— 140 —
Lupo Provik disentangled himself from Two. He went to a window. Beyond lay the world he had chosen as the seat of his stolen empire. It was a beautiful world, still untarnished. He meant to keep it that way.
“You’re brooding again.”
“I suppose.”
“One and Four again?”
“Yes.” The news dribbled in. The Ku seemed to have done everything but get the hostages away.
“It was a thin hope.”
“I know. I know. It had to be done. And they volunteered. But knowing that doesn’t fill the hole in here.” He studied the forest that swept up his mountain. “Now we’re safely out, I can’t help wondering if it was worth it.”
Two understood. “It was. This isn’t Tregessser Horata DownTown, where you’d be dead by now if you hadn’t reached up and grabbed. And none of the rest of us would have lived.”
“I suppose.”
“If you have to brood, worry about how we’re going to keep the Guardships from finding us.”
“They’ll be too busy picking up the pieces and holding the Rims.”
“If you can’t do anything constructive with your mind, come do something useful with the rest of you.”
— 141 —
WarAvocat was wounded. Lady Midnight did not remember him. And she had aged. It was terrible to look at her and recall the beauty that had faded. So he looked at the other woman, who had come aboard as haughty as a queen, unafraid, contemptuous.
He could not fathom her attitude. It seemed misplaced. “You’re not in the Tregesser Pylon,” he told her.
“Which renders me vulnerable to maltreatment. It doesn’t change who’s quality and who isn’t.”
Ouch. He lifted an eyebrow. “Why did you leave your companions? Why should you expect any mercy?” She radiated something intensely sexual. He wondered how she would be.
“The Ku and his bullies are determined to go out in high Ku style. They want to die. But they also want to make a fool of you for as long as they can.”
“They haven’t done a bad job.”
“They’ve forgotten something in the heat of their game. Getting the Outsider fleets to suicide only gets rid of the fleets. The point of the war for the methane breathers is to buy time while they ready a place to hide.”
WarAvocat frowned. “There is no safe place.”
“Wrong. We spent a year there. But I can’t tell you where. Only the Ku knows. And he has no reason to tell you.”
He quizzed her. She was forthright. But why? He asked.
“I have people on that rider, including a son.”
There it was. She wanted to cut a deal. “I’ll think about this.” Long enough for them to get real hungry out there. If shipboard politics permitted.
Three days. He had not made a dent in Midnight. The Tregesser woman had been easy, and interesting, but inclined to manipulate. She overvalued her skills.
She was strange. In the usual loose confinement, she roamed around muttering like a madwoman.
He did not think she was crazy. She was up to something. She got around too well, too, like she knew where she was going....
Ku wearing captured combat gear invaded a rider bay and carried off shipboard rations. He had not anticipated that. They were daring. They could become lice on the body of the Guardship.
Were they trying to force something? More likely they had no choice. Midnight and the Tregesser woman had come aboard gaunt.
They were vulnerable out there, even if they were indetectable. He had options. He sent fighters to pepper the area with 40mm CT. Afterward, he sent a message. He wanted the methane breathers’ final redoubt.
Instant uproar. The Deified did not want deals. They wanted revenge. Living crew did not want campaigns, they wanted Starbase Dengaida, to get Gemina into therapy.
The Valerena’s muttering paid off sooner than she expected. She took a turn in a remote corridor and there was Tawn. Had to be, though it was female. It had that look.
Its being female was a surprise. That would make seduction more difficult. And this Tawn, on a Guardship filled with the Living, would be less naive.
WarAvocat waited uneasily for the Ku’s representative. Provik appeared to need no guide. Disturbing. “Do you have yourself under control, Colonel?”
Klass nodded. She knew she was a psychological counter. She was tough. She had come out of the tank knowing she had been killed and had gone to find out how and why. She was ready to hunt the Ku. Maybe too ready.
Why was Provik with the Ku? They had lied skillfully at P. Benetonica....
The air asked his attention, communication for his ears only. He listened, accessed the surveillance on the Tregesser woman’s quarters. She was having a conversation with someone who was not there. Bizarre. He would have to give that more attention.
Provik arrived. He was direct. “The Ku says he’ll give you the location and a method of attack if you’ll give him Midnight and Valerena Tregesser and turn your back while he disappears.”
“Maybe he’d like another shower of CT.”
“He might worry if your gunners could hit the broad side of a Guardship.”
“I see. So. You once said, ‘We have our own politics to survive.’ I have my own politics to survive.”
Provik shrugged. “All the same to them. They’ve made up their minds to die. They won’t bargain.”
He had feared that. Damned Ku style. “And you Tregessers?”
“We wrote ourselves off way back. We have nothing to gain from you.”
Too true. Life was the only chip he had on his side of the table. And they would not play for that stake. He glanced at Klass. Provik seemed untroubled by her presence.
“We have an impasse. I don’t know how to break it.”
“Ask Gemina.”
Crew were troubled enough. If Gemina offered an unpopular suggestion... Even so. “Access, Gemina. You have been monitoring. Respond to Mr. Provik’s suggestion, please.”
