Judge (22 page)

The detachment and Aras watched the demonstration. Shan tapped her thumbnail against her teeth, lost in thought, and kept taking out her swiss and the borrowed handheld to stare at the screens for a few moments before putting them back in her jacket pocket.

“Not exactly covert,” said Barencoin.

“Doesn't need to be, mate. Eqbas tech. We've seen that shielding bounce missiles, remember.”

“It's okay with a salt cellar, because they're pretty easy to subdue.” Barencoin reached across the table and lifted the glass to slide a pebble beneath it. “But put this bloke inside with his piece, and you're still confined with him. They'll have close protection for Prachy. All we can do is seal off a building from the air.”

“But it's still a whole lot simpler than inserting covertly into God knows where in Europe and getting the old girl and us out in one piece again.”

“Does the FEU know the Eqbas have those kinds of isolating shields?”

“Thanks to Eddie, yes. Remember all the footage he pumped out from Umeh?”

“Oh well, knowing it's there doesn't mean they can do anything about it.”

“Except surround Prachy with a load of big blokes with big guns.” Barencoin turned to Qureshi with a smile. “Or a load of teensy little women with big guns, of course.”

Qureshi shrugged. “Well, then it's a case of who's got the better body armor.”

Shan looked as if she was suddenly paying attention. “Maybe this isn't such a good idea. Might be simpler if I walked in and just slotted her like Esganikan wants.”

There'd been a time when a full-on nuke couldn't have shifted Shan once she'd made up her mind. Now she was wavering. The one thing she couldn't do that a good officer had to was to put her people in harm's way. It was different for coppers; they usually expected to come home each night in one piece. And the detachment was her volunteer militia, civvies, not protected by international law. Shan cared about stuff like that.

“You couldn't do it now,” Ade said kindly. “You have to
insert.
It means flying in, and any journey originating here is going to get FEU attention. Plus you're a known face to the FEU, Boss. We're doing it, period, and then it's up to the Eqbas to process her.”

“It'll all hinge on where they stash her, anyway,” said Becken. They had a small audience of ussissi now, all watching the discussion as if it was a chess game in a park. “One thing we know is that whatever building they use, we can isolate it without touching the ground, and then clear out whatever's inside. No overground exfil.”

“I lose, then,” said Shan. “And shouldn't we have a pilot here for the planning?”

Aras raised his hand. It was a peculiarly human gesture and he almost looked as if he was taking the piss.

“I am,” he said. “I can do this.”

Shan didn't look convinced. “You've never flown an Eqbas ship.”

“I was a pilot. All wess'har ships have much in common. Besides, you want to return to Wess'ej before the Eqbas fleet withdraws, don't you? How do you imagine you'll do that?”

“Good point,” she said, without emotion. She turned to Ade. “Look, when this kicks off, you won't be able to stroll into Ankara afterwards, so if you're going to visit the war graves, you'd better get on with it while you can. It's going to be tense enough getting into Turkish airspace as it is.”

She walked out into the main lobby. Barencoin gave Ade a sympathetic pat on the shoulder. “I reckon so. It's not going to be like the Fourteen-Eighteen War, playing football with the Hun in the tea break between shelling. Get going.”

Chahal and Webster spent the next couple of hours working through the live map databases of Europe, speculating on where Prachy might end up, which seemed to entertain the remaining ussissi. The money was on the main FEU complex in Brussels, because that was the kind of up-yours gesture that Zammett would make; he'd defy the Eqbas to trash the center of government because they hadn't zapped any of his ships, Barencoin reckoned. Ade couldn't work out why they didn't just hand the woman over. She was expendable. Everyone was in the end. And they had to know by now that they weren't getting Shan, whatever pressure was brought to bear.

“Fucking mess,” Ade muttered to himself, and made a conscious effort to stop his mind wandering back through the timeline to the point where it had all started to come unraveled. He knew it was that day on board
Actaeon,
back in orbit above Umeh, when Commander Lindsay Neville tasked him to find a way of infiltrating Bezer'ej to capture Shan Frankland.

Jesus, don't I ever learn? I'm doing it again, aren't I?

No, it wasn't then. He could have clawed it back after that. It was the moment in the armory when Rayat asked him if the BNO bombs could be transported to the planet, and he said he…he said they
could
be, but shouldn't be. Ade had lost count of the times he'd imagined himself telling Rayat and Lindsay to fuck off, because there was nothing they could have done to force him, and he was bloody certain that the rest of the detachment would have dug their heels in too, regardless of disciplinary action.

My fault. I tipped events.

He didn't dare talk about it to Shan any more. She always got exasperated and went through a long list of all the other ways that the nukes could have been deployed on Bezer'ej, and maybe with even greater loss of life all round, but it never quite made the guilt go away completely.

