Final Impact (29 page)

Halabi shook her head at the way clerical errors seemed to be the only constant across the multiple realities.

“Do we have the bed space?”

“Aye, ma’am. Three empty cots. No waiting.”

“Oh well,” the
Trident
’s skipper said, “no harm done then. How is she?”

McTeale checked his flexipad. “Four broken ribs, a small puncture of the left lung. Deep-tissue damage to the upper torso. Apparently she survived an impromptu firing squad. We can patch her up, send her on in a day or two.”

“Sweet mother of God,” Halabi said as she sipped at a steaming mug of tea. “She’s indestructible. Is she conscious? Is she talking to anyone?”

McTeale nodded. “Aye, ma’am. Cursing up a storm, by all reports.”

“That’d be right,” Halabi said, grinning. “You can look after the shop for a few minutes, Mr. McTeale. I might as well pop downstairs and have a word with our celebrity contestant.”

“Very good, ma’am.”

Halabi left the bridge and headed across into the starboard hull of the trimaran. The ship was quiet, but not exactly calm. The storms of the last few days had whipped the North Sea into a bit of a washing machine, and her passage through the companionways of the stealth destroyer was a matter of lurching from one handhold to the next. She passed only a few crewmembers, however. Many of her sailors were asleep in their bunks, although the Combat Information Center was fully staffed around the clock, the sysops keeping a constant watch on the feed from the Nemesis arrays. A third of them were monitoring the Eastern Front, and the ship was full of ’temps again, as “experts” in the Soviet military had come aboard to make sense of the data stream pouring in from Poland.

She always felt as if she had unwanted houseguests when the number of ’temps passed a certain point. This lot wasn’t too bad. They tended to be of a more academic bent than the usual run of buffoons, and she hadn’t been dragged into a pissing contest with any of them so far.

Still, she felt uncomfortable, which was ridiculous, wasn’t it, really? It was
her
ship. The crew respected her, and she was doing a great job. In her cabin she had personal letters of thanks from both the king and the prime minister. Her dress uniform was heavy with medals, and the BBC had even had her in as a guest on
Desert Island Discs.
She’d chosen Albinoni’s Adagio in G Minor, a Dvorák setting of Te Deum, and a couple of grrrl-power standards like the Donnas’ “Fall Behind Me” and Anna B’s “Mister Tubbs,” before finishing with Jurassic 5 kicking it on “What’s Golden.” The host, Roy Plomley, was a charming man who was more than chuffed that his little radio program would play on well into the next century—all things being equal. But of course, they weren’t.

As pleasant as the interlude with Plomley had been, it was one of the few really enjoyable moments she’d had since coming home. Some days it was hard even to think of England as her home anymore. She had some family here, on her mother’s side, but one meeting with them had been more than enough. They’d been horrified at the idea of a “darkie” in the family. Her father’s family was somewhere in Pakistan, which wasn’t even Pakistan yet, and perhaps never would be. They’d disowned her back up in twenty-one, when she’d left home to join the navy. They thought her a traitor to the faith, and a couple of the nuttier ones had even written to tell her that her life had been forfeited the moment she’d turned her back on Allah.

Dickheads.

They were a large part of the reason she had no faith in anyone but herself, her crew, and her ship. Once she might have added the navy to that list, but although she’d made one or two friends among her contemporary colleagues, they mostly remained aloof and she often had the impression they were just waiting for the immediate crisis of the war to pass, after which they would deal with her, somehow. It was why she’d resolved to leave the service at the end of hostilities, and move to California to join Mike.

She harbored no illusions about the reception she’d find in parts of the United States—in his hometown in the South, for instance. But then again, neither did Mike, and they’d decided to settle in the San Fernando after the war. She’d had a marvelous time there during the all-too-short week of their honeymoon, dining out in twenty-first restaurants, dancing in clubs with proper music, getting some time to themselves up at Kolhammer’s place on the lake. She’d loved “slumming it” in downtown LA, which was like stepping into the History Channel, even with the obvious influence of the Zone having wrenched so much of the old city’s culture into such weird and wondrous shapes. Even now she often lulled herself to sleep at night with memories of Mike playing his saxophone in a small Latin jazz club in East LA. She felt more at home there, in some low-rent dive on the edge of the barrio, surrounded by zoot-suiters and beats, than she did in London. Frankly, she couldn’t wait for the war to end so she’d be done with the place.

