Revolution's Shore (16 page)

“It's sweet of Paisley to help Lia and me care for Gregori,” said Jenny at last, musing. “And you, of course. Otherwise we'd never cover our duty.”

“Don't thank me,” Lily replied quickly. “Actually, this past two months Kyosti of all people has been spending time with him, letting him tag along to Medical.”

Jenny looked surprised, then chuckled. “So that's it. Lately he's been coming home full of peculiar facts and stories and questions I can't answer. And he keeps saying that he's being tutored. I thought he'd snuck into some higher level education program in the computer. I'll have to thank Hawk.”

Lily grinned briefly. “Please do. It will discompose him.”

“Will it?” Jenny asked with interest. “I don't think I've ever seen him discomposed. Well”—she paused—“except for those two times with Finch.”

“Finch,” Lily declared with exasperation. “That's what I was asking you about. Callioux has refused all three of my requests that Finch be transferred to another ship. I told Bach to switch from shadowing Hawk to sticking close to Finch. Then he can at least alert me. And possibly stun Hawk—but you wouldn't have seen that. I just don't know what else to do.”

Jenny considered this while keeping her gaze on her son, who had reached past Paisley to roll the three dice for her. “I honestly don't know,” she answered at last. “Given that you're determined to keep Hawk with you. You're using what resources you have to cover as much ground as possible. Beyond quarantining one of them—or forcing it to a controlled resolution—”

“I have thought of that,” Lily agreed, “but I'm not ready yet. I have yet to figure out how to set up a confrontation that I can control completely. Especially with Hawk.”

“Yes.” Jenny shifted her gaze to Hawk as he sat perfectly at ease with the three Ridanis, playing a game with them that by tradition only Ridanis were supposed to know. “I thought that sticks game was sacred, or something. Why does he know it?”

Lily shrugged. “They're letting Gregori watch.”

“Yes, but just watch if any adults go near, or show too much interest. Have you spoken to Finch anymore about Hawk?”

“Only a bit. I never have time to see him, partly because his duty schedule is so carefully set up to match Hawk's, and partly because he won't come
here
when he is free.”

“Can you blame him, Lily-hae?”

Gregori clapped his hands in excitement as some roll of sticks or dice came up in his—or at least in Paisley's—favor.

“I'm not sure it's entirely because of Hawk,” said Lily. “He still won't speak to any Ridanis unless he has to.”

“That's not so different from a lot of Jehane's troops. You know very well that it's a shock to most of these people that Jehane has enlisted tattoos as regular comrades at all. Even if most of the Ridanis are in separate companies, still—it rankles a lot of the soldiers. Finch isn't so different.”

“He ought to be,” retorted Lily hotly. “I expected better of him. I always thought he was so easygoing, so good-natured. But on the other hand, when did we ever see Ridanis at Ransome House? There may have been some mines that employed them for the worst work. I don't know. But most jobs weren't open to Ridanis on Unruli. And if you weren't tied into one of the House mines, or to the university or the city offices, you had no access to living quarters, which were a true necessity on Unruli. We just never saw them, growing up.”

“Then you ought to understand why Finch could be prejudiced.”

“Except it doesn't mean you
have
to be,” said Lily harshly. “Having nothing personal against them. That was one thing the Sar
never
tolerated at table: Any kind of ignorant prejudice.”

“Just informed ones?” Jenny shook her head. “Did he ever try to hire Ridanis?”

“No,” Lily admitted. “I don't think he did. But he made it clear to his children that you have to judge an individual on her own merits, rather than on any preconceived idea.” Now her gaze moved to the Mule. Jenny, looking with her, nodded slightly. “Yes,” finished Lily. “Too bad it's not as easy in practice as in theory. What do you think Callioux's got on the screen, anyway?”

“Void take me,” said Jenny with a sigh. “I just had this one out last night with the other form leaders. I don't want to go over it again.”

Lily laughed. “All right. Then how about Yehoshua? What do you think Yi's people strapped to his arm? A laser cannon?”

“Speak of the Void, and it enters,” said Jenny abruptly, her eyes lifting to the far wall. “There he is.”

