And another sergeant who would shake her head, and tell Mele, “Darcy, you stupid boot, I always told you to stop screwing around and you’d make rank in a flash. It’s about time you listened.”
As she stepped outside on her way back to the grandly named Glenlyon Ground Forces Training Camp, Mele paused to look up. People did that a lot these days, she realized. Looking up to where they had come from or where they were going or where people they knew were. Had Lochan Nakamura gone on to Kosatka? Was he still with that Carmen, who had seemed to have had her share of hidden secrets? Mele wished he could know she had made major. But since that was unlikely to happen, she hoped Lochan was all right. Kosatka was supposed to be a quiet place, after all.
• • •
Someone had gone to the trouble of making Kosatka’s second city, Drava, different in architectural style from the original city. Not hugely different, but with enough distinctive features to give it a feel of individuality. Lochan liked that. The people running Kosatka might have made some missteps, but they clearly were trying to do things right. Even more than the first city, Drava felt only half-occupied, having been overbuilt to accommodate the new immigrants coming in with every ship that arrived.
He took another look at Carmen as their vehicle rolled through streets with light traffic. She had been up and down all day, one moment seemingly elated by the progress they had made and the next moment gloomy and looking around as if expecting some sort of trouble. During the brief moments when he had felt safe to speak candidly with her and asked whether she was worried about anything, Carmen had only shaken her head, muttered “ghosts,” and left it at that.
The meeting with representatives from Drava was to take place in a newly completed building. “No negative historical associations possible,” First Minister Hofer had commented wryly to Lochan and Carmen. “As short as our history has been, places are already acquiring good and bad connotations. But this is completely neutral ground.”
Entry was through broad doors into an expansive and mostly empty reception area. The new lift tubes were being balky, so the small group walked up two flights of stairs to the second story. Besides Lochan, there was Carmen Ochoa, First Minister Hofer, House Leader Ottone, Safety Coordinator Sarkozy, and a single guard. Lochan noticed that as they walked, the Safety Coordinator always positioned herself in the group so that she could keep an eye on Carmen.
After a short walk down a hallway with finished but bare walls, Lochan brought up the rear as the small group entered a suite on the second floor. “We need to discuss a few internal matters while waiting for the representatives from Drava,” First Minister Hofer told Lochan and Carmen. “I hope you won’t mind waiting in the outer room.”
“No problem,” Lochan assured him.
The First Minister, House Leader Ottone, and Safety Coordinator Sarkozy entered the inner room. As the door closed behind them, Lochan could hear the Safety Coordinator beginning to speak forcefully, but he didn’t catch any words.
The guard with them took up position outside the inner door, ostentatiously blocking access but giving Lochan and Carmen a slightly apologetic look. Lochan suspected he was following orders from Safety Coordinator Sarkozy.
Lochan looked around the outer room, a rectangle maybe seven meters long and about half that wide, the doorway to the hall set in the center of one long wall and the door to the inner room set directly opposite it. One of the shorter walls had a big window set in it, but curtains veiled any view of the outside. Like the hallway, the outer room lacked any pictures or displays. If he hadn’t known he was on Kosatka, Lochan thought, he could be back on Franklin, or even on Earth.
“It’s funny,” he commented to Carmen. “We go so far from Old Earth, we build something totally new on a totally new world, and from the inside, it looks like it could have been built anywhere at any time in the last few centuries.”
She started to reply, stopped with a worried/puzzled expression, turned toward the outer doorway, then leapt toward Lochan.
He staggered back as she shoved him, catching a glimpse of someone in the doorway, a weapon aimed in at them.
“Alert!” the guard at the inner door shouted, clawing at the shocker holstered under his coat. “Lock the—”
The guard jerked three times and fell back against the door he had been guarding, his eyes open in a final stare at the man who had killed him. The sound of the shots had been muffled but was still clear in the otherwise quiet building.
