"I haven't heard anything, sir," the other said. "Everyone's keeping off the radio. I know the Conquerors have taken the settlement, though, and that some of the other transports in that last batch are overdue. The Corvines have gone off to run cover for the search ships."
"All right," Holloway said grimly. "Let's get going before they need to bail us out again. Send someone to go give Crane a hand." He glanced at Melinda. "And have someone pick up one of those Conqueror bodies over there-grab whichever's in the best shape. Get a couple of their weapons, too."
Three minutes later they were in the air again. Melinda found herself looking past the dirty, powder-stained men to stare at the body bags that had been hastily piled in the rear of the craft. The war had indeed begun... and she was indeed here in the middle of it.
"Sorry you didn't leave when you had the chance?" Holloway asked quietly from beside her.
She turned to look at him. Those cool brown eyes were studying her closely. Maybe trying to decide if she was going to be more trouble than she was worth in the coming days. "I'm sorry any of this had to happen at all," she said. "I wish we could all have started by talking instead of shooting."
"Wedid," he reminded her bluntly. "It was the Conquerors who came out shooting."
"Maybe we scared them."
"Or maybe they just aren't interested in talking," Holloway countered. "There are all sorts of people, Doctor, humans and nonhumans alike, for whom talking just slows down the process of taking whatever it is they want. You run into one of them... well, you're a doctor. You know that sometimes there's only one way to stop a rabid animal."
He looked past her at the body bags. "Let's just hope the politicians have the guts to do it before anyone else has to die."
Melinda looked at the body bags again, a shiver running up her back. "You're talking about CIRCE."
"Damn right I am," he said. "I don't know what the geniuses at NorCoord are waiting for, anyway. I'd have started reassembling the thing the day theJutland force was hit."
"Political considerations, probably," Melinda said. Pheylan had gone into a CIRCE kick, she remembered, when he was a child. Something he'd said then...
"You'd know more about that than I would," Holloway grunted. "Maybe this will finally get them off their soft seats and doing something."
"Maybe," Melinda said. "Colonel, you were in supreme command of the Peacekeeper forces on Dorcas, weren't you?"
"Still am," he said. "For whatever it's worth. Why?-you want the job?"
"No," Melinda said. "I was just wondering if you'd have known if any of the CIRCE components were being stored here."
For a long moment Holloway just stared at the body bags, his face rigid. "Oh, hell," he murmured at last.
Melinda's heart seemed to skip a beat."Is one of them here?"
"I don't know," Holloway said, his face still tight. "Local commanders never do. But if it is, there's only one likely place it could be."
"Back at the garrison?"
"Not quite that bad," he said. "But bad enough. There's a small automated tectonic-monitoring station in the hills just north of the settlement that some NorCoord agency put in a few years back. At least, that's what they told me it was. If it's really the storage point for a CIRCE component-" He shook his head. "The good part is that it's well enough snugged in underground that the Conquerors probably won't know anything's there. The bad part is that we can't get to it without having to practically walk into their arms."
"So what do we do?"
"I don't know," Holloway conceded. "But it's not exactly a priority. First job for us is to dig in and get ready for whatever the Conquerors decide to throw at us. If we survive... well, we'll see then what we can do."
18
From the strangely shaped control board wrapped around Hill came a shrill warble, jarring Cavanagh out of a light and troubled doze. "What is it?" he asked, straining to see in the dim light of the indicators and subsidiary displays. "Hill?"
The warbling cut off. "It's all right, sir," Hill said, his silhouette moving across the tiny colored lights as he shifted in his seat. "Just a proximity warning, Mrach style. We're coming up on Phormbi."
Cavanagh squinted at his watch. Seven hours, approximately, since that mad scramble out of Mig-Ka City. "Do we know where we're going?"
"Yes, sir, the Northern Wooded Steppes. There's a map and a little bit about the place on the computer here. With your permission I'm going to key the auto-entry to bring us in on the night side. Try to avoid whatever they've got in the way of a traffic pattern."
"Fine," Cavanagh said, rubbing his eyes. Between the interrupted sleep on Mra-mig and all the adrenaline surges since then, he was feeling desperately tired.
"Kolchin? You awake?"
"Yes, sir," the other's voice came softly. "I think Fibbit's still in that cold-sleep of hers. You want me to try to wake her?"
"Don't bother," Cavanagh said, his ears still ringing from that proximity alarm. Either that cold-sleep was incredibly hard to break, or else Duulian hearing was on a par with Duulian night vision. "Hill, do you have any idea what the landing procedure's going to be like?"
"None at all, sir," Hill said. "I've never been to a Yycroman world before. But I'm sure one of the interdiction ships will be able to tell us."
