Timothy Zahn

Conquerors' Pride

 

Conquerors Saga, book 1

 

1

They were there, all right, exactly where the tachyon wake-trail pickup on Dorcas had projected they would be: four ships, glittering faintly in the starlight of deep space, blazing with infrared as they dumped the heat that zero-point energy friction had generated during their trip. They were small ships, probably no bigger than Procyon-class; milky white in color, shaped like thick hexagonal slabs of random sizes attached to each other at random edges.

Alien as hell.

"Scan complete, Commodore," the man at the Jutland's sensor station reported briskly. "No other ships registering."

"Acknowledged," Commodore Trev Dyami said, flexing his shoulders beneath his stiffly starched uniform tunic and permitting himself a slight smile as he gazed at the main display. Alien ships. The first contact with a new self-starfaring race in a quarter of a century.

And it was his. All his. Trev Dyami and the Jutland would be the names listed in the Commonwealth's news reports and, eventually, in its history books.

Warrior's luck, indeed.

He turned to the tactics station, fully aware that everything he said and did from this point on would be part of that history-book listing. "What's the threat assessment?" he asked.

"I estimate point one to point four, sir," the tactics officer reported. "I don't find any evidence of fighter ejection tubes or missile ports."

"They've got lasers, though, Commodore," the tactics second put in. "There are clusters of optical-discharge lenses on the leading edges of each ship."

"Big enough to be weapons?" the exec asked from Dyami's side.

"Hard to tell, sir," the other said. "The lenses themselves are pretty small, but that by itself doesn't mean much."

"What about power output?" Dyami asked.

"I don't know, sir," the sensor officer said slowly. "I'm not getting any leakage."

"None?"

"None that I can pick up."

Dyami exchanged glances with the exec. "Superconducting cables," the exec hazarded. "Or else just very well shielded."

"One or the other," Dyami agreed, looking back at the silent shapes floating in the middle of the main display. Not only a self-starfaring race, but one with a technology possibly beyond even humanity's. That history-book listing was getting longer and more impressive by the minute.

The exec cleared his throat. "Are we going to open communications, sir?" he prodded.

"It's that or just sit here staring at each other," Dyami said dryly, throwing a quick look at the tactical board. The rest of the Jutland's, eight-ship task force was deployed in his designated combat formation, their crews at full battle stations. The two skitter-sized watchships were also in position, hanging well back where they would be out of danger if this meeting stopped being peaceful. The Jutland's own Dragonfly defense fighters were primed in their launch tubes, ready to be catapulted into battle at an instant's notice.

Everything was by-the-book ready... and it was time to make history. "Lieutenant Adigun, pull up the first-contact comm package," Dyami ordered the comm officer. "Get it ready to run. And alert all ships to stand by."

 

"Signal from the Jutland, Captain," Ensign Hauver reported from the Kinshasa's bridge comm station. "They're getting ready to transmit the first-contact package across to our bogies."

Commander Pheylan Cavanagh nodded, his eyes on the linked-hexagon ships in the bridge display. "How long will it take?"

"Oh, they can run the first chunk through in anywhere from five to twenty minutes," Hauver said. "The whole package can take up to a week to transmit. Not counting breaks for the other side to try to figure out what we're talking about."

Pheylan nodded. "Let's hope they're not too alien to understand it."

"Mathematics are supposed to be universal," Hauver pointed out.

"It's that 'supposed to be' I always wonder about," Pheylan said. "Meyers, you got anything more on the ships themselves?"

"No, sir." The sensor officer shook his head. "And to be honest, sir, I really don't like this. I've run the infrared spectrum six ways from April, and it just won't resolve. Either those hulls are made of something the computer and I have never heard of before, or else they're deliberately skewing the emissions somehow."

"Maybe they're just shy," Rico said. "What about those optical-discharge lenses?"

"I can't get anything on those, either," Meyers said. "They could be half-kilowatt comm lasers, half-gigawatt missile frosters, or anything in between. Without power-flux readings, there's no way to tell."

"That part bothers me more than the hull," Rico said to Pheylan, his dark face troubled as he stared at the display. "Putting that kind of massive shielding on their power lines tells me that they're trying to hide something."

"Maybe they're just very efficient," Meyers suggested.

"Yeah," Rico growled. "Maybe."

"There it goes," Hauver spoke up. "Jutland's running the pilot search signal. They've got a resonance—fuzzy, but it's there." He peered at his board. "Odd frequency, too. Must be using some really weird equipment."

"We'll get you a tour of their comm room when this is all over," Pheylan said.

"I hope so. Okay; there goes the first part of the package."

"Lead bogie's moving," Meyers added. "Yawing a few degrees to port—"

And without warning a brilliant double flash of light lanced out from the lead alien ship, cutting across the Jutland's bow. There was a burst of more diffuse secondary light as hull metal vaporized under the assault—

And the Kinshasa's Klaxons blared with an all-force combat alert. "All ships!" Commodore Dyami's voice snapped over the radio scrambler. "We're under attack. Kinshasa, Badger, pull out to sideline flanking positions. All other ships, hold station. Fire pattern gamma-six."

"Acknowledge, Hauver," Pheylan ordered, staring at the display in disbelief. The aliens had opened fire. Unprovoked, unthreatened, they'd simply opened fire. "Chen Ki, pull us out to sideline position. Ready starboard missile tubes for firing."

"How do we key them?" Rico asked, his fingers skating across his tactical setup board. "Proximity or radar?"

"Heat-seeking," Pheylan told him, acceleration pressing him back into his chair as the Kinshasa began to move forward to its prescribed flanking position.

"We're too close to the other ships," Rico objected. "We might hit one of them instead of the bogies."

"We can pull far enough out to avoid that," Pheylan told him, throwing a quick look at the tactical board. "Point is, we know the bogies are hot. With those strange hulls of theirs, the other settings might not even work."

"Missile spread from the Jutland," Meyers announced, peering at his displays. "They're going with radar keyed—"

And suddenly all four alien ships opened up with a dazzling display of multiple-laser fire. "All bogies firing," Meyers shouted as the warble of the damage alarm filled the bridge. "We're taking hits—hull damage in all starboard sections—"

"What about the Jutland's missiles?" Rico called.

"No impacts," Meyers shouted back. The image on the main display flared and died, reappearing a second later as the backup sensors took over from the vaporized main cluster. "Bogies must have gotten 'em."

"Or else they just didn't trigger," Pheylan said, fighting down the surge of panic simmering in his throat. The Kinshasa was crackling with heat stress now as those impossible lasers out there systematically bubbled off layers of the hull... and from the barely controlled voices shouting from the audio-net speaker it sounded as if the rest of the Peacekeeper ships were equally up to their necks in it. In the wink of an eye the task force had gone from complete control of the situation to a battle for survival. And were losing. "Key missiles for heat-seeking, Rico, and fire the damn things."

"Yes, sir. Salvo one away—"

And an instant later there was a sound like a muffled thunderclap, and the Kinshasa lurched beneath Pheylan's chair. "Premature detonation!" Meyers shouted; and even over the crackling of overstressed metal Pheylan could hear the fear in his voice. "Hull integrity gone: forward starboard two, three, and four and aft starboard two."

"Ruptures aren't sealing," Rico called. "Too hot for the sealant to work. Starboard two and four are honeycombing. Starboard three... honeycombing has failed."

Pheylan clenched his teeth. There were ten duty stations in that section. Ten people who were now dead. "Chen Ki, give us some motion—any direction," he ordered the helm. If they didn't draw the aliens' lasers away from the ejected honeycombs, those ten casualties were going to have lots of company. "All starboard deck officers are to pull their crews back to central."

"Yes, sir."

"The ship can't handle much more of this, Captain," Rico said grimly from beside him.

Pheylan nodded silently, his eyes flicking between the tactical and ship-status boards. Rico was, if anything, vastly understating the case. With half the Kinshasa's systems failing or vaporized and nothing but the internal collision bulkheads holding it together, the ship had bare minutes of life left to it. But before it died, there might be enough time to get off one final shot at the enemy who was ripping them apart. "Rico, give me a second missile salvo," he ordered. "Fire into our shadow, then curve them over and under to pincer into the middle of the bogie formation. No fusing—just a straight timed detonation."

"I'll try," Rico said, his forehead shiny with sweat as he worked his board. "No guarantees with the ship like this."

"I'll take whatever I can get," Pheylan said. "Fire when ready."

"Yes, sir." Rico finished his programming and jabbed the firing keys, and through the crackling and jolting of the Kinshasa writhing beneath him, Pheylan felt the lurch as the missiles launched. "Salvo away," Rico said. "Sir, I recommend we abandon ship while the honeycombs are still functional."

Pheylan looked again at the status board, his stomach twisting with the death-pain of his ship. The Kinshasa was effectively dead; and with its destruction he had only one responsibility left. "Agreed," he said heavily. "Hauver, signal all hands: we're abandoning. All sections to honeycomb and eject when ready."

The damage alarm changed pitch and cadence to the ship-abandon signal. Across the bridge, board lights flickered and went dark as the bridge crew hurriedly disconnected their stations from the ship and checked their individual life-support systems.

Pheylan himself, however, still had one task left to perform: to ensure that those alien butchers out there would learn nothing about the Commonwealth from the wreckage of his ship. Getting a grip on the underside of his command board, he broke it open and began throwing the row of switches there. Nav computer destruct, backup nav computer destruct, records computer destruct, library computer destruct—

"Bridge crew reports ready, Captain," Rico said, a note of urgency in his voice. "Shall we honeycomb?"

Pheylan threw the last switch. "Go," he said, pulling his hands back inside the arms of his chair and bracing himself.

And with a thudding ripple that jerked Pheylan against his restraints, the sections of memory metal whipped out from the deck and ceiling, wrapping around his chair and sealing him in an airtight cocoon. A heartbeat later he was jammed into his seat cushion as the bridge disintegrated around him, throwing each of the individual honeycomb escape pods away from the dying hulk that had once been the Kinshasa.

"Good-bye," Pheylan murmured to the remains of his ship, fumbling for the viewport shutter-release control. Later, he supposed vaguely, the full emotional impact would hit him. For now, though, survival was uppermost in his mind. Survival for himself, and for his crew.

The shutters retracted, and he pressed his face up to the viewport that looked back on the Kinshasa. The other escape pods were dim flickers of light drifting outward from the twisted and blackened hull still being hammered by the aliens' lasers. There was no way to tell how many of the honeycomb pods were intact, but those that were should keep their occupants alive until they could be picked up. Moving carefully in the cramped confines of the pod, he got to the viewport facing the main part of the battle and looked out.

The battle was over. The Peacekeeper task force had lost.

He floated there, his breath leaving patches of fog on the viewport, too stunned to move. The Piazzi was blazing brightly, some fluke of leaking oxygen tanks allowing fire even in the vacuum of space. The Ghana and Leekpai were blackened and silent, as were the Bombay and Seagull. He couldn't find any trace of the Badger at all.

And the Jutland—the powerful, Rigel-class defense carrier Jutland—was twisting slowly in space. Dead.

And the four alien starships were still there. Showing no damage at all.

"No," Pheylan heard himself murmur. It was impossible. Utterly impossible. For a Rigel-class task force to have been defeated in six minutes—six minutes—was unheard of.

There was a flicker of laser fire from one of the aliens; then another, and another. Pheylan frowned, wondering what they were shooting at. Some of the Jutland's Dragonfly fighters, perhaps, that were still flying around? The aliens fired again, and again—

And with a jolt of horror Pheylan understood. The aliens were firing on the honeycomb pods. Systematically and painstakingly destroying the survivors of the battle.

He swore viciously under his breath. The pods were no threat to the aliens—they weren't armed, armored, or even equipped with drives. To destroy them like this was to turn a military victory into a cold-blooded slaughter.

And there was nothing that he could do about it except sit here and watch it happen. The pod was little more than a minuscule cone with a power supply, a dioxide/oxygen converter, a backup oxygen tank, an emergency radio beacon, a short-range comm laser, two weeks' worth of rations, a waste-reclaimant system—

He was clawing the equipment access panel open almost before the thought had completely formed in his mind. The aliens out there weren't just blasting every chunk of rubble in sight; they were specifically and deliberately hunting down the pods. And suddenly it was blindingly obvious how they were doing that.

The emergency beacon was a deliberately simple gadget, as unbreakable and foolproof as anything in the Peacekeepers' inventory. But foolproof didn't necessarily mean sabotage proof. A minute later, every wire and circuit line to it cut and the blade of his multitool jabbed into its internal power backup, it had finally been silenced.

Pheylan took a deep breath, feeling the coolness of sweat on his forehead as he turned back to the viewport. The flashes of laser fire were still flickering through the battle debris as the aliens went about their grisly business. One of the ships was working its way his direction, and he wondered tensely whether any of his crew had figured out what was going on and had knocked out their own beacons.

But there was no time to think about that now. That alien ship was coming almost straight toward him, and if they were really determined to be thorough about this, there were other ways besides the beacon to pick him out of the flotsam. Somehow he had to get the pod moving. Preferably in the direction of the watchships that should still be skulking out there somewhere.

He watched the ship's deliberate approach, mentally running through the list of available equipment. But there was really only one possibility, and he knew it. He needed propulsion; ergo, he needed to throw something overboard.

It took longer than he'd expected to get to the oxygen tank release valve on the far side of the narrow equipment bay, and the alien ship was looming large in the viewport by the time he was finally ready. Mentally crossing his fingers, he tweaked the valve release open.

The hiss was loud in the enclosed space of the pod—as loud, he thought with a macabre shiver, as the hiss of gas in one of those death cells the Commonwealth was forever lodging strong protests about with the Bhurtist governments. It wasn't an irrelevant comparison, either: with the pod's oxygen reserve spewing into space, his life was now solely dependent on the uninterrupted functioning of his dioxide/oxygen converter. If it flicked out on him—and they did so with depressing regularity—he would have only as long as it took the air in the pod to get stale to get it running again.

But so far the plan was working. He was drifting through the wreckage now, slowly but steadily, moving roughly crosswise to the alien ship's approach vector toward the area where the watchships would be if they hadn't already meshed out. Now if he could just make it outside the cone of whatever focused sensor beams the aliens were using...

Concentrating on the first ship, he never even saw the second ship's approach. Not until the blue light abruptly flared around him.

 

"Keller? You still there?"

With an effort Lieutenant Dana Keller pulled her eyes away from the distant flickering of laser light and keyed her comm laser. "I'm here, Beddini," she said. "What do you think? We seen enough?"

"I'd seen enough five minutes ago," Beddini told her bitterly. "Those lousy, f—"

"We'd better get moving," Keller cut him off. Watching Commodore Dyami's task force get sliced to ribbons like that had sickened her, too, but letting Beddini get started on his extensive repertoire of curses wouldn't accomplish anything. "Unless you want to wait and see if they'll come after us next."

She heard the hiss as Beddini exhaled into his mike. "Not really."

"Fine," she said, keying her nav map. Actually, it was unlikely that the aliens even knew they were here—watchships were about as sensor-stealthed as it was theoretically possible to make them. But she wouldn't have bet a day's pay on that, let alone her life. "The book says we split up. I'll take Dorcas; you want Massif or Kalevala?"

"Kalevala. My static bomb or yours?"

"We'll use mine," Keller told him, keying in the sequence to activate and drop the high-intensity tachyon explosive. "You might need yours on the way off Kalevala. Don't start your engines until I give you the word."

"Right."

Behind her Keller felt a whisper of air as the copilot returned from her abrupt visit to the head. "You okay, Gorzynski?" she asked the other.

"Sure," Gorzynski said, sounding embarrassed and still a little sick. "I'm sorry, Lieutenant."

"Forget it," Keller told her, studying the younger woman's tortured face as she maneuvered carefully in zero-gee to her copilot's seat. Younger woman, hell—Gorzynski wasn't much more than a kid. Fresh out of basic, her first real tour... and this was how it had ended. "We're heading back. Get the drive sequence ready to go."

"Right," Gorzynski said, getting shakily to work. "What did I miss?"

"Just more of the same," Keller said. "They're still going around icing the survivors."

Gorzynski made a sound in the back of her throat. "I don't understand," she said. "Why are they doing that?"

"I don't know," Keller told her grimly. "But we're going to pay them back with interest. Bet on it."

The board pinged: the static bomb was ready. Keller touched the primer and the release key, and there was a slight lurch as the bulky cylinder dropped free of the watchship. "Beddini? Static bomb away. Ninety seconds to detonation."

"Acknowledged," Beddini said. "We're out of here. Good luck."

"You, too," Keller said, and keyed off the comm laser.. "Let's go, Gorzynski."

They had swung the watchship around and were pulling for deep space when the static bomb blew up behind them, sending out a wide-spectrum saturation burst of tachyons that would blind whatever wake-trail detectors the enemy out there had. Or so went the theory. If it didn't work, the Peacekeeper garrisons on Dorcas and Kalevala had better hope they were ready for company. "Here we go," she told Gorzynski, and pressed the keys.

The sky shimmered, the stars spinning briefly into an illusion of a tunnel as the space around them twisted. And then the twist became a sphere, the stars winked out, and they were on their way.

Keller looked over at Gorzynski. The kid still looked sick, but there was something else there, too. The kind of quiet, dark determination that Keller had seen so often in hardened combat veterans.

She shook her head. What a way for the kid to have to grow up.

 

The door slid open, and Lieutenant Colonel Castor Holloway stepped into the Dorcas colony's Peacekeeper garrison sensor center. Major Fujita Takara was waiting just inside the door, his face looking somber in the dim red light. "What've we got, Fuji?" Holloway asked.

"Trouble, looks like," Takara told him. "Crane just picked up the leading edge of a static-bomb discharge."

Holloway looked across the room at the tachyon pickup display and the young sergeant sitting stiffly in front of it. "The Jutland task force?"

"I don't know what else it could be," Takara said. "You can't really pin down a static bomb from anything but point-blank range, but it's from the right direction."

"Strength?"

"If it's from the same spot where we placed the bogies, it's about the size of a watchship's backstop bomb." Takara's lip twitched. "I don't know if you knew, Cass, but it's only been forty minutes since the task force meshed in out there."

The room, Holloway noted, was very quiet. "I suppose we'd better alert Peacekeeper Command," he said. "We have a skitter ready to fly?"

Takara's forehead creased slightly, and Holloway could tell what he was thinking. There were only two stable stardrive speeds, three light-years per hour and twice that, with only small ships like fighters and skitters able to achieve the higher equilibrium. The problem was it cost nearly five times as much per light-year to fly at the higher speed, which on the Dorcas garrison's budget was a nontrivial consideration. "Number Two can be ready in half an hour," the major said. "I assumed we'd be waiting until we had something more concrete to send them."

Holloway shook his head. "We can't afford the wait. Whatever happened out there, the fact that a watchship dropped its static bomb means there's been serious trouble. Our job is to buy the Commonwealth every minute of prep time that we can. The details of the trouble can wait until later."

"I suppose so," Takara said heavily. "I'll get the skitter crew moving."

He left, the door sliding shut behind him, and Holloway stepped over to the tachyon station. "Can you sift anything at all out of that mess, Crane?" he asked.

"No, sir," the young man said. "The tachyon static will blanket everything else in the region for at least another hour. Maybe two."

Which meant that they'd be on Dorcas's doorstep before anyone knew how much of the task force was coming back. Or, perhaps more important, if any uninvited guests were following them in. "Keep an eye on it," he told the other. "I want to know the minute the static starts to clear."

"Yes, sir." Crane hesitated. "Sir, what do you think happened?"

Holloway shrugged. "We'll find out in a couple of hours. Until then, I suggest you try to keep your imagination from running away with you."

"Yes, sir," Crane said, a bit too hastily. "I just meant—well—"

"I understand," Holloway assured him. "It's not much fun sitting blind while you wonder what might be coming your way. Just bear in mind that the Commonwealth has a long history of winning these little encounters. Whatever's out there, we'll handle it."

"Yes, sir," Crane said. "There's always CIRCE, too."

Holloway grimaced. Yes, that was always the option. The option, and the unspoken threat behind it. There were a lot of people—not all of them nonhumans—who resented living beneath the shadow of CIRCE and the Northern Coordinate Union leaders who held sole possession of the weapon's secrets. A lot of people who felt that NorCoord's domination of the Peacekeepers and the political structure of the entire Commonwealth was based on CIRCE and CIRCE alone. But the simple fact was that in the thirty-seven years since that awful demonstration off Celadon, the NorCoord military had never again had to fire the weapon. It had kept the peace without ever having to be used.

He looked at the tachyon display, feeling his throat tighten. Perhaps this time it was going to be different. "Yes," he agreed quietly. "There's always CIRCE."

 

2

The lunch had been served and eaten, the empty dishes cleared away, and the frosted coffee served; and only then did Nikolai Donezal finally ask the question Lord Stewart Cavanagh had known he would eventually get to. "So," Donezal said, sipping carefully at his steaming cup and licking a stray bit of frosting off his upper lip. "Shall we get down to business? Or shall we continue to pretend your visit today has been motivated solely by nostalgia?"

Cavanagh smiled. "That's one of the things I've always liked about you, Nikolai: your unique combination of subtlety and bluntness. Not a single nudge or probe during the meal itself, and now straight between the eyes."

"The ravages of age, I'm afraid," Donezal said regretfully. "I find that I'm useless all afternoon if I ruin my digestion at lunch." He eyed Cavanagh over the edge of his cup. "And turning down favors while eating invariably ruins my digestion."

"Favors?" Cavanagh echoed, giving the other his best innocent look. "What makes you think I'm here to ask for any favors?"

"Long personal experience," Donezal said dryly. "Coupled with the stories about you which one can still hear being told in parliamentary back offices. If even half of them are true, it would appear you left an impressive trail of wrenched arms behind you during your time here."

"Baseless slander." Cavanagh dismissed the subject with a wave of his hand. "Sprinkled with a bit of jealousy."

Donezal raised an eyebrow. "Perhaps more than just a bit," he said. "Still, you protest more than necessary. I understand that a man cannot create your list of accomplishments without also creating a few enemies along the way."

"Plus a few friends, I hope," Cavanagh said.

"I'm certain you did," Donezal said. "Though the other group is always the louder. Still, the doomsayers we shall always have with us. At any rate, you bought lunch; the least I can do is hear you out."

"Thank you," Cavanagh said, pulling his plate from his inside pocket. He opened it, called up the proper file, and slid it across the table. "My proposal is really quite simple. I'd like to shift a part of my Centauri electronics operation out to Massif."

"Indeed," Donezal said, glancing over the first page and keying for the second. "To be located in the Lorraine and Nivernais states, I see. A good choice—the plunge in iridium prices has hit those two regions particularly hard. An influx of light industry would be welcome." He looked speculatively at Cavanagh. "So tell me what the favor is you need. Free land, or just massive tax breaks?"

"Neither," Cavanagh said, mentally crossing his fingers. Donezal had a good business mind and was, at the core, a decent enough man. But his military tour of duty on the Bhurtist homeworld of Tal during the Peacekeepers' police action there had left some scars where nonhumans were concerned. "What I need is for you to help me get NorCoord's permission to run a pair of satellite facilities in the Duulian and Avuirlian enclaves."

