"If you just get shot up and die, you can at least reclaim the points inherent in your shipbuild in another round of the game," Maj said to Laurent. "But if something completely destroys your ship and you can"t recover the material for salvage, you have to start over from scratch...buy your way back into the construction program and then sometimes wait a month or two before the resources are available to build your new ship...."
"Like real life," Laurent said.
"All too much like it," Kelly said.
From the direction of the buildings in their base complex, a klaxon began to sound. "That"s it, troops," Shih Chin said, and with a look of great relief headed off toward her ship.
"Chinnn!!" Bob and Del and Mairead shouted after her.
"Oh...I forgot." She came back to the rest of them.
"Ready?" Bob said, putting out a hand.
Shih Chin put her hand on top of Bob"s, and then one after another, the Group piled hands up on top of one another. "Oh, come on, Goulash," Bob said to Laurent then, and shyly, Laurent put his hand on top of all of theirs.
"Seven for seven," Bob said. "Or nine, or ten. However many we are. Yeah?"
"Yeah!" they all shouted.
"Now let"s go kick the Archon"s big green b.u.t.t," Shih Chin said, "and be back home in time for popcorn and a late movie."
Everyone headed hurriedly for their fighters. Shortly Maj and Laurent were back in their seats, and all around them the scream of Morgenroths coming up to speed was becoming deafening. "This planet," Laurent said, nearly shouting over the noise, "it is in this system?"
"Nope," Maj said. "Fourteen light-years away."
Laurent"s eyes widened as the nine ships lifted up and away from the surface of Jorkas together, in formation. "And we are going to get there in ten minutes?"
"In about a second and a half, actually," Maj said, checking the readouts for the sizable part of the Arbalest"s computer which managed the squeezefield synchronization. "If we had a jump gate, it would be even faster. But that uses a lot of power, and the gate structure is vulnerable at either end to sabotage. However, we have enough ships to do it the other way." She glanced around. The others were slowing down, preparing.
"What way?"
"Hang on," she said, and meant it. The first time it was always a surprise....
"Ready, Seven?" Bob"s voice came down the ship"s comm.
"Ready!" Maj said. Seven other voices said, "Ready!"
"Synch starts-now!"
The squeezefield sequence cut in. Maj watched the guidance laser jump from craft to craft, knitting them together in a many-times reflected webwork of light. The hyperma.s.s augmentation sequence started- And then the stars streaked in to collapse around them, molded themselves flaming to the shapes of the ships, pushed the ships and their pilots unbearably inward inward on themselves in a wave of spatially compressed light and a deafening scream of sound- on themselves in a wave of spatially compressed light and a deafening scream of sound- Everything vanished. And then the stars blazed out again, leaping back out to their proper positions, and leaving the formation of Arbalests falling toward the surface of the planet Didion....
Laurent was gasping. "You-you-!"
"You can either poke holes in the universe to get where you"re going," Maj said, "which some people suspect is bad for its structure...or you can wrap it around you like a coat, go where you"re going, and then take the coat off again. It"s all the same coat. Everything in it touches everything else...."
That was as much theory as Maj intended to get into at the moment, for there was a lot to do, a lot of instruments to check and double-check in the next minute or so. The c.o.c.kpit was filling up with nervous background chatter from the others as they did what Maj was doing-made sure the weapons were hot and loose, the Morgenroths answering properly. Below them, streaks of fire and puffs of smoke and long streamers of contrail in the upper and middle atmosphere told them that the Battle of Didion was already in progress, and heating up.
"Ready?" Bob said from his Arbalest, taking squad leadership and point this time out. He had devised the strategy they would be using on the way in, and therefore he got to die first if anything went wrong.
"All set, big B," Maj said.
"Ready, Bob-"
"Let"s do it, already!"
"Seven for seven," Bob said. "Go. Go. Go."
Nine Arbalest fighters fell at ever-increasing speed toward the surface of Didion. From the backseat of one of them came a yell of pure and not entirely inappropriate joy, and in the front seat, the pilot smiled, settled one arm deep into the field that handled the firing controls, and got ready to show her houseguest a good time.
