5 The Guns of Medina Mosque

Diplomacy is the art of saying “Nice doggie” whilst you find a rock.

Attributed to Talleyrand

A day or three ago, the Great Hall must have been solid ice. This day it occupied half the volume of the Mosque. It was lavishly decorated: Renner recognized a modified illustration from A Thousand Nights and a Night. Tapestries with fantastic decorations: a djinn, a roc, Baghdad as it might have been in the twelfth century. The carpets were soft with unmistakably Saracen designs. There were also certain anachronisms: the big viewscreen on one wall, the opposite wall a vast curve of glass looking out onto the ice,

The screen showed another region of Inner Base Six, and a ship dropping through the iceball’s black Langston Field sky.

Horace Bury paced, looking very relaxed, bobbing as if underwater in the low gravity of Base Six. He hadn’t noticed that Joyce’s pickup camera was on him. All Baba bobbed along beside him, a perfect half-scale mime.

It was a funny sight. Kevin Renner saw that, but he found that command has its own emotions: he had to look beyond humor, and beyond calling attention to humor. There was a lot at stake here, and the responsibility fell squarely on Kevin Renner. And that’s what Captain Blaine felt, back at the Mote. That and his reluctant tolerance for the smartass Sailing Master.

“Almost neutral territory,” Eudoxus said. “Our base, but your part of it, a place where Commodore Renner may come and yet retain control of his ship. Excellency, this is to be a formal reception. Are you certain you will not invite any of the crew of Atropos? To act as entourage. Warriors, for instance.”

“Is that really important?” Renner asked.

“It is important,” Horace Bury said. “But it is also important that all Motie groups understand us as we begin to understand you. Moties and humans must modify their customs when they meet. Let us begin now.”

Eudoxus bowed. “As you wish.”

Chris Blaine watched the alien ship descend. “Looks like a racing yacht,” Blaine said. “But bigger.”

Eudoxus said, “I had wondered at the strange design. The Crimean Tartars must have taken considerable resources from the vermin city.”

And your Engineers will already be examining everything about that ship, Renner thought. Moties aren’t just innovative, they’re adaptive.

The ship docked in a pattern of concentric scarlet circles, onto a platform that began to descend at once. As it sank from sight, Eudoxus listened to a handset. “They’re down. Do you wish to see your friends disembark?”

“Of course,” Renner said. Bury and Ali Baba turned as one.

The screen blinked, then showed an opening airlock. A Warrior emerged into the pressurized reception lock, then a Mediator with an odd marking pattern. Glenda Ruth Blaine followed, clutching a sealed carrying case to her chest. After her came a young man in space coveralls who carried a Mediator pup in his arms. Two Warriors and a young Master followed them.

“Only two.” Bury and Ali Baba were bristling. “We had understood there were four?”

“Yes, Excellency. We are only now learning the details. One of the four insisted on filming the cleansing of Vermin City. He was hurt. His wounds were serious, life threatening. The Tartars have not ceased to tell us of the resources expended in saving his life.

“But when the Khanate ships were seen to be attacking, all realized that Terry Kakumi would not survive the acceleration required to escape. He was cast adrift. His female companion insisted on accompanying him.”

“And thereby hangs a tale,” Renner said. He looked at Blaine and got a slight nod. “And what has happened to them since then?”

“I have not been told,” Eudoxus said.

The handset squawked. Eudoxus listened for a moment. “Your friends seem to be of two minds. They wish to see you immediately, but they are concerned that their appearance might lead you to suspect they have not been well treated.”

“Tell ‘em we’ve already seen them on-screen,” Renner said. “With war fleets coming at us from all directions I don’t think we have a lot of time to waste washing up. Eudoxus, can Medina Trading send someone to rescue the other humans?”

“I will learn.”

‘”Adrift,’” you said,” Joyce noted.

Eudoxus shrugged. “What better word?”

Blaine said, “Cast loose at low thrust, concealed but with a transponder beacon that will answer if pulsed with the right signals. Right?”

“I have not been told, but I assume so. We will do what we can to rescue them, but I suspect we must simply buy them from the Khanate.”

“Buy how?” Joyce demanded.

“A matter for negotiation,” Eudoxus said. “And not yet.”

Renner prompted her. “Why not yet?”

“Kevin, the Khanate Axis cannot themselves know what they will want. You have seen the pattern of their movement as well as I.” She gestured toward the screen, which now showed points of light clustered around nothing whatever. “They wished to control the Sister. This they attained. Now they assemble their strength so that they can send through their war fleet. They wish to escape into your Empire, as we would have done if you had not been present to meet us, but the Khanate will not talk or bargain first. They have this advantage over us: they know that ships went through and lived to return, something that no ship ever did before. Now they believe that surprise is their best weapon, victory their best bargaining tool. Is it not clear to you?”

Blaine nodded. “Clear enough.”

“But that’s horrible!” Joyce said. “Captain Renner, shouldn’t you be doing something?”

Renner’s eyes fell on her without interest; wandered back to the screen. Mediators ruled information flow; this would be as good as anything Atropos could tell him. The Khanate was gathering. They would involve all the allies they could persuade to break free into the wide universe: every family within a billion miles, likely, excepting those who flew Medina’s banner. All ready to flash through to MGC-R-31, where Balasingham waited with Agornemnon and whatever reinforcements might have reached him. If they broke past Agamemnon, they would be loose in the Empire.

