He shrieked as it smashed him to the floor, but the sound was half lost in the wail of a fresh alarm, and Okanami paled as the blood chem monitors went berserk. A binary agent neuro-toxin drove the toxicology readings up like missiles, and the security code on Ford’s screen was joined by two more. Their access attempt had activated some sort of suicide override!
“Retract!” he screamed, but Ford was already stabbing buttons in frantic haste. Alarms wailed an instant longer, and then the implant monitor died. The toxicology alert ended in a dying warble as an even more potent counter-agent went after the half-formed toxin, and the amber-haired woman slumped back on the table, still and inert once more while the injured surgeon sobbed in agony and his fellows stared at one another in shock.
“You’re lucky your man’s still alive, Doctor.”
Captain Okanami glowered at the ramrod-straight colonel in Marine space-black and green who stood beside him, watching the young woman in the bed. Medical monitors watched her with equal care—very cautiously, lest they trigger yet another untoward response from the theoretically helpless patient.
“I’m sure Commander Thompson will be delighted to hear that, Colonel McIlheny,” the surgeon said frostily. “It only took us an hour and a half to put his diaphragm back together.”
“Better that than what she was going for. If she’d been conscious he’d never have known what hit him—you can put that on your credit balance.”
“What the hell is she?” Okanami demanded. “That wasn’t her on the table, it was her goddamned augmentation processors running her!”
“That’s exactly what it was,” McIlheny agreed. “There are escape and evasion and an anti-interrogation subroutine buried in her primary processor.” He turned to favor the surgeon with a measuring glance. “You Navy types aren’t supposed to have anything to do with someone like her.”
“Then she’s one of yours?” Okanami’s eyes were suddenly narrow.
“Close, but not quite. Our people often support her unit’s operations, but she belongs—belonged—to the Imperial Cadre.”
“Dear God,” Okanami whispered. “A drop commando?”
“A drop commando.” McIlheny shook his head. “Sorry it took so long, but the Cadre doesn’t exactly leave its data lying around. The pirates took out Mathison’s data base when they blew the governor’s compound, so I queried the Corps files. They don’t have much data specific to her. I’ve downloaded the available specs on her hardware and gotten your medical types cleared for it, but it’s limited, and the bio data’s even thinner, mostly just her retinal and genetic patterns. All I can say for sure is that this—“ his chin jutted at the woman in the bed “—is Captain Alicia DeVries.”
“Devries?! The Shallingsport DeVries?”
“The very one.”
“She’s not old enough,” Okanami protested. “She can’t be more than twenty-five, thirty years old!”
“Twenty-nine. She was nineteen when they made the drop—youngest master sergeant in Cadre history. They went in with ninety-five people. Seven of them came back out, but they brought the hostages with them.”
Okanami stared at the pale face on the pillow—an oval face, pretty, not beautiful, and almost gentle in repose.
“How in heaven did she wind up out here on the backside of nowhere?”
“I think she wanted some peace,” McIlheny said sadly. “She got a commission, the Banner of Terra, and a twenty-year bonus from Shallingsport—earned every millicred of it, too. She sent in her papers five years ago and took the equivalent of a thirty-year retirement credit in colony allotments. Most of them do. The Core Worlds won’t let them keep their hardware.”
“Hard to blame them,” Okanami observed, recalling Commander Thompson’s injuries, and McIlheny stiffened!
“They’re soldiers, Doctor.” His voice was cold. “Not maniacs, not killing machines—soldiers.” He held Okanami’s eye with icy anger, and it was the captain who looked away.
“But that wasn’t the only reason she headed here,” the colonel resumed after a moment. “She used her allotment as the core claim on four prime sections, and her family settled out here.”
Okanami sucked in air, and McIlheny nodded. His voice was flat when he continued.
“She wasn’t there when the bastards landed. By the time she got back to the site, they’d murdered her entire family. Father, mother, younger sister and brother, grandfather, an aunt and uncle, and three cousins. All of them.”
