The Desert of Stars (The Human Reach) (18 page)

He bled out and died a few minutes later. Kao Tai stayed
with him during that time, programming herself with all the actions needed to
get to the safehouse and report in. It hurt so much that she knew she would
need to leave herself for a long, long time.

They exited the security center in the Honda, Neil
driving, Gomez beside him, and Harkins in the back seat.

“Nice way to seal the deal, Neil,” Gomez crowed. “With any
luck you killed those Han operatives, too. Really fine work uncovering the way
they were drugging Conrad. He’s much more pliable to our interests now. Tell
me, how did you find out about the drug they were giving him?”

“I have my sources,” Neil said evenly.

“Neil, we talked about trusting each other. If you’re
worried about the Marine knowing …”

“Not the issue,” Neil interrupted. He turned the car.

“That’s not the way back to the consulate. I need to brief
Layton. Where are we going?”

“Somewhere we can talk,” Neil said.

Gomez’s face darkened. “No, Mercer, we’re going to the
consulate, now.”

“No, we’re not.”

Gomez tensed.

Neil said, “If you reach for that gun, Gomez, Harkins will
put a bullet in your skull.”

ITANAGAR, ARUNCHAL PRADESH, INDIA – Fearful of an
outbreak of hostilities with China, thousands of northern mountain dwellers
began arriving in the regional capital this week, overwhelming local shelters.
Several refugees reported seeing paramilitary units moving toward key passes
into Tibet, but authorities dismissed their claims and denied any such
operations were underway. They also threatened reporters with expulsion from
the region if they did not supply the names of “anyone spreading such unfounded
rumors.”

Combat Supply Cache Falcon, Sequoia Continent, Kuan Yin

These guys would be deadly at poker.
The meeting
was DiMarco’s usual “captains and above” gathering, and Rand couldn’t read the
reaction of most of the officers when he presented his report on the situation
at Sycamore. The straight backs, the guarded expressions: This was a group of
careful men and women.

When he finished, Lieutenant
Commander DiMarco frowned. “So all you have to go on is the timeline they gave
you to reply to the offer? That’s not evidence, Captain. That’s speculation.”

“It’s not ironclad, but the timing is too perfect, sir,”
Rand said. “I recommend we send Ruiz to tell them we are planning to surrender,
and we use that time to disperse our forces. Even if they’re watching the site
and see us leaving, they’ll think we’re coming their way.”

“The answer is no. We’re just a month away from launching
our assault on Sycamore, just as Colonel Foster envisioned. Carrying out your
plan entails significant delays.”

“But, sir –”

“That’s enough, Captain.”

Major Cruz took up his cause. “Commander, we should still
send Staff Sergeant Ruiz back to Sycamore,” she said. “No harm in him telling
the civvies to mislead the Hans. We need him there to coordinate with the
civvies anyway.”

DiMarco waved a hand. “Fine.”

Rand stewed for the rest of the meeting.
I wish Kelley
had come back with us. She could fuck DiMarco into complying. He’s going to get
everyone here, every last damn fighting American on this planet, slaughtered,
all in the name of what he claims is Foster’s vision. If Foster was so smart,
she would have recognized the need for flexibility in the face of changing
information and conditions. She would have recognized we can’t beat three Han
brigades by ourselves, and that our best hope is to bleed their forces with guerrilla
fighting here, so our guys have it easier elsewhere, and the Big Army can make
it back to Kuan Yin. Most of all, she would have recognized the sheer stupidity
in getting so many soldiers killed for no reason at all. Too bad we can’t call
Vincennes
anymore
.
Then again, why the hell did the general on
Vincennes
sign
off on gathering here in the first place? Kelley was right; this is idiotic,
from beginning to end.

The meeting eventually broke up, and DiMarco shuffled off,
two Navy ratings in tow.

I will not lose any more of my people,
Rand thought.

“Major Cruz, can I talk to you for a minute?” he said.

Cruz turned to face him, eyes narrowed. Her shadow, Captain
Gant, had an almost identical expression.

“Something funny, Castillo?” Cruz said in a harsh voice.

“Sorry, Major, no,” Rand said. “Look, you’re right, and DiMarco’s
wrong. I was wondering if you had any ideas about how to preserve the force.”

Cruz and Gant shared a look.

“You trying to entice me to disobey orders, Castillo?” Cruz
said.

“No, ma’am!”

“That’s too bad. Your report convinced me. It’s a stupid
risk to stay here. Even if you’re wrong, we’ll just delay DiMarco’s plans, and
everybody gets to go camping for a few days.”

