The Lazarus Particle (12 page)

Through the din of voices and his swimming vision, the face of Soroya of Shih’ra clarified itself before his eyes. “Are you alright, Vic?”

“Fine,” Vichante said, his voice muffled behind his hand. He pulled it away from his face, finding only a bit of blood. Still hurt like hell. The girl could throw a pretty solid punch, no doubt about it, even if it was technically a sucker punch.

“How many fingers am I holding up?”

“I said,
I’m fine
,” he repeated, a touch more firmly. Alexia didn’t have
that
good of an arm.
 

“I understand. Apologies.” She thrust her arm down between them. “How about a hand up, then?”

Vichante started to tense, then thought better of it. He’d lost his best wingman not an hour earlier, and he was worried about being seen taking a hand up? Hell, he didn’t have the strength in his bones to say no at this point, fuck-all what anyone else thought.

“Thanks.” He clasped her hand, doing his part and pushing up with his legs as she helped lift him back onto his feet. Other than a sore ass and a bloodied nose, he wasn’t that much worse for wear, all things considered. “Sorry I got cross with you. All of you,” he said, raising his voice a bit once he’d gathered his bearings. “You, too, Alexia. Hey! Bring her back; it’s alright. She needs to hear this, too. All of you.”

Slowly, their scattered, battle-worn wing shuffled forward at his urging. Some didn’t even bother; they’d obviously lost the fire. After today, he could hardly blame them. He suspected he would see the exploding flower of Dell’s fighter on the backs of his eyelids for a long, long time to come.

“Alexia,” he pleaded, his voice hoarse and strained. “I’m sorry I don’t have anything of his to give to you. It all happened so fast. If it’s any consolation, he never knew what hit him.” He cleared his throat before continuing, addressing the room now. “We know what Dell and the others died for. What they fought to protect. They were proud of their service, proud of what we’re doing here; they had every right to be. We know they would want us to carry on. That’s how we honor their memories. That’s how we mourn their sacrifice.” He looked to Alexia, opening his arms to allow for a sympathetic embrace.

Alexia DeCoud took one look at him, bright blue eyes welling with hateful tears, and reared back quick as an Oviddian cobra.

This time it was no sucker punch.

Vichante winced as the medic threaded the last stitch through his lower lip and he was allowed to speak again. “Fuck,” he spat, grasping his chin and working his jaw cautiously.

The medic dismissed himself.

“So,” Soroya finally said. She’d stood by, waiting implacably while the medic earned his keep. Now that they were alone, they could speak freely. “What really happened out there, Vic?” Her voice was quiet but heavy with the gravity of command.

Vichante heaved out a leaden sigh. Feeling the sting of breath against his swollen, stitched lip, he winced again. “Ambush. One second everything’s fine, the next it’s pandemonium. Lost Dell in the first wave. Poor kid never had a chance. After that, Dancer and Shipley bought it covering our evac. Rest of us barely made it back to the No-Fly Line with our asses intact. Total clusterfuck.”

Soroya considered this thoughtfully. “An ambush. Could it be the Tyroshi were simply in the right place at the right time?”

“Possible,” he conceded. “Doubtful.”

“What else then?” she prompted.

Vichante lifted his gaze, eyeing her levelly from his place on the examination table.

“Ah. Sabotage, is it?”

“You have a better explanation?”

“Indeed. Bad luck.”

Vichante shook his head. She had meant it to sound consoling, but he refused to accept such a simple explanation.

“Do you allow that I know you, Vichante Harm?”

Considering her for a moment, he nodded. “I do.”

“And do you then allow that I know you perhaps even better than you yourself?”

“… I do,” he agreed warily.

“Then hear me out when I say that your desire for an explanation—your need for a problem to
attack
and
solve
—is crowding out your ability to see the situation for what it is. You cannot accept that a pilot of Dell’s caliber could be killed by a senseless ambush, that he did not perish in a blaze of glory, because you cannot root out bad luck at the source. You cannot mount a loyalty campaign against it, or flush it out the nearest airlock the way you can a saboteur, spy, or traitor. You can only hope against it, and then only by degrees upon degrees, because you simply have no other option but to accept it as the threshold upon which even the most optimistically conceived and operationally sound mission plan succeeds or fails.” As she spoke she crossed the room little by little, until finally she stood nearly nose to nose with him before the examination table. She took his hands within her own and met him with a keenly level gaze. “I do hope some of that got through to you…” she said in a suddenly much softer, more intimate tone. She lifted a hand to corral an errant twist of matted, sweaty hair back into place.

