“It seemed a good guess. I just don’t know how long.”
Downing looked sheepish. “Caine, what’s the last thing you remember?”
“Coming up out of the postsurgical anesthesia, I think. No, wait. I remember someone else, an orderly—” Downing was looking at the floor, a study in discomfort. Caine sighed, wanted to keep hating him but also knew that Richard had been following orders and doing his job. “Okay, how much time have I lost now?”
“Caine, I suspect the first thing you remember is the preoperative review at the time of your second surgery.”
“Second surgery?”
“Yes. We did what we could right after you were hit in Indonesia, but we lost you on the table.”
Caine thought he might vomit. “I was dead?”
“In another few minutes, they would have called the clock and pulled up the sheet. So we had to put you in a cryocell until we could get a different medical team to join us. They were far more advanced, and performed the second surgery.”
“Stateside?”
“Er… no, spaceside.”
“What?”
“Caine, do understand. Not only did we have to rendezvous with the second surgical team as swiftly as possible, but the entirety of the World Confederation Council insisted that you be sent with the invasion fleet to Sigma Draconis. Your unique relationships with so many of the—”
“Whoa, hold on. Sigma Draconis? Invasion fleet? Where the hell am I?”
Downing sighed. “You are in far orbit around the Arat Kur homeworld. We arrived a few days ago.”
“And just where on the calendar are we?”
“It’s June 12, 2120. You’ve been unconscious almost constantly for the last five months. The second surgical team did not reach us until late April. We were well underway to bring the war to the Arat Kurs’ doorstep, and so they had to catch up. Your recovery was dicey and you were kept in postsurgical cryogenic reduction. Not full cryosleep, but the safest way to monitor an uncertain recovery.”
Caine could hardly think through what felt like the hailstorm of mental blows he’d just received. “Then why—why the hell am I even here? Why didn’t you leave me on Earth, with Elena, with Connor, with—?”
“I told you. The Consuls insisted you accompany us. Besides, you couldn’t stay on Earth, Caine. The surgical team arranged to meet us on the way to Sigma Draconis. And frankly, you’d still be in cryogenic reduction, recovering, if our mission here hadn’t hit—well, a snag.”
“So I guess I’m going to have a working recovery before I get to go back home.”
“I’m afraid so, Caine. I’ve brought you this”—Downing held up a datastik—“to help you catch up on what’s been going on over the last five months. Can I get you anything else?”
“No—yes! Is Elena here, too?”
“I’m sorry, Caine, but no. This fleet is only carrying essential personnel. Only you were deemed an indispensable asset, if our interactions with the Arat Kur became—problematic.”
“Yeah, well, if I’m so indispensable, why couldn’t the second surgical team have operated on me before we left Earth, rather than chasing us across umpteen light-years to—?”
But Downing was shaking his head. “No, Caine, you don’t understand. The second surgical team was not on Earth. In fact, it would have taken them longer to get there than meet us on the way.”
Caine felt something cold moving in the general area of his incision, told himself—somewhat desperately—that it was just his imagination. “The surgical team wasn’t on Earth.” He knew the answer to his next question before he asked it. “So it was the Dornaani?”
Downing nodded. “They sent a small diplomatic packet to join our fleet on the way to Sigma Draconis Two. It was also carrying their surgeons and equipment. To whom I am quite sure you owe your life.”
Seems I owe lots of people my life: first Opal, now the Dornaani. Meaning I’ve got twice as many debts as I can reasonably repay. I’ve only got the one life, after all.
“Caine, are you all right? I know it’s a beastly lot of shocks to absorb—”
“No, Richard. I’m okay. But it sounds like our situation with the Arat Kur isn’t, so I’d better get reading, hadn’t I?” Caine shook the datastik meaningfully.
Downing’s answering smile was rueful. “I suppose so. But you don’t need to get started straight away—”
“Yes. Yes, I’d better.” Caine felt his patience slipping as picked up the bedside dataslate. “It will give me something to do other than think about a son I should be meeting, and the two women I should be visiting with flowers.” And whether or not I should keep hating your guts, duty and orders be damned.
Downing cocked his head. “Bouquets for two women?”
“Yes, Richard.” Did he really not understand? “One bouquet to bring to Elena’s door, and another for Opal’s grave.”
Downing grew pale. Caine looked away as the computer brightened.
A moment later, he heard Downing close the door behind himself.
The next morning, when Downing returned and knocked on the door—reluctantly, cautiously—Caine was already up and dressed, staring at the dataslate’s screen. It looked as though he’d been reading from it most of the preceding night. “So, it seems we’ve been pretty busy getting some payback from the Arat Kur while I was napping.”
“Yes, although I think what’s distressed them most is having us show up at their homeworld without a fraction of the warning they were expecting.”
Caine nodded. “Speaking of their homeworld, I see from the battle reports that only two days ago, they were still fighting to retain control of their orbital space.”
Downing nodded. “The Arat Kur defense drones kept our lads on their toes for quite a while.”
“Any losses?”
“Some, but not heavy. Lord Halifax was a step ahead of our opponents all the way.” Downing leaned back. “Which means they are now helpless at the bottom of their homeworld’s gravity well. Which led everyone to expect that they’d finally be willing to discuss surrender terms. But instead they’re not even returning our communiqués. That’s why Visser and Sukhinin finally agreed to rouse you a week early. There are military pressures—strategic pressures—that make it essential we make some progress in regard to negotiations.”
Caine nodded, turned away from his dataslate. “I think part of the problem with the negotiations is that there’s a puzzle piece we’re missing. And because of that missing piece, we’re not fully understanding what we’re seeing.”
“To what are you referring, specifically?”
“I mean we’ve got too many unanswered questions about why the war-averse Arat Kur were so eager to fight us in the first place, and why it seems that the Ktor were laying the groundwork for this invasion of us long before we came to the Convocation.”
Downing leaned back. “What’s got you thinking about that?”
“Well, as soon as we realized that it was the Ktor who were almost certainly behind the Doomsday Rock, I started to wonder if they recruited the Arat Kur as their ‘plan B’ when it failed.”
“Interesting notion. But why the Arat Kur, specifically?”
“Because I suspect the Ktor were quite aware of the Arat Kurs’ prior knowledge—and fear—of our species as age-old destroyers.”
Downing leaned forward. “Caine, do you really think there’s anything to those folk myths of their lower castes?”
Caine glanced sideways at him. “The Arat Kur—Darzhee Kut, Hu’urs Khraam, others of the higher castes—made oblique references to what humanity had done, had been, before now. As if they were afraid of what we might do to them now because of something we’d done to them in the past.”