He kicked the vessel into slow life and eased onward, resisting the temptation to close the interval with a wasteful burst of power. There was time. The bay was all his.
"Priority, NAS-12.
They gave him leave to move. His heart started thudding with a heavier and heavier weight of premonition. His hands moved, throwing the little ship over into rightwise alignment and hurtling it at Saber with furious haste.
"Sir," the intercom announced, "Lt. Comdr. James Galey.
Adm. Koch scribbled a note on the screen, hit file and disposed of one piece of business, touched the intercom key in silent affirmative. A second screen showed the busy command center; Capt. Zahadi was taking care of matters there at least; and Comdr. Silverman in Santiago
Galey arrived, a sandy-haired, freckled man who had begun to have lines in his face. Galey looked distressed ought to be, summoned directly to this office for debriefing. The eyes nicked to the corner, where a high-ranking regul had lately died; Koch did not miss it, returning the offered courtesies.
"Sir," Galey said.
"You set SurTac Duncan downworld in good order?
"Yes, sir. No trouble.
"You volunteered for that flight.
Galey was masked in courtesies. The face failed to react to that probe, only the eyes, and that but slightly, betraying nothing.
"Want you to sit down," Koch said. "Relax. Do it.
The man looked about him, found the only chair available, drew it over and sat on the edge of it. Koch waited. Galey dutifully eased himself back and positioned his arms. Sweat was standing on Galey's face, which might be from change of temperature and might not. Careers rose and fell in this office.
"Why?" Koch pursued him. "The man walks into this office wearing mri robes, asks for a cease-fire, then guns down a ranking regul ally. Security says he's gone entirely mri, inside and out. Science department agrees. You imagined some long-ago acquaintance, is that it? You volunteered to ferry him back why? To talk with him? To satisfy yourself of something? What?
"I worked with him once. And I'd flown guide for Flower's landing, sir; I happened to know the route."
"So do others.
"Yes, sir.
"You worked with him on Kesrith.
"One mission, sir.
"Know him well?
"No, sir. No one did. He's SurTac.
The specials, the Surface Tactical operatives, were remote from the regul military, in all ways remote; peculiar rank, peculiar authorities, the habit of independence and irreverence for protocol. Koch shook his head, frowned, wondering if that was, even years ago, sufficient explanation for Sten Duncan. Governor Stavros, back in Kesrith zones, had trusted this wildness, enough to hand Duncan two mri prisoners and their captured navigational records. It had paid the dividend Stavros had reckoned; they were here, at the mri home world; and Duncan, with the mri contacts no one had ever been able to establish, came suing for peace.
Then shot a regul in the same interview, bai Sharn, commander of Shirug, lieutenant to humanity's highest placed ally among regul, and all plans were off.
I have done an execution, Duncan had said. The regul know what I am. They will not be surprised. You know this. I can give you peace with Kutath now.
Mri arrogance. Duncan had been acutely uncomfortable, asked for a moment to drop the veil with which he covered his face.
"You worked with the man," Koch said, regarding Galey steadily. "You had time to exchange a few words with him in getting him back to Kutath. Impressions? Do you know him at all now?
"Yes," Galey said. "It's what he was, back on Kesrith. Only it wasn't wasn't all the same. Now and again it's there, the way he was; and then not. But
"But you think you know him. You were in the desert together back at Kesrith, recovered the records out of that shrine had a little regul trouble then on the way back, all true?
"Yes, sir.
"Hate the regul?
"No love for them, sir."
"Hate the mri?
"No love there either, sir.
"And SurTac Duncan?
"Friend, sir.
Koch nodded slowly. "You know the pack he was given has a tracer.
"I don't think that will last long.
"You warned him?
"No, sir, didn't know. But he's not anxious to have us find the mri at all; I don't think he'll let it happen.
"Maybe he won't. But then maybe his mri don't want him speaking for them. Maybe he told the truth and maybe he didn't. There are weapons on that world worth reckoning with.
"Wouldn't know, sir.
"Your first run down there, you took damage.
"Some. Shaken about. What I hear, it's old stuff. I didn't see anything to say different; no fields, no life, no ships. Nothing, either time. Only ruins. That's what I hear it was.
"Less than that down there now.
"Yes, sir.
A dying world, cities decayed and empty, machines drawing solar power to live; armaments returning fire with mechanical lack of passion; and the mri themselves.
Rock and sand, Duncan had said, dune and flats. The mri will not be easy to find.
If it's true, Koch thought. If there are no ships in their control, and if all cities are machine life only.
"You think they pose no threat to us," Koch said.
"Wouldn't know that either, sir.
There was Reeling of cold at Koch's gut. It lived there, sometimes small, sometimes when he thought of the voyage behind them larger. It grew when he thought of the hundred twenty-odd worlds at their backs, a swath which marked the trail mri had followed out from Kutath to Kesrith, a trail eons old at the beginning and recent at the farther end, in human space, where the mri had been massacred. Before that, along that strip all worlds were scoured of life more than desert; dead.
Mri hired themselves for mercenaries. Presumably they had done so more than once, until the regul turned on them and ended them.
Ended a progress across the galaxy which left no life in its wake, a hundred twenty-odd systems which by all statistical process should have held life, which might have supported intelligent species.
Void, if they had ever been there gone, without memory, even to know what they had been, why the mri had passed there, or what they had sought in passing.
Only Kesrith survived, trail's end.
I have done an execution, Duncan had said, black-robed, mri to the heart of him. And; The regul know what I am.
"Bai Sharn," Koch said, "is being transported back to her ship. There is no regul authority with us now; the rest are only younglings. They can probably handle Shirug competently enough, but nothing more, without some adult to direct them. That puts things wholly into our laps. We deal with the mri, if Duncan can get their holy she'pan to come in and talk peace. We run operations up here. And if we misread signals, we don't get any second chance. If we get ourselves ambushed, if we die here then the next thing human space and regul may know is more mri arriving, to take up the track the others left at Kesrith, and this time, this time with a grudge. The thing we've seen continued. Is that understood, out among the crew?
"Yes, sir," Galey said hoarsely. "Don't know whether they know about the regul, but the other, yes, it's something I think everybody reckons.
"You don't want to make a mistake in judgment, do you? You don't want to make a mistake on the side of friendship and botch a report You wouldn't hold back information you could get out of SurTac Duncan. You understand how high the stakes are ... and what an error could do down there.