He reached out and touched the sleeping woman’s shoulder, the gesture gentle and curiously vulnerable in such a big, hard-muscled man, then laid the long, heavy rifle he’d carried in across the bedside table. Okanami stared at it, considering the dozen or so regulations its presence violated, but the colonel continued before he could speak.
“I’ve been out to the homestead.” His voice had turned soft. “She must’ve been out after direcat or snow wolves—this is a fourteen-millimeter Vorlund express, semi-auto with recoil buffers—and she went in after twenty-five men with body armor, grenades, and combat rifles.” He stroked the rifle and met the doctor’s eyes. “She got them all.”
Okanami looked back down at her, then shook his head.
“That still doesn’t explain it. By every medical standard I know, she should have died then and there, unless there’s something in your download that says different, and I can’t begin to imagine anything that might.”
“Don’t waste your time looking, because you won’t find anything. Our med people agree entirely. Captain DeVries” —McIlheny touched the motionless shoulder once more “—can’t possibly be alive.”
“But she is,” Okanami said quietly.
“Agreed.” McIlheny left the rifle and turned away, waving politely for the doctor to precede him from the room. The surgeon was none too pleased to leave the weapon behind, even without a magazine, but the colonel’s combat ribbons—and expression—stilled his protests. “That’s why Admiral Gomez’s report has a whole team of specialists on their way here at max.”
Okanami led the way into the sparsely appointed lounge, empty at this late hour, and drew two cups of coffee. The two men sat at a table, and the colonel’s eyes watched the open door as Okanami keyed a small hand reader to access the medical download. His cup steamed on the table, ignored, and his mouth tightened, as he realized just how scanty the data was. Every other entry ended in the words “FURTHER ACCESS RESTRICTED and some astronomical clearance level. McIlheny waited patiently until Okanami set the reader aside with sigh.
“Weird,” he murmured, shaking his head as he reached for his own coffee, and the colonel chuckled without humor.
“Even weirder than you know. This is for your information only—that’s straight from Admiral Gomez—but you’re in charge of this case until a Cadre med team can get here, so I’m supposed to bring you up to speed. Or as up to speed as any of us are, anyway. Clear?”
Okanami nodded, and his mouth felt oddly dry despite the coffee.
“All right. I took my own people out to the DeVries claim because the original report was so obviously impossible. For one thing, three separate SAR overflights hadn’t picked up anything. If Captain DeVries had been there and alive, she’d’ve showed on the thermal scans, especially lying in the open that way, so I knew it had to be some kind of plant.”
He sipped coffee and shrugged.
“It wasn’t. The evidence is absolutely conclusive. She came up on them from the south, with the wind behind her, and took them by surprise. She left enough blood trail for us to work out what must’ve happened, and it was like turning a saber-tooth loose on hyenas, Doctor. They took her down in the end, but not before she got them all. That shuttle must’ve been lifted out by remote, because there sure as hell weren’t any live pirates to fly it.
“But that’s where it gets really strange. Our forensic people have fixed approximate times of death for the pirates and her family, and they’ve pegged the blood trails she left to about the same ti
me. Logically, then, she should have bled to death within minutes of killing the last pirate. If she hadn’t done that, she should have frozen to death, again, probably very quickly. And if she were alive, the thermal scans certainly should have picked her up. None of those things happened—it’s like she was someplace else until the instant Sikorsky’s crew landed and found her. And, Doctor,” the colonel’s eyes were, very intent, “not even a drop commando can do that.”
“So what are you saying? It was magic?”
“I’m saying she’s managed at least three outright impossibilities, and nobody has the least damned idea how. So until an explanation occurs to us, we want her right here in your capable hands.”
“Under what conditions?” Okanami’s voice was edged with sudden frost.
“We’d prefer,” McIlheny said carefully, “to keep her just like she is.”
“Unconscious? Forget it, Colonel.”
