Harko began a hasty straightening out of his office. It wouldn't do to have guests of their stature confronted with his normal clutter, and then expect them to make the leap of faith it would require to accept him as the organized fact gatherer he was supposed to be. He'd try to look the part, even though he felt uncomfortable with it.
“Chief?"
Now who the hell is it?
“Harko here."
“I have a call waiting for you from Central Dispatch. She says Shuttle Twenty-three has an urgent message for you. Want me to put it through?"
“Yes."
He slapped his hands together and laughed. Then ten anxious minutes plodded by, and Harko had gone through the motions of straightening out his office for the second time before his com beeped.
“Harko here."
“Mr. Harko, this is—"
“Quiet. Don't say anything more about where or who you are. You have a pretty fancy computer over there, don't you?"
“Yes, we do, but—"
“Good. Have it duplicate this scramble,” he said and counted to ten and back several times with the scrambler running. “Are you able to understand me now?"
“Yes. We hear you clearly."
“Good. I don't want anyone to hear this but us. Are you Nikisha Kaznov?"
“What? Is that important?"
“It's vitally important to me. Are you Kaznov?"
“All right, I am Niki Kaznov. What I have to tell you is extremely important, and we've only a couple of hours to do something. Paz Cadre's coming here at eleventh hour thirty to take out your men and attack the shuttles. We can defend ourselves, but we won't be able to help your men unless you tell them it's all right for us to take them in—or send more officers out here. The latter will only get a lot of people hurt, because there's nothing you can do against the equipment they have and I'm sure they outnumber you."
“You'd take Enforcement men in ... into the shuttle? Why would you do that? Why should I believe anything you have to say, Kaznov?"
“I don't want to argue with you, and I won't attempt to justify myself, either. If you want our help, we are willing. We don't want to see anyone hurt over things they're unable to understand or accept and that aren't any of their concern, anyway."
“What the hell are you talking about?"
“Will you listen, damn it? The Paz Cadre is bent on gaining control of Paz and they're going to do it by force, while we, on the other hand, merely want to leave. The time has come, and Halfyear is going to bring tremendous upheaval here."
“And?"
“And we're willing to help you as much as we can with the Paz Cadre, because they are willing to destroy millions of Pazians to get what they want. What you do about the Twelfth Generation is up to you. The rest of it ... you wouldn't understand."
Harko bit at his lip. There it was—his chance to make some choices he had been mulling over for several hours—decisions that could have an eternal impact on Paz. The people in the shuttle were not an evil—he'd arrived at that conclusion a long time ago—and they were offering their help. According to the Book of the Law, he should do everything he could to stop them, apprehend them, and make sure they were brought to trial for their crimes—but he couldn't do that. It would be a waste of vital time and would be misdirected, anyway.
“What would you say if I told you I understand more than you think, Kaznov?” he challenged.
“It's not beneficial for either of us to ramble about things that are not pertinent to the current situation, Mr. Harko. If there's time afterward, I'd be willing to sit with you, face to face, and discuss it. Right now your problem is not why we're doing this, but the fact that there's an army out here preparing to pounce on you—and that they don't care who gets termed."
“Go on."
“As I see it, we have the advantage since it is you who needs us. Now, do we talk about important things, or do you want to engage in useless intellectual repartee?"
Harko chuckled. This was no simple fisherman and he didn't waste words. Harko's suspicions were confirmed, and he really wanted to sit with this man. Maybe Kaznov could help Harko accept the reality of who he was in this genetic stew that was being stirred by forces unknown.
“All right, Mr. Kaznov. I was just probing a little. It's in my genes to dig for stuff, if you know what I mean. Do you know the individuals involved?"
“Call me Niki, please, and no, I don't know them. We overheard a conversation between someone named Tazh—Colonel Tazh—and a fellow named Lang. From what we heard, Lang must have people in high places, because he knew about your operation out here, your rotation schedule, and your ready team at East End."
There must be holes everywhere. How can I defend if they know everything I'm going to do?
Niki's voice continued speaking from the com, and Harko sat drumming his fingers loudly on the desk.
“...moving people in to deploy along the Vaskez line south to Anderson's. Other troops are going to be meeting up with Tazh's rovers at Pelter's Rock at fourteenth hour. I don't know why they'd be going all the way out there unless they're planning to squeeze you from three sides by bringing up people from Nuperz. That's all the information we have. I can have our computer send a copy of that conversation and the frequencies if you'd like."
“Yes. Do that. That would be helpful. Oh, and you may call me Brand. What do you know about their numbers?"
“Nothing. Based on what I've seen, I'd say you may be looking at thousands."
Thousands? Harko couldn't count on the Council, the Militia—even his own people.
“What is your suggestion?"
“Pull your men out of here, or tell them to get in with us. I know, it's in your genes to assume we want them removed to make things easier for us. Believe me, we can leave here any time we want and your men could do nothing to prevent it. Getting them out of here will save their lives, and that's our only motivation. We'll take care of what comes this way and along the Vaskez, if it's necessary."
“That's all?"
“No, you'd better start looking for some help you can trust—you're going to need all you can get."