Donezal's face tightened, just noticeably. "I see," he said. "May I ask what Sanduuli and Avuirli have to offer that our human colonists can't match?"

"Frankly, I don't know," Cavanagh said. "That's one of the things I'm hoping to find out."

"Such as whether they can do the work cheaper?" Donezal demanded.

Cavanagh shook his head. "Such as what ideas and improvements nonhuman intelligences and methodology might suggest to us," he corrected. "The satellite facilities would be geared for R and D, not production."

Donezal looked down at the plate again, and Cavanagh could see the strain as he tried to uncouple his judgment from his memories. "You're aware, of course, that five months ago Peacekeeper Command and the Commerce Commission began tightening regulations on nonhuman handling of potential military technology."

"Yes, I know," Cavanagh said. "But the work we'd be doing would be distinctly nonmilitary. All of our Peacekeeper contracts would stay in the existing high-security plants on Avon and Centauri."

Donezal rubbed his cheek. "I don't know, Stewart. Understand, I have nothing personally against either the Sanduuli or Avuirli. And I'd certainly like to see you move a plant onto Massif. But Commerce seems very serious about all this; and to be honest, I'm not sure the term 'nonmilitary' can be applied to anything electronic anymore. There's so much bleed-through between military and civilian equipment, especially with the sort of high-density and semisentient work you do. A great deal of that is still exclusively human property, and many of us would like to keep it that way. Otherwise there could be trouble whenever the next brushfire erupts."

"Possibly," Cavanagh said. "On the other hand, a perception that the Commonwealth is being unreasonably selfish is almost a guarantee that those brushfires will indeed occur."

Donezal made a face. "Well, if that happens, the Peacekeepers will certainly be ready for it," he growled, turning his attention back to the plate. "You should see all the money they've been levering out of the treasury lately. All right, let me look at this again."

Cavanagh sipped at his coffee and looked around the Parliament dining room, memories flickering through his mind as he did so. Certainly he'd come here on business, but Donezal's facetious reference to nostalgia hadn't been completely off the mark. Cavanagh had been less than enthusiastic about serving in the Northern Coordinate Union Parliament when the governor of Grampians on Avon had offered him the job—had argued long and hard, in fact, that there were others in Grampians who wanted the appointment far more. But the governor had persisted; and Cavanagh himself would be the first to admit that the six years he'd spent in Parliament had been among the most interesting of his life. The previous twenty years, spent building up a minor electronics empire from scratch, hadn't prepared him at all for the style and routine of government operation. Everyone had known it, of course, and he suspected there had been a few side bets in the back offices that the new Parlimin from Avon, Grampians state, would never even make it off the landing field.

But he'd surprised them. He'd quickly learned how to adapt his work and people-handling techniques to the strange new environment of politics, and had then proceeded to forge odd but potent coalitions among those who felt the same as he did about a dozen of the most important issues. None of the coalitions had lasted very long, but more often than not they'd lasted long enough to accomplish the goals he'd set for them. He'd become adept at the art of political arm-twisting, a talent that had given him a certain notoriety during that first term and the two subsequent appointments the governor had talked him into accepting. Apparently, if Donezal could be believed, some of that notoriety still lingered in the Parliament chambers.

A movement caught his eye: a young-looking Parlimin gesturing emphatically at the colleagues seated around him at his table. There were only a few Parlimins still in office who had also served during Cavanagh's stint here, but the current trend among the national and state governments of the NorCoord Union was to appoint top business and industrial leaders to the upper house, and Cavanagh spotted several men and women he'd locked horns with across tables over the years. There was Simons of Great Britain, Alexandra Karponov of Kryepost on Nadezhda, Klein of Neuebund on Prospect...

He was looking at Klein when the other's face suddenly went rigid.

Cavanagh looked back at Donezal, to find the same expression on his face. "Emergency signal?"

"Yes," Donezal told him, fumbling in his pocket and pulling out his slender whisper-call. "Full-Parliament alert," he said, peering at the message scrolling across the display. "Some kind of trouble out at—"

He broke off. "I have to go," he said abruptly, stuffing the whisper-call back into his pocket and levering himself out of his chair.

"What is it?" Cavanagh asked, standing up himself and making a quick hand signal. "What kind of trouble?"

"There aren't any details," Donezal said, starting toward the door. The other Parlimins, Cavanagh noted peripherally, were also heading rapidly for the exits. "Call my office later. Better yet, call your own Parlimin. I'm sure Jacy VanDiver would love to hear from you."

Cavanagh fell into step beside him; and as he did so, the quiet figure of his security chief, Adam Quinn, appeared at his side. "Trouble, sir?" the other asked softly.

"Yes," Cavanagh told him. "Come on, Nikolai, give. I'll owe you one."

Donezal stopped, throwing a sour look at Cavanagh and an only marginally less acidic one at Quinn. "There's a watchship coming in from Dorcas," he bit out. "Apparently, a Peacekeeper task force there has been hit. Badly."

Cavanagh stared at him, an old and all-too-familiar pressure squeezing his chest. "Which task force was it?"

"I don't know," Donezal said, frowning at him. "Does it matter?"

"Very much," Cavanagh murmured. The Kinshasa, with Pheylan aboard, was stationed with the Jutland in the Dorcas area. If that was the force that had been hit... "Let's get over to the chamber," he told Donezal, taking his arm. "They should at least be able to tell us who was involved."

Donezal shook off the grip. "We are not going to the chamber," he said. "I am going. You're not a Parlimin anymore."

"You can get me in."

"Not for something like this," Donezal insisted. "I'm sorry, Stewart, but you'll just have to wait and find out when the rest of the Commonwealth does."

He turned and joined the general exodus of people now streaming through the dining room's main exits. "Like hell I will," Cavanagh muttered under his breath as he pulled out his phone. "Quinn, where did Kolchin go?"

"I'm right here, sir," the young bodyguard said, appearing magically at Cavanagh's other side. "What stirred up the anthill?"

"A Peacekeeper task force has been hit off Dorcas," Cavanagh told him grimly, punching in a number. "I'm going to see if I can get us some more information."

The phone screen came on, revealing a young woman in Peacekeeper uniform. "Peacekeeper Command."

"General Garcia Alvarez, please," Cavanagh said. "Tell him it's Lord Stewart Cavanagh. And tell him it's urgent."

 

The cables overhead lengthened and separated, dropping their ski-lift-style chair out of the upper-corridor traffic flow and bringing it to a halt at the floor. Before them, topped by a large Peacekeeper insignia, was the archway into the Peacekeeper Command section of the NorCoord Union government complex. Standing beneath the arch, flanked by the duty guard and a man wearing a major's insignia, was General Alvarez.

"Stewart," Alvarez said in greeting as Cavanagh and his two men came toward him. "I trust you realize how irregular this is."

"I do," Cavanagh said. "And I thank you. I'll try not to be too much trouble."

Alvarez made a face and looked at the officer at his side. "These are my visitors, Major. I'd like them cleared through."

"Yes, sir," the other said. "Hello, Quinn. Long time no see."

"Hello, Anders," Quinn said evenly. "Good to see you. I didn't know you'd moved to Command."

"I'm not surprised," Anders said, an edge of bitterness in the voice. "You haven't exactly kept in touch. So this is him, huh?" he added, throwing a cold look at Cavanagh. "The guy who you helped to dump on the unit?"

"Lord Cavanagh is my employer," Quinn said. "And we didn't dump on the Copperheads. We helped make them stronger and better."

"Yeah, well, that's sure not what it looked like from the inside." Anders looked at Kolchin, and for a moment his eyes seemed to glaze over. "And you're former Peacekeeper commando Mitri Kolchin," he said. "You always stock your payroll with Peacekeeper quitters, Lord Cavanagh?"

Beside him, Cavanagh felt Kolchin stir, and he could imagine what the expression on the young man's face must be. General Alvarez, facing him from a meter away, didn't have to rely on imagination. "You're not here for a discussion of career choices, Major," the general put in. "You're here to authorize temporary clearances for these men. Can you or can't you?"

Anders's lip twitched. "There's nothing in their records to prohibit it, sir," he said. "I can clear them through to the outer briefing room. No farther."

"Good enough," Alvarez grunted. "Thank you. Come on, Stewart—the watchship's records should be here anytime."

"They couldn't transmit from orbit?" Cavanagh asked.

"We didn't want them to," Alvarez said. "There are too many kids out there whose idea of fun is to tie into military transmissions and try to crack the scrambling. The last thing we want is for this to leak out before we're ready." He threw Cavanagh a tight smile. "Which is one reason we're letting you in here. Makes it easier to keep track of you."

"I see," Cavanagh said. He'd already figured that part out, actually. "What do you know so far?"

"Only that a skitter arrived from Dorcas about two hours ago telling us a watchship was probably on its way," Alvarez said. "That all by itself meant bad news."

Cavanagh braced himself. "Do you know which task force it was?"

Alvarez nodded heavily. "It was the Jutland's," he said. "And the Kinshasa was definitely there with it. That's the other reason you're here."

"I appreciate it," Cavanagh said, the pressure returning to his chest. "What else do you know?"

"Precious little," Alvarez admitted. "About twenty-five hours ago the tachyon pickup on Dorcas spotted an unfamiliar wake-trail, terminating in the outer rim of a minor system six light-years from Dorcas. They didn't have a tracking baseline, of course, but the Jutland and the local garrison commander were able to triangulate a probable endpoint. The force went out to take a look; forty minutes after meshing in, they popped a static bomb. Dorcas picked it up, figured it meant bad news, and fired us off a skitter to give us some advance warning. End of report."

"Forty minutes sounds rather short," Cavanagh said.

Alvarez snorted. "Try frighteningly short. Especially when you consider that Commodore Dyami wouldn't have meshed in right on top of the bogies. Real-space transit time would have eaten up part of that forty minutes. Maybe even most of it."

The briefing room was deserted when they arrived. Alvarez turned on the displays for them, then left to watch the proceedings with his fellow officers in the main command center. Five minutes later the watchship's recordings began.

It was worse than Cavanagh had expected. Worse than he could even have conceived it to be. To watch the entire task force being cut to ribbons was bad enough. To watch the alien ships coldly and systematically destroying the honeycomb pods afterward was horrifying.

And to know that he was watching the death of his son made him feel physically ill. And very, very old.

The battle and its murderous aftermath seemed to take forever. According to the display chrono, the entire episode took barely fourteen and a half minutes.

The record ended, and the display went off, and for a few minutes none of them spoke. Quinn broke the silence first. "We're in trouble," he said quietly. "Big trouble."

Cavanagh took a deep breath, blinking the sudden moisture out of his eyes. It would have been quick, at least. That was something to hold on to. It would have been quick. "Could the force have been taken by surprise?"

"No." Quinn was positive. "Dyami knew to be ready for combat. That's always the assumption when you contact a new race. Besides, the force was fighting—you could see missiles being launched. They just weren't detonating."

"You know if the Jutland had any Copperhead fighters aboard, Quinn?" Kolchin asked.

"I doubt it," Quinn said, shaking his head. "Most Copperhead units are stationed aboard Nova- and Supernova-class carriers these days, mostly out in Yycroman space. That's what I've heard, anyway. We could ask Anders on the way out."

"Well, at least that's something new we can try on them next time around." Kolchin paused. "And maybe NorCoord will decide it's time to reassemble CIRCE."

"Perhaps," Cavanagh said. "Quinn, we need to send word to Aric and Melinda about this."

"I can do that, sir," Quinn said. "What should I tell them?"

Cavanagh shook his head. "It doesn't matter," he said through the ache. The ache, and the growing rage that his son had been so cold-bloodedly taken from him. "Just tell them their brother is dead."

 

3

The Meert was typical of his species: short and stocky, with small greenish-brown overlapping scales and a face that humans almost invariably compared in shape and texture to a peeled orange. He stood stiffly across the desk, his pale-yellow eyes boring into Aric Cavanagh's face, his teeth dripping with saliva.

Decidedly unhappy.

"I want to talk to Cavanagh," he growled, his English coming out mangled but more or less understandable. "I was promised Cavanagh."

"I am Cavanagh," Aric told him. "Aric Cavanagh, Lord Stewart Cavanagh's firstborn son. I'm also director of CavTronics operations for this region of space. Whatever your complaint, you may express it to me."

The Meert hissed under his breath. "Human," he growled, making the word a curse. "You care first for yourselves. The Meert-ha are nothing to you but slaves."

"Ah," Aric said, cocking an eyebrow. "Do the Meert-ha care more for humans than for themselves, then?"

The overlapping scales opened slightly, settled back into place. "You insult the Meert-ha?"

"Not at all," Aric assured him. "I merely seek clarification. You accuse humans of caring more for their own kind than for nonhumans. Is it different with the Meert-ha?"

The Meert was silent a moment, his scales flipping rhythmically up and down. Aric stayed seated, resisting the urge to ease his chair a little farther back from the desk. For a pair of heartbeats he was a teenager again, engaged in his favorite lazy-day pastime of verbally driving his younger brother crazy, when he'd suddenly awakened to the fact that he no longer had thirty centimeters and twelve kilos on the kid. The game had stopped being fun that day... and the Meert standing in front of the desk had a lot of the same look about him.

He shook off the memory. He wasn't fifteen anymore, that wasn't Pheylan standing there preparing to pound him, and a nonhuman work foreman in a CavTronics electronics plant surely wouldn't be rash enough to physically attack the owner's son. Still, he was beginning to wish he hadn't left Hill outside with the car. Normally, he didn't feel any need for one of his father's cadre of security guards on these plant tours; but palpitating Meertene scales meant there was a lot of body heat being dumped, and if the Meert was getting overheated, it probably meant he was angry. Aric had thrown in that comment to put the Meert's accusations of species loyalty into perspective, as well as to hopefully knock the approaching tirade off track a little. The whole thing would be rather counterproductive if the Meert tried to break his face instead.

The scales settled back in place. "It is still true that you think of the Meert-ha as slaves," the Meert said.

"Not at all," Aric said, starting to breathe again. "We have always treated our Meertene employees with respect and honor."

"Then why this?" the Meert demanded, pointing two thick fingers out the window. "Why do you close this workplace?"

Aric sighed. Here it came: the same argument he'd already been through twice on this trip, with two other nonhuman species. He wondered if Commonwealth Commerce had had any idea of the trouble they were creating when they first started dropping these new restrictions through the hopper five months ago. Or if they'd even cared. "In the first place, we aren't closing the plant," he told the Meert. "We're only scaling back some of its operations."

"Meert-ha will no longer work here."

"Some Meert-ha will lose their jobs, yes," Aric conceded. "As will some from the Djadaran enclave, as well."

"Will humans lose jobs?"

"I don't know," Aric said. "That has yet to be decided."

The scales quivered. "When?"

"Whenever we so choose," Aric said. "Would you wish us to rush these decisions? All of them?"

The Meert shook his head, the movement scattering droplets of saliva to both sides. In mainstream Meertene culture, shaking the head was often a signal of challenge; Aric could only hope that in this case the Meert was mimicking the human gesture instead. "I speak only of justice," he growled.

"Justice is my goal as well," Aric assured him. "And the goal of my father. Be assured we will both do whatever is possible to achieve it."

The Meert tossed his head. "We will watch and see," he said, crossing the fingers of his hands in the Meertene farewell gesture. "Stay slowly."

Aric returned the gesture. "Go slowly."

The Meert turned and strode out through the office door. "Justice," Aric muttered under his breath, finally letting go with the grimace he'd been holding back since the Meert first barged in. His father had warned the Commissioner of Commerce—had warned him repeatedly—that this was both bad politics and bad business. He might as well have tried talking to moss.

The office door slid open again. Aric looked up, muscles tensing and then relaxing as he saw it was just Hill. "About time," he told the security guard, mock-severely. "Here I am, risking my life with an angry Meert, and where are you?"

"Outside," Hill replied calmly. "Keeping out the other eight who were demanding to get in to see you."

"Really." Aric cocked an eyebrow. "You didn't mention there was a whole delegation out there."

Hill shrugged. "I didn't want to worry you," he said. "Besides, it didn't seem important, given that I wasn't going to let more than one of them in anyway. I figured even you could handle a single Meert."

"I appreciate the confidence," Aric said dryly. At least that explained why his visitor had been so relatively easy to deal with. Expecting to be part of a nine-man complaint committee, he'd already been thrown off stride by having to go it alone. "Have they all left?"

Hill nodded. "This group mad about the layoffs, too?"

"Mad about the threat of layoffs, anyway," Aric said. Privately, he was still hoping they could persuade the paranoids at Commerce that no Peacekeeper military secrets were being risked by letting nonhumans work with CavTronics computer components. "Has the evening-shift director arrived yet?"

"No, sir," Hill said, stepping over to the desk and holding out a card. "But this was just transmitted in for you. Via the skitter from Earth, I think."

"Must be from Dad," Aric said, taking the card and sliding it into his plate. The two of them had come up with a little scheme that might create an end-run precedent around these new restrictions. This might be the word on whether Parlimin Donezal was willing to play ball on it. Keying for the proper decoding algorithm, Aric watched as the message came up.

It was very short.

He read it through twice, a sense of unreality creeping through him. No. It couldn't be.

"Sir? Are you all right?"

With an effort Aric looked up at Hill. "Is the ship back yet?"

"I don't think so, sir," Hill said, frowning at him. "You weren't planning to leave until tomorrow."

Aric took a deep breath, trying to drive away the numbness in his mind and body. "Call the spaceport," he said. "Get me a seat on a liner to Earth. You and the ship can go back to Avon when it gets here."

"Yes, sir," Hill said, pulling out his phone. "May I ask what's wrong?"

Aric leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. "It's my brother," he said. "He's dead."

 

"Dr. Cavanagh?"

Melinda Cavanagh looked up from the large high-detail plate and her final run-through of the upcoming operation. "Yes?"

"Dr. Billingsgate is in prep," the nurse said. "Room three."

"Thank you," Melinda said, mentally shaking her head. He could just as easily have paged her or called her on her phone, but instead he'd sent someone else scurrying off to find her. She'd never worked with Billingsgate before, but the Commonwealth's surgical community was by necessity a small and tight-knit group, and she'd heard enough stories to know that this was typical of the man. Opinion was split as to whether it was arrogance, stinginess with his own time, or just a simple preference for human interaction over the more impersonal electronic sort. "Tell him I'll be there in a minute."

She finished tracking through the plan and pulled her card from the plate. Prep Three was just down the corridor, and she entered to find Billingsgate poring over the high-detail plate there. "Ah—Cavanagh," he said distractedly, waving her over. "Ready to suit up?"

"Almost," she said, sitting down in the chair next to him. "There are a couple of minor points I'd like to discuss with you first."

He frowned at her from under bushy eyebrows. "I thought we'd settled everything," he said, his tone dropping half an octave.

"I thought we had, too," she said, sliding her card into his plate and keying for the marked sections. "Number one: I think we should reduce the use of markinine in the third phase. We certainly want to lower blood pressure at that point, but with the shorozine drip only four centimeters away, I think we should consider lowering the dosage by at least ten percent."

The eyebrows frowned a little harder. "A ten percent cut is rather drastic."

"But necessary," Melinda said. "Number two: in phase four you have two separate neurobinders being applied at each of four sites. This one"—she pointed to it on the plate—"strikes me as being just a shade too close to the optic chiasma. Particularly given your revised dosage numbers."

"You think that, do you?" Billingsgate said, his voice starting to shade from annoyed to intimidating. "Tell me, Doctor, have you ever performed this operation yourself?"

"You know I haven't," Melinda said. "But I've consulted on five similar operations."

Billingsgate's eyebrows lifted slightly. "For five different surgeons, no doubt?"

Melinda looked him straight in the eye. "That's unfair," she said. "And you know it. The two operations weren't identical—no two operations are. Trying to bypass me that way and just blindly following the first plan was totally irresponsible. And it could have been fatal."

"It most likely wouldn't have been," Billingsgate pointed out.

"Would you have wanted me to take that chance?" Melinda countered.

Billingsgate's lips pursed tightly together. "You didn't have to humiliate Mueller publicly."

"I tried talking to him privately. He wouldn't listen."

Billingsgate turned back to his plate, and for a minute the room was silent. "So you think we should cut the markinine by ten percent, do you?" he asked.

"Yes," Melinda said. "The lower dosage should do the job perfectly well. Particularly given the patient's metabolic baseline."

"I was going to ask if you'd checked on that," Billingsgate said. "All right; but if the blood pressure doesn't respond properly, we're going to jack the dosage back up. Fair enough?"

"Fair enough," Melinda agreed. "Now, what about the neurobinders?"

The discussion was short and civilized, and in the end he acquiesced with reasonably good grace. Like most surgeons Melinda had dealt with, Billingsgate had strong proprietary feelings toward his operation designs, but he was also experienced enough not to simply ignore the recommendations of a good consultant. With more and more routine operations being handled by semisentient computerized systems, the only ones that still required human surgeons were those that were as much art as they were science. Writing required editors; sculpture required texturers; surgery required design consultants. Or so the theory went.

"All right, then," Billingsgate said at last. "We cut the markinine by ten percent and shift the gamma-site neurobinder three millimeters right-lateral. Is that it?"

"That's it." Melinda closed down the plate. "Is everything else ready?"

"Just about. We just have to—"

He broke off as the door slid open and a nurse stepped in. "I'm sorry, Dr. Cavanagh, but this just came for you," she said, holding out a card. "It's marked urgent."

"Thank you," Melinda said, taking it and pulling out her own plate.

"Make it fast," Billingsgate said.

"I will," Melinda promised, frowning at the scrambled symbols. She'd expected it to be a job assignment or something equally official; but this was in one of her father's private codes. Keying for decoding, she watched as the lines reformed themselves....

And felt her heart seize up. "No," she whispered.

Halfway to the door, Billingsgate turned back around. "What is it?"

Wordlessly, she swiveled the plate around to face him. He stooped to read it. "Oh, my God," he murmured. "Who's Pheylan?"

"My brother," Melinda told him, her voice sounding distant in her ears. She'd had a chance to see Pheylan three weeks ago, when they'd both been on Nadezhda. But she'd been too busy....

Billingsgate was saying something. "I'm sorry," she said, forcing herself to focus on him. "What did you say?"

"I said you don't need to stay," he repeated. "The team can handle things without you. Get yourself a flight over to the spaceport and get out of here."

She looked back at the plate, the words dissolving into blurs before her. "No," she said, wiping at her eyes. "I'm the design consultant. I'm supposed to see the operation through."

"That's a recommendation," Billingsgate said. "Not a requirement."

"It's my requirement," Melinda said, standing up. Her mind was starting to function again, spreading out the possibilities and necessities in her usual surgically neat lines. "Give me a minute to get in touch with the CavTronics plant in Kai Ho and I'll be right there."

"All right," Billingsgate said, not sounding convinced. "If you're sure."

"I'm sure," she told him. "I can't bring Pheylan back. Maybe I can help prevent someone else from dying."

She didn't realize until the words were out of her mouth how easily they could be interpreted as a slight on Billingsgate's surgical skills. But the older man didn't even seem to notice. "All right," he said again. "Nurse, tell the team to get suited up. We'll be starting as soon as Dr. Cavanagh is ready."

