Instead, like all the Family, he treated the scientific underpinning of his world as a set of colorful spirits and personalities, elementary animations and wills which orchestrated events he could not see. Learning to use them meant boring study of the proper rituals—connecting leads, punching in numbers and commands, arranging wires and knobs and minute chips—which induced proper behavior in the entities who inhabited the interior of the Argo’s myriad complexity.

He sensed living motivations inside dead matter, but imagined that this came from humanity, animating the ancient human tech with fresh force. Mechtech, though, was inherently dead and beyond human understanding. It came from more recent and higher evolution of the galaxy, he knew, but he despised it for what it did to humanity—and for its indifference to the pain and anguish and inexpressible poignancy of what every human felt instinctively and mechs in their remorseless certainties so clearly could not.

“Yeasay,” Killeen added. “The Volts hid in the shafts. Like mines; the mechs didn’t have projectors themselves. Carelessness killed Waugh and Leveerbrok.”

This pronouncement brought silence and stony, downcast glances to the table. Killeen bit his lip, wishing he could have made the point more smoothly. Better to get it over soon, though, before the experience faded. “So it went,” he said cheerfully. “But you three—you were fast and sure and damnfine.”

He raised a glass of alky-laced cider and they all followed suit. There was a traditional toast at every post-Witnessing dinner, and this seemed a good way to break the mood. They murmured assent and Killeen said, “Clean the table, too.” They all cast puzzled glances at him.

“Didn’t Family Knight have such a custom?” he asked Shibo.

“Eating all food?”

“After a Witnessing, yeasay. It shows confidence in the future, gathering energy for coming battles and victories.”

Shibo shook her head. “Family Bishop big eaters anyway.”

“Porkers,” Toby put in timidly, “compared with Knights.”

“Guess it got started in the bad years at Citadel Bishop,” Killeen said. “I was small, barely ’member ’em. Ending the meal was the best—crunchy, salty.”

Shibo arched an eyebrow at him. “What was?”

“The food? Crawlers. Insects.”

They all looked shocked. Shibo said disbelievingly, “You ate?”

“Oh, yeasay. Times were when that was all we had.”

“Ate crawlers?” Toby asked open-mouthed.

“Was fair—ate only ones that crawled onto our crops, tryin’ eat our own food. Turnabout’s fair, yeasay?”

To their continuing shocked looks he added, “Had ’em salted, crisped up over the Family fire. In big baskets, mixed in with whatever crop they were tryin’ eat themselves.”

Loren swallowed with difficulty and the others looked down at their plates. “Eat up, now,” Killeen said, and could barely suppress his impulse to laugh.

Shibo’s lips played with a smile and then took a solemn, thin line as she caught on. This bit of foolishness had gotten their minds off Waugh and Leveerbrok. Further, Killeen judged, the midshipcrew would all soon hear of how the Cap’n had eaten crawlers and been glad of it. It did no harm to have stories of the hard oldtimes circulating, and it helped build the tenuous communality that they would surely need.

Killeen finished the scraps of fleshy black eggplant and stringy beans on his plate. He said nothing as the others started up smalltalk again, for without his anticipating it, a dark mood had stolen over him.

He had enjoyed this meal in the company of his son and friends, but throughout it he had been unable to remain simply the father. He could not shuck off the role of Cap’n merely by shedding his tunic and emblem. Loren and Besen were Toby’s friends but they were midshipcrew, too, and a good Cap’n had to seize every chance of training them. Comfortable though they had all gotten during the long voyage, there was no room for easeful life now.

The experience of watching his son dodge and dart through murky alien passages had filled Killeen with horror. He had suppressed it then, but now it all came out in a black and foul mood that fed on him even as the others resumed their bantering. They were speculating on what lengths Families might’ve gone to for gruesome victuals in the past—or themselves, in the future—and he knew they were trying to draw him out. But he could not get the images of the assault from his inner eye.

To these three midshipcrew, happily joshing one another, the action had been an exciting triumph. To Killeen it had conjured up memories of dozens of battles and all the anguish they brought. The young had not yet learned that death was not a dramatic outcome of a heroic charge. Instead, it came with a sudden sound and a Family member nearby falling, already crisped or fried or spat by a projectile weapon. They were gone before they knew they’d been hit. And who got hit depended on a thousand factors you could never judge in advance: positions, terrain, speed, color of body armor, vagaries of mech movements and aim, endless details that shifted every moment. So death was random and meaningless—that was what you learned on the field. And all the Witnessing and ceremonial dinners could not erase that penetrating fact.

How had his father handled this knowledge? Abraham had never seemed bothered by the losses suffered on the raids he led out of the Citadel. Even the worst moments had not seemed to damp that wry spirit. Yet they must have. That was the difference between him and Abraham, Killeen thought. He had to struggle to keep up the facade of Cap’n. To Abraham there had not been any falsity. Abraham had been the real thing.

He saw he had been silent too long, and opened his mouth to rejoin the conversation. Before he could speak, Cermo’s signifier beeped from his finger-coder. All at the table heard it and fell silent, knowing that Cermo, who was on watch, would not call unless it was important.

Killeen tapped his wrist. “Report?”

—Cap’n, there’s something happenin’ on the planet.—They all could hear the tension in Cermo’ s voice.

“Another shuttle coming up?” Already a shuttlecraft from the surface of the planet had arrived. The Family had easily overpowered the two mech pilots. The ship had been filled with machined parts.

—Nossir, it’s—it’s—you come see.—

“I’m on my way,” Killeen said, getting up. Having to end a meal this way irritated him and he added, “You should sharpen your descriptive powers.” The phrase had the right edge of old-style Cap’nly speech, and he felt a certain pleasure in that.

—Sorry, Cap’n.—Cermo’s small voice was chagrined.—What it is…well, there’s some ring around the planet. And it’s gettin’ brighter.—

Killeen felt a cold apprehension. “It’s in orbit?”

—Nossir. Looks like it’s…it’s cuttin’ through.—

“Through what?”

—Through the whole damn planet, sir.—

ELEVEN

At first Killeen did not believe that the image on the large screen could be real.

“You check for malfs?” he asked Cermo.

“Aye-aye, sir. I tried….” The big man’s forehead wrinkled. Cermo labored hard, but to him the complexity of the command boards was a treacherous maze. Shibo gently took over from him, her hands moving with rippling speed over the touch-actuated command pads.

After a long moment she said, “Everything checks. That thing’s real.”

Killeen did not want to believe in the glowing circle that passed in a great arc through free space and then buried a third of its circumference in the planet. Without understanding it he knew immediately that this was techwork on a scale he could never have imagined. If mechs did this here, they had blundered into a place of danger beyond his darkest fears.