The Zone would eventually revert to contemporary control, but that wouldn’t be for a few years yet. And by then, they were both sure, the culture of the Valley, of LA and, even of California itself would have changed sufficiently that a woman of mixed parentage married to a white man need not fear the sort of social chill she often felt in London. Mike also hinted in his e-mails that so many companies had now settled in the San Fernando, and were making so much money out of the Special Administrative Zone, that there was a powerful lobby emerging to retain the arrangement as it now stood. It wasn’t something they could discuss openly on official channels, but both of them were very hopeful that with such powerful businesses having an interest in maintaining the Zone as a stand-alone entity, there was a very good chance that Congress would fall in line.

The ship climbed up an especially steep wave before pitching over the top and sliding down the reverse slope. Halabi felt the destroyer slam into the trough at the bottom of the abyss and from long experience surmised that they’d just passed through a wave front about 40 percent larger than the chaotic ten-meter seas they had been fighting for a few days. She pitched forward with the momentum.

“Not to worry, ma’am. I’m sure you’ll find your sea legs soon enough.”

She looked up to find her master chief, Dave Waddington, smiling at her as he hauled himself up the passage by swinging from one grab bar to the next.

“Cheeky fucker,” she said, smiling. “How are the kiddies, Dave?”

“Sleeping soundly, for the most part, Captain. Nothing on the threat boards. I’m about to turn in myself. And you?”

Halabi shook her head. She was very fond of Waddington. A better strong right arm she couldn’t have hoped for. She also knew, even though he’d never spoken of it, that he’d picked up the fresh pink scar on his jaw in a bar brawl on shore. Defending her honor, according to McTeale. She was going to miss him. She was going to miss them all.

“I’ve got a few naughty tigers to tuck into bed before I get my head down, Chief. Night-night.”

“Cheers, ma’am,” he said, nodding as he dragged himself off toward the chiefs’ mess.

She’d made it to the infirmary and pushed aside the curtain to haul herself inside. Three of the six beds were taken, their occupants secured against the movement of the vessel. She recognized Julia Duffy in the nearest cot. She was on a drip and had a couple of sensors clamped onto her fingers, but otherwise she just looked tired.
Very
tired. She’d lost weight, too. Halabi assumed her chest would be heavily strapped under the light blue gown she wore. Julia turned her head slowly when the
Trident
’s captain entered, and a smile broke slowly over her face, lighting it up like a sunrise.

“Long time, skipper.”

“A very long time. Honolulu, if I recall. That dinner with Spruance just after we arrived.”

Duffy held out a hand and Halabi shook it gently, taking care not to dislodge any of the sensors. The reporter looked as though she might have been crying earlier.

“My XO tells me you’ve been upsetting my sailors with your potty language, Julia.”

The reporter snorted weakly. “As if.”

“So how are you doing? I hear you got caught up in some unpleasantness.”

Duffy shrugged. When she spoke it was in a disconnected monotone. “I was working with a Ranger squad on deep recon up near the Ardennes. We got tumbled, got the shit shot out of us. Then we got captured. They took all my equipment. Cuffed us. Put us into a truck. Next thing, we’re hopping out in some field full of SS guys, and I’ve got a bad fucking feeling. Sure enough, there’s about a platoon’s worth of American prisoners there. Long story short, they line us up and cut us down.”

Her eyes welled up again.

Halabi took a wadded-up tissue from her pocket and dabbed away the tears. “Well, they couldn’t have taken all your equipment. File tag says you took a bullet on the plating of your body armor. Saved your life.”

Duffy nodded. “Yeah. I was wearing a Bodyglove nanotube weave. With inserts. I guess the krauts don’t recognize quality when they shoot it.”

“Krauts, is it? You sound like a local, Jules.”

“Sorry. Going native is kind of an occupational hazard. I’ve been smoking Camels and thinking about fucking Betty Grable, too.”

She tried to shift herself up in the bed and winced, turning a little gray in the face. Halabi leaned down and helped settle her against a pillow.

