The other factor had been to await the right opportunity. And that could just have been answered, too. Rorvax had brought the news that President Harzin of Cerios was coming to Lambia to meet with King Perasmon, following the negotiations that had been going on for some time between their technical advisers. It could only mean that a truce between the two powers was in the offing, after which Perasmon would be a hero, and Freskel-Gar's chance of power and fame would be gone permanently. If he was going to make his move, it seemed it would have to be very soon, or never.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
"Attack! Attack! Battle stations!" The passages and decks of the Lambian corvette Intrepid, patrolling in northern waters, erupted in a frenzy of bodies tumbling out from doorways, pulling on pieces of kit as they scrambled to clamber through hatches and up ladders. Petty Officer Jissek came out of the wheelhouse onto the starboard bridge as the crew of Number Four gun were frantically finding their positions, just in time to see the black shape diving out of the night to the east. The torpedo struck amidships thirteen seconds later.
The concussion pitched him over the rail, into the signal bay above the foredeck main gun. He lay crumpled, semiconscious, pain shooting through seemingly every joint in his body. The sounds of shouting and screams penetrated through the ringing in his ears. He hauled himself up dazedly, using the mast stanchion by the flag locker. The deck beneath him was already tilting alarmingly. As he looked up, the center of the vessel lit up in a sheet of orange, silhouetting debris and bodies thrown into the air. Figures staggered out onto the bridge above him, and promptly disintegrated along with the door and companion way behind them as the aircraft made a second pass, firing rockets and cannon.
The sea was choppy under a squally wind, its gray just a little darker than the sky. Jissek could feel the cold creeping into his bones through his wet, oil-sodden clothes and the rubberized canvas floor of the raft. They couldn't last long in this, he knew, barely fifty miles from the ice shelf. But it would have been unbecoming to say so.
There were just two of them now. Two of them alive, anyway. The sonar operator who had lost a leg had died maybe an hour before, but he was still lying with his head on Ensign Thorke's lap. Kept as a shred of extra cover from the wind? Or was it that they simply hadn't had the energy to lift the body overboard? Perhaps they just didn't see any point in it. The cold made thinking difficult and sporadic, an effort of will in itself.
Thorke was hurt, too, having taken something in his back-a bullet, or piece of shrapnel or flying debris. His breathing was heavy, and he coughed intermittently, which brought trickles of blood to his mouth. Just nineteen, his first operational trip. But he hadn't complained. Jissek felt little more than a boy himself. Inwardly, he was bracing himself to the thought of having to face the rest of whatever was ahead alone. He looked at the boy's face. It was paler, developing a greenish tint. Thorke licked his lips dryly. Automatically, Jissek started weighing the risk of wasting their limited provisions. Then, catching himself and repulsed by his own meanness, he unscrewed the cap of the water flask and offered it across. Thorke took a sip, nodded gratefully, and passed it back. Jissek screwed the cap on without taking any himself and returned the flask to the survival box.
He had seen other rafts being inflated and figures hauling themselves or others into them in the light of the flames from the sinking corvette. But if they were still anywhere, they had drifted out of sight before daylight came. The only reminder from one cheerless horizon to the other that the Intrepid had ever existed was a corpse floating grotesquely about forty feet away, which had stayed with them doggedly along with some pieces of floating wreckage. It seemed strange. If the other rafts had drifted out of sight, why hadn't this local patch of flotsam dispersed too? Currents did funny things, he supposed. A shape that he had noticed earlier on the skyline seemed nearer and looked like ice. Did it mean they were being carried northward?
He thought about Ilia, fussing with her plants and painting the walls in the flat they had finally scraped together enough for, and Lochey just toddling the last time Jissek had been home on leave and seen him; about his parents, pottering in their garden and always worrying about him. If the end was going to be long and drawn out, he hoped they'd never know. Hunger was knotting his stomach. Time to measure themselves a breakfast, maybe. Or would it be more practical and sensible to wait until… He was doing it again.
"Sir…?" Thorke's voice came as little more than a dry croak but sounded suddenly urgent. Jissek looked up. Thorke was staring at something high up and behind him. Jissek turned himself stiffly to look over his shoulder.
How it could have come up on them without making a sound, he didn't know. It looked like a huge metal egg, the size of a truck, hanging in the air about a hundred feet away. "What is it, sir?"
Jissek shook his head. "I'm not sure." He had never seen anything like it.
"Is it theirs?" the ensign asked fearfully.
"I can't tell."
After apparently inspecting them, the object moved closer. Jissek felt his own mouth go dry. It came to just feet away, looming over them, and then descended to immerse its lower part in the water so that the vertical part of its surface was alongside the raft. A panel that had been invisible opened to reveal a chamber with an inner door, beyond which was a larger, orange-lit space showing glimpses of fittings and equipment panels. "Can you hear me?" a voice called from within.
Jissek nodded numbly. "Yes… Who are you?"
"That would be too much to go into right now. Besides, you don't look as if you've exactly got all day to sit there listening. This is about as close as I can get. Can you make it across? There's plenty of room for three."
"No," Jissek replied. The compulsion to correct was reflexive. "Just two."
They were progressing back in time, toward the war's beginnings.
The Shapieron's doctor pronounced that the uninjured sailor from the raft had slept, eaten well, and was strong enough for visitors. His companion was still unconscious after surgery, with chances of recovery that were not good. The situation did not call for the pestering of a crowd of interrogators. Frenua Showm, who was technically in charge of the political mission, decided that she and Hunt would talk to him. His name was Jissek, the medics had established, and he appeared to be a Lambian.
ZORAC had increased its proficiency as a translator rapidly with the contacts made in the course of these reconnaissance visits. Approaches had been restricted to isolated individuals, which did have the risk that the individual approached might have little of value to tell them. Hunt had suggested keeping things simple and saving time by putting a probe down in the middle of a university campus with a concentration of people who would be able to answer anything, and wrapping the whole thing up in one operation. Danchekker, however, felt that in all the hysteria and excitement that a stunt like that was likely to cause they would probably end up being too deluged with questions and demands for explanations themselves to have much chance of asking any, and the present policy had prevailed.
Showm was silent as Hunt walked with her along the corridor of pale yellow walls and glowing luminescence panels to the clinic and medical bay. Her decision to handle this herself was more than just to complement his scientific perspective and show a Thurien presence, Hunt knew. For her this had become a deep personal matter, involving aspects of her nature that she desperately needed to understand better and to master to progress toward in the inner development that Thuriens regarded as the fulfillment of existence. Hunt had seen her shaken reaction when one of the Shapieron's probes sent back views of the aftermath of a Lambian air strike on an industrial suburb of a city, and watched her face as an intercepted news broadcast showed young orphaned children, some blinded, others missing limbs, telling their stories. For her, the possibility of creating even a sliver of reality in which such things could be avoided was becoming an object of almost religious fervor.