Battleground (45 page)

“Then I'll find a way to talk to her,” he said, though he could not see how.

Bella said, “How is Mickey?” with a longing that must be Hanna's.

“He's good . . .” Jameson hesitated, but Hanna deserved more than that. “He's afraid of thunderstorms. He wants to be in my lap when they come, he's fine then. But Hanna would be better. She could do more with thoughts than I can do with words. Soon—I want her—he wants her home soon. But he's safe, and loved. He's very much loved.”

“Don't cry,” Bella whispered, and he actually put a hand to his eyes before he realized she meant the words for Hanna.

•   •   •

July 21: Back to Kakrekt, a commute so familiar by now that Hanna dozed on the
way. She surfaced fitfully from time to time, to snippets of thought, memories of talk.

“You'd think starving people would notice sooner . . .” Her own voice.

“No hunger pangs. We eat as much as we can stand. You were already too thin, and so lethargic—the word doesn't start to describe it. But I couldn't understand why my clothes were getting loose, or why I feel so strange . . . All I want to do is sleep.”

“You are here,” said the escort, and Hanna straightened, resisting a hysterical laugh.
You are here,
universal guide to complex maps: here at the edge of the explored universe, trapped and weak and alone.

No, she thought; only conditionally trapped; Starr might decide to move that warship up, and Battleground wouldn't stand a chance with Fleet. Nor alone: there were D'neerans on
Endeavor.

But weak, that, yes. It took more effort every time to crawl out of the carts.

She did not have to crawl out. She was hauled out by Kakrekt pulling on her arm.

“Come, come—”

This was a febrile excitement she had not felt in a Soldier before. Kwoort was prone to something like it—

“But the language has no words for these emotional states because most users of the language don't experience them after a sort of, think of it as priming the pump, at the start of puberty. After that it's gone for years, for centuries.”
Gabriel
. “Most don't live long enough for, oh, for the circuits to activate fully—”

She was dragged through Kakrekt's quarters, through doors, through narrower corridors she had not seen before.

“Slower!” she gasped. Something had finally taken hold of her spotty concentration. It was the heaviness in her legs.

“You are always slow, now you are almost standing still,” Kakrekt said impatiently, but she slowed as if for a pet that would not be hurried.

The narrow corridors gave way to wider ones with Soldiers coming and going, the hush to a rumble that stirred Hanna's memory. They came abruptly to the space Hanna had seen on her arrival here, the hangarlike cavern with Soldiers crawling over machines in many stages of construction or repair, using noisy tools, shouting at each other. She stumbled through the chaos, dizzy, following Kakrekt's sinuous figure. A gray glow of natural light grew ahead of them, and they came out onto a familiar plateau. Snow fell here, big feathery flakes. The wet ground showed that earlier flakes had melted, but the air must have cooled and now there was a thin layer of white over everything.

Kakrekt did not hesitate. She grabbed Hanna's arm again and dragged her into the snowfall. Hanna's feet slipped on treacherous rock; on a wave of fury she tried to pull away, and failed, off-balance and weak. This slithery walk went on forever, downhill, minute after minute, until Kakrekt suddenly stopped and Hanna looked up again, freezing, snow splattering into her eyes, and there, like a precious mirage, was the pod.

She couldn't stop herself, the code words burst out of her mouth, the translator was programmed not to twist them and the hatch whipped open. She wanted to rush for it, and Kakrekt's hand held her just long enough to think that would not be wise; and anyway it would be a stagger, not a rush.

“I know where you can go,” Kakrekt said.

Yes, to
Endeavor,
only there

“If anyone has what I require,” Kakrekt continued, “it will be Nakeekt, or others on her islands, the oldest ones. That is where you will go.”

Her grip had relaxed, and Hanna twisted free. She said, “That Place must be the worst-kept secret on this world. I've been there, and Nakeekt told me not to come back. What makes you think she will give me any help?”

