Undercurrents Page 11

  I cupped Alia’s chin in one gauntleted hand, until her eyes met mine. “You’re very brave to come back. But I didn’t send you downstream to protect you from a fight. I’m wearing armor that will barely show on Yavi sensors. The two of you will glow in the dark like vending-machine rubbers.”

  Alia wrinkled her forehead. “Like what?”

  I raised my eyebrows at Pyt and shrugged while I answered Alia. “Never mind. Look, if the Yavi know we’re here, this won’t be an ambush. It’ll be a clusterfuck.”

  Alia wrinkled her forehead again.

  I pointed at an upturned rock ledge. Needle guns were designed to kill selectively in civilian crowds, not penetrate cover. “Both of you get behind that. Maybe they won’t—”

  Wheet. Wheet. Wheet.

  The remote sensors I had set downstream klaxoned in my helmet. At the same instant, a new sound mingled with the falls’ distant rumble. The skimmer’s whine.

  I ran, crouching, back to where the pair huddled behind the slab and pointed at the sky. “Keep your eyes on the gorge rim. If they know we’re here, they may try to flank us. Shoot anything that moves.” If a Yavi did poke a helmeted head over the rim above us, the Iridian rifles wouldn’t dent his helmet. But the shots might slow him down, and they would warn me that he was there.

  Whirrr.

  I maxed my snoops and focused on the lip of the first cascade, six hundred yards away. The skimmer’s snout peeked out above the precipice, then withdrew.

  Bam. Bam. Bam.

  Two hunting rifles rattled behind me.

  “Jazen! They’re up above! All around us.”

  The skimmer peeked out again, this time slewed broadside.

  Prraaap.

  The skimmer’s side-mounted needle gun hosed the rock ledge with a burst that sang away in a shower of orange ricochet sparks and spent rounds.

  Thump.

  An object, dropped from above, half buried itself in the sand ten yards from me. Illumination canister. Its fuse fizzed; then the charge burst in a white, arcing flash.

  My snoops compensated. The Yavis’ snoops would, too. Neither I nor they needed illumination. The canister had been dropped to momentarily blind my two would-be helpers.

  Meanwhile, the skimmer refused to enter my kill zone.

  Alia called, “Jazen! We can’t see!”

  I fired twenty machine-gun rounds at the spot where the skimmer had been seconds before. As much from frustration as from murderous intent or tactical cleverness. The burst’s tracers zigzagged in green streak ricochets, then disappeared harmlessly up the gorge.

  The skimmer showed its snout again. I aimed, fired. And the gun jammed after a single round.

  Something wriggled against the gorge wall, above and to my flank, like a spilled basket of cobras.

  I groaned. Rappel ropes.

  My side was outnumbered, outgunned, blind, surrounded, and had ceded the high ground to the enemy. I had been wrong. This ambush would have to get lots better to rise to the level of a clusterfuck.

  I swung the gun around to pick off as many of the Yavi as I could as soon as they began bouncing down the rock walls toward us. I tried to clear the jam, failed, and tried again.

  Finally, I drew my sidearm in one hand and my bush knife in the other and faced the still-unused rappel ropes. “Well, a few of you baby-killers are going down with me!”

  It was the kind of guts-and-duty drivel that Kit had always spouted when her back was to the wall. Now, finally, she had me doing it, too. Unfortunately, she would never know about it. No one would.

  Twenty-nine

  “Base, this is Flanker. We’re in position above the objective. We will down rappel on your command.”

  Polian, seated in the skimmer, enveloped in nitrogen fog from the needlers’ bursts, chinned his helmet comm and replied to Mazzen. “Any effective resistance? Because you’ll be sitting ducks while—”

  The sensor specialist seated behind Polian tugged his arm and thrust the handtalk at him. “Sir, it’s Lieutenant Frei. From the cutter.”

  Polian sighed. If he had had another suit hotted up, Frei would be wearing it. Then he and Frei could be conversing on any one of a half-dozen nets that the suits supported. Instead Polian wormed the handtalk in through his open visor until it rested alongside his ear.

  Frei’s voice buzzed at him. “—immediately.”

