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Return to Part I
by labingi
[a cycle later]
Prudence dictated that it would be wisest for Scorpius to land his transport pod at a random location within Motak 4's agricultural belt. He chose not to do so. The risks having been assessed, he landed just out of sight of his mother's life pod. He would not repeat the mistake of entering it. Yet as long as he was here on this planet, he would allow himself the indulgence of looking at it again.
In his mother's time, the planet had been insignificant. Its only relevance for the Scarrans had always been its ability to support the Chrystherium flowers they needed to maintain their higher cognitive functions. But it had been so close to Peacekeeper space that the Scarrans had avoided developing it, lest their movements betray the importance of the flowers. Under the terms of the treaty, the planet fell within Scarran borders. Peacekeeper prying was a negligible threat: the Peacekeepers cravenly refused to pursue any espionage that might exasperate the Scarrans. And in the wake of the destruction of the Chrystherium mother plant on Katratzi, Motak 4 had become an attractive site for agricultural development.
But it had not been extensively planted out yet. And with the Scarrans stationed here still few, now was the time to sabotage their efforts.
In cycles past, Scorpius had studied the planet extensively. That made him an apt choice to oversee the toxification of the soil. But as he himself could not easily infiltrate the developed zones without being recognized, the infiltration would be the task of another operative, who should arrive in sixteen arns.
In the meantime, he hid his pod under electromagnetic reflectors, scanned the area, and, satisfied that his position was secure, walked out toward his mother's pod. The sun had set, and the fields rolled blue in the light of a gibbous moon. Her pod loomed silhouetted on the horizon, less prominent than he remembered, probably due to subsidence into the soil. He stopped at the ridge of a low hill, a position from which he could see both his pod and hers. There he sat and activated a small infrared reflector, which ought to keep his heat signature off the scanners of all but the most low-flying ships. The reflector crackling softly, he lay down and pushed the tall grass back so that he could gaze at her pod.
It had been thirty-five cycles since last he had been here, driven by the need to see the place where she'd lost her freedom. He had only got a glimpse inside before Tauza had captured him. Now he knew that there was nothing the pod could tell him. Tauza had taught him all he needed to know of his parents.
Very long ago, so long that the memories of that time flashed erratically out of the gray of forgotten childhood, Scorpius had cared about Tauza, in that needy way in which a child cares. He had wanted her to be proud of him. And then, he had discovered that all she said was based on lies.
He looked at his mother's life pod and thought of Tauza and all the Scarrans, who had robbed his mother of what should have been a harmless, agrarian life in this place. The Peacekeepers' treaty with them was strategically necessary, but it did nothing to correct the Scarrans' brutality. All the slaves in their domain were as tormented as before.
A ship wooshed overhead, cruising low. Lying still, he watched it circle and land to the south of his own pod. He waited, reviewing the devices he had brought from his ship and their applications as weaponry. After half an arn, the transceiver in his ear began to beep out the code that notified him of his contact's arrival. Fifteen arns early--a suspicious sign. He had been told that his contact would come straight from a previous assignment and, if anything, might be late. He did not send the response code. Instead, attaching his infrared reflector to his belt, he rose and made his way toward the ship, the code signal steadily increasing in intensity.
In the glow of its landing lights, he could identify the ship as a small planet-hopper: the type he had been told to expect--but that, too, could be part of a trap. Taking shelter behind an outcropping of rock, he charged his pulse pistol and sent the response signal. For perhaps a quarter of an arn, the two signals beeped back and forth at each other. Then, his contact's signal began to grow louder. Soon after, he could make out a swishing in the field. He aimed his pistol in its direction.
A voice called out the verbal recognition code. It was the correct code, Scorpius noted in passing, but it was the voice that arrested him. For a microt, he considered firing, then dismissed the idea as precipitous and called out his response code instead. Even in the moonlight, he could instantly recognize the form of Sikozu as she stood up in the grass.
***
This time it would be different. Sikozu Shanu did not--would not--accept defeat. She would prevent the Scarrans from exploiting Motak 4; she would see them pay for enslaving her people. And she would make herself worthy again in Scorpius' eyes.
But no sooner did she see him stand up in the gloom than she found herself doubting again.
No. There was no place for doubt.
He was walking toward her.
"Switch off your landing lights," he said shortly as he passed her.
She followed him back toward her ship. She had kept the lights on so he could scout out her position, but now, he was right; they were safer in the dark. After she had locked down her ship, they stood silent on her flight deck for some microts.
"I will scan the area," Sikozu began. "If there is no sign that we have been intercepted in the next four arns, we should relocate to a less conspicuous position." She found it curious that the rendezvous point he had chosen was so near to his mother's life pod, exactly where the Scarrans would look, if they had reason to look for him at all, which hopefully they did not.