It was a long wait. Bad. It might mean.... It did.
“Enlist the Ku according to recent fleet directives. Assign them detached duty with orders to report at an unspecified date.”
Impractical. “The Directive disallows anyone who has stood in arms against Canon.”
“Hire him as a special operative, independently assigned, under suspended death sentence.”
Interesting. Gemina understood Ku warrior psychology. Enlisted, their concepts of faith and honor would compel them to fulfill whatever obligation they undertook. It would lay a fat temptation before Kez Maefele, who wanted to get his people out. The unspoken agreement would be no commentary ever about what had happened to Starbase.
“Do you understand the undertaking there, Provik?”
It would not be politically acceptable, but he could order it. If he did not mind putting his Deification more at risk than it was.
Once he had been ready to risk it to get the Ku. Must he now risk it to silence an enemy more terrible and repugnant?
“Tell the Ku I’m considering dealing. On about those terms. If he convinces me totally that this Outsider hideout is dangerous.”
“I see the angles, Strate.” Provik walked out.
WarAvocat looked at Klass. “Well?”
“You haven’t kept up on my work with the Meddinians.”
“I haven’t had time. What have I missed?”
“Seeker claims it’s critical that we beat the Godspeakers now, before they dig in. If we don’t, we’ll never beat them completely. They’ll devour us in the long run. He says. In fact, he goes on like we may have missed our chance already.”
“I’ll review the material. See what you’ll need if we have to deal with the Ku the hard way.”
“Yes, sir.” She went.
He reviewed the material though he was too tired to concentrate.
Turtle said, “Let me think,” after hearing Provik’s report. The snare was patent. They would turn him into a living endorseme
nt for the fleet.
He should not have survived Starbase. If his people had followed orders, they would be safely away. He would not be eyeball to eyeball with another moral monster.
They would insist on keeping the attack secret. But the Ku needed to know that their ignominy had been redeemed. But the news running free might hamstring the Guardships when they needed everything to end the Godspeakers’ threat.
Had he hurt them too much? Had he made it impossible for them to compromise?
Jo eased into the darkness outside VII Gemina. It had been a long time since EVA school. She had to be careful. She was wearing a field combat suit for the sake of its detection capacity. It would be clumsy in free fall and had no maneuvering jets. She attached a safety line and jumped.
She stopped paying out after two hundred meters, studied the damage, looked for sentinels. She could find none.
The motion vectors of her jump, the unyielding safety line, and the slow rotation of the Guardship swung her out over the damage. When she was headed for the horizon, she began paying out again. There were twenty kilometers of monofilament on the reel, more than enough.
Hey! Didn’t that look like a tractor vane, that trapezoidal regularity in the wilderness of twisted metal? Hard to be sure. No way to make sure without getting too close.
What the hell? She worked the rocket launcher around, sighted, launched, hit rewind. The takeup reeled her in so fast she did not see the rocket strike.
WarAvocat needed no convincing when Provik returned. He believed the Meddinians. The Godspeakers would constitute a deadly threat while they maintained belief in a Destroyer deity.
The Godspeakers understood the Web less than did any other race.
The Presence radiated dread as a defense, as a tool with which it frightened away destructive vermin. Only a pest encountered repeatedly risked destruction. Predisposed by evolution to dark interpretations, the Godspeakers had seen the Presence as a manifest avatar of a greater power, a child sent by the Darkness to demonstrate Truth.
They had stumbled onto a way of summoning the Presence. Announcements attributed to it were fancies or wishful thinking. They lied to their human allies, who lied in turn to the subject races.
WarAvocat entered a directive: obtain that summons. Web maintenance could be concentrated in Canon space.
The murder rites did affect the Presence. Seeker suggested that was because it misread the sacrifices.
Provik presented a crude starchart. “There’s what you’ll have to dig them out of if you let them get ready.”
WarAvocat plugged it in, let Gemina translate, stared.
Grim.
“They’re providing themselves with habitats capable of surviving there?”
“Construction was ahead of schedule when we left.”
War Avocat glared at the chart. “I can find it now.”
“But how long will that take?”
WarAvocat accessed the data from VI Adjutrix. What he needed still was not there. He glanced up. Provik grinned.
Had they gotten aboard VI Adjutrix during its stay at P. Benetonica? That would explain a lot. “I’ll need a face-to-face on this.”
No protest. No argument. “I’ll tell him. I’d like to see Midnight and Valerena before I go. I have messages for them.”
That hurt. He had made no headway with the artifact. “I’ll have someone take you. Don’t dally.”
Provik grinned again. “We’re not in any hurry. There’s no time pressure on us.”
The clang rang through the rider. “What was that?”
Turtle had it in a minute. “Something hit one of the vanes.” He could not get a good look. “Someone will have to go look.”
One of his people went out. His report was not good. “There is an anti-armor rocket embedded in the vane. It did not detonate.”
“A dud? Or intentional?” Turtle worried. They knew where he was now.
“That will be the big question.”