  “We’re in a firefight, Sandr. Later.”

  “He said to tell you it’s a direct order.”

  Polian stiffened. “What? Who?”

  “General Gill, sir. He hit dirt two hours ago.”

  “He’s not due for two days!”

  “Yes, sir. He traded downshuttle slots with one of his aides.”

  Polian blew out a breath.

  Frei said, “He’s—frankly, sir, he sounded pissed you didn’t meet the downshuttle, even before I told him we were out here. And when he heard we’ve gone operational, and about Lieutenant Sandr…”

  Polian squeezed the handtalk. Gill didn’t understand.

  “Sir, he’s ordered us to cease operations instantly and return to Tressia with all deliberate speed.”

  “Okay. We should wrap up out here within two hours. We’ll be back aboard the cutter with prisoners before dawn.”

  “Uh. I kind of told him that, sir. He asked me whether I had a hearing problem, because if I did a court-martial would fix it.”

  Gill was focused on the mission, which was appropriate. And a new commander usually made an example early to establish authority. But Gill needed to know the gravity of the threat that had drawn Polian out here. “Frei, patch me through to the general.”

  “Just lost the link, Major.”

  Only fool officers jumped into a situation about which they knew nothing and undercut the commander on the ground. Polian had no reason to think that Gill was a fool. And even if he were, Polian’s oath contained no escape clause for orders issued by fools. In the darkness, Polian turned his head and swore. Then he said, “Understood. Out.”

  Polian considered explaining to Mazzen, but Mazzen had taken the same oath. Polian dialed up CallAll, then sounded recall.

  Mazzen’s voice broke in over the electronic bugle. “Sir? Did you hit recall by mistake?”

  “No mistake. Get back here at the double crack.”

  “But—yes, sir.”

  Polian slumped back against his seat’s safety harness. While he waited for the squad to reassemble at the skimmer, he stared at the tablet’s screen. Three distinct images glowed there now. The two boat rebels. And a tiny flicker, scarcely bigger than a small rodent. To Polian’s trained eye, the flicker was the telltale of a third adversary, wearing a suit of Trueborn Eternad armor. If the Iridians hadn’t been there, shining like beacons, the skimmer would have blundered into the trap. Polian held the tablet in one hand while he made a fist of the other and pounded his thigh plate.

  The sensor specialist said, “Sucks, doesn’t it, Major? I mean, we had the bastards! And now it’s over.”

  Polian stared at the tiny flicker that he held responsible for Sandr’s death and imprinted on his brain the distant face of the spy he had glimpsed through binoculars from the cutter’s deck. Then Polian shook his head. “It isn’t over.”

  Thirty

  I aimed my rifle at the cliff tops, waiting for the first Yavi head, hand, or foot to poke over the edge, and listened to my heart pound.

  Nothing.

  I glanced back toward the falls. No skimmer. In fact, no sound of a skimmer.

  Pyt low-crawled out from behind the rock slab to me, then whispered, “What are they waiting for?”

  I shook my head and whispered back, “Dunno.”

  I checked the downstream sensors. The skimmer was gone, or at least had retired out of sensor range. I scanned the cliff top again. My helmet indicators all lay flat in the green.

  Twenty minutes passed. Then I stood up and showed myself. Nobody shot me, or painted me with fire-control sensors, or did anything at all.r />
  I wrinkled my forehead inside my helmet. “They’re gone.”

  We waited another hour. Then we crept to the boat, loaded the gear, and pushed off silently downstream, with my armored ass steering while the two Iridians lay sheltered in the boat’s belly.

  After the current had carried us six miles without incident, Pyt crawled back to me, smiling. “We made it!”

  I nodded. We had, though it made no sense.

  The gorge widened, and the expanding sliver of sky began to glow with false dawn.

  Alia also crawled to us in the boat’s stern. Her eyes were alight, her cheeks aglow.

  A Trueborn warlord named Churchill wrote, while a young soldier, that there is no feeling so exhilarating as to be shot at without result. I suspect he wrote that before he saw his first friend take a bullet.

  I turned to Pyt. “So, when do I see Celline?”

  Alia wrinkled her glowing forehead and opened her mouth, but Pyt silenced her with a hand on the girl’s forearm.

