"Negative. I'll talk with him upon his arrival. Have you received instructions with regard to my quarters?"
Ily nodded to herself as Arta sent the message. In a low Voice she added, "If you can, have them prepare an escort for our arrival. It might speed our access and avoid mistakes on our part."
In the interim, Arta glanced Ily's way. "Under interrogation, Skyla said the personal quarters for Companions were in the core area-the least monitored section. If Skyla is Staffa's lover, and Chrysla has been under the Praetor's control, she wouldn't run right back to his bed, would she?"
"I'd gamble that she'd play it safe-but, Rot it, we just don't know enough about their relationship! So much is . . . it's all different than I thought it would be. " And Ilys nerves were eating at her.
The woman on the comm stated, "We have received no instructions regarding your arrival, Lady Attenasio. Is there anything we can do?"
"I would appreciate it if you could prepare quarters close to Staffa's and provide an escort for me and my servant upon our arrival."
Ily realized she'd clutched the armrests on her chair until her fingers ached.
To battle the growing tension, she forced herself to relax knotted muscles and still her adrenalinestressed heart.
Itreata responded, "Affirmative, Lady Attenasio. Is there anything else? "
Arta's expression remained perfectly controlled. "No, thank you. Please inform me when Insystem Traffic Control wishes to assume control of the navcomm. In the meantime,
my best regards to Itreata, and it's good to be home again after all these years."
"Careful!" Ily whispered through clenched teeth - "What if she's been there?"
Arta shot her a sidelong glance. "When? If Chrysla arrived on Rega with MacRuder and Rysta-and is with them now-when would she have been to Itreata?
Skyla would have known if the woman had turned up in the Myklenian aftermath.
The timing doesn't work otherwise."
Ily tried to exhale her anxiety as she closed her eyes and leaned back. "Yes, well, good thinking. But for my peace of mind, don't push it."
Arta chuckled. "My first inclination was to ask to be put up in Staffa's quarters-and to please remove Skyla's things before I set foot in the place.
Wouldn't that have wound them up?"
"Do it, and I'll shoot you myself!"
Arta's mouth screwed up. "Ily! I'm surprised at you! What is this? Losing your nerve?"
"No, I'm just . . . Rot take it, I don't like surprises! Chrysla? Alive? What else don't we know?"
"So she's alive? What of it? By the time Gyton could match and pick up Rega One, and then revector for Itreata, we'll have planted the virus and gone to ground in Itreata. Staffa will make planet in a weltered mess. We'll kill him, wreak a little extra havoc for a diversion, and make our escape. "
"And if the real Chrysla happens to call Itreata comm?" "So long as it happens after we get to Andray Sornsen, it won't make any difference. " Thoughtfully, Arta tapped her fingers on the controls. "During the interrogation, Skyla said she didn't trust him. He's festering with resentment about Staffa and the Companions. He'll work with us. Especially after I wrap myself around him.
A codified legal system is the foundation upon which human beings must base their relations with each other. Without such a system of law, ethics and behavior intertwine in a gray twilight of morality....
Sinklar stared at the words glowing on the monitor, his brain blocked by the enormity of what he attempted as he, sat at his desk aboard Chrysla. At his elbow, a ring formed around the inside of a half-empty cup of cold stassa.
Flimsies containing scrawled notes created an air of wild disorganization.
How did a single man start from scratch and write an entire body of law for a civilization as disparate as Free Space? Where did he start-even with the benefit of the only human history book in existence?
Sinklar groaned and rubbed the back of his neck.
" Sinklar? You in there?" Adze's voice called through the door comm.
"Come on in! Please! " He grinned as the hatch slipped back and she entered, bringing a sudden radiance to the room.
Adze wore spacer's whites that revealed her shapely body and contrasted with the sleek shine of her long black hair and copper-tinted skin. A portable comm was tucked under one arm.
"Hard at work?" she asked, noting the brief composition on the monitor.
