“It was half a victory,” Jeff insisted quietly from across the dining room table. “That’s what you have to hang on to. Half a victory.”
Nicole didn’t answer. The plate in front of her was loaded with food, and before she’d headed out to meet Fievj and Nevvis she’d promised herself a good meal when it was over.
Now, even with her stomach rumbling, she had no appetite.
What had she done?
“This is the part when you tell me I’m right,” Jeff said into the silence. “You can also add that I’m usually right if you want. I’ll wait.”
He was trying to cheer her up, Nicole knew. Trying to ease some of the pain choking her heart and mind.
In some ways his attempt at humor was an insult, as if he were brushing aside her failure and ignoring the terrible consequences of her actions. But she was too weary and heartsick to even feel offended.
“Nicole, you have to snap out of it,” he said. “You can yell if you want, or cry if you want, or even call me a coldhearted bastard if that helps. But you have to come back.”
“How?” Nicole asked, feeling fresh tears welling up in her eyes. “I killed them, Jeff. All of them.”
“You didn’t kill anyone,” he said firmly. “It was all Fievj and Nevvis.”
“Was it?” Nicole countered. “What if I’d let Levi throw the drone at them like he’d wanted to? You were right there, ready to fight back. Maybe if they’d had to take a moment to dodge the drone you’d have gotten there before they had a chance to shoot the Wisps.”
“First: You didn’t know I’d heard the ruckus and was on my way,” Jeff said. “Second: You don’t know that they’d even have bothered with the drone. They came to the meeting wanting to eliminate you, and there’s a 90-plus-percent chance they’d have ignored anything that got in the way of that.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Trust me. I do.” Jeff hesitated. “And third: We need those drones. Both of them. If they’d taken the time to shoot it, okay, maybe they would only have had enough time to take out two or three Wisps instead of all four. But it would have cost us.”
“So you’re saying that our plans and our gadgets are more important than people’s lives?” she snarled.
He held her gaze without flinching. “Our plans are for freeing the Fyrantha and saving the lives of everyone aboard,” he said. “There are certain things we need for that plan. You had to make a choice between something we absolutely need and some lives that the plan could manage without.”
Nicole shivered. “You make me sound like a monster.”
“No,” Jeff said quietly. “I make you sound like a general.”
The tears filling Nicole’s eyes flowed over and down her cheeks. “I don’t want to be a general.”
“I don’t blame you,” Jeff said. “Being the leader in a war is a huge burden. But it’s the job—and the burden—that the Fyrantha’s given you. And whether you like it or not, you’re pretty damn good at it.”
Nicole huffed a half laugh, half sob. “Really? I was supposed to trap Trake’s men, get their spider guns, then hit the Shipmasters hard enough to get their greenfire weapons. The whole World War II Liberator gun thing—remember?”
“I remember,” Jeff said. “So we only got the spider guns and not the greenguns. Like I said, half a victory.”
Nicole wiped at her tears. “So if we’d gotten the greenfire guns, we could have paid another four Wisp lives for them?”
“It doesn’t work that way, and you know it,” Jeff said, the first hint of annoyance creeping into his voice. “Forget about the guns and the Wisps for a minute. You played the Shipmasters, Nicole—played them perfectly. You convinced them that you understood them and could anticipate their moves, and that they needed something new to throw at you. You guessed they’d go to Bungie for advice, and you knew he’d tell them that Trake was the one person you never understood. You had them, Nicole, all the way down the line.”
“Then why didn’t it work?” Nicole demanded. “Why are four Wisps dead?”
“You’re missing the big picture,” Jeff said. “Remember what Iosif said? No battle plan survives contact with the enemy? Well, yours did a lot better than most. That fact gives me a great deal of confidence that you’ll be able to pull off the rest of the campaign.”
He reached over the table and touched the back of her hand. “I know you’re hurting about the Wisps. So am I. But we’re in a war, and war requires choices. No general worth an honest salute likes making the decisions that will cost people their lives. But they keep making the choices, and the sacrifices that go with them, because if they don’t a lot more people will die. Understand?”
“I suppose,” she said, turning her hand over and getting a grip on his. “Did you ever have to make that kind of decision?”
“Me personally?” Jeff shook his head. “I never got anywhere near that kind of rank. But I knew people who did, and almost all of them came back feeling the same way you are right now. Especially the first time they had to send someone to their death.”
“Almost all of them?” Nicole asked. “What about those who didn’t come back feeling that way? Were they handling it better?”
“No, they were handling it like bastards,” Jeff said. “Probably why we called them that.”
“You didn’t.”
Jeff shrugged. “Well, not to their faces.”
The dining room door slid open, and Nicole looked over to see Levi and Iosif come in, followed by Moile and Teika.
“Well, they’re here,” Iosif announced as he headed toward the food dispenser. “Not exactly happy campers.”