“She would not, but she will help me. She must, if she wants That Place to survive. You will show her this.” Kakrekt's long fingers dipped into her coverall and came out with something flat and gray. “The directive is in here. It is detailed. She is to give what I demand to you, not to your escort, not to anyone else.”

“What escort?”

“Wox.” Kakrekt raised her voice. “Wox!”

A shadow in the falling snow turned into another Soldier, shorter than Kakrekt, a little stockier than the norm.

“Wox has a hand weapon,” Kakrekt told her. “He will not kill you. But if you do not go directly to That Place, and come directly back again, he will hurt you, only not so much that you cannot fly this craft. And if you attempt to call your Commander, he will disable you enough so that he can reach into your mouth and cut out your tongue. He has a knife for that purpose.”

She gave Hanna a shove toward the pod's entry ramp. Wox was already making his way up it, rather slowly and suspiciously.

Hanna ducked another shove, more startled than alarmed by the direct threats, the first from anyone on Battleground.

“Wait, wait! Kakrekt Commander, as soon as I start to power this craft, a signal will go to those who sent me. They will immediately try to communicate. If I don't answer I don't know what they will do. Think it taken by someone unauthorized and destroy it from space, maybe. I will have to answer them, and what could I say? I do not want—”

“Wox!
Wox!
” Kakrekt's shout soared to a warbling whistle; Wox scrambled back down the ramp, and Hanna thought of making a dash for it—

move fast, get the ramp up, take off and—

—but Kakrekt's hand clamped on her arm again hard enough to bruise, and when she tried to jerk free Kakrekt said something and Wox's bigger hand came up and hit her so hard that her head rocked.

When it cleared she was in the pilot's seat in the pod, tasting blood, and Wox stood behind her with Kakrekt.

“I would go with you but I can't,” Kakrekt said. “Your Commander has demanded to talk to the Holy One and I am determined to be there when she does. I will say, you will say when you are asked, that you have gone to perform a task for me. To learn about our history, you will say. Wox knows what you are allowed to say. Go now. Go
now.
” And Kakrekt was gone.

Wox poked Hanna's shoulder. “Ramp up,” she said automatically, thinking
Is my cheekbone broken, I don't think so, just hurts like hell
, “power up,”
shaky, long time since I was hit,
and the readouts came alive. The first one her eye fell on showed the date, and her breath caught. The days had blurred together, she had never asked the D'neerans what day it was in Standard time, preferring to believe her imprisonment was not as long as it felt. But that was wrong. She had been in Wektt for six Standard weeks.

A
SOLDIER CAME FOR HANNA,
but she was not there. The Soldier looked for her—it was almost funny, Gabriel thought, because where could she hide? The room was a gray box. The bathroom—literally, “water-cube”—was just a setback behind a partition that gave the humans welcome privacy, but was only there to keep water from spattering into the rest of the box, keeping down the mold that had to be scrubbed away. Soldiers presumably were supposed to do this for themselves, and no cleaning crew had showed up in this billet (Soldiers did not use servos), so Gabriel had appointed himself mold-scrubber-in-chief. As his energy waned, however, the mold had begun to win.

The Soldier went away, scratching his head in an eerily human way. Gabriel lay down and sank back into torpor. After a while, a minute, an hour, the door slammed open again, jarring him out of it. Three more Soldiers charged in, and then, amazingly, Kwoort himself.

“Where has she gone?”

Gabriel didn't bother to sit up. The weakness that had been growing on him—and on Hanna—seemed to have taken a quantum leap. Every move demanded thought, a determination of how much energy it required.

“I don't know. Nobody tells me anything. Somebody came and got her. If you don't have her, maybe Kakrekt does.”

“What would Kakrekt want with her?”

“What she always wants, I guess. Whatever it is. What do you want?”

“I am to speak with your Commander. And your Holy Man. I—”

“What Holy Man?” Gabriel said, but Kwoort went on without hearing him, “They want to see her. To see if she is well.”