  Pyt slipped alongside me and replaced me on the tiller. “Dusk tomorrow, if the weather holds.”

  Alia frowned. Then Pyt tapped the girl’s shoulder and led her forward to rig lines.

  Thirty-one

  The unmarked Tressen staff car’s brake squeal woke Polian; then its deceleration pitched him upright in the auto’s front seat. The car stopped and idled at the striped sentry box set beside the gate in a wire fence line.

  While the car’s driver presented his pass to the Tressen gate sentry, Polian stretched and rubbed the stubble of two days’ travel on his face. Polian was supposed to be a missionary, not a soldier, so the look was consistent. But Gill probably wouldn’t see it that way. Polian was prepared to be relieved because he had compromised this mission’s security. He was more than prepared to be busted—maybe even court-martialed—because his blundering had gotten a good young officer killed.

  The sentry glanced through the window at Polian without studying him, then stepped back and raised the gate.

  The car rolled forward into the military compound on the capital’s outskirts, passed barracks and administration buildings, then swung onto a dirt track that led to a windowless warehouse and stopped.

  Polian stepped from the car, cleared another sentry, then stepped through a man-sized door, set in a vehicle-sized rolling door, and into the building’s incandescent-lit interior.

  Gill stood, back to Polian, wearing a black civilian suit, a cleric’s shawl draped round his neck, hands clasped at the small of his back. He was tiny for a Yavi military man, as short and slight as a girl, with cropped white hair rather than the current shave job. He stared down a row of thirty parked skimmers, all painted in gray and white arctic camouflage.

  Polian tucked his civilian cap beneath his arm, shot the cuffs of the shirt beneath his Tressen jacket. Then he straightened and cleared his throat. “Sir, Major Polian reports.”

  Gill stepped to the nearest skimmer and laid a hand on its empty gun mount. “At ease, Major. A handful of patrol vehicles. Not much equipment for a two-leaf general, do you think, Polian?”

  “Sir? It’s not my place to think—”

  “Major, it is always an officer’s place to think.” Gill pivoted and faced Polian. Dark eyes alight beneath thick brows, he slapped his palm against the skimmer’s flank plates. “When I arrived, you had decided to go off and run an operation. Even though you’re a staff officer by training and experience.”

  Damn right I had, and I‘d do it again. But it went wrong and compromised this operation and got a good man killed. Polian swallowed, hard. “Yes, sir. Operations aren’t my business. I screwed up.”

  Gill waved a thin hand as he shook his head. “Son, operations have been my business all my military life. And I can tell you there is no way up which I have not screwed. That’s the beast’s nature. I didn’t stand you down because you chased your instincts. I certainly didn’t stand you down because things got difficult. I stood you down because you weren’t there to meet me.”

  Polian felt blood color his cheeks. For a moment I thought you were reasonable. But, you pompous old son of a bitch, you’re going to discipline me because I didn’t greet you with roses and a kiss on your balls! “It was inconsiderate of me, sir.”

  Gill raised his palm again and shook his head, smiling. “Major, you aren’t hearing me. I don’t care a rat fart whether my staff sucks up to me. I do care if I can’t get their advice when I’m fresh on dirt. Do you know who did meet me, in your absence?”

  “Uh, no, sir.”

  “The commandant of the Interior Police.”

  Polian closed his eyes, then opened them.

  “Evidently his organization’s been trying to get custody of some female prisoner. He insisted I turn her over to them immediately.”

  Polian’s heart sank, and he blurted, “General, the ferrents are goons. They’ll kill that prisoner without learning a thing!”

  Gill snorted. “Major, do you really think I’d undercut an officer of mine? On a matter I know dick about? I told him I’d sleep on it.”

  “Oh. Thank you, sir.”

  “Don’t thank me, Major. Just don’t leave me uninformed again. Polian, an intelligence staff officer’s job is to suspect everything and to predict the future. A commander’s job is to listen to his staff, then make the future. Son, from now on I’ll do the operational commanding, and you suspect and predict. Fair enough?”

  “Yes, sir.” Polian slumped, relieved.

