Timothy Zahn - Conquerors' Legacy

Besides, it didn't really matter. Cavanagh and Bronski were up to something—that much was a given. If Kolchin was in wristcuffs, it meant only that he wasn't voluntarily going along with the scheme. Or else the wristcuffs were just for show. Either way, they could sort it out at the trial.

Lord Stewart Cavanagh on trial. What a lovely thought.

"That could be useful," Pheylan agreed, looking around and trying to ignore the eerie sensation tingling through him. It had been barely fifteen days since Aric and Quinn and the Copperheads had pulled him out of this place, unconscious, with a dose of Zhirrzh tongue poison in his bloodstream. Hardly enough time even for his metabolism to recover from the poison and the alien food his captors had fed him; and yet, here he was, back on the same world.

Facing once again the memories of his imprisonment. And the memories of the crushing Peacekeeper defeat that had put him there.

"Commander?"

Pheylan snapped out of the painful musings, focusing on the third member of their party. Colonel Helene Pemberton, if he'd gotten the introductions right, a fiftyish woman with dark hair, piercing gray eyes, and a slight Confederate accent. The colonel had been waiting with Williams when Pheylan had landed and had tagged silently along with them during the tour. "I'm sorry, Colonel," he said. "Did you say something?"

"Not yet," she said, her eyes narrowed slightly as she studied him. "As long as I have your attention, though, did you ever see any of this area while you were here?"

"No," Pheylan said, shaking his head. "I saw my cell room—that was the room with the big glass cylinder in the middle—and some of the areas outside. They never showed me anything else."

"I see," she said. "Carry on, Lieutenant."

"That's about it, actually," the engineer said, waving around the room. "Except for the impressions in the ground where the pyramid and domes you mentioned were sitting. And, of course, the fence."

"Yes, Thrr-gilag mentioned an outer fence," Pheylan said. "Where exactly is it?"

"About half a klick out," Williams said, waving a hand in a general sweep around them. "It's made of a fine mesh, extends a couple of meters up and another couple underground. Basically the same design of fence that was around that other pyramid your brother looked at while he and the Copperheads were out looking for you."

"You never saw the fence here?" Pemberton asked.

"No," Pheylan said. "Though there was a path leading from the landing field away through the trees. I assume it led there."

"Yes, it does," Williams confirmed. "You want to go take a look?"

"Sure," Pheylan said, though he couldn't imagine what good it would do. He wasn't exactly a materials expert, after all.

For that matter he wasn't anything that could make much of a difference to this investigation. He'd been sent here to catch what other, inexperienced eyes might miss, Admiral Rudzinski had said; but from what he'd seen so far, there was precious little left for anyone to look at, experienced or otherwise.

They headed out onto the landing field. The sky had clouded up while they'd been inside, and the stifif breeze had turned chilly. "Unfortunately, the Zhirrzh had plenty of time to pack up everything and get it out of here," Williams commented as he led the way toward the path, the red dust scrunching underfoot. "About ninety hours, I understand, before the Peacekeeper assault force could get here."

"Yes, we worried about that time lag on the way back," Pheylan agreed. "There was some discussion about whether we ought to go to Dorcas instead of heading directly to Edo. Peacekeeper warships starting from there could have lopped about thirty-five hours off the turnaround time."

"Why didn't you?"

"We decided it was too big a gamble," Pheylan said, forcing down the hard lump that had suddenly formed in his throat. Melinda had been on Dorcas when the Zhirrzh had attacked. "There hadn't been any warships there when we'd left, and no guarantee that would have changed. Besides, we were low enough on fuel that if we diverted to Dorcas, we wouldn't have had enough to continue on to Edo."

"Good thing you didn't stop," Pemberton said soberly. "You wouldn't have found anything at Dorcas but Zhirrzh and Zhirrzh warships."

"Yes," Pheylan murmured, Melinda's face hovering before his eyes. "A good thing, indeed."

They reached the path, and Williams led the way onto it. Pheylan followed, his chest aching with the memory of how he'd manipulated his captors into triggering the magnets of his obedience suit at this spot. Slammed flat on his face on the ground, he'd used the distraction to covertly pick up one of the sharp pieces of flint that were still scattered around the edges of the path.

A piece of flint that he'd successfully smuggled back to his cell... and that had been suddenly discovered hours later by the Zhirrzh. He still didn't know how they'd pulled that one off.

The trees were pretty much as Pheylan remembered them: tall gray-green objects, which didn't look anything like the trees he'd grown up with but which obviously filled that same ecological niche. Walking along a path surrounded by them, however, he realized for the first time that they also put out a distinctive and not entirely pleasant odor. "Interesting aroma," he commented. "Smells like an annoyed Avuire."

"Actually, it's more like an Avuire greeting friends after a long absence," Pemberton corrected absently. "Annoyed Avuirli smell entirely different."

"Ah," Pheylan said, stifling a smile. He'd meant the comment to be more facetious than anything else. He considered pointing that out, decided the colonel probably wouldn't appreciate it, and kept silent.

A few minutes later they emerged from the trees. Five meters ahead, stretching out to both sides in front of them, was the fence.

"That's it," Williams said. "What do you think?"

"Impressive," Pheylan said, looking up and down the fence as he stepped toward it for a closer look. "Goes all around the encampment, you said?"

"Right," the engineer said. "Obviously a defense of some sort."

"Obviously," Pheylan agreed. The strands that made up the mesh were slender, composed of a silvery yet vaguely translucent material that reminded him of glass. "Was it electrified?"

"Nope," Williams said, poking at one of the mesh strands with the tip of a knife. "The material's not even conductive. Some kind of high-tensile ceramic material, really strong. We're still doing measurements on it."

Pheylan looked along the fence, shading his eyes with one hand as the sun winked out of the clouds. "What kind of supports does it have?"

"None that we've been able to find," Williams said. "Apparently, the engineering design of the mesh plus the section underground is enough to hold it upright. Oh, and there's no gate, either, at least none we could find. Looks like the Zhirrzh don't go in for evening strolls."

"The question, of course," Pemberton spoke up, "is what the Zhirrzh were expecting it to protect them against. Certainly not any kind of weapons attack."

"Thrr-gilag implied it was here to keep animals out of the compound," Pheylan said, fingering the mesh. The strands were very smooth.

"That's a pretty tight mesh for keeping out tigers," Williams commented. "You'd think they were terrified of squirrels, too."

"Maybe they're not the ones it was here to protect," Pheylan said, letting his hand drop to his side. "Maybe it was to guard the pyramid."

"Why do you say that?" Pemberton asked.

"Well, we know the pyramid was very important to them," Pheylan said. "Three Zhirrzh came bounding out of the domes and pointed nasty-looking sticks at me when I tried to get too close to it. And it was right after that incident that Svv-selic was replaced as interrogation spokesman by Thrr-gilag."