Six thousand miles away the major was sitting in business cla.s.s on a domestic flight to Vienna, from which she would have to catch yet another flight to Zurich, the nearest s.p.a.ceplane port. She much disliked having to pa.s.s through Switzerland, but at the moment it was unavoidable. Speed was of the essence, and she had other things than the wretched Swiss on her mind.
"He has not left the house, Major," said the voice down the hushed and scrambled Net link she was using from the booth at the back of business cla.s.s.
"Good. A small blessing, if nothing else. What are his hosts doing?"
"Having a quiet day at home, it would seem. The mother has been working in the garden. The father has been in the household Net mostly, not out in the public Nets at all. The daughter and the boy are in the Net as well."
"In the boy"s accounts?"
"No. Though they could be at any time. His father had his son"s account information installed on a North American server."
"Well, that should hardly be a problem for us. Break into the accounts. I want them completely searched."
"Unfortunately," said her contact, "the server is not the one to which they were originally moved. The new server is one which is used by several U.S. government agencies...and it is regrettably extremely well protected. We cannot get at it."
She muttered something rude under her breath. "Well, at the very least I want the boy watched and listened to wherever he goes in the public Nets. He"s likely enough to drop some useful information where it can be heard."
"But, Major, except for the Greens" household Net, he has been nowhere except in a proprietary system-and that as a guest on the professor"s daughter"s account. And the proprietary systems routinely have top-flight filters which keep outside access limited to registered subscribers-"
"Well, subscribe! subscribe!"
"We did. But it takes twenty-four hours to approve the credit. And besides, our country"s domains are blocked. We had to go in through a Transylvanian domain address, and for that we had to get the usual clearances-"
Bureaucracy, she thought in anguish and covered her face with one hand. It had its uses, but most of them rarely did her any good.
"Just do it," the major said. "Once inside the proprietary system, you should find a fair amount of information about the girl-her habits, how often she uses the system, and so on. I want a complete report on that. Meanwhile, how is the search for the father doing?"
"There is good news there, Major. The techs working on one of his research a.s.sociates have produced some results. They said he had gone north for holidays several times in the last year, even though as far as they knew, he had no family or friends up there. His excuse was that he had been fishing."
"I daresay he had...though I think it more likely that the kind of fish we have in the lakes up there were not what he had in mind."
"Perhaps not. He made some mention of the places he had gone. We are questioning people in those towns now...and one woman there says she thinks she saw him two days ago."
The major smiled. "The increased surveillance at the borders may yet pay off. Increase the searches in the north, then.... Also, find out if any of our own people know anything about fishing."
There was a silence at the other end. "Excuse me, Major?"
"You heard me. I want them kitted out with appropriate equipment and sent up north. Darenko may actually have been been fishing. In fact, he may be doing it now. A capable fisherman can live for a good while in the countryside without needing to set foot in a town where anyone can see him...." fishing. In fact, he may be doing it now. A capable fisherman can live for a good while in the countryside without needing to set foot in a town where anyone can see him...."
"Uh, yes, Major, I"ll take care of it."
"Do so first thing in the morning. Then get into the Net and see what the boy is doing. I will have to be ready to move shortly when I get there...and I want as much information on hand as possible to guide me."
"Yes, Major."
"Now, what about the professor? You had leads you were still researching."
The response sounded somewhat nervous. "He has ties to Net Force."
Her breath hissed out. "We knew about that. His daughter is in the Net Force Explorers, after all."
"No, Major. Closer ties than that."
"I see. Can you be more specific?"
"No."
"Is there anything else?"
"No."
"I"d suggest I will contact you before I leave Zurich."
She closed the connection down, took a moment to compose herself, and headed out into the cabin again. Twelve hours or so Twelve hours or so, she thought, and I will be there. And after that...we will go about the business of taking back what is rightfully ours and I will be there. And after that...we will go about the business of taking back what is rightfully ours.
The major settled herself in her comfortable seat again, smoothing down the handsome businesswoman"s skirt suit which was her "uniform" for this particular mission. Poor little Laurent Poor little Laurent, she thought. Enjoy yourself while you can. There will be little enough enjoyment for you when we get you home.... Enjoy yourself while you can. There will be little enough enjoyment for you when we get you home....
