Rules of Conflict (4 page)

The door opened.

“I saw you coming on the scan.” The woman looked Jani up and down
and grimaced. Her name was Ileana, and she was Jani’s boss. “What the hell
happened?”

Jani ducked past her. Inside, the air felt cool and held a soft
floral fragrance. “Almost got mugged.”

“Where?”

“The Cuarto Montaña.”

“What the hell were you doing there!” Ileana flipped her long
black braid over her shoulder. “At night? Alone?”

“Fell asleep on the
hojea
.” The Felician Spanish slang for
the automated public-transport system slipped off Jani’s tongue as though she’d
used it all her life. “Didn’t hear the end-of-the-line alarm until it was too
late. They just spooked me. I’m fine.”

“Hmph.” Ileana eyed Jani’s rumpled white trouser suit. Then she
looked down at Val’s heavy brown boots and wrinkled her nose. “Tell me you
didn’t do that on purpose.” She had matched her own flame orange wrapshirt and
trousers with high-heeled sandals of the same color, and had wound a
desert-print scarf around her neck. Her thick braid reached to her waist and
gleamed with gold oil. Tall and lithe, with a long, angular face, she appeared
the well-to-do Feliciana, a mature lady of business. Perfume dealer, in this
case.

Appearances could be deceiving.

“It’s a long story.” Jani entered the main work area, where a man
and woman watched over the array that packed the rolls of perfumed adhesive
patchlets into cartons. “Maybe I’ll tell you about him sometime.”

“Ah, man trouble!” Ileana clapped her hands in glee. “Finally, my
paper robot shows humanity!” She followed Jani into the tiny employee locker
room. “Bring him to lunch tomorrow, Tasia. I must meet him.”

Tasia
. Jani sat down on the narrow bench in front of her
locker. Oh yes, a “T” name; lately, she found it hard to keep track. “Sure.
When and where?”

Ileana debated times and places out loud; Jani stifled a yawn as
she willed her voice into the background. Post-augie fatigue had overtaken
post-augie jitters more quickly than she remembered. But then, lately, lots of
things were happening differently than she remembered.

The entry comport buzzed; Ileana, still nattering about
restaurants, left to answer it. As soon as she was alone, Jani keyed into her
locker and removed a small duffel. The Service surplus bag was made of stiff,
dark blue polycanvas, and contained everything she owned. She had taken a risk
leaving it there, but she hadn’t dared take it into Neoclona, and she didn’t
trust the security of her flat.

Jani did a quick inventory of her duffel’s contents.
My
preflight check.
Two pairs of dark grey coveralls, rolled into tight tubes.
A pair of battered black boots. Assorted underwear. Her keepsakes: a toy
soldier, a holocard depiction of two sailracers, and a gold ring with a red
stone.

She examined her boots wistfully. Val’s hikers chafed her ankles
despite the padding, but felt tight around her feet. That meant her feet had
swelled.
If I take his boots off, I won’t be able to get mine on
. She
pushed her old faithfuls aside and dug farther into the bag.

The scanproof material that lined the false bottom of her duffel
had cost Jani most of her cash reserve, but would have been worth it at twice
the price. Within the slippery blue envelope rested her shooter, a bulky
Service-issue over twenty years old, and assorted gadgetry hooked together by a
braided length of red cloth. The devices allowed her to reset a touchlock or
interfere with an eavesdropping device. Nothing to strike fear in the hearts of
an antiterrorist squad, but they would draw the notice of Treasury Customs and
Transport Ministry Security.

Jani stuffed the gadgets back in the envelope, then removed a
cracked plastic case from a well-padded pocket. “Hello, you,” she said as she
unzipped the case and removed her scanpack.

The palm-sized oval’s scratched black cover shimmered dully in the
glare of the overhead lighting. Driven by Jani’s farmed brain tissue, the
device functioned as the repository of a quarter century’s worth of documents
knowledge. It would have won her envious stares from the other doc techs Jani
had met at Felix Majora’s Government Hall, and pointed questions from Ileana.
Only Registry-listed documents examiners carried scanpacks, and only four
others in the forty-nine-planet Commonwealth carried ones that looked like
Jani’s. And they all worked on Earth.