Fuck it. It was done now, and the least he could do was clean up the last turd. He took out his
virin
and began planning the trip to Ankara.

“I'll pilot a shuttle,” Aras said, looking over his shoulder. Ade hadn't realized he was watching so closely, but Aras had that wess'har mood radar. “It will be excellent training for the mission.”

Aras was a good bloke. There was no doubt about it.

An hour later, Shan walked back into the restaurant. Her expression was that odd mix of chalky unblinking anger and something that might have turned into a smile, but a humorless one. Someone had just lived up to her worst expectations, or she'd been outflanked. Ade knew it. Aras tensed and stood up.

“God bless the Canucks,” she said. “Now they've upped the ante. The UN backed their extradition idea.”

“To where?” said Chahal. “Surang?”

“Canada.” Shan pointed at Barencoin, cueing him. “Now, may I have an opinion from m'learned friend Judge Barencoin over here?”

Barencoin perked up. The mouthy, aggressive image hid the fact that he did international law at university, a regular intellectual, but he never liked revealing that side. “Do they have the death penalty? Come to that, do they do piddly nitpicking stuff like real trials, and risk acquitting people? Because if they won't lynch her, Esganikan won't consider the case closed. I won't bill you for the legal advice. It's common sense.”

“I'm obliged, Your Honor. That's the question the Aussies are putting to them now.” Shan looked at them all, asking for a response. “Well, do we still want to get involved?”

“It's legal,” said Becken. “I'm up for overseeing a handover too. Even if it's not as much fun as extracting her.”

Qureshi nodded. “Better, actually.”

“Shame it wasn't that Sinostates place, right on the African Assembly border,” said Ade. “Last time we looked, they were beheading everyone for anything, just to be on the safe side.”

“It's Canada,” said Shan, and Ade knew everyone was thinking the same thing; they'd still have to go in and haul out Prachy anyway. “And if Prachy had any sense of duty, she'd save everyone the trouble and top herself. Ade, if you're still going to Ankara, make it very soon.”

Shan wandered off.

“If Prachy
does
stand trial,” said Barencoin, savoring his bit of legal exercise, “it's going to be fascinating procedure.”

Immigrant Reception Center's airstrip, late afternoon.

 

“Do you have time for this trip?” Esganikan demanded. “Shouldn't you be planning the arrest of Prachy?”

Aras watched Shan for signs of a reaction but she remained glacially calm. Knowing her temper, he thought it was a remarkable feat of self-control when she almost certainly wanted to round on Esganikan for her deceit more than she wanted to remove her. Aras didn't think Shan
wanted
to remove her at all. There was no rage or passion in this, just that dull sense of having been deceived again, and he remembered how much that rankled with Shan when she discovered what the politician Perault had done to her.

As always, Shan chanelled the sense of betrayal into the strict performance of her duty, by way of vengeance.

“This will only take seven hours, tops,” Shan said quietly. “Canada's discussing the handover and there's nothing useful I can add to that. Ade's never going to get the chance to visit the graves again, and I intend him to have his wish. I hope we're clear on that.”

“I'll come too,” Esganikan said. “As will Kiir and Aitassi. We have never seen war graves, and Aras needs an experienced shuttle pilot with him.”

“I don't think either Kiir or Ade would welcome that.” Shan's tone was completely neutral, not that Esganikan would have been swayed by her emotional state anyway. “This is a very emotional event for Ade. Kiir had better stay behind.”

Ade lowered his chin. “It's okay. He might as well see it. I think he'll understand humans better if he does.”

Esganikan paused for a moment, then motioned Kiir on board. It was hard to tell if the Skavu had been ordered to come or if he was genuinely curious. He said nothing and stepped into the shuttle, saber slapping against his back with each stride, and vanished into the gloom of the ship.

Shan nudged Aras discreetly. “I'll keep an eye on him,” she whispered. “You concentrate on learning to fly that bloody thing properly.”

Esganikan was totally unperturbed by the tension. “We shall need to extend this area to accommodate all the vessels,” she said, changing topic completely and gazing around the dilapidated field. Slabs of cracked concrete poked through dead grass as if there had been other buildings here once, or at least parking. She seemed to have made up her mind. “An area of fifty square kilometers so we can bring all the Skavu inside the perimeter. Then we can make this a temporary city.”

That was what wess'har called their garrisons; there was never an intention to remain. Empires prized permanence, but wess'har were simply passing through, putting things right and enabling the native population to maintain what they had re-created. That was how they saw it, anyway.

“Well, I think it's time we made a move,” said Shan. “Seeing as you're concerned about my time management.”

