VII Gemina was running toward Capitola Primagenia still.
The pieces were falling into place, smoothly and on time.
— 130 —
WarAvocat grew uneasy as VII Gemina drove nearer and nearer Canon’s heart. That Outsider watcher had dropped away, but watcher or no, his intention must be apparent.
If he was indeed too late... For what? That was the question.
For the Ku, too late could mean too late to abort his attack. But that was not the mission VII Gemina had assumed. He was going to get Kez Maefele and rob the Outsiders of their most potent weapon. He need not be too late for that.
But he remained uneasy in the way he did when he left his quarters sure he had forgotten something important but could not think what it might be.
Even putting Gemina onto it surfaced nothing to justify his uneasiness.
What sort of reception would be waiting? Material losses at P. Benetonica would restrict his options. He consulted Gemina and the Deified, put together a straightforward consensus plan of attack.
VII Gemina would go in screened, thrash around till the Ku was spotted, then would chase him till he was caught. Those new ships were nimble, but they had to put into a station sometime.
With slightly over eight days on the count, Seeker reported the Ku’s arrival at the S. Alisonica anchor point. An hour later he reported a big burst of coded transmission throughout that region.
“Are they jumping off early?”
Seeker did not know.
Soon afterward the Meddinian stopped reading anything. The implication was that the Outsiders were all in starspace and communicating by normal means. Which in turn implied that the attack had begun.
WarAvocat became more uneasy.
Next day Seeker reported catching the tail of a brief signal from behind. It could have originated anywhere between VII Gemina and the nether face of the Outsider empire.
Forty-six hours later he reported a similar unrangeable signal.
The record passage for a Voyager running from T. Rogolica to the Barbican was forty-three hours and some minutes.
Moments later VII Gemina ripped past an Outsider sitting in a turn node. It blatted a signal. Seeker reported it as a number.
Little things. Little things. WarAvocat was tempted to cancel.
VII Gemina broke away from the Web expecting anything. And found nothing.
Capitola Primagenia had been attacked but not destroyed. The Outsiders had pulled out. Losses on both sides had been heavy, those of the Outsiders apparently heavier than they had expected. But a triumph had been within their grasp.
And they had gone.
Everyone began pestering WarAvocat about tactical dispositions and relief efforts. He shut them out and brooded, sure he was one piece short of a complete puzzle.
The last Outsider, another damned watcher, handed him that piece. It sent a message. The dragon has taken the poisoned bait. Now it is too late. Success is assured.
“Aleas! Get over here. It’s Starbase!” he roared. “Damn his black heart!”
Aleas stared.” What are you howling about?”
“What’s been nagging me. What I’d forgotten. The Ku always used decoys. You never knew what was real and what wasn’t. He led us here. He knew the Meddinian was reading his signals. Now we’re too far away to get into his hair at Starbase. That watcher is mocking us because we can’t do anything but go back and count the cost.” He started stomping around WarCentral, indifferent to the disapproval of the Deified.
“You’re not going to charge back there after him?”
“Damned right I am!”
“Isn’t that message supposed to make you do that? We go, the fleet jumps back in here?”
WarAvocat stopped stomping. She was right.
He grinned.
VII Gemina climbed onto the Web but moved only a short distance. Two minutes after Seeker reported a bleep of a signal from the watcher, the Guardship broke back off on top of the Outsider, unleashing a Hellspinner storm so intense not a thought escaped.
WarAvocat disposed his secondaries and waited.
Only two ships survived his ambush.
VII Gemina clambered onto the Web cursed by Capitola Primagenia’s bureaucratic legions for leaving them to fend for themselves.
Now for the Ku.
— 131 —
Turtle faced a display representing starspace from Starbase to Gateway. His lieutenants were with him, arguing about how best to deploy the fleet — not quite in the manner their employers would have approved. For safety’s sake, the discussion took place in warrior ghifu dialect.
They reached agreement. Turtle moved to the Outsider commtechs, gave them orders to relay to group commanders.
Delicate Harmony climbed onto the strand, moved toward Starbase, broke away again before reaching the end of the strand, sneaked forward to watch for the projectile strike coming in from behind Starbase.
The Outsider crew, human and methane breather, were awed by their target. They had not believed before. Not really.
The Valerena wandered into the combat center while the gawking was going on. Nobody paid any attention. She had become a familiar haunt. When she got bored she went roaming, looking for an Outsider who could be led into temptation.
She paused behind the commtechs, peered at a screen. “Is that Starbase?”
One of the Ku told her it was. The Outsiders understood body language better than they did the speech of Canon. She toyed with a man’s shoulder for a while. Then she just slipped past, hit a few keys, and started yelling at Starbase to look out.
She ended up restrained by two of Turtle’s people. Everyone stood around looking at one another. Turtle checked the board. “She missed the safety key. It didn’t go out. You. You.” He picked two of his own and four Outsiders. “Collect the hostages. Lock them in the mess of the number two rider. They will have what they need there and there will be no more of this nonsense.”
They went.
“Get to work.” Turtle assumed his station, apparently studying Starbase.