And yet, in a way, she understood his decision.
He was watching her. "Your associates--whether they are the Kalish or the Scarrans--have displayed poor tactical sense in assigning you to me."
That was anger, not reason talking.
"You think they know what is between us?" she replied.
"Assuredly, the Scarrans do; your coms gave them a most thorough account."
She felt a stab of shame. She had betrayed more than military tactics when she allowed the Scarrans to observe her every move.
"Surely, that indicates that it is the Kalish who sent me."
"The Kalish Resistance would be a poor spy network if it had failed to piece together your treachery."
"True," she said, "yet *they* took me back."
He studied her a moment. "It would seem so," he said finally. The contacts she had put him in touch with a cycle ago, at least, should serve as evidence that she still worked for the Kalish. She was relieved to see that he made no attempt to argue that.
After a moment, he sat down and said, "You are fifteen arns early."
"You are earlier still." She took a seat on the other side of the small flight deck from him. When he made no reply, she added, "I wished to have additional time to scout the area. I do not believe that is unreasonable."
"I was told my contact must complete a previous assignment and would not arrive ahead of schedule."
No wonder he was suspicious. "I called in a substitute to finish that assignment so that I would not be late." It was all going wrong again! She had pulled out on an assignment to work with him, and now he would trust her less for it.
"Why you?" he demanded.
"I am the nearest thing the Resistance has to an expert of Motak 4."
"An interesting coincidence."
"It is not a coincidence at all," she answered, her throat suddenly tight.
From the way his eyes bored into her, she wondered if he had misunderstood: did he think she meant that she had studied this planet to use the knowledge against him? To compromise him?
"I am not your enemy," she told him.
"You," he replied hotly, "are an encumbrance. The question is not whether you disapprove of Scarran domination. The question is what you are prepared to do about it. And by your actions, you demonstrate yourself to be that most dangerous of liabilities: an adept performer with catastrophically poor judgment."
That was among more hurtful things he had ever said to her. Hurtful--and unfair as well.
"You do not understand," she shot back. "If I had not done what I did, the Scarrans would have killed thousands of bioloids and thousands of natural-born Kalish. They would have gutted one of the most powerful resistance efforts ever to be mounted against them."
"And you served them," said Scorpius, "to preempt the purge you had been warned of."
"Yes!"
"But if while you were implanted with their coms, you could not alert me to this situation, then, by the same token, you could not alert the Resistance, which presumably, therefore, remained ignorant of its danger."
"Yes--"
"In which case, I fail to see how your betrayal of the Peacekeepers could accomplish anything for the Resistance apart from postponing its obliteration."
Sikozu had spent hundreds of arns grappling with that very problem. "I was buying time!" she said. "I was hoping that the Resistance would discover some sign of their danger."
Scorpius smiled at that, the first smile he had given her since casting her off. "As strategies go, hoping for the best is hardly worthy of a spy of your acumen."
She knew there was a compliment buried in that, but the insult shown out plainer.
"So you say," she retorted, "but it *worked*. Why do you think the Resistance still exists at all today? Between the time that I agreed to work with the Scarrans and time that you discovered it, my people did begin to suspect their danger. When the Scarrans struck, almost forty-five percent were able to evade capture."
"Fortuitous," he said simply.
"Tell that to the Kalish who are still alive."
"And while you were passively gambling that your people were astute enough to survive, you very nearly handed Crichton over to the Scarrans!"
She knew it was true. The words were like a knife she turned on herself. "It was all that I could think to do. If I could have asked for your advice, I would have." She'd longed to. "Do you have advice to give me now? If my planning was so stupid, then illustrate the virtuosity of *your* brain and tell me what I should have done."
"You should have let the Scarrans destroy the Resistance," he answered without hesitation.
*That* made Sikozu boil. She rose from her seat and came to stand over him. "You can sit there and tell me that I had an obligation to send thousands--perhaps millions--of my people to their deaths before I lied to *you*!"
"Don't be a fool," he snapped. "That your actions involved lying to me is purely incidental. Moreover, your hypocrisy is exceptional to suggest that I lack a sense of proportion when, for the lives of some millions of enslaved Kalish, you would have sold the freedom of half the galaxy!"
"That is not fair." Nor was it an entirely new thought for Sikozu.
"Is it not?" he said more quietly. "And what if a few shots had been fired differently and the Scarrans had captured Crichton before he could return to Moya? And what if they had tortured out of him the secret of wormhole weapons? All because *you* led them to him?"
"It was never my intention to lead them to Crichton. I did not even know he was alive for most of the time I was their spy. I thought they would merely be learning about Peacekeeper movements."