"Let's hope it's short and quick," Kolchin said. "Could be awkward if word of our departure from Mra-mig arrives while we're still up here chatting."
"At least we know the news couldn't have beaten us here," Hill pointed out. "That's something."
"Yes," Kolchin said. "Lord Cavanagh, I've been thinking about what happened back there at the hotel. Your suggestion that what we saw was a power struggle between Mrach factions?"
"Yes. And?"
"Another possibility's occurred to me. That red card Bronski showed you-could it have been a forgery?"
Cavanagh frowned into the darkness. "Interesting thought," he agreed. "I've never seen one up close before, and I didn't take the time to examine this one."
"Same here," Kolchin said. "But that might explain why the Mrachanis didn't send a representative up with him. And why he didn't haul us away when he had the numbers on his side."
"And perhaps explain the incident at the elevators," Cavanagh added slowly. "If Faction A issues official red cards, but Bronski was actually working for Faction B, Faction A might have sent the Bhurtala to bring him in."
"But why would a NorCoord diplomat be working for the Mrachanis?" Hill objected.
"We only have Bronski's word that he's a NorCoord diplomat," Kolchin reminded him. "If he can forge a red card, a diplomatic ID isn't going to be a problem."
"All of which brings us back to the man in Fibbit's threading," Cavanagh said. An odd and not entirely pleasant thought had suddenly occurred to him. "New line of thought, Kolchin. What are the chances that the whole Bhurtala thing at the hotel was a setup? That the Mrachanis fed us this tip about Phormbi and then deliberately let us escape?"
For a moment the only noise in the cabin was the twittering drone of the drive beneath them. "If they wanted us to escape, why didn't they let Bronski pass?" Kolchin asked.
"All they were guarding was the elevators," Cavanagh pointed out. "I didn't see anyone at the stairway down the hall, and there was certainly no one by the emergency drop shaft. Maybe if Bronski had turned around and taken the stairs instead of arguing, they'd have let him go."
"I suppose that's possible," Kolchin said thoughtfully. "Bronski sure wasn't the type to back down. All right, let's assume they wanted us to leave there and go to Phormbi. Why?"
"All I can think of is that we're on a wild-snipe chase," Cavanagh said. "Maybe they know who the man in Fibbit's threading is and don't want us talking to him. Or maybe there's something more to those Conqueror legends they don't want us to find out."
Kolchin seemed to ponder that. "Sounds pretty complicated for Mrachanis," he said. "They're not supposed to be that good at chicanery."
Cavanagh shrugged. "Most people I've met have been perfectly capable of becoming chicanerous when important interests were at stake. What differs is their abilities to do a good job at it."
"Maybe that's why the Mrachanis pointed us to Phormbi instead of someplace a lot farther away," Hill suggested dryly. "It would be days before we'd know Fibbit's friend isn't on Nadezhda."
"If you want, sir, we could turn around and head back," Kolchin said. "We've got plenty of fuel."
Cavanagh shook his head. "No point to that now. As long as we're already here, we might as well stay long enough to ask a few questions."
There was another brief warble from the control board. "We're here," Hill announced. "Stand by...."
From somewhere behind them came the dull multiple thud of relays snapping open. The blackness through the canopy turned to the brief illusion of a tunnel, and then the stars flowed back into their proper positions around the large green-blue crescent hanging in space before them. "Right on target," Hill said approvingly. "Good autoentry on this thing."
"Mrach efficiency," Cavanagh told him, peering out at the specks of light moving in the planet's vicinity. "Which ones are the Peacekeeper ships?"
Hill leaned over his displays. "Actually... none of them."
Cavanagh frowned. "None of them?"
"No, sir. I'm picking up about thirty merchant-class, but they're all Yycroman design and registry. No Commonwealth ships of any kind."
Cavanagh rubbed at the stubble on his cheek. No Peacekeepers... and here they were flying a Mrach courier ship in Yycroman space. Not a smart move, by anyone's standards. "How soon before we're in laser range?"
"Searching for a satellite or ground station now," Hill said. "Couple more minutes."
Cavanagh nodded, looked out at the dark planetary surface ahead. If the sporadic clusters of lights scattered across it were anything to go by, Phormbi was not exactly a heavily populated world. "Maybe we should go ahead and contact one of those ships first. At least that would let someone know who we are."
"I don't think it'll be a problem," Kolchin soothed him. "They haven't got any ground- or orbit-based weapons anymore."
