Eschaton debacle (pp. 325–326)
even out in the four-court theater the stockpiled warheads are hidden from view inside the identical white plastic cast-off industrial-solvent buckets all academies and serious players use for drill-balls
Context
Eschaton runs on concealment. Each Combatant's team "knows only their own Situation-profile and total available megatonnage," the arsenals sit hidden in buckets indistinguishable from ordinary ball-hoppers, and the pre-game summit is therefore "a lot of poker-facing about response-resolve, willingness to go SACPOP, nonnegotiable interests" — a game whose engine is hidden capability and bluffed resolve. Pemulis, its master, would "just about eat the whole world alive during pre-Eschaton summits," his "teams won most games before the first lob landed" — i.e., won on concealment and bluff, not aim. That the children's dead-serious rehearsal of hidden strength and disguised weakness is being conducted under the literal eye of a professional at that exact craft is the scene's quiet rhyme: amateur tradecraft performed, all unknowing, for an audience of one who does it for a living.