by Timothy Zahn
"They couldn't transmit from orbit?" Cavanagh asked.
"We didn't want them to," Alvarez said. "There are too many kids out there whose idea of fun is to tie into military transmissions and try to crack the scrambling. The last thing we want is for this to leak out before we're ready." He threw Cavanagh a tight smile. "Which is one reason we're letting you in here. Makes it easier to keep track of you."
"I see," Cavanagh said. He'd already figured that part out, actually. "What do you know so far?"
"Only that a skitter arrived from Dorcas about two hours ago telling us a watchship was probably on its way," Alvarez said. "That all by itself meant bad news."
Cavanagh braced himself. "Do you know which task force it was?"
Alvarez nodded heavily. "It was the Jutland's," he said. "And the Kinshasa was definitely there with it. That's the other reason you're here."
"I appreciate it," Cavanagh said, the pressure returning to his chest. "What else do you know?"
"Precious little," Alvarez admitted. "About twenty-five hours ago the tachyon pickup on Dorcas spotted an unfamiliar wake-trail, terminating in the outer rim of a minor system six light-years from Dorcas. They didn't have a tracking baseline, of course, but the Jutland and the local garrison commander were able to triangulate a probable endpoint. The force went out to take a look; forty minutes after meshing in, they popped a static bomb. Dorcas picked it up, figured it meant bad news, and fired us off a skitter to give us some advance warning. End of report."
"Forty minutes sounds rather short," Cavanagh said.
Alvarez snorted. "Try frighteningly short. Especially when you consider that Commodore Dyami wouldn't have meshed in right on top of the bogies. Real-space transit time would have eaten up part of that forty minutes. Maybe even most of it."
The briefing room was deserted when they arrived. Alvarez turned on the displays for them, then left to watch the proceedings with his fellow officers in the main command center. Five minutes later the watchship's recordings began.
It was worse than Cavanagh had expected. Worse than he could even have conceived it to be. To watch the entire task force being cut to ribbons was bad enough. To watch the alien ships coldly and systematically destroying the honeycomb pods afterward was horrifying.
And to know that he was watching the death of his son made him feel physically ill. And very, very old.
The battle and its murderous aftermath seemed to take forever. According to the display chrono, the entire episode took barely fourteen and a half minutes.
The record ended, and the display went off, and for a few minutes none of them spoke. Quinn broke the silence first. "We're in trouble," he said quietly. "Big trouble."
Cavanagh took a deep breath, blinking the sudden moisture out of his eyes. It would have been quick, at least. That was something to hold on to. It would have been quick. "Could the force have been taken by surprise?"
"No." Quinn was positive. "Dyami knew to be ready for combat. That's always the assumption when you contact a new race. Besides, the force was fighting - you could see missiles being launched. They just weren't detonating."
"You know if the Jutland had any Copperhead fighters aboard, Quinn?" Kolchin asked.
"I doubt it," Quinn said, shaking his head. "Most Copperhead units are stationed aboard Nova- and Supernova-class carriers these days, mostly out in Yycroman space. That's what I've heard, anyway. We could ask Anders on the way out."
"Well, at least that's something new we can try on them next time around." Kolchin paused. "And maybe NorCoord will decide it's time to reassemble CIRCE."
"Perhaps," Cavanagh said. "Quinn, we need to send word to Aric and Melinda about this."
"I can do that, sir," Quinn said. "What should I tell them?"
Cavanagh shook his head. "It doesn't matter," he said through the ache. The ache, and the growing rage that his son had been so cold-bloodedly taken from him. "Just tell them their brother is dead."
3
The Meert was typical of his species: short and stocky, with small greenish-brown overlapping scales and a face that humans almost invariably compared in shape and texture to a peeled orange. He stood stiffly across the desk, his pale-yellow eyes boring into Aric Cavanagh's face, his teeth dripping with saliva.
Decidedly unhappy.
"I want to talk to Cavanagh," he growled, his English coming out mangled but more or less understandable. "I was promised Cavanagh."
