Turtle had maybe three shots left. He was considering saving the last for himself. Or should he go out hand to hand, risking capture, torture, sacrifice?
Zap! A running Outsider pitched headlong. Two shots left. Or one and the easy way out.
He had refused that option when they ground the Dire Radiant down.
Boom! Boom! Boom! The outboard hatches blew inward. Grenades tumbled through with Ku warriors right behind.
The shooting was over in seconds. An assault team headed forward. Ah! They meant to hit Combat so there could be no shooting when the rider pulled away.
He reeled as Midnight smashed into him. “Oh! You’re all right. I was so worried.”
“You’d better get back...”
The Outsiders from back aft arrived. Turtle shoved Midnight through the hatchway. A wild beam gnawed at his back. He grunted, shoved her at Provik. “Hang onto her!” He raced to the rider’s Combat Center, ignoring pain.
Only one soldier was on duty. “Any comm off ship?”
“No, sir.”
“Damn.” But he had expected it. He tried to estimate how long to reach Combat, how much resistance, while catching up on the situation outside.
That was going exactly as choreographed.
He went to the nearest outboard lock. It was quiet out there now. They were waiting to cover the assault team. He asked one of his people, “You arrange to unload the rider crew?”
“They go out fore and aft, shielding us as we fall back through the midships hatchway. They’ve been told they have forty seconds before we disconnect and decompress the passageway.”
“Good. Carry on. I’ll be in Combat.”
He did not make it. His wound was worse than he thought. Blessed, Midnight, and the Valerena dragged him to the rider’s rudimentary dispensary.
The rider had been away two hours, tumbling like a derelict, when Turtle did reach Combat. “I ought to court-martial you all. But where would I find an unbiased court?”
They were drifting away from the action. The attack was nearing its peak. It would continue a long time unless the Godspeakers had an uncharacteristic attack of strategic sense.
“We pulled it off,” he said. “And have a chance of getting out.” Six hours and the rider would be outside detection range. There would be futures to consider, probably in the guest colonies Outside.
— 134 —
WarAvocat watched the minutes drag. The suspense was worse than it had been going into that end space ambush. “I want to break away moving dead slow, screen up.”
“You think we’ll find?...” Aleas’s voice caught.
“We’ll find Starbase beat all to hell and the Outsider fleet wiped out.”
“Why?”
“Or I could be wrong. He could have fooled me again.”
VII Gemina broke away into a warships’ graveyard. Nothing moved, except as it had died. The heat had fled most of the wreckage. It had been over a long time.
“Prophylactic screening,” WarAvocat ordered. “Ahead slow. Anything from Starbase?”
“Negative, sir.”
“Scan.” Most of the wreckage would have drifted out of detection already. He was awed by what the Ku had brought to the slaughter.
“We have a signal from Orbital Six, sir. Starbase Core survived but lost ninety percent plus outports. It’s using that capacity to seek breaches in its environmental armor.”
He exchanged glances with Aleas. Starbase would be no help taming Gemina. She said, “You were going to vent a theory about the Ku.”
“About how he used us. He stepped into the middle and manipulated everything so it came out to his specs.”
She thought he was mad.
“How many got away at S. Alisonica? At T. Rogolica? How many here? He planted them where he could squash them. Without killing any bystanders.”
She scowled. She could not believe the Ku had put them through hoops.
The next few decades would be difficult for some Guardship people.
Aleas said, “What I see is the death of the myth of our invincibility. He engineered this, and he failed. Another triumph for us. And that’s all. But if news of this gets around, we’ll have fires on all the Rims.”
She was right. The rest of the universe should hear only of another crushing defeat for Canon’s enemies.
How long till Starbase repaired itself? Centuries?
She had made a point within her point. The fleet could not brag about what had happened. The Outsiders would not admit their forces had been crushed. But if the Ku remained at large...
He was at twenty-eight percent of strength with no hope for replacements short of getting in line at Starbase Dengaida. He could not go there till he knew about the Ku.
He cued a conference of rider commanders and fighter pilots, told them he needed Outsider ships with surviving personnel or data systems capable of yielding information. He sent them out. Then he asked Orbital Six for everything about the fighting. When the data was in, he settled to watch the replay.
Simple little thing like history, Jo thought. This happened. So and so did that. Whatchamacaliit reacted thus. Facts and dates in serial, maybe with a body count if that shed any light. History.
Seeker did not see it that way. Specific events, times, persons, had little meaning. History was process and context and slowly oscillating emotion in a psychically unified, intimately interconnected milieu where the players never changed. History was a sluggish, silty river, and he was a fish in a school. The river could not be sliced.
It had looked like a straightforward job of translating, slow but not insurmountable. It had turned into a nightmare of misinterpretations, misapprehensions, mistakes, and miseries. She could not have sustained the task without AnyKaat. Seeker could not have survived without Amber Soul.
“AnyKaat. You ever get nostalgic about Merod Schene?”
“No. That wasn’t a good time.”
“Life was simpler.”
