The young Mandalon pressed another couple of buttons and then stood up and made a slight bow in their direction, and Diva and Grace both bowed back. Then the Sellite abandoned the Dome with great dignity.
Diva looked after him with one eyebrow raised. “That kid will go far,” she said admiringly. “I hope he can change the rest of the Sellites.”
Grace felt a huge sense of relief. Arcan had won, but the Sellites could still live on Valhai for another thousand years. That sounded like a good deal to her, for all parties.
“Why did you insist on payment, Grace?” asked Arcan.
“Because the Sellites hold a monopoly of ore extraction in the system, and all the planets would grind to a halt if they withheld it. This way you can stop them interfering so much. I don’t know – I had a strong premonition that it might be a good idea.”
“Well I don’t want to be bothered with any of that,” said Arcan.
“No. We will have to set up some sort of administrative service for you so that you don’t have to be disturbed. Perhaps we could bring in people from Kwaide or Coriolis to take care of things for you. We can sort it out later when there is more time. Why did you want a starship?”
“It will give me the capability of talking directly to the visitor now, and it will be very useful when we—” Arcan suddenly remembered that the visitor might be transmitting this event, and changed what he had been about to say, “—that is, I had a … strange sensation … that it would come in useful.”
The video camera whirred into life. “Can I talk now?” it asked plaintively.
“Of course, Visitor, I’m sorry.” Grace stepped aside as the sphere became visible.
“I think you were too generous to give them a thousand years. You should have told them to go now!”
Speckles of colour ran through Arcan. “It is only a thousand years,” he said, “it didn’t seem worth discussing!”
Chapter 30
ON KWAIDE THE weather was getting worse. The cold season was well established now, and that meant that the days were shorter, and the nights so cold that only the heat of the chimneys melted the ice on the roofs, which refroze before it could drip down to the floor, causing curious sculptures on top of each shack.
Grace and Diva arrived back in a shuttle pod, having been deposited on the orbital station by Arcan. They left the pod at the spaceport, next to the other three that were on the ground, and then walked to the base camp. That took them some time – Diva was still limited in the movements of her leg, although she was now able to be completely self-sufficient.
They told Six and Cimma exactly what had happened at the meeting, and how Arcan had agreed not to transport anybody directly to the surface of Kwaide. “… which is why we had to come down in a pod,” finished Diva.
“That is great news!” Six jumped up, and began to pace the room, thinking. “It means that the Elders can no longer depend upon the Sellites to get them out of trouble. Fantastic!” Then his face fell. “Though the Sellites get to stay on Valhai for a thousand years. That is not so good!”
“I think Arcan put that time on it so that they wouldn’t all move over to the Sacras planets, invading us,” said Diva. “This way they will probably put things off for hundreds of years – and they might even have changed by then.”
“Some hope!” said Six. “They will be worse than ever, I expect. Not that any of us will be around to see it.”
“You should have seen Mandalon 50 stand up, Six,” Grace told him. “He is only ten, and yet he made all those agreements as if he had been bargaining for years!”
“What happened to my old favourite, Atheron?”
Diva pulled a face. “Nothing, of course. Our old inquisitor wriggled out of it as usual, saying he had been badly advised, and only doing his best in a position for which he had not been modified genetically. Grace listened in to some of the Sellite chit-chat, and Atheron was playing the victim so well that they were apparently sorry for him!”
“He would!” Six gave a snort. “What a poser!”
“At least he has been forced to go back to running only the teaching house,” said Grace. “And Mandalon 50 is outside his reach now, because since he has taken on the presidency at such a young age, he will be tutored non-virtually at his own skyrise.”
“I bet he turns out like his father, in the end,” asserted Six.
Grace shook her head. “I don’t think so. He did really well at the meeting, stood up for what he believed was right for Sell, and seemed to grasp the most important points. His father was determined not to change anything. Anyway, they have convoked the Second Valhai Votation, which will take place soon. Mandalon 50 has decreed that all 50’s can attend without a trustee, providing they are at least 6 years old. That means that the old school will be pretty effectively shut out. There are only about twenty 50’s who are over university age.”
“Was Arcan happy with the deal?”
“Relieved, I think. He just wants to be left in peace and quiet, and this treaty will give him that. He has only to run the orthotubes for another ten years, and then the Sellites will be self-sufficient. It is a good solution.”
“But he can’t transport us to Kwaide.”
“No, but the space station is pretty close. We have left our orthogel bracelets up there, too. The refugees don’t have Arcan, but the Elders don’t have the Sellites, either. It seems fair.”
“Maybe,” said Six, “but didn’t the Elders realize that they have no way to export the rexelene?”
“I guess they did,” Diva told him, “but they didn’t have much choice. Atheron told them that they couldn’t have any more ships – it takes them three months to get here and there to get back, remember. Plus, they used up all the armament on their last visit. The Elders had to realize then that since New Kwaide has two space traders they were at a great disadvantage.”
“Then they will try to take back the space traders,” said Six slowly. “I hadn’t thought of that! We have to protect the spaceport and the shuttle pods! That is the only way they can get up to the orbital station. And you are right – for the next few years whoever has the orbital station has the possibility of trade with Coriolis and the ability to survive!”