“But—“
“I said forget it! You don’t keep a patient sedated indefinitely, particularly not one who’s been through what she has, and especially not when there’s an unknown pharmacology element. Her medical condition is nothing to play games with, and your download—“ he waved the hand reader under the colonel’s nose “—is less than complete. The damned thing won’t even tell me what three of the drugs in her pharmacope do, and her augmentation security must’ve been designed by a terminal paranoiac. Not only do the codes in her implants mean I can’t override externally to shut them down, but I can’t even go in to empty her reservoirs surgically! Do you have the least idea now much that complicates her meds? And the same security systems that keep me from accessing her receptors mean I can’t use a standard somatic unit, so the only way I could keep her under would be with chemicals.”
“I see.” McIlheny toyed with his coffee cup and frowned as he came up against the captain’s Hippocratic armor. “In that case, let’s just say we’d like you to keep her here under indefinite medical observation.”
“Whether or not her medical condition requires it, eh? And if she decides she wants out of my custody before your intelligence types get here?”
“Out of the question. These ‘raids’ are totally out of hand. That’s bad enough, and when you add in all the unanswered questions she represents—“ McIlheny shrugged. “She’s not going anywhere until we’ve got some answers.”
“There are limits to the dirty work I’m prepared to do for you and your spooks, Colonel.”
“What dirty work? She probably won’t even want to leave, but if she does, you’re the physician of record of a patient in a military facility.”
“A patient,” Okanami pointed out, “who happens to be a civilian.” He leaned back and eyed the colonel with a marked lack of affability. “You do remember what a ‘civilian’ is? You know, the people who don’t wear uniforms? The ones with something called civil rights? If she wants out of here, she’s out of here unless there’s a genuine medical reason to hold her. And your ‘unanswered questions’ do not constitute such a reason.”
McIlheny felt a grudging respect for the surgeon and tugged at his lower lip in thought.
“Look, Doctor, I didn’t mean to step on any professional toes, and I’m sure Admiral Gomez doesn’t want to, either. Nor are we medieval monsters out to ‘disappear’ an unwanted witness. This is one of our people, and a damned outstanding one. We just need to . . . keep tabs on her.”
“So what’s the problem? Even if I discharge her, she’s not going anywhere you can’t find her. Not without a starship, anyway.”
“Oh, no?” McIlheny smiled tightly. “I might point out that she’s already been somewhere we couldn’t find her when all the indications are she was lying right there in plain sight. What’s to say she can’t do it again?”
“What’s to say she has any reason to do it again?” Okanami demanded in exasperation.
“Nothing. On the other hand, what’s to say she did it on purpose the first time?” Okanami’s eyebrows quirked, and McIlheny grinned sourly. “Hadn’t thought about that, had you? That’s because you’re insufficiently paranoid for one of us much maligned ‘spooks,’ Doctor, but the point is that until we have some idea what happened, we can’t know if she did whatever she did on purpose. Or what might happen to her if she does it again.”
“You’re right—you are paranoid,” Okanami muttered. He thought hard for a moment, then shrugged. “Still doesn’t matter. If a mentally competent civilian wants to check herself out, then unless you’ve got some specific criminal charge to warrant holding her against her will she checks herself out, period. End of story, Colonel.”
“Not quite.” McIlheny leaned back and smiled at him. “You see, you’ve forgotten that she wasn’t Fleet or Marine, she’s Imperial Cadre.”
“So?”
“So there’s one fact most people don’t know about the Cadre. Not surprising, really; it isn’t big enough for much about it to become common knowledge. But the point is that she’s not really a civilian at all.” Okanami blinked in surprise, and McIlheny’s smile grew. “You don’t resign from the Cadre—you just go on inactive reserve status. And if you don’t want to hang onto our ‘civilian’ for us, then we’ll just by God reactivate her!”
Chapter Three
The being men had once called Tisiphone roamed the corridors of her host’s mind and marveled at what she found. Its vast, dim caverns crackled with the golden fire of dreams, and even its sleeping power was amazing. It had been so long since last Tisiphone touched a mortal mind, and she had never been much interested in those she had invaded then. They had been targets, sources of information, tools, and prey, not something to be tasted and sampled, for she was an executioner, not a philosopher.
