She stumbled into the bubble and activated the transponder in her wrist with a savage jab, sorry when she didn't draw blood. She didn't want to look down the slope to where Rumis' body lay, but she couldn't help herself. She wasn't sure whether she was happy or sad when she saw nothing but a body-shaped blur through the interference, a wide line of darkness slashing through its-his!-middle.

She kept watching, Rumis reduced to an abstract cipher through the bubble's filter, and thought she saw his blood form a stream and trip falteringly down the slope. A dark red ribbon in the bright morning sun.

She only closed her eyes when she felt the tingle of the extraction ship's displacement device lock on her and begin transport.

Chapter Twenty.

The moment she was displaced to the Fusion evacuation ship, Laisen knew she was through with her job. That resolve hardened to cold steel by the time she met up with Copan a week later.

After having him in her subconscious for almost three years, she was startled when she saw him again in person. She noted further signs of his ageing. He was a bit thinner, his large knuckles even more prominent, his hair a bit greyer around the temples. Or maybe he had always been like that. The Fusion's longevity treatments were legendary and three decades hardly made a difference to someone's appearance. Maybe some bright coder had brushed up his avatar before inserting him and his blue practice room, complete with non-functional clock, into the middle of her neurons.

Despite her private reservations, she had no real grounds on which to object when they removed the construct module and forwarded the information to Copan. She had never had one of those devices in her head before, which might have explained her feeling of violation during removal, made more complete by the clinical and aloof operating procedure. She stayed under observation for a day and a half, staring at the ceiling. She relived Rumis's moment of death. She wished that, out of all the memories she took away with her from her Menon mission, that was the one the Fusion would somehow botch up and end up erasing while they tinkered with her brain. It was a futile hope. As she ran through the recollections of the past three years, coached by post-recovery questions and exercises, she was depressed to note that they were all intact. She would have to live with her memories of Rumis until the day she died.

At the start of the mission, with no previous experience to guide her, she had viewed the AI construct as nothing more than a tool. Now she felt as if she had unwittingly forwarded a most intimate diary to a stranger. She hadn't been talking to this Copan while she was trussed and bleeding, believing she was about to die in Drel's underground chamber. And it wasn't this Copan who had encouraged her to have s.e.x with Lith. When she walked into his real office on the real Tatrex four days after the operation, she felt as though an important slice of her life had been pa.s.sed to an impersonal panel, to be flicked through and discussed by people she didn't know for purposes she could not subvert. And when she saw the subtly different Copan, the feeling increased.

"Laisen, please have a seat."

His smile was the same but Laisen couldn't shake the feeling of disconnectedness. She sat down without returning the greeting. The chair creaked as it took her weight, the sound an uncanny echo from her mind.

"It's been a long time," Copan began with a sad tilt to his lips. "I gather from the construct that a lot happened."

"It did," she agreed, eyeing him brazenly. "So what would you like to talk about first?"

"Lith is the obvious choice. But let's talk about Rumis."

Laisen couldn't help it. Her fingers tightened on the armrests.

"You reported, and despatches from the Perlim have confirmed, that a Rumis Swonnessy was found dead at the Nineteen's headquarters." He paused. "You were trying to displace with him, weren't you?"

And she saw again her adjutant's empty eyes.

His blood seeping into the dry earth.

The scent of metal and death.

"I know you told me not to," Laisen replied quietly, "and I know it's against all protocols, but I couldn't help it. Rumis is, was, like a brother to me."

But Copan was already shaking his head. "Why do you think we have these rules? Do you consider yourself the only agent who's contemplated such an action?" He paused, searching her face. "The results are disastrous. We put those protocols in place for a reason. Before they were enforced, most of our mission rescuees committed suicide within a year due to anger, resentment and disa.s.sociation. It was almost a foregone conclusion, so we had to be firm: no evacuation of non-Fusion personnel."

"Fusion technology keeps advancing in leaps and bounds." Her voice was sullen. "There could have been some way to make it work."

She moved in her chair, uncomfortable with her thoughts, not wanting to admit that Copan was right. She knew it herself, which was why she kept silent that morning as she dragged Rumis up the eastern escarpment. She could have told him aboveground, or even in their underground headquarters, who she really was, but she knew what he would think. It was only her stubbornness that made her cling to a lie, where Rumis would be grateful and she could continue mentoring him. In reality, Rumis would have killed her. In anger, in disbelief, in utter despair, but ultimately as a loyal Perlim officer. He could have done no less.

Copan sighed at her apparent intransigence. "He's being called a deserter."

"A-?" Laisen's head jerked and her eyes narrowed in pain as the words struck home.

