Timothy Zahn - Conquerors' Pride

"I know who he is," VanDiver cut him off coldly. "Get on with it."

"Yes, sir. Aric Cavanagh left for Earth aboard a CavTronics freighter. Dr. Melinda Cavanagh also left on a CavTronics freighter, destination unknown."

"What do you mean, destination unknown?" VanDiver demanded. "They filed a flight schedule, didn't they?"

"Uh..." Peters skimmed frantically through the report. "Mr. Lee doesn't say. Maybe the schedule wasn't filed through the normal Edo spaceport. That's sometimes done with freighters."

"Or else Cavanagh's playing it cute," VanDiver growled. He'd called it, all right—Cavanagh was up to something. And whatever it was, it was going to be trouble. He could call that one with his eyes closed. "Send Lee a message," he ordered Peters. "Tell him to find out where that freighter went and get one of his people following the daughter. Ditto for the son. That's always been a cozy little family—I want to know why they've suddenly split up this way. Lee himself is to stay on the father. I want to know everywhere the family goes and everything they do. Got that?"

"Yes, sir," Peters said, scribbling madly on the plate. "Anything else, sir?"

VanDiver glowered at his desk. He didn't know yet what Cavanagh had up his sleeve; but whatever it was, it would undoubtedly be flamboyant. The man thrived on that sort of thing. "Tell Lee to instruct his people that if any of the Cavanaghs even goes near a net or media journalist, he's to have them arrested."

Peters's stylus paused in midstroke. "Sir?"

"You heard me," VanDiver snapped. "Lee can invent something, use my name, invoke Commonwealth security—whatever he has to. But the Cavanaghs are not to talk to journalists."

"Yes, sir," Peters said, his stylus moving again. He finished his notes and looked up. "Will there be anything else, sir?"

For a moment VanDiver studied him. The young man's lips looked uncomfortably tight, and it occurred to VanDiver that he'd probably heard stories about Cavanagh from the other staffers. "Just bear in mind this has nothing to do with the so-called feud between Cavanagh and me," he told the other. "Yes, we were business rivals once; yes, the governor of Grampians passed me over three times to appoint him to the NorCoord Parliament. But that's all water under the bridge. What this is about"—he jabbed two fingers on the desktop for emphasis—"is military security. The Cavanagh family has information about that run-in with the Conquerors that they shouldn't have, and which could disturb the proper focus of the government and the Peacekeepers if it was released to the public. I intend to make sure that doesn't happen."

"Yes, sir." Peters still didn't look entirely happy, but the tension lines had smoothed out a little. "I'll get this out on the next skitter to Avon."

He left; and as the door slid shut behind him, VanDiver snarled out an old street curse he had carefully avoided using for the past thirty years. The Peacekeepers were scrambling to get to battle readiness, rumors of all sorts were shooting across the Commonwealth like tachyon static bursts, Parliament had barely an hour ago finally released the official version of the slaughter off Dorcas; and here he was, Parlimin Jacy VanDiver, having his time and attention wasted by Stewart Cavanagh. The sort of thing that always happened when he locked horns with the man.

Well, no more. This time, with a little luck and a little planning, he would sink Cavanagh for good.

The skitter to Avon wouldn't be leaving for another half hour. Pulling out an official records card, VanDiver punched for one of the more obscure and unused forms in the Parliament catalog. Depending on where Cavanagh chose to make his big play, Lee might have trouble enlisting the help of local law-enforcement officers fast enough to silence him. But with an official NorCoord Parliament carte blanche in hand, that would no longer be a problem. Wherever Cavanagh went, there would always be Peacekeeper forces somewhere nearby.

A counterpoint underlined in the view from the Cavatina's ramp. Overhead a group of Mrach courier ships shot past, their flowing-metal design glinting like white gold in the sunlight, followed closely by a flock of dark birdlike flurries flying in an identical formation. Beyond them, rising up over the long marbled-tan spaceport terminal building and the rooftops of Mig-Ka City beyond, a distant range of white-capped black mountains thrust up into the blue sky. Mystery, counterpoint, and consummate civilization—that was the Mrach image.

An image that was starting to show the strains of the looming Conqueror threat. Those couriers flying overhead had been wobbling slightly with the unaccustomed drag of hastily mounted rocket launchers, the distinctive twittering drone of their engines laboring noticeably under the extra weight. The vast parking field, designed to accommodate a hundred commercial ships the size of the Cavatina, was two-thirds empty, with the majority of the ships still parked there of the same flowing-metal Mrach design as the aircars. And according to Captain Teva, the Cavatina was the only ship since they'd entered the system to be landing on the sloped runways instead of departing from them.

The Commonwealth had finally released the news about the Conquerors' attack... and all over the Mrach worlds, Mrachanis and visitors alike were looking fearfully at the sky. Many of those visitors were leaving.

"Sort of ironic, isn't it," Kolchin commented from Cavanagh's side. "The Mrachanis were gearing up to get stomped by the Yycroman Empire when we conveniently showed up and shoveled sand on the fire for them. Now here they are again, smack in the Conquerors' probable approach cone, looking to get stomped again."

" 'Ironic' isn't exactly the word that I'd use," Cavanagh told him. " 'Tragic' is more like it."

"No, that's not what I meant," Kolchin shook his head. "I meant that if we hadn't interfered back then, they wouldn't have had any choice but to build themselves some defenses and learn how to use them. But we came along and made the Yycromae go back home. So they didn't have to. And they didn't."

Cavanagh nodded, understanding now. "Yes, I see. And so now they're stuck having to play catch-up."

"Right," Kolchin said, shading his eyes with one hand as he looked up at the aircars. "And I'll tell you one thing: war isn't something you learn on the fly."

A motion to the left caught Cavanagh's eye: the Cavatina's groundcar, being maneuvered carefully out of its aft storage hold. "You spent some time in Mig-Ka City a few years back, didn't you?" he asked Kolchin as the two of them started down the ramp to meet it.

"It was just a couple of weeks," the other said. "The Yycromae were complaining about the interdiction again, and the Mrachanis asked Command to send some of us to each of their worlds to discuss urban defenses."

"What did you think of them?"

"I don't know," Kolchin said slowly. "They seemed nice enough—polite and friendly and all that. But... I don't know. They seemed to do an awful lot of talking sometimes without really saying anything. Whenever guys in the military do that, you figure they don't know what they're talking about. I don't know. Some days I thought they'd be worth defending to the death; other days I was ready to ice the whole planet myself and be done with it."

Cavanagh thought back to his own infrequent dealings with Mrachanis. "I know what you mean. They have a knack for pushing buttons over the whole emotional spectrum. Probably without the slightest idea that they're even doing it."

Kolchin grinned. "Well, we wound up pushing a few buttons right back at them. We had two guys in the unit from Modendina on Palisades who liked to talk Italian to each other when they were off duty, and three more from Edo who always started jabbering in Japanese whenever the Italians started up. Plus there was Crazy Ray, who could swear in twenty different languages, with gestures to match. The Mrachanis couldn't figure out what to make of any of those guys, and you could tell it drove them nuts."