Rules of Conflict by Kristine Smith Page B

farthest from the entry.
    He activated his handheld and pulled up the file he had
unfortunately found many reasons to update over the past weeks. In one column,
he had listed all the documents that had gone missing, in the other, the ones
that had eventually turned up. He sorted, ran a discard, and examined the few
items that still remained outstanding.
    The roster. Shipping records. Death certificates . The
roster and records belonged to the CSS Kensington , the flagship of the
group that executed the evacuation of Rauta Shèràa Base.
    And the death certificates? Ebben. Unser. Fitzhugh. Caldor. Three officers and a Spacer First Class, who died during the evacuation.
    Sam stared at the small display and tried to divine a pattern from
the list of documents. Like flecks in stone, they seemed anarchic, unconnected.
But he sensed history, just as he would if he studied the stone. If he
subjected the stone to elemental analysis and investigated the site at which
he’d found it, he would know how it formed, and why. So, too, with these
documents—they could be broken down, as well. Every entry had another piece of
paper to back it up, and when he had uncovered those pieces, well, then he’d
know, wouldn’t he? He never liked to conclude ahead of his data. At the
beginning, it was enough to know that sufficient reason existed for the data to
be collected.
    He sipped his tea, heavily creamed and sugared to obscure the
bitterness. Not like at his old stomping grounds on Banda. The university .
There, they knew how to make tea.
    “And I knew how to drink it.” He recalled overhearing a shopkeeper
brag to another customer one day as he made his purchases. No one in
Halmahera knows tea like Simyam Baru—
    Sam paused, then checked the nameplate on his handheld. Duong .
First name Sam, rhymes with Mom.
    “My name is Sam Duong.” But pictures formed in his imagination
again. He saw himself encased in ice, then heard the hissing crackles as
fissures formed in the block. Water dripped as the melting progressed,
revealing who he truly was. Another man, who hated hospitals, too.
    Again, not something he remembered. Something he knew.

Chapter 5
    Evan stood before his shallow bank of roses and
inventoried the status of each bush in turn. “The Crème Caramel’s looking
good.” He dictated the observation into his handheld as he hefted a branch
laden with butterscotch blooms. “Tell your Dr. Banquo she knows her
fertilizer.”
    Banquo . . . Banquo. Evan paused, his finger
pressed against the handheld touchpad, as the names cascaded in his head. Banquo . . .
Mako . Mako . . . Pierce. “It’s been over two weeks,
Quino. I just wondered if you’d scrounged anything about Colonel Pierce. The
more I think about that name, the more familiar it sounds.” That was a lie, but
he’d had lots of time to ponder the colonel’s snub, and the more he thought
about it, the more it bothered him. Information flitted throughout military
bases at speed—he wondered if Pierce knew something, something that made him
feel he didn’t need to hide his dislike for his fallen minister. Perhaps the
Service had reopened its investigation of Jani’s transport explosion. Perhaps
it had found a witness, someone who had stumbled past the comroom just as Evan
had contacted the fuel depot where the transport was hangared. Saw him enter
the comcode. Heard him say the words.
    Do it.
    He grunted in pain, and looked down to find he had gripped the
Crème’s branch too hard, driving the thorns into his hand. He hunted through
his pockets for a clean dispo, dabbed at the welling beads of blood, and moved
on to the next shrub. “I’m not sure about this Wolfshead Westminster. It’s
still washed-out rust instead of bright orange, but I don’t know what you
expect. It’s a cold-weather hybrid that thrives by waterside, and we’re only in
the middle of the hottest, driest summer in thirty years.” He flicked off the
device and shoved it in his pocket.