(eng) L. E. Modesitt - SA by Adiamante (retail)

Author:Adiamante (retail) [Adiamante (retail)]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

XIX

I actually had my flitter secured below the locial tower before Lieza and the magshuttle drifted in, or before the cyb lander had thundered out of the gray sky and rumbled down the strip.

I checked the knife and slugthrower on opposite sides of my belt and then sealed the flitter. As I walked toward the magshuttle through the unsettled air that mixed comparative warmth and chill, Keiko caught me on the net.

“Coordinator?”

“Yes, Keiko? What’s the status on Delta?”

“K’gaio isn’t happy about your cannibalizing equipment from three locials, but she’s not complaining too loudly. Elanstan thinks that they might have the station operational in two to three days.”

“That’s too long.”

“That’s what it will take.” She paused only minutely before she added, “That’s not why I linked. The cybs are headed out along the lower Aquarius trail.”

“With Majer Henslom?” I glanced toward the north. Was there a hint of distant clouds?

“Yes, ser.”

“Good. I’d like them to get a solid feel for Old Earth.”

“You still don’t want a screamer?”

“They’re big boys,” I pointed out.

“Yes, ser.” Her disapproval—black on black—was clear.

She still thought I was wrong, and maybe I was, but I didn’t see any changes in the cyb attitude toward us, and without any changes, they were still going to try to wipe out us demis, seize our technology, enslave the draffs, and claim it was all justified by The Flight.

She also thought I was bending the Construct, and perhaps I was doing that, too, but the Construct didn’t say anything about having to protect people from the ecosystem or the environment. It just said you couldn’t provoke, threaten, or take the first step in a destructive action, no matter what the result might be. It also said, both fortunately and unfortunately, that you could not act contrary to the Power Paradigms. That precluded moral compromises, which was what most aggressors demanded. Working within those parameters was almost impossible—and sometimes it had proved so. That’s why more than half the eleven historical Coordinators hadn’t survived their charges.

I stopped by the base of the tower and waited for Lieza to float-taxi the shuttle to the area just north of the tower. While it might have been a quarter of the size of the cyb troop landers—not that I’d seen any cyb landers other than troop landers—the magshuttle was still big enough to make a flattened maize cake out of a careless Coordinator.

We still don’t believe in all the excessive warning and safety devices that were another contributing factor that led to the SoshWars. Personally, I thought that attribution was just Masc propaganda, since men tend to be more careless. But we have so little left from that time that it’s hard to say what happened. We do know that when safety devices exceed five percent of a device’s resource contribution or weight, then there’s either a fault in the design or in the operator, or both. Basically, if you can’t operate well-designed equipment without safeties on safeties on safeties, you shouldn’t be trying it.

I

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