Timothy Zahn - Spinneret

"It is not their use to be wasted for no purpose," the Chosen shot back. "Or do you believe their armor can withstand this weapon long enough to accomplish any practical objective?"

"You hold yet one landing craft in reserve," the Chief Tactician murmured, thinking aloud as tacticians were supposed to. "But without more information you cannot expect to add effective countermeasures to its equipment. It is also impossible to predict the weapon's range."

It took most of the clan liaisons a moment to catch the full implications of that.

"Impossible!" the S'tarm snorted. "Surely this ship is beyond danger, and if not, the warships certainly are. We still hold the threat of total annihilation over the Humans."

Again the Chosen held his tongue. If the S'tarm continued such stupid comments one of the Command officers would eventually challenge the fool and save him the trouble. One never made threats one was unwilling to carry out, and wanton destruction of such a prize as this would draw the perpetrator death for both himself and his entire clan.

"Threats of destruction against the planet are useless," the Chief Tactician said, dismissing the S'tarm's suggestion with a gesture that was just short enough of contempt to avoid drawing a challenge. "However, you may be able to realistically make such threats against their spacecraft."

The words were barely out of his mouth when the three-tone alert twitter rendered them moot. "Chosen," the Defense Officer called over the alarm, "we've picked up the shift mark of six vessels, on intercept vectors. By configuration … Rooshrike corvet-class warships."

The Chosen made an acknowledging sign, the sound of crumpling status loud in his soul. To have failed in such a task would topple him back to the low echelons from which he had so laborously risen … but to have failed and to have thrown away lives for nothing would be worse. His own two warships could easily handle six corvets, but that would be only the leading edge of the wave, and he had neither the ability nor the desire to challenge the entire Rooshrike military.

"Steersman," he called to the pilot, "raise us to geosync orbit. Speaker: inform the Humans my ground forces will surrender if they will then be permitted to leave the planet. Broadcast like instructions on the troops' local frequency. Then order my warships to stand ready to submit to the approaching Rooshrike force."

"You are surrendering?"

The Chosen turned back to face the S'tarm. "Yes," be ground out between clenched teeth. "You object?"

"Yes! The glory of the M'zarch people—"

It wasn't precisely a formal challenge, but the Chosen was fairly certain the S'tarm got the point sometime before he caromed off the far bulkhead, his chest already bruising from the blow. The Chosen waited, hands ready for combat, but the other—perhaps recognizing that zero-gee fighting was too far outside his experience—slunk off the bridge instead. At least, the Chosen thought, I won't have him under my eyelids for the return trip.

Of course, upon their return he would no longer be the Chosen either. Perhaps then the S'tarm would take vengeance.

It didn't matter that much. For the Chosen, life as he knew it was already over.

It wasn't until nearly sundown the next day that the observers Meredith had stationed at the foot of Mt. Olympus reported the gravity beginning its high/low divergence;and the ocean was cutting almost dead center across the sun as the new cable was catapulted from the volcano's cone.

"First sunrise, now sunset," Hafner nodded as Andrews relayed the news to Meredith. "Must be designed to fire the cable into Astra's own orbit, more or less.

Probably makes pickup a lot easier, especially if a bunch of them drift into the Lagrange points."

"Um," Meredith nodded. "Though at this point I'd say pickup was already the simplest part of the whole operation Hafner gave him a wry smile. "Or in other words, our progress out at Olympus has been less than remarkable."

"Still no sign of an entrance?"

"None. However the crater opens up to let the cable out, it doesn't seem designed to let people in"

"Maybe your' re just overlooking it," Meredith said with a shrug. "Three hundred square meters of cone floor plus a hundred more of interior wall around it is a pretty good-sized area to hide a secret entrance in."

"Except that I don't think it was designed to be especially hidden, and service doors usually are set up to be at least visible."

"What do you mean, 'not hidden'?" Andrews spoke up. "It's disguised to look like a volcano, isn't it?"

"I'm starting to think the form is accidental," Hafner replied. "The short piece of cylinder inside the cone is relatively smooth—made of something like the cable material, I think, minus the stickum—and the outer surface really doesn't look like igneous rock. The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that the Spinners—"

"Spinners?" Meredith frowned.

"Oh, that's the hypothetical race that built the whole thing," Hafner explained, looking a bit sheepish. "Dr. Chang's team calls the apparatus the Spinneret, you know, and the other just came naturally. Anyway, I'm convinced the Spinners just piled up the stuff they'd dug out in making their underground factory, and that heat from the central shaft gradually fused the loose stone into its present form."

"Yes—this underground work area," Meredith said, finally getting to the topic he'd called Hafner in to discuss in the first place. "In the report you and Miss Olivero filed this morning you state that you'd like permission to search the area around the Dead Sea for the entrance. Isn't that going just a bit far afield? We're talking some ten kilometers, minimum, between the Sea and the volcano cone."

Hafner shrugged. "The spot where the M'zarch flyers lost their repulsers was nearly that far from the cone."

"But at least a kilometer west of the Sea."

"True. But unless the Spinners went to the trouble to put in a stage elevator in the middle of nowhere, the only convenient place to put an entrance is among the hills bordering the Sea."

Across the desk, Andrews held his phone up and murmured something. Eyes and half his attention on his aide, Meredith said, "You have to understand, Doctor, that while I appreciate the need to learn more about this—ah, Spinneret, I also don't have the resources to spare for the kind of long, drawn-out search you're requesting. We've again lost every bit of metal fertilization and are going to have to either harvest prematurely or lay down more fertilizer. The latter would have to be done immediately and mostly by hand—" He broke off as Andrews looked back up. "Well?"

"Colonel, the Pathfinder reports two Rooshrike ships have left orbit and are moving to intercept the cable."

Meredith nodded slowly, thinking. It was immediately obvious that he could either like it or lump it, that the chances of the Pathfinder interfering with the Rooshrike retrieval were essentially zero. Anyway, with the departure of the M'zarch ground troops still underway, it wouldn't be a good time to antagonize the cavalry who'd come to Astra's rescue. "Have Radford inform the Rooshrike that we're giving them the cable in return for their timely help and all that—he can figure out how to phrase it."

"Yes, sir."

Meredith turned back to Hafner, half expecting an argument. But the scientist nodded agreement. "Good idea. They'll see through it, of course, but it shows them we understand politics. Incidentally, did the first cable disappear when the leecher went on?"

"No, it didn't seem to be bothered."

"Um. Well … Am I to take it, then, that I'm not getting any more men to help with my search?"

Meredith spread his hands. "We've got to do something about those crops immediately, as I said. After that's taken care of we're going to be building some giant plastic-lined window-box contraptions to see if those could be a possible long-term defense against the leecher. And all of that's on top of all of our other work. I can assign you a car and a reasonable amount of digging gear, but that's all. You can take it or leave it."