The Khanate Axis. How would they work it? By long odds, they would soon have Jennifer Banda to describe Agamemnon and MGC-R-31 as she’d last seen them. Terry Kakumi might be used to persuade her. By now one of their allies might have brought a Bury Fyunch(click) to read her face. Jennifer could translate, could convey surrender terms . . . in either direction.

But what was Commodore Renner to do about it? He must talk to Glenda Ruth, soon. Was Agamemnon holding the MGC-R-31 system alone, or did other Navy ships arrive before Hecate came through? What had she done with the C-L worm? “Eudoxus...”

“We will fight, of course,” Eudoxus said. “All of the strength of East India and Medina assembles. We have sent messages to Byzantium, and their war fleets are gathering. The Khanate Axis will send their Warriors through to fight whatever they find on the far side of the Sister, but they must leave their Masters safe on this side. Those ships we can attack, but we must know what contributions you humans can make.”

“War for the stars,” Joyce said, awed.

“Here are your friends,” Eudoxus said. The outer door of the Great Hall opened. It had been made wide, so that a number could come through it at once.

Warriors streamed in and took places along the walls. They were followed by Admiral Mustapha Pasha, Master of Base Six. Behind that group came new, strange Moties, and two humans; and with them were other Mediators, a small group of Warriors who huddled around two Masters, and a scattering of other forms including a Doctor.

That must be Freddy Townsend, with a Mediator pup riding his shoulder. The box in Glenda Ruth’s arms threw her balance off. She settled it and stepped away. She was radiating joy like a summer day as she turned to her brother; but Lieutenant Blaine was entirely absorbed by the Moties.

Eudoxus spoke slowly, formally, in the trade language. The visiting Mediator answered. “Victoria,” Glenda Ruth said, and waved, but Victoria didn’t notice. East India spoke. Blaine was trying to follow it, and so was Glenda Ruth . . . and then brother and sister grimaced at each other because all the Mediators were talking faster and faster. Twisted bodies shifted, danced. Renner was awed. Before his eyes and Joyce’s camera, they were turning the skeletal trade koine into a language. The Mediators broke off to speak to the Masters, then resumed their gabble. The Masters spoke, first one of the newcomers, then Admiral Mustapha.

And every Warrior jumped straight into the air.

Glenda Ruth screamed, “No, no, it’s a gun, Victoria! You point it!”

The Warriors ringed the ceiling and their weapons ringed the humans. They could fire, now, without hitting each other. Two Engineers and a dozen Watchmakers scrambled forward. Victoria shouted at the Masters, at the other Mediators. They gabbled, while Watchmakers surrounded Glenda Ruth’s box and began spraying it with plastic foam. Every Motie Warrior held a weapon, and every weapon was pointed at a human.

Kevin hadn’t gone for his pistol, and neither had anyone else. His only real weapon was Atropos. If the Masters had cut his communications, then Atropos would be on alert status now.

“I presume there is an explanation for this rather startling behavior,” Bury said.

“Your Crazy Eddie Worm,” Eudoxus said. “A boon to Mediators! But terrible for Masters. You knew of it and did not tell us. Joyce knew and would not tell us.”

Joyce drew in a breath to speak but held it in. Her neck and cheeks flushed pink, then red.

“Our natural suspicion,” Eudoxus continued, apparently to all of them, “is that your altered parasite is a means of making Motie life extinct. You would not consider this suggestion insane, would you, knowing what Victoria has just told us? Kevin, you did not instantly describe the Crazy Eddie Worm. You were much disturbed when you knew that you were going not to Mote Prime, where winds might distribute your parasite, but to a domain where spacecraft must bring the worm to an infinity of closed environments-I see my point is made. So. I fear some tension remains, Excellency, until we again reach understanding. It is, after all, not too late for us to join forces with the Khanate.”

“Endless war,” Chris Blaine said.

“Preferable to extinction. Glenda Ruth, what did you mean-“

She cried, “But it’s for you! It doesn’t reproduce except under controlled conditions. You can point it, like a gun. You win a battle, you don’t have to kill your enemies. You give them the Crazy Eddie Worm instead, and now they’re Keepers, conservative-“

Eudoxus waved her silent. He spoke rapidly to Victoria. They gabbled. A Master spoke. Eudoxus asked Glenda Ruth, “Do you wish to change anything you told Victoria? So. Lieutenant Blaine, tell me what you know of this. Quickly.”

“His Excellency knows more than I do.”

“Excellency?” The tone held respect; but the Warriors clung to the roof, their weapons tracking back and forth among the humans.

Quietly, calmly, moving slowly so as not to startle any Warrior, Bury had linked himself to Nabil’s medical package. The displays were alive and the lines they drew were turning jagged. Bury wasn’t as calm as he looked. Ali Baba regarded the displays with interest.

Bury said, “I know this. One of King Peter’s Mediators was alive when I was last on Sparta. Less than a Mote year ago. Alive. I was told that this was due to the action of a genetically altered parasite.”

“And you believe this?” Omar asked. “Truly, Excellency?”

“Certainly those who told me believed it, as do all those here. Yes. I believe.”

“You fear Moties,” Eudoxus said. “The Bury who came to Mote Prime did not, but you do. When we first spoke to you, I was surprised to see that. Yet since you came here, that, too, has changed. What has happened to change you, you of all humans, not once but twice? Speak truth, Excellency.”

“The first is a Navy secret,” Bury said.

