But they did register on several intruder sensors and got STASIS and a few technicians grumbling about ghosts and glitches.
The journey in the belly of the Hauler was as easy as the first leg. Running empty, the crew had no cause to check the holds.
Midnight became the problem. Her nerves were not up to this. Turtle had to keep calming her. “One more leg and we’re safe. Two at the most. We go off the Horigawa onto some other Hauler. Get off that at a station down the Web and just disappear. Maybe find a phantom and make a move just to get thoroughly lost. They can’t turn over the whole universe looking for us.”
“But where are we going to go? What are we going to do? We don’t have any documentation. We don’t have any credit.”
For Turtle, with his timeless perspective, those were not problems. Given ten years he could develop either anywhere. He had done it often before going inert in Merod Schene.
They might not turn over the universe, but WarAvocat would alert STASIS and Canon garrisons everywhere. He represented a real threat now. He had to go to ground fast.
Where? That would be determined more by Midnight and Amber Soul than by his own desires. He thought of heading Yon. There were Ku Outside. But that was too far. He thought of Amber Soul’s homeworld. But the Guardships would suffer no qualms seeking him there, treaty or no.
The Horigawa Hauler left the Web at the obscure, planetless system N. Kellrica. It meant to collect transhipped luxury goods destined for the Barbican.
Midnight told Turtle, “Amber Soul doesn’t want to leave.”
“We have to get off here. This is a very minor nexus station. Perfect for losing our trail. Security will be feeble.”
“There’s something here that scares her.”
“There is something about them all that will frighten us. We’re fugitives, Midnight. They will hunt us. We do not have the option of choosing which fears we want to face. Tell her to come on.”
Amber Soul came. In a state approaching petrification. Had security not been nonexistent, Turtle would not have gotten her off the Hauler let alone all the way around station to the only other vessel docked, the Sveldrov Traveler Gregor Forgotten.
He had not counted on finding himself with no options but one. From what he overheard along the docks, though, it was a bad season for the old station. There might be no other ship in for months. He could not turn back. The Horigawa Hauler had departed.
A Hauler would have been preferable. A Traveler was more difficult to hide aboard.
Amber Soul did not want to board. Turtle could make no sense of her objections. Midnight shrugged. “She doesn’t understand herself. She says she doesn’t remember, but it’s evil. She’s been there before. Something like that.”
“Damn! We have no choice. Unless we’re ready to sit here till VII Gemina comes. She doesn’t want to go back there, does she?”
“No.”
“Then we have to do this. And she has to hide us while we’re aboard.”
Amber Soul managed. But her mental state continued to deteriorate. Her thoughts, that leaked over at times, were flooded with terror and misty memories of something terrible long ago.
Something was very wrong. Amber Soul walked the edge of madness, continuously terrified. Still she could not explain. But it was that Traveler. That specific Traveler.
Midnight fell into a bleak mood of her own. She had begun to suffer because of her design specs. It had been too long since she had seen a man.
Turtle could lead neither out of shadow.
He began to suspect that there was indeed something sinister about the Traveler. Yet the passage began with promise. The crew remained unaware that they had been joined by unregistered companions. Till Amber Soul went into a sudden paranoid frenzy that ended with one of her psychic screams.
In her last moment of consciousness, she sent mind pictures of things writhing and people screaming for mercy where there was none while shadows murdered them brutally.
It made no sense, but it felt real, like something Amber Soul actually had seen.
Turtle understood only that because of the outburst he was not going to get away.
— 56 —
Chief Timmerbach released the final coupling. Centripedal force eased Glorious Spent away from M. Carterii 4A. He had little to do. So he worried.
Had the Majhellain techs been thorough? Should he go ahead and incarcerate Hanhl Cholot? Should he backtrack and try to brownnose that prick Haget into letting him off?
Nova light.
“Guardship breaking off the Web,” some genius said.
“Bet I could have figured that out for myself.”
A less confident voice announced, “Chief, that’s our old buddy IV Trajana.”
Timmerbach’s stomach went into freefall. He stepped to nav comp and brought up back course data. “Shit.”
Hanhl Cholot — or whatever — said, “Take us back to dock, Chief.”
“Like hell. I’m not dragging anybody else across their sights.”
“That’s an order, Chief. If you won’t execute it, I’ll replace you with someone who will.”
“I doubt it.” Timmerbach’s bridge people continued turning the Traveler, laying it into the groove headed toward the Web.
Cholot started to bluster.
Timmerbach said, “Master-at-Arms.”
A hard-looking woman approached Cholot. “To your stateroom, sir.” She showed him a pacifier.
“Hey, Chief. Check this.”
Timmerbach turned away as Cholot walked out ahead of the Master-at-Arms. “What?”
“Pair of fighters off the Guardship headed this way like they want to see if you can burn holes in vacuum.”
Timmerbach sighed and slumped into his command chair. He had no reserves left. He was accursed, and he accepted it. He wanted to go to sleep and shut the universe out.
But he could not. He had an obligation to passengers and crew and House. He kept Glorious Spent in the groove, headed for the Web.