Pointed questions, followed by pointed sticks
. Jani stuffed
the device back in her duffel and sniffed the air again.
Isabellita.
The
light floral scent had become popular in some rather far-flung regions of the
Commonwealth, a reason sufficient to explain the small perfume house’s ’round-the-clock
operation. Every morning, boxload after boxload departed the small loading
dock, bound for the rich colonies of the J-Loop as well as their not-so-rich
brethren in the Channel and the Outer Circle.

Wonder if External Revenue’s caught onto the fact there’s a lot
of sweet-smelling sewage out there lately
. Jani grinned. The perfume was a
water-soluble concoction that could be flushed out of the patch polymer; the
polymer could then be reworked into some of the best scanshielding Jani had
ever seen. Not on par with the military-grade material lining the bottom of her
duffel, but good enough to allow the occasional cruiser filled with
unregistered, untaxed cargo to flit through the GateWay chain under the noses
of sundry Cabinet branches.

Jani unrolled one of the pairs of coveralls, then began the tricky
task of pulling off her pants without removing Val’s hikers. Ripping proved
necessary, but that didn’t bother her. The suit, fashionable and delicate,
belonged to someone named Tasia, and Tasia had only minutes to live.

Laughter trickled in from the packing room. This was, without a
doubt, the happiest smuggling ring she ever worked with.
Wonder how long it
will last?
No operation like it ever floated for long without springing a
few leaks. The fact that most of the revenue earned by the small network went
to finance colonial secessionist groups didn’t bode well for its life span,
either.

That was the main reason for her delay, when every nerve in her
body sang for her to
get out now
. She had to finish out the night, leave
things tight. If it ever went to hell for these people, it wouldn’t be because
of anything she had done. Or failed to do. She might have worked at many jobs,
under many names, on a score of worlds, but Jani Kilian had done them all very
well. The habit had sunk its roots during her short but eventful Service
career.
Whatever job you undertake, perform it to the best of your ability,
and see it through to the end
. And so she had, now as then.

Well, no. There had been one particular
then
when she had
not done her best. Oh, she had survived. No one else had, though, except in her
memory.

Knevçet Shèràa, the one bad job that outweighed all the good.

“
Tasia!
What’s taking you so long!”

Jani bundled the ruined trouser suit into her locker and limped
out to the packing room to find Ileana waiting for her, holding a documents
pouch.

“Guv Hall. Hurry. You have sixteen minutes to file these
quarterlies or those bastards will come after me!” She thrust the pouch into
Jani’s hands, then grabbed her elbow and steered her toward the door.

“It’s only half a block.” Jani tried to ease out of the woman’s
grip. “I could stop for dinner and get there in time.”

“Maybe, the way you eat.” Ileana eyed Jani’s coverall with
distaste. “You eat like you dress. No thought. No one would ever mistake you
for a true Feliciana.” She pushed Jani out the door. “Now move!”

Jani hurried down the street in a lurching double time, her eyes
focused on the brilliantly lit triple towers of Government Hall. Then she
glanced back to see if Ileana watched her, and slowed down when she saw she
didn’t. Her chest ached again. Her thigh muscles trembled. She wondered what
Val was doing. Worming secrets from his sometime love? Or tearing the city
apart looking for her?

Good old Val
. Her steps slowed as she recalled his embrace.
It worried her that it took only a single kind gesture to knock her off-balance
at a time when she couldn’t afford the least wobble. Now more than ever, she
could not drop her guard.

But I’m tired.
Tired of feeling sick, of running, of trying
to remember what her damned name was. Fed up with being alone.

Jani flashed her Tasia ID for the last time at the Guv Hall
security desk—one of the few benefits of being non-Reg was that she didn’t have
to worry about hand or eye scanning. After she stuffed the pouch in a lobby
drop box, she keyed in a request that the receipt be fiched to Ileana instead
of to her.

That final loose end tied off, Jani crossed the wide avenue and
headed for the
hojea
platform, dodging skimmers and jostling through
groups of the well-dressed leaving their businesses for a night on the town.
One, a day-suited man whose night out must have started that morning, bumped
her roughly, then staggered on, muttering curses at the world in general. Not a
Felician accent, Jani noted. Earthbound. No surprise there. Lots of
Earthbounders worked on Felix.

