If Bessany hadn't been in the med lab again, one corner of which still boasted a temporary covering to keep out the snow, she might not have heard it in time. As it was, she became aware of the approaching noise just after Chilaili left the room, heading out to fetch more wood for the cookfires. Bessany jerked her head up and listened. Something enormous was approaching across the ruins of the forest, moving at a high rate of speed and grinding whole tree trunks under an immense weight, crushing them with a snapping, grating sound. After an instant of total befuddlement, she realized what it must be. A chill of horror raced down her spine.
"Chilaili!" She broke and ran, shouting at the Tersae who would, by now, be in the approaching Bolo's gunsights. "Chilaili!" Bessany skidded outside, slipped and slid through the snow to where the Tersae had stopped, swivelling her head in puzzlement from the noise of the approaching war machine to Bessany's wide-eyed, coatless rush forward.
"What—?" the Tersae began.
"Get down!" Bessany shouted, hurtling herself between the katori and the massive weapon bearing down on them from the blizzard. It was going to fire, any second now . . . Wicked gun snouts appeared through the blinding white whirl of snow, towering above them. Antipersonnel guns were trained straight at them.
"Don't shoot!" Bessany screamed at it, flinging out both hands in a hopeless gesture. It ground to a halt less than five meters away and sat motionless while Bessany's deafening heartbeats slammed against her chest. She couldn't even see all of it, just part of the prow with its bristling weapons and the fronts of its immense treads. "Chilaili," she gasped out, "as you love life, don't move! Don't even breathe!"
She heard a hatch opening somewhere above, which startled her, heard the clatter of feet on metal. Then a man appeared through the wind-driven snow and ice, rushing forward, a wicked-looking gun in one hand. An instant later, she stared up into the very last face she had expected to see coming toward her out of a Thulian blizzard. Her eyes widened and her mouth fell open, but no sound emerged past the squeaking constriction in her throat.
"My God," John Weyman breathed, "you're alive . . ."
A jumble of emotions slammed through Bessany, wild relief fighting for space with shame and embarrassment. The raking claws of nightmare would never have descended on her if she'd simply believed this man in the first place. She struggled to find her voice. "You came. You must have read my reports. . . ."
"Yes," he said grimly. "I've read them, all right. Some of them. About twenty minutes ago."
"Twenty minutes?" she echoed, baffled. An absent shudder caught her, chattering her teeth in the biting, subzero wind. "But—"
"Later," he said gruffly. "You're freezing and so am I."
He turned toward the med lab—and halted in his tracks.
Chilaili hadn't moved. Wasn't breathing, either. She was staring, pupils dilated with shock, at the Bolo's towering war hull. Bessany didn't like the look on John Weyman's face. "Please ask your Bolo not to shoot Chilaili."
"Are there any more of those things here?" His gaze never even flickered from Chilaili and his grip on the pistol was so tight, she wondered why the bones of his hand hadn't cracked.
"No, there aren't any more Tersae here," she bit out. "And they're not 'things.' They have names. This," she gestured brusquely, "is Chilaili. My friend."
A muscle jumped in his jaw. "Rapier," he growled, gaze still glued to Chilaili, "please do not shoot the prisoner. Not until I've had a chance to interrogate it, anyway."
"You really are Alexander's brother, aren't you?" Bessany snarled.
John Weyman's face ran deathly white in the glare of light pouring from the med lab. Bessany was so recklessly angry, she didn't even care. "Chilaili," she snapped, "forget about more wood for the cookfires. We'll bring it in later. Let's get inside before I freeze to death." She strode toward the med lab, fists clenched.
The tall katori took a hesitant step to follow, head cocked sideways to keep one eye rolling backwards toward the Bolo's bristling guns. Herve Sinclair blocked their way, gaping up at the Bolo. Bessany shoved roughly past. "Herve, please ask everyone to come in for a meeting. We've just officially been rescued. The Bolo's commander will want to debrief everyone."
"Is it safe?" he asked uncertainly.
