War Games Part 26

"I've never visited a semi-dyson before," Lith said, obviously trying to change the topic.

"My parents live almost directly opposite on the other side of the sun," Laisen answered with distraction.

Had the Fusion given Lith any other protection other than a name change? Was that why she was at Floks, because it was far from Perlim penetration and one of the few safe places she could run to? How could she check if the security service was doing its job when she wasn't part of its hierarchy any more? Dammit, why the f.u.c.k was Lith here?

"They teach at one of the universities there."

"Oh." The conversation spluttered into silence. "That must be nice," Lith said faintly.

"How did you get away?" Laisen asked, deliberately softening her tone.

Whereas she was physically a different person from the role she played as Cheloi Sie, Lith was exactly the same. Maybe her face had thinned slightly in the two years they had been apart, throwing her cheekbones into further relief. But she still had the same olive skin that contrasted so beautifully against her own and the same honey-coloured hair, still shot through with those streaks both Laisen, and Cheloi, ached to touch.

"Rep Kodnell gave me a priority pa.s.s when we reached the Five," Lith told her. "I rode an empty supply shuttle the next morning and got off Menon. Two days later, I took a transport from Station Three at the system's border. I ended up at Laeyek Omni B a week after that. As you probably know," her voice faltered, "there's a Fusion underground ring on the planet."

"A Free-Perlim Council offshoot?"

"Yes."

"Was Nils there?"

Lith widened her eyes with surprise for a moment before dropping her gaze to the hem of her s.h.i.+rt. She plucked at a nonexistent loose thread. "Yes."

"And?" It wasn't suave or collected or rational to pursue that particular line of conversation, but Laisen wasn't feeling any of those things.

"I didn't tell him you were working for the Fusion."

Dammit, that wasn't what she meant.

"So you did meet up with him?" Laisen asked, flailing herself. She wasn't blind. She had seen the flash of remembrance in Lith's eyes and had known what that meant. Had Lith gone back to him? Was his the neck she would have to squeeze the life out of? A flash of cruel pleasure coursed through her fingers and she flexed them slowly.

"We met." And the non-committal tone gladdened her, even as she railed at the incompleteness of the answer.

What do you want, Lith?

She even opened her mouth to ask that exact question, when she was interrupted.

"What happened with you?" Lith asked. "After I left?"

I had a piece of my heart ripped out. By you. By Rumis. I'll be lucky if I can draw a clean breath ever again.

"The Fusion is very happy with how things went." It was more than a year after her discharge and Laisen could afford the hint of dryness that threaded her voice.

"And you? Are yougetting ready for another mission?"

Laisen shook her head. "I'm well past that, I think. Used up, wrung out and tossed away. I couldn't contemplate another mission, even if I wanted to."

"So, you think you may settle here?" Lith's hand swept the room. The house had some sense and had lit the s.p.a.ce subtly so it didn't resemble an interrogation chamber. Small mercies. Outside, there was only a slit of brightness at the horizon simulating a planetside sunset. In a few minutes, maybe ten, it would be gone.

"It's a good place to start," Laisen said, trying for a tone that didn't sound so abject. So pathetic. "I've neglected a lot of my life. Maybe it's too late to start again, but I'll try."

Lith rose to her feet in one sudden movement, smoothing her already creaseless skirt with one hand. "I've been thinking." She looked at Laisen, then away, and took a step towards the balcony. "It may be best if I stay as far away from the Perlim Empire as possible. As well as anything a.s.sociated with the Perlim. The Fusion intelligence service was quite honest with how they saw things and...and I think it would be best if I found another line of work."

Fusion intelligence service? That was her! Copan must have known something after all, the b.a.s.t.a.r.d.

"Did they hurt you?" she asked urgently. Laisen was one of the service's own murderers, safe in their keeping, but Lith had almost destroyed more than a decade of careful planning single-handedly. Suddenly, the number of people wanting-requiring!-elimination increased alarmingly. Would she turn on her own colleagues? Laisen looked at the woman she loved and instantly knew the answer.

In a heartbeat.

Lith flicked her gaze down to the tense knuckles of Laisen's hands as they tightened on the padded armrests.

"No, no," she said quickly. "It wasn't like that at all. They were very kind. And courteous. But also," she smiled faintly, "quite insistent. And, considering I took their advice regarding a name, it seemed churlish ignoring everything else they said."

"Such as?" Laisen was sure Lith had mentioned the other advice, but she couldn't think straight for the moment. Perlim a.s.sa.s.sins, Fusion "advice". What was next, a miniature black hole displaced into her home?

Lith swallowed. "Such as settling far away from Perlim s.p.a.ce. I, ah, hear that Floks administration has some vacant and non-committed residences available. I, I was thinking of taking one."

