A Deepness in the Sky

"Pilot Manager, I want you to personally—" A tone sounded on Brughel's console. There was no video, but the Vice-Podmaster was listening to something incoming. After a moment, Brughel said, "Yes, sir. We can make up for that. What is your situation?"

What's happening up there? What's happening to Rita?Jau forced his attention away from the long-distance conversation, and looked at his own situation board. In fact, he was pushing his zipheads to the limit. They were beyond finesse now. There was no way they could disguise this operation from the Spider networks. The Accord missile fields stretched across a swath of the northern continent, and they only approximately followed the track of theInvisible Hand. Jau's pilots were coordinating a dozen ordnance zipheads. TheHand' s patchwork of battle lasers could take out near-surface launchpads, but only if they were given a fifty-millisecond dwell time. Hitting everything would be a miracle ballet of firepower. Some of the deepest targets, offensive sites, would be hit by digger bombs. Those had already been launched, were now arcing down behind them.

Jau had done everything he could to make this work.I didn't have anychoice. Every few seconds, the mantra floated up through his consciousness, the response to the equally persistentI am not a butcher.

But now...now there might be a safe way to evade Brughel's terrible orders.Be honest, you're still a butcher. But of hundreds, not millions.

Without the detailed geographic and ordnance advice from L1, any number of small errors might be made. The Southmost strike showed that. Jau's fingers drifted over his keyboard, sending last-second advice to his team. The mistake was very subtle. But it would introduce a tree of random deviations into their attack on the antimissiles. Many of those strikes would now be way off target. The Accord would have a chance against the Kindred nukes.

Rachner Thract paced back and forth in the visitor holding box. How long could it take Underhill to come out? Maybe the cobber had changed his mind, or simply forgotten what he was about. The sentry looked upset, too. He was talking on some kind of comm line, his words inaudible.

Finally, there was the whine of hidden motors. A moment later the old wood doors slid aside. A guide-bug emerged, closely followed by Sherkaner Underhill. The guard came racing around his sentry box. "Sir, could I have a word with you? I'm getting—"

"Yes, but let me talk to the Colonel here for just a moment." Underhill seemed to sag under the weight of his parka, and every step took him steadily to the side. The sentry fidgeted by his post, not sure what to do. The guide-bug patiently dragged Underhill back onto a more or less straight path headed for Thract.

Underhill reached the visitor holding box. "I have a few free minutes now, Colonel. I'm very sorry about your losing your job. I want to—"

"That's not important now, sir! I have to tell you." It was a miracle that he had gotten through to Underhill.Now, if I can just convince him beforethat sentry gets up the courage to intervene. "Our command automation is corrupt, sir. I have proof!" Underhill was raising his arms in protest, but Rachner rumbled on. This was his last chance. "It sounds crazy, but it explains everything: There's an—"

The world exploded around them. Colors beyond color. Pain beyond the brightest sun of Thract's imagination. For a moment the color of pain was all there was, squeezing out consciousness, fear, even startlement.

And then he was back. In agony, but at least aware. He was lying in snow and random wreckage. His eyes...his eyeshurt. The afterimages of Hell were burned all across his foreview, blocking his vision. The afterimages showed stark silhouettes against a beam of utter darkness: the sentry, Sherkaner Underhill.

Underhill! Thract came to his feet, pushed aside the flatboards that had fallen on him. Now other pains were surfacing. His back was a single massive ache.Getting punched through walls will do that to you. He took a few shaky steps, but nothing seemed broken.

"Sir? Professor Underhill?" His own voice seemed to be coming from a great distance. Rachner turned his head this way and that, like a child still with its baby eyes. He had no choice; his forevision was filled with burning afterimages. Downhill, along the curve of the caldera wall, there was a row of smoking holes. But the destruction here was enormously greater. None of the Underhill outbuildings still stood, and fire was spreading across all that was flammable. Rachner took a step toward where the sentry had been standing. But now that was the edge of a steep, steaming crater. The hillside above him was blown out. Thract had seen something like this before, but that had been a terrible accident, an ammo dump struck by penetrating artillery.What hit us? What was Underhill storing below? Something in the back of his mind was asking the questions, but he had no answers and plenty of more immediate concerns.