"I"ll ask around." Rumis shuffled the flimsies around on the desk. "Could be one of our informants can find out a bit more for us."
"Ah yes, our informants. Who do they think we are?"
"A small rebel group pinned down in the Five. I got Intelligence to put a couple of our fict.i.tious rebels on the Empire"s "wanted" list, so they have credibility with the groups in other territories. So far it seems to be working. We"re getting a lot of valuable information from the surrounding territories."
"Don"t overextend us. I"d rather have less frequent, solid intel over a long period of time, than a lot of data that only lasts a month."
Rumis nodded. "Understood Colonel."
He stood, saluted and turned to walk away. Cheloi, watching him as she rubbed her thigh under her desk, was once again reminded of how close she"d come to losing him along with her driver. Rumis had been scheduled to accompany Cheloi on a sector inspection that fateful day. Only a last-minute request from Central Control had prevented his attendance.
The door closed behind her adjutant and Cheloi"s eyes narrowed.
The accepted explanation was that her skimmer had been hit by a random barrage from a temporary rebel position. Almost from the moment her eyes opened after the dust from the blast cleared, Cheloi put Koul at the top of her list of suspects. How neat it would have been. One, two, three, all three new transfers out of the equation in a single b.l.o.o.d.y explosion. It didn"t help that Koul hadn"t made an effort to deflect his dislike of her since she a.s.sumed command of the territory. She felt his gaze, like high-powered lasers, boring into her whenever her back was turned.
In the end, there had been too little evidence to go on. Even Rumis had unhappily drawn a blank after carrying out his own private investigation. It could be Koul or it could be as advertised, a random rebel strike.
Cheloi wished she knew the truth of the matter. Thinking too much on it was apt to give her a headache.
Chapter Four.
Day 1,503 of the War: "Please." Dr. Copan walked across the carpet to two chairs, gesturing to one of them. "Sit down."
She knew what to expect, but could never stop that first reflexive look around the bare room. The walls were painted a soothing pastel shade of green-blue, matched to the darker carpet. The comfortable chairs were covered in thick black fabric. A clock, always showing the same time, was on one wall, sandwiched between two small square abstract paintings.
The doctor watched her as she sat. He was a tall man, tanned and clean-shaven with straight greying hair brushed back from a high forehead and candid blue eyes. There was nothing singular about him. He was tall but not overly so. His skin was not remarkably dark or pale. His eyes were more a muted than vivid hue. He matched his surroundings perfectly, blending into the room"s microcosm of calm.
"It looks just like your office on Tatrex," she commented, more to fill in the silence than anything else.
"You always say that," he smiled. "I can"t recall, is this one of our scheduled visits or a stress-related one?"
She grimaced. "A bit of both."
Copan leisurely crossed one leg over another, letting his elbows relax on the armrests. His hands hung over the edges, long buff-coloured fingers with prominent knuckles.
"So, how goes the war?"
"Well." She hesitated. "Slower than I would like."
"Do you still dream of home?"
"Occasionally. Maybe only twice since my last visit."
Her sessions with Copan were usually four to six weeks apart.
"And what was the tenor of those recent dreams?"
"Positive. Some childhood memories, holidays by the mountains. The usual."
Copan nodded. "And how"s Koul?"
She smiled, a mixture of amus.e.m.e.nt and exasperation. "He"s a very predictable man."
"Still fighting you?"
"I"m amazed at how much energy he has," she admitted. "I thought the Sab-Iqur affair would have made us allies, but it hasn"t worked out that way."
He tilted his head to one side. "Because you thought committing a war crime would strike a chord with the way he thinks. Make him respect you."
It wasn"t a question. She and Copan had discussed the topic extensively just after it occurred, but she still felt the guilt from the decision she made that fateful evening. A hot flash of anger raced through her.
"You keep bringing up Sab-Iqur," she protested, her voice tight. "I thought we dealt with that."
"On the contrary, you"re the one who brought up the subject. Despite our previous discussions, it"s your subconscious that keeps reacting to the reference."
Copan"s voice was calm and sensible, but she couldn"t shake the feeling that he was somehow judging her, condemning her for her actions. And he was right. She had been the one who initially mentioned the incident.
Incident.
