The whisper erupted into a cacophony of shouts. Sisters jumped to their feet. Ears and hands flapped wildly. The journalists tried to point their noters in six directions at once.
Byvant climbed to her feet and drew herself up to her full height. “Sisters! Please!” she bellowed. Silence descended like a heavy blanket over the room.
Very good, Sister,
thought Ishth.
Now, salvage this. Please.
“The Humans and the
devna
killed two of our sister-defenders?” said Byvant with perfect calm. “And who sent them out to die? Who held the Humans until they had to escape? To whose names do those deaths ready go, Citizen Sisters? Who ready owes their families for their lives?”
The shouts changed pitch and direction and the hand-and-ear-waving grew less. Byvant glanced down at Ishth. Ishth dipped her ears in approval.
Vreaith's face tightened up. She had evidently counted on that news to shock the whole room into confusion. Which went to show that she not only had no taste in clothes, she had no real understanding of how good Byvant was.
Ishth lowered her ears a little closer to her scalp. “Do you have any idea where your prisoners escaped to?”
Pem's ears sagged. There was no escaping the fact that Byvant's few words had swung the room against them again.
“We assume they are heading for the Human outpost near Mrant Chavan.”
“And there are more sisters sent to intercept?” prompted Ishth.
“They may have them by now.”
Ishth dipped her ears. “Good. It will be that much more convenient for you to escort them to the Human outpost.”
A look of incredulity flickered through Vreaith's eyes.
“Understand me clearly,” said Ishth. “The Humans are already scouring the Hundred Isles for their missing sisters. They can either find them soon, or they can continue to search for whatever they can find. Which may include the truth of what your sisters aboard the
Ur
are planning. What do you think the Humans will do if they find that?”
Now, what are you going to do? Are you nervous enough to give it all up now, or are you going to try to buy time for your sisters aboard the
Ur?
Pem dropped her gaze to the floor. “We'll have to send some messages to find out what the situation is.”
Buying time. Good. You'll buy it for us, too. As long as the Humans think we can't manage for ourselves, they'll be willing to take you on for us.
And when you must die, it is not we who kill you.
C
ommander Keale, wake up! Commander Keale, wake up!”
Keale surfaced slowly from sleep. It took a minute to realize be was being bailed by the room voice.
“Commander Keale, wake up!”
“Room voice, what's the emergency?” Keale knuckled his eyes. “Lights!”
The lights rose, just a little, to give his eyes time to adjust, and the voice answered, “A priority red call is on your comm station.”
The words jolted Keale fully awake. He scrambled out of the sheets and snatched a pair of shorts off the bedside chair.
“Room voice, open comm station. I'm coming!” he called to the station as he yanked the shorts on.
The lights came up to full. Keale hurried out of the bedroom and into his spartan living room. The main comm station was alive and Lieutenant Ryan's face looked anxiously out at him from the screen.
“What is it?” Keale dropped into the station chair. Ryan was tousled and rumpled. Whatever he'd been doing, it wasn't sleeping.
“We've got trouble,” Ryan answered. “We got this from a pilot who was flying back to base late after doing a pass over Vshlanl and Prentanl Islands.”
Ryan's face blanked out and was replaced by a green-and-brown blur of woods and fields, punctuated by towns and homesteads. Then, in a clump of trees, an unexpected glint caught the light.
“What's that?” asked Keale.
“That's what the pilot wondered,” said Ryan's voice from behind the scene. “He went back for another look.” The ground tilted and rotated as the pilot banked his craft and angled his flight path over whatever in the grove was catching the light.
The plane flew over, the cameras looked down, and showed a tubular construction topped with a shining lens.
“A telescope?” Keale scratched his chin. “What are the Getesaph doing with a telescope so close to the port?”
“I went in and asked.” The flyover video cut out and Keale faced Ryan again. “There were five soldiers that we saw: a couple
trindt,
and three
ivrth.”
Captains and engineers, Keale translated mentally. Ryan's face was replaced by a new scene. This was a square room, small by Getesaph standards. It looked like one of the white, prefab buildings they were so good at putting up at a moment's notice. Two uniformed Getesaph with the trindt's red bands on their cuffs stood in front of whoever's eyes had made this recording.
