But forcing an Eqbas vessel to do anything when it was cocooned in countermeasures was next to impossible. Kiir, showing unusual restraint, waited until he saw the flare and trail of a missile before he fired one burst of light that split into three; the missile and both fighters ahead of them exploded in a ball of flame. It lit up the whole shuttle and Aras heard Shan’s shocked grunt.
“Shit,” said Ade. “Shit.”
The two fighters on their tail broke off the pursuit and Kiir streaked away at top speed towards the Arabian Peninsula.
“From tomorrow,” said Esganikan wearily, “we return to normal rules of engagement.”
It wasn’t an act of invasion by a long stretch of the imagination, but Aras knew it would be recorded as the first attack by an alien vessel on a human ship in its own airspace. As things went, a war had definitely begun, regardless of legal status. Aras simply felt sorry for Ade, having his day of such emotional significance marred by more deaths that needn’t have happened.
But if the FEU had wanted to capture Shan, the missiles hadn’t been fired to hit, merely to pass close and intimidate. It was another tactical mistake based on treating the Eqbas as humans.
The FEU never stood a chance of seizing Shan from a ship like this. Ade sat forward with his head resting on his hands, elbows braced on his knees.
“Sorry, Dave,” he said.
Reception Center: Eqbas officers’ quarters, meeting area, 5th floor.
“So you went out of curiosity?” Laktiriu Avo asked.
“I did,” said Esganikan. “The graves are so orderly. Humans seem to find more reverence for each other when they can no longer benefit than while they’re alive. They always come to their senses too late.”
She watched the BBChan transmissions, fascinated by the flurry of activity that the shooting down of the fighter had caused. The FEU was enraged. Michael Zammett, the leader who Bari seemed to dislike so intensely, appeared every ten minutes on one channel or another declaring that it was an act of war and that the Australian government was complicit if it harbored the Eqbas aggressors. There was a certain irony in that.
“You could have your say on that channel,” Laktiriu pointed out. “Premier Bari’s office tells me they’ve had hundreds of requests to interview you.”
Esganikan knew all about interviews. Eddie Michallat had been an excellent teacher, and when she decided it was time to speak, she would address BBChan exactly as advised. It was a pity he hadn’t come; but he was a human with a strange conscience, just like Shan and Ade, and so he’d be a hindrance as often as a help. The exposé of Prachy had made the top headlines for a full day.
“I’ll wait,” she said. “Let’s see.”
The reporters were pressing Zammett to say if he thought the repeated incursions, as they kept calling them, were connected to the Eqbas demands to hand over Katya Prachy. Zammett snarled defiance. He didn’t mention Shan, though. It was yet another confirmation that they wanted her as a biological sample, and didn’t want anyone else to focus on her. Bari’s aide said a formal request for Shan’s extradition was sitting on the Prime Minister’s desk, and that he was using it as a coaster.
“I feel pity for Ade Bennett,” said Esganikan. “Still mourning his friend after so many years. He even mourns the pilots we shot down yesterday. He’s too sensitive for his line of work, I think.”
Laktiriu didn’t look up from her virin. “Yet he still does it well.”
“And it pains him each time. Shan Chail feels her losses too, but she’s so much better at ignoring them.”
Esganikan spoke not only from observation but from the many perspectives her parasite gave her. She felt as Shan felt, occasionally, and as Ade Bennett did. They lived painful inner lives. So did Aras. Small wonder they clung together.
“She looks impervious to me,” said Laktiriu. “I can’t even detect her mood from her scent.”
“She’s far from impervious.” Esganikan hadn’t worked out significance of the large humanoid animal, the one who kept gesturing frantically in Shan’s memories, or the sheet of flame that sometimes flashed into her mind, or even the flaking blue door, but Shan certainly wrestled with demons. “She collects painful events and seems not to know what to do with them.”
“So you two talk more than I imagine. I thought she found you difficult to deal with.”
