Page 51 of Aftershocks (Colonization 3)

Cairo Control came on the radio then, to report that the shuttlecraft’s trajectory accorded with calculations. “But your departure was late,” the control officer said in some annoyance. “We have had to put two aircraft in a holding pattern to accommodate your landing.”

“My apologies,” Nesseref said. “The Big Uglies held me up, because one of their aircraft was landing at the facility and lacked the fuel to go into a holding pattern.”

“Inefficiency,” the control officer said. “It is the Tosevites’ besetting flaw. The only thing in which they are efficient is addling us.”

“Truth,” Nesseref said, while Straha’s mouth opened wide in amusement. Even though it hadn’t been her fault, Nesseref felt bad about inconveniencing the aircraft her landing was delaying. Since she couldn’t do anything about it, though, she put it out of her mind and concentrated on making sure the landing went perfectly. On her radar, she spotted not only those two aircraft but also helicopter gunships on patrol around the landing area.

Straha saw them, too, and understood what they meant. “I should be honored,” he said. “Atvar does not want this shuttlecraft shot out of the sky.”

“I too am thoroughly glad the fleetlord feels that way,” Nesseref replied. “I have taken gunfire from the Big Uglies a couple of times while landing here, and I do not wish to do it again. There are too many parts of this planet where our rule is far less secure than it should be.”

“If I had succeeded in overturning Atvar during the first round of fighting-” Straha began, but then he checked himself and laughed again, this time with a waggle in the lower jaw that showed wry amusement. He finished, “It is entirely possible that things might look no different, save that you would be flying Atvar here to see me and not the other way round. I like to think that would not be so, but I have no guarantee that what I like to think would be a truth.”

Braking rockets roared. The shuttlecraft approached the concrete landing area. To Nesseref’s vast relief, no fanatical Big Uglies opened fire on it. It settled to the surface of Tosev 3 as smoothly as it might have on a training video.

No mere mechanized combat vehicle came out to meet the shuttlecraft, but a clanking, slab-sided landcruiser. “The fleetlord takes your safety very seriously,” Nesseref said to Straha. “I have not been met by a landcruiser here since my first descent to this city.”

“Perhaps he worries about my security,” Straha replied, “and perhaps he just wants to secure me.” He sighed. “I have no choice but to find out. You, at least, Shuttlecraft Pilot, are sure to remain free.” Nesseref pondered that as she and the renegade shiplord left the shuttlecraft and headed for the massive armored vehicle awaiting them.

Inside the Race’s administrative center in what had once been known as Shepheard’s Hotel, Atvar awaited the arrival of the landcruiser coming through Cairo from the shuttlecraft with all the delighted anticipation with which he would have faced a trip to the hospital for major surgery. “I hoped Straha would stay in the United States forever,” he said to Kirel and Pshing. “As long as he remained out of my jurisdiction, I could pretend he did not exist. Believe me, such pretense left me not in the least unhappy.”

“That is understandable, Exalted Fleetlord,” Pshing answered. “Straha’s defection, his treason, hurt us far more than any of the mutinies ordinary soldiers raised during the first round of fighting against the Big Uglies.”

“Truth.” Atvar sent his adjutant a grateful look. “And now, with what he has given us, I am not altogether sure I can punish him at all, let alone as he deserves for that treachery.”

“What he has given us,” Kirel said, “is, in a word, trouble. I would not have been altogether dismayed had that knowledge, like Straha himself, stayed far, far away. We shall have to calculate our response most carefully.”

“We have always had to calculate our responses to Straha and everything that has to do with him most carefully,” Atvar replied, to which Kirel returned the affirmative gesture. The two of them had been the only males in the conquest fleet who outranked Straha. What would Straha’s rank be now? That, at the moment, was the least of Atvar’s worries. But it would not be shiplord again-so he vowed.

He peered out the window toward the west, the direction from which the landcruiser would come. And there it was, like a bad dream brought to life. The outer armored gate of the compound slid back to admit it. As soon as it had gone through, the outer gate closed and the inner gate opened. The two gates were never open at the same time; that would have invited the Big Uglies to fire a gun or launch a rocket through them. As if they need an invitation to make trouble, Atvar thought.

