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"I think that brought him out of it, Podmaster." A woman's voice.
Almost unwillingly, he turned his head toward the voice. A
"Ah, Apprentice Vinh. I am pleased to see you back among the living." Nau's smile was concerned and solemn.
It took Ezr a couple of tries to gargle up something intelligible: "Wha's...What's happening? Where am I?"
"You're aboard my principal residence. It's about eight days since your fleet attempted to destroy mine."
"Guh?"We attacked you?
Nau cocked his head quizzically at Vinh's incoherence. "I wanted to be here when we woke you. Director Reynolt will fill you in on the details, but I just wanted to assure you of my support. I'm appointing you Fleet Manager of what's left of the Qeng Ho expedition." He stood, patted Vinh gently on the shoulder. Vinh's gaze followed the Emergent out of the room.Fleet Manager?
Reynolt brought Vinh a book of windows with more hard facts than he could easily absorb. They could not all be lies....Fourteen hundred Qeng Ho had died, almost half the fleet's complement. Four of the seven Qeng Ho starships had been destroyed. The ramscoops on the rest were disabled. Most of the smaller vehicles had been destroyed or seriously damaged. Nau's people were busy cleaning up the orbital flotsam of the firefights. They quite intended to continue the "joint operation." The volatiles and ores that had been lifted from Arachna would support habitats the Emergents were building at the L1 point of the sun/planet system.
And she let him see the crew lists. ThePham Nuwen had been lost with all hands. Captain Park and several members of the Trading Committee were dead. Most people on the surviving ships still lived, but the senior ones were being held in coldsleep.
The killing headache of his last few moments on the lander was gone. Ezr had been cured of the "unfortunate contagion," Reynolt said. But only an engineered disease could have such a convenient and universal time of onset. The Emergent lies were scarcely more than an excuse for civility. They had pla
At least A
Ezr read the reports quietly, not sneering, not crying out when he saw that Sum Dotran was gone.Trixia's name was nowhere on the list of thedead. Finally he came to the lists of the waking survivors and their present disposition. Almost three hundred were aboard the Qeng Ho temp, also moved to the L1 point. Ezr sca
Ezr looked up from the book of windows, tried to sound casual. "What, um, what's the meaning of this glyph beside some of the names?"BesideTrixia's name.
" ‘Focused." '
"And what does that mean?" There was an edge, unwanted, in his voice.
"They're still under medical treatment. Not everyone recovered as easily as you." Her stare was hard and impassive.
The next day, Nau showed up again.
"Time to introduce you to your new subordinates," he said. They coasted through a long, straight corridor to a vehicular airlock. This habitat wasn't the banquet place. There was the faintest drift of gravity, as though it were set on a small asteroid. The taxi beyond the airlock was larger than any the Qeng Ho had brought. It was luxurious in a baroque, primitive way. There were low tables and a bar that served in all directions. Wide, natural-looking windows surrounded them. Nau gave him a moment to look out:
The taxi was rising through the strutwork of a grounded habitat. The thing was incomplete but it looked as big as a Qeng Ho legation temp. Now they were above the strutwork. The ground curved away into a jumble of gray leviathans. These were the diamond mountains, all collected together. The blocks were strangely uncratered, but as somberly dull as common asteroids. Here and there the frail sunlight picked out where the surface graphite had been nicked away, and there was a rainbow glitter. Nestled between two of the mountains he saw pale fields of snow, a blocky tumble of freshly cut rock and ice; these must be the fragments of ocean and seamount they'd lifted from Arachna. The taxi rose further. Around the corner of the mountains, the forms of starships climbed into view. The ships were more than six hundred meters long, but dwarfed by the rockpile. They were moored tightly together, the way salvage is bundled in a junkyard; Ezr counted quickly, estimated what he could not see directly. "So you've brought everything here—to L1? You really intend a lurking strategy?"
Nau gave a nod. "I'm afraid so. It's best to be frank about this. Our fighting has put us all near the edge. We have sufficient resources to return home, but empty-handed. Instead, if we can just cooperate...well, from here at L1 we can watch the Spiders. If they are indeed entering the Information Age, we can eventually use their resources to refit. In either case, we may get much of what we came for."
Hm. An extended lurk, waiting for your customers to mature. It was a strategy the Qeng Ho had followed on a few occasions. Sometimes it even worked. "It will be difficult."
From behind Ezr, a voice said, "For you perhaps. But Emergents live well, little man. Best you learn that now." It was a voice that Vinh recognized, the voice that had protested of Qeng Ho ambush even as the killing began. Ritser Brughel. Ezr turned. The big, blond fellow was gri
"But don't worry, Peddler boy. Your quarters are properly inconspicuous." Brughel pointed out the forward window. There was a greenish speck, barely showing a disk. It was the Qeng Ho temp. "We have it parked in an eight-day orbit of the main jumble."
Tomas Nau raised his hand politely, almost as if asking for the floor, and Brughel shut up. "We have only a moment, Mr. Vinh. I know that A