She closed her eyes, cynically admiring language and its ability to deceive. "Incident" sounded like a gla.s.s of spilt liquid, or a brief squabble with a friend. But Sab-Iqur was a magnitude, a universe, beyond that.
She reopened her eyes, harnessing her anger and using it to override her guilt. "There were good reasons for doing what I did. To establish my authority in front of Koul. To simultaneously progress the Perlim war effort. And give the Menons another reason to hate the Empire." She exhaled a deep breath but refused to look away. "All it took was one ma.s.sacre."
"It was an extreme act," he agreed, "but not unprecedented."
"Nothing the Fusion won"t forgive me for," she muttered.
Copan eyed her shrewdly. "I don"t think it"s the Fusion"s forgiveness we need to worry about here."
She had ordered footage from the village to be sent to her because it was too dangerous for her to be there in person. And she sat in the isolation of her office and watched what was sent until her eyes felt seared to charcoal. It helped, a bit, that the dead looked like marionettes. Despite her self-imposed penance, she was able to distance herself from the ma.s.s images of carnage by concentrating on their puppet-like poses. It was when those limbs appeared with no distractions-a severed leg, or a hand with rings on the dead fingers-shredded flesh, often surrounded by nothing but stained, bare earth, that the enormity of what she had done hit her. Maybe her darkest thoughts were true. Maybe she was no better than the garbage she was fighting.
Copan used the small silence to shift position. "Are you sorry you accepted this a.s.signment?"
Every session with Copan came back to this one question. It was the axis around which her mental equilibrium spun.
"The Perlim Empire is old and corrupt," she finally said after a heavy silence. "They don"t believe in a fairer redistribution of wealth, equal partic.i.p.ation of their citizenry or equal access to social policy. They can afford all of it, but have made conscious decisions to do otherwise. They are a harsh feudal structure that"s outlived its usefulness."
"That"s not what I asked," he rebuked gently.
A small smile flitted across her features, conceding the point. "I won"t deny it"s exciting. Me, against an entire empire. While it"s critical and political to the Fusion, I have to admit I approach it more as a game. No, I"m happy enough that I"m here."
Then something intervened and she frowned. A face in her mind"s eye.
"There"s another issue?" Copan inquired a split-second later, an eyebrow lifting.
The AI psych-kernel was quick. If this was a physical interaction, she could have masked her reactions. But "Dr. Copan", a realistic avatar of her Fusion briefing officer, was inside her head in a very complex cognitive construct with links to several areas in her brain. The program wasn"t sophisticated enough to read her mind but it had a good idea when vulnerable thoughts surfaced and took action accordingly.
"I have a new aide," she finally conceded.
"Long overdue," he nodded, "considering your accident occurred two months ago."
"Koul found her."
Copan"s eyes brightened. "Koul? Her?" He didn"t have to ask how she felt about that. The question was stamped on his face.
"She"s very attractive."
"Your type?"
She remembered the warm welcoming eyes, the smooth skin and high cheekbones, the full lips and delectable curves. She looked away from the psychiatrist.
"Yes. She"s my type."
"Unfortunate. One reason we chose you for this a.s.signment, Laisen, was because of your s.e.xual predilections. A heteros.e.xual woman in such a h.o.m.ophobic, male-dominated environment could have led to complications. Ones you, presumably, wouldn"t have caused."
"I"m well aware of that."
"And the fact that Koul found her is also suspicious."
"Yes, I know that too." Her voice was testy. Irritated.
He paused. "I"m only trying to help. However," he sat back, "looking at it differently-with the a.s.sumption that you"ll not act recklessly, that you"ll be discreet, and maintain your cover-the Fusion has no issue with you establishing an intimate relationship with this woman. You"ve been without s.e.xual contact for several years. As your psychologist, I consider intimacy with another person to be very healthy and grounding." He softened his voice and she met his gaze.
"To my mind, the fact that you desire someone, find her attractive, despite Koul and despite the war, means that you"re still coping well in a very stressful and isolating environment."
The mood in the room changed to something approaching camaraderie and she instinctively recoiled. Nothing she said to the AI Copan would be forgotten. Everything, from the words she spoke to the way she said them, would be recorded in a self-contained, removable neural patch for later a.n.a.lysis.
