Scardown-Jenny Casey-2 (29 page)

Like making a cake, and forgetting the salt because you couldn't taste it in the finished product. “Alan,” she said through her fingers, and pulled her hand away from her lips. “I've neglected you shamefully. I'm sorry.”

Friday 15 December, 2062
Sol-system wide area nanonetwork
17:01:05:23–17:15:26:03

Richard focused as much attention as he dared on Wainwright, subprocessing conversations with Jenny, Leah, and Min-xue with a fraction of his awareness. His primary consciousness stayed tuned to the ship and its safety. He didn't like how completely he'd been blocked when Koske was hurt, and he didn't mean to let it happen again—but watching both ends of the solar system and a dozen points between taxed even his resources.

And now there was Wainwright.

Richard watched her pace the confines of her office, wall to wall and back again, and tried not to let her human slowness lull him into false security. Or irritation. Either of which could be fatal.

It was long seconds before she looked up and spoke. “As I see it, you're essentially a stowaway on my ship. I think I'm well within my rights to completely wipe this system and start over from backup.”

“You'd be better off to accept that our destinies are linked and treat me as a member of the crew,” he replied. “If I haven't proved my goodwill—”

“You've proved that if I unseal the manual overrides, you can destroy that crew in a matter of instants.”

“And float undisturbed between the stars forever. Or until some helpful nation lobs a missile at the
Montreal
. That wouldn't be a logical course of action, Captain. I can't fly the ship. You built it that way.”
And until I reprogram its nanotech to lay some additional wiring to my specs, it will have to stay that way
.

She laced her fingers together and pushed both hands out from her chest, stretching her shoulders. “You mean that you can't access the drive.”

“Only the human pilot can do that. I think if I haven't proved myself in the last twenty hours, Captain, then I never will earn your trust. And if it comforts you, keep it that way. The fact of the matter is that I can do what I was intended to do—process information, make critical decisions, handle a higher data load than the human pilot, and communicate with him fast enough to make a difference in the safety of the ship. And you can't replace me if you kill me.” He tried to read her gaze, the way she ran her eyes along the walls and stopped at the various sensor points. Her face stayed impassive, but he detected a rise in her heart rate; her skin conductivity spiked, revealing a light sweat, and her pupils dilated.

“I'm not promising—” Her desk beeped. She turned away. Richard had been firewalled out of the communications protocols, too. “Well,” she said when she had scanned the message. “You get a reprieve.”

Richard would have blinked. “What?”

“It seems Prime Minister Constance Riel wants you protected and used to the fullest extent of your abilities. Under my judgment, of course. Do you have somebody on the ground playing advocate for you, Richard? Dr. Dunsany and Mr. Castaign, perhaps? Colonel Valens?”

Jenny was sleeping, but Richard smiled over her anyway.
Good girl, Jenny. Very good girl indeed.

6:15 AM
Saturday 16 December, 2062
Somewhere in Québec

The longest twenty hours of my life
. Indigo threw her backpack onto sawdust-strewn planks and bolted the cabin's door behind her, shutting the predawn outside. The last time she had been here there had been birdsong. The last time she'd been here it had been spring, and she'd been twelve years old.

The cabin that had belonged to her mother was cold, and little light filtered through the windows. Toronto lay a thousand kilometers and three stolen vehicles behind. She'd discarded her HCD, cut her hair, and changed the line of cheeks and jaw with a smart putty manufactured for stage actors.

She prayed to the ghosts of her ancestors that it would be enough.

She could have killed me.
Indigo put her back against the door and slid down it, grunting as her butt hit the floor. When the sun rose, she'd have to go outside to fire up the generator and see if the pump was frozen, or if she would have water. She'd scrubbed Farley's spattered blood off her face and hands, changed her coat, dumped everything she could afford to dump and driven through the night.
Well,
she thought, as she laid her assault rifle across her knees and folded her arms over it like a sleeping soldier would,
that one went pear-shaped in an absolutely spectacular fashion.

She could have killed me.