 

4

The blue light flared through the honeycomb's viewports, jolting Pheylan out of a troubled sleep. The light faded, flared again, faded again, flared again, faded again—

"All right!" he shouted, slapping the pod wall. "Enough, already!"

The light flared one last time and went out. Pheylan swore under his breath, wincing at the rancid taste in his mouth as he checked his chrono. He felt as if he'd just barely closed his eyes, but he'd actually been asleep for four hours. That made it twenty-two hours since the alien ship had come up behind his pod and swallowed it like a big fish snaring its lunch. Roughly sixty-six light-years, assuming the aliens hadn't discovered a stardrive that ran on a different theory from the Commonwealth's. A long way from home.

The blue light flashed again, twice this time. Reflexively, Pheylan reached for the shutter control, stopped with another curse as his sleep-fogged mind remembered that none of the pod's equipment was functional. They'd done that to him early on, scuffling furtively around the base of the pod where he couldn't see them and knocking out his power supply. He'd been in silent darkness ever since except for the dim light and muffled sounds filtering in from the shuttle-bay-sized room around him.

Without power, of course, his dioxide/oxygen converter was also useless, and there'd been a couple of tense hours when he was debating with himself how close to suffocation he should get before he risked popping the hatch. But while the air inside the pod had slowly grown stale, it hadn't gotten any worse than that. Clearly, the aliens had arranged a supplementary air supply to him, probably funneling it in through the valve he'd weakened earlier when he dumped the pod's reserve oxygen.

For a couple of hours after that he'd worried about bacteria or viruses against which his immune system would have no defense, wondering if his captors had had the foresight to filter such things out. But there was nothing to be gained from such speculation, and eventually he'd abandoned it. Under the circumstances alien variations of influenza were probably going to be the least of his worries.

Outside, the blue light flashed twice more, and as it did so Pheylan noticed that his body was beginning to press into his seat again. Weight was returning; and unless the aliens had belatedly decided to spin the ship, that could mean only one thing.

Wherever they'd been heading, they had arrived.

It was fourteen minutes before the sudden rumbling vibration that indicated they'd made planetfall. The noise and motion died away, and for another fifteen minutes Pheylan sweated in the dim light, his survival-pack flechette pistol gripped in his hand, waiting for his captors' next move.

When it happened, it happened all at once. The pod's exit hatch at his left was abruptly rimmed with light, and with a crackle of superheated metal and a cloud of brilliant sparks the hatch cover blew outward, landing with a muffled clang on the deck below. A cool breeze flowed in through the opening, carrying with it the stink of burned metal. Setting his teeth, Pheylan pointed his gun into the air flow and waited.

No one tried to come in. But then, no one had to. Sooner or later he would have to come out on his own, and waiting until he ran out of ration bars would gain him nothing. Sliding his pistol into the inner pocket of his jacket, he unstrapped from his chair and worked his way through the cramped space of the pod over to the blackened opening. The edges were still warm, but not too hot to touch. Getting a grip on the handholds, he looked cautiously out.

The light outside was too dim to see very well, but he could make out a row of indistinct silhouettes facing him from three or four meters away. Worming through the opening, he dropped to the deck beside what was left of the hatch cover. "I'm Commander Pheylan Cavanagh," he called, hoping the quaver in his voice wasn't as noticeable to them as it was to him. "Captain of the Commonwealth Peacekeeper starship Kinshasa. Who are you?"

There was no reply, but one of the shadowy figures left the line and stepped toward him. He stopped a meter away, and Pheylan had the impression that even in the dim light he was having no trouble looking the prisoner over. "Brracha," he said in a deep voice; and as he did so, the lights in the room came up.

And Pheylan finally got a clear look at the creatures who'd destroyed his ship.

They were roughly human in height, with slender torsos and a pair each of arms and legs in more or less human arrangement. Their heads were hairless, the faces roughly triangular in shape as large brow ridges over the deep-set eyes narrowed to hawklike beaks. They were dressed in tight-fitting footed jumpsuits of a dark shimmery material, with no insignia or other ornamentation that Pheylan could see.

Nor were there any obvious side arms in sight. Pheylan eyed them, wondering if it was possible that the basic concept of hand weapons could somehow have passed them by. If so—if that meant they might miss the flechette pistol in his jacket pocket—

There was a movement to his right, and he turned to see another of the aliens step through an archway into the bay, a long folded towel of what looked like their jumpsuit material draped around the back of his neck. He came up to the alien facing Pheylan, who turned and took the material. Their heads, Pheylan saw now, extended farther back than he'd realized, curving back and under to the neck and to a low spinal ridge that jutted out from their jumpsuits. The ridge terminated just above the legs in a flat, eellike tail that seemed to twirl continually in a tight corkscrewing spiral.

The alien spokesman turned back to Pheylan and held out the material. "Tarr'ketarr brracha," he said in the same deep voice.

Pheylan focused on it and saw that what he'd taken to be a long towel was in fact another of their jumpsuits. "No, thank you," he said, shaking his head and tapping his chest. "I prefer to wear my own uniform."

The alien opened his mouth slightly, and a long dark-red tongue jabbed outward at the jumpsuit in his hands. "Tarr'ketarr brracha," he repeated.

Pheylan grimaced, but it was obvious that they had their minds made up. It was also obvious that unless he wanted to haul out his gun and start shooting, there weren't a lot of options open to him. Stripping off his uniform, he put on the jumpsuit.

It was a perfect fit—amazingly perfect, in fact, right down to the slight but annoying bulge around his waist he'd been promising himself to get rid of for the past two years. Clearly, it had been custom-cut for him; and while that eliminated any potential problems of movement or breathing, it also left him no loose nooks or folds where he might be able to conceal his pistol.

The point turned out to be moot. He was still figuring out how the fastening strip worked when the second alien stooped and collected his uniform and equipment, then turned and disappeared back the way he had come.

The spokesman took a step to the side. "Brracha," he said. Again the tongue snaked out, stiffened to point briefly to the alien's right, then retracted again into his mouth.

Pheylan looked in that direction. There was the outline of a large hexagonal-shaped hatchway on the bulkhead, probably the door his pod had come in through. The request was obvious, and as with the jumpsuit there wasn't anything to do but obey. He headed toward it, the alien spokesman stepping to his side as the rest of the line formed up behind them. As they approached the hatchway, it folded outward, letting in a burst of cool, spicy-pungent air.

The sky outside was blue with a scattering of white clouds. As the hatchway continued to open and Pheylan got closer to it, he saw first the tops of tall gray-green objects—the local equivalent of trees, he decided—and then, between him and the trees, a complex of low, flat buildings. From his angle it was difficult to be sure, but they looked as if they were the same linked-hexagon design as the aliens' ships.

A dozen more of the aliens were waiting for him on the ground, standing in a line facing a flat ramp that had been run up to the edge of the hatchway. Pheylan started down toward them, trying to get a look at everything without being too obvious about it. The building complex seemed to be backed up against the gray-green forest, with a wide-open space between it and the landing area. Here and there a few plants still grew, but most of the ground around the complex was a uniform reddish dirt. An indication that it had been only recently finished, he decided, a hunch supported by the second complex clearly still under construction just off the landing area to his right. At the edge of the forest, midway between the two building complexes, was a small geodesic shape with the ominous look of a weapons dome about it.

He reached the foot of the ramp and stopped. "I'm Commander Pheylan Cavanagh of the NorCoord Union," he identified himself again. "Captain of the Peacekeeper starship Kinshasa."

The middle three aliens in the line stepped forward; and now that he was closer, Pheylan could see that their jumpsuits were a different design from those his shipboard escort were wearing. The two flanking aliens stopped a meter away, while the one in the center took another step toward Pheylan. "Mirras kryrrea sor zhirrzh har'proov," he said. His long tongue extended, curved back beneath the lower beak almost to his neck. "Svv-selic: Too'rr," he said. The tongue swung around to his right to point toward the alien there. "Nzz-oonaz: Flii'rr." The tongue swung around to his left—"Thrr-gilag: Kee'rr."

"Cavanagh," Pheylan repeated, sticking out his own tongue and trying to point to himself. Not surprisingly, it didn't work very well. "Earth," he added, hoping he was guessing right about what had been said.

"Cavv-ana," the alien repeated. "Urr't."

"Close enough," Pheylan said. "Now let me try. Siv-seleck: Too-err—"

"Svv-selic: Too'rr," the alien corrected him sharply.

"Right," Pheylan said. "Siv-selick—"

"Svv-selic: Too'rr," the alien insisted.

"Yes, I get it," Pheylan said. He could hear the differences; he just couldn't get his mouth to make the proper sounds. "Sorry, but 'Siv-selick' is as close as I can get. You're not exactly on target with 'Cavv-ana' either, you know."

For a moment Svv-selic gazed at him, as if trying to guess what his prisoner might have said. Pheylan found himself looking at the alien's wide eyes, noticing for the first time that each had what looked like three separate pupils. The two on either end were vertical, catlike slits, while the center pupil of each eye was noticeably wider. It struck him as an odd and rather redundant arrangement.

Though so did the aliens' hands, for that matter, composed of three fingers plus two oppositely placed thumbs. Was the second one a spare? Or did their particular grasping movement require an extra thumb to get a proper grip? Or was the appendage something else entirely?

Long ago, in his second year at the Peacekeeper academy, there'd been a unit on nonhuman physiognomy. He was beginning to wish he'd paid more attention in that class.

The alien stirred, cutting off his musings. "Brracha," he said.

From the chorus line of aliens two approached, each with a small round greenish-yellow ball clutched in one hand. One of them stopped beside the alien on Svv-selic's left—Thrr-gilag, if Pheylan was right about these jawbreaker consonant sounds being names—and handed him the ball. Thrr-gilag took a step forward and, in turn, handed the ball to Svv-selic. At the same time, the other alien handed his ball to Nzz-oonaz, who stepped forward and handed it to Pheylan.

"Thank you," Pheylan said, frowning at it. It was hard but not too heavy, with a bumpy texture and a strange but not unpleasant aroma. A piece of fruit? He looked back up at Svv-selic, wondering if they intended for him to eat it. Svv-selic, watching him, held up his own piece of fruit—

And suddenly his tongue snapped stiffly out, its edge slashing like a knife blade as it ripped through one side of the fruit.

Pheylan jumped, startled. The tongue retracted and slashed out again, cutting a second deep groove in the other side of the fruit. A thick, clear liquid pooled slowly across the top of Svv-selic's fingers and dripped over them onto the ground. "Brra'avv rrv nee," he said.

Pheylan swallowed hard. As an object lesson, it could hardly have been improved on. It probably also explained why they weren't bothering with hand weapons. "Very impressive," he managed. "Now what?"

"Brracha," Svv-selic said. His tongue slid out, supple and nonknifelike again, and pointed at the fruit in Pheylan's hand.

Pheylan shook his head. "I'm sorry, but I can't," he said, sticking out his tongue again for their inspection. "My tongue doesn't work that way."

For a long, uncomfortable moment Svv-selic just looked at him. Then he turned and handed the lacerated fruit back to Thrr-gilag. As he did so, Nzz-oonaz stepped forward again and took the fruit from Pheylan's hand. "Brra sev kel't mrrt," Svv-selic said.

He turned, the others standing with him following suit, and started toward the building complex. One of the shipboard escort stepped up to Pheylan's side and gestured toward the complex with his tongue. "Right," Pheylan said, and started walking.

They led him to a heavy-looking door in one of the smaller hexagons at the near edge of the complex. Svv-selic swung it open and gestured with his tongue. "Right," Pheylan said again, and stepped inside.

It was a large room, taking up most if not all of the hexagon. Three of the six walls were lined with waist-high consoles, some of them with displays that showed shifting ghosts of hazy luminescence or more sharp-edged patterns of white and gray. A dozen pieces of alien furniture were scattered loosely around two of the other three walls. The sixth wall held the door they'd entered by, itself flanked by another pair of consoles.

And in the center, arranged inside a floor-to-ceiling glass cylinder, was a bed, a chair and fold-down table, a toilet, an open-top shower, and a washbasin.

His cell.

"Nice and cozy," he commented sourly. Actually, it wasn't nearly as bad as he'd expected. Small but adequately appointed, a little short on privacy... and, somehow, oddly familiar. He took a step toward it, studying the layout—

And stopped abruptly as a tongue darted out in front of him, pointing to his left.

He looked. Five of the aliens had grouped themselves beside one of the consoles against the wall. A console whose front panel was even now extending a flat, tablelike slab into the room.

Pheylan took a deep breath. Alien or not, he knew a medical-examination table when he saw it. "Okay," he said, bracing himself and starting toward it. "Let's get it over with."

 

It took three hours in all—a long and distinctly unpleasant three hours. Still, he had to admit as the glass door of his glass cell swung shut behind him, it could have been a lot worse.

Maybe that part would come later. After they'd learned some English and could ask him all the questions prisoners of war were usually asked. He wondered if their culture included the concept of torture.

He took a deep breath, looking around the room and trying to ignore the uncomfortable tingling still running through his muscles from the instruments they'd used in their examination. With three hours to think about it, he'd figured out why the cell arrangement had looked familiar. Except for the missing wall displays and mounted artwork, it was a perfect copy of Commodore Dyami's stateroom aboard the Jutland.

He stepped over to the bed and sat down, running a hand over the material. It was noticeably softer than a standard shipboard bunk, and the blanket felt more like plastic than cloth. But they'd gotten the basic style right.

The aliens were still in the outer part of the room, some of them watching him. Swiveling around, he stretched out on the bed and gazed up at the flat, almost featureless ceiling. Wondering if they realized the priceless bit of information this room had given away.

They'd had four ships at the battle: big ships, far too big to use the double-speed skitter stardrive. They'd picked him up at that same battle and flown him here. Presumably directly, and he would have known from the engine sound if they'd stopped along the way. True, they could have had a skitter stashed aboard one of the other ships, which could have arrived here fourteen hours ago. But most of that lead time would have been eaten up by however long it took the aliens to sift through the rubble of the Peacekeeper force. And yet, he'd arrived to find a copy of Commodore Dyami's stateroom already in place for him.

The conclusion was inescapable. The aliens had a method of true instantaneous communication.

It was the breakthrough in tachyonic physics that the Commonwealth had been looking for for probably the last hundred years. This wasn't just the raw, single-bit information that a ship was passing by a few light-years away or that a tachyon static bomb had just been triggered. This was someone at the battle talking directly to someone here, giving highly detailed instructions as to what kind of environment to set up for the prisoner who was on his way. It was contrary to everything the scientific establishment thought they knew about tachyon physics. And yet here it was.

And the consequences could be devastating. Detailed information from advance scouts, from forward bases, from the height of pitched battles—all of it would be instantly available to the aliens' high command. It would be modern planetary warfare, expanded to interstellar scale.

And he was the only one in the Commonwealth who knew it.

He closed his eyes, unwilling to let his captors see the tears there even if they had no way of understanding their significance. He'd made it through the massacre alive—from the evidence, apparently the only one of the 145 aboard the Kinshasa who had. He'd known every one of those men and women, and had been responsible for their lives.

And he'd failed them.

He swallowed, his throat aching with bitterness and guilt. Already he'd replayed the battle a hundred times over in his mind, searching for something—anything—that he could have done differently. Something that he should have done, or shouldn't have done, that would have made a difference.

There was no way for him ever to make up for the people who'd died aboard his ship. The best he could do now was to make sure they hadn't died uselessly.

He opened his eyes again. The aliens were still going about their business, their tails corkscrewing slowly around as they conversed in small groups or bent over flickering consoles. He would survive, he promised himself silently. No matter what they did to him, he would survive. And as they learned about him, he would learn as much as he could about them.

And when the time was right, he would do whatever it took to escape from this place and get his knowledge back to the Commonwealth.

 

"Okay, Colonel, we've got us a green light to go in," Lieutenant Alex Williams said, keying the drudgeship's engines off standby. "Where do you want to go?"

"I'm not sure it really matters," Holloway admitted, gazing out the canopy at the brilliantly lit field of debris drifting through space in front of them. "Given Dorcas's location and all, I thought it might be instructive to see what we were up against. I guess I could have saved myself the trip."

"There's not much left to see," Williams agreed. "We've already picked up most of the big pieces and sent them off to the analysis center on Edo. Mostly what we're doing now is picking bodies out of the rubble."

Holloway nodded, his stomach tightening in anger. That part had shown up in exquisitely painful detail in the watchship records. Twenty-eight hundred men and women, most of them slaughtered for no reason. "We're going to have to make them pay for that."

"No argument from me on that one," Williams said grimly. "Odds among my crew are running five to one that we finally bring CIRCE out of retirement."

"Let's just hope they're damn careful when they start putting it back together," Holloway said, looking around at the floating debris. "All we need is for these butchers to get hold of a working CIRCE."

"These, or any other batch," Williams said. "The Pawoles still haven't forgiven us for using it on them. I'll bet the Yycromae wouldn't mind getting their hands on it, either."

"That's certainly a cheery thought." Holloway looked out the viewport at the dim sun of the system, so far away it was hardly distinguishable from the background stars around it. "What were they doing out here, anyway?"

"Probably poking around the cometary halo looking for stuff to mine," Williams said. "Wasting their time—our teams looked the place over about five years ago. Nothing here worth the effort of digging out. Look, Colonel, we've still got a lot of work to do out there. If you want, I can drop you off—wait a minute." He cocked his head slightly, listening intently to his earphone. "Williams here. You sure? Okay, stay with it—I'm on my way."

He keyed the drive, and the drudgeship swung around toward one of the banks of lights. "What is it?" Holloway asked.

"The jackpot, maybe," Williams said. "Someone's spotted what looks like a piece of alien ship outside the scavenger area."

Two other drudgeships were already there when they arrived, their remote analyzers drifting across the fragment's surface. "What have you got, Scotts?" Williams asked, touching a switch and pulling off his headset.

"Looks like a hull plate, Lieutenant," the other's voice came over the cockpit speaker. "A piece of one, anyway. Got some electronic fragments or something on the underside, too."

"What got it, a shrapnel line?"

"Looks more like expansion shock to me," Scotts said. "Probably flash-heated by a close-in warhead explosion and popped at the seams. I'm picking up some odd dust here, too—could be the same stuff. We'll scoop some of it up."

Holloway peered out at the milky-white plate, only slightly scarred except near the edges where it had broken. "One plate and some dust," he commented. "Must be one very sturdy hull material."

"All that, and more," Scotts said. "I want a copy of the stress-test report when it comes in."

A third remote had drifted in to join the other two now at the hull plate's surface. "What haven't you done yet?" Williams asked.

"Bakst is looking at the edge structure; I'm trying to get an angle on those electronics," Scotts said. "We haven't tried composition yet."

"Okay, I'll run that," Williams said, keying in the program. "The Jutland ships took a shot at this before the shooting started," he added to Holloway, leaning over in his seat to peer into the remote's display. "Didn't get 'em anywhere; but then, they were eight klicks away and trying to read through a heat-dump spectrum. Let's see if we can do a little better now... well, well. Bingo."

"What?" Holloway asked.

"It's not a metal alloy at all," Williams said, straightening up again. "It's a ceramic."

"A ceramic?" Holloway echoed. "I've never heard of a ceramic this tough."

"Me, neither," Williams said. "I guess we're hearing about it now."

"I guess we are," Holloway agreed. "And that explains why the radar-triggered missiles the force kept throwing never went off. There weren't any large masses of metal for them to lock on to."

"I don't think there were even any small ones," Scotts's voice came from the speaker. "You're going to love this, Lieutenant. These electronics things on the underside? No metal in 'em."

"Not even power lines?"

"If they're here, I can't find them," Scotts said. "All the filaments they've got running in and out are just optical control fibers. No idea how the power's getting in."

"Could they be using a Djadaran electron-tunneling effect?" Holloway asked.

"Not unless they've come up with a way to make it a lot more efficient than the Djadar ever did," Williams said. "How about it, Scotts?"

"I don't think so," Scotts said slowly. "Scan's still running, but so far I'm not reading any semiconductors, either."

"No metals or semiconductors?" Williams frowned. "All right, I give: what is there?"

"Throw your guess in with mine," Scotts said. "All I'm getting is the optical fibers plus some complex geometric shapes of unknown composition."

"Crystalline?"

"Or amorphous," Scotts said. "The analyzer can't seem to make up its mind on that one, either. We could try taking an interference reading."

"Not worth the effort," Williams said reluctantly. "We're just supposed to find this stuff, anyway—it's up to the geniuses on Edo to figure out what the hell it is. Pull your remotes back and I'll take this piece in. You and Bakst start a search of the area, see if you can find any more pieces. I'll swing a couple more ships over to give you a hand."

"Yes, sir."

Williams keyed the board speaker switch off again and put his headset back on. "Where are we going?" Holloway asked.

"Back to the Ganymede to drop this off," Williams said, looking at the display as he maneuvered the grabber arms out toward the alien plate. "And unless there's something else you want to see, Colonel, I'm going to drop you there with it. We've still got work to do out here. And there's no guarantee the aliens won't come back."

"I understand," Holloway nodded. "I'd better be getting back to Dorcas, anyway."

"I can't say I envy you your post," Williams said candidly. "Playing sitting duck on a rock like Dorcas isn't my idea of a fun tactical stance."

"I could think of better positions myself," Holloway agreed. "Somewhere in Orion Sector springs to mind. You think you'll be able to find all the bodies?"

"Probably," Williams said, the bulk of his attention clearly on the task at hand. "The battle was pretty well localized—it was over too fast for much drift. Why?"

Holloway looked out at the field of junk floating off to their right. "Just wondering if maybe they weren't all killed."

Williams shook his head. "The watchships didn't leave until all the locator beacons had been silenced. And those things don't break down by themselves."

"Yes, I know," Holloway said. "I was just thinking that if I'd just had a run-in with an unknown race, I'd make sure I got at least one live prisoner to take back for study."

Williams shrugged. "You can't count on them thinking like humans."

"It still wouldn't hurt to mention the possibility in your report."

"Frankly, Colonel, I've got better things to do right now than add stuff to my file work," Williams said. "If you want it put in, write it up yourself."

"Maybe I will," Holloway said, looking out at the lights of the drudgeships moving around against the stars. "Yes. I think I will."

 

5

The rumors had begun even before they'd left Mees, and for the entire ten-hour trip they seemed to be the sole topic of conversation aboard the liner. There were whispered stories of sudden activity at the Peacekeepers' orbital Bridgehead base; second- and third-hand reports that the governments of the three human enclaves on Mees had been called into emergency session; dark hints that postbattle assessment teams had been activated and been whisked off God only knew where. Through it all Aric had kept to himself, working through the shock and grief of his father's unexpected message as best he could. Wondering how his younger brother had died, and whether the still unknown circumstances surrounding it were to blame for the flurry of nervous hearsay.

It wasn't until he reached the NorCoord Parliament chambers that he had his first inkling that the rumors might for once have been understated. The smiling young pages who normally stood by the doors to the observation balcony had been replaced by a pair of armed and decidedly unsmiling Peacekeeper Marines. They checked Aric's ID carefully, double-checked it against their list, and finally let him in.

He walked down the short entrance corridor to the rear of the balcony proper. Kolchin was waiting there, leaning against the wall with his usual deceptive air of carelessness. A dozen other men and women loitered nearby, all exuding the same aura of alert competence as they gave Aric a thoughtful once-over. Apparently, CavTronics Industries wasn't the only big gun of Commonwealth industry and business represented here today.

