Page 21 of Warrior’s Mate

"And if the delays appear there too?"

"Then either half the district developed unrelated communications failures this morning, or something upstream is interfering with traffic."

The maintenance supervisor cleared his throat. "I can access cooperative data from here." Maelis turned. "All of it?"

"All in the southern irrigation zone."

"Do it."

The man hesitated only long enough to glance at Kaiven. Kaiven nodded. A minute later the station display filled with water-meter transactions from farms scattered across the valley. Maelis sorted by transmission time.

There. A cluster of messages had arrived eighteen minutes late. Another cluster, nearly half an hour. Then a third group, transmitted at 0552 and received at 0704.

Kaiven went very still.

"Seventy-two minutes," Maelis said.

"Can you identify the path?"

"Trying."

Her hands moved quickly over the controls. Household meter to cooperative node. Cooperative node to district water system. District water to—

She stopped. The packet had left the civilian network.

"That's impossible."

Kaiven's voice lowered. "What?"

"It was routed through an external defense relay."

"Why would civilian water telemetry touch a defense relay?"

"It wouldn't."

They looked at each other. A warning tone sounded on Kaiven's field terminal. He crossed to it. The screen displayed a priority military message.

ALL LOCAL COMMANDS: TEMPORARY COMMUNICATIONS IRREGULARITIES REPORTED. DO NOT INITIATE CIVILIAN ALERTS. NETWORK DIAGNOSTICS IN PROGRESS. MAINTAIN ROUTINE OPERATIONS PENDING CONFIRMATION.

Maelis read it twice. Then a third time.

"Do not initiate civilian alerts."

Kaiven said nothing. She turned on him. "You're going to obey that?" His head came up.

"They're telling us not to panic millions of people over an unconfirmed network anomaly."

"They're telling us not to warn them."

"We don't know there's anything to warn them about yet."

"We know civilian traffic is being pushed through defense infrastructure."

"We know some traffic is."

"And we know command doesn't want civilians told."

He exhaled slowly.