The Vastalimi Gambit (4 page)

“Is that so? You are likely unaware that I am the current
Sena
pistol champion and ranked third with the issue carbine,” she said.

“Only third?”

Leeth looked away, a brief flash of embarrassment flitting across her face. “I had a bad match. I shall do better next time. I—” She caught the hint of Kay’s grin.

“Ah. You pull my fur.”

“Who better than your own sister to do so? I expect the third place was but a fluke. You always were the most driven and talented among us. But even so, there is one called Gunny who would defeat you eight of ten with any common sidearm or shoulder weapon, and
she
loses to Cutter by the same ratio when they vie.”

“Interesting. I should like to see them shoot.” She paused. “Have you had Challenges?”

“None so far. Perhaps those who might have offered such have either died or moved on, or perhaps, forgotten.”

“Unlikely those directly concerned have forgotten.”

“Well, I have been here but a few hours. Word is yet to get around.”

“It will.”

“I expect so. I have learned some new skills from my adopted pack that may be of use.”

Kay caught the hint of another question in Leeth’s demeanor. She said, “I thought so at the time.”

Leeth blinked, surprised. “To what do you refer?”

“The question you did not ask: Was Jak worth it?”

Leeth shook her head. “You could have been a great
Sena
, sibling. You have an uncanny knack for clawing to the heart of the matter, a clarity of vision. And
now
what do you think?”

“Probably not. I have yet to see him.”

“But you will.”

“Of course.”

“His alignment has changed.”

“To be expected.”

“I have never heard him speak of you.”

“Also not a surprise. The questions I will need to ask him are not personal but about our problem.”

“You think Jak is involved?”

“I cannot say. But his uncle was the third to die from the malady.”

“Yes. I recall.” Leeth nodded. “You seem . . . calm about things.”

“The years away have given me a perspective I would likely not have achieved here. Humans do not see the world as we do. There are things to be gained from them.”

Leeth whickered again. “You always were more liberal in your views about such things.”

“But was it not you who used to tell me that the more you knew, the better? That knowledge was the sharpest fang?”

“I have missed our discussions, Sister. I would not have chosen the path you did, and I have wished more than once that you had taken a different one, but
zevot krut
.”

“Yes, often life
is
hard. I cannot complain; many have it worse than I.”

There came a short pause. “I have duties. We will speak again, assuming we survive our days.”

“I shall endeavor to do so,” Kay said. “And offer hopes you will do the same.”

“Sister.”

“Sister.”

After Leeth was gone, Kay was somewhat surprised at the emotions that had roiled up within her during their short meeting. Leeth had been the brightest light of their litter, always faster, sharper, more ambitious than the rest of them. That she became a Shadow had been no surprise. She always had a rigor in all her activities and a keen sense of justice. The
Sena
could not expect more from one of its own than Leeth brought to the job, for even in that august body, she was above reproach.

That she came to see her tainted sibling? Nobody would lift a lip in her direction. Certainly not if they knew what was good for them.
Sena
were restricted from offering Challenges, save for most special circumstances. They were exempt from
any
.

It was the talk of Jak that had stirred her, even more than the loss of her siblings and parents. Death claimed all, there was no point denying that. But Jak was still alive. She had, she’d thought, put all that behind her, let it go. So she had thought.

Having Leeth as a resource would likely prove beneficial. The gnawing little pest in the back of her mind had increased its activity. If this disease was not a natural phenomenon, then somebody had unleashed it upon The People for reasons that would need be discovered in order to determine who had done it, and from them, how it could be stopped.

When you hunted, there were several ways you might proceed to take unseen prey. You could follow a trail; you could circle around and try to get ahead of it, to intercept it; you could guess where it might go and get there first and wait. You could use bait or a lure. Any might work, but determining which was the fastest and surest was the quest. Dull hunters went hungry. Really dull ones got themselves killed.

Sometimes, prey would outwit even the fastest and sharpest hunter and escape. It happened.

But she was not going to let that happen this time.

Cutter leaned back in his chair and considered the problem. It wasn’t really that much of one, relatively speaking. They had a pretty good idea of who the opposition was, and it was a matter of tracking them down and having a spirited discussion with them.

Sometimes, it would take guns. Sometimes lawyers, sometimes money. TotalMart had them out here to kick ass, but if he determined that buying off the opposition was cheaper? The runners would write a transfer and pay the toll, and Cutter and his troops could move along to another job.

Corporate liked that about CFI, that they would make the report even if it meant they put themselves out of work. So far, that had always resulted in more jobs being offered in short order, and he was good with that. Sometimes a win was decisive, and sometimes it came from packing up and walking away. Nature of the biz.

Jo and Gunny and Gramps would poke around and figure out what was what, and when they did, then there would come a battle plan. Meanwhile, they had enough seasoned troops to guard the root shipments. Industrial espionage was doubtless on the table, and processing sites being sabotaged, local growers being kidnapped, and the like might still happen. CFI had already started offering classes to local bodyguards and their expertise to any police agencies who might want it.

