Sariena thought for a moment, then shook her head. “I don’t think so, Lan. Kelm also left here earlier with a party of guards. And it seems that Zeigler is getting ready to go somewhere. Something seems to be happening. But whatever it is, it’s not here.” Keene stared hard from the tiny screen. Behind him, apparently some distance back, Sariena caught a glimpse of a figure holding a spear. “Do you know you have company, Lan?” she asked.
“Yes, don’t worry about it. They’re my escort. . . . Look, can this source that Shayle has find out more? This is urgent. We need to know now. I think they might be going after Naarmegen and the others in that Scout.”
Sariena felt her mouth go dry at the thought. “But why? For what purpose?” she whispered.
“Who knows? To teach everyone else a lesson? To give Rakki’s soldiers an easy first-blood lesson and show them that the Sky People aren’t invincible? Whatever goes through the minds of people who want things like this.”
“I’ll go and find Shayle now,” Sariena said. “You’ll be there?”
“There’s not much else in the way of places to go,” Keene answered.
* * *
The rendezvous point chosen for Jorff’s two flyers to meet up with the one bringing Kelm and the backup force from Serengeti was a desolate valley on the west side of the central mountain chain known as the Spine, about halfway between Serengeti and Carlsbad, where operation Usurper was to be carried out. The plan was for Rakki’s newly trained force to bear the brunt of the action, both as a morale booster for them and to suitably impress the Cave Tribe of how much they stood to gain from coming over as allies once Jemmo was gone. The method to be employed was modeled on former Terran riot and crowd control tactics. Reconnaissance probes were already deployed in the area and would be moved in close to locate Jemmo before the attack went in. When it did, the assault force would be able to go straight for the target, relying on speed and shock to numb any potential resistance into inaction until it was too late. And if something did go wrong that warranted calling in the support, it would be good experience for Kelm’s troops too.
Kelm, Jorff, and Leisha stood together on the ground, watching as the three craft that had taken off minutes previously completed their circuit and came down in the same positions they had been in for the three static rehearsals. Sims was the first out of the leading bus, shouting orders and waving Rakki’s warriors on as they emerged past him at a run, fanning out to secure the flanks. The smaller personnel flyer that had landed beside it disgorged the snatch squad led by Enka, while the backup team from the second bus slightly farther back advanced to take up covering positions. Considering the insanely short time he’d had to pull anything together, Jorff had done amazingly well, Kelm conceded inwardly. But it wouldn’t do to let himself be seen with too soft a public image.
“Too ragged and slow forming up on the left flank,” he said. “And the third man along there is going to kill himself or somebody else, holding his weapon like that. Get them back inside, and let’s run through it again on the ground.”
“Sir,” Jorff acknowledged, and began shouting orders.
Kelm turned to Leisha. “How much longer before Zeigler and the others get here?” he asked her.
“Due in just about forty-five minutes,” she told him.
Considering the haste, the demonstration they had just seen would no doubt be satisfactory. But Kelm thought they could do even better. “Let’s make this a good, snappy one. Then two more drops from circuits,” he called to Jorff. “You think we can impress the boss?”
“You bet.”
There was some jostling and milling about going on around the doors, Kelm saw. But that wasn’t too important. The practice hadn’t been to get them back in.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Kronian Interplanetary vessels like the Osiris and Trojan simulated gravity by the rotation of a wheel-like system of modules carried on spokes that could be trailed at an angle like a partly-open umbrella to produce a normal resultant of centrifugal and linear forces at the Rim. While ingenious, this yielded a large and somewhat ungainly structure whose distortion under thrust set a limit on the acceleration that could be sustained. This meant that they were unable to take full advantage of the performance theoretically attainable from their fusion drives. Aztec, by contrast, with its underdeck Yarbat generators, did away with large, deformable geometries, and was trim and compact. When the ship was under thrust, the AG fields were simply generated at a slant to produce the same effect as had previously required enormous works of structural engineering. Hence, though its drives were similar to those used on the earlier craft, Aztec could run them to higher power. In addition, even with its greater carrying capacity, Aztec was burdened with smaller mass. For both these reasons, it could attain accelerations that were considerably higher. To withstand the resulting forces, the vessel’s construction was correspondingly more robust.