Menon had turned her into a mess. That was the only reason Laisen could think of for the tears that sprang to her eyes. No, this was worse than a displaced black hole. Much worse. This was Lith on her very doorstep and Laisen didn't think she was strong enough to stand even the thought of her within travelling distance much less the image of her so close and yet in someone else's embrace. Was Nils coming too? Following behind with their joint possessions? She couldn't bear to imagine them together, much less steel herself for the shock of reality. Slowly, Laisen shook her head.

Chapter Twenty-Two.

Lith was stunned. Every speck of resolve and restraint dissolved the moment she saw wetness fill Laisen's eyes.

She paused for only an instant before moving forward and crouching down in front of the Fusion agent.

She had planned everything so differently in her head. She was filled with a confidence she didn't have when leaving Menon IV. The woman who had first landed on the planet was different to the one who had left. The idealistic naif had been replaced by someone wiser and more conflicted.

Exploiting Nils' contacts, she escaped Laeyek and made it back across the Fusion lines to safety. When she saw her firebrand lover again, less than a month after fleeing the Nineteen, it was like looking into the face of a stranger. Nils' flashy sense of the dramatic and his p.r.o.nouncements of justice now failed to impress her. He seemed no longer a pa.s.sionate activist but a lost and rather scared young soul. Lith felt older than him in ways she could barely comprehend.

He spoke about death and retribution, but he had not visited the military medical complexes as she had. Technology was advanced, but it still couldn't veneer the pain and hopelessness she had seen, the confused despair of people who thought they had taken their last breath on an alien planet, only to find themselves still alive, patched up and being prepared for more campaigns. Lith had listened to them for months as she walked the wards. The guilt at surviving while friends perished. The hopelessness of seeing any end to the conflict.

The rebels, through some spa.r.s.e conversations and more extensive actions, had spoken to her of their own cause. She knew clearly that their sense of justice was founded in blood and murder, surrounded by ruin and uncertainty.

Neither position. Perlim nor Menon, came from empty words trumpeted from the safe, protective arms of the Fusion. She felt for both sides of the conflict, the people defending their homes and the soldiers sent to bring them into line, and could draw no straight line between which was good and which was evil. At that point, with right and wrong merged into tones of grey, she thought she understood Cheloi Sie and Laisen Carros better than she'd ever done before.

"You're leaving the group?" Nils had asked in disbelief after wringing every reluctant detail from her. "But you can't! You came the closest of all to the Butcher. You even," he shuddered, "ate meals with her. Think of the media coup we could pull if you went public with what you saw!

"I know you didn't manage to fulfil your mission," he said with a shrug that didn't quite conceal his censure and Lith would have happily brained him with a conveniently near and heavy object if she didn't have other things on her mind, "but we can still salvage something out of this."

Salvage. Her mind thought over his choice of words. As if she had destroyed something instead of managing to escape with her life. As if her life wasn't worth anything beyond thirty seconds of a stirring anecdote orated from a public platform. What had she ever seen in him, she wondered bitterly?

His eyes became crafty as his gaze slid towards her then away. "Think about what we could achieve, Lith. We could take it to the private nets first, if you like. If you're feeling nervous. We'll practise what to say and how to say it. And once we've polished our appearances, we'll hit the Lower Convergence and the main public nets at the same time. We'll be celebrities!"

Lith wondered why she had never seen his overriding urge for recognition before. It was the major consideration that motivated all of Nils' actions, something the now more experienced Lith spotted in a second. She regarded him sourly, tallying his character and finding it wanting. With a maturity she had not asked for, Lith turned her back on him, walked out of the group and off the planet and began searching for the woman she had fallen in love with in the middle of a treacherous and fraught war.

What she had told Laisen was the truth. She had been detected by agents of the Fusion intelligence services not long after she returned from Menon IV, soon after her falling out with Nils.

Detected, briefed, proposed and requested.

That was one thing she, the child of Perlim refugees, appreciated about the Fusion. They were always so straightforward, so open about the choices available to their citizens. She thought she even saw faint similarities between the agent who was her main Fusion contact and the woman she had known as Cheloi Sie. They both exhibited a certain calm capability and amused professionalism, as if there was nothing in the galaxy they hadn't seen.

But Bihn Jare's eyes didn't hold the sadness or strange vulnerability that Cheloi's did and the remembrance made her heart ache.

Agent Jare was courteous but firm during all their dealings. Lith could either retain her name, with the attendant risk of being tracked down and executed as a traitor by the Perlim Empire, or she and her parents could accept entirely new names with new pasts, generous credit compensation and relocation away from the border. The choice, and consequences, was entirely theirs to bear.

She had wanted desperately to see Laisen again, to determine whether what she felt was the result of a pressure-cooker environment or the beginning of something more profound. She wanted to live, so she said yes to the ident.i.ty scrubbing. Uin Szolt was born.

