Theirs Not to Reason Why 4: Hardship (15 page)

It felt a bit like mentally holding one’s breath in hope that the monsters under-the-bed/in-the-closet wouldn’t hear.

As the bright-hued dog came through the front office door, she found herself asking lightly, “Private Sunrise, do you suppose Melba toast counts as a cracker? Or is it too bready? What do you think?”

Turning to face her CO, Sunrise opened her mouth to reply. That brought her right hip into Ia’s reach. Without a thought in her head, Ia plucked the gun from the other woman’s holster, flicked off the safety, and fired, all in a swift, smooth motion. The
bang
of the gun echoed loudly in the small room, accompanied by a puff of acrid smoke and a sharp
yipe
of pain from the stubbie as it was flung back across the floor by the force of her shot.

I’m quite sure I was equally memorable, and I know I am equally to blame for some of the actions on Dabin—it was not so much a matter of breaking any rules or regs as it was a matter of shocking and appalling the meioas around me.

In hindsight, it’s easy to claim I had a purpose for what I did, but at the time, it was nothing more than the sheerest instinct to deliver an horrendous, overwhelming shock. A slap to the face to wake everybody up. And . . . maybe a touch of revenge. I am mostly Human, after all.

~Ia

“The
hell
?” Major Tonkswell bolted up from his seat, only to grab for his gun and crouch behind the bulk of the drawers holding up one side of his desk. Out in the hall, voices shouted and footsteps thundered, some fleeing, others drawing near. “Put down the gun!”

Lance Corporal Aston also gaped and blinked, then grabbed for his own pistol. Both men aimed their weapons at Ia’s head. She didn’t move, just stood there with an unopened bottle of water in her left hand and a smoking projectile weapon in the other, still aimed at the dog. Silently, she studied the last gasping breaths from the dying animal. A third gun poked through the opening of the brigadier general’s office, this time the muzzle of an HK-74 laser rifle, replete with the faint whine that said it was charging. Only a narrow strip of its wielder could be seen, however.

Blinking a couple times from shock herself, Private Sunrise finally shrugged and answered her commanding officer’s question. “I’m . . . not really sure, sir. It’s usually about the size of a large cracker, it
is
crisp, and you can certainly spread things on Melba toast like a cracker . . . but it technically does start out as bread, first. Yeast-risen, not sodium or some other means.”

“What the mossy red
hell
is
wrong
with you two?” Aston demanded, hands no longer shaking, though sweat now beaded visibly on his brow. “You
shot
the General’s dog, and you’re talking about
toast
?”

“Put
down
the gun, sir!” Tonkswell asserted loudly, his own hands quite steady.

Ia didn’t take her eyes or her aim off the still-glowing, dying canine. She could see the potential chemical energy in the explosive powders of the projectile cartridges loaded into Aston’s, Tonkswell’s, and her borrowed handguns. The glow from the power conduits in the walls lit up the nearby walls in angular bars, and the glow from the brigadier general’s now fully charged laser rifle was even stronger as it poked past the edge of the inner-office door . . . but none of those were as bright as the dog’s glow. Paradoxically, that glow kept getting brighter, not dimmer as the creature twitched and bled.

Still, Corporal Aston’s question deserved an answer. As did the major’s demand. She answered in a tone as dry as the toast in question, though her gaze never left the dog. The little hitches of Ginger’s bloodied rib cage were slowing down.

“I apologize, gentlemeioas. It
would
have been an instant kill, but I am missing an eye, and the bitch moved at the last second. And technically, the subject is
crackers
, not bread. As for the gun . . . Private Sunrise?”

Reversing the gun, she held it grip-first to her companion, gaze never wavering from the dying dog. In Ia’s mind, “Ginger” was a modern-day leprechaun; she didn’t even allow herself a moment to blink. She couldn’t get close enough to touch the dog, not with so many weapons aimed at her head, but Ia didn’t blink and didn’t look away.

She did, however, address the ex-Knifeman. “I am surprised this wasn’t still loaded with splatters, Private. That would’ve made this a lot faster.”

“Sorry, sir. I swapped ’em out at our last rest stop when it occurred to me we were deep in civilian territory,” Sunrise admitted, taking the pistol back. “Controlled expansion bullets are frowned upon by most Peacekeeper forces, sir. But . . . now I’m wishing I’d kept them in there. I brought us here because a part of me realized someone in Mattox’s immediate environment had to be controlling him.”

