In much lighter, more casual wear was Admiral Juanita Krill, a woman who was not only tall, taller than Harker’s one-fifty centimeters, but also large-boned. She wasn’t so much fat as imposing, and the fact that she had a bony crest going from above the eyes back and over the skull and terminating near the back of her neck made her look almost alien. The crest was actually a fairly common effect, as were the tumors, but on her it didn’t look like a deformity. It, well, worked.
She wasn’t known for her brawn or fighting abilities, though. She was known as The Confederacy’s greatest expert on planting and finding eavesdropping and other such devices. In an age when these might be nanomachines created in the food preparation modules and inserted in your morning coffee, this was impressive. So, of course, was Commander Park.
“You worked with her, I believe,” Harker commented.
Park nodded. “I was one of her proteges. She made me an offer when she left the service to do all the things we wouldn’t allow her to do and get better paid for it, but I turned it down. I was impressed that she was here. I actually sent her an open invitation to get together in town or up there or anywhere else to talk about old times but I never got a reply. Of course, she’s prohibited from all service facilities and installations, but there’s plenty of places beyond the Cuch. Too bad.”
“The others?”
“The little twitch who looks like a chicken is van der Voort, you know the good Father Chicanis, the lady who looks like an Oriental bowling ball is Doctor Takamura, our physicist, and the thing slithering in that looks like a furry snake with pop-up eyes and sharp pointy teeth is our Pooka. Last, but not least, the fairly pretty lady with no growths and her own hair is Doctor Katarina Socolov, a recent graduate of Mendelev University who specializes in cultural anthropology of all things. You make any sense of the group?”
“I’ve been trying. You?”
“I think they’re going to attempt a landing on a Titan world. In fact, I’d stake my professional reputation, which is nonexistent for the most part, that they are going to attempt a landing on Helena, the Karas family’s home in the pre-invasion days.”
“But that was two, three generations ago! What could possibly be left there for them now?”
“Something very important. Something that’s so important they’re willing to bet that the impossible can be done, and that they can get in and somehow get out again with it. Something that would have survived the Titan-forming of the planet, which means it’s well underground.”
“Money?”
“Does that family look like it needs money? I don’t think so. And, as you point out, probably not family members, either. So—what? We’ve run through the entire panoply of things that it might be, and some of the best analytical and psychoanalytical computers have combined every piece of information relating to the family or the world, and we’ve come up with nothing likely that’s worth this kind of risk.”
Harker looked over the motley crew. “It’s a device, that’s for sure. One that they can move but aren’t sure how to get working. That’s why there’s a brilliant mathematician and a top physicist along. To figure it out, or make it do what it’s supposed to. The mercenaries are for protection as needed, the anthropologist just in case there is some semblance of humanity that can be contacted, and the priest is there in case divine intervention would help. The old lady knows where it is but won’t be going. She’s bankrolling the operation and overseeing it. God knows what the Pooka’s for, but they have really good vision in near total darkness and can squeeze into holes and crevices we can’t. Ten to one it’s the bag man. How am I doing?”
“Oh, great. As good as our best computers, in fact. Thing is, now tell me how the hell they expect to get back? Once they’re down there, their best automated stuff won’t work. The Titan power grid will drain everything from them in a matter of seconds. That’s why there are no robots or biorobotics in this batch, so they understand that. It’s the old-fashioned way. Fist and kick and knives and the like. Mogutu will be essential there. Black belts in five disciplines, among other capabilities. N’Gana is more the brute force type, but he’s effective. He was accused of strangling an entire squad with his bare hands. Unfortunately, they were on our side.”
“He didn’t know?”
“He knew. He just didn’t care. They screwed up and pissed him off.”
“Sounds like he deserves to be stuck down there.”
“Could be. But how’re he and the others going to get back up? The only way you can do that is to shut down the entire Titan planetary grid. We don’t even precisely know what they are or how they work or how they live, but we do know that the humans they deign to ignore they consider local fauna to be allowed to roam, or maybe be captured and bred for some quality or another. Nobody comes out who goes in. Maybe their genes do, but not them. If we could blow up the power grid, even make a dent in it, we could beat them, but if it drains all power from anything it doesn’t recognize and if we don’t know what it is exactly or how it works and the best minds we have just can’t make a dent in it, then how the hell do they expect to shut it down? Those types aren’t suicidal, and all the money in the universe can’t compensate for being stuck down there living the life of a savage until something, kills you.”
“What are they talking about?” Harker asked, looking at the assemblage and noting that the old diva was there, now again looking like she had in the Cuch, under a hood and veil and baggy dress that made her, well, social again.
“Audio up to normal,” Park commanded. “Begin at briefing start.”
All the people in the lounge now were suddenly seated except for Father Chicanis, interestingly enough, who stood to one side of the screen.
“Isn’t the priest a Karas?” Harker asked. “Maybe he’s more than divine intervention. Maybe he’s the family’s man on the expedition. True faith in God would help on that score here.”
“He is and you’re right.”
The priest was speaking.
“Good day, ladies, gentlemen, others,” he began in his sermonizing voice. Harker had heard that kind of voice before; it seemed to be taught by seminaries throughout The Confederacy and perhaps since the beginning of religion. He’d grown up being hauled to church every Sunday morning to hear that. “I apologize for the lengthy lay-to here, but we have had some coordination problems with the last member of the team. We are now awaiting word on whether to wait longer or to proceed and rendezvous en route. That is beginning to sound like a more practical course. It’s not that our objectives mean anything less if they are accomplished next month or next year rather than now, although word has come that a new force of Titan Ships is incoming, and this will increase our journey through hostile space and possibly get us mixed up with the inevitable refugee flights if we don’t proceed before that begins. It is also boring here, and they are going mad, I think, trying to figure out what we are up to here. Every new day we lay to in this port is one more day they have to compromise us.”
“You got that right,” Park muttered to himself.
“Not to mention the fact that you haven’t told us squat about just what our objective is,” N’Gana commented in his deep and imposing bass.