Turtle accessed the ship’s schematics. They went to work figuring out how much damage the warhead could do and what options existed.
Turtle muttered the whole time. He had a damned good idea who had put the rocket there.
Blessed told the women, “I’m here because we’re negotiating. We’ve almost closed a deal.”
The Valerena was not excited. “Oh.”
“We have something they want.”
“The Outsider hideout?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t want to go back, Lupo. I like it here.”
One raised an eyebrow. He did not tax her, though. “Midnight?”
“I go with Blessed. Wherever he goes.”
One nodded. He saw the weariness the Ku had mentioned, the encroachments of time. “It shouldn’t be long. WarAvocat is pressed for time.”
WarAvocat was pressed politically. He had presented the available evidence to Kole Marmigus, the Dictats, and the Avocats. Marmigus and the Deified Pursole Styles, dct. 3 and former WarAvocat, agreed immediate action was indicated. Hereo Jaspyon, dct. 7, and the Avocats wanted to head for Starbase Dengaida. Now! They refused to believe a beaten species could pose a continued threat — despite the Ku’s example.
They did not want to believe.
Aleas had broken her silence to warn him that Makarska Vis had come out of seclusion. She led a cabal dead set against handing the Ku anything but his head.
“Damn! I thought we were a sensible, pragmatic people.” He was talking to himself, thinking about resigning again.
There would be no easy way out. The options were fading. He would be forced to put his immortality on the line one way or another.
Someone tapped on his door, uncertainly, then with resolution. “Enter.” He was startled. “Midnight!”
“Hello, Hanaver,” she said in a tiny, frightened voice.
Turtle supervised the dismantling of the vane personally. That was not difficult. The rider had been designed for easy repairs under poor conditions, in expectation the work would be done by inexperienced people with common tools.
They had the dud out within the hour. Turtle prepared a timer and destructor charge and hurled it toward the Guardship’s horizon. It flew on till it encountered the screen, slid around the curve, finally blew.
Under cover of that distraction, Turtle moved ship five hundred meters, to a better hiding place.
— 142 —
WarAvocat met Provik in an empty fighter nest. Klass and Midnight accompanied him. Blessed Tregesser and Provik’s girlfriend completed the other party. Midnight bustled off to Tregesser. WarAvocat maintained a face of stone, his suspicion that she had visited him to soften his heart confirmed.
Provik said, “He didn’t expect you to come to him.”
“The political situation has devolved into the grotesque. I have to do something quickly.”
Provik’s girlfriend muttered, “How many times do we have to kill her before she stays dead?” She and Klass glowered at one another.
WarAvocat finally understood. The Tregessers had replication technology. Nothing else explained the mysteries so neatly. He had not seen the obvious because it was not supposed to be there.
The fleet desperately needed newer, more flexible minds. His own generation had brains set in concrete.
“Klass. Compose yourself. We’re not animals. There’s more at stake than your outrage. Provik, take me to him.” He had come prepared to go outside, though he had not known what to do about Midnight. There were no EVA suits for winged people.
Provik solved that with a fighter pilot’s blow bag, a poor man’s escape pod. They closed her into one, inflated it, and Blessed Tregesser towed it like a child’s balloon once they were outside.
WarAvocat’s heartbeat rose. His blood coursed as it had not in millennia. Going to meet the enemy... This was not the same as standing in WarCentral moving pawns who actually did meet the enemy eyeball to eyeball.
“WarAvocat is coming himself.”
Turtle w
as astonished. Then suspicious. Why would the man do that? “Watch him every second.”
“The female soldier is with him, Kez Maefele.”
“Watch her twice as close. She’s twice as dangerous.”
They came to the rider’s bridge. WarAvocat glanced around. “Are we this much trouble?” He was a tired old man, moving slowly.
“You are.”
“To be honored by the enemy is a greater accomplishment than to be honored by one’s own, I suppose. It’s been an interesting few years. I’m glad you didn’t want it all.”
“The alternatives were less appealing. Lupo says you had great success at S. Alisonica and T. Rogolica.”
“Few got away.”
“Excellent. I hope the blow to your pride wasn’t insupportable.”
“My pride is fine. It couldn’t have been managed on a cooperative basis. But I have to live with the political consequences.”
“I imagine Makarska Vis is exercised.”
“You imagine right. And there are others after my blood. There have been changes since you left.”
“Yes? So. I gather you see a way to break our deadlock.”
“A basic approach. Providing you have a functional escape pod.”
“I do.” Turtle was intrigued. His gut feeling was that Strate did mean to let them go. Why? Some political angle?
“At fifteen hundred hours my chief of staff will open a port in the screen. You will shoot through and head for the strand. When you’re convinced you’ll make it, you’ll eject me, the Colonel, and the data.”
“And we’re quits?”
Klass said, “No. I’ll find you someday.” She moved slightly. Provik’s woman had the mouth of a weapon in her face almost before she started.
“How many times you have to die?”
“I only have to get through once.”
“Colonel! No immunity, Kez Maefele. Just a head start. In exchange for that information.”
Turtle nodded. “And if I don’t come through?”