“Ma’am?”

“Understand if DiMarco sent you to test my loyalty, I’ll
twist your balls off and roast them in the power plant.”

“Right, ma’am,” Rand said.
So paranoid. All these people
do is fight each other. What will get through to her?
“One soldier to
another, all right? I don’t want the squid ruining everything we’ve worked for.
We could quietly ramp up patrols to get people out of the cave. DiMarco
wouldn’t have to know the real purpose. ”

Gant said, “If we do that, there’s a greater risk of losing
people running into Han patrols, and if they capture someone, they could give
up our location.”

“They already have it, Captain,” Rand said.

“We’ll do it, Castillo,” Cruz said. “The extra patrols, I mean.
We can also add runs to the other caches. Instead of sending out fireteams,
we’ll send squads. Instead of squads, platoons.”

“Thank you, Major,” Rand said.

“But you’ll need to stay here, Castillo. If DiMarco sees you
daily, he’ll have less reason to suspect anything’s going on. Just go back to
watching orbit, and be ready to run for it when the attack comes.”

San José, Republic of Tecolote, Entente

Neil had set up his handheld so Kitsune, in Harkins’ room
elsewhere in the hotel, could secretly listen to the conversation. Gomez sat in
the room’s single comfortable chair, her eyes darting toward the door. Neil sat
in a desk chair, facing her. Harkins stood behind Neil with her M6 pointed at
the ceiling. Neil’s chief worry had been Gomez’s gun, but she had surrendered
it without a fight. But her defiant expression told Neil she might still try
something.

“You have screwed up so very badly, Mercer,” the NSS officer
said. “The only way you can hope to avoid prison is if you kill me.”

Harkins snorted. Neil stared at Gomez for a long moment. He
hadn’t received any formal training in interrogation techniques, so he had
decided on the direct route, once Gomez’s rage had run its course.

Finally, Gomez said, “What could have possibly made you two
kidnap a fellow American officer?”

“I brought you here, and I’m going to hold you here, because
it’s going to take a while to bring any counterintelligence people to the
island. You’re working for the Hans, Irene.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Gomez sneered. “I’ve been working
against
them for longer than you’ve been alive.”

“You told them where to find Kitsune, and he’s dead now. You
told them where Kao Xun was being held. You had a clear shot and could have
killed the Chinese agent who rescued him, but you and she recognized each other
and held fire. I bet she’s your contact. You’ve betrayed your country during a
war, Irene. What else have you told them? Have you gotten any other Americans
killed, or were Harkins and I your first try?”

Her eyes focused on him, and her face cracked. In an
eyeblink, she was no longer an inscrutable, angry NSS officer, but a tired,
aging woman who had nothing left to fight with. Her body shook violently, and
she sobbed once, and choked back a second.

Neil felt an involuntary burst of sympathy for her, which he
suppressed.
She must have been under far more strain than I thought. Or
she’s trying to manipulate me …

“What do you know about death, child?” she said, in a voice
stabbed with agony. “I’ve lost more than you can imagine.”

“What did you lose, Irene?” Neil said quietly.

“My son. My son. He died! And you bastards won’t tell me
where, or how, or why. I even tried asking you, you worthless shit, but you
won’t tell me. No one will tell me. The Chinese know where he died, too.”

“And that’s why you turned to them?”

“They want payment,” she said, choking on the words. “I gave
them information about the government here in Tecolote, some of it true, some
of it false. And they were starting to answer my questions.”

“What did they tell you?”

“He died on Commonwealth, just before the war started.”

“I flew with him, didn’t I? Harkins did, too. My boss said
you requested me here. Not for this mission, but to pump me for information
about that one,” Neil said. “They’ve classified so much about the
San
Jacinto
’s mission before the war.”

“His name was Rafael Sato,” Gomez whispered.

Pointless, reflexive secrecy. Give her what she wants.
“I worked with him pretty closely for a short time. He probably saved my life
in Graypen. He was killed by a Chinese sharpshooter while we were trying to get
off the planet. One of their Second Bureau guys, who went by the name Li Xiao,
claimed to have pulled the trigger. After our battle with the Chinese
destroyer, we gave Rafe a military funeral and buried him in space alongside
the other members of the crew who died on the planet and above it.”

“That’s … all I wanted to know,” Gomez said, her voice
shaking. Long-restrained tears trickled down her cheeks. “I thought he might
have been killed on Entente, so I requested an assignment on this planet. Isaac
left me because I came here. Is his killer dead?”

