Seeing T.C.'s blackness of spirit, he had decided to try to comfort her mourning over Ellen's death. Now that they had reached the side of the crater rim away from the tripods, the wind drowned out the worst of the horror. From here, they could see the horizon painted in bloody hues by a shrunken sun, and the vast, sullen crescent of Haetai suspended just above it. Looking closely, Kendric could make out the faintest wisp of a shadowy line across Haetai's equator, the trace of a ilark ring. Many gas giants had rings, usually composed of orbiting chunks of ice. The heat of the superjovian must have boiled away many ice ages ago, leaving only coal-black meteoric debris. As he watched, a meteor flashed, arcing across the sky and vanishing in a silent flare that left a tingling green afterimage on the eye. Kendric caught himself imagining that it might be the reentry trail of a space craft. A rescue craft.
His fists clenched at his sides. There was no use thinking in that direction. If there was to be any change in his situation, he would surely have to make it on his own. Kendric turned toward T.C. and found her still staring at him. He smiled. "Serious? Yes.. .yes I am. I find my own feelings about TOG.. .changing."
"What feelings?"
He decided to try a different tack. "You hate TOG, don't you?"
"It shows that much?"
"Not usually. You...you're a remarkable woman. Condemned to that...that hell. But you don't often show what you must feel. Would it be prying if I asked why you were sent here?"
"We don't ask such questions. We are what we are now.. .not what we were."
"But..."
"It doesn't matter anymore, does it?"
"Yes." Kendric said. "Yes, it does matter. It's not right, what they're doing to people here."
"The past doesn't matter, because there's nothing more we can do about it. It's dead." She turned away. "We're dead. All of us."
Kendric studied her in the red light. Even covered with mud, T.C. had been attractive to him in her bearing, her manner, and her determination in the face of this hellish existence. Now that the mud was gone, he found her beautiful. Hard work and lean diet had not broken her. Not yet, at any rate. Though her body was hard and strong, her presence still held a lingering feminine softness.
That might have been why her words jarred him. T.C.'s determination, the set of her jaw, her ferocious will, all were gone now... or changed somehow. She seemed defeated and as distant as the red sun moving toward eclipse behind Haetai.
It wasn't just this sudden change that disturbed him. It was the effect it had on a decision he'd made about his own fate. Days before, he had decided that today was the day he would take Boss Lynch up on his offer and start walking down the mountain. Life on Grod had become torture, a hell made more miserable by the certain knowledge that the next shift would be precisely like the last, as would the next, and the next, and the next.. .There was no hope of change down in those mines, but out in the wilderness, at least he would be free.
"But we're not dead," he said softly.
"No? Then we're worse... slaves who refuse to free ourselves." She was studying the skyline beyond the crater. The sulfurous haze seemed to lie across the valley like something alive, touched and bloodied by the last of the sun's rays.
"Do you know how many times I've stood here and thought about walking over the top, and down the mountain?"
Kendric shook his head.
"Twenty-eight. I've come here every 20-shift, looked at the sky, and told myself that, this time, I'm going to start walking."
Kendric wanted to say something comforting, something strong, but he could find no words.
"What do I think of TOG?" T.C. went on. "That it's the single greatest evil ever spawned. That it's a monstrous, bloated, bloody monster devouring this Galaxy... That if it is not stopped, it will devour every free spirit and thinking mind and independent will in the universe!" She was silent then for such a long time that Kendric was startled when she began to speak again in a voice so soft that he had to lean close to hear her.
"I was in the Navy, Ken.. .like you. I was stationed on Daeremon, in charge of computer records. The base commander was some sort of minor noble.. .1 don't even remember what, now. He was terribly rich, terribly handsome, and I suppose I was a little in love with him.
"One day, he called me into his office for a little talk. He reminded me that I was at a dead end as far as the service was concerned. I was a Lieutenant—Archikeleustes—and could never rise any higher. The damned Patria Potestas, again."
