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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 ru
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. A
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 gri
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 gri
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 mille