`Have you been issued any ex-vehicular gear, Mr Lyon?’ she asked, finally turning to him.
`No, ma’ am.’ `Then get some. With that she rose from the table and strode out of the ready room.
`Well, you heard her,’ Ashiant said, smiling.
`I also heard you say that I’m going along in several capacities, sir. which?’ `Interpreter, observer, and… lastly, but most important, the Talent to whip someone out of trouble if necessary.’ Thian got himself a full-radiation suit, and the requisite stunner which Lieutenant Sedallia handed him with a supercilious expression on his face.
`I don’t imagine you’ve needed to handle a weapon before…
`On the contrary, I’ve hunted for the family table since I was old enough to pull the trigger of a rifle.’ At the surprised look, Thian added. `And we always ate well.’ He sighted along the thick barrel.
`But this is a spread weapon anyway. I certainly ought to be able to hit a shuttle-bay door with this.’ He slapped it back into its clip and, with a nod to the ratings handing out equipment, left. He could `hear’ the comments and most were complimentary.
Sedallia wasn’t that popular.
Thian was prompt at the intergroup meeting, held in the ready room, with screens linking the six ships of the squadron. Ashiant introduced Commander Vandermeer as the human leader and she quite ably greeted her `Dini counterpart. Thian kept his expression neutral but he was rather pleased with his student Her sentences were, of course, brief and there were pauses while she accessed words from her vocabulary but PIr, the leader of the `Dini boarding parties, understood her perfectly.
The `Dini showed her a chart of the vessel and identified certain of the remaining portions as the part of the main propulsion unit, fuel storage, resting cubicles, nesting and work quarters. The Queens’ accommodations had been blown away for they were usually in the centre: some peripheral weapons were still in place as well as several arsenals and storage areas. Plr then drew longitudinal lines, separating the wreck into six sections and assigned a boarding team to each.
Vandermeer agreed with the assignments even when PIr preempted the sector holding the remaining weapons.
`It’s more familiar to them than any of us,’ she said to her own group.
The meeting was concluded and final preparations made which, Vandermeer said, would begin with a good high-protein meal.
`Leviathan,’ Thian murmured more to himself than Lieutenant Ridvan AusterKiely sitting beside him.
`Say what?’ Ridvan asked, bending his ear towards Thian.
`That thing is not just big, it’s a Leviathan,’ he repeated, struggling not to hunch his shoulders away from the immensity of the damaged space vessel.
Thian remembered that `Leviathan’ was what his grandmother had called the Hive ship that had been destroyed beyond Deneb over forty years before.
The shuttle was obediently waiting at the forty spatials to see if there was any reaction from the vessel. The `Dinis had said that a Hive ship would automatically open fire on anything that approached even though it was out of range.
`What’s a Leviathan?’ `Something as big as this.’ `This is not the time to be funny.’ `The best time.’ `Be serious, Thian. Say, couldn’t it be a planetoid?
I mean, it could have been hollowed out.. `And then metal coated and levels dug out?’ Thian chuckled. `No, Ridvan, it’s a ship and not as big as say, Callisto, either.’ `That doesn’t reassure me.’ Ridvan was nervous and didn’t bother to hide it.
Thian was neither nervous nor scared and wondered if this was wrong. Excitement was the prevailing sentiment within the shuttle, certainly. He knew his senses were all heightened and he wondered that he didn’t feel – even through the vacuum of space – the stingpzzt of proximity to a Hive artefact.
No-one else in this boarding party had ever been so close to a Hive artefact. Admittedly, he had only helped dig up a panel on Deneb, exciting enough in itself when you’re only ten, and help sling it into the `copter scoop. That still doesn’t make you an expert, he told himself firmly They waited, getting bored with the view of what Thian began to describe as a semi-demi- hemisphere.