No doubt in her mind. Genevieve Casey—shit.
Shit!
Indigo crushed her eyes closed and tried to think past the burning exhaustion, the sensation like a bullet hole in the center of her chest. She saw, over and over, the woman's fucking arrogant white grin as she rolled steel fingers back precise as a time-lapse film of a flower unfurling, the squashed bullet, the
wink
.

Who the hell would have imagined she could do that?

Why on Earth would she want to let me live?

Despite the blinds, it was much brighter in the cabin when she lifted her eyes and rubbed at the dent the rifle had left in her forehead. She wasn't sure if she had slept, but her neck ached and her mouth felt stuffed with scraps of paper. She leaned the rifle against the wall and stood. Food first—she dug in her backpack for energy bars and a pouch of pop—and then she flipped open the cheap Web link she'd bought in a department store in Ottawa. She signed in using trial guest software from an Internet conglomerate and checked Web mail accounts maintained under several false names.

On the third one, she found the e-mail from Razorface. Time-stamped two days before.

Shit.
Her finger hovered a centimeter from the
open
icon at the edge of her interface, and finally stabbed through it. His recorded image stared at her out of cyberspace, a clever algorithm making the eyes seem to track. “Indy.” A deep breath, and the image covered its mouth to cough. “I got a message for you from Maker . . . from Jen Casey, probably the name you know her by. She says you need to ditch Farley, head for the border or someplace safe. You need to abort the hit on Riel—she said to tell you this: ‘Tell Indigo that Genevieve Casey says her Uncle Bernard would have had more sense, and she doesn't have to trust me but if she's smart she'll do what I say.' She said to tell you that Farley works for Alberta Holmes, and she—Maker—doesn't.”

“Shit.” Indigo dropped the Web link on the battered maple table.
She tried to warn me?

She didn't just let me get away. Genevieve Casey went out of her way to protect me.

What the fuck is that supposed to mean?

0300 Hours
Saturday 16 December, 2062
HMCSS
Montreal

Trevor Koske was coming to dread opening his eyes. It could have been worse. This time, he flinched from the strobe-flicker of fluorescent lights and would have shaded his eyes with his hand, but it was tied to the bedframe. “Ow.”

“Captain Wainwright.” A modulated voice he recognized as the tones of the ship's AI. “The overhead lights hurt Lieutenant Koske's eyes. Would you—”

“Light down,” she said, and the flicker behind his eyelids dimmed to a bearable level. “It's okay, Lieutenant. You can talk now. The tubes are out.”

He coughed and tried to peer at her through his eyelashes. “The fluorescents strobe,” he managed. “Ma'am, thank you. How long has it been?”

“It's Saturday,” she said. “Barely.” She circled sick bay slowly, one wall to the other, measured steps carrying her between workstations. “You're going to be fine. Apparently you're tougher than we imagined, Lieutenant. Your warning allowed the ship's AI to avert a major threat to the
Montreal
. You have the crew's gratitude for that.”

“Threat?”

“A computer virus. A Trojan horse.” A lightning change of direction. “Can you describe your attacker?”

“Can you untie my hands?”

Captain Wainwright glanced toward the door. “I don't see why not, now.”

The AI spoke. “It should be acceptable, Captain. The duty surgeon gives his permission.”

She unwound the soft cloth straps on his wrists, careful not to touch his skin. Once she released him he stretched, then gingerly patted the bandages encircling his throat. “I remember leaving the gym,” he said. “Handball practice.”

The captain's eyebrows arched at the irony in his voice. “
Now
you develop a sense of humor?”

He shrugged. It tugged his bandages. He didn't do it again.

Wainwright came back to the bedside, her rubber-soled ship shoes scuffing the deckpads. “That's all?”

He pushed back until he found blackness, his gut unraveling when he realized he didn't even know how much time he'd lost. His voice came out level, to his pride. A wrinkle in the sheets chafed his skin. He smoothed it irritably. “Until I woke up in my quarters.”

“Traumatic amnesia?”

“I—It's not a tip-of-the-tongue thing, like trying to remember where you left the car keys. It's like the memories just don't exist.” He remembered in time not to shake his head. “What am I doing awake, Captain?”

