"Not yet," Liadof said. "But the Qanska will soon be giving us that information. After that—" She shrugged. "It'll simply be a matter of sending Omega to pick it up."

"Really," Faraday murmured, frowning at the displays. No. That couldn't possibly be the entire plan.

Why on Earth would the Qanska just meekly hand over their stardrive?

He sent a sideways look over at Beach. His face was rigid, his lips compressed tightly together. He and McCollum had gotten along pretty well in the past, he knew. Could McCollum have picked up a few more pieces of this puzzle from her friend in Bay Seven before Liadof locked her away and passed them along to him?

Possibly. Easing away from Milligan's shoulder, he drifted in Beach's direction—

"You'd better come back here with me, Colonel," Liadof called, almost lazily. "We wouldn't want you distracting the techs with unnecessary questions, now, would we?"

Faraday gave Beach's profile one last look, then turned away. "No, of course not," he said.

"Right here, Colonel," Liadof ordered, indicating a chair she'd set beside her. "You'll have a good view from here."

"And what is it I'll be looking at?" he asked as he sat down.

Liadof turned to the displays, her eyes shining again. "The end of an era," she said quietly. "And the beginning of the next."

Raimey had reached Level Two, and had leveled off from his climb, when he began to hear the first whispers of the distant Qanskan call.

He paused, letting himself drift with the wind as he listened. The voices were faint and indistinct, the tonals coming across as little more than mutterings. But if the words were still obscured, the tone of the call was clear as empty air.

Danger!

He resumed his swimming, putting a little more speed into it. He'd heard a thousand such warnings in his lifetime, most while he was a child, almost all of them signaling a Vuuka attack.

But he'd never heard a warning with such an edge of fear to it. What in crosswinds could be going on up there?

Whatever it was, it seemed to be getting worse. More Qanska were picking up the call now, echoing the original and adding to it. Danger, attack, fear, terror.

And there was something else different about it. Something that set it apart from all the other warnings he'd heard since birth. Something odd and chilling...

And then, with a jolt, he got it. All the voices in that call were female. All of them. The only ones who were calling for help were the Nurturers and the female Breeders. None of the Protectors were calling.

Which meant the Protectors were too busy fighting the attack to add their voices to the chorus.

Or else all of them were already dead.

Raimey leaned his muscles hard into his swimming, putting every bit of strength and speed he could into it. He had the direction now: straight ahead, definitely on Level One.

Somewhere near his old herd.

"You must be insane," Faraday said, tearing his eyes away from the displays and staring in disbelief at the woman beside him. "What are you trying to do, start a war?"

"Calm yourself, Colonel," Liadof said. Her own eyes, he noted, were still on the displays, her manner glacially calm. "And no, I'm not trying to start a war. I'm trying to end one."

"If you think a few Martian protests and riots constitute a war, you are sorely deficient in historical perspective," he bit out. "This is the sort of thing that starts real wars."

"Gently, Colonel," Liadof warned. "Proper respect and decorum, or I'll have you sent back to your quarters."

Faraday took a deep breath. Calm down, he ordered himself. She was right; and there would be absolutely nothing he could do to stop this madness if he was kicked out of here. He had to keep silent and control himself, to stay here and watch for something—anything—he could do.

And so he clamped his mouth tightly shut and let his eyes return to the displays. To the image of the Omega Probe, carrying out Liadof's grand scheme.

Carrying out her act of war.

A small group of Qanska shot past Raimey in the near distance, mothers and children of various ages, swimming as fast as they could. He thought of calling to them, but he didn't have the breath to spare right now for a conversation. Neither, he suspected, did they.

He kept going. More Qanska were visible now, most of them children with their mothers or other female Breeders, all of them swimming hard away from a point somewhere still ahead of him.

Something coming up from below caught his eye. Vuuka, was his first, startled thought. But no, it was just a pair of Protectors, swimming upward toward the distress call. If they noticed him, they didn't say anything.

Ahead, now, he could see something moving through the atmosphere. Or maybe a pair of somethings, one of them attached to the back of the other. His mind flashed back to that Sivra attack so many dayherds ago, where the smaller predators had hitched a ride on a hijacked Vuuka.

But the shape ahead was all wrong for that. Besides, unless his eyes and distance perception were playing strange tricks on him, the thing up ahead was far too big for any Vuuka that could get up this high.

In fact, it was too big for a Vuuka of any sort, at least any Vuuka he'd ever heard of. That lower shape had to be at least a hundred-size across from nose to tail, bigger than anything but the oldest of the Wise. What in crosswinds...?

And then, suddenly, it clicked. "Vuuk-mook," he muttered disgustedly to himself. This was no natural phenomenon threatening the lives and well-being of the herd. This was nothing but another of the humans' probes.

With an exasperated snort, he let himself glide to a halt, annoyed at himself and even more so with the Protectors and Nurturers of the herd. These were people who had seen Raimey delivered to them by this same sort of machine, after all. Had they forgotten all about that?

Apparently so. Ahead, he could still see Qanska fleeing from the probe's advance. Mostly they were the slower Babies and younger Midlings, all of them being herded frantically away by their mothers.

Behind them, the Protectors were gathered around the probe, churning the air madly as they repeatedly rammed their bony foreheads into its sides.

Mentally, Raimey shook his head in contempt. Idiots.

Still, if they kept beating themselves against the probe that way, someone was going to get hurt. He'd better go over and patiently explain that this was nothing to be worried about.

He started forward again; and as he did so, the dull rumble of the probe's engines began to grow louder. The probe changed course, swiveling a few degrees into the wind and heading off toward Raimey's left.

Raimey frowned, altering his own course to compensate. What in turbulent air were the humans doing? Trying to get their probe away from the Protectors before they damaged it? Probably. He picked up his pace, noticing as he did so that the probe was likewise speeding up.

Still, if they wanted to get away, they were going to have to do better than that. Behind the probe, the Protectors had regrouped and were giving chase. Apparently, someone in charge over there was really determined to chase this intruder away.

The probe was still picking up speed, outpacing the pursuing Protectors, the sound of its propellers filling the sky. Already it was moving far faster than Raimey would have expected something that big could go. Clearly, the humans had decided their best bet was just to give up and go do their research somewhere else. It wasn't like the skies of Jupiter were that crowded, after all—

And then, abruptly, something seemed to catch in Raimey's throats. The probe wasn't running away, he suddenly realized. It was instead heading straight toward one of the straggler groups of Qanskan children and their mothers. Chasing them across the sky like a huge metal Vuuka.