“Not surprised,” Nicole said. “One of the empty rooms, right?”
“Six of them, actually,” Jeff corrected. “Figured we didn’t want them talking and plotting together. Did the Wisps take up guard positions like I’d ordered them to?”
“Yep, two on each room,” Levi said. “Don’t worry, they’re well buttoned up.”
“Good,” Jeff said. “You checked for hidden weapons, right?”
“Oh, yeah,” Iosif said. “We got three shiny new knives out of the deal.”
“Any good?”
Iosif shrugged as he punched in his food order. “If we want to cause mayhem we’ve got better things in our tool lockers.”
“Figured.” Jeff looked at the two Ponngs. “You two all right?”
“We’re fine,” Moile said, holding up a red-blotched arm. “The reaction seems to be largely superficial.”
Nicole winced. The chemical that dissolved the spider webbing had unexpectedly turned out to be an irritant to Ponng skin. Just one more small glitch in her great plan.
“So what are we going to do with them?” Iosif asked.
Nicole started, belatedly realizing that the question had been to her. “I thought we’d put them in the arena,” she said. “The Shipmasters have all pulled out of Q4, and we’ve checked the place for weapons. If we program the dispenser for human food, they should be okay until we figure out something more permanent.”
“Bungie eating dog kibble,” Jeff said with an evilly satisfied smile. “I like it.”
“It’s more trail mix than dog kibble,” Iosif pointed out.
“I’ll still tell him it’s kibble,” Jeff said, turning again to the Ponngs. “Speaking of which, are you two hungry? We’ve got the dispenser here programmed with your stuff if you want to give it a try. Real food, too, not just your version of trail mix.”
“Really?” Teika asked. “How did you learn Ponng recipes?”
“We didn’t, really,” Jeff conceded. “But Joaquim fiddled around and combined a couple of our food varieties with your nutritional needs. He claims it will be good, but none of us really knows.”
“Then we should address your uncertainties,” Moile said. “Only yesterday we were discussing some of our favorite foods from home.”
“I’m afraid this probably won’t be anything close,” Jeff said.
“Perhaps it will become one of our favorites,” Moile said. “Show us this food, that we may examine it.”
“I like your sense of adventure,” Jeff said, standing up. “I’ll show you how to program it.”
He headed between the tables to the food dispenser, the Ponngs close behind.
“Can I talk to you a minute?” Levi asked quietly as he sat down beside Nicole.
“Sure,” she said, eyeing him. Levi was never exactly outgoing or flamboyant, but even for him this seemed unusually subdued. “What’s up?”
His eyes flicked to Jeff and the Ponngs at the dispenser, then to Iosif eating his meal alone at a table halfway across the room. “That thing back in the corridor,” he said, looking back at Nicole. “When you tried to take the control away from me. You didn’t have to do that.”
Nicole frowned. “What?”
“I know I froze,” he went on hurriedly. “But I was coming out of it. I just hadn’t expected them to surprise us that way. But I was all set to ram the drone down their throats.”
“Of course,” Nicole said. That was what he thought she’d been trying to do? To take over the drone from him?
“Really, I was,” he insisted. “It would have worked better than the tangle gun you tried.”
“It’s all right,” Nicole said. “We were all improvising there.” She swallowed hard. “And it didn’t come out as clean as I would have liked. But we’re all okay, and we got the spider guns, and that’s what’s important.”
“I suppose,” he said. “I just wanted to say you won’t have to do that again.”
“I’m sure I won’t,” Nicole said. “You should probably get something to eat.”
He looked over at Jeff and the Ponngs. “Yeah, I think I’ll wait until they’re finished. Not really interested in sampling old-style Ponng cooking. I’ll be in my room if anyone needs me.”
“Okay,” Nicole said. “And, you know … thanks for everything. I know you weren’t enthusiastic about this plan.”
Levi shrugged. “Like you said, we got some weapons out of the deal. That’s better than I was expecting.”
“And we’ll do even better next time,” Nicole promised.
“Yeah, let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Levi said, standing up. “See you later.”
“Right. Rest well.”
With a nod, Levi headed back out into the corridor. Nicole watched until the door closed behind him, then turned back to the mostly untouched food sitting in front of her. She still wasn’t hungry, but starving herself wouldn’t bring back the dead Wisps. She scooped up a bite and forced herself to eat it.
She was halfway through the meal when Jeff and the Ponngs returned, the latter with trays piled high with different-colored variants of the food Nicole had been eating since she first arrived on the Fyrantha. “You’re certainly confident,” she commented, eyeing the masses of food.
“I pulled up a sample tray first,” Jeff said, waving at their trays. “These are the variants they liked the best.”
“Not precisely like the food of home,” Teika said. “But the taste is that of the ground food we had in the arena, and it and the texture are quite satisfying.”