That man was already inside the room and spinning to target Lochan and Carmen. Frozen in surprise, Lochan got only a blurred glimpse of a wiry build, a balding head, and the muzzle of the weapon coming around to aim.
In the vids, this was where the bad guy would stop to give a speech, then watch without reacting as the good guys jumped into action.
But the killer’s only hesitation came as he took a moment to decide which of them to kill first.
Lochan would have died in the seconds he needed to figure out how to react. But Carmen had launched herself into the assassin the instant she finished pushing Lochan aside, taking advantage of the killer’s brief instant of indecision.
Lochan had seen Mele fight, seen the sure, practiced blows with which she disabled a threat. Carmen didn’t fight that way.
Carmen fought dirty.
Lochan didn’t catch everything she did as Carmen hit their attacker, but he saw a thumb driven into an eye and a knee go into a groin. Carmen and the killer fell to the floor, her teeth closing on the wrist holding a weapon. The killer rolled free, shouting in pain, his weapon now in Carmen’s hand.
In the vids, this was where the good guy would stop and tell the bad guy to surrender.
The moment Carmen lined up the pistol, she fired, hitting the attacker. Taking only a second to aim better, she fired again, knocking him down for good.
Lochan was still grappling with what had happened when Carmen bent down, retrieved the shocker the guard had been trying to draw, and tossed it to Lochan. “I heard at least one more out there,” she told him. “Get over on that side of the door. Can you use that?”
He looked down at the weapon, his head and guts swirling with adrenaline and emotion, then back at Carmen Ochoa. “I’ve never fired a weapon,” Lochan said as he picked it up.
“You’re a fast learner, aren’t you?” Carmen had closed in on herself, no feelings visible in her expression. The only sign of distress in her was the tightness with which she was gripping the weapon taken from the attacker.
“What do they want?” Lochan asked as he knelt by the opposite side of the door from Carmen, his own weapon held awkwardly. It only now occurred to him that he had been standing between the doorway and the guard. If Carmen had not shoved him out of the way, the killer’s bullets would have hit Lochan first.
“They want to kill any chance of peaceful resolution,” Carmen said, her voice a monotone. “Commit another atrocity and cause a bigger crackdown. Feed a spiral of violence with innocent victims. It’s an old, old strategy.”
A voice called from the other side of the inner door. “Who’s out there?”
“Ochoa and Nakamura,” she replied. “Your guard is dead. There’s at least one more attacker in the hall. We’re holding the outer door. Keep yours closed in case they get past us.”
After a long pause, the voice came again. Lochan recognized it as that of Safety Coordinator Sarkozy. “I owe you an apology, Citizen Ochoa.”
“I’ll accept it when we have the chance,” Carmen replied.
She swung her gaze across Lochan for a moment, then focused once more on the doorway.
Lochan shivered at what he had seen in her eyes. Growing up on Mars. That was what it had meant. That’s what being a Red meant. He finally understood that when Carmen had spoken of fighting for survival, of fighting her way off Mars, she hadn’t been speaking metaphorically.
“Hey,
” another woman’s voice called from the hallway. “You in there. You kill Graf?”
“Yeah,” Carmen replied, her voice taking on a different accent. “He dead.”
“You pretty good. Graf was bloody Red. You Hellas gang?”
“Shandakar. No gang,” Carmen answered, her weapon aimed steadily at the doorway.
“Shanda? Ha! Graf be really mad if he knew a wimp Shanda kill him.”
Carmen looked about quickly, then gestured urgently to Lochan to continue covering the doorway with his weapon. She faded back, moving as silently as possible, until she was against the outer wall in the corner next to the window.
“Hey, wimp Shanda,” the woman in the hallway outside called. “You run, we let you go. Bonus life. Deal?”
Lochan looked at Carmen, who didn’t answer this time. Instead, she shook her head angrily and indicated he should keep his attention focused on the doorway.
