by Eric Flint
A sound came out of the speaker, as if of a boot against rock, followed by a murmured question, Redhead's soft, "I dunno . . ."
A new voice emerged from the speaker, crisp and tight.
"Commander Lizardi here. My weather reporter says it looks like the locals are burning themselves out of house and home. If the Scout is available relay this to his attention. News of the quarantine has been a catalyst for major upheaval within power structures. Violent upheaval, even by local standards. My ground station for our tactical satellite has been destroyed by ground forces, and the Chilongan government that hired me has been in transition this last five-day, leaving me with no current contact up-line despite reports that the north is bringing a major invasion force down on the continent. If the government that hired me is gone, I need to withdraw. Repeat: We have no assurance of contracted withdrawal at this point. We also have attracted a few dozen off-world non-combatants who travel in our train. The Scout has my contact radio frequencies and I expect them used appropriately.
"We're moving now. Lizardi out."
* * *
"Brunner, from this point on you will have an assistant on duty with you at all times while you are in the meteorology lab."
Chief Thurton stood beside his own desk in his own office, hand clenching and unclenching nervously.
"An assistant?" Brunner stared, wondering if he looked upon madness, or only exhaustion.
"We have no such an assistant available," he pointed out. "Shall you assign the intern's hours to mine, it might be possible."
"The intern . . . is on sick-call. She is . . . unreliable. I note that I don't have your letter on file. I need it as soon as possible. You—through the orders of the Scout, or by your own choice—are on the verge of violating our neutrality."
"Indeed," he murmured, keeping his voice calm, his posture non-argumentative. "By your direction I follow the Scout's necessity. And the station's—am I not to preserve the function of the monitor?"
"Liz Lizardi is a combatant, as is the operator of the equipment. You should not be carrying messages of a tactical nature for the Scout from Lizardi!"
The chief spun, paced; he stared at the monitors with their images of smoke-streaked atmosphere.
"Am I," Brunner asked carefully, "relieved of the command to follow the Scout's orders? The equipment on-world was supplied for our use by the Scout."
Abruptly, the chief sat behind his desk, still if not at ease. He closed his eyes, and spoke softly, enunciating each word with great care.
"Until such time as we are able to assign an assistant for you, you will record any and all activity within the laboratory, you will forward the text of any and all communications with the ground, with the Lunatics, as soon as it is completed. I have found a dozen or more conversations you've had with that soldier in the files, contacts you've never mentioned. . . ."
Brunner bowed, keeping the wave of frustrated confusion in check with an effort. This conversation was far too similar to the senseless interrogations regarding melant'i, proper conduct, and "civilized behavior" that his halfling self had endured from delm and nadelm to be borne with true calmness.
"It is as you say, Chief. The conversations were brief and part of the record. It seems . . . profitable . . . to be in touch with the one operating the unit, and in fact to ascertain that the operator is intact enough to operate it properly. The unit is in a war zone, and I am told I am responsible for it!"
The chief opened his eyes.
"I see. In fact, your motives are pure and your thought wise." He took a hard breath. "Allow me to be specific. Do forward messages as they occur. Do not initiate any conversation with the ground which are not in response to their queries or actual operational necessity. Do not contact any other ground units or respond to any outside requests for information; all such must go through my office. Do not argue with the Scout, but if he gives you further instructions, report them to me for clarity before carrying them out."
Brunner bowed again and turned to—
"Brunner—" The chief called him back. "Maybe you don't understand your situation—the precarious situation of this station with regard to the . . . situation on the planet. As a result of the Scout's declaration of quarantine, the so-called legitimate planetary government has vanished, giving rise to two entities who now claim to be in control. A third has announced its willingness—and ability—to destroy 'all interlopers in the system.' At one point this was a civilized world and they had means to back that threat up. A space station, as I am sure I don't need to tell you, is a very, very vulnerable habitat."
Brunner bowed once more, speechless. The chief collapsed against the back of his chair, boneless with emotion and waved an incoherent hand.
"Go!"
* * *
Redhead shut the Stubbs down and pushed up off her knees. Skel looked 'round from where he'd been watching for her, his face black with ash.
"Get 'im?"
"Just static. I think that roll down the hill might've shook something loose," she said, pulling the now-familiar burden up over her shoulders, and settling it with a wince. Truth told, that tumble hadn't done her a lot of good, either. Skel'd wrapped the ribs for her, but there wasn't much else to do about the bruises and contact burns than ignore 'em.
"Best let's catch up," she said. "I'll try again tonight."
* * *
There was activity in the Chilongan isthmus. Heavy equipment working between the mismatched sea walls. Brunner upped the magnification, trying to see what they were about, conscientiously recording to the planetologist's queue.