“Too damned simple.” AnyKaat snorted. “This loafing is too much for you; why don’t you blow yourself away?”
“I wouldn’t wish it on another me. Strate would have another Jo out in three days. Hell. I’m about done. If I can just get straight what he’s saying about the Web and the Presence.”
WarAvocat ran the encounter with the Outsider forerunner five times, speed up, slow down, trying to find a clue to why the ship tripped alarms. Aleas finally took pity. She froze the scene, blew up the nose of the Outsider, scribed a circle. “Those characters are Ku. They translate ‘Delicate Harmony.’ The characters on the vanes translate ‘Dire Radiant, One.’ The characters between the fighter nests are the Ku date for their surrender and a word that comes through as dishonor but means more.”
He disappointed her expectations of gratitude. “He wouldn’t advertise himself like that.”
“How often would he see the outside of his ship?”
“Not often.” Did the Outsiders have their politics, too?
No matter. It was evidence the Ku had been here. “Access, Gemina. Isolate the battle data pertaining to this vessel.” It could be another of the Ku’s diversions. “I want it temporal, regardless of source. Run at one hundred times real time. Sit down, Colonel Klass. Where have you been hiding?”
“With our aliens, sir.”
“Uhm.” Strange, that maneuvering with the riderships... There it was. “But you’ve got something?”
“It may not be important but it’s got to be interesting to anybody who believes the fleet is the pinnacle of technological possibility.”
“That sounds ominous. One minute.” He watched the tumbling rider till it vanished. He launched a blossom of nine probes down its track, ran up views of Web strands, launched more probes, then faced Klass. “Tell me about it.”
She went at it directly. “The Web is an artifact. The Presence — there are three in our part of the galaxy — is an automated repair device.”
“Well,” he said. And was so stunned he coul
d only repeat himself. “Well.” Nowhere in any hypothesis was there a suggestion that the Web was a construct — except in the theological sense. Starbase was the ultimate macroengineering concept.
Klass said, “Seeker says his people have been on the Web six million years. They met one race that had been around an eon. They didn’t know who built the Web, they just had legends from older races. The Builders probably were the first intelligence to evolve, and were functionally immortal. They laid out the pattern in starspace at low sublight velocities, taking eons. When they finished this galaxy, they supposedly were going to connect the nearer galaxies. Maybe they’re out there spinning the Web right now.”
He said nothing. He was in shock.
“The Web wasn’t meant for travel, it was a means of communications, like a fiber-optic network. Of course, all that’s hearsay now.”
“These Builders sure built for the ages if their ‘machines’ are still operating.”
“Seeker says the Web is deteriorating. Traffic wears it out. In the past billion years a thousand races have found it. The Presences can’t keep up. They’ve stopped trying in some regions.”
“Whoa. This is too much right now, with everything else.” He had waiting calls nagging. “Get it prepared for review. Sounds like a first-rate job.”
“Thank you, sir. It hasn’t been easy. I thought you’d want the key information. I wouldn’t have interrupted had I realized we were operationally engaged.” She departed.
He muttered, “She has been preoccupied.”
Aleas said, “An interesting revelation. Consider the consequences of that becoming general knowledge.”
“Eh?”
“We’ve spent millennia claiming Guardships represent the limit to technology. We believed it. Now suppose this gets out.”
“Why worry? The information hasn’t exactly been secret.” He turned to his calls waiting.
The third was interesting. A fighter had located the main of the Outsider forerunner. It was damaged but functioning.
He ordered the derelict collected.
— 135 —
The starspace journey became dreary fast. There was only so much planning possible. Once everyone had added to the wishlist, there was nothing left but routine duty and watching stores dwindle. Turtle spent his time with Midnight, trying to know her while he could.
Time’s gnawing had become obvious. Blessed was troubled. Then Midnight herself caught on, at least unconsciously. She suffered mild depressions. They would get worse.
Turtle was nursing her through a spate of tears when Provik appeared. “Better come forward.” His tone was grim.
A crowd had gathered. One of his people had held his seat. “It’s set to run.”
He ran the tape.
A recon probe ripped past. “Twenty minutes ago.” Two more followed, barely detectable. Calculation indicated they had come from the vicinity of Starbase.
“VII Gemina. WarAvocat figured it out.”
His people had run the options. They had found what he expected. There were no options.
The rider did not carry foodstuffs enough and could recycle nothing but air and water. It had not been designed for protracted independent operation.
They were committed to the shortest possible starspace run.
One of his people said, “If ten of us were to...”
“No.”
“It would give the rest more time.”
“No.”
“Better ten dead than all dead.”
“Better no dead than ten.”
“Sir...”
“The subject is closed. And I will not tolerate disobedience. Find out what resources we have. Hospital, chemicals normally used for other purposes, vermin, whatever.” He had a despicable idea. “Anyone kills himself, the rest of us will eat him.” His gorge rose but he meant it. They knew that. None would subject his comrades to that.
“We begin strict rationing. We avoid activity as much as possible.”