He understood why IV Trajana was here. Web geometry. The strands they had taken leaving that anchor point converged again here. That bastard Haget had seen that. He must have deadmanned the Traveler. “Should have known better. You can’t beat them.”
The fighters spread out. Timmerbach’s last hope vanished as they began curving in. One took station ahead. The other came in on his quarter in firing attitude, snapped three sudden shots that scrubbed three Web tractor vanes. Glorious Spent could not run away.
“Guess that’s a message, eh? All right. Guide on that lead fighter.”
What the hell could he do? How was he going to deal with this? IV Trajana was not VII Gemina.
The fighter guided him straight to the Guardship, to an empty rider bay. The Guardship grabbed hold. It began accelerating, headed for the strand leading back the way the Traveler had come.
Warning lights flared. Main cargo hatch gave way. Timmerbach heard noises in the passageway. He faced the hatchway.
A pack of little machines scurried in, accompanied by a feeble ghost. The ghost surveyed the bridge, fixed on Timmerbach. It said, “Come.”
— 57 —
The wound in VII Gemina’s shoulder was three kilometers long and half a kilometer deep. It had been scarred over enough to ignore till the Guardship reached Starbase Tulsa. WarAvocat had no intention of heading there immediately.
A Voyager had been detected sneaking away just before VII Gemina hit the rock.
That mastermind was in for uncomfortable times.
The guns in the end space were silent. The task now was to root the survivors out and find out what other throats needed cutting. Thus far the sword of evidence only pointed Outside.
The one clue he found intriguing came out of the heart of the command asteroid, the wreckage of a monster artificial environment. A few squiggles of data suggested the system had been occupied by a monster like those aboard the Cholot Traveler and the invader destroyed by XXVIII Fretensis.
?
?? 58 —
The crew of the Sveldrov Traveler were unfriendly but surprisingly cautious. They isolated the hold and that was that, initially.
The Traveler broke off the Web at the first anchor point up, made station, then the crew surged in and tossed the stowaways out dockside. Then the Traveler scooted before Station Master or STASIS could act. It refused anything but responder communication.
Turtle was baffled. He could think of nothing that would explain such behavior.
“Remain calm,” he told Midnight. STASIS personnel and dock workers eyed them warily. “Let me do the talking. Don’t say anything if you can help it. If you can’t, don’t contradict me. I’m going to blow smoke in their faces.” He looked at Amber Soul, no longer in a coma but certainly in a fugue of some sort, lying on the deckplates, panting, changing external appearances as though trying to find one that would protect her from what she feared.
What the hell had it been about that Traveler?
He told Midnight, “Just pretend you’re too stupid to understand their questions.” There were advantages to belonging to the underclasses. One was that you never disappointed the master race by being stupid.
Bureaucracy ground slowly where for ages it had had no need to handle the unusual. Turtle had plenty of time to rehearse an elaborate fable.
— 59 —
Seated against the wall, Jo was first to sense the strange, short vibrations. They filled her with undirected dread. “Anybody else feel the station shaking?”
Everyone did. AnyKaat, Degas, and Colonel Vadja looked grimly uncomfortable. But Haget just sat there grinning. “I suggest you all get yourselves up to military specs.”
Eleven days in close confinement had produced one plus. Seeker was communicating. Some.
A killer ship has come, Jo heard within her head. It is attacking. It has not communicated with the station.
Jo glared at Haget. “A Guardship is here. You knew it was coming. How did you do that?”
Haget grinned some more. “The routes IV Trajana and Glorious Spent took come back together at M. Carterii. When Timmerbach started acting strange, I rigged a dead-man signal on a longwave transmitter and concealed it in the main hold. It carried a copy of our mission log. It had to be reset daily to keep it from broadcasting a mayday.”
“Clever. And you kept it all to yourself.”
“If I’d told you, I’d have been telling everyone else who happened to be listening. They might have moved us out of here. They’re coming. Let’s look like soldiers.”
I Am A Soldier. Jo grunted, got up, joined Haget at the cell door. The others fell in behind them. Even Seeker prepared to move. Haget smiled pleasantly when Station Master, the STASIS chief, and a squad of retainers appeared. “Buck up, girls. We all screw up.”
“Don’t overdo it,” Jo muttered.
The station people let them out and returned their possessions and equipment, loaded them aboard a bus. The bus took them to a docked ridership guarded by an unstable hologram of a youth clad in a style unseen for three thousand years.
“WatchMaster Commander Haget, take your party aboard. Station Master, I’ve surveyed your data reservoir. The following persons are to be delivered to me.” Followed a list of forty-six, with job titles.
Station Master started to protest.
“I have loosed a Hellspinner. This station can survive no more than seven.”
Station Master got the message.
“I am remanding to this station the crew and passengers of the confiscated Cholot Traveler Glorious Spent. All passengers will be delivered to their contracted destinations at the expense of House Cholot and will be reimbursed for their inconvenience and lost time.”
There were no comforts aboard the ridership. Prisoners and rescuees alike were crowded into a compartment that soon stank of fear and excretions for which no facilities existed. Some prisoners babbled pleas to Haget.
“Be quiet. I’m no more in control here than you are.”
The ridership settled into IV Trajana’s hull. The Guardship was in the groove and running for the Web.
