CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Armed Zeigler supporters had cordoned off the entrances to the Operations and Communications Dome when Keene approached with Sariena and a string of others from the dorm blocks. They had left Rakki and the other two with Naarmegen and some help to keep an eye on them. The subversives were wearing red armbands emblazoned with the Pragmatist triangle-and-lightning-flash emblem. Most of them, but not all, were SA.

People were converging on OpCom from all parts of the base and being held back, arguing and protesting. Some of them had been inside when Keene was there, and presumably been evicted. As Keene and Sariena pressed forward through the throng, a group of exasperated Kronians surged toward the guards, only to fall back uncertainly when they found themselves facing suddenly leveled weapons. The SA lieutenant commanding the guard detail was Jorff, who had driven out with Keene and the others to make the first contact with the Tribe at Joburg.

“You too?” Keene said grimly as they drew up.

Jorff met his gaze stonily and made the slightest of shrugs. “We’re taking our world back. Our world.”

“And is this how you want to rebuild it?” Sariena challenged. “Starting out the same way, all over again?”

“It’s the only way.”

A girl in a red armband, standing back nearer the door, had read the name tags on Keene’s and Sariena’s jackets and was consulting via a compad with someone inside the building. “They can go up,” she announced. Jorff stood aside and waved to the others to let them through. Keene was too angry to make any further remark. He shouldered his way past, making sure Sariena was close behind. In the lower level of the dome, a guard watched as a medic attended to a couple of bloodied figures who looked as if they had been clubbed. This wasn’t real, Keene told himself.

Pandemonium had taken over the operations floor when they entered from the stairway. Zeigler was still in the center with a number of what Keene presumed were his adjutants. Armed guards were posted around the floor and at places along the walls. A mixed group was confronting Zeigler, in the fore among them, Gallian. The others were mainly Kronian and Kronian-Terran scientific and engineering group leaders, base administrators, and a few Terrans, including Charlie Hu. Keene and those with him in the other building had seen the recording of Valcroix’s proclamation, which had been screened there before they left. Everyone seemed to be trying to speak at once. The guards looked on edge and dangerous, no doubt cognizant of the discrepancy in numbers and the magnitude of the risk they were now committed to. Two of the Kronians were waving their arms frenziedly.

“What kind of rule are you talking about?” one of them demanded. “How can there be rule that doesn’t emerge from willing support? It makes no sense.”

The majority of Kronians wouldn’t relate to the concept of subjugation by force. They might be aware of it intellectually from what they knew of Earth’s history, but they had no feel for what it meant. Overt force was used rarely in Kronia, and then only in restraint, to curb behavior beyond what few would question as permissible limits. It wasn’t used to impose. A few of a philosophical disposition argued that restraint in itself constituted an imposing of limits; but the rest, for the most part, went about their business happy that the benefits outweighed any cost by a margin huge enough not to be worth quibbling about.

“You can’t expect anyone to do anything for you by pointing guns at them,” the other fumed. “Why would they? It doesn’t make you worth anything!”

“After what happened to Limli and Isaan?” someone else was protesting. “You expect us to obey criminals?”

“They were warned,” Zeigler replied. “And it should serve as a warning to the rest of you too. Don’t underestimate our determination. We shall not hesitate to employ whatever extremes are forced on us.”

“Ah, here are Landen and Sariena,” Gallian said, spotting them. “Lan, you’re a Terran of some practical experience. Tell them this can’t possibly succeed.”

“Of course it can’t!” Keene growled, turning to face Zeigler. He moved a step forward, but two of the guards interposed themselves and Zeigler motioned with his pistol for him to stay back. Keene threw up both his palms. “What’s the matter with you people? Can’t any of you count? How do you think you’re going to keep control of the base and two ships? And even if you could, what good is it going to do you? You have no resources. Developing them is going to need everyone working productively, not split down the middle. This is the fastest guaranteed way to sabotage everything we’ve worked for. For Christ’s sake drop it now, while we can still fix the damage.”

