A Deepness in the Sky (81 page)

Nethering turned back from the parapet and headed for the stairs. There was a loud rattle and bang that might have been a troop of one hundred combateers coming up the stairs—but was more likely Shepry Tripper and his four hiking boots. A moment passed, and his assistant bounced out onto the open. Shepry was just fifteen years old, about as far out-of-phase as a child could be. There had been a time when Nethering couldn't imagine talking to, much less working with, such an abomination. That was another thing that had changed for him at Princeton. Now—well, Shepry was still a child, ignorant of so many things. But there was something starkly strong about his enthusiasm. Nethering wondered how many years of research were wasted at the end of Waning Years because the youngest researchers were already in early middle age, starting families, and too dulled to bring intensity to their work.

"Dr. Nethering! Sir!" Shepry's voice came muffled by his air warmer. The boy was gasping, losing whatever time his dash up the stairs had gained him. "Big trouble. I've lost the radio link with North Point"—five miles away, the other end of the interferometer. "There's blooming static all across the bands."

So nothing would be left of his plans for tonight. "Did you call Sam on the ground line? What—" He stopped, Shepry's words slowly sinking in:static all across the bands. Behind him the strange auroral "spike" moved steadily southward. Irritation merged silently into fear. Obret Nethering knew the world was teetering on the edge of war. Everyone knew that. Civilization could be destroyed in a matter of hours if the bombs started falling. Even out-of-the-way places like Paradise Island might not be safe.And that light? It was fading now, the bright point vanished. A nuke burst in the magnetopatch might look like aurora, but surely not so asymmetrical and not with such a long rise time. Hmm. Or maybe some clever physics types had built something more subtle than a simple nuclear bomb. Curiosity and horror skirmished in Nethering's head.

He turned and dragged Shepry back toward the stairs.Slow down. How many times had he given Shepry that advice? "Step by step, Shepry, and watch your power cord for snags. Is the radar array up tonight?"

"Y-yes." Shepry's heavy boots clomped down the stairs just behind him. "But the log will just be noise."

"Maybe." Bouncing microwaves off ionization trails was one of the minor projects that Nethering and Tripper managed. Almost all the reflections could be tied to returning satellite junk, but every year or so they'd see something they couldn't explain, a mystery from the Great Empty. He'd almost gotten a research article out of that. Then the damn reviewers—the ubiquitous T. Lurksalot—ran their own programs, and didn't buy his conclusions. Tonight there would be another use for the array. The pointed end of the strange light—what if it were a physical object?

"Shepry, are we still on the net?" Their high-rate connection was optical fiber strung across the ocean ice; he'd intended to use mainland supercomputers to guide tonight's run. Now—

"I'll check."

Nethering laughed. "We may have something interesting to show Princeton!" He poked up the radar log, began scanning. Was it Nature or War that was talking to them tonight? Either way, the message was important.

FIFTY

Nowadays, flying made Hrunkner Unnerby feel very old. He remembered when piston engines spun wood propellers, and wings were fabric on wood.

And Victory Smith's aircraft was no ordinary executive jet: They were flying at nearly one hundred thousand feet, moving south at three times the speed of sound. The two engines were almost silent, just a high thready tone that seemed to bury itself in your guts. Outside, the star- and sunlight together were just bright enough so colors could be seen in the clouds below. Deck upon deck, the clouds layered the world. From this altitude, even the highest of the clouds seemed to be low, crouching things. Here and there canyons opened in the air, and they glimpsed ice and snow. In a few more minutes they would reach the Southern Straits and pass out of Accord airspace. The flight communications officer said there was a squadron of Accord fighter craft all around them, that they would be in place all the way to the embassy airfield at Southmost. The only evidence Unnerby saw for the claim was an occasional glint in the sky above them. Sigh. Like everything important nowadays, they moved too fast and too far to be seen by mere mortals.

General Smith's private craft was actually a supersonic recon bomber, the sort of thing that was becoming obsolete with the advent of satellites. "Air Defense practically gave it to us," Smith had remarked when they came on board. "All this will be junk when the air begins to snow out." There would be a whole new transportation industry then. Ballistic vehicles, maybe? Antigravity floaters? Maybe it didn't matter. If their current mission didn't work out, there might not be any industry at all, just endless fighting among the ruins.