Armed with enough credits to see her through half a decade of decent living, she started her digging.

The Fusion databases were extensive but the Fusion itself was large, spanning almost a third of the galaxy. It took her months to find even a hint of who the mysterious Laisen Carros was. She had to go through several naming permutations before a t.i.tle on the Floks Nine Semi-dyson was mentioned and knew she had finally discovered a tangible lead to follow. Using that as a base point, she tracked the name through two decades of appearances, disappearances, visits, and vacations that hopped all over Fusion s.p.a.ce like an irritable flea on an animal.

But that only gave her a clue as to how widely travelled her war-zone lover was. It still didn't tell her exactly what Laisen Carros was. She dug deeper for the answer to that one while still tracing the meanderings of a name that she may, or may not, have remembered correctly. She found the links she had forged through her studies of politics stood her in surprisingly good stead. She approached researchers, who freely discussed with her the intricacies of Fusion involvement in other galactic conglomerates. She shared their tut-tutting reports on their government's interference and manipulation of some of those conglomerates. She even managed to write a couple of essays on the topic that were well received, leading her to the thought that she could find a position in teaching or research when her quest ended. As she worked through the data, sifting through rod after rod of intel, she discovered that the woman who had lifted her to the heights of delirious pa.s.sion was also an agent of the Fusion's intelligence services, just as Bihn Jare had been. Maybe that's why he seemed so familiar. Both were spies.

More than a year pa.s.sed before Lith finally put both sets of pieces together, Laisen the person with Laisen the wanderer. And it was only done that quickly because she had the covert arm of the Fusion and its cadre of critics to help her.

All that was left was to find out where Laisen lived. Not ten or five years ago. Now. a.s.suming she was still alive after the rebel overrun of the Nineteen.

Lith saw replays of the carnage when she got back to Fusion s.p.a.ce, sitting next to her parents as they trawled through the nets for news of Menon IV. She had been frozen in position while she watched the images flick across the screen.That was where she had taken her first walk with Cheloi around the camp perimeter.That was the northern entrance to the camp, now nothing more than a gaping hole in the ground surrounded by collapsed tunnels, like the excavated routes of giant earthworms. Lith saw stained earth, recognised it for what it was, and walked away before she could see or listen to any more, barely keeping herself from throwing up. Cheloi had to be alive, she thought fiercely. She couldn't have gone through so much, endured so much, found so much, only to lose it forever. And no death notice with the name of Laisen Carros had been issued anywhere in Fusion s.p.a.ce.

Finally, a "living" alarm pinged at Tatrex, but the planet was well-known to be one of the largest administrative centres for covert action in the galaxy. Lith laughed when she thought on that. Trust the Fusion to have a famous 'covert' administration hub. But whether with humour, or without it, the idea of facing Laisen in the middle of such focused bureaucracy depleted her courage.

The next ping came from the Floks Semi-dyson. It was the second data point from that destination, dated more than ten years after the first. A stop-over perhaps? But when the signal remained static for several months, Lith knew her time for dithering had come to an end. She settled her parents on one of the outer planets of the Free Threwtin Organic and Mechanical Coalition, a cheerful and far flung group of Fusion techno-agrarian enthusiasts, and set off for Floks.

Her plan was simple. Both she and Laisen had done questionable things on Menon, but both of them had also found a surprising pa.s.sion for each other. Surely it was logical to discuss the first and further explore the second? If things turned out, all well and good. But, if they didn't, the semi-dyson would still be a nice place to settle. It was also well beyond the reach of a crumbling and corrupt empire. And if she "accidentally" b.u.mped into Laisen, that would be entirely understandable. Maybe she could eventually convince the spy that she couldn't live without her?

It sounded like a workable plan. Until Lith's flight approached Floks and she saw exactly how unimaginably, stupendously, frighteningly large a semi-dyson was. An entire planet's surface area barely marked a small fraction of the habitable ribbon. The population it could sustain easily numbered into the hundreds of billions with room to spare. That was the first shock.

Her data point had told her that Laisen was on Floks, but had neglected to tell her that it would still be the work of a handful of weeks to track her down to one small speck on that habitat. By then, half of Lith's initial courage had fled.

Her second shock was catching sight of Laisen herself at the end of her house, looking like she was the merest step away from hurling herself into a field of gra.s.s that resembled a gentle, dying, inferno. The woman who was her commander looked so still, so mysterious. So unbearably sad. With a dry throat, she realised that what she felt for Nils was a pale shadow next to how she felt about Laisen, and the rest of her bravado evaporated into nothingness.

"Lith, please don't do this to me."

She was used to seeing Laisen always in control. Smooth, cool and lethal like a spike of ice. Without the trappings of Cheloi Sie, could still discern those elements as an intrinsic part of the woman she loved. But her heart broke when she saw the tears, knowing it was only a handful of words from her that had caused such anguish.