"I am Cavanagh," Aric told him. "Aric Cavanagh, Lord Stewart Cavanagh's firstborn son. I'm also director of CavTronics operations for this region of space. Whatever your complaint, you may express it to me."
The Meert hissed under his breath. "Human," he growled, making the word a curse. "You care first for yourselves. The Meert-ha are nothing to you but slaves."
"Ah," Aric said, cocking an eyebrow. "Do the Meert-ha care more for humans than for themselves, then?"
The overlapping scales opened slightly, settled back into place. "You insult the Meert-ha?"
"Not at all," Aric assured him. "I merely seek clarification. You accuse humans of caring more for their own kind than for nonhumans. Is it different with the Meert-ha?"
The Meert was silent a moment, his scales flipping rhythmically up and down. Aric stayed seated, resisting the urge to ease his chair a little farther back from the desk. For a pair of heartbeats he was a teenager again, engaged in his favorite lazy-day pastime of verbally driving his younger brother crazy, when he'd suddenly awakened to the fact that he no longer had thirty centimeters and twelve kilos on the kid. The game had stopped being fun that day... and the Meert standing in front of the desk had a lot of the same look about him.
He shook off the memory. He wasn't fifteen anymore, that wasn't Pheylan standing there preparing to pound him, and a nonhuman work foreman in a CavTronics electronics plant surely wouldn't be rash enough to physically attack the owner's son. Still, he was beginning to wish he hadn't left Hill outside with the car. Normally, he didn't feel any need for one of his father's cadre of security guards on these plant tours; but palpitating Meertene scales meant there was a lot of body heat being dumped, and if the Meert was getting overheated, it probably meant he was angry. Aric had thrown in that comment to put the Meert's accusations of species loyalty into perspective, as well as to hopefully knock the approaching tirade off track a little. The whole thing would be rather counterproductive if the Meert tried to break his face instead.
The scales settled back in place. "It is still true that you think of the Meert-ha as slaves," the Meert said.
"Not at all," Aric said, starting to breathe again. "We have always treated our Meertene employees with respect and honor."
"Then why this?" the Meert demanded, pointing two thick fingers out the window. "Why do you close this workplace?"
Aric sighed. Here it came: the same argument he'd already been through twice on this trip, with two other nonhuman species. He wondered if Commonwealth Commerce had had any idea of the trouble they were creating when they first started dropping these new restrictions through the hopper five months ago. Or if they'd even cared. "In the first place, we aren't closing the plant," he told the Meert. "We're only scaling back some of its operations."
"Meert-ha will no longer work here."
"Some Meert-ha will lose their jobs, yes," Aric conceded. "As will some from the Djadaran enclave, as well."
"Will humans lose jobs?"
"I don't know," Aric said. "That has yet to be decided."
The scales quivered. "When?"
"Whenever we so choose," Aric said. "Would you wish us to rush these decisions? All of them?"
The Meert shook his head, the movement scattering droplets of saliva to both sides. In mainstream Meertene culture, shaking the head was often a signal of challenge; Aric could only hope that in this case the Meert was mimicking the human gesture instead. "I speak only of justice," he growled.
"Justice is my goal as well," Aric assured him. "And the goal of my father. Be
assured we will both do whatever is possible to achieve it."
The Meert tossed his head. "We will watch and see," he said, crossing the fingers of his hands in the Meertene farewell gesture. "Stay slowly."
Aric returned the gesture. "Go slowly."
The Meert turned and strode out through the office door. "Justice," Aric muttered under his breath, finally letting go with the grimace he'd been holding back since the Meert first barged in. His father had warned the Commissioner of Commerce - had warned him repeatedly - that this was both bad politics and bad business. He might as well have tried talking to moss.
The office door slid open again. Aric looked up, muscles tensing and then relaxing as he saw it was just Hill. "About time," he told the security guard, mock-severely. "Here I am, risking my life with an angry Meert, and where are you?"
"Outside," Hill replied calmly. "Keeping out the other eight who were demanding to get in to see you."
"Really." Aric cocked an eyebrow. "You didn't mention there was a whole delegation out there."