“Thanks,” Duffy whispered. She took a few seconds to steady herself before nodding at the engagement and wedding rings Halabi was wearing. “I heard about you and the Texan,” she said, smiling weakly. “So what are you calling yourself nowadays? Captain Mrs. Michael Judge?”

“I’d smack you, but I might kill you,” Halabi said around a smirk. “But no. I kept my name. It’s quite the in-thing now, you know, for a young lady to keep her name. And I’m such a slave to fashion.”

Duffy closed her eyes as another wave of pain washed through her. “S’cool,” she croaked. “Just gimme a second.”

After a few moments she had it back under control again.

“Well, I’m glad for you, Karen. I interviewed your husband once. Out in the Zone. He was a good guy.”

“That Texan charm of his does work wonders on the ladies.”

Duffy seemed to set herself, like somebody about to lift a heavy weight. “It didn’t work out between Dan and me.”

“I heard.”

“Yeah. It was my fault—”

“Now, Jules, don’t—”

“No. It was. He was a great guy and I totally fucked it up with him. Jesus. What a fucking mess I’ve made.” She started to cry again.

Halabi perched on the edge of the bed. Despite the circumstances she appreciated having a contemporary—a true contemporary, not a ’temp—to talk with. She could relax with someone like Duffy in a way that just wasn’t possible even with a member of her crew. The closest thing she had to a female friend was Jane Willet on the
Havoc,
all the way off on the other side of the world. And they could only manage a personal e-mail every couple of weeks at best. Sometimes months went by without any contact.

She didn’t know Duffy nearly as well. Didn’t know her at all, really. They’d shared a pleasant enough evening at dinner a couple of years ago in Hawaii before the
Trident
left for home. Apart from that, she’d followed Duffy’s work for the
Times,
and once she’d done an e-mail interview with her for a brief profile in a series on “women warriors.” Given the isolation all the uptimers felt, however, that was enough to make them more than just acquaintances. It was a little like meeting a countryman in a strange foreign land.

“Look around, Jules. The whole world’s a fucking mess. An even bigger mess in some ways because we turned up. Our personal problems don’t really count, measured up against all that, do they? And at any rate, it’s not like you haven’t achieved anything since you arrived. Your readers love you. And in my opinion, off the record, you did your country a huge favor exposing Hoover the way you did.”

Duffy repaid her with a tentative look. It didn’t seem to sit comfortably on her face, and Halabi guessed that it was an unfamiliar expression for the reporter.

“You think?” she asked. “I took a lot of shit for that series. People saying I killed him. You had to read some of the fucking hate mail to believe it. I thought whack jobs like that were all a product of talk radio and Fox. Apparently not.”

“I hope you don’t blame yourself. You didn’t put the gun in his mouth, Julia. He did that, and pulled the trigger all on his own. My first commander used to call that sort of thing natural selection at work. As I read it, Hoover’s incompetence and sheer lunacy was largely to blame for the trouble the Yanks had catching those bombers who hit New York. If he’d been on the job like he was supposed to…”

Duffy’s eyelids fluttered with exhaustion and the heavy drug load she was carrying. “You seem very informed,” she said with a soft, cracked voice.

“I married an American, remember? A very political American, too, in his off-duty hours. Mike had no time at all for Hoover. Said he was a menace to society. He read every piece you and just about anybody else ever wrote about him. Used to scan them and e-mail them to me. Instead of love letters I’d get these enormous bloody text files with Mike’s annotations on the life and crimes of J.-bloody-Edgar.”

“Let me guess. He was a blogger, back up in twenty-one?”

Willet smiled. “I think it’s what he misses most about the future. Handing around mimeographs just doesn’t do it for him.”

Duffy chuckled. It was a low, warm sound. “So why’d you two get together. It doesn’t sound like he knows how to treat a gal?”

Halabi smiled again. “Mike looks like a hanging judge, if you’ll excuse the awful pun, but he’s a sweetie at heart. And he came after me. Looked me up when he was in London for some conference. Took me out to dinner.
Showed me off.
You know how with some guys, when you’re out with them, you can just tell they’re walking ten feet tall because they think they’ve grabbed the prettiest girl in the room all for themselves.”

The corner of Duffy’s mouth quirked up in a fair imitation of a grin. “Yeah, I remember.”