by Timothy Zahn
"I obey, Commander," Klnn-vavgi said, heading back into the command/monitor room. "Communicator?"
"Shouldn't you send some technics too?" Klnn-dawan-a asked Thrr-mezaz.
"I wish I could," the other said, flicking his tongue. "Unfortunately, every technic on Dorcas - and most of the ones from the encirclement ships, too - are up to their tonguetips looking through the spacecraft the Mrachanis came in. The Overclan Seating's contact mission is due to hit the Mrachani homeworld in about a fullarc, and Warrior Command wants to know as much about Mrachani technology as possible before they land."
"Wouldn't Warrior Command be willing to reassign some of them for this?"
"They might," Thrr-mezaz said, throwing a quick look around the room. "On the other side, they might also order me to stay away from that underground structure entirely. In fact, they may do that anyway - there are probably Elders who'll be reporting this discovery whether I do directly or not."
Klnn-dawan-a looked around the room, too. No Elders were visible, but that didn't prove anything. "Why wouldn't Warrior Command want you investigating the structure?"
"Call it a hunch," Thrr-mezaz said, taking a step toward the door. "If you'll excuse me, I'd better get those warriors moving."
Klnn-dawan-a made a quick decision. "Let me go with them."
Thrr-mezaz flicked his tongue in a negative. "Not a good idea," he said. "It could be dangerous."
"So could having warriors blundering around not knowing what they're doing," she countered. "I know a fair amount about alien artifacts."
He gazed hard at her, indecision flicking across his face. "Thrr-gilag will raise me to Eldership personally if anything happens to you."
"He has no say in it," Klnn-dawan-a said, tasting bitterness beneath her tongue. "Our bond-engagement has been annulled, remember?"
"Yes, but - "
"And the only way we're going to get together again," she went on quietly, "is if we make such a contribution to the war effort that the clan leaders have no choice but to reconsider. Could this underground structure be such a contribution?"
Thrr-mezaz's tongue flicked. "Yes. It could indeed."
"Then I'm going," she said, standing up. "Do I have time to change into field clothing first?"
"I think so, yes." Thrr-mezaz's tongue flicked again. "Klnn-dawan-a - "
"I'll be fine, Thrr-mezaz," Klnn-dawan-a assured him, touching his cheek gently with her tongue. "Really. Just let me get my bags from the shuttle, and then you can show me where I can change."
It was odd, Melinda Cavanagh had thought more than once during the past twenty days, how the twin tensions of warfare and forced confinement worked so effectively together to bring out both the very best and the very worst in people.
She'd seen a pair of Peacekeeper soldiers stoically endure enemy laser burns that should have had them screaming in agony, insisting that she give her attention first to fellow soldiers whose injuries were worse than theirs; yet barely two days later she'd had to rebandage some of those same burns after a casual insult had precipitated a brief but vicious fight in one of the hillside bivouacs. She'd watched civilians uncomplainingly take their turns standing watch at the perimeter sentry posts in the icy mountain air, knowing full well that those posts would be the first to go when the inevitable Zhirrzh attack came; yet those same men so calmly facing death could launch into five minutes of swearing at the news they'd been tapped for latrine-digging duty. Melinda had experienced the same paradoxical tugs on her own psyche, working straight through the night to treat burns and abrasions and frostbite, yet nearly going ballistic one evening when her meal ration was one meat strip short.
All of which had made Lieutenant Colonel Castor Holloway's conduct over those same twenty days stand that much further above the crowd. In her multiple roles as physician, microbiology researcher, and occasional idea sounding board, Melinda had spent a fair amount of time with Holloway or in close proximity to him, and she had been thoroughly impressed by his consistent professionalism and self-control. She'd seen him grim, tired, amused, thoughtful, even frustrated; but never angry, brusque, or insulting to the troops or civilians under his command.
Apparently, it took a lot to make Colonel Holloway really angry. Just as apparently, Melinda had managed to find the winning combination.
"I don't believe what I'm hearing," Holloway snarled, his cheeks tinged with red as he glared at her. "You, of all people, Cavanagh. Of all people."
