FALLEN DRAGON (38 page)

The platoon crossed into a wide concreted area around the base of a big apartment block, which the local kids used for their games. A dozen or so skinny boys just into their teens were kicking a soccer ball about. Their game trickled to a desultory halt as they turned to stare at the invaders.

Most of the crowd began to turn back, heading for the shops and bars and haunts along the street, probably intimidated by the open space. Denise slouched on the corner by a shop, watching the platoon march away. Following them here would make her too visible; besides, she'd learned what she needed.

Suddenly the soccer ball was powering through the air. It almost hit one of the Skins, the sergeant himself no less, but he dodged back. Denise blinked as his foot shot out, stopping the ball in midflight. His toe nudged it about; then it was arching up. His knee came up underneath and bounced it twice; then he kicked it gently to another Skin. They started passing it to each other.

The boys who'd been playing were now all standing sneering, striking a variety of stubborn hands-on-hips poses designed to show how tough and unintimidated they were.

"Give us the ball back!" one shouted. He was the tallest, all gangly limbs and a thick beret of curly black hair.

"Sure," the sergeant said.

The kid took a half pace back in surprise at hearing the modestly amplified voice. Then the Skin was walking toward him, nudging the ball along in front. He got right up to the kid, who made the mistake of going for the ball. The sergeant neatly flicked it round him, and kept on going to the next youth. Another attempted tackle, another failure. The sergeant was picking up speed, and the other kids flocked toward him for their own moment of victory. He got around another three, then kicked the ball over their heads. It was a perfect arc that placed the ball at the feet of another Skin. He kicked it firmly, and it smacked against the wall between the two fading white lines that marked out the goal.

The sergeant held his arms high. "Easy."

"Yeah?" the tallest kid scoffed. "You're in Skin, asshole. Come out and try that against us."

There was a moment's pause, and the sergeant's Skin split open down his neck. The tall kid took a startled half pace backward as the head wriggled free of the split. His face and hair were shiny with a pale-blue gel, but he was still smiling.

Denise's hand flew to her mouth, smothering her gasp of surprise. The shock had overridden all her cause-dedicated calm. It was
him. Him!

"Skin suits give us strength," Lawrence said cheerfully, "not skill. Still, not to worry. Some of you have a smattering of talent. Twenty years' time, you might come up to our level."

"Fuck off!" the kid cried. "You bastards would just shoot us if we didn't let you win."

"You think so? Over a soccer game?"

"Yeah!"

"Then I feel sorry for you. You're the ones shooting us, remember?"

The kid shrugged awkwardly.

Lawrence gave him a friendly nod. "If you ever fancy your chances on a level field, come and give us a game. Ask for me, Lawrence Newton. We'll take you on. Buy you a beer if you win, too."

"You're shitting me."

"So call my bluff." Lawrence winked and began pulling himself back into the Skin. "Be seeing you."

Clever, Denise thought as the platoon marched away, leaving the kids standing limply behind in a communal bewilderment. The platoon's communication link was roaring with a dozen variations on
what the fuck were you doing?

But then, she told herself, you shouldn't have expected anything different from
him.
He was clever, and a bleeding-heart humanist. Someone like that would always try to build bridges with the enemy.

Thank goodness,
a tiny traitor part of her mind whispered.

Denise's jaw hardened with determination. It didn't matter.
He
could not be treated any different from the others. The cause could not allow that.

She walked back down Corgan Street, planning how to turn the soccer match to her advantage. In war, which this was,
his
kindness was a weakness she could exploit.

Myles Hazeldine hated the wait in the anteroom. No matter how urgent the summons, and how irate Ebrey Zhang was, he always had to endure this ritual. He refused to show his temper, conceding the bitter irony. This was his study's an
t
eroom, and he had always made his visitors wait, be they allies or opponents.

How obvious and petty it was, establishing the true authority figure.
Did they once laugh at me for such crudity?
he wondered.

The doors opened, and Ebrey Zhang's aide beckoned him in. As usual, the Z-B governor was sitting behind the big desk. And as usual, it galled Myles. The sharpest reminder of Thallspring's miserable capitulation.

"Ah, Mr. Mayor, thank you for coming." Ebrey's cheerful smile was as insincere as it was malicious. "Do sit down."

Keeping his face blank, Myles took the chair in front of the desk. An aide stood on either side of him. "Yes?"

"There was a nasty traffic accident today."

"I heard."

Ebrey cocked his head expectantly. "And?"

"One of your people was hurt."

"And in a civilized society, someone would say something along the lines of: Sorry to hear that. Or: I hope he's all right. Standard conversational procedure, even here, I believe."

"The hospital says he'll live."

"Try not to sound so disappointed. Yes, he'll live. However, he won't be returning to frontline duty. Not ever."

Myles smiled thinly. "Sorry to hear that."

"Don't push it," Ebrey snapped. "I'm going to have that accident thoroughly investigated. My people will oversee your transport forensic team. If they find anything suspicious, I'm going to use up some of my collateral. Still smirking, Mr. Mayor?"

"You can't be serious. A truck hit a wall."

"That's what it looks like. But maybe that's how it was meant to look. How often do your automated vehicles have traffic accidents, Mr. Deputy?"

Myles couldn't help frowning; he'd never actually heard of one before. "I'm not sure."

"The last one involving any sort of injury was fifteen years ago. For a fatality you have to go a lot further back. Even your antiquated electronics can manage to keep vehicles running smoothly. I find the timing highly suspicious."

"The odds pile up. Don't tell me your systems can do much better."