The Valerena had played that well. The rest would have to manage as cleverly if they were to survive.
There was a lot of comm chatter. Starbase was engaged with the backside force. Turtle beckoned the senior Outsider on duty. “Right on schedule. We have fourteen hours. I want as many men rested as possible.”
Those Turtle had sent to confine the hostages returned. One Ku twitched, so. Provik had surrendered the toxin he had been carrying disguised as medicine, finally.
He felt a stir of remorse, but his bets were down. He had chosen a narrow path between light and shadow. He could not balk at the price.
More waiting. More trying hours as the backside force hurtled closer, as his human and nonhuman supporters ran cautious backup checks throughout Delicate Harmony, seeking a flaw in the plan.
The Outsider techs sounded an alarm when they had the backside force in detection. Turtle hurried into Combat. What he saw troubled him. Starbase had defended itself better than expected. “The fools,” he grumbled. “Send the move order now.”
Techs looked at him askance. They had trouble with fluid tactics. They made a plan, they stuck to the plan. “They’ve lost three of the four projectiles targeted on Starbase. They haven’t redirected any of the others. It’s probably too late, but we’ll try to adjust.”
He was not entirely displeased.
The Godspeakers sent the move order to the main fleet.
Turtle determined which projectiles had chances of warping course enough to impact Starbase. “Code this and send it to projectiles Three and Nine,” he told a commtech.
“Sir, if I send this, they’ll know we’re here.”
“If you don’t, we’ll have no chance of victory.” He faced the senior Outsider. “Man the fighters and number one rider. When that message passes Starbase, they’ll send someone to investigate.”
The Outsider looked at him hard, but fearfully, not suspiciously.
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“This is your chance to be heroes. You plan to live forever? Wessel, Staich, the rest of you,” he told his own people, “clear away as the combat crew cornes on.”
He got arguments. He snapped, “I want the best people at every post. That isn’t you. Wait in your quarters till I need you. Comm. Has that order gone out?”
“Yes sir.”
“Alarm given? Secondaries manning?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good.” The battle crew began replacing the watch. “Tell the secondaries they may separate at their discretion, but they’re to stay close so we cast one shadow.”
Twelve men aboard the fighters. Forty-two aboard the rider. That improved the odds. Not enough if the toxin failed, but some.
Detection reported, “Two ships headed this way, sir.”
Turtle watched the data develop till he was sure they faced a standard Guardship rider and a courier that would be fast but lightly armed and screened. He ran simulations, chose his method of attack.
The Godspeakers reported the fleet on the strand, coming.
Time passed. Detection found two more riders outbound, running in the red. The first two had begun decelerating. Turtle said, “They see we’re like nothing they’ve faced before. They’re probably everything Starbase has left. We’ll take the first two before we have to fight all four.”
His attack was straightforward, the fighters going for the messenger, Delicate Harmony and its rider bracketing the enemy ridership. The fighters finished the courier immediately. The rider was more stubborn. It got in one lucky hit before retiring with heavy damage. The second pair closed fast.
Turtle checked the time. His own people should be in place. “Man the number two rider.” He got no arguments.
He prepped detailed orders for the battle groups when the fleet came sleeting in.
The backside force was closing fast. The second rider launched.
For a moment he felt lonely. Now he was the only non-Outsider on the main. How long till they figured it out? “Are those orders loaded?”
“Yes sir.”
“Key them as soon as they break away. Don’t wait for my order.” He disposed his riders and fighters for attack passes meant to look innovative but designed to let the number two rider behave oddly.
He asked for time marks. Just over six minutes till the projectiles arrived. “Anyone has personal business, now is the time.” He left them smirking. Strange people.
He hurried along a passageway, brushed the timer arm on a device his people had installed where the Godspeakers were blind. There was a lot they could not see. They had concentrated on obvious areas, like the bridge.
He had to pass the hatches that led to the number two rider bay. That was an area the Godspeakers did not monitor. Odd, their tapestry of concerns and fears.
He collected a sidearm his people had left, taken from one of the ridership crew, whom they had overcome as they had reported aboard.
Lot of good the weapon would do, him alone with one hundred sixteen Outsiders and six Godspeakers. But great raw material for the Ku legend weavers, the lone hero staying to buy time for his comrades.
Great stuff in stories. Not so great when you were there. But certainly an appropriate end for a dragonslayer who had stepped out of the obscurity of ages to raise the sword of honor one last time and script a cataclysm that would devour empires....
Whoa!
He was amused with himself. Had he developed a mild megalomania?
He returned to combat. Things had gone predictably outside. Crew concentrated on their jobs. They were not yet suspicious.
In a few minutes it would not matter who suspected what. In a few minutes he would have won.
One of Starbase’s satellite fortresses shed a blast of light.
First projectile was in.
Delicate Harmony went into its attack run. “Stand by. Fire as you bear.”
Another orbital fortress vanished in fire. The first was a hulk with a hole punched through.
The lighting dimmed as Delicate Harmony fired.
“Breakaway! Breakaway!” someone shouted, excited as a child. “The fleet is coming in!”
