He had picked Strate because that was a name Midnight could remember and talk about endlessly — he hoped not too much.
If he kept them focused on him long enough, they would lose interest. Then it would be into DownTown and disappear and scheme out how to get away before VII Gemina came.
A tall young man summoned them into an office. Turtle took his measure at a glance. A lifetaker. Doubly dangerous because he had a mind stacked atop the conscience of a spider. Carrying at least three weapons.
He rose and followed. Midnight knew he would do the talking unless she was questioned directly. Amber Soul could not stick her foot in her mouth if she wanted.
There were three more in the office, all younger than the thug. The leader would have stood out even had he not fortified himself behind an immense combination desk and info center. Turtle saw toughness and competence in spite of youth.
The one behind the desk asked, “Are you the one doing the talking?”
“Yeah.” Turtle pitched his voice near the bottom of the register of human hearing. Its undertones would make them uneasy.
“Name?”
“Sally Montengrin.” A entertainer whose name was known throughout Canon space.
“What?” The boy was startled.
“You ask a stupid question you’re gonna get a stupid answer, kid. You got it in front of you. You got the next answer, too. And the one after that. All the questions been asked five times each by fourteen different guys. They been cross-checked by three different computers. So cut the crap.”
He had the boy rattled. Probably nobody ever talked back.
“Do you know who you’re talking to?”
“Should I care? Some kid who thinks he matters because he’s big in his House. But ain’t nothing in Canon.”
“I could make your life unpleasant.”
“You can’t make it worse than it is already, being here on the butt of the universe getting interrogated by a fifteen-year-old with delusions of importance.”
Midnight touched his arm, cautioning him not to overplay it.
The girl laughed. “It is the butthole of the universe, Blessed.”
The boy flashed her an irritated look. She sneered. The boy looked at Turtle. “You might be right. If your answers are a web of lies, I won’t trip you up now. So what am I going to do with you?”
“Not being human, I don’t get why you figure you got to do anything. But the human that’s got the power always figures he’s got to interfere. What would a Ku do? Ignore us because he’d figure we wasn’t any of his business. Unless he got in a bureaucratic bind. Then he’d ship us off to Capitola Primagenia and let the Presidents sort us out.”
“Most human administrators would agree.”
“But you’re not going to do that because you figure you might be able to use us somehow.”
The boy’s face went cold. One finger twitched.
Turtle seemed to do nothing but lean a little and take a small step backward. The thug flung past him in a surprised sprawl. He showed no animosity as he pulled himself into a sitting position. “That’s enough, Blessed.”
“An experiment,” the boy told Turtle.
“If I’d thought you was serious, you’d all be dead.”
Young eyes went hollow as young ears heard echoes of the whisper of the wings of Death.
The boy Blessed said, “You’ve made an impression, Ku. Seriously, do you know who I am?”
“Who you are, no. I’ve heard this is a Tregesser world.”
“I’m Blessed Tregesser. My grandfather is Simon Tregesser.”
Turtle looked at him blankly.
“Simon Tregesser! Simon Tregesser!” the girl chirped.
Her brother asked, “You’ve never heard of him?”
“No.” He hadn’t.
Blessed Tregesser stared for half a minute. “Tina, show them where they’ll be staying.”
The girl frowned but led them out of the office.
Turtle was satisfied with his performance. But now he had to get off this world. Before these people found him out. Before VII Gemina came.
Blessed waited till Tina returned. She came in and demanded, “What did you guys cook up while I was gone?”
Nyo said, “Nothing. We waited for you.”
Blessed asked, “What did you think, Tina?”
“He was scary. And I think he played you like a magic flute.”
“Uhm. Nyo?”
“He scared me, too.”
“Cable?”
“He was telling the truth. He could have killed us.”
“Tina’s right. He played us like magic flutes. Am I the only one who noticed he wasn’t alone? He focused everything on himself.”
Tina said, “You had one without a mind and one that couldn’t talk.”
“I’ve got a habit of accepting nothing at face value. Cable. Can we use them?”
“Him certainly. If we find a handle. I’ve never seen anyone move like that. Not a millimeter of waste motion. He could kill you so fast you wouldn’t know you were dead. The psi-active alien might be valuable, too. If it can be controlled.”
“That’s the catch with all of them. That and the fact that they might be what they claim, and somebody might come looking for them. Research them. And cover any trace of them having come here.”
“That’ll take some doing. They made a racket coming in.”
“Take Tina. If it can be gotten out of the system, she can do it. Nobody talks to people anymore. Unless they volunteer. Discourage that.”
Shike smiled. “Consider it handled.”
Blessed did. He always did when he suggested Cable handle something. Cable always got the job done.
— 61 —
Simon Tregesser’s Voyager had been running flat out, well into the red, for nineteen days. It was seven days ahead of the schedule Provik had posited for the run to the G. Witica — S. Satyrfaelia strand.
Tregesser’s crew thought him mad. Nobody pushed a ship so hard so long. It was a miracle the Q had not gone.
Simon was no more confident than they, but he was riding a nightmare hunch that if he did not get to that strand fast, he was a dead man. He had no idea why. But he trusted his hunches. They had done him right before.