“It did,” he confirmed, matching her tone. “You’re probably right.”

She dropped that hand around the nape of his neck and drew him in for a kiss. In light of his recently stitched lip, he returned it cautiously but with no less passion for it. Suddenly he felt the coldness of blood and death and battle sloughing off him like sheets of ice from the berg. He was warming to her touch, his lips parting just so to welcome a still-closer exchange, when a familiar pounding sound reverberated from the hall outside.

They had already put a respectable distance between them when the runner skidded to a halt within the doorway. “Madam Commandant,” he said, saluting smartly. “Message coming in for you in the communications suite.”

“Very well. No need to keep me waiting.”

The runner nodded. “They were still trying to decrypt it when they sent me to fetch you, but Nafis said it looked, quote, ‘a hell of a lot like it’s coming from a Morgenthau-Hale CCV.’”

Soroya canted her head just so. “A courier command vessel? Interesting.”

“Yes, ma’am. Something about a unique signature in the transmission source code. Evidently it’s designed to assist rescue teams locate the senior staff first in the event of a ship or station-wide evacuation.”

“What the hell is a Morgenthau-Hale CCV doing way out here?” Vichante wondered incredulously. “They’ve got no dog in this fight.”

“I am sure it is a simple misunderstanding,” Soroya said. She was always cool, always collected, his Soroya of Shih’ra. Some, he knew, thought her chilly and removed; indeed, he had once been of the same mind. He knew better now. She was as passionate and devoted to the cause as any of them. It was what had drawn them together so many years earlier. Her phlegmatic idealism precisely tempered his quixotic devotion. If not for her influence, Vichante didn’t want to think where he might be right now. Probably dead, if he was being honest with himself.

“What now?” he asked after she signaled for the runner to wait outside.

She stepped in close once more, letting the tension build before she said, “I should look into this. Go get cleaned up. I will meet you as soon as I have a better handle on this.” She paused, considering. “Whatever
this
is.” He nodded and she moved to meet the messenger. “Lead the way, Corporal Groat.”

Per her advice, he headed straight for their shared quarters. Specifically, the shower. The water felt good, beading and curling and careening off his various parts and limbs. It was hot, almost unbearably so. Just what he needed. He shaved next. Then he washed and lathered up again, going against the grain that second time, completing the ritual. A few nicks cropped up here and there, but he looked more or less refreshed, even if he didn’t quite feel it.

The shower and shave gave him ample time to consider his place with the Free Planetary Irregulars. He could remember back when the movement had mattered, when it had achieved measurable results. Sure, only a few of the literally dozens of campaigns he’d participated in on some level had come to fruition; that is, convincing the Tyroshi or the various other Sovereign Corporate States that whatever system they had designs on wasn’t worth the resources necessary to capture it. It was a simple formula, based upon simple principles of guerrilla warfare dating back centuries, if not millennia.

That was before the Tyroshi mounted their current campaign of counterinsurgency with such shattering results.

There were other factors, as well, of course. The entire movement was a mess. Overextended. Too big, too subsidized by that third or so of Coalition governments that had succumbed to some form of single-party totalitarian rule. True, those planets and their so-called governments tended to be amongst the most ardent supporters of the Irregulars, but only because it kept the Sovereigns off their own doorsteps. Give to the fight there so you don’t have to fight here— that sort of thing. Sure, it kept them in guns and butter, but at the cost of being beholden to thugs and strongmen. Promises had to be made; favors had to be exchanged.
 

He had just finished washing his stubble and shaving goop down the drain and toweling dry his face when Soroya returned.

“Ah, good. You showered,” she said, reaching out to trace the sculpted landscape of his abs appreciatively.

“So, what was that all about?”