5.
Maj woke surprisingly early. It was what her mother referred to as "happy wake-up," the kind that happens when you"ve successfully finished a job and your whole system knows it. You wake up completely rested and feeling ready for anything, though the hour is patently absurd. On this particular morning, dawn was just turning things pink and gold at the edges in the eastern sky when Maj wandered out to the kitchen, enjoying the blessed stillness before the rest of the family really got moving.
Cla.s.ses felt as if they were half a day away, though in reality she would have to be ready to leave in an hour and a half. She started the kettle, then slipped into her work s.p.a.ce, leaving it "open" to the kitchen so that she could see if Laurent or the m.u.f.fin surfaced all of a sudden.
E-mail immediately appeared all over the desk, which was-in this overlapped merging of reality and virtual reality-stuck to the kitchen table. A quick reconnoiter of the contents revealed many congratulatory notes from the other members of the Group. The Group of Seven had done spectacularly last night. Part of it, truth be told, was just Bob"s good planning. He had a twisty mind, that one, and made a good squadron leader in a fighter-group situation. But the rest of it was so much a matter of teamwork that Maj hardly knew where to start praising the others-Shih Chin"s go-for-broke courage, Kelly"s chilly accuracy with the pumped lasers, Mairead"s eyes-in-the-back-of-her-head that missed nothing happening around her, whether to friend or foe. They had done well from the standpoint of scoring. All of them got in, shot up a goodly portion of Didion"s insides, and they all got out again before the cl.u.s.ter nuke went off inside the station.
There had been disappointments. They had not been involved in the final attack that fought its way in to emplace the nuke. They had not made it as far into Didion"s tortuous insides as Maj had hoped they would. Weapons charges ran low, and the Group of Seven had had to beat it out of there before the Black Arrows caught up with them and minced them all. Still, the retreat had been orderly, and they had been on hand for the Big Bang, and had been included in the distribution of bonus points for those involved in the planet"s destruction. The Archon would think twice about trying to establish a base so close to the Cl.u.s.ter Rangers" home s.p.a.ce again. And now the Rangers could get back to concentrating on carrying the battle deeper into the Archon"s s.p.a.ce, working slowly on the master plan to force him out of the galaxy entirely....
Maj smiled. Entirely satisfactory Entirely satisfactory, she thought. The whole thing The whole thing. And she had gotten an odd charge out of having someone in the seat behind her for a change, someone absolutely blown out of the water by everything that was happening. Oh, eventually little Laurent would get over the novelty of it all, and calm down. But in the meantime, his unbridled enthusiasm was too cute for words.
Maj finished sorting through her mail, making sure she told everyone what she thought of them-which, today, was an unusually pleasant task since today she thought everyone in the Group was wonderful. Once that was done, she sat quietly with her tea for a few minutes, basking in the glow of the previous evening"s success.
It was not an unbroken glow, though. The sound of a somewhat lost-sounding little voice saying, I wish my father could see this.... I wish my father could see this.... was still very much with her. was still very much with her.
"Computer..." Maj said.
"Ready, boss."
"Put me together a general review of recent history of the Calmani Republic. Video, audio, and supplementary text."
"Depth?"
"Average."
It took the system a few seconds to a.s.semble what she wanted from her work s.p.a.ce"s link to the Britannica databases. "Ready."
"Go..."
The pictures began to display themselves all around her, a little grainy at first, as the oldest flat film and holos tended to be when rechanneled for virtuality-soldiers marching down country roads, politicians making angry speeches, great crowds gathered together in city streets. Calmani was only one of the remnants of numerous countries that had torn themselves apart just before or after the turn of the millennium, due to the exacerbation of old hatreds or new tensions. Sometimes the troubles were caused by newly independent peoples using their sudden freedom to resurrect the arguments of two or three or five centuries past, old "grudge matches" interrupted by the interference of one or another of the great powers and resumed at the first possible moment. Or sometimes the rivalries that broke out involved one side or another of the old border suddenly having more money or more power than the neighbors did. While everyone had been poor together, things had been fine-but when one country suddenly started doing better than the others around it, tensions rose. For these and many other kinds of reasons, some of the local histories in that part of the world had turned unimaginably b.l.o.o.d.y.
