A Deepness in the Sky (86 page)

Vinh had regained consciousness. There was a glaze of pain in his eyes—and a glitter of hatred. Nau smiled back at him. He gestured for Ciret to twist Vinh's maimed shoulder. "I need a few answers, Ezr."

The Peddler screamed.

Pham boosted himself faster and faster up the diamond corridor, guided by green images that smeared and wobbled...and dimmed toward total darkness. He coasted blind for a few seconds, still not slowing. He patted at his temples, trying to reset the localizers there. They were in place, and he knew there were thousands of localizers drifting through the length of the tunnel. Anne must have cut off the wireless power pulses, at least in this tunnel.

The woman is unbelievable!For years, Pham had avoided direct manipulation of the ziphead system. Yet somehow Anne had still noticed. The mindscrub had slowed her progress for a while, but this last year she had tightened the noose and tightened it, until...We were so close to disablingthe power cutoff, and now we've lost everything.Almost everything. Ezr had died to give him one more chance.

The tunnel turned somewhere just ahead. He reached into the dark, touching the walls lightly, then harder, breaking his dive and turning himself feet first. The maneuver was a fraction of a second late. Feet, knees, hands, smashed into the unseen surface, about like a bad fall groundside—except that he bounced back, spinning into another wall.

He caught himself and finger-walked back to the turn. Four separate corridors branched from here. He felt for the openings, and started down the second one, but very quietly this time.Anne hadn't known for sure untila few seconds ago. The cache he had set in this tunnel should still be in place.

After a few meters, his hands touched a cloth bag tacked to the wall.Ha. Planting the cache had been a big risk, but endgame maneuvers usually are, and this one had paid off. He slipped the bag open, found the ring light inside. A glint of yellow glowed up around his hand. Pham grabbed at the rest of the gear, the light following his hands, rainbows and shadows hurtling back and forth around him. There were tiny balls in one of the packages. He bounced one of them down a side tunnel. It flew silently for a second, and then there was a thud and miscellaneous banging—a decoy for Anne's listening zipheads.

So our cover was blown, just a few Ksecs too soon.But screwups happen more often than not when plans finally meet reality. If things had gone right, he'd never have needed this pack—which was just why he'd planted it. One by one, Pham considered the contents of the pack: the respirator, the amplifying receiver, the medikit, the trick dart gun.

Nau and Company had some choices. They might gas the tunnels or dump them into vacuum—though that last would destroy a lot of valuable equipment. They might try to chase him around in here. That would be fun; Nau's goons would find just how dangerous their tunnels had become....Pham felt the old, old enthusiasm rising in him, the rush he always got when the crunch came, when the planning and thought became action. He tucked the gear into his pockets as the plan-of-the-moment grew sharper in his mind.Ezr, we'll win, I promise. We'll win despite Anne...and forher.

Quiet as a fog, he started up the tunnel, his ring light just bright enough for him to see the side tunnels up ahead. It was time to pay Anne a visit.

TheInvisible Hand coasted 150 kilometers above the Spiders' world. It was so low that only a limited ground swath of Spiders might directly see them, yet when the time came it would pass precisely over the ordained targets. And whatever the lies they were telling Rita and the others at L1, aboard theHand the Spider sites were calledtargets.

Jau Xin sat in the Pilot Manager's chair—once, when the Qeng Ho had owned this ship, it had been the executive officer's—and surveyed the gray curve of the horizon. He had three ziphead pilots on this, but only one was actually monitoring flight. The others were plugged into Bil Phuong's ordnance systems, plotting options. Jau tried to ignore the words he heard from the Captain's chair beside him. Ritser Brughel was enjoying this, giving his boss on Hammerfest a running account of what was happening on the ground.

Brughel paused in his perverse analysis, was mercifully silent for some seconds. Abruptly, the Vice-Podmaster swore. "Sir! What—" Suddenly he was shouting. "Phuong! There's shooting at North Paw. Omo is down and—pus, I've lost my huds link. Phuong!"

