The Mouth nodded. "Think of an epileptic seizure. One that lasts all day long."
I swallowed hard. "Look," I told the Mouth, taking a step toward him, "use your head for a second. How can this be a trick to fool the Admiralty? Who’d want to fool the Admiralty? Why go to the extreme of killing eight proctors just to…"
"To plant false evidence on us?" the Mouth suggested. "Killing eight proctors was the perfect way to catch the fleet’s attention. Mass murder is big; it’s flashy. It guaranteed the commander here would do some investigating, and send the results to the High Council." Mouth showed no sign of concern as I stepped forward again through the hologram. "Doesn’t that sound like a deliberate plot to bring us in?"
"But who’s plotting?" I insisted. "What would anyone gain from deceiving the Admiralty?"
"We don’t know," the Muscle answered. "That’s what bothers us."
"You don’t know how it concerns the navy," I said, taking another step, "but you’re sure it does? Every little mystery has to be about you?"
"Yes," the Mouth and the Muscle said together.
Which was when I broke Mouth’s knee.
It was a jerk-simple side-kick, hard and low — my instep hit the sweet spot of his patella and drove it backward till his whole leg bent the wrong way. Mouth hadn’t suspected a thing. Maybe these two spent so much time researching my link-seed, they’d overlooked the punch’n’crunch training the Vigil gave every proctor.
Always a mistake to concentrate on the mental and ignore the physical.
Mouth screamed… part pain, part the sight of seeing his knee angled back like a grasshopper’s. Damned sissy mainstreamer probably never took a good hit before. The Mouth didn’t even put up his guard when I stepped in to hand-strike range, so I gave him a good palm-heel in the solar plexus to shut him up.
He wheezed and fell. Still breathing, of course, but fierce unhappy about it.
When I turned to the Muscle, he’d backed up against the door and drawn a stun-pistol. "Stand where you are, please," he said.
"Why should I?"
"Because I’ll shoot if you don’t. We can pry into your brain, even if you’re stunned cold; it’s just harder when we can’t see your conscious response. More chance of us making a regrettable mistake. But if that’s the way you want to play it…"
"Shoot her!" Mouth gasped. At least I think that’s what he said — he didn’t have much air in his lungs for making words.
"I won’t shoot unless I have to," the Muscle said, still calm, keeping his gaze focused on me. "No sense in jeopardizing the mission, just because one of us got careless." He gestured toward the bed with the barrel of his pistol. "Are you going to lie down, Ms. Smallwood? Or do we do this the hard way?"
I stared at him, sizing up the situation. Unlike Mouth, the Muscle had been prepared for my attack; maybe he’d expected it as soon as I began inching forward. He wouldn’t hesitate to fire if I took the teeniest step toward him… and I knew from recent experience how fast stun-guns worked. The ultrasonic blast would drop me long before I got within kicking distance.
Throw something at him? No; there was nothing I could grab fast enough. Maybe if I yanked up the Mouth, I could use his body as a shield, let it absorb the sonics.
Useless. As soon as I bent over to grab the Mouth, the Muscle would slab me.
But I had no intention of letting these men into my brain. One lightning rush, zigzagging to make myself harder to hit?
"Don’t try it," the Muscle said, like he’d seen my thoughts on my face. "This pistol’s cone of effect covers your whole half of the room. I don’t have to aim to get you."
I didn’t know enough about stunners to tell if he was lying. Only one way to find out.
"Okay," I said in what I hoped was a defeated-sounding voice. "I’ll lie down on…"
Without warning, I dived forward — old trick, moving in the middle of the sentence, hoping your opponent needs a second to switch mental gears. Even as I struck the floor, I heard the whir of a stun-pistol, felt a wash of dizziness stagger my brain. Not quite out, I thought muddily, not unconscious. I rolled in the direction I thought was the door and blundered out with my leg, trying to sweep the Muscle’s feet out from under him. Nothing. If my leg moved at all, I couldn’t tell; it sure as blazes didn’t hit anything solid. I gave it another try, but my spasm of frantic motion only floundered me onto my back, staring up at Muscle through clumsy eyes.
Sitting duck. Too punchy to move.
The Muscle’s silhouette was framed against the light from the open door. I waited for him to shoot again, put me out for good. Instead, he just stood there, face lost in shadow… till his breath slipped out in a sigh and he slumped like a tired child, toppling across my legs.
Someone was standing in the doorway behind him — someone who also held a stun-pistol. It took a second for me to muddle out what I was seeing. Then I realized the whir I’d heard wasn’t Muscle’s gun, it was the newcomer’s. He or she had shot Muscle in the back… and I was still conscious because I’d only caught the slop of the blast, the sonic spill that hadn’t been soaked up by Muscle’s body.
The newcomer stepped cautiously into the room. It was a woman, a human woman, but with the backlighting I couldn’t make out her face. She moved forward, quickly now, the yellowish hologram light slipping over her body as she strode through the projected images. When she stopped, I could only see her back; she stood over the Mouth, her stunner trained on him.
"Ten-hut!" she said in a calm voice.
The Mouth stared up at her, eyes squinting, trying to see who she was. Suddenly, his face bugged wide with fear. "Admiral!" he yelped.
"I bet that leg hurts," the woman told him. Her pistol whirred, and the Mouth slouched back limply. "Now it doesn’t," she said.
For a moment more, she stayed with the Mouth’s unconscious body — bending and running her hand carefully over his broken knee. Her back was lit now by the spill-glow of the hologram. Enough light to show she did indeed wear the gray fatigues of an admiral in the Outward Fleet.
Under the circumstances, I didn’t take much joy seeing another navy mucky-muck.
Without jarring Mouth’s leg, the admiral readjusted his body slightly, shifting him into something close to the first-aid recovery position — the safest way for an unconscious body to lie, insurance the victim won’t choke if he vomits. Then she tucked her pistol into a hip holster and came to kneel by me. Her hand gently swept a sweat-strand of hair from my eyes.
She was young for an admiral. Clear green eyes, very alive. And she had a furious port-wine birthmark smeared across the right half of her face.
"Hello," she said. "I’m Festina Ramos. Sorry I didn’t get here sooner."
DIPSHITS
Festina Ramos… a familiar name, thanks to Angie’s son Nate (age 13). Nate, Lord love him, had a whopping crush on the whole Outward Fleet — one of those obsessions some kids get, where they never seem to think of anything else. Drooling over schematic diagrams of star-ships the way a normal boy would ogle skin pix. Sending mail to active and retired fleet personnel all over the Technocracy. Subscribing to the Navy Gazette and keeping his own database of captains, ship postings, duty assignments.
So yes, I’d heard of Festina Ramos. Ad infinitum. She’d been an Explorer First Class till two years ago, when out of the blue she got vaulted to Lieutenant Admiral… a position that had driven Nate to cracked-voice fits (bass/soprano, bass/soprano) because it was some bastardization. ("It’s crazy, Mom-Faye! The lowest rank of admiral is rear admiral. It’s been that way for absolute ever! They can’t just invent ranks out of the blue!")
But the High Council of Admirals could. And did. After which, the shiny new L-Adm. Ramos was appointed to chair a board of inquiry for restructuring exploration practices. The media had gone into blood frenzy, convinced there had to be a lip-licking scandal behind Ramos’s promotion; but the blitz of attention had come to a screechy halt when the board hearings began. It was the press’s first chance to see Ramos in person… and she looked like an Explorer. Not only that, but the hearing room was full of people waiting to give testimony, and they all looked like Explorers too.