A Princess of the Aerie (32 page)

The snake’s head reached into Jak’s heart and paused there, flat expressionless eyes looking into the dark of each chamber,
venom oozing from the fangs into his bloodstream. “You’ll accesscast the material I need to get out there, if I cooperate,
and not if I don’t?”

Sinda smiled, not a smile he’d ever seen on any access-cast. “Results soon are much better than results later, silly boy.
If ten minutes from now I have the stuff I need, and it takes twenty minutes to edit it, then thirty-one minutes from now
it will be out there grabbing audience.”

“The parts about MLB—”

“All great, toktru, I wouldn’t cut it for a billion utils, because it’ll make that much. But I’ll hold it till I can frame
it as I like. If you give me what I want,
right now,
I can frame it as I like,
right now
, and it goes out,
right now.
” Anyone looking in at that moment might have thought she was flirting with him. “Now, Jak, do I get my interview with the
answers I want? Before you’re even back at the krilj, or wherever you’re going next, it will be all over Mercury and on its
way to everywhere else. You are right. Once this is accesscast, Riveroma’s little scheme will be over.”

“Well, then,” Jak said. “Well.” He swallowed hard. “And you won’t give me any evidence I can take with me, about why I actually
said these things?”

She laughed. “Do you know how much you could sell that for, to a competitor, as an accesscast? One second after you say it,
I’ll be denying everything—and I intend to be in a position to make those denials stick.”

He stared at the situation. He preferred his friends alive (and wrongly hating him) rather than dead (and rightly trusting).
“All right then.”

“Full cooperation?”

“Full.”

Drones flew from her bag, and surrounded Jak in a mass of tiny lights and cameras. “Now,” she said, “start with explaining
how the whole purpose of this is to win back Shyf Karrinynya’s heart, and how you’ll do anything for her. Then slide into
how angry you are with Dujuv Gonzawara for screwing everything up and for being a big stupid panth. Stress how much he lied
about you and what a fool he is. Remember, be convincing.”

* * *

Just four people remained in the krilj when Jak returned: Dujuv, Shadow, and Bref, who had to be there, and Narav, who wanted
to be everywhere his brother went. With Durol dead there was no one to tell Narav no. Shadow looked up from his diagrams and
said, “No doubt my tove will explain that accesscast, and apologize later. Right now we have a plan to carry out and I cannot
be sure how much time remains to us. Bref’s data penetrations show that MLB knows what is going on, and we have to worry about
the possibility of the rest of the quacco being held as hostages, either by capture or by some weapons being sighted in on
their ferry. So we need to move fast and decisively. Therefore I am going to tell you all what to do; I have some experience
at this kind of thing. Please accept any offense to your customs as a matter of pure necessity.

“Here’s what we’re going to try.” He talked quickly to his purse; maps and diagrams danced across the projected screen on
the wall. “That’s it.” He made each of them review his part. “We’re ready. Any serious reason to delay?”

Four human heads shook in unison. The Rubahy nodded once, gravely, and said; “Sinda’s accesscast will bring help, but if the
evidence is destroyed, this will all just have to be done again, when all the rats come back after the cat is gone.” He raised
his head and looked at each of them in turn. “I derive great honor from being permitted to direct an operation with four very
brave people in it. I thank you for the honor. This is not the time for the discussion of any other points of honor.”

Jak said, “I do have an explanation and an apology, the moment that there’s time.”

“Of course, you would,” Dujuv said. He pulled his helmet on and closed up for outside work. The boys, then Jak, closed up
and com checked.

Shadow closed up last. “Now, my friends, quiet and quick, and let us see how much honor we can wrest from so estimable an
enemy. Shut off your default sends—I think it best that we maintain radio silence.”

“Tell me, again,” Dujuv said. “And don’t tell me like I’m stupid.”

Jak hoped his nodding would show through his pressure suit: “All right, then. First team on the surface, that’s Shadow, Narav,
and Bref, scoots for cover. Second team, me and you, activates the dead man trigger on the slagger. Each of our purses checks
with us and sends the dead man switch a signal every twenty minutes, via the
Spirit of Singing Port,
which will be in orbit overhead, where it’s line of sight from us, for about two hours. Phrysaba and Pabrino will be monitoring
com links the whole time, too, so if things go badly there’s at least some human judgment in the loop.”

