Trial by Fire - eARC (27 page)

She realized she had inadvertently started glancing at the contents, had a quick impression of old photographs and news clippings. She shut the manila folder swiftly, heart racing. She had faced death on a battlefield frequently, and yet nothing had ever induced this particular species of terror—because this one was laced with guilt, as well. Which was foolish. Because after all, she hadn’t stolen Caine’s file; she had only
borrowed
it. And she hadn’t done so to satisfy her
own
curiosity. She had done it to help him. Only to help him.

She looked around her, discovered that she had somehow navigated herself to the correct street corner, and raised a hand. A driverless cab smoothly swerved across two lanes of traffic and came to a stop beside her.

The taxi was requesting the address and she was giving it, but that was happening someplace else, as if it was in a side closet of her mind. Because as soon as she had stepped inside the vehicle, was beyond Downing’s reach, she knew the truth of what she was doing.
You’re a liar, Opal. This isn’t about Caine. This is about you, worrying that there’s something in those one hundred hours that could come between the two of you. Maybe he hooked up with some old girlfriend, there, or maybe—

She felt suddenly nauseated. At herself.
So now you’re jealous of ghosts that might not even exist, Opal? How pathetic is that?

The question remained unanswered. She was too busy getting the encircling rubber band off the manila folder so she could devour its hated and feared contents.

Letters he sent to friends. High school records. A picture with a girl—but only a skinny, coltish girl—before a prom. It was a funny picture, too; he was kind of gangly as a kid. Pictures of his house on the Chesapeake Bay. Another, much earlier one with several teeth missing from his warm and easy smile, his silver-maned father with an arm around his shoulder, and some kind of sports field behind them. She studied his faintly freckled face and tousled hair. It was impossible to reconcile that boyish image with the mental portrait she had of the man whom fate had turned into an operative code-named Odysseus.

There were printouts of the first articles he published as a kid in the local paper, then later in
Time
, then reviews of his books, letters to publishers and editors that lauded him, castigated him, and finally eulogized him.

She came to the end of the folder. And had discovered absolutely nothing useful. Somewhere far away, the taxi announced that their arrival was imminent.

She looked down at the ravaged pieces of Caine’s life, scattered in her lap.
What have I done? Or, more importantly, why did I need to do this? Because I’m afraid I’ll never see him again? Or that I will—only to find he has someone to go back to, a life in which I can have no part?

She closed the folder slowly.
And now I can’t undo what I’ve done. Even if Downing never notices this file is missing, even if I return it first, I still stole it. Stole it to quiet my fears—but at the expense of what little privacy Caine has left.
She looked up without seeing the dusk-darkening streets, tried to will away the two tears—one from each eye—that struggled free of her lower eyelids and streaked swiftly down each cheek.
Damn me. Damn me
.

This time, when the taxi’s robot voice announced her arrival, she heard it. “Now at Bethesda Hospital, Maternity Annex. Eleven dollars, please.”

Chapter Seventeen

Over West Java, Earth

Sitting beside Darzhee Kut, Yaargraukh peered out rear of the extended cockpit canopy. The waves scudding beneath them were now occasionally distressed by small rocks, diminutive islands. “We are approaching the landing zone.”

Darzhee Kut clasped to his seat more tightly. This was a part of his calling that he had never envisioned. “How soon until we arrive?”

“Ten minutes,” answered the Arat Kur at the controls. “Assuming—”

The pilot abruptly stopped speaking, pulled the spaceplane into a steep left-handed dive. The plume of a rocket—the thick white exhaust clumped and bloated like a kilometer-long length of intestines—shot up and past them, not more than ten meters away from Darzhee’s recoiling antenna.

“Counterfire!” Yaargraukh’s order was snarled into his commo clip.

Their two Hkh’Rkh escort craft banked, seeking the active sensors the humans had used in acquiring a lock on the spaceplane. An eyeblink later, a dense cluster of down-shooting, white-hot lines streaked dirtside, a ripple of supersonic cracklings trailing a second behind them: rail-launched kinetic-kill cluster warheads, heading planetside at six or seven times the speed of sound.

Darzhee Kut looked over at the Hkh’Rkh Advocate. “Do they have a target already?”