"I'm sorry, Colonel," Melinda said, trying to keep her voice steady and quiet. Especially quiet. There was precious little privacy there in the huge, cavernlike area that served as Peacekeeper HQ, and it was embarrassing getting chewed out in public. "But I don't think it's that serious a problem."
"Oh, you don't, do you?" he asked icily. "Communication with the enemy isn't that serious a problem? Unauthorized, unsupervised, uncensored communication with the enemy isn't that serious a problem?"
"It's not communication with the enemy," Melinda insisted, feeling some anger of her own starting to simmer. "It's one civilian talking to one prisoner. Prr't-zevisti can't get to any of his people - that metal room has him completely trapped."
"We only have his word for that," Holloway shot back, jabbing his stylus toward her for emphasis. "For all we know, the whole Zhirrzh task force out there could have been listening in."
"Which is one reason I thought I should be the one to talk to him first," Melinda said. "I don't have any military knowledge they could use against us."
"That's not the point," Holloway insisted. "The point is that you had no business pulling something like this without consulting with me first."
"And what would you have said if I had?" Melinda countered. "That no one was to talk to him until you'd taken a close look at who and what this incorporeal creature was who'd taken up residence in your camp? Fine. Who exactly would you have picked to do that study?"
"That's irrelevant," Holloway growled. "And damn conceited, besides."
"I'm sorry," Melinda said stiffly. "Being irrelevant and damn conceited runs in my family."
There was an almost-chuckle from the side, instantly strangled off. "You have something to add, Major?" Holloway demanded, glaring at his second in command.
"No, sir," Major Fujita Takara said, his face straightening instantly back to serious. "I was just agreeing with Dr. Cavanagh that those qualities do indeed run in her family."
For a long moment Holloway held the glare, the muscles of his throat and cheeks working, but his reddish color slowly beginning to fade. Finally, with a long and thoroughly exasperated sigh, he turned back to Melinda. "I'd have you court-martialed, Doctor," he said, tossing the stylus in disgust onto the desk, "except that that's what you technically are anyway. All right - let's hear it."
"Yes, sir," Melinda said, turning on her plate and setting it on the desk where Holloway could see it. "To begin with, Prr't-zevisti seems to represent a stage of Zhirrzh existence that has no real analogue in the human life cycle. At the point of physical death, their spirits - or personalities, or whatever - are drawn back to and anchored at the site of an organ that had been earlier removed and preserved. These fsss organs are taken from beneath the brain when the Zhirrzh are children - that's where that scar at the back of the skull comes from. The organs are then stored in huge pyramid-shaped structures maintained by the various Zhirrzh families."
"Ghost retirement homes," Takara murmured, hitching his chair closer to the desk for a better look at the plate.
"Something like that," Melinda agreed. "Except that they're called Elders, not ghosts. Anyway, it seems that if you then take a slice from one of these fsss organs, the Elder attached to it can move back and forth between the main organ and the cutting. Supposedly instantaneously, even if the two pieces are light-years apart."
"I'll be damned," Takara said quietly. "There it is, Cass. That's their instantaneous communication method."
"Maybe," Holloway said, frowning suspiciously at Melinda. "And he
just told you all this?"
"Most of it," Melinda said. "Some parts I had to work out on my own because of the language barrier."
"So it's really just speculation."
"There's very little speculation to it, Colonel," Melinda said tartly. "The bottom line is that Prr't-zevisti thinks this war is a terrible mistake, and he wants very much to get it stopped. That's why he opened a dialogue with me in the first place, and why he's been so candid about himself and his people."
"What does he mean, a mistake?" Takara put in. "Did they think we were someone else?"
Melinda shook her head. "It was the communication package the Jutland transmitted to them. Apparently, radio waves play havoc with the Zhirrzh sense of balance and also cause tremendous pain to Elders via their fsss organs or cuttings. So much so that radio transmitters were used once - just once - in a Zhirrzh war. They're still called Elderdeath weapons."
For a minute both men were silent. "No," Holloway said at last. "It's all very interesting, but it doesn't hold together. You might be able to explain that first battle with the Jutland by saying they thought the contact package was an attack, but that doesn't explain their subsequent invasion of the Commonwealth."
