"Can you continue?" asked Rhodane.
I nodded very carefully, frightened that too vigorous a response might damage my neck. She stared at me for a long moment until I realised my gesture had been wasted—not being emphatic enough for her to recognise.
"I can," I said.
As she moved on, I stepped out from the wall and turned to follow her. Slog and Flog, recently departing the ladder, moved in either side of me and gripped a biceps each. I felt that protest now would be foolish, because it seemed unlikely I would be able to manage any distance at all down here on my own.
Rhodane led the way into a kind of dormitory, with beds jutting from the wall like bracket fungi, and sporting those familiar organic mattresses. Tottering through the door after her, I could think of nothing to say, I was so unutterably weary. She merely gestured to one of the beds, onto which Slog and Flog released me. I hauled up my legs, then…nothing.
Yishna
Leaning her forehead against a port of the inter-station shuttle—the cool glass soothing the burn inside her skull—Yishna observed a landing craft departing Corisanthe II, and knew Duras was aboard and now on his way back to the planet's surface. He might well achieve all he intended down there, but she suspected it would not be enough. A conflict between Fleet and Combine seemed unavoidable, no matter what votes were won in Parliament. As the shuttle turned, she took her head away from the port, then pulled herself over and down into the chair beside Dalepan, and strapped herself in.
"What preparations are being made?" she asked.
"All the quadrant guns are now operational," said Dalepan, as he guided the shuttle towards the distant speck of Corisanthe Main. "Presently all other weapons systems are being checked, as are all the safety protocols." He gestured to the spacesuit he wore. "Everybody works wearing one of these now."
"If it comes to us ever needing them, we'll probably have lost," said Yishna.
"Perhaps so, but we also have a few surprises awaiting the hilldiggers—should they attack. Gneiss has only just informed me that Orbital Combine has been working in secret to build and develop gravity-disruptor weapons, which are also being installed on the Corisanthe stations and on some of the defence platforms. We are also launching stealthed space mines, and Fleet is being ordered to stand off by a million miles."
"Which Fleet will not do."
Dalepan nodded, then went on, "I think the largest imponderable concerns directed and undirected weapons. All the stations of Orbital Combine are a sitting target so Fleet could remain far out and pound us with inert missiles fired by linear accelerator. If we reply in kind, the hilldiggers merely need to be moved."
"Collateral damage," said Yishna, understanding at once.
"Precisely. If they bombard us from a distance, a proportion of their missiles will inevitably strike Sudoria. Is Harald prepared to countenance that? How far is he prepared to go to win?" Dalepan gazed at Yishna queryingly.
"I don't know," she replied, and then began to consider what might be her brother's objectives, and just what he might do to attain them.
Upon their arrival at Corisanthe Main, they were forced to wait until sufficient precautions were taken before the shields shut down. While this was being done, Yishna observed a maintenance vessel approaching the station, clutching in its multiple grabs some kind—of—massive engine. Space all around it was filled with suited figures and installation pods. After the shields shut down, a computer-controlled maintenance sphere mounted with a missile launcher came out to escort them in. Upon docking, five heavily armed OCTs came aboard to check over their ship before she and Dalepan could disembark.
Once inside the station, he told her, "Stay healthy," before moving off. She smiled her thanks, but had to wonder about that comment. Certainly she had not been too healthy when last she left this place, and now, upon her return, felt a growing fear that she might once again become the troubled person she had been then. Shaking her head angrily she set out, two of the armed OCTs staying to escort her to the Director. From them she discovered that all Worm research had been stopped—the containment cylinders locked down under a security protocol, but thankfully not one for a physical breach, she realised, because, after her own interference, that would have meant the containment cylinders had long departed the station. Everyone she saw on the way was wearing either spacesuits or emergency survival suits and seemed to be moving at an accelerated pace.
In his office the Director had the same question for her as Dalepan had asked aboard the shuttle.
"I've considered this," she replied, "and come to the conclusion that, just like myself, my brother is prepared to do anything to attain his goals."
Director Gneiss gestured to the seat before his desk, swung a screen scroll across on a pivoted arm, extended the flimsy screen, then tapped something into a console before him. Yishna sat eyeing the sensor head mounted in the wall behind him, then his suit helmet resting on the desk beside him. She had yet to collect a suit for herself from the stores. After a moment he gazed across at her, and once again Yishna was struck by how she somehow knew him, yet could never read him. Having been away for a while she had nearly convinced herself that her prior opinion of him had been distorted somehow. But here, now, upon her return, she found him just as unnerving as ever.
"We have defences against conventional weapons, and possess many such weapons too," he stated. "We also have gravtech weapons of our own; however, there is as yet very little defence against them, and in the end, should they be deployed by either side, very little will remain around Sudoria but the wreckage of the hilldiggers and our stations."
"But don't the same rules apply to gravtech weapons as to missiles that aren't self-directed, like those fired by linear accelerator?" Yishna interlaced her fingers in her lap and attempted a relaxed mien. She had no doubt that members of the Combine Oversight Committee were watching very closely everything that occurred in this room and logging questions on the screen the Director kept flicking his plastic gaze towards.
"Your point?" he asked.
"A gravity-disruptor burst expands like a torch beam—by the inverse square law—so to hit one of our stations without striking Sudoria, that weapon would need to be fired at or below the orbital level of the station." Yishna shrugged. "Should a hilldigger manage to attain such an advantageous position, that would mean it no longer needed to use such a weapon." Gneiss just stared back at her so she continued. "What Harald could do in close with gravity disruptors, he could also manage at a distance, with little danger to Fleet, with missiles fired by linear accelerator. To go back to your original question: I feel my brother will be quite prepared to inflict considerable collateral damage on Sudoria while attaining his goal. But I feel the real question to ask is how much collateral damage to their home planet are those under his command prepared to tolerate?"
"You make some interesting points," said Gneiss.
"Harald is not Fleet," Yishna added. "And it is well to remember that there'll be few under his command who do not have family down on the surface, and even aboard some of the Combine stations."