"That ship that never came close vanished as soon as we fired," Arlen observed, marshaling arguments now against the theory he himself had originally advanced, being unsure, deep down, what to believe. "Those aboard conceivably could have controlled the carrier, and perhaps Signe equates descending right next to a jury-rigged, remote-controlled, lethal charge of blasting gel with trusting to your cool head when she lifted the lifeboat, Dahl--and in both cases, her trust proved justified. Well! Levi, my congratulations. You've rendered Columbia invulnerable to attack by Signe's black ships."
Levi shook his head. "We, sir. Not me. And we've not finished the job, either, but that datapad holds a program I think might run in our weaponry's Earth-built computer systems."
Having nodded in assent, Arlen turned to the board, and addressed his captains. "Gentlemen: Brant, Danner, Ford, Yukio. My congratulations on your spectacular, simultaneous hit on what had to have been an hitherto undetectable vessel of some sort. Our defense works. Now, we need to employ constant vigilance, until Levi and I achieve a method of integrating the devices with our weaponry, so that a strike will be automatic. Remember, however, that Signe commands six unaltered first-class military ships, and that she's a formidable strategist. Report any unusual sighting to me with no delay. I commend you on your performance today."
Well, you've met your goal, Arlen: shut Signe out of the space around Columbia, and rendered the Ice World far easier to defend. Your work's not finished, but the end lies in sight. You next need to turn your eyes--and your mind--towards what's happening in Columbia. Focus on thwarting the plots of your rivals, and on strengthening the civil government. Immerse yourself in work, so you don't have time to think of yourself. Strive not to dwell on your sorrow, your loss, your culpability. Pain swirled out of dark depths in the bereaved leader's soul: pain that woefully sapped his justifiable pride in his achievement.
Chapter Ten
Jason made a slow recovery, healing physically. Busy as Arlen continued to be, buffeted emotionally by a searing sense of bereavement as he was, the Commander-in-Chief nonetheless kept in close touch with Ahearne regarding the injured officer's progress, and paid several visits to the patient battling despair. When the day arrived in which the attending physicians agreed to discharge the man cruelly scarred for life, Arlen went with Amin to help Jason through the trauma of crossing a daunting threshold, and returning to his ship and his comrades.
Striding into the small cabin in Fifth Corps' Infirmary, bearing a duffel bag containing one of his lieutenant's freshly adjusted uniforms, Amin crisply greeted the subordinate slumped in a chair, announced that the time had come for him to return to duty, and directed him to dress.
Arlen unerringly discerned the spacer's deep depression. Forthrightly, he declared, "Jason, you've been incarcerated in this cramped space for far too long, as necessary as a quiet interval was to your recovery. It's time you engaged your mental faculties in assisting Amin to handle the new responsibilities I've laid on him. Neither you nor myself can afford to dwell on personal sorrow to the exclusion of other concerns."
That blunt reference to Arlen's personal tragedy jarred Jason out of the fog of acidly corrosive self-pity into which he had sunk after he first beheld the irreparable, ghastly effect produced by his freakish misfortune. The hard, ridged, pinkish-white flesh of his ravaged face--a surface bearing no resemblance to skin, too stiff readily to allow the subtle, unconscious movements reflecting changes of emotion--horrified him. A rampaging allergy to chemical residues coating the numerous tiny fragments of metal embedded deep in the burned flesh had fatally interfered with the specialists' efforts to graft on new epidermal tissue cultured from Jason's healthy skin. Fearing dangerous complications, the physicians reluctantly allowed healing accompanied by scarring to take place.
The surgeons had restored the shape and bulk of features burned away. Their patient again possessed a nose, and ears. Thick, dark hair grew from the original hairline with undiminished vigor, but those benefits afforded little comfort. The twisted mouth gave a bitter cast to the ruin of the face that its owner felt certain any beholder--a man, and most especially, a woman encountering him for the first time--would regard with profound revulsion. His mutilated flesh revolted even himself.
