Gabriel shook his head. 'Delde Sola, thanks for the analysis. We may need some more help from you before this is over.'
'Call when ready,' she said, and the line clicked. 'Helm,' Gabriel said. 'I'll be up a while yet.'
'Stay ready. We may have to do something in a hurry.' 'Like what?' I have no idea!
'I'll let you know before morning,' Gabriel said.
He turned again, but Kaiste had vanished from the doorway out into the silence and the dimness of the cavern.
Earlier, the time seemed to be dragging, but now it seemed to be fleeing by, unfairly swiftly, and Gabriel snatched at every moment of it, hoping that the next moment might give him the idea he needed. But every moment that went by without an answer said in his ear, You blew it.
Enda sat by the little hot pool with her eyes closed, listening to him. This was something Gabriel had seen her do on Sunshine. She often looked as if she were sleeping, but she never missed a word. Now he paced and talked as he might have done with Delvecchio in those far lost days on Falada. 'The Concord ought to be here,' he kept saying. 'Why aren't they here?'
'Indeed,' Enda said after a moment, her eyes still closed, 'I would have thought that because of the treaty, the Concord's attention would have been turned much more intently toward this system.' 'I think that may be why things have heated up here.' Gabriel said. For a moment it was as if it was not Enda sitting there but Delvecchio. Odd how he could almost feel that prickly, amused presence nearby. 'Enda, think about the situation as it was. Phorcys and Ino hate each other, but neither is averse to doing a little trading on the side with a tiny colony of sesheyans well out in the middle of nowhere. No one else is interested in that colony. It remains the Thalaassan worlds' little secret, though they understand perfectly well what VoidCorp's response will be if it ever finds out about this place. The Company moves in and deals with this little colony, probably terminally. Then, understanding that Phorcys and Ino will have known about this place but never informed VoidCorp about it, the Company moves into the Thalaassa system with intent. Oh, outwardly it's all very much on the up and up. Development, progress, sell us a few of your outer planets-you don't need them. Sell us some of the bigger companies on your worlds, we'll make them work better. Economies of scale, all the usual excuses. So that would happen too. Soon enough VoidCorp would have a major hold on this system, and once it controlled most things, that's when the revenge would start. The Company has a long memory.
'Then all of a sudden the Concord shows up and starts insisting that Phorcys and Ino stop fighting one another, make peace, lay everything out on the table where it can all be seen. Well, on the one hand, the governments on Phorcys and Ino are absolutely delighted. Here's possibly the only force that can keep the Corpses from eating the whole Thalaassa system alive. At the same time, they don't really want to stop fighting, and they also know that if the Concord finds out about this little colony of sesheyans on Rhynchus, there'll be trouble.
'So it's never mentioned, at first. Then the treaty comes close to being ready to sign. Now, both governments know they can't make a treaty 'disposition' of their system without mentioning it. Yet if they do mention Rhynchus, one way or the other, they're straight down the hole. VoidCorp will never forgive them if the Concord makes an issue of this the way they did of Grith... and they will. There will be two Griths, one of them in the Thalaassa system, a much less well protected system than Corrivale is, and sooner or later the wrath of VoidCorp will fall on Rhynchus-and on Phorcys and Ino as well. Yet if they don't mention the colony on Rhynchus, there's trouble as well. The language of the treaty they signed requires both planets to help to 'protect and defend the sovereignty of all inhabited worlds in the system.' That will have to include Rhynchus, even though no one has mentioned it. When the Concord finds out what's going on there, and what's been going on, they'll be furious, and they'll probably withdraw their protection, leaving Phorcys and Ino in just as bad a spot.'