CFI had been down this road a few times.

The GU Army hadn’t sent over a rep yet. Buried somewhere in all the briefing material was the report on them, but Cutter hadn’t bothered to find and read it yet. It didn’t really matter, at least at this point. They were HQed near the big mines and not close, but it was only a matter of time. The local commander would know what was going on in his or her backyard, and either somebody would come to call or he’d get a com telling him to report to the base ASAP for a chat. Regular Army didn’t have much use for private military, but fuck ’em—he had enough of that organization when they had set his unit up for a snafu not their fault. The uplevel dicks had pissed on a bunch of good officers to make sure nobody came after their guilty asses. Only reason he had been allowed to retire instead of being court-martialed and sent away was because he had friends among the generals who owed him. They knew he was getting screwed, but their influence only extended so far.

We can keep you out of the stockade, Rags, but we can’t keep you in the Army.

No point in dragging that up, done was done, and in the end, he was doing okay . . .

Maybe it was time to break out the bourbon and have his daily drink a little early, hey?

No. It could wait. Not the least reason being that he didn’t want to wait. One drink, expensive booze over ice, to be enjoyed, not used as a crutch . . .

The incoming com chimed. The sig said the caller was Colonel Sett, Galactic Union Army HQ . . .

Speak of the devil . . .

Sett? That name sounded familiar. Sett . . . ?

Cutter waved his hand at the com. The threedee image of a man looking at the camera appeared over the com, quarter scale. “Cutter here.”

Even as he said the words, he recognized the face. It was still lean and angular, dark-skinned and the hair shaved or depilated, a few more wrinkles here and there. And it had been First Lieutenant Sett the last time he had seen him.

“Mica Sett,” Cutter said. “How the hell are you?”

The man grinned. “Other than being posted to the asshole of the galaxy, I’m doin’ jest fahn, Rags.”

“How long has it been? Fifteen years?”

Sett nodded. “About that. The Aleutians, that little revolution that took down General Papirósa.”

“Yep, what a clusterfuck that was. So, asshole of the galaxy, but a full bird colonel?”

Cutter didn’t ask the next question: Was Sett sent here as punishment that would wind down his career, or because it was a necessary posting on his track to keep going? Sometimes with the Army, you couldn’t see what they had in mind: A rathole in the middle of nowhere could be a curse or a blessing, depending.

Sett must have known what he was thinking. He said, “And if I don’t screw it up, a good shot at general within two years if my sources can be believed. The politicians have been convinced by the GU Army lobbyists that we need more boots on the ground. More boots, more freshly minted generals to direct them how to step. Better me than some others.”

“Congratulations.”

“Thanks. Been a long time coming. Uh, Rags, you aren’t going to be part of the problem, are you?”

“Not if I can help it. I’m here to protect the root-growers from bandits.”

“Yeah, we know about that. I sent patrols out, but we are stretched pretty thin here, I can’t afford to keep troops with every van on the road.”

“What they hired us for. We keep the trucks from being jacked until we can figure out who is doing it.”

“At which time, you will give me all the particulars so that I can stop them.”

“Well, of course, Mica. Absolutely.”

They both grinned at that. He could chop the bad guys into fine soyburger as long as he wasn’t too loud and obvious about it, Cutter knew. Within the ROE, there was a lot of leeway, and as long as he didn’t make the local commander look bad, nobody gave a toad’s ass. And if he could make him look
good
? So much the better.

Never hurt to have TotalMart call up your commander and allow that you were a fine fellow well met.

Sett didn’t speak to Cutter’s history, nor did Cutter expect that he would. Sett would know what had happened, the Army underground com being what it was. No point in bringing up bad memories.

“Seriously, Rags, I need to keep a low profile here. I come away from this posting without any fuss, my name shows up on the lists. I get the star holograms, I wind up a Systems Commander somewhere comfortable, nice bump in pay, the usual perks, a good place to park until we get another shooting war.”

“Not my job to screw that up,” Cutter said. “This should be a by-the-numbers operation. The opposition hasn’t thrown anything at us we can’t handle, and unless they up their game, we’ll run them down and be done here, a few weeks, maybe less.”

Sett nodded. “You will keep me in the circuit?”

“Sure. Nothing to report yet, but soon as we get something, I’ll pass it along.”

“Thanks. You were always a stand-up soldier. I have to run; base command is like being nibbled to death by ladybugs. Maybe we can get together and clink glasses.”

“I’d like that.”

“Good talking to you,” Sett said.

After they disconnected, Cutter smiled to himself. He and Mica Sett had met as lieutenants together a lifetime ago, bumped into each other a few times since. They hadn’t been best buddies, only had a nodding acquaintance, different platoons, working soldiers in the same action; still, Sett would cut him a little slack based on that. The good old days always seemed better in distant memory than they had actually been at the time.

