A Deepness in the Sky (89 page)

He heard small choking sounds from the other end of the connection, the sounds Qiwi made in moments of absolute horror. Damn, that could start a memory cascade. He pushed down his fear and said, "Qiwi, we still have a chance. Have the traitors shown themselves at Benny's?"Has PhamNuwen gotten through to the parlor?

"No. But we know something has gone terribly wrong. We lost the video from North Paw, and now it looks like war down on Arachna. This is a private link, but everyone saw me leave Benny's."

"Okay. Okay. This is good, Qiwi. Whoever are in this with Vinh and Trinli are still confused. We have a chance, the two of us—"

"But surely we can trust—" Qiwi's protest trailed off, and she didn't give him any argument. Good. This soon after a scrubbing, Qiwi was most unsure of herself. "Okay. ButI can help. Where are you hiding? One of the sluiceways?"

"Yes, trapped behind the outer hatch. But if we can get out, we can rescue the situation. L1-A has—"

"Which sluiceway?"

"Uh." He looked at the face of the hatch. A number was just visible in Marli's light. "S-seven-four-five. Does that—"

"I know where it is. I'll see you in two hundred seconds. Don't worry, Tomas."

Lord.Qiwi's recovery was awesome. Nau waited a moment, then glanced questioningly at Marli.

"The connection is down, sir."

"Okay. Realign. See if you can punch through to Ritser Brughel." This might be his last chance to check on the ground operation before everything was settled, one way or another.

TheInvisible Hand was over the horizon from Southmost when the missiles arrived there. Nevertheless, Jau's displays showed flashes against the upper atmosphere. And their trailing satellites relayed a detailed analysis of the destruction. All three nukes were on target.

But Ritser Brughel was not entirely happy. "The timing wasn't right. They didn't get the best penetration."

Bil Phuong's voice came over the bridge-wide channel. "Yes, sir. That depended on high-level ordnance knowledge—things that are up on L1."

"Okay. Okay. We'll make do. Xin!"

"Yes, sir?" Jau looked up from his console.

"Are your people ready to hit the missile fields?"

"Yes, sir. The burn we just completed will put us over most of them. We'll take out a good part of the Accord's forces."

"Pilot Manager, I want you to personally—" A tone sounded on Brughel's console. There was no video, but the Vice-Podmaster was listening to something incoming. After a moment, Brughel said, "Yes, sir. We can make up for that. What is your situation?"

What's happening up there? What's happening to Rita?Jau forced his attention away from the long-distance conversation, and looked at his own situation board. In fact, he was pushing his zipheads to the limit. They were beyond finesse now. There was no way they could disguise this operation from the Spider networks. The Accord missile fields stretched across a swath of the northern continent, and they only approximately followed the track of theInvisible Hand. Jau's pilots were coordinating a dozen ordnance zipheads. TheHand' s patchwork of battle lasers could take out near-surface launchpads, but only if they were given a fifty-millisecond dwell time. Hitting everything would be a miracle ballet of firepower. Some of the deepest targets, offensive sites, would be hit by digger bombs. Those had already been launched, were now arcing down behind them.

Jau had done everything he could to make this work.I didn't have anychoice. Every few seconds, the mantra floated up through his consciousness, the response to the equally persistentI am not a butcher.

But now...now there might be a safe way to evade Brughel's terrible orders.Be honest, you're still a butcher. But of hundreds, not millions.

Without the detailed geographic and ordnance advice from L1, any number of small errors might be made. The Southmost strike showed that. Jau's fingers drifted over his keyboard, sending last-second advice to his team. The mistake was very subtle. But it would introduce a tree of random deviations into their attack on the antimissiles. Many of those strikes would now be way off target. The Accord would have a chance against the Kindred nukes.

Rachner Thract paced back and forth in the visitor holding box. How long could it take Underhill to come out? Maybe the cobber had changed his mind, or simply forgotten what he was about. The sentry looked upset, too. He was talking on some kind of comm line, his words inaudible.

Finally, there was the whine of hidden motors. A moment later the old wood doors slid aside. A guide-bug emerged, closely followed by Sherkaner Underhill. The guard came racing around his sentry box. "Sir, could I have a word with you? I'm getting—"

"Yes, but let me talk to the Colonel here for just a moment." Underhill seemed to sag under the weight of his parka, and every step took him steadily to the side. The sentry fidgeted by his post, not sure what to do. The guide-bug patiently dragged Underhill back onto a more or less straight path headed for Thract.

