Conquerors' Pride (19 page)

Slowly, Takara matched Holloway's smile. "Which will be on update file at any of a number of places. Such as the Peacekeeper base on Edo."
"Which is only a seventeen-hour round trip," Holloway nodded, pulling his plate over and punching up an order. "It's worth taking a shot at. Go alert the crew-I'll have the order cut by the time they're ready to lift."
"Right," Takara said, heading for the door.
"And then hit the sack," Holloway added. "We've got a busy day tomorrow."
"There's another kind?" Takara paused at the doorway. "What do you think they're up to, anyway? Quinn and the Cavanaghs?"
"No idea," Holloway said, gesturing at the display. "But there's one other interesting point here I didn't mention. Aric and Melinda have another brother-had another brother-name of Pheylan. Until recently commander of the Peacekeeper shipKinshasa. "
"TheKinshasa, huh?" Takara said thoughtfully. "Yes. That could explain all this."
Holloway frowned at him. "Really? How?"
"No idea," Takara shrugged. "I'm just saying itcould explain it."
"Thanks," Holloway said dryly. "You're so helpful sometimes. I just hope to God that whatever this is, it's something minor. Something we can just lock them up for."
Takara's lip twitched. "I hadn't thought about that. But we are officially a war zone now, aren't we?"
"That we are," Holloway nodded. "With all the peripheral fun stuff that comes along with it."
"Like summary trials."
"And summary executions."
Takara exhaled noisily. "You're right," he said. "Let's hope real hard it's something minor."
13
The three Zhirrzh interrogators didn't come back to see Pheylan the day after that first trip outside his prison. Nor did they come the day after, or the day after that. On the fourth day they finally reappeared.
With Svv-selic no longer in charge. It was obvious from the moment they entered the outer room through their private door. Svv-selic had always been the one in the middle of the group whenever they all stood or walked together, with Thrr-gilag and Nzz-oonaz flanking him and generally keeping their mouths shut. This time, it was Thrr-gilag, the short one, who held center position as they walked over to the glass wall of his cell.
And it was Thrr-gilag who spoke. "Good day, Cavv-ana," he said. "You well?"
"Reasonably well," Pheylan replied, wondering if he should comment on Thrr-gilag's new status and deciding it was probably best to ignore it. "I could use some sunlight, though. It's been a long time since I was outside."
For a moment Thrr-gilag seemed to study him. "That your doing," he said. "You must not go where forbidden."
"I didn't mean to do anything wrong," Pheylan assured him. Just one more bit of evidence, if he'd needed it, that that white pyramid thing out there was extremely important to these people. Apparently, Svv-selic had been demoted because of it. "We humans are curious, that's all."
"So you said," Thrr-gilag said. "Do you want go outside?"
Pheylan looked at Nzz-oonaz, standing near the dog flap with the obedience suit across one arm. "Yes, I do," he said cautiously. There was something about the way they were all just standing there that he didn't care for.
"We have question," Thrr-gilag said. "You answer question, you go outside."
So they were finally getting around to the inevitable interrogation. "Let me go outside first," Pheylan said. "Then I'll answer your questions."
"Question first," Thrr-gilag said. "If you refuse, no go outside."
Pheylan pursed his lips. "Compromise," he suggested. "I'll answer your questions while we're outside."
For a moment Thrr-gilag stood there, apparently considering the offer. Pheylan held his gaze, mentally crossing his fingers. The more he could get them to back down-on anything-the more potentially useful precedents he would have set for future negotiations.
And to his mild surprise Thrr-gilag did indeed back down. "You answer question outside," he agreed. "If not, you not go outside again."
"All right," Pheylan nodded. "But remember that if you do that, I'll die."
"You not die," Thrr-gilag said. "We not allow." He gestured, and Nzz-oonaz knelt down and stuffed the obedience suit through the dog flap.
They watched as Pheylan changed clothes. "Do as we say," Thrr-gilag warned as he opened the cell door. "Else punish again."
The weather outside wasn't nearly as pleasant this time as it had been four days earlier. The sky was completely covered with gloomy bands of gray and dirty-white clouds, and a moderate increase in the earlier cool temperatures was more than offset by the gusty winds that swept restlessly across the landing area, kicking up clouds of red dust. "This isn't going to help me very much," Pheylan warned Thrr-gilag. "Not much sunlight getting through those clouds."
"Tomorrow come back outside," Thrr-gilag said. "Unless you refuse answer question."