“
Controlling
me?” Mattox demanded from behind the shelter of his office door. “Nobody’s controlling me.”

Sunrise ignored him. “For the record, Captain, I had picked the dog, too . . . but mine was just a paranoid guess. Ah . . . not that I doubt you, but I
do
hope your choice is the right one, sir. I’d really rather not be incarcerated for this.”

The stubbie finally stopped breathing. Her awareness of the other energy sources in the room was starting to fade, but the dog’s glow only increased. Eye itching from the need to blink away the mounting dryness, Ia counted down inside her head from ten. “Oh, I
know
I’m right.”

“Right about what?” Aston demanded. “About hating a poor, sweet dog so much you . . . you . . .” A flash of light made him whip his head to the side.
“What the
shakking
 . . . ?”

The stubbie’s corpse had vanished in that flash. Even the blood spatters were gone. Had anyone looked closely at the faux-granite pattern of the plexcrete flooring, they might have noticed a thin dusting of tiny golden specks, which hadn’t been there before. No one bothered, though; everyone but Ia gaped at the oversized, mirror-smooth, dark soap bubble that now hung in the air in the absent dog’s place. She knew the dust had been left behind, but only because she knew Dabin’s gravity was just barely high enough to pull some of that residual matter out of the alien hovering in midair.

“I will give you one warning, Meddler,” Ia stated calmly, eyeing the dark gray sphere. “Drop your faction with Miklinn, swear a new faction to
me
, and I will arrange things so that you
gain
position in the Game. Run from me, or continue to counterfaction me, and I will—”

The Feyori turned and bolted out through the window. Ia spun and dashed after it to the window, hand slapping against the broad pane just centimeters short of touching that sphere. It slowed a few meters away at the shield boundary, causing a cascade of sparks to arrow down into the slowly brightening alien as it fed briefly, then zipped off into the sky.

“Slag!” Ia growled, watching the bubble shrink into the distance. She thumped the transparent plexi pane again, this time with a curled-up fist. “
Shakking v’shova v’carra v’
slag!”

The cursing didn’t alleviate her frustration. Nor did it add anything to it. Unfortunately, her anger wasn’t nearly enough to tip her over the energy/matter border. Part of what held her back was how a little too much of the excess energy had bled away. Part was from the realization that she would be leaving Private Sunrise in a very indelicate position if she did leave to go bubble-chasing across the planet.

The rest came from acknowledging to herself that she now had the mess of the 1st Division’s blatant contamination by Meddling to clean up. The Admiral-General would expect nothing less of her. So would her parents, in a lesson Ia had learned long ago.
If you are the one who saw the mess, that means you are the one expected to clean it up, and you’re not allowed to just walk by and leave it to rot . . .

I love you, Mom and Ma, but sometimes I wish you hadn’t dented such a strong sense of responsibility into my head!

Her hand slapped one last time into the plexi surface. Drawing in a deep breath, she let it out again slowly. Stepping away from the window, Ia turned to face the others . . . and found a host of weapons still pointed at her. Tonkswell had tilted his gun up, pointing it ceilingward as the only safe direction, but Aston, Mattox, and the cluster of soldiers filling the front doorway continued to aim at her. Rolling her eyes, Ia shifted her hands to her hips.

“As you just saw for yourselves, I did
not
shoot anybody’s dog. I shot
an enemy spy
. You have all been contaminated by Feyori Meddling, thanks to ‘Ginger’ disguising herself as a friendly canine.
Think
, meioas, about what you have all just seen.” She waited for them to lower their weapons. When they didn’t, she firmed her expression. “I have been authorized by Admiral-General Christine Myang to deal with the Feyori, including the right to intercede in covert Human-Feyori interactions. My actions are completely within the realm of my orders.”

They didn’t move. Excepting Sunrise, the men and women around her looked dazed, as if not quite registering her words. It was possible “Ginger” had implanted a last-minute telepathic suggestion. Ia could only guess, though; telepathy was not one of her strengths by any means. Still, every word she said was true, under her terms of
carte blanche
and the Admiral-General’s awareness of her dealings with the Feyori.

This would be so much easier with Helstead on hand. I am
not
a psychodominant . . .