“All right, Niki. I'll pull my men out, and I'll trust you to do as you say. You had better have told me true because, if you haven't, I'll find a way to get to you—that's a promise, Niki, and don't get any wrong ideas about why I'm cooperating with you. In my view, you're a destabilizing element that needs to be dealt with—and that's all. The sooner I get you out of the mix, the sooner I can defuse the others. As long as you're around, I have a problem."
“Sure, Brand, whatever you say. Remember, don't send anyone out here, because we won't be able to tell the difference and I don't want to be responsible for harming any innocents."
Harko very much wanted a chance to talk with this Nikisha Kaznov under different circumstances, but he was aware that it would be unlikely. He wanted to know more about this lone Delta, this simple fisherman who sounded more like a combination of intellectual and commander, whose voice exuded an unusually high degree of integrity and confidence that Harko found refreshing—compelling.
“All right, Niki, you have my word. I'll do my best to keep the Council and Enforcement out of the way and concentrate on straightening out the mess with the Generation. But, please, if it's at all possible, I'd appreciate having a chance to talk with you."
“I think I'd like that, Brand. Night."
Harko stabbed a finger at the com panel and a weary, bedraggled Sax appeared.
“Get all your material on Dathan Vagnu and Bagdel Frank into case presentable form. Don't fabricate anything, but make it as damning as you can. Exaggerate where necessary, but don't be obvious. I want to see both of them in the Terminator's booth before the end of Halfyear. Oh, and give me a set of genetics on all our Senior and Level One Investigators. Not a word to anyone—understood?"
“Sure, boss. Your wish is my tickle."
“This is serious, Sax—not a single syllable."
“
Yes, sir. This is great. Who would ever have thought there'd be high intrigue in the records office?"
“Sax?"
“Yes, sir?"
“Shut up."
* * * *
Pax, being mindful of her footing, because of the meager eighth g, paced the hangar deck as the shuttle started its approach to the number three docking ring. She wasn't happy about not having the information that ship could have given them. When she'd learned about the crew not being able to penetrate it, she'd searched all the records again. All the stuff the Rammix had in its formidable memory, even side bars and anecdotal commentary, was combed for any mention of anything that even alluded to entry codes. There was nothing.
It was blind luck that the recognition codes were similar enough for ISCU-9 to accept the Hermes's presence in the same galaxy without powering up for a fight—a fight she knew the Hermes would win, but at great cost. Now, there they were, side by side in astronomical terms, with the same destination and timetable. She pondered the odds against that and found the answer to be nothing short of laughable.
Lavan had been watching her for several minutes from the compartment's open door. She moved slowly toward Pax in her cautious let's not aggravate the vertigo, and the movement of her soft yellow smock caught Pax's attention.
“Hi, Marta,” she said as she turned almost too fast.
“Want something for that?"
“For what? Oh, you mean my pacing."
“No, I mean the tension behind it."
“I'm fine."
“Oh, I can see that."
“Seriously. I'm just a little hot about things not going the way I want them to, that's all."
“Alex, let's go somewhere so we can sit and talk. I think that might help."
“Not now, Marta. I have to debrief the shuttle crew when they come aboard."
“Alex, I know you. You've been in constant contact with them since they separated from the Hermes, and you've heard everything they said, seen all that they saw, and played back the condensed record several times. Why do you think you need to talk to them now?"
“You're right."
“I know I'm right. So—do we go?"
“Uh-huh. Let's get some coffee before Rammix shuts us down for the coast in."
“You mean before it sets me up with a prolonged case of the dizzies. Too bad nobody's found the gene for that one."
“Medication?"
“None of them work on me. Anyway, let's get that coffee. Can't think of many things I like less than sucking stuff—especially hot stuff—from tubes."
Pax measured her stride to stay with Lavan as they made their way to the lounge. She enjoyed Lavan's company, her irreverent sense of humor, and her penchant for telling it as she saw it—both in marked contrast to her innocent-little-girl appearance. Maybe that was the key to her charm.
“Why don't you grab a table while I get the coffee?” Pax said. The lounge was full of others who had anticipated the coming fall into orbit, and there were only a couple of tables left. Besides, knowing Lavan, in this minute amount of inertial gravity, she would probably lose her coffee on the way.
“With pleasure,” Lavan said.
The coffee was hot, though a little bitter, and the conversation, as always with Lavan, was pleasant and wandered over a broad range of topics. Pax almost forgot the ISCU-9 problem that annoyed her so much.
“What ever happened to the old idea of artificial gravity, Alex?"
“Artificial ... gravity?"
“You know ... fifth force and all that."
“I guess the same thing that happened to wormholes and time warps. Why?"
“It's my only hope. Couldn't help noticing that we're down to less than twenty minutes and none of our super-hyper-brilliant engineering staff's come up with the goods to get a spin on."
“It's a little late, now. Maybe next time."
“No next time, Alex. By the way—crummy segue—have you noticed that we've changed?"
“How do you mean that?"
“We're not the same people."
“Of course we're not—we're a hundred and thirty light years from home. We—"
“That's not what I'm getting at, Alex."