Gabriel said nothing. Kwoort ordered his entourage into the corridor and gave more orders Gabriel did not hear, though he heard Kakrekt's name. Then Kwoort came back and stood inside the door, at first very still, and waited. Presently he began to fidget.
He's getting just like the first one, just like Kwler,
Gabriel thought vaguely, but then he dozed again.

•   •   •

J
ameson had used, in some desperation, a stimulant. Kwoort had been adamant about the only interval he could spare from his devotions, and then he would only do it to confer with a not-Soldier of equal rank. Jameson, in further desperation, had allowed himself to be temporarily and falsely designated Holy. The interval happened to fall at three o'clock in Jameson's morning. At least Mickey had finally gone to sleep around midnight, though thunder still rolled through the sky.
I am too damn old for this,
he thought, inhaling the vapor his contact guaranteed was black market Fleet issue.

He summoned official transport, less conspicuous in the night sky than his personal aircar (which shouted of privilege). Before he reached Admin he learned that Kwoort had arbitrarily canceled the conference, but he did not turn back. The telepaths had told Metra almost simultaneously that Hanna had been forced to leave Wektt—and wouldn't tell them why. At least she was in control of the pod; but Gabriel was still deep underground.

•   •   •

T
he telepaths all knew about the aborted conference, and they were all awake, and they all knew where Hanna was, and called for her attention.

But she could not hold two conversations at once, and the one she had to have aloud, with Communications, was delicate.

“A task as a favor for Kakrekt Commander,” she explained, ears pricked for Wox with his knife.

“What kind of task? Where are you going?”

The voice was familiar, but the man's face and name escaped her. She did not answer at once; she concentrated on climbing up, straight
up
, past the snow, through the clouds, up and up until she could see the sun just beyond the terminator, and the pod filled with golden light that made her gasp and made her eyes water. Sunlight at last! She drank it in, every cell in her body rejoicing.

The voice began, “Team leader Bassanio—”

“Yes. Sorry. Uh, the task is a matter of historical research. An observer is with me. I'll report when I can.”

“Very well.” The scantest hesitation; Wox would not find it significant. “Your team will await word from you.” Telepathically, was the implication.

“As soon as possible. Over.”

Definitely not alone, and not so trapped, either, but—she began to feel the weariness born of hunger again—she would still keep to herself Kakrekt's reason for sending her to That Place. A plan of murder would not suit her D'neerans. She didn't want to deal with their combined righteousness, not yet, not when she thought murder might not be a bad idea at all.

•   •   •

S
oldiers had a nice line in invective, Gabriel was interested to find. There were a lot of references to what the translator prissily called “excrement,” and many accusations of laziness (“lapse in industry”) and dereliction of duty. He listened for references to sex, that staple of human mudslinging, but the closest Kwoort and Kakrekt got was mutual accusation of failure to breed. After a while he deactivated the translator and listened to a cacophony of top-volume clicks and whistles, punctuated by spoken (shouted) words. Hanna should be here, he thought. The scene would add something to her theory that emotional life developed with Soldiers' aging. These two were certainly old enough to emote!

•   •   •

T
he telepaths wanted a conversation, but Hanna didn't. She told them about Wox, the watchdog, but nothing else. You didn't have to be Adept to slide an all-purpose veil over your thoughts, though it helped, and that was what Hanna did, hiding behind shutters. She could not escape the awareness that everyone knew—the true-humans, too—that she hadn't told them everything. She would have to do
something
about that soon—eventually—

But she was busy. The pod was capable of getting back to someplace it had already been without help from her or from Navigation, so she told it where to go and began a search of every storage compartment in its interior. Maybe she had overlooked a meal tab or two.

The search was short and unproductive. At the end she found herself face to face with an intruder, a frightening face on the wall, bruised and strained. Who . . . ?

She blinked at her reflection in the medical cabinet door, which did not blend with the matte tan of everything else but was shiny and purposely made to stand out. It was unlikely to hold anything edible, but she opened it anyway. No food. She started to close it and her eyes fell on a neat row of tiny vials. Stimulants could substitute for food. For a while.