The center of the fuselage was filled with rack on rack of computer and communications gear. Unnerby had seen the laser and microwave pods when they came aboard. The flight techs were plugged into the Accord's military net almost as securely as if they'd been back at Lands Command. There were no stewards on this flight. Unnerby and General Smith were strapped into small perches that seemed awfully hard after the first couple of hours. Still, he was probably more comfortable than the combateers hanging on nets in the back of the aircraft. A ten-squad; that was all the General had for bodyguards.

Victory Smith had been quiet and busy. Her assistant, Tim Downing, had carried all her computer gear aboard: heavy, awkward boxes that must be very powerful, very well shielded, or very obsolete. For the last three hours she had sat surrounded by half a dozen screens, their light glittering faintly off her eyes. Hrunkner wondered what she was seeing. Her military networks combined with all the open nets must give her an almost godlike view.

Unnerby's display showed the latest report on the Southmost underground construction. Some of it was lies—but he knew enough of the original designs to guess the truth. For the nth time, he forced his attention back to the reading. Strange; when he was young, back in the Great War, he could concentrate just like the General was now. But today, his mind kept flitting forward, to a situation and a catastrophe that he couldn't see any way around.

Out over the Straits now; from this altitude, the broken sea ice was an intricate mosaic of cracks.

There was a shout from one of the comm techs. "Wow! Did you see that?"

Hrunkner hadn't seen a damn thing.

"Yes! I'm still up though. Check it out."

"Yes, sir."

On their perches ahead of Unnerby, the techs crouched over their displays, tapping and poking. Lights flickered around them, but Unnerby couldn't read the words on their screens—and the display format wasn't anything he'd trained on.

Behind him, he saw that Victory Smith had risen off her perch and was watching intently. Apparently her gear was not linked with the techs'. Huh. So much for the "godlike view" he'd been imagining.

After a moment she raised a hand, signaled one of them. The fellow called back to her. "It looks like somebody went nuclear, ma'am."

"Hm," said Smith. Unnerby's display hadn't even flickered.

"It was very far away, probably over the North Sea. Here, I'll set up a slave window for you."

"And for Sergeant Unnerby, please."

"Yes, ma'am." The Southmost report in front of Hrunkner suddenly was replaced by a map of the North Coast. Colored contours spread concentrically about point twelve hundred kilometers northeast of Paradise Island. Yes, the old Tiefer refueling depot, a useless chunk of seamount except when you wanted to project force across ice. Thatwas far away, almost the other side of the world from where they were right now.

"Just one blast?" said Smith.

"Yes, very high up. A pulse attack...except that it wasn't more than a megaton. We're building this map off satellites and ground analysis from the North Coast and Princeton." Legends scattered across the picture, bibliographic pointers to the network sites that contributed to the analysis. Hah. There was even an eyewitness report from Paradise Island—an academic observatory, according to the code.

"What did we lose?"

"No military losses, ma'am. Two commercial satellites are offline, but that may be temporary. This was barely a jab."

What then?A test? A warning? Unnerby stared at the display.

Jau Xin had been here less than a year before, but that had been on a six-man pinnace, sneaking in and out in less than a day. Today he managed the piloting of theInvisible Hand, a million tonnes of starship.

This was the true arrival of the conquerors—even if those conquerors were duped into thinking they were rescuers. Next to Jau, Ritser Brughel sat in what had once been a Peddler Captain's seat. The Podmaster spouted an unending stream of trivial orders—you'd think he was trying to manage the pilots himself. They'd come in over Arachna's north pole, skirting the atmosphere, decelerating in a single strong burn, nearly a thousand seconds at better than one gee. The decel had been over open ocean, far from Spider population centers, but it must have been enormously bright to those few who saw it. Jau could see the glow reflected in the ice and snow below.

Brughel watched the icy waste rolling out before them. His features were pursed with some intense feeling. Disgust, to see so much that looked totally worthless? Triumph, to arrive on the world that he would co-rule? Probably both. And here on the bridge, both triumph and violent intent leaked into his tone, sometimes even his words. Tomas Nau might have to keep the fraud going back on L1, but here Ritser Brughel was shedding his restraint. Jau had seen the corridors that led to Brughel's private quarters. The walls were a constant swirl of pink, sensuous in a heavy, threatening way. No staff meetings were held down those corridors. On the way from L1, he heard Brughel brag to Podcorporal Anlang about the special treat he would bring out of the freezer to celebrate the coming victory.No,don't think on it. You know too much already.