"Mr. Cavanagh," Kolchin nodded as Aric came up to him. "Good to see you, sir."

"You too," Aric nodded back, noting peripherally that with Kolchin's identification of him the other bodyguards seemed to lose interest. "Where is he?"

"Down there," Kolchin said, pointing toward one of the lower tiers of seats.

Aric looked. The balcony was barely a quarter full, his father's white hair instantly recognizable in the subdued lighting. He was sitting alone, and even at this distance Aric thought he could see a slump in the older man's shoulders. "Melinda hasn't arrived yet?"

Kolchin shook his head. "No, but she should be here soon. She was doing an operation on Celadon that couldn't be rescheduled and had to catch a ride with one of our transports. They got in to Cheredovat about half an hour ago. Parian's bringing her in."

Aric nodded. "Okay. Send her down when she gets here, all right?"

"Sure thing."

Parlimin Hurley Maxwell was on the podium down on the floor below, speaking passionately about Peacekeeper preparation and funding as Aric walked down the aisle. "Hi, Dad," he said as he reached his father's row and sat down beside him.

"Aric," the elder Cavanagh said, giving him a poor attempt at a smile as he gripped his son's hand. "Thanks for coming."

"Sure," Aric assured him, studying the other's face in the subdued light. There were new lines there, lines of fatigue and grief that he hadn't seen three weeks ago. The old man was taking this hard. "How are you doing?"

"No worse than you'd expect," his father said, trying the smile again with the same lack of success. "Of course it's hard; but it's not like we never knew that this day might someday come. Pheylan knew there were risks that came with the uniform, and he accepted them."

"It was more than just acceptance, Dad," Aric reminded him. "He'd wanted to be in the Peacekeepers since before he was seven." He smiled as a stray memory clicked. "Wanted it about as badly as he didn't want an office job."

His father threw him a sideways look. "Told you about that fight, did he?"

"We told each other most things," Aric said, swallowing through a suddenly aching throat. He was going to miss Pheylan, too. More than he was willing to admit even to himself. "I remember him storming into my office right after that particular argument and announcing that he'd rather join a pirate gang than disappear like me behind a desk somewhere in CavTronics. It took me half an hour to calm him down."

"That sounds like him," the elder Cavanagh said, shaking his head. "Strange, isn't it. He hated the idea of a desk job; but even in the Peacekeepers that's where he would eventually have wound up. Maybe it's just as well he didn't get that far."

"Maybe," Aric said, looking down at the chamber floor and searching for a way to change the subject. His father was putting up a good front, but beneath the calm words Aric could see an all-too-familiar pattern beginning to form. The downward emotional spirals that followed Aric's mother's sudden death had plagued his father for months afterward, taking a harsh toll on his health and threatening to turn him into a recluse. Now, five years later, Aric suspected he would be even less capable of handling that kind of stress. "What's the big debate down there today?" he asked. "Some fallout from all of this?"

"More than you know," his father said. "I couldn't put it into my message, but your brother didn't just die in an accident or minor skirmish. The Kinshasa was destroyed in a full-blown battle. Along with the rest of the Jutland task force."

Aric swiveled in his seat. "The entire task force?"

The other nodded. "All eight ships. No survivors."

An unpleasant tingle ran through Aric's body. The shipboard rumors had indeed been understated. No wonder the Marines were on guard duty out there. "Where did it happen?"

"Dorcas. A few light-years outside the system, actually."

"Do we know who hit them?"

"All we know is that it's someone new," his father said. "That much was clear from the watchship data. Who they were, or where they come from, we still don't know."

Slowly, Aric turned back and settled again into his seat. A brand-new self-starfaring race... and already blood had been drawn. "What's Peacekeeper Command doing about it?"

"Preparing for war." His father gestured toward the chamber floor below. "And I can't say that everyone is upset at the prospect."

Aric focused his attention on the podium. "—and will furthermore cement our position once and for all within the Commonwealth and among the nonhuman worlds," Maxwell was intoning. "For the past decade the policies of the Northern Coordinate Union have been treated with thinly veiled contempt by more and more member states of the Commonwealth. Particularly those policies involving the organization and philosophy of the Peacekeeper forces that protect them. It's high time we demonstrated to the critics that their taxes and young people have not been simply disappearing into some soft, bloated military bureaucracy. The Peacekeepers are hard and lean and ready to fight. It's time they proved it."

He picked up his plate and stepped down from the podium to a ripple of applause from the rest of the chamber. "He's sure ready to go," Aric murmured.

"He's not the worst, either," his father said. "There's a small but vocal faction that's convinced on philosophical grounds that a strong common enemy is exactly what the Commonwealth has been missing lately. Something to pull humanity together, get us all going in the same direction again."

"Under NorCoord leadership, of course."

The elder Cavanagh shrugged. "Some of them genuinely believe that would be better for all of humanity. I'm not sure all of them do."

"Has anyone brought up CIRCE yet?"

"Not yet," the other said grimly. "But it can only be a matter of time."

Aric studied his father's profile. The taut cheeks, the haunted eyes. The memories. "You don't want it reassembled, do you?"

The other sighed. "You see CIRCE as history," he said, gesturing toward the Parliament floor. "Most of the people down there do, too. Even those my age who lived through the events saw CIRCE more as facts and numbers in a news report than anything else. But I was there. I saw what it did."

Aric frowned. "I didn't know you were at Celadon."

"I wasn't at the battle, no," his father shook his head. "But I was with the cleanup crew that went aboard one of the Pawolian warships afterward."

Wandering around a ghost ship... "Pretty bad, huh?"

"In its own quiet way it was the most terrifying thing I've ever witnessed," the elder Cavanagh said. "You had to see those ships, Aric, to really appreciate what CIRCE had done to them. The Pawoles knew we were experimenting with ion-beam weapons, and they'd built some awesome ion protection into those five ships. They had multiple layers of superdense metal shielding, high-power dipole field generators, even a liquid-envelope radiation reflector. None of it did a bit of good. Twenty-five thousand Pawoles died in that one shot, radiation-burned right where they stood. A shot, remember, that went straight through the cloud of fighters arrayed between the two lines without even singeing them. That was the eeriest part of all."

Aric shrugged slightly. It was hard to get too worked up over nonhumans who'd died before he'd even been born. Especially when it was the Pawoles who'd picked the fight in the first place. "It ended the war," he pointed out.

"Oh, it ended the war, all right," his father said heavily. "And we were all terrified out of our minds that it would end everything. You know as well as I do that no technology ever remains exclusive property for very long—not nuclear weapons, not the Chabrier stardrive, not anything. If CIRCE's secret had leaked out..." He shook his head. "We've been lucky, Aric. Weapons like CIRCE almost always lead in one of two directions: a balance of power where everyone has it, or abuses of power by the exclusive owner. In this case we've had neither."

"Perhaps," Aric murmured noncommittally. It was true enough that CIRCE hadn't been used since the Pawolian war, but not everyone would agree that just because a weapon wasn't fired meant it wasn't being abused. The NorCoord Union had slowly been becoming a secondary voice in Commonwealth politics when the Pawolian war and CIRCE came along. It was hardly a secondary voice now.

A historical fact that was surely not lost on those Parlimins down there. "So how long do you think it'll be before someone finally suggests that NorCoord reassemble the thing and get it ready to use?"

His father nodded toward the floor below. "I'd say right about now."

A Yycroma had taken Maxwell's place at the podium, its furry-scaled crocodilian face almost hidden by the glints of light rippling across the crest and faceted sides of its ceremonial helmet.

Aric frowned. It was hard to tell size and proportion beneath the cloak and helmet, but— "Is that a male?"

"It is indeed," the elder Cavanagh said darkly. "A special envoy from the Hierarch, here on some matter concerning the interdiction zone. He took over from the ambassador as soon as they were informed about the Dorcas attack."

"Terrific," Aric growled. A male Yycroma, the heady smell of conflict in his nostrils. Just what they needed.

[I will be brief,] the Yycroma said, his long jaw grinding out the alien words as if chewing small animals. [I have heard long talk today about preparation and political matters. Such things are for the mediation of females. This is not a faction threat or corsair attack that now stands before you. This is an enemy beyond anything you have faced. To use less than your full strength would be the mistake of fools.]

"Typical Yycroman tact," Aric murmured.

"Shh."

[If I speak bluntly, it is because this danger does not threaten only you,] the Yycroma continued sternly. [The prohibition imposed by Peacekeeper fiat upon Yycroman military vessels leaves our worlds and people defenseless against attack from outside should the interdiction zone forces be withdrawn. And such attacks will come. Speak to the Mrachanis—hear their tales of those who once passed through their domain fleeing an enemy they named as the Mirnacheem-hyeea.]

He paused, his helmet glinting as he swept his gaze around the chamber. [You have spoken of much today. You have not yet spoken of the CIRCE weapon. Of that you must speak further among yourselves. I say only this. If these are indeed the Mirnacheem-hyeea, they will move swiftly to take your worlds from you. If the worlds they seize contain parts of the CIRCE weapon, you will lose by default any ability to use it against them. Think on that.]

He stepped down from the podium and strode back to the observation boxes where the rest of the nonhuman ambassadors sat or squatted. "I guess that makes CIRCE an official part of the discussion," Aric commented.

"Unfortunately, his point's a valid one," his father said. "Scattering CIRCE's components across the Commonwealth might have kept it from being easily abused, but it also makes it vulnerable to precisely that kind of piecemeal seizure."

"I don't see why," Aric said. "The original plans must be still kicking around somewhere. We ought to be able to build an entirely new CIRCE from scratch, let alone manufacture a replacement part or two."

"One would think so," his father said thoughtfully. "But that assumes that it was deliberately designed in the first place."

Aric frowned at him. "Come again?"

"It's just something I've been thinking a great deal about since all this broke. Don't forget that CIRCE came effectively out of nowhere—there weren't even whispered hints about its existence until after it had been used. And in thirty-seven years since then no one else has been able to come up with another working model of it. Either NorCoord's had an incredible run of luck and good security... or else there's something about the weapon that can't easily be duplicated."

Aric chewed at the inside of his cheek. Pheylan had gone on a CIRCE kick back in grade school, reading everything he could get his hands on regarding the history and technology of the project. He'd complained at the time how surprisingly little there was available. "So what are you saying?" he asked. "That CIRCE is a non-human technology that NorCoord found buried somewhere and figured out how to work?"

His father smiled faintly. "You sound like a second-rate thriller. No, I don't think we've got a nonhuman device here. But research accidents do happen; and I think it's entirely possible that part of CIRCE came from a botched experiment that turned out to be more than anyone expected. Possibly one reason they broke the weapon up, in fact. Scattering the pieces across a dozen planets would make it that much harder for a potential thief to identify and locate the key component."

"But they must have analyzed the whole thing since then," Aric argued. "Surely they know by now what they've got."

"Perhaps. Though I can say from experience that electronic mistakes can sometimes be impossible to reproduce. The larger fact remains, though, that if any part of CIRCE is difficult to replicate, we could be in serious trouble if that component was destroyed or fell into enemy hands."

Aric grimaced. "Peacekeeper Command has presumably thought about that."

"If not, one hopes our Yycroman friend has now reminded them."

Aric nodded. On the floor below, a Dja was waddling its way forward. Apparently, Parliament had decided to give podium time to each of the nonhuman observers. "Did you catch the name he was calling those aliens from the Mrach legend? I couldn't make it out."

"Mirnacheem-hyeea," his father said. "It's a somewhat archaic Mrach phrase that translates roughly as 'conquerors without reason.' One of the few bits of the language I know."

Conquerors without reason. "Sounds ominous."

"Agreed. The real irony of it—and I doubt most of the Parlimins down there know this—is that that's the same term the Mrachanis first used for humans."

There was a rustle of movement in the aisle beside Aric. He looked up—

"Aric," Melinda whispered to him, squeezing his shoulder briefly in greeting as she slid deftly past the two men and sat down on her father's other side. "Hi, Daddy," she said, half turning in her seat to give him a long hug. "How are you doing?"

"I'm all right," he said, hugging her back. "Thanks for coming."

"I'm sorry it took so long," she apologized into his shoulder. Her eyes lifted to Aric's, eyebrows rising in silent question. He shrugged, shook his head fractionally. Only time would tell how well their father was going to weather this new loss.

"Parian told me all about the battle on the way over," Melinda continued, pulling back from the hug but keeping hold of her father's hand. "Do they know yet who did it?"

"Not yet." He eyed her carefully. "How are you holding up?"

"I'm okay," she assured him. "Really. Don't worry about me. How about you, Aric?"

"I'm doing fine," Aric told her. To his own ears he didn't sound nearly as convincing as she had. But then, she'd always been a better straight-faced liar than he had. "How did the operation go?"

"No problems," she said, her tone dismissing it as unimportant. "Has anything new happened since I left Celadon?"

"Nothing we're being let in on," their father said. "Excessive speech making from Parliament, mainly. I presume Peacekeeper Command is making better use of its time."

"They are," Melinda said. "Even before your message arrived, they'd already whisked Dr. Haidar and some others off to Edo. He's one of the best diagnostic surgeons in the Commonwealth."

"Gone to help with the autopsies, no doubt." The elder Cavanagh shook his head, eyes focused on nothing. "There'll be plenty of that sort of work for them to do."

Snugged up against his side in its inside pocket, Aric's phone vibrated silently. "I've got a call coming in," he said, standing up. "Back in a minute."

He had to go out past the Peacekeeper Marines at the door before he was far enough outside the Parliament's transmission shielding to get a clear connection. "Hello?"

"Quinn, sir," the familiar voice and face said. "I thought you ought to know that Peacekeeper Command has begun notifying the families of those killed at Dorcas. That means the remains should be released soon. Do you want me to contact them and make the arrangements?"

Aric grimaced. A distinctly unpleasant duty; but it was the family's duty, not Quinn's. "Thanks, but I'll do it," he said. "Who do I contact?"

"Mortuary Affairs," Quinn said. "I don't know who the officer in charge is."

"I'll find him," Aric said. "Are you at the ship?"

"Yes, sir. Captain Teva says we'll be ready to head out to Avon whenever your father wants to leave."

"Good. We'll let you know."

"Yes, sir."

Aric keyed off, called up the directory, and punched in the proper number. "Peacekeeper Mortuary Affairs," a young-looking sergeant answered. "Lewis."

"My name is Aric Cavanagh," Aric identified himself. "My brother Pheylan was captain of the Kinshasa. I'd like to make arrangements for us to pick up his remains."

"One moment, sir."

The phone went blank. Aric leaned against a convenient wall, gazing around the wide circular lounge that wrapped around the back of the observation balcony. The place was mostly deserted, with the usual swarm of tourists already having been turned away and most of the journalists sniffing around the edges of the story having gone one level down to wait for the Parlimins and aides to come out of the chambers.

"Mr. Cavanagh?" a new voice said.

Aric shifted his attention back to the phone. An older officer had taken Sergeant Lewis's place on the display. "Yes?"

"My name is Captain Rawlins, sir," the other said. "All remains have been released and are in the process of being returned to their home states. However, I don't find any listing here for Commander Cavanagh."

Aric frowned. "I don't understand."

"I don't really understand it myself, sir," Rawlins admitted. "There was a lot of damage out there, and there are several remains that are still only tentatively identified. But Commander Cavanagh is the only one listed simply as missing in action."

"Could they have just missed him out there?"

"Unlikely, sir," Rawlins said. "The cleanup team supposedly got everything worth collecting."

Aric rubbed at his lip. Either someone had messed up, or someone was covering up. Either way, he didn't like it. "Who do I need to talk to?"

"I could transfer you to Civilian Affairs, sir," Rawlins offered. "I doubt they could tell you anything more than I already have, though."

"Don't bother, then," Aric said. "Thank you for your help."

He keyed off, resisting the urge to swear out loud. It wasn't bad enough that he'd lost his brother. Now they couldn't even give him a proper farewell.

Well, he wasn't going to simply sit back and wait. Keying his phone back on, he punched for Quinn. "Yes, sir?"

"Quinn, who's the top Peacekeeper officer who Dad might know personally?" Aric asked him.

"Well, he knows General Garcia Alvarez," Quinn said slowly. "I believe he also has at least a passing acquaintance with Admiral Rudzinski. The admiral was the Fleet's Parliament liaison when Lord Cavanagh was in office."

And now Rudzinski was supreme Fleet commander, one member of the three-man Peacekeeper Command Triad. That could prove useful. "Any idea where Rudzinski is now?"

"I heard he was with the assessment team on Edo. I can check if he's still there."

"Do that," Aric told him. "And then have Teva get the ship ready to fly."

"Yes, sir. I take it we're heading to Edo?"

"You take it right," Aric told him grimly. To Edo, to get his brother back.

Or to find out why he couldn't.

 

6

Pheylan had promised himself to do whatever it took to escape from his cell. And for the first four days it looked as though he were going to be leaving on a slab.

It was like no sickness he'd ever had before. Violent stomach cramps without any vomiting; vertigo and light-headedness that left his mind foggy but without any actual pain; fever that came and went almost hourly. It was probably a reaction to some local bacterium or virus, and he would undoubtedly have been much more concerned about it if he'd had any mental energy left for such worries.

He spent most of those four days on his cot, either bundled up to keep warm or with the blankets thrown off and his jumpsuit open to the waist trying to cool himself down. He slept a great deal, too, with strange dreams blending into the equally strange reality of his imprisonment and back again. Occasionally, he would wake up to find some of the aliens standing around him, poking or studying him with dull white instruments. But the memories were foggy. Perhaps they too were dreams. The fifth day he woke up to find himself healthy.

He lay there for a few minutes, running through a mental checklist and trying to decide whether he really believed it. But the discomfort and confusion were gone, and for the first time since landing he realized he was ravenously hungry.

Carefully, he sat up, aware that four days of dehydration could make him as light-headed as the sickness itself had. On his bed's pullout nightstand was a tall cylinder of some clear liquid and two of his escape pod's ration bars. The liquid proved to be a delicately scented water; the ration bars proved to be just what he needed.

He sat on the edge of his bed, looking around the room as he ate. Three aliens were visible, two of them working at one of the consoles, the third lying on what looked like a sort of stretched-out vaulting horse in the lounge area. None of them seemed to be paying all that much attention to him, but he somehow doubted he was being ignored.

Still, they were aliens; and any excessive sense of privacy he might have once had had been burned out by fifteen years in the Fleet. He finished his breakfast, stripped off his decidedly rancid jumpsuit, and stepped into the shower.

The standard Fleet-shower soap drip was missing, but with some experimentation he discovered that a bumpy section of wall near the shower head was a thick slab of some soapy substance. He scrubbed himself clean and shut off the water, remembering only then that there was no towel out there to dry off with. But that was okay. Simply being able to take a shower had made him feel like a civilized human being again, and if he had to walk around buck naked while he air-dried, it was a small price to pay.

He brushed off the excess water and stepped out. To his mild surprise he discovered that his old jumpsuit was gone, replaced by a new one that had been laid neatly across the bed. "Good maid service," he murmured. He walked across to it, glancing around the room as he did so—

And suddenly felt a surge of adrenaline jolt through him. There, off to his left, a vertical crack was visible in the wall of his cell. A vertical crack that bisected the milky-white lock mechanism set into the wall.

It was the edge of the door to his cell. And it was open.

He continued on to his bed, looking around quickly as he tried to kick his brain cells into activity. Could his captors really have left the door open when they brought in the fresh jumpsuit? No—surely they wouldn't have been that careless. It had to be a test of some sort. A test to see what he would do if they offered him a way to escape.

He sat down on the bed, picking up the jumpsuit and pretending to examine it. On the face of it the whole thing was so blatantly obvious as to be an insult to his intelligence. Here he was, barely recovered from four days of illness, imprisoned on an unknown world with nothing but the clothes they themselves had provided for him; and they expected him to jump at the first hint of a way out?

Or were they expecting a different reaction entirely? A reaction like charging out and trying to kill the aliens in the outer room?

His hand, he noticed suddenly, was dry where he was touching the jumpsuit: the material seemed to have wicked the water away from his skin. Possibly why they hadn't provided him with a towel in the first place. He started to get dressed, watching the aliens out of the corner of his eye as he did so. They were still just going about their business, completely oblivious to the open door.

All right, he told himself as he finished sealing the jumpsuit. It had to be a test, which meant that ignoring the door would tell them only that he was smart enough to be suspicious. But with luck maybe he could use it to plant a few false assumptions. Stuffing the empty water tube awkwardly into the top of his jumpsuit, he mentally crossed his fingers and stepped to the door.

The one time he'd seen them use it, the door had swung open on its own at the touch of a button on a milky-white plate set into the cell wall near the door's edge. It wasn't nearly so easy to push open by hand, but it was also not nearly as hard as Pheylan tried to make it look. Whatever method he used to eventually break out of this place would almost certainly include simple raw strength, and the more the aliens underestimated human muscle power, the better chance he'd have.

So he pushed hard against the door, clenching his teeth as he strained to inch it open, hoping that those who were watching couldn't see that his shoulder was simultaneously pushing against the wall itself. He shifted to a two-handed grip on door and jamb as soon as it was far enough open, grimacing all the more dramatically as he forced tired muscles to strain isometrically against each other and against the skintight material of the jumpsuit. He got it open just far enough and squeezed out.

The three aliens were watching him now, all right. But there was no mad scramble for the door or for hidden weapons. Sacrificial goats, for sure, there to draw the tiger in for the attack.

An attack Pheylan had no intention of making. He'd demonstrated his physical weakness with the door; now it was time to demonstrate his innate innocence and lack of aggression. Stepping up to the nearest alien, he pulled the water tube out of his tunic and held it out. "Do you suppose," he said, "that I could have some more of this?"

 

They led him back to his cell, one of them going off to one of the consoles to refill the water tube. This time the door was closed properly behind him.

Apparently, that part of the test was over. Pheylan wondered whether he'd passed or failed.

He drank half the water, then lay down on his side on the cot. Propping his head up with the pillow, resting one hand against the smooth coolness of the cell wall, he gazed out at the aliens as they resumed their work.

Or at least he hoped it looked as if he were watching them. At the moment he was far more interested in the wall of his cell.

His first reaction on seeing it had been to identify it as glass. Later, before succumbing to his illness, he'd changed his mind and decided it was probably a plastic. Now, running his fingertips and nails across the material, he decided he'd been right the first time. An incredibly tough glass, undoubtedly, and a good five centimeters thick on top of it, but a glass nonetheless.

He turned over to lie on his back, trying to think. Glass was a noncrystalline substance, often but not always silicon based. Generally acid resistant, though there were one or two acids that he vaguely remembered would attack it. An old memory drifted up from the past: the time he, Aric, and Melinda had been playing drag ball and he'd driven the ball squarely into the window of his mother's study. The glass itself had survived, but the impact had cracked the framing and popped the pane neatly out onto the desk, knocking over a cup of tea his mother had left there and creating a major mess.

At the corner of his eye, something moved. Pheylan turned to look; but there was nothing there. Just the wall of his cell and the usual flickering of lights from the consoles on that side.

"Cavv'ana."