“That makes
me
feel better,” Shadow said dryly.

Jak went on. “If it doesn’t get signal from any of us, the dead man switch starts a clock. If we still haven’t called in six
minutes later, it turns on that slagger Kyffimna planted earlier. The slagger sprays the upper part of the west wall of the
crater, where MLB is, with positrons. That will trigger a big, fast flow of magma down onto the crater floor, and it will
keep doing it until the flowing magma overruns the slagger itself. Check your rocable, because that’s how we get rescued if
we get trapped outside with a magma flood.”

“I can’t wear one because they haven’t made them for anyone with rage spines,” Shadow said, “so I will either have to die
with great honor or be extremely quick and clever. Either way, actually, will get me great honor.”

“All right,” Jak said. “Now, the objective is for Shadow and Bref to get across there, to the main storage cave, and hack
the recordkeeping system so that it will upload everything to general access, along with any pictures they can shoot. Everything
else is just a diversion from that. But if we’re all captured before we can get there, then the flood of magma will keep them
pretty busy, and seal over the outside of the cave. That will tie everything up in dozens of courts until they can excavate
and confirm that Kyffimna was telling the truth, and, uh—just possibly kill those of us who don’t get to high ground fast
enough. So let’s hope Plan A works.”

“All right, everything’s what I thought it was,” Dujuv said. “Sorry to make us all review.”

“Dujuv Gonzawara,” Shadow on the Frost said, “a human of your honor and accomplishments is entitled to as many reviews as
he wants. Now let’s move. As Duke Psim often says, plans are like fresh mayonnaise, best used just after they are made, dangerous
if the least bit old.”

They used only passive infrared to guide them through the old tunnels.

The Eldothaler boys needed no navigation device; Bref would simply pop up into a shaft and begin chimneying up, Narav would
follow, and Dujuv, Shadow, and Jak would turn to each other, shrug, and follow. Or Narav would inexplicably veer right or
left as they walked down a dark tunnel, its walls a mess of confusing shadows in the infrared, into what had seemed to be
a big spot on the wall; Bref would stop to guide them into the spot, and they would find that they had entered a different
tunnel.

All around them the surfaces gleamed in weird shapes under the infrared, reminding them that many times they were walking
through a tunnel that had been bored through a chamber that had been filled with melted waste from yet another chamber, which
might itself have been carved into a big vault that, after the slaggers it housed had been removed, had then been filled with
melted tailings from a surface operation. There must be rocks around here that were on their tenth human melting.

After a while Bref gestured. The five of them bent over at the waist, helmets together, to hear each other by conduction rather
than risk radio. “Up this chimney, about twenty-five meters.” Bref shouted so that they could all understand him clearly.
“Opens in a cluster of rocks; should be invisible except overhead.”

“We don’t want any sensor pointing toward the main party,” Shadow said. “So Jak and Dujuv, whichever of you gets to the surface
first starts the dead man. Six minutes after I’m out of the hole, get going on the diversion.”

“From the time you pop, six and go,” Jak said.

“Got it,” Dujuv added.

The vertical tube was narrow enough to chimney. Jak put his back against one wall, his feet against the other, and walked
and humped his way up. It had probably been an outlet shaft for substitution pumping, Jak decided.

Jak noticed a slight pittering sound on his helmet; tiny pellets of metal were falling off the walls from the three climbers
above him. The walls were peppered with metal droplets no bigger than a period on a page, which showed as dark spots in the
passive infrared.

The dark dots became “stars” sporadically; some visible light was coming down into the shaft. A little higher, and there was
more light as Bref climbed out, up above, and then Narav, and finally Shadow. Jak saw a few bright stars in the tunnel mouth.
He started the clock and chimneyed up farther.

At the top his helmet adjusted to the brilliant glare pouring into the top of the shaft, and the stars were lost in that.
Another heave and kick, and he lay on the surface on his back. He rolled over, staying low, set the dead man, checked his
time, blipped a com check through a rerouter to the
Spirit,
and heard Phrysaba’s voice murmur in his ear, “Com check successful, we’re here, good luck.”

Two more minutes till go time.