They would be coming up on the strand soon. He had them feeling for it now. He wondered how Lupo was doing. He had not seen Provik since the run began. He had stopped trying to communicate.
Maybe Lupo hadn’t gotten out. That would be hell. How would he manage without him? Lupo had been his rock forever.
Simon was on the operating bridge, filling half with his bell, when the Guardship broke off the Web. Right there. In his lap. Six light years from anywhere.
“Aw, shit,” he said without any force. “One more signal to Provik. Warn him off.” He analyzed the Guardship’s motion vectors and ordered a turn that offered a chance to reach the strand before the Voyager could be destroyed.
He would not be taken, that he determined.
Provik remained amazed. “Simon is going to complete the run a week fast. Or kill himself trying.”
None of his family were comfortable running in the red, though his Voyager was more suited to it than was Tregesser’s and there were enough of them to close-monitor the Q.
“He should be getting close.” Simon’s Voyager remained at the very edge of detection.
“Message coming in.”
Guardship. Right in Simon’s lap. Motion vectors thus and so. He was turning so. Fifty-fifty chance of outrunning death and getting onto the Web.
“Damn! Decision time.”
Tension filled the bridge. Suddenly they were all there, all offering to share the pain, wondering if he could do what, for nineteen days, they had been deliberating.
Lupo stared at the comm board. The tight beam was locked onto Simon’s Voyager. The code sequence was in. The circuit was armed. The machinery was ready. Was the man?
Could he kill Simon Tregesser?
He cou
ld. But could he live with Lupo Provik afterward?
“Damn it!” His hand stabbed. “Turn us into the Guardship’s vectors and shut everything down.”
He sat down and cried.
Shedding their own tears, his family began trying to make the Voyager invisible by reducing its emissions.
— 62 —
WarAvocat feared he would have a minor mutiny on his hands if his move did not produce quick results. To hear OpsAvocat and ServAvocat fuss you would think VII Gemina would scatter into its component atoms shortly if it did not head for Starbase immediately. And that despite assurances from Gemina that the Guardship’s wounds were neither deadly nor incapacitating.
There would be political consequences if the fugitive did not turn up. His reelection looked ever less certain. The cream of his support had been killed in that end space. The regrowth system would be a long time replacing them.
“Coming up on breakaway, WarAvocat.”
“Very well.” That bastard had better show.
“Breakaway.”
Two seconds passed. “Holy shit. There he is.”
What? Already? Impossible.
“Look at that bastard go!”
WarAvocat ran to where he could see it for himself, telling no one in particular, “He’s got to have been running at the top of his red all the way. Why hasn’t he blown his Q?”
“He’s seen us, WarAvocat. He’s turning.”
WarAvocat scanned the motion vectors, range rates, relative velocities. The son of a bitch had a chance.
He gave orders quickly, moving VII Gemina not in pursuit but so as to cut off flight toward S. Satyrfaelia. Once the Voyager headed the other way it was dead. VII Gemina could overhaul it on the Web and run it till its master gave up.
Then the fireworks started.
The Voyager’s Q went. The multimillion-degree fusion process erupted into the Voyager, obliterating everything inside before it reduced the more stubborn hull to stripped nuclei. Those inside the Voyager did not live long enough to realize what had happened.
Probe had time only to determine that there were five beings aboard, all apparently human.
Before the fire faded OpsAvocat asked, “Can we head for Starbase now?”
Lady Midnight fluttered into WarAvocat’s mind. “It’s your Guardship, OpsAvocat. Condition Yellow One. WarAvocat out.”
Nothing left now but the chore of hunting down the villains behind the ambush.
— 63 —
Valerena watched figures scroll. She was pleased. The balance had shifted just enough to produce the first profitable week of the century. Better weeks would come. All you needed was the will....
“What?” she snapped. She loathed interruptions. And that was one lesson these people were too stupid to learn. She glared at the creature in the doorway.
“I was told to deliver a message.” Sullen and without honorifics. “A Tregesser Voyager has broken off the Web. A man named Lupo Provik wants to talk to you. He’s sending a shuttle.”
Lupo? Here?
She was frightened. This should not be. He was supposed to be in that end space with Simon. Had something happened? Had they aborted?
She had a thousand questions and a hundred fears.
She was on the flying city’s docking platform, suited, when the shuttle set down. The poison wind barked and whined around her.
She stepped onto the bridge of the Voyager. Lupo was there alone, waiting. There was something wrong with him. “Have you been sick?” she blurted.
He responded with a soft, sad, almost holy smile. “Only here.” He tapped his chest.
She frowned, worried. Lupo Provik, of all people, going spooky and mystic?
The universe could not be that perverse.
“What’s happened? Why aren’t you in the end space?”
“Sit down.”
There was an echo of the old whipcrack. She sat.
“It’s over, Valerena. We blew it. They came earlier than we expected. VII Gemina. XXVIII Fretensis. XII Fulminata.”
“Three? But...”
“Three. We got XII Fulminata and VII Gemina. But XXVIII Fretensis finished us. Your father didn’t get out.”
Shock. She felt lightheaded, numb. Her brain closed up shop.
