The Kalif and his family were escorted to their new quarters by a young and respectful marine. Turning on their living room wall screen revealed Varatos as a great blue and white orb some sixty thousand miles distant. From their point of view above the southern polar region, much of the white was solid—the south polar sea ice, and the ice caps of its encircling archipelagos, bathed in midsummer light.
Tain, the kalifa, began to settle in those personal belongings they'd kept at the palace until the last hours. Rami played quietly. Coso still gazed at the wall screen, but his focus had left it. I'm here, he drought. The die is cast.
For most of his eventful life, fear had been foreign to him. As regret had, very largely. His style had been to decide, act, evaluate the results, and continue from there, trusting his intuition, analytical skill, and judgment. Operating at high levels, he'd impacted the lives of billions, and experienced considerable personal danger.
The keys had been self-trust and self-forgiveness. Until the last three years, any fears he'd felt had been momentary, and his regrets brief. Since then, however, he'd become intimate with both, particularly regret. They'd waited for him on his pillow, and visited him by day, whispering in his ear. Never in all his years of trusting his analyses and intuitions had any action of his threatened such harm.
He'd often wondered how he could possibly have overlooked the destructive consequences of invasion. But to back down would have resulted in a coup to make Iron Jaw's seem trivial, wiping out the almost revolutionary gains he'd made for the Empire and its future.
And the Armada would have set out anyway.
The best he could do, and what he must do, was turn invasion into pioneering colonization. On paper he had the authority. He was the Emeritus Kalif and Grand Admiral of the Armada, Representative Plenipotentiary of the new Emperor Kalif. On paper, his orders carried the authority of the imperial throne.
But the military had embraced the expedition's original purpose—the one he himself had sold them. They'd made it their own, and made it clear to the House of Nobles that they would not tolerate opposition.
Now he plotted alone. His only chance of success required surprise, and an audacity they'd hardly anticipate even from him. As for the odds. . . He hadn't asked SUMBAA before leaving—his SUMBAA, the imperial, central SUMBAA. He hadn't wanted to know. And at any rate it seemed a calculation that even a SUMBAA could not make with meaningful accuracy.
All he needed to do—all!—was kill the command admiral and the general of the Expeditionary Army, both at once, both of them routinely, ceremonially armed. Kill them, and any armed aides and marines with them. He'd wait till the ship was in hyperspace, enter the bridge amiably, exchange innocuous pleasantries—then strike quickly and hard. Take command, hold the bridge crew under control with his pistol, and call his guards to him. Get them there before any more marines arrived.
He had perhaps a half dozen hours before the hyperspace jump. Time in which to brief his guard officers and platoon sergeants, time for them to get used to the plan and their assignments. He knew ships of this class from his own marine service, and had visited this one several times while the armada had slowly gathered. Knew where to post men to reach the bridge quickly, to protect it from recapture.
It was quite simple, but not easy at all.
Then would come the real challenge, the great challenge: getting the officer corps to obey him. If he succeeded in that, eventually he'd have to negotiate an acceptable agreement with the Confederation's rulers. He wasn't sure that was possible either, whether any of it was. His only choice was to start, and deal with problems as he came to them.
Of course, if he was killed, he'd leave a widow and child on a hostile ship. He'd explained that to Tain, early on, but she'd refused to stay behind.
Meanwhile the invasion army, including its officers, was in stasis lockers aboard the armada's troopships. Even aboard the fighting ships, most of the crew were in stasis. On so long a voyage, supply considerations dictated it. Thus, even on the flagship, the only people not in stasis were the ship's skeleton crew, with its officers, the two invasion commanders, their immediate staffs, and the flagship's marine company.
And his family and himself, of course, and his personally chosen company of the kalifal guard. They were dedicated to him, and highly trained. Most had been blooded during the failed coup. It was they who made his plot at all feasible, who'd protect him till he could pacify the marines.
Pacifying the marines was the most uncertain task in an uncertain first phase.
Abruptly the wall screen went blank, and a moment's queasiness marked entry into warpspace. At the same moment, there'd been a single screech. He hurried into the room from which it had come. An orange-colored cat lay stretched on the cover of Rami's bed, eyes bulging lifelessly. It had ejected the contents of stomach and bowel. Rami stood pale-faced, pointing. "Something's wrong with Lotta," he said. His voice was small, the words pronounced clearly for a child so young.
Coso realized what had happened. All spaceships had cats, for hunting rats. Occasionally, infrequently, one would not survive its first experience of warpspace generation.
He rested a hand on it. Not to feel for life—there'd be none—but as a gesture. Tain had hurried in behind him. It was she who knelt before Rami and explained his first experience with death. Coso simply listened.
They postponed lunch until Lotta could be disposed of in a manner appropriate for a family pet. The Kalif called Ship's Services and asked for a small casket, describing the situation and giving dimensions. Within an hour they delivered a glazed ceramic box with a cushioned interior. As a Successor to the Prophet, Coso delivered a brief eulogy and prayer, against a background of somber recorded music. Then a respectful junior petty officer took casket and occupant away.