She stepped onto the platform and surveyed the scene around her as
she waited for the train. Across the street, she saw the man who had bumped her
standing in the Guv Hall entryway, watching her. Then the street wove
and roiled like a banner in the wind. Just as she sagged to her knees, Jani
heard footsteps close in from behind. Then it all went black—

“So what do we do now, Quino?” Evan van Reuter flipped his
stylus from one hand to another. “We’ve been waiting for one goddamn piece of
paper for two hours.”

Joaquin Loiaza shot a look uptable at the SIB chief investigator.
But Colonel Veda was engaged in anxious discussion with the Judge Advocate’s
representative, and didn’t appear aware of the mutterings at the far end of the
conference table. “In truth, Evan, we’ve been waiting for two goddamn pieces of
paper. The
Hilfington
roster would be nice, but we’ll take the
Kensington
master if we have to.”

“By my count, this makes the fourth time in a month they’ve
misplaced documents.”

“Yes, their track record does fail to impress. I must consider how
to turn that to our advantage.” Joaquin rubbed his chin thoughtfully. As
always, the old-coin aspect of his close-cropped brown hair and regal nose was
offset by the pinched look around his turtlelike eyes.

Caesar with a migraine.
Evan tapped the stylus on the table
and stole another glance at Colonel Veda. Since she sat, he could only see her
from the waist up. Closely trimmed black hair. Creamy brown skin. A noble face,
handsome rather than pretty. He’d yet to see her smile, but he guessed those
dark brown eyes could sparkle given the right encouragement. He knew from other
stolen glances that her Service summerweights hugged lovely curves.

Her first name’s Chandra.
A soft, lovely name. Yes, in
another lifetime, he would have asked Durian Ridgeway to don his go-between hat
and invite her to an assignation in one of the rented flats the Interior
Ministry had scattered throughout Chicago. In that other lifetime, she would
have accepted.

But in this lifetime, Durian is dead and Veda thinks I’m a
worm.
Evan struck the stylus against the table—tiny shards of poly sprayed
across the surface as the writing tip shattered. “What difference do the ship
records from the evac make?” He swept the plastic bits over the tableside and
onto the carpeted floor. “They know I was there—that’s why I’m in trouble now.”

Joaquin sighed. “Pretend you’re still a cabinet minister and use
your brain. We want to build sympathy. Highlight the hardships you endured
during the idomeni civil war and the evacuation, the hardships that still haunt
your memory eighteen years later. The terror as the Haárin stalked Rauta
Shèràa, slaughtering the fallen Laum, while their Vynshàrau puppetmasters
watched from the surrounding hills.”

“You make it sound like a ’Vee melodrama. All that’s missing is
the closing clinch with the girlfriend to the strains of the Commonwealth
anthem.” Evan smiled to mask his unease. He had many reasons to dread his
memories—he didn’t relish the thought of his own attorney dredging them up
again.

Especially the memories he’d deny to the grave.

Joaquin’s stylus scraped across the surface of his recording
board. “Only you would see it that way. A more sober-minded individual would
have lived in constant fear.”

Evan’s smile died. Fear? Of what? The bombs? The panic? The rumors
of a massacre by a human of twenty-six Laumrau in a place called Knevçet
Shèràa? That the Haárin might ignore their cultural conditioning and avenge the
disorderly deaths of their enemies by slaughtering the remaining inhabitants of
Rauta Shèràa’s human enclave?

That his government would find out the things he’d done? That
escaping execution in Rauta Shèràa only increased his chances of meeting that
fate back on Earth?

“Fear?” Evan felt the sweat trickle under his shirt. His hands
shook. His left knee ached. He needed a drink. “What do you know about fear?”

Joaquin ignored the question. “Most especially, we need to emphasize
that there were times during the voyage home that you didn’t think you’d make
it back to Earth alive.”

His stylus broken, Evan dissipated the urge to twitch by tugging
on his security cuff.
My electronic leash.
Nice of his jailers to make
the black-banded monitor look like a timepiece. He wondered if it fooled
anyone. “Living through two months of crappy food and cramped quarters isn’t
going to win me any sympathy from this crowd. It’s their way of life.”