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it could be something like that... but a twelve-hour turnaround sounds awfully
ominous. He either wants to get back home as fast as possible or doesn't
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Cobra want to spend any more time here than absolutely necessary."
"Could some disease have shown up in our last shipment?" Chrys asked, holding
his shirt for him.
"A lot of those commercial carriers only take minimal precautions."
"If it had, they'd probably have specified that they'd stay aboard their ship
while it was being serviced." Jonny grimaced as he backed into the sleeves,
trying to keep the sudden pain from showing.
Chrys noticed anyway. "Dad called this afternoon to remind you again about
getting that checkup,"
she said.
"What for?" Jonny growled. "To hear him tell me my anemia and arthritis are
still getting worse? I
already know that." He sighed. "I'm sorry, Chrys. I know I should go see
Orrin, but I truly don't know what good it would do. I'm paying the price for
being a superman all these years, and that's all there is to it."
She was silent for a long moment, and in a way her surface calm was more
disturbing than the periodic outbursts of bitterness and rage that had
occurred over the first months of his condition. It meant she'd accepted the
fact that he couldn't be cured and was sublimating her own pain to help him
and their three sons handle theirs. "You'll call when you know what's going
on?" she asked at last.
"Sure," he promised, relieved at the change of subject. But only for a
moment... because there was only one reason he could think of for the behavior
of that ship out there. And if he was right, progressive anemia was likely to
be the least of his worries.
Five minutes later he was driving toward the starfield. Beyond the glow of the
streetlights, in the darkened city, the ghosts of Adirondack seemed to be
gathering.
Tammerlaine Wrey was the image of the middle-level Dome bureaucrats that had
been the favorite target of political caricaturists when Jonny was growing up.
Paunchy and soft, with expensive clothes in better shape than he was, he had
that faintly condescending air that frontier people often claimed to sense in
all mainstream Dominion citizens.
And his news was as bad as it could possibly be.
"Understand, we'll be doing what we can to draw off the bulk of the Troft
forces," he said, waving a finger at the curved battle front on the Star Force
tactical map he'd brought with him. "But while we'll be keeping them pretty
busy, it's unlikely they'll forget about you completely. The Joint
Command's best estimate is that you can expect anywhere from twenty to a
hundred thousand troops on your three planets within a year."
"My God!" Syndic Liang Kijika gasped. "A hundred thousand?
That's a quarter of our combined populations."
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Cobra
"But you have nearly twenty-four hundred Cobras," Wrey pointed out. "A hundred
thousand Trofts shouldn't be too much for them to handle, if past experience
proves anything."
"Except that almost seventy percent of those Cobras have never seen any sort
of warfare," Jonny put in, striving to keep his voice calm as the memories of
Adirondack swirled like swamp vapor through his mind. "And those who have are
likely to be unfit for duty by the time the attack comes."
" 'Those who can't do, teach,' " Wrey quoted. "Your veterans ought to be able
to whip them into shape in a few months. Gentlemen, I didn't come here to run
your defense for you it's your people and your world and you'll undoubtedly do
a better job of it than I or anyone else on Asgard could. I
came here solely to give you a warning of what was coming down and to bring
back the dozen or so
Dominion citizens that the ban on commercial travel has stranded here."
"We're all
Dominion citizens," Tamis Dyon snarled.
"Of course, of course," Wrey said. "You know what I mean. Anyway, I'll want
those people packed and on my ship within six hours. I have their names, but
you'll have to find them for me."
"What's being done to try and prevent the war?" Jonny asked.
Wrey frowned slightly. "It's beyond prevention, Governor I thought I'd made
that clear."
"But the Central Committee still talking "
is
"In order to delay the outbreak long enough for you to prepare."
"What do you mean, prepare?
" Dyon snapped, rising half out of his seat. "What the hell are we going to
do build antiaircraft guns out of cyprene trees? You're condemning us to
little more than a choice of deaths: murder by the Trofts or the slow
strangulation of a closed supply pipeline."
" am not responsible for what's happened," Wrey shot back. "The Trofts
started this, and you ought
I
to be damned glad the Committee was willing to back you up. If it hadn't,
you'd have been overrun years ago." He paused, visibly regaining his control.
"Here's the list of people I'm authorized to bring back," he said, sliding a
magcard across the table toward Jonny. "Six hours, remember, because the
Menssana
's leaving in now eleven."
Slowly, Jonny reached across the table and picked up the magcard. The die was
apparently cast... but there was too much at stake to just sit and do nothing.
"I'd like to talk to Governor-General Stiggur about sending an emissary back
with you," he said. "To find out what's really going on."
"Out of the question," Wrey shook his head. "In the first place we stand an
even chance of getting hit by the Trofts before we ever reach Dominion space;
and even if we get through, your emissary would just be trapped there. The
Corridor hasn't a prayer of staying open long enough for him to return, and
he'd just be dead weight on Asgard."
"He could function as a consultant on conditions here," Jonny persisted. "You
admitted yourself you
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Cobra don't really know us."
"A consultant to what end? Are you expecting the Star Force to launch a backup
assault through a hundred light-years of Troft territory?" Wrey glanced around
the table at the others and stood up.
"Unless there are any more questions, I'm going back to the
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Menssana for a while. Please inform me when Governor-General Stiggur arrives."
Nodding, he strode briskly from the room.
"Doesn't care falx droppings for us, does he?" Kijika growled. His fingertips
were pressed hard enough against the tabletop to show white under the nails.
"It's not going to matter much longer what he or anyone else in the Dominion
thinks about us," Dyon said grimly.
"Maybe we can postpone that a bit," Jonny told him, handing Dyon the magcard.
"Would you give this to Theron Yutu and have him start locating these people?
I have an important call to make."
Governor-General Brom Stiggur was still en route to Capitalia, but he was
within constant range of the Hap-2 communications satellite now and the
picture was crystal clear. Not that it mattered, really Stiggur's expression
was exactly as Jonny had expected it to be. "So that's it, then," the other
said when Jonny had summarized Wrey's doomsday message. "The Trofts have
finally gotten their courage up for round two. Damn them all to hell." He
snorted. "Well, what's it going to take to get us ready for a siege?"
"More time than we've got," Jonny said bluntly. "To be brutally honest, Brom,
I don't think we've got an icecube's chance on Vega if the Trofts decide they
really want us. The new Cobras are our only defense and they know less than
nothing about warfare."
Stiggur grimaced. "Should we be discussing this on a broadcast signal ?"
"We're going to keep all this a secret?"
"Not hardly," Stiggur conceded. "All right, Jonny you didn't call just to give
me advance notice of
Armageddon. What do you want?" [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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