Braking rockets roared. The shuttlecraft approached the concrete landing area. To Nesseref’s vast relief, no fanatical Big Uglies opened fire on it. It settled to the surface of Tosev 3 as smoothly as it might have on a training video.
No mere mechanized combat vehicle came out to meet the shuttlecraft, but a clanking, slab-sided landcruiser. “The fleetlord takes your safety very seriously,” Nesseref said to Straha. “I have not been met by a landcruiser here since my first descent to this city.”
“Perhaps he worries about my security,” Straha replied, “and perhaps he just wants to secure me.” He sighed. “I have no choice but to find out. You, at least, Shuttlecraft Pilot, are sure to remain free.” Nesseref pondered that as she and the renegade shiplord left the shuttlecraft and headed for the massive armored vehicle awaiting them.
Inside the Race’s administrative center in what had once been known as Shepheard’s Hotel, Atvar awaited the arrival of the landcruiser coming through Cairo from the shuttlecraft with all the delighted anticipation with which he would have faced a trip to the hospital for major surgery. “I hoped Straha would stay in the United States forever,” he said to Kirel and Pshing. “As long as he remained out of my jurisdiction, I could pretend he did not exist. Believe me, such pretense left me not in the least unhappy.”
“That is understandable, Exalted Fleetlord,” Pshing answered. “Straha’s defection, his treason, hurt us far more than any of the mutinies ordinary soldiers raised during the first round of fighting against the Big Uglies.”
“Truth.” Atvar sent his adjutant a grateful look. “And now, with what he has given us, I am not altogether sure I can punish him at all, let alone as he deserves for that treachery.”
“What he has given us,” Kirel said, “is, in a word, trouble. I would not have been altogether dismayed had that knowledge, like Straha himself, stayed far, far away. We shall have to calculate our response most carefully.”
“We have always had to calculate our responses to Straha and everything that has to do with him most carefully,” Atvar replied, to which Kirel returned the affirmative gesture. The two of them had been the only males in the conquest fleet who outranked Straha. What would Straha’s rank be now? That, at the moment, was the least of Atvar’s worries. But it would not be shiplord again-so he vowed.
He peered out the window toward the west, the direction from which the landcruiser would come. And there it was, like a bad dream brought to life. The outer armored gate of the compound slid back to admit it. As soon as it had gone through, the outer gate closed and the inner gate opened. The two gates were never open at the same time; that would have invited the Big Uglies to fire a gun or launch a rocket through them. As if they need an invitation to make trouble, Atvar thought.
A voice came from the intercom: “Exalted Fleetlord, the passenger has entered the compound.”
“I thank you,” Atvar replied, one of the larger lies he’d ever hatched. No one felt easy about speaking Straha’s name in public. He’d been an object of reproach among the males of the conquest fleet since fleeing to the Americans, while males and females of the colonization fleet had trouble believing such a defection could have taken place; to them, it seemed like a melodrama set in the ancientest history of Home, back in the days before the Empire unified the planet. For a hundred thousand years, treason had been unimaginable-except to Straha.
“Exalted Fleetlord, ah, what shall we do with him now that he is here?” asked one of the males at the gate.
Shoot him as soon as he comes out of the landcruiser, Atvar thought. But, however much he was tempted to imitate the savage and barbarous Big Uglies, he refrained. “Send him here, to my office,” he said. “No-escort him here. He will not know the way. The last time he had anything to do with the business of the conquest fleet, our headquarters were in space.”
“It shall be done, Exalted Fleetlord,” came the reply. The male down there was properly obedient, properly subordinate. Atvar wished he hadn’t been.
Kirel spoke in musing tones: “I wonder what he will have to say for himself. Something clever, something sneaky-of that I have no doubt.”
“Straha knows everything,” Atvar said. “If you do not believe me, you have but to ask him.”
Both Kirel and Pshing laughed. Then, as the door to the fleetlord’s office opened, their mouths snapped shut. In strode Straha, two armed infantry-males flanking him. The first thing Atvar noticed was that he wouldn’t have recognized Straha in a crowd. The next thing he noticed was that Straha’s body paint was not as it should have been. Irony in his voice, the fleetlord said, “I greet you, Shuttlecraft Pilot.”