“At least that’s one thing we got right today,” Nicole said.
“Come on,” Jeff chided gently. “Half a victory, remember? Okay, so what’s next?”
“We need to get Bungie and Trake locked in the arena,” Nicole said, dragging her mind back to the problems of the present.
“We’ll need a code to unlock the door,” Jeff reminded her.
“I can get it for you,” Nicole said. “While you do that, I should go over to Q3 and check in on the Thii.”
“When’s Nise due to check in?”
“Not really sure,” Nicole said. “He has to gauge his movements to what the Shipmasters are doing. But it should be soon, and I don’t want him having to wait. I should probably take them more food and water, too.”
“Tell you what,” Jeff offered. “How about you go take a nap, and I go find Nise?”
“He’ll be expecting me.”
“He’ll be expecting someone with fresh supplies,” Jeff said. “And all things considered, it might be better if it’s someone the Shipmasters aren’t desperately trying to kill. Besides, you need to get some rest.”
“I’m okay,” Nicole said. He was right on both counts, but her depression had suddenly sparked an unexpected surge of stubbornness. “I’m the reason everyone’s having to run around like crazies. I need to at least pull my own weight.”
“Right,” Jeff said. He looked at the Ponngs. “I’m heading over to Q3 to check on the Thii. You two want to come along?”
“We would be honored,” Moile said.
“Unless the Protector needs us,” Teika put in. “Our first duty is to her.”
“No, go ahead,” Nicole said, the stubbornness fading back into common sense. She was pretty tired, and Jeff could certainly handle the rendezvous with Nise. “I’ve got Cambria and the others if there’s trouble, and Kahkitah’s wandering around somewhere, too.”
“If you’re sure,” Teika said, sounding a little doubtful.
“I’m sure,” Nicole said. “But thank you.”
“Good,” Jeff said briskly. “And when I say take a nap, I don’t mean go stuff Bungie in a padded cell. They’ll be fine right where they are for now. I’ll wake you when we’re back, and we’ll move them together.”
“Fine,” Nicole said tiredly. Actually, the thought of getting Trake’s gang to their permanent prison hadn’t even occurred to her. “Be sure to take a couple of spider guns with you.”
“First on my list of things to do,” Jeff said. “Eat up, gentlemen, and let’s get this show on the road.”
“This will keep until later,” Moile said, taking a last bite and then pushing his tray a few inches away.
“Yes,” Teika said. He took two hasty bites, and Nicole noted that he seemed more reluctant when he also pushed away his tray.
“You really don’t—” she began.
“Yes, we do,” Jeff cut her off as he stood up. “Any new instructions for Nise?”
Nicole sighed. “Just that they’re to keep watching and listening. And tell him we’ll be there to relieve them as soon as we can.”
“Got it,” Jeff said. “Sleep well.”
“And wake me if anything changes.”
“Of course,” Jeff said. Ushering the Ponngs in front of him, he left the room.
“He’s not a very good liar, is he?” Iosif commented from his table.
“Excuse me?” Nicole asked.
“He has no intention of waking you up for anything short of the Second Coming,” Iosif said. “He worries about you.”
“I’m fine,” Nicole groused.
“You look like something the cat dragged in,” Iosif said. “Who’s Cambria?”
“One of my five special Wisps.”
“Special how?”
Nicole hesitated. Those special Wisps were supposed to be a secret, but she was too tired to play games. Besides, as far as she was concerned, Iosif’s and his team’s actions in the Q3 battle had more than proven their commitment. “We told you how the Wisps seem anchored to their own specific quadrants, right? Well, these five are apparently anchored to me.”
“Really,” Iosif said thoughtfully. “Interesting. That could be useful.”
“So we hope,” Nicole said. “Thank you for your help in Q3, by the way. We couldn’t have done it without you.”
“Glad we could help,” Iosif said. “Actually, if the Shipmasters are that easy to outmaneuver, this may be easier than I’d expected.”
“Well, don’t get overconfident,” Nicole warned. “They may not be terrific at fighting, but they’ve got resources and weapons that we don’t.”
“Maybe,” Iosif said. “But wars are won by men, not weapons. Men and women,” he added, inclining his head to her. “But you’re right about the overconfidence. Never a good idea.” He looked over at the door as it slid open and a Wisp glided in.
Not just any Wisp, but one of her special five. But up to now, they’d always stayed put unless she gave them orders to the contrary. “Hagert?” she asked. “Is something wrong?”
The Wisp came over to her and stopped beside the table. Nicole reached out and laid a hand on its arm. Is something wrong? she thought at it.
The Caretaker speaks to me, Hagert said into her mind. Allyce is with him in the animal treatment room on level 6. She wishes to see you.
All right. Go and bring her here, please.
She wishes to see you there.
Nicole frowned. In the treatment room?
