by Timothy Zahn
“I will.”
He touched the end of the cable to the rectifiers, and the room came alive with blue-white light and a hissing sizzle. Wesowee held the pose for four seconds, and Nicole grimaced as the stench of burnt electronics curled her nostrils.
The Ghorf lifted the cable, and the light and sizzling stopped. “If the Fyrantha is correct, easy communication with Q1 should now cease,” the Ghorf said as he coiled the cable and returned it to the power box. “I wonder…”
“What?” Nicole prompted.
“You’ve said the Fyrantha is somewhat at odds with itself,” Wesowee said. “I wonder if the next instruction our team’s Sibyl receives will be to come here and make repairs.”
“Huh,” Nicole said, frowning at the scorched circuit box. “I hadn’t thought about that. Or worse. If the Shipmasters can figure out where the problem is, they might be able to fix it themselves.”
“I thought only humans could make repairs.”
“That’s what I was told,” Nicole said. “But that could be mostly because only humans can be Sibyls and hear the Oracle’s instructions, and the Oracle told me this system was added by the Lillilli after they took over the ship.”
“The Shipmasters are the Lillilli?”
“Or maybe just a special group of them,” Nicole said. “Though, you know … once when the Fyrantha was being shot at and needed me to fix something at the top of the ship I was nearly caught by a couple of Shipmasters who came charging in after me.”
“Did they think they could fix it?”
“I don’t know why else they would have been there,” she said. “Maybe this isn’t the only thing they added.” She nodded toward the box. “And in this case, it’s pretty obvious what we did and how to fix it. All you need to do is read the numbers off the rectifiers and swap them out for new ones.”
“Perhaps it’s not as obvious to the Shipmasters as it is to you.”
“I’d hate to bet on that,” Nicole said. “Maybe we ought to stick around for a while just to make sure.”
“Perhaps,” Wesowee said doubtfully. “But not in here.”
“You’re right,” Nicole said, shivering. Earlier, she’d considered the catastrophe of getting trapped in one of the Fyrantha’s smaller rooms. That situation didn’t sound any better now than it had then. “Let’s see if there’s someplace across the hall we can watch from.”
“There should be several choices,” Wesowee said, opening the door and looking back and forth. “Stay here while I go look.”
“Okay, but make it quick,” Nicole said, an odd feeling tingling itself up her back. With the door open, something suddenly felt wrong. She moved forward quickly, catching the door before it could close behind Wesowee, and leaned up to the opening.
She was right. There was some kind of whining sound coming from down the corridor, still too soft to identify, but somehow ominous.
And it was getting louder.
“Wesowee!” she whispered, easing an eye around the doorjamb. The sound was still too soft to identify, but she knew she’d heard it somewhere before. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Wesowee step back toward her, and could sense him bracing for trouble …
And then, even as the sound abruptly clicked in Nicole’s mind, the drone appeared around the distant corner.
Nicole froze, hardly daring to breathe. Had it spotted her at the same time she’d spotted it? She was still mostly hidden inside the room, but if the drone operator was looking closely he was bound to see the small piece of human face looking back at him.
If he spotted her …
She clenched her teeth. If he spotted her, she would have to make sure she was the last thing the operator saw. The minute the drone started toward them she would duck back into the room, assuming her sudden movement would catch his attention. She would have maybe fifteen seconds to make her preparations before the drone reached her; and the second the device was in range she would try to zap it with the same power surge Wesowee had just used to blast the rectifiers. With luck, it would be enough of a jolt to destroy it.
At which point, of course, she and Wesowee would have to run. But they were going to have to run, anyway, and at least this way they could run without someone staring over their shoulders.
And then, even as she mentally unwound the cable Wesowee had used, filling in the details of her plan in her mind, a second drone floated around the corner to join the first.
Nicole hissed. Damn. Because the operators would have to be idiots to send both drones into range of the enemy. Now she and Wesowee would need something he could throw—maybe two or three somethings, if they weren’t very big or heavy—to take out both machines. Two figures stepped around the corner—
Nicole huffed out a relieved sigh. It was Moile and Teika, drone controllers gripped in their hands. “Protector?” Moile called softly.