The Getesaph were talking, but Ryan hadn't turned up the sound. “They gave us a story about using the ’scope to watch the shuttles. To make sure everything was going to and coming from where it was supposed to.”
Reasonable,
thought Keale. Dedelphi paranoia made him look positively lackadaisical.
“They showed me the ’scope.” The video jumped straight to a close-up look at the telescope and its turret and cables running off its sides like black vines. “I asked a few questions and left, and took this recording to Jasper over in comm tech.”
Ryan appeared again. “She ran the scraps together, looked at the angle, and the fact that the place was well manned, personed, whatever, on a day when there aren't any flights planned, and came up with another possible use.” Ryan took a deep breath. “It seems that ’scope is in the exact right place for getting the backscatter of communications transmissions off the clouds.”
The sentence sank into Keale's mind and translated itself. “They've tapped our communications?”
“Yes, sir.”
Grim satisfaction flowed through Keale. “All right, knot up what you've got and get it to me. I'm going to wake up Veep Brador, and then I'm going to wake up the Sisters-Chosen-to-Lead and—”
“Sir?” interrupted Ryan. “That's not the real problem. The real problem is that Jasper's team also figured out why Hagopian was looking at the passenger manifest.”
Keale froze. “Go on.”
“Jasper's team has also been going through the port tapes, listening to conversations, watching personnel registration, matching faces with names and movements.” Ryan ran a hand through his hair, making yet more of it stand on end. “What she found was that the names people were calling each other in the hallways and with their families did not always match the names they entered for the register.”
“Who have we got up there?” asked Keale softly.
“Jasper thinks it's a boatload of soldiers.”
Any satisfaction Keale felt drained down to the soles of his feet. “Oh, Christ,” he whispered. His mind reeled and righted itself. “All right, Ryan, this is an emergency order. The Hundred Isles and t'Aori peninsula are to be evacuated of all Human personnel. Immediately.”
“Wh—”
“Because whatever the Getesaph are doing up there, it's going to be aimed at the t'Therians, and if the t'Therians get wind of it, they'll attack the Getesaph and all hell's going to break loose like nothing we've ever seen. Get our people out of there. Now.”
“Yes, sir.” He still hesitated. “What about Nussbaumer and Hagopian?”
Keale shook his head. “We're going to have to put the planes on evac duty. Everybody should keep an eye out for them, but evacuation of the outposts and ports is now top priority.”
For a moment Ryan forgot his title. “Brador's going to chew your ass off and spit it out.”
“It's my ass,” said Keale dismissively. “Get going. I've got to get hold of Captain Esmaraude.”
“Yes, sir.” Ryan cut his thread and the screen blanked out.
“Room voice, emergency call to Captain Elisabeth Esmaraude aboard the
Ur.
Security override all other communications and secure the thread.”
Haul her out of bed, voice. She's the one in real trouble.
“Completing request.”
Keale couldn't sit still. He got up and paced back and forth in front of the terminal.
Come on, Esmo. Come on.
The carpet felt soft and warm under his callused feet. His hands started to ache from how tightly his fists clenched.
The evacuation was going to cause a scene down there. Maybe not panic, but one hell of a general confusion, especially in the Getesaph port where everyone was sitting around waiting for something to happen. Ryan was right. Brador was going to have his ass over this. Which was why he was waiting to call Brador last. He had to get everything else in motion. Then, he'd find a way to explain to a veep whose own ass depended on schedules and calm that if they didn't create a little Holy Hell now, it was going to get a lot worse later. People, Human and Dedelphi, were going to get killed.
By evacuating, they would give the Dedelphi a taste of the only real threat Bioverse had stated it was willing to use. The Dedelphi weren't behaving, so the Humans were leaving. It might actually do some good.
Finally, the screen lit up. Esmo, wrapped in a thick, patchwork robe, was in the act of sitting down and shoving her spectacles into place over her temple connections.
“What's happened?” she asked.
“We've got a boatload of soldiers up there with you, Esmo.”
