The Twentieth nodded and vanished. The Prime picked up the reader, checked how much he had yet to read. It was a depressingly large amount. Worse, even with all the time he'd now lost to sleep, he still didn't feel particularly rested.
The Twentieth returned. " 'I greet you, Overclan Prime,' " he quoted, " 'and apologize for the lateness of this message. My name is Protector Thrr-tulkoj; Kee'rr. I have been asked by Searcher Nzz-oonaz; Flii'rr, to deliver a message to you. The recognition code he gave me is Mistrand over Kylee.' "
The Prime felt his tongue press against the inside of his mouth, his mind dragging itself fully awake. This wasn't just one of the private recognition codes he'd set up. This was the signal that indicated potentially serious trouble with the rest of the mission. "Understood," he said. "I'm listening."
The Twentieth vanished, reappearing a few beats later. " 'Searcher Nzz-oonaz would like you to meet with me out here as quickly as possible.' "
"Why?"
" 'He doesn't want to explain over an open pathway. I don't even know myself. But he assures me it is very important.' "
The Prime frowned. "What do you think?" he asked the Twentieth.
"I don't know what to think," the other said frankly. "I've had the servers double-check the list of Elders on theClosed Mouth, and none of them are from shrines anywhere near Cliffside Dales."
"What about from theWilling Servant!" the Prime asked. "It had a large contingent of observer Elders aboard, and they should have reached Mra by now."
"Also checked," the Twentieth replied. "Again, none from that part of Kee'rr territory. This could be a trick of some sort."
"Let's find out," the Prime said. "Send this: does he want me to come alone?"
"Good idea," the Twentieth said approvingly, and vanished. Reaching to his reader, the Prime cleared the warrior reports and pulled up the two Elder lists himself. The Twentieth was right: not a single Elder was from that region. What in the eighteen worlds was Nzz-oonaz doing? And how was he doing it?
The wait this time was longer, as if the protector had had to discuss the question with someone else. But after a hunbeat or so the Twentieth returned. " 'Nzz-oonaz urges you not to come alone,' " he quoted. " 'He recommends you bring warriors you can trust.' "
"Interestingly worded," the Prime commented.
"Yes," the Twentieth agreed. "If it's a trap, at least the trapper is avoiding the obvious."
Another Elder appeared: the Fourteenth. "I've done an independent trace of the pathway, Overclan Prime," he reported. "The origination point is indeed in the Kee'rr village of Cliffside Dales."
"Any idea which Elder he's talking to Nzz-oonaz through?"
"Not yet," the Fourteenth said. "They're still trying to track that down."
The Prime nodded, gesturing to the Twentieth. "Very well, I'll come as soon as I can," he dictated. "Where do I meet you?"
The Twentieth vanished. A half dozen of the previous Primes had gathered in the room now, the Prime noticed as he crossed back to his desk, listening with silent intensity. Activating the desk reader, he called up a map and an aerial photo of the Cliffside Dales area and waited.
He didn't have to wait long. " 'I recommend a group of hills at the eastern edge of the Amt'bri River Valley approximately twenty thoustrides west of Cliffside Dales,' " the Twentieth quoted. " 'There's room for transports to land, as well as the privacy Searcher Nzz-oonaz wishes.' "
"There," the Fourth said, dropping down to the Prime's shoulder and jabbing a tongue at the map. "It's certainly got privacy."
"Yet it's not forested," the Twenty-second added. "That implies no easily concealed ambush waiting for you. And on top of hills you'll have good warning of unwanted arrivals after you land."
"Yes," the Prime murmured, studying the photos. It certainly looked like a reasonable place for a legitimate meeting.
And if itwas a trap, he was rather interested in seeing how the plotters intended springing it. "I'll be there in two tentharcs," he said. "Will you be alone?"
" 'I certainly intend to be,' " the Twentieth brought back the rather dry answer. " 'If I'm not, you'd better assume something's wrong.' "
"Understood," the Prime said. "Tell Searcher Nzz-oonaz I'll look forward to hearing what he has to say." He gestured to the Twentieth. "Relay that, then close the pathway. Twenty-second, alert Commander Oclan-barjak to prepare five transports and ten sectrenes of his most trustworthy warriors. We'll leave as soon as they're ready."
The two Elders vanished. "I hope you know what you're doing, my son," the Twenty-eighth said quietly, moving up beside the Prime.
"I do," the Prime said firmly, opening the storage drawer of his desk and pulling out the packed travel bag he always kept there. "I trust Nzz-oonaz's judgment. Besides, I'll be well protected."