Straha shrugged. “I needed the makeup and the false body paint to get away from the American Big Uglies. They worked.” Only then did he bend into the posture of respect. “And I greet you, Exalted Fleetlord, even if neither of us much wants to see the other.”
“Well, that is a truth, and I will not try to deny it,” Atvar said. “You relieve me in one way, Straha: you are not claiming friendship, or even comradeship, as I feared you might.”
“Not likely,” Straha said, and appended an emphatic cough. “As I told you, I did not do what I did for your sake. I did it for the sake of my friend, the Big Ugly. Having done it, though, I thought I might get a warmer reception here than among the American Tosevites.” He waggled an eye turret at Atvar. “Or was I wrong?”
“As a matter of fact, I truly am not sure,” Atvar replied. “You know the harm you did the Race when you defected.”
Straha made the affirmative gesture. “And I also know the service I just did the Race with those documents I sent you.”
“Is it a service? I wonder.” Straha spoke in musing tones.
“Fleetlord Reffet would reckon it one,” Straha said slyly.
“Fleetlord Reffet’s opinion…” Atvar checked himself. He did not care to advertise his long-running feud with the head of the colonization fleet. Picking his words with some care, he went on, “Fleetlord Reffet has had a bit of difficulty adapting to the unanticipated conditions existing on Tosev 3.”
Straha laughed at that. “You think he is as stodgy as I always thought you were.”
Atvar sighed. Evidently, he didn’t need to advertise the feud. “There is some truth to that,” he admitted. “But we have just fought one war that was harder and far more expensive than anyone thought it would be. There was, I am told, a Big Ugly who exclaimed, ‘One more such victory and I am ruined,’ after a fight of that sort. I understand the sentiment. I not only understand it, I agree with it. And so I am something less than delighted to receive these documents, though I cannot and do not deny their importance.”
“Tosev 3 has changed you, too,” Straha said in surprised tones. “It took longer to change you than it did me, but it managed.”
“Perhaps,” Atvar answered, knowing the renegade shiplord was right. “Tosev 3 changes everyone and everything it touches.”
Straha made the affirmative gesture. “We discovered that even before we made planetfall,” he said. “Now, if this were up to me, what I would do is-”
Atvar let out an angry hiss. Before he could turn that hiss into coherent speech, Kirel said, “I see there is one way in which Tosev 3 has not changed you at all, Straha: you still want to give orders, even when you are not entitled to do so.”
“Truth,” Pshing put in.
Straha ignored Pshing. He did not ignore Kirel. “You have not changed, either: you hatched out of Atvar’s eggshell right behind him.”
“And something else has not changed,” Atvar said: “We are taking up the quarrels that preoccupied us before your defection as if you had never left. It is, if you like, a tribute to the power of your personality.”
“For which I thank you.” Yes, Straha sounded smug. Atvar had been sure he would.
The fleetlord went on, “But Shiplord Kirel is correct. You do continue to seek to take command where you have no authority. It is possible”-the words tasted bad on Atvar’s tongue-“it is possible, I say, that by providing these documents to the Race you have made it unnecessary for us to punish you for defecting.”
Straha’s hissing sigh held nothing but relief. “You are stodgy, Atvar, even yet. But you do have integrity. I thought you would. I counted on it, in fact.”
“Do not waste praise too soon,” Atvar warned. “You may perhaps be allowed to live once more in lands the Race rules, to rejoin the society of your kind. But, Straha, I am going to tell you something that is not only possible but certain: you will live here as an ordinary citizen, as a civilian. If you think for an instant that your past rank will be restored to you, you are completely and utterly addled. Do you understand me?”
He watched the male who had come so close to overthrowing him, watched with the greatest and closest attention. Ever so slowly, ever so reluctantly, Straha made the affirmative gesture. But then, still full of self-importance, the ex-shiplord said, “A civilian, yes, but not, I hope, an ordinary one. When I went over to the Americans, they interrogated me most thoroughly on matters pertaining to the Race. Now that I have lived so long in the United States, do you not believe I will know things about these Big Uglies you could not learn elsewhere?”
“Well, that is undoubtedly a truth,” Atvar agreed. “We will indeed debrief you, and no doubt you will provide us with some valuable insights. Perhaps we will even use you as a consultant, should the need arise.” He gave his old rival such salve for his pride as he could before going on, “But I repeat: under no circumstances will you ever return to the chain of command.”