“I … I don’t know,” Neil said. “I shot him, later, on Kuan
Yin, but he probably lived. I don’t know where he is now.” He felt Harkins’
gaze on the back of his neck. She had been on that mission and, like everyone
else save Donovan, believed Neil had executed the Second Bureau operative,
something he couldn’t bring himself to do.

Gomez looked out the hotel room window. “So he’s out there,
somewhere.”

“You can go, now, Irene. Call a cab, go back to the
consulate, and debrief Layton. And I’ll know if you talk to the Chinese again,”
he lied. “So don’t, unless I give you some disinformation to feed them. And
understand I will provide a recording of this conversation to NSS
counterintelligence.”

After Gomez left, Harkins turned to face him.
You’ve got
some explaining to do, sir, about why you didn’t pop that Han,
her eyes
told him, but she said nothing.

I’m not sure I can make any of that stick,
Neil
thought.
She could defend herself by framing it as information trading with
a potential source. I don’t have the resources to confine her, and I don’t know
what Naima would do if I took this to her. Better to get her out of here,
quietly, and soon.

Sycamore, Sequoia continent, Kuan Yin

General Xie’s office was downright frigid this morning;
that meant the general was distressed. Lieutenant Colonel Shen Liang sat and
steeled himself for an unpleasant conversation.
Perhaps I am being fired and
can return home to Shanghai and my wife.

Major Wong, the chief of the internment camp’s security
forces, entered the office and sat beside him.

“Good morning, both of you,” Xie said. “I am having
difficulty synchronizing the reports you both are giving me about the camp and
the American forces still in the field, so I thought I would begin a discussion,
so we can work out what is happening.”

Shen briefly bowed his head; Wong, as the junior officer
present, bowed her head more deeply.

“Now,
Zhong Xiao
Shen, what are our satellites
observing at the enemy bases?” Xie said.

“Sir, I must caution that we do not believe we have located
all of the enemy caches, but we do believe we have found their primary base and
several supporting ones,” Shen said. “To answer your question, since the
civilian leadership in the camp told us that the Americans were planning to
surrender, we have seen significant activity at their primary base, with small
groups of personnel departing.”

“Armed?”

“We have evidence they are, yes. In general, they are
heavily laden. Some have been using their small transport vehicles, the ones
built to carry materiel, not personnel.”

“When did the first group depart?”

“Activity picked up immediately after the offer should have
reached the base.”

“It has been five days since then,” Xie said. “Have you
tagged any of them?”

“Sir, they are moving in squad-size or smaller formations,
in all directions, making it difficult to maintain continuous surveillance on
them beneath the forest canopy,” Shen said. “Our satellite network is not
robust enough to stay with more than two or three groups and still provide
constant coverage of all the bases. My standing orders to the detection section
were to follow any formation larger than a platoon, but we haven’t seen any so
far.”

“Very well,” Xie said, rubbing his chin. “Have the detection
people select a squad and follow it, regardless of anything else. Wong, have
you detected anyone arriving in the camp in the last two days?”

“No, sir. No one since the messenger, who immediately
departed.”

“What about activity among the prisoners?”

“A few of my troops have mentioned that some of them are
acting a little bolder. The youths are throwing rocks and behaving obscenely in
the direction of our sentries more often than in the past, but that is
anecdotal. No increase in violent incidents.”

“Behaving obscenely?”

“Hand gestures meant to represent the phallus, displays of
buttocks, and the like, sir.”

“Really?” Xie said. “Do you not punish such disrespectful
behavior?”

“Sir, we certainly can, if that is your preference,” Wong
said.

“At the moment, I am simply curious why it is ignored.”

“Certainly,” Wong said. “Captain Li, our psychological
officer, manages an index that gauges the level of unhappiness in the camp. If
the bulk of the camp residents are passive, as the index currently indicates,
punishing juvenile displays like this actually increases resentment and anger
in the population. We grab a couple of those youths, beat them or throw them in
solitary confinement, and suddenly everyone is angrier.”

“But you’ve cracked down in the past!”

“Indeed. We do extract particular troublemakers for
punishment when necessary, but we have found general crackdowns are useful when
the overall unhappiness is higher, as it was not long after our initial
invasion. In such cases, we instill fear and hopelessness among the population,
trying to drive them down to the levels of passivity we currently are
enjoying.”

Shen said, “Then what do you make of the spike in behavior
you are describing?”