"Even excellent judgment can be manipulated," the Twenty-eighth reminded him. "And if the Speaker for Dhaa'rr is behind this, the goal may not be an overt attack. It might merely be a ploy to draw you out of Unity City for a few tentharcs."
"I don't know what that would gain anyone," the Prime said. "I'll hardly be out of communication with the Overclan Seating or Warrior Command anywhere along the way."
"It may not have anything to do with you at all," the Fourth said darkly. "At least not directly." He jabbed his tongue meaningfully at the desk's secure drawer.
The drawer containing the box that Speaker Cvv-panav had thrust into his face the previous fullarc. With Prr't-zevisti'sfsss organ inside.
Cvv-panav himself was supposedly back on Dharanv, but of course that didn't mean anything. If this was his scheme, his agents would already be in place inside the Overclan Complex. "You have a point," he agreed, unlocking the drawer and withdrawing the box. "But I think we can fix that."
"How?" the Seventeenth asked. "Where can you hide it that would be more secure than here?"
"In a place where thousands of Elders would be available to witness its theft," the Prime told him, sliding the box into an empty pouch of his travel bag.
"After also witnessing a direct attack on the Overclan Prime himself," the Fourth said, nodding his approval. "Excellent."
"At least not unreasonable," the Seventeenth said doubtfully. "A clever ploy might still succeed."
"What sort of ploy?" the Fourth scoffed. "The Prime will have some of the Overclan's best warriors with him-"
"Whatever's going on, we'll soon know all about it," the Prime cut them off, his tongue flicking impatiently. Never, he swore to himself, never, never, never would he fall into this infuriating habit of second-guessing the decisions of the Overclan Prime when he himself was raised to Eldership. "Seventeenth, go tell Commander Oclan-barjak I'm on my way to the transport hangar."
He set off down the hallway, still seething, the warriors falling into step around him. And tried not to wonder how many of the former Primes back there had promised themselves exactly the same thing.
The relays cracked, a much louder sound down in the forward hold than it was up on the flight deck. Once again, theHappenstance had meshed in.
"Here we go again," Quinn said, his voice muffled as he floated in the zero-gee, his arms and head inside the Corvine's starboard sensor access panel.
"Okay, fire it up," Daschka's voice came over the open intercom to the flight deck. "Let's see if they've gone to ground yet."
"Right," Cho Ming's voice answered.
"A little straighter, please," Quinn said.
"Sorry," Aric apologized, shifting the angle of the diagnostic display he was holding so that Quinn could see it better over his shoulder. They'd meshed in perhaps a dozen times already since leaving theTrafalgar, returning to normal space to track the movements of the fleeing Zhirrzh warships. A perfectly straightforward pursuit strategy, apparently straight out of the NorCoord Military Intelligence manual.
Except that in this case Aric was starting to wonder if the technique was going to backfire on them. Every time they meshed in and the fleeing Zhirrzh warships didn't, the pursuers fell a few minutes farther behind the prey. Already the warships were right on the edge of Cho Ming's wake-trail detector; another three or four of these stops and they'd be out of range completely.
"Nope," Cho Ming said. "There they are, still chugging along."
"I see them," Daschka growled. Maybe he was starting to wonder if this was such a good idea, too. "Anyone else out there?"
"Actually, this time there is," Cho Ming told him, "Coming in roughly from the direction of Mra-mig."
"Mrachanis?"
"Hang on," Cho Ming said. "It's a strange reading-give me a second to sort it out."
Carefully, Quinn eased his way out of the access panel, steadying himself with a grip on the edge of the access opening as he looked over toward the intercom. The silence from the flight deck grew a little thicker....
"Got it," Cho Ming said. "It's a group of Mrach transports flying in loose formation. Breaks down to ten Hrenn-class heavy-haulers."
"They on an intercept course with the Zhirrzh?" Daschka asked.
"No," Cho Ming said. "Looks like the vector cuts along their backtrail."
"Are they on an intercept with us?" Quinn called.
"Doesn't look like it," Cho Ming replied. "Though if we keep going... hold it."
"What?" Daschka asked.
"They've meshed in," Cho Ming said. "Somewhere about four light-years ahead of us."
"Directly ahead?" Quinn called.
"No," Cho Ming said. "About thirty degrees wide of our vector."
"They may not have anything to do with us or the Zhirrzh, actually," Daschka added. "There's a solar system over there. Could be mining ships."
"Maybe," Cho Ming agreed. "Wait a second, we've got another group just meshing out. Two Hrenn haulers this time, heading away from the same area where the other group meshed in."
