Crossover (20 page)

Sandy took another mouthful, still smiling. And sighed. "I wish we'd had a few open days. We rarely got to see civilians."

Vanessa frowned. "You got leave, didn't you?"

"Sometimes. My team didn't think much of civilians. Never understood my fascination certainly. And there wasn't anyone else to go with ... GIs needed monitors, too."

"Even you?" Vanessa asked with a deeper frown.

"I don't officially exist, Vanessa. Regular GIs needed it — officials said they might get confused, it was for their own good. And no one wanted to admit how different I was, so I got treated like the others. With apologies, of course."

"Must have been tough."

"I suppose." She swallowed another, thoughtful mouthful, and washed it down with some hot tea. "I didn't think about it much until the last few years. It was just life, I hadn't known anything else. And my team was more important than anything straights might do. I was with them mostly."

"Where are they now?" Vanessa asked. Sandy's eyes flicked up briefly. Met Vanessa's curious gaze for a moment. She didn't want to tell Vanessa now. It was the wrong moment, and Vanessa was not an analyst. She would leave it for Ibrahim. And besides, it didn't answer Vanessa's question. She turned her attention back to her meal.

"Dead," she said softly. "All dead." There was a silence, filled only by the crackling of flames in the fireplace, where the new log was burning nicely. The warmth was pleasant on her face, even at this range.

"How?" Vanessa asked. Not 'I'm sorry' or 'how tragic', Sandy noted. Vanessa was not certain if such comments were fitting. Vanessa would not bullshit her. She appreciated that, as much as she had appreciated anything since she'd been in Tanusha. She sipped at her tea, and released a deep breath. And told Vanessa something that she had not been willing to divulge to any investigator up to this point.

"My superiors had them killed," she said quietly. "All but me." She looked up, in that silence that followed. Vanessa looked shocked. And she was the wrong personality, Sandy guessed, to make a good actor.

"What happened?"

"The war was winding down," Sandy said quietly. "My commanders separated me from my team — put me under the knife for an upgrade while my team was sent on a new mission under a different captain. It was the first time in five years any of them had been on a mission without me. They never came back."

She closed her eyes. Memories assailed her. Arguments with Colonel Dravid, a ferocious shouting-match. She'd broken his desk, smashed it clean into two pieces. Never before in her life had she snapped like that. It had been a revelation to her ... and to Colonel Dravid too, she had no doubt.

Dravid, who had always been civil enough, in a distant kind of way. A Fleet Man to the soles of his shiny black shoes. No way had Dravid volunteered for administrative duty over a bunch of steely-eyed killer-skins. With the others, he was cool, direct and totally devoid of emotion. With Captain Kresnov ... the same, only tentative.

Sometimes, Sandy could have sworn he was frightened of her. But then, every officer behaved differently around her. With some it was simple curiosity. With others it was sidelong looks and nervous, unthinking finger-tapping. Dravid hid it well. But after so long, and so many administrators, guardians, commanders and seniors-in-general, she could always tell.

She remembered Dravid's face, white and trembling with anger and fear, threatening her with court martial. Which would have been funny if she hadn't been so furious. Try explaining a court martial to her minders. To the platoon of navy psychs who analysed her debriefing reports. To the biomeds who tested her reflexes and upgraded her functions. To Captain Teig, who sometimes invited her up to bridge level for dinner and conversation — often politics, or books, or music, or of places Teig had visited in her long navy career.

They couldn't court martial their multi-billion-dollar test subject. They had far too much riding on her. But they were evidently concerned by her sudden lack of emotional restraint. Her outburst earned her a fast trip to Lieutenant-JG Ghano's couch.

"How does this make you feel?" he'd asked when she'd explained the reasons for her fury. For a psychologist, Ghano was not at all bad. He did not patronise ... much, anyway. He was direct. He even had a sense of humour. And he was Sandy's personal shrink, since she found all the others so annoying.

"How the fuck do you think I feel?" she'd retorted. "It's a fucking light metals ore-refinery, Sevi. Why do they need
my
team to hit a damn ore-refinery? Do they think the Federation will collapse because they suddenly don't have enough foil covers for their microwave dinners? The target selection doesn't make sense!"

