In an ancient gesture, the assembled bowed their heads for a moment of silence. As the memorial broke up, Rue saw Mike hanging out at the edge of the crowd, uneasily glancing back at her. After the effort of speaking the eulogy, she felt strangely disconnected and so she felt it easy to go over to him. At the same time she was cringing inwardly at the thought that her need to save her crew had gotten two people killed and she was calculating whether the speech she had given would result in greater morale and respect for her. Her distraction allowed her to smile at him warmly, and say, "Thank you for being here."
"It's not like I had any choice," he said stiffly.
"Still. I need you with us, Mike. I… need you with me on this. We went through a lot to get to this point, and I'm sorry about the deception of the past months. But my people were— are— in danger. It was necessary."
"Yes, Captain."
Now Rue's carefully built mask crumbled. "Oh, Mike, I'm so sorry." She reached out tentatively. "Have the past months changed you so much?"
"No." He jammed his fists into the pockets of his jumpsuit. "It's you who's changed, Rue. You… don't need me. There was a time when I thought you might."
"Need you? Like Herat needs you? No, Dr. Bequith, I don't need you that way," she said hotly. "And I hope I never do. I'm not looking for a servant, I'm looking for an equal. Somebody who's with me not because of what they can do for me, but because of what we can do together." She turned away, shaking her head. "Once upon a time I imagined we could do great things together."
He flushed with anger. Rue regretted her sharp words, but damn it, none of this was her fault. She shook her head and floated over to Dr. Herat, who was floating nearby in a flock of inscape windows. "What are we faced with, Professor?"
"Crisler's here all right. And he's right at the source." Herat pointed to a window where a false-color image of the Lasa construction site glowed. "This place is pretty complex. From what I can tell, they get their raw materials from tethers that hang down into the dwarfs' upper atmospheres. They skim the elements they want off the top, which must take a long time. These tethers are powered by electrodynamic ones higher up. They bundle the scavenged materials and toss them at the orbital center of the system. There, the Lasa use something like a multilobed ramscoop to pull the packets in and feed it all into this." This was a cylinder, a kilometer long and almost half that in width, that radiated infrared at about 300 K. The Banshee was moored right next to this cylinder.
"So are they building a cycler there?" she asked, nervously twining her hands together.
"Actually, I don't think so. At any rate, I don't think they could launch a cycler using beam power. The total number of power tethers they've got in orbit around the Twins will produce trillions of watts of power, but that's not enough. It's kind of a puzzle, actually," he said happily. "The tethers produce far more power than they'd need to construct a starship or run a sizeable colony, but not enough to launch much more than a cycler cargo. There's no colony. If there's a starship, it's hidden inside that cylinder. So what are they doing with all that power? I don't know."
"What about the Banshee? Are you sure Crisler didn't detect our arrival?"
He nodded. "It's got a very low-level radar ping going. They're not expecting visitors— why should they? These ships," he nodded at a window showing their interceptors, "are not supposed to exist."
"The R.E. discounts the halo as a threat," said Sola, who'd come to hover nearby. "We're seen as bumpkins. It's our biggest advantage."
Rue nodded, contemplating the interceptors. Michael had come to examine the windows as well; secretly she was glad he was putting his anger aside, if only for the moment.
The interceptors certainly looked exotic, and Rue'd had the engineers emboss their diamond hulls with ruby lettering: Lasa script. They had copied fragments of writing found on a wrecked Lasa ship. Nobody knew what the words said; the point was not to fool the Lasa, but to convince Crisler that these interceptors were native to this place— part of the machinery.
Sola, the tactician, pointed to a top-down map of the Twins' system. "We can send teams A and B around the dwarfs, so that they ride in to the construction site in the pellet streams from the scavengers. Two ships at first, so as not to alarm Crisler. They'll dock opposite the Banshee at the construction site and we'll disembark as quickly as we can. If we can employ countermeasures to their inscape or sensors, we'll do that. The two squads will look for any control center, as well as looking for your crew, Captain." He shook his head. "That will be the tricky part."
"You don't have to remind me," she said coldly. "Then what?"
He shrugged. "Then the other interceptors approach. We'll see how close we can get to the Banshee before we have to open fire. But all we have to do is take out a critical system, like her engines and she'll have to surrender. If she's caught unprepared, it should be easy. Immobile, she has no options, because we can slide in behind the 'construction shack' to avoid her weaponry. We'll board her and secure your people."
Rue nodded. "Sounds good. Prepare everyone. It'll take a couple of days to orbit the dwarfs, so we'll head out right away. Communication is to be by laser only. We'll leave this outpost and one interceptor to act as observers."
"So who's on the in-teams?" asked Mike, his expression neutral.
She hesitated. Rue didn't want to send Mike into the fray, but if she left him here as an observer, he would be furious with her. "I'm going," she said. "With one squad, to bring my people out. Dr. Herat will go in the other ship, and… and since you control that autotroph thing, you'll go with him. We need to know what's valuable and what isn't, here. Do we need to secure the whole system to be safe? Or just the new cycler? Only you and Herat can make that assessment."
He nodded, his expression neutral.
The Klaxons sounded and everyone began to suit up to return to their ships. Rue watched Mike as he talked to Dr. Herat. His eyes often drifted back to her; he knew she was watching. But they were separated by meters and an impossible gulf of duty, for now. She tried to fix his features in her mind, in case she never saw him alive again.
HERAT WAS NOT one to let fear get in the way of his enthusiasms; so Michael was surprised at how subdued the professor seemed as they began their run around the back side of Apophis.
As soon as they were coasting on the aerobraking trajectory the pilot had chosen, Herat ordered the telescopes out and began silently studying the face of Apophis. Michael checked on his autotroph companion, and when he was certain the swarm's systems were all working, opened a connection to the ship's telescopes for it.
As he worked he brooded over what Rue had said. Was it true that he knew no other way to relate to those he cared for, other than service? — to place someone else's needs above his own, and ensure that those needs were met? Wasn't that what love was?
Or was it possible that love was sharing your own goals with someone else? In which case… just what were his goals? He didn't know anymore.
"Something's happening," muttered Herat. "I was right."
Michael climbed through the maze of pipes and struts that was the cabin of the interceptor and settled beside Herat. His shoulder brushed the hot carapace of the autotroph's capsule.