It was as good a time as any, Laktiriu was pragmatic and would understand. Sooner or later, Esganikan would do something that would reveal her condition—an accidental wound that healed immediately, something she couldn’t plan out of possibility—and that would demand explanations.
“I have her memories.”
“I don’t understand, Commander.”
“I carry the c’naatat parasite.”
Laktiriu stared at her, utterly still with shock. “She contaminated you? When? Is there nothing you can do to remove it?”
“I acquired it deliberately, from Rayat, and so I have his memories, too, and several others’. It would make sense to Laktiriu in the end, she knew it. “I was prepared to experiment, knowing that if Da Shapakti is never able to remove it, I have the option of a quick death. But if we can control it—as we now appear to be able to control it in humans—then it offers us huge advantages on long deployments like this.”
Laktiriu’s pupils were snapping open and shut. Esganikan had almost expected someone to notice how different she was becoming, but not even Shan seemed to have spotted it.
“I think you’re foolish to sacrifice yourself for an experiment,” Laktiriu said at last, “but it’s very courageous.”
“I haven’t mentioned it to anyone else. I wouldn’t want the Skavu to know. They reacted very badly to Shan Chail when they found out what c’naatat was, and I have to maintain control of them. So sensible discretion is called for, and I know how unnatural that is for us.”
“Understood. But we face unnatural challenges.”
“If any of you want to join me in the experiment, you’re free to do so. The matriarchs of Surang are fully aware of what I’ve done.” Esganikan hadn’t spoken to them since leaving Bezer’ej. Hers was another ongoing restoration now, expected to carry on quietly unless there was a serious emergency she couldn’t handle. C’naatat made that even less likely. “Shan is not aware of it. Like the Skavu, she reacts in an extreme way, and I don’t want this mission disrupted. She even aborted her own child to stop the spread of the parasite, Shapakti says.”
That silenced Laktiriu. Wess’har could consciously control their fertility, so the idea of an unplanned and unwanted child was beyond them. It simply sounded nightmarish; and it was. Esganikan felt a surge of the conflicting memories of both Shan and Lindsay Neville, and how very differently they’d felt about Lindsay’s accidental pregnancy. She wondered if either of them had regretted their decisions in the weeks that followed, but she would never know now unless she asked them. She could hardly approach either of them for a top-up of their body fluids to experience what they’d felt since their c’naatat infected the next host. Esganikan had to make do with the snapshot the parasite gave her up to the point of infection. That was distressing enough.
“I shall be discreet,” Laktiriu said. “Let’s change the subject.”
It was a prudent approach, and one Esganikan expected of her second-in-command. And somehow she felt very much better for having told at least one member of her crew.
If there was one thing she knew she had inherited from Shan rather than Rayat, it was an unforgiving conscience that muttered quietly in the corner, while the bold Rayat within her told her that risks were there to be taken for the greater good.
After Laktiriu left to get a meal, Esganikan summoned Kiir. She didn’t like leaving things to chance now, and the more she saw of emotional human reactions to inevitable death, the more she wondered if Shan and the marines would have been capable of seizing Prachy, knowing she would be killed anyway.
They might have turned squeamish, though. Kiir never did. Skavu alw
ays made sure that the job got done.
Immigrant Reception Center.
“Kiir,” Shan said, “I need your assistance. Come here.”
The Skavu commander straightened up slowly and stared at her, turning his back on the chart laid out on the table. She’d already punched him out once for suggesting that an abomination like her should be killed. She didn’t want to leave him with the impression that she wouldn’t do it a few more times for fun, and indicated the doors with an imperious jerk of the thumb.
It wasn’t fair, she knew, because in his own world he was probably just like Ade and others, ordinary people doing a rotten, thankless job, and she wondered if she shouldn’t cut him some slack just for wearing a uniform. Slaughtering unarmed isenj—well, she couldn’t get too pious about that. She slept with a wess’har who’d killed an awful lot more isenj civilians than Kiir could probably count. It was one of those ironies of life that Ade adored Aras but would kill Kiir if he got the chance.