“No, but the orbital interdiction batteries will have backtracked the missile’s plume. They are simply firing at its point of origin.”

Darzhee looked out the window sheepishly, as if someone on the ground would see him and try to fire again. “The humans will not be so foolish as to loiter at the launch point.”

“Of course not. I doubt they were ever near it, but rather controlled the launch from a remote location. They probably have their active sensors dispersed, as well. That means we have nothing to shoot at, no efficacious response. So we do something pointless. And we feel better.”

Darzhee turned as swiftly as his carapace would allow. Yaargraukh was looking straight at him. Darzhee stole a glance at the rear of the craft. Graagkhruud was deep in a growling exchange with First Voice. “If First Voice heard you—”

“Then it would be among the few times he ever did.” Yaargraukh unstrapped, tried to take a step backward, found the afterdeck of the Arat Kur spaceplane too cramped. He was unable to do more than crouch. “I grow weary of this.”

“Of what? The constrictions of our craft?”

“No, of being brought along as an Advocate that is uniformly ignored.” He turned to Darzhee. “I was a tactical advisor before this. Had I been allowed to remain such, at least my efforts and input would be sought and recognized. And perhaps then we might not have quite so many problems as we do now.”

“Why? Are the strategies recommended by Graagkhruud ill-advised?”

“They are wrong. The humans do not fight as we do, but nor are they the cowards he believes. He does not understand them and he cannot win against them if he does not. The humans know this. Well, some of them do.”

“They do?”

“One, Sun Tzu, wrote, ‘if you would be victorious, know thy enemy.’ I can only hope the humans have forgotten their own axiom. But I think not.”

Darzhee felt the shuttle pull into another, but more gradual, turn. The pilot announced, “Apologies for my interruption. We are holding here until the landing zone at Soekarno airfield is available.”

“There is unexpected traffic?”

Yaargraukh placed a finger on his earpiece and grunted. “There is unexpected insurgency.”

Darzhee felt the wiggling-snake feeling in his upper digestive tract that was the Arat Kur fear reflex. “What?”

Yaargraukh, listening, offered quick updates. “Fifteen, maybe twenty insurgents. Half were killed. Almost all got inside the perimeter.”

“But how?”

“Delivery of comestibles. Explosive devices were apparently already buried someplace within the defense perimeter. An external attack—a feint—on the opposite side of the compound. Our troops rushed there, so security was reduced at the logistical ingress point. Several of the disguised insurgents managed to slip away from the food trucks. They deployed the final, triggering bombs. Casualties—” He paused and removed the earpiece, looked out the canopy into the clear blue sky overhead. “Casualties are high.”

“How high?”

“Dozens. Including some of my clan. I knew them. Personally. We shared knives at feast.”

Darzhee experienced a rare sensation. He did not know what to say. “But there are prisoners to interrogate, so there will be a counterattack—yes?”

Still looking at the blue, Yaargraukh wiggled his neck lazily. “Prisoners, yes. But they will not lead us to anything useful.”

“Certainly they can be made to speak what they know.”

“Certainly. Your drugs and our—methods—are equally effective. But it hardly matters, because the humans do not bother to resist. They tell the truth freely and immediately.”

“Then—?”

“Then we look for what they have told us about. The safe houses are empty. The hidden camps are deserted, and the supply trucks—indistinguishable from those which carry produce—are gone.”

“I do not understand.”

Yaargraukh turned to Darzhee. “The human commanders plan on having their insurgents captured. They tell them to confess and share any information they have. And it is useless to us, because the moment any of their number are captured or lag too far behind, the transponders they wear code them as being ‘lost.’ And so their commanders move everything, that very moment. By the time we have rounded up the prisoners, asked our questions, assemble a reprisal squad, they are gone. Unless they have left an ambush team behind, either with guns or control-detonated bombs.”

“They sound very well organized.”

“Too well organized, if my opinion were to be asked. I find the aptness of their tactics, and the promptness with which they began to exercise them, improbable.”

“What is improbable”—it was Graagkhruud’s voice, a rumble of rocks jounced together in a bag—“is that your defeatist attitude allows you to remain in First Voice’s service, Advocate.” He emerged from the passenger section into the forward cabin. “Perhaps you would do better clearing the streets of our adversaries?”

