Go Tell the Spartans (23 page)

"We should recommend low-level aerial survey," Jesus said. "But with care. Have Swenson set up a team of technicians, and we will borrow some of the RSMP tiltrotors—blimps if we must—and do some intensive sidescan and IR work. Land parties and do seismic mapping at intervals as well."

"I'll coordinate with Major Barton," Catherine said.

"And Captain Mace. His scouts may be glad of the opportunity."

"Right. Anything else?"

"Yes." He touched his controls, and the area around Olynthos sprang out; it was a city of about forty thousand, just below the exit from Lake Alexander. Smelters originally, more recently general industry, and many of the outbacker hunters operated out of there. "The Scout Company of the Prince Royal's Battalion is going to base out of here when they move out. Have Sweeny run some of them through on her depth-sounding equipment, and then issue it to them when they begin practicing their SAS games up in the Dales. If you can pry the stuff loose."

They both smiled; Senior Lieutenant Leigh Swenson guarded her remote reconnaissance equipment with the brooding intensity of a hen with one chick.

"That should turn up some interesting data," he said meditatively, finishing his coffee. "Which leaves the question of the NCLF and Sparta City. On the one hand, that's more the Milice and RSMP's territory. On the other, I agree with Desjardins: the NCLF as a whole may not be with the Helots, but their leadership
is
. Pity this is a constitutionalist planet."

On most worlds—on anywhere directly ruled by the CoDominium Colonial Bureau, or for that matter in the United States—they would simply disappear Mr. Dion Croser and sweat the facts out of him.

"No it isn't, or had you forgotten we were supposed to be based here permanently?" Catherine Alana said. "I wouldn't want our children to grow up on that sort of world, Jesus."

"But if they don't get moving, this may
become
that sort of world," he replied. "Personally, I don't find the NCLF's political program very reassuring."

Ursula cleared her throat "
'If you fight dragons long enough, you become a dragon: if you stare into the Abyss, the Abyss will stare back into
you.' " Nietzsche, and on her required reading list. Along with all the rest of the canon, in case she was bored in her munificent four hours of free time daily.

"The fact remains, the Milice and the RSMP have no political intelligence to speak of," Jesus continued sourly. "They are trying to remedy that lack, but you know the problems."

"Philby," Ursula said. "But isn't your lie detector gear—"

"It's good but not that good," Catherine said. "What we can detect is stress. If we're lucky, and especially when we surprise people, we can get differential stress—stress indications where there shouldn't be so much, that sort of thing. Casual use against well-prepared subjects, that's another matter."

"So we may have infiltrators," Ursula said. She had been doing a good deal of reading in the classical espionage cases. How the West German counterintelligence chief in the 1980s had been a Sovworld plant, and one reason the Israelis had overrun the Levant so quickly in 2009 was a deep-sleeper who was head of Military Intelligence Evaluation for the Greater Syrian Republic.

"Well, not in the Legion itself. Certainly not among the officers. What I would like is a source of information of our own." He called up a map of Sparta city, clicking in on the lower southwestern corner. The spacious grounds of the Royal University of Sparta filled the screen. "We know that the NCLF has an active student chapter. The usual thing: boredom and guilt and excuses for failure among the spoiled children of success. Not as much here as most places—this is a frontier planet—but enough." A grim smile. "Odd, how guilt is inversely proportional to real culpability. On Santiago"—his home, one of the three nations of Thurstone—"where there is real slavery, most university students are fanatic Carlist reactionaries."

"The ones here probably don't feel really afraid," Ursula said clinically. There had been clients like that, back on Tanith in the Lederle Hilton, who had been sorry for her. They usually expected something extra for it, too.

"Yes. And we also know that there have been disappearances among members of the student chapter of the NCLF. Half a dozen immediately after the Spartosky incident, for example. Educated people would be one of the chokepoints for a guerrilla force recruited mainly from transportees. They will need junior officers."

"Well, then we should obviously try infiltrating through there," Ursula said. "Who did you have in mind—oh."

Catherine Alana reached over and patted her hand. "You
do
need some more formal schooling, dear," she said.

"Oh." She looked down at her hands, with a sinking feeling. The structured, ordered life of the Legion was a little confining sometimes, but wonderfully secure. "Well, I do have acting training," she said dryly. "But Mata Hari I am not, with respect, sir, ma'am."

"Mata Hari we don't want," Catherine said. "You'll be a student on detached duty taking courses in cartography and statistics, both of which are quite relevant to your career. Who you date is your business, not ours. Except that if you meet any of the militants there's no point in being rude to them."

"Oh. But—"

Jesus shook his head. "I am not sure this is a good idea," he said.

"I'll be fine," Ursula insisted.

"Perhaps. But we have no wish to cause you embarrassment. You need not reveal anything at all about your previous experience. Merely tell them that you were recruited on Tanith, and you have been sent to the University for formal training. Then be careful, because you will almost certainly be approached by the enemy in the hopes that you will let slip something of value."

"Only I don't know anything—"

"That is not strictly true," Jesus said. "In any event, I think I can guarantee that at least one of those who pays attention to you will have ulterior reasons. What you do about that is your business, but be certain, we are not asking you to play Mata Hari."

"Would it help if I tried?" Ursula asked.

"My dear," Catherine said, "I should think you know the answer to that. The Legion needs nice, healthy young officers, not psychological wrecks. Learn and observe, that's all. We're soldiers, not spies."

