No time to worry about it now. He tapped his wrist. “Ready? It’s time.”
He drifted away when no one was watching. He joined his family on the operating bridge of his personal Voyager. As Lupo One backed it from its docking bay, he said, “VII Fulminata blew up a minute ago. Want to screen it?”
“Might as well.”
Lupo felt tired beyond any weariness justified by exertion. It was the tiredness that comes after great stress, great failure. It was a weariness brought on by a certainty that half a life’s work had gone for naught.
He had expected it, but that did not soften the impact of reality.
Behind the Voyager, fire and death clawed the face of the night and ripped the fabric of space.
— 49 —
Absolute silence gripped VII Gemina. In every compartment boasting a viewscreen, men and women watched fire blossom on the field of stars, XII Fulminata’s self-chosen eulogy.
No Guardship had chosen self-destruction in two thousand years. Even in defeat that extremity had been unnecessary.
WarAvocat suspected it was a statement rather than a necessity. Fulminata would not let anyone or anything external become the arbiter of its fate.
Characteristic.
WarAvocat surveyed the Deified. Makarska Vis refused to acknowledge his presence. He smiled. She was shaken. What support she retained, after her trick with the Ku, would dim.
He vandalized a holy silence. “Stand to, people. It’s our turn.”
The smell of fear tainted the air.
VII Gemina was deep into the deadly sock, approaching the point where XII Fulminata had dropped screen. Much of the enemy’s resources had been destroyed. But a lot remained. Maybe enough.
A leaden weight dragged at WarAvocat. He did not want to follow XII Fulminata into oblivion. Could he have gone on without XXVIII Fretensis there to see?
The might of the enemy smashed in. In seconds VII Gemina was locked up inside its shield too tight to fire back.
He checked his secondaries.
XII Fulminata’s last few and some of VII Gemina’s were headed for XXVIII Fretensis to rearm. The XII Fulminata pilots would not be much use anymore, as exhausted and disheartened as they must be.
The enemy had begun recovery, too. Suddenly, he understood why Stareicha had seemed intent on racing to his doom. “Maximum acceleration ahead,” he ordered, silently cursing the man or woman who had condemned him to follow this one straight course. “Connect me with all the squadron commanders. Off whichever Guardship. All secondaries to relay to anyone we can’t reach directly.”
Click! Every viewscreen reserved for the Deified became active.
“We have a net, WarAvocat.”
“Access. All squadrons. This is WarAvocat VII Gemina. All ships capable break off present action. The enemy is recovering for rearming. Pursue. If his bays are open, fire into them. Destroy ships moving in to rearm. Don’t waste time on enemy batteries. When you need to rearm, do so on XXVIII Fretensis.
“XXVIII Fretensis, I’m going to run this gauntlet through, then work back outside it. Do you have reserve pilots sufficient to reman ships off XII Fulminata and VII Gemina?”
A simple “Yes,” and that connection ended.
WarAvocat checked his shield. It was solid but under increasing pressure. That pressure would get worse. Maybe so bad he would have to follow Stareicha’s example and hope VII Gemina cleared the sock before it was consumed.
Could he give the order to drop screen? He was not WarAvocat XII Fulminata, obsessed with an image of invincibility, ready to accept destruction if withdrawal was the alternative.
All those silent Deified, many of whom had been WarAvocat before him, stared, knowing the conflict within him, perhaps wondering if they could have given the order themselves.
“WarAvocat.”
That voice was grim. He hurried to the woman’s side. She tapped her monitor. It displayed a schematic of the sock ahead, aflicker with fields of fire. She cancelled that. A stark portrait and bleak prognosis remained.
“I should have figured.” He had been thinking of it as a sock, not a tube. And the mastermind on the other side had shown no inclination to miss an opportunity.
The end of the killing tube was plugged with chunks of dead rock. “How many? Four?”
“Six. Two are small.”
That was one decision made. It was too late to avoid a collision. He had to go into that with a shield. “We taking any fire from them?”
