another couple of days to realize he was a genius who could be used like a dynamo, could be used to literally change the course of a world war. Within fifty days she had had Strut Greenval convinced of the same, and Underhill was tucked away in his own lab, with labs growing up around him to handle the peripheral needs of the project. Between her own missions, Victory had schemed on how she might claim the Underhill phenomenon—that was how she thought of him, how the Intelligence Staff thought of him—as her permanent advantage. Marriage was the obvious move. A traditional Marriage-in-the-Waning would have suited her career path. It all would have been perfect, except for Sherkaner Underhill himself. Sherk was a person with his own plans. Ultimately he had become her best friend, as much someone to scheme with as to scheme about. Sherk had plans for after the Dark, things that Victory had never repeated to anyone. Her few other friends—even Hrunkner Unnerby—liked her despite her being out-of-phase. Sherkaner Underhill actually liked the idea of out-of-phase children. It was the first time in her life that Victory had met with more than mere acceptance. So for now they fought a war. If they both survived, there was another world of plans and a life together, after the Dark.
And Strut Greenval was clever enough to figure out a lot of this. Abruptly, she glared at her boss. “You already knew, didn’t you? That’s why you wouldn’t let me stay with the Team. You figure it’s a suicide mission, and my judgment would be warped…. Well it is dangerous, but you don’t understand Sherkaner Underhill; self-sacrifice is not on his agenda. By our standards he’s rather a coward. He’s not especially taken by most of the things you and I hold dear. He’s risking his life out of simple curiosity—but he’s very, very careful when it comes to his own safety. I think the Team will succeedand survive. The odds would only have been improved if you’d let me stay with them! Sir.”
Her last words were punctuated by the dramatic dimming of the room’s single lamp. “Hah,” said Greenval, “we’ve been without fuel oil for twelve hours, did you know that, Colonel? Now the lead acid batteries have about run down. In a couple of minutes Captain Diredr will be here with the Last Word from maintenance: ‘Begging your pardon, sir, but the last pools will freeze momentarily. Engineering begs that you join them for final shutdown.’ “ He mimicked his aide’s high-pitched voice.
Greenval stood, leaned across the desk. His doubts were hidden once more, and the old snap was back in his manner. “In that time, I want to clear up a few things about your orders and your future. Yes, I brought you back because I don’t want to risk you on this mission. Your Sergeant Unnerby and I have had some long talks. We’ve had nine years to put you through almost limitless risk, and to watch how your mind works when thousands of lives depend on the right answers. It’s time to take you off the front lines of special operations. You are one of the youngest colonels in modern times; after this Dark, you’ll be the youngest general.”
“Only if the Underhill mission succeeds.”
“Don’t interrupt. However the Underhill affair goes, the King’s advisors know how good you are. Whether or not I survive this Dark, you’ll be sitting in my job within a few years of the starting of the New Sun—and your days of personal risk-taking must be over. If your Mr. Underhill survives, marry him, breed him, I couldn’t care less. But never ever again are you to put yourself at risk.” He waved his pointed hand at her head, a mock threat with an edge. “If you do, I swear I’ll come back from the grave and crack your thick shell.”
There was the sound of footsteps in the narrow hallway. Hands scratched at the heavy curtain that was the room’s only door. It was Captain Diredr. “Excuse me, General. Engineering is absolutely insistent, sir. We have thirty minutes of electrical power, at the outside. They are begging, sir—”
Greenval spat that last aromatique into a stained cuspidor. “Very good, Captain. We are coming down instanter.” He sidled around the Colonel, and pulled back the curtain. When Smith hesitated to go before him, he waved her through the doorway. “In this case, senior means last, my dear. I’ve never liked this business of cheating on the Dark, but if we have to do it,I’m the one who gets to turn out the lights!”