Preceded by his cousin, Yehoshua had indeed entered the common room. He halted to survey the occupants. Most had not noticed him yet—many, in any case, did not know him—and as his gaze found Lily he smiled and walked across toward her.

“I don't see anything different—” began Jenny.

She stopped as Lily gasped.

Indeed, there was nothing different. Yehoshua held a thin screen in one hand; the other hung relaxed at his side, swinging as he walked. He had two hands, two arms: perfectly normal.

Kyosti glanced up, not with surprise, but more to mark Yehoshua's passage and acknowledge it with a brief nod. Other people glanced at him noticing nothing out of the ordinary. Rainbow stopped playing and stared, an action that attracted Gregori's attention. Alsayid merely grinned.

“Comrade Heredes. Comrade Seria.” Yehoshua halted before the two women with a smile. He was clearly pleased with himself, and enjoying their consternation.

“Let me see that,” Lily demanded.

He held his right arm out for her. She took the hand, touched the arm, and made a face.

“Stop trying to fool me. The artificial one.”

He shrugged, still smiling, and offered her the other arm.

“No,” said Lily after a moment, “it
was
the right one that was amputated. Hoy.”

“Damn my eyes,” breathed Jenny. “I've never seen anything like that in my life.”

Yehoshua was not, however, inclined to gloat. “Comrade Heredes,” he said as he detached his hand from her incredulous, and apparently paralyzed, grasp. “I'm actually here to call you to a staff meeting with Comrade Officer Callioux.”

“When?” asked Lily.

“Now. This time it's not a false alarm: we have an assignment.” He smiled with relish, closing and unclosing his false hand that was as real to touch and sight as his true one. “Action at last.”

Callioux had already lit up the table in the tac room when Lily and Yehoshua arrived. Three officers from other ships came in after them. Yehoshua leaned on the edge of the tac table, examining the array of lights beneath the surface that represented the placement of systems surrounding the
Cairn
's current position. Lily, with a last glance at Yehoshua's right hand, moved to stand beside her fellow officers in training and waited.

The tac officer finished entering information into the table's computer and stepped back to let Callioux into the control console. Callioux surveyed the group—about sixteen people—before reconfiguring the display on screen and beginning to speak.

“This model shows approximately the plus
x
, minus
y
, plus
z
oct of Reft space. The red point represents Bleak House.” A white light dutifully started to blink red. “Now I'll expand perspective to include the entire plus
z
duo of the grid. Central, as you know, rests at null. The two blue points of light”—they switched over—“represent Salah-eh-Din, and Tollgate. Jehane has clear control of Tollgate and all points beyond and passive—undercover—control of Salah-eh-Din. Now”—Callioux paused, reading each face in turn before continuing—“we begin to encircle. Our first goal: To control all windows into and out of Salah-eh-Din. With Salah-eh-Din and Tollgate in our hands, Jehane basically controls the major vector routes throughout the plus
z
duo.” A second pause as Callioux widened the perspective to include the entire grid of Reft space.

“Not counting Arcadia at null,” commented Yehoshua into the hush, “there are only two major agricultural planets in the minus
z
duo: Dairy and Blessings.”

Lily lifted one hand slightly, catching Callioux's attention. “Dairy isn't
that
productive, comrade. It supplies its own sector, but as far as I remember from school, exports very little outside of that.”

Callioux offered the group a brief smile. “Exactly. The pressure builds on Arcadia. Blessings and Dairy then begin to look vulnerable. In any case”—the grid shrank back to focus on the plus-minus-plus oct—“we are moving out in six hours for Landfall.”

A kind of collective, unvoiced gasp caught in the throats of the officers present.

“I thought that was garrisoned. Heavily.” A voice from the back.

“It was. We have just received word that a diversion planned and led by Jehane personally is on schedule at Bukharin, which as you see has routes out through Landfall and past the sta homeworld to Tollgate. This diversion will pull off a large proportion of the Landfall garrison, who will believe Jehane is beginning an attack on the vector ring that circles Arcadia.”

“But what if the diversion fails?”

