Starfire Saga, page 57
He nodded at me, then at Jasin Lebec, and his side of the room vanished.
Jemeret laughed once, sharply, humorlessly. “They’re even more nervous than I thought they’d be,” he said. “The threats are starting sooner than I expected.”
“Should I be worried?” I asked him.
“Only about Barbin 3,” he answered. “We still need to work out a detailed, viable scenario.”
“You haven’t come up with anything worth trying yet?” Jasin Lebec asked.
“We haven’t really put our minds to it,” my lord said. “Just as a matter of interest, how do you feel about Pel and the Tribunal attempting to coerce Ronica’s compliance?”
His grandfather turned bland eyes on him, leaning forward to make certain they could see each other well. “It wasn’t unexpected,” he said. “The marriage must have impressed them as your attempt to coerce her compliance, perhaps in violation of the terms of the agreement. They would naturally want to find a way to neutralize your influence.”
I made a rude, astonished noise, surprising all three of us.
Jasin Lebec looked at me and his expression softened. “I know you are tied to him, child,” he said. “My projective abilities may be wanting, but there’s nothing wrong with my reading, and you glow at him. It’s just that the government takes the form of marriage very seriously.”
“So do I,” I said with unexpected intensity. “And I find it unbelievably demeaning that the Com can’t credit me with some volition of my own.”
Jasin Lebec said calmly, “It’s not your volition anyone questions, Ronica. It’s your ability to judge clearly while being subjected to a Class A sexual onslaught.”
Jemeret’s anger returned with a rush, and his control over it nearly slipped. I felt it start to go, and then he wrenched his power back over himself again, holding the fury in check. I laid my hand lightly on his arm and looked Jasin Lebec squarely in the eye. “They will probably trust you more than they will either of us, so I want you to try to convince them of a great truth in my life,” I said.
“Which is?” the old man asked.
Jemeret looked at me curiously, the anger muting down.
“I want you to tell them,” I said, “that, for me, in the final analysis, love is a much more potent lubricant than lust could ever be.”
“And so you are saying you love my grandson?” Jasin Lebec asked. “I ask it because I overwhelmed his grandmother sexually, but we had very little real love between us.”
I started to deny that I’d been overwhelmed, but bit it back after the first, abortive syllable. For a long moment none of us moved. For the first time in a long while, I was thinking about the issue of “fairness.” Jemeret had kept his word to me, had never forced me physically, had not taken me until I was ready to accept him. But—
I had lost my focus, and now I looked back at Jasin Lebec again. “Yes, I love him,” I said. “And yes, at the beginning he overwhelmed me. But he had the wisdom not to allow me to remain overwhelmed.”
Jemeret relaxed. “You know how strong she is. And you know me, na-sire. I’ve always looked for the woman I could share my life with, not one I would have to compel. This is the one, and she had to make her own choices in the end.”
“Did you win her fairly, Jemeret, or did you unbalance the fight?”
I looked between the two of them, and I could see the family resemblance, the similar shapes of the eyes, the matching angles of jaws and cheekbones, the comparable mold of the noses.
Jemeret smiled. “Of course I unbalanced the fight,” he said, “just as you do every time you ‘aid’ in negotiations or ‘help’ people adjust their goals. But I only did it at the outset. You do it to carry out the Com’s political agenda. I was fighting for her life.”
Jasin Lebec nodded once. “The government believes it’s fighting for her life as well. She is oath-bound.”
“She’s aware of that!” I said somewhat astringently. Jemeret’s arm slid out from under my hand. I caught control of myself. “Jasin Lebec, I don’t think that I’m a child any longer. I remember my oath. Tell them to trust that. Jemeret, I need to see if Tynnanna’s all right. He’s been shut up for a very long time now.”
It was an excuse. No one questioned it.
Jemeret and I rose, and Jasin Lebec turned in his chair to follow us with his eyes. I half expected him to ask about the klawit—I’d been expecting everyone to ask about the cat since the Megalume left Markover, but no one had.