Gabriel sat down and thought for a moment, reaching for a cup of chai the sesheyans had left him. 'So. Here it starts to get iffy. But I would lay money that at this point, VoidCorp suddenly switched roles and offered to be the 'good cop.' Some soft-voiced, well-dressed type at level Q or better turns up in the offices of the lord president of Phorcys and the delegate of Ino and says, 'Don't get all concerned now. We can do you a little favor, solve your problems, solve our problems. Then everybody will be happy.' What they suggest is that they're going to get rid of the colony on Rhynchus. Sterilize it.' The anger was building in him again, but he didn't care. 'That way, there will be no dirty little secret for the Concord to discover when they come in after the treaty and start doing detailed scans and assessments on all the planets in the system to determine where the assistance programs and so forth will go. Naturally VoidCorp will be very grateful. Probably the gratitude would at first take the form of them not moving to take over the system wholesale.' Gabriel grinned. 'My guess is that they'd wait for the Concord to finish the assay sweeps, let them spend the money to find out whether there's any reason to stay in the place. Resources, whatever. Then move in. Or, if there's nothing worth the taking, leave the place alone. Otherwise . .. until there's enough other infrastructure in place in this part of the Verge to come back inexpensively and take over the system.' 'The Company,' Enda said softly, 'has a long memory.' Gabriel nodded. 'Revenge.' He put his chai down. 'There are other problems.' 'Yes,' Enda said. 'Silver Bell.'
Oleg's dead face came up before Gabriel's eyes again. Who's doing this? he thought. These-people-well, they were people once. Now they move, they act, but are they alive?
Who takes a dead person and brings him 'alive' again, then sends him out to fight and kill?
He shook his head.
'What will we do?' Enda asked.
Gabriel sighed. 'I need more time.'
'I think there is no more time,' Enda said. 'It is dawn.'
He and Enda stepped out of the caves for a breath of fresh air and to see the new light. Dawn did not make that much difference here. At this distance Thalaassa was only a small disk, just a step up from a super bright star, its light at noon not much brighter than a misty morning or a very bright moonlit night on Bluefall in Gabriel's childhood. Still it was a change from the blackness of night or the closeness inside the caves.
Gabriel stood out at the edge of the landing field, looking up. The sky here was dark, partly because of the distance from Thalaassa, partly because there was still not that much oxygen or nitrogen to refract the sunlight. The early morning was cloudless-no surprise, the planet had shown little weather when they arrived yesterday. High up, though, there was one long streak of cloud, catching the pale sun, burning surprisingly bright.
Gabriel looked at it. 'Has Helm been dipping down into atmosphere?' he said to Enda. 'Why would he do that?'
'Well, that almost looks like a contrail-' They both stared at it, pausing to nod at Kaiste as he came out behind them and looked up to see the contrail as well. Gabriel glanced at Kaiste and got out his handheld. 'Helm?'
A pause. 'What?'
'Have you been in atmosphere?'
'Me? Hardly.'
'Then what's that contrail up there?'
A long silence. Then, slowly, eloquently, Helm began to swear. 'What? What?' Gabriel asked frantically, but he already knew. 'The sensors say,' said Helm, 'that it's clathrates. Clathrates of nitrogen.'
Gabriel's heart seized up inside him. Something up there was changing the way the air reflected the little sunlight it got from Thalaassa, changing the atmosphere's constitution. 'Aiai,' Enda said softly. 'They had another one.'
'Of course they did,' Gabriel said, groaning. 'No one ever makes just one weapon. And they had to use it quickly because their attack force was seen or because their first bomb was found. Helm, how did they get past you ? '
He was swearing again, but he stopped long enough to answer. 'Not impossible, if there's just one ship in orbit and you stay on the far side of the planet from it at all times. If the ship is small enough-' What fourteen didn't do, one did, Gabriel thought bitterly. 'How fast will the change come?'
'From what Delde Sola said, pretty fast. It's a catalytic process. Maybe only a few hours to sweep around the planet. Another couple of hours to work right down into the lower atmosphere. After that-'
'After that we will start to die,' said Kaiste softly. 'We do not have machines to make air from stone the way the satellite colonies do. We take our air from outside, concentrate it, filter it, and process it. If within a few hours there will be no more-then a few hours after that, we will start to die.'
They all looked at one another in horror.