The same uncertain hologram waited outside the exit hatch. It seemed blind to everyone but Haget. “Bring them out, Commander.”
Haget nodded to Jo. She herded the prisoners out and formed them in a column of threes. They were beyond terror now, into that dulled, accepting, bovine antihysteria that grips the victims of great disasters and atrocities, glazed eyes becoming one-way glasses keeping reality at bay. Wake up some day and find it all a bad dream.
Ha.
Lights came on ahead and died behind. Physically the Guardship resembled VII Gemina. But it was empty. Haunted empty, leaving Jo feeling isolated and alone. Like she had been warmed from storage to find the entire Guardship abandoned but going on. Haulers and Travelers came off the Web that way sometimes. Without a soul aboard and nothing to show what had become of the crew.
It took half an hour to reach their destination. The same holo character awaited them. “Prisoners to the left, Commander. Your own facilities to the right.”
“Jo?”
There was an electronic barrier. It parted. A light came on. Jo moved the prisoners.
Degas said, “Hey, look. It’s our old buddy Chief Timmerbach. How’s it going? Not so good?”
AnyKaat silenced him. “They left the lights on where we were, Degas.”
The holograph told Haget, “I’m on the Web running for Starbase. Gemina will put in before and after the action against the pirates. I have little capacity for sustaining the living. I may dispose of the prisoners as I examine them.”
“My WarAvocat would want the Chief off the Traveler. And possibly the krekelen.”
In a moment of illumination, Jo realized Haget was talking directly to Trajana. Directly! No one ever spoke to Gemina direct, nor did Gemina speak directly to anyone. If that should happen, it would scare the crap out of the whole crew.
Bound for Starbase. For home. There was a lot of loneliness and uncertainty out here. She missed the familial closeness of the squad and platoon, the certainty of knowing who and what and where you were. She did not miss the rigidity, the lack of humor and humanity in the chain of command.
Things happened out here. Strange things, weird things, interesting things. Today’s universe was alien to the one where she had been bom.
Born? A woman she no longer remembered had carried her inside her body. Did they still do that, down on the worlds? She could not recall the last time she had seen a pregnant woman.
They did not have the several immortalities down there. That was not allowed. Somebody too strong might come along.
This place was the antechamber of Hell. Here the shadows of madness met and danced. She wanted out badly.
Once upon a time she had lived on a world, a child who could look up and see uncovered sky.... What was the matter with her?
Shit. The place was creepy. And that damned spook Trajana was on a talking jag, going like it would not stop till it dumped them at Starbase. Yakking like some crazy old hermit who had not seen another human being in thirty years.
Spider momma, ate all her babies, cries because she’s all alone.
— 60 —
Blessed scanned the report again, pushed it away, shook his head, pulled it back, pushed it away again, looked at the others. “What do you think, Cable?”
“Improbable. But it fits the facts.”
“A mutiny? A Canon legate and most of his staff murdered?”
“Killed accidentally, according to this. And the legate had not announced himself.”
“They do that,” Nyo said. “Especially when they’re sneaking around.”
Tina said, “Maybe that’s what got them killed. Maybe they found something out.”
Cable said, “The Traveler behaved erratically from the moment it broke off the Web. It ID itself as the Hansa Traveler True Ceremonial.”
“And Bligger says it isn’t? Based on the pathetic data he has?”
Rolan Bligger was the Canon garrison in M. Shrilica system. An honorary, at that. But he took his appointment seriously.
“His ship records go way back. Only one Hansa True Ceremonial is noted. It vanished on the Web fifty-three years ago. He says this ship’s markings were either Sveldrov, Pioyugov, or Volgodon.”
“Stolen ship?” That meant pirates.
“That would explain their lack of interest in an investigation.”
Blessed gnawed a hangnail. The business stank. And felt like it might fall on him. “So what do we have? An artifact and two aliens. Why would a legate drag them around?”
Tina laughed. “The artifact is obvious. For the same reason you drag me around.”
Nyo simpered. “You really think she can cook, Tee?”
Shike smiled. He tapped one of three small holoportraits. “This one is mental. Psionic. Strong. Be handy if it was tame.”
“What’s the other one? It’s ugly. And it looks mean.”
“Bligger says it’s a Ku warrior.”
“What the hell is that?”
Blessed said, “Check history, Nyo.”
Cable said, “I looked them up. They had it out with the Guardships a long time ago. Gene-engineered their whole species. Ku warriors were faster and meaner than anything human. If you were a Canon legate peeking in dangerous places, you might want a character like that covering you.”
Blessed said, “It builds into an interesting picture. I don’t believe them, but I’ll give them a closer look. Bring them down.”
“I took the liberty after I talked to Bligger. Smelled like something we might use.”
As they awaited their interview, Turtle admitted, “I put it on too thick.”
“Maybe that Traveler was extrasuspicious.”
Of course. Amber Soul’s seizure had not made those people produce false identifications. He had been asked about that repeatedly. All he knew was, he had boarded a vessel purporting to be Gregor Forgotten. Lord Strate had booked passage. Wasn’t his business to know why. He was a bodyguard.