He and Diva looked at each other, and comprehension dawned on both faces at the same time. Six leapt to his feet, and Diva staggered to hers – the bad leg was still slowing her down.
“We need to get there NOW!” Six set up a shout, and dashed to the door, telling anyone he met to pass the word, to arm and to get to the spaceport FAST.
Cimma was in the front of the wave of refugees which surged down towards the spaceport. She was waving her Xianthan knife like old times, and looking intensely pleased to have some possible action in the near future. Six had to stop her sternly, and ask her to stay in the base camp. They needed somebody with decision-taking experience there. While he spoke, Grace studied her mother. She was still the same – slightly crazy and very single-minded. But she seemed to have grown in stature here on Kwaide. She seemed, Grace thought, almost happy. It was a strange moment of recognition. Grace smiled and got told off for it by Six.
“I can’t see anything remotely funny in the situation,” he snapped. “Boy, you have a strange sense of humour!”
“I was thinking about something else!” she told him.
“Well, don’t!”
“Sorry, sir! No, sir!”
Six gave a sheepish smile. “I’m sorry, too. I might be a bit overwrought.”
“Shouldn’t we wait for Diva?”
He shook his head. “No time,” he explained. “If the Elders get hold of the spaceships they can get up to the orbital platform, and if they get hold of that, then they can control all of the imports and exports for the whole planet. At least until we can build some shuttles and pods of our own. And that makes whoever controls the space platform the virtual rulers of Kwaide.”
“But they don’t know how to fly any of the ships or pods. They don’t have any pilot
s,” pointed out Grace.
“They don’t at the moment,” agreed Six. “But I daresay they could remedy that fast enough. They could even pay some Coriolans to come over and fly for them while they brought some of their own sychophants up to speed. No, they won’t attack us anymore; they will head straight for the spaceport. I just hope we are not too late.” And he put on an extra spurt of energy.
“Oh Cian!” Grace attempted to catch up with him, together with the hundred or so Kwaidians who were flinging themselves down the path in his wake. Others were raising the alarm all over the camp.
“Who was up at the orbital station?” asked Six, over his shoulder.
“Ledin, and two others.”
“Get somebody to alert them.”
Grace stopped to brief one of the refugees to turn back with a message for Cimma. By the time she had finished Six was out of sight. She bent over for a moment, struggling to get her breath and held her sides.
Diva, who was moving extremely quickly for somebody in her condition, came pounding up, her bad leg moving stiffly and causing a rolling gait. It hadn’t managed to slow her down very much at all. She was brandishing her famous dagger with its ornate teeth, and looking extremely fierce.
“If we lose the spaceport after all we have been through I shall be furious,” she gasped. “Come on, Grace, I don’t want to miss all the fun!”
“They can’t have got here all that quickly,” replied Grace. “They haven’t had time to organize an attack.”
Diva looked grim. “Let’s hope not!”
The two girls threw themselves along the path to the spaceport in the wake of the others. Neither had enough breath left to talk any more.
THE SCENE THAT met their eyes when they finally arrived was anything but positive. The whole spaceport had been taken over by the Elders, and the four space shuttles had been captured. That left only one more up on the orbital station, plus the two space traders which would probably be en route to Coriolis. Ledin would have a hard time defending the orbital platform against four space shuttles, particularly since nobody had much armament left, and so it would probably eventually come down to who had the superior numbers.
The forces were already squaring off. More Elders were pouring in from the south, and as word spread to the refugees they were grabbing their weapons and racing in from the north. Whoever won this battle would win the war, and there wasn’t a fighter on Kwaide who didn’t know it.
Diva gave a fierce cry, raised her knife, and was about to throw herself into the fray when a voice from nearby stopped her.
“No!”
She looked around. Six was standing slightly to the left, and with him were the other three pilots, together with all of the trainees. Six was sketching a rough plan of the spaceport with a stick in the earth. He made two lines stretching north and south for the runway, and then drew the spaceport approximately in the middle, and bisected by it. Four stones, two on each side of the runway, represented the ships, and then he drew in circles behind the ships to show the fuel tanks, and smaller circles, both to the north of the fuel tanks, to show the water storage compartments. The support buildings, one on either side of the runway, and both to the south were marked by rectangles.
“We have another job,” he said. “We have to penetrate to the ships and recover them. Once the ships take off then the rest will be over. There is no point in our getting killed on the battle front: they need us as pilots now. I’m sorry, Diva, but your bloodthirsty tendencies will just have to wait.”
Diva gave a low growl, and then reluctantly sheathed her dagger. She turned to Six. “How are we going to do it?”
Six gave a nod in the direction of the fighting. “That is the part I haven’t quite worked out yet,” admitted Six, “Don’t quibble, Diva.”
She gasped. “I like that! Quibble indeed! You are going to get us all killed, no-name!”
He tilted his head. “It is possible,” he admitted. “Grace, you are the one with all the ideas – would you mind working out the details?”
