Endgame (24 page)

“Jani?”

This time it was Lucien who stood over her desk, kitted out in fresh dress blue-greys, his brimmed lid tucked under his arm.

“Mako wants to see you.”

Admiral General Hiroshi Mako's office was located aboard the
Ulanov,
in a suite replete with galley, dining room, and a bar. The glossy top of his truewood desk was clean but for a comport, stylus stand, and holos of his wife and children, the paperwork the purview of the staffers who swept in and out with the silent dispatch of temple acolytes.

Mako himself stood in front of one of the observation ports that dotted one wall, a browned, bald stump of a man, arms folded, dress blue-grey tunic pulling across broad shoulders. He turned as Jani and Lucien entered, revealing a round, high-boned face that bore a few more lines, a few more shadows, than when Jani had last seen him in person over a year before.

You've aged since Chicago, Roshi.
But then, hadn't they all?

“My sympathies on the loss of your friend.” Mako's voice emerged a gravel growl, the roughness exacerbated by the ship's dry air. “He was…one of the great ones.” He made as though to say more, but was interrupted by Niall, who emerged from the galley bearing two steaming cups.

“Would you like coffee, gel?” He handed one cup to Mako. “They've got everything back there but the coffee plantation itself.”

“No, thanks.” Jani chose a chair on the side of the room opposite Mako's desk. Sat on the edge, back straight, duffel at her feet. Lucien settled for a seat in a far corner, like the low man that he was, while Niall opted for a cushy lounger close to Mako.

The man himself walked around the desk and perched on the edge, setting his coffee untouched beside him. “Anais spent the better part of the morning apprising me of your culpability in the Guernsey matter.” Mako tilted his head toward Niall. “My colonel has since expressed his opinion, which differs significantly.” If he fought the urge to raise his voice, he hid it well. Instead he sounded tired, as though this was the latest disaster in a snakebit campaign. “You should've realized that what you said would leak out. A remark like that is just the sort of thing a reporter would latch onto to create controversy.”

Jani felt the anger rise, clearing her head for a blessed moment. She hadn't been able to concentrate since leaving the station, her mind a muddle of emotion and half-formed thoughts. “I said it before. I'll say it again. They had to hear it from me. They needed enough time to prepare for any reaction. Any retaliation.”

“I've messaged back to my team at Karistos to start digging.” Niall sipped his coffee, then set it aside and dug for his 'sticks. “The fact that the article appeared in the
Amsun Star
is a red flag. I fully expect to learn that Exterior played a major role in funneling that remark to the press, at which point I will kick that bitch's bony ass.” He exhaled a smoky sigh. “You made yourself one hell of an enemy, gel.”

Jani looked to the corner where Lucien sat, and pondered the skills of those who always seemed to land on their feet.
But such is not my way.
She sketched a word on the leg of her coverall. Another. “Sensitive bunch, this group that carried out the bombing. They read that Haárin will be questioned in connection with Tsecha's assassination, and they get all shirty and kill hundreds of their own. When do you think they'll claim credit? All the groups I researched are
very keen about claiming credit, but this group is different. What's taking them so long? Think they're saving it up for a threefer? One more tragedy and they win a brand-new skimmer?”

“Jani?” Niall stubbed out his 'stick and moved to the edge of his seat, ready to rise. “Are you all right?”

“Where's Nahin Sela?” Jani pointed to him. “You sent Lucien to find out about her.”

Lucien stood. “I'm awaiting a call-back from the Guernsey Merchants Association. They seem to have a better relationship with the Haárin than we do.” As if on cue, his handcom buzzed.

“Take it here, Captain.” Mako's voice held the same brand of wary disgust that Niall's did when he spoke to Lucien, aversion to the man coupled with grudging acknowledgment of his talents. “We'd all like to know what they have to say.”

Lucien activated the handcom. Listened for a moment. “Nahin Sela's disappeared. The ship security officer who was escorting her to the Haárin office is dead.” He shook his head in response to the unspoken question. “The Haárin office is in a completely different section of the station. It was unaffected by the bombing.” He paused to listen. “Three ships broke away before the Haárin closed their side of the station as a safety precaution. Two were larger passenger vessels that responded immediately when asked to submit passenger information. The third was a smaller courier-class vessel that ignored attempts at contact, cloaked, and vanished, presumably on its way to the GateWay.”