“What do you require of me, Shan Chail?” His tone was level but there was almost a thought bubble sketched over his head with abomination penciled in it. Qureshi was right about the iguana thing. “I’m preparing to repel FEU threats to our hosts.”
Shan was determined not to mention the shooting down of the FEU fighters. Ade’s remorse had left her feeling even more raw about it. She knew she’d never get used to deaths in wars, because her police training was all about death being unacceptable, and not something to be chalked up to experience, however many autopsies she watched impassively with a sandwich in one hand. There was inuring yourself to personal pain to do the job, and there was kidding yourself that people had to kill each other, and she never wanted to find that she couldn’t tell the difference any longer.
“It won’t take long,” she said. Am I being disloyal to Ade? He hates this bastard. “I need weapons.”
Kiir didn’t ask why. “What are you competent to use?”
“Most small ballistic firearms. Haven’t got a clue how to use energy weapons, except a PEP laser for those pesky public order situations.” He knew all about her 9mm and Ade’s rifle. “But what I want is a fighting knife and a few grenades. You know. Small explosives. Ade trained me.”
“Why do you need explosives?”
It was a fair question. “Because I’m an abomination, as you so kindly pointed out last time, and if I fell into enemy hands I’d like to fragment myself as efficiently as possible. I’ve tried spacing myself. Doesn’t work.”
“I meant what task you require it for, because that will determine what kind, and how much you need.”
“Ah.” Shan wondered how much was lost in the translation; Skavu could speak eqbas’u, as could she, but they wore thin metal collars that interpreted languages for them. “Large biped, like me. And I’ll take a few more for my abominable men folk as well.”
“You mock me,” Kiir said flatly. “I’ll get you the grenades. But you have a blade. Your sergeant confiscated one from me.”
“Your sword, you mean.” Skavu all carried a large flat saber sheathed on their backs, which seemed quaint and ceremonial like a naval officer’s sword, except the Skavu really did use them. Ade would have had the scars to show for it if he hadn’t been c’naatat. “I want a small blade.” She held her forefingers apart to indicate length. “Fifteen to twenty centimeters, if you have one.”
Shan was suddenly aware of Ade approaching from the right, casual and careful. He stood with his hands in his pockets, head cocked, but in Ade it signified disapproval rather than curiosity.
“You could borrow mine, Boss,” he said quietly.
“No, you better keep it.” She turned back to Kiir. He stared at Ade and then looked back at her, unfathomable. “Kiir, I’ll be here for a while, so if you could get those for me, or have one of your men do it, I would be grateful.”
“It’s good to be prepared to fragment yourself, Chail,” Kiir said. “The consequences of humans’ acquiring the organism would be disastrous.”
Kiir summoned a junior officer and sent him on the errand while he went back to his planning session. The breakfast table was covered with a chart of the Australian coastline; it was exactly like the device that Shapakti had used as a microscope when he was surveying the irradiated soil of Ouzhari, a thin sheet of transparent material that Shan thought of as a tea tray. Like the opaque-to-transparent hulls of the Eqbas vessels, it could zoom in and out to different magnifications. Kiir and his officers pored over a global chart of the southern hemisphere as seen from Antarctica and then the image changed instantly into a much more detailed chart of harbors and inlets.
Ade cast a discerning eye over it at a tactful distance, and then steered her away to the lobby with gentle pressure on her elbow.
“You okay?” she asked.
“Fine.”
“I’m sorry, I really am.”
“You forget what I did for a living, Boss. Just because we’ve had a few relatively quiet years doesn’t mean I didn’t see a lot of dead blokes in my career.”
Shan didn’t regard them as quiet years at all, but the marines certainly hadn’t seen frequent action. It seemed all too frequent to her, though.
“Okay. I’m still sorry.”
“Look, I paid my respects to Dave. I’m glad I got the chance. Now let’s concentrate on the task in hand. Prachy.”
