I laughed a little. “Yeah. I hadn’t really thought of it that way before, but yeah. She offered me the chance to escape. That’s when I threw the grenade at her, actually.”
She started laughing too. “You may have been the first person to ever take Katerina Capanelli by surprise.”
“She acted like it was a convenient opportunity to escape, but I’d like to think so.”
“That’s definitely how she would handle it. She always had to make you believe she was the one in control of everything.”
“I guess so, yeah. She had already beaten both of us by that point, anyway. She could have killed us if she wanted to. She told me she didn’t like to kill Section 9 agents.”
“Huh. I’d like to think that’s loyalty, but I know her too well to really believe that. Since we’re waiting, do you want to hear a story?”
“Sure.” I leaned back against the wall and closed my eyes.
“Back when Katerina was field commander,” she went on. “We had intel that a Sol Federation fleet admiral was planning a coup.”
“Holy shit.” I opened my eyes again. “That actually happened?”
“Not many people outside of Section 9 know about it, so don’t tell anyone.”
“I don’t know anyone who isn’t in Section 9.”
“It should be easy then.” She smiled and gave me a disarming wink. “So one of our informants passed along the info and we had to decide how to deal with it. It’s not an easy problem to solve. If we had the admiral arrested, it made the Sol Federation look unstable. If we just shoot him, it’s big news for months with dozens of nation-states as potential suspects. Both scenarios were bad for the Federation, and our entire purpose is to prevent things that are bad for the Federation from happening in the first place. So what do we do?”
I thought about it for a minute, but there only seemed to be one answer that made any sense. “Make it look like an accident?”
She nodded. “That’s what I would have thought too. But Katerina called that an unimaginative solution. It was the only thing any of us could think of, but she wouldn’t do it because it bored her. Can you believe that?”
“So what did you end up doing?”
“We targeted one of the other conspirators, a fleet captain who was meant to seize control of the capital. We hacked his car and drove it into a wall so fast there wasn’t much of a body to recover. Then Katerina met the admiral in person and got him to ask her out. They met for dinner and she mentioned the accident, then she asked if he had considered retirement.”
“That’s kind of disturbing, honestly.”
She nodded. “She meant it to be. He submitted for retirement the following day and was relieved of command by the week’s end. A stupid move on his part.”
“Why?”
Her answer was simply, “Without a fleet, his potential to make headlines was reduced.” She curled her fingers around an imaginary sidearm and squeezed the trigger. The thought that Section 9 might have assassinated a retired SpaceFleet admiral had serious implications.
“It sounds like this was a different unit under her.”
“I don’t know.” Raven shrugged. “Our job is still the same. Protect the Sol Federation from all enemies, foreign and domestic. She just chose to do it with an approach that you could either call sadistic or pragmatic.”
My dataspike beeped at me, indicating an incoming call.
“This is Tycho,” I said.
“Hey, Tycho, Andrew. Sorry about the delay, but Andrea’s just getting out of surgery now. She’s up here in medical.”
“Okay, Andrew. We’re on our way,” I said and closed the call.
“What’s up?” asked Raven.
“Surgery took longer than anticipated. We’re supposed to go up to Medical.”
“Oh, that’s a relief. I worried Katerina had already killed everyone.”
We went back out into the corridor and headed for the elevator. “There don’t seem to be any checks and balances,” I pointed out. “We don’t answer to anyone, and we have endless resources. I could see us going to prison for some of the things we do if it ever got out.
“Oh, they’d kill us well before that.”
I stopped dead in my tracks, and she started laughing, one hand over her mouth.
“Okay, you’re right,” I said. “You’re absolutely right.”
We took the elevator two levels down and entered medical. As we walked through the antechamber door, we could hear raised voices. Through the glass doors ahead, I could see that no one else was in the room except Andrea and her mother. It dawned on me that Andrew hadn’t actually asked us to come down to medical.
“It’s not safe, Yulia.” Dr. Markov sounded agitated, though it was clear she was still doing her best to project the calm bedside manner that had made such an impression on me.
Andrea’s voice had a venom I’d never heard before. “That is not my name, Samara.”
Dr. Markov tried to placate her. “I’m sorry, Andrea. I’m just trying to tell you that it isn’t safe. If you apply too much pressure before the nanites can fuse the bone, the pinning could unseat and your arm—”
“It’s my body. What’s left of it, anyway.” Andrea was unstrapping herself from the operating table as she argued. Her new left arm was all exposed graphene and metal composites, with no pleximesh skin fitted over it yet. Its shiny black surface stood in sharp relief against her pale skin as she pulled at the straps.
“Of course, I wasn’t implying otherwise. Here, if you’re going to do that, let me help. I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”
“I don’t need—never mind. Just unstrap me.”
Andrea looked away while she waited for her to unclasp the restraints. “I’m not telling you what to do,” Samara said. “As your doctor—”
“You’re not my doctor. You’re an expert prosthetic surgeon. Stick to that.”
“Andrea, you could damage the prosthetic interface if you don’t allow yourself to heal. Do you understand what I’m saying? That means heavy metals and neurorelay entering your bloodstream. You could die.”
“I died a long time ago.”
Dr. Markov seemed to shrink, like all the energy had been sucked right out of her. She didn’t say anything else, she just stood, grabbed a pill bottle, and handed it over to Andrea without a word.
Andrea took it from her in equal silence, then swung her feet around to the floor. When she saw Raven and I through the glass she just glared. Raven gave her a sympathetic look, which if anything caused her scowl to deepen.
I don’t know what I looked like, but I was doing everything I could to seem as impersonal as possible. Andrea came out the room, pouring out a small amount of red pills into her palm. She brought her hand to mouth and swallowed the medicine with a tilt of her chin. She spoke to us as she passed.
“I thought I told you to meet at holding.”
She continued without breaking stride. As we followed her toward the door, I glanced back. Samara Markov watched her daughter walk away, and the look on her face was pure heartbreak.