“No, sir. Probe shows only dead rock.”
“Fields of fire again.”
She brought them back. He studied them, ignoring protests from warning systems associated with the screen. He grunted. Only one thing to do, feeble as that was. He had to open a port forward and throw everything he could to reduce the masses of those rocks. Tube it like a gun barrel so it would channel Hellspinners. The Twist Masters could get off more if they were not aiming them.
He gave orders. VII Gemina hurled massed fire forward. He fixed his attention on the schematics, ignored the creaking screen. It would hold. Or it would not.
A lucky Hellspinner destroyed the smallest rock. A heavy CT shell blew the other small one into gravel. Hellspinners rolled, snapped chunks out of the four big rocks. “I want everyone strapped securely,” WarAvocat directed. He set the example.
Twenty-eight seconds and the run would be over. VII Gemina would be clear of the killing zone and ready to get down to the business of massacre.
“WarAvocat! The screen is going!”
“Hold it forward! All weapons commence firing!” He was going shitstorm, want it or not. “Damn it, I said hold the screen forward! Get it up! Get it up!”
Two. One. Impact.
— 50 —
Provik secured the stern view. “I was good enough to take out two Guardships.”
“Only thirty to go,” Four quipped.
“Good enough to take two, but they sent three. The same old story. You can’t beat them if you play their game.” He stared at nothing. “Our whole investment, smoke in a few hours.”
Four said, “We knew the odds. We weren’t doing anything new. Just putting more firepower in one place. We had the Outside screen, but it didn’t contribute much.”
“Tactically, it had little significance,” Lupo admitted.
“We need a new strategy,” Four said.
“I’m open to suggestions.”
Three said, “We need Hellspinners.”
“Let’s not fool around here,” Lupo said. “As long as we’re wishing, why don’t we do what Simon did and wish for our own Guardship?”
That stifled conversation. Lupo reactivated the viewscreen, contemplated the receding battle zone. They were killing each other there still, but it was harder to see. The massed firing was over. The surviving Guardship would take its time and do the job right.
Had he covered House Tregesser well enough? That was his main concern now. That he might have left something that would point a finger. Not something important, like someone who knew something, but something trivial that would scream House Tregesser.
He had it all covered. Still, he would be watching over his shoulder for a long time.
“Do we have contact with Simon’s Voyager?”
“Way out on the edge.”
“Keep it there. Don’t reply if he tries to communicate.”
Everyone looked at him. One asked, “What are you thinking?”
“Not yet. It needs time to ripen. Or rot.”
“He’ll get irritated if we don’t respond.”
“He won’t see us. Our system is better than his. He’ll keep his mouth shut. He won’t want the Guardship coming after him.”
Lupo stared into that viewscreen and wondered if he had what it would take to do what he was contemplating.
— 51 —
Jo broke a long silence to spit, “Chains! How absurd are these clowns going to get?”
Degas, AnyKaat, and Vadja — still groggy from
drugs — burned with the same indignation. They wanted to bite somebody. Chains! In a pseudoprimitive cell, shackled with chains!
Only Haget was in a good humor.
Jo snapped, “What’re you grinning about, you stiff-necked martinet? Are you getting off on this?”
His smile faded. It resurfaced quickly, though. “I can’t help it. I keep thinking of the fun I’ll have after the pendulum swings.”
“The pendulum swings? You silly sack of shit, what do you mean, after the pendulum swings?”
Haget laid a finger to his lips. “Let them find out the hard way.”
Jo muttered, “He’s crazy. We’re in the hands of savages and our fearless leader thinks it’s a joke on them.”
“It is, Jo. They played it on themselves.”
Degas said, “Cholot was the krekelen.”
Haget agreed. “Timmerbach wouldn’t pull a stunt like this on his own. The real Cholot had the spite but not the balls.”
“We’ve lost it. It’ll get out of that Traveler and turn into somebody else.”