Enough. Kevin Renner said, “Watchmakers destroyed the battleship MacArthur. Civilians had to be evacuated by lines across vacuum to Lenin. Horace was almost there when he realized that the man crawling up behind him was a pressure suit full of Watchmakers. He fought them off with his suitcase and his oxygen tank. Okay, Horace?”

“No longer secret, then.” The lines were turning choppy. “There was worse. I had intended to bring Watchmakers to the Empire, to aid in building my fortune. Then I saw the danger. The war of all against all, and I nearly caused it.”

“We have pictures to top that,” Glenda Ruth said. “Wait’ll you see Vermin City, Your Excellency!”

Bury looked at her. “Wonderful.” To Eudoxus: “You must understand, I enjoy the company of Mediators. Even half-grown Mediators, yes, Ali Baba?”

“Certainly, Excellency- “And Watchmakers would be fantastically useful, fantastically valuable in Empire space. But that was not to be. Your society is much like that of the Arabs before the Prophet. Infanticide. Genocide. No other way to control your population. And after the Prophet, we burst forth to conquer, but we had not learned how to live with other cultures.” Bury shrugged. “Nor had others learned to live with us, and this was still true when I last visited your star system.”

“And you have learned now?” Eudoxus demanded.

“Yes. We have learned, the Empire has learned. The Arabs have found a place within the Empire. We are not yet as honored as we would wish to be, but we have a place that is not without honor. We are free to govern ourselves, and we can travel among the Imperial planets. As you see that I do.”

“You are tolerated.”

“No, Eudoxus, we are accepted. Not by all, enough, and that, too, will change.”

“And you see us in that role?”

“Provided that you accept our terms.”

Eudoxus turned and spoke slowly in the newly adapted trade language. Admiral Mustapha spoke briefly. Eudoxus turned. The Warriors had not moved.

“Your terms?” Eudoxus demanded.

Bury smiled. “Of course we cannot speak for the Empire, but I know what those terms will be. First, there is to be one Motie government. That government will see that no Motie leaves the Mote system without carrying the stabilizing parasite. Within the Mote system-well, I suspect that is all negotiable. Kevin, would you not agree?’

“Mmm . . . yes. The notion is generally that you keep your own house clean. Mote system is to be one government, kept that way by Mote citizenry. We’ve had at least one piece of luck, Eudoxus. Mote Prime is . .. eighty, ninety percent of your population? But they’re not a consideration because Medina Concordance can keep them bottled up. That is, if you can hold the rest of the system in your gripping hand.”

A Master spoke. Six Watchmakers finally ceased spraying foam plastic on a sphere that was now two meters across. Moties resumed their rapid conversation. Abruptly Eudoxus turned to Renner. “The worm is the heart of your strategy. Must we examine it?”

“We have holograms,” Glenda Ruth said. “Victoria has records, too. Why not save it? You don’t have anyone to use it on yet.”

“Victoria tells us different, Glenda Ruth, and I’m amazed that you could forget. For Mediators, the Crazy Eddie Worm extends our life span at least twenty years. We’re being very careful not to let that sway our judgment.”

“Judgment,” Bury said. “That is your real purpose, isn’t it? Not mere obedience, and more than negotiation. Judgment. In your zeal for fairness, think on a Mote society in which Mediators live long enough to learn for themselves.”

“We have,” Omar said. “Excellency, you speak of holding the Mote system. Will the Empire help?”

“Of course,” Renner said.

“Defending System unity is Imperial policy,” Joyce Trujillo said. “They’re already keeping the Blockade Fleet. Expensive, with no return. Trade with the Moties will be so profitable that the costs of helping you to keep order in here won’t matter. His Excellency can tell you-“

“None of this requires extraordinary intelligence for understanding,” Bury said.

“True,” Omar said. “Excellency, it appears that your Crazy Eddie Worm truly is the key to human and Motie cooperation.”

The Mediators began their gabble again, each to his own Master. Admiral Mustapha listened, then spoke rapidly.

“The Admiral agrees,” Eudoxus said. “The question now becomes, what shall we do about the Khanate?”

Kevin Renner thought hard. “Horace-do we trust them, Horace?”

“They trust us.” Bury swept a hand to indicate the Warriors who now hung relaxed, their weapons holstered, though still in place. Ally had turned enemy had turned ally, and no Warrior seemed surprised.

“Right. Glenda Ruth, what was the situation beyond the Sister when you left?”

“Not much different from when you came through. Agamemnon was on guard at the Alderson point leading out of the red dwarf system. There were three Motie ships waiting there with Agamemnon. Reinforcements from New Caledonia were expected, but hadn’t arrived. But that was hundreds of hours ago.”

“Thank you,” Renner said. But they didn’t have any ships to send. Meaning we better assume there aren’t any. “They’ll send their fleet through. What happens if we attack the Masters that stay behind?” Renner asked.

“They’ll send for their Warriors.”

“The whole fleet?”

Eudoxus spoke with the Master of Base Six. Another Master got involved, then two Warriors and an Engineer. Ultimately Eudoxus said, “As I surmised. Dividing one’s forces is rarely a good idea. They will bring back all of their fleet.”

“Nothing to gain. Why did they try it at all?”

“We surmise that they did not anticipate our use of Inner Base Six. We’ve already built up a respectable velocity for several hundred ships and an enormous fuel dump. They believe they have time to clear a path beyond the Sister. We can deny them that time. Still, Kevin-“

“Good. Then what we do is get in position, wait until their battle fleet goes through the Sister, and pounce.”