“So let's shut the GateWay down.” Niall glanced at a wall clock. “We have three station-hours to initiate.”

Jani wrote another word on her knee. “The idomeni have a GateWay out here, too. Samvasta.”

“It has a reputation for instability.” Niall chuckled with a complete lack of humor. “Half the ships that enter it don't come out the other end.”

“I heard those same stats twenty years ago.” Jani stood
and walked to the observation port. Looked out into the star-spattered dark. Imagined Nahin Sela, hunkered down in a cabin, awaiting the jump through a balky GateWay and wondering if she would punch through to the other side.
I certainly hope not.
“Beyond the wording in various treaties, do you have any reason to believe that Shèrá hasn't repaired it?”

“We do keep an eye out for those sorts of activities,” Mako said dryly. “It's one of the reasons we're here.” He tapped his comport. “Ask Vice Admiral General Vega to stop in when she has the chance.”

The four of them looked at one another. Then Jani sat in front of a coffee table and inscribed across the top. Words. Numbers.

Niall opened the drawer of a side table and removed a stylus and a sheet of letter parchment. “Here, gel.” He put the stylus between her fingers, then slipped the parchment beneath her hand.

“Only humanish assassinate.” Jani pondered the stylus, a curving sweep of silver much like a Sìah blade. “Except when they don't.” She wondered why she hadn't thought of it before.
Only humanish assassinate.
Just as only humanish ate in public, smoked, drank bitter lemon on the rocks.
We are all the same in this.
She'd said it herself, but grief and loss had prevented her from seeing the facts for what they were.

She looked at Lucien. “The sill provided the better view.”

Lucien nodded, slowly at first, then faster as he figured out what she was talking about. “Yes, but standing allowed the assassin a greater ability to maneuver. Remember?” His voice came soft, light. A voice for animals, children, and absent-minded older relations. “The rubble on the sill wasn't disturbed.”

“You said the dust was smeared.”

“…yes.” Lucien nodded as slowly as he spoke. “Possibly they set something on it, a gear bag or a weatherall.
Analysis of the scans of the area may indicate what exactly laid there.”

“An idomeni who lay on that sill would feel the sharp edges of the rubble through their clothes. The mind-focusing properties of pain.”
Focus
, she wrote on the parchment. “And they'd have the better view.”

“An idomeni assassinated Tsecha?” The first flare of surprise entered Mako's voice. “An idomeni named, perhaps, Nahin Sela?” His tone sombered. “So the dock explosion—”

“Diversion. To keep us from getting our hands on her.” Jani looked to Niall, who watched her with wide, worried eyes. “She didn't have to watch the monitors because she already knew what happened.” Pieces slotted into place, one after the other. No need to force them. No need to change them in any way. Because this time they
fit.
“Because she drove what happened. She killed Tsecha.”

“Jan?” Niall's voice came so gentle that Mako turned to stare at him. “That's a leap. I'm not saying you're wrong, because you know the idomeni better than any of us, but it's a major leap to take Sela's walk down the concourse and her disappearance now and extrapolate assassination.”

“It's more than that.” Jani set aside the stylus and parchment. “Wholeness of Soul. Tsecha had spoken out against it many times. It was the subject of his last treatise, which he published just before he died.” She stood, returned to her place by the observation port. “It's a major tenet of the major idomeni religions. The idea that injury to a body also damages the soul that inhabits it, and that any sort of prolonged, grave illness or injury so endangers the soul that it is preferable to let the body die than to attempt to save the life.” She closed her eyes, remembered that last argument in his workroom. They had argued so much, toward the end.

“Jan?” Once more, Niall's voice, bringing her back.