John Weyman's voice came as an impatient growl behind her. "Of course it's safe. Rapier doesn't shoot humans." The slight emphasis on the last word brought Bessany around again, glaring. Chilaili had moved cautiously to one side, putting Bessany between herself and the massive machine outside. And, coincidentally, its commander.
"Bessany—" he began, pushing past Herve to stalk toward her.
"No," she gritted out. One hand came up involuntarily, halting him in much the same way as her outflung hands had stopped the Bolo. "Not yet. We're scattered in half-a-dozen lab buildings. The Navy waited three months to answer my reports, so you can cool your heels for another five minutes, until we're all here. You really need to hear what we have to say."
That muscle jumped again in his jaw. "Yes. I do. More than you can possibly guess."
Their gazes locked, striking sparks in the silence. Stone-hard muscles flexed in his jaw and his long, lean hands. The muzzle of the gun swung slightly at that movement, scaring Bessany. Then he surprised her. He ran one of those tense hands through his hair, brushing away melting snow, and let go an unhappy sigh.
"All right," he said, voice low. "We may not have spoken since that damned wedding, but you've never given me any reason to mistrust you. And God knows, my family put you through enough hell, we owe you a break or fifty. I'll give you, and it" —he glanced pointedly at the Tersae behind her— "the benefit of the doubt. For now."
Bessany drew a long, shaky breath. "Thank you," she said quietly. "And Chilaili is not an 'it.' She's a master healer and she's my friend. Please treat her with the courtesy she deserves."
His mouth tightened into a thin, white line. "I'm trying," he said roughly. "Given standing orders on those—creatures—you should be damned glad we didn't fire on sight. Just for the record, were they," he darted a cold look at Chilaili, "responsible for the damage here?"
"No. A tornado hit us. According to Chilaili, we picked the worst spot on Thule to build this lab. An assessment I fully support. And just for the record," Bessany muttered, tucking both hands under her armpits to warm them, "why did it take you so long to read my reports?"
"We've been in the field, on the front lines of the Deng invasion," he said with a growl. "Sector Command never forwarded your messages. Much as it galls to say it, you don't fall into the immediate-family category. So a very junior communications technician dumped every one of your messages into a holding queue. I found out twenty minutes ago, when I queried Sector Command and the Ministry of Mineral Resources for any reports out of Eisenbrucke Station."
"But . . ." she stared, aghast, "surely the Ministries sent some kind of message to the head of Sector Command? If not Mineral Resources, surely Xenology did?"
Anger sparked through his eyes. "No. I bounced copies immediately to General McIntyre, here on Thule. If anyone at Sector had seen them, McIntyre would have known. He was as shocked as I was."
The staggering scale of bureaucratic bungling left Bessany ashen.
John said bitterly, "I suspect the only messages Mineral Resources bothered to read were those directly involving saganium. God only knows what Xenology's excuse is."
"And here I was, stuck out here, thinking—" She reddened, unable to hold his gaze. From the set of his mouth and the look in his shadowed eyes, John Weyman knew exactly what she had been about to say.
"It's all right, Bessany," he said quietly. " I can imagine only too well what you've been thinking. Given what you went through with Alex, I don't blame you a bit." He fell silent then, studying the med lab with quiet intensity, taking in every detail, from the cracked and braced ceiling to the badly injured men and women in every bed they'd been able to salvage. Even so, some of them had been tucked into makeshift pallets on the floor.
A brooding frown hovered around his mouth, but he didn't ask questions, waiting for the others to arrive. He kept his gun in his hand, however, and seemed electrically aware of Chilaili, who had remained utterly and prudently silent. Bessany noticed, for the first time, a medical brace around his elbow and wondered how he'd come to be injured. If the Tersae were behind it, he wouldn't be the only human, by a long shot, with a score to settle.