Could they be digging? he wondered. But what—
Alarms went off, not just in his lab but all over the station, raucous noise bouncing against walls and ear drums.
Brunner spun away from his screen, trying to catalog the racket—alarms only, no instruction to abandon ship, or report of sections sealed, only—
Jack, clanking in at a run, a device of some sort in his hand.
"What is it," Brunner yelled, over the unabated clamor.
"Neutrons! Look to your station screen!"
Brunner spun back, slapping the keypad as the alarms reached a crescendo, faltered, died.
"High Energy Particle Alert" flashed across the station information screen. "Check badges now."
"Jack here, we're fine in Science A." A glance showed him listening intently before he said, "Then recalibrate. It's not an error."
Brunner snatched the badge from his pocket, confirmed that it was a perfect, unblemished white, spun back—
Jack waved him 'round again. "Take a look realtime—someone's shooting off big stuff!"
The alarm gave tongue again; ceasing almost at once.
"Are we attacked?" Brunner demanded, his fingers calling up satellites and long-range scans.
"Dunno," Jack admitted, flipping through his beltside inventory. "We're looking secure right now. Bridge didn't mention incoming."
Jack walked around the lab, casually, fingers still busy along his belts. "Yeah, this'll flush out what tech's left, I'm guessing . . ."
The alarms blared again; Jack flashed his scanner, touched his collar, listened, then wandered over to stand next to Brunner.
"Not aimed at us," he said, as the alarm screamed into silence. "Air bursts, off on the limb. Mostly neutron and gamma stuff but our shielding's up to it . . . you'll have some tracking to do."
"But, the radiation! They'll kill everyone!"
Jack made a noise like a laugh without energy, and patted the top of Brunner's monitor as if it were a pet in need of reassurance.
"Nah, now. Only if they do it right. Likely they don't have enough N-bombs to do everybody in that way. Gotta hand it to 'em, though, between the gas, and the nukes and burning everything that'll take a flame, they might've figured out how to manage it, anyhow."
Speechless, Brunner brought the tracking screen to full magnification, moving the satellite to cover the area of the Stubbs' last report, while he fing
ered up the Stubbs' screen. Even as the window came live, data began to flow. Brunner closed his eyes against the wave of relief, took a breath and touched the send button.
"Miri Robertson, please alert. Miri Robertson . . ."
The response was as instantaneous as the minor lag allowed. "Brunner! Am I glad to hear your voice! Tried to get you earlier, but the machine wasn't getting anything but static! Anyhow, we're ready for a forced march outta here. Locals are gone crazy; had a bunch attack us with sticks . . . carrying candles like they was going to light us out of the way. Another bunch just sat down in front of us and shot their own brains out . . ."
"Galandaria, they are using nuclear weapons on each other."
A pause; a long, long pause . . .
"Say again, Brunner." Absolutely serious, her voice, all trace of childish exuberance extinguished.
"We are recording," he said, keeping his voice calm, so calm, for her sake. Jack shifted at his side, making room for the Scout.
". . . we are recording nuclear weapons blasts," Brunner said into the microphone; "high energy particle counts. I have not had opportunity to analyze, but . . ."
"Right. Hold that there. I'll see if I can get Liz here to . . . damn!" There were sounds, popping, hisses, explosions. "Bastards coming over the hill! I'll call!" The speaker went dead.
"Redhead!" He slapped at the switch, knowing it futile. On the screen, the instrument reports flowing in from the Stubbs cycled from active, to collate, to archive.
* * *
Jack was still, as it turned out, in the weather room when Brunner returned from his nightmare-riddled off-shift. He lounged in Brunner's chair, feet propped up on the instrument stool. He was awake, as were the monitors, and seemed none the less for the wear. Brunner's mood, already black, darkened.
"Jack, I see now what makes you so valuable to this station. You never sleep and you are always concerned of things you have no need to know!"
Jack grinned and bowed a meaningless, half-reclined bow.
"We're alike that way, aren't we? And yeah—my sleep center took a hit when I was on a mission, back when I was the age of your redhead down there. Well, pretty much all of me took a hit, tell the truth. Got put in an autodoc for about a week . . . and came out mostly better, 'cept I can't sleep more'n about three hours at a time."
Brunner shook his head, looking around at the busy screens.
"What happened?" he demanded.
"Well, I survived and found a job using my unique talents . . ."
Brunner bristled, strode over to his main screen.
"I know," Jack said, rising with a minimum of clank and clatter. He bowed; a surprisingly apt bow of a colleague relinquishing activity to an equal. "It ain't funny, but it's my only defense right now."
Sighing, Brunner returned the bow. "Now tell me: Down there—what has happened?"