Xin turned in his chair, saw Brughel pounding on his console. The man's pale face was flushed. The Vice-Podmaster listened on his private channel for a moment. "But the Podmaster survived? Okay, put Reynolt on then. Put her on!"

Apparently Anne Reyolt was not immediately available. One hundred seconds passed. Two hundred. Brughel steamed and fumed, and even his goons backed away. Jau turned to his own displays, but they flowed by him meaninglessly.This wasn't in Tomas Nau's script.

"Slut! Where have you been? What—" Then Brughel was silent again. He grunted occasionally, but did not interrupt what must have been a monologue. When he spoke again, he sounded more thoughtful than enraged. "I understand. You tell the Podmaster he can count on me."

The long-distance conversation continued through one more exchange, and Jau began to guess what was coming. Jau couldn't help himself; his gaze slid sideways, toward the Vice-Podmaster. Brughel was looking back at him. "Pilot Manager Xin. Our present position?"

"Sir, we're southbound over the ocean, about sixteen hundred kilometers from Southmost."

Brughel glanced over his head, taking in a more precise view coming up on his huds. "So, and I see on this pass we'll overfly the Accord's missile fields as we progress north."

There was a hard lump in Xin's throat. This moment had been inevitable,but I thought I had more time. "... We'll pass some hundreds of kilometers east of the fields, sir."

Brughel gestured dismissively. "A main torch burn would correct that....Phuong, you're tracking this? Yes, we're advancing things by seven Ksec. So? Maybe they will notice us, but it'll be too late to matter. Have your people generate a new ops sequence. Of course it'll mean more direct involvement. Reynolt is diverting all her loose zips to your disposal. Synch 'em up as best you can....Good."

Brughel relaxed on his Qeng Ho Captain's chair, and smiled. "The only drawback to all this is we won't have time to get Pedure out of Southmost. Pedure we had figured out; I think she would have made a good native viceroy....But, you know, for myself I'm not fond of any of them." He saw that Xin was following his words with undisguised horror. "Careful, careful, Pilot Manager. You've been too long with your Qeng Ho friends. Whatever they just tried, itfailed. Do you have that straight? The Podmaster survived and still has his resources." He looked beyond Jau, seeing something in his huds. "Synch your pilots with Bil Phuong's zipheads. You'll have concrete numbers in a few seconds. Over Southmost we won't fire any of our own weapons. Instead you'll locate and trigger the short-range rockets the Kindred have offshore, the ‘Accord sneak attack' we already had planned. Your real job will come a few hundred seconds later. Your people will take out the Accord's missile fields." That would involve using the small number of rockets and beam weapons that remained to the humans. But those weapons were quite sufficient against the Spiders' more primitive antimissile defenses...and after that, thousands of Kindred missiles would murder cities across half the planet.

"I—" Xin choked, horror-struck. If he didn't do this, they would murder Rita. Brughel would kill Rita and then Jau. But if he followed orders...I know too much.

Brughel watched him intently. It was a look Jau had never seen in Ritser Brughel before...a cool, assessing, almost Nauly look. Brughel cocked his head, and spoke mildly. "You have nothing to fear in following orders. Oh, maybe a mindscrub; you'll lose a little. But weneed you, Jau. You and Rita can serve us for many years, a good life. If only you follow orders now."

Before everything blew up, Reynolt had been in the Attic. Pham guessed she'd be there even now, camped in the grouproom with Trud and every bit of comm access she could manage, doing her best to protect and manage her people...and use their combined genius to do Nau's will.

Pham flitted upward through the darkness, easing through tunnels that finally narrowed to less than eighty centimeters across. These had been machine-carved over decades, beginning when Hammerfest's roots were driven into Diamond One. Sometime in the third decade of the Exile, Pham had penetrated the Emergents' architecture programs, and the tunnels—some of them—had simply been lost; other connections had been added. He was betting that not even Anne knew all the places he could go.

