Timothy Zahn - Conquerors' Pride

Cavanagh fell into step beside him; and as he did so, the quiet figure of his security chief, Adam Quinn, appeared at his side. "Trouble, sir?" the other asked softly.

"Yes," Cavanagh told him. "Come on, Nikolai, give. I'll owe you one."

Donezal stopped, throwing a sour look at Cavanagh and an only marginally less acidic one at Quinn. "There's a watchship coming in from Dorcas," he bit out. "Apparently, a Peacekeeper task force there has been hit. Badly."

Cavanagh stared at him, an old and all-too-familiar pressure squeezing his chest. "Which task force was it?"

"I don't know," Donezal said, frowning at him. "Does it matter?"

"Very much," Cavanagh murmured. The Kinshasa, with Pheylan aboard, was stationed with the Jutland in the Dorcas area. If that was the force that had been hit... "Let's get over to the chamber," he told Donezal, taking his arm. "They should at least be able to tell us who was involved."

Donezal shook off the grip. "We are not going to the chamber," he said. "I am going. You're not a Parlimin anymore."

"You can get me in."

"Not for something like this," Donezal insisted. "I'm sorry, Stewart, but you'll just have to wait and find out when the rest of the Commonwealth does."

He turned and joined the general exodus of people now streaming through the dining room's main exits. "Like hell I will," Cavanagh muttered under his breath as he pulled out his phone. "Quinn, where did Kolchin go?"

"I'm right here, sir," the young bodyguard said, appearing magically at Cavanagh's other side. "What stirred up the anthill?"

"A Peacekeeper task force has been hit off Dorcas," Cavanagh told him grimly, punching in a number. "I'm going to see if I can get us some more information."

The phone screen came on, revealing a young woman in Peacekeeper uniform. "Peacekeeper Command."

"General Garcia Alvarez, please," Cavanagh said. "Tell him it's Lord Stewart Cavanagh. And tell him it's urgent."

The cables overhead lengthened and separated, dropping their ski-lift-style chair out of the upper-corridor traffic flow and bringing it to a halt at the floor. Before them, topped by a large Peacekeeper insignia, was the archway into the Peacekeeper Command section of the NorCoord Union government complex. Standing beneath the arch, flanked by the duty guard and a man wearing a major's insignia, was General Alvarez.

"Stewart," Alvarez said in greeting as Cavanagh and his two men came toward him. "I trust you realize how irregular this is."

"I do," Cavanagh said. "And I thank you. I'll try not to be too much trouble."

Alvarez made a face and looked at the officer at his side. "These are my visitors, Major. I'd like them cleared through."

"Yes, sir," the other said. "Hello, Quinn. Long time no see."

"Hello, Anders," Quinn said evenly. "Good to see you. I didn't know you'd moved to Command."

"I'm not surprised," Anders said, an edge of bitterness in the voice. "You haven't exactly kept in touch. So this is him, huh?" he added, throwing a cold look at Cavanagh. "The guy who you helped to dump on the unit?"

"Lord Cavanagh is my employer," Quinn said. "And we didn't dump on the Copperheads. We helped make them stronger and better."

"Yeah, well, that's sure not what it looked like from the inside." Anders looked at Kolchin, and for a moment his eyes seemed to glaze over. "And you're former Peacekeeper commando Mitri Kolchin," he said. "You always stock your payroll with Peacekeeper quitters, Lord Cavanagh?"

Beside him, Cavanagh felt Kolchin stir, and he could imagine what the expression on the young man's face must be. General Alvarez, facing him from a meter away, didn't have to rely on imagination. "You're not here for a discussion of career choices, Major," the general put in. "You're here to authorize temporary clearances for these men. Can you or can't you?"

Anders's lip twitched. "There's nothing in their records to prohibit it, sir," he said. "I can clear them through to the outer briefing room. No farther."

"Good enough," Alvarez grunted. "Thank you. Come on, Stewart—the watchship's records should be here anytime."

"They couldn't transmit from orbit?" Cavanagh asked.

"We didn't want them to," Alvarez said. "There are too many kids out there whose idea of fun is to tie into military transmissions and try to crack the scrambling. The last thing we want is for this to leak out before we're ready." He threw Cavanagh a tight smile. "Which is one reason we're letting you in here. Makes it easier to keep track of you."

"I see," Cavanagh said. He'd already figured that part out, actually. "What do you know so far?"

"Only that a skitter arrived from Dorcas about two hours ago telling us a watchship was probably on its way," Alvarez said. "That all by itself meant bad news."

Cavanagh braced himself. "Do you know which task force it was?"

Alvarez nodded heavily. "It was the Jutland's," he said. "And the Kinshasa was definitely there with it. That's the other reason you're here."

"I appreciate it," Cavanagh said, the pressure returning to his chest. "What else do you know?"

"Precious little," Alvarez admitted. "About twenty-five hours ago the tachyon pickup on Dorcas spotted an unfamiliar wake-trail, terminating in the outer rim of a minor system six light-years from Dorcas. They didn't have a tracking baseline, of course, but the Jutland and the local garrison commander were able to triangulate a probable endpoint. The force went out to take a look; forty minutes after meshing in, they popped a static bomb. Dorcas picked it up, figured it meant bad news, and fired us off a skitter to give us some advance warning. End of report."

"Forty minutes sounds rather short," Cavanagh said.

Alvarez snorted. "Try frighteningly short. Especially when you consider that Commodore Dyami wouldn't have meshed in right on top of the bogies. Real-space transit time would have eaten up part of that forty minutes. Maybe even most of it."

The briefing room was deserted when they arrived. Alvarez turned on the displays for them, then left to watch the proceedings with his fellow officers in the main command center. Five minutes later the watchship's recordings began.

It was worse than Cavanagh had expected. Worse than he could even have conceived it to be. To watch the entire task force being cut to ribbons was bad enough. To watch the alien ships coldly and systematically destroying the honeycomb pods afterward was horrifying.

And to know that he was watching the death of his son made him feel physically ill. And very, very old.

The battle and its murderous aftermath seemed to take forever. According to the display chrono, the entire episode took barely fourteen and a half minutes.

The record ended, and the display went off, and for a few minutes none of them spoke. Quinn broke the silence first. "We're in trouble," he said quietly. "Big trouble."

Cavanagh took a deep breath, blinking the sudden moisture out of his eyes. It would have been quick, at least. That was something to hold on to. It would have been quick. "Could the force have been taken by surprise?"

"No." Quinn was positive. "Dyami knew to be ready for combat. That's always the assumption when you contact a new race. Besides, the force was fighting—you could see missiles being launched. They just weren't detonating."

"You know if the Jutland had any Copperhead fighters aboard, Quinn?" Kolchin asked.

"I doubt it," Quinn said, shaking his head. "Most Copperhead units are stationed aboard Nova- and Supernova-class carriers these days, mostly out in Yycroman space. That's what I've heard, anyway. We could ask Anders on the way out."

"Well, at least that's something new we can try on them next time around." Kolchin paused. "And maybe NorCoord will decide it's time to reassemble CIRCE."