Not that he thought he would need much slack. This didn’t look to be complicated as an op; at least not so far. And better that the local army commander was inclined to give you a break than not. Take what you could get.

_ _ _ _ _ _

Formentara said, “If you would.” Zhe gestured toward the table.

Jo nodded and reclined on the padded support. The field hummed as she entered it, and Formentara began waving hir hands over the control panel, initiating the system’s reader. The room smelled faintly like patchouli, but even with her augmented senses, Jo couldn’t nail down the source of the pleasant odor.

Formentara went into hir work trance.

Jo never forgot how lucky she was to have somebody with such outlandishly good skill adjusting her augs. Formentara was a genius, second to nobody when it came to this. Not only did zhe create new augs that went from luxury to necessity in short order, zhe was the best there was at maintaining installations. The level of complexity in somebody with more than a few augs was mind-numbingly complicated because of the imperfection of cybernetic interfaces. Your biology suffered, hormone systems, major organs, the balance of this and that, they were all prey to damage. Most if it was minor, but it added up over time. Some if it could be repaired, but some of it could not be.

Somebody with one major aug up and running lopped around five years off his or her life span. Five augs, could be twenty-five years. Aug hogs who ran twenty systems? They were pretty much fated to live fast, die young, and leave hideous corpses. You could be superwoman, but you paid the price, and the run wasn’t long.

Jo currently had fourteen augs. Which meant that she could expect to live to be seventy, maybe eighty, out of a normal span of 150 years. That was the cost, and because of who she was and how she had come to be that way, she had elected to pay it. That’s how it went. Nobody lives forever.

But when she’d come under Formentara’s care, that had gotten her a snort. “Camel cark!” No reason she couldn’t live out a normal span if a technomedic kept things balanced properly.

And how many technomedics could properly balance that many systems? Jo had asked.

Counting Formentara hirself? Two. Maybe three . . .

“Okay, that’s it,” Formentara said, breaking into Jo’s memory. “All done.”

“Everything okay?”

Zhe laughed. “You are kidding, right? Of course everything is okay. You forget who you are talking to here?”

Jo sat up.

Formentara’s smile seemed a little forced, and Jo’s ability to read such things was also augmented. She had inbuilt stress analyzers. Lies were pretty easy. Fugue was a little harder.

“What?”

“What ‘what’?” Formentara said.

“Listen, you know how good my microexpression reader is, you installed it. What?”

Formentara nodded. “Hoist on my own petard.”

“What does that mean?”

“Means I should have known you’d pick it up.” Zhe paused. “You are running out of room, Jo. You are balanced now, but . . .”

Jo nodded. “So if you come up with some neat new toy, I can’t have it?”

“I didn’t say that. But there are limits to what even I can manage. Two, maybe three more, that’s it. What that means is, you will have to be more careful in your choices. Once you hit the limit, I’m not going to give you any more.”

“I understand.”

“I’m not sure you do, but that’s the deal, remember.”

“Yes.”

And it made sense; everything had a limit, even the edge of the universe was out there somewhere. She couldn’t be immune to that.

As a soldier, Jo’s combatware was useful, and she had more of that than anybody she knew still walking around. Some of the others—com, proprioceptives, high-end sensories—were icing on the cake. Being tended by Formentara was priceless, and if she decided to sneak off and get another aug elsewhere, that would be elective suicide—it might take a couple of decades, but she’d be going down, no question.

If Formentara couldn’t keep her stable, nobody could.

Of course, she could be KIA on any op—that was part of the risk.

She had good reasons why she had started along this road. And the pull to keep going farther was an addiction, as much as a chemhead’s lust for drugs or a wirehead’s hunger for juice.

To be stronger, faster, smarter, more impervious to pain or injury, able to do what no ordinary human could do? It was a powerful draw. How many humans could play hand-to-hand with a Vastalimi and hold their own? How many could see into the red or violet, hear radio waves, stand on one foot with their eyes closed for as long as they wanted?

Not many.

Mostly, she didn’t think about it. Now and then, it shone through her mind. The candle that burns brighter burns out faster. She’d accepted that. But once Formentara had told her she could have both? It was a miracle. She’d be foolish to give that up.

Still . . .

“Well. I’ll just get more picky,” she said.

“Maybe I won’t come up with anything else you’ll want.”

They both grinned at that one.

“That might be. What are you working on?”

“Ultimate orgasmware,” zhe said.

“Shit you are!”

Formentara laughed. “Well. I could if I wanted.”

“Every male in the galaxy would want to buy that one. And more than a few fems, too. You could retire a multibillionaire in a couple of weeks.”

“I could. But where would the fun be in that? I already have more money than I know what to do with. Why would I need more?

“Okay, you’re done. Come back for a recheck next month.”

“Yeshir.”