Wox was not watching. He was looking out with mild curiosity, and some trepidation, at something he had never seen before: the brilliant white masses of cloud below.

Hanna pried the vials from their nest and slipped them into a pocket.

I can't use them, I can't risk it, but maybe Gabriel . . .

•   •   •

They talked about foodstuffs for Gabriel that could be delivere
d by unmanned transport, and about starting continuous transmission to Wektt requesting permission to come get him or, failing that, a demand that the supplies get to him.

“Last resort, we'll go dig him out,” Metra said.

“Do you know where he is in that maze?” Jameson asked.

“Only approximately.”

“You're risking casualties, then.”

“I hope not. I'm thinking we'd move the
Admiral Wu
into the system and borrow some combat servos. Use minimum personnel.”

Evanomen looked strained and said nothing. He probably wished he had stayed Deputy Director for Trade.

Bella, part of this meeting over Metra's protest, said, “What about H'ana?”

“We can't intervene while she's in transit with an armed Soldier,” Jameson said. “And she's not likely to overpower him. Not if she's been starved for a month.”

Metra looked up from a readout. “She's definitely headed for That Place. Just confirmed by contact with the pod's navigation systems. Why does Kakrekt want her doing historical research?”

“She doesn't,” Bella said. “It's a cover for something else. I don't know what.”

“Can't you tell? Why not?”

“She's shielding. H'ana can shield better than anybody I know. You people throw around the word ‘Adept' and you don't know what you're talking about. There's only a few hundred on all D'neera, and there's only about ten of her caliber. She might be better than any of them. Listen, the food. I could just take the other pod, with supplies, and go to That Place myself.”

Metra sorted that out. “I don't think we want them to know we're tracking Bassanio,” she said.

“Are you going to let her starve? I could expect it of you,” she told Metra, “but
you?”
This was for Jameson. “That guy with her, he hurt her. Hit her. I picked that up trying to read her, she saw her reflection and her face is swelling up.”

He was silent under Bella's green gaze. The passion in her face reminded him of the unguarded moments that had once come easily to Hanna, though not so easily now. She had become miserly with emotion, Mickey excepted; she had done her best to leave behind the young woman he had first known and loved. He had tried to find out why and she had refused to tell him, leaving him to guess. Best guess: the devastation of Michael Kristofik's death had been so terrible that she was afraid emotion, if allowed its freedom, would destroy her.

She had put out her hand to him years ago, with her heart in it. Unforgivably, he had undervalued the gift. Now he thought he might go on paying for that for the rest of his life.

He abandoned talk of strategy and said so gently that all of them stared at him, “We won't let her die.”

•   •   •

You'd think she could think to me . . .

Gabriel thought of turning over, just for variety, but the effort required too much commitment. He remained on his back.

If Kwoort and Kakrekt had not chosen to have their explosion in this room, all spice and fury, he would have had no idea that Hanna was not still in the complex.

He was cold. Somebody must have turned down the heat. If Hanna were here he could huddle against her, though lately even slight pressure seemed to start up inexplicable bruises.

He thought of Cory, the starved little boy who had been found abandoned in a demolished domicile in some place of war. Cory was not starved by the time Oversight brought him to Alta, but there were images in his records. Gabriel wondered if he would look like that at the end, skin barely, obscenely, veiling naked bone.

No!
somebody said.

“Bella?” he said out loud.

Hold on a little longer. We'll get supplies to you. Or get you out.

In the thought he saw servos marching as implacably as Soldiers, fire and dust in the teeming caverns. Soldiers dying.

“Not because of me!”

Not your decision.

“Just supplies, only that. Please. But Hanna. Kakrekt sent her away.”

I know. Don't worry. Starr Jameson said she won't die.

“You believe him?”

I've seen them together. He'll get her back.

The Parting Observance popped into his head. “Even after . . . ?”

Even. Be patient. Food is coming.

He didn't feel hungry, but he said, “Send chocolate.”

He drifted off into prayer, into Psalms.
I will satisfy you with the finest of wheat. I will feed you with honey from the rock . . .