Arlen held bleakly rebellious dark eyes with his own--eyes luckily undamaged. Aided by the clinical detachment habitual to a physician, he concealed an upsurge of pity behind an expression as inflexibly demanding of an officer in the Special Force as it was warmly accepting of Jason's disfigurement.
"I…heard, sir. I'm deeply sorry about your loss."
Arlen's pain showed nakedly despite his effort to appear unmoved.
Well aware that he just witnessed an incredible failure of will on the part of a man self-conditioned to hide any emotion he sought to conceal, Jason gauged the intensity of his superior's grief. For the first time in days, his generous heart went out to another. Arlen hurts terribly owing to losing his family , he admitted silently, but he kept in touch with Ahearne, asked about you constantly, and even came personally to check on you. Pull yourself together, spacer!
As Arlen watched the object of his solicitude unconsciously square his shoulders, and instinctively stand more erect, the Acting Commander of the Special Force produced the uniform that his lieutenant donned. Bracing himself, Amin issued a brisk injunction. "Well, let's go."
Jason took a tentative step towards the door. Involuntarily, he halted. A searingly exact, utterly unforgettable awareness of what the multitudes of people outside this refuge would see--a blistering certainty regarding the way they would react to that sight--froze the afflicted spacer into despairing immobility. I can't face the horror that'll reflect in the faces of the people I'll meet! he railed inwardly. I can't! Why in hell can't anyone realize that? I simply can't!
Amin's heart constricted as he divined his second officer's thoughts. What can I say? he agonized. What can I do, other than I've done? Prepared both my crew and those of the other captains … exhorted them not to show any emotion … but everyone else … I can't …
Gently, but most firmly, Arlen addressed his gruesomely disfigured subordinate. "Jason, I expect you wonder why I didn't ask whether you wished to be freed of the obligation of serving out the term of your enlistment. I know how you feel. You don't want to walk out into corridors teeming with civilians who owe their own comfortable, unchanged existences to the valor of spacer-fighters like yourself. You don't want to face the pity you know will show on startled faces.
"But your comrades don't feel pity, Jason, nor will they feel uncomfortable, after the initial shock wears off. They of all men know the meaning of scars. They of all men know the person who lives behind that altered face. Every last one of them honors the warrior behind those scars for his ability and his courage. They're the companions you need most, now. And Amin desperately needs you . The pity that'll damage you worst is self-pity. Brace yourself to walk out of here between Amin and myself, and resume a career you'll find still engrosses you."
Shock melted into self-castigation. Arlen's right , Jason conceded, as guilt mingled with the pain flaying his sorely tried psyche. He's making no concessions to your sensibilities … your self-pity. Pull yourself together. You can't hide in here forever. You can't hide anywhere. You've no way to avoid what you abhor facing, unless you plan to become a recluse. Amin does need you. So steel yourself, spacer. Bad enough that you just let both Arlen and Amin detect what they did . Squaring his shoulders consciously now, the veteran without a word strode out into the corridor of the medical facility, and took up a life that would never again be the same as it was prior to the raid on Dunn.
Nine men summoned by their commander to view the enlarged and enhanced shots of the structure orbiting Columbia stared dejectedly at a clearly visible orbital fort. Hands on hips, eyes glacial, Signe stood to one side of the screen, and scanned the faces.
"Well, gentlemen," she greeted her officers evenly, "Arlen has perfected a means of detecting
and blasting our black ships, just as Eric and I figured he would. That fort's undoubtedly one of three such. I wondered why he'd docked the passenger ships so close to Dunn. Now we know."
"A strike in Columbia itself forms an impossibility, now, Signe. The majority of Arlen's twelve military ships guard the perimeter of those forts. He'll deploy the remainder around the Ice World, but he's only got three passenger vessels, so the Ice World will be guarded by military ships alone," Morgan observed, looking askance at his leader as he voiced that hint.
"Military ships sporting a means of detecting vessels sprayed with Gaeanite," Jassy reminded the enthusiast.
"In one sense, the war's over," Theo averred ruminatively.