  Gill nodded. “Alright, then. Major, speaking as my staff intelligence officer, what’s the single most important thing I need to do right now?”

  Polian drew back. “Oh. Uh. Well, I’d continue to keep the woman prisoner away from the ferrents. Their techniques could spoil her value.”

  “What value does she have?”

  “I think she’s a Trueborn spy.”

  Gill raised his eyebrows. “A Trueborn? Here? You think the Trueborns would risk meddling in Tressel politics again? The Tilt was decades ago, and half the outworlds still hate ’em for it.”

  “Sir, what we’re attempting here can reverse the balance of the Cold War. If Earth even suspects that, they couldn’t risk not meddling.”

  “The Interior Police say the woman’s just a suicidal Iridian rebel who shot two careless infantrymen. They also say that you commandeered a Tressen warship on a hunch, to chase some Iridian fishermen.”

  Polian stiffened and nodded. “Sir, the woman was wearing Eternad armor.”

  “So are half the crooks and insurgents in the Union. The black market’s lousy with it.”

  Polian shook his head. “She was too competent to have been a local. And the fishermen spoofed our sensors. Iridians shouldn’t have been that sophisticated.”

  Gill narrowed his eyes. “As I heard it, they dumped a half-dead fish in the water and we chased it. How sophisticated is that?”

  Polian swallowed. “Also, I saw…I think I saw another person in the fishing boat. Also wearing Eternads. Trueborn case officers operate in pairs. And we intercepted the boat near the track of the Trueborn cruiser’s orbital dip, which is where the fishing boat would have been if it was rendezvousing with a Trueborn fast mover.”

  Gill raised his palm. “Or if it was fishing. The woman was captured fifteen hundred miles away from whoever you saw.”

  Polian shook his head again. “Sir, one way to resolve this is to get her to talk. One of our interrogation specialists is part of the team that downshipped with you. I’ve seen the ferrents in action. If they work her over first, there won’t be a mind left to interrogate.”

  Gill crossed his arms, then extended a bony hand and rubbed his chin. “Major, the Trueborns say ‘finders, keepers.’ What if I tell that Tressen cop that we found her, so we’re keeping her?”

  Polian grinned. “Thank you, sir.” Then he frowned. “But the ferrents won’t like it.”

  “Son, if I had spent my career doing what idiots liked, I’d be behind a desk wearing another
leaf.”

  “If you say so, sir.”

  The general turned back and stared at the skimmers. “How about you show me what I’m in command of? Besides these tubs.”

  “I thought you might want a tour, sir. I took the liberty of arranging one. How soon do you want to leave?”

  Gill rubbed his parchment cheeks with both hands and yawned. “I’m an old man, and I have been in travel status too long. By the look of you, you’re a young man but you have, too. Let’s both get some sleep. We’ll leave in the morning.”

  Thirty-two

  The sun had already set when Alia and I jumped over the side into knee-deep water, while Pyt manned the boat’s tiller. We tied lines to two charred posts that had once been a dock.

  Since we had left the ambush of an ambush that never happened, we had dodged through a maze of rock-walled canyons without incident. I had assumed that our course had carried us farther inland. In fact, we had run parallel to the coast, and this place was an inlet, so close to the sea that I could hear ocean waves break in the distance.

  Alia and I unloaded my gear and piled it fifty yards from the shoreline. I shucked my Eternads in favor of local clothing that I borrowed from Pyt. My outfit comprised baggy cloth trousers and a buttoned shirt, a pocketed vest, and hide boots that would have been comfortable if they had fit.

  Trueborns were by definition alien and by reputation assholes already. Case officers tried to minimize those disadvantages in first meet-ups by going as native as the situation allowed.

  I also unloaded the diamonds, a day pack filled with basics, and a sidearm. Then I left Alia to camo the cache with moss while I went and sat with Pyt.

  I wanted to know where we were, and why. But it had been a long and exhausting time since I fell out of the sky. Pyt and I sat silent and cross-legged, ate, and rested while Tressel’s only moon rose and began its brief dash across the night sky. I watched Alia as she scurried back and forth, collecting moss, arranging, than rearranging it. “She’s a good kid.”