Grace gave him a look, and then exchanged glances with Diva. The Coriolan girl gave a shrug. “He is right, Grace. You are always the one with the ideas. You will come up with something – I know you will.” Diva looked around her for a reasonably comfortable hollow, folded herself elegantly onto the hard ground, and began to massage her bad leg, looking totally unconcerned.
Grace stared down at the makeshift figure drawn in the beaten earth and heaved a deep sigh. “No pressure,” she murmured to herself. “Take all the time you need, Grace.”
Six had turned away, and now began discussing tactics with the other refugees in the group. “That’s it, Grace,” he said over his shoulder. “All the time in the world. As long as it’s less than an hour. If we leave it much longer than that then we may have lost the war.”
“Thanks!”
AFTER TEN MINUTES Grace had come to the only possible conclusion: there was no easy way. She gave a sigh, and called the others together.
“The Elders have taken all of the spaceport and the installations, but if you look they are only about twenty metres past the two water storage tanks on either side, which are both situated on the northern side of the spaceport, one to the east, and one to the west.”
The others looked, and then nodded, curious.
“So IF,” she went on, “and it is a big if, our troops can force them back – even momentarily – to beyond the water tanks then some of us could get inside, and make our way through the water conduits underground to the fuel deposits.”
“Brilliant!” said Six, eyes flashing.
“The problem is,” went on Grace, “that then we would have to crawl through the overhead fuel feed lines to get into the ships. They are connected to all four shuttles still, because they were in the process of refueling. Unfortunately none of the ships are currently connected directly to the water tanks, so our only option would be the fuel lines. Once we get to the side of the ships we simply cut our way out of the fuel feeds, fight our way into the ships, close the doors, and take off!”
“Oh, sure, piece of cake.” said Diva, with a roll of her eyes. “—Have you gone MAD? How are we supposed to get through fuel lines full of propellant?”
“We need mask packs and full bodywraps,” Grace said. “There is nothing else we can use. Only the space traders and the orbital station have deep space suits, and we can’t empty the water conduits or the fuel lines. In any case the deep space suits would be too bulky. The mask packs will let us breathe, and we should be able to get through the water conduits all right. There may be a minor problem with the fuel lines. They are highly corrosive, and I don’t know whether the equipment will last out long enough for us to get into the ships. And they are only just big enough for a thinnish person in a bodywrap to crawl through.”
Diva’s mouth dropped open. “Minor problem? You think we can crawl through an overhead fuel line just big enough to hold us, in full view of an army of sycophants, in mask packs made for low atmospheres rather than liquid surroundings?”
Grace looked sheepish. “I’m sorry. I can’t think of any other way to do it. Perhaps somebody else …?”
Six waved an airy hand. “Don’t look for backswampers where there aren’t any, Diva. It’s a great plan, Grace! Absolutely brilliant. Turns out to be a good thing that the Coriolans couldn’t supply us with smaller and thicker tubing for the fuel lines, then.” He thought for a bit, and then went on, “Might get us killed, of course, but I agree – there is no other way. That is what we will do.”
He turned around and passed the word rapidly to the main army to fight a path free to the two water towers. Then he sent messengers back to the base camp to have as many available bodywraps brought down as soon as possible. Then he signed for them all to gather around.
They listened attentively as Six began to speak. “We have to split up into four different groups – two will take the eastern water tank and two the western. When we get through to the fuel tan
k each group will split up again to take one ship each.” He looked around at the assembled crew. “We need at least one experienced pilot for each ship, and the trainees should be divided. The fuel lines are only about four hands in diameter, which means that with bodywraps on only the smallest of us can get through.” He touched two of the waiting pilots on the shoulder. “Neither of you would make it through the fuel lines, so your job will be to mind our backs with the others in case anything goes wrong with the plan.”
Both men nodded solemnly.
Six went on, “Once we know how many bodywraps are available, and what size they are, we can decide on the make-up of each group.
Luckily there is plenty of time to get ready.” He indicated the fierce fighting going on to either side of them. “It is going to take at least half an hour to reclaim the two water towers.”
Diva raised one aristocratic eyebrow. “Half an hour to get ready? Oh, of course. Aren’t we the lucky ones? Oodles of time! Now what should I do, I wonder? Mesteta bath, perhaps? Have my hair done? A quick trip to the dentist to have my teeth polished? With so much time you spoil me for choice.”
“Now don’t be difficult, Diva. You know what I meant. And you ought to go easy on the tooth polish. A couple of flashes of those teeth and you will give away our position to every sycophant within range.”
Diva bared said teeth at him, and he winced, shielding his eyes. “See – that’s just what I mean!” He reeled about for a bit, pretending to be blind and calling for a blackout. The men around him laughed.
Diva gave him a cross push. “Fighting is one thing,” she grumbled, “being posted down a toxic tube is quite another!”
GRACE WATCHED THE battle taking place, detached from it by fate, aware that men were dying below her, and yet disconnected. Her own heart was preparing itself, beating faster and forcing adrenaline into her blood-stream. She was shaking with a mixture of apprehension and anticipation. She looked over at Diva, and wished she could be more like the Coriolan girl. Diva caught her look and smiled. “Won’t be long,” she said happily.
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