“Where’s Aras?” Shan asked. He was getting left out. She needed to drag him along with them whether he felt like it or not. “I don’t want him brooding.”
“He’s helping set up hydroponics. Boss, I’m a grown-up now. Treat me like one. Why ask Twat-Features for kit when you could ask me?”
Yes, Ade really was an adult. Shan wasn’t blind to her own double standards in keeping things from him for his own good, and then yelling at him for doing the same to her.
“You don’t have any more grenades,” she said.
“I could get some, and at least I know what I’m doing. What happened to the last one you kept? You had it before we left.” He was doing his instructor–sergeant routine now. It was actually quite intimidating, even by her standards. “Cops know how many rounds they’ve got and how many they’ve expended. I’m like that with frigging ordnance.”
She opened her jacket. “I didn’t leave it on the bus…”
“And the knife?”
“I’ve not got one.”
“I’ve got a lovely knife. Old pattern Fairbairn-Sykes. And you could have—”
“And you need it.”
Ade wasn’t giving up. When he was locked on to a target, no chaff could distract him. “I know some oranges can put up a fight, Boss, but why else do you need a knife now?”
Shan could have used the blade in her swiss, or maybe found a sharp enough knife in the reception center’s restaurant, but her first thought had been something separate and disposable so she didn’t risk contaminating herself with even the faintest trace of Mohan Rayat. That was one mind she didn’t want sharing space with hers. There was one easy test she’d used on herself to check for c’naatat, and that was slicing a chunk out of someone: you could watch the wound heal instantly.
It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Shapakti’s judgment, but before she took anybody’s word—Rayat’s word, especially—that Esganikan Gai had given herself a dose of the parasite, she wanted proof. If they were wrong, the consequences might turn out to be even worse than leaving things alone.
“I’m still waiting, Boss.” Ade looked disappointed and—yes, hurt. Did he know how hard that hit her? “I think I can guess.”
He didn’t even need her memories. He just knew her.
“Okay,” she said. “It’s as good a test as any, isn’t it? I need to be sure Esganikan’s what we think she is.”
Ade beckoned her outside where they could talk in the remains of a pebbled forecourt that might once have been a Zen garden. In the containment of the defense barrier, it was a pleasantly warm day. Overhead, in the reality of a searing January morning, a poli
ce drone craft was making lazy circles in a bee-cam-free sky while it emitted regular pulses of light from its nose.
It must have been disabling media surveillance dust. Journos had no bloody ethical standards these days. Eddie would have had something to say about it. From time to time, a fighter streaked across the sky at a much higher altitude. The FEU carrier was still nudging at the territorial waters and everyone was still jumpy.
“I liked your method best,” she said, watching the flickering ship. Her hands pulsed violet light for a moment and then gave up.
Ade ambled along the pebble border. “Can’t shoot dust, unfortunately. “So who’s going to drop this turd in their lap, then? And what about her bosses back in Surang? Can’t they see this is enough to warrant relieving her of command?”
“Shapakti told Nev that they won’t interfere because they don’t second-guess commanders in the field.”
“D’you know, that’s the first time in my life that I’ve thought that might be a bad idea.”
“What would you do, then?”
“Just tell the crew. They can’t all be stupid. One of the females might even do the jask thing and take over if Laktiriu doesn’t. But whatever happens, don’t let it be you.”
They sat down on an ornamental bench. Shan wondered if Ade knew her better than she knew herself, and could see her becoming convinced of her own responsibility to be in charge. No, she hadn’t the slightest idea how to run this mission properly; she was just an intelligent, competent copper, nothing more. All her opinions of how she’d run the world, her instant knee-jerk wisdom, were hopelessly inadequate when she tried to apply them to a big, complex system like Earth. Shoot all the bloody wasters, shoot all the fucks who harmed kids and animals, shoot…well, she’d shot a few on a very personal basis, but now that she was looking at a more dispassionate, rational, and industrial scale approach to culling humans, she’d lost her nerve.
And you thought you were so hard, didn’t you?