"Prr't-zevisti doesn't understand that either," Melinda said. "Though he does concede the Zhirrzh have always moved swiftly to crush races they thought had attacked them without provocation."
"They certainly seem experienced at it," Holloway said sourly. "So what does Prr't-zevisti suggest we do? Set him free to go proclaim peace to his people?"
"More or less," Melinda said. "Though I'm not sure I would have put it quite so cynically."
"Being cynical runs in my family," Holloway countered.
"Being cynical is also part of our job, Doctor," Takara added. "I agree with Colonel Holloway that this Elderdeath thing is intriguing. But with comm lasers next to useless out here in the wilds, this could just as easily be some kind of Zhirrzh sympathy ploy to get us to limit our use of short-range radios."
"Not to mention the whole Elder concept being a little hard to swallow in the first place," Holloway agreed. "I hope you realize we can't simply give in on this."
"I wouldn't want you to," Melinda said. "The Cavanagh genes lean to conceit, not naïveté. What I would suggest is that you have all this ready to upload the next time one of those Peacekeeper surveillance ships comes into the system. If there's even a chance Prr't-zevisti is telling the truth, the Commonwealth needs to know about it."
Holloway and Takara exchanged glances. "That's a reasonable idea," Holloway said. "Unfortunately, the only laser we've got that's able to punch a signal that far out is currently in service as a perimeter defense weapon."
"Can't it be reaimed upward?" Melinda asked.
"Reaiming isn't the problem," Takara said. "The problem is that the frequencies used for communication are nothing like those used in combat. It would have to be retuned, and that would take time."
"More time than any surveillance ship would likely want to hang around the system," Holloway said. "Though there might be some kind of modular tuner we could cobble together. Check with the techs, Fuji, and see what they can do."
"Right," Takara said, making a note on his plate.
"In the meantime, what do we do about Prr't-zevisti?" Melinda asked.
"Colonel!" one of the Peacekeepers called across the cavern. "Report from Spotter Three: the enemy's on the move. Six or seven Zhirrzh on foot, moving north from Point Zero."
For a heartbeat Melinda looked at Holloway, an odd sense of unnamed dread pricking at her. Why did north from the village seem significant?
Then, abruptly, it clicked: the underground tectonic-monitoring station, where she and Holloway had speculated one of the CIRCE components might be hidden. "Colonel - "
"Must have found the tectonic station," Holloway cut her off, his eyes flashing a warning as he got to his feet. Melinda nodded: clearly, he hadn't shared their private suspicions about the station with the rest of his troops.
For obvious reasons. Whenever the Zhirrzh finally got around to launching their attack, the last thing Holloway would want potential captives knowing was that there might be more to the tectonic station than met the eye. "What do you want me to do?" she asked.
"Go back to the infirmary and get prepped," Holloway told her. "There's a good chance you'll be getting some new patients soon."
The door to the underground structure was well hidden, built into the surface of one of the many hills that dotted the area. They'd located it, and Klnn-dawan-a had succeeded in opening it, when the alert came.
"Report from Commander Thrr-mezaz," the Elder said urgently. "The Imperative has spotted Human-Conqueror warcraft coming this way."
"Arrival time?" Warrior First Tbv-ohnor asked.
The Elder vanished, returned a pair of beats later. "Two or three hunbeats," he said.
Klnn-dawan-a felt her tail speed up. "That's not much time," she said, trying to keep her voice calm.
"No, it's not," Tbv-ohnor agreed, looking around them.
Klnn-dawan-a looked around, too. It was not, to her mind, a particularly auspicious location for a battle. The heavy tree canopy overhead would hide them from sight, but it would do little to shield them against enemy weapons. The only Zhirrzh weapons powerful enough to stop the warcraft were in the ground defense stations protecting the village, the nearest of which was a good three thoustrides away. At ground level the trees and other hills in the area also offered some protection against long-range weapons, but they similarly limited the range of the Zhirrzh warriors' own laser rifles. Worse, they would provide cover for advancing Human-Conqueror ground warriors should the enemy choose to attack that way.
Which left the underground structure.
