The Big Picture

"Where are you going?" Tsu asked suspiciously as he stood up. "Hey, Jims, don't be getting yourself in trouble. You hear me?"

There was more along the same lines, but Harking didn't wait to hear it. Striding from the lounge, he headed down the corridor toward officer country. If Isis thought he was going to just sit back while she maligned Abe on interstellar television, she was in for a surprise.

There was no answer when he buzzed her door. He buzzed a second and third time; and he was just about to start pounding his fist on the heavy panel when it finally slid open to reveal Laura Isis.

But it wasn't the same woman he had left barely two hours earlier. Her casual suit was gone, replaced by an old and sloppily tied robe. The bright, probing eyes were heavy with interrupted sleep.

And the neatly styled hair was now only neatly styled on the right side of her head. On the left side, where he'd thought he'd noticed something odd earlier, there was no hair at all. What was there was a crisscross pattern of angry red scars, slicing across the side of her head, cutting across her ear, and digging down along her cheek and neck.

Harking felt his mouth drop open, the alcohol-driven fire vanishing in that first stunned heartbeat. "Hello, Ensign," Isis said quietly. "Was there something you wanted?"

He shook his head, his voice refusing to operate, his eyes unable to look away. "No," he managed at last. "No. I'm ... I'm sorry."

She nodded, as if seeing past the words into his own, more invisible scars. "You'd better come in," she said, stepping back out of the way. "We need to talk."

Numbly, he complied. She closed the door, then brushed past him to sit down at the fold-down desk. "From past experience," she said as she gestured him to the guest jump seat, "I know I need to explain this before we go on to anything else." She pointed at her disfigured face.

"I'm sorry," Harking said as he sat down. Vaguely, he realized that wasn't exactly the proper thing to say, but his brain was still frozen on its rail and his mouth was free-ranging. "I mean—"

"It happened at the third battle off Suzerain," she said, mercifully cutting off the babbling. "The ship I was on was hit. Badly. We barely got away."

She lowered her eyes. "Many of the crew weren't as lucky as I was."

"It can be fixed, though," Harking said desperately. "Can't it?"

She shrugged. "So they tell me. Assuming the war doesn't kill us all and eliminate such trivial issues as cosmetic surgery."

"But then—" He gestured helplessly at her face.

"Why don't I go back to Earth and have it done?" she suggested.

"Well ... yes," Harking said. "I mean, your face is famous. It's on TV all the time."

"Because it would take six months," Isis told him. "I can't afford to take that much time off. Humanity can't afford for me to take that much time off."

In spite of himself, Harking felt his lip twist. "Humanity?" he demanded without thinking. "Or your career?"

The instant the words were out of his mouth he wished he could call them back. But to his surprise, she didn't take offense. "You don't understand," she said softly. "The career itself is irrelevant. It's what I can do with that career for the war effort that's so desperately needed."

"And what is it you do, exactly?" Harking asked darkly. "Report the day's slaughter in that cool, professional way you reporters all have?"

He nodded at her face. "Or has that made things a little more personal?"

"This war has always been personal for me," Isis countered, her eyes hardening a little. "That's the problem, really. It's personal for all of us."

She gestured to him. "Especially for those of you who are actually doing the fighting."

Harking shook his head. "You've lost me."

"You take this war personally, Ensign," she said. "Like everyone else, you're tightly focused on your own little corner of it. To you, that corner is the most important thing in the entire universe."

"That's what keeps us alive," Harking growled. "Most of us don't have time for deep philosophical discussions on the issues of the day. We shoot, or we duck, or we die."

"Of course you do," Isis said. "But that's not what I meant. I'm talking about focusing in so tightly that you can't see the whole of what's happening out there."

Harking snorted. "That's the generals' job. Bottom feeders like us just do what we're told."

"Yes, that's how it traditionally works," Isis agreed. "But we can't afford to hold onto traditions like that. Not anymore." She took a deep breath. "You may not know it, out here on the edge of things, but the Expansion is losing this war."

"We're not that far off the map," Harking said stiffly. "We do get regular news feeds."

"Exactly," Isis said, giving him a tight smile. "And after you hear the news, what then? Do you discuss how the Supreme Command is doing? Speculate on how the Sjonntae can be beaten? Argue about tactics and strategies?"

"Well, sure," Harking said, frowning. "Shouldn't we?"

"Of course you should," she agreed. "That's the point. We need to tap into every resource we've got if we're going to win this thing; and that includes getting every human being working on the problem of victory. But the generals don't have time to go into depth on what's happening with each line unit or every far-flung command."

She touched her recorder, sitting by her elbow on the desk. "That's where we in the news come in. We do have the time to dig into the stories and tie events together in a real-time way that your superiors and order-lines can't possibly do. Our job is to pick up as many pieces as we can, scatter them all across the Expansion, and hope that someone will see how two or three of those pieces fit together in a way that no one's ever noticed before. Do you understand?"

Harking nodded, feeling ashamed of his earlier thoughts. "Sure," he said. "The big picture. That's what you're feeding us: the big picture. Is that why you want me to dissect Abe and his mission for you?"

She nodded back. "Even if he failed, reporting on what he did—exactly what he did—may give someone else an idea of something new to try. Because he was right: if we're going to capture enough Sjonntae technology to study, this is the place to do it. Out here, where there's no fighting and hardly even any traffic. And where their main battle force can't get to quickly enough to interfere if we manage to crack it."

"Try no traffic at all," Harking said with a sniff. "They haven't

sent a single ship in the entire three years we've been in place. It's like they're just sitting there thumbing their butts at us, knowing we can't do a thing to bother them."

"They are definitely arrogant SOBs," Isis agreed. "And too much arrogance can be a weakness. Let's see if we can find a way to turn that against them."

"Yeah," Harking said. "Though as someone once said, it ain't bragging if you can do it."

He stood up. "I apologize for the intrusion, Ms. Isis. And for ... other things."

"No problem," she assured him. "I would like to talk more with you about Lieutenant Ferrier and his mission, though."

"Of course," Harking said. "I go on duty in an hour, but we can talk while I take my photos if that's okay with you. Just come up whenever you're ready."

"I'll be there," she said.

"Good." Harking started to the door—

"Just one more thing," she said.

He turned back, mentally bracing himself. "Yes?"

Her face was very still. "Abe Ferrier wasn't just your friend, was he? He was something more."

Harking took a deep breath. "He was my cousin," he told her. Was, the word echoed through his mind. Was. "The only family I had left."

Without waiting for a reply, he turned and left.

The motorized telescope mounts on the far side of the door could be heard humming softly as Harking sent the lens pointing toward the next spot on the grid. "So he had had some commando training, at least?" Isis asked.

"Some," Harking said, watching his screen. The view flashed through a variety of different colors as the telescope tracked across contrasting strips of farmland, then slowed and settled in on the east end of a reasonably large village twenty kilometers south of the fortress. The village seemed to be home to most of the landscape and maintenance slaves for the southern part of the Sjonntae buffer zone, and it was here that Abe had hoped to eventually end up. Sixty kilometers inside the damper field, and under the watchful eye of the Sjonntae slave masters, he had hoped it would be the last place they would look for an enemy spy.