“And when their fleet comes back?” Omar asked. “Several thousand ships.”

“We cross that bridge when we come to it,” Renner said.

“And hope the horse can sing,” Glenda Ruth added, but she spoke so softly that no one but Renner could hear her.

6 Judgment

First ponder, then dare.

Helmuth von Moltke

“No,” Kevin Renner said. “Damn it, we’re going into a battle!”

“I’m the only correspondent present,” Joyce said. “An opportunity of a lifetime, and you can’t say no!”

“You’ll slow us down.”

“Not I, Commodore Renner. With His Excellency aboard you’re limited in how fast you can go to begin with.”

“Horace.”

Bury was pacing a contorted path through Sinbad’s crowded cabin: his last chance to inspect his altered ship. “Ms. Trujillo is correct, of course. Yet I must come. This is my ship, and I have messages to send, orders to give, that I can only give personally.” Bury waved toward the new control panel. “Sinbad is better defended than she has ever been. And all that is irrelevant. Kevin, if we do not win, no one in the Empire is safe. Having Joyce aboard will not change that and will not lessen our chances.”

So who do we leave behind?”

“Jacob, I think. Nabil-“

The old man hissed in surprise. “Please, Excellency, I have served you for all of my life.”

“Serve me now. Hold this message cube in safety aboard Base Six,” Bury said. “Cynthia-“

“I think I should be with you, Excellency.”

“Then we agree, because that was what I was about to say.”

“All touching, but we have no time,” Jacob Buckman said. “Horace, I think you’re crazy, but good luck.” He shook Bury’s hand and held it an instant longer. “We-“

“Good-bye, Jacob.”

“Um. Yes.” He turned and joined Eudoxus and the others who would stay on Base Six.

“Mother isn’t going to like this,” Chris Blaine said. He took his sister by the shoulders. “Commander Rawlins is right. They need one of us here on Sinbad, and I’ll be more useful on Atropos.”

“If we don’t bring this off, nobody’s safe,” Freddy Townsend said. “Anywhere. Not even Sparta.”

Renner nodded to his new copilot. “I’m afraid you’re right, Freddy. Okay, secure the airlocks. Everybody strap in.”

Sinbad was intensely crowded. The Motie Engineers had reworked Sinbad’s interior and added a fuel tank outboard, where the add-on cabin had been. The control bridge held two couches for humans. It was bounded by collapsing doors that opened onto the main lounge. There they had built shaped acceleration couches for two Mediators and two Engineers, each with a Watchmaker, as well as couches for the other humans. Sinbad looked cluttered, with incomprehensible gadgetry attached at odd angles wherever there was space for it.

Cynthia had Bury tethered into his water bed. Bury watched the Moties settle in.

“They’ve all got the worm,” Kevin said.

“Yes. And how does it affect these cursed little Motie brownies? We test it here for the first time!”

“We may need them for damage control,” Renner said. “Omar, can you keep them from mucking about with the ship? The last thing I need is to have the control system rebuilt.”

“They will do nothing without orders.” Omar took his place next to Victoria of the Crimean Tartars. “Your MacArthur was safe until the Engineer died. A Medina Engineer, Kevin. Even then a Medina Master or Engineer could have saved her. But-“

“But we didn’t allow any communications with the Engineer or the Watchmakers, and Medina was already fleeing from King Peter,” Renner finished.

“Precisely. It was not all your doing. After the arrival of King Peter’s ship it would have been very difficult for you to communicate with Medina.”

Renner nodded to himself. Even then, thirty years ago, the Moties had known more than the humans suspected. And what did they know now? But there was work to do.

“Rawlins?” A screen showed the commander of Atropos watching Sinbad’s chaos with concealed disapproval. “Let us get well clear before you move in and refuel,” Renner said.

“Aye, aye. Godspeed, Commodore.”

“Thank you.”

Refuel only. No Motie would ever touch Atropos. Paranoid, but am I paranoid enough? After thirty years with Horace Bury? Renner said, “All right, Mr. Townsend, let’s launch.”

An hour after Sinbad’s departure, Rawlins called to report launch from Inner Base Six with full tanks.

One of Renner’s screens displayed Atropos as a black dot on a violet-white glare. Another display, unmagnified, showed violet dots weaving a slow pattern about Sinbad. Another showed Commander Rawlins sprawled in his acceleration chair, and Chris Blaine behind him in a similar couch. The strain of three-gee acceleration showed in both faces.

“First things,” Renner said. “The Moties report that our message to the Crazy Eddie Fleet went through as planned. No way to know if the Admiral got it.”

“But he ought to,” Rawlins said, “And no way to know what he’ll do about it.”

“Right,” Renner said. “Anyway, for once things are pretty simple.”

Rawlins lifted an eyebrow with some effort. “If so, it’s the first time.”

“Yeah. Bury and I have discussed the Khanate’s options with the Moties, and we’re all pretty much agreed on how things have to be. They’ve got two options. Plan A, they go through the Sister with everything they’ve got, hit whatever’s waiting, and get through into Empire space, where they scatter. The Khanate is used to living off slim pickings: give them any kind of a system, and they’ll soon be breeding like mad, if they can get their colony ships through.”

Rawlins said, “What’s to stop them? Why have a Plan B?”

“Well, they don’t know they can get through,” Renner said. “Or what they’ll find when they do.”

