Conquerors' Pride

"We get out of here," he said, rolling off her and getting to his feet. "Crane, go check on Wei. The rest of you—"

"Colonel Holloway?" a voice called.

Holloway looked to the left. "Over here," he called back.

Melinda stood up as a man in Peacekeeper uniform came around the side of their protective copter, his assault gun held ready. "Colonel," he said, and even through her dazed ears Melinda could hear the relief in his voice. "Thank God, sir—we thought they'd iced you. We've got an aircar around back that way."

"Thanks," Holloway said. "Any status reports yet?"

"I haven't heard anything, sir," the other said. "Everyone's keeping off the radio. I know the Conquerors have taken the settlement, though, and that some of the other transports in that last batch are overdue. The Corvines have gone off to run cover for the search ships."

"All right," Holloway said grimly. "Let's get going before they need to bail us out again. Send someone to go give Crane a hand." He glanced at Melinda. "And have someone pick up one of those Conqueror bodies over there—grab whichever's in the best shape. Get a couple of their weapons, too."

Three minutes later they were in the air again. Melinda found herself looking past the dirty, powder-stained men to stare at the body bags that had been hastily piled in the rear of the craft. The war had indeed begun... and she was indeed here in the middle of it.

"Sorry you didn't leave when you had the chance?" Holloway asked quietly from beside her.

She turned to look at him. Those cool brown eyes were studying her closely. Maybe trying to decide if she was going to be more trouble than she was worth in the coming days. "I'm sorry any of this had to happen at all," she said. "I wish we could all have started by talking instead of shooting."

"We did," he reminded her bluntly. "It was the Conquerors who came out shooting."

"Maybe we scared them."

"Or maybe they just aren't interested in talking," Holloway countered. "There are all sorts of people, Doctor, humans and nonhumans alike, for whom talking just slows down the process of taking whatever it is they want. You run into one of them... well, you're a doctor. You know that sometimes there's only one way to stop a rabid animal."

He looked past her at the body bags. "Let's just hope the politicians have the guts to do it before anyone else has to die."

Melinda looked at the body bags again, a shiver ru

"Damn right I am," he said. "I don't know what the geniuses at NorCoord are waiting for, anyway. I'd have started reassembling the thing the day the Jutland force was hit."

"Political considerations, probably," Melinda said. Pheylan had gone into a CIRCE kick, she remembered, when he was a child. Something he'd said then...

"You'd know more about that than I would," Holloway grunted. "Maybe this will finally get them off their soft seats and doing something."

"Maybe," Melinda said. "Colonel, you were in supreme command of the Peacekeeper forces on Dorcas, weren't you?"

"Still am," he said. "For whatever it's worth. Why?—you want the job?"

"No," Melinda said. "I was just wondering if you'd have known if any of the CIRCE components were being stored here."

For a long moment Holloway just stared at the body bags, his face rigid. "Oh, hell," he murmured at last.

Melinda's heart seemed to skip a beat. "Is one of them here?"

"I don't know," Holloway said, his face still tight. "Local commanders never do. But if it is, there's only one likely place it could be."

"Back at the garrison?"

"Not quite that bad," he said. "But bad enough. There's a small automated tectonic-monitoring station in the hills just north of the settlement that some NorCoord agency put in a few years back. At least, that's what they told me it was. If it's really the storage point for a CIRCE component—" He shook his head. "The good part is that it's well enough snugged in underground that the Conquerors probably won't know anything's there. The bad part is that we can't get to it without having to practically walk into their arms."

"So what do we do?"

18

The warbling cut off. "It's all right, sir," Hill said, his silhouette moving across the tiny colored lights as he shifted in his seat. "Just a proximity warning, Mrach style. We're coming up on Phormbi."

Cavanagh squinted at his watch. Seven hours, approximately, since that mad scramble out of Mig-Ka City. "Do we know where we're going?"

"Yes, sir, the Northern Wooded Steppes. There's a map and a little bit about the place on the computer here. With your permission I'm going to key the auto-entry to bring us in on the night side. Try to avoid whatever they've got in the way of a traffic pattern."

"Fine," Cavanagh said, rubbing his eyes. Between the interrupted sleep on Mra-mig and all the adrenaline surges since then, he was feeling desperately tired.

"Kolchin? You awake?"

"Yes, sir," the other's voice came softly. "I think Fibbit's still in that cold-sleep of hers. You want me to try to wake her?"

"Don't bother," Cavanagh said, his ears still ringing from that proximity alarm. Either that cold-sleep was incredibly hard to break, or else Duulian hearing was on a par with Duulian night vision. "Hill, do you have any idea what the landing procedure's going to be like?"

"None at all, sir," Hill said. "I've never been to a Yycroman world before. But I'm sure one of the interdiction ships will be able to tell us."

"Let's hope it's short and quick," Kolchin said. "Could be awkward if word of our departure from Mra-mig arrives while we're still up here chatting."

"At least we know the news couldn't have beaten us here," Hill pointed out. "That's something."

"Yes," Kolchin said. "Lord Cavanagh, I've been thinking about what happened back there at the hotel. Your suggestion that what we saw was a power struggle between Mrach factions?"

"Yes. And?"

"Another possibility's occurred to me. That red card Bronski showed you—could it have been a forgery?"

Cavanagh frowned into the darkness. "Interesting thought," he agreed. "I've never seen one up close before, and I didn't take the time to examine this one."

"Same here," Kolchin said. "But that might explain why the Mrachanis didn't send a representative up with him. And why he didn't haul us away when he had the numbers on his side."

"And perhaps explain the incident at the elevators," Cavanagh added slowly. "If Faction A issues official red cards, but Bronski was actually working for Faction B, Faction A might have sent the Bhurtala to bring him in."

"But why would a NorCoord diplomat be working for the Mrachanis?" Hill objected.

"We only have Bronski's word that he's a NorCoord diplomat," Kolchin reminded him. "If he can forge a red card, a diplomatic ID isn't going to be a problem."

"All of which brings us back to the man in Fibbit's threading," Cavanagh said. An odd and not entirely pleasant thought had suddenly occurred to him. "New line of thought, Kolchin. What are the chances that the whole Bhurtala thing at the hotel was a setup? That the Mrachanis fed us this tip about Phormbi and then deliberately let us escape?"

For a moment the only noise in the cabin was the twittering drone of the drive beneath them. "If they wanted us to escape, why didn't they let Bronski pass?" Kolchin asked.

"All they were guarding was the elevators," Cavanagh pointed out. "I didn't see anyone at the stairway down the hall, and there was certainly no one by the emergency drop shaft. Maybe if Bronski had turned around and taken the stairs instead of arguing, they'd have let him go."

"I suppose that's possible," Kolchin said thoughtfully. "Bronski sure wasn't the type to back down. All right, let's assume they wanted us to leave there and go to Phormbi. Why?"