A Deepness in the Sky

Unnerby's display showed the latest report on the Southmost underground construction. Some of it was lies—but he knew enough of the original designs to guess the truth. For the nth time, he forced his attention back to the reading. Strange; when he was young, back in the Great War, he could concentrate just like the General was now. But today, his mind kept flitting forward, to a situation and a catastrophe that he couldn't see any way around.

Out over the Straits now; from this altitude, the broken sea ice was an intricate mosaic of cracks.

There was a shout from one of the comm techs. "Wow! Did you see that?"

Hrunkner hadn't seen a damn thing.

"Yes! I'm still up though. Check it out."

"Yes, sir."

On their perches ahead of Unnerby, the techs crouched over their displays, tapping and poking. Lights flickered around them, but Unnerby couldn't read the words on their screens—and the display format wasn't anything he'd trained on.

Behind him, he saw that Victory Smith had risen off her perch and was watching intently. Apparently her gear was not linked with the techs'. Huh. So much for the "godlike view" he'd been imagining.

After a moment she raised a hand, signaled one of them. The fellow called back to her. "It looks like somebody went nuclear, ma'am."

"Hm," said Smith. Unnerby's display hadn't even flickered.

"It was very far away, probably over the North Sea. Here, I'll set up a slave window for you."

"And for Sergeant Unnerby, please."

"Yes, ma'am." The Southmost report in front of Hrunkner suddenly was replaced by a map of the North Coast. Colored contours spread concentrically about point twelve hundred kilometers northeast of Paradise Island. Yes, the old Tiefer refueling depot, a useless chunk of seamount except when you wanted to project force across ice. Thatwas far away, almost the other side of the world from where they were right now.

"Just one blast?" said Smith.

"Yes, very high up. A pulse attack...except that it wasn't more than a megaton. We're building this map off satellites and ground analysis from the North Coast and Princeton." Legends scattered across the picture, bibliographic pointers to the network sites that contributed to the analysis. Hah. There was even an eyewitness report from Paradise Island—an academic observatory, according to the code.

"What did we lose?"

"No military losses, ma'am. Two commercial satellites are offline, but that may be temporary. This was barely a jab."

What then?A test? A warning? Unnerby stared at the display.

Jau Xin had been here less than a year before, but that had been on a six-man pinnace, sneaking in and out in less than a day. Today he managed the piloting of theInvisible Hand, a million tonnes of starship.

This was the true arrival of the conquerors—even if those conquerors were duped into thinking they were rescuers. Next to Jau, Ritser Brughel sat in what had once been a Peddler Captain's seat. The Podmaster spouted an unending stream of trivial orders—you'd think he was trying to manage the pilots himself. They'd come in over Arachna's north pole, skirting the atmosphere, decelerating in a single strong burn, nearly a thousand seconds at better than one gee. The decel had been over open ocean, far from Spider population centers, but it must have been enormously bright to those few who saw it. Jau could see the glow reflected in the ice and snow below.

Brughel watched the icy waste rolling out before them. His features were pursed with some intense feeling. Disgust, to see so much that looked totally worthless? Triumph, to arrive on the world that he would co-rule? Probably both. And here on the bridge, both triumph and violent intent leaked into his tone, sometimes even his words. Tomas Nau might have to keep the fraud going back on L1, but here Ritser Brughel was shedding his restraint. Jau had seen the corridors that led to Brughel's private quarters. The walls were a constant swirl of pink, sensuous in a heavy, threatening way. No staff meetings were held down those corridors. On the way from L1, he heard Brughel brag to Podcorporal Anlang about the special treat he would bring out of the freezer to celebrate the coming victory.No,don't think on it. You know too much already.

The voices of Xin's pilots spoke in his ear, confirming what he already saw on his tracking display. He looked up at Brughel and spoke with the formality the other seemed to like. "The burn is complete, sir. We're in polar orbit, altitude one hundred fifty kilometers." Any lower and they would need snowshoes.

"We were visible across thousands of kilometers, sir." Xin matched his words with a concerned look. He'd been playing naive idiot on the trip down from L1. It was a dangerous game, but so far it had given him some leeway.And maybe, maybe there is some way I can avoid mass murder.