Conquerors' Pride

  And stopped abruptly as a tongue darted out in front of him, pointing to his left.

  He looked. Five of the aliens had grouped themselves beside one of the consoles against the wall. A console whose front panel was even now extending a flat, tablelike slab into the room.

  Pheylan took a deep breath. Alien or not, he knew a medical-examination table when he saw it. "Okay," he said, bracing himself and starting toward it. "Let's get it over with."

  It took three hours in all-a long and distinctly unpleasant three hours. Still, he had to admit as the glass door of his glass cell swung shut behind him, it could have been a lot worse.

  Maybe that part would come later. After they'd learned some English and could ask him all the questions prisoners of war were usually asked. He wondered if their culture included the concept of torture.

  He took a deep breath, looking around the room and trying to ignore the uncomfortable tingling still running through his muscles from the instruments they'd used in their examination. With three hours to think about it, he'd figured out why the cell arrangement had looked familiar. Except for the missing wall displays and mounted artwork, it was a perfect copy of Commodore Dyami's stateroom aboard theJutland.

  He stepped over to the bed and sat down, running a hand over the material. It was noticeably softer than a standard shipboard bunk, and the blanket felt more like plastic than cloth. But they'd gotten the basic style right.

  The aliens were still in the outer part of the room, some of them watching him. Swiveling around, he stretched out on the bed and gazed up at the flat, almost featureless ceiling. Wondering if they realized the priceless bit of information this room had given away.

  They'd had four ships at the battle: big ships, far too big to use the double-speed skitter stardrive. They'd picked him up at that same battle and flown him here. Presumably directly, and he would have known from the engine sound if they'd stopped along the way. True, they could have had a skitter stashed aboard one of the other ships, which could have arrived here fourteen hours ago. But most of that lead time would have been eaten up by however long it took the aliens to sift through the rubble of the Peacekeeper force. And yet, he'd arrived to find a copy of Commodore Dyami's stateroom already in place for him.

  The conclusion was inescapable. The aliens had a method of true instantaneous communication.

  It was the breakthrough in tachyonic physics that the Commonwealth had been looking for for probably the last hundred years. This wasn't just the raw, single-bit information that a ship was passing by a few light-years away or that a tachyon static bomb had just been triggered. This was someone at the battle talking directly to someone here, giving highly detailed instructions as to what kind of environment to set up for the prisoner who was on his way. It was contrary to everything the scientific establishment thought they knew about tachyon physics. And yet here it was.

  And the consequences could be devastating. Detailed information from advance scouts, from forward bases, from the height of pitched battles-all of it would be instantly available to the aliens' high command. It would be modern planetary warfare, expanded to interstellar scale.

  And he was the only one in the Commonwealth who knew it.

  He closed his eyes, unwilling to let his captors see the tears there even if they had no way of understanding their significance. He'd made it through the massacre alive-from the evidence, apparently the only one of the 145 aboard theKinshasa who had. He'd known every one of those men and women, and had been responsible for their lives.

  And he'd failed them.

  He swallowed, his throat aching with bitterness and guilt. Already he'd replayed the battle a hundred times over in his mind, searching for something-anything-that he could have done differently. Something that he should have done, or shouldn't have done, that would have made a difference.

  There was no way for him ever to make up for the people who'd died aboard his ship. The best he could do now was to make sure they hadn't died uselessly.

  He opened his eyes again. The aliens were still going about their business, their tails corkscrewing slowly around as they conversed in small groups or bent over flickering consoles. He would survive, he promised himself silently. No matter what they did to him, he would survive. And as they learned about him, he would learn as much as he could about them.

  And when the time was right, he would do whatever it took to escape from this place and get his knowledge back to the Commonwealth.

  "Okay, Colonel, we've got us a green light to go in," Lieutenant Alex Williams said, keying the drudgeship's engines off standby. "Where do you want to go?"

  "I'm not sure it really matters," Holloway admitted, gazing out the canopy at the brilliantly lit field of debris drifting through space in front of them. "Given Dorcas's location and all, I thought it might be instructive to see what we were up against. I guess I could have saved myself the trip."

  "There's not much left to see," Williams agreed. "We've already picked up most of the big pieces and sent them off to the analysis center on Edo. Mostly what we're doing now is picking bodies out of the rubble."

  Holloway nodded, his stomach tightening in anger. That part had shown up in exquisitely painful detail in the watchship records. Twenty-eight hundred men and women, most of them slaughtered for no reason. "We're going to have to make them pay for that."

  "No argument from me on that one," Williams said grimly. "Odds among my crew are running five to one that we finally bring CIRCE out of retirement."

  "Let's just hope they're damn careful when they start putting it back together," Holloway said, looking around at the floating debris. "All we need is for these butchers to get hold of a working CIRCE."

  "These, or any other batch," Williams said. "The Pawoles still haven't forgiven us for using it on them. I'll bet the Yycromae wouldn't mind getting their hands on it, either."