"Are you approving my wish to fornicate with a junior officer, Doctor?" she asked dryly, distancing herself from the AI"s friendliness.
He smiled and shook his head. "This isn"t the first time you"ve handled missions like this. We wouldn"t have put you here if we didn"t have the utmost confidence in your abilities. Pursue a temporary relationship with this woman. You know the risks. The Fusion won"t stand in your way."
"No, but common sense will."
"Koul"s involvement is a complication," he agreed. "Do you think there"s a link between him and your aide?"
"I hope there isn"t, but Koul is as twisty as a grapple-vine. I wouldn"t put it past him."
"Do you think he knows of your s.e.xual preferences?"
The woman the Fusion called Laisen Carros shrugged in a gesture of ignorance.
"What will you do?" Copan asked.
"What can I do? She"s my aide, so I can"t avoid her. And getting rid of her too quickly will also tip off to Koul that something"s the matter. But, in the meantime, I"ll be watching her very closely."
And how closely is that, my overs.e.xed Laisen?
Copan nodded. "Sounds like a sensible plan. Good luck."
She wished she was a soldier.
Cheloi kept her expression serious as she walked the northern edge of the camp later that morning. As a soldier, all she had to do was fight and die. It was straightforward. Simple. With dust in her face and stones in her boots, life had an immediacy that kept other, more disturbing, lines of thought at bay. Having no say in the wider strategy of war was also liberating. Soldiers b.i.t.c.hed about everything knowing that they lacked the responsibility to do anything about it. The food, their weapons, the supplies, the weather, the accommodation, their commanders. They could do very little about any of them. Life came down very simply to two paths, live or die.
On the other hand, being a commanding officer was complex, often beyond sensibility. She had that ultimate responsibility. If not for the weather itself, then certainly for the food, the weaponry, the supplies, the accommodation, the exploitation of weather and the commands that would send living beings to their possible deaths. It was up to her to juggle conflicting priorities and strained resources in order to carry out her orders from a cadre of men who were too old, too divorced from reality, to remember what it was like to share a cramped room with nine others, breathing in each other"s air while they waited for the word that could end their lives.
And if that wasn"t bad enough, she was a traitor. She might be a Perlim officer, but she wasn"t Perlim. Instead, she was an operative for the empire"s sworn enemy, the Fusion.
A twisty grapple-vine.
She might have used that term describing Koul to Copan but it also applied to the Fusion. Even though they were rich and powerful, they never directly attacked any of their enemies. The Perlim might fear such a threat, but that was only because they didn"t know how the Fusion really operated. Why initiate a frontal attack when a giant game of strategy could be set up instead? It was like boxing a playful magician. The Fusion danced around pulling tricks out of its sleeves, threatening with one move, feinting with the other. It took more time but they won more times than they lost.
But out of all the missions she had undertaken, this had to be the most audacious yet. She had been planted by the Fusion two territory commands before and briefed on the eventual possibility of taking command of the Nineteen. How did they know she would even get here? She could have been killed at any time over the past two years and the Fusion"s entire plan for the planet would have crumbled.
Central Control could have chosen someone else to replace the then-commander of the Nineteen, an incompetent Senior Colonel by the name of Samnett.
She could have been transferred off planet.
The Nineteen could have been captured by rebels while she was still at the Thirty-Five or Eight.
Yet, here she was, exactly as predicted. In fact, a little ahead of schedule.
The mission the Perlim Empire gave her was clear: hold the Nineteen and repel any rebel attacks.
The mission the Fusion gave her was also clear: bring down the Nineteen and do it in a manner that would make rebuilding difficult, if not impossible.
It was up to Cheloi to find a way to do both before escaping with her life and, while she was pondering the contradictions, her gaze was caught by a movement to one side.
Lith. Cheloi knew that she and Rumis had been on a tour of the hospitals earlier that morning. She turned and waited as her aide approached.
"Colonel." Lith saluted and snapped her feet together, sending small clouds of dust into the late morning air.
"Lieutenant."
"We"ve just come back from delivering the minor citations, as ordered."
Cheloi turned and continued walking. Lith stepped into rhythm beside her.
"And what did you think?"
"Colonel?"