“Still there, Shanda? Deal offer expire real soon.”
The window shattered, curtains blowing inward as a man broke through, rolling up to aim at the inside of the doorway. Before he could fire, Carmen fired two shots into him from her position behind him next to the wall. The man twisted partway, staggered, and fell, his weapon dropping from his limp hand.
Distracted by the activity at the window, Lochan nearly missed the woman dodging through the doorway. He fired without aiming, the pop of the shocker startling him.
More by luck than design, the shocker’s charge grazed the spine of the woman. She fell, twitching, her lips drawn back as she tried to bring up her weapon.
Lochan extended his arm, aimed as the shocker recharged, and fired a second time. That shot hit her full on.
Carmen took long enough to check on the man she had just shot, then raced back to Lochan and looked over his victim. For a moment, he wondered if she would shoot the unconscious attacker, but Carmen shuddered and passed one hand across her eyes before returning attention to the doorway.
“Citizen Ochoa,” Safety Coordinator Sarkozy called from the inner room. “Our response team is entering the building.”
“Understand,” Carmen called back. “I need an announcement when they get close. I don’t know if there are any more killers out there.”
“They’re coming up to the second floor now. The officer in charge is Sergeant Dominic Desjani.”
Lochan heard faint noises in the hallway and tensed again.
“In the room,” a clear voice called, “this is Sergeant Desjani, Public Safety Rapid Response Team. Identify yourselves.”
“Carmen Ochoa,” she called back.
“Lochan Nakamura,” he called as well, reassured that Carmen trusted whoever was out there this time.
“Place any weapons you have on the ground,” Sergeant Desjani’s voice ordered. “Then stand up, your open hands clearly visible. Is there anyone else inside?”
Lochan put his shocker down and got to his feet as Carmen answered.
“Four,” Carmen said. “All down. Two dead, one maybe, one unconscious.”
“Understand.” A small flying drone swung into sight and entered the room, panning around to view everything within. “Remain standing. Don’t move. We are coming in now.”
Lochan’s feelings of relief were replaced by renewed fear as figures wearing protective gear and carrying weapons swept into the room, some of the weapons pausing to stay directed at him. Most were nonlethal shockers, but Lochan thought one or two of the weapons might be something more dangerous.
After a few seconds of knife-edged tension, the man who must be Sergeant Desjani edged toward the inner door. “Commander? The outer room is secure.”
“Good.” The Safety Coordinator opened the door, looking relieved. Behind her, Lochan caught glimpses of the drawn faces of First Minister Hofer and House Leader Ottone.
Sergeant Desjani called out another command as he removed a protective face mask. “Stand down. Casualty status?”
“She was right,” one of the other officers reported. “Officer Yeltzin is dead. That one is also dead. Multiple slugs. This one is almost dead. Same cause. I’ve called the EMTs up here for him. The third subject is out, shocker burns visible.”
Lochan saw the sergeant look from the slug thrower at Carmen’s feet to the shocker at his, then raise his eyes to study both of them. “These two are okay?” he asked Safety Coordinator Sarkozy.
“More than okay,” Sarkozy replied, coming into the outer room and looking down morosely at the fallen guard.
“He was shot with this,” Carmen said, toeing the weapon at her feet. “The same weapon that killed his killer. He died defending you.”
“His memory will be honored. I’m sure you might have died as well,” Safety Coordinator Sarkozy said. “I overheard a little of the conversation out here. You know where they came from?”
Carmen sighed. “I don’t know who sent them here, but I know where they came from originally. Mars. All three are Reds. You can question the woman when she comes to, and she might be open to a deal to tell you what she knows. She sounded like a Vall-Mar. Tough. Threaten her, and she won’t say a word, but Vall-Mars are usually willing to negotiate.”