“They’re risking everything they have,” Glenda Ruth said. “Those colony ships are the Khanate. Everything they have, and they don’t really know what they’re facing. By now they’ll have Terry and Jennifer, so they’ll know Agamemnon was all there was a couple of hundred hours ago.”

“Pity that engineer didn’t just get himself killed,” Rawlins said.

Freddy bridled; Renner spoke quickly to head him off. “What they don’t know, because nobody on Hecate could know, is what reinforcements Agamemnon may have picked up.”

“It won’t be a lot,” Rawlins said. “But maybe something. We did have some ships under repair, and this wouldn’t be the first time Sinclair and his crew at the Yards passed a miracle.”

“We’re presuming they can talk to Terry and Jennifer,” Freddy Townsend said. “The first Tartar group couldn’t.”

“The Khanate is richer than the Tartars,” Glenda Ruth said. “They could have bought a half-trained Bury Fyunch(click) by now. I hope so.”

“Why?” Rawlins asked.

“Jennifer admires Bury,” Glenda Ruth said. “And she’s impressed by the Empire. She’ll be sure there’ll be a big fleet with Agamemnon because she’s got a romantic view of our competence. If they could talk to Joyce, it would be a different-“

“Now, Glenda Ruth, I don’t-“

“We can hope,” Renner said. “It may have happened that way. Whatever the Khanate learned from Jennifer Banda and Terry Kakumi, they’re playing it plenty cautious. They’re sending their warships through, but so far they’ve left their Masters behind. Those are still in Mote system with nothing but a corporal’s guard.”

Renner touched the screen controls and brought up images of the remaining Khanate ships. They were big ships, like civilian cruise ships in the Empire, and not one resembled any other. They were accompanied by a score of smaller ships.

“Two dozen-actually twenty-six of the big ships. That’s the target. The thing is, a Master’s family and entourage are a colony. Those are all the Masters and everything they need to survive, plants, symbiotes, useful Classes, everything. Each family a little colony.

“We go after those. Medina is vectoring everything onto those ships. So are East India and the Tartars. Byzantium has agreed to help. In about twenty hours, things are going to be plenty hot for the Khanate Masters.”

“That part I understand. Fine by me,” Rawlins said.

Blaine said, “It won’t be a surprise attack by the time we hit them, but right now they don’t know how fast we’re coming. They won’t have factored in the boost from Inner Base Six. The Medina Alliance is bigger than they thought, too, as they’ll soon find out. So-what choices do they have? Either they pop through to get support from their war fleet, or they send for help. Quite possibly both, that is, they go through and then yelp for assistance, which means recalling the war fleet. That should buy some time for Agamemnon.”

“Yeah, it just might,” Rawlins said. He looked thoughtful. “If they do that, maybe we can reinforce Balasingham in time to do some good.”

“Good thinking,” Renner said.

“What’s Plan B, Commodore?”

Renner said, “Our best guess is that the Khanate’s Plan B is the same as Medina’s. If they can’t blast past Agamemnon, then they come back here, put together a big alliance that can defeat Medina, and offer to negotiate with the Empire.”

“So the important thing is to see they don’t get past Agamemnon. Other than that-do we care who wins?” Rawlins asked.

Kevin Renner had never thought of that at all.

“The Empire may not care,” Bury said. “But we do.”

Rawlins frowned.

“I’ll second that,” Freddy Townsend said.

Both men were civilians. Rawlins couldn’t quite suppress a patronizing tone. “Now, I know you like these Moties, but Imperial policy is not to get involved with the internal affairs of candidate systems.”

“We all know it happens,” Freddy said.

“Maybe, but this is at a policy level a hell of a lot higher than any of us,” Rawlins said. “Even with the Blaine heirs aboard.”

“Rawlins-“ Renner began.

“Commander,” Glenda Ruth said. “We’re only speculating on what the Khanate might do. The fact is, they haven’t tried to negotiate with us. They have taken two Empire citizens captive, and they won’t even talk to us about it.”

“Hell, your friends took you captive.”

“And are doing their damnedest to make restitution,” Freddy said.

The two Mediators were listening intently, but neither spoke.

“Medina has earned our trust,” Bury said. “Should we not earn theirs? Then there is a matter of property rights. Medina knew that-“

“Property?” Rawlins demanded, his reply delayed by the lightspeed gap.

“Yes, Commander. They knew that the protostar would collapse, that the Sister would open. They bought that knowledge with scarce resources. Including the life of an Engineer we allowed to die aboard MacArthur.”

“Be damned,” Renner said.

“Yes.” Bury’s voice sounded labored. “The situation is not quite what happened to Mr. Townsend, but there are similarities. And from that little store of knowledge they guessed what we would do, and they bet their survival on being right. I have done the same myself. Do you not regard ideas as property? In a sense, Medina Consortium holds copyright on the Empire.”

A beat. Then, “Copyright. Thank you, Trader. Commodore?”

Renner said, “We’ll fight alongside Medina Trading. I’ll take the heat. You’ve got your orders, Commander. Go hit those colony ships. We’ll be thirteen hours behind you.”

“Yes, sir.” Too late to be of any help, but they both knew that. “You’re an unknown to the Moties,” Renner said. “They won’t know what your ship can do. I don’t know if that means they’ll concentrate on you or try to avoid you. Be ready either way. We’re going to need your protection when we get closer, so try to stay alive.”

The delay was longer this time. “We’ll try.’