Beside him, Dujuv thumped onto the surface, rolled, and put his helmet to Jak’s. “Just wanted you to know that I know you
have a dozen good reasons to accomplish the mission, so I’m sure you’ll do it, but I also know it’s got nothing to do with
your personal honor or your loyalty to a friend or anything like that. You’re a useful bag of shit, but you’re still a bag
of shit. Masen?”

“Toktru. Ten seconds to go. We’ll talk later.”

The little red bar in Jak’s helmet display winked out. Jak and Dujuv leapt onto a boulder between two spires, then down a
long slope covered with the black carbon tailings, trying to stick out like a head of cabbage in a banana split.

Dujuv unslung his flash bomb, set the timer on the blasting cap for ten seconds, and tossed the bomb down the slope. It was
a flask of liquid oxygen packed into a metal toolbox full of powdered aluminum, with the blasting cap’s timer sticking out
through a hole on top.

Even on a slope bathed in Mercurial sunlight, the flash was bright, and would have alerted any sensor pointed this way.

Jak and Dujuv ran across the carbon slope. When they were about a hundred meters from the gully on the other side, Jak said,
“Purse, execute cover noise.”

His purse switched through two general frequencies several times, to help MLB’s sensors lock on. He played back the recording
Jak and Dujuv had made back in the krilj—neither of them was much of a playwright, but perhaps audience interest would make
up for it:

“Dujuv, you complete idiot, how could you have done that? How are we going to accomplish our mission without that bomb? And
you set it off right where they’ll see it!”

“Yeah, well, who’s broadcasting open channel with power and volume all the way up?”

“Whoops!”

That was the curtain line. Jak followed Dujuv into the gully. The panth was bounding along easily ahead of him, kicking up
sprays of carbon.

His scanner was picking up plenty of encrypted noise, but his purse wasn’t having much luck with decrypting it. Once he heard
the high beep-squeak of Duj squeezing off a message to Phrysaba and Pabrino, in the
Spirit of Singing Port
.

The whole plan depended on Jak, with that sliver in his liver, being a bigger draw to Riveroma than anything else, and on
Riveroma’s being completely in charge. If everything was working right, Riveroma’s scanners would have identified Jak’s voice
pattern and linked it to the suited figures and the flash bomb; Shadow on the Frost, Bref, and Narav would have gone undetected;
and a mass hunt for Jak and Duj, over here on the wrong side of the crater, should be starting.

Jak and Dujuv scurried down the long gully. The surface here was probably aboriginal, pitted and rough, but without melting
or flows. In the long dark shadow, Jak could see that he was mostly kicking up white regolith.

Dujuv motioned for Jak to hold. High-pitched squeaks in Jak’s scanner—some message from the
Spirit,
or a relay from Shadow and the boys? The panth hesitated, then made an overhand gesture, and bounded directly into the sunlight
and down the slope.

Jak swallowed hard and followed. His purse said, “I have a request via scrambled text channel for you to say something loud
and rude to your friend, on Channel 87. You should specifically sound very angry.”

“Set 87. Dujuv, you idiot, get out of the sunlight, they’ll see us for sure.”

“Get off open channel, asshole,” Dujuv replied. Jak thought his acting might be a little too convincing.

“Now who’s on open channel?”

“Get into the shadow over here, dumbass,” Duj said, “follow me to it, haven’t you heard me all that time asking you to get
into the shadow?”

“There’s lots of shadows around here, I don’t know which one you mean, and don’t call me a dumbass.”

Jak saw Duj flash his helmet lamp on and off in the deep black shadow that hugged the north side of a bedroomsized boulder;
on airless Mercury, with its harsh bright sunlight, shadows made things nearly invisible to the naked eye. “Oh,
that
shadow. Okay, coming down to you.” He bounded down the slope in the bright sunlight, kicking up more gray-white regolith.

Jak guessed that Shadow and the boys had had to make some use of radio, and Pabrino, monitoring from the
Spirit,
had found the word “shadow” in decrypts of the malphs’ communications, which would imply that the malphs had heard and decrypted
some of what the other party had said. On the chance that MLB hadn’t heard too much, and in the interests of keeping them
preoccupied with hunting Jak, Dujuv had contrived a situation in which the word “shadow” would go out from his suit a couple
of times, hoping to confuse the other side’s analysis.