Underhill reached the visitor holding box. "I have a few free minutes now, Colonel. I'm very sorry about your losing your job. I want to—"

"That's not important now, sir! I have to tell you." It was a miracle that he had gotten through to Underhill.Now, if I can just convince him beforethat sentry gets up the courage to intervene. "Our command automation is corrupt, sir. I have proof!" Underhill was raising his arms in protest, but Rachner rumbled on. This was his last chance. "It sounds crazy, but it explains everything: There's an—"

The world exploded around them. Colors beyond color. Pain beyond the brightest sun of Thract's imagination. For a moment the color of pain was all there was, squeezing out consciousness, fear, even startlement.

And then he was back. In agony, but at least aware. He was lying in snow and random wreckage. His eyes...his eyeshurt. The afterimages of Hell were burned all across his foreview, blocking his vision. The afterimages showed stark silhouettes against a beam of utter darkness: the sentry, Sherkaner Underhill.

Underhill! Thract came to his feet, pushed aside the flatboards that had fallen on him. Now other pains were surfacing. His back was a single massive ache.Getting punched through walls will do that to you. He took a few shaky steps, but nothing seemed broken.

"Sir? Professor Underhill?" His own voice seemed to be coming from a great distance. Rachner turned his head this way and that, like a child still with its baby eyes. He had no choice; his forevision was filled with burning afterimages. Downhill, along the curve of the caldera wall, there was a row of smoking holes. But the destruction here was enormously greater. None of the Underhill outbuildings still stood, and fire was spreading across all that was flammable. Rachner took a step toward where the sentry had been standing. But now that was the edge of a steep, steaming crater. The hillside above him was blown out. Thract had seen something like this before, but that had been a terrible accident, an ammo dump struck by penetrating artillery.What hit us? What was Underhill storing below? Something in the back of his mind was asking the questions, but he had no answers and plenty of more immediate concerns.

There was an animal hissing sound, right at his feet. Rachner turned his head. It was Underhill's guide-bug. Its fighting hands were poised to stab, but its body lay twisted in the wreckage. The poor beast's shell must be cracked. When he tried to sidle around it, the bug shrieked more fiercely and made a ghastly effort to pull its crushed body out from the flatboards.

"Mobiy! It's okay. It's okay, Mobiy." It was Underhill! His voice was muffled, but so were all sounds just now. As Thract slipped past the guide-bug, it pulled its broken body from the flatboards and followed him toward Underhill's voice. But the bug's hissing was no longer a threat. It was more a sobbing whimper.

Thract walked along the edge of the crater. The edge was piled deep with debris that had been thrown up. The glassy sides were already slumping, collapsing inward. And still there was no sign of Underhill.

The guide-bug pulled himself past Thract. There, right ahead of the bug: a single Spiderly arm stuck sharp and high from the mangle. The guide-bug shrilled, and started feebly digging. Rachner joined him, pulling boards out of the way, shoveling the warm splatter dirt to the side. Warm? It was hot as the Calorica bottomland. There was something especially horrifying about being buried in warm earth. Thract dug desperately faster.

Underhill was buried rear-end down, his head just a foot below the air. In seconds, they had him free down past his shoulders. The ground lurched, sliding with the rest of the crater's edge. Thract reached out, twined his arms around Underhill's—and pulled. An inch, a foot...the two of them fell onto the high ground just as Underhill's grave slid into the pit.

The guide-bug crawled around them, his arms never letting go of his master. Underhill patted the animal gently. Then he turned, weaving his head about in the same silly way Thract had been. There were blisters in the crystal surfaces of his eyes. Sherkaner Underhill had shaded the blast from Thract's eyes; the whole top of the old cobber's head had been directly exposed.

Underhill seemed to be looking toward the pit. "Jaybert? Nizhnimor?" He said softly, disbelievingly. He came to his feet, and started for the drop-off. Both Thract and the bug held him. At first, Underhill let them guide him back over the crest of the splatter. It was hard to tell under the heavy clothes, but at least two of his legs seemed to be cracked.