“Any more questions?...Right. Let’s get to it. Godspeed.” Renner switched off, to find Bury chuckling.

“Yeah?”

“I was thinking,” Bury said. “I can envision a trial. With Blaine’s parents presenting our defense.”

Sinbad was accelerating at 1.2 standard gravities. Glenda Ruth Blaine was using the cramped space of the galley area to do slow stretches. She asked, “Have you ever had a pet?”

“My dad had a pair of Keeshonden,” Joyce said.

“They died, though. You knew they’d die someday and did.” Glenda Ruth didn’t wait for a response. “It was like with Jock and Charlie. They told me themselves. Charlie died. My folks had a version of the C-L worm by then, but it was late for Charlie, or it wasn’t quite right. No, Joyce, you leave camera where it is.”

Joyce hadn’t moved. “I can’t help what I’m thinking, Glenda Ruth, but if they were about to shoot me for knowing too much, I’d still be listening.”

“I’m not sure what I want to say for the press. What I did, it wasn’t honest and it wasn’t simple and it would be insanely complicated to try to describe. What I’m getting at is that the C-L worm pulled my oldest friend off death row. Hello, Freddy.”

Freddy had popped out of the pilot’s enclosure. “Hi. Being interviewed?”

“Off the record. Coffee?”

“Bless you.” Freddy Townsend turned to Bury. “Gravity all right, sir?”

Bury looked up at him. “It is no worse than Sparta. I am quite comfortable. Thank you. It is harder on Ali Baba and our friends.” The Mediator pup was huddled into Bury’s armpit; it didn’t seem unhappy.

“I came back to show you something,” Freddy said. “We’ve got cameras outside the Field.” He indicated the lounge screens. Bright flashes and softer glows, the intricate light threads of a space battle

“Atropos group?” Glenda Ruth asked.

“They’re still a couple of hours short of the Sister. That’s the Tartar fleet. They were closest. Victoria, I’m afraid it’s not going well for your people.”

“We did not expect it to,” Victoria said.

“A fearful consumption of resources,” Omar said.

“An investment,” Bury said.

“With potentially unlimited returns,” Omar said. “We have had years to contemplate, but this is the first generation of Moties to see the universe as a place of real opportunity. So. How soon will we be there?”

“It’s a bit under two light-minutes,” Freddy said. “Call it twenty-six hours at our present rate.”

“Won’t it be all over by then?” Glenda Ruth asked.

“Possibly not,” Victoria said. “Space battles take time.”

“And this is a battle such as few have ever seen,” Omar said. “A battle of Masters, the final failure of the Mediator class.”

“One thing I don’t understand,” Joyce said. “Why won’t the Khanate negotiate?”

There were new flashes of light on the screens.

“More ships,” Glenda Ruth said, “Whose are those?”

“Hard to tell,” Freddy said. “But they’re shooting at the Khanate, so they’re on our side.”

“Enemies of our enemies,” Bury said. “We can but watch with patience. Allah has been merciful.”

“Joyce, there are many answers to your question,” Victoria said. “Their history. The Khanate has had few successes with alliances.”

“Given their record this is not surprising,” Omar said.

“All true. They treat their allies with contempt. They did not honor the terms they had made with us. And now they see unlimited potential if only one of their colony ships survives to roam Imperial space.”

“Unlimited,” Glenda Ruth said. “Crazy Eddie. An entire clan.”

“We see it, too,” Victoria said. “As do Medina and East India. Call it an entire culture.”

Sinbad’s control bridge was dark except for the navigation screens. Freddy had closed it off from the lounge. He had set the pilot’s couch for massage mode.

Glenda Ruth noted Freddy’s relaxed posture. “Hi.”

“Hello.”

“I saw some activity on the screens.”

Freddy nodded. “The battle’s started up again. I told the Commodore. There’s not much we can do about it, for another fourteen hours, so there wasn’t any point in rousing the others.”

And you’re not saying why you didn’t call me. “What do we do when we get there?”

“Good question,” Freddy said. “On this course we’ll shoot past at about two hundred klicks a second.”

“That’s not much use.”

Freddy showed some irritation. “If we slow to match velocities, we’ll be forever getting there. The idea is that we can boost our thrust at the end if somebody needs our firepower. Otherwise it’s safer to go through fast and backtrack.”

“Good news from all over,” Glenda Ruth said.

The main screen flared, a blue flash. She stared at it. “Freddy-“

“It’s all right. You don’t have to watch.”

Her voice was almost patronizing, though it came three seconds later. “Freddy love, there’s not much point anyway. All I’m seeing is colored lights. Why don’t you tell me what’s happening? Pretend it’s a race.”

“Race. Okay.” A touch zoomed the picture, expanded the center of the maze of colored lines. Lasers were splashing across black and coal-red balloons of varied size. One was inflating, green, blue, a white flash like a nova. “They began with twenty-six big ships. After twelve hours of fighting it’s twenty-three. They’re not moving much, but your brother would recognize that dance they’re doing. Ship A floats behind Ship B. Ship B takes the heat for a while. You can’t do it unless the enemy is all in one direction. Ship A sheds some energy, then drops the Langston Field just as it passes from the other ship’s shadow. Fires everything. Turns on its Field again ... oops.”

“Doesn’t always work?”

“No. Twenty-two”

“Uh-huh. Freddy, that was twenty-six clans of the Khanate. Each ship is an extended family. The ships are different sizes because some families are bigger, or richer. It’s worth remembering that Moties don’t flinch at extermination.”