A voice came from the intercom: “Exalted Fleetlord, the passenger has entered the compound.”

“I thank you,” Atvar replied, one of the larger lies he’d ever hatched. No one felt easy about speaking Straha’s name in public. He’d been an object of reproach among the males of the conquest fleet since fleeing to the Americans, while males and females of the colonization fleet had trouble believing such a defection could have taken place; to them, it seemed like a melodrama set in the ancientest history of Home, back in the days before the Empire unified the planet. For a hundred thousand years, treason had been unimaginable-except to Straha.

“Exalted Fleetlord, ah, what shall we do with him now that he is here?” asked one of the males at the gate.

Shoot him as soon as he comes out of the landcruiser, Atvar thought. But, however much he was tempted to imitate the savage and barbarous Big Uglies, he refrained. “Send him here, to my office,” he said. “No-escort him here. He will not know the way. The last time he had anything to do with the business of the conquest fleet, our headquarters were in space.”

“It shall be done, Exalted Fleetlord,” came the reply. The male down there was properly obedient, properly subordinate. Atvar wished he hadn’t been.

Kirel spoke in musing tones: “I wonder what he will have to say for himself. Something clever, something sneaky-of that I have no doubt.”

“Straha knows everything,” Atvar said. “If you do not believe me, you have but to ask him.”

Both Kirel and Pshing laughed. Then, as the door to the fleetlord’s office opened, their mouths snapped shut. In strode Straha, two armed infantry-males flanking him. The first thing Atvar noticed was that he wouldn’t have recognized Straha in a crowd. The next thing he noticed was that Straha’s body paint was not as it should have been. Irony in his voice, the fleetlord said, “I greet you, Shuttlecraft Pilot.”

Straha shrugged. “I needed the makeup and the false body paint to get away from the American Big Uglies. They worked.” Only then did he bend into the posture of respect. “And I greet you, Exalted Fleetlord, even if neither of us much wants to see the other.”

“Well, that is a truth, and I will not try to deny it,” Atvar said. “You relieve me in one way, Straha: you are not claiming friendship, or even comradeship, as I feared you might.”

“Not likely,” Straha said, and appended an emphatic cough. “As I told you, I did not do what I did for your sake. I did it for the sake of my friend, the Big Ugly. Having done it, though, I thought I might get a warmer reception here than among the American Tosevites.” He waggled an eye turret at Atvar. “Or was I wrong?”

“As a matter of fact, I truly am not sure,” Atvar replied. “You know the

harm you did the Race when you defected.”

Straha made the affirmative gesture. “And I also know the service I just did the Race with those documents I sent you.”

“Is it a service? I wonder.” Straha spoke in musing tones.

“Fleetlord Reffet would reckon it one,” Straha said slyly.

“Fleetlord Reffet’s opinion…” Atvar checked himself. He did not care to advertise his long-running feud with the head of the colonization fleet. Picking his words with some care, he went on, “Fleetlord Reffet has had a bit of difficulty adapting to the unanticipated conditions existing on Tosev 3.”

Straha laughed at that. “You think he is as stodgy as I always thought you were.”

Atvar sighed. Evidently, he didn’t need to advertise the feud. “There is some truth to that,” he admitted. “But we have just fought one war that was harder and far more expensive than anyone thought it would be. There was, I am told, a Big Ugly who exclaimed, ‘One more such victory and I am ruined,’ after a fight of that sort. I understand the sentiment. I not only understand it, I agree with it. And so I am something less than delighted to receive these documents, though I cannot and do not deny their importance.”

“Tosev 3 has changed you, too,” Straha said in surprised tones. “It took longer to change you than it did me, but it managed.”

“Perhaps,” Atvar answered, knowing the renegade shiplord was right. “Tosev 3 changes everyone and everything it touches.”

Straha made the affirmative gesture. “We discovered that even before we made planetfall,” he said. “Now, if this were up to me, what I would do is-”

Atvar let out an angry hiss. Before he could turn that hiss into coherent speech, Kirel said, “I see there is one way in which Tosev 3 has not changed you at all, Straha: you still want to give orders, even when you are not entitled to do so.”

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