People were arriving through the snow, wearing hastily donned coats or wrapped in blankets, most of them whispering in awed tones about the Bolo parked outside. When they'd all gathered, jamming themselves into every possible empty space in the room, John broke the hushed, expectant silence. "I'm Lieutenant Colonel John Weyman, Third Dinochrome Brigade. And in case you're wondering about the name, Bessany is my sister-in-law."
He cleared his throat slightly, his expression reflecting considerable chagrin. The scandal of his brother's death had been reported from one end of human space to the other, so he had to be wondering what she might have told her colleagues, what deeply intimate and damaging details she might've shared about his relatives.
He went on doggedly, despite the curious stares. "Recent events have bumped you people to the number one defensive priority on Thule. That's why I'm here with my Bolo, rather than mounting defense over the mines at Seta Point."
"Recent events?" Herve Sinclair echoed. "What can possibly have happened to make us so important?"
John's blue eyes were chips of ice. "I hope to hell your biochemists and their lab equipment have survived, because the Tersae have stockpiled a very nasty chemical—or maybe biological—weapon. They released it during a battle near Rustenberg. The town's been evacuated."
A dreadful silence crashed down. Every gaze, including Bessany's, swung toward Chilaili. The tall katori was watching John Weyman, head tipped sideways and swinging slightly in that maddening head motion so typical of the Tersae.
John said harshly, "I'm hoping you people can find a way to protect the colonists against this stuff, because it's deadly. It acts like a hemorrhagic neurotoxin and it kills within minutes. It was released during an attack on one of the Tersae's underground camps. The stuff wiped out the whole population within three minutes. And it killed a whole flock of those birdlike things that resemble them, in the forest nearby."
Bessany blanched. A whole nest, wiped out? And a flock of their genetic ancestors? How could the Tersae's creators have given something like that to creatures who barely understood the most basic items of advanced technology? It was one thing to give them rifles and bombs, which only warriors would be put at risk, trying to use. But to give them something like a biochemical weapon that would destroy a whole clan, if accidentally released . . .
She glanced at Chilaili—then stared, while the hair on the nape of her neck stood starkly erect. John's words had clearly baffled the tall katori. Bessany had seen enough of the Tersae's facial expressions during the past three months to read that look with utter certainty. Chilaili had not the slightest idea what John was talking about. They don't know they have it, Bessany realized with a ragged pounding of her pulse. My God, they've stockpiled a deadly biochemical weapon and they don't even know they have it.
Even as that realization sank in, Chilaili turned a puzzled eye on Bessany, begging the question with a silent look. Bessany drew a deep breath, trying to gather her scattered wits. She had to say something and she didn't want to blurt out her suspicions. Not yet. She needed time to think about this, to see all the ramifications. A few minutes, at least. She finally latched onto a way to break the awkward silence. "To begin this properly, Chilaili, I must first tell you that John Weyman is the brother, the nestmate, of my life-mate, who is now dead." There, she'd managed to say that in an almost normal tone of voice.
The Tersae's pupils dilated slightly with surprise. She swung her head back toward John.
"I am honored to know you, John Weyman. I have deep respect for Bessany Weyman. Your nestmate chose wisely, to seek her as life-mate." She hesitated, while John's eyes widened at hearing Terran standard coming from the tall alien's oddly shaped beak, then Chilaili asked, "The great ogre responds to your commands?" One clawed hand gestured cautiously toward the temporary wall and the Bolo beyond it.
"What do you know about Bolos?" John asked harshly.
Chilaili blinked. "This is how the ogres are called? We know very little of them. The Ones Above warned us against the humans' metal ogres, but I had not believed such a thing could be so large."
John narrowed his eyes. Drew a breath. Paused, glancing at Bessany, then said carefully, "Tell me about the Ones Above."
"They created us," Chilaili said at once. "And now they are trying to destroy us."
John opened his mouth, then stopped. A peculiar expression flickered through his eyes and halted whatever he'd been about to say. "They're what?"