In one of the cargo holds, as Tynnanna raced around the large space, powerful muscles bunching and relaxing, Jemeret and I talked quietly about Barbin 3. By the time Megalume went through its final roll and achieved orbit, we had evolved a workable scenario.
The population of Barbin 3 was about six and a half million, and more than two million of them—men, women, and children—could now be counted in the rebel camp. The six plasma disruptors were being used to hold four key cities and the two spaceports. Each of the disruptors was manned by a crew of two, resupplied from the outside, and supporting thirty to fifty remote, handheld units in the field, to stop anyone trying to interrupt the resupply process.
Coney, Jasin Lebec, Jemeret, and I sat in front of the holo field, looking at the six points of red light representing the plasma disruptors. By eftel vid, Pel Nostro and Terrill Guthrie watched it and us from Orokell. As it was my assignment, Jemeret agreed that I should do the presentation, and now that I knew he’d approved the scenario—parts of which I was instrumental in formulating—I felt confident enough.
“Of course, the handhelds are of no importance to us,” I said, “because they’ll die when the disruptors go down. I estimate we’ll need to take the disruptors three at a time, in two raids—these two at the spaceports and the one here first, because that’s the central triangle.”
“We can give you Drenalion protection—” Terrill Guthrie began, but I sharply said, “No!” as Jemeret’s head came up and he said, “You will not send the Drenalion back to Barbin 3 under any circumstances.”
Terrill Guthrie was angry at that, but Pel Nostro was both calm and unsurprised. “How can we protect you, then?” he asked dispassionately.
“We’ll use the remaining units of the planetary corps,” I said. Now that we were in orbit, we were certain we’d come under MI surveillance, which could be conducted from the surface of the planet, and we had deliberately gone over the plan earlier for their benefit. I had wondered if they would tell the Tribunal what they overheard, but gathered now that they hadn’t. I wanted to be curious about it, but there wasn’t time. “We believe the planetary corps has every reason to want to see the disruptors stopped.”
“All right, assuming the presence of planetary corps units,” Pel Nostro said, “how can you get in without the rebels turning the disruptors on you?”
This was the hard, the unavoidable, part of the scenario. “We can’t,” I said steadily. “That’s why we have to go in singly—except that Jasin Lebec will need to take Sandalari with him on the first descent, then Coney on the second, to use their reserves. We’ll take a blast from the disruptors to be decoys for the corps units, and then as soon as they turn their attention to the corps, we’ll sting the disruptor operators before the units can be realigned to aim closely at the corps.”
There was a lengthy silence. There were a few more permutations to the scenario, involving getting the strength of the disruptor beams diffused, but I decided not to bring them in just at the moment. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Jasin Lebec’s hands tremble slightly before he controlled them, but he said nothing. I realized he hadn’t heard any of this before, because we hadn’t had a chance to tell him before the meeting, and he was reacting to the news that he would have to take a hit from the disruptor beam. We’d seriously tried to figure another way, for his benefit, but the costs of the alternatives were all too high.
Pel Nostro said, “Percentages.”
There was a click, and we knew the MI observers had weighed in. “What do you project as the duration of a raid?” asked the strangely androgynous voice. I couldn’t tell whether it came from our wall speakers or those on Orokell. It made little difference; they were synched by the presence of the eftel contact.
“We estimate approximately ninety-eight seconds from the time they discover us until the time a disruptor dies,” Jemeret said.
“And how are you proposing to survive the disruptor blast?” Pel Nostro asked.
“There are five power suits in this ship’s inventory,” I said. “We’ll need them.”
“A power suit cannot fully deflect the blast of a plasma disruptor,” Pel Nostro said, as if we didn’t know it already.
“Neither can a Class C shield,” I told him, “but we believe the two in combination will provide a strong enough defense to get us through the blast.”
“Estimate for success on first raid is eighty-two percent,” the MI said. “We find that acceptable.”
“What’s the estimate for the second raid?” Jasin Lebec asked.
“The figure drops to fifty-eight percent, plus or minus four percent, and is dependent on the reserve capacity of the Class A’s.”
Pel Nostro looked at Jasin Lebec. “Is this tantamount to suicide on your part?”