“Here,” Nicole said, stepping out into the hallway. “Are you all right?”
“Quite all right,” Moile confirmed.
“They’re fine,” a new voice called.
And to her surprise Jeff stepped around the corner. “The question is,” he continued as Levi and Tomas appeared behind him, “are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” Nicole assured them, hurrying forward to meet them halfway. All three men were wearing large boxes on their backs, and were carrying what looked like a strap-pack of ceiling vents in each hand. From the way they were all walking, she guessed all of it added up to a lot of weight. “What are you doing here?”
“Kahkitah passed on Wesowee’s message that you wanted Nise and Iyulik to meet you here,” Jeff said. They reached each other—
And Nicole paused, suddenly uncertain. She was the Fyrantha’s Protector, after all. Did that position allow her to show affection, or even relief?
Jeff wasn’t bound by any such restrictions. Even as Nicole hesitated, he set his strap-packs on the deck and gave her a quick but intense hug. “I figured that whatever you were planning you could probably use some extra hands,” he finished as he pulled away.
“Probably,” Nicole said, taking a deep breath. So different from Bungie. “Hey, Levi, Tomas.”
“Good to see you,” Levi said, making no move to come in for a hug of his own.
“This had better be good,” Tomas warned grimly, also keeping his distance.
“It will be,” Jeff promised. He looked past Nicole at Wesowee, and she saw his eyes flick back and forth across the corridor. “Where are they?”
“Nise and Iyulik? I sent them on a job,” Nicole said evasively, eyeing Tomas. He had a look that she’d seen a lot of back in Philadelphia. There was a simmering anger beneath the surface, along with a thirst for revenge.
Hardly a surprise. He’d been nursing a quiet but intense bitterness ever since the Koffren killed his friend Bennett, and that bitterness was showing no signs of fading away.
Nicole could sympathize, and had more than enough reasons herself to want the Koffren taken down. But she’d also seen enough with Trake to know how bloodlust could affect judgment and brains and mouths. If Tomas got into a rant with the Koffren or Shipmasters and said too much, he could ruin everything. Best to keep the Thii mission quiet for now.
Unfortunately, Levi didn’t have Nicole’s experience in such things. “What sort of job?” he asked.
“I sent them to check out the Q2 arena,” Nicole said, thinking quickly. “I thought we might be able to pick up some allies or weapons.” She nodded at the box on his back. “Speaking of weapons, it looks like you’re pretty loaded, too. Or is all of that just supplies?”
“We think it’s weapons,” Jeff said. “We won’t know how effective they are until we get a real field test.”
“Which had better be soon,” Tomas warned.
“Don’t worry, it will,” Jeff promised, picking up his strap-packs again. Now, up close, Nicole could see that they were indeed a set of rectangular ceiling vent covers. “Moile, Teika: I want you to run the drones as far as you
can in all directions without losing them. Make sure there’s nothing nearby that could jump out at us. Levi, Tomas, stay with them in case of trouble.”
“What about you?” Tomas asked suspiciously.
“I need to show him something Wesowee and I found,” Nicole spoke up. “We’ll be back in a second.”
She led the way back toward the room with the sabotaged booster junction. “Glad to see the Wisps are obeying you like I told them to,” she commented. “I assume you ran into the Ponngs on their way back to Q4?”
“Basically,” Jeff said. “Interesting fact. Did you know the Wisps can tell you where someone is?”
Nicole felt her stomach tighten. “No, I didn’t,” she said as casually as she could.
“Only if you’re in their quadrant, though,” Jeff amended. “The Q4 Wisps couldn’t see into Q3 and tell me exactly where you were. But they were able to tell me the Ponngs were getting ready to come across from the edge of Q3. Good thing, too, or we might have crossed opposite directions on different levels and missed each other completely.”