"We'll see." Ebrey activated a desktop pearl and waited for its pane to unfurl. He glanced at the script that began scrolling down. "Now then, I see the Orton and Vaxme plants still haven't got up to their proper capacity. Why is that, Mr. Mayor?"

"The Orton plant was undergoing refurbishment when you landed. You ordered it back into production status before the new components were properly integrated. It'll probably get worse before it gets better."

"I see." A finger tapped on the card's screen, changing the script pattern. "And Vaxme?"

"I don't know."

"But no doubt you'll find some engineering-based reason. After all, it could never be a human fault."

"Why should it be?" Myles asked pleasantly. He knew he was goading Ebrey too hard and didn't really care.

"Get its production back up," Ebrey said levelly. "You've got ten hours. Make it plain to them. I am not going to be dicked around on this."

"I'll see what I can do."

"Fine." He waved at the door. "That's all."

"Actually it isn't." Myles enjoyed the annoyance that washed over Ebrey's face. "I've made this request to your aides twice already today, but never even got a reply. It isn't as if I shout wolf every time we have a medical problem."

"What request?"

"I need some resources reallocated from the university biomedical department. You took our most qualified people away to help with those new vaccines you wanted formulated over at the Madison facility."

"I can't spare anyone to lecture some bunch of backward students with falling grades."

"It's nothing to do with that. There have been a couple of new pulmonary ward admissions at the hospital."

"So?"

"The doctors aren't sure, but it seems to be some kind of tuberculosis variant. It's not something we've seen before."

"Tuberculosis?" Ebrey asked; he made it sound as if Myles had told a sick joke at a funeral. "That's history. It doesn't suddenly resurrect on a planet light-years from Earth."

"We don't know what it is, exactly. That's why we need an expert diagnosis."

"Oh, for Christ's sake." He flicked the desktop pearl off. "You can have them for a day. But I'll hold you responsible if Madison falls behind."

"Thank you."

The Junk Buoy was modeled on a thousand waterfront resort bars that Lawrence had enjoyed in his twenties, and those had all been centuries out of date long before he even reached Earth. It catered for all sorts, although the sudden influx of Z-B platoons these last two nights had managed to repel most of the locals. When the first platoon came in and slapped on the bar demanding beers, the manager tried to refuse. They were ready for that; the sergeant had a communication card with a link already open to City Hall. A few words were said about licenses and there was no more trouble, only resentment. But the platoons were used to that, it hardly spoiled their evening.

Lawrence and Amersy sat under a thatched parasol out on the patio as the last crescent of gold-red sun sank behind Vanga peak. Both of them were sipping Bluesaucer beer from chilled bottles while the rest of the platoon spread themselves around the bar.

"Did you hear about Tureg's platoon?" Lawrence asked quietly. None of his own men were close, four of them were round the pool table. Edmond was in a corner booth, talking to a well-dressed local man—which made Lawrence frown briefly. Hal, of course, was sitting up at the bar, wearing a white T-shirt that was tight enough to outline every muscle and smiling at all the girls who came in.

"I heard," Amersy said. "The hatch nearly cut old Duson in half when they tried to open the lander pod. They reckon the thing was pressurized to ten atmospheres. Goddamn company using cheap suppliers again."

"That's bullshit, and you know it. No way a drop pod could pressurize like that."

"One of the RCS nitrogen tanks vented. The valve jammed. It happens."

"A valve jammed! Those things are supposed to be failsafe. And nitrogen doesn't vent inside the pod, you know that."

"It can, if enough things go wrong."

"Ha!"

"What then?"

"Foran got caught by a runaway truck, didn't he?"

"Come on!" The patch of white skin on Amersy's cheek flushed darker. He leaned in closer. "You can't be serious," he hissed. "How could they sabotage a lander pod?"

"It was out beyond the boundary."

"So what: you're saying this
KillBoy
resistance group managed to change its descent trajectory?"

"No, of course not. It drifted off track, enough of them do. This one was sitting out there in the middle of the jungle for a week before we got around to dispatching a recovery sortie. Plenty of time for them to find it and rig the nitrogen."

"You've got to be wrong, man. The only way they could do that was if they could get around our software security."

"Yes."

"No way. We're talking e-alpha here. Nothing can break that encryption."

Lawrence tried not to dwell on the Prime program he still carried in his bracelet pearl. He'd never actually tested it against e-alpha, although it could certainly break Z-B's second-level software. "I hope not."

"It can't, Lawrence." He was almost pleading. "If they could break e-alpha we'd be wide open to them. Hell, we'd never even have made it down from orbit."

"Yeah." Lawrence took another sip from his bottle: it was his fourth, or fifth. Not a bad brew, based on some Nordic ideal of three hundred years ago with an alcohol percentage higher than he was used to. "I guess you're right" The sun had vanished now, pulling a veil of deep tropical darkness over Memu Bay. Streetlights and neon signs threw a rosy haze into the air above the marina. Farther down the beach, someone had started a bonfire. He took a slow glance around the bar, watching his men fooling about. "Will you look at that? We're commanding the biggest bunch of losers in the galaxy."

"They're damn good, and you know it. We just got all shook-up by Nic, is all."

"Maybe. But this whole outfit isn't what it used to be. There used to be enough of us to damn well make sure there were no screwups like truck crashes and pressurized lander pods. And nobody would ever have taken a shot at us like they did poor old Nic."

"Lawrence..."

"I mean it. I used to go along with it when I was younger. Now I'm old enough to know better. A lot better."

"Jesus, Lawrence, are you having a midlife crisis on me? Is that what this is?"

"No, that's very definitely not what this is."

"You got doubts about the job, Lawrence? If you have, then I'm telling you, you've got to sideline yourself. It ain't right someone with doubts leading us. You might—"