"'Merely' that?"
Sikozu sighed and began to pace. "Yes! That is bad enough. But it could have been survived. There was much about Peacekeeper tactics I did not have access to, nor did I strive to."
"And when I told you that Crichton was alive?"
"I do not know! It happened too fast." She stopped, unable to look at him. Slowly, she admitted, "I used to think I was. . . more resourceful."
"As did I," he answered.
Now, she glared at him. "But I will not fail here."
He answered with a silence more condemnatory than speech.
***
In the planet-hopper just outside the coordination station, Scorpius waited for Sikozu to return. He was unable to follow her progress: Scarran scanners made transmitters too great a risk.
When she was an arn overdue, he began to seriously consider the possibility that she was laying a trap. There were other possibilities too. Her guise as a technical aide might have been exposed. She might have been captured before she could seed the toxin into the fertilization distributor—but she'd been implanted with a distress signal to activate in need. She had not signaled. Then again, she might merely be delayed; such delays were not uncommon.
He waited.
When she was an arn and a half overdue, he determined to search for her. If he'd had greater trust in her, he would have waited longer. His appearance would make it difficult for him to infiltrate the station. For that reason, they had determined that he should come to her aid only as a last resort.
But if she had betrayed him again, every moment he remained in this ship increased his danger. She might be long gone and guards alerted to seize him. Or she might be in trouble and unable to activate the distress signal. The best option for addressing all the eventualities was to make a personal investigation without delay.
Packing an extra measure of the toxin, he exited the ship. The twilight, along with his infrared reflector, should help conceal his approach. The station should not be heavily guarded. Scorpius made his way to the maintenance entrance for the refrigeration chamber, which was used to refine certain compounds for fertilizer. The Scarrans were likely to avoid it on account of the cold. The access codes his network had intercepted opened the door. The cold air poured out in an invigorating rush.
He had memorized where the fertilizer distributor was housed. Still, to approach it without being seen took fully half an arn: he must not only avoid security details but blank out the cameras he passed as well so that there would be no record of his presence.
When he reached the distribution room, the door was open. He could see Sikozu tinkering with the distributor. But she was not dispersing the toxin through it. He watched her narrowly for some microts, striving to discern her precise actions. So intently was he watching her that the footfalls behind him startled him. He whipped around abruptly to see a low caste Scarran approaching, hand raised to deploy its heat probe. Scorpius fired his pulse pistol directly into the Scarran's eyes, which would blind it if not kill it.
The Scarran squawked. Sikozu appeared at the door. Ignoring her, Scorpius fell upon the Scarran and fired his pistol at it again, point blank through the eye into the brain. Then, Sikozu was there, helping him drag the body into the distribution chamber. She palmed shut the door.
"What the frell are you doing here?" she demanded.
"Attempting to ascertain why you were delayed," he said shortly, accessing a surveillance monitor to assess whether the scuffle in the hall had raised an alarm.
"The distributor is broken," said Sikozu. "I *was* fixing it, but now I suspect I will not have time to do so before the Scarrans are alerted to that guard's absence." She hesitated. "Have they been alerted?"
There was no sign of an alarm. "It would appear not yet."
"They did not see you?"
"I blanked out the cameras I passed."
She sighed and turned back to her work. "It will take me at least another two arns to fix this machine."
He knelt by the distributor. "I will assist you."
Sikozu shook her head. "The scrambled conduit regulators are all located in one processor. There is not room for two people to work on it at once."
"We do not have two arns," he growled.
"Brilliant observation."
There had to be another way. He poured over their situation, searching for possibilities.
After far too many microts, an idea came. "If the malfunction is localized around the conduit regulators, then the main distributing engine is still functional?"
"Yes," Sikozu answered, "but without the conduit regulators, the toxin will not be proportionally delivered to all the plants."
"But if we can inject the toxin into the main engine, it will be distributed through the planetary substations nonetheless."
"In comparatively unregulated quantities," Sikozu cautioned.
Not all the plants would be destroyed. But their population should be decimated.
"Then, I suggest we activate the engine and inject the toxin."
Sikozu crossed to the access hatch for the main engine and opened it, revealing a large hole in the floor. "We will have to inject the toxin first, then activate the engine."
"Unacceptable," said Scorpius, coming to her side. "If this compound is allowed to settle, it will solidify before it can be distributed." As he spoke, however, he perceived the difficulty. The body of the engine was buried in a cylindrical hole. It was designed to be accessible only to special maintenance equipment, which did not appear to be stored in this room.
"You will have to climb down the wall to it," he told Sikozu.