Hill shrugged. "I didn't want to worry you," he said. "Besides, it didn't seem important, given that I wasn't going to let more than one of them in anyway. I figured even you could handle a single Meert."
"I appreciate the confidence," Aric said dryly. At least that explained why his visitor had been so relatively easy to deal with. Expecting to be part of a nine-man complaint committee, he'd already been thrown off stride by having to go it alone. "Have they all left?"
Hill nodded. "This group mad about the layoffs, too?"
"Mad about the threat of layoffs, anyway," Aric said. Privately, he was still hoping they could persuade the paranoids at Commerce that no Peacekeeper military secrets were being risked by letting nonhumans work with CavTronics computer components. "Has the evening-shift director arrived yet?"
"No, sir," Hill said, stepping over to the desk and holding out a card. "But this was just transmitted in for you. Via the skitter from Earth, I think."
"Must be from Dad," Aric said, taking the card and sliding it into his plate. The two of them had come up with a little scheme that might create an end-run precedent around these new restrictions. This might be the word on whether Parlimin Donezal was willing to play ball on it. Keying for the proper decoding algorithm, Aric watched as the message came up.
It was very short.
He read it through twice, a sense of unreality creeping through him. No. It couldn't be.
"Sir? Are you all right?"
With an effort Aric looked up at Hill. "Is the ship back yet?"
"I don't think so, sir," Hill said, frowning at him. "You weren't planning to leave until tomorrow."
Aric took a deep breath, trying to drive away the numbness in his mind and body. "Call the spaceport," he said. "Get me a seat on a liner to Earth. You and the ship can go back to Avon when it gets here."
"Yes, sir," Hill said, pulling out his phone. "May I ask what's wrong?"
Aric leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. "It's my brother," he said. "He's dead."
"Dr. Cavanagh?"
Melinda Cavanagh looked up from the large high-detail plate and her final run-through of the upcoming operation. "Yes?"
"Dr. Billingsgate is in prep," the nurse said. "Room three."
"Thank you," Melinda said, mentally shaking her head. He could just as easily have paged her or called her on her phone, but instead he'd sent someone else scurrying off to find her. She'd never worked with Billingsgate before, but the Commonwealth's surgical community was by necessity a small and tight-knit group, and she'd heard enough stories to know that this was typical of the man. Opinion was split as to whether it was arrogance, stinginess with his own time, or just a simple preference for human interaction over the more impersonal electronic sort. "Tell him I'll be there in a minute."
She finished tracking through the plan and pulled her card from the plate. Prep Three was just down the corridor, and she entered to find Billingsgate poring over the high-detail plate there. "Ah - Cavanagh," he said distractedly, waving her over. "Ready to suit up?"
"Almost," she said, sitting down in the chair next to him. "There are a couple of minor points I'd like to discuss with you first."
He frowned at her from under bushy eyebrows. "I thought we'd settled everything," he said, his tone dropping half an octave.
"I thought we had, too," she said, sliding her card into his plate and keying for the marked sections. "Number one: I think we should reduce the use of markinine in the third phase. We certainly want to lower blood pressure at that point, but with the shorozine drip only four centimeters away, I think we should consider lowering the dosage by at least ten percent."
The eyebrows frowned a little harder. "A ten percent cut is rather drastic."
"But necessary," Melinda said. "Number two: in phase four you have two separate neurobinders being applied at each of four sites. This one" - she pointed to it on the plate - "strikes me as being just a shade too close to the optic chiasma. Particularly given your revised dosage numbers."
"You think that, do you?" Billingsgate said, his voice starting to shade from annoyed to intimidating. "Tell me, Doctor, have you ever performed this operation yourself?"
"You know I haven't," Melinda said. "But I've consulted on five similar operations."
Billingsgate's eyebrows lifted slightly. "For five different surgeons, no doubt?"
Melinda looked him straight in the eye. "That's unfair," she said. "And you know it. The two operations weren't identical - no two operations are. Trying to bypass me that way and just blindly following the first plan was totally irresponsible. And it could have been fatal."
"It most likely wouldn't have been," Billingsgate pointed out.