Turtle made a course adjustment. It would take two days longer to reach the strand, away from where it had intersected his earlier course. It was the best he could do.
All systems went down to minimal. He ran Stealth and SCAM patterns to blind active scans, launched an ECM probe programmed to look like a ridership trying to do a sneak down his former course. He sent a second probe off on a likely alternate course. He reviewed the tricks they had used in the old days. Some should be good still.
He hoped Hanaver Strate was WarAvocat VII Gemina still.
— 136 —
VII Gemina broke away running dead slow relative. Ops took sights and moved ship to a position astride the quarry’s last known course. No scan, passive or active, detected anything.
That was to be expected. The Guardship was days early.
WarAvocat was in Hall of the Watchers. The display wall showed nothing but the starfield. Outwardly he appeared calm, confident. But that was half his job. Inwardly, he was paralyzed by a conviction that whatever he did the Ku would anticipate. Like they were tied into a knot of predestination.
He could not see beyond the Ku’s prime objective, the strand, which he would use for all it was worth, on and off, to shake the Guardship.
Aleas said, “He’ll see our corona soon, Hanaver.”
“I know.” He moved closer, whispered, “My mind has turned to gelatin. I don’t know what to do besides wait. Unless I make him go against an unknown.”
Aleas looked quizzical.
“You take him. He doesn’t know you.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes.”
Aleas reflected, examined the estimated situation, ran some calculations. He saw her intent, was surprised he had not thought of it himself, and worried. If the Ku did slip past, it was all over. He would vanish before they could recover riders. Secondaries had become too precious to abandon.
Aleas took VII Gemina onto the Web, moved twelve light minutes, broke away, launched a fourth of the secondaries and a decoy that would look like a Guardship. Then she moved twenty-four minutes the other way, made an identical launch. Then she returned VII Gemina to its starting point, through starspace. She launched the remaining secondaries and another decoy construct.
WarAvocat wanted to ask questions. He refrained. He had put it into her hands. He had to let her run it. Even though he would answer for any failure.
Aleas ordered all secondaries to assemble on the central construct if VII Gemina went onto the Web in pursuit.
A perfect solution.
It took her thirty-five hours to make her dispositions.
She had one more surprise. She ordered the whole sprawl to advance toward Starbase.
— 137 —
Turtle was not surprised by the third corona.
Provik said, “They want us bad, don’t they?”
“Kez Maefele, we will pass within a million kilometers of the one on the right,” a watchstander reported.
“Feed me the data.” He retreated inside himself, put everything to the wizard. The way they had done in the old days, never depending on the infallibility of computation systems. Let intuition bear the load.
It took an hour to fall into place.
“There is only one Guardship. They could not have gotten three together. The one in the middle will be real. We will maintain our present heading.”
He wished he had not launched those decoys.
He ran calculations. He could reach them with a carefully aimed tight-beam pulse without betraying himself.
“Use the docking jets to put the tumble back on,” he directed. “We’ll take our radiation profile down till we can barely stand the cold. We’ll try sliding through as a wreck.”
Watchers reported an intercepter had a contact, on the time mark and not far off the Ku’s projected track. Riders converged.
“A missile,” Aleas grumped. “Hell. All that excitement for nothing.”
WarAvocat doublechecked. It was enemy. Seemed unlikely that t
he Ku would have used so passive a decoy. He went back to Gemina’s visuals of the fighting. He could find nothing that argued one way or another. The resolution was not fine enough to discriminate missiles and projectiles.
Next contact came fourteen hours later. Another loose missile.
WarAvocat frowned. That seemed a long coincidence, but they did not fit the Ku’s style. They should have come in a hurry, making a racket. Serials and other markings might show from which ship they had launched. But there was no reason to expect their proximity fuses to have failed.
Twenty hours after the second contact Aleas asked, “Could he have turned back?”
“I don’t know. He might have headed for the strand behind Starbase. He might have shifted course up, down, or sideways. He might have stopped to wait us out.”
Came word of a contact way off to the left, followed by word that it was just a piece of cold matter. Then to the right, before the nerves settled, a pursuit ship caught a ghost of an echo of something moving behind it.
Some secondaries had been out over three days. That was hard on fighter crews. Discipline flagged with endurance. Each contact drew some fighters out of position.
The ghost proved to be another missile. One that had gotten through, undetected till the last instant.
“And there’s our problem,” Strate told Aleas. “Even though we’re not covering a large region, we’re not covering it completely. He could fall through the cracks.”
They had two riderships and a fighter on passive scan. Turtle kept making minute adjustments with the indetectable docking jets, holding a groove through the heart of the triangle.
Provik said, “They don’t care who sees them, do they? They’ve got everything cranked up enough to cook eggs at a thousand kilometers.”
Turtle grunted, bled a little more power into the Stealth, SCAM, and ECM systems. He gestured for quiet. He wanted to keep an ear on intercepted inter-ship chatter. Most was military gabble but he spoke gabble well.