Kendric nodded. The laws that had robbed women of their rights in the name of the good of Humankind effectively hampered the career of any woman determined to be more than mistress or mother.
"Anyway, he made a very grand offer." She laughed, and Kendric heard the pain there. "He offered to let me be his mistress, offered to 'take care of me,' set me up with plenty of money, clothes, a mansion to live in. I found out later that his own rise to power required the proper sort of ornament on his arm, a pretty girl in diamonds and firestones for him to show off at embassy balls."
"That was quite an offer."
"Was it? I don't know anymore. I turned him down. Actually, I threw my drink into his face." She laughed again. "Maybe that was overdoing it a bit...especially with three of his retainers, his private secretary, two of his mistresses, and some count or other all there in the room with us."
"Oh, God..."
"Yeah. I always have had trouble saying 'no' gracefully. Anyway, he promised I'd be sorry...and sure enough..."
"Are you sorry then...that you didn't take him up on his offer?"
"Lord, I'm not sure of anything anymore." She wiped at the tears on her face. "You don't want to hear this."
"Yes, I do, T.C. It's important. To me."
"Well, there's more. What do I think of TOG? After I was arrested, IS agents visited my parents. Maybe they were trying to find something they could use against me, I don't know. They... they questioned them. Tortured them. They died."
"How did you find out?"
"I have a brother, Carl. He wasn't home when the IS came, but he found the bodies that had been left as.. .as a warning. Through friends, he got away and has gone with the Underground. I don't know where he is now, but he did manage to get word to me that he was safe.. .but that our parents were dead."
"What...here? How?"
Pain tugged at her mouth, her eyes. "Ellen."
"The woman who died last night?"
"She was in the Underground, before they caught her. I guess she still was, because the Underground had...ways of sending messages through slave networks, even in the mines. Somehow, Carl had found out which mine and level and barracks I'd been sent to and managed to get word to me through Ellen. "
That explained why T.C. had felt so strongly for Ellen and why the woman's death had hurt her so much.
The Renegade Underground was the topic of endless speculation among the slaves who dared discuss it, off-shift, in the barracks. Little was known about it, save that it existed, that it worked ceaselessly to move refugees, prisoners, escaped slaves, and the like along the "Freedom Road" to safety.
How big, how powerful was the Underground? Kendric had long since discarded the several schemes that had risen to his mind during his first days in Mine 12, schemes for contacting a revolutionary underground, arranging a slave rebellion, escaping.. .TOG was far too powerful for such melodramatics. With the Pit slaves naked, unarmed, and only a single elevator capable of carrying a handful of people at a time, the chances for a successful rebellion among them were exactly nil.
"I hope he's made it to the Commonwealth by now," she added, her gaze fixed toward the ruby light of the sun. "He might be safe there..."
"Safe?" Kendric looked at her sharply, then forced himself to relax. "Sorry. I'm not used to thinking of the Commonwealth as a haven."
For years, the major focus of TOG's military efforts had been the Human-Baufrin Commonwealth, a straggling fringe of perhaps 40,000 inhabited systems at the trailing end of the Galaxy's
Orion Arm. A number of classes at the TOG military academies were devoted to the history of the Commonwealth—how the Humans were dominated by the vaguely entymoid Baufrin, how whole worlds were starving in an anarchy that ignored every social, political, and economic lesson of Imperial history, how the Commonwealth warlords nonetheless had conspired for centuries to bring down the TOG Imperium and return Mankind to an alien-dominated barbarism. Such, at least, was the picture painted by his instructors at Grelfhaven. Since his arrival at Grod, Kendric had begun to wonder how accurate many of those lessons had been.
Still, it was impossible to think of the Commonwealth without immediately linking them in his mind with the word "enemy."
"This Underground is connected with the Commonwealth?" he asked quietly.
"Oh, yes. You've heard of the Renegade Legion?"
Kendric nodded, though he knew few specifics. The Renegade Legion was a TOG Imperial unit that had turned traitor and defected to the enemy Commonwealth several centuries before. The Legion—its descendant, at least—continued to fight from bases within the Commonwealth at the far end of the Galaxy.
