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TWENTY-NINE
It was an afternoon that Hrunkner U
The tri-prop took less than two hours to make it from Lands Command to Princeton. But the aircraft was no flying command center; such things were beyond current budgets. So the General had two hours with only a low-speed wireless link. That was two hours away from the command and control hub at Lands Command or its near equal at Princeton. Two hours to listen to fragmentary reports and try to coordinate a response. Two hours for grief and anger and uncertainty to gnaw. It was midafternoon when they landed, then another half hour before they reached Hill House.
Their car had scarcely stopped when Sherkaner Underhill was pulling the doors open, urging them out. He caught U
Over the years, U
Smith was very still for a moment. Then she moved close to him, laid an arm across Sherk's shoulders, caressing his fur. Her voice was soft and stern, almost like a soldier bracing another about lost comrades. "No, dear. You can only do so much." Outside, the afternoon was moving into overcast. A thin whistle of wind came through the half-opened windows, and the ferns scraped back and forth on the quartz panes. A dark green gloom was all that filtered down through the clouds and the shrubbery.
The General stood with her head close to Sherkaner's, the two just staring at each other. U
U
The twilight quickly became night, as much a product of the gathering storm as the setting of the sun. U
U
Smith pushed the reports back at him. "Okay. Get Daram and his team back in the loop. Keep them busy. What's new with the search reports?" She waved the other staffers close, and she herself became very busy.
The house command post had good maps, a real situation table. With the microwave link, it could double for the command center at Lands Command. Unfortunately, it had no special advantage for comm into Princeton. It would be several hours before that problem was cured. There was a steady stream of ru
The chief of counter-Kindred operations showed up an hour later. Rachner Thract was very new to his job, a young cobber and a Tiefer immigrant. It was strange to see someone with such a combination in that post. He seemed bright enough, but more bookish than deadly. Maybe that was okay; God knew they needed people who really understood the Kindred. How could traditional values go so wrong? In the Great War, the Kindred had been minor schismatics within the Tiefer empire, and secret supporters of the Accord. But Victory Smith thought they would be the next great threat—or maybe she just followed her general suspicion of trads.
Thract laid his rain cape on the coatrack and undid the pa
"Why am I not surprised?" said Smith. U
"Two interviews and two autopsies. The cobbers who were killed had been through plenty of physical training, and it doesn't look like athletics; there were old nicks in their chitin, even a patched bullet hole."
Victory shrugged. "It's been clear this was a professional job. We know there are domestic threats, trad fringe groups. They might hire competent operators."
"They might, but this was the Kindred, not the local trads."
"There's hard evidence?" asked U
"Um." Thract seemed to consider the questioner as much as the question. The cobber couldn't quite decide where U