“Do you think we thought of this yesterday?” Zeigler retorted. “Just take it from me that such matters are in hand. But to restore some degree of order now, we need to appoint a representative who can speak on behalf of the various interests not yet directly affiliated with us. I was hoping, Dr. Keene, that with your noted organizing and leadership abilities, you might be willing to meet such a need.”

”What? Cooperate with you? You’re out of your mind.”

“No. I’m simply asking you to be a spokesman for the various groups that are trying to start a dialog here—Kronians, Terrans. You have experience with both.”

“Don’t even talk to them,” Sariena said.

“You just said we need everyone working productively,” Zeigler pointed out. “And I’m agreeing with you. We need your help in organizing just that. Can’t you see it’s for the good of everyone? Maybe essential to their very survival.”

“Then perhaps you should have left things the way they were, running by Kronian methods,” Gallian put in. “The Kronians know quite a lot about survival in hostile environments, and about ensuring the resources essential to it.” He obviously couldn’t resist adding, “Or perhaps you never quite grasped that.”

Zeigler looked at him sourly. In his eyes, Keene could see that behind the bold front, the strain was telling. “I suggest that you control your flippancy,” he snapped. “Antagonism is not going to help matters.”

”You accuse him of antagonism!” a Kronian woman protested.

Another waved despairingly in the direction of the window facing the pad area and the bleak scene of hilly desolation beyond. “Look outside. You have a world destroyed. The only task is to rebuild.”

“Which is exactly what we what to do,” another of Zeigler’s Terrans chimed in, maybe feeling that Zeigler needed some demonstration of solidarity.

“But you’re not. You’re starting again the ways that know only how to destroy.”

“Look what we built before,” the Terran countered.

“And it took, what, five thousand years? More? Look what we built at Kronia in fifty!”

“A few dugout towns and domes scattered across a handful of moons?” Zeigler said dismissively. “We have a whole world waiting here. You have no idea what real cities were like, a whole living planet. Just take it from me, your quaint debating-club methods won’t do it.”

“So you would introduce the methods of what? Of gangsters? Empires? Enslavement all over again? Is that what you want?”

“You don’t understand,” Zeigler said.

“Damn right! I don’t!”

“Will you consider the proposition I put to you?” Zeigler said, ignoring him and looking back at Keene. “As a rational man, you should appreciate that it’s in the best interests of everyone. I ask it to make a working compromise possible to best voice the interests of all parties.”

“I have considered it, and I already told you: You can go to hell. If you care about everyone’s interests, just climb down and get out of the way.”

“I’m disappointed, Dr. Keene. I had hoped for more.”

Sariena found her voice at last. “You have to be insane… . Do you think you can keep this up indefinitely? A minority like this? Lan already said, can’t any of you count?”

“Be quiet, you foolish woman,” Zeigler said tiredly. “Do you think there aren’t more of us on the way? Of course this was planned to be viable. Not only viable, but eventually impregnable.”

“Eventually,” Gallian repeated. “Some day in the future? Maybe?” His expression had hardened. He had clearly been angered by the way Zeigler had talked to Sariena. “And what of the reality in the meantime, Mr. Zeigler? Do you imagine that if you insist on bringing your methods back here, Kronians are incapable of adopting them too, if they must. Think about the numbers. Will you ever know who is behind your back? Will you fall asleep easily, knowing you might never awake again?” His voice became quieter, making it somehow more menacing, capturing all the attention in the room. He was advancing slowly, fixing Zeigler with a steady stare. “Will you trust any mouthful of food that you eat? Or where might the bomb be that takes you out, Mr. Zeigler? In your desk? Beneath your bed? Under the path on which you walk?” A guard stepped forward to bar the way, but Gallian pushed his weapon aside contemptuously. The guard looked back at Zeigler for direction. Gallian kept on moving. Zeigler licked his lips. “For that is the world you wish to re-create, isn’t it, Mr. Zeigler—your world? And you ask our cooperation? Very well, if you force us, we will cooperate totally in giving you precisely what you ask.” Gallian and Zeigler were almost face to face. The rest of the room had become motionless. Gallian continued moving. His hand came up in part of the same unhurried motion, reaching slowly but deliberately toward Zeigler’s pistol. “Enough of this, now, I think. Why don’t we all just—”

And Zeigler shot him three times, at point-blank range, full in the chest.