“Ah,” Nicole said. She could see where Jeff was going with this. “And that’s how you know I didn’t send the Thii to Q2?”
“Basically,” Jeff said. He was trying to be casual about it, but Nicole could hear the edge beneath the words. “I should mention that lies in the middle of an operation always make me nervous.”
“I was going to tell you,” Nicole said. “I just didn’t want the others to know yet. In case … look, I’m not saying—”
“In case Tomas goes full Rambo, gets caught, and spills the details?”
Nicole winced. “Something like that. Sorry.”
“No apology needed,” Jeff assured her. “I figured it was something like that, which is why I didn’t call you on it in front of him. Just between us, I’m a little worried about him myself. I would have left him behind, but he and Levi were the only ones willing to come with me.”
Nicole frowned. “The others don’t want revenge for Bennett?”
“Oh, they want revenge,” Jeff said reluctantly. “It’s just that they kind of blame you and your tactics for getting him killed. I don’t,” he hastened to add, “because I saw everything and know there wasn’t anything you could have done to stop it.”
“But the others still blame me.”
“Yeah,” Jeff conceded. “Anyway, like I said, Levi and Tomas were the only ones willing to come with us to hit the Shipmasters’ armory.”
“Uh-huh,” Nicole said, wrinkling her nose. She’d been pretty sure that was where this was going. “So this is an armory raid?”
“That’s all they would agree to,” Jeff said. “They want to kill someone, and for that they need weapons.”
“And the whole thing about not tipping off the Shipmasters that humans can fight?”
“They don’t care,” Jeff said. “And I’m pretty sure we’re way beyond that point anyway.”
“Maybe,” Nicole said. “But we’re not ready for the armory. For starters, we don’t even know where it is.”
“Preaching to the choir here, sister,” Jeff said ruefully. “But it was that or I was going to be hoofing it alone. So what exactly are the Thii up to?”
Nicole braced herself. This could get awkward. “They’re following Bungie into Q1. Hopefully to the armory or the teleport room, but we won’t know which one they found—if either of them—until they get back.”
“Bungie, huh?”
“Yeah.”
For another couple of steps Jeff remained silent. Nicole braced herself, waiting for the inevitable question about how exactly the Thii had been able to connect with Bungie in the first place. “Okay,” he said at last. “In that case, running a little sortie into Q1 might be exactly what we want. It would help draw the Shipmasters’ attention outward.”
“Toward us?”
“You got it,” Jeff said. “You remember talking about setting up diversions while we hit the armory? Same thing.”
“Except that we’re not hitting the armory yet. Are we?”
“No, but you can also use diversions on recon missions.”
“I was just wondering if they might catch on if we do that too often.”
“Maybe,” Jeff said. “But not likely. It’s not like this is going to be a long campaign. We don’t have the time or the troops for that. Moile said you swiped the drones from the Q3 arena?”
“Yes,” Nicole said. “He told you about the cameras and weapons?”
“Both very useful things,” Jeff agreed. “So they’re what inspired you to this new plan?”
Nicole nodded. “I hope you don’t mind me taking charge this way.”
“You’re the Protector,” Jeff said. “You’ve got knowledge and resources the rest of us don’t.”
Nicole winced. “I don’t know about that.”
“I do,” Jeff said. “Besides, as a wise man once said, no battle plan survives contact with the enemy. You get new stuff—troops, weapons, or just a better field position—you run with it. So. You have a plan for the drones?”
“I think so. At least, part of a plan.”
“Great,” Jeff said. “Fill me in.”
* * *
Jeff was impressed by the sabotage Nicole and Wesowee had used on the radio booster. Levi, from the look on his face, was probably automatically thinking what it would take to fix it.
Tomas was mostly intrigued by the high-power port.
“So are there plugs like this in all the work spaces?” he asked, fingering the cable Wesowee had used.
“I don’t know if they’re in all the work spaces,” Wesowee said, sounding a little confused. “I’ve seen them in some of the places where my team’s worked.”