“Maybe. But if you can figure it out, so can Timmerbach. We catch up with Glorious Spent, our krekelen will be there. Locked up. Bet?”
Degas mumbled, “You’re right, Jo. He’s got a wobble in his spin.”
Haget said, “Two weeks at the outside, troops. Jo. Is that thing dead yet?”
Jo glanced at Seeker. It had not yet shown an inclination to recover. “It’s still breathing.”
“It’ll come around. So let’s lay back and enjoy the holiday.”
“Listen to the man. Calls this a holiday.”
“Fake it, then. It’ll drive them crazy.”
“Ha-ha. We’ve got a party now.” Jo looked at Seeker. Had the damned thing gone into hibernation?
“Hi, guys,” Haget told three humorless STASIS types outside the door. “Smile. It’s good for you.”
Jo pasted on a grin. “Eat, drink, and make merry. You don’t have a lot of time.”
They went away. Jo wished she felt as confident as she had sounded.
— 52 —
Turtle established them in an empty office overlooking that cavernous birth canal where new Guardships came to life. For him the location was no better than any other. But it pleased Midnight. She could launch herself on fanciful acrobatic flights in the inconsequential gravity of the construction channel. Her wings had gained color and luster.
For six days Turtle worked himself to exhaustion. If Starbase had secrets it wanted kept, he could not detect the blocks locking him out. If there were living beings anywhere, he could not track them down. He could locate none of the Deified supposed to haunt the system. There seemed to be no omniscient observer as there was aboard VII Gemina.
He could find no evidence Starbase was anything but what it appeared, a half-forgotten fortress where no one had remembered to shut the gate and the garrison were dozing at their posts. The neglect of absolute assurance.
No defenses were active.
Turtle could not focus on the monitor. He went to watch Midnight’s ballet. “Castle Dreaming,” he murmured, recalling a myth as Midnight looped. A fortress dire and invincible, defended by unkillable demons with claws of steel and fangs of diamond. But Tae Kyodo had entered unchallenged and had walked out with the Bowl of Truth because the demons were taking a siesta, confident their reputation would keep the bad guys away.
Up the cavern the automated factory went to work. Sparks flew. Midnight glided down. “That was beautiful,” he said.
“It’s easy where there’s so little gravity. Did you find a way?”
“It’s so easy it’s pathetic. We just get on one of the shuttle ships. The Deified operating them aren’t interested in what happens inside them. But once we reach the Barbican, we’ll have problems. We’ll have to change ships. And they will be alert for people who do not belong.”
“I’m going to check on Amber Soul.”
“All right.” Turtle stared at nothing. Somewhere along his life path he had lost the fervor that had driven him in the days of the Dire Radiant.
All those years slinking through the shadows, peeking through the cracks, educating and arming himself against his next bout with the necromancers, and now his inclination was to lay his sword aside and declare peace on the Guardships. Revolutionary change would deliver Canon into the jaws of predators.
There was an evolutionary thing happening, and he’d just begun to recognize it — though he had listed symptoms for WarAvocat.
Canon grew as inexorably as a black hole. Growth would not stop while there were Guardships and Outsiders to offend them.
Give them that. The conquerers never struck first.
Within the ever-advancing Rims a vacuum was developing, consequent to human depopulation. The race was old and, maybe, beginning to fade from the stage of the Web.
The vacuum was pulling nonhumans off the worlds where they sulked, to fill empty shoes. Almost by capillary action, some were oozing upward into the hierarchies. This great empire, Canon, might be theirs to inherit. Ten thousand years hence, Canon law and the Guardships might be the only evidence of the human race’s passing.
Circumstances argued that the greatest good for the greatest number sprang from the status quo.
How to get out? Just the one way. Stealth. Going without being seen, without leaving a spoor. But the Barbican stood athwart his path like a wall a thousand kilometers long and five hundred high.
“Turtle!” Midnight squealed. “Come here! She’s waking up! For real this time.”
He hurried into the office.