Then: "Victory? Brent? Can you hear me? I've lost—" He turned and started back toward the pit. This time, Rachner actually had to fight him. The poor cobber was drifting in and out of delirium.Think! Rachner looked downslope. The helipad was tilted but the ground above had shielded it from the flying debris. His chopper still sat there, apparently undamaged. "Ah! Professor—there's a telephone in my helicopter. Come on, we can call the General from there." The improvisation was thin, but Underhill was drifting in and out of delirium. He swayed for a moment, almost collapsed. Then a moment of false lucidity: "A helicopter? Yes...I have a use for that."

"Okay. Let's go down there." Thract started for the top of the stairs, but Underhill still hesitated. "We can't leave Mobiy. Nizhnimor and the others yes. They are surely dead. But Mobiy..."

Mobiy is dying.But Thract didn't say that aloud. The guide-bug had stopped crawling. Its arms waved gently in Underhill's direction. "It's an animal, sir," Thract said softly.

Underhill chuckled, delirious. "That's all a matter of scale, Colonel."

So Thract took off his outer jacket and made a sling for the guide-bug. The creature seemed like about eighty pounds of very dead weight. But they were going downhill, and now Sherkaner Underhill followed without further complaint, needing only occasional help to keep on the stairs.Sowhat better could you be doing now, eh, Colonel? The lurking Enemy had finally pounced. Thract looked out across the caldera at the pattern of smoking destruction. Likely it was repeated on the altiplano, trashing the King's strategic defenses. Doubtless, the High Command had been nuked.Whatever it was I came to do, it's too late now.

FIFTY-SEVEN

The taxi floated up from the L1 jumble. Below them, the mouth of S745 was open, exhausting air and ice particles. If not for Qiwi, they would still be trapped behind the sluiceway's pressure hatch. Qiwi's landing and ad hoc lock work were something that even well-managed zipheads might not have accomplished.

Nau slid Ali Lin gently into the front seat beside Qiwi. The woman turned from her controls, and her face twisted in grief. "Papa? Papa?" She reached to feel for his pulse, and her expression eased a fraction.

"I think he'll make it, Qiwi. Look, there's medical automation at L1-A, and—"

Qiwi pulled back into her seat. "The arsenal... ." But her gaze stayed on her father, and the horror was shading toward thoughtfulness. Abruptly, she looked away and nodded. "Yes."

The taxi boosted on its little reaction jets, sending Nau and his men on a quick scramble for handholds. Qiwi was overriding the taxi's sedate automation. "What happened, Tomas? Do we have a chance?"

"I think so. If we can get into L1-A." He related the story of treachery, almost the truth except for Ali Lin.

Qiwi's slewed the taxi smoothly into its braking approach. But her voice was near sobbing. "It's the Diem Massacre all over again, isn't it? And if we don't stop them this time, we'll all die. And the Spiders too."

Bingo.If Qiwi hadn't been so freshly scrubbed, this would be a very dangerous line of thought. A few days more and she'd have a hundred little inconsistencies to piece together; she'd quickly see through it all. But now, for the next few Ksecs, the analogy with Diem played in his favor. "Yes! But this time we have a chance to stop them, Qiwi."

The taxi descended swiftly across Diamond One. The sun was like a dim red moon, its light glistening here and there off the last of their stolen snow. Hammerfest had disappeared around the corner. Most likely, Pham Nuwen was trapped in the Attic there. The fellow was a genius, but he'd achieved only half a victory. He had cut off ziphead services, but he hadn't stopped the Arachna operation, and he hadn't reached allies.

And in this game, half a victory was worth nothing.In a few hundredseconds, I'll have the firepower at L1-A. Strategy would crystalize in assured destruction, and Pham Nuwen's own moral weakness would give all the game to Tomas Nau.

Ezr never lost consciousness; if he had, there would have been no waking. But for a time, all awareness was centered within himself, on the numbing cold, the tearing pain in his shoulder and down his arm.

The urge to gasp air into his lungs became overpowering. Somewhere there must be air; the park had as much breathable space as ever. Butwhere ? He turned in the direction where the fake sunlight was brightest. Some remnant of reason noted that the water had come out of that direction. It would be falling now.Swim toward the brightness. He kicked feebly and as hard as he was able, guiding with his good hand.

Water. More water. Water forever. Reddish in the sunlight.