Gerrick grunted as if he'd been punched in the belly, for Matthews was right. What had happened in Mueller couldn't have happened. The support bores narrowed once they reached bedrock, and each of them incorporated a squared-off crosscut a half-meter wider than the diameter of the lower bore. The rectangular support shafts socketed into those crosscuts, for their cross-section was also greater than the diameter of the lower bores. The last ten meters of every shaft was, in effect, locked into a supporting matrix of bedrock even before the ceramacrete footing was poured. Without proper ceramacrete, the native rock couldn't have held a support once the collapse began, but it should have kept the supports from turning until far more shearing force was exerted on the stone. The supports should have fallen straight inward for the first dozen meters and only started to twist in the last two-thirds or so of their collapse.
And, he thought, his eyes suddenly even more intent, only the supports Stu had tagged in crimson showed that motion pattern. The ones between them were falling exactly the way the models said they should, and he was right about the final degree of deformation, too. It was as if something had actually relieved the stress on the marked support members... and that, he realized suddenly, was exactly what would have happened if they'd been free to turn in the holes. More than that, there was another pattern that...
"We've input the data on the bad ceramacrete?"
"Of course we have," Matthews said a bit snappishly, touched on his exhausted professional pride, and Gerrick raised a placating hand.
"Highlight the supports with the bad footings in amber," he said intently. Matthews looked at him a moment, then shrugged and typed more instructions into the computer. Nothing happened for an instant while the molycirc genius considered its orders, and then most of the crimson-coded support members began to flash alternating crimson and amber. But not all of them, Gerrick noted, and leaned closer to look at the two which didn't.
His eyes darted over the displayed vector analyses beside the two steadily crimson supports, and then he grunted again. The numbers didn't match those of their red-and-yellow fellows, but allowing for the fact that they'd had good ceramacrete and the others hadn't...
And then the rest of the pattern hit him.
"Son-of-a-bitch," he whispered. "Son-of-a-bitch!"
"What?" Matthews said sharply.
"Look! Look at the spacing of the bad holes!"
"What about it?" Matthews asked blankly, and Gerrick shoved him aside to get at the controls. He frowned for a moment, making his brain give up the information he needed then started inputting commands, and the display began to flash with additional light codes.
"We had a total of seven power bores working this project," he reminded his colleague without ever looking away from his keyboard and the holo. "Each of them put in five holes a day, right?"
"Right." Matthews' reply came out slowly, as if his thoughts were almost catching up with Gerrick's. More lights flashed in the holo, picking out support members in seven different colors, and then Gerrick stood back.
"You see?" He reached out and caught Matthews' shoulder as if to drag him physically inside the holo with him, and his voice was a whisper. "Do you see it, Stu? Every goddamned one of those 'turning' supports was set in a hole drilled by the same bore-operator! And look at this!" He tapped more keys, and a final indicator of lurid, poison-green light flickered and danced in the display. "You see it?" he said again. "Two of the holes the son-of-a-bitch drilled got good ceramacrete, but every single instance of bad ceramacrete is in one of the holes he drilled!"
"But that means..." Matthews began, and Gerrick nodded savagely, then whirled from the display.
"Chet! Get me a priority line to the Regent!"
"What?" Sky Domes' personnel manager sounded confused, and Gerrick actually stamped a foot in fury.
"Get me Lord Clinkscales now, damn it!" he barked. "And then get me the name of the motherless bastard responsible for..." he bent to peer at his own inputs for a moment "...Power Bore Number Four!"
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Andrew LaFollet watched through the boat bay gallery's armorplast as the civilian shuttle docked, and his mind was sick and weary behind the mask of his steady gray eyes. He'd come down personally to escort the shuttle's passenger to the Steadholder because he hoped that this time there might be some good news buried in all the horror, yet another part of him knew there was no good news, and the weight of his personal despair was like some agonizing yet pale shadow of Lady Harringtons.
LaFollet was a Grayson. He was unmarried and had no children, yet he understood his people's fury deep in his bones. He didn't, couldn't, blame them for feeling it, but he also knew how skillfully Lady Harringtons enemies were using that fury against her. The callous manipulation of such heart-deep anguish sickened him, yet there was nothing he could do about it. And because there wasn't, he couldn't protect his Steadholder from others' anger... or from her own cruel, self-inflicted wounds.
He remembered his sense of futility when Lady Harrington had learned of Paul Tankersley's death. She'd been shattered by her loss, white-faced and stricken, and she'd shut out the entire universe, even Nimitz, for three terrible days. LaFollet had been terrified that they were going to lose her, that she was simply going to go out like a light, but somehow she'd survived. Avenging Tankersley's bought and paid for murder had helped, he thought. It hadn't been enough to prevent the deep wounds not even a full T-year had yet completely healed, for no amount of vengeance could ever restore the man she'd loved to her, but it had helped.
Only this time, there was no one to seek vengeance from, and the only person she could punish for what her company had done was herself.
LaFollet's mind shied away from what this was doing to her. She hadn't withdrawn this time, but the person who looked out through her eyes was no longer his Steadholder. She was a stranger, fulfilling her duties as a naval officer only because some remnant of her deep, personal sense of honor required that she do so. Yet she fulfilled them like a robot, locked in her own private hell and hating herself even more than the people on the planet her ships orbited hated her. There was no cruel, vicious charge anyone could hurl at her which she hadn't already hurled at herself, and the fresh damage had ripped her old wounds wide.
He watched the green pressure signal light over the docking tube and remembered the first night after the dome's collapse. He'd been off duty when MacGuiness commed him frantically, and he'd rushed to her quarters to find her writhing in the sweat-soaked grip of a nightmare. He had no idea what agonies she’s been inflicting upon herself, but one look at Nimitz had told him they were terrible.
Even when she'd withdrawn into her numb, frozen cocoon after Tankersley’s death, she'd never truly been alone, for Nimitz had been with her. He'd shared her pain, but he'd fought for her, pouring his love and support into her while he handled the anguish beating at him through their empathic link and refused to let it suck him under with her or make him let her go.
Not this time. This time her agony had claimed him, as well, and a hissing, red-eyed, bare-fanged demon had crouched on the carpet just inside her sleeping cabin when MacGuiness keyed the hatch. Andrew LaFollet was no coward, but he'd seen the videotapes of the Maccabeus coup attempt, seen Nimitz kill and maim men who threatened Honor Harrington, and it would have been more than his life was worth to dare that door guard's fury. He and MacGuiness had talked to the 'cat, gently, soothingly, almost begging him to let them pass, and there'd been no response. None at all. Nimitz had been lost in his person's agony, hammered back to the bloody-fanged violence of his evolutionary past.