Charles Gannon - Raising Caine

“Not luck,” Wu corrected. “First we heard a shot, much farther inland.” He pointed west. “We were heading there when this area started sounding like New Year’s in Taipei. We just followed the sound of trouble.”

But Veriden was no longer listening; she was pacing around the glade, searching, frowning. “Where’s Riordan?”

Wu crossed the clearing to the northeast corner. “He was here?” He looked, saw the discarded filter mask.

Veriden looked up. “Yeah, I think—”

Wu saw a faint impression in the ground cover, a spatter of vomit, and, looking more closely, a faint trail of broken or bent ferns that led out of the clearing and straight toward—

Wu stood up sharply. “Everyone. We are going to need some help.”

“Help doing what?” Rulaine asked.

“Lifting this dead water-strider.”

* * *

Nezdeh Srina Perekmeres already knew what Zurur Deosketer would report: “Still no reply on the lascom from the strike team.”

Nezdeh leaned back in her command chair, watched the two new cannonballs race to fill the orbital gap above the assault zone. Jesel’s shuttle had signaled a safe landing three and a half hours ago. Fifteen minutes later, her sensors had picked out the thermal flare of the supposedly destroyed human corvette, performing what might well have been a suicidal maneuver that brought it briefly over the same zone. And then they had waited. And waited.

Nezdeh suppressed a sigh, turned toward Idrem, who was no longer at gunnery. He was here for counsel and, though she dared not even admit it to herself, for comfort. “Jesel has failed.”

“It seems so.”

“It was wise that we did not equip them with any of our technology. It would have fallen into the Aboriginals’ hands.”

Idrem nodded carefully. “The Terrans have been denied access to any conclusively incriminating evidence or advanced knowledge.”

“You are guarded in your words, Idrem.”

“I am hesitant to consider our exposure fully controlled. There are two corpses planetside whose genelines were on the threshold of Elevation. Their genetics will yield much to sustained examination.”

Nezdeh frowned. “Agreed. But what options do we have? We could fire a missile spread in an attempt to obliterate that evidence, but that presumes that the Slaasriithi do not have unrevealed planetary defense batteries, in addition to their drone ships. We might achieve nothing other than blatantly bombarding their world.”

“This is true.” Idrem nodded. “And I concur that the Slaasriithi, while reluctant to deploy offensive systems, seem quite ready to commit their defensive technologies. I suspect we do not have enough missiles to saturate the assault zone and eliminate the spoor of Jesel’s assault team.”

“So you agree that we must live with the marginal exposure that has occurred?”

Tegrese Hreteyarkus interrupted from her station at gunnery. “We do have one nuclear weapon,” she pointed out.

Nezdeh and Idrem exchanged surprised, then carefully neutral glances. Nezdeh turned toward Tegrese. “We are in a system adjacent to the Slaasriithi homeworld. We have trodden a terribly fine line between plausible deniability and overt responsibility for the attacks here. And you would have us ‘correct’ the faint evidence of our possible presence with a nuclear weapon?”

Tegrese looked away, her jaw bunching. “I merely mentioned the option.”

Nezdeh turned away, did not want Tegrese to see what might be in her eyes at this moment: the ruthless calculation behind her unbidden thought, She might have to be liquidated; she is worse than the males of this House. And she is only of a subsidiary gene line. Nezdeh shifted her attention to the holosphere. “Ulpreln.”

“Yes, Nezdeh.”

“Plot a rendezvous with the Arbitrage . We are done here.”

Ben Hwang leaned away from where Caine Riordan lay among, and in some cases fused with, a bewildering array of biots, all presided over by two small but efficient medical monitors. He stepped away from the living bed in which his friend was held, shook his head as the transparent osmotic membrane-dome lowered back down and sealed seamlessly into the rim of the cushion.

Etienne Gaspard hovered near the entry of the room. “Well, Dr. Hwang?”

Hwang shook his head. “I can’t tell much. I’m not a medical doctor, and I’ve only had a day to absorb the details on half of what they’re using to keep him alive. And they won’t explain the other half. ‘Culturally destabilizing technology,’ they call it.”

“Yes, yes, but will he recover?” Gaspard stepped closer, glancing up into the soaring, asymmetrical ceiling that was typical of the chambers within the Third Silver Tower. Seeing it the first time, Hwang had wondered if Gaudí had been coached by the Slaasriithi when he was building La Sagrada Família . At any rate, Hwang didn’t want to answer Gaspard’s question.

“Doctor, will Riordan recover; yes or no?”

Hwang turned to look the ambassador in the eyes. “Etienne, he’s dying. There’s too much compromised tissue, too little respiratory capacity. I wish I had the skill, the knowledge, to help him — but I don’t.”

Gaspard nodded curtly. “Then I shall talk to those who do. Forcibly.” He turned on his heel, stalked toward the exit.

Hwang stared after him.

* * *

The Silver Towers, the cognitive hive of Slaasriithi life, were also renowned for their serenity, their simplicity. The Towers were objects, yes. They depended upon, and functioned as, machines, yes. But that was why such pains had been taken to create them as artifacts that invoked ancient feelings of safety and repose. They soared up beyond where predators might threaten, presenting adamantine walls to the world while, within, their chambers strove gracefully upward toward the sky.

But serenity was in short supply in the Third Silver Tower, Mriif’vaal reflected sadly as he entered the neoaerie. From the moment that Yiithrii’ah’aash’s shift-carrier had been attacked in orbit, and the human survivors had landed in the reaches overseen by the Tower, its many halls and chambers had been in comparative turmoil. Calls for urgent decisions on urgent matters — a rarity in themselves — had flooded in at an increasing rate. And then in the last forty-eight hours—

Another orbital attack. An atmospheric intrusion. Requests for help and consequent protocol challenges. Consultations with the First Silver Tower. Responses and debates. Transfers of equipment and authority. Bloody battle. And now a collection of bedraggled and bruised humans, their eyes furtive and cautious, dwelling within the Third Silver Tower like so many truant predators, uncertain of what they should trust, if anything. It was most unsettling, Mriif’vaal admitted wearily.

But when the neoaerie’s spore-transfer ducts wafted the approach of W’th’vaathi and Thnessfiirm, he signaled his receptivity. They, of all Slaasriithi, were the most knowledgeable about the humans and had the most right to make inquiries or reports, given the harrowing days they had just lived through.

To Mriif’vaal’s right, Hsaefyrr gestured subtly with one tendril tip when the pair appeared in the entrance. “Note the cerdor, Thnessfiirm. She appears distressed.”

Mriif’vaal allowed that “distressed” was a charitable description. Thnessfiirm evinced more than the typical quick motions and eager activity of her taxon; she seemed ready to tremble. Her sensor cluster did not merely move swiftly, but abruptly; gone was the smooth steadiness of a neurologically healthy cerdor. Her neck skin was haggard and her pelt beginning to tuft, in patches. Mriif’vaal grieved her obvious distress, greeted the two with a greater measure of affinity and empathy spores as they arrived at the Ratiocinator’s Ring and sat.