about you? She’s gone nuts, says you’ve killed Kal Omo and taken over North Paw.” His words guttered to a stop as he realized that Pham’s presence here was equally unlikely.
Pham grinned at Silipan, and shut the door behind him. “Oh, the stories are all true, Trud. I’ve come to take back my fleet.”
“Your… fleet.” Trud just stared for a moment, fear and wonder playing across his face. “Pus, Pham. What are you on? You look strange.” A little adrenaline, a little freedom. Amazing what it can do for you. Silipan shrank before the smile that was growing on Pham’s face. “You’re crazy, man. You know you can’t win. You’re trapped here. Give up. Maybe we can pass this off as—as temporary insanity.”
Pham shook his head. “I’m here to win, Trud.” He raised his little dart gun up where Silipan could see. “And you’re going to help. We’re going out to the grouproom, and you’re going to cut off all ziphead support—”
Silipan brushed irritably at Nuwen’s gun hand. “Impossible. There’s a critical need for them, supporting the ground op.”
“Supporting Nau’s Spider-extermination program? All the better to cut them off right now. It should have an interesting effect on the Podmaster’s lake, too.”
Pham could almost see the Emergent balancing the risks in his mind: Pham Trinli, his old drinking buddy and fellow-braggart, now armed with a debatably effective dart gun—against all the Podmasters’ lethal power. “No way, Pham. You got yourself into this, and now you’re stuck with it.”
The huds that Pham held crumpled in his right hand were making muffled, angry noises. There was a final squawk, and the door to the storeroom popped open. “What’s the matter with you, Silipan? I told you we need—” Anne Reynolt slid into the room. She seemed to take in the tableau instantly, but she had nothing to bounce out on.
And Pham was just as fast as she. His hand turned, the little dart gun fired, and Reynolt convulsed. An instant later, a strange thudding rocked her body. Pham turned back to Trud, and now his smile was broader. “Explosive darts, don’t you know? They get inside, then—bam—your guts are hamburger.”
Trud’s complexion turned a pale shade of ash. “Unh-unh…” He stared at the body of his former boss/slave, and he looked about ready to puke.
Pham tapped Silipan’s chest with the little dart gun. Trud stared down, horror-frozen, into the muzzle. “Trud, my friend, why so glum? You’re a good Emergent. Reynolt was just a ziphead, a piece of furniture.” He gestured at Reynolt’s body, its convulsions fading toward the limpness of fresh death. “So let’s stow this garbage out of the way, and then you can show me how to disconnect the zipheads’ comm.” He grinned and moved back to snag the body. Trud was visibly trembling as started toward the door.
The instant Silipan turned away from him, Pham’s casual grip on Anne became gentle, careful.Lord, that sounded like the real thing, not a stundart and a noisemaker. It had been half a lifetime since he’d used this trick; what if he’d botched it? For the first time since the action started, panic seeped through the adrenaline rush. He slipped one hand to the side of her throat… and found a strong, steady pulse. Anne was thoroughly stunned and nothing more.
Pham pasted the predatory smile back on his face and followed Trud into the zipheads’ grouproom.
FIFTY-FOUR
The news companies had had the last laugh after all. So what if Accord Security had blacked out Mom’s getting off the daggercraft? Within minutes, she was on Southland territory—and the local news services were more than willing to show Victory Smith and every person in her entourage. For a few minutes, the cameras were so close that she could see the inner expression of the General’s eating hands. Mom looked as calm and military as ever… but for a few minutes Victory Lighthill felt more like a small child than a lieutenant in the Intelligence Service. This was as bad as the morning Gokna had died.Mom, why are you taking this risk? But Viki knew the answer to that. The General was no longer essential to the great counterlurk that she and Daddy had created; now she could help those she had put in greatest peril.
The NCO Club was crowded with cobbers who normally would have been on sleep shift or at other amusements. It was the closest place they could come to being back on the job. And for once “the job” was clearly the most important thing any cobber could be doing.
Victory drifted among the arcade games, discreetly signaled her people that things were cool. Finally, she hopped on a perch next to Brent. Her brother had not taken off his game helmet. His hands were in constant motion across the games console. She tapped him on a shoulder. “Mom will be talking any second now,” she said softly.
“I know,” was all Brent said. “Critter nine sees our op, but it still is fooled. It thinks the problem is local.”
Viki almost grabbed her brother’s helmet off his head. Damn. I might as well be deaf and blind. Instead, she took a telephone from her jacket and poked out a number. “Hi, Daddy? Mom has started talking.”
The speech was short. It was good. It blocked the threat from the South.And so what? Going down there was still too much of a risk. On the displays over the fizz bar, Viki could see the General handing her formal offer to Tim to pass out to Parliament. Maybe that end of things would work out. Maybe the trip was worth it. Several minutes passed. The cameras at Parliament Hall scanned back and forth across growing tumult. Mom had departed the platform with Uncle Hrunk. A scruffy little cobber in dark clothes approached them. Pedure. They were arguing….
And suddenly none of it mattered anymore. Brent shrugged against her. “Bad news,” he said, still not pulling the game display off his head. “I’ve lost them all. Even our old friend.”
Lighthill jumped off her game perch and signaled the team. Her gesture could have been a shrill whistle for the effect it had. Her team was on its feet, saddled up with panniers, and all headed for the door. Brent pulled up his game hat and hustled out just ahead of Lighthill.
Behind them, she saw curious glances, but most of the club’s clientele were too stuck on the television to pay them much attention.
Her team had bounced down two stories before the attack alarums started screaming.
“What do you mean, we’ve lost ziphead support? Was the fiber cut?” Trinli had somehow found all the fibers?
“N-no, sir. At least I don’t think so.” Podcorporal Marli was competent enough, but he was no Kal Omo. “We can still ping through, but the control channels don’t respond. Sir… it’s as though somebody just took the zips off- line.”
“Hm. Yes.” This could be another Trinli surprise, or maybe there was a traitor in the Attic. Either way… Nau looked across the room at Ezr Vinh. The Peddler’s eyes were glazed with pain. There were important secrets behind those eyes, but Vinh was as tough as any that he and Ritser had interrogated to death. It would take time or some special lever to get real information out of him. Time they didn’t have. He turned back to Marli. “Can I still talk to Ritser?”
“I think so. We’ve got fiber to the laser station on the outside.” He tapped hesitantly at the console. Nau suppressed the impulse to rage at his clumsiness. But without ziphead support, everything was clumsy.We mightas well be Qeng Ho.
Marli grinned suddenly. “Our session link to theInvisible Hand is still active, sir! I just keyed audio to your collar mike.”
“Very good…. Ritser! I don’t know how much you’ve got of this, but—” Nau gave a quick rehash of the debacle, finishing with: “I’ll be out of touch for the next few hundred seconds; I’m evacuating to L1-A. The bottom- line question: Without our zipheads, can you still prosecute the ground operation?”
It would be at least ten seconds before an answer came back on that. Nau glanced at his second surviving guard. “Ciret, get Tung and the ziphead. We’re going to L1-A.”
From the arsenal vault, they would have direct power of life and death over everyone in L1 space, with no intervening automation. Nau opened the cabinet behind him and touched a control. A section of the parquet floor