"Sandy, Sandy ..." Sevi Ghano had held up his hands, as if to fend her off. "I'm not a strategist, Sandy. I don't know what to say about that..."

"Oh come one, since when am I wrong? They fucking designed me. They should damn well know what I'm capable of, and I'm telling them they're wrong!"

"They designed me?" Ghano had looked pained. "Sandy, that sounds like seriously retrograde thinking to me. You know perfectly well that
no one
designed your thought processes, you're as much an individual as me or anyone else on this ship." Deathly silence from his patient. "Now I'm a smart guy, I can see you're upset. You don't usually get upset like this. It's more than just the target selection, isn't it?"

"Of course it's more than the target selection." Shortly. "Intra-orbital insertions are dangerous, whatever the pinheads say." Pinheads were the intelligence number-crunchers. Mission planners — mathematicians, mostly. And every grunt's favourite target for derision and contempt. Algebra warriors. Armchair generals. Pinheads. "My team hasn't operated without me for five years. I need to be with them."

"Sandy, do you or do you not need that surgical upgrade?"

"It can wait!"

"The meds don't think so."

"When they start leading the assaults," she snapped, "then they can tell me about it."

"These are some of the most experienced, decorated, well-trained special ops soldiers in the League, Sandy," Ghano had implored her. "And most of that quality is because of you, and what they've done with you, and what you've taught them. You better than anyone should know how good they are. Do you really think that they're so vulnerable without you?"

"It's my call, dammit!" Harshly. "It doesn't matter what the fuck the stupid mission objective is — it's my team, and it's my call! They've got no business interfering like this."

"Sandy." Gently. "This isn't like you. You're usually so full of praise for your guys. You talk about them like they can walk on water." Was that what he thought? Was that really what he thought? "What's troubling you? For the last year you've been tense, you've been moody... is it because of the way the war's going? It's not the end of the world, you know — we're not going to have to surrender anything. And no one blames you for anything at all. You've done magnificently. The League couldn't have achieved anything like it has without you and your guys ..." Sevi Ghano was a nice guy all right, but sometimes, like all the others, he mistook her for a child.

"You're way off target, Sevi." Blandly, and utterly unhelpful. Ghano had sat on the couch beside her. Brushed affectionately at her hair, smoothing her brow.

"Tell me what's the matter, Sandy." His hand rested upon her cheek, smooth and warm. "You'll feel better if you tell me, I promise. I want to help you, I hate seeing you this upset." And he'd leaned down to kiss her on the cheek.

"Blatant manipulation," she'd murmured. Ghano had grinned at her, leaning close.

"Of course." Another kiss, this time upon the lips. Rarely one to refuse an invitation, Sandy had responded.

They'd made love, first on the couch and then moving to Ghano's bunk, as they had numerous times before. It was hardly a regular patient/psychologist relationship, Sandy knew. And she further knew that with Ghano it was mostly because he and the entire psych department dedicated to her study knew that she — and most GIs, come to that — had precious little compunction about whom she screwed, never having been socialised in the art of being picky. Nor taught a common-sense reason to say no. And GIs were nothing if not logical... and in that sense, she was just like the others. Which was not to say that Ghano didn't like her — he did. And obviously he enjoyed having sex with her ... everyone else did, and she had a reputation to uphold. But mostly, he did it because it was the best way to get information from her. She knew this, and in those comfortable, lingering minutes that followed, she usually didn't disappoint him.

Except this time.

"We'll be okay, Cap'n," Tran had told her later that alter-day, after the main-day shift had ended. Seated on the neighbouring bunk, looking puzzled at Sandy's concern. "It's just another damn orbital insertion ... we were in Tyuz system last month. There's nothing there, even the pinheads say so."

"That's no recommendation," said Mahud from alongside. Shifted an arm more firmly about Sandy's bare shoulders, a casual, affectionate companionship.

"You just be careful," Sandy had told them. Looked across at Raju, sitting at the end of her bunk. Nudged at him with her foot, bare beneath the covering sheet. "Don't trust the pinheads, don't trust command, don't trust anybody except yourselves. I don't like this mission. I don't like it at all."