Pheylan sat up and looked the other way. Standing just outside his cell were three of the aliens. From the design of their jumpsuits, he tentatively identified them as the three who'd accosted him on the ground outside the ship. "Hello," he said, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed and sitting up. "And how are you today?"

The alien in the center regarded him for a moment, the tip of his tongue flicking in and out of his beak. "I well," he said in a deep voice. "You well?"

For a second the whole thing went straight past Pheylan. Then, abruptly, his mental gears caught with a grinding jerk.

The alien had spoken in English.

"I'm much better," he managed, staring at the creature. "I was sick for a few days."

"Who few days?"

Pheylan frowned. Then he got it. "Not who; what. What is a few days," he corrected. "In this case a few is four." He held up four fingers. "Four days."

The alien paused as if digesting that. "I bring your container," he said. He gestured with his tongue to the alien on his left and the pod survival kit gripped in his hand. "You want?"

"Yes, I do," Pheylan said, standing up. "Thank you."

The alien with the bag took a step to the side and knelt down beside the cell door. Three small white squares were set into the glass near the floor, positioned just about right for hinges and a lock. The alien did something with the upper square, and a flat rectangle of the wall swung down. The survival kit turned out to be slightly larger than the opening, but with a little effort he got it through. "Thank you," Pheylan said again as the alien closed the flap.

"You keep alive," the center alien said. Svv-selic, if Pheylan remembered the name right. And if they were standing in the same order as before. "Container necessary?"

"It'll help," Pheylan said, trying to keep the bitterness out of his voice. Such solicitude, all of a sudden, from these things who'd coldly butchered his crew. "But if you want me kept alive, I'm going to need more food than I've got here."

For a minute the aliens conversed softly among themselves. "Food prepare," Svv-selic said.

"Terrific," Pheylan grunted. "So when does the interrogation begin?"

There was another quiet debate on the other side of the glass. "Not understand."

"Don't worry, you'll figure it out," Pheylan assured them sourly. "How'd you learn how to speak English?"

"We later," Svv-selic said. He turned, the others following suit—

"Wait a minute," Pheylan called, scrambling to his feet. For a second, as they'd turned, he'd caught a glimpse of something....

The aliens turned back to face him. "Who?"

"Not who; what," Pheylan corrected again, moving right up to the wall in front of them and thinking quickly. He'd gotten them to turn around as he'd wanted, but now he had to figure out what he'd presumably wanted to say.

Behind the aliens the outer door swung open, spilling a wedge of bright sunshine into the room as another alien came in. Sunshine, and inspiration. "I need more than just food," Pheylan said. "My body needs sunlight every day or two to stay healthy."

For a moment the aliens looked at him. "Not understand," Svv-selic said again.

"Outside," Pheylan said, gesturing to the door, now closed again. "My skin creates chemicals I need to live." He tapped the back of his hand with a finger. "Skin. Chemicals. Vitamin D, melanin—many others."

"Not understand," Svv-selic said. "We speak later."

They turned around again. This time Pheylan knew where to look... and at this distance and angle, he saw it clearly.

They went to the door and exited in another brief flood of sunshine. "Sure you don't," Pheylan muttered under his breath, picking up his survival pack and taking it back to the bed. They understood, all right. That pidgin English was nothing but an act, probably designed to lull him into a false sense of security as to how much of what he said they could understand. But it wouldn't work. He'd seen the scars now, nestled there under the overhang at the base of those long skulls of theirs, and he knew what those scars meant.

Svv-selic and his friends were wired.

He sat down on the bed, pulling open the survival bag and dumping the contents onto the blanket beside him. Wired. Probably with wireless transceivers—there hadn't been any sign of a Copperhead-type jack implant, unless that part had been wired in out of sight beneath the jumpsuit material. But they were wired, all right... and in retrospect, given the technology, it was foolish to think they wouldn't use it. Everything they saw or heard—his words, his intonation, his expressions and body language—were probably going straight into a computer somewhere on base, a computer that was undoubtedly spitting back to them exactly what they should say. Obvious and inevitable, and the only question left was where they'd gotten the grammar and word base from. Perhaps in his fever he'd done a bit of babbling.

There wasn't much left in the survival bag that they'd decided he could have. He sorted the ration bars in one pile, the vitamin supplements in another, the juice tubes in a third. The medical pack was mostly full, though a check showed tiny indentations in each of the capsules where the aliens had taken a sample for analysis. The tool kit, extra flechette clip, rope, and spare clothing were gone. Pulling out the first of the under-bed drawers, he dumped in the ration bars and juice tubes. The vitamins and med pack went into the second drawer. Wadding up the now empty bag, he opened the third—

And stopped suddenly as the last piece fell into place. Commodore Dyami's stateroom, intact enough for the aliens to make a copy of it for Pheylan's cell. Including the under-bed drawers.

Where Dyami had kept his personal research computer.

Slowly, Pheylan dropped the bag into the drawer and pushed it shut. So that was where the aliens had gotten their word base. Dyami had been one of those secretive paranoiac types who hadn't wanted all his personal records going into his ship's computer system where it could theoretically be accessed by anyone willing to dig through all the security barriers. Keeping a private computer was technically a breach of regulations, but it was an open secret among the task force's senior officers, and Pheylan had never heard of anyone being unduly worried about it. The few concerns he'd heard had focused on what sorts of discomfiting secrets about them Dyami might be compiling in those private records.

He took another sip of scented water and lay back down on the bed. A word base was bad enough; but what else might have been in those files? A detailed map of the Commonwealth, maybe, complete with navigational data? Strength and organizational data on the Peacekeepers, including base and task-force locations?

Or could there even have been something about CIRCE?

Abruptly, Pheylan twisted around. There it was again: something he thought he'd seen, brushing past just at the edge of his vision. But again there was nothing there.

Or at least there wasn't anything there now.

Slowly, he scanned that part of the room, taking a good look at everything and everyone there. There was nothing that could account for the movement he'd seen: no physical movement, no trick of lighting, no reflection. It had to be something else.

Perhaps, like the open door, another test.

He turned again to face the wall. Fine; let them play their little games if they wanted to. Sooner or later he'd find a way to turn one back on them, and then he'd be out of here.

Resting a hand against the wall, he scratched idly with a fingernail, and tried to remember everything he'd ever learned about glass.

 

7

Edo was the last gasp of the once-proud and ambitious Japanese Hegemony; the last of fifteen colonies still politically united with the home country. Like most other Earth colonies, the others had broken off from their founding nation somewhere along the line, either grouping together with other colonies on the same planet or else joining the Commonwealth directly as independent states. NorCoord's unique political prominence had kept a handful of colonies aligned with it, but union with the Hegemony had had no comparable advantages, and only Edo still remained. The Peacekeeper base on Edo had been a political compromise, one that critics at the time had roundly criticized. Sixty light-years from Earth, straddling the Lyra and Pegasus Sectors, it was considerably closer to the nonviolent Avuirli than it was to either of the more dangerous Pawolian or Yycroman world groups. As such, the base had long been considered the perfect example of military bureaucratic waste by Peacekeeper opponents. There was no reason, they maintained, to have such an extensive facility out on the fringes near such minor colony worlds as Massif, Bergen, Kalevala, and Dorcas.

For the moment, at least, such criticisms were likely to remain muted.

The base's public waiting room was impressive, too, one that you could be comfortable in for hours. And it was starting to look to Cavanagh as if they might have the chance to put that to the test.

"I'm sorry, Lord Cavanagh," the Marine at the inner door said for probably the tenth time. "Admiral Rudzinski is still in conference. I'm sure he'll contact me when he's ready to speak to you."

"I'm sure he will," Cavanagh said, struggling to contain his irritation. "Can you confirm for me that he has at least been informed I'm here?"

"I'm sure he's been told, sir."

"Can you confirm that?"

"I'm sure he's been told, sir."

"Yes," Cavanagh muttered. Turning his back on the Marine, he strode back to the seats where the other four were waiting.

"Anything?" Aric asked.

"They could replace him with a tape loop," Cavanagh said with a sigh as he sat down between his children. His remaining children. "Rudzinski's still in conference."

"I thought we had an appointment."

"We do. We're almost an hour into it now."

Aric snorted under his breath. "Sounds to me like he's hiding."

Cavanagh glanced at the Marine. "It's starting to look that way, isn't it?"

Beside Aric, Kolchin stirred in his seat. "Maybe we shouldn't wait for official clearance," he said.

Cavanagh looked at him. The young bodyguard was studying the Marine, a thoughtful expression on his face. "Whatever you have in mind, Kolchin, I don't think it would be a good idea."

"It would get us their attention," Kolchin pointed out.

"It would get us thrown off Edo," Cavanagh corrected. "And possibly get you a trip to the hospital."

Kolchin wrinkled his nose. "Hardly."

"Let me try something," Melinda said, pulling out her phone and punching up the directory. "Quinn, do you know the layout of this building?"

"I know some of it," he said.

"Good." She found the number she was looking for and punched it in. "Let's see if this works."

The screen cleared. From Cavanagh's angle the picture wasn't all that good, but it looked like a middle-aged man. "Hello, Dr. Haidar," Melinda said brightly. "This is Melinda Cavanagh. We were on Celadon together last week... right, the Billingsgate team.... Oh, it went fine.... No, actually, I'm right here in the building. My father's here to see someone, but he's in conference and we're stuck waiting. I was poking through the directory and found your name, and thought I'd call and say hello.... Why, yes, that would be terrific.... I think so; let me check."

She looked up. "We all have Class Three clearances, don't we?"

"Yes," Cavanagh told her, wondering what she was planning. Surely building security wouldn't be fooled by anything this transparent.

"Yes, we're all clear," she confirmed, turning back to the phone. "Great. We'll be waiting."

She closed down the phone. "He'll be here in a couple of minutes. We're going to get a tour of the medical facilities."

"That sounds wonderful," Cavanagh said, frowning at her. "We will, you realize, have an escort all the way there and back."

"We're not here to see Admiral Rudzinski," she reminded him. "We're here to find out about Pheylan." She looked across at Quinn. "And every Peacekeeper medical lab I've ever seen has had at least one terminal with a Mindlink jack."

Cavanagh looked at Quinn, too. "I don't think that would be a good idea, Melinda."

"No, sir, she's right," Quinn said. His face was tight, but his voice was firm. "It's our best bet."

"Can you can handle it?"

Quinn gave a short nod. "No problem."

"All right. If you're sure." Cavanagh stood up. "Let's get ready."

He stepped toward the guard; and as he did so, the door behind the Marine slid open. Admiral Rudzinski stood there, flanked by two more Marines. "That won't be necessary, Lord Cavanagh," the admiral said quietly. "All of you, please: come with me."

 

The admiral led them down the maze of corridors, his two Marines following closely behind. Aric walked beside Kolchin, keeping a careful eye on the bodyguard's face. Kolchin had that coiled-spring look about him, and if he decided that Rudzinski was taking them to detention instead of an office, he was likely to object rather strenuously. Aric wanted to be ready to hit the floor if that happened.

They reached a door with Rudzinski's name and a number three on it. "You two wait here," the admiral instructed the Marines as he palmed it open. "The rest of you: inside, please."

It was a conference room, small but impressive even by the corporate standards Aric was used to. A holographic map of the Commonwealth and nonhuman worlds dominated one wall, with a corresponding tactical map on the wall opposite it. Filling most of the room was a stylish French curve-shaped table equipped with a central display spine and surrounded by a dozen comfortable-looking chairs.

Seated in one of those chairs, looking like a cross between a thundercloud and an extremely sour lemon, was Parlimin Jacy VanDiver.

He opened his mouth to speak; Aric decided to get in the first word. "Well, well," he commented lightly. "Old-home week on Edo, I see. At least now we know what the delay was."

"One more time, Admiral," VanDiver warned, clearly intent on ignoring Aric completely. "This is both ill-advised and unnecessary."

"Would you rather they find out another way?" Rudzinski countered. "They have no right—"

"They have every right, Parlimin," Rudzinski cut him off. "They are Commander Cavanagh's family."

"None of whom have clearance for Class One information," VanDiver snapped. "Or any official standing in either the Peacekeepers or the NorCoord government."

"Are you suggesting that I'm a security risk?" the elder Cavanagh asked quietly.

VanDiver looked him straight in the eye. "I'm saying, Lord Cavanagh, that contrary to what you seem to believe, you're no longer the Parlimin from Grampians on Avon. You're a private citizen. You don't rate any special treatment."

"Thank you for reminding us of that." Deliberately, the elder Cavanagh turned back to Rudzinski. "You have information for me about my son, Admiral?"

"To be perfectly honest, Lord Cavanagh, we don't have anything solid enough to qualify as information," the other said, gesturing them to seats around the table as he sat down at the inner-curve chair. "What we have comes more properly under the heading of vague speculation."

He touched a key on the control board, and a field of slow-moving points of light appeared on the spine displays. "A section of the battle scene near Dorcas," Rudzinski identified it.

Aric glanced at his father's face. The pain was back, but buried so deeply that he doubted anyone else in the room except he and Melinda could see it. No surprise there: showing that kind of emotion in front of Jacy VanDiver would be the last thing he would want to do.

"It was taken a few hours afterward," Rudzinski continued. "Here"—a large circle appeared, filling most of the display—"is where the Kinshasa was during the battle. We know that both from the watchship data and from the fact that all the honeycomb pod debris retrieved from inside that sphere came from the Kinshasa" He paused. "And here"—a hazy and slightly distorted white cone appeared near one edge of the circle—"is a stream of oxygen molecules."

He paused. Aric glanced at the others, looking for some indication that any of them had the slightest clue as to what that was supposed to mean. If the blank expressions were anything to go on, they were as mystified as he was. "You said that as if it was important," he prompted.

"We're not sure whether it is or not," Rudzinski said. "What we do know is that it didn't occur during the battle itself. The conical shape's too well preserved for that, and the momentum-vector map too uniform."

"So where did it come from?" Aric asked.

Rudzinski glanced at VanDiver. "There's no way to know for certain," he said, the words coming out with obvious reluctance. "But it's not inconsistent with a deliberate, controlled leak from a honeycomb pod's oxygen tank."

For a long minute the room was silent. "You said you'd identified some of the pods from the Kinshasa," the elder Cavanagh said at last. "Did you find any pieces from Pheylan's?"

VanDiver slapped the table. "There you go," he said, glowering at Rudzinski. "I told you he'd jump to this conclusion, Admiral. I told you he would."

"We haven't identified any specific pieces, no," Rudzinski shook his head. "But bear in mind that that doesn't necessarily mean anything. Not with the kind of destruction we're dealing with here."

"But you clearly suspected something," the elder Cavanagh persisted. "Otherwise, why the investigation?"

Rudzinski made a face. "Blame it on the commander of the Dorcas Peacekeeper garrison," he said. "He took a fact-finding joyride out to the battle site and then filed a recommendation that an effort be made to confirm no prisoners had been taken. One of the analysis team picked up on the suggestion and took it seriously." He waved at the display. "That's what dropped out."

Quinn stirred. "Those momentum vectors you mentioned," he said. "What direction were they pointing?"

"Away from the apex of the cone," Rudzinski said. "And, possibly coincidentally, away from the watchship positions."

"As if someone was using his reserve oxygen supply to get his pod moving toward safety?"

"There is no evidence that anyone survived the battle," VanDiver snapped. "Not Pheylan Cavanagh; not anyone."

Quinn ignored him. "Admiral?"

"It's not inconsistent with that scenario," the other conceded. "It's also not inconsistent with a simple leak."

"He's dead, Cavanagh," VanDiver insisted. "They all are. The Conquerors didn't stop shooting until every single beacon was silenced."

"Beacons can fail," the elder Cavanagh countered. "Or can be shut off." He looked at Rudzinski, a new fire in his eyes. "Or can be blocked."

"No," Rudzinski said, shaking his head. "We've already run that simulation. An operating beacon being pulled inside another ship would show a distinctive fade curve before dropping below detection threshold. There's no sign of anything like that in the watchship records."

"That doesn't prove anything."

"Neither does wishful thinking," VanDiver said, climbing to his feet. "All right, Admiral, you've done your duty. Now if you're quite ready, the rest of the Parliament observation group is waiting for us."

"Just a minute," Aric said as Rudzinski also stood up. "You haven't said what the Peacekeepers are going to do about finding Pheylan and getting him back."

Rudzinski's face seemed to sag a little. "I'm sorry," he said, looking at the elder Cavanagh. "There's nothing we can do. Without some kind of solid evidence that Commander Cavanagh is still alive, we can't risk sending out a search party."

"Why not?" Aric demanded. "He's out there somewhere—"

"You don't have any proof of that," VanDiver cut him off.

"And you don't have any—"

"Enough!" Rudzinski barked.

Aric broke off in midsentence. Rudzinski glared at him, then at VanDiver, and finally turned back to the elder Cavanagh. "In the first place," he said, his voice quiet again, "we wouldn't have any idea even where to start looking. Their exit vector was masked by the watchship static bomb, and without a baseline heat-dump profile for their hulls we can only make a guess as to how far they came. But that's not the crucial point. The crucial point is that if we go charging around out there playing blindman's buff, they're going to pick up on our tachyon wake-trails and follow the search parties straight back to the Commonwealth. And if there's anything certain about all this, it's that we're a long way from being ready to deal with a full-scale invasion."

So you're just going to abandon him. With an effort Aric kept his mouth shut. An insulting accusation like that wouldn't help solve anything; and besides, he knew it wasn't true. Rudzinski's primary responsibility was to defend the Commonwealth, and he couldn't put twenty-four worlds into unnecessary danger for a single man.

The elder Cavanagh put it into words first. "We understand, Admiral," he said, standing up and offering his hand. "I appreciate your time. And your honesty."

"I'm sorry I couldn't do more," Rudzinski said, gripping the proffered hand. He glanced at VanDiver— "And I presume I don't have to insult you by reminding you that everything we've said today comes under the Official Secrets Regulations."

"None of it will leave this room," the elder Cavanagh promised.

Rudzinski nodded. "The Marines outside will escort you to the exit. I wish I could do more."

"Thank you, Admiral," the other said softly. "I think you've done enough."

 

Across the room the door chimed softly. "Come in," Cavanagh called.

The panel slid open. "You wanted to see me, sir?" Quinn said.

"Yes." Cavanagh gestured to the chair beside his desk. "I need your professional opinion on something."

"Certainly," Quinn said, coming in and sitting down.

Cavanagh swiveled the desk plate around toward him. "Take a look. Tell me what you think."

He watched as Quinn's eyes flicked down the text. "Are you serious about this?"

"Very serious." Cavanagh cocked an eyebrow. "You don't seem surprised."

Quinn shrugged slightly. "Kolchin's call, not mine. Said you were practically broadcasting it on the drive back to the ship." He gestured to the plate. "But this isn't the way to do it."

"Why not?"

"Because freighters aren't designed for military activity," Quinn told him. "They're not warships, no matter how many missiles and particle cannon you cram into them. You send them out against our aliens out there, and they'll be cut to scrap."

"All right," Cavanagh said. "So how do we bring them up to fighting trim?"

Quinn shook his head. "We don't. It can't be done. Freighters don't maneuver well, they handle in gravity wells like helium-filled bricks, and their acceleration/mass ratio is a couple orders of magnitude lower than what you need for combat. And they're damn big targets."

Cavanagh grimaced. He'd sweated for nearly two hours trying to work up a halfway respectable task force from the ships and crews in the CavTronics merchant fleet Two wasted hours, apparently. "Let me put it this way: I'm going to go look for Pheylan. What can you do to give me a fighting chance?"

Quinn sighed. "Look, sir, I know how you feel. But this doesn't make any sense. You haven't got the weaponry or the experience. And you don't know where he is."

"We've got the vector they came in on," Cavanagh said. "I'll start with that."

"He may not even be alive, sir," Quinn said quietly. "Odds are he isn't."

Cavanagh looked away from him, toward the wall with the inset pictures of his children and his late wife. "Then at least I'll know that for certain," he told Quinn. "Either way, I'm going."

He could feel the other's eyes on him. "We can't do it with freighters," Quinn said at last. "We need warships. Six attack fighters—Axehead- or Adamant-class, if we can get them. Plus crews. Plus a stardrive-equipped fueler to carry them."

"Really," Cavanagh said, slightly taken aback by the sudden shift in attitude. "Where do you propose we get them?"

"We steal them, of course," Quinn said.

Cavanagh felt his mouth drop open. "You're not serious."

Quinn returned his gaze without flinching. "As serious as you are about going."

For a half-dozen heartbeats Cavanagh just stared at him. The man meant it, all right... and the challenge was now squarely on Cavanagh's side of the table. Just how far was he willing to go to find his son?

The door chimed, jolting into his thoughts. "Come in," he said, reaching over and swiveling the plate back around to face him.

"Dad." Aric nodded in greeting as he and Melinda walked into the room. "We interrupting anything?"

"Not really," he assured them. "How are you two doing?"

"We're holding up." Aric glanced at Melinda. "We wanted to talk to you about Pheylan."

Cavanagh glanced at Quinn, got a fractional shake of the head in return. "What about him?"

Aric's face changed; not much, but enough. He looked at Quinn, back at his father. "We were wondering if there was anything we could do to help get him back," he said, strolling behind Quinn and around the side of Cavanagh's desk. "Some kind of pressure we could bring to bear on Rudzinski or the Parliament."

"We don't know if he's even still alive," Cavanagh said, watching his son's all-too-casual approach. He'd picked up on the mood, all right, and he was aiming for a look at the plate. "But that's a good idea," he added, reaching over and blanking the screen. "Why don't you and Melinda go work up a list of Parlimins who owe me favors."

"Sure," Aric said, measuring his father with his eyes. "You want to tell us first what's going on?"

"What do you mean?"

"Come on, Dad," Aric said. "This is no time for playing games. You and Quinn are planning something. What is it?"

Cavanagh looked at Melinda. She was watching him, too, her expression firm and alert. He'd never noticed before how much there was of Sara in her face when she looked like that. "All right," he told them. "I'm going after Pheylan."

"I see." Aric looked at his sister. "When?"

"Wait a minute," Melinda said. "Personnel before timetable, Aric. You're not talking about going yourself, are you, Dad?"

"Yes, I am," Cavanagh said. "And I don't want to hear any arguments about it."

"Too bad," she said. "Because you're going to get some. This is not some little joyride out to—"

"Melinda." Aric held up his hand. "Let's hear it from the top first, okay? Dad?"

"There isn't much yet to tell," Cavanagh said, waving them both to chairs. He should have known that he couldn't keep this from them for very long. Though to be honest, he hadn't really wanted to. "I was planning to take four of our armed freighters and go look for him, but Quinn tells me that won't work. He thinks we ought to borrow some Peacekeeper attack fighters instead."

"Does he, now," Aric said, giving Quinn a long, speculative look. "And how does he intend to perform this interesting feat of prestidigitation? Especially in the middle of war preparations?"

"Actually, the mobilization will work in our favor," Quinn said. "A lot of Peacekeeper ships and personnel are being rushed back and forth across the Commonwealth right now. A couple extra transfer orders slipped into the stack will hardly be noticed."

"How many transfer orders are we talking about?" Aric asked.

"Not many," he said. "We'd need to get hold of a deep-space fueler and half a wing of Axeheads." He hesitated. "And one Copperhead fighter."