"Hardly," Wong objected. "We can scarcely just shrug, and disband our fleet. Those forts alone--plus a first-class ship or two--would suffice to render Arlen's home world impregnable. He could leave two or three more guarding the Ice World, and launch six or eight on a strike here--hurl at us a force equal to ours. We couldn't safeguard all thirty-nine planetoids, and if we concentrated our fleet around Main World, an assault on one of the less populated rocks would become all the more certain."
"What would Arlen gain?" Theo demanded. "If he had contemplated conquest, why wouldn't he have struck right after our first raid? Launched fifteen ships against our five?"
"He was vulnerable then to our ships' being undetectable," Morgan interjected. "Had he attacked Gaea, he'd have chanced our devastating his capital. He risks no strike, now, on his home world, whatever he does. He's got twelve captains commanding his Earth-armed ships--men who've made a career of fighting--men who'll not rest content to spend the balance of those careers tamely orbiting Columbia, guarding against the remote possibility of some suicidal assault on their impregnable fort. Hell, no. He'll find himself pressured to launch a campaign of conquest--or at the least, to regain the mine he evacuated without a fight."
"We'll need to test his defenses periodically," Conor agreed. "Let him know we're guarding our perimeter--that we're alert and ready. Keep things at a standoff, though I foresee staggering difficulties arising out of that scenario, as well."
"Such as fuel," Malcolm noted. "They've got all they need, and we're hurting for water."
"I wonder…" Yuri breathed his response in an undertone, as if speaking aloud to his own self, rather than to the group.
"You wonder what, Yuri?" Attuned to the mind of this shy, self-deprecatory friend of many Earthyears' standing, Sean sensed that his brilliant colleague harbored an idea worth considering.
"The logical thing to do, at this point, is to contact the Columbians, and ask whether they might be ready to consider a truce, and eventually, a peace treaty. We'd be negotiating from a far stronger position now than we held right after we drove Norman off Main World." Once prodded into sharing his thoughts, Yuri spoke with passionate conviction.
"A peace treaty!" Morgan snarled, outraged. A clenched fist descended with jarring force on the tabletop. "The Columbians violated the Convention! Built weapons that could kill at a distance--stockpiled them--while that agreement banning them was in full force! Then invaded--out of the black--a world holding to its pacifistic tenets! A world populated by people who didn't even use swords! With no provocation--no warning! Out of sheer greed--lust for conquest! For killing! We'd be insane to trust them again!"
"Leon violated the Convention," Yuri protested calmly, even as he thrust a hand palm-outward towards the objector, in placatory fashion. "And Norman. Arlen seems to me to be a different sort of leader."
Shrugging, Conor drawled sardonically, "Somebody assassinated Leon. Arlen rose to power right afterwards. Makes you wonder, Yuri."
"That might not have been cause and effect," Theo demurred.
Eric spoke with impassioned force. "I've always doubted that Arlen effected Leon's death, and if you notice, he hasn't employed Yancey as one of his captains. That name has never surfaced in any of the transmissions we've monitored."
Standing facing the men seated along one side of a long table, Signe crossed her arms as her oval face set in stern lines. She nonetheless responded dispassionately to the man making the suggestion. "Yuri, Morgan definitely scored a point, about Columbia's historical penchant for treachery. The first Columbians plotted to seize Johann's Flagship , so as to subjugate the first Gaeans. That attempt failed for one reason: Johann lifted in the only one of the three huge vessels that jumped from Earth, which was a warship. Whoever controlled that legendary mobile stronghold, controlled the system--then, and if it were rediscovered, now.
"Johann's vanishing in that ship--his hiding it where it's never been found, and presumably dying aboard it--was all that prevented the first Columbians from conquering the first Gaeans. In the aftermath of Johann's courageous act of self-sacrifice, the early Columbians signed the Convention, after the Gaeans left Columbia and settled here. But the present generation of our foes deliberately, premeditatedly, violated that agreement. I'd feel safer trusting to a strong defense."
"I don't propose any weakening of our defenses, or lowering of our guard, Signe," Yuri countered, undeterred by his Commander's manifest lack of enthusiasm for the idea. "No way! But we face Earthyears--decades--of a standoff, now, unless we can devise some new strategy offering an insuperable military advantage, and render Gaea itself impregnable. Talking to Arlen face to face might not be a bad idea."