Jani opened her eyes, looked out to the black. “Tsecha had come to feel that the concept of Wholeness of Soul was no longer acceptable, that those propitiators and physician-priests who espoused it were anathema. He felt that the hu
manish practice of doing all possible to preserve life was the one idomeni should adopt.” She studied her hands, the animandroid left and real right. One was nourished by rose-pink carrier, the other by blood. Other than that, they looked identical, felt and sensed the same. “A body can suffer horrendous injury, and the life can still be saved. I'm living proof of that. But the brain must remain relatively uninjured, because we haven't yet figured out a way to restore it, to rebuild it, in the way we can a limb, an organ. Nerves.”

Niall sat back, the events of that day replayed in the way his shoulders sagged, in the pain in his eyes. “My God.”

“Whoever killed Tsecha made sure that he couldn't be saved by destroying his brain. But they left the rest of his body uninjured, intact but for a punctured eardrum.” Jani turned her back on the starscape, leaned against the wall, felt the chill through her coverall. “That brand of cruelty would only, in my opinion, have been practiced by one to whom the original principle meant a great deal. And who had come to hate Tsecha very much.”

Mako passed a hand over his face. “Do you know what you're saying? Do you?” His comport beeped, and he struck it with his fist. “
What?”

“Vice Admiral General Vega is here, sir,” the disembodied voice meeped.

“Bring her in,” Mako bit out. “You're saying Cèel had him killed.” He twisted around to glare at Jani. “No one else hated him so much.”

Jani nodded. “I know.”

The door swept aside and one of the hot-and-cold-running aides escorted Alex Vega into the office. She was a tall, stocky Felician, as old as Mako and just as seasoned, brown skin a sharp contrast to the silvery braid that wound her head like a crown. The
Ulanova
group was hers, and if the presence of her supreme commander aboard her flagship unsettled her in any way, that upset didn't show in her calm brown eyes.

But she knew tension when she stepped in the middle
of it. She stopped in the center of the room and regarded each of them in turn before fixing on Mako, who kicked any preamble to the curb and started in with the most important question of the moment.

“Is Samvasta GateWay operational?”

“No, sir.” Vega's voice was mellow. “It's not.”

Niall raised a hand. “Has Shèrá made any attempts to repair it, ma'am?”

“Oh, they've tried. We detect their soundings and send out cancellation waves. They have not been able to do more than the most preliminary surveys.” Vega's tone altered from Felician caramel to vinegar. “Is someone going to tell me what the hell is going on?”

Mako gestured toward Jani. “Vice Admiral, I don't know if you've ever met Jani Kilian.”

Vega focused on Jani with narrowed eyes. “Anais Ulanova does not have anything good to say about you. I'd normally consider that a recommendation, but she blames you for the Guernsey bombing.”

“She's full of shit.” Niall carried his coffee to the bar and tossed it into the sink.

Mako looked ceilingward. “I can bring you up to speed on the twists and turns later. At the moment, the most important issue is whether an idomeni courier can evade capture by bypassing Guernsey and punching through Samvasta GateWay.”

“Only if they want take a substantial risk that they will not come out the other end.” Vega's face reddened. It was clear that she wanted context and she wanted it yesterday, but she didn't dare blow up at Mako. “I will not send anyone to patrol that area. We lost two tracer pilots last month when they approached too closely just as the boundary destabilized without warning. They vanished. There was nothing left.”

Niall added ice to half a glass of colorless liquid that Jani hoped was water. “We could stick Anais Ulanova in a drone and shove her into it, see what comes out the other end.”

“That's enough, Colonel.
” Mako closed one hand into a
fist. Opened it, then clenched it again. “Ms. Kilian believes that an Haárin named Nahin Sela assassinated ní Tsecha Egri at the behest of Oligarch Cèel. Sela was to have been held at the station for questioning, but during her transfer to the Haárin offices, Cèel's agents detonated the bomb as a diversion. While all attentions focused on the
Capria,
they killed Sela's security escort and took Sela aboard a courier, which vanished soon after breakaway. We wonder if they might attempt to punch through to the worldskein via Samvasta GateWay in order to avoid capture.”

“So the idomeni have adopted the practice of selective elimination.” Vega watched Jani all through the course of Mako's explanation. “All I will say is that they are taking the risk of their lives if they attempt to punch through at Samvasta.”