She peered inside. Behind the door was a short entrance chamber, perhaps two strides wide by three strides long, unlit except for the dim sunlight filtering down through the trees. At the end of the entrance chamber was a stairway, disappearing downward into darkness. If they went down there...
"Risky," Tbv-ohnor said quietly from beside her. "Enough metal around us in the stairway - certainly enough in the underground structure itself - that we'd be completely cut off from Elder communication."
Klnn-dawan-a felt her tail twitch as a horrible thought struck her. Cut off from Elders meant they would also be isolated from their fsss organs. If their bodies were destroyed down there, it wouldn't be simply a matter of being raised to Eldership. They would all be dead.
"But, then, that's what we came here to see," Tbv-ohnor continued, stepping cautiously through the doorway. "Everyone: inside. You three" - he flicked his tongue at three of the warriors - "stay up here. Use this room for cover and have the Elders target your shots for you - maybe we can turn the poor visibility to our advantage. You two: come with Searcher Klnn-dawan-a and me." Taking Klnn-dawan-a's arm, he headed down into the cool darkness of the stairwell -
And abruptly Klnn-dawan-a was thrown off balance as the thundercrack of a shock wave hammered them from behind.
Her free hand flailed for balance, caught the guide rail fastened to the stairwell wall more by good luck than deliberate intent. Tbv-ohnor tightened his grip on her other arm, and she managed to stay on her feet. "Keep moving!" Tbv-ohnor shouted. "They'll be back any beat."
Together they stumbled down, the two warriors close behind them. The stairway ahead faded disconcertingly into the gloom, but as Klnn-dawan-a's lowlight pupils widened, she found there was enough light filtering down for her to see the end.
From above came another thunderclap, sounding almost as loud as the first had in the close confines of the stairwell. Klnn-dawan-a grabbed the guide rail again, and as she did so, her sensitized sight caught a rapid multiple flicker of reflected light against the walls: the warriors in the entrance chamber, firing at the Human-Conqueror warcraft shooting past overhead.
"Looks like another door at the end there," Tbv-ohnor said as the last reverberations faded away. "You think it'
ll have the same type of opening mechanism?"
"We can hope so," Klnn-dawan-a said, grateful for the warrior's obvious effort to take her mind off the danger. "Odd, though - that outer door didn't seem very secure. Not like something the Human-Conquerors really wanted to keep intruders out of."
"Maybe this is the secure one," Tbv-ohnor said as they reached the bottom of the stairs. "See if you can open it quickly; if not, we'll burn it."
"Right."
Klnn-dawan-a squatted down beside the door; and as she studied the mechanism, she heard a new set of footsteps hurrying down the stairs behind them. "Warrior First?" one of the three warriors Tbv-ohnor had left in the entrance chamber called down. "Report from the Elders: one of the warcraft has landed and is discharging Human-Conqueror ground warriors. Commander Thrr-mezaz is dispatching the Stingbirds and more warriors."
"Understood," Tbv-ohnor said grimly. "Keep me informed."
"I obey," the warrior said. Turning, he hurried up the stairs again.
"Looks like we've sliced open a real maggot-filled kavra on this one," one of the warriors standing beside Klnn-dawan-a muttered under his breath.
"Looks like it," Tbv-ohnor agreed. "The Human-Conquerors don't want us down here, that's for sure."
"You wouldn't know it from their locks," Klnn-dawan-a said. Standing up, she released the latching mechanism -
And with only a single high-pitched squeak, the door swung gently open.
"Troop carrier's on the ground, Colonel," Crane reported as he sat at the situation monitor. "No opposition yet. Aircars still reporting minor laser fire from the target zone; no damage."
"What about the copters?" Holloway asked.
"Spotter Two reports they're prepping for flight," Crane said. "At the moment they're still on the ground."
"Probably going for a simultaneous jump-off," Takara muttered.
"Most likely," Holloway agreed, restlessly fingering the short-range radio comm in his hand as he studied the panoramic view of the village and target zone being relayed via comm laser from the spotters' nose cameras. The enemy force had definitely made it to the tectonic station; the laser fire coming at the aircar overflights showed that much. The question was, had they gotten inside yet?