“The First Fist of the First Voice of the First Family would know better than I.” But Yaargraukh did not lower his crest, or his eyes, as he recited the ritual obeisance.

Graagkhruud looked down his considerable snout in such a way that Darzhee Kut felt he was under his gaze as well. “There is no problem here that we could not solve were we not constrained by the Arat Kur rules of engagement.”

“And what would you do if freed of them, First Fist?” asked Darzhee Kut, expecting the Hkh’Rkh would pause briefly to consider tactical alternatives.

Graagkhruud did not even stop to draw a new breath. “Hold hostages. Kill ten of them for every one they kill of ours. Place towns under death-interdict: an attack on one of our bases results in the firebombing of five of their
kempangs
. They can be stopped and their will can be broken.” He turned to Yaargraukh, whose black-worm tongue had snaked out once, briefly, at the height of the strategic tirade. “Do you opine otherwise, servitor?”

“I believe that the plan may be more easily articulated than realized.”

Graagkhruud fluted the phlegm in his nostrils. “It is well you are Advocate. As a Tactical Leader, you would have only led your troops to death.”

“He has no record of ever having done so in the past, First Fist.” First Voice had emerged from the secure suite in the center of the fuselage. “And for now, he will remain the Advocate.” The spaceplane banked again. The early morning light that came through the starboard windows angled more acutely, disappeared, then streamed in portside as yellow beams. “Pilot: report.”

The Arat Kur at the controls leveled them off. “We have just been redirected to the cargo airfield north of Tasikmalaya, First Voice.”

“We have no need to visit the mass driver, pilot.”

“With apologies, that is not the purpose of our redirection. The airspace security at Soekarno airfield is not yet deemed fully secure. We will land at North Tasikmalaya, refuel, await clearance from Jakarta.”

First Voice’s crest flattened. He looked over at Darzhee Kut. “Hu’urs Khraam assured me that your missile intercept systems would be more than adequate to counteract such attacks.”

Darzhee Kut had a momentary vision—and panic—of the immense carnivore leaning over to devour him on the spot. “I am unable to speak to the First Delegate’s assurances on this matter. Pilot, is there any word why the air defenses are unable to ensure our safe approach to Jakarta at this time?”

“Speaker Kut, the humans intermittently salvo many small rockets—some dangerous, some not—to saturate our defense arrays. Sometimes they do this for no apparent reason; sometimes they do it when they intend to make some purposeful attack. While our point defense fire systems are occupied with these many targets, the humans occasionally manage to launch a high-performance missile that cannot be engaged soon enough and which penetrates the primary defense umbrella. I am told that more air-defense batteries are being emplaced every day.”

And if Urzueth sings true, we will soon have deployed almost all that we have. Who could have known that hundreds of these units would be required for such a small theater of operations?

First Voice emitted a rippling snort: the Hkh’Rkh equivalent of a sigh. “First Fist, we have a firebase at North Tasikmalaya. What is the size of the contingent?”

“Five hundred warriors, organized as fifty troops of ten, First Voice. Twenty Arat Kur in powered armored suits provide heavy support.”

“Is this not also the site where we have human auxiliaries in support of our operations?”

Graagkhruud’s eyes vanished for a second then bulged outward. “First Voice of the First Family cannot mean me to include these
beings
in my report of our strength in that place.”

“They are assets which relieve our warriors of other duties, thereby allowing more of them to be deployed for direct engagement at any moment.”

“It is as you say, First Voice of the First Family.”

Darzhee watched First Voice’s crest furl and soften a bit. “First Fist, I am not chastising you, but I need complete information at all times.”

Graagkhruud’s nostrils seemed to tremble. “Esteemed First and son of my mother’s father, I live to serve you with honor and distinction, so I plead that you hear me. We must count on ourselves alone in this enterprise. Our Arat Kur allies seem acceptably competent in the distant button-pushing that passes for war between the stars. But they must give you more freedom and more control of the true war: the war on this planet. They trust to machines and hide in their buildings. The humans have not learned to fear us and obey. And they must, or we are doomed. We are too few, even against such weak opponents, if they cannot be cowed into a reflex of submission.”