SEVEN
By rights Pham Trinli should not have been on the Fleet Captain’s bridge, certainly not during a serious operation. The old man sat at one of the duplicate comm posts, but he really didn’t do anything with it. Trinli was Programmer-at-Arms 3rd, though no one had ever seen him behave productively, even at that low rank. He seemed to come and go at his own pleasure, and spent most of his time down in the employees’ dayroom. Fleet Captain Park was known to be a little irrational when it came to “respect for age.” Apparently, as long as Pham Trinli did no harm, he could stay on the payroll.
Just now, Trinli sat half-turned away from his post. He listened dyspeptically to the quiet conversations, the flow of check and response. He looked past the techs and armsmen at the common displays.
The landings of Qeng Ho and Emergent vessels had been a dance of caution. Mistrust for the Emergents extended from top to bottom among Captain Park’s people. Thus there were no combined crews, and the comm nets were fully duplicated. Captain Park had positioned his capital vessels in three groups, each responsible for a third of the planetary operations. Every Emergent ship, every lander, every free-flying crewman was monitored for evidence of treachery.
The bridge’s consensus imagery showed most of this. Relayed from the “eastern” cluster, Trinli could see a trio of Emergent heavy lifters coming off the frozen surface of the ocean, towing between them a quarter-million- tonne block of ice. That was the sixth lift in this op. The surface was brightly lit by the rocket glare. Trinli could see a hole hundreds of meters deep. Steaming froth masked the gouge in the seafloor. Soundings showed there were plenty of heavy metals in this section of continental shelf, and they were mining it with the same brute force that they employed when they carved the ice.
Nothing really suspicious there, though things may change when itcomes time to divvy up the loot.
He studied at the comm status windows. Both sides had agreed to broadcast intership communications in the clear; a number of Emergent specialists were in constant conference comm with corresponding Qeng Ho officers; the other side was sucking in everything they could about Diem’s discoveries in the dry valley. Interesting how the Emergents suggested simply grabbing the native artifacts. Very un-Qeng-Ho-like.More like something I might do.
Park had dumped most of his fleet’s microsats into near-planetary space just before the Emergents arrived. There were tens of thousands of the fist-sized gadgets out there now. Subtly maneuvering, they came between the Emergents’ vehicles far more often than simple chance would predict. And they reported back to the electronic intelligence window here on the bridge. They reported that there was far too much line-of-sight talk between the Emergent vessels. It might be innocent automation. More likely it was cover for encrypted military coordination, sly preparation on the part of the enemy. (And Pham Trinli had never thought of the Emergents as anything but an enemy.)
Park’s staff recognized the signs, of course. In their prissy way, these Qeng Ho armsmen were very sharp. Trinli watched three of them argue about the broadcast patterns that washed across the fleet from Emergent emitters. One of the junior armsmen thought they might be seeing a mix of physical-layer and software probing—all in an orchestrated tangle. But if that were true, it was more sophisticated than the Qeng Ho’s own best e- measures… and that was unbelievable. The senior armsman just frowned at the junior, as if the suggestion were a king-sized headache.Even theones who have been in combat don’t get the point. For a moment, Trinli’s expression got even more sour.
A voice sounded privately in his ear. “What do you think, Pham?”
Trinli sighed. He mumbled back into his comm, his lips barely moving, “It stinks, Sammy. You know that.”
“I’d feel better if you were at an alternate control center.” ThePhamNuwen ’s “bridge” had this official location, but in fact there were control centers distributed throughout the ship’s livable spaces. More than half the staff visible on the bridge were really elsewhere. In theory, it made the starship a tougher kill. In theory.
“I can do better than that. I’ve hacked one of the taxis for remote command.” The old man floated off his saddle. He drifted silently behind the ranks of the bridge technicians, past the view on the heavy lifters, the view of Diem’s crew preparing to lift off from the dry valley, the images of oh-so-intent Emergent faces… past the ominous e-measures displays. No one really noticed his passage, except that as he slid through the bridge entranceway, Sammy Park glanced at him. Trinli gave the Fleet Captain a little nod.
Spineless wretches, nearly every one.Only Sammy and Kira Pen Lisolet had understood the need to strike
