“Colonel Klass is carrying an explosive device. She won’t hesitate to use it.”
WarAvocat probably had his own, Turtle reflected. “I’ll take a chance. It may be the only chance.” He produced a cassette. “Everything I can give you is on this. You may review it if you like.”
“I like.”
The rider powered up cautiously, lifted off the Guardship, pointed its nose toward where WarAvocat claimed a port would open.
It opened on the mark, a black mouth in the pearly shimmer.
Turtle shoved it deep into the red. The rider plunged forward.
“Hellspinners, Kez Maefele.”
“Raise screen.”
“Miss. Another miss.”
“Someone must not care if they get WarAvocat along with us.”
“Missiles launching, Kez Maefele.”
Turtle’s human companions cursed and blustered. His Ku stuck to business. He put the rider through the port. It popped shut behind them. The missiles exploded against the inner face of the screen. “Politics,” Turtle said. “They must be on the verge of civil war. Launch the pod as soon as they’re ready. Let them chase that.”
The sudden acceleration caught Strate unprepared. “Can’t he do anything gently?”
Three minutes later there was a violent thrust at right angles to the first. The Ku had launched the pod.
It revolved. WarAvocat saw missiles banging off the inside of VII Gemina’s screen, saw Hellspinners seeping through. He became so angry he almost had a stroke.
VII Gemina, operationally in control of OpsCrew rebels, accelerated toward the strand but arrived too late. Three days of hurtling back and forth produced no sign of the rider.
WarCrew backed by Gemina regained control, went back, collected WarAvocat. He was hale enough to vent his rage. Within an hour there was a new OpsAvocat, and a dozen Deified had gone to the electronic equivalent of purgatory. One was a Dictat. WarAvocat exceeded his legitimate powers dramatically. WarCrew who had cooperated, even unwittingly, he had recycled.
In hours living WarCrew were in control, totally and absolutely. Soon the Guardship was on the Web, headed Outside.
Strate formally informed crew of his intentions. “We will finalize the matter of the Godspeakers. Then we will visit Starbase Dengaida for what help may be available. Then we will travel to P. Benetonica to pick up our unfinished business there.”
Privately, he told Colonel Klass, “I think the Ku will try to rejoin the original Lupo Provik, wherever he’s gone. Somewhere on P. Benetonica 3 there’ll be someone who knows some truth and someone who’s in contact with Provik, however indirectly, who’ll serve as the first stepping-stone in the chain.”
The Valerena Tregesser heard the public announcement. From that she reasoned forward to WarAvocat’s private thoughts.
— 143 —
VII Gemina limped across the Rim, a determined cripple, much slower than during the crashing inward run. In private WarAvocat was as concerned as anyone else. Gemina had no recollection of a time so desperate the Guardship had carried on with this much damage.
He hoped for the best.
A long, slow passage, without political complications, allowed time to look into what he had shelved or missed. He spent a lot with Klass and her Meddinians, trying to integrate their knowledge into what Gemina already had. Which meant frequent collisions with the unpleasant fact of Gemina’s burgeoning ego.
He spent some time in damaged areas where Gemina could not eavesdrop, too, discussing that with senior live crew. The meetings did not produce much. He did learn that there were no breaches in the Core’s armor or seals. The problem was not organic. It would develop slowly — but could not be treated medically.
Klass had a suggestion: resurrect her sidekick. “She’s the only one aboard who’s had a kid or has had to deal with one. Right now Gemina is a real bright baby. We could make some breaks for ourselves if we started from the beginning trying to bring it up right.”
He chuckled, not taking her seriously.
“You start right now teaching it ‘I Am A Soldier.’ That it’s got specific duties and responsibilities and honors and privileges. Teach it that it’s an important part of the crew but only a member of the crew. That’s in the programme already. Reinforce it whenever you deal with the personality. Treat it that way and demand that it behave that way.”
An amusingly flaky idea — that grew on him. He adopted it. It might buy needed time. He authorized AnyKaat’s restoration.
He permitted the Tregesser woman to insinuate herself into his bed. It was a way to keep an eye on her. She had some private agenda. What it was he could not fathom.
He suspected she was in regular contact with Tawn, and they might even have a physical relationship, but he could worm nothing out of her. Nor could he learn much through surveillance. Gemina still insisted Tawn was mythical and would not see her though crew sightings were a commonplace.
He took VII Gemina off the Web at a system already designated B. Alenica, nicknamed Chatterpoint, deep within the methane-breather empire. Chatterpoint was the place to leave data packages whenever one Guardship had something worth sharing with others.
There were recent optimistic packages from old confederates IV Trajana and XII Fulminata. According to them, it was almost over. A couple more gas giants to hit, some mopping up, putting quits to roving warships without bases to support them anymore.
Simpletons.
WarAvocat set out a package containing VII Gemina’s news, with requests for support in the waste space.
Valerena came early the day VII Gemina departed Chatterpoint. She was troubled. He asked, “What is it?”
“Guardship politics. I made a mistake, staying. I don’t fit this reality at all. Some of the Deified are going to try to kill you. But I don’t see how they could.”