"Sounds like a mining operation, all right," Daschka concluded. "Let's get back to the focus at hand. Are the Zhirrzh still holding their original course?"
"Pretty much," Cho Ming said. "They've shifted a few degrees... I'll be damned."
"What?" Daschka asked.
"You're going to love this one, Daschka," Cho Ming said, his voice suddenly tight. "We chased ten Zhirrzh ships away from Phormbi, right?"
"Right," Daschka said. "Plus the one that had already left ahead of them."
"Right," Cho Ming said. "Well, of those ten I'm only reading seven now. In the thirty-two minutes since our last wake-trail reading three of them have meshed back in."
"Have they, now," Daschka said softly. "Quinn, you might want to step up here."
Cho Ming had finished his preliminary analysis by the time Quinn and Aric reached the flight deck. "All right," he said, running a spot pointer across a large-scale on one of the displays. "Here's my best-guess scenario. Right after we meshed out the last time, three Zhirrzh ships broke away from the pack and headed along this vector, meshing back in again in the cometary halo of this system over here. The rest continued on, hoping we wouldn't notice they'd lost some numbers."
"And the Mrach haulers are running a supply line?" Quinn asked.
"Or else helping with repairs," Daschka said. "Between theTrafalgar and the Yycromae, the Zhirrzh lost a brickload of lasers. Quinn, how fast can you put that Corvine back together?"
"Not fast enough," Quinn said. "Two hours, maybe one."
Daschka made a face. "Damn."
"Not fast enough for what?" Aric asked.
"Not fast enough for us to split up," Daschka growled. "We've got two targets, and only one ship to chase them with. Means we have to flip a coin."
"If we're going to follow the main fleet, we need to mesh out right away," Cho Ming warned. "Otherwise, we're going to lose them."
"I know," Daschka said. "Let me think."
For a minute he stared out at the stars outside the canopy. Then, abruptly, he stirred from his musings and reached for his control board. "Okay, decision made," he said, keying in a course change. "Our best chance of finding the Zhirrzh and Mrachanis doing the morris dance together is where our wounded wolves have gone to ground. So that's where we go."
There was another thunk, and the tunnel illusion, and they were once again meshed out. "Okay," Daschka said. "ETA at the rendezvous is about an hour twenty. You two get back down and do whatever you have to to get that Corvine buttoned up. Cho Ming, you'd better go help them."
"I have a question first," Aric said. "How did the Zhirrzh know when we had meshed out and therefore wouldn't be able to spot their course change?"
Daschka shrugged. "Seems pretty obvious. The Mrachanis have wake-trail detectors; the Zhirrzh have instantaneous communication. QED."
"In other words, you're saying that the Mrachanis over at that system have to have a Zhirrzh ship with them," Aric said.
"Or else the Zhirrzh have given them their communication technique," Cho Ming said. "What's your point?"
"Two points," Aric said. "One, that this is enough evidence to implicate the Mrachanis as collaborators without having to go take a look ourselves. We can head back right now and blow the whistle."
Daschka shook his head. "Inference hardly counts as proof."
"Even under martial law?"
"Even then."
Aric grimaced. "All right, then, point number two. If the Mrachanis and Zhirrzhare collaborating, then they're onto us. They've seen us here, and they'll see us coming toward them. And they'll be ready for us."
"But they won't know exactly where we're going to mesh in," Cho Ming pointed out. "Not accurately enough for an ambush."
"We don't know that," Aric said. "The Zhirrzh managed a pretty impressive pinpoint mesh-in when Quinn and I were out searching for Pheylan. We don't know everything they can do."
"We're NorCoord Intelligence, Cavanagh," Daschka reminded him. "It's our job to occasionally stick our heads in the lion's mouth."
"It's my job, too," Quinn added quietly. "I'm sorry, Mr. Cavanagh, but I agree with them."
Aric sighed. If he somehow managed to live through all of this, he promised himself, he was never, ever going to leave his nice, safe CavTronics desk again. "It's not Cavanagh when we're flying, Maestro," he reminded Quinn morosely. "It's El Dorado, remember? Come on, let's go get that Corvine buttoned up."
"The Mrach transport craft have met with the five warships of theTrillsnake force at Rendezvous One," the Elder reported. "The connections have been successfully completed on two of them; the other three are not yet finished. The Mrachanis estimate two more tentharcs to completion."
Cvv-panav nodded, making another note on his reader. "What about the others?"
"TheCompelling is nearly to its rendezvous point," another of the group of Elders circling around him said, moving forward. "The ship commander has no knowledge of whether the Mrachanis are there yet."