But there were no signs of impending interference as the diplomat traded nods with the tough-looking noncom who sat cleaning his boots on the front steps and entered the building. Blankets had been hung over the windows, and the sun had started to set, so there wasn’t much light inside. What there was emanated from a single glow cone and served to frost the top of the large sphere that rested on the table at the center of the room. The construct was about four feet in diameter and nearly identical to the recon ball that Vanderveen had encountered during the fi?nal hours of the battle on LaNor.
All of which caused the diplomat’s heart to leap since what she took to be a cyborg could be the fi?rst harbinger of help. Had one of the Confederacy’s battle groups dropped into orbit around Jericho? Yes! Vanderveen thought excitedly, and hurried to join the group gathered around the beat-up-looking sphere. Batkin was nearing the end of his narrative. “. . . At that point another prisoner entered, sat down, and began to talk. And it soon became obvious that he was ready to cut a deal with Tragg.”
It wasn’t what Vanderveen had been hoping for, and she was about to ask a question when Hooks beat her to it.
“This is ridiculous,” the offi?cial said contemptuously.
“Why should we believe this nonsense? Assuming this individual is who he claims to be, then he’s massively incompetent! Ten, no eleven people are dead, due to his negligence.”
“Maybe,” Nankool allowed cautiously, “and maybe not. Remember, Madame X works for me, and I know what she expects of her operatives. And she wouldn’t be very happy if one of them were to spend all his time waiting for information to come his way. She would argue that it was Batkin’s duty to enter the camp. Regardless of what might follow. Let’s hear the rest of what he has to say before arriving at any conclusions.”
Hooks didn’t like the answer, but there wasn’t much the secretary could do except fume, as Batkin prepared to resume his narrative. A rather tricky moment, because the spy not only knew who Hooks was, but why the offi?cial wanted to preempt the report. “Why listen to my secondhand account,” Batkin inquired rhetorically, “when you can watch the real thing?”
That was when a holo blossomed over the cyborg and the entire LG was treated to a shot of a man’s back with Tragg beyond. Hooks felt a moment of relief, but that emotion was short-lived as his voice was heard, and the rest of the group turned to stare at him. “I think the sonofabitch is going to run,” Batkin remarked mildly. However, Hooks was already in motion by then—and Vanderveen was the only person between the senior diplomat and the door.
But if Hooks thought he could run the blond over and make a dash for Tragg’s prefab, he was sadly mistaken. Because rather than wait for the two-hundred-pound man to overpower her—the diplomat threw her body into the air and hit the offi?cial with what could only be described as a fl?ying tackle. Vanderveen had the breath knocked out of her as both of them crashed to the fl?oor.
Hooks struggled to extricate himself, and was just about to do so, when Schell and Nankool got ahold of him. The traitorous offi?cial attempted to call for help at that point, but took a blow to the jaw and was soon subdued. Ironically, it was Calisco, the very man Vanderveen had been so suspicious of, who helped her up off the fl?oor. Batkin would have smiled had he been able to do so.
“Where was I? Ah yes, the holo!” The recording reappeared at that point, giving everyone present the opportunity to hear Hooks cut his deal and see the turncoat’s face as he stood. Nankool was shocked. “Damn it, Roland . . . Why?”
“Because you’re going to die anyway,” Hooks said dispiritedly. “Can’t you see that? Especially after today?”
“What I see is a traitor,” Nankool answered coldly.
“Yes, every single one of us may die here. . . . But who knows? Maybe one of Batkin’s message torps got through. Perhaps help will come. But regardless of that, we have a war to fi?ght—and we’re going to fi?ght it.”
Schell frowned. “Sorry, sir. But I’m not sure I follow. We’re prisoners, so how can we fi?ght?”
“The space elevator,” Nankool replied grimly. “The bugs need it—and we’re going to destroy it. But not until they have invested lots of time, work, and money in it.”
There was a moment of silence after that, followed by grim laughter, as half a dozen POWs nodded in unison. Unlikely though it might seem, the prisoners had declared war on their captors, and the fi?rst battle had been won. It was about four hours later, when even Tragg was asleep, that something landed on the fence and the camp’s alarms went off. More than a dozen Ramanthian guards were already busy trying to remove the badly charred body when the overseer arrived on the scene. Given the fact that the guards were under strict orders to keep the fence electrifi?ed at all times, it was necessary to pry the corpse loose with long wooden poles.
Only when that process was complete, and the corpse fell free, was it possible to make a positive identifi?cation. Tragg felt something cold trickle into his veins as he looked down into the traitor’s staring eyes. Why? the overseer wanted to know. Why would a man who was about to go free take a run at an electrifi?ed fence?
But Hooks was dead, none of the guards could speak standard, and the people who knew the answer were elsewhere. Mutuu made a brief appearance, but being ignorant of the agreement between Hooks and Tragg, took the episode at face value and soon went back to bed. Finally, as the jungle creatures screamed and hooted, the long, bloody day came to an end.
9.
A brave Captain is a root, out of which, as branches, the courage of his soldiers doth spring.
—Sir Philip Sidney
Standard year 1580
PLANET ALGERON, THE CONFEDERACY OF SENTIENT BEINGS
Captain Antonio Santana lay belly-down on a layer of ice-encrusted scree and stared through a pair of Legionissue binos. Each time the crosshairs passed over an object, its range and heat index appeared next to the image. Santana knew that the long U-shaped valley below him had been gouged out of Algeron’s surface by a retreating glacier roughly ten thousand standard years earlier. Then, perhaps nine thousand years subsequent to that, a tribe of nomads wandered into the basin and decided to stay. And, thanks to the hand-dug well from which the community took its name, the settlers eventually developed a dooth-powered, pump-driven water distribution system.
It took hundreds of years of backbreaking work to clear the fi?elds of rock, build the stone walls that split the valley into a patchwork quilt of family farms, and construct the low one-and two-story homes that were so markedly different from the subsurface dwellings typical of most Naa villages.
All of which explained why Deepwell had prospered, not only as a center of agriculture but as a bustling market town. Until two standard weeks earlier when a large contingent of bandits under the leadership of a Naa named Nofear Throatcut seized control of the town. Deepwell’s warriors had given a good account of themselves according to Nostop Footfast—the Naa youth who lay to Santana’s right. But given the element of surprise, and a force of heavily armed fi?ghters, the bandits won the battle with ease. And that was when the hellish rampage of murder, rape, and theft began.
It took Footfast the better part of seven standard days to reach the nearest village, where the elders passed word of the outrage along to Senator Nodoubt Truespeak, who brought the matter to General Booly. And it was then that Santana caught wind of the situation and requested permission to lead Team Zebra against the bandits. Not out of a sense of altruism but a very real need to test his newly formed company against an enemy that could shoot back. And who better to test a group of convicted criminals against than another group of criminals?