— 144 —
Lupo hugged everybody, including Turtle, then hugged everybody again. For hours everybody told everyone what had happened for a year and a half. “You pulled it off!” Provik enthused. “I don’t believe it. But why did you come back, Kez Maefele? I thought you’d do another long disappearance.”
“I hope I have.” The Ku looked around. “And there was nowhere else where I had more friends.”
Lupo was startled. He heard truth there, if not the whole truth. “There’s more.”
“Yes. When I gave WarAvocat the data, all I gave him was what he needed to silence the methane breathers. I reserved information about several tag ends with no military significance. If I could find a partner willing to share the wealth of that waste space with the Ku people...”
Lupo burst out laughing. “You never stop scheming, do you?”
“Do you? I have to be what I was made to be.”
“You have a deal. Down the middle. I’ll put up equipment and capital. You come up with the manpower and keep the Guardships out of our hair. They haven’t given up on us.”
“No. But VII Gemina will be occupied with internal problems perhaps long enough for us to become a matter of no consequence.”
“I hope so. Come on, we have to have an all-Canon blowout to celebrate the most bizarre passage in modern history.”
— 145 —
Jo caught AnyKaat’s signal, cocked the hairsplitter she had kept as a souvenir. Two furtive OpsCrew types came along an aisle between vats, supporting a limber-limbed replica of Makarska Vis.
WarAvocat had anticipated his enemies correctly.
The OpsCrew conspirators were headed for Personnel Recording. While the replica was in the vat, and in transit to Recording afterward, it was the only record of the Deified.
Jo stepped into their path, aimed at Vis’s forehead, blew her brains out. After the woman fell, Jo shot her through the head twice more, walked away.
The Deified Makarska Vis was dead forever. There was no way she could be restored.
Jo figured the Deified would get WarAvocat’s message.
— 146 —
Seek
er and Amber Soul were beside Strate when he took VII Gemina into the waste space. Colonel Klass and AnyKaat were there to help communicate. WarAvocat was awed by the stellar display, which had been invisible from Webspace. “I wasn’t convinced,” he said. “Until now. You could hide anything in that.”
The Godspeakers had plenty of warning, though WarAvocat used Helispinners liberally to burrow a channel so he could reach his objective more quickly. He sent a rider force ahead to strike at two incomplete habitats Seeker feared would flee before they could be destroyed.
Strate told Klass, “Tell him to concentrate on tracking those things.” Minutes after VII Gemina’s breakaway Seeker had announced that each habitat contained a “brood mass,” a mindless superGodspeaker colony serving a reproductive function resembling that of a queen ant and the data storage function of a Starbase Core — though the brood mass could not manipulate that data itself.
“It’s a repository for genes and knowledge,” Klass said. “Without one there could be no more Godspeakers.”
“Why hasn’t he mentioned it before? He’s been holding out.”
“We destroyed the original when we hit their homeworld. He says he didn’t think they could put another one together. They’ve never had two at once, ever.”
WarAvocat knew little about the biology of the methane breathers. He did not care. They were the enemy. Their biology signified only when it could be used against them.
He did not accept Seeker’s claim. He had known. Brood masses had to be the reason he’d been so keen to get a Guardship out here....
Dammit! He’d turned the Ku loose for nothing. Seeker could have gotten them here if only they had had sense enough to ask the right questions.
The Meddinians had high moral pretensions. No matter the pragmatic necessity they’d never admit a desire for genocide. They would not want to take the guilt back home.
His rider force was too weak. The Outsiders forced it back, launched a counterattack VII Gemina repelled with difficulty.
WarAvocat feared he had been too optimistic. Or maybe he had been suckered again, if Kez Maefele had sent the Guardship to its destruction.
That would be the perfect solution from his point of view, wouldn’t it? Let VII Gemina be destroyed finishing the Godspeaker threat so he would have no enemies left over.
Klass reported Seeker sensing one of the habitats beginning to move deeper into the waste space.
A second attack came in. He rode this one out behind his screen, using Helispinners sparingly. Let them spend themselves now and be in for rearming when he reached their base.
He noticed an interesting phenomenon: Every ship capable of climbing onto the Web, which had neither methane breather nor human aboard, expended its munitions and ran for the tag end.
The glue of loyalty had come unstuck. They would make no last stand for masters who would abandon them.
Klass reported the second habitat moving, but slowly. Seeker said it was less finished than the first.
The fight at the station was no epic to be recalled for a thousand years. WarAvocat took VII Gemina into the cleared space, screen maxed, ignored the two methane-breather heavies and a dozen human warships, picked an angle from which the station could not defend itself, ran out the funnel, poured in fire till Probe said there was nothing left alive. Then he went after the slower habitat. It had only a four-hour start.
The Outsiders attacked continuously, desperately. WarAvocat heard grumbling because he would not fight back. He ignored it.
The habitat scurried into a swarm of cold matter. That suited WarAvocat fine. There was so much garbage flying around, the Outsiders could not bring but a fraction of their strength to bear. He went to prophylactic screening and began picking them off — never slowing in his pursuit of the habitat.
Catching up took more than a day.