"Signe, you can't risk a meeting! They'd likely assassinate you ," Morgan growled. Having targeted the Commander with an extended forefinger, he jabbed it twice in her direction.
"I don't propose that course, either, Morgan," Yuri replied without heat, meeting his comrade's flashing green eyes squarely. "I agree with you. I'd like permission to contact a friend I made before the war. A student at the University of Columbia collaborated with me from across the void, on research involving metallurgy, despite the aggravation posed by the time-lapse. I'd thought of reaching Arlen through this civilian engineer. I'd be willing to act as an envoy: fly to Columbia under a symbolic flag of truce, feel Arlen out, and see whether I could arrange some way that he and Signe could meet in a place where each would be safe from treacherous attack.
"What harm could such an overture do? One or two of us could assess whether our archfoe seemed genuinely interested in working to end the standoff, lukewarm to the notion, or hell-bent on conquest. Signe would find out whether we're looking ahead to decades of patrolling space, armed and ready, or whether we might conceivably be able in the near future to negotiate a breakthrough that would let both sides return to peaceful pursuits."
Sean spoke with quiet determination. "After more than twelve Earthyears of unrelenting warfare, a man wonders if peace isn't an impossible dream. We fought to make Gaea free, not to see her drained indefinitely of people and resources, enslaved in a new sort of bondage¾forced to patrol an unimaginable volume of space. Signe, if you'll permit Yuri to take a tentative step to try for a breakthrough, I'll go with him, if we succeed in arranging a meeting."
Suppressing an impulse to denounce the past perfidy of Columbians in more savage terms than had Morgan, Signe reviewed Yuri's and Sean's appeal. Does Arlen really want peace? He's a military dictator. Morgan's right about his captains' being professional military men steeped in traditions originating with Johann's mercenary fighters. Arlen could well be contemplating an assault on Gaea, or at least, of regaining the mine on Penn's Rock. If he desired an end to the conflict, wouldn't he make an overture?
Frowning, Signe yet responded with reasoned calm. "Yuri…Sean…I sympathize with your idealistic yearning for peace, even as I admit to harboring reservations fully as deep as Morgan's. I won't forbid your contacting Yuri's former acquaintance, but I advise you not to seem too eager. See what comes of your feeler. Meanwhile, gentlemen, we need to decide how we'll handle this new phase of the struggle."
Conor voiced the thought weighing on all present. "Malcolm pinpointed our major problem. We're hurting for water. Flying a fleet of eight military ship
s on patrols designed to detect any offensive move by the Columbians will require an astronomical supply."
"I'm exquisitely aware of that," Signe declared in a tone charged with challenge. "Two notions rise to mind when I lie awake racking my brain for a solution. Capture a comet, or haul supplies periodically from Feynman."
Nine men stared at the visionary, astounded. You think on a bold, large scale , Conor saluted her mentally. That questing mind habitually generates daring leaps of the imagination, sparking flights of innovation that your skill as a leader transforms into workable, novel strategies. Youth renders you malleable: mentally flexible. Sigurd left you a rare legacy, girl, when he provided you an education that liberated your intellect, instead of channeling it into rigidified patterns of conventional thought. I can lead--inspire men to fight with passionate fervor--but I lack that ability to conjure up visions of radically unique possibilities. You're the war-leader the crisis demands. Columbia never produced a greater one!
Morgan broke the pregnant silence. "You don't think small, do you, Signe? Feynman. An ice world, only the ice isn't solid all the way to the surface. Slush underlies a hard top layer of indeterminate thickness. That sea of ice and water completely covers that outer satellite of the gas giant. Feynman's a daunting distance from here when it's closest: roughly, once every eight weeks. More often, it's farther, and when most distant, almost twice as far away as Columbia. Just how did you figure we'd land on a body on which no human being has ever set foot?"
"We'd have to remodel the docking module on our cargo vessel," Signe replied, frowning. "Don't think I underestimate just what fearsome problems such an attempt would involve. I threw out both wild notions just to set all of you thinking."
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