"Sort of," Sinklar agreed, standing and arching his back to get the kinks out.
"It would be more accurate to say I'm hard at being lost. I don't know what to do next. You read the history book and legal systems all sound so poetically lofty. "
He shook his head. "I guess I've spent too much of my time in the mud. My idea of a perfect legal preamble is as follows: 'These are going to be the rules from now on. Break them and we'll break you. ' "
"You're in charge, write them that way. Who's going to criticize? "
Sinklar pointed to the comm monitor where the history book was displayed.
"Posterity. And that's an eerie feeling. Something I've never had time to consider before. From now on, people are going to be trying to analyze what I did-just the same way I had to do in class when we wrote papers on Tybalt the Imperial First."
Adze's gaze dropped.
"Did I say anything wrong?"
She winced. "Talk about truly Rotten timing ... Tell you what, I'll drop in later. How's that?"
Sinklar gave her a scowl and shrugged. "Now's fine. Believe me, words to rock the ages can wait. What can I do for you?"
In a flat voice she said, "I wanted to talk about Targa. About your first drop with the First Targan Assault Division. "
"Why would you ever want to do that?"
,'The Special Tactics Units throughout the Companions are doing an analysis of errors committed by First Atkin and Second Nytan when they dropped on Targa.
Given the changing face of strategic and tactical realities, we might be doing a lot more of that kind of fighting rather than the traditional 'smash down their door and kick their teeth in' assault." She smiled nervously, "But I'll talk to you about it later. Sorry to have--
fo " Whoa! Hold it! " Sinklar waved his hands as he stepped rward. "Tell you what. I'll help you if you'll help me." "Deal! "
"But not here. How about in the forward lounge. You, me, your notebook, and the beverage of your choice." "Let's go."
As they stepped into the corridor, Sinklar shook his head. "I think I'm going to get the best out of this deal. There's not much to say about the Targan drop. First Atkin deployed his forces by the book. Everything he did is right there in the manual-the Holy Gawddam. Book. The prescribed way to take an enemy-held city. A, B, C, D, E, and you win. Bruen didn't play by the rules.
He used the common citizens against us. In the instance where I survived, it was a little old lady with a purse full of explosives. She blew up our entire Section."
"An elderly lady did this?"
1l That's right. She walked in, old, gray, stooped, and wanting to know about her government checks. When she walked out, she wasn't carrying her purse. Mac, Gretta, and I charged out after her and the whole place exploded.
Scratch one Section."
"So how did you make it?"
"The three of us were hunted in the streets. Straight guerrilla warfare.
Ambush, move, ambush, move. By the
time Mykroft's Second Division landed and pulled us off a burning roof, the lesson had sunk in. " Sinklar gestured with his hands. "Here's the point.
We'd killed more Targansjust the three of us on our own-than the entire Section had-or could have on a per capita basis. We weren't brilliant or anything, we just hadn't been indoctrinated in a stagnant system.
"Let's face it. The Regan military, and the Sassans, too, for that matter, were ripe for a fall. The Companions had been doing the real dirty work of war. The Empires just sort of showed up and provided support. It was a nice clean system for the aristocracy. They
could play soldier in the wake of the Companions' victories." Sinklar pointed to the notebook. "You're still doing it."
"You don't make it sound very spectacular."
"Hey, it wasn't. We were scared every second of the way. Failure meant death.
To put it into an equation, desperation and necessity equal innovation. I got the wild ideas-Mac and Gretta made them work. The Regan system was so stagnant and inefficient that we won the war and revolutionized the armed forces. "
She nodded to herself and shut off the recorder on the portable comm. "The words sound all right, Sinklar, but I detect a note of desperation and depression underneath it all." She paused. "Want to talk about it?"
No, I . . .
"I'm available, and I think I'm the only set of ears you've got these days, at least until they get Mac out of his fix. What's bothering you?"