“Thank you for the vote of confidence,” Jasin Lebec said dryly. “As it happens, I’ll have fresh reserves to draw on for the second raid.”
“Sixty percent,” amended the MI voice, oblivious, as always, to anyone’s feelings.
“By the balance,” Coney said, his voice carefully expressionless, “I’m worth two whole percentage points.”
“Plus or minus four percent,” I couldn’t resist adding.
It was patently absurd, and Jasin Lebec surprised us all by saying to Coney, “You’ll always be worth at least eight percent to me, son.”
Pel Nostro threw his hands up in complete exasperation. He seemed to debate something briefly, then ordered Terrill Guthrie from the room. The big man didn’t hesitate, he just went. My estimation of Pel rose a notch at that.
Then the Com Counselor folded his hands on the table in front of him and said, “I’d like to speak to Class A Ronica McBride in private.”
Jasin Lebec rose immediately, but paused when no one else moved. I felt Jemeret’s tension radiating from him, so I touched him lightly with the sting to reassure him that it would be fine. For a moment I expected him to ignore me, but he got slowly to his feet, asking me deliberately, “Will you be all right?”
“Of course.” I said it almost dismissively.
Coney left the room before either of the Class A men. Jemeret looked long and hard at Pel, as if he could read him through the eftel vid, then went out. Jasin Lebec remained longest, though I had no idea why. When he, too, was gone, and, I thought, only the silent MIs were listening, I asked, “What’s the matter with the scenario, Pel?”
He unfolded his hands. “With the scenario? Nothing that I can see except that Jasin Lebec may not survive it. That’s your choice. The matter is with—” He paused, searching for a diplomatic phrase or two; I didn’t think he’d found one. “—the attitude you and those around you are bringing to the Com. Talent is not treated with irreverence here, Ronica McBride. You should remember from your training the absolute necessity of your work to our functioning as a society.”
There were so many ways I could have replied. Even two tendays later I might have responded in an entirely different way. I said in a low voice, “Talent isn’t a monolith, Pel. I’ll never be Jasin Lebec.”
He nodded. “I can accept that,” he said. “Just see to it that you don’t become Jemeret Cavanaugh, either. We need talent that works with us and for us.”
It didn’t sound like any kind of threat, but of course it was. I thought detachedly that he would have to be good at diplomacy to have held his job this long.
As coldly as I could I said, “Then if you need it so much, perhaps you could do some things to ensure that Tial Borland isn’t carved up while he sleeps.”
Color rose in his face, and before he could say anything in reply, I cut off the vid contact, slamming my hand a little harder than necessary into the table control that led to the eftel. Then I rose, shaking, and went to find the others, who were waiting in the lounge.
In only seventeen hours it would be full, moonless night over the primary targets, and then we would have to act.
Coney was first to acknowledge that. “I’m going to wake Sandi and tell her what the scenario is,” he said. “I’ll meet you in lander bay one at hour four, low watch.”
Jasin Lebec said, “I’m going to get some sleep. I’m too old for this, and I’m not certain what taking two disruptor hits will do to me.” He did not sound frightened, just weary.
“We tried to think of a way to spare you,” Jemeret said quietly, “but our chances of surviving three hits were not very good, even in power suits.”
“I understand,” the old man said, “and from the Com’s point of view, I am the expendable life among the three of us.”
I should not have been surprised at how angry I sounded. “There are no expendable lives, Jasin Lebec. There are sometimes lives which have to be spent, but they’re not expendable.”
After being part of the avoidance of war several times on Caryldon, and then being caught in that last, minor skirmish at the very end of our stay, I was now confronting the necessity of fighting.
Jemeret took my arm, and we went back to our cabin. “You should probably try to get a little sleep, too,” he said to me when the door irised shut. “You’ve been overextended lately, and you should tamp down your adrenals and save your energy.”
“I’d rather you onslaughted me,” I said flatly, and he stared at me for a full second before he laughed.
“You can relax without it, you know,” he said, his voice caressing my nerves. “And the MIs are monitoring us now.”