At that moment, she was also rocked by the amount of power that gave her. She was full of the knowledge that she could destroy Laisen with a careless word and hated the jolt of satisfaction that pierced her. The part of her that wasn't part of a rational being-the part that yearned for Laisen's touch and the feel of her body, relaxed and satiated, next to hers-noted the animal advantage this gave her and urged her to use it to its fullest.

She crouched down in front of Laisen, catching her cold limp hands.

"I don't understand," she said softly. "Do what to you?"

"A sh.e.l.l," Laisen murmured. "I'm just a sh.e.l.l. And you wound me too easily."

There were other things here too, not just her words. Had something else happened after she left the Nineteen? Was Rumis okay? Had Grakal-Ski been court-martialled? Maybe she should have stayed till the end of that vid on the Menon debacle.... No, she wouldn't get sidetracked by that. This was her future she was fighting for. If she won, there was time enough for all the other questions she wanted to ask.

"Laisen," she pleaded, pulling on her fingers, "what do you want from me?"

Tell me, her heart shrieked. Tell me you can't live without me. Or if you can't do that, tell me at least that you want me to stay.

Laisen wordlessly withdrew her hands and stood up. Shattered, Lith remained crouching. She heard steps leading out to the balcony and a m.u.f.fled quality to Laisen's voice that indicated that their backs were to each other.

"If I believed in happy endings. Oh Lith, if I believed in happy endings, I'd believe you were here because you discovered you couldn't live without me."

Lith spun and jerked to her feet. Did she imagine those words? Laisen too had turned. She put her hand up to forestall any words. More than mere distance stretched between them.

"Please, let me finish. You'd think I would have had all that blind optimism kicked out of me by now, but it's a stubborn and tenacious beast." She shook her head. "Lith, I don't know why you came here, but you can't stay. Not on Floks. I know I can't force you but if it must be here, please not near Gaard's Sub-Prime. If you want the truth, I don't think I'm strong enough to be so close to you while you live out your own life."

"Why not?" Lith asked. She injected a touch of belligerence in her voice. It was the only and desperate way she could think of to provoke a deeper response from the woman she loved.

"Why aren't you strong enough, Laisen? Does it have anything to do with the fact that you never searched for me after you returned to the Fusion?" She quelled the sob, but its traces were still evident in her voice and the words that were choked out. "That you made sure I had a clear escape and then forgot about me in a heartbeat? Could that have something to do with why you don't want me living near you?"

Laisen turned and struck the handrail with an open hand, the slapping sound of flesh against metal carrying through the open house. "Curse you, Lith, do you want me to debase myself? Truly, I never thought you were so cruel, so relentless." There was bitterness in the response but Lith ignored it. Once, such a tone would have been enough to send her cowering. Now, she revelled in its vehemence as a sign of strong emotion. If only it was the right emotion, she would dance right over that bitterness and straight into Laisen's arms.

"Tell me," Lith insisted. "I think you owe me at least that."

She wanted to rush over to the railing, to turn Laisen around, look deep in her eyes and force her to say the things Lith desperately hoped to hear. But, clenching her fists, she made herself stand still, giving Laisen the time she needed. Lith had waited more than a year for this moment. She could afford to wait a few more minutes. But only a few. Even as she stood there with her breath caught in her throat, her self-restraint was sapping away.

Don't make me turn away, Laisen. Please.

"I'm so afraid. I love you." It was a whisper. A thin silken thread on the night breeze. But it was enough.

Lith crossed the s.p.a.ce in a heartbeat. Without a word, she pulled Laisen around and kissed her, using her lips to convey what she felt. Her pa.s.sion, her need. She forced Laisen's mouth open and invaded it with her own heat, willing her to understand that this particular equation involved two people. Willing her to understand that she wanted to stay. With her.

When Laisen eventually tore her lips away, she was breathing heavily. Her expression was serious, but there was a light in her eyes Lith had not seen when she first entered the house.

"Why did you do that? Don't you-"

Lith smiled with relief as she took in Laisen's stunned expression. "For a smart ex-Fusion agent, Laisen Carros, you can be incredibly stupid at times."

"You care for me." The words were torn from her, wondrous and disbelieving. "But, but didn't you go back to Nils?"

"Nils and I," Lith said dryly, "didn't have as much in common as I thought."

"And we do?"

Was there a trace of playfulness, of wry self-deprecation, in her voice? There, beneath the overtone of despair? Yes, Lith decided, there was. Her body started to relax.

"I think so. At least, there seems to be enough in common to begin a promising exploration."

Laisen, ever the opportunist, moved her hands to encircle Lith's waist. Pulling her forward. Tightening her grip as if she would never let her go. "Are you sure?"