“There are two back doors out of Bukharin, both of which immediately branch. It's a fairly safe feint for the attacker, and a dangerous ambush for Central's forces. So”—on the grid, Landfall system grew until a planet turned beneath them, lines tracing two small continents marked with two large cities on their surface—“we move in and destroy all the ground emplacements and garrison housing. The two converted merchanters will dock at Landfall Station—which is, as you see, an orbiter—forcibly evacuate the hub, and destroy the second wheel”—the grid narrowed into an image of Station, with its slow rotation blocking their view of star by distant star in turns—“which houses the garrison's regional command. Then we leave.”

Callioux waited while the officers examined the screen and murmured comments back and forth. Eventually they subsided and returned their attention to their commander.

“This is strictly a strike. We are not establishing any zone of control. We hit, and leave. Landfall will be crippled for months—we estimate three months—which will give us time to cinch a noose around it and cut it off completely without worrying about its capabilities.”

“What about Central?” asked Yehoshua. “Surely they can send out reinforcements from Arcadia.”

“When they hear about it. We'll be gone by then.”

Lily, studying the curve of Landfall as it turned on the screen, thought again through the grid of the region, and moved forward to put a hand down on the edge of the table. “What about the sta?” she asked.

Callioux nodded. “The sta are neutral in this conflict. Trade will continue to pass through the routes they oversee as long as no fighting occurs. Any other questions?”

There were none.

“Very well. Assignments. We'll start with the ground assault, divided into teams Alpha and Veeta. Team Alpha will run in three groups. Comrade Officer Yehoshua will lead Group One; Comrade Officer Sgambati, Two; and comrade Heredes, Three. Your destination: This city, called Scarce. The ground emplacements there are strong enough that you may run into fire on approach, but we expect to have thrown Landfall's forces into confusion by our quick destruction of their space command. Team Veeta will be in two groups …”

Landfall hung, a brilliant blue against the void of space. At her first sight of it, Lily had wondered if it had any land at all, but it rotated to reveal two irregular masses that seemed-scarcely larger than islands, isolated in so much water. Even after living on Arcadia, where she had in any case seen no larger body of water than a lake, she still could not imagine an ocean, much less a planet whose surface was over ninety-five percent water. Callioux had mentioned that there was land besides the two land masses optimistically called continents, but they were a scattering of islands strewn across the vast sea.

Lily shuddered. She studied the vaguely rectangular continent on which the city named—aptly, she thought—Scarce had grown and presumably flourished. As she turned away from this view, the tac officer's voice came alive in her wrist-com, calling the countdown to strike. At least Scarce was not on the coast, but on a plateau in the center of the continent.

She met the others in the shuttle bay. In the space between two shuttles, Jenny stood arguing with Yehoshua. Gregori, tears bright on his face under the glare of harsh light, clutched at his mother's waist as if he meant never to let go of her.

“—we don't have enough people,” Yehoshua was saying as Lily walked up to them. Behind Jenny, Aliasing sat on a crate, dressed in Jehanish whites that looked too harsh for her slight frame. “In any case,” Yehoshua continued, turning to include Lily, “if you could use your own comm-man on your shuttle, instead of having him go down with
me
because of—” A hesitation as he glanced toward the distant figure of Kyosti, who spoke to Pinto on the shuttle's ramp. Lily, looking that way, could read from Kyosti's posture that he was listening while trying to look otherwise engaged. “Because of
that
, you wouldn't need a second comm. Aliasing's all we've got. So she has to go.”

“I can't leave my son alone on this ship for Void knows how long—” Jenny broke off. Her expression was taut with worry, and she frowned and laid a hand on her son's startlingly golden hair as the full implications of her interrupted comment hit her.

“Take him with us,” said Lily softly. “There are extra seats, and he'll be with Lia the entire time.”

Jenny turned on Lily, angry now. “Take him into fire? Are you
insane
?”

“Jenny—” Lily began.

Jenny sighed and shut her eyes, sinking to her knees and hugging the boy with a tenderness that seemed uncharacteristic in a mercenary of her background. “Oh, Gregori,” she murmured as the boy hugged her with one arm and wiped his face with the other, “what a life I've made for you.”