Aitassi let Aras slip into the pilot's seat and watched from the position beside him with wary matte black eyes. None of the controls felt as familiar as Aras had hoped, despite his training. Shan settled down on a seat that emerged at her touch from the bulkhead, and Ade gave her a silent thumbs-up. Aras wasn't sure why. It was just something he did to bond with her. Perhaps it was approval for not punching Esganikan when she must have wanted to.

“I'll apologize in advance for this,” Ade said. He kept his eyes on the deck, possibly to avoid meeting Kiir's gaze. The Skavu commander sat silent in the aft section of the shuttle, his sheathed saber flat across his knees. “I'm going to be upset when we get there. Don't be embarrassed.”

“'It's okay,” Shan said. She had an eye on Kiir, though. “You do whatever you need to.”

The shuttle's deck became transparent. Ade knelt down to watch the eastern seaboard of Australia streaking beneath them, and as they passed over the coast they could see patrol vessels leaving brilliant white wakes as they moved south.

But it was beyond Australian airspace where the reality of the Eqbas visit became suddenly visible. Their days of peaceful isolation had been an illusion. Now Aras could see exactly how the world was reacting to the arrival of the Eqbas and the tension with the FEU, in the shape of a Sinostates carrier battle group on station to the north.

“Is that for us?” Shan asked.

“I doubt it,” Ade said. There wasn't a lot a carrier could do against Eqbas air power, and everyone must have known that by now. “I think it's to block off more refugee movement when things start to go pear-shaped.”

The bulkhead displays were showing clusters of yellow lights on the long-range chart, the point where the FEU, African Assembl, and Sinostates borders met; they'd have company in Ankara. Aras hoped the FEU had the sense simply to look, and not try to touch.

They reached Turkish airspace at 0925 local time. The first of the fighters picked up the shuttle fifty kilometers out from the coast, and stayed with it across a country that seemed to be either dense cities or arid wasteland.

“It's time I took over the helm,” Aitassi said. “This is no time to practice your skills.”

“Ussissi never fly combat roles,” said Aras “Your neutrality is important to you.”

“This,” said Aitassi, showing a hint of teeth, “is not configured as a fighter, and ussissi can certainly defend themselves.”

“I think that subtle point might be lost on our buddy up there.” Shan pointed up through the deckhead, now set to transparency. A wedge-shaped craft trailing an occasional ring of vapor was keeping pace with them. “He's probably just observing. I bloody well hope so.”

When Esganikan magnified the image, Aras could see the FEU roundel on its undercarriage. The tracking display showed twelve more were within a ten-kilometer radius of the shuttle.

“Not a Turkish squadron,” Ade said. “Central European. Off their usual turf today.”

“You worry about nothing,” said Esganikan. “They can do you no harm, and observing an act of mourning is hardly going to provide intelligence for them. Aitassi, connect me to their traffic control. I warned them we were coming, and I want no interference.”

Ade didn't seem comforted. He was often consumed by guilt; Aras knew he would feel it now, and would blame himself for everything that happened from this point. Some humans absolved everyone around them of responsibility, and Ade was one of them, still punishing himself for not saving his mother from his monstrous father. Aras didn't understand why a child felt he had to be more adult than his own parents.

“I don't want to start anything,” Ade said. “Not today, and not here. Please.”

“Do you want to turn back?” Esganikan asked.

“If this is going to cause a—”

Aras interrupted. “No. This is important for Ade. He has to do this.”

Aras
understood.
Wess'har didn't bury their dead or create memorials, but he remembered how he had clutched helplessly at the soil on Ouzhari, on Bezer'ej—two hundred years ago, yes, just after the
gethes
sent their first unmanned mission—and mourned for his comrade Cimesiat. There was no body to leave for the scavengers, for the rockvelvets or
srebils,
because Cimesiat carried
c'naatat:
so he had finally ended his own life by fragmentation.

Everyone should be returned to the cycle of life. Everyone needs somewhere to mourn.

“You know who's flying those fighters, Aras?” Ade asked. “Ordinary blokes like me. They're the ones who get hurt, not the tossers in Brussels who start this shit. I know a lot of them are going to die sooner or later—but not today, and not because of me.”

Esganikan waited with unusual patience for contact with the Turkish air controllers. “I have no intention of firing on them unless they attack on us.”

“You don't have to return fire at all,” Shan said. “You don't need to. You've got shielding.”

“If I don't, then how will they learn that we mean what we say?” The shuttle was well inside FEU airspace now with its fighter escort. “They must be able to see where we're heading. Perhaps they think a small vessel is also a vulnerable one.”

Ade glanced up through the deckhead a few times but his attention was on the ground. Finding a specific location on Earth was simple; Aitassi turned for the cemetery with a burst of speed and left the FEU fighters struggling to catch up.

