Thrr-mezaz stared at him. Five more beachheads, before their first three target worlds had even been pacified? "Excuse me, Supreme Commander, but that strikes me as a bit... premature."
"Insane was the word I used, Commander," Dkll-kumvit said heavily. "I don't know what in the eighteen worlds they're thinking of back there. I can only assume they have some good reason for it."
Thrr-mezaz looked at Klnn-vavgi, their brief discussion just after the last Human-Conqueror attack flashing to mind. The conversation where they'd speculated that Warrior Command had learned something about the Human-Conquerors that had them scared. "Perhaps they've altered their threat assessment," he murmured.
"Perhaps," Dkll-kumvit said. Reaching to the desk, he picked up the hummer and shut it off. "I just hope they aren't getting overconfident," he added into the sudden silence. "This isn't going to be like taking on four planets' worth of Isintorxi, you know."
Thrr-mezaz looked at Klnn-vavgi again. "No," he said. "Somehow I don't think overconfidence is going to be a problem."
The latearc darkness had fallen, masking the village in a sort of watchful gloom. Shifting position on his couch, Thrr-mezaz stared out the window of his office, squeezing his hands against the sides of his head and the dull pain throbbing there. A headache, generated by Dkll-kumvit's hummer. And by Dkll-kumvit's words.
Behind him the door slid open. "Commander?" Klnn-vavgi called.
"Come on in, Second," Thrr-mezaz said, gesturing him over. "I'm just sitting here in the dark."
"Yes, I can see that," Klnn-vavgi said, stepping in and letting the door slide shut behind him. "Any particular reason why?"
"Headache," Thrr-mezaz said. "Or trying to think, or basic fear of the light. Take your pick. Any report from our intrepid search party?"
"Well, the major news is that the Dorcas topground has metallic ore veins in it," Klnn-vavgi said dryly. "Vast numbers of them, judging by the number and volume of the complaints I've been getting. The Elders aren't happy at all with this assignment."
"This is a war," Thrr-mezaz snapped, abruptly sick and tired of the Elders and their attitude. "In case they've forgotten, let me remind them that wars do not involve large shares of personal happiness. I get any more of this whining—about anything—and I'm going to send the whole batch of them back to their shrines. They can sit there and watch the clouds go by for the rest of eternity for all I care. You got that?"
"Yes, Commander," Klnn-vavgi said, his voice stiff and formal. "I'll make sure the Elders understand."
For a few beats the room was silent. Thrr-mezaz squeezed his hands against his headache, the sudden flare of anger burning down again into tiredness. "All right, then," he said more calmly. "Aside from complaints, did they have anything to report?"
"Not yet," Klnn-vavgi said. "But they've covered only about ten percent of the area. This part's going to be slower than the above-ground search."
"I know," Thrr-mezaz said, turning back to the window. What was the Human-Conqueror commander doing up there, he wondered, secure behind his explosive missiles and his Copperhead warriors? Was he staring out into the darkness, too, wondering and worrying about what his enemy was doing? Or was he instead poring over maps and timetables with his warriors, confidently planning their next expedition to the mysterious objective to the north?
In any given arena, at any given time, one side or the other always had the initiative. Or so Thrr-mezaz had been taught. Which side, he wondered, had it here?
"Commander?" Klnn-vavgi asked tentatively.
Thrr-mezaz gave his head one last squeeze and dropped his hands back to the desk. "Enough is enough, Klnn-vavgi," he said, keying on his reader and pulling up one of the overview maps that the orbiting warships had made up. "We've been sitting on our hands here for eleven fullarcs now, letting the Human-Conquerors make all the moves. It's time we took some of the initiative ourselves."
"You going to petition for more heavy air-assault craft?"
"I had in mind something with higher odds of success," Thrr-mezaz said. "What do we know about the approaches to the Human-Conquerors' stronghold?"
"Well, we know there aren't any easy ones," Klnn-vavgi said, coming around to his side of the desk where they could both see the reader. "Are we talking about an attack direction here?"
"Not necessarily," Thrr-mezaz said. "Or rather, not yet. What we need first is to find out more about the place."
"I don't know how we're going to do that," Klnn-vavgi said, flicking his tongue in a negative. "We'd never get a Stingbird in close enough. Not with those Copperhead warriors waiting there like hungry halklings."
"What if we go on foot?"
"That's not much better," Klnn-vavgi said, leaning over the desk and keying the reader for an overlay. "There are only a handful of passable approaches—you can see where they're marked. The Human-Conquerors have sentry points guarding all of them."
"True," Thrr-mezaz said, studying the map. "But those posts have probably been set up to keep anyone from getting through into the stronghold itself. There's no particular reason we have to go in that far."
Klnn-vavgi frowned down at him. "You're not thinking about using the Elders, are you?"
"Why not? They're perfect for this kind of scout work."
"As I recall, that was one reason we let the Human-Conquerors leave with Prr't-zevisti's cutting," Klnn-vavgi reminded him. "You're not going to get a lot of volunteers to try it again."
"I'm in command here, and I don't have to ask for volunteers," Thrr-mezaz reminded him mildly. "Besides, the main problem with Prr't-zevisti was that we let the Human-Conquerors in on the transport end of the operation. This time we'll do it all ourselves."
Klnn-vavgi rubbed thoughtfully at the corner of his mouth. "I don't know, Thrr-mezaz," he said slowly. "That's pretty rough country to tackle on foot. And unless we can talk Dkll-kumvit out of one of his ten-thoustride-range Elders, we're going to have to get the pyramid within five thoustrides of something useful. That's going to put us uncomfortably close to one or the other of those sentry points, and I somehow doubt a nice shiny white pyramid would go unnoticed."
Thrr-mezaz grimaced. Klnn-vavgi was right, of course, on all counts. And given the current political realities, Dkll-kumvit probably wouldn't go out on soft sand like this for him. Particularly not with something involving an Elder. "Then there's no way around it," he said. "We're just going to need a cutting with a longer anchor range. If we can't get it from Dkll-kumvit—"
He broke off, an odd thought suddenly striking him. "Is there any particular reason why we need to lug a whole pyramid up there?" he asked slowly. "We're only talking about one, maybe two cuttings here. Why not just put them in some kind of small predator-proof container and carry it on up?"
Klnn-vavgi's midlight pupils narrowed in astonishment. "You aren't serious," he said. "You mean just throw an Elder's fsss cutting into a box like it was an order of fresh produce or something? Come on, Thrr-mezaz—you think you have trouble with the Elders now, you try even suggesting something like that. They'd be screaming for you to be staked out for the savagefish before you could blink twice."
"All right, forget it," Thrr-mezaz growled. Traditions were fine in their place, but the fastidious and inflexible adherence to them could sometimes be a complete pain in the throat. "Then we're back to finding ourselves a cutting with a longer range. I wonder if Warrior Command would be able to furnish us with one."