He looked irritated. "Everything. You probably won't understand this, but I'm not adjusting very well. I'm on the verge of falling right into the life I dreamed about before I left Rega. I'm going to be using my training in history, sociology, and political science in the reshaping of the human condition. Right? Just what I dreamed of doing after I got out of University on Rega. I was crushed . . . crushed when I got drafted.
"Now I have the power not only to imagine but to implement. I should be ecstatic!"
"But you're not."
"You saw the words on the comm back there. All of human history is in that book and all of the social theory I
learned is in my head, and I still can't write the preamble to a legal code-a document which will define human civilization for the next however long."
She led him into the lounge, across the colorful waves of carpet and into one of the corners, triggering a privacy field around them as she pushed him into one of the plush chairs Through the tactite, the stars had blueshifted as Chrysla built for null singularity.
She leaned forward, eyes animated. "You're bored, Sinklar. That's what it is, you know. For the last four years, you've been battling one catastrophe after another. You've been living on adrenaline and fear alternating with ecstasy and triumph. Now you're facing the prospect of spending the rest of your life sitting in an office - "
He studied her, aware of her intensity. Was that it? "Sinklar," she insisted,
"You're young, ambitious, and you've been shot at. One of two things happens to people who've been shot at. Either they decide they never want to be shot at again, or they develop a craving for the rush they get when a blaster bolt crackles by their heads. I've got a feeling that you can't turn off that rush.
You've been trying to, but it just isn't happening. "
He sucked at his lip for a moment, remembering the endless hard days with disaster looming before them. That skinny kid who'd sat next to Gretta Artina on the night drop to Targa had metamorphosed, but into what? Into who?
"You've put yourself in order," Adze continued. "You've made peace with the dead, forgiven yourself for snaring yourself in Ily's trap. You've discovered the legacy Anatolia searched for. Justice has been done with Bruen and Nyklos.
Only Ily and Arta are left, and, Sink, the Wing Commander has as much right to them as you, and she's closing in - "
"I would like a chance to finish pulling the trigger on Arta. Ily I would hand over to Dion Axel for trial. But you're right, I've accepted that Skyla Lyma will get them before I do.'I
The lights gave a bluish tone to Adze's thick black hair as she tilted her head. "Where to from here? An office? If I were you, Sinklar, I'd give it a little thought. Maybe the reason you can't write a preamble for your laws is that you don't know where you're going. Either that, or you shouldn't be writing the Rotted things in the first place."
He leaned back, squinting at her. "Are you another psychologist? Or do you hear this in STU training? You seem pretty sure of yourself, and I don't think it's because you've had that much personal experience. You're not that old."
She eased back a little, that sparkling smile warming him. "No, I'm not. But my grandfather is-and I've heard my grandmother tell it over and over, about how he was when he finally got himself shot up to the point that he couldn't take combat anymore. My mother was the same way. Her back was blasted open in the Vermilion campaign and the neural damage was so severe that she couldn't space anymore. She still drives us near to insanity."
"Your whole family fights for the Companions?"
"We have since Malbourne was absorbed into the Sassan Empire. Grandfather wouldn't serve Sassa I, said he looked more like a fat white maggot than a god."
Sink laughed and slapped a hand to his knee. "Maybe you're right. It seems like I keep drifting back to the memories, replaying times with Hauws, Gretta, Mac, and Shiksta. The only holos I run on my wall tanks are of Targa.
'Remember when' are the words most commonly in my mind. "
"So let's change them. How about, 'When we finally .
or 'One of these days . . .' Which ones do you like best?" "Planning on starting a war? "
She pulled a muscular leg up, lacing her fingers over the knee. "Scuttlebutt has it that a project is working on the Forbidden Borders. That Dee Wall is building the device the Mag Comm said it needed to break the Forbidden Borders. "
Sinklar caught the subtle change in her attitude. "You're dancing around the edge of security."
"I'm very quick on my feet, and I know a lot of different steps. You want to try me out sometime?"