Of course. With the way it looked, it was the obvious conclusion. Rumis's body would have been found high on a ledge on the opposite side to the action. Koul's would have been discovered in the communications relay room. Protecting the equipment perhaps?

Result? Rumis deserter, Koul hero. She couldn't save her adjutant in life and now it seemed he was irredeemable in death. She swallowed a lump of grief but it kept rising in her throat, bitter bile to choke on for the foreseeable years.

"Senior Colonel Cheloi Sie is believed to be vaporised and at the bottom of a maze of collapsed tunnels."

"You're punishing me," she accused, her voice thick.

"I'm debriefing you."

Laisen jerked her head but said nothing.

"The captain of the Dare to Live told me you're thinking of leaving the service."

That was the name of the stealth ship that had evacuated her from Menon IV. It was so ironic, Laisen almost went into an hysterical fit right there on the displacement coils. She thought she had pulled herself together but noted that the small crew watched her intently for the rest of the voyage. Obviously, she was not as convincing at feigning sanity as she'd thought.

The captain, a brusquely cheerful man whose name she didn't bother remembering, managed to trap her into several brief conversations, but Laisen was adept at avoiding most other contact. She remained in her cabin for almost the entire trip and kept the door locked. She never answered any chimes from would-be visitors. She spent much of the shipboard time eating, watching vids or sleeping, and deliberately avoided initiating the Copan construct.

On the couple of occasions she and the captain met, she remembered uttering bitter words to the effect that she and the Fusion's covert intelligence service were going to part company as soon as possible. He'd obviously sent that little snippet along when he delivered her to Tatrex.

"We've discussed me leaving before."

Copan's voice was puzzled. "Have we?"

Yes. No. No, not with this Copan, but with the other one, the one in her head. But that wasn't quite right either. She had meant to bring up the topic but never did. The capture by the rebels had cut short that resolution.

"Perhaps not," she conceded. "But I meant to."

Suddenly, it was all too complicated. Skeins of plots that she had previously been able to keep effortlessly apart were now tangled into a hopeless mess. People she had spoken to were either artificial, dead or missing. (Lith, where are you? Did you get away?) Right now, the most important task of any she accomplished in the past twenty years seemed trivial, minuscule, barely above a childish prank.

"And what would you do if you left the service? Transfer to another section? Leave the intelligence service altogether?"

"Leave." Laisen was firm.

"And go where? The Floks Nine Semi-dyson? You haven't been back since Eys died."

Laisen looked at him sharply but didn't say a word.

"Your experiences would be highly valuable if you remained with the service," Copan continued, "even if it wasn't with the active deployment teams."

"I'm too old," she said. "Too tired."

"We wouldn't put you in deep-cover a.s.signments. Not if you didn't want to."

And that too was an issue. How could Laisen be content with an a.n.a.lysis or policy position, working beside people who'd be dropped into covert a.s.signments she had refused? She was also afraid that the constant lure of danger and excitement would prove too much. Perhaps, in her current frame of mind, she'd be able to resist it for a year, but not much longer than that. And what if she went back to missions and got an attack of conscience at an inconvenient moment? Again.

"Let's talk about something else," she said. "Do you know if Lith Yinalna managed to escape?"

"We're tracking her movements now." Copan's voice was noncommital.

"You didn't know she was Fusion, did you?" Laisen asked wolfishly and was amused by the barely-disguised discomfort on his face. "How did they get past our intelligence, Doctor? I thought we were watching the Free-Perlim Council closely. I even had briefings on them. How did Nils and his little band of confused freedom-fighters get past the mightiest body in the galaxy?"

It was only a small act of defiance and it didn't last. The Fusion was relentless in its efforts to rehabilitate her and even Laisen's reservations and spirited sarcasm weren't allowed to stand in its way.

Copan kept repeating that the mission was considered a complete success. Two of Menon's top commanders were out of action-the real Cheloi Sie was dead and the would-be tyrant Grakal-Ski was also dead. Territory Nineteen was in tatters, their experienced command structure gutted. The entire region had been claimed by rebel forces, cutting the imperial force in two. It was the ideal outcome.

The Perlim Empire was now caught between salvaging an impossible guerilla war and containing the pinp.r.i.c.ks of distraction along the protracted Perlim-Fusion border. In the Fusion's opinion, the ultimate downfall of the Empire was still at least a decade away, but an important first step had been made and Laisen had been an integral part of that.

As for her disillusionment, she was met with a soft understanding that continually absorbed her outbursts of pain, giving nothing back. Copan understood her anger and considered that a natural outcome from such an extended mission. He was so understanding, so compa.s.sionate, so willing to open himself up to every criticism Laisen could throw at them that she felt more incensed at the end of each of their sessions.

