Power Play - Anne McCaffrey [8]
“Not just for her,” Yana said with a sigh.
“Well, do you approve?” Marmion asked, coming into the cabin with a loaded tray.
“I’ll never be as well dressed again,” Yana said on the end of a sigh. “Oh, that smells divine . . .”
“Good natural foods always do. This is earth chook.”
“Chicken?”
“Prepared from a much-coveted family recipe known to the famille de Revers as the Colonel’s Southern Fried Chicken,” Marmion said, snatching off the cover of the main dish with a dramatic gesture. “The colonel was my many-greats ancestor who fought in some sort of early war on Earth.”
“Ohhh . . .” Yana, sniffing deeply, made no more concessions to courtesy but sank down on the chair by the table and served herself from the large platter.
Bunny entered then. “What smells so good?” she asked. Diego was right behind her, sniffing with his not-so-small proboscis.
“Yummy!”
“There’s enough for all and more that can be hotted up if anyone has an appetite,” Marmion said as the young people pulled chairs up to the table. She and Sally exchanged glances at the success of their agenda.
3
Sean forced himself back to work after seeing Yana off. He had hoped that they would have a little time to spend together. He’d arranged his investigations in the south so that he could. Damn CIS. But he had to trust Marmion de Revers Algemeine. She was awake on every count and more than able to handle whatever the ungood Captain Torkel Fiske and ex-chairperson Dr. Matthew Luzon could be up to. Sean did not doubt for a moment that they had plans underway to discredit Marmion, Yana, Bunny, and Diego, perhaps even discredit Anaciliact—though he would be the hardest person to compromise of the lot of them that had gone so bravely forth today. Sean just didn’t see either Torkel Fiske or Matthew Luzon forgetting the indignities both had suffered on Petaybee, well-deserved though they had been.
Luzon may have broken legs, but with new healing techniques those injuries wouldn’t put him out of action much longer. And nothing had broken his brains any more than they already were, or altered the man’s outrage at the backfiring of all his calculations. Of course, he had lost credibility with Farringer Ball, the secretary-general of Intergal, but that would only make him more anxious to retaliate.
The company, too, was retaliating, apparently intent on drowning the newly appointed interim joint governors of Petaybean affairs, himself and Yana, under a mountain of paperwork.
At SpaceBase, most of the several tons of paper that was stacked ceiling-high in Yana’s little cabin would have been electronically transmitted. So far Kilcoole had no electrical power, nor did it want to acquire any in the near future. The generator that ran Adak’s radio was inadequate for the volume of communication the company suddenly found necessary to transmit. The battery-powered comm units weren’t up to the job either. So couriers were sent several times a day via two of the hovershuttles that had been sent down to aid in the repair of SpaceBase.
Three weeks after the planet had destroyed the landing fields and many of the surrounding buildings by extruding massed rock up through the center of the facility, SpaceBase had been all but evacuated. Meanwhile, troops were set to relocating buildings around the old cleared perimeter and salvaging what they could until small shuttles could ferry enough material to build a new landing pad. But before the first shipment could arrive, the planet gave the company another demonstration of its power.
Sean and Yana had been riding toward SpaceBase and were just in sight of the standing stones the planet had made of the landing field when suddenly both curlies shied and whinnied. About the same time, the trees began to shimmy, the river along which the trail ran churned as if stirred by millions of giant fish, and the ground shuddered. Both curlies abruptly sat down, Sean and Yana still astride them.
“Earthquake!” Yana yelled, but Sean found