“What then?"
“I mean we are basically, fundamentally different people than we were when we entered the program. At first I thought that it was ridiculous, but a couple of my memories about how certain members of the crew would react to things weren't gibing with what I see in the same people now."
“Like?"
“Short fuses, for one thing. Oh, not hot tempers—but less tolerant and quicker to react. It's not attributable to the stress of our new situation but more—this isn't necessarily negative—more basic animal. Anyway, I ran through some of my early records, about a year into the program, and saw very different people than I'm seeing now."
“I haven't noticed anything different in me."
“You wouldn't. I didn't either. But I am different, and so are you—so is everyone else. If I hadn't worked so closely with all these people and kept profiles on them, I wouldn't have noticed anything."
“Are you saying the gene therapy—"
“That's what I'm saying. There is something more than what we were told. We don't make decisions or process information in the same way we used to."
“And that bothers you?"
“Only in that I feel like I've been raped at the molecular level. As for the mission, it's probably a good thing, but I would have appreciated it more if someone had summoned up the gonadal grit to tell me about it up front."
“I don't know if I can believe what I'm hearing."
“No? Alex, what made you decide you wanted to be a mother?"
“I don't know. I just felt better about myself, I guess."
“Look, Alex, I've been piecing things together, and I have a much better picture of what you're about. The person sitting here now is not the person I know from the training program. Tell me about the bittersweet thing."
“There's nothing to tell—nothing that's important to you, anyway."
“Who was the wicked witch, Alex?"
“Just an insignificant entry in a history chip that won't play in today's system. Now, drink your coffee. We start to fall in seven minutes."
* * *
Chapter XXI
At tenth hour fifty Tazh finished briefing the officers who would be in charge of the small strike force and returned to the Operations Center where he would keep an eye on the action. He seated himself at his console as the digits on the wall changed to eleventh hour exactly. Alarms started to rattle their irritating clamor through the chambers and passages of the Keep.
What the hell?
Hundreds of men rushed through the facility trying to get to their assigned emergency stations while huge, steel doors automatically rolled closed, sealing them into the Keep. Suddenly Ops was filled with anxious faces peering into monitors at consoles all around him. Tazh brought up the tactical sensor array and studied it to be sure that nothing had come in through the security grid. It showed the buffer zone to be clear—no intrusion. There was no air traffic an no one on the ground—so what had set off the system? All the equipment had been subjected to a thorough test earlier in the day, a routine he had insisted on from the beginning to be certain their security zone could not be violated. Everything had proven to be functioning perfectly. Something was wrong.
“Sir,” a voice crackled from the com. “The entire western section is sealed off."
“Sealed off? What's sealed off and how?"
“All passages to the western section at every level are closed, sir. Some sort of doors have sealed the entries to the west."
What? There weren't any doors in the tunnels, only on the main entries from the outside and at the internal compartment closures. The passageways had been open and clear when work was started on the Keep over five years ago. Doors might have set off the alarms, but where had the damned things come from?
Tazh
raced down the corridor west from Ops and, about a hundred meters along the route, ran up against a door in his path. He'd just spun around and headed back to Ops when he was knocked off his feet and sent sprawling by a tremendous jolt, followed by a rumbling vibration that lasted two minutes. Plate movement at this time of year? During Perigamia, certainly, but not nearing Halfyear. The Fathers had chosen these sites for their stability during the worst time of the year, and so the arrival of the Cafferty Cone had come as a surprise to everyone. But Cafferty had lain dormant for two hundred years. Now, approaching Halfyear, even the least solid ground on Paz moved very little, if at all.
The lights in the passages were dim and flickering when he entered the Operations Center. He found several consoles overturned, their entrails arcing and snapping in the weak emergency lighting, and the air was foul with smoke from electrical fires and the stench of burning flesh. Two men, their faces frozen in horror, their bodies contorted into impossible positions, lay smoldering on the floor, and a third sat trembling in a corner, his face colorless, and incoherent mumbling coming from his mouth. All the others were gone.
Cowards.
“What happened here?” he demanded of the quivering man who, when Tazh spoke, attempted to press himself farther into the corner and covered his head with crossed arms. Tazh wanted an answer, but the only reply he got was a series of unintelligible whimpers from the darkened corner.
“I ask for true Gammas and they give me—this?"
The main control and external sensor arrays remained on line, and Tazh assessed the situation quickly. Six of the main generators were down, which accounted for the emergency lighting, and all four main entry doors were now locked in the open position. Still nothing appeared on the sensors. It was not an attack, that much was clear to him, or else there would have been something on those screens, yet all the chambers west of the Operations Center had been physically removed from the system. What could have caused this, and why hadn't those doors been noticed during the reconstruction?
The shaking and rumbling began anew, and Tazh was forced to hold on with both hands. Rock and cement dust filled the room as it shook violently, and loose equipment danced amid sparks from parting cables. It was unlike any seismic activity in his memory, and, being a Pazian, he had experienced a lot of that. This was more reminiscent of his days working in the mines when the ore cars, fully loaded, rumbled along the tracks to the surface—except this was more pronounced, more violent.
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