“I don’t much care.” I meant it. Even if I hadn’t stopped caring about the possibility of being watched by the MIs when we were on Markover Station, we were about to go to war, and I wanted to know beyond any doubt that Jemeret and I could still have what we’d had on Caryldon.
“There’s something I want you to know first,” he said, surprising me. “If I was reading you accurately in the conference room—” And when had he read me other than accurately? “—you expected me to agree with you that there are no expendable lives.”
I nodded.
“I don’t agree with you, love. To me, the nonexpendable lives, the irreplaceable ones, are those with power.” He watched me, but he didn’t touch me with his sting. He wouldn’t influence my reaction to this. I didn’t accept it, and I didn’t want to believe him. It was hard not to, hard not to tell him he was wrong. He went on, “I take being a chief very seriously, Ronica. My tribe is the Boru, yes, but it’s also the Samothen, and that makes me responsible for all people with power. If it came to a choice between the few of us with talent and the multitude without, I wouldn’t hesitate.”
For a long moment I couldn’t move at all, the mix of conflicting feelings battling in me so strongly that I didn’t know how I was going to be able to respond. Part of me believed absolutely that he was right, that if it came down to that kind of choice, I would stand with him without a second thought about it. And another part of me reverberated with the starfire’s pronouncement that I was High Lady to more than the Samothen, that my obligations were to the human tribe as a whole. At last I had to speak. “I take being High Lady as seriously as you take being a chief, even if I haven’t had nearly as much experience at it. So I have to conceive my role as making certain it doesn’t come to a choice between those with power and those without it.” Deep inside, there was a ripple of fear, a presentiment in a place where precognition had never existed, that such a confrontation might be unavoidable. I pushed it back, ignoring it. “If it did somehow come to that choice, I don’t know where I would stand.” My voice nearly failed; I was saying that I might have to take a stand against him. “I know I didn’t have to atone for the Drenalion life I took, or for Evesti the way I had to atone for Kray and the hitch, but I think I have to learn to feel them more. You taught me that people are worlds, and some worlds are just more powerful than others. That doesn’t make them better.” Just as he hadn’t stung me, I didn’t sting him.
His face remained impassive. He reached out and stroked my cheek with one fingertip. “We each have our responsibilities,” he said softly. “And right now, our first responsibility is to Barbin 3.”
“Does it change anything?” I asked him almost fearfully, locked into the depths of his gray eyes.
For an answer he drew me against him and kissed me, but when we made love, he didn’t use the sting, and in response, neither did I.I told myself we would need all our strength for what was to come on the surface.
And I prayed, foolishly hopeful, that there would never come a time when he and I would need to confront each other over something important.
The Megalume’s instruments showed the first three planetary corps units in place on the surface of Barbin 3, and each of us, the Com’s three Class A’s, got into separate hyperdrive battle capsules—Jasin Lebec sharing his, uncomfortably tightly, with Sandalari. Coney waited with Keli, both of them pale and worried, on the capsule deck. He’d tried to convince me to let him go first, but I insisted he make the second sortie, when Jasin Lebec was likely to be weaker. It was a mistake.
The ship shot a hundred decoy capsules out with us in a wide enough pattern to force a diffusion of the disruptor beams. I was aimed at one of the two spaceports, and I guided my capsule to land on the cabin of the disruptor itself. Responding to previously programmed instructions, the dummy capsules dived and swerved as if they were also guided.
Even wearing a power suit and holding a complete, carefully constructed Class C shield around myself, I couldn’t escape the blast, which was both painful and overwhelmingly nauseating. I fought it hard, not trying to protect reserves, both in order to increase the odds of a successful mission and because vomiting in a power suit could mean asphyxiation. I hit the trigger that would fire flares out of half the decoy capsules, signaling the planetary corps to begin the diversion, and was infinitely grateful when the disruptor beam’s power began to lessen as it was thrown onto pause for recalibration. My capsule hit and bounced along the cabin roof, even as the other capsules dropped around it. I banished the shield, flipped open the faceplate of my suit, and instantly swept the cabin below me, identifying and taking control of the two minds I found.
