If I did anything so precipitate as try to initiate a general search without being sure I could isolate the activity from the mainBrain below, I would most certainly be warning the Grand Sech that things were happening up here and I would likely would lose control of the shipBrain; in this delicate interval since Adelaar released control of the tap and before she gets here, I will do nothing so stupid.
ELMAS OFKA: Quale Yabass, you know the trans-tubes, take us where the squads are, if they need reinforcing…
QUALE: As soon as Adelaar’s in.
(A pause; Parnalee imagined him checking his thumbchron.)
Only a few minutes more, five at most. Whatever’s happening won’t change that much in five minutes.
ELMAS OFKA (An angry hiss, like a spitting kitten. Sound of footsteps as she prowled about the Bridge.
Parnalee laughed aloud and stroked his hand across the Dark Sister’s metal skin, content for the moment to hear the Empress bested like that, having to spend her impatience in the movements of her body. He played with the pad and brought in another conversation.)
A HORDAR (probably one of Jamber Fausse’s men, Parnalee didn’t know their names and didn’t care to know.):
Look at her, man, I wouldna wanna put my butt in reach of those claws.
SECOND HORDAR: Hunh.
FIRST HORDAR: Wonder how K’mik’s doing. Part of his squad’s a Sea Farm isya, wouldna trust them bitches far as I could throw one.
SECOND HORDAR: Oh, I dunno. She’s one.
(Parnalee pictured him making an obscene gesture toward Elmas Ofka, but he didn’t delude himself that was actually happening: these mamaboys had a ridiculous respect for the whipmistress.)
FIRST HORDAR: Don’t hardly seem so; she don’t act so snotty as others I could name.
SECOND HORDAR: Tried to grope that little Cinnal, eh?
FIRST HORDAR: Got nothing to do with it. They just snotty, that’s all.
Aslan sat at an abandoned station, one foot tucked under her. She scribbled on a battered pad with most of its leaves torn off, looking around at intervals to see if anything interesting was happening. The Ridaar was propped inconspicuously beside a screen, flaking the events of the Bridge, but in situations when more than an unadorned report was required, when her emotions and sensory reactions, her intuitions and expectations were part of the story, it was her habit to write down whatever came into her mind, disjointed words, phrases, the only requirement a precise identification of time and place.
The Rau was picking delicately at a sensorboard, calling up items and lists, absorbing what was there, his relatively immobile face unreadable. Elmas Ofka was still pacing, throwing angry looks at Pels and at the door. Quale sat at another station, looking sleepy and disengaged. Karrel Goza and Lirrit Ofka were standing apart from the other Hordar, not touching but intensely aware of each other, their conversation single words or phrases interrupted by long periods of silence. Jamber Fausse joined his band; they were gathered by the prisoners, talking in low mutters and looking suspiciously at the others on the Bridge. This clutch of mismates, she thought, they looked like a separating sauce; somebody’s going to have to give them a few brisk stirs to save the mix.
Adelaar came striding in, crossed to Quale. “Still mopping up?”
“So it seems; we haven’t heard anything from the other squads.” He gave the Hanifa a lazy grin as she joined them. “You think you could run a scan on the ship without triggering wrong ideas in downside techs?”
“Give me a minute.” She swung round and loped over to Pels; they consulted in polysyllabic mutters for several minutes, then he jumped down, let her have the command station, moved to the nearest aux com station and brought it online.
Aslan moved closer, her eyes shifting from Adelaar’s busy hands to the small screen at the station; it was the first time since she was a small child that she’d seen her mother doing real work. Never when she was home for a visit and not back at Base. She wasn’t welcome at the Listening Station; Adelaar did very little while she was there, either turning over her work to Parnalee or Kumari and walking outside with her, or chasing her with impatient cutting words which came so close to quarreling that she left rather than provoke her mother further. Her mother’s facility reminded her rather oddly of Xalloor’s dancing; she watched Adelaar and remembered Unntoualar females weaving, Vandavremmi stormdancers weaving bubble sculptures fifty kilometers across. Even Sarmaylen walking round and round a rock, reading images into it. Enigmatic, fascinating, rather demonic. A capacity for unraveling secrets and extending control over other people far beyond what she herself considered acceptable.
Images on the small screen, pale green lines, a race through successive cross sections, a jolting stop and the great mainscreen flared into activity. A huge cavernous space about massive shipdrives, control stations dark and dusty except for the central area. A complex mix of sounds, the explosions of the pellet guns, the ping-whine of ricochets, shouts, groans, clatter of feet on catwalks, unidentifiable knocks, cracks, thuds. Four bodies motionless on the catwalks, some distance apart, no two on the same level. A fighter lay bleeding slowly from one arm, the other three were low-level techs in the Drive Gang. A small dark form darted out of shadow, shot at something, threw himself into a twisting roll that took him back into shadow. Adelaar’s shoulders twitched. “Quale.”
“Right. Hailer, hmm?”
“Ready. You talk, they’ll hear.”
“Right.” He set a hand on the back of her chair. “The Bridge is taken,” he said. “If you surrender, you’ll be set down on Tassalga alive and in good shape. If you continue your resistance, you’ll be dead. Keeping on is futile. In a few days we will be sending this Warship into the sun. Kanlan Gercik, collect your squad, get them out of there. We can seal any holdouts in the Drive Sector and let them fry.” His voice was weary, uninterested in what the holdouts decided, a lazy baritone smooth as cream and far more convincing than a raucous scream. Aslan scribbled rapidly, scatter-shot words that said, in effect, I-don’t-care-what-you-do can be more terrifying than hate and rage.
The image went silent, still.
A moment later Kanlan Gercik’s voice sounded from somewhere near the control bank. “Zhurev, Meskel Suffor, Harli Tanggаr, move your units toward the entrance. Meskel, can you get to your wounded friend?”
In his soft slurring west coast accent, Meskel Suffor answered, “If the others give me cover; better so, if the Gang shows a touch of smarts and surrenders.”
“Start moving. Quale Yabass, is there any way of getting the name of the Engineer?”
Quale shifted his gaze to Adelaar, raised his brows.
Adelaar nodded, worked her pads and pulled up three names on the small screen. “They’re all Huvveds. Erek Afa Kaffadar, Boksor Tra Shiffre, Marak Sha Yarmid.”
“Any idea which?”
“No indication.”
“Kanlan Gercik, did you hear that?”
“If you could repeat them?” After Quale finished the list, Kanlan called out, “Erek, Bokso, Marak, whichever you are. Talk to me.”
More silence, broken mainly by scuffs and some tings where something metallic touched a rail or a piece of equipment, the members of the squad edging toward the entrance.
“What guarantee do we have?” The voice was gruff, impatient, with the arrogant edge of a top-rank Huvved.
“The guarantee you’ll fry.”
“We have the drives.”
“So you can sit and watch them hum as you head for the sun.” A snort. “You got some kind of idea you can run them without the shipBrain?”
Silence.
Muttering.
A scuffle.
Then a different voice. “Hang on a minute.” More muttering.
A dull thump (pellet gun tossed onto the rubbery floor covering), more thumps, more guns.
“That’s it. Hold everything. We’re coming out. We got to carry Tra Shiffre.”