Cavanagh looked at Aric, saw his own surprise mirrored in his son's face. "I appreciate the offer, Quinn," he told his security chief. "But this is my responsibility. Mine and my family's. I'm not inviting you along."

"You don't have a choice," Quinn said bluntly. "You're going to need someone with military experience in command of those fighters—that's not even open to question. Don't worry, there should still be a few Counterpunches lying around that I can get my hands on." Cavanagh looked again at Aric, searching for something to say. Locating and getting hold of a Copperhead fighter hadn't been the part he was worried about, and both he and Quinn knew it. But finding a diplomatic way of putting it...

He was still searching when Melinda jumped into the gap. "I still want to know, Dad, when it was decided that you personally would be going on this trip."

"About two hours before you and Aric crashed the party," Cavanagh told her. "And it's not open to debate."

"Dad—"

"I said it's not open to debate, Melinda," Cavanagh repeated, putting some warning in his voice.

"Really," she said, not shriveling in the slightest under his glare. "I'd like to hear that from Quinn."

"Quinn has nothing to do with the decision."

"He most certainly does," she countered. "He's in charge of the expedition."

Cavanagh blinked at her. "Since when?"

"It's standard company policy, Dad," Aric put in. "You pick the right people for the job, then get out of their way. You told me that my first day."

Cavanagh shifted his glare to his son. He didn't shrivel, either. "Of all the things I've said to you over the years," he growled, "you had to remember that one. All right, Quinn, your turn. Let's hear your two cents' worth."

"Actually, sir, they're right," Quinn said. "You can't go."

Cavanagh tried the glare one last time, with the same results. "Why not?"

"To be perfectly honest, because you're too old," the other said. "The fighter pilots we get aren't going to go along with this unless they're convinced we're legitimate Peacekeeper officers. Fifty-seven-year-old men aren't generally in line-officer positions, and there's no reason why a senior officer would go on a search/rescue mission like this."

"We can find a reason."

"Not one that'll hold up long enough." Quinn looked at Melinda. "Unfortunately, Dr. Cavanagh, that also leaves you out."

Melinda frowned. "Why?"

"Because there aren't a lot of female attack fighter pilots or tail officers," he said. "Chances are good that whoever we get will know most or all of them, at least by name."

"Why can't I be a special envoy from Peacekeeper Command?" Melinda asked. "Or from Parliament? A specialist in captives or something?"

"Because I'd then have to explain why I'm flying a fighter without a tail," Quinn said. "This is going to be fragile enough without pushing things more than we have to."

Aric stirred in his chair. "Process of elimination," he said. "I guess that leaves me."

For a moment no one spoke. "I guess it does," Quinn agreed at last. "When do you want to leave?"

Aric's lip twitched. "The sooner the better, I suppose. What do we do first?"

"Head to Earth. I have an old associate at Peacekeeper Command who might be willing to put me onto a mothballed Counterpunch and some Axeheads that aren't doing anything."

"Okay," Aric said. "What about the deep-space fuel ship?"

"I can get that," Cavanagh said. "I know of a couple of older ones that have been decommissioned and converted to civilian use. I presume you'll be jumping off from Dorcas?"

"Right," Quinn said. "We'll need some other supplies, too—I'll make up a list. You can probably address them to me, care of the Dorcas Peacekeeper garrison."

"Or he could address them to me there," Melinda suggested. "I could go ahead and get everything set up. That way you'll be ready to go as soon as you get there with the fighters."

"That would save time," Quinn agreed, standing up. "All right, we'll do it that way. If you'll excuse me, I'll go get started on the supply list."

"Anything I can do to help?" Aric asked.

Quinn shook his head. "Just be ready to go when I am. I'll let you know."

He left. "Well," Melinda said into the sudden silence. "And to think all we came in to talk about was putting political pressure on Parliament."

Cavanagh nodded, studying his son and daughter and marveling once again at the wide range of personalities he and Sara had created together. Aric, quiet and thoughtful, master manipulator of words but about as nonphysical as it was possible to get. Pheylan, three years younger, forever struggling to escape Aric's prestigious scholastic reputation and spending as much time fighting with his brother as he did defending him from schoolyard bullies. Melinda, midway between them in both age and abilities, skilled in the exacting physical art of surgery but with a lot of Aric's ability to use words as weapons when she chose, often to her detriment.

Pheylan had left home to join the Peacekeepers. Melinda had gone away, too, to the less hazardous but no less nomadic career of surgical design consultant. Only Aric had opted for the safe and familiar life of his father's business.

And so, naturally, it was Aric whom he was sending out into the unknown.

Melinda stirred and got to her feet. "I think I'll go watch Quinn work up his list," she said. "Maybe I can get some orders placed before you leave. You'll say good-bye before you go, won't you?"

"Sure," Aric assured her. "See you later."

She smiled at her father and left. "So," Aric said, cocking an eyebrow. "I trust you're as impressed by the irony of all this as I am."

"You don't have to go, Aric," Cavanagh said. "We can still concoct some story as to why a fossil my age is out on a mission like this. Better yet, we could send Kolchin or Hill along."

Aric shook his head. "Like you said before, Dad, this is family business. Besides, we can't tell Hill or anyone else about this. VanDiver would have your head on a platter if we broke the Official Secrets Regulations."

"I'm willing to risk that."

"I'm not." Aric smiled tightly. "Besides, think of the look on Pheylan's face when he sees his stick-at-home brother coming out of the blue to rescue him." His smile faded. "More important, someone has to be there who can keep an eye on Quinn. And can order him to unplug from that fighter if things get awkward."

Cavanagh sighed. "Good luck on that one," he advised his son. "Quinn considers his security duties to extend to the family, not just the corporation. And he takes those responsibilities very seriously."

"Yes, well, even he ought to be willing to concede that his duties don't extend to damn-fool stunts like this," Aric said.

Cavanagh nodded, feeling his chest tightening. The enormity of what they were planning was beginning to sink in now... and with it were coming the doubts and fears. They weren't just talking about skirting some outdated regulation here, or of pushing the edge of accepted business practice. This bordered on treason. "Aric—"

"We don't have any other choice, Dad," the other said softly. "Not if we want to get Pheylan back. You know it; I know it; Quinn and Melinda know it. In fact, I'd bet money that Admiral Rudzinski knows it. It's our family. Our risk."

"Except that we're hardly the only ones at risk anymore," Cavanagh reminded him soberly. "There are those six Axeheads of Quinn's, for starters. That's twelve men right there. But the real danger is the one Rudzinski brought up back in the meeting. If we lead the aliens back to the Commonwealth, we could be responsible for murdering millions of people."

"No," Aric said emphatically. "You can't take the blame for that one. We've got thousands of ships crisscrossing the Commonwealth every day, every one of them laying out a tachyon wake-trail. If the aliens really want to find us, they aren't going to need a fueler and half a dozen fighters to do it. As long as we're careful and spread a few static bombs judiciously around, that shouldn't be a real threat."

"I hope you're right," Cavanagh said.

"I hope so, too." Aric took a deep breath, exhaled it noisily. "Anyway. I'm glad we had this little talk, Dad. Better go to my cabin, I guess, and get ready to go."

"You'll say good-bye before you and Quinn leave, won't you?"

"Melinda would kill me if I didn't," Aric said wryly. "Don't worry, I will."

He stepped to the door... and paused. "By the way," he said over his shoulder, his voice sounding odd. "Did you notice what VanDiver called them today?"

"Yes," Cavanagh said. "He called them the Conquerors."

Aric nodded. "Sounds like someone's been taking that Mrach legend seriously."

"Legends often have a basis in fact."

"Yes. Might be worth sending someone out to Mrach territory to look into that. Well... see you later."

The door opened and closed behind him. "Yes, indeed," Cavanagh murmured to the empty room. "It might be worthwhile, at that."

For a moment he sat there, listening to the background hum of his ship. Then, stirring, he turned on his plate again. He had a fueler to locate and arrange purchase for. After that he would have Quinn's list of supplies to order.

And after that perhaps he would take that little trip to Mra that Aric had suggested. To hear firsthand this Mrach legend of the Conquerors.

 

8

There was a new assortment of aromas drifting through his cell when Pheylan awoke; and he opened his eyes to discover that breakfast had been served.

It consisted of six flattened hemispheres sitting on a contoured tray just inside the dog flap they'd stuffed his survival pack through the previous day. Each of the lumps was a slightly different shade of tan paste, with chunks of brightly colored food items of different sorts embedded in them. The overall effect was that of holiday cheese balls assembled by color-blind children, and Pheylan wasn't at all sure it was something he really wanted to face first thing in the morning. But his ration-bar stock was being steadily depleted, and he wanted to save at least a couple of days' worth for whatever escape attempt he wound up making. And after all, the Peacekeeper recruiter had promised him new and exotic experiences.

Figuring out the utensil they'd supplied with the meal was the first challenge. The main part was shaped basically like a half-melted spoon, but it had a spring-loaded textured stick attached at the back end that worked against the edge of the spoon bowl like something midway between tongs and chopsticks. Probably a breeze to use with that extra opposing thumb of theirs, Pheylan decided, but his human hands couldn't seem to get the hang of it. The whole thing was made of a soft, rubbery material, and eventually he just gave up on the chopstick attachment and bent it back out of his way.

The aliens' first attempt at a home-cooked human meal was, not surprisingly, a decidedly mixed achievement. Only one of the six food lumps tasted genuinely good, the rest ranging from so-so to nearly tasteless to a near-perfect reenactment of the time he'd misread the heat setting on the oven and turned his mother's roast into charcoal. He ate all of them, though, except the last, starting with the best-tasting and working his way down the scale. It would be interesting to see if his observers took note of the order and adjusted the menu accordingly for his next meal. He rather thought they would.

His three interrogators arrived near the end of the meal, and this time he spotted the unobtrusive door they came in by. It was sandwiched between two consoles, one of which blocked any view of what lay beyond. A prep room, maybe, with no guarantee of another exit from it. Still, something to keep in mind.

"Greeting, Cavv-ana," Svv-selic said as Pheylan laid the tray aside. "You well?"

"Reasonably well," Pheylan said, dropping the tong-spoon on the tray and taking a last sip of water. Svv-selic's proficiency with English seemed to be improving, though perhaps not as quickly as Pheylan would have expected of someone equipped with the aliens' version of Mindlink connections. Either they were having trouble deciphering the data in Commodore Dyami's computer, or else their translators weren't as sophisticated as the equivalent Peacekeeper programs. He hoped it was the latter; it would be nice if humanity was ahead of them in at least one area. "And you?"

"We well." Svv-selic motioned, and the shortest of the three—Thrr-gilag, if Pheylan remembered right—stepped forward with what looked like a folded jumpsuit under his arm. He opened the dog flap and stuffed it into the cell. Pheylan watched the operation closely, counting off the seconds and trying to gauge whether or not he would have time to leap forward and grab a wrist before the alien could withdraw it. It would be barely possible, he decided, though how useful it would be he wasn't sure.

"You wear this," Svv-selic said as Thrr-gilag closed the dog flap again.

Pheylan stepped forward and picked it up. It was a jumpsuit, all right, made of the same material as the one he was wearing but with a stiffened and slightly thickened ring around the upper arms, forearms, midthighs, and ankles. There were also rings around the chest and waist, their placements corresponding to that of the arm rings. Scattered across the suit, on the chest, back, and arms, were a number of small glassy disks embedded in the material. "What's this?" he asked.

"Wear," Svv-selic said. "We go outside."

Pheylan frowned at him. "Outside?" he repeated. "As in, outside this room?"

The other seemed to consider, or maybe was waiting for the translation to catch up. "You need outside. We go."

"Yes, sir," Pheylan muttered, stripping off his clothes and climbing into the new jumpsuit. The thicker rings weren't particularly heavy and didn't seem to constrict his movements any. "All right," he said, patting the fastening strip closed. "I'm ready."

"You not leave we," Svv-selic warned as Thrr-gilag stepped to the door and opened it. "Do, punish."

"I understand," Pheylan agreed. That must be what the rings were for: some mechanism for keeping him in line. Under the circumstances, certainly a reasonable precaution.

Unfortunately, he couldn't just leave it at that. At some point along the way he was going to have to find out what exactly the mechanism consisted of. He hoped it wouldn't hurt too much.

The third interrogator, Nzz-oonaz, stayed well back as Svv-selic and Thrr-gilag moved into step on either side of him. That made Nzz-oonaz the backup, which implied that he was the one with the obedience-suit trigger. The one to be watching, then, when Pheylan made his break.

They moved across the room to the door. Svv-selic did something to one of the consoles flanking it, and the door swung open; and for the first time since his arrival nearly a week ago Pheylan stepped outside.

The weather was much as it had been the day he landed: blue skies and white clouds, a cool but not uncomfortable temperature, light breezes. At the far end of the landing area sat a small ship about the size of a Peacekeeper courier, with a handful of the aliens working busily around it. The second complex he'd seen under construction at that end of the landing area was coming along nicely, and two more of the low weapons-style domes had joined the first.

And in the center of the triangle formed by the three domes was something else that hadn't been there before. A small pyramid shape sparkled in the sunlight, perhaps three meters high, brilliant white but with dozens of dark spots scattered irregularly across the top two meters of its surface.

"Good?"

Pheylan looked at Svv-selic, trying to decipher the other's economical use of the language. Then he got it: he'd told them humans needed sunlight to survive. "It's helping," he nodded, opening the neck of his jumpsuit a few centimeters and turning his face to the sun. "Though it's going to take a while, dressed like this. Not much exposed skin area. It would go a lot faster if I could take off this suit."

Svv-selic's tongue flicked out. "You not do."

"Okay." Pheylan shrugged. "I was just asking." He took a deep breath, stretching his arms out to the side. "Do you suppose I could run a little? Humans need exercise, too."

The tongue flicked out again. "You not leave we."

"Can we at least walk, then?" Pheylan persisted, pointing over to the forest about sixty degrees to the left of the domes and pyramid. "I'd like to take a look at those trees."

There was the usual pause as the translation came through, and another moment as Svv-selic and Thrr-gilag consulted among themselves. "We go," Svv-selic said at last. "You not leave we."

They started off toward the trees, crunching through the loose red dirt surrounding the complex and raising small clouds of dust with each step. Thrr-gilag and Svv-selic stayed close beside him, with Nzz-oonaz still hanging back. "You—Thrr-gilag," Pheylan said.

The shorter alien looked up at him. "Speak."

"How come you never talk to me?"

Thrr-gilag's corkscrew tail picked up its pace a little. "Not understand."

"You never talk to me," Pheylan repeated, throwing a glance toward the domes and pyramid and shifting his path a couple of degrees in that direction. "Neither does Nzz-oonaz, for that matter. It's always Svv-selic who does the talking. Don't you two want to be here?"

Thrr-gilag looked past him to Svv-selic. "Too'rr rights," he said.

"Who or what is Too'rr?" Pheylan asked.

"Svv-selic Too'rr," Thrr-gilag said.

Svv-selic Too'rr? Pheylan ran the two words around his mind a couple of times. Was Too'rr a family name? A title? A military rank? A caste designation? "I don't understand," he said, easing a couple more degrees toward the domes and pyramid. "Is Svv-selic an expert at this type of alien interrogation?"

A pause. "Not understand."

"Is he expert at talking to non—what do you call yourselves, anyway?"

Another pause, and another short conversation between the two aliens. "We Zhirrzh," Svv-selic said at last.

Pheylan tried it out. It wasn't as hard to pronounce as their names, actually, though the word tended to buzz unpleasantly against his tongue. "So is Svv-selic the resident expert at talking to non-Zhirrzh?" he asked again.

Abruptly, Svv-selic's hand snaked over to grip Pheylan's upper arm. "Not go," he said.

"What?" Pheylan frowned as he stopped.

"Not go," Svv-selic repeated. His tongue jabbed out to point at the domes and pyramid Pheylan had been easing them toward.

"What do you mean, not go?" Pheylan asked. So his gut feeling had been right: the domes and pyramid were something important. "I just want to look at the trees."

"We go," Svv-selic said, pointing with his tongue at a group of trees ninety degrees away from the domes.

"I want to see those trees," Pheylan insisted, pointing again near the domes. Sneakiness hadn't worked; time to try bluster. If it didn't work, it would at least give him the chance to test out his obedience suit's capabilities. He hoped that they hadn't overestimated human physique when they'd designed the thing. "I'm going, and you can come with me or not. Your choice."

He started off toward the trees, watching Nzz-oonaz out of the corner of his eye. The Zhirrzh had raised one hand toward him, and he could see a small black device nestled in the curled fingers. The obedience trigger, or else a weapon. "Not go," Svv-selic said.

"Don't worry, I'm not running away," Pheylan called over his shoulder. "Where would I go? I just want a closer look at those trees."

"Not go," Svv-selic repeated, more insistently this time.

Pheylan ignored him. Nzz-oonaz was still pointing his black gadget at him, but so far nothing seemed to have happened. Setting his teeth together, Pheylan took another step, wondering whether it would be an injection or an electric shock and wishing irritably that whichever it was they would get on with it. He took another step—

"Nzz-oonaz: kasar!" Svv-selic called.

It was indeed painful, but not in any way Pheylan had anticipated. From somewhere over his shoulder came a faint hum; and suddenly his legs jerked together and his arms were yanked to his sides and he toppled forward to slam face first into the ground.

For a long minute he lay there, feeling the feathery stalks of the local grass-equivalent prodding against his cheek and fighting to get some air back into his stunned lungs. So that was what they'd come up with. No risky drugs, no potentially dangerous electrodes, just a few strategically placed electromagnets designed to completely immobilize him. Simple, elegant, and very safe, provided he didn't break his neck when he fell. Carefully, trying not to let the effort show, he tested the magnets' strength. He might as well have saved himself the effort.

The humming behind him stopped, and he was once again free to move. Laboriously, he got his feet under him and stood up again. "You not go," Svv-selic said.

"I get the message," Pheylan agreed, rubbing his cheek and jaw where they'd hit the ground. "I wasn't going to do anything, you know. I just wanted to look."

"Why go?" Svv-selic asked.

"Because I was curious," Pheylan told him. "We humans are curious people. It's probably our most distinguishing characteristic."

Svv-selic jabbed out his tongue toward the domes. "Curious not good," he said emphatically.

Pheylan looked. A triangular-shaped door had opened in each of the three domes, and a Zhirrzh was now standing just outside each opening. All of them held long gray sticks with thin rectangular muzzle openings and lots of small but sharp-looking edges arranged around the business end.

And all three of the sticks were pointed at Pheylan.

"You not go," Svv-selic said again.

"You're getting repetitious," Pheylan grumbled. There seemed to be a strange shimmering deep inside the muzzles, like some kind of eerie pilot light. Maybe it was just his imagination. "But you make your point. All right. We'll go look at the trees over there instead."

 

Pheylan had hoped for a chance to examine his new obedience suit more closely, but the Zhirrzh weren't naive enough to leave him alone with it any longer than they had to. They escorted him back to his cell after the brief exercise period and Svv-selic ordered him to strip the thing off. Pheylan did so, they opened the dog flap for him to put it outside, and then they and it disappeared back through the back door.

Pheylan put his old jumpsuit back on, trying to make sense of what he'd just seen. It was clear now that the three domes out there were guardhouses, not the weapons clusters he'd first thought. Their arrangement, furthermore, made it equally clear that what they were guarding was the white pyramid.

The question was, why?

It was too small to be a house, at least for anyone the size of a Zhirrzh. Could it be a tomb? But again, the proportions were wrong for a Zhirrzh, and there was no reason why a tomb should be guarded that way in the first place. A monument? Again, he couldn't think of any reason why a monument would need a three-man guard on it.

Except that they were aliens. There were no guarantees that they would think or behave anything at all like humans. No guarantees that Pheylan could even hope to understand their reasons and motivations.

He shook the thought away. No. They were vicious, cold-blooded killers; but they'd brought him here, given him food and clothing, and so far seemed to be doing all they could to keep him alive. Whatever alien quirks their psychology and culture might have, there was enough overlap here for him to figure out what was going on.

Something flickered at the edge of his vision. Pheylan turned, but as always he was too slow to see anything. Outside the glass wall of the cell one of the Zhirrzh techs, attracted by his movement, looked over at him. Pheylan looked back, and the alien turned back to his work.

So what was the pyramid? If not a monument, could it be something technical? A transceiver, maybe, for that instantaneous communications system of theirs? Or something even more esoteric?—a terminal, say, for some kind of broadcast power?

But, then, why wasn't it taller? Or inside a building or protective shell where it would be out of the elements? The Commonwealth's experiments with broadcast power, he knew, had been notoriously finicky with regard to atmospheric factors. Unless the pyramid shape was its protective shell.

Pheylan shook his head. On the face of it, he had to admit, this was a pretty ridiculous waste of mental energy. The pyramid could be any of a thousand different things, from a planetary communications beacon to a traffic-control signal for the landing area. It could be the Zhirrzh equivalent of a torus music system, a wind-powered computer, a piece of government-mandated artwork—

Or a weapon.

Pheylan looked out at the Zhirrzh working at their consoles, his mouth suddenly dry. An unknown, guarded device in the middle of a Zhirrzh base. A base with no obvious ground-to-space or ground-to-air weapons clusters.

He went over to his bed and lay down on his side, folding his arms across his chest. There had been innumerable late-night bull sessions back at the Peacekeeper academy centering on the possible science and technology of the mysterious CIRCE weapon. One of the more intriguing ideas Pheylan had heard had been that it was a field-effect gadget of some sort, requiring two to five electromagnetic poles and an equal number of resonant-locked tachyon generators. The resultant radiation cascade was theorized to occur at certain specific intersection points between the field contours, supposedly unaffected by any matter elsewhere in the area.

Such as the fighter squadrons at Celadon. Or the atmosphere of a planet.

Did the Zhirrzh have a version of CIRCE? Was that white pyramid one of its poles?

All right, Cavanagh, settle down. First question to ask was whether this place was a forward military base or a colony or a major Zhirrzh world. Presumably they wouldn't bother setting up a CIRCE on just any old world they happened to land on. Second question was whether the pyramid out there was unique or whether it had lots of brothers nearby. Third question was whether the pyramid was fixed in place or had mechanisms for transport or aiming.

Good questions, all of them. Problem was, he couldn't think of any way to get any answers.

Outside the glass wall two of the Zhirrzh had gotten together and were consulting on something. Pheylan watched them, wishing that Aric were here. He, Pheylan, had always been the physical one of the family; Aric, in contrast, had been much better at manipulating words. More than once Pheylan had watched in secret awe as Aric had finessed information out of their father that he'd flat-out said he wasn't going to tell them.

Pheylan had admired that ability. Admired and envied it both, though he'd been careful to hide that from his brother. In their youth Aric would simply have taken such an admission and found a place for it in his arsenal of verbal abuse, a sport he already got far too much pleasure out of. And after they'd both become adults, the subject had somehow never come up.

Pheylan wished now that he'd said something. Now that it was very likely too late.

He swore under his breath. Thoughts like that weren't going to do him any good here. So he wasn't a wizard with words? Fine. He'd get out of here without them. He had a brain, eyes, and muscles, and it was time he started using them.

And the first step was to learn every square centimeter of this place. Every square centimeter, and every move his captors out there made.