“The Fyrantha told me to apply high voltage to the rectifiers, so I assumed there would be a source somewhere in the compartment,” Nicole added. “Once I knew that, I told Wesowee to look around until he found something that looked promising.”
“And when I saw this port I remembered Kointos—he’s our team leader—telling us all to stand back when he used one just like it,” Wesowee added with a childlike eagerness. “And then there were sparks and noise. And a smell that hurt my nose,” he added ruefully.
“Ozone,” Tomas said. “Hadn’t seen any high-voltage outlets like this before. Could be useful.”
“We’ll think about how to use it the next time,” Jeff said. “Right now, let’s stick with the stuff we know works.”
“What next time?” Tomas countered, frowning. “I thought we were hitting the armory. Not going to need any of this junk-heap stuff once we have some real weapons.”
“We will if we can’t find the armory or can’t get inside,” Jeff said. “Don’t worry, our stuff will work.”
“Yeah, you keep saying that,” Tomas said sourly. He tapped the cable one last time and then backed out of the compartment. “Fine. We going, or what?”
“We’re going,” Jeff confirmed. “Nicole, is there any spot that would be better than anywhere else to cross into Q1?”
“I doubt it,” Nicole said. “The big question is whether I’ll have enough control of the Wisps to get us across the duct. As far as I can tell, that doesn’t depend on where we are.”
“Except which quadrant we’re in,” Levi said.
“Right,” Nicole said. “Obviously.”
“Don’t get snappy,” Tomas said tartly. “Fine. If Q3 is iffy, why don’t we cross from Q2? Jeff said you had better control there.”
“I don’t know if it’s better or just the same as here,” Nicole said. “Sometimes I can control them, sometimes I can’t. Sometimes it’s like I’m taking control away from the Shipmasters. I did that here once, anyway. Don’t know if I can always do it.”
“Well, if it’s going to be potluck no matter where we start, we might as well save ourselves some time and walking,” Jeff said. “We’ll head straight to the heat-transfer duct, you can call some Wisps, and we’ll see what happens.”
; “What about them?” Tomas asked, jerking a thumb at Moile and Teika. “Those drones could be handy.”
“We’ll come with you,” Moile announced, his voice firm.
“Not so fast,” Jeff said. “Nicole, did you have a different plan for the drones and the Ponngs?”
“Why do we care what she wants?” Tomas cut in before Nicole could answer. “We’ve got a plan, and we’re ready now.”
Nicole hesitated. The last thing she wanted was to take the drones into Q1 right now.
But looking at the others’ faces, she knew she didn’t really have a choice. Levi and Tomas already blamed her for Bennett’s death. If she tried to take control from them and Jeff, she would risk having them turn their backs on her for good.
And she would need them before this was over. She would need all of them.
“He’s right,” she said, trying to sound calm and controlled. “Being able to see ahead could make all the difference.”
“And him?” Tomas asked, nodding at Wesowee.
“He should stay here,” Nicole said, watching Wesowee’s face. He wasn’t happy about letting her go off with Jeff and the others—that much was clear. But unlike Tomas, he trusted her.
“That’s right,” the Ghorf said, whistling a little nervously. “I have to get back. Kointos will be wondering where I went. I don’t want him to think I got lost again.”
“No, we can’t have that, can we?” Tomas said sarcastically. “So: two Ponngs, three men, and no Ghorfs. Works for me.”
“Plus Nicole,” Jeff reminded him firmly.
“Yeah. Nicole.” Tomas shot her a look, then turned deliberately back to Jeff. “So what are we waiting for? Let’s do it.”
“What about your weapons?” Nicole asked. “Shouldn’t I at least have some idea what they are and how they work?”
“I’ll give you the full rundown when we get to the duct,” Jeff promised. “We’ll put everything together while we wait for the Wisps to show up. Marching order: Nicole and I will take point, Levi and Tomas at the rear, Ponngs in the middle with the drones flying about fifty meters ahead and behind. Clear? Good. Nicole?”