The voices of Xin's pilots spoke in his ear, confirming what he already saw on his tracking display. He looked up at Brughel and spoke with the formality the other seemed to like. "The burn is complete, sir. We're in polar orbit, altitude one hundred fifty kilometers." Any lower and they would need snowshoes.

"We were visible across thousands of kilometers, sir." Xin matched his words with a concerned look. He'd been playing naive idiot on the trip down from L1. It was a dangerous game, but so far it had given him some leeway.And maybe, maybe there is some way I can avoid mass murder.

Brughel grinned back smug superiority. "Of course we were seen, Mr. Xin. The trick is to let them see—and then corrupt how they interpret the information." He opened the comm channel to theHand' s ziphead deck. "Mr. Phuong! Have you cloaked our arrival?"

Bil Phuong's voice came back from theHand' s ziphead hold. The place had been a madhouse the last time Jau looked, but Phuong sounded cool: "We're on top of the situation, Podmaster. I've got three teams synthesizing satellite reports. L1 tells me they look good." That would be Rita's team talking to Bil. She should be going off duty any moment now, for what Nau would probably claim was a rest break before the heavy work. Jau had known for a day that that "lull" was when the killing would begin.

Phuong continued, "I must warn you, sir. Eventually the Spiders will sort things out. Our disguise won't last for more than a hundred Ksec, less if someone down there is clever."

"Thank you, Mr. Phuong. That should be more than enough." Brughel smiled blandly at Jau.

Part of their horizon-spanning view disappeared, replaced by Tomas Nau back on L1. The senior Podmaster was sitting with Ezr Vinh and Pham Trinli in the lodge in Lake Park. Sunlight sparkled on the water behind them. This would be a public two-way conversation, visible to all the Followers and Qeng Ho. Nau looked out across theHand' s bridge and his gaze seemed to find Ritser Brughel.

"Congratulations, Ritser. You are well placed. Rita tells me you have already achieved a close synch with the ground nets. We have some good news of our own. The Accord Intelligence chief is visiting Southmost. Her opposite number in the Kindred is already there. Short of accidents, things should be peaceful for a while more."

Nau sounded so sincere and well-meaning. The amazing thing was that Ritser Brughel was almost as smooth: "Yes, sir. I'm setting up for the announcement and network takeover in—" He paused, as if checking his schedule. "—in fifty-one Ksec."

Of course, Nau didn't reply immediately. The signal from theHand had to be bounced out of radio shadow to a relay and then across five light-seconds of space to L1. Any reply would take at least another five seconds coming the other way.

Sharp on ten seconds, Nau smiled. "Excellent. We'll set the pacing here so everybody will be fresh when the workload spikes. Good luck to all of you down there, Ritser. We're depending on you."

There were a couple more rounds in their dance of deception; then Nau was gone. Brughel confirmed that all comm was local. "The go codes should come down any time, Mr. Phuong." Brughel grinned. "Another twenty Ksec, and we fry some Spiders."

Shepry Tripper gaped at the radar display. "It's—it's just like you said. Eighty-eight minutes, and there it is coming out of the north again!"

Shepry knew plenty of math and had worked for Nethering almost a year. He certainly understood the principles of satellite flight. But like most people, he still boggled at the notion of "a rock that gets thrown up and never comes down." The cobblie would chortle delight when some comsat came trucking over the horizon at the time and azimuth that the math had predicted.

What Nethering had done tonight was a prediction of a different order, and he was just as awed as his assistant—and a whole lot more frightened. They had had only two or three clear radar bearings on the narrow end of the aurora. The thing had been decelerating even though it was well outside of the atmosphere. The Air Defense site at Princeton had not been impressed by his report. Nethering had a long-term relationship with those people, but tonight they treated him like a stranger, their autoresponse thanking him for his information and assuring that the matter was being taken care of. The world network was full of rumors of a high-altitude nuke. But this had been no bomb. Departing southward, it had appeared to be in low orbit...and now it was coming back from the north, right on schedule.