"What makes you think I can dance? I'd flatten your toes and smash your arches. I've never danced a step in my life. In the first place, it wasn't part of the curriculum in the state school on Rega and, in the second, I was such an odd kid no girl ever wanted to dance with me - "
"You dance just fine, Sinklar. You've danced clear away from the subject. "
Her musical laughter augmented her conspiratorial smile. "Remember that day in the archives
inside Makarta? I joined your team-not for the time on Targa but for the long haul. "
Sinklar touched his fingertips together and frowned. "Ily told me something one time. Mytol serves any master with the truth - "
"Good point, and to date you've only got my word that I'm not the gun room loudmouth. Remember, though, the battle can be lost when the commander seals his lips and gets killed by the enemy's first shot. " She stared at the blue streaks of starlight hazing into vague blackness. "Speaking hypothetically, if the Forbidden Borders could be breached, someone would have to take the first ship through. "
Sinklar chuckled. "One of the things I've noticed about you is that you don't fool around with subtlety. That said, I want to remind you that the last time I trusted an ambitious woman I ended up in her prison. "
"I'm not Ily Takka. But it does pay to be prudent." She gave him that frank look that always left him off balance. "Tapa on the table. Here are the facts.
You're right. I'm ambitious, and I think you're an intelligent human being I can work with to achieve certain goals."
"And what might those goals be?"
She leaned closer to him. "I think they're the same as yours. Most of the STU
haven't realized it yet, but if the Mag Comm works as well as the Lord Commander hopes and if the Forbidden Borders go down, the best most of these people can hope for is a job like a glorified policeman might hold. Some, like Ryman, might settle down, but I'm too young for an office."
"So why me? The Lord Commander's son would be the sort of target any woman might take a fancy to
She stiffened, a chill in her narrowing eyes.
"Cards on the table, right?" Sinklar countered. "You be straight with me, I'll be straight with you."
"Fair enough." She thawed 'slightly. "And I guess the question is fair. I just get a bit fuzzy-tailed when someone suggests I'd sell myself. Mom never did, and she taught me-beat it into my bones-that a woman can only make it with her wits. Not on her back. Before I rest my case, remember what I thought of you that first day at Makarta . . . son of Staffa. "
 
; "You're right. You couldn't hide that look of disdain."
"Getting back to facts, I think you and I want to go in the same direction."
Her eyes seemed to darken and pool. "I actually came to respect and like you, Sinklar. You're easy company, thoughtful, warm, and intimate. I haven't met many authentic people before.
"Authentic? Isn't everyone?"
She shifted in her seat, running long fingers through her luxurious hair. "Not at all. That's one of the things about you that fascinates me. You're completely vulnerable one moment, with a soft gentleness in your eyes-and the next you're harder than a sialon milling tool. I consider myself pretty well educated, but at times you startle me with what you know. Round all that off with the fact that you're just good company, and I'd be a fool to ignore you."
"Just what do you have in mind?"
"Partnership. You and I can help each other. Just like we're doing right now.
" She focused on the distance. "I suppose if I had a model to strive for it would be like Staffa and Skyla. I've seen the way they look when they talk to each other. Respect, appreciation, and most of all reliance. "
"Before or after they became lovers?"
"They've been in love with each other for as long as I've known them. They just didn't know it. It took Staffa going off to Etaria to trigger that realization. I'd have to say it's just always been there. "
"Is that what you see for us? Lovers?"
"Let's leave it strictly professional for the time being, all right? Besides if you were foolish enough to fall in love with me this quickly, I'm not sure I'd be inclined to trust your judgment." Then her mischievous grin spread.
"Your lust, maybe, but definitely not your judgment.
"You are an extremely acute woman."
"Thanks for making my last point for me. There you go, Sinklar. All of my cards are on the table. "
"Do I have to make my choice right now?"
, Take your time. But whatever you decide, pick a direction for yourself. You might even be able to write that preamble.
CHAPTER 37
5780:03:10:22:17 Seddi Warrens Itreata.