Far out in space, still beyond the orbit of Jupiter, the Trojan had completed a complicated maneuver that involved redirecting its course toward the inner Solar System. But it executed the change in such a way that in an intermediate phase, the vessel’s heading was aligned along a precisely calculated minimum-duration trajectory that would intercept the course of the transorbital Eskimo, coasting inward from the Saturn system at the best rate its limited design permitted. At this orientation, with the Trojan‘s forward velocity adding its own maximum component, it launched a freight crate containing six of the boosters that had been brought up from the armory in the course of the SA training drills thoughtfully carried out earlier.

The boosters were intended for carrying fission-pumped laser warheads to a safe detonating distance. But a booster was a booster, and could accelerate any mass that it was properly attached to. Warheads needed to be deployed rapidly, which meant having boosters capable of imparting fearsome acceleration; it also meant that reconfigured for a slower burn, six of them could comfortably gun a moderate-mass vessel up to the kind of velocity usually associated with interplanetary journeys—one the size of the Eskimo, for instance.

The crate itself was sped on its way by another two of the same boosters added to its regular propulsion, which still translated into several days before intercept with the Eskimo. The Trojan‘s final course vector set it up to rendezvous with the accelerated Eskimo a further week after that.

Walsh was on the Control Deck, rechecking that everything was on schedule and generally keeping an eye on things, when Colonel Nyrom appeared from the Communications Room.

The takeover of the ship had gone more smoothly than they had dared hope, with the number of SA who had agreed to come over exceeding expectations. The dissenters, including a higher proportion of crew, had yielded without too much trouble and were now detained and out of the way for the duration. The scientists didn’t much matter, because after their initial show of protest and bluster, they’d prattle for a while, as was already the case, and then get back to the things that concerned them, pretty much regardless of who was in charge. Walsh had never had much time for them when he was an Army man. Lots of smart ideas and blueprints for how the world should be run, and always with themselves in privileged positions of influence. But always from behind the throne. They needed strong men to hide behind and do the dirty work that they didn’t have the guts to do themselves. This operation wouldn’t be any different.

He turned and raised an eyebrow inquiringly as Nyrom approached. Since there was no doubt who was running the ship now, they could speak openly.

“Regular communications from the Varuna and the Surya are being blocked,” Nyrom informed him. “No confirmation signal yet.”

“Already?” Walsh frowned. It could only mean that Zeigler had made his move there. Official notification would come from Party headquarters, currently aboard the Eskimo. “It doesn’t really affect us yet,” he said curtly. “We’ll hear in good time.”

Nyrom waited to be sure that Walsh had nothing more to add, than said, “And there was another thing, Captain.”

“Yes?”

“Delucey did an exemplary job supervising the launch procedure for the booster crate. He’s worked conscientiously and efficiently throughout. I’d like to put a request through right away for promotion to lieutenant-commander. We’re going to be needing more junior officers soon—and good ones.”

“I agree. See to it.”

It was clear that Walsh wasn’t in a talkative mood. Nyrom took his leave and left the Control Deck.

Walsh moved a few paces to run a cursory eye over the displays at the First Officer’s station, then turned to contemplate a screen showing the external view inward toward the ship’s hub. He hadn’t liked even the delay between takeover of the base on Earth and arrival of the backup force that was in the plan, and had said so when it was formulated. But the political experts behind the throne had theorized that the population there would be easier to handle if there was still essential survival-related work waiting to be done. The feelings of vulnerability would make them more compliant. Walsh hadn’t been overly convinced, and behind the glib talk he suspected they knew more about charts and statistics than the nature of real humans. But he was a soldier, and that was the way it had been decided. And now Zeigler had brought the date forward further still. He would be isolated there if anything went wrong. Walsh could only suppose that he had his reasons. They had better be good ones, he told himself.