"It was the example of the Legion that gave hope to...to a lot of other people fed up with the TOG tyranny. The Underground took the name Renegade as well...uses the same symbol..."
The reality of what T.C. was saying brought with it a crushing despair. Kendric nearly staggered under its weight. "TOG is too powerful," he said after a moment, hating himself for the admission. "There's no way any rebel underground could hope to bring it down. The...the apparatus of government, the number of people controlling it, the momentum it's built up in thousands of years.. .it's all too big, too massive."
"At least, rebels are doing something..."
"What? What can any of them...Renegade Legion, Renegade Underground...what can they do? Except commit suicide..."
"No! Ellen didn't kill herself! TOG did! And it was Ellen who kept me going, reminded me that Carl was alive, even though our parents had been butchered! Damn it, Ken, if there's anything I've learned in this last year, it's that you're not alive if you're just existing! When you're faced by a monster like TOG, you don't just sit on your ass and say there's nothing you can do! You do something...'"
And then T.C. was crying, her whole body shuddering as she gulped for air against the sobs. Kendric reached out and drew her close. For a long time, all he could hear was her weeping against the sounds of wind and the far-off chorus of agony from the tripods.
She drew back at last, though remaining within the circle of his arms.
"I shouldn't have said that," he said. "I'm sorry."
She shook her head. "No, you're right. TOG is too big. But that doesn't mean there's nothing that can be done."
"You mean...walk? Like Lynch said?"
She nodded. "Twenty-eight times I've come here, determined to put an end to it. Twenty-nine times, if you count this one. But this time it's different."
"How?"
"I realized a bit ago that this time I didn't want to walk away." Her eyes met and held his. "This is the first time there.. .there was someone I didn't want to leave behind."
It took him a moment to realize she was talking about him. His response was an inner, answering warmth that he had not felt—had not let himself feel—for a long time.
"Why does that make you unhappy?"
"Don't you understand? What chance do any of us have at...at a relationship here? Like this?" She broke free from his embrace, pushing him back and turning away. "I'm a slave. The damnable thing is, I'm too much a coward to free myself—to do something about it, once and for all..."
"Can I tell you something?" Kendric said softly. She nodded again but still didn't look at him. "I came up here to say good-bye tonight. I was going to take a walk myself."
"You're just saying that."
"No. It's a hard thing to say. I haven't been through half what you've been through...haven't been through one twenty-ninth what you've gone through, in fact." He hesitated. She was watching him again, her eyes and wet face glistening in the light. He took a breath as decision calmed his racing pulse and thoughts. "Shall we make a pact, you and I?"
"What kind of a pact?"
"To do something...for ourselves. For each other."
"What?"
"To keep on living... for a little while, at least. Every twenty work periods, we can come here to reevaluate things. And if we ever both decide it's not worth going on, then we'll take that walk together."
She studied his face for a long time. The sun was gone, slipping behind the gas giant in a last blaze of orange radiance. The only light now was from the dull, scarlet-glowing bulk of Haetai's night side. The stars were brighter now, and much nearer.
"That sounds very much like an ancient vow of marriage, Ken. 'Until death do us part...'"
"If you like." He was remembering similar words when he'd married Cara, ten years before.
She shook her head, a breaking of magic. "No." She waved her hand, taking in the volcanic ugliness, the squalor of Grod's surface buildings, the horror of the distant forest of tripods. "No. This is all we have...all there is. What hope do we have?"
He reached out gently, touching her chin, guiding her head around and tilting it back until she faced him squarely. "You don't believe that, T.C. I've seen what you've done for the people here."
"Nothing..."
"Wrong. I know I'd find this place unendurable...without you."
T.C. shook her head. "There's no room here for...for a physical relationship," she said at last. "Not one that means anything. That sort of thing is just for the custies.. .to get them to turn the water back on, to get better food, to...to..."
