“She's Valens's boss.” I catch myself picking the edge of my bandages with my steel hand and force myself to stop. I can't feel it. Valens peeled the damaged contact poly off, and when I turn it over I can spot the brighter scrape gouged by Indigo's bullet.
“And Valens is your boss.”
“I'm my own boss.” Which is a stupid thing for somebody who's in the service to say, but it's not like what I'm doing has a damn thing to do with the army anymore. “I–Constance, I have reasons for what I did.”
“I know who Indigo Xu is. Did you know her?” Another hanging silence. A trick of hers.
“I didn't even know she existed.” Honest truth, and her enhanced green eyes narrow. “No. Look. We have to do this. The Chinese have found a planet that might possibly be colonized — colonizable? Whatever. They have ships under way, and…” Richard, why does this all sound so stupid when I try to explain it out loud?
“Because politics usually is?” He rubs one well-worn hand across his left eye, face downturned in thought. “Keep talking.” But Riel interrupts.
“We have some pretty big problems at home, Master Warrant Officer,” she says. “I don't know how much information Unitek has made available to you.”
“As little as they can get away with. But they know, and they didn't tell me, but I know. And I know something you — and they — don't.” I pour myself ice water and drink it quickly. The IV isn't keeping up with my body's fluid demands.
A sculptured eyebrow rises. “Do tell.”
“Have you heard about the sabotage yet?”
“Sabo — no. Is that what happened to Le Québec?”
“No, that was pilot — Colonel Valens's term was pilot inadequacy. You know what I am now. You saw what I can do. Sometimes it still isn't enough.”
“And I'm grateful.” She stuffs both hands into the pockets of her swing jacket, stretching the soft houndstooth fabric. Thermally luminescent threads woven through the cloth ripple jade and violet with the movement. My sister would have loved that look. “But I'm afraid the official word from Valens is now that Québec was the victim of a terrorist act.”
“A what?”
“A computer virus,” she says. “It's one of the reasons they decided to experiment with the smart programs and the artificial personas for ships' computers. They can be trained to recognize threats and defend themselves, like ants protecting a hive. You didn't know?”
“I didn't.” Richard?
“Keep her talking, Jenny. There's something else she needs to know when you get a chance. We've got Benefactors — aliens — coming from two directions.”
Riel's still talking, too, into my divided attention. “—what you said about sometimes still not being enough?”
Two? “Prime Minister. Have you ever driven a sports car?”
“Yes. Ah.”
“They can get away from you, can't they?” I duck into her hesitation before she can take the sentence wherever she was planning. “I can barely handle those ships, ma'am.”
“Constance,” she reminds me. “Casey, do you have any idea what you look like from the outside? I had heard stories, but — why didn't the enhancement program ever move forward? If you're an example of what it produces?” She leans forward. I taste burned coffee on her breath.
“There are side effects, ma— Constance. I'm not a superhero. And it didn't always work, or even often, and you'd never get somebody healthy to agree to it.”
Eager, leaning even closer. “But the new nanotech is better?”
“So far.” I close my eyes. A lot better, Jenny. A thousand times better. “You wanna know why all your grunts aren't wired.”
“I do. Yes.”
I shake my head, thinking time for a haircut as stray strands brush the edge of my interface plate. “Because it drove most of us crazy. Because so many men in my test group swallowed bullets that they shelved the whole program and salvaged what they could out of those of us who didn't. Some of them were so sensitized — there was supposedly one former pilot who had to sleep in a sense-dep tank.” I bite my lip. Shit. That was Koske, wasn't it?
Thirty years is a long time to remember that kind of a detail. If it was, he's a lot better now.
“The faster healing is nanotech, too?” Relentless.
“Yes. It takes somebody like us to fly one of those things, and even we mess it up.”
She's looking at me, studying me with her head cocked to one side. I wonder if she sees a weapon, or a tool, or a commodity. Or maybe — maybe — if Constance Riel is a statesman rather than a politician, she sees what the machines in my blood could mean for the whole stinking, fevered planet. “Master Warrant. How do you guarantee the safety of the crew?”
“You can't.” I wish I could pace back and forth while I talk to her. I force myself not to kick my other foot like a sulky child. “But I'm good, despite my limitations. And while flying the ship, I have an artificial intelligence assisting.”
“The A-life personas? How smart are they?”
“No.” I finish the last of the water. “A sentient computer.”
Richard interrupts. “Technically, I'm software, not hardware, Jen.”
Shut up, Richard. Knowing he can hear the grin in what I say. As easily as I sense his as he withdraws a half-step.
“Jen, is this smart?”
Is anything I've done in the last fifty years smart?
“Touché.”
Riel's still chewing that over. She closes her eyes and I hear joints crack when she raises her shoulders and lets them drop. A voice in the hallway distracts me, but I can't make out the words. “Okay,” she says without opening her eyes. “So Dunsany's program has produced something that isn't just fool-the-eye smart? Convince me.”
“Trust me. The ship itself is smart.”
She's not used to an answer like that, but she bites her lip and takes it like a boxer soaking up one on the chin. “Okay. Granted. How the hell does that help me deal with a future involving millions of starving Canadians?”
Well, hell. As long as I'm coming clean, I may as well come clean. “It's not just the Canadians who're going to be starving. It's going to be thirty years ago all over again. Only worse. World War IV.” The graze on my shoulder has almost stopped hurting. I roll my head experimentally to the other direction and feel the tug across the muscles and the skin. Ah, there's the pain: just gone a little deeper is all. “Constance, I'm coming to you because there was an attempt on the Montreal by somebody on board her — I'm guessing a Chinese agent — which was foiled by the ship's AI. And I'm guessing nobody bothered to tell you that either. And I'm coming to you because Holmes is going to jail. If there's any justice on this planet, she will be executed for her crimes.”
“You think the Americans have enough to hang her.”
“I think the Canadians have enough to hang her, or I could give it to them. The Americans still use lethal injection, as far as I know.”
“Why do I give a rat's ass? Pardon my English, Casey—”
“Hold it. If you're Constance, then I'm Jen.”
“Jen — but Alberta Holmes is a wart on the toad's ass of society. And if you're going after her… well, forgive my vote of nonconfidence. But that's a bit like the mouse crawling up the elephant's leg with rape on its mind.”
“You've got a subpoena on your desk with her name on it, don't you?”