"I was only taking precautions," said Yishna, then cringed at her blatant lie. The baton had been in her hand before she even knew what she was thinking, and her finger was ready poised over the button to send the mine's detonation code. Her sister, Rhodane, something about her, about some lack of connection, had caused a resentment and a twisted terror to arise within Yishna. True, she had stopped herself from actually operating the damned thing, but wondered if she could have held out much longer had not McCrooger tackled her.
"I shan't dignify that statement with a reply, because we have no more time to spare. Director Gneiss is demanding to speak to you, and won't cover us down to the planet's surface until he's done so. Meanwhile, every moment we stay here we are in danger."
"Then let me speak to him," said Yishna.
"But you might tell him this ship presents a danger."
"I might, but it would take a lot more than any claim from me to persuade him. What I brought aboard that shuttle was my own idea. He doesn't believe the Brumallians to be a threat."
"Very well, stand up."
Glancing at the quofarl on either side, Yishna pushed herself to her feet. It was only then that she realised she was experiencing gravity, and wondered briefly if the Brumallians had conquered that technology. Once out in the corridor, however, when she saw the curve of the floor, she realised she must be in some part of the ship that had been spun up.
"The drug?" she managed, as she walked between the quofarl.
"Like Rhodane, you find it difficult to talk about what that drug is suppressing," he said.
"I…yes."
"The Shadowman has you by the throat, Yishna. Though her mind has been shaped by him, he has no hold on Rhodane any more. And your reaction to her, I suspect, was either due to that—the elimination of a faulty tool—or to the possibility, however remote, that the evidence we're bringing here might end this war." The door opened and he used sign language to the two quofarl, who then chattered something in Brumallian, before stepping back. They entered some kind of control room where Brumallians sat enclosed in organic technology. Rhodane stood over on the other side of a viewing pit, with something clinging to the side of her head. Immediately Yishna felt another surge of resentment towards her, and just could not fathom why. Fortunately it was weaker than before, so one she thought she could control.
Out of the viewing pit rose the holographic image of Director Gneiss.
"Yishna, where've you been?" he asked. On the surface he evinced suspicion, but underneath that display Yishna wondered if there was anything at all. She did not even want to try to analyse that impression, as she was currently having enough problems with her own emotions.
"I've been scanning this ship," she lied, glancing towards Rhodane, whereupon her emotions ricocheted between resentment, outright hate and strangely a deep sibling love. She tried to push all that emotional clutter aside and operate on intellect alone. "It seems clear of anything untoward."
"Whatever." Gneiss waved a dimissive hand. "I just wanted to be sure you're all right before clearing the ship to land. I'm sending over your route and destination coordinates right away. You'll be landing on the edge of the Komarl, where Duras will meet you."
Yishna gazed at Rhodane, who nodded briefly. Gneiss now blinked out, and Yishna felt McCrooger's hand close around her upper arm.
"Well done," he said. "I could see that was difficult for you."
"The Shadowman?" Yishna queried, remembering his earlier words. Somehow, down deep, she knew exactly what he was talking about, yet there seemed something blocking that information from her conscious inspection.
"Certainly not racial conscience…" said McCrooger. He turned to Rhodane. "We're going in now, I take it?"
"We have our route cleared down to the surface, and shields and defence buoys are being deployed to cover us," said Rhodane. "It should take us about two hours to reach our landing coordinates."
Soon came a rumbling sound, as a Brumallian ship entered the atmosphere of Sudoria for the first time ever.
16
One would have thought that economic collapse on Sudoria would have resulted in automatic victory for the Brumallians. What actually happened is a perfect demonstration of how artificial and insubstantial is this human construction called an economy. Why were some people starving when others were growing more than sufficient food? The extent of the madness operating up to the point of the revolt was revealed when entire warehouses packed with hoarded food were broken into. It was all about money and greed. The people were being taxed savagely to pay for the war effort and further enrich the plutocrats, but because of this tax burden they could not afford to buy sufficient food and essential goods. The subsequent introduction of a fair rationing system after the revolt began to settle unrest, and the fate of Cairo-Desit got people back to work, now knowing they were working for their very survival. Had the owners of those warehouses been prepared to reduce their prices, they might not have ended up drive-bolted to rocks out in the Komarl. It was a simple economic mistake with harsh consequences.
— Uskaron
Director Gneiss
"If you had a spare spacesuit to sell here, you would net enough profit to buy yourself a shuttlecraft," observed Roubert Glass, the Director of Corisanthe III. "The price for one suit is now about a hundred times what it cost only a few hours ago, but few people are ready to sell since there's only about one spacesuit for every 800 citizens aboard."
"I see you're wearing yours," observed Director Gneiss. Indeed, Glass, who was a thin and rather sickly-looking specimen with anaemic blonde hair contrasting starkly with his narrow dark face, appeared to be wearing a spacesuit obviously a few sizes too big for him. Gneiss turned his attention to another screen, showing a view of the station itself from a nearby satellite that had thus far survived the bombardment. Corisanthe III, which had originally started out as a simple cylinder, was now vaguely disc-shaped—after conglomerations of industrial units, private accommodation and the connecting infrastructure had spread out gradually from the cylinder's waist, till eventually subsuming it completely. Spotting an anomaly on the vast structure. Gneiss instructed the satellite to focus in. This revealed, in appalling clarity, a gaping hole in one of the surrounding units. Something had obviously detonated there: either a missile had got through or more likely a shield generator had blown catastrophically. He could now see living quarters standing open to vacuum, and in the surrounding cloud of debris he spotted blankets, furniture, a view screen, and three decompression-bloated bodies, one of them too small to be an adult. A one-man EVA unit was working nearby, equipped with a grab claw and a vacuum glue gun. The operator was collecting debris and sticking it together in a conglomerate to be hauled inside—the quickest way of clearing free-floating debris that could otherwise become a danger to the station. This ghoulish mass of detritus contained bodies as well. After a further moment of close inspection, Gneiss drew the focus back.
Above the station the menisci of its energy shields flashed into view intermittently under the impact of missiles fired by the approaching hilldiggers. Ships crammed with people were constantly departing from below the station, while other ships were returning from the surface of Sudoria. Nevertheless, ensconced in his office aboard Corisanthe Main, Gneiss could tell by the numbers he called up that this civilian evacuation would take months. Hopefully their assessment of Harald's strategy was correct, and he did not intend the total destruction of this place but merely to break supply chains by keeping the station on the defensive.