Jack rubbed his face wearily. "They're killing each other. Not a peep from our weather station. Every time the terminator hits a new planetary time zone, bombs go off. Looks like somebody's answering somebody else back. There's been a couple of pretty big bombs go off up north, random times, like maybe they had to be delivered in person. I think there's been more gas, too, but it's hard to tell with all the other . . . Anyhow, I saved it all for you."
Brunner stared at the screens full with smoke, fire, doom and destruction. He leaned against the counter, pushing hard to counteract the shaking.
"To what can they aspire?" he whispered in Liaden. "What can they achieve?"
"I guess," Jack answered, in quiet Terran, "that they can be right."
Still shaking, Brunner took his seat, riffled screens, counted seventeen marked explosions on the charts. He had no way of knowing dispersal rates at this point but many were already thinning rapidly. One in the north was very heavy, and he zoomed the map in to take a closer look.
"Was the south attempting to destroy the rest of the farmlands?"
Jack looked over his shoulder, shook his head.
"That's centered on a small range of hills. Might've been the Chilongans were after a base, a treasure house—something buried for protection."
The door opened, admitting the Scout. He waved toward the wall and Brunner reluctantly put the image of the whole hemisphere on the big screen, with the terminator moving relentlessly west.
"That could be bad downwind," said the Scout, shockingly matter-of-fact. "We'd need twelve dozen automated Stubbs, to begin tracking. Perhaps we could get by with six dozen if we rule out a need to . . ."
"Rate they're going at it," Jack broke in, "won't be any reason to track it but science."
"We shall see. I have spoken to the chief, who informs me that the station cannot accept more than ten dozen refugees, and that only with the assurance that there be no local interference and that ships will be on the way to offload them soonest."
"No local interference? Surely . . ." Brunner was watching the clock and the terminator on screen, bringing the satellite online to the old coordinates . . .
"Nothing there," Jack told him. "Trees, some. Burn marks. Couldn't catch anything moving but the IR isn't that good . . ."
"There!" the Scout shouted, not quite as loud as the alarm.
Jack muttered something, his belt clanked briefly and the alarm shut abruptly off.
"What are they doing?" Even from here there were noticeable points of light, all concentrated.
"Carpet-bombing. Nuclear bombing on the isthmus."
The alarms sounded again as two very bright spot blossomed, beeped as several more . . .
. . . and stopped.
". . . here. Dawn shows us clear; we blew the bridge and . . ."
"Miri!"
Brunner slapped at the switch.
"Miri!"
"Got static, Tech, are you . . . There, gotcha. Yeah, it's me. Most of us got through, but we picked up some damage. The Stubbs, it bounced a couple with my name on 'em."
The station alarm sounded, stopped.
". . . so none of 'em are dependable. Hey, sounds like you got some hoorah going up there."
"Miri, Miri, do you know they are still using nuclear weapons? Several dozens or more. All over the world. Many, thirty degrees northeast of you. The . . ."
"Right, we thought something was going on. Locals suiciding, station control ain't answering—doesn't acknowledge."
The Scout made a small sound, and Jack said, "Why you think I'm down here? Tried to answer the phone, stupid old man that I've come to be."
"No," the Scout said sharply, "look at the isthmus!"
The low sun angle and remains of expanding clouds made the seeing difficult; but the intent appeared clear. The excavation he had noticed so many days ago had been completed—perhaps by the bombing—and stretching from one ocean to the other.
Brunner took a hard breath. "Miri, it is good that you are far from a coast," he murmured, his fingers keying his cameras to record, while Jack moved away. "We shall need to speak with Commander Lizardi."
The alarm beeped, but barely. Around it, he heard Jack paging the planetologist.
". . . with the wounded. I'll grab her when I can. Be there, right?"
"We will be here," Brunner promised. "Next orbit."
* * *
Dr. Boylan was . . .delighted.
"Do you see what they've done? They have removed the isthmus, and that . . . and that has done something unprecedented on an inhabited world. There are shock waves registering on the seismographs, and not simply the explosives. They've significantly altered the actual surface structures . . . and they've created a triple tsunami as well! Something else is going on—but that will take days to confirm, and perhaps millennia to conclude!"
Brunner closed his eyes against this ghoulish enthusiasm while trying to visualize the changes, the—
"I believe the flow of water has upset the balance of the underlying plates," she went on, "and may have even broken the link! They'd be free to float . . ."
"Brunner! We will need as
much as you can get in the way of gas analysis, for they may well have released the oceanic methane clathrates. Oh, that's a delicate balance indeed, and given the odd sediment formations here, and the subsurface temperature variations, we could be looking at a cascade of undersea landslides and quakes, reinforcing a continental redistribution . . ."
"The jet streams," Brunner managed to get in, "should not be greatly affected, but the currents . . . much of my database will need to be rebuilt, and we have no reliable reporting scheme . . ."