Yes. She asks that you come alone.
“What is it?” Iosif asked. “Trouble?”
“Allyce is upstairs and wants to see me,” Nicole said. “She’s one of our doctors.”
“Yeah, I know who she is. You want me to go with you?”
“She wants me to come alone.”
Iosif straightened up a little, his eyes narrowing. “That doesn’t sound suspicious or anything.”
“It does, doesn’t it?” Nicole agreed, a bad feeling settling into the pit of her stomach. Ask the Caretaker if there is danger there.
He says there is not.
Which meant not a single damned thing, Nicole knew. With the Caretaker partially under Shipmaster control, or at least under Shipmaster influence, his assurances were worthless.
“Thanks for the offer,” she told Iosif as she stood up. “But the Caretaker says it’s safe.”
“You believe him?”
“It’s okay,” Nicole said. Which wasn’t actually an answer to his question, but he probably wouldn’t notice. “Allyce has been … a little touchy lately. She may just need a woman-to-woman talk.”
Iosif grunted. “Yeah, I remember woman-to-woman talks. I never saw any of them end well.”
“Well, then, this can be a first,” she said, standing up. “But thanks for the offer.”
“You sure?” he persisted.
“I’m sure.” Nicole pointed to his tray. “Besides, I haven’t finished eating, and Jeff hauled the Ponngs away from their trays. We really should let someone finish a meal in peace today.”
“Now you’re just reaching.”
“Fine,” Nicole said. “Joking aside, I want someone competent here in case of trouble with Bungie and Trake.”
“Better,” Iosif said, gazing hard at her. “You and Jeff still need to work on this deception stuff.”
Nicole sighed. “I’ll be fine,” she said. “This is Q4, remember? One shout, and every Wisp in earshot will be there.”
“Fine,” Iosif said, waving his fork. “It’s not like you couldn’t lose me if I tried to follow you, anyway. What about that one?” He nodded toward Hagert.
“I’ll send him back to my room with the other four,” Nicole said. “If Fievj or Nevvis drops by, I don’t want them wondering why a bunch of Wisps are just hanging around doing nothing.”
“Yeah,” Iosif said. “Well. Be careful, okay?”
“Don’t worry,” Nicole said. “If I die, I’ll be sure to leave a note for Jeff not to blame you.”
Iosif grunted. “Not funny.”
“Sorry. Back as soon as I can.”
“You’re at least taking a spider gun, right?”
“Sure,” Nicole lied. “I’ll grab one on my way.”
Which she wouldn’t, of course. She and Jeff could summon Wisps, but no one else here could do that. The spider guns were all they had to protect themselves, and she had no intention of unnecessarily reducing their odds.
Besides which, she thought darkly as she headed down the corridor, if this was a trap of some sort, anything she was carrying would be permanently lost. She had no intention of risking herself and one of their weapons. This day had been too costly as it was.
The last two times she’d entered the treatment room she’d come from the aft part of the room. This time, mindful of the oddness of the situation, she decided to try a door she’d noticed closer to the area where the hologram of Ushkai typically waited for her.
The hologram wasn’t visible as she slipped through the door and into the high-ceilinged room with its rows of cages. But Allyce was. The doctor was sitting cross-legged on the floor near Ushkai’s usual spot, about fifty yards away, gazing down at the floor in front of her as if in a yoga meditation. She had some kind of handmade scarf wrapped loosely around her neck, the ends dangling down over her chest. Nicole thought about calling to her, decided she’d wait until she was closer, and headed in.
She was halfway to Allyce when a quiet alarm bell went off in the back of her head.
Something was different.
She stopped short, holding as still as she could, her eyes darting everywhere within view as she tried to figure it out. She couldn’t see anyone besides Allyce. There were no sounds other than the background noises she’d always heard when she was here.
Was the oddness the reason Ushkai’s hologram hadn’t appeared? He’d always been there waiting for her. Had Allyce somehow blocked him, or sent him away? Or could it have something to do with the Shipmasters’ control?
“Thank you for coming,” Allyce said into Nicole’s sudden fears. There was an odd tension in her voice as it echoed through the room. “I hoped you would. I prayed you would.”
Nicole swallowed hard. “I’m here,” she said, wincing at the unnecessary words. Allyce already knew she was here. “What do you need from me?”
“I need to set things right,” Allyce said. “I need to put things right. You’re the only one who can help me do that.”
Nicole caught her breath as it suddenly clicked. The sights of the room, and its sounds—all of those were normal.
But not the smell. The smell was different. Just a hint, but it was there.
The smell of Koffren.
“I’m sorry,” Allyce said. “But it was the only way.”
And as Nicole broke her paralysis and started toward her, she heard a faint scuffling behind her. She spun around—
To see a Koffren striding toward her, his short sword gripped ready in his hand.