Maj watched the images of soldiers and speechmakers unfolding around her and thought, suddenly, of the last time she and her mom had gone crabbing together. After you caught the crabs, you hauled them out of the trap and put them in a bucket before taking them home. Naturally the crabs all started trying to escape-but their preferred method for doing this seemed to involve pulling each other down in order to climb up the others" bodies and get on top. None of the crabs seemed to notice that, as a result of all the pulling down, none of them were escaping. Now Maj thought of all those small countries, desperate, struggling, and yet succeeding mostly at keeping one another down as they struggled (they thought) up.
Elsewhere, though, power had changed hands with relatively little fuss beyond ma.s.s demonstrations in the streets and some shootings of people in high places. Romania was one of these places. After many years of truly astonishing repression under a Marxist-style dictator, the country shook him off suddenly and relatively unbloodily, and settled down into what everyone had thought would be a slow but steady process of "Westernization." But there were still surprises in store. After the Balkan difficulties of the turn of the millennium had trailed off and a long weary quiet had settled over the area, suddenly the nationalist urge awakened in Romania, and over the s.p.a.ce of several months the country shuddered, convulsed, and split itself in three. The southernmost and most urban part, which named itself Oltenia after its northern hills, kept the cities of Bucharest and Constante (and incidentally most of the region"s trade with the West, since it had the Black Sea ports at Constanle and Mangalia). The midmost part of the country became Transylvania as a nation as well as a region. It had stayed fairly calm and settled, even while the dust of secession was still in the air, and had continued to do a brisk business in tourism to the former haunts of Vlad Dracula, both for those tourists interested in the ancient Voivod as a nationalist hero who fought off the Huns, and those more interested in his (theoretical) career as a vampire.
The northernmost area of what the newspeople routinely called "the-former-Romania," the area which now called itself the Calmani Republic and contained most of the mountain chain stretching down from that area, had at first seemed likely to go the same way as Oltenia had. But when the revolution had almost finished, and the candidates whom it seemed the local people wanted to run things were about to take power, there came a hiccup that took everyone by surprise. Several of the candidates for the new ten-man "Senate" died under strange and violent circ.u.mstances-shot in the streets by unknown a.s.sailants, or bombed in their beds-and other candidates pulled out of the Senate within days. When this new and terrible cloud of dust settled, there were only three senators left, and the new small country as a whole was so unnerved that no one argued much when the three of them took power as a "caretaker government" until a new set of elections could be held, if they ever would be held....
"I don"t know," she suddenly heard her father say, from down the hall. "I"ll ask, though. Maj?"
He put his head around the kitchen door. Her dad was wearing his sweats, which was normal this time of morning; usually he went out running as early as possible, on summer workdays, to take advantage of the cooler temperatures.
"Yeah, Dad?"
"Were you going to order some workout clothes for Niko? He"s going to run with me. All he needs are sweats, nothing fancy. And he"ll need shoes."
"Sure, I"ll take care of it. He"ll have to tell me his shoe size, though...the machine"s no good at that. At least none of our machines are.... The GearOnline computer might be able to pull something from the measurements it took the other day. Just in case, what"s the size?"
"Thirty-six," Laurent said, putting his head around from behind Maj"s father.
She goggled at him. "What are you doing up at this awful hour?"
"It is lunchtime in Europe," Laurent said.
"I don"t mean that. I mean, not just just that. It"s not that long ago that we finished things up-!" And indeed Maj was feeling a little grainy around the eyeb.a.l.l.s herself from lack of sleep. that. It"s not that long ago that we finished things up-!" And indeed Maj was feeling a little grainy around the eyeb.a.l.l.s herself from lack of sleep.
But Laurent grinned at her. "I am fine."
"I"m not so sure. Is thirty-six really a shoe size where you come from?"
"Yes."