Fire With Fire

traded stares with Alnduul. He glanced quickly at Riordan, who was still slumped against the far wall, dark maroon stains around his nose, his eyes fletched with the blood-red lightning streaks of burst capillaries. Downing determined that the time for well-mannered, soft-spoken diplomacy was long past. “Alnduul, we require an update: do you have any more news on the event?”

Alnduul’s hands were folded and voice was tight. “The other delegations deny involvement of any kind. Except the Arat Kur: they still refuse to reply to any summons whatsoever. On the other hand, the Hkh’Rkh delegation has now accused your delegation of attempting to assassinate Yaargraukh.”

Opal looked up sharply. “They what?”

Visser turned a withering stare upon Alnduul. “This is not only preposterous, but a transparent attempt to manufacture an incident in order to-”

Downing heard where Visser was going, derailed her by interrupting. “Alnduul, have your technicians determined why our coupler’s doors failed?”

“No, but the chip that monitors the coupler’s functions registered a brief pulse of power in the circuit that triggers the explosive bolts. This was what caused them to discharge.”

“So there was an overload from some other system?”

Thandla answered before Alnduul could. “Mr. Downing, I do not think you understand the significance of what Alnduul has just told us. There is no way-there is no physical pathway-for a power surge to trigger the bolts. The bolts are physically isolated from all other systems until their arming switch is thrown. Furthermore, they are insulated from any other charge-bearing systems in order to prevent exactly this kind of failure.”

Alnduul nodded. “My technicians confirm that the bridging switch to the explosive bolts has not been moved since it was last checked by your technicians on Earth.”

“So an electric current just appeared in the circuits beyond the gap of the still-open bridging switch?”

“That is correct. And allow me to anticipate your next question: our station sensors would have detected any attempt to induce current in the line by projecting an electromagnetic or microwave flux at it. No such energy pulse was recorded.”

Downing nodded, felt cold sweat on his palms. There wasn’t any power surge in Alexandria either, but it was the same species of mysterious failure there, too. And probably the same with Nolan’s coronary controller…

Alnduul was continuing. “Since we cannot identify a system failure of any kind, I have asked the Third Arbiter to provisionally treat this event as an attempted assassination.”

“Thank you. Does this mean that the Third Arbiter has approved my request that our delegation should now be returned as two separate groups?” Eyes turned toward Downing; he ignored them.

“Yes, although there was considerable discussion about the political wisdom of acceding to that request. However, your colloquial axiom that one should never put all their eggs in one basket decided the matter. However, I must ask that the party returning to Earth in your own module makes the journey in cryosleep.”

“Of course, Alnduul. When will we be departing?”

“Twenty minutes: no more.”

Stunned stares went back and forth between the other members of the delegation.

“We shall be ready,” Downing promised.

“And we shall remain vigilant. I shall contact you soon again.” Alnduul’s image faded.

“Twenty minutes?” Hwang mused. “That’s not a lot of time.”

“That’s the idea,” replied Downing. “We don’t want to give the assassins enough time to have another go at us.”

Elena let out a long sigh. “A few hours ago, I wondered how long it would be before the Accord came apart.”

Trevor looked over at her. “And now?”

“Now I wonder how long it will be before we’re at war.”

Visser shook her head. “Nein, Elena: we already are.” She sent a sideways glance at Riordan. “What happened to Caine was the first shot, I think.”

“Or just a warning, perhaps?” Durniak offered.

“More likely a promise of what is to come,” Elena said grimly.

Visser nodded. “Ja, that is what I am afraid of.” She closed her eyes. “Which means I have failed.”

Wasserman waved dismissively. “Hey, you weren’t alone here, Ambassador. We all blew it.”

Caine cocked an eyebrow-which only called greater attention to his blood-streaked eyes. “No, none of us ‘blew it.’”

Wasserman’s chin jutted at Caine truculently. “Have you seen any other human delegations on this station? If not, then we’re the bozos who screwed up.”

“No, we didn’t, Lemuel-because we never had a chance in hell of succeeding.”

Thandla shook his head. “We could have allied ourselves with the Ktor.”

“Yeah, but would they have allied themselves with us?”

Durniak shrugged. “They assured us of their support.”

“Sure they did. But so what? I’ll bet they offered their support to every race they thought might turn against the Dornaani.” Caine spread his hands. “Let’s assume for a moment that the Ktor wanted an alliance with us more than with any of the other races. A crucial question remains: an alliance against whom? The Dornaani? The Slaasriithi? The Arat Kur-who, if they make war on us alone, would get spanked and sent home by the Custodians? An alliance with the Ktor is meaningless because the only real danger to us is the Ktor. Which means we’re not talking about an alliance at all: we’re talking about extortion, a protection racket.”

“Well,” Thandla shrugged, “that still might have been to our advantage. It might have slowed down the avalanche of events which seem to be overtaking us now.”

“No, Sanjay, buying ourselves time by masquerading as a Ktoran ally still won’t enable us to close the tech gap between us and them quickly enough. And I doubt we could have conned them, anyway: trying to out-lie professional liars rarely works. Besides, if we were cowering in the Ktor’s kennel, they’d probably turn right around and remove the only folks who might be able and willing to intervene if the Ktor do decide to eat us instead of keep us as pets: the Dornaani and the Slaasriithi.”

“Who’ve done nothing to help us, so far,” added Visser.

Caine shrugged. “I suspect it’s in their nature to avoid conflict as long as possible.”

“You mean, until it’s too late to help,” Wasserman sneered. “And I just love the way they’ve rewarded our fine, upstanding morals. Using your analogy from the other night, we took the higher road and played the part of Churchill: we stood up to the bad guys. Except it turns out that the Dornaani have happily taken on the role of Chamberlain and have hung us out to dry, trying to preserve ‘peace in their time.’”

“That could be what happens,” admitted Caine, “but I think the possibility that the Dornaani might fail us is a whole lot lower than the probability that the Ktor mean to consume us.”

Visser’s smile looked labored, broken. “You are trying to be kind, Caine, but we failed. The fault is ours.”

“Failure and fault are two different things, Ambassador.” Caine leaned toward her. “You came here expecting a tea party and found yourself in a diplomatic death match. It was already half over, with the long-term pros jockeying for their final positions. We didn’t even know the boundaries of the ring, much less the rules-and we didn’t have the power or the knowledge to change the outcome.”

Downing smiled. “So what you’re saying is, there’s no shame in losing a rigged game. True enough, I suppose. But did we have to lose by such a margin? From a security perspective, we have utterly failed our planet.”

Caine looked up, spoke slowly. “That depends upon how you define ‘security,’ Richard: do you mean ‘survival at any cost’-including slavery-or ‘living as a self-determining species’? If by security you mean nothing more than physical survival, then you’re right: we failed. We had another option: we could probably have survived as slaves.”

“Slaves?” Opal sounded horrified.

Caine shrugged. “If we had to fight off the Ktor alone, I’m pretty sure the endgame would be thralldom or