 
Aegean,
sea. [Ae-ge-an], named for enclosed portion of eastern Mediterranean, Earth. (see
names,
Mythological, Graeco-Roman)
One of two linked inland seas on the planet
Sparta
(see
Sparta
];
The Aegean, with the larger
Oinos sea
(q.v.) to the south, forms the great inland embayment which separates the northern and southern lobes of the
Serpentine Continent,
Sparta's principal landmass. Roughly rectangular in shape, the Aegean covers approximately 510,000 sq. kilometers; geological investigation shows that it was formed by a complex process of subsidence, attendant on the crustal plate movements which accompanied the raising of the
Drakon Mountains
(q.v.). In general terms, the Aegean is therefore relatively warm, shallow (few areas over 500 meters depth) and characterized by a rough balance between sediment deposition and subsidence of the sea floor. Characteristic terrain on all sides of the Aegean consists of coastal plains of varying width, backed by hills or mountains; the northeastern corner offers a lowland corridor to the valley of the
Middle Eurotas
(q.v.) The main river draining into the Aegean is the Eurotas, which reverses its lower course and drains northward through its delta into
Constitution Bay
(q.v.), a nearly circular impact crater associated with an asteroid collision of circa 50,000 BCE. The large volcanic islands of
Zakynthos
(q.v.),
Leros
(q.v.),
Keos,
(q.v.)
New Crete
(q.v.) and
Mytilene
(q.v.) are products of the same astrophysical event.
Marine life is abundant, and is based on native equivalents of plankton. Common species include the
grunter,
notable for its great numbers and resemblance to the terrestrial cod, the multiclawed
rockcrawler,
much in demand as a delicacy offworld, and the
torpedofish,
a predatory species up to 10 meters in length, which attacks its prey by ramming with its bone-armored nose. All vertebrate piscoids are gill-breathers but have pseudomammalian features such as four-chambered hearts, and are viviparous. The
tangler kelp
is the sole source of Ez-e-Mind
^TM
, Lederle AG's vastly profitable "morning after" contraceptive. Introduced terrestrial species include the common dolphin and the orca (killer whale), both wild and domesticated.

 
We have fed our sea for a thousand years
And she calls us, still unfed,
Though there's never a wave of all her waves
But marks our English dead:
We have strawed our best to the weed's unrest,
To the shark and the sheering gull.
If blood be the price of admiralty,
Lord God, we ha' paid in full!

—Rudyard Kipling

Steven Armstrong pushed his chair back from the table and loosened his belt.
Been doing that a lot lately
, he thought. Growing a bit of a pot, to offset the massive shoulders and bull neck and the barrel chest that bulged out his roll-necked sweater. . . . He grinned and tossed back thick rough-cut hair the color of butter, only lightly streaked with gray. Once he took the
Alicia
out of harbor and north to the Thule Sea, he'd work that off soon enough, no matter how good Cookie's hash was. The air was full of the odors of good solid cooking, with an overtone of pipe tobacco and damp cool air from Constitution Bay below; they were close enough to the docks to hear the gulls, and the clacking sound of the cranes.

"Ladies and gentlemen!" he said, standing and raising his stein. "I give you—the Alicias, both of 'em! The ship, and the lady who made her possible!"

There was a cheer from all the tables he had rented in the Neptune; hearty cheers, though nobody had been drinking more than enough to put a little edge on. Most of them would be sailing with him in an hour or so, after all. All eyes had turned to his wife at the other end of the table. Alicia Armstrong was smiling and wiping at her eyes at the same time, as the guests began to applaud her. She was a round-faced woman with a close-cropped head of tightly curled hair, and eggplant-black skin that set off her gold seashell earrings. Three children from four to ten were seated next to her; they leaped up and began clapping too, with high-pitched shouts of
"
Mommy! Mommy!
"

"I—" she began, as cries of "speech, speech" rang through the taproom. Then: "Oh, let Steven make the speech—he
likes
doing it."

More laughter; Steven Armstrong had been Senator-legate of the Maritime Products Trade Association for a year now, and was famous for a rhetorical style that included thumping lecterns hard enough to break the wood at Pragmatist rallies.

"OK, I promise not to damage Mrs. Kekkonen's tables, at least," he began, looking around until he caught the proprietor's eye and winked. She winked back; the Armstrongs and the Neptune Inn went back a long way. It was the sort of place he enjoyed; not fancy, just a taproom and kitchen with an outdoor terrace for summer and some rooms above. A workingman's place, where you could get a good solid mess of grunter fillet and yam or a twenty-ounce steak and potatoes and pie for an honest tenth-crown; the sort of place you could bring your family, too. "Actually, I hate giving speeches."

"
Then you must love to suffer, bucko!
"

"Shut up, Sven. Where was I . . . Armstrong & Armstrong's come a long way," he said. "When Alicia and I got married, we honeymooned here at the Neptune because we couldn't afford anything else—"

"Well!" the widow Kekkonen said, mock-indignant.

"—and all we had was these hands"—he held them up; massive and reddened, scarred and callused with hooks and nets and lines—"Alicia's brains and one rickety overgrown dory with an engine that worked, sometimes. I busted my butt, and Alicia kept books better than the computer we couldn't afford—found out that the Meijians would pay through their noses for rockcrawler claws—and we saved every penny. Now we've got four trawlers and damned good ones, and best of all—the
Alicia.
You all know what it'll mean, being able to tap the Thule Sea shoals; off-planet exchange, for one thing. No reason to let the Newfies get it all."