“Valerena? You hear me? Simon is dead. You’re the Chair.”
She nodded slowly. And for once told the complete and naked truth. “I’m scared, Lupo.”
“That’s what Simon said the day he took over.”
“It’s real, isn’t it?” She knew it was. Lupo would not say it if it wasn’t.
“As real as death, Valerena. I’m taking you to Prime. You have to be confirmed. You have to take charge fast. The Directors will panic when they find out we failed. They might get the idea they could profit by informing. They’ll need supervision.”
“Yes.” Tendrils of self-possession insinuated themselves through her shock.
Simon Tregesser was dead. The Tregesser empire was hers. There were things to do.
Dead! “The bastard got me again. Dying in his own time and way.”
Lupo smiled sickly. “He didn’t die willingly or in a place of his own choosing.”
“It was Simon who died? You’re sure? It wasn’t his Other?”
“It was Simon Prime.”
“Will his Other give me trouble?”
“They always do. They don’t want to die, either.”
That was a snake’s nest someone was sure to stir. The Simon Other had become a nonperson with Simon’s death but some Directors might defy that, preferring the Other to her. Then, too, someone might try to make something of the fact that she was not the original Valerena. She was not popular with the Directors.
Did that matter? Simon hadn’t been popular. He had been the boss. The king. The bloody damned emperor.
As she would be.
“Can we use it?”
Lupo paced. He milked his chin and stared at unseen infinities. “If you kept it out of sight, maybe. But we’d never dare forget it’s Simon Tregesser in almost every sense.” He faced her, “We can talk while we’re on the Web. How soon can you leave?”
“Now. But how safe will I be?”
“Why would you... My loyalty is to the Chair. You’re the Chair. I’m the one at risk.”
“You are?”
“I’ve thwarted your ambitions so often.”
Valerena examined her feelings. She entertained no resentment. He had been doing his job. “Will you do as good a job protecting me?”
“Probably better. Especially if I can convince Blessed to be patient.”
“I could leave him where he is.”
“You can’t. He has to be on Prime, to learn. Just as you were, despite the frustration you caused your father.”
“He bottled me up here.”
“An emergency expedient. He was frayed. Too much pressure. You wouldn’t have liked the solution he preferred himself.”
“He wanted to kill me again?”
“All of you. I convinced him it would be more cruel to send you here. We’re still saying things better said in transit.”
“Then go, Lupo.”
He nodded, touching something. “Two. Four. I need you.”
Valerena watched the women enter. One had been Lupo’s companion that day in the Pylon. The other had to be her sister.
Provik said, “We have a crash priority here, ladies. See if station will bump us to the head of the launch schedule.”
Good heavens! The man had a sense of humor.
— 64 —
Starbase! At last!
That damned spook Trajana had not shut up the whole time. How did you exorcise such a ghost? It had tried to keep its prisoners alive, a captive audience.
No one talked much except when humoring the ghost. Trajana was not just weird, it was psychotic. Two prisoners had spoken their thoughts. Their remains shared confinement with the survivors.
The ghost kept hinting that Trajana wanted to a
cquire new living crew. Each hour raised the tension level. Degas had the shakes half the time.
Haget handled it best. He could take Trajana’s ravings about the Presence without twitching a lip, feigning an interest in Trajana’s obsession. Or maybe he was interested. Maybe Trajana did have something to say behind all the shit about devil gods, death cults, and phantom Travelers.
Haget broke away from the spook. “Starbase, people. XXVIII Fretensis is in for post-combat refitting after a joint mission with XII Fulminata and VII Gemina.”
Jo asked, “What’s up? You look rattled.”
“Unsettled. It was the trap WarAvocat expected. XII Fulminata was destroyed. VII Gemina suffered heavy damage and hasn’t yet made it back.”
AnyKaat blurted, “Somebody took on three at once?”
“Yes. They had the hair and almost enough firepower. And that’s all I know. Except that Trajana wants to horn in on the follow-up.”
Jo asked, “How bad was VII Gemina hurt?”
“Trajana has graciously offered us refuge if VII Gemina doesn’t come in. We’re docking now. We have health and dietary matters to attend outboard. Let’s go.”
Haget led them on a long hike. Jo brought up the rear, behind Seeker, who stumbled with weakness. They debouched onto a vast, empty, sterile dock. A lighted dock. A dock not foul with the stenches of wastes and decaying corpses.
To and around a corner. “Now,” Haget said. He hugged Jo so hard he crushed the wind out of her. When she wriggled free, she hugged Vadja too. Degas and AnyKaat looked ready to couple on the spot.
Haget said, “One more day and I’d have started chewing the bulkheads. I’m going to scream the craziness out.”
Jo whispered, “I know a better way.”
He looked at her. “Yeah. Let’s get Seeker to Medical before we have to carry him.”
They reached hospital bay. Haget tried to get Seeker to tell him what he needed. Seeker did his best. Maybe Jo would have been a better receiver. They had developed a feeble rapport aboard IV Trajana. Jo ordered a feast while the others sought physicals.
Haget handed Jo a note. “See if you can come up with a broth with all that in it.”
“All right.”