Freddy looked at her

“What are they doing now? Freddy, there goes another one!”

“Caught you looking.” He turned. “Where’s the cloud?”

“No, it just winked out. There, another one.”

“No, my love, that one’s not dead.” He slapped keys. “Commodore! Mister Bury!”

Bury’s image appeared on the intercom screen. “Two ships have fled through the Sister. I think motion. There goes another one, yes, Freddy?”

“Yes, and another one just died. Five down, three gone through, and the rest are converging on the Sister.”

“0-okay. Atropos won’t have to fight.” Renner sounded tired, and there was no image on the screen. “Freddy, we’ll have to go through, but that won’t be for fourteen hours. You have the watch. I’d appreciate it if you’d work the navigation problem. It lets the rest of us get some sleep.” There was a moment of silence. “Horace, we’ve got to talk to the Moties. We can’t go through the Jump alone.”

“So I had surmised. Go to sleep, Kevin. I will negotiate.”

Kevin Renner set his couch to full recline and closed his eyes. He heard Bury’s voice, brisk but with a thread of fatigue in it. “Omar, we will need as many warships as can be assembled to accompany Atropos and Sinbad through the Sister...” And then it all faded out.

“Urgent message,” the computer announced.

Renner sat up at the console. “Put it through.”

Eudoxus showed on the screen. Renner punched in questions: Base Six was a bit under four light-minutes behind him.

“Kevin, the fleets of Byzantium are delayed. They will not reach the Sister in time to accomplish anything, Shall we send them elsewhere? Also, we have detected objects on an intercept course with Sinbad. Three unidentified ships on this vector.” There was a twitter of binary data. “They should be twenty-six minutes from intercept when you receive this.”

Renner thought it through, then sent, “I assume Byzantium is still your ally. Ask them and any other allies to join you at Base Six. Help to secure the Sister. We will look at your unidentified ships. Our present plans are unchanged. We will follow the Atropos group through the Sister. With luck you will secure the Sister from this side.” Kevin thought for a moment and shrugged. Why not? “Godspeed.” Renner clicked off. “Mr. Townsend?”

Freddy Townsend’s picture said, “What’s up?’

“Screen two.” They studied the screen together. Black space and stars, and three dots approaching from low and thirty degrees off the port bow, a degree below the Pleiades.

“Sinbad’s detectors haven’t seen them yet,” Freddy said. “Maybe now that we know where to look...”

“Right.” Renner punched in commands. “Three targets acquired. Constant bearing, and closing, thirty thousand klicks. They’re not throwing anything at us yet, Freddy.” He watched violet-white lights weaving about him and said, “I’d say our allies are already alerted, but call them anyway and make sure Rawlins knows, too.”

“Wake anyone else up?”

“Call Joyce.” Bury was fast asleep. His readouts were a little jagged, a bit disturbing. The Moties slept, too, and Kevin considered. “We don’t need a translator, do we?”

“Let her sleep. Death makes Glenda Ruth twitchy.”

Joyce Trujillo was awake: Kevin could see her screen alight past the back of her head. “Hi, Joyce. Battle shaping up. Freddy, have you got any of the other ships?”

“Signal from Ten, but I can’t read it. Warriors. I’m waking Omar.”

“Swell.”

Omar uncurled and sat up. What followed was a rapid exchange between Sinbad and its twenty small Motie Warrior fighter escorts. Omar said, “You are to be protected.”

Irritating. Kevin said, “If I tell you that I am a Mediator-Warrior-“

“Ships Six through Twenty deployed between us and Bandit Cluster One. Ships One through Five in reserve. Expected attack at high velocity, two clusters of fighters around a fuel tank, expected to separate, plus a Master ship. These are some random ally of the Khanate, arriving late but obliged to protect the Sister from capture by East India and Medina.”

“Much better, Omar. Might they be aware that the Khanate has abandoned them? Give me your best guess.”

“They will not guess that, because the Khanate need not have told them what the Sister does. Ship One suggests you activate your Langston Field now.”

Renner did that. Screens went black, then lit one by one as he raised cameras.

Violet lights were diminishing toward the Pleiades. “Omar, did all of our escort go off to fight?”

“Omar’s off,” Freddy said. “I see four Warrior fighters still with us, not holding any special position. Dammit-“ He didn’t have to finish. Glenda Ruth was watching Joyce’s screen with bright eyes.

Joyce spoke to her, a near-whisper in the dark cabin. Kevin wasn’t meant to hear. “Are we going to fight, do you think?”

“To fight, or to timidly hide behind our allies? Hmm.” If Glenda Ruth hadn’t meant him to hear, Kevin didn’t believe he would have. “Joyce, we tried to put everything we know in the message to Weigle. We even duped your tapes as a supplement.”

“’Even’?”

“Barring that message, whether or not it went through, everything mankind knows about Moties is right here in Sinbad.”

Three enemy dots had become a spray of lights. Sinbad’s Warrior fighters were dancing, an unpredictable pattern. The enemy began to dance, too. When the enemy is light-seconds away, it is possible to dodge laser beams.

“The thing is,” Glenda Ruth said, “if Sinbad has to fight, it’ll be a very bad sign.”

“It’s likewise true that my holos may be the most important thing to emerge from Mote system.”

“Point.”