It wasn't hard to spot from the air.

Aras was used to two kinds of artificial landscape; the near unspoiled, like F'nar, making as little visual impact as possible, or the wholly urbanized, like Umeh had been. What he'd never seen before was manufactured emptiness. The cemetery covered a vast area of land south of Ankara, nowhere near the city itself; hectares of arid, empty land covered with perfectly precisely spaced white objects that threw shadows. Magnification showed him what they were: headstones. This wasn't a wess'har custom, but he knew what headstones were because he'd made a stained glass one for Lindsay Neville's dead baby. What was new and shocking to him was the sheer number and the space they occupied.

Why should this shock you? You were responsible for the deaths of many more isenj than this.

He tried to work out if the distress was from his own sorrow for lost comrades or the influence of Ade's memories. The shuttle hung motionless above the cemetery. There had to be thousands of headstones down there. It shook him to his core despite his rationalizations.

Shan had now switched her attention to the scene below, all scent suppressed, and she took Ade's hand without looking at him.

Aras turned to him. “You knew all those people?”

“No,” said Ade. “I only knew my mates.”

“How will you find the right grave?”

Ade tapped his pocket. “I got the coordinates from the public register. The rows have numbers and directions. It's like a city.”

“Tell Aitassi where to go,” Esganikan said. “She'll maintain a shield over the area so you can do what you need to without interruption.”

Unlike Shan, Ade couldn't shut down his scent signals. Even normal humans gave off scents that a wess'har could detect and use to gauge their mood, but Ade had an extra dimension of wess'har genes and so communicated his feelings much more clearly. He was scared and angry. Aras watched him carefully while the shuttle took up position over the section where Dave Pharoah was buried, ready to offer some comfort if Shan's tight grip on Ade's hand wasn't enough.

Is he reliving the battle? Or is he reacting to the moment?

Turkish air-traffic control responded at last. Esganikan seemed more interested in the graves.

“Eqbas vessel, this is ATC Ankara. You've entered FEU airspace—”

Esganikan's tone was subdued. “I informed you we wished to visit.”

“You have no
formal
permission to land. But the cemetery has now been closed to the public for the duration.”

“Are you a soldier?”

“Eqbas warship, say again?”

“You. Are you a soldier?”

“This is a military traffic center, yes.”

“I have one of your former comrades on board, a man who fought for the FEU many years ago. All he wants to do is to visit the grave of his friend, and then we'll withdraw. Do you understand his need? If it were your friend, would you not want to do the same?”

“Eqbas warship, I don't have authorization to respond to that.”

Shan cut in quietly. “Esganikan, I don't think you understand what's being said. He's not actually stopping you. He's not giving you permission, because that might compromise his government, but he's not
stopping
you. Get it?”

Esganikan played along as best a wess'har could. “Very well, then tell those who do, and by the time they decide how to deal with me, we'll have left your territory. We won't fire on your vessels.”

Esganikan closed the link. This wasn't the commander who laid down her rules of engagement and applied them without concession on Umeh. Aras caught Shan's eye.

Yes, you think that's unusual too, don't you?

“Are you going soft?” Shan asked, treading on thinner ice. Aras willed her not to confront Esganikan now.

“I see no point in engaging in conflict that won't achieve anything,” Esganikan said. “My curiosity will be satisfied and Ade will have more positive memories of a day that has great significance for him.”

“You've pulled, Ade,” Shan muttered. “Get your coat.”

Aras could work that one out from her expression. Esganikan certainly liked Ade just as the rest of the Eqbas crew seemed to, but wess'har weren't swayed by appearance anywhere near as much as humans, and Ade now emitted wess'har male scent. Wess'har females were never attracted to males already bonded to an
isan,
though. Sexual jealousy was a human trait. Aras hoped that Shan was indulging in a bitter joke to postpone that inevitable confrontation with Esganikan. It was hard to tell—even for her, sometimes.

“He has a very long life ahead of him,” Esganikan said, with the slightest hint of annoyance. “Being burdened with a painful memory is that much worse for
c'naatat
hosts, is it not?”

Ade did his usual trick of defusing the situation. “Thanks, ma'am,” he said. “I appreciate it.”

The graves looked identical, but Ade knew where he needed to go. Aitassi waited in the shuttle overhead while the rest of them descended to the ground. Within the defense shield projected by the ship, the air was still; beyond its heat-haze boundaries, the breeze whipped dust from the finely chipped pink-tinged stone that covered the ground between the gravestones. Aras couldn't see a single living plant. This was either a wasteland, or meticulously maintained. Around them, all the headstones were carved with the same globe emblem that Ade had worn on his beret; these were all men and women from 37 Commando Royal Marines. It said so on the headstones, along with their name, rank, age and date of death.