But things had changed. She was alone and diminished, and no one had sent her to punish this mortal; she had been summoned by the mind in which she wandered, and she needed it. Needed it as a focus and avatar for her weakened self, and so she searched its labyrinthine passages, finding places to store her self, sampling its power and fingering its memories.
It was so different. The last human whose thoughts she’d touched had been—the shepherd in Cappadocia? No, Cassander of Macedon, that tangled, ambitious murderer. Now there had been a mind of power, for all its evil. Yet it was no match for the strength, clarity, and knowledge of this mind. Man had changed over her centuries of sleep, and even cool Athena or clever-fingered Haphaestus might have envied the lore and skill mortals had attained.
But even more than its knowledge, it was the power of this mind which truly astounded her—the focused will, crystal lucidity . . . and ferocity. There was much of her in this Alicia DeVries. This mortal could be as implacable as she herself, Tisiphone sensed, and as deadly, and that was amazing. Were all mortals thus, if only she had stopped to see it so long ago? Or had more than man’s knowledge changed while she slept?
Yet there were differences between them. She swooped through memories, sampled convictions and beliefs, and had she had lips, she would have smiled in derision at some of the foolishness she found. She and her selves had not been bred for things like love and compassion— those had no meaning for such as they, and even less this concept of “justice.” It caught at her, for it had its whetted sharpness, its tangential contact with what she was, yet she sensed the dangerous contradictions at its core. It clamored for retribution, yes, but balance blunted its knife-sharp edge. Extenuation dulled its certitude, and its self-deluding emphasis on “guilt” and “innocence” and “proof” weakened its determination.
She studied the idea, tasting the dynamic tension which held so many conflicting elements in poised balance, and the familiar hunger at its heart only made it more alien. Her selves had been crafted to punish, made for vengeance, and guilt or innocence had no bearing on her mission. It was a bitter-tasting thing, this “justice,” a chill bitterness in the hot, sweet blood-taste, and she rejected it. She turned away contemptuously, and bent her attention on other gems in this treasure-vau
lt mind.
They were heaped and piled, glittering measurelessly, and she savored the unleashed violence of combat with weapons Zeus himself might have envied. They had their own lightning bolts, these mortals, and she watched through her host’s eyes, tasting the jagged rip-tides of terror and fury controlled by training and science and harnessed to purpose. She was apt to violence, this Alicia DeVries . . . and yet, even at the heart of her battle fury, there was that damnable sense of detachment. That watching presence that mourned the hot blood of her own handiwork and wept for her foes even as she slew them.
Tisiphone spat in mental disgust at that potential weakness. She must be wary. This mortal had sworn herself to her service, but Tisiphone had sworn herself to Alicia DeVries’ purpose in return, and this mind was powerful and complex, a weapon which might turn in her hand if she drove it too hard.
Other memories flowed about her, and these were better, more suited to her needs. Memories of loved ones, held secure and precious at her host’s core like talismans against her own dark side. Anchors, helping her cling to her debilitating compassion. But they were anchors no more. They had become whips, made savage by newer memories of rape and mutilation, of slaughter and wanton cruelty and the broken bodies of dead love. They tapped deep into the reservoirs of power and purpose, stoking them into something recognized and familiar. For beneath all the nonsense about mercy and justice, Tisiphone looked into the mirror of Alicia DeVries’ soul and saw . . . herself.
Jade eyes opened. Darkness pressed against the spartan room’s window, moaning with the endless patience of Mathison’s winter wind, but dim lights cast golden pools upon the overhead. Monitors chirped gently, almost encouragingly, and Alicia DeVries drew a deep, slow breath.
She turned her head on her pillow, studying the quiet about her, and saw the rifle on her bedside table. The weapon gleamed like memory itself in the dimness, and it should have brought the agony crashing in upon her.