"They are trying to destroy us. It is why I came through the snow and the wind to Bessany Weyman's nest. I am desperate to halt this war before it destroys my clan and the other clans, the whole of my people. Without the help of humans like Bessany Weyman, we are doomed. Either you will win this war and destroy us, or we will drive you back to the stars—which I do not think likely—and the Ones Above will destroy us. In all the wide world, there is only one human we could turn to. So I came, to beg her help. And also," she added with forthright simplicity, "to pay the life-debt I owe her for saving my only daughter's life. If I cannot stop this war, I have at least brought the warning there will be an attack."
John stared at Chilaili for a full ten seconds without making any sound at all, while his eyes reflected the sudden reordering of long-held assumptions about the nature—and identity—of their enemy. "I think," he finally said, swinging his gaze toward Bessany, "you had better tell me the whole story of what's happened here."
She let go her breath in a long, silent sigh, unaware until that moment that she'd been holding it so rigidly. Speaking very quietly, she told him. He listened intently as each person in the room told their own parts of the story, in turn. Surprise dawned in his eyes and continued to grow, like the sun rising above a glacier. And as he continued to listen, some of the ice began to melt from those chilly blue eyes. His gaze drifted again and again to Chilaili, expression baffled as the researchers and technicians talked of Chilaili digging them out of the rubble, teaching them how to keep campfires going while they looked for enough spare parts to hook the various labs back into the power plant, how to cook food over a bed of hot coals, how the Tersae had set broken bones, treated injuries and shock, changed wound dressings, and brought in snow to melt for drinking and cooking and wash water for the injured.
By the time the last of them had spoken, the worst of the harsh suspicion had gone from his eyes. Caution remained, clearly visible in his expression, but he no longer looked at Chilaili like something he'd have preferred to shoot out of hand and question later—if she survived the first salvo. When the last technician had finished speaking, he frowned thoughtfully. "I don't think I have to tell you how surprising all of this is. Given the ferocity of Tersae attacks elsewhere, I'd have bet money this wasn't even possible. Frankly, it's giving me some fairly weird ideas."
He roused himself from his distracting thoughts with obvious difficulty. "If I might suggest it, this med lab isn't large enough for all of us and the patients in here need quiet and rest. I'd like a brief tour of the facilities that survived the tornado, please. Then I need a meeting with Bessany, Herve Sinclair, Dr. Ivanov, and anybody with a biochemistry background. And Chilaili," he added with a glance toward the Tersae. "We have a great deal to thrash through, yet."
Sinclair nodded. "Of course, Colonel."
"All right, let me get my cold-weather gear. I'll meet you back here in five."
Bessany watched him hurry through the snow and vanish up the side of his Bolo. As she turned back into the room to retrieve her own coat, she wondered what, exactly, his weird ideas might be. Was it possible that Alexander Weyman's brother actually saw the potential for alliance that Bessany had already seen? Had seen, in fact, as early as that first wild night in the thunderstorm? An alliance she had begged various ministries and military agencies to consider in her reports? She glanced at Chilaili, who stood carefully out of the way as people left the med lab. Then stared, while shock like icewater raced through her veins.
John had left Chilaili unguarded.
Just to get a coat.
Her heart thumped in a sudden heavy rhythm of hope, so unexpected it caused a physical pain. Maybe he'd done so only because he knew the Bolo could take out the whole building if Chilaili tried anything. But maybe—just maybe—he really had decided to give Chilaili a chance? Bessany closed her eyes for a long moment. She knew what was at stake here, possibly better than John did, because she had already deduced things about Chilaili's makers that he couldn't possibly know yet, if he'd had her reports for only twenty minutes.
Given what she already knew, that news about the biochemical weapon had shaken her. Badly. The fact that Chilaili had no idea the stuff existed had shaken her even worse. She knew John didn't believe yet, in Chilaili's ignorance, but Bessany was absolutely certain. Nor could she imagine a clan katori being kept totally unaware of it, if anyone at all in the clan knew it existed. Not with the survival of the whole clan at stake, once the genie was out of the bottle. And if the Tersae genuinely didn't know they possessed such a thing . . .
What in hell was it doing in their winter nests?