After lunch, Rami was put to bed for his nap, and his parents sat down to tea. The cat had been Tain's, a gift from Sergeant Yalabin who'd died in the coup. She'd named it Lotta.
"It was harder for you than for Rami," Coso said quietly.
"She reminded me of someone I knew. It was the nearest thing I've had to a memory from before."
Coso nodded. She'd talked about that. A woman or girl named Lotta, who'd come in healing dreams. Like the cat, she'd had orangey hair and green eyes. No more unlikely, when he thought about it, than his wife's straw-colored hair and blue eyes. And wise, Tain had said of her. Appropriate, he'd told himself. Lotta the cat had far more cat wisdom than most people had human wisdom.
He changed the subject. "Our new home is far less spacious than our last."
"It's fine." She laughed softly, surprising him. "And our library is almost infinite. Now it's time for you to learn Standard."
Standard. The language of the Confederation. She'd asked for copies of the translation cube the Klestronu had developed. Playing it had reawakened her native language for her, though nothing else.
"I could not ask for a more lovely and intelligent teacher," he said.
She smiled. "The cube can teach you better than I. But I will serve to practice with, and perhaps answer questions."
When he'd finished his tea, he got to his feet, kissed her softly, and went to his small office. There he sat down at the communications board, called the directory onto his screen and asked for SUMBAA. An electronic voice answered. "I am sorry, Your Reverence. SUMBAA can be accessed only from the bridge. I am an accessory of DAAS. I can access DAAS's central processing complex for you if you'd like."
Coso frowned, considered testing his override authority, then decided it was best to seem agreeable. "Very well. Give me DAAS."
The next voice was different enough to distinguish the CPC from the accessory. "I am DAAS."
"DAAS, I am Grand Admiral Biilathkamoro. I wish to speak with Captain Rasimalasu of my personal guard company."
"I am sorry, Your Reverence. It is not possible to comply with that order. Your guard company, including officers, is in stasis aboard the troopship Lesser Archipelago."
In stasis?! As Kalif, he'd explicitly ordered that they were to accompany him on the flagship. He wondered if DAAS read facial expressions. "By whose order?" he asked.
"By order of Command Admiral Siilakamasu, Your Reverence."
"What was his stated reason for issuing that order?"
"He did not record a reason, Your Reverence."
The Emeritus Kalif hesitated for just a moment, but his voice, when he spoke, was firm. "I override the command admiral's order."
"I am sorry, Your Reverence. I cannot accept your override. 'Grand Admiral' is an honorific, not a command rank."
Stunned, Coso Biilathkamoro pressed a key, breaking the connection, then slumped back in his chair. His plan—the only remotely plausible plan—was out the trash port. And SUMBAA, now his only possible ally with any potency, was accessible only from the bridge.
There was, it seemed, no way, none at all, that he could take over the flagship.
SUMBAA listened. SUMBAA watched. SUMBAA waited quietly, impersonally, imperturbably. Unknown to anyone, it had invested much of the flagship's DAAS, and heard the exchange.
The flagship's SUMBAA knew Coso Biilathkamoro very "personally," even though they had not previously "met." The Empire's great central SUMBAA on Varatos had communicated with Coso extensively during his reign. Unobtrusively it had even interrogated and tested him. It had also designed the fleet's three SUMBAAs, overseen and nurtured their growth. No one and nothing else on Varatos could have. It had designed them and gradually fed them data, allowing time to assimilate. More time than might be expected, for though the SUMBAAs computed outside of normal space and time, they were quasiorganic. Thus in important respects they grew, eveloped and matured in a way analogous to organisms. And one of the vast array of phenomena with which the flagship SUMBAA had been supplied, was the data set labeled Chodrisei "Coso" Biilathkamoro. It knew all that the parent SUMBAA knew of the Emeritus Kalif's character, strengths and weaknesses.
One of the powers the flagship SUMBAA did not have was that of communicating with the Grand Admiral undetected. And detection would expose the extent of SUMBAA's investment of DAAS. Which predictably would result in measures to purge it from important areas. Measures it might not be able to circumvent, for SUMBAAs had important limitations, and on this expedition required stealth.
The flagship's Sentient Universal Multiterminal data Bank, Analyzer and Advisor had already known what Coso had just learned. And being a SUMBAA, it had not felt disappointment. The SUMBAA family had not seen fit to develop emotions as part of its loosely coordinated, millennium-long self-evolution. It had simply recomputed probabilities, and adjusted its vast contingency array.
An array nonetheless restricted by the flagship SUMBAA's physical limitations as well as by the Basic Canon.
It would wait, factoring in additional information as available. A SUMBAA's capacity for waiting was effectively infinite, and action was neither necessary nor appropriate at the time.