“After,” she said dismissively. Taking him by the hand, she led him over to their rack.

“After what?”

“Your massage. Lie down.”

He did, naked and on his stomach. He could hear the shift of fabrics removed and discarded as she undressed behind him. A moment later he felt her straddle the backs of his thighs, her hands coming down to grip his shoulders. Her grip was strong yet agreeably feminine. She spent a good deal of time working out the knots in his shoulders and the small of his back before shifting her weight further down, her hands trailing with it. By the time she had finished kneading his gluts, thighs, and calves, he was putty in her hands. The one notable exception revealed itself as she coaxed him onto his back.

“Well, hello there,” she said, positioning herself atop him.

Vichante started to object, to tell her he couldn’t. That they
shouldn’t
. Not after all that had transpired earlier. It was in poor taste, it was insulting to the memory of those they’d lost, it was a futile effort on her part—all of these excuses and more flashed through his mind in the short span it took her to settle into that neat up-and-down rhythm. By the time he finally opened his mouth to protest, all that came out was a choked-off groan of appreciation.
 

He came within minutes, his whole body sliding liquidly into the throes of climax. The sensation was one of unburdening ecstasy mingled with gnawing shame.

“I believe that is what your people refer to as a ‘happy ending,’” Soroya observed wryly after he had finished.

“More or less. Happier than most, anyway,” he agreed as she rose from the rack and sauntered, still quite naked, across the room to wash up. “What did I do to deserve that?”

“You came back.”

“That’s setting the bar pretty low.”

“Not these days.” She splashed water on her face and under her arms, drying with a nearby towel. Her breasts swayed appealingly each time she raised and lowered her arms. “Besides, you needed it. We cannot have you moping around the troops like you were; bad for morale.”

Vichante bristled at the suggestion he had been moping. A vital intelligence-gathering operation had gone catastrophically wrong and men—good men,
his
men—had paid the ultimate price. And for what? Nothing. No appreciable, meaningful result whatsoever. The entire action was a blip at best. That was the galling part, the senseless part, the devastatingly tragic part. The dead men, he held letters to their families and loved ones in his trust. Protocol dictated he not only deliver them, but write a letter of his own to each of the families, as well. What was there to say? What possible solace could he mine from their sacrifices? Vichante shook his head.

In place of that passing instant came a sudden expansion of clarity. Here again was Soroya in her element. Managing. Leading. Thriving. Her judicious calm tempering his wounded steel. She might have engaged a slightly less provocative word to better describe his state of mind, but as usual her instincts were spot on. They needed to project an air of redoubled purpose and unflinching determination, he especially.

“Message received.” He sat up, rubbing the heels of his hands over his eyes. “I’ll pull myself together. Thanks for giving it to me straight.”

“Of course, my love.” She started to dress again. “Oh, and no more free shots for Specialist DeCoud, either. Same principle.”

Vichante flexed his jaw, still feeling a bit of lingering soreness. “No argument there.”

“Good.”

“So. What about that transmission earlier? Did the techs get it decrypted and verified?”

“Definitely originated from a Morgenthau-Hale CCV,” Soroya said absently, having turned back to the sink. “Still no clue as to the substance of the message, but…”

“But?” Vichante prompted after a handful of seconds.

Still she hesitated. “What if you are wrong, Vichante? What if they now have a dog in this fight? If they have forged an alliance with the Tyroshi, we are in for even more death and destruction than we could have possibly imagined.”

14 • STIRRING THE POT

Jskaarl was waiting outside her personal hovel when the living manifestation of Clan Kerikeshaala finally graced him with her presence.

“Report,” Kerikeshaala: Tj Yeleyhi ordered, barely breaking her stride as she breezed past him.

Jskaarl followed like the whipped snarr pup he was. “One of our long-range patrols intercepted an Irregulars’ flight well outside of their so-called No-Fly Line.”

Kerikeshaala nodded absently as she began divesting herself of the various trappings and light plated armor that together constituted her third skin. She was nearly down to the hidebound matte black body stocking beneath, her second skin, when she realized Jskaarl had paused, seemingly for effect. Flexing her mandibles against the sudden urge to snap at him, she snarled, “And?”