"Ah," Pheylan said, grimacing to himself. So that was why Thrr-gilag had backed down on the question of an open-air interrogation. He'd seen the weather and had known full well that they weren't giving anything away for free. "Fine," he grunted. "Let's hear these questions."
"One question only," Thrr-gilag said. "Tell everything about weapon CIRCE."
Pheylan's stomach tightened into a hard knot. So there it was: the dark fear that had been lurking at the back of his mind ever since he'd first realized that Commodore Dyami's personal computer had been captured intact.
The Zhirrzh knew about CIRCE.
"I don't understand," he stalled. "What do you mean?"
"CIRCE," Thrr-gilag repeated. "Do you refuse tell?"
Pheylan looked over at the white pyramid and its three surrounding domes, trying to figure out what the hell he was supposed to do now. The survival of humanity might well hinge on NorCoord's ability to use CIRCE against the Zhirrzh and those invulnerable warships of theirs. The more the Zhirrzh knew about the weapon, the better their chances of coming up with a defense against it.
But he'd made a deal with Thrr-gilag. If he reneged on that promise, he'd lose any chance of making future bargains. Besides which, there was probably nothing he could tell them that they hadn't already gotten from Dyami's computer. "No, I didn't mean that," he assured Thrr-gilag. "I was trying to ask what you wanted to know. I don't really know anything about CIRCE except its history."
From behind Thrr-gilag, Svv-selic muttered something in their own language. "You command human spacecraft," Thrr-gilag pointed out. "You know human weapons."
Pheylan shrugged. "Commanding a ship doesn't have anything to do with it," he said, starting to walk toward the woods behind the base. "Not with CIRCE."
"But CIRCE is human weapon," Thrr-gilag persisted, taking a couple of quick steps to catch up to him.
Pheylan glanced at him... and looked back again. Close up, he could see for the first time that there was a small button the same color as Zhirrzh skin nestled beneath a shallow horizontal ridge on the side of Thrr-gilag's head. It was hard to tell for sure, but it looked as if there were four thin appendages extending from the button into the four parallel slits curving across the skin beneath the ridge. "What's that thing?" he asked, pointing to it.
"This?" Thrr-gilag asked, his tongue snaking out around the side of his head to point at the button. Pheylan twitched his hand back a little; he'd almost forgotten Zhirrzh tongues could do that. "It connect to interpreter."
"To an interpreter?" Pheylan repeated. "You mean a mechanical interpreter? A computer?"
"Yes."
"But I thought... never mind."
"Explain."
"I said never mind," Pheylan said, starting to turn away.
Thrr-gilag's hand snaked out, its three fingers and two thumbs wrapping around Pheylan's upper arm. "Explain," he demanded.
Pheylan looked at the audio link again, threw a quick glance over his shoulder at Svv-selic and Nzz-oonaz. Now that he knew what to look for, he could see that each of them was wearing one, as well.
So then what was that scar all of them had at the base of their skulls? The scar he'd assumed was the mark of a Copperhead-type Mindlink implant?
Thrr-gilag was still waiting. "I assumed you were connected to a computer translator in a more permanent way," Pheylan told him. "These scars back here." He reached out toward the back of Thrr-gilag's head-
He didn't fall flat on his face this time, but only because he was more or less balanced when Nzz-oonaz triggered the magnets in his obedience suit. His right elbow did crack painfully against his rib cage, however, as his arms were yanked to his sides. "Hey!" he snapped, bending violently back and forth at the waist as he fought to keep his balance. "I was just trying to point to it."
Thrr-gilag said something, and the magnets shut off. "Explain word 'scars,' " Thrr-gilag said.
"Scars are marks of surgery," Pheylan told him, throwing a glare at Nzz-oonaz as he rubbed his elbow. "Cutting into someone's body to take something out or put something in. All three of you have them, right at the base of your skulls." He started to point, changed his mind, and indicated the spot on the back of his own neck. "Right here."
For a long moment the three Zhirrzh just looked at him, their nonhuman faces unreadable. Nzz-oonaz muttered something to Thrr-gilag, who replied in the same tone. Svv-selic joined in, and for a minute they held a quiet three-way discussion. Pheylan waited, blinking against the dusty wind blowing across his face and surveying the landscape around them. The last time they'd been out here, he'd spotted what had seemed to be a path leading back into the woods from a corner of the building where his cell was located. He was hoping today to get a closer look at that area.
"Humans not havefsss organ?"
Pheylan shifted his attention back to Thrr-gilag. "What?"