"Would you have wanted me to take that chance?" Melinda countered.
Billingsgate's lips pursed tightly together. "You didn't have to humiliate Mueller publicly."
"I tried talking to him privately. He wouldn't listen."
Billingsgate turned back to his plate, and for a minute the room was silent. "So you think we should cut the markinine by ten percent, do you?" he asked.
"Yes," Melinda said. "The lower dosage should do the job perfectly well. Particularly given the patient's metabolic baseline."
"I was going to ask if you'd checked on that," Billingsgate said. "All right; but if the blood pressure doesn't respond properly, we're going to jack the dosage back up. Fair enough?"
"Fair enough," Melinda agreed. "Now, what about the neurobinders?"
The discussion was short and civilized, and in the end he acquiesced with reasonably good grace. Like most surgeons Melinda had dealt with, Billingsgate had strong proprietary feelings toward his operation designs, but he was also experienced enough not to simply ignore the recommendations of a good consultant. With more and more routine operations being handled by semisentient computerized systems, the only ones that still required human surgeons were those that were as much art as they were science. Writing required editors; sculpture required texturers; surgery required design consultants. Or so the theory went.
"All right, then," Billingsgate said at last. "We cut the markinine by ten percent and shift the gamma-site neurobinder three millimeters right-lateral. Is that it?"
"That's it." Melinda closed down the plate. "Is everything else ready?"
"Just about. We just have to - "
He broke off as the door slid open and a nurse stepped in. "I'm sorry, Dr. Cavanagh, but this just came for you," she said, holding out a card. "It's marked urgent."
"Thank you," Melinda said, taking it and pulling out her own plate.
"Make it fast," Billingsgate said.
"I will," Melinda promised, frowning at the scrambled symbols. She'd expected it to be a job assignment or something equally official; but this was in one of her father's private codes. Keying for decoding, she watched as the lines reformed themselves....
And felt her heart seize up. "No," she whispered.
Halfway
to the door, Billingsgate turned back around. "What is it?"
Wordlessly, she swiveled the plate around to face him. He stooped to read it. "Oh, my God," he murmured. "Who's Pheylan?"
"My brother," Melinda told him, her voice sounding distant in her ears. She'd had a chance to see Pheylan three weeks ago, when they'd both been on Nadezhda. But she'd been too busy....
Billingsgate was saying something. "I'm sorry," she said, forcing herself to focus on him. "What did you say?"
"I said you don't need to stay," he repeated. "The team can handle things without you. Get yourself a flight over to the spaceport and get out of here."
She looked back at the plate, the words dissolving into blurs before her. "No," she said, wiping at her eyes. "I'm the design consultant. I'm supposed to see the operation through."
"That's a recommendation," Billingsgate said. "Not a requirement."
"It's my requirement," Melinda said, standing up. Her mind was starting to function again, spreading out the possibilities and necessities in her usual surgically neat lines. "Give me a minute to get in touch with the CavTronics plant in Kai Ho and I'll be right there."
"All right," Billingsgate said, not sounding convinced. "If you're sure."
"I'm sure," she told him. "I can't bring Pheylan back. Maybe I can help prevent someone else from dying."
She didn't realize until the words were out of her mouth how easily they could be interpreted as a slight on Billingsgate's surgical skills. But the older man didn't even seem to notice. "All right," he said again. "Nurse, tell the team to get suited up. We'll be starting as soon as Dr. Cavanagh is ready."
4
The blue light flared through the honeycomb's viewports, jolting Pheylan out of a troubled sleep. The light faded, flared again, faded again, flared again, faded again -
"All right!" he shouted, slapping the pod wall. "Enough, already!"
The light flared one last time and went out. Pheylan swore under his breath, wincing at the rancid taste in his mouth as he checked his chrono. He felt as if he'd just barely closed his eyes, but he'd actually been asleep for four hours. That made it twenty-two hours since the alien ship had come up behind his pod and swallowed it like a big fish snaring its lunch. Roughly sixty-six light-years, assuming the aliens hadn't discovered a stardrive that ran on a different theory from the Commonwealth's. A long way from home.