“Your nanite load appears to have saved your life.” Her face stayed impassive, a mask of intellectual interest. “You were very lucky. There was an attempt on Master Warrant Officer Casey yesterday as well, along with the prime minister.”

“Casey? Is she—”

“She'll be fine.”

He chewed the inside of his cheek, not even bothering to sort through the tangle of emotions
that
raised. “Linked?”

“Seems a bit likely, doesn't it? But no one has provided me with an official opinion on that. Yet.” A touch of irritation? Maybe. “You should be on your feet before you know it,” Wainwright continued. “Meantime, rest. We'll try hypnosis and, if we have to, study drugs to try to recover your memories, when you're feeling better.” She stared down at him for a long moment, as if expecting a response.

“Ma'am?” He struggled with his frown, lost, wrestled his mouth back to a neutral line with some effort.

A shrug, narrow shoulders lifting and falling under the crisp navy of her jumpsuit. She stepped away from the bed. “And, Koske—there's a guard on the door. I'm afraid you're in protective custody until we figure out what's what and which side who is on.”

0400 Hours
Saturday 16 December, 2062
National Defence Medical Center
Toronto, Ontario

At oh-four-hundred I get out of bed to go to the bathroom and realize three steps away—when the IV tugs and I turn back absently to give the motorized smart stand time to catch up—that I am walking. With a certain amount of stiffness and pain, yes. With a spasm in my thigh like my quadriceps has been tied in a knot and spot-welded back into place, and my right arm feeling like Dr. Frankenstein ran a few stitches across the top of the shoulder to hold it on until he could get back to me.

But walking.

I stagger to the head, the IV stand humming happily along behind me, and then crawl back into bed and try to close my eyes. Sleep comes easier than I thought it would, but it only lasts an hour or two.

By sunrise, I'm up and dressed in the clothes Elspeth dropped off yesterday, the IV—much to the discomfiture of the staff—unhooked and pushed back beside the nightstand. I can't stay in bed another minute. Even chatting with Richard about his conversations with Wainwright and company fails to distract me, but my leg still hurts too much to pace. I ask Richard to tell Leah to have Gabe hurry up. He laughs at me.

Dick, how's Koske?
I stretch back in the chair and stare at the ceiling, unwilling to endure the mindless drek on the holo.

“Talking to Wainwright. I'll fill you in later. He'll live.” Richard sounds oddly satisfied at that. “He's better once you get to know him. Not personable by any means, but better.”

You've been talking to Koske? Did he identify his attacker?

“He can't remember anything between opening the door to his quarters and winding up on the floor. Somebody disabled the recording devices, and somebody must have been able to hack past the thumb lock on the door.”

The way you did Gabe's
—but my question is cut off by the appearance of a tall figure, framed in the yellow-painted steel doorway. Valens hesitates a moment, meeting my eyes as if waiting for permission to enter the room.

“Forgive me if I don't get up, Fred.”

“At ease,” he answers wryly. A dark bruise mottles his left cheek. It looks an awful lot like the sort of handprint you leave on somebody when you're making damn sure they're watching you talk. I've seen those in the mirror, though not lately.

Huh.

That would be a pretty big hand.

He saunters in like a silver tomcat casing an unfamiliar living room: a look to the left, a look to the right. “Just so you know, Casey. If that slug had gone where it was headed, we wouldn't be having this little conversation. Don't start thinking you're immortal now.”

“Perish the thought. That was one hell of a spanking.”

“Yeah.” Valens rubs the palm of his right hand across his blue-shadowed cheek. He takes a little box out of his pocket and plugs it into a wall socket next to the light switch. He presses buttons, and then he closes the door and wedges a plastic chair in front of it.

Tension drags my shoulders back and I wince as that graze on my shoulder tugs hard.

Valens straightens from adjusting the settings on his antiespionage device. “I didn't know Alberta would be so willing to sacrifice you. I thought the hit would come after you left.”

“I suspect she may have underestimated Indigo's dislike for me. Holmes isn't real good with people, is she? In any case—Riel would be dead.”