It didn't matter. The Fusion were appreciative but unmoving. In a fit of wrath, Laisen had even demanded a meeting with the Strategy Panel. They gazed at her with compa.s.sionate but detached expressions as she paced and ranted before them. They regretted that somebody she cared about got killed, but that was how wars went. And, on a smaller version of the scale the Fusion used to quantify the effectiveness of its campaigns, wasn't Rumis's death balanced by Koul's? Yes, Rumis Swonessy's life was cut prematurely short, but could she imagine what life would be like for the Menon, or any other unfortunate species, if Koul Grakal-Ski had survived?

Their sophistry was maddening, but Laisen had three years' experience in hostile isolation. She used the self-discipline she had honed during that time to fiercely clamp down any further outbursts of righteous anger. Not only wouldn't it do any good, but the last thing she wanted or needed was a diagnosis as a psychotic. The kindness exhibited by the Fusion under such circ.u.mstances didn't bear thinking about.

The only sc.r.a.p of satisfaction she could salvage was on the topic of Lith. Even the Strategy Panel had been discomfited when she bought that up. The Fusion had known about the Free-Perlim Council and had kept careful tabs on it but, while they knew Nils had broken away from the organisation, his entire plot to have Cheloi Sie killed completely bypa.s.sed them. They didn't like to admit that they had overlooked something, especially something that had the potential to upend their carefully laid plans, and Laisen smiled when she thought of how much agitation that little conspiracy must still be causing them.

Even with her mind made up and Copan finally acquiescent, it still took six months to fully extricate herself from the clutches of the intelligence service. She hadn't known how much baggage she had acc.u.mulated until it was time to shed it all.

Her very first mission for the Fusion had been a simple burglary on one of the Nedron worlds. From that simple task to the last psychological disaster on Menon IV, Laisen had to plough through every record to verify that everything was as complete as she could remember it. Everything she had done as an agent was kept in an extensive knowledge base for use as reference and training material. The Fusion also appreciated post-factum a.n.a.lyses of her past missions and, if she was now bereft of ideology or optimism, the one thing Laisen did not run low of was a supply of opinion. She knew the Fusion took her work seriously, that every word she appended would be read, a.n.a.lysed and commented on by others, and that made her think as comprehensively and dispa.s.sionately as possible as she trawled through the records.

Even though she was still angry with how it had turned out, the Fusion decision about the desert planet had been the right one. She bore that in mind as she relayed her experiences and conjectures.

Over the years the Fusion had shortened her, lengthened her, bleached and darkened her skin. In a couple of missions, they had even changed her s.e.x. Her gender had been the only obstacle to an otherwise excellent match for two deployments and the Fusion let little stand in their way.

Looking back on those memorable a.s.signments in the soft quiet expanse of the main intelligence library was soothing, and it was difficult for Laisen to keep her amus.e.m.e.nt in check. It had been an interesting experience being male. The change in hormonal balance altered the very way she looked at the galaxy. There was none of the almost-obsessive introspection that had been so important on Menon IV.

In contrast, her missions as males had been delightfully and ruthlessly direct. She'd even had s.e.x as a male, pursuing attractive females with verve and no small amount of flattery, honed on what previously had best worked for her. Plunging fingers into a willing orifice was one thing, but plunging an erect and sensitive p.e.n.i.s, once she remembered it was there, was something else. She remembered the sensation, the ripples of o.r.g.a.s.m joined by the novel sensation of spurting alien e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.e into slick and eager c.u.n.ts. It had been an interesting set of experiments. And a pair of memorable missions.

It was two seasons on, a cool and sunny spring on Tatrex, when she finally finished. She had grown strangely reluctant near the end and had to force herself to keep up the pace of work.

"Where will you go?" Copan asked during one of their last face-to-face sessions. The worry was still evident on his face.

Laisen knew he was still unconvinced of her complete rehabilitation.

"Floks," she said.

Near the end of their long relationship, she had become as uncommunicative as possible. She saw it as protecting her mental privacy. She knew he saw it as a hurdle to healing. Laisen felt there was no common ground without her compromising her very thoughts.

"Your family will be happy to see you."

Yes, she owed her family a lot. Perhaps even a decade of her life spent roaming all over the galaxy, just so she could avoid confronting the memories of Eys.

"Yes."

"You never got around to cleaning out your house, did you?"

Laisen looked at him and frowned, eliciting a small deprecating smile.

"Did you think we didn't know? The flurry of missions we sent you on after Eys' death was as much for you as it was for us, Laisen. It was something we never discussed."