— 53 —
Blessed Tregesser paused before leaving the cozy Voyager for the uncertainties dockside. M. Shrilica 3A. Not exactly the hub of the Tregesser empire. A financial loser. The in-system station, 3B, unaffected by Canon regulations, was almost completely shut down.
The world, too, was a source of negative profits. To recommend it, it had nothing but its value as a place to dump exiles.
Rash Norym, whose governorship he would usurp, looked like a woman who had received an unconditional pardon. She waited dockside with the Station Master and a platoon of functionaries who looked like they were doing life without parole.
“If we’re going to do it, let’s get it done.” Blessed started walking. Nyo and Tina Bofoku and Cable Shike followed, willing companions in exile.
Shike was twenty-two. He came out of the darkest dark of the Black Ring. His eyes were the eyes of an old man who had seen all the evils that men do. Blessed hoped to make Shike his own Lupo Provik. Cable aspired to the role.
Blessed stopped in front of Norym, took her hand in his. “Don’t question your good fortune. Make use of the opportunity. I’ll do the same here.” She seemed pained because her escape would be at the expense of another. “Nyo. The envelope.”
Nyo handed it to Norym. “Transfer, travel authorization, whatnot.”
She opened it. She read. “Tregesser Horata? The Pylon?”
“I pulled a string. It would be nice to have a friend inside. Somebody who would send the occasional letter telling me the latest gossip.”
Her face closed down. She knew there would be more to it. A time would come when a major payback would be demanded. “I understand. Thank you.”
“Good. The Voyager is waiting. Go when you like. I’ll need to meet with your managers to see if we can’t turn this operation around.”
Rash Norym looked at him hard, a seventeen-year-old talking about turning around the worst loser in the Tregesser empire. “Lots of luck.”
“We studied it coming out. Cable thinks he sees a way to cut our losses.”
Norym glanced at Shike. “Like I said, good luck. I’ll write when I’m settled.” She was amused. But there was no humor in her companions. They had heard the deadly edge in Blessed’s voice.
— 54 —
Valerena stood staring through double armor glass into the high noon gloom of a mild and sunny day on C. Pwellia 2, a world in its toddle
r stage. It was so active tectonically nothing dared be built upon its surface. Everyone lived aboard the same airborne prison, a feeble giant of an imitation starship that could not rise above fifteen thousand meters with prayer boosting it.
“Tregesser Tzeged,” she muttered. “Armpit of the universe.”
C. Pwellia 2 boasted a crop of volcanos so vigorous the planet seemed to simmer. Its surface was a treacherous scum that could break up or turn over any moment. Sometimes the activity exposed concentrations of rare elements worth harvesting.
It was a low-budget operation, marginally profitable, kept in place by the Tregesser need to possess. If House Tregesser pulled out, some other House might move in.
Valerena wondered if the seeds of disaster might not lurk inside that attitude. If you were too stubborn about holding on you might not recognize when getting out was your only viable option.
She had brought a retinue of a hundred to this hellhole, where it rained only at stratospheric altitudes, and that a deadly corrosive rain. Her retainers were there behind her. She turned. “They sent us to Hell on a pretext. Let’s shove it down their throats.”
— 55 —
Amber Soul ate ravenously for three days. Then they grabbed the first ship out to the Barbican. Turtle spent the time aboard explaining what had happened, where they were, and what they had to do to get away. Then he explained again. Then he zeroed in on the gray areas where she did not comprehend. Then he just hoped for the best.
And there was the thing she wanted to hear over and over again. “Your race inhabits a system called M. Meddinia, the fourth planet, a Closed Treaty World. Your people don’t leave there often. Nobody could figure how you got to Merod Schene.”
Then she would want to hear all about the member of her race who had been on the Cholot Traveler. He could tell her nothing but the name: Seeker of the Lost Children.
The passage to the Barbican was easy. The Deified managing the ship noticed nothing. The transfer to a Horigawa Hauler was more difficult, but Amber Soul covered them perfectly.