Downbelow Station

Dayin Jacoby rose from a chair to welcome him.

“What’s going on?” he asked of Jacoby.

“I really don’t know,” Jacoby told him, and it seemed the truth. “I was roused out last night and brought aboard. I’ve been waiting in this place half an hour.”

“Who’s in charge here?” Ayres demanded of the ma

They did nothing, only stood, rifles braced all at the same drill angle. Ayres slowly sat down, as Jacoby did. He was frightened. Perhaps Jacoby himself was. He lapsed into his long habit of silence, finding nothing to say to a traitor at any event. There was no polite conversation possible.

The ship moved, a crash echoing through the hull and the corridors and disturbing them from their calm. Soldiers reached for handholds as the moment of queasy null came on them. Freed of station’s grav, they had a moment yet to acquire their own, as ship’s systems took over. Clothes crawled unpleasantly, stomachs churned; they were convinced of imminent falling, and the falling when it came was a slow settling.

“We’ve left,” Jacoby muttered. “It’s come, then.”

Ayres said nothing, thinking in panic of Bela and Dias, left behind. Left.

A black-clad officer appeared in the doorway, and another behind him.

Azov.

“Dismissed,” Azov said to the ma

“What’s going on?” Ayres asked directly. “What is this?”

“Citizen Ayres,” said Azov, “we are on defensive maneuvers.”

“My companions — what about them?”

“They are in a most secure place, Mr. Ayres. You’ve provided us the message we desired; it may prove of use, and therefore you’re with us. Your quarters are adjoining, just down that corridor. Kindly confine yourself there.”

“What’s happening?” he demanded, but the aide took him by the arm and escorted him to the door. He seized the frame and resisted, casting a look back at Azov. “What’s happening?”

“We are preparing,” Azov said, “to deliver Mazian your message. And it seems fit for you to be at hand… if further questions are raised. The attack is coming; I make my guess where, and that it will be a major one. Mazian doesn’t give up stations for nothing; and we’re going, Mr. Ayres, to put ourselves where he has obliged us to stand… up the wager, as it were. He’s left us no choice, and he knows it; but of course, it’s earnestly to be hoped that he will regard the authority you have to recall him. Should you wish to prepare a second, even more forceful message, facilities will be provided you.”

“To be edited by your experts.”

Azov smiled tautly. “Do you want the Fleet intact? Frankly I doubt you can recover it. I don’t think Mazian will regard your message; but as he finds himself deprived of bases, you may yet have a humanitarian role to fill.”

Ayres said nothing. He reckoned silence even now the wisest course. The aide took him by the arm and drew him back down the corridor, showed him into a barren compartment of plastic furniture, and locked the door.

He paced a time, what few paces the compartment allowed. In time he yielded to the weariness in his knees and sat down. He had managed badly, he thought Dias and Bela were… wherever they were — on a ship or still on the station, and what station they had been on he still did not know. Anything might happen. He sat shivering, suddenly realizing that they were lost, that soldiers and ships were aimed at Pell and Mazian… for Jacoby was brought along too. Another — humanitarian — function. In his own stupidity he had played to stay alive, to get home. It looked less and less likely. They were about to lose it all.

“A peace has been concluded,” he had said in the simple statement he had permitted to be recorded, lacking essential codes. “Security council representative Segust Ayres by authority of the Earth Company and the security council requests the Fleet make contact for negotiation.”

It was the worst of all times for major battle to be joined. Earth needed Mazian where he was, with all his ships, striking at random at Union, a nuisance, making it difficult for Union to extend its arm Earthward.

Mazian had gone mad… against Union’s vast extent, to launch the few ships he had, and to engage on a massive scale and lose. If the Fleet was wiped out, then Earth was suddenly out of the time he had come here to win. No Mazian, no Pell, and everything fell apart

And might not a message of the sort he had framed provoke some rash action, or confound maneuvers already in progress, lessening the chance of Mazian’s success even further?

He rose, paced again the bowed floor of what looked to be his final prison. A second message then. An outrageous demand. If Union was as self-convinced as the ma

“Considering merger of Company interest with Union in trade agreements,” he composed in his head. “Negotiations far advanced; as earnest of good faith in negotiations, cease all military operations; cease fire and accept truce. Stand by for further instructions.”

Treachery… to drive Mazian into retreat, into the kind of scattered resistance Earth needed at this stage. It was the only hope.

BOOK THREE

Chapter One

i

Norway moved as the Fleet moved, hurling their mass into realspace in synch. Com and scan flurried into action, searching for the mote which was giant Tibet, which had jumped in before them, advance guard, in this rout.

“Affirmative,” com sent to command with comforting swiftness. Tibet was where she was supposed to be, intact, probe untouched by any hostile activity. Ships were scattered about the system, commerce, quickly evaporating bluster from some self-claimed militia. Tibet had had one merchanter skip out in panic, and that was bad news. They needed no tale-bearers ru

And a moment later confirmation snapped out from Europe, from the flagship’s operations: they were in safe space with no action probable.

“Getting com out of Pell itself now,” Graff relayed to her post at controls, still listening. “Sounds good.”

Signy reached across the board and keyed signal to the rider-captains, advising them. Fast to Norway’s hull, so many parasites, they did not kick loose. Com was receiving direct and frantic id’s from the militia ships scrambling out of their projected course as they came insystem dangerously fast, out of system plane. The Fleet itself was more than nervous, ru

They were nine now. Chenel’s Libya was debris and vapor, and Keu’s India had lost two of its four riders.

They were in full retreat, had run from the debacle at Viking, seeking a place to draw breath. They all had scars; Norway had a vane trailing a cloud of metallic viscera, if they still had the vane at all after jump. There were dead aboard, three techs who had been in that section. They had not had time to vent them, not even to clean up the area, had run, saved the ship, the Fleet, such as remained of Company power. Signy’s boards still flashed with red lights. She passed the order to damage control to dispose of the corpses, whatever of them they could find.

Here too there might have been an ambush — was not, would not be. She stared at the lights in front of her, looked at the board, with the drugs still weighting her senses, numbing her fingers as she manipulated controls to take back Norway’s governance from comp synch. They had scarcely engaged at Viking, had turned tail and run — Mazian’s decision. She had never questioned, had respected the man for strategic genius — for years. They had lost a ship, and he had pulled them, after months of pla