So much for thinking she had kept her heart-rending pa.s.sion for Eys Ttulon secret while she was in Drel's dungeon. It would have already been old news to the Copan construct. The Fusion had its eyes and ears everywhere.

She knew his last remark was one of Copan's opening gambits. Even near the end, he was determined to delve into her psyche one more time. She couldn't help the smile that curved her lips.

"And now we have others," she replied, and her voice and expression were pure Cheloi Sie. Cool, dark and impenetrable.

He had to be content with that.

She spent the rest of the day, and the next one, tying up the administrative details. Almost the last thing she did was transfer possession rights of her small apartment on Tatrex to the planet's governing body for rea.s.signment to future residents. The unit held nothing of value, although she hoped the new owners would like her taste in furniture. Or maybe, she looked around at the muted colours and slanted angularities, it would be too severe for them. She had instructed the apartment to switch off the heating and it was already starting to get cold.

She had taken possession of the apartment after Eys, when she had run away from Floks and needed another bolt-hole in which to hide. The tidy s.p.a.ce was virgin territory, unsullied by a presence other than her own. After Eys, she had let n.o.body enter her private domain. Even the women who wanted to get to know her more intimately were shepherded to their own residences or private hotels and Laisen made sure she always left before the sun rose the next morning.

The string of casual affairs and physical couplings had lasted for years. Until Lith came along.

Copan had told her they were tracking Lith. Laisen wanted to follow up on that statement, use Copan's Fusion contacts to find out more about her lover, but her liaison was inexplicably tight-lipped on the subject. In order to gain knowledge from him, she had to give him some. Offer more insight into what she was thinking and feeling. Laisen wasn't willing to go that far. She could have tracked Lith down from the depths of the intelligence library but she knew that her queries could be tracked, and she was even less comfortable laying out her thoughts for some nameless a.n.a.lyst to ponder.

In any case, what could she possibly tell the woman she had loved then sent away? How could she explain herself or what she did? There was still a gaping hole inside her when she thought of the beautiful honey-blonde but, like Eys, she knew the pain would eventually fade. Wouldn't it? Lith was ultimately better off with someone more balanced and complete. Wasn't she?

Maybe if she could find something else to think about. What she needed was some other career, equally exciting and stimulating, but not as dangerous. That would enable her to put those short chaotic months of her life to one side, wrapping it in forgetfulness and locking it in a mental cupboard. She would leave Lith in her past, hope that the pain in her heart subsided, and start a new life.

So she tied up her affairs on Tatrex and paid one last visit to the administrative centre. And it was there that her world shattered again.

Chapter Twenty-One.

It was her last visit to Tatrex as a Fusion operative. She hoped. The long, low-slung administration building of the intelligence services gleamed silver and white in the slanting morning sun. Its curves caught the bright chill rays of sunlight, throwing them onto the wide pavements that radiated from the building like broad metallic beams.

The morning was still young, well before the workday formally started, but the Fusion was galactic and there were always some staff on duty. By visiting early, Laisen hoped to avoid running into anybody she knew. She had made all the explanations she was prepared to and wasn't willing to indulge in any further questioning, no matter how friendly it might be.

Copan had pleaded and cajoled her to remain with the service, but his entreaties fell on deaf ears. Eventually, he told her that, by leaving, she was running away from the situation. He was right. Like a disillusioned lover, she was finally fleeing the Fusion's covert service, breaking off a long and intimate relationship that had suddenly turned tragically bitter. But she was also running towards something. For almost a decade, she had harboured a nagging incompleteness regarding Eys and the place they had built on Floks Nine. Finally, she was going to come to grips with an earlier phase of her life and actively search for some peace.

Being a natural planet, the weather on Tatrex was less regulated than on an artificial construct such as Floks. The morning was chillier than she'd been expecting. Laisen burrowed her hands into the pockets of her jacket as she headed across the ma.s.sive quadrangle, to the hidden side entrance only employees knew about. The air was bracing and made her feel alive again, even if the tips of her fingers were feeling a bit numb.

There was only one more task left on her list. In fact, her visit was spurious, but she needed definitive confirmation that the next day's pa.s.sage had been booked for the semi-dyson and not for one of her usual off-mission destinations. After more than ten years of not wanting to be anywhere near it, Laisen was now adamant that Floks was the place she had to be.

She visited the transport office, checked the details and confirmed the departure for Floks Nine. Mollified, she was on her way out, walking back along the silvery path ,when she saw him. It was another early-riser heading along the wide avenue between buildings. He was tall and lean and the way he walked...