“You will put. Your weapons.
Away
,” she ordered, her tone edged with the authority Myang had entrusted to her. (
Now!
)

That single thought pulse, hard and forceful, jolted through them. It also drained the last of the glow, leaving Ia with nothing more than normal senses and a faint, burgeoning headache. Like a slap to the face, they shook their heads and drew in sharp breaths. Blinking, the men and women slowly lowered their weapons, looking as if they had just woken up from a weird dream. Ia wasn’t completely fooled; the subtle depths of Feyori mind games would take more than a single mental demand from her to wipe them away. But they did activate the safeties on the projectile guns and shut off the e-clips for the energy ones.

Most pointed the muzzles up, the one safe direction on the top floor of a building. With her peripheral vision, she could see Mara narrowing her own eyes at the few who pointed their weapons down. Ia let her handle that violation. She kept her gaze on the brigadier general while Mara spoke, her tone cold with highly displeased authority.

“I see a few of you have forgotten the Rules of the Range, meioas.” The ex–staff sergeant hardened her tone when they didn’t move. “Stunners don’t go through floors and walls, but
those
are Hecks and Jellies. Muzzles
up
, soldiers!”

They snapped their guns up. Ia turned slightly, addressing the man still lurking mostly behind the inner door. “Brigadier General Mattox. In light of the revelation of the Meddler’s presence in your Headquarters, I strongly suggest you and your entire staff submit immediately to psychic examinations and treatments. Failure to comply carries with it automatic accusations of Fatalities Nineteen, Collusion; Six, Subversion; Three, Espionage; Thirty-five, Sabotage; and possibly Fatality Two, Treason . . . and I’ll remind you that Fatality Two is automatically an accusation of Grand Treason, given that we’re currently at war. Possibly Grand High Treason, depending on how much damage you have done to the war efforts while under Ginger’s influence.”

Major Tonkswell spoke up. “We’re the Army, Ship’s Captain. We have zero psychic attachés on our staff. The Brigadier General . . . ah . . .
shova
.”

“Brigadier General Mattox had asserted that they would not be necessary, yes, I figured as much the moment you said there weren’t any,” Ia finished for him. “Whether or not this was before or after ‘Ginger’ officially arriving on the scene is immaterial. The Feyori could have hidden in that restaurant across the street and still been able to influence his mind.
All
of your minds. They do have a limit to that range, but that’s more than close enough.”

Aston frowned at that. “Then why did she bother to disguise herself as a
dog
?”

“Conservation of energy,” Sunrise told the corporal. “It’s a lot easier to spy on your game pieces and keep them playing in all the right ways when you’re right there at the gaming board.”

“Exactly,” Ia agreed. “Nobody would suspect a dog of being a spy, she wouldn’t need to have her identity checked and confirmed, and those extra-sensitive canine ears would give her an increased chance to eavesdrop on anything important—Brigadier General, would you please put down the gun now?”

Mattox wasn’t aiming it at her, and in fact was now cradling it against his chest, but it was still fully charged. Despite the naturally tanned hue of his skin, he looked pale, shaken by what had just happened. “I . . . I just want to be ready. To shoot her. If she comes back . . .”

Ia wasn’t the only one to roll her eyes at that. Private Sunrise did, too. “That was a
Feyori
, sir,” the ex-Knifeman scorned. “You’re wielding a
Heck
. That’d be like smacking a starving, feral dog with a
sausage
.”

He flushed under the sting of her derision, the color rushing back into his sallow cheeks in splotches. “Your insolence, soldier, is—”

“—Is exactly what you need to wake up to the fact that you have been
controlled
, sir,” Ia interjected, defending her crew member. She softened her tone a little. “Now, I believe this situation can be salvaged. It does require everyone in this building undergoing psychic scans, behavioral evaluations, and a review of every decision you have made for as long as Ginger was here, plus an extra month or so before that point so we can pinpoint when your actions began to change under her influence.”

“And where are we going to get the psychics necessary for such evaluations, Ship’s Captain?” Major Tonkswell asked dryly. A flick from his hand dismissed the crowd at the door, Aston included. “If you haven’t noticed, we’ve been blockaded by the Salik fleet. We can’t exactly call them in from another system.”

“This is a well-established colonyworld with plenty of resources,” Ia reminded him. “Until we can get formal evaluators out here from the 6th Cordon Psi Division, we’ll use a mixture of civilian contractors and certain members of my crew. I brought plenty of psis with me, knowing I’d have to deal with the two Feyori on this world. Some of them are qualified to do formal mind scans, and I’m willing to attach some of them to Headquarters until we’re all reasonably assured that the impact of the Feyori’s Meddling has passed.”

Brigadier General Mattox frowned. “You aren’t in the Space Force Army, let alone in our chain of command.”