'I see.' She chewed on that thought. It had been five years since she'd seen a fellow Cadreman. She'd believed- hoped-she never would again.
'We really don't have a choice, I'm afraid. There are too many holes in the data we've got.'
'I see,' she repeated more normally. 'And in the meantime?'
'In the meantime, I'm keeping you right where you are. We had to do a lot of repair work, as I'm sure you've already realized, and I want someone versed in Cadre augmentation to check it over.' She nodded, and he cocked his head. 'Are you experiencing any discomfort? I wouldn't want to get into any fancy meds, but I suppose we'd be fairly safe to try old-fashioned aspirin.'
'No, no discomfort.'
'Good.' His relief was evident. 'I wasn't sure, but I'd hoped your augmentation would take care of that. I'm glad to see it is.'
'Uh, yes,' she said, but a quick check of her pharmacopoeia processor told her he was wrong. 'Are you doing that?' she asked the voice.
'Of course.' 'Thanks.'
'What's your prognosis?' she asked Okanami after a moment.
'You've responded well to the surgery, and to the quick-heal,' Okanami said. 'In the long term, you'll probably want to consider replacement for your spleen, but you're coming along very nicely for now. The bone damage to your leg was extreme, and the repairs there are going to need several weeks yet, but the rest-' He waved a dismissive hand and, Alicia noted, carefully did not discuss her mental state. Tactful of him.
He moved a few strides to his right, glancing at her monitor displays, and made a few quick notes on the touchpad, then turned back to her.
'I realize you've just waked up, Captain DeVries-'
'Please, call me Alicia. I haven't been 'Captain DeVries' in years.'
'Of course.' He smiled with genuine warmth, eyes twinkling with just a touch of sadness. 'Alicia. As I say, I realize you've just waked up, but what you really need more than anything else just now is rest. Even if you're not feeling it, this kind of surgery really takes it out of you, quick-heal or no, and you weren't in very good shape before we started.'
'I know.' She eased back down in the bed, and he pursed his lips.
'If there's anything you'd like to talk about,' he began hesitantly, then fell silent as she waved a hand. He nodded and began to turn away.
'Touch him,' a voice said in her mind, so suddenly she twitched in surprise at the intensity of its demand.
'Uh, Doctor.' He stopped and looked back at the sound of her voice, and she held out her right hand. 'Thank you for putting me back together.'
'My pleasure.' He gripped her hand and smiled, and she smiled back, but shock threatened to wipe it from her lips. Her hand tingled with the power of the spark which had leapt between them at the moment of contact. God, was the man nerve-dead? How could he have missed that flare of power?!
But that was nothing beside what followed it. A column of fire flowed down her arm and licked out through her skin. She looked at their joined hands, expecting to see flames darting from her pores, but there were no flames. Only the heat … and under it a crackle that coalesced suddenly into something she almost recognized. A barrier went down, like an opening door or a closing circuit, and the fire in her arm flared high and faded into a familiar intangible tingle. It was like smelling a color or seeing a sound, indescribable to anyone who had never experienced it, but she had experienced it. Or experienced its like, at any rate.
Information spilled up her arm, crisp and clear as any her Alpha receptor had ever pulled from a tactical net, and that was impossible. Yet it was happening-happening in a heartbeat, like a burst transmission from a forward scout but less focused, more general and disorganized.
Concern. Uncertainty. Satisfaction at her physical condition and deep, gnawing worry about her mental state. Discomfort over his decision not to mention Intelligence's interest. Burning wonder over how she'd survived untended and undetected in the snow. Genuine distress for the deaths of her family, and an even greater distress that she seemed so calm and collected. Too calm, he was thinking, and I have to listen to that recording. Maybe-
He released her hand and stepped back. Clearly, he had sensed nothing at all out of the ordinary, and his hand rose in a small wave.
'I'll see you in the morning, Cap-Alicia,' he said gently. 'Go back to sleep if you can.'
She nodded and closed her eyes as he withdrew … and knew sleep was the last thing she was going to be able to do.
Chapter Four
Benjamin McIlheny looked up from a sheaf of hard copy as a hatch hissed open aboard the battle-cruiser HMS Antietam, then rose quickly as Sir Arthur Keita stepped through it. Keita wore the green-on-green of the Imperial Cadre with the golden harp and starships of the Emperor below the single starburst of a brigadier, and if he was a head shorter than the colonel, he was far thicker and broader. 'The Emperor's Bulldog' was silver-haired and pushing a hundred years old; he was also built like the proverbial brick wall, hard-faced, with eyes that were quick and alert under craggy brows. Keita was the Imperial Cadre, and his arrival had been something of a shock. The colonel suspected they would have seen someone far less senior if Keita hadn't been right next door in the Macedon Sector, anyway.
The man behind him could have been specifically designed as his antithesis. Inspector Ferhat Ben Belkassem, well short of his fortieth year, was small, neat, and very dark, with liquid brown eyes and a strong, beaked nose. His crimson tunic's collar bore the hourglass and balance of the Ministry of Justice, and he seemed pleasant enough-which was far from sufficient to reconcile McIlheny to his presence. This was a job for the Fleet and the Marines. By McIlheny's lights, not even Keita had any real business poking his nose in-not that he intended to say so to a brigadier. Particularly not to a Cadre brigadier, and especially not to a Cadre brigadier named Sir Arthur Keita. Which, because Colonel McIlheny was an intrinsically just man, meant he couldn't say it to Ben Belkassem, either. Damn it.
'Sir Arthur. Inspector.'
'Colonel,' Keita returned crisply. Ben Belkassem merely smiled at the omission of his own name-a lack of reaction which irritated the colonel immensely-and McIlheny waved at two empty chairs across the conference table.
Ben Belkassem waited for Keita to seat himself, then slid into his own chair. It was a respectful enough gesture, but the man moved like a cat, McIlheny thought. Graceful, poised, and silent. Sneaky bastard.
'I've downloaded all of our data to Banshee,' he began, 'but, with your permission, Sir Arthur, I thought we should probably begin with a general background brief.' Keita nodded for him to continue, and McIlheny switched on the holo unit. A display of the Franconian Sector appeared above the table, like a squashed quarter-sphere of stars. An edge of the Empire appeared along its flattened side, green and friendly, but the scarlet of the Rishathan Sphere crowded its rounded upper edge, and a sparkle of amber Rogue Worlds and blue systems claimed by the Quarn Hegemony threaded through its volume. McIlheny slipped into his headset, connecting the display controls to his neural receptor, and a single star at the sector's heart blinked gold.
'The sector capital.' The announcement was probably redundant, but he'd learned long ago to make sure the groundwork was in place. 'Soissons, in the Franconia System. Quite Earth-like, but for rather cool temperatures, with a population just over two billion. A bit high for this region, but it's one of the old League Worlds we retook from the Lizards more or less intact.'
His audience nodded, and he cleared his throat.
'We really should have organized a Crown Sector out here a century ago, but with the Rishatha hanging up there to galactic north it seemed reasonable to turn our attention to other areas first. God knows we had enough to worry about elsewhere, and the Ministry of Colonization decided not to draw Rishathan attention south until we'd firmed up the central sectors. As you can see-' skeins of stars suddenly winked to life beyond the sector's curved frontier, burning the steady white of unsurveyed space '-there's a lot of room for expansion out there, and
