Spin State - Chris Moriarty [3]
She followed Soza toward the door. In the back of the room, Cohen stood, stretched casually, and slipped out after them without even asking if he was wanted.
“Come on,” Li said as soon as the three of them were out in the empty corridor. “Let’s hear the real story.”
“That is the real story,” Soza said, still standing by his lie and putting his faith in eye contact. “That’s what Intel gave us.”
“No, it’s not. Even Intel isn’t that stupid. This your first trip to the Periphery, Soza?”
He didn’t answer.
“Right. Well, let me tell you what they didn’t tell you in your official briefing. Half the population of this planet are registered genetic constructs. The other half don’t know what the hell they are and couldn’t qualify for a clean passport even if they had the money to pay for a genetic assay. The only human in-system besides you is the governor. His air’s shipped in, his food and water’s shipped in, his official car has a full-blown life-support system, and he might as well be on Earth itself for all he has to do with anything. I could put you in a cab and drive you to places where people have never seen a human, where they’d look at you like you’d look at a mastodon. The Syndicates, on the other hand, are practically neighbors. We’re eight months sublight from KnowlesSyndicate, fifteen from MotaiSyndicate. You can catch a ride to Syndicate space on half the freighters in-system as long as you’re willing to pay cash, keep your mouth shut, and forget you ever met your fellow passengers.”
Soza started to speak, but Li put up a hand impatiently. “I’m not being disloyal. Just realistic. We put riot troops on-surface here during the incursions. That’s not the kind of thing people get over, whichever side of the gun they’re on. And the Secretariat knows it. That’s why they tread so lightly in the Trusteeships these days. And why they wouldn’t in a million years call down a tech raid just because some local company is a little too friendly with the Syndicates. No. There’s a reason for this raid. And the right thing for you to do is play straight with me about it.”
“I can’t,” Soza said. He glanced at Cohen for support, but the AI just shrugged.
Li waited.
Soza laughed awkwardly. “General Nguyen warned me about your, uh, persuasiveness, Major. Look, I really admire you. You should have made colonel in your last go-round. Everyone who doesn’t have his head stuck in a hole knows it. You’re a credit to . . . well, all colonials. But you know that kind of politically sensitive information isn’t cleared for release to line troops.”
“It’s cleared for release to you, though.”
“Well . . . of course.”
“And you’ll be dropping with us tomorrow?” She asked the question in a carefully neutral voice. She didn’t want to humiliate him—but she sure as hell wasn’t going to sugarcoat it.
“No,” Soza said. At least he had the grace to blush.
“So when the shooting starts, we’ll have no one on the ground who knows enough to tell us when it’s time to cut our losses and leave. I’m not willing to send my people into action under those conditions.”
That hit Soza where he lived.
“They’re not your people, Major. They’re UN Peacekeepers. And they’re under TechComm command for the duration of this mission.”
“TechComm doesn’t have to visit their parents when we send them home in boxes,” Li said.
She stood toe-to-toe with Soza and looked straight into his eyes so he could see the green status light blink off behind her left pupil as she shut down her black box. “Look. Feed’s off. This is soft memory only. It’ll wipe as soon as we jump out-system.” Well, not quite. But hopefully Soza was too young to know all the ways you could kink Peacekeeper datafiles.
“You’re not authorized for that information,” Soza said stiffly. This time he didn’t call her Major.
Li ignored him. “How can we do the