Her jaw worked itself back and forth. “Kaye, we've searched the place. We've had health and safety teams in there every day. We've—”
“I know.” Keale told her, and for the first time in his life, he saw Esmo utterly stunned.
When she could move again, she lowered her head into her hands. “What are they doing? What in the Lawgiver's name are they doing?”
“I intend to ask them.” Keale's voice was brittle. “But first, we've got your people to look out for. Esmo, what can you do?”
“Not a whole lot, Kaye. We're not set up for a siege, or a prison.” She pulled a patch cord out of the station and hooked it up to her glasses. Keale watched her lips move silently for a moment.
She focused on him again. “Okay, I've sealed the maintenance hatches, and the pass-throughs to the other city.” Her eyes flickered, glancing at something in the corner of her spectacles. “It's almost morning here. I'll send a directive to all personnel to get into the secondary domes during shift change. That'll cause the least confusion. Everybody's on the move then anyway. Then, we'll close off the corridors.” Her expression turned rueful. “Hole up and wait. That's about what we're capable of.”
“Okay.” Keale nodded. “Do it. When your people are secure, we'll send mine into the main dome for a search and seizure.”
“Kaye, you've got two hundred security guards armed with stunners and blinders. If Jasper's right, we've got three thousand trained killers up here.”
“I know,” said Keale quietly. “That's why I'll be going in first.”
The captain said nothing, just nodded.
“See you in a few hours, Esmo.” Keale cut the thread and sat there, alone and silent for a long time.
Then, he got up to go get dressed, and tried to mink of what he was going to say to the veeps. Right now, it was all he could do.
“Dayisen Lareet! Dayisen Umat!”
Lareet sat bolt upright on the mattress. Her motion startled Umat, who lay beside her.
The two Ovrth Gert burst out of the stairwell, both panting like they had swum ten miles upstream. They hit the light controls, and the other dayisen who hadn't woken up at the shouts, lifted ears and heads.
Lareet and Umat had been up all night with the dayisen squad leaders at a planning session in the (hopefully) unmonitored living room downstairs. When it was decided everyone needed at least some sleep, they'd all retreated to the second floor.
“What is it?” Lareet climbed out from under the blankets. They hadn't gotten the wiring for the speakers laid yet, so sensitive information was being carried by runners rather than through the Human computer system, where they had no way to tell who was listening in.
“The Humans,” wheezed Ovrth Brend. “They've sealed the pass-throughs.”
The skin on Lareet's shoulders stiffened. “Did they give any explanation?”
“None that we know of.” Ovrth Hral straightened up and tried to get her breathing under control.
Umat breezed past them and down the spiral stairs without a word. Lareet followed on her heels, along with the other dayisen. Umat laid her hands on the comm station and lit the screen up.
“No waiting messages, no general announcements,” she reported.
“What do you think?” asked Lareet, half-afraid of the answer.
“I think we're out of time.” Umat took her sister's hand and faced the dayisen.
“Send out the word to your groups. We go in one hour. Keep to written orders. Do not under any circumstances use the computer lines.
“We need the first-strike force at the launch point with the second-strike force assembled and ready to go. Dayisen Yntre, your sisters must make sure all the emergency lockers are covered. As soon as we start, we must have a flow of supplies. Dayisen Huln, your people cover the hatches. The third force must be ready to go down them as soon as they're clear.”
“Remember,” said Lareet, “if you kid them, it will be that much harder on your sisters and your daughters. We must make them concentrate their immediate efforts on rescuing their own. We must not make them believe it is safer to kill us all, or that we have killed so many of theirs that they act in anger. They are not impervious to emotion, no matter what rumors we hear. They are just slow to burn.” She glanced at all the dayisen and saw them dip their ears in agreement.
Umat stood even straighter. Lareet would not have thought it possible. “We have one advantage they cannot overcome. They cannot destroy this ship without seriously crippling their mission. This will buy us time.”
Lareet tried to pull her spine up as straight as her sister's, but her muscles resisted. “As long as they believe they can regain what they have lost, they will stay here. They will protect our sisters below from attack by the t'Therians. We must not drive them away too quickly.”