  "That's certainly a cheery thought." Holloway looked out the viewport at the dim sun of the system, so far away it was hardly distinguishable from the background stars around it. "What were they doing out here, anyway?"

  "Probably poking around the cometary halo looking for stuff to mine," Williams said. "Wasting their time-our teams looked the place over about five years ago. Nothing here worth the effort of digging out. Look, Colonel, we've still got a lot of work to do out there. If you want, I can drop you off-wait a minute." He cocked his head slightly, listening intently to his earphone. "Williams here. You sure? Okay, stay with it-I'm on my way."

  He keyed the drive, and the drudgeship swung around toward one of the banks of lights. "What is it?" Holloway asked.

  "The jackpot, maybe," Williams said. "Someone's spotted what looks like a piece of alien ship outside the scavenger area."

  Two other drudgeships were already there when they arrived, their remote analyzers drifting across the fragment's surface. "What have you got, Scotts?" Williams asked, touching a switch and pulling off his headset.

  "Looks like a hull plate, Lieutenant," the other's voice came over the cockpit speaker. "A piece of one, anyway. Got some electronic fragments or something on the underside, too."

  "What got it, a shrapnel line?"

  "Looks more like expansion shock to me," Scotts said. "Probably flash-heated by a close-in warhead explosion and popped at the seams. I'm picking up some odd dust here, too-could be the same stuff. We'll scoop some of it up."

  Holloway peered out at the milky-white plate, only slightly scarred except near the edges where it had broken. "One plate and some dust," he commented. "Must be one very sturdy hull material."

  "All that, and more," Scotts said. "I want a copy of the stress-test report when it comes in."

  A third remote had drifted in to join the other two now at the hull plate's surface. "What haven't you done yet?" Williams asked.

  "Bakst is looking at the edge structure; I'm trying to get an angle on those electronics," Scotts said. "We haven't tried composition yet."

  "Okay, I'll run that," Will
iams said, keying in the program. "TheJutland ships took a shot at this before the shooting started," he added to Holloway, leaning over in his seat to peer into the remote's display. "Didn't get 'em anywhere; but then, they were eight klicks away and trying to read through a heat-dump spectrum. Let's see if we can do a little better now... well, well. Bingo."

  "What?" Holloway asked.

  "It's not a metal alloy at all," Williams said, straightening up again. "It's a ceramic."

  "A ceramic?" Holloway echoed. "I've never heard of a ceramic this tough."

  "Me, neither," Williams said. "I guess we're hearing about it now."

  "I guess we are," Holloway agreed. "And that explains why the radar-triggered missiles the force kept throwing never went off. There weren't any large masses of metal for them to lock on to."

  "I don't think there were even any small ones," Scotts's voice came from the speaker. "You're going to love this, Lieutenant. These electronics things on the underside? No metal in 'em."

  "Not even power lines?"

  "If they're here, I can't find them," Scotts said. "All the filaments they've got running in and out are just optical control fibers. No idea how the power's getting in."

  "Could they be using a Djadaran electron-tunneling effect?" Holloway asked.

  "Not unless they've come up with a way to make it a lot more efficient than the Djadar ever did," Williams said. "How about it, Scotts?"

  "I don't think so," Scotts said slowly. "Scan's still running, but so far I'm not reading any semiconductors, either."

  "No metalsor semiconductors?" Williams frowned. "All right, I give: whatis there?"

  "Throw your guess in with mine," Scotts said. "All I'm getting is the optical fibers plus some complex geometric shapes of unknown composition."

  "Crystalline?"

  "Or amorphous," Scotts said. "The analyzer can't seem to make up its mind on that one, either. We could try taking an interference reading."

  "Not worth the effort," Williams said reluctantly. "We're just supposed to find this stuff, anyway-it's up to the geniuses on Edo to figure out what the hell it is. Pull your remotes back and I'll take this piece in. You and Bakst start a search of the area, see if you can find any more pieces. I'll swing a couple more ships over to give you a hand."

  "Yes, sir."

  Williams keyed the board speaker switch off again and put his headset back on. "Where are we going?" Holloway asked.

  "Back to theGanymede to drop this off," Williams said, looking at the display as he maneuvered the grabber arms out toward the alien plate. "And unless there's something else you want to see, Colonel, I'm going to drop you there with it. We've still got work to do out here. And there's no guarantee the aliens won't come back."

  "I understand," Holloway nodded. "I'd better be getting back to Dorcas, anyway."

  "I can't say I envy you your post," Williams said candidly. "Playing sitting duck on a rock like Dorcas isn't my idea of a fun tactical stance."

  "I could think of better positions myself," Holloway agreed. "Somewhere in Orion Sector springs to mind. You think you'll be able to find all the bodies?"

  "Probably," Williams said, the bulk of his attention clearly on the task at hand. "The battle was pretty well localized-it was over too fast for much drift. Why?"