"Scar mark offsss organ," Thrr-gilag said. "Humans have here?" His tongue darted out to point to the right side of Pheylan's abdomen.
Pheylan frowned. There was nothing noteworthy there except the small keyhole mark where he'd had his appendix removed when he was ten.
A mark which, now that he thought about it, the Zhirrzh examiners had paid an unusual amount of attention to during that long physical exam his first day here. "I don't know," he told Thrr-gilag. "We don't have the same names for organs that you do. What does afsss organ do?"
Svv-selic growled something, his tongue flicking restlessly in and out of his mouth. Thrr-gilag replied-reluctantly, Pheylan thought-and then turned back to Pheylan. "Not proper subject," Thrr-gilag said. "You tell about CIRCE."
"There's not much more to tell," Pheylan said. So Thrr-gilag was changing the subject; and in a suspiciously abrupt way. Was thisfsss thing something taboo to discuss in polite conversation? Or was it something they didn't want humans to know about? Either way, one more bit of information to tuck away for future reference. "The name CIRCE is supposed to be an acronym-that means it's short for the full name of Collimated Ion Resonance Cannon, Ephemeral. Everything else I know is just the history that's in the public record. Only a few humans know what CIRCE really is or how it works."
"Tell history."
Pheylan took a deep breath, an unexpected shiver running up his back. They must have shown the cadets that old watchship recording fifty times back at the academy... and it had been as eerie the fiftieth time as it had the first. "It was an ambush," he told Thrr-gilag. "Five top-of-the-line Pawolian warships were hanging off Celadon system's innermost planet, hiding in the umbra-the shadow. They headed straight out toward the three NorCoord ships, none of which was more than half the size of theirs. They launched their fighters ahead of them, we launched ours, and they had at it."
"You see?"
Pheylan shook his head. "This was thirty-seven years ago. I wasn't even born yet. I've just seen the record."
"Tell more."
"There's not much more to tell," Pheylan said. "The fighters met between the converging warship lines, and the battle was getting started when the Pawoles' tactical structure suddenly just collapsed. They started retreating, with the NorCoord fighters in pursuit... and on the record you can see that the warships behind them have started drifting out of formation. CIRCE had killed everyone aboard."
There was a moment of silence, followed by another three-way conference. Pheylan kept walking, watching the forest off to his left. It hadn't been just a trick of angle and lighting: there was a path there, all right. More or less straight, heading back into the trees and underbrush behind the complex. Altering his direction a few degrees, he headed toward it.
The conference behind him ended. "How?" Thrr-gilag asked.
"How what? How did CIRCE kill them?" Pheylan shook his head. "Radiation burns of some kind. Beyond that I haven't the foggiest."
Thrr-gilag seemed to consider that. Or else was listening to their computer floundering over the word "foggiest." "Why CIRCE not used in attack against Zhirrzh?" he asked at last.
Pheylan glared into his alien face. "Get your facts straight, Zhirrzh. We didn't attack first. You did."
"Not true," Thrr-gilag said. "Commanders and Elders say. Human ships attack first."
"Were you there?" Pheylan demanded. "You personally?"
Thrr-gilag's tongue flicked out a couple of times. "No. Kee'rr clan Elder speak-"
"Iwas there," Pheylan cut him off. "And I don't care what your Elders or your commanders or anyone else tells you. Your ships fired first."
He turned his back on the Zhirrzh, the faces of his murdered crew flickering across his vision. Rico, Hauver, Meyers, Chen Ki-
"You not speak words against Elders," Svv-selic admonished him. "Too'rr clan Elder say same."
"As say Flii'rr clan Elder," Nzz-oonaz chimed in.
"I don't care what your Elders say-"
"No more!" Svv-selic snarled, taking a step toward him. "You speak no more words against Elders. Or punish."
Pheylan felt his lip twist. So that was how it worked here. The official line was that theJutland task force had been the aggressor, and that was how it was going to be. And Svv-selic and Nzz-oonaz were going to fall dutifully into line like loyal party functionaries. Unwilling to question the supreme Zhirrzh authority, or even to listen to anything that might conflict with the official version of the truth. Their minds already made up.
Absolute control, coupled with absolute subservience... and yet, even as the contempt bubbled in Pheylan's throat, he recognized that here, finally, was a chink in the Zhirrzh armor plate. A potentially devastating chink. Human history had demonstrated time and again the basic instability of autocratic, information-manipulating governments, from Nazi Germany to the Soviet Empire to the Chinese Domination to Celadon's Quadarch regime. All it took was the right spark to set it off.