They, and their European and Russian counterparts, had been gathering for the better part of three weeks. They arrived by truck or coastal barge, never in units larger than fifteen personnel and two vehicles, collecting here and in a dozen other coastal enclaves, well away from major towns or cities. Thandla and Wasserman had been assigned to go to Java in the second wave, with what the Americans incongruously called their “Air Cavalry.” Sanjay would have expected an ornate Pegasus as the unit symbol, but it was simply a black-rimmed gold shield which was adorned by (in the language of heraldry that he had learned during an early fascination with the age of chivalry) a bend sable and a chief sinister couped horse head, also sable. The other unit concealed here at the water’s edge, a German troop of high-speed VTOL drone controllers, was the first wave. How any of them were to survive getting airborne had not yet been explained.
Lemuel had stopped to speak with one of the American pilots before he finished his journey back to Thandla. “They say it shouldn’t be long now. Maybe an hour, maybe half. Maybe less.”
Thandla smiled, looked east across the water. He heard Wasserman’s feet shift in the sand: a noise that signified suppressed irritation. It was the greatest exertion of self-restraint that Wasserman seemed capable of. “Yes, Lemuel? What is it?”
The foot-scuffling stopped. “Well, yeah. I just want to know why you’re smiling. I mean, what’s to smile about? In a few hours, we’ll be—”
“We’ll be doing what we have trained to do, ever since returning from the Convocation. Once we are in Jakarta, I will be trying to glean data from a hopefully intact Arat Kur computer. You will be searching for any files or technology which will better help us understand their shift and antimatter drives. Are you not eager to begin?”
“Well, yeah—but no. I mean, look at this place.” Wasserman waved back at the vehicles of the second wave. They were low, wedge-shaped deltas with sleek turrets and menacing secondary weapon blisters. The intakes for their ducted-thrust engines were broad, thin slits, reminiscent of a shark’s mouth when cruising for prey. Two of the vehicles were larger, boxier vehicles bristling with sensor and communication pods and antennae. All were in an aqua-blue mottled camouflage scheme that would shift to green-gray when they finished their run across the Sunda Strait to Java. “You feel safe riding in those?” Wasserman asked.
“Far safer than riding in those.” Thandla smiled, pointed at the lighter, more needlelike fuselages of the German VTOLs: built for linear speed rather than nap-of-earth combat support operations, the airframes of the European craft looked faster but infinitely more fragile. Not that that mattered: nothing could withstand a direct hit from any of the Arat Kur orbital interdiction batteries.
“That’s not what I mean,” Wasserman pressed. “I’m talking about doing any of this. You know, being here.”
Thandla did not understand. “You mean, in Indonesia?”
“No, I mean in the middle of a war zone. Doesn’t that—bother you?”
Ah. That was it, then. Thandla shook his head. “No, not really.”
“But I thought— You’ve mentioned a wife. And kids. Right?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re not scared of—of—?”
Could he really not say the word? Was he no more prepared than this? “Scared of dying? I am scared, although perhaps not as you mean it.”
“You mean there’s more than one version of ‘scared’?”
Thandla ignored the facetious tone. “Yes. I am scared that I will not see my family—or this world—again.”
“Yeah, there you go. That’s the kind of scared I’m talking about.”
“I think it is not. For if I depart this world, this frame of existence, I only go to another that is closer to Nirvana, to a communion with and dissolution into all things.”
Wasserman had leaned back. “You believe that stuff?”
Thandla smiled at Wasserman’s crude and artless dismay, but also at the undeniable undercurrent of personal concern, as if the American were listening to a friend who had decided to go skydiving without checking his parachute. “Yes, Lemuel, I believe that stuff. I always have. Both in peace and, now, at war.”
Lemuel was quiet for a long moment. An eternity, for him, Thandla reflected. “Does that belief make you feel better at a time like this?”
“I do not know. Probably. It affects how I feel—and think—at all times.”
Lemuel made a noise that sounded like a cross between a grunt and a sigh. “Hunh.” Thandla looked at him; Wasserman was staring out over the water. “Hunh,” he said again.
“What is it?”
“I’m just thinking about today, and about Murphy’s Laws.”
Thandla smiled. “Which one?”
“The one which predicts that since you’re not particularly worried about death, you’ll probably get away without a scratch. And because I’m shit-scared about dying, I’ll probably get my guts blown out.”
Wasserman’s projection was too juvenile and unreasonably cynical to warrant a response, but Thandla was struck by its subtext. That, for reasons unclear, Lemuel Wasserman was admitting to fears and cosmological misgivings and anxieties. To him.
Thandla felt his smile widen, saw Lemuel glance over—but his eyes did not make it all the way to Thandla’s. His gaze froze on something he had seen over Sanjay’s shoulder.
“Dr. Thandla.”
Sanjay turned. Two command pilots, one American, one German, had come to stand behind him. They both had their hands behind their backs. The American, a major, was looking down. “Dr. Thandla,” he repeated, “I’m afraid we’ve got a change of plans.”
“I do not understand.”
The German captain spoke with a directness that was jarring after the American’s soft Missouri drawl. “Herr Doctor, our lead encryption and decoding specialist has been afflicted with gastroenteritis for two days. Treatments have not been effective. He is quite incapacitated.”
“What does this have to do with me?”
The American looked up. “Dr. Thandla, Kapitan Dortmuller’s C4I specialist was to coordinate jamming and counterjamming for the bow wave of our operations from Sumatra. Without his crash-training in what little we know about Arat Kur systems, machine language, and programming habits, the kapitan’s mission could be over almost before it begins. We cannot lose control of the jamming and image-making drones that will be deployed in advance of his unit. We have to stay one electronic step ahead of the Arat Kur attempts to see through them.”
“To cover an attack by your vehicles in the second wave?”
The American looked away. “Well, yeah, that too. But there’s more at stake. There are units out there”—he nodded toward the surf without looking away—“that need those seconds even more than my attack wave does.” He held Thandla with his eyes. “Much more. ’Course, I’m also aware that we need to keep you ready in the rear, so that you can pick apart any of their computers that we might get our hands on. So maybe I’m talking to the wrong person.” He looked over at Lemuel. “As I understand it, Dr. Wasserman, you’re just about as competent as Dr. Thandla when it comes to what little we know about Arat Kur hard- and software.”