  Holloway looked out at the field of junk floating off to their right. "Just wondering if maybe they weren't all killed."

  Williams shook his head. "The watchships didn't leave until all the locator beacons had been silenced. And those things don't break down by themselves."

  "Yes, I know," Holloway said. "I was just thinking that if I'd just had a run-in with an unknown race, I'd make sure I got at least one live prisoner to take back for study."

  Williams shrugged. "You can't count on them thinking like humans."

  "It still wouldn't hurt to mention the possibility in your report."

  "Frankly, Colonel, I've got better things to do right now than add stuff to my file work," Williams said. "If you want it put in, write it up yourself."

  "Maybe I will," Holloway said, looking out at the lights of the drudgeships moving around against the stars. "Yes. I think I will."

  5

  The rumors had begun even before they'd left Mees, and for the entire ten-hour trip they seemed to be the sole topic of conversation aboard the liner. There were whispered stories of sudden activity at the Peacekeepers' orbital Bridgehead base; second- and third-hand reports that the governments of the three human enclaves on Mees had been called into emergency session; dark hints that postbattle assessment teams had been activated and been whisked off God only knew where. Through it all Aric had kept to himself, working through the shock and grief of his father's unexpected message as best he could. Wondering how his younger brother had died, and whether the still unknown circumstances surrounding it were to blame for the flurry of nervous hearsay.

  It wasn't until he reached the NorCoord Parliament chambers that he had his first inkling that the rumors might for once have been understated. The smiling young pages who normally stood by the doors to the observation balcony had been replaced by a pair of armed and decidedly unsmiling Peacekeeper Marines. They checked Aric's ID carefully, double-checked it against their list, and finally let him in.

  He walked down the short entrance corridor to the rear of the balcony proper. Kolchin was waiting there, leaning against the wall with his usual deceptive air of carelessness. A dozen other men and women loitered nearby, all exuding the same aura of alert competence as they gave Aric a thoughtful once-over. Apparently, CavTronics Industries wasn't the only big gun of Commonwealth industry and business represented here today.

  "Mr. Cavanagh," Kolchin nodded as Aric came up to him. "Good to see you, sir."

  "You too," Aric nodded back, noting peripherally that with Kolchin's identification of him the other bodyguards seemed to lose interest. "Where is he?"

  "Down there," Kolchin said, pointing toward one of the lower tiers of seats.

  Aric looked. The balcony was barely a quarter full, his father's white hair instantly recognizable in the subdued lighting. He was sitting alone, and even at this distance Aric thought he could see a slump in the older man's shoulders. "Melinda hasn't arrived yet?"

  Kolchin shook his head. "No, but she should be here soon. She was doing an operation on Celadon that couldn't be rescheduled and had to catch a ride with one of our transports. They got in to Cheredovat about half an hour ago. Parian's bringing her in."

  Aric nodded. "Okay. Send her down when she gets here, all right?"

  "Sure thing."

  Parlimin Hurley Maxwell was on the podium down on the floor below, speaking passionately about Peacekeeper preparation and funding as Aric walked down the aisle. "Hi, Dad," he said as he reached his father's row and sat down beside him.

  "Aric," the elder Cavanagh said, giving him a poor attempt at a smile as he gripped his son's hand. "Thanks for coming."

  "Sure," Aric assured him, studying the other's face in the subdued light. There were new lines there, lines of fatigue and grief that he hadn't seen three weeks ago. The old man was taking this hard. "How are you doing?"

  "No worse than you'd expect," his father said, trying the smile again with the same lack of success. "Of course it's hard; but it's not like we never knew that this day might someday come. Pheylan knew there were risks that came with the uniform, and he accepted them."

  "It was more than just acceptance, Dad," Aric reminded him. "He'd wanted to be in the Peacekeepers since before he was seven." He smiled as a stray memory clicked. "Wanted it about as badly as hedidn't want an office job."

  His father threw him a sideways look. "Told you about that fight, did he?"

  "We told each other most things," Aric said, swallowing through a suddenly aching throat. He was going to miss Pheylan, too. More than he was willing to admit even to himself. "I remember him storming into my office right after that particular argument and announcing that he'd rather join a pirate gang
than disappear like me behind a desk somewhere in CavTronics. It took me half an hour to calm him down."

  "That sounds like him," the elder Cavanagh said, shaking his head. "Strange, isn't it. He hated the idea of a desk job; but even in the Peacekeepers that's where he would eventually have wound up. Maybe it's just as well he didn't get that far."

  "Maybe," Aric said, looking down at the chamber floor and searching for a way to change the subject. His father was putting up a good front, but beneath the calm words Aric could see an all-too-familiar pattern beginning to form. The downward emotional spirals that followed Aric's mother's sudden death had plagued his father for months afterward, taking a harsh toll on his health and threatening to turn him into a recluse. Now, five years later, Aric suspected he would be even less capable of handling that kind of stress. "What's the big debate down there today?" he asked. "Some fallout from all of this?"