At every turning point, he slowed himself with easy hand presses, and flickered his light briefly. Searching, searching. Even without external power, the localizers' capacitors could drive a last, brief computation. With the amplifying receiver he could still get clues—he knew he was high in the Hammerfest tower, on the grouproom side of the structure.

But the nearby localizers were almost exhausted. He drifted around a corner, past what he'd thought was the most likely spot. The walls glittered dim rainbows, unblemished. A few more meters.There! A faint circle etched in the wall of diamond. He coasted up to it and gently touched a control code to the surface. There was a click. Light blazed all around the disk as it turned back, revealing a storeroom beyond. Pham slipped through the opening. There were racks of food rations and toiletries.

He came around the racks, was almost across the room, almost to its more official entrance—when someone opened that door. Pham dove to the side of the doorway, and as the visitor stepped through, he reached out and lightly plucked off his huds. It was Trud Silipan.

"Pham!" Silipan looked more surprised than frightened. "What the devil—do you know, Anne is having a fit about you? She's gone nuts, says you've killed Kal Omo and taken over North Paw." His words guttered to a stop as he realized that Pham's presence here was equally unlikely.

Pham grinned at Silipan, and shut the door behind him. "Oh, the stories are all true, Trud. I've come to take back my fleet."

"Your...fleet." Trud just stared for a moment, fear and wonder playing across his face. "Pus, Pham. What are you on? You look strange."Alittle adrenaline, a little freedom. Amazing what it can do for you. Silipan shrank before the smile that was growing on Pham's face. "You're crazy, man. You know you can't win. You're trapped here. Give up. Maybe we can pass this off as—as temporary insanity."

Pham shook his head. "I'm here to win, Trud." He raised his little dart gun up where Silipan could see. "And you're going to help. We're going out to the grouproom, and you're going to cut off all ziphead support—"

Silipan brushed irritably at Nuwen's gun hand. "Impossible. There's a critical need for them, supporting the ground op."

"Supporting Nau's Spider-extermination program? All the better to cut them off right now. It should have an interesting effect on the Podmaster's lake, too."

Pham could almost see the Emergent balancing the risks in his mind: Pham Trinli, his old drinking buddy and fellow-braggart, now armed with a debatably effective dart gun—against all the Podmasters' lethal power. "No way, Pham. You got yourself into this, and now you're stuck with it."

The huds that Pham held crumpled in his right hand were making muffled, angry noises. There was a final squawk, and the door to the storeroom popped open. "What's the matter with you, Silipan? I told you we need—" Anne Reynolt slid into the room. She seemed to take in the tableau instantly, but she had nothing to bounce out on.

And Pham was just as fast as she. His hand turned, the little dart gun fired, and Reynolt convulsed. An instant later, a strange thudding rocked her body. Pham turned back to Trud, and now his smile was broader. "Explosive darts, don't you know? They get inside, then—bam—your guts are hamburger."

Trud's complexion turned a pale shade of ash. "Unh-unh..." He stared at the body of his former boss/slave, and he looked about ready to puke.

Pham tapped Silipan's chest with the little dart gun. Trud stared down, horror-frozen, into the muzzle. "Trud, my friend, why so glum? You're a good Emergent. Reynolt was just a ziphead, a piece of furniture." He gestured at Reynolt's body, its convulsions fading toward the limpness of fresh death. "So let's stow this garbage out of the way, and then you can show me how to disconnect the zipheads' comm." He grinned and moved back to snag the body. Trud was visibly trembling as started toward the door.

The instant Silipan turned away from him, Pham's casual grip on Anne became gentle, careful.Lord, that sounded like the real thing, not a stundart and a noisemaker. It had been half a lifetime since he'd used this trick; what if he'd botched it? For the first time since the action started, panic seeped through the adrenaline rush. He slipped one hand to the side of her throat...and found a strong, steady pulse. Anne was thoroughly stunned and nothing more.