"I wouldn't bet money on that if I were you," Hill said, his voice suddenly odd. "Lord Cavanagh, you'd better have a look." The canopy shimmered, altering from viewport to display mode-
And there, looming out of the darkness behind them, was a dark shape. A shape splashed with lights and strangely curved luminescent edges. A shape out of the history records; a shape that no longer existed.
A shape that was rapidly overtaking them.
"That's a Yycroman warship," Cavanagh breathed, his voice seeming to come from a long distance away.
"Yes," Hill said. "And I'm not sure... but I think they want to talk with us."
After the sparsely furnished style of their Mrach hotel suite, the Yycroman room they were taken into was something of a shock. Large and ornate, packed almost too full of furniture and artwork to be comfortable, it felt to Cavanagh more like a museum with seats than an office or waiting room. Fibbit, in fact, seemed to treat it in exactly that way, flitting around the room from painting to sculpture to clothwork to scroll, studying everything in sight, apparently oblivious to the pair of Yycroman guards at each of the room's three doors.
The guards, of course, were not oblivious to her. Cavanagh could see their eyes moving beneath the glitter of their helmets as they watched every twitch of her long limbs. Or any twitch from the rest of them, for that matter.
Finally, after nearly two hours of waiting, they had a visitor.
A high-level visitor, too, judging from the elaborate ceremonial helmet and tooled cloak. [Which is Lord Stewart Cavanagh?] the Yycroma demanded, striding toward the ornately carved chair facing the prisoners.
"I'm Lord Cavanagh," Cavanagh said, standing up. "May I ask whom I have the honor of addressing?"
[I am Klyveress ci Yyatoor,] the Yycroma said, brushing the cloak to one side and sitting down. [Twelfth Counsel to the Hierarch.]
A female name, plus a title and position that traditionally went to a female. "Honored to meet you, ci Yyatoor," Cavanagh said, bowing low, a little of the tension leaving his throat. There was nothing good about this situation, but at least he wouldn't have to worry about sparking the hair-trigger male Yycroman temper. "I'd like to apologize for any problems our sudden appearance here may have caused," he continued. "I hope we can quickly resolve any misunderstandings that might still remain."
[Three of you carry passports of the Northern Coordinate Union,] Klyveress said, her eyes raking each of the three humans and then flicking to where Fibbit was now standing stock-still among the artifacts. [The Duulian has no passport at all. Yet you arrived here aboard a sensor-stealthed Mrach courier ship. Explain.]
"I admit it's an unusual situation," Cavanagh conceded. "As I explained to the ship's captain, we were forced by circumstances to borrow a Mrach courier when we left Mra-mig."
[Would a human fleeing the Mrach not seek out other humans?] Klyveress countered. [Yet you came to Phormbi instead of to a world of humans or the human ambassadorhold on Kammis. Explain.]
"We were looking for someone," Cavanagh said. "A human who we were told was somewhere in the Northern Wooded Steppes region of Phormbi."
Klyveress's gaze seemed to sharpen. [Who told you this?]
"A Mrachani who came to our hotel room a few minutes before we had to leave."
[His name? Position? Title?]
"I'm sorry," Cavanagh shook his head. "I don't know anything at all about him."
[Yet you believed this Mrach whom you knew nothing at all about?]
Cavanagh grimaced. Put that way, it did sound pretty ridiculous. "We didn't have any other leads," he said. "I thought it would be worth a try."
[Who is this man you seek?]
"I'm afraid I don't know that, either."
The Yycroma cocked her crocodilian head. [Yet you follow him. Have you no better uses for your time?]
Cavanagh felt his lip twitch. This was starting to get sticky. Klyveress clearly suspected them of being agents of the Mrachanis; and given the highly illegal existence of that Yycroman warship they'd run into out there, she had good reason to be hostile toward potential spies. "We went to Mra-mig looking for information about the Mrachanis' supposed contact with the Conquerors," he told Klyveress.
Klyveress hissed gently through her long snout. [It is not supposed. It is real.]
"Are you sure?" Cavanagh asked, frowning.
[We are quite certain. Continue your story.]
"There's not much more to tell," Cavanagh shrugged, wondering how on Earth the Yycromae would know anything about two-hundred-year-old Mrach legends. Had they already been in space by then? "We saw Fibbit-the Duulian-threading on the street and observed what seemed to be several Mrachanis watching her from concealment. That caught our interest, and so we went over and talked to her. Among other things she told us about a human who'd passed her a couple of times, and offered to show us the threading she'd made of him. Shortly after that the Mrachanis suddenly seemed to be trying to get her away from us and off the planet. That aroused my curiosity even further, and when the Mrachani I mentioned came to our suite and told us the man was on Phormbi, we decided to come here and see if we could find him."