Everyone there had already served in war. Something inside them anticipated the words.
"Unidentified ship…course forTirol…Skull and Ghost squadrons…Admiral Hayes and Admiral Hunter…"
The war's come between us again.
Rick started off in a dash, but stopped before he had gone three steps, realizing his wife was no longer with him. Fortunately, in all the confusion, only one person noticed.
He looked back and saw Lisa waiting there, head erect, watching him. He realized he had reacted with a fighter jock's reflexes, the headlong run of a hot scramble.
It was the argument they had been having for days, for weeks now-tersely, in quick exchanges, by day; wearily, taxing to the limit their patience with one another, by night. Rick was a pilot, and had come to the conclusion that he couldn't be-shouldn't be-anything else. Lisa insisted that his job now was to command, to oversee flight-group ops. He was to do the job he had been chosen to do, because nobody else could do it.
Rick saw nothing but confidence in his wife's eyes as she looked at him, her chin held high-that, and a proud set to her features.
Sue Graham, wielding her aud-vid recorder, had caught the whole thing, the momentary lapse in protocol, in confidence-in love. Now, she rewound the tape a bit, so that the sight of Rick Hunter dashing off from his wife would be obliterated, and began recording over it.
Just as people were turning to the Admirals Hunter, Rick stepped closer to Lisa. In that time, conversation and noise died away, and the Royal Hall itself, weighted by its eons of history and haunting events, seemed to be listening, evaluating. Rick's high dress boots clacked on an alien floor that shone like a black mirror.
He offered her his arm, formal and meticulously correct, inclining his head to her. "Madam?"
She did a shallow military curtsy, supple in her dress-uniform skirt, and laid her hand on his forearm. The whole room was listening and watching; Rick and Lisa had reminded everyone what the REF was, and what was expected of it.
"Orders, Admiral?" Rick asked his wife crisply, loudly, in his role as second-ranking officer present. By speaking those words, he officially ended the ball and put everyone on notice that they were on duty.
Lisa, suddenly their rock, gazed about at them. She didn't have to raise her voice very much to be heard. "You all know what to do, ladies, gentlemen. We will treat this as a red alert. SDF-3 will stand to General Quarters. GMU and other ground units report to combat stations; all designated personnel will return to the dimensional fortress."
There was already movement, as people strode or hurried to their duties. But no one was running; Lisa had given them back their center.
"Fire-control and combat-operations officers will insure that no provocative or hostile acts are committed," she said in a sharp voice. "I will remind you that we are still on a diplomatic mission."
"Carry on."
Men and women were moving purposefully, the yawning hall quickly clearing. Lisa turned to an aide, a commo officer. "My respects to the Plenipotentiary Council, and would they be so gracious as to convene a meeting immediately upon my return to SDF-3."
The aide disappeared; Lisa turned to Rick. "If you please?"
Rick, his wife on his arm, turned toward the shuttle grounding area. REF personnel made way for them. Rick let Lisa set the pace: businesslike, but not frantic.
When the shuttle was arrowing up throughTirol's atmosphere for SDF-3 rendezvous, and the two were studying preliminary reports while staff officers ran analyses and more data poured in, Rick paused for a moment to look at his wife as she meditated over the most recent updates.
He covered her hand with his for a moment; squeezed it. "We owe each other a waltz, Lisa."
She gave him a quick, loving smile, squeezing his hand back. Then she turned to issue more orders to her staff.
To Rem, the Humans and their REF mission had been bewildering from the beginning, but never more so than now.
With this news of an unidentified warship, he and Cabell-who had been a father to him, really, and more than a father-were hastened toward the shuttle touchdown area, to await their turn to be lifted up to the SDF-3. Their preference in the matter wasn't asked; they were an important-perhaps crucial-military intelligence resource now, even though they were just as mystified as anybody else.
There were confused snatches of conversation and fragments of scenes as Rem guided Cabell along in the general milling.
There were the two young cadets Rem had come to know as Karen Penn and Jack Baker.
They had been pressed into service as crowd controllers and expediters of the evacuation. Jack kept trying to catch Karen's eye and call some sort of jest or other; she just spared him the occasional withering glance and concentrated on her duties.
Rem couldn't blame her. What could be funny about a situation like this? Was Jack psychologically malfunctional?
Then there was the singer, Minmei, Janice Em's partner, possessed of a voice so moving that it defied logic, and a face and form of unsettling appeal. The one they called Colonel Wolff seemed to be trying to usher her along, seemed to be proprietary toward her, but she wasn't having any of it. In fact, it appeared that she was about to burst into that startling and alarming human physiological aberration called tears.
The Ghost and Skull and GMU teams were cooperating like mind-linked Triumvirates, though Rem had seen them ready to come to blows only a short time before.
He look about for Janice Em, Minmei's partner and harmony and, in some measure, alter ego, but couldn't see her. She had been with Lang only moments before, but now Lang was gone, too. Rem tried to push troubling thoughts from his mind, such as the rumors that were rife about Lang and Janice.
Lang was supposed to be like an uncle to her, though some said he was "much more."
But what? Rem barely understood the concept "uncle," and had no idea what "much more"
might mean. Yet his cheeks flushed, and he felt a puzzling rage when he thought of Jan having some nebulous relationship to Lang that would make the old Human scientist more important to her than, than…
Then all at once Rem and Cabell were being rushed into a shuttle, and a sliding hatch cut off the haunted nighttime view of ruined Tiresia.
CHAPTER TWO
I never got tired of covering the Hunters, the admirals. To me, they were a perfect couple, the best the Earth could field But in another sense, the enemy had fielded his worst Susan Graham, narration from documentary Protoculture's Privateers. SDF-3, Farrago, Sentinels, and the REF
On the bridge of the Superdimensional Fortress Three, Lisa Hayes surveyed the preparations for battle and despaired, thinking the REF diplomatic mission might be doomed to find nothing but war.
Approximately twenty minutes had passed since the unidentified dreadnought was spotted, and it was nearly upon them. Yet it had not responded to any visual or electromagnetic signal. Peace was important to her, but so were the lives of her crew and the survival of her command. She was as edgy as any enlisted-rating gunner, but didn't have the luxury of simply hoping she could shoot first.
And, the SDF-3 was only partially combat-worthy; letting the enemy get to close range might mean ultimate disaster. Still, the REF mission had to mean something more than crossing the galaxy only to fight battle upon battle, had to mean more than war without end.
She went over every detail, to see if there wasn't one more preparation she could make. Lisa looked around the bridge. There was the same small bridge watch-gang setup that her mentor, Captain Gloval, had used, except that the three enlisted-rating techs were male, as were the watch officer and Lisa's exec, Commander Forsythe.