They all grinned. For a moment some humanity shone through.
Delicate Harmony lurched. Turtle felt a touch of sadness. Such a beautiful machine to waste. “What was that?” he demanded.
Techs looked puzzled. “Were we hit?” one asked.
“I can’t get through to the bridge.”
Turtle said, “Look at the hull. See where we’re hit.”
A man screamed. Others yelled. The techs who talked to the Godspeakers went crazy. Turtle yelled, “Help those men!” Provik’s toxin worked! “What’s happening?”
The ship lurched. A real hit. Panic shone in nearby faces.
“Calm down. Do your jobs. Get those men out of here if they’re injured.” One of the fighters did a suicide smash into an enemy ship. Another fighter had vanished. Turtle’s number one rider limped badly.
A third orbital fortress took a hit. A projectile streaked through, hitting nothing. A fifth smashed into Starbase itself, with so much energy it started a slow rotation.
Turtle asked, “Comm, did you get that squirt off to the fleet?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good.” That damned number two rider was not cutting around the action to head for the tag end. Were those fools going to try to get him out? “I want a message run to Damage Control. We need communications back.”
One officer frowned. The first hint of suspicion. He wondered why the Gqdspeakers had become the first casualties.
Why didn’t those halfwits get out? Soon it would be too late to slide around the fleet. If the Outsider crew figured it out... He made sure his back was clear.
Two more orbital fortresses went. A badly diminuated projectile hit Starbase. Delicate Harmony stood toe to toe with the remaining enemy. Armaments exhausted, the surviving fighters watched. The number two rider drifted closer but remained silent.
A tech gobbled, “All dying! Poison.”
Turtle shot the three ranking officers before they finished turning. “Get to work.” The crewman stared. “Work! Or none of us get out alive.”
Delicate Harmony staggered.
— 132 —
WarAvocat tried to think like Kez Maefele. Starbase was vulnerable, obviously. Else the Ku would not have engineered an all-out assault... Or would he? Or would he?
Breath of a suspicion.
“Alert! Red One! Prepare for magnum launch!”
Now. He would see if he could think like the Ku.
VII Gemina broke away at T. Rogolica.
“Damn me! I was right!” The system swarmed with the weakest and oldest units of the Outsider fleet.
In minutes he knew. The fleet had attacked, drawn off the Guardship covering the Barbican, and had fled just before that Guardship arrived. And had come back after the Guardship departed.
The Outsiders had no pickets watching for trouble from deeper inside Canon.
Only a few Outsiders escaped the Guardship’s fury. Afterward, WarAvocat said, “Aleas, the Ku isn’t quite the monster I supposed. Unless he’s something worse.”
“What?”
“I was gloating because I’d screwed up his schemes. But what if I am his scheme?”
“He sent those ships here hoping you’d destroy them?”
“I’m beginning to think so.”
The Barbican was scrap and gas. Outsiders had not destroyed it.
They had captured it somehow. The Guardship returning from T. Rogolica had destroyed it — and it had destroyed the Guardship. Local space was empty. No defenders. No attackers. No watchers. No Horigawas. Nothing but silence.
WarAvocat told Aleas, “I’m not sure I want to see what comes next.”
“We have to go. VII Gemina needs repairs.”
Not just because Gemina had spoken. Seventy percent of the secondaries were gone. The Guardship’s skin was an encyclopedia
of battle damage. VII Gemina ought not to risk another engagement before undergoing repairs.
There was life at Gateway. Of a sort. Gateway’s orbitals had been destroyed. Gateway was beyond recognition. But its Core had survived.
It did not know the fate of Starbase. Nothing friendly had come out. Very little unfriendly had.
Tight-lipped, WarAvocat ordered the Guardship onward.
— 133 —
The number two rider drifted as though it had been crippled, ignored. Then it blew the main drive off Delicate Harmony’s opponent. “Tricky,” Turtle said. “Keep working. They haven’t quit.”
He saw what his people planned. Stupid. A bet against long odds. But they were going to try. He had to cooperate.
He backed to the nearest hatch, jammed it with a shot, did the same with a second, then stepped through a third, jammed it from the outside, headed toward the rider locks.
He ran headlong into the Damage Control party he had summoned. There was a tense moment. A shot sent them scurrying.
In minutes the whole ship would be alert. Even if they took him off, how did they figure to pull out again under fire?
He knocked out spy eyes, welded hatchways shut. He created a zone where he could not be pinpointed. Then he examined the rider hatches. They could not be sealed by remote.
Delicate Harmony shuddered. Lighting faded, came back. A mechanical clanging started aft, hysterical in intensity. The ship lurched, lurched again. What the devil? It was hell being blind to everything but that passage.
He picked a spot near the middle hatch and prepared to make the stand so likely to get puffed in legend.
New noises started up forward. They had begun breaking through the sealed hatches.
Delicate Harmony continued to stumble and lurch and clatter.
The passageway was full of fire. On the deck were six Outsiders who had tried to be heroes. Turtle did not miss.
They could not get a clear shot without exposing themselves. Stalemate. Till the bunch working their way forward set up a crossfire.