His arms still folded across his chest, Pheylan got started on a set of what he hoped were indiscernible isometric exercises, and began to memorize the room.

 

9

The narrow Granparra street was about as crowded and noisy a place as Aric had ever seen before in his life. Hundreds of pedestrians in rough, colorful fabrics were crammed into the area, pushing and jostling their way along in both directions and in and out of side streets. The flow eddied back and forth, with parts of it sometimes coming briefly to a complete halt as someone paused to examine the wares displayed in the window-front shops or stopped to greet a friend or neighbor. The cacophony of shouts and shouted conversations assaulting Aric's eardrums included at least three different languages; the odors coming from stoves and shops were varied and exotic and made him want to sneeze.

"How much farther?" he called to Quinn ahead of him.

"I don't know," the other called back over his shoulder. A few heads turned at the sound of English words, and Aric noted with some uneasiness that not all of the expressions on those faces were friendly. "The numbering system here isn't always as clear as it could be."

There was a blood-chilling shriek from above him. Reflexively, Aric ducked, glancing up just as a troop of monkey-sized grooma scampered past on the living vine lattice that covered the entire city a few meters above their heads.

Covered the city, and most of the rest of the island. "What do you think of the mesh?" Aric asked, moving up close behind Quinn where he wouldn't have to shout. "Sentient, or not?"

"Not," Quinn said firmly. "The Parra's a plant. Plants aren't sentient. Period."

"I'm not so sure," Aric said, looking up at the vine mesh uneasily. Had anyone ever established whether or not the thing had auditory senses? He couldn't remember. "It does seem able to sense what goes on around it."

"So do sunflowers, if you want to get technical," Quinn said. "There are a lot of other plants that react on a chemical level if you poke or cut them. No one claims those are sentient."

"Except that the same reaction doesn't occur when the vine is cut naturally by lightning strikes," Aric pointed out. "The chemicals in the outer skin don't change, and the grooma don't go nuts. It's only when someone tries cutting the vine back that it counterattacks that way."

"Could be a chemical reaction to the metal in the cutting tools," Quinn said. "Or a reaction by the grooma themselves to the noise and commotion. The point is that no one's ever come up with even a candidate for a nervous system. Let alone enough of one for sentience."

Overhead, another chattering troop of grooma passed by, their claws digging small air and sunlight punctures through the tough outer surface of the vine as they traveled. The Parra seemed to need those punctures, just as it also needed the mineral-rich body oils the grooma paws left behind. In return, the grooma ate the large red buds that the Parra seemed to grow specifically for their benefit.

For their benefit alone. Any other herbivore that started eating sections of the vine would quickly be met by crazed troops of grooma that would usually drive off the intruder in short order. Whether or not it was chemical changes in the red buds that drove the frenzy was still being hotly debated in high academic circles, as was the whole question of Parra sentience.

For the people who lived here, of course, the subject was far from academic.

"Here's our street," Quinn said, breaking into Aric's musings. "Bokamba's place should be at the end of it."

"I'm right behind you," Aric assured him. Following Quinn, he eased his way out of the traffic flow and into the narrow street.

And nearly bumped into Quinn as the other came to an abrupt halt five steps later. "What—?"

He strangled off the question. Ten meters ahead four tough-looking young men were drifting from the sides of the street to positions blocking their path. Four men with expressions set in black stone. "Uh-oh," Aric murmured.

"Fair assessment," Quinn murmured back. "Let's wander back to the main street and try it from the other direction."

Aric glanced over his shoulder. Just inside their side street three more men had appeared, cut in the same mold as the four ahead of them. "Too late," he told Quinn. "I think it might be time to call for help."

"Going for your phone wouldn't be a good idea right now," Quinn said. "The police couldn't get here in time. If they came at all."

Aric swallowed. Quinn had warned him before they landed that the people of Granparra had no love for NorCoord or NorCoord citizens. It was starting to look as if he'd understated the case a bit. "So what do we do?"

Quinn shrugged fractionally. "We see what they want."

He started walking toward the four men now standing in a line across the street in front of them. "Hello," he nodded. "Nice day."

The two men in the middle glanced at each other, but aside from that there was no reaction. Quinn kept going, aiming for the gap in the middle; the four men responded by pulling closer together to block it. Quinn walked to within a meter of the group and stopped. "I wonder if my friend and I might pass," he said. "We have an appointment with a gentleman farther down the street."

"NorCoord," one of the men said, his English thickly accented. "That is right, is it not? You are NorCoord."

"Why do you ask?" Quinn countered.

One of the men spat on the ground. "You are NorCoord. Don't deny it."

"I'm not denying it," Quinn said. "I just want to know why you care."

Another of the men growled something in a fluid-sounding language. Aric eased a little to the side, not wanting to get too far away from Quinn but also not wanting to get in his way if this thing exploded. He glanced back at the three men still blocking their escape, hoping fervently that the Peacekeepers had found time to teach their elite Copperhead pilots something in the way of hand-to-hand fighting.

The four men stepped forward, hands bunched into fists. Quinn stood his guard, swiveling slightly on one foot to turn his right side toward the others. He lifted his hands into a loose ready position Aric had seen Kolchin use on the sparring mat—

"Savva!" a new voice barked.

Aric shifted his attention to the street behind the youths. A middle-aged man was standing there, a few meters back, his arms folded across his chest. "What do you do here?" he demanded.

One of the youths growled something over his shoulder. The middle-aged man growled something back, punctuating the comment with a jabbing finger. For a minute or two the debate went back and forth, with both sides sounding angrier with each exchange. But from the body language Aric could tell that the older man was winning; and even before the youth spat one final expletive and moved reluctantly out of the way, his heartbeat had returned more or less to normal. Together he and Quinn passed between the scowling faces and stepped up to the middle-aged man. "So," the man said, eying Quinn with an expression that seemed to be a mixture of curiosity, hospitality, and distaste. "You came. I wasn't really sure you would."

"My word that much in question these days?" Quinn asked.

The older man smiled wryly, and as he did so, the distaste seemed to fade away. "Perhaps it's merely Anders's opinion of your word that is in question. My apologies." His eyes flicked to Aric. "And this, I take it, is the other gentleman Anders spoke of?"

"Yes," Quinn nodded. "This is Aric Cavanagh, son of my employer. Mr. Cavanagh, I'd like you to meet Reserve Wing Commander Iniko Bokamba. My former commander in the Copperheads."

 

"So what do you think of Granparra's famous hospitality to strangers?" Bokamba asked as he poured a little honey into the steaming liquid in Aric's mug. "A bit disappointing, perhaps?"

Aric glanced at Quinn, but the other was staring meditatively into his own mug. "I've occasionally seen warmer welcomes," he conceded. "I get the impression it was more than just our nonresidency status they were objecting to."

For a brief moment Bokamba's eyes bored into his. "You're NorCoord," he said, turning away and setting the honey vase down on the side table. "The Granparri have a long and deep resentment against the NorCoord nations."

"NorCoord is just one member of the Commonwealth," Aric said. "The Granparri have an equal voice."

Bokamba smiled tightly. "And did the Granparri put a weapons platform above Earth and the NorCoord nations, as well?"

Aric frowned. "The Myrmidon Platform wasn't put there as a threat. It was put there to protect you."

"Was it?" Bokamba demanded. "Or was its purpose merely to exact vengeance when Granparra was destroyed?"

Quinn stirred in his seat. "We didn't come here to talk politics, Iniko."

"He needs to hear this, Adam," Bokamba insisted. "He is a son of privilege, with beliefs that have been created and nurtured by other sons of privilege."

"I'm not a son of privilege," Aric said. "My father wasn't given the title of lord until he left Parliament six years ago."

"I do not refer to titles or ranks," Bokamba said. "I refer to your citizenship in the Northern Coordinate Union. That is where your privileges arise from."

"The NorCoord people have worked hard for what we've achieved, Commander Bokamba," Aric said. "And those achievements have benefited all of the Commonwealth."

"Kindly do not lecture me on the obvious," Bokamba said coldly. "Despite the technological limitations which the Parra imposes on us, we are not ignorant savages. Certainly the people of the NorCoord nations have worked hard, and certainly they have accomplished great things. But their time has passed."

"I don't know how you can say that," Aric said. "Why shouldn't NorCoord have as much right to survive as, say, Centauri?"

"I do not speak of survival," Bokamba countered. "I speak rather of the unnatural extension of power. All empires have a fixed life span, Mr. Cavanagh, a time after which their part in history is over. The empire of Rome rose and fell; so too did the domination of the Mongolians, the British, the Soviets, and the Americans. The Japanese Hegemony and Pan-Arab Caliphate have both come and gone. Only the empire of NorCoord remains. And it should not."

"Except that it's not an empire," Aric insisted. "NorCoord has no more power than any other Commonwealth member."

Bokamba shook his head. "You see it from the inside, Mr. Cavanagh. No empire looks oppressive to those in power. On paper, perhaps, all Commonwealth states are equal. But in reality it is NorCoord who dominates all that is said and done. It is the NorCoord military who commands the Peacekeepers; it is the NorCoord Parliament who makes laws that all will eventually live by; it is the administration of the NorCoord chancellor which dictates how commerce and business will be done across the Commonwealth and even in the nonhuman worlds." He waved a hand, encompassing the room with the gesture. "You have seen how the Granparri live. Tell me why we are here."

Aric took a sip from his mug, trying to remember what he'd learned about minor-world Commonwealth history back in college. Granparra had been claimed by Mexico some fifty years ago after a few other nations had taken a look and decided not to bother with it. The Mexicans had planted a colony here on Puerto Simone Island, the one place on the planet where Parra vine domination had choked out most of the rest of the planet's lethal vegetation, a colony that had then struggled on for a few years before they finally gave up on it. The place had remained essentially abandoned for the next twenty years until the current population had arrived under a Commonwealth incentive program to provide some of the perpetually dispossessed peoples of Earth with land of their own. "Because you wanted a world of your own," he said. "And because you weren't willing to take anyone else's word that Granparra couldn't be conquered."

Bokamba smiled grimly. "Yes, that is the reason why many of us came. But that is not the reason why we were sent here."

"I don't understand."

"What happened twenty-five years ago?" Bokamba asked. "Out there, barely thirty light-years away?"

Aric grimaced. He could see where Bokamba was going with this now. "We ran into the Yycromae."

"Exactly," Bokamba nodded. "And NorCoord saw in them the greatest threat to humanity since the Pawoles. And so"—he waved his hand again—"they brought us here. To provide an excuse to station a Peacekeeper force over our world." A muscle in his cheek twitched. "And to provide a target the Yycromae couldn't ignore."

Aric looked at Quinn. The other shrugged. Apparently, he'd been over this territory before with Bokamba. "I guess it's a good thing the Yycromae were able to ignore it," he said. "I suggest that you might be reading a little more malice into the situation than really existed."

"Am I?" Bokamba retorted. "Is it merely coincidence that the recolonization of Granparra began at the height of the Commonwealth's tension with the Yycroman Hierarch? Is it coincidence that the Myrmidon Platform was transported here from Bergen, which was itself clamoring for more protection from possible Yycroman strikes? And is it coincidence that not a single NorCoord citizen was given authorization to travel to Granparra until after the Pacification had ended and the interdiction zones established?"

"There were a lot of NorCoord citizens who were serving on the Myrmidon," Quinn reminded him quietly. "As well as taking part in the Pacification."

"The NorCoord people fancy themselves as the wolves," Bokamba snorted. "They have no interest in playing the role of bait."

"Very soon now they're likely to be both," Aric said.

Bokamba looked back at him, some of the fire fading from his face. "Yes," he murmured. "The Conquerors. For once, it appears that there will be enough death to go around for everyone."

He muttered something under his breath and drank from his mug, and for a minute his eyes were distant with memory. Then, taking a deep breath, he returned to the present. "Anders's message said you needed my help, Adam. What is it you want?"

Aric could see Quinn brace himself. "Anders said you still had one of our old Counterpunch fighters in working condition. I'd like to borrow it."

"Would you, now. And who would be flying it?"

A muscle in Quinn's cheek twitched. "I will."

Bokamba's eyebrows lifted. "Really. Well, that alone was worth chasing Savva and his bullies away to hear." He looked at Aric. "And what exactly is this private mission that has enticed Adam Quinn back into the cockpit?"

Aric took a deep breath. He'd worked out a whole speech on the trip here from Earth, using every trick of language and every persuasive technique he knew. Looking into Bokamba's face, he realized all of that had been a waste of time. "My brother was captain of the Kinshasa," he said. "We think he might have been captured by the Conquerors. We want to go find him and get him back."

Bokamba looked at Quinn, back at Aric. "Have you any proof he was taken captive?"

"We have indications," Aric said. "Nothing solid enough for the Peacekeepers to move on."

Bokamba looked down into his cup. "Going to do it alone?"

"I was hoping to borrow a half squadron of Axeheads," Quinn said. "Mr. Cavanagh's father is arranging for a long-range fueler for us."

"How do you intend to borrow these Axeheads?"

"Fake myself some orders," Quinn told him evenly. "I was hoping you could get me the unit operation numbers for a fighter wing somewhere, preferably some unit that's so far been left out of the mobilization. If I can get a look at one of their current orders, I should be able to construct a more or less legitimate orders code."

Bokamba stood up and went over to the honey vase, pouring another dribble of honey into his cup. "I could get you the unit numbers," he said as he returned to his seat. "But it would gain you nothing. Even in a crisis situation they run a check over all incoming orders. You're not active—you're not even reserve. You wouldn't get past the first level."

Quinn looked at Aric. "Then we'll go out alone. Assuming you'll lend me your fighter."

Bokamba gazed into his cup again, lips pursed tightly together. Aric listened to the muffled sounds from the city outside, trying without much success to read the older man's face. Even to be sitting here discussing this could mean trouble for Bokamba down the line, and the man surely knew that. "I'll make a deal with you, Adam," he said at last. "You can take my Counterpunch... provided the half squadron of fighters you take with you are also Copperheads."

Aric threw Quinn a startled look, got an equally surprised one in return. "We appreciate the offer, Commander—" he began.

"Adam?" Bokamba asked, his eyes on Quinn.

"As Mr. Cavanagh said, we appreciate the offer," Quinn said slowly. "But we can't accept it."

"You don't have a choice," Bokamba told him. "You haven't a hope in hell of getting orders like that through on your own. I do. But I'm Copperhead reserve, and if I try requisitioning anything but Copperheads I'll light red flares from here to Earth and back again. So it's Copperheads or nothing."

"I can't do it," Quinn said, shaking his head. "It would put your head in the chopper, too. That wasn't why we came here."

Bokamba's face twisted in a lopsided smile. "My head's already well inside the chopper. If you walk out of here and I don't report this—and I won't—I'll be in as much trouble as you when you get caught. On the other hand, if you succeed and find Commander Cavanagh, they won't be able to touch any of us. Heroes, you know. It's therefore to all our benefits for you to go out as well equipped as possible."

Quinn studied him. "And there's nothing more to this?"

Bokamba's smile faded. "Of course there's more," he said quietly. "We're facing war here, Adam—understand that. Not some small police action like the Yycroman Pacification or troubles with the Bhurtala or Djadar. This is full-scale war, against a powerful and vicious enemy. You were one of the best Copperhead pilots who ever flew. Possibly the best. Against an enemy like the Conquerors, we need to have the best."

Quinn looked away. "You don't understand why I left."

"I think I do," Bokamba disagreed. "And despite what your resignation did to the unit, I don't really blame you for leaving. But those problems have been corrected. I think that if you get the chance to watch the new generation of Copperheads in action, perhaps we can entice you permanently back into the cockpit."

There was another long silence. "I can't promise anything," Quinn said at last.

"I wouldn't want you to," Bokamba assured him. "All I'm asking is for you to give us another chance."

Quinn looked at Aric. "Trying to borrow Copperheads instead of regular fighters will get us in worse trouble if we're caught," he pointed out.

"I'm willing to risk it," Aric said, silently releasing the breath he'd been holding. Personally, getting into official trouble was the last thing he was worried about in all this. The chance to have some of the Commonwealth's premier fighter pilots along was an opportunity he was ready and willing to grab with both hands.

"All right, Iniko," Quinn said, looking back at Bokamba. "We accept. And thank you."

"No thanks needed," Bokamba said, smiling grimly as he stepped over to Quinn and gripped his hand. "Whatever you decide about the Copperheads, Commander Cavanagh is a Peacekeeper. It's only right to try to get back one of our own. Come, let me take you to where my Counterpunch is stored."

 

The door slid open. "Parlimin VanDiver?" the young aide said hesitantly.

Jacy VanDiver looked up, annoyed. Couldn't the man see he was busy? "What is it, Peters?"

"A report's come in from a Mr. Taurin Lee on Avon," the aide said, holding up a card. "You said you wanted to be kept informed."

VanDiver frowned. What was Lee doing on Avon...? Oh, right. He'd assigned the man to keep an eye on Cavanagh and his family after that irresponsible fool Rudzinski had caved in and given them all that soap-bubble nothing the Peacekeepers had collected. "So inform me," he said.

Peters took a step forward, holding out the card— "No; you tell me," VanDiver said. "Summarize."

"Yes, sir." Peters fumbled out his plate, cringing a little under VanDiver's glare. As well he should. The man was young and new to the staff, but even he ought to know that a NorCoord Parlimin didn't have time to read everything that came across his desk. That was what staff members were for in the first place.

"Yes, sir," Peters said again as he found the place. "Lord Stewart Cavanagh left Edo for Avon shortly after Mr. Lee began his surveillance. Aric Cavanagh—that's Lord Cavanagh's eldest son—"

"I know who he is," VanDiver cut him off coldly. "Get on with it."

"Yes, sir. Aric Cavanagh left for Earth aboard a CavTronics freighter. Dr. Melinda Cavanagh also left on a CavTronics freighter, destination unknown."

"What do you mean, destination unknown?" VanDiver demanded. "They filed a flight schedule, didn't they?"

"Uh..." Peters skimmed frantically through the report. "Mr. Lee doesn't say. Maybe the schedule wasn't filed through the normal Edo spaceport. That's sometimes done with freighters."

"Or else Cavanagh's playing it cute," VanDiver growled. He'd called it, all right—Cavanagh was up to something. And whatever it was, it was going to be trouble. He could call that one with his eyes closed. "Send Lee a message," he ordered Peters. "Tell him to find out where that freighter went and get one of his people following the daughter. Ditto for the son. That's always been a cozy little family—I want to know why they've suddenly split up this way. Lee himself is to stay on the father. I want to know everywhere the family goes and everything they do. Got that?"

"Yes, sir," Peters said, scribbling madly on the plate. "Anything else, sir?"

VanDiver glowered at his desk. He didn't know yet what Cavanagh had up his sleeve; but whatever it was, it would undoubtedly be flamboyant. The man thrived on that sort of thing. "Tell Lee to instruct his people that if any of the Cavanaghs even goes near a net or media journalist, he's to have them arrested."

Peters's stylus paused in midstroke. "Sir?"

"You heard me," VanDiver snapped. "Lee can invent something, use my name, invoke Commonwealth security—whatever he has to. But the Cavanaghs are not to talk to journalists."

"Yes, sir," Peters said, his stylus moving again. He finished his notes and looked up. "Will there be anything else, sir?"

For a moment VanDiver studied him. The young man's lips looked uncomfortably tight, and it occurred to VanDiver that he'd probably heard stories about Cavanagh from the other staffers. "Just bear in mind this has nothing to do with the so-called feud between Cavanagh and me," he told the other. "Yes, we were business rivals once; yes, the governor of Grampians passed me over three times to appoint him to the NorCoord Parliament. But that's all water under the bridge. What this is about"—he jabbed two fingers on the desktop for emphasis—"is military security. The Cavanagh family has information about that run-in with the Conquerors that they shouldn't have, and which could disturb the proper focus of the government and the Peacekeepers if it was released to the public. I intend to make sure that doesn't happen."

"Yes, sir." Peters still didn't look entirely happy, but the tension lines had smoothed out a little. "I'll get this out on the next skitter to Avon."

He left; and as the door slid shut behind him, VanDiver snarled out an old street curse he had carefully avoided using for the past thirty years. The Peacekeepers were scrambling to get to battle readiness, rumors of all sorts were shooting across the Commonwealth like tachyon static bursts, Parliament had barely an hour ago finally released the official version of the slaughter off Dorcas; and here he was, Parlimin Jacy VanDiver, having his time and attention wasted by Stewart Cavanagh. The sort of thing that always happened when he locked horns with the man.

Well, no more. This time, with a little luck and a little planning, he would sink Cavanagh for good.

The skitter to Avon wouldn't be leaving for another half hour. Pulling out an official records card, VanDiver punched for one of the more obscure and unused forms in the Parliament catalog. Depending on where Cavanagh chose to make his big play, Lee might have trouble enlisting the help of local law-enforcement officers fast enough to silence him. But with an official NorCoord Parliament carte blanche in hand, that would no longer be a problem. Wherever Cavanagh went, there would always be Peacekeeper forces somewhere nearby.

Smiling grimly to himself, VanDiver began to fill out the form.

 

10

The Cavatina's hatchway slid open, and as the cool air flowed into the ship's entrance foyer, so too did the exotic aromas of the Mrach world of Mra-mig. Stepping out onto the top of the ramp, Cavanagh took a deep breath of the chilly air. It had been a long time since he'd been on any of the five Mrach worlds, and the intervening years had dulled his sense of smell somewhat. But the aroma was still pleasant, evoking memories and that sense of mystery and counterpoint the Mrachanis so carefully cultivated.

A counterpoint underlined in the view from the Cavatina's ramp. Overhead a group of Mrach courier ships shot past, their flowing-metal design glinting like white gold in the sunlight, followed closely by a flock of dark birdlike flurries flying in an identical formation. Beyond them, rising up over the long marbled-tan spaceport terminal building and the rooftops of Mig-Ka City beyond, a distant range of white-capped black mountains thrust up into the blue sky. Mystery, counterpoint, and consummate civilization—that was the Mrach image.

An image that was starting to show the strains of the looming Conqueror threat. Those couriers flying overhead had been wobbling slightly with the unaccustomed drag of hastily mounted rocket launchers, the distinctive twittering drone of their engines laboring noticeably under the extra weight. The vast parking field, designed to accommodate a hundred commercial ships the size of the Cavatina, was two-thirds empty, with the majority of the ships still parked there of the same flowing-metal Mrach design as the aircars. And according to Captain Teva, the Cavatina was the only ship since they'd entered the system to be landing on the sloped runways instead of departing from them.

The Commonwealth had finally released the news about the Conquerors' attack... and all over the Mrach worlds, Mrachanis and visitors alike were looking fearfully at the sky. Many of those visitors were leaving.

"Sort of ironic, isn't it," Kolchin commented from Cavanagh's side. "The Mrachanis were gearing up to get stomped by the Yycroman Empire when we conveniently showed up and shoveled sand on the fire for them. Now here they are again, smack in the Conquerors' probable approach cone, looking to get stomped again."

" 'Ironic' isn't exactly the word that I'd use," Cavanagh told him. " 'Tragic' is more like it."

