The Gripping Hand

Now Medina's Engineers mounted forty-one fusion motors in a ring aft of the half-klick snowball. In hours, Base Six had become a warship. It began accelerating immediately, outward, toward Medina Trading.

Most of Base Six's ships, and the hydrogen they carried, had traveled only as far as the odd-shaped black bubble Mustapha thought of as the Storehouse: odd shaped to avoid detection by radar and other means. Within the Storehouse was a growing store of hydrogen, and a population of Warriors that did not grow because tournaments kept their numbers steady

Now troopships full of Warriors moved to rendezvous with Base Six. Some would land, some would orbit.

Base Six was an armed carrier and fuel dump and warship, the heart of a fleet capable of defending whatever treasure had emerged from Crazy Eddie's Sister.

Sinbad accelerated at .8 gravities, comfortable enough for Moties, not too great a strain on Bury. Behind them the Mote was not much more than a star. It had a barely discernible disk and was just too bright for unprotected human eyes. Murcheson's Eye was a dull red smear off beyond the Mote.

Four Motie ships, with Eudoxus in the lead; then Sinbad, closely followed by Atropos; finally, four more Motie warships.

"That's all I can detect, Captain Re

"Thank you."

"Sir. We watched the Motie ships during the battle. This gives us another look."

"Have any conclusions?"

"They're pretty good. High performance. We saw nothing but gun actions, no torpedoes. Their ships tend to be small. We could certainly defeat any four of what we've seen so far, barring big surprises."

"I would not rule out surprises."

"No, sir, I sure don't. Captain, can you explain what's going on?"

"Do I detect a note of pathos? All right. It's time for a council of war while we have secure communications." Re

"Rawlins, we're not going to Mote Prime. They're out of it. The important players are all offplanet civilizations, and there are a lot of those. The one that was best prepared for the new I-point is Medina Trading, ruled by Caliph Almohad, and his chief negotiator is Eudoxus, the Mediator we're following, all names chosen by Eucloxus. Okay so far?"

"Yes, sir. Who are we fighting?"

"There are a whole bunch of factions." Re

"Got it." Rawlins's eyes focused offstage. "Oh boy."

"And that's just the important ones."

"Khanate's got the comet...obody cares... the Tartars hold the new Jump point, and a ship... oh, my God."

"Yeah. Hecate is a civilian ship piloted by the Honorable Frederick Townsend with Chris Blaine's sister, Glenda Ruth Fowler Blaine, aboard as passenger."

"Oh, my God. Captain, Lord Blaine isn't going to be happy about that! Are we going to rescue them?"

"Could we?"

Rawlins was quiet for a moment. "I don't know, but I'd sure as hell hate to go back without trying."

"I see your point, but Eudoxus doesn't ships even with yours. Right now the best safe, and our Motie allies are trying to deal while, we're headed for a Medina Traders was a joint base with East India Trading, been a readjustment of that alliance."

"Readjustment?'

"That's the word Eudoxus used.'

"Somebody else to fight?"

"Maybe."

Chris Blaine came to the bridge and took a place near Re

Commander Rawlins said, "Are things usually this complicated with Moties? Captain, what the hell is our objective?"

"Good question," Re

"Cargo?"

Re

"Yes, sir. As Captain Re

"Only there's no battle fleet." Re

Blaine nodded. "Commander Rawlins, just how much do you know about Moties?"

"Not much. I skipped the classes on Motie society back in the blockade squadron. Studied their tactics, but I didn't see any need to understand them, since all we were supposed to do was kill them."

"Yes, sir. You must have a crewman who was that curious. Find him. Meanwhile, I lecture."

"To begin with, we all know Moties are a strongly differentiated species. Masters are the only Motie class that really counts; whereas the Mediators do all the communicating. Mediators are so likable that we tend to forget that they're not really in charge, that they take orders from Masters

"But not always," Re

"Okay, consider the three Moties sent to the Empire. Two of King Peter's Mediators, with an older Master related to King Peter but not previously in charge of Jock and Charlie. That gave Jock and Charlie some leeway. They didn't have to obey every order Ivan gave, although they usually did. There must have been rules, but I never learned them. Ivan only lasted six years, and then they were on their own.

"I once asked Jock what Ivan's last orders were. Jock told me, ‘Act in such a way as to decrease the risk to our kind in the long term. Keep each other sane. Make us look good.' I think she left out considerable detail. And Mediators would lie to us if Ivan had told them to,

"So here we are back in Mote system and everything we know is a little bit wrong. We're dealing with a space civilization, not a planet. All the Classes will be a little different, some a lot different, even including the Masters. Motie civilization is old. The asteroids have been settled for over a hundred thousand years, time enough for evolutionary changes, and we know the Moties have used radical breeding programs on themselves as well."

"Like Saurons," Rawlins said.

"Well, not really," Re

"Yes, sir." Rawlins didn't sound convinced.

"We've had one piece of luck, maybe," Blaine said. "Horace Bury's Mediator apparently left King Peter entirely and sold her services to the highest bidder. Bury-trained Mediators seem to be swapped around out here like money."

"Must make His Excellency happy," Rawlins said. "Is that the reason for all the Arab names they give themselves?"

Chris's forefinger wagged. "No, no! Skipper, these names were all chosen by Medina's Bury-trained Mediator, Eudoxus, probably for their emotional impact on Horace Bury. Tartars are enemies of Arabs. Medina Traders sounds good to an Arab. Eudoxus was a famous Levantine trader who operated out of the Red Sea and discovered the original Arab trade route to India."

"Ho, ho," Rawlins said. "And of course Bury knew that."

"Of course. There is another thing. Motie Masters don't really form societies the way we do. The subordinate classes generally obey the Masters, but Masters don't have any instinct to obey each other, and whatever it is about humans that makes us form societies is largely missing in Masters. Motie Masters will cooperate, and one will take a subordinate position to another, but as far as I can make out, the only loyalties are to a gene line. There's no loyalty at all to any abstraction like an empire, or a city. That's more like an Arab civilization than it's like the Empire, which may account for the popularity of Bury Mediators. Mister Bury is likely to understand things here better than any of us."