Pham pasted the predatory smile back on his face and followed Trud into the zipheads' grouproom.

FIFTY-FOUR

The news companies had had the last laugh after all. So what if Accord Security had blacked out Mom's getting off the daggercraft? Within minutes, she was on Southland territory—and the local news services were more than willing to show Victory Smith and every person in her entourage. For a few minutes, the cameras were so close that she could see the inner expression of the General's eating hands. Mom looked as calm and military as ever...but for a few minutes Victory Lighthill felt more like a small child than a lieutenant in the Intelligence Service. This was as bad as the morning Gokna had died.Mom, why are you taking this risk? But Viki knew the answer to that. The General was no longer essential to the great counterlurk that she and Daddy had created; now she could help those she had put in greatest peril.

The NCO Club was crowded with cobbers who normally would have been on sleep shift or at other amusements. It was the closest place they could come to being back on the job. And for once "the job" was clearly the most important thing any cobber could be doing.

Victory drifted among the arcade games, discreetly signaled her people that things were cool. Finally, she hopped on a perch next to Brent. Her brother had not taken off his game helmet. His hands were in constant motion across the games console. She tapped him on a shoulder. "Mom will be talking any second now," she said softly.

"I know," was all Brent said. "Critter nine sees our op, but it still is fooled. It thinks the problem is local."

Viki almost grabbed her brother's helmet off his head.Damn. I mightas well be deaf and blind. Instead, she took a telephone from her jacket and poked out a number. "Hi, Daddy? Mom has started talking."

The speech was short. It was good. It blocked the threat from the South.And so what? Going down there was still too much of a risk. On the displays over the fizz bar, Viki could see the General handing her formal offer to Tim to pass out to Parliament. Maybe that end of things would work out. Maybe the trip was worth it. Several minutes passed. The cameras at Parliament Hall scanned back and forth across growing tumult. Mom had departed the platform with Uncle Hrunk. A scruffy little cobber in dark clothes approached them.Pedure. They were arguing... .

And suddenly none of it mattered anymore. Brent shrugged against her. "Bad news," he said, still not pulling the game display off his head. "I've lost them all. Even our old friend."

Lighthill jumped off her game perch and signaled the team. Her gesture could have been a shrill whistle for the effect it had. Her team was on its feet, saddled up with panniers, and all headed for the door. Brent pulled up his game hat and hustled out just ahead of Lighthill.

Behind them, she saw curious glances, but most of the club's clientele were too stuck on the television to pay them much attention.

Her team had bounced down two stories before the attack alarums started screaming.

"What do you mean, we've lost ziphead support? Was the fiber cut?" Trinli had somehow found all the fibers?

"N-no, sir. At least I don't think so." Podcorporal Marli was competent enough, but he was no Kal Omo. "We can still ping through, but the control channels don't respond. Sir...it's as though somebody just took the zips offline."

"Hm. Yes." This could be another Trinli surprise, or maybe there was a traitor in the Attic. Either way...Nau looked across the room at Ezr Vinh. The Peddler's eyes were glazed with pain. There were important secrets behind those eyes, but Vinh was as tough as any that he and Ritser had interrogated to death. It would take time or some special lever to get real information out of him. Time they didn't have. He turned back to Marli. "Can I still talk to Ritser?"

"I think so. We've got fiber to the laser station on the outside." He tapped hesitantly at the console. Nau suppressed the impulse to rage at his clumsiness. But without ziphead support, everything was clumsy.We mightas well be Qeng Ho.

Marli grinned suddenly. "Our session link to theInvisible Hand is still active, sir! I just keyed audio to your collar mike."

"Very good....Ritser! I don't know how much you've got of this, but—" Nau gave a quick rehash of the debacle, finishing with: "I'll be out of touch for the next few hundred seconds; I'm evacuating to L1-A. The bottom-line question: Without our zipheads, can you still prosecute the ground operation?"