There was such bitterness in her words that Kendric cringed inwardly. His Gael-bred protective feelings toward women, his personal feelings toward this particular one whose spirit had helped him survive his first weeks in the Grod camp, both contributed to deepen his revulsion against TOG and all it stood for. It was as though the inner foundations of his thought and feelings, constructed over the course of twenty years, were crumbling.
"No," he said. "Nothing like that. "But we can be friends."
She was crying again, though silently. She nodded. "Friends, Ken. I...I want that very much."
He wanted to take her in his arms again, but did not. There was nothing sexual, nothing passionate in the look that passed between them. What they exchanged in that moment was deeper and more lasting than passion.
But they did hold hands as they started back down the hill toward the barracks.
What kind of fool would rather he a lone protozoan than a cell in a higher being? —TOG proverb
"We've got big trouble, Lenard," Elliot said. "It may be all over."
Elliot had come aboard the Gael Warrior, again disguised as a health inspector from the Alba Port staff. His recurring presence had become something of a joke on the Warrior lower deck, as the crew loudly bantered about whether this was not proof of their claim that the Warrior's mess staff had been serving them legaldies and rats and selling the real food on the black market for a scandalous profit. "I don't mind that," one common punchline went, "if they would just cut me in for a share of the profit. Then I could go get a decent meal at the High Side and get back some of my own!"
The story had gotten around to Morganen by various routes, and he and Elliot had found it amusing. Neither man was laughing now, however. Caius Elliot had always taken pride in his image of perfect calm and rationality, but not today. His inspector's uniform was awry, the formal blue cloak crooked on his shoulder, and he was breathing hard. He was scared. Things were moving too fast.
"Maybe you should start at the beginning, Caius," Morganen said. "It can't be something that can't be fixed."
Elliot looked at the others in the cabin, each in turn. Commander Kelly MacCandless, Commander Lee Fairfax, Lieutenant Commander Jaime Douglass, and Chief Wemyss were the four men
Morganen had asked to serve as the tactical planning staff for t
he rescue mission. The ship's personnel officer had identified MacCan-dless, Douglass, and Wemyss as men with extensive combat experience. Fairfax had been in combat only once, as Fire Control Officer on the Warrior's bridge during the Battle of Trothas, but Morganen had been so impressed by the Alban's performance that he'd wanted him for the mission. For his part, Fairfax would have had it no other way, once he learned why they wanted him.
Douglass had as much fighter combat experience as anyone in the Interceptor group and had been assigned as Group Leader—along with being promoted to Lieutenant Commander—after the death of Lieutenant Commander Haldane. His devotion to Kendric Fraser had the intensity of jihad, a fiery passion that he kept from his voice but could not hide in his eyes. As the Warrior's Ops Director, Kelly MacCan-dless brought the benefit of considerable tactical training to the group. Morganen had not realized that the slim, quiet man had been four years behind the Captain in the same Naval Academy. He had also served three years with the Imperial Navy before transferring back to the Gael Militia for a position aboard the Cluster's new battleship.
Though the project, now rather loosely codenamed Old Man, was supposed to be top-secret, word had already begun spreading through the Gael Warrior, and was no doubt now spreading through the lower decks of the other ships of the squadron as well. How? Ship's scuttlebutt was known for its faster-than-light travel long before Man had discovered the secret of T-space. Its spread often seemed to defy rational physics, causality, and common sense, but Morganen wondered if those spreading rumors might have reached ears they shouldn't have?
Elliot took a deep breath. "TOG's timetable has been moved up— drastically!"
"What do you mean?"
"The word is out down at the Governor's office." For some time now, Elliot had been working in Governor Malatya's office as a liaison between the TOG bureaucracy and the Gael Parliament. It was a useful place for him to be. His plan for detaching some of the Gael ships to rescue Kendric Fraser was possible only if he had access to the TOG bureaucratic apparatus—computer lines and data bases, communications through VLCA Alba, and the ear of the Provisional Governor himself. The orders detaching two Gael Squadron ships had already gone through.
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