decided against. Discussed Niall Pierce’s odd behavior with Val the
Bear.

She had also waited for Neumann to reappear. He hadn’t. At least
something had gone right.

The sound of laughter brought her back to the present; she watched
the rising sun illuminate her coworkers’ sleepy eyes and sheepish grins.
Dressed in T-shirts, shorts, and trainers, scanpacks hanging from belts and
shoulder slings, they looked like Sheridan’s first team in the all-dexxie
Olympics.

“What do you think, Captain?” Colonel Hals gestured toward the
milling group. Ischi, athletic-looking enough to appear at home in the
abbreviated uniform of the day, busied himself checking off names on a
recording board. Meanwhile, the less toned Vespucci, red-faced and fidgety,
assisted a couple of underlings with last-minute ’pack assessments.

Jani eyed assorted flaccid limbs. “I think there’s going to be a
stampede on the gym when we get back.” She looked at Hals, who regarded her
impatiently. “When word of this leaks out, the self-appointed arbiters will
have plenty to say.”

“That’s a given.” Hals sipped her steaming coffee. “What about the
Vynshàrau?”

Jani bit into a slice of carefully scanned breakfast cake. The
smell of the coffee hadn’t agreed with her stomach, but otherwise, she felt
good. Not one bit sleepy. Hyper, actually. Floaty, as though she’d drunk a
glass of wine. “Officially, I think they’ll be relieved. I can’t predict
individual reactions.”

“But you went to school with them?”

“Yes, but we didn’t mix.”

“Except for Hantìa?”

“Only because she approached us.”

“Wasn’t that unusual? I would have thought they’d have waited for
you to come to them. I thought that except for Tsecha, all the idomeni felt
themselves superior to you.” Hals coughed out Nema’s official name. A good job,
as though she’d practiced.

Jani shrugged. “The Vynshà hadn’t yet ascended to rau, so they
still had room to maneuver. It was up to the Laumrau to hold the snobbery
standard.” She flashed a smile she didn’t feel. “Hantìa was disputatious, even
by Vynshà standards. She liked sticking her fingers between the bars.”

“Did any of you ever bite?” Hals grew restive as the silence
lengthened. “I’d like an answer, Captain.”

Oh hell.
It never failed. Why did the events from your past
that you hoped remained buried forever always disinter themselves at the worst
possible time? “I . . . hit her, once.”

“You
hit
her!” Hals lowered her voice as people turned to
look. “Define
hit
.”

Jani mimed a right uppercut. “It was our first term at Academy—”

“I don’t need a history lesson.”

“Yes, ma’am, you do. She found out that Hansen Wyle and I had been
sneaking food into our study carrels. We stayed in the equivalent of a
dormitory, but we couldn’t eat or even store any food there. If we wanted to
eat, we had to travel to the human enclave, two kilometers outside Rauta
Shèràa’s perimeter. It took an hour or more to skim there on an average traffic
day. Three or more hours to make the round-trip. We already traveled there
twice a day for regular meals. We had so much work to do, we couldn’t spare the
extra time.” Jani felt a sick chill. “And we just got tired of being hungry.”
Even decades later, the episode bought back feelings of guilt. Fear. Anger. “We
tried our best to follow their dictates, and only bring in the kinds of foods
that were sold on the futures markets on a given day.”

“She threatened to fink?”

“She would have gotten us expelled. Not even Nema could have saved
us from that one.” Jani clenched her hand. “She came to my room and told me
what she was going to do. She has a very aggravating laugh, even for an
idomeni.” She heard it in her head now, that monotonic staccato. “I was scared.
Upset. I thought I’d blown it for everybody. Before I knew it, I had knocked
her to the floor.”

“What did she do?” Hals’s voice was flat.

“Blinked. Stared right at me, which surprised me. Picked herself
up off the ground and left.”

“That was it?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Jani worked her fingers. She could still remember
her aching knuckles, Hansen trying to console her as he packed her hand in ice.

Hals shook her head. “And you think that in spite of that run-in,
she accepts you now?”

“She knows I killed twenty-six Laumrau at Knevçet Shèràa. They all
do. They accept it. Like I’ve said before, they’d be insulted if you tried to
hide me or pretend I didn’t exist. It would be an affront to their
intelligence.” Jani sighed at Hals’s confused look. “It’s difficult to explain.
Honoring the unpleasant isn’t a sensibility most humans are familiar with.”

Before Hals could respond, a stiff-looking young woman approached
them. She wore dress blue-greys cut with a mainline stripe, and eyed the bare
limbs around her with distaste bordering on horror. “Lieutenant Guid, ma’am.”
She saluted Hals. “Judge Advocate’s office.” She offered Jani only a vague nod,
in acknowledgment of the fact that she represented the prosecution while Jani
embodied the prosecuted.

Hals gestured for them both to follow her to the other side of the
people-mover, away from prying eyes. “Lieutenant Guid is here to see about your
chip, Captain.”

“I was starting to wonder about that.” Jani held out her
still-sore right arm to the pinched young woman, who removed a tiny blip
scanner from her trouser pocket.

“This release is on a timer.” She ran the scanner along the inside
of Jani’s arm. As soon as it beeped, she tapped it against the bandaged area,
leaving a red dot behind. Then she removed a stylus from her shirt pocket,
activated it, and placed the glowing orange tip against the dot.

Jani felt a warm tingle at the site, followed by a painful jolt as
feedback from the chip radiated through incised tissue and nerve. Her arm
jerked.

Guid struggled to hold the stylus in place. “You must return to
Sheridan within four hours, Captain.” The stylus emitted a sharp squeak, and
she released her grip as though Jani burned.

“I asked for six, Lieutenant.” Hals had paled when Jani’s arm
started twitching. She stood a long pace back and declined to draw closer. “I
distinctly remember petitioning Incarceration for six.”

“Four hours, ma’am. That’s standard.”

“This is a decidedly nonstandard situation.”

“Then you need to take it up with Incarceration, ma’am.” Guid
repocketed her devices. “Someone will be available at oh-nine.”

“You—” Hals struck her bare thigh with the flat of her hand—the
impact sounded like a slap. “Thank you, Lieutenant. That will be all.” She
grudgingly acknowledged the young woman’s salute. “Damn it,” she said as the
representative of justice disappeared over the rise, “that’s cutting it close.”

Jani flexed her arm. Liberated felt no different than trapped.
Not
yet, anyway.
“If what I felt before was any indication, when it kicks in,
it kicks in full-force. It won’t increase gradually.”

“Should we have a medic standing by?”