"No, that's not what I meant," Kolchin shook his head. "I meant that if we hadn't interfered back then, they wouldn't have had any choice but to build themselves some defenses and learn how to use them. But we came along and made the Yycromae go back home. So they didn't have to. And they didn't."

Cavanagh nodded, understanding now. "Yes, I see. And so now they're stuck having to play catch-up."

"Right," Kolchin said, shading his eyes with one hand as he looked up at the aircars. "And I'll tell you one thing: war isn't something you learn on the fly."

A motion to the left caught Cavanagh's eye: the Cavatina's groundcar, being maneuvered carefully out of its aft storage hold. "You spent some time in Mig-Ka City a few years back, didn't you?" he asked Kolchin as the two of them started down the ramp to meet it.

"It was just a couple of weeks," the other said. "The Yycromae were complaining about the interdiction again, and the Mrachanis asked Command to send some of us to each of their worlds to discuss urban defenses."

"What did you think of them?"

"I don't know," Kolchin said slowly. "They seemed nice enough—polite and friendly and all that. But... I don't know. They seemed to do an awful lot of talking sometimes without really saying anything. Whenever guys in the military do that, you figure they don't know what they're talking about. I don't know. Some days I thought they'd be worth defending to the death; other days I was ready to ice the whole planet myself and be done with it."

Cavanagh thought back to his own infrequent dealings with Mrachanis. "I know what you mean. They have a knack for pushing buttons over the whole emotional spectrum. Probably without the slightest idea that they're even doing it."

Kolchin grinned. "Well, we wound up pushing a few buttons right back at them. We had two guys in the unit from Modendina on Palisades who liked to talk Italian to each other when they were off duty, and three more from Edo who always started jabbering in Japanese whenever the Italians started up. Plus there was Crazy Ray, who could swear in twenty different languages, with gestures to match. The Mrachanis couldn't figure out what to make of any of those guys, and you could tell it drove them nuts."

Hill was waiting in the driver's seat as they got into the car. "Captain Teva's already checked clearance, sir," he told Cavanagh. "We can go straight through."

"No customs?" Kolchin asked, frowning.

"Apparently not inbound," Hill shrugged. "Teva said he got the feeling the Mrachanis are delighted to have a few more humans hanging around the city."

"Probably want us in the line of fire if the Yycromae decide to take a poke at them," Kolchin muttered. "Get the Peacekeepers here that much faster."

"Could be," Hill agreed. "Teva said he's heard rumors that the interdiction units are already starting to be reassigned to border and planetary-defense positions in other parts of Lyra and Pegasus Sectors." He looked at Cavanagh. "Where to, sir?"

"Information Agency," Cavanagh told him. "I think that's our best bet."

"Yes, sir." Hill punched it into the console, glanced briefly at the map and location, and turned into one of the vehicle lanes between the ship-parking areas. "By the way, the port people assigned us to the Mrapiratta Hotel," he said over his shoulder. "Just northeast of the port."

Cavanagh frowned. "I told Teva we didn't want accommodations."

"Yes, sir. The Mrachanis insisted on reserving us a suite anyway."

Cavanagh shook his head in annoyance. One of the more irritating Mrach characteristics was their insistence on treating all non-Mrach visitors as if they were attending youth summer camp, including assigning quarters for them at the various hotels in the spaceport and central-city areas. Most human visitors were willing to put up with the procedure, especially once they discovered that more often than not they were being booked into luxury hotels at a fraction of what the equivalent would cost on a Commonwealth world.

What other alien species thought about it Cavanagh didn't know. Certainly the times he'd been to Mrach worlds there hadn't been many nonhumans staying in his hotel. Somehow he'd never gotten around to inquiring as to where those other races were being lodged.

"Hill, do we have any binoculars?" Kolchin asked suddenly, looking out and up through the rear window.

"Right-hand under-seat drawer," Hill told him. "Why?"

"Something's coming in," Kolchin said, getting out the binoculars and turning them on as Hill let the car coast to a stop. Twisting half to the side, Kolchin braced his left elbow against the rear hatchway and focused through the window.

Cavanagh turned, searching the sky and finally locating the fuzzy dot moving toward the spaceport. "Trouble?" he asked.

"I don't know," Kolchin said, adjusting the binoculars. "It's a human design—courier-class ship, looks like. Flashy type, too. The kind NorCoord Parlimins and top Peacekeeper brass like to use."

"A fact-finding tour?" Hill hazarded.

Kolchin snorted. "In a potential war zone? Not likely. If that's a Parlimin in there, it has to be something pretty important." He lowered the binoculars and looked at Cavanagh. "Like maybe informing the Mrachanis the Yycroman interdiction is about to end."

For a moment the car was silent as each of them apparently considered the possible repercussions of being in Mrach space at the moment when restrictions on traffic in and out of Yycroman worlds were suddenly lifted. "Let's not jump to conclusions," Cavanagh said at last. "A Parlimin might not want to visit a war zone himself, but there are plenty who wouldn't mind risking an aide or two to come out and take a look. Anyway, the Commonwealth would be more likely to send news like that directly to Mra and let the Mrach government handle the job of passing the word on to their other worlds."

"Maybe," Kolchin said, shutting off the binoculars. "I suggest, sir, that you might want to have Captain Teva keep the ship on standby. Just in case we have to get off in a hurry."

Cavanagh looked back out at the ship rapidly nearing the field. The only ship, aside from theirs, to land since the Cavatina entered the system. "Yes," he said. "I think we'll do that."

 

The Mrachani's mouselike face seemed to flatten, the iridescent crewcut-length hair covering his neck and shoulders stiffening briefly before settling down into place again. "You surely joke, Lord Cavanagh," he said, his melodious tenor's voice making an odd contrast with his alien appearance. "Folklore? Old spacer stories?" The hair stiffened again. "Rumors and stories are hardly the things from which lucid decisions are made."

"That's an interesting point of view," Cavanagh said. "Especially considering that it was apparently from those same legends that the NorCoord Parliament adopted the name 'Conquerors' for our new enemy."

The body hair flattened a little tighter against the skin beneath it. "Was it the Mrachanis who spoke of those legends?" he asked, an edge of bitterness creeping into his voice. "Was it the Mrachanis who gave any credence to them at all? No. It was the Yycromae who did so."

"I understand that," Cavanagh nodded. "But I don't see what difference it makes who brought the subject up. The fact is that you ran into an unknown alien race out there—"

"So the Yycromae say," the Mrachani interrupted. "The Yycromae say many things which are not true. Forever they seek to weaken the resolve of the Human Commonwealth to protect the Mrachanis against their aggression."

"The Commonwealth has no intention of abandoning the Mrachanis," Cavanagh assured him. "But—"

"Has it not?" the Mrachani interrupted again. "Even now we hear tales that Human Commonwealth forces will soon be withdrawn from around Yycroman worlds."

"I thought rumors weren't the stuff of lucid decisions," Kolchin reminded him mildly.

"But even the Yycroman peril pales in the face of the new danger waiting beyond the air of our homes," the Mrachani continued, ignoring Kolchin's comment. "The Mrachanis have put their trust in the strength of arm and mind of the Human Commonwealth. Have you the resolve to protect our worlds from that threat as well?"

"As I said, I don't expect the Commonwealth to abandon you," Cavanagh said, letting his voice go a little sterner. "But the Commonwealth's strength and resolve will depend on how much we know about the threat we face. Anything you hold back from us, even rumors or stories, could affect that strength."

The Mrachani seemed to shrink back into its skin. "Do you threaten us?" he whined. "We trust the Human Commonwealth with our lives."

"I'm not threatening you," Cavanagh sighed, feeling irritated and guilty both. Kolchin was right; you could like the Mrachanis and at the same time want to wring their necks. "I'm trying to point out that this is no time to be coy. The humans and Mrachanis are in this together, and anything you can tell us could turn out to be important. No matter how trivial it seems."

The Mrachani looked at Kolchin, back at Cavanagh. "I will order these rumors searched out," he said at last, lifting a delicate arm and letting it fall again in a gesture of weary defeat. "If they exist, they will be delivered to you. Where do you stay on Mra-mig?"

"We'll be in our ship," Cavanagh told him. "The Cavatina, in docking slot—"

"A private ship?"

"Yes," Cavanagh said. "The Cavatina, registered on Avon. It's in docking slot—"

"It cannot be done," the clerk interrupted again. "Data cannot be delivered to a non-Mrach ship. You must be in a hotel."

Cavanagh frowned. "What are you talking about? I get data transfers to my ship all the time."

"We cannot do it," the clerk insisted. "All areas are shorthanded as we prepare to defend our homes. Data can only be delivered to Mrach ships or buildings."

It could be legitimate, Cavanagh supposed; data transfers outside a net did take a minuscule bit more effort to arrange than transfers within one. But it could also be more along the lines Captain Teva had suggested: that the Mrachanis wanted as many humans between them and the Yycromae as they could possibly get.

Unfortunately, either way there wasn't much he could do about it. Not if he wanted a look at those records. "Fine," he told the clerk. "You can send the information to us at the Mrapiratta Hotel." He lifted an eyebrow. "And we're in something of a hurry."

"I will order the rumors searched out," the Mrachani repeated. "I can promise no more than that. As I have said already, we are shorthanded. But whatever is possible will be done."

"I appreciate your efforts," Cavanagh said. "And I'll again remind you that any information we can gather about the Conquerors will help us all."

The Mrachani eyed him another minute. Then, without replying, he turned away and busied himself at his computer terminal.

The appointment, apparently, was over. Cavanagh caught Kolchin's eye and nodded toward the door. Kolchin nodded back, and together they left the office.

"What do you think?" Cavanagh asked as they hit the street again.

"He wasn't very happy about it," Kolchin said. "I get the distinct feeling he thinks we're wasting his time."

"There's a good chance we are," Cavanagh conceded. Somehow he'd expected that this legend would be something every Mrachani would at least have heard of, even if they didn't give it much credence. Now he was beginning to wonder if he was wasting everyone's time, his as well as theirs. Wasting time, and looking rather like a fool on top of it.

He forced the thought away, feeling a flash of annoyance at himself for having thought it in the first place. He'd never yet let the risk of looking like a fool stop him before. Now, with Pheylan's life on the line, was no time to start.

Pheylan's and Aric's both. "We'll give them one night," he decided, looking down the street and raising his hand. Fifty meters away, their car pulled away from its parking space and headed toward them. "If they haven't come up with anything by tomorrow morning, we'll assume they haven't got it."

"So we're going to take the hotel room after all?" Kolchin asked as Hill pulled up to the carved curbstone in front of them and popped the doors.

"We're going to have to start there, anyway," Cavanagh said as they got into the car. "But if we don't have anything by dinnertime, it might be worth trying a different tack. Hitting one of the spaceport clusterings, say, and seeing if we can find an old Mrach spacer we could get talking."

"I'm not sure I'd recommend that, sir," Kolchin said guardedly. "A lot of non-Mrachanis hang around spaceport clusterings, too. Could be risky."

"I doubt that you and Hill would have any trouble handling the odd Pawolian drunk," Cavanagh said. "Change in plans, Hill: we're going to the Mrapiratta Hotel, after all."

"Yes, sir," Hill said, his attention on the rearview display. "Before we go, sir, I wonder if you'd have a look out to your left. Across the street, beneath that triangular overhang a little ways back."

Cavanagh turned. Seated with its back against a building, being generally ignored by the Mrach pedestrians passing by, was the hairy and angular shape of a Sanduul—a female, he guessed, from the height and general build. Propped against her bent knees was a small trapezoidal wooden frame with a piece of cloth stretched across it. "Looks like she's doing a threading," he said.

"Yes, sir, that's what I thought," Hill agreed. "Now take a look at that alleyway two buildings farther back."

Cavanagh craned his neck. In the alleyway were three Mrachanis, young adults by the looks of them, muffled comfortably against the cool temperatures. "What about them?"

"They've been there since I parked the car," Hill said. "I'm not absolutely sure, but I think they're watching the Sanduul."

Cavanagh frowned. "Why would anyone do that?"

"I don't know," Hill said. "But I can't see any other reason why they'd just be standing there."

"Maybe they're waiting for someone," Kolchin suggested.

"Why not wait inside one of the buildings, then?" Hill countered.

"Maybe it's not someone who lives here," Kolchin said. "Maybe they're just using the alley as a meeting point."

"Could be." Hill nodded to their immediate left. "So is that group doing the same thing?"

Cavanagh looked. There, standing in a sheltered entryway one building to the Sanduul's other side, were two more young Mrachanis. Mrachanis, furthermore, with the look of people who'd been there awhile and who weren't planning to move on anytime soon.

And they were indeed looking in the Sanduul's direction.

"They're not waiting for transportation, either," Hill added. "I called up the schedule, and there's nothing coming by here for another hour."

"Interesting," Cavanagh murmured, rubbing thoughtfully at his cheek. "Especially after all that moaning about how shorthanded everyone in Mig-Ka City is. I wonder what they're up to."

"If you want, Hill and I could go ask them," Kolchin offered.

Cavanagh looked at the two groups of Mrachanis again. "Yes, let's go take a closer look," he decided. "But you and I will go, Kolchin. We'll take that group in the alleyway, I think. Hill, is there any way for you to get the car around behind them?"

"Yes, there's a clear path back into the alley," Hill said. "You sure you wouldn't rather have me out here where I can back you up?"

Cavanagh lifted an eyebrow. "Against what, five Mrachanis? Anyway, I'd rather have you back there blocking their exit when they realize we're heading their direction. We'll give you a couple of minutes to get in position."

He and Kolchin got out of the car, and Hill drove off. "In general, sir, I have to say that this isn't such a good idea," Kolchin said. "In the future, I'd rather you sit in a locked car and let us handle situations like this. You never know how nonhumans are going to react."

"In general, I fully agree with you," Cavanagh agreed. "But we're talking Mrachanis and a Sanduul here. You'd be hard-pressed to find a less violent group."

"Maybe," Kolchin said, still clearly not convinced. "You planning to talk to the Sanduul?"

"It's as good a way as any to give Hill his couple of minutes," Cavanagh said. "Besides, I've always wanted to see a Duulian threader at work."

They crossed the street, passed the two Mrachanis in the building entryway without looking at them, and headed toward the Sanduul. From this angle Cavanagh could see that her only protection against the cool air was a flimsy-looking serape wrapped tightly around her thorax. The threading board was braced against the makeshift easel of her folded legs, and as they got closer Cavanagh could see that her hands were shaking slightly with cold.

Kolchin noticed it, too. "Kind of out of her element here, isn't she?" he commented.

"It gets colder than this in parts of Ulu," Cavanagh said. "But they wear more clothing there than this one's got on."

They reached the Sanduul and stopped. "Hello," Cavanagh said.

The Sanduul looked up, her hands pausing in their work. "Good day, kind sirs," she said, the slightly distorted words accompanied by the odd hum characteristic of Duulian pharynxes. "Do you come to see my threading?"

"Yes, we do," Cavanagh told her. "May I hold it?"

"My honor," she said, lifting her hands away from the threading. For a moment one of the tendrils of silk from her under-claw spinnerets stretched out between fingertip and cloth before snapping off and dropping flat against the cloth.

Carefully, Cavanagh picked up the frame by its edges. It was a picture of the Information Agency, but with the distant mountains towering over the building as if they were directly behind it. The sun was half-visible, rising between two of the mountain peaks into a blue sky peppered with white cirrus clouds. "Turn it; just so," the Sanduul suggested, twitching her head a fraction to the side.

Cavanagh did so; and suddenly the scene was somehow different. Everything was still there, but the mood had been subtly changed. Instead of a cheery sunrise, it had somehow become a brooding sunset, the optimistic promise of a fresh new morning turning into the sadness-tinged end of a wasted day. He turned the picture back again and the sunrise returned, complete with its upbeat mood. "Extraordinary," he told the Sanduul as he handed it back. "Absolutely unique. I've never seen anything like it."

The Sanduul opened her mouth wide, displaying the razor-sharp teeth that had so unnerved the first humans who landed on Ulu. "You honor my talent," she said, closing the teeth back in again. "Fibbit u Bibrit u Tabli ak Prib-Ulu offers her thanks."

"Cavanagh of Hamilton of Townsend from Grampians-Avon assures her the gratitude is all his," Cavanagh said, hoping he was getting the ritual order of his lineage right. "I've seen Duulian threadings before, but never one with such an inventive approach. May I ask why you're working here instead of on Ulu?"

The spidery face turned away as she arranged the frame again against her legs. "The Mrachanis also admired my talent," she said. "They invited me to study on Mra-mig. For this I was given a gift of money and a promise of schooling with Mrach artists."

Cavanagh looked down at the thin serape rippling in the breezes. "What happened?"

"I do not know," she said, whistling, softly through her pharynx in the Duulian equivalent of a sigh. "When I arrived, I was told there had been a mistake. My gift of money had been withdrawn. But I had not enough for the traveling home. So I am still here."

"Couldn't you get help from someone?" Cavanagh asked. "The Duulian embassy, perhaps?"

"There is no advocate of the Sanduuli on Mra-mig," Fibbit said. "I have tried to send messages to Ulu, but the cost has been too high."

Cavanagh frowned. She must be living right on the edge not to be able to afford to send a simple letter. Even messages sent by skitter didn't cost that much. "How long have you been here?"

"Half a year." She rubbed a fingertip claw across her serape. "It has become cold."

"It has indeed," Cavanagh said. "How have you survived?"

She stroked her artwork gently. "I do threadings," she said. "Sometimes I am hired by a Mrachani, as now. Other times I make portraits of Mrachanis or others and offer them for sale."

"Others?"

"There are others in Mig-Ka City besides the Mrachanis. Some are humans." She displayed her razor teeth again in another smile. "I like threading humans. You have such depth of faces. But there are few living here."

"I'm surprised there are any at all," Cavanagh commented, trying to make sense of this increasingly nonsensical situation. As far as he could tell, Fibbit was a completely harmless representative of the equally innocuous Duulian race. So why did the Mrachanis have her under surveillance? Especially when they could get rid of her simply by buying her a ticket to Ulu?

"There are several," Fibbit assured him. "One human has been here twice since this threading began. His face is most depthful."

Cavanagh frowned, a quiet bell going off in the back of his mind. "You mean here to the Information Agency?"

"Yes," Fibbit said. "Four days ago, and six days ago."

Cavanagh looked at Kolchin, got a slight shrug in return. "It's where any non-Mrachani would come if he wanted to find out anything," the bodyguard pointed out.

"True," Cavanagh agreed. But if the human was someone important or dangerous, it might explain the surveillance on Fibbit. "Did you speak to this human, Fibbit?"

"No," she said. "He passed me, but did not speak. His face was most depthful."

"How well do you remember it?" Cavanagh asked. "Well enough to do a threading?"

"There is no need," Fibbit said. "I have already threaded him."

"Really," Cavanagh said, looking down at the threading again. This was, of course, none of his business, with no connection whatsoever to his reason for coming to Mra-mig. But he'd already gotten the ball rolling for the Conquerors information, and this situation of Fibbit's was becoming more and more intriguing. "I wonder if I might be allowed to take a look at it."

"It would be my honor," Fibbit said. "It is at my home, only a short distance from—"

"We've got company," Kolchin interrupted.

Cavanagh turned. Three Mrachanis were crossing the street from the direction of the Information Agency. Clearly headed their way. "Do you know any of those Mrachanis, Fibbit?"

"The one of the center selected me to create this threading," the Sanduul said. "Perhaps he is coming again to check on my progress. Or perhaps not. Mrach faces do not have the depth of human faces."

Cavanagh looked at them. Their faces were hard to read, he realized suddenly, even compared to other nonhuman species. Odd that he'd never noticed that before. "It'll be all right," he soothed Fibbit. "Let's see what they want."

"Lord Cavanagh," the center Mrachani said as the group came up. "I confess surprise at finding you here. I was under the impression you had returned to your hotel to await our information package."

"My driver noticed Fibbit while he was waiting for us," Cavanagh explained, looking the Mrachani over. It definitely wasn't the clerk he and Kolchin had talked to inside the Agency; this one was taller, older, with far more poise and verbal polish. "I've always been interested in Duulian threadings."

There might have been a reaction to the mention of Fibbit's name. With all the breezes blowing at the Mrachanis' body hair, Cavanagh couldn't be certain. "Yes, she is a master artist," the Mrachani agreed. "The Mrachanis have purchased several of her threadings; perhaps you would be interested in contemplating them. I have a listing of their current locations in my office."

"Perhaps later," Cavanagh said. "Is that all you came to tell me?"

The Mrachani seemed surprised. "My intent was not to speak with you at all," he said, taking a sidling step around Kolchin toward Fibbit. "As I already stated, I was surprised to find you here. My purpose was merely to inspect the threading's progress."

Wordlessly, Fibbit handed him the frame. The Mrachani looked at it, then offered a view to each of his companions. "It is excellent," he told Fibbit. "Precisely as I desired. Come with me, and I will arrange for your payment."

"Now?" Fibbit asked, her head tilting with surprise. "But it is not yet finished."

"It is precisely as I desired," the Mrachani repeated, in a tone that somehow discouraged further argument. "Your payment awaits inside. Come."

"I come." Fibbit stood up, rising to an amazing height as she unfolded herself to vertical. "I am ready," she said, gripping her serape tighter around her thorax.

The Mrachani looked back at Cavanagh. "Your information will be ready soon, Lord Cavanagh," he said. "I trust you will find it useful."

"I trust so, too," Cavanagh said.

The nonhumans headed back across the street, Fibbit's spidery physique towering over the much shorter Mrachanis. "We haven't checked into the hotel yet," Kolchin reminded him. "If that package arrives before we do, it'll get bounced back here."

"I know," Cavanagh said, watching the group heading back to the Information Agency. It all seemed perfectly reasonable and straightforward... and yet, there was something about it that seemed a little bit skew. Something he couldn't put his finger on. "I think just Hill and I will go to the hotel for now," he told Kolchin. "I'd like you to stay here a little longer. Make sure Fibbit comes out all right."

Kolchin frowned. "Fibbit?"

"Yes," Cavanagh said. "They slipped her away from us just a little bit too neatly."

Kolchin seemed to consider that. "Maybe," he said at last. "I don't see what it has to do with us, though."

"Neither do I," Cavanagh admitted. "Call it a hunch.

"Yes, sir," Kolchin said. "You want me to have a talk with those Mrachanis down the alleyway while I'm waiting?"

A motion to his right caught Cavanagh's eye, and he turned as their car pulled to the curb in front of them. "They must have spotted me," Hill said through the open window. "They all suddenly took off a minute ago." He glanced behind them at the spot where Fibbit had been. "The Sanduul left?"

"They took her into the Information Agency," Cavanagh said. "Allegedly to buy her threading. Which way did our loiterers go?"

"Opposite direction," Hill said, nodding behind him. "Though they could have circled back around."

"We'd better get moving," Kolchin put in. "If they're watching us, this can't help but look suspicious. You can drop me off a block away. Hill, we've got a break-apart scooter in back, don't we?"

"We should have," Hill said. "What's going on?"

"I'll tell you on the way," Cavanagh said. "You just be careful, Kolchin." He looked out the window at the Information Agency as they drove off. "You're armed, aren't you?"

"I'm always armed, sir," Kolchin said quietly. "Don't worry. Whatever's going on, I can handle it."