That much—that compromise of Arat Kur electronics and computing technology—Darzhee Kut had to report. But he could not mention Riordan’s name. If he did, it meant that the human’s status as a diplomat would be revoked. In short, it would mean issuing a death warrant for Riordan.
But a further question presented itself. Even if the finer details of this incident remained obscure, what would Riordan do next? Something else that was particularly troublesome? And if so, was it not inevitable that both the Hkh’Rkh and the Arat Kur would endeavor to localize and eliminate such a threat—regardless of whether they had learned the threat was named Caine Riordan?
Darzhee Kut felt a twinge through the center of his body: that must not occur. Not simply because Caine had had no choice but to flee, and once fled, had little choice but to fight back. More importantly, he, alone of all humans, truly seemed to harmonize—at least in part—with the rockheart of the Arat Kur. And in that harmony lay the possibility of communication, of a cultural bridge, by which the war could be stopped, a settlement reached, a peace established. But without that harmony—
In the streets, Darzhee Kut heard several rockets explode. Dust shook down from the absurdly high ceilings beneath which he stood motionless. Without Caine’s tendency toward harmony with the Arat Kur, this might be the only future both races and their coming generations would ever know: war.
Endless, savage, senseless war.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The tiny, archaic wharfside in Nevis’ one port, Charlestown, hadn’t changed much from Trevor’s last visit eight years ago. Admittedly, there were more cars running here than he had seen in Annapolis, Norfolk, or Jacksonville, but that was because the newer fuel-cell models hadn’t yet become ubiquitous in the Caribbean, particularly not in the sleepy Leeward Islands. Their up-front costs were high and many local mechanics remained unfamiliar with them. So blue-white plumes of ethanol exhausts marked the movement of vehicles around the small coastal town, where there were no physical signs that the Earth had been invaded dirtside, completely encircled spaceside, and was facing a most uncertain future. No, this was Nevis—and nothing changed very much.
Trevor hefted his locker by the end handle, swung it around to rest against his back, and made his way off the pier onto the street.
“Taxi, sir?” The inevitable inquiry—but made by a strangely accented and familiar voice. Trevor turned—
—and saw Chief Petty Officer Stanislaus Witkowski emerge, arising from a supine position between two crates, pushing a panama hat back from his eyes.
“Stosh? What the hell are you—?”
“Doing? Waiting. For you. I hate officers. Always late. Ready to go up to the house?”
Trevor wanted to be able to play the surly boss, but couldn’t. “Stosh, you are a sight for sore eyes.”
“Or a sight to make eyes sore. Or so the ladies tell me. It’s tolerable seeing you again, too, sir. You’ve had a pretty busy itinerary since Mars, if shack chat is half true.”
“Yeah, they’ve kept me hopping.” They had arrived at a worn but ready-looking Land Rover, which was idling irregularly. “How bad did the EMPs hit you down here?”
“Bad enough. Scuttlebutt says they pretty much blanketed the globe.”
“Yeah, that’s what they told me in Norfolk. Wasn’t intense enough to knock out milspec hardening, but any civilian gear that was switched on was pretty much fried. West coast got hammered. It was the start of rush hour there.”
Stosh opened the door with a flourish. “Not as bad as Tokyo or Beijing if you can believe the ham radio operators. Hit them right after everyone had settled in to work: computers on, streets packed, deliveries underway, elevators crowded. More than a little messy.”
Trevor rolled his eyes when Stosh opened the car door and held it for him. “And was it some ham operator who told you I was coming?”
Stosh slid in the right-hand driver’s side. “Nope, that was the little birdie that visits a noncom when his CO is about to come and make his life miserable. And shorter.”
“And does that little birdie have a name?”
“Yes. It’s called ‘Common Sense.’ I figured when the EMP hit, you’d be heading down here to keep us in the loop. Given the timetables for the coastal feeder system, I guesstimated you’d get out of Annapolis either the night we got hit by the cosmic bug-zappers or the day after. I figured you’d hitch a ride through to Norfolk and then have a zero-wait time to get a boat to Jacksonville or Miami.”
“Zero-wait time?”
Stosh had cleared the outskirts of Charlestown, gunned the Land Rover. “Captain, I’ve seen the card that Mr. Downing gave you. You weren’t going to be waiting on line anywhere. So I just ran the numbers, figuring it would take you maybe as many as two days to get a boat either out of the Keys or the Bahamas, wherever you had heard of the best connection.”
“Your little birdie is pretty clever.”
“Sometimes clever. Sometimes simply equipped with good ears.”
Trevor smiled as they bounced over a ghut, a gullylike washway that had been given formal and permanent shape by concrete. “Hard to believe there’s much worth hearing this far away from DC.”
“See? You officers lack imagination, lack vision. Don’t hear as well as our little birdies do, either. F’r instance, do you know how popular the local Four Seasons resort is with megacorporate executives and defense engineers?”
“Very?”
“Very very. And you’d be surprised at some of the things an NCO’s little drink-buying birdy can hear there.”
“Such as?”
“Oh, such as—Delta Pavonis remained off-limits even after the Virus scare was lifted, and even though a lot of military traffic continued heading there and to points beyond.”
“What kind of military traffic?”
“All kinds, but a lot of interesting cargo, particularly low-mass support weapons and high-tech assault gear. If you listen to the lower-echelon types, they are convinced that the knuckleheads in logistics really screwed the pooch on this one. According to them, the reason we’re short of so many key systems here on Earth is because we sent them out to defend the colonies.”
“What shortages are you talking about?”
“Hadn’t you heard? EVA is almost unattainable. Specialty ammo is in short supply, particularly for heavy weapons. And the unofficial word on tacnukes is that the arsenals’ racks are as bare as Mother Hubbard’s cupboard. So, apparently, are the barracks that house special and elite units.”
“Which you learned how?”
“Just because we’re incognito interlopers in this tropical paradise doesn’t mean we couldn’t do some online lurking, looking in on the websites of some pals in Pensacola, Quantico, Coronado, Benning and Bragg.”
“And?”
“And most of their sites haven’t been touched in about four months. The others have become electronic ghost towns.”
“And where have your missing pals disappeared to?”
“Oh, you hear lots of rumors. A popular one is that they were on the carriers or capital ships that were lost at Barnard’s Star, or out at Jupiter.”
Trevor held on to the roof with his left hand as they swept around a long, palm-lined curve. Mounting up on his left was the extinct volcanic cone of Mount Nevis. Sweeping off to the right was a sward of elephant grass that led his eye onward to a broad white-sand arc, then white breakers, and finally glass-smooth turquoise water. “I was at Barnard’s Star for better than a month. I didn’t see a single SEAL or green beanie. No spec ops personnel at all. You might say their absence was conspicuous.”