"Not while it is active," Sikozu replied. "The forces would be too strong; they would counteract my ability to alter my center of gravity."
He gazed at the machine, gauging the distance. "I believe if I hold onto your legs, you can reach it."
Sikozu gazed at him warily. "I will try," she consented and drew out her vial of toxin.
"Use this as well," said Scorpius, handing her his own supply. Perhaps they could substitute quantity for precision.
Switched on, the engine roared and whirled the air. Scorpius sat and braced himself against a guardrail, while Sikozu clambered awkwardly under the rail and clung to it. Scorpius took hold of ankles and gripped them tightly enough that his thumbs almost touched the tips of his fingers. Idly, the thought occurred that if she had not been wearing boots, he could have encompassed her small ankles in his hands easily.
"Are you ready?" she asked him.
"I am," he replied.
She let go of the guardrail and promptly thwacked against the side of the cylinder. Her impact jolted him, and her altered position required to him to shift his grip if he was to keep hold of her. He determined to shift it one ankle at a time.
When he first loosened his hold, she cried out, "What are you--?" Then, evidently she divined the answer, for she promptly fell silent.
She scrabbled against the wall, reaching down to the engine.
"Lower!" she called up.
He moved forward and down as far as he could.
There followed more scrabbling and some cursing. He could not see her well enough to follow her progress. After perhaps a hundred microts, she called out, "I have done it."
He pulled her up till she could grasp the guardrail, then let her go. While she was composing herself, he checked at the surveillance monitor again. The guard's absence from his post had been noted. They were sweeping through the security cameras and would find blanked ones soon.
"We must go now," he told her.
They were more than halfway back to the refrigeration chamber, when rounding a corner too fast, they almost smashed into a Scarran. Before they could react, it had seized Scorpius' arm in a vice-like grip. Scorpius twisted and lunged at it with all his might, not enough to do that Scarran any damage but enough to stumble momentarily free.
"Get down!" he heard Sikozu yell and flung himself onto the floor just in time to glimpse the yellow gleam of her radiation before covering his eyes. The heat bloomed out as if from inside him. He could imagine his skin blistering and liquefying. Then, the worst of the heat faded, and there was a weak tugging at his shoulders.
"We must hurry," said Sikozu, on her knees by his side. Behind her, the Scarran sprawled motionless.
Scorpius heaved himself up and pulled her up roughly beside him. They both stumbled dizzily. Sikozu was shaking with exhaustion, worse off apparently than he was. Supporting her with one arm, he hurried her back toward the refrigeration chamber. By escaping the way he came, he could keep himself off the security cameras.
They made it to through the chamber and out the door into the grass. They'd gone several hundred paces when an alarm in military code began to shout instructions for capturing infiltrators. They quickened their pace. The heat from Sikozu's body burned into him where she touched him. After perhaps fifty microts, the coded instructions changed, but they were too far away now for Scorpius to make out specific words.
Sikozu twisted to look back as they ran.
"They are coming," she panted.
But he and Sikozu were already at the hatch of the planet-hopper. When they reached the flight deck, she fell into her chair and began the launch sequence.
"Get to your pod," she ordered. "We will stand a better chance of one of us surviving if we go in two directions."
They had stored his pod in the hopper's bay to keep it off their silhouette, while leaving it as a means of escape. But now, he did not see how it would help them.
"We will not," he answered breathless and fell in a chair beside her. "Already, all stations are being alerted to our presence. The Scarrans have more than enough ships to gun down both of us."
"Well?"
They were lifting up from the field and, without motive, Scorpius suspected, Sikozu was steering them in the direction they had come from.
"We will use this more conspicuous ship as a diversion," he decided, "and both attempt to escape in my pod."
"But they are watching this ship; they will see your pod."
True. "We must use the pod as a diversion as well. We can place both ships on autopilot and abandon them. I suggest ejecting from the pod, as it remains the less conspicuous vessel."
"Ejecting where?" Sikozu demanded.
In the viewer behind them, a Scarran ship was rising from the retreating speck of the coordination station.
Scorpius reviewed his knowledge of this planet, searching for a likely hiding place. Nothing was presenting itself.
Sikozu turned to him sharply. "Your mother's pod."
That was absurd! "It may well be booby-trapped," he answered.
"Perhaps," said Sikozu, "but it is also a place they are unlikely to look--unless they know you are here, which, since you blanked the cameras, they should not. It is shelter. It is a ship that may even be made space-worthy."
Yes. She was correct. The pod was a technologically serviceable object that was also a ruin in a wasteland. On every Scarran database for the planet, it would be recorded as an irrelevant derelict. Just now, it appeared the best option.
"Set the autopilot on a plausible escape vector," he said, "and meet me in my pod."