Safety Coordinator Sarkozy eyed Carmen, nodding in confirmation of earlier suspicions. “You know more about Mars than you let on. I thought so, but I also thought wrong. Kosatka owes you a lot.” She extended her hand. “I have your back from this day on. Sergeant, Citizen Ochoa and Citizen Nakamura are to be given every trust and courtesy.”
After Carmen Ochoa had shaken hands with Sarkozy, she walked over to where Lochan stood and gazed at him, worry in her eyes.
He knew what she was worried about. “It’s okay.”
“Is it? You just saw me. Really saw me.”
“I saw part of you,” Lochan said. “How did you know that guy would come through the window?”
“It’s an old trick,” Carmen said, her head lowered, looking depressed. “The one in the hallway talking to me to keep my attention focused on her and to cover any sound the other guy made getting into position. Lochan—”
“I said it’s okay.” He gave her his best sympathetic look. “It must be hard to live with sometimes.”
“There are a lot of memories that are hard to live with,” Carmen agreed. “I just picked up a couple more.”
“I’m a lot more impressed with you now,” Lochan said, meaning every word of it. “To come out of that and be who you are. That’s amazing.”
She finally looked at him again, skeptical. “You’re impressed?”
“I’d be dead if not for you,” he pointed out.
“I guess.”
“I just realized something else,” Lochan added. “Ever since I headed down, I’m attracting the attention of young women who not only aren’t interested in me physically, they also keep putting weapons in my hand and telling me to use them.”
“You must be making bad choices,” Carmen said, smiling slightly.
“I think when it comes to people who are good to have around when things go bad, I’m making really good choices,” Lochan said. He studied her, concerned. “You’re not all right, are you?”
She shook her head.
“What can I do?”
“I may get seriously drunk tonight. If I do, I could use someone to keep an eye on me and get me back to my room.”
“Deal,” Lochan said.
“Most of those from Mars are like me,” Carmen said in a rush. “Just trying to be decent people and leave the ugliness behind. But others look at us and see only Reds like those killers. And there are always enough Reds like that to feed the fears and the rumors and the anger.”
Lochan was trying to come up with an answer when the sergeant joined them.
“Citizens,” he said, looking them over again, “do you require any assistance?”
“
We’re fine,” Lochan said.
“No injuries?”
Lochan looked to Carmen, who shrugged as she answered. “Just a few scratches and bruises. I’ll be all right.”
“You should let one of the EMTs check you,” the sergeant suggested. “You took that guy down by yourself?”
“Yes,” Carmen said, sounding reluctant to admit it.
“We’re in your debt. If you need anything, please let us know. You can call me personally,” the sergeant said, passing both Carmen and Lochan his contact information but looking at Carmen as he said it.
“It looks like you have another admirer,” Lochan said to Carmen as the sergeant rejoined the other safety officers.
“That would be funny, wouldn’t it?” she replied, gazing after the sergeant. “A Red and a cop. Not too likely, though.”
To no one’s surprise, the meeting with the representatives from Drava was postponed until the next day. But First Minister Hofer took pains to emphasize in a public statement that the meeting would go forward. “The three who killed a brave public safety officer and would have killed more except for the valiant actions of two individuals from Old Earth were not from Drava,” he announced. “They were agents of an outside power, planning to place the blame for their actions on the people of Drava. We all know that attempt could not have succeeded because we are all one on Kosatka. I want to reassure the people of Drava that we will work to address any concerns they have, and that I personally still feel myself as safe here as I do back in my own home.”
That night, Lochan sat with her while Carmen drank. She had decided to have a bottle sent up rather than be in a public place like a bar. After a while and after enough drinks, Carmen started talking in a low voice, sharing memories and events in the manner of someone unearthing things they had once hoped to keep buried forever. Lochan listened, saying nothing but an occasional vague sound to let her know he was listening. These weren’t things meant for him to comment on, he knew, and he didn’t feel qualified to judge or talk about such matters anyway. Carmen needed to talk, needed to share some of the burden she carried inside, and so he listened and took on a little of that.