"Why not?" Raju had asked, as puzzled as Tran. "It looks like a cakewalk." Sandy had stared at the overhead, her jaw tight. How could she tell them? They wouldn't understand. They'd think she was being paranoid. They trusted her in just about everything, but this ... this was asking too much. And it would distract them from what they needed to do.

"Just be careful," she'd said at last. "Trust me, I have my reasons."

"Sure," Tran had said, casting surreptitious, frowning looks first at Mahud, then at Raju. "Sure Cap'n." Another look at Mahud, when she thought Sandy wasn't looking. Mahud had taken the hint and rolled over, pressing against her body, trailing a curious hand across her flat, bare stomach beneath the sheets. Sandy had sighed, staring up at the overhead again.

"Cap," Mahud had chuckled in her ear, a hand caressing her breast. "You're all tense, Cap. Just relax a bit, huh?"

In time she'd surrendered, that being all she could do. Tran and Raju had moved over several bunks, speaking in mild tones about operational preparations and readiness drills, all the while casting glances over at their sacred Captain, and hoping worriedly that Mahud was doing at least a passable job of taking her mind off things for a while. Everyone knew the Captain had been acting a little strange for some time now. Everyone speculated on what it might be — out of her hearing, of course. Or so they thought. It worried them that she was worried, but for some reason she was incapable or unwilling to share with them her concerns.

Probably, they'd thought, it was yet another strange Kresnov-ism. The Captain had so many strange tastes. Like her books, and her music. And sometimes ... sometimes she'd spoken to one or another of things, issues and politics and strange, foreign concepts that none of them pretended to understand. They spoke to each, other of the Captain's periodic attempts at otherworldly conversation. They agreed that if the Captain thought it was important, then it probably was. But none of them were the Captain, and none of them possessed anything like her designation, so they left it largely alone. Tran alone had expressed a hope that the Captain might find some people among the straights with whom she could speak of such things. And the others had agreed that that would be good but could hardly be considered a priority ... there was a war on, after all. There always had been.

The Captain's one compulsion that they readily understood was sex — her libidinous reputation was nearly the equal of her martial one, and everyone knew that Captain Cassandra Kresnov was the best fighting soldier in the history of the human race. In bed, that translated into one very big rap, and as such, she could have had her pick of the ship, and chosen at will. But strangely, she preferred to roam mainly within her own small circle of comrades, acquaintances and the occasional passer-by — GIs or straights, she had little observable preference. But, make no mistake about it, not only was the Captain talented, but she was prolific, too. Which, to her companions, had made a certain amount of sense — everything else in her brain appeared to work in overdrive mode, so it was little wonder that her libido should follow the same path. The Captain liked sex when she was happy, and sex when she was sad and, most particularly, sex when she was uptight or frustrated.

This particular alter-day, she had worn Mahud out. Tran, ever conscientious where the Captain was concerned, had insisted Raju do his duty, scowling at him when he looked like he might protest. And so Mahud had departed Sandy's bunk, sparing a brief, friendly ruffle of her hair as she rolled onto the newly arrived Raju, and went to work.

"Three in one day, Cap," he'd told her, "you're not working on your record, are you?"

"Not unless you've got all the men in D platoon lined up outside the hatch," she had replied, humour returned and breathing hard. Raju had found that funny, and laughed. Sandy rested her forehead against his broad shoulder, and chuckled with him, the length of him pressed warm and strong against her naked body, his arms about her in a comfortable embrace.

A nice moment, as she recalled it. She'd always liked that feeling, as much as the actual sex itself. Warmth and affection. A close embrace, body to body, sharing a laugh with a man she might have called her friend. Or comrade, at the very least. And then, she recalled further, Raju had nailed her so hard and so well from behind that her grasping, straining hands had nearly bent the bed frame. A nice moment indeed.

... And looked up to find Vanessa still watching her, with the disconcerted recognition of a moment passed, left forgotten. Her time-sense told her that it had only been a few seconds. But she was alarmed to find herself wandering like this, revisiting a time, and a space, and a life that was for her long dead.