The moment the inevitable became obvious, the Outsiders gave up trying to prevent it.
WarAvocat shouted, “Colonel Klass! Ask Seeker if they can form another brood mass if we destroy both habitats.”
She did so. “Negative, sir.”
“They’ve decided to concentrate on saving the other one, then. Do we have contact still?”
“Yes, sir.”
“If he loses it, I’ll slice off his ears. Understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
The habitat, once caught, was easy. It had no defenses and could not maneuver.
WarAvocat was in his element now, dealing with an enemy of known strength and capability who was locked into a mission with absolute parameters.
The Outsiders left one watcher — which he deluded with the guile of a Ku and waylaid before he finished the habitat.
Then the real chase was on. It was apparent quickly that it would not be over soon. They knew the waste space. He did not. But he knew where they were and, for the moment, he was invisible to them.
— 147 —
The Valerena tracked events through Tawn. That relationship was nearing its peak heat, where Tawn would be at her most pliable. The Valerena was concerned that WarAvocat would stretch it out so long her influence would wane.
She experimented.
Tawn was invisible to Gemina. Gemina refused to believe she existed. Invisibility would be handy as hell for an interloper with ambitions. She asked Tawn to try to fix it.
Tawn tried. It worked. As long as the Valerena was not in the presence of someone Gemina did accept and recognize.
Perfect.
The Valerena went to work nagging about getting a replica of herself made. Better than being invisible would be being invisible and being able to be two places at once.
— 148 —
Eighteen days since the destruction of the first habitat. The Outsiders had not regained contact with the Guardship, grace of Seeker and Amber Soul. WarAvocat had gotten ahead of the habitat and its convoy. He placed a decoy inside a swarm of cold matter, moved on to another swarm within a stream of very active gas.
He launched secondaries, had them pair with rocks, vanishing in their shadows. “One from your book, Kez Maefele,” he muttered.
VII Gemina waited.
The Outsider scouts spotted the decoy, darted back. The convoy stole into the hyperactive gas stream. It would be harder to detect there.
It was not the perfect ambush. The Outsiders’ leading vessels tripped it too soon.
For those it was thorough and final.
The Outsiders did what they had to do.
When the shooting stopped, one of their heavies was out and the other was crippled. Their secondaries had spent themselves in suicide attacks so effective WarAvocat elected to slough the Guardship’s two outermost layers. The smaller Outsider ships all suffered. Three more perished. But the habitat made its getaway, sustaining minimal damage.
It hurried toward the neutron star whose gravity had helped create the river of hyperactive gas.
Plodding and implacable, Hanaver Strate went after it.
The habitat was down close to the neutron star. VII Gemina could not get into decent range. Neither Guardship nor personnel could withstand the tidal forces that seemed no inconvenience to the methane breathers. Their habitat was nimble enough and shielded well enough to survive everything WarAvocat threw down there.
Forty-two days passed. WarAvocat occasionally pestered the Godspeakers with a shower of missiles and shells. Sometimes the bombardment went on for hours. It did no good.
— 149 —
The Valerena was in her quarters with her replica when the alarm sounded. “That’s Red One. They’re going to do it. Head for WarCentral so you can be seen with WarAvocat while it’s happening.”
She turned to her small info screen, glad Tawn was elsewhere and did not have to be managed.
VII Gemina hit the habitat with the heaviest and most prolonged bombardment yet. It did no harm. That was not expected. The flash and crash was meant to keep the Godspeakers blind to what was really happening.
WarAvocat had borrowed f
rom Kez Maefele again.
The chunk of cold matter inbound was eight kilometers by three and was moving one hundred twelve thousand meters per second when the Godspeakers detected it. It was too late for the habitat to prance aside.
Asteroid and habitat met head-on.
The Valerena loped passageways as naked of life as any of VI Adjutrix’s had been. They were identically constructed. She located the nexus of nutrient delivery for the Core. It took two minutes to inject ten cubic centimeters of sterile freon into each of two feed lines.
She raced back to her quarters, invisible to the eyes of the thing she had attacked.
The physical effects of the embolisms were trivial. But Gemina forgot how to burn starspace drives and lost track of the critical function in calculations of how to climb onto the Web.
The door to the Valerena’s quarters smashed inward. WarAvocat entered behind his living shadow, Colonel Klass, and her permanent sidekick. The Valerena queried, “Hanaver?”
“You overlooked one trivial technical detail when you sent your replica to distract me. She was a virgin. All else could be reasoned back from that.”
The Valerena shrugged. “So I’ve failed to achieve my personal goal. The House is safe.” The Guardship had started moving just before the embolisms struck. Helpless, VII Gemina was drifting deeper into the waste space.
“I wouldn’t count on that,” Strate said. “We hold grudges forever. Colonel.”
Klass fired one shot, through the Valerena’s brain.
— 150 —
Provik found him tending Midnight’s grave, which he still did after all these years. “Kez Maefele, this just came in on one of our Haulers out of the New Presidencies.”
Turtle glanced at the brief document. “We were overly optimistic again.”
“The strong survive.”
Turtle read the document again.