“I’ve read about space-fleet engagements,” Joyce said. “They all say the same thing. They’d be boring if they weren’t terrifying. I didn’t really believe that before.”

The weaving lights of the enemy ships had converged to one blurred point and stayed that way. Renner frowned. What did they think they were doing?

They were withdrawing, the Warrior ships protecting the Master Sinbad’s entourage were too many for them.

Bandit Cluster Two was bigger. They went past at six hundred klicks per, firing once. Cluster One’s beams impinged on Sinbad at the same time, the attack easily absorbed by Langston Fields. Cluster Two decelerated to join One.

Atropos reached the Sister and took up station there, without incident, surrounded by East India Trading’s Warriors and the remnants of the Crimean Tartar war fleet. The Medina outriders were already arriving.

A third Bandit Cluster arrived, too. With Cluster One/Two they gathered their forces into a complex pattern half a million klicks out and forward of the Sister, then held station.

Freddy Townsend recorded that and later played it for Renner at high speed. “Sir, it ought to make a pattern, but I can’t see it.”

“Omar, who are these?”

“Three families, one local, none of any consequence. The Khanate’s contract to depart Mote system must leave enough wealth behind to back any number of alliances.”

“Okay. There aren’t enough to attack us. They’re expecting the Khanate to come surging back through the Sister. Then when we flee, these guys block our path.”

“What’s in that direction?”

“It doesn’t matter. They’re not between us and what we want. They only think they are. Freddy, how close are we to the Sister?”

“Three hours, but we’ll be going through at two hundred klicks per, unless we increase thrust. Another three hours if we miss the pass.”

Bury was asleep. His telltales seemed to have settled down: he was resting well. Give him another hour, Renner thought. “Belay thrust increase. Omar, we need a conference with our escorts and allies. Freddy, please call Commander Rawlins.”

“Let me be sure of this,” Rawlins said. “We’re going through the Sister. Me first, and I’m to try to protect the lot of you. What from?”

“Whatever the Khanate has left as doorkeeper,” Renner said. “Opinion is divided on just how much that will be.”

“Okay,” Rawlins said. “Standard convoy escort through a Jump point. I can do that, but the Moties will have to cooperate. Shall we work out the courses, or will you?”

“Your job,” Renner said. “I’ve been away from it awhile. You’ll do it better. Now, we’re six hours behind you if Townsend’s maneuver works, thirteen if it doesn’t. You’d better not wait. We’ll follow you.”

“Yes, sir. Okay, I go in and cover the forty-seven Motie alliance warships you’re vectoring in. Then when we’re all through, we make for Agamemnon at flank speed.”

“Everything that gets through,” Renner said. “You’ve got a copy of my report to Agamemnon. Relay that if you can. The important thing is to keep the Khanate from getting out to the Empire. Don’t you agree?”

“Yes. All right. Sir. Okay, but there are too many ships for me to cover them all. I’ll have to send some through in a dispersion pattern. I’ll work out the course vectors and send them over within an hour. As for Sinbad, you’re moving too fast, it would take hours to match velocities.”

“We don’t have hours. We’re too slow anyway, with Mr. Bury aboard.”

“Exactly. We’ll fight what we find there while you and your escorts go right on past. They won’t be expecting that.”

“That’s the way I see it,” Renner said.

“Then we all go on. Commodore, I suggest you work on the message to Balasingham. He isn’t going to like seeing a bunch of Motie ships coming at him.”

“Right. Thanks,” Renner said. “Omar, make sure your people understand. Commander Rawlins will have his computers work out a course for every ship. It’s important they follow directions exactly.”

“Understood,” Omar said. “Thank you.”

“Okay, Commander, we’ll wait for you to call. Thanks.” Renner turned to Freddy Townsend. “So. Still think we can get through at two hundred klicks?”

“Piece of cake.”

“Just what is happening?” Joyce asked. “Freddy?”

“Give me a minute,” Freddy said.

“Omar,” Renner said. “When you can spare a moment, we have a job for your Engineer.” He tapped furiously and a series of diagrams appeared on the screen. “I need this set up.”

“The Flinger, Kevin?”

Bury. “Yeah.” Renner glanced at Bury’s medical readouts. They’d settled to normal. “Glad you got a good rest. We’re going through, and we don’t know what’s on the other side. I want to erect the Flinger.”

“Indeed.” Bury sighed. “In that case-Cynthia, I believe you should open the sealed locker in Compartment Eight. We may need its contents.”

The brown Motie Engineer had been studying the screen. Now she chattered to Omar.

“Problem?” Renner asked.

“No, she understands the mechanism and its purpose. It will be done in less than an hour. Indeed, she says she can make considerable improvements-“

“No!” Bury said. “My ship, and by the Prophet, no! Leave it as it was designed.”

Renner was chuckling, but stopped when he saw the medical readouts. “Omar, I think it will be best if the system works as I expect it to. We can leave the improvements for another time.”

“Very well.” Omar spoke rapidly. The Engineer and Watchmakers went aft to find their pressure suits

“Please,” Joyce said. “Won’t somebody tell me what’s happening?”

“What’s happening, or what we think is happening?” Glenda Ruth asked.

“Both!”

“I would appreciate the information myself,” Bury said.

Kevin kept an ear cocked. Freddy, too, was listening, though he had his own work.

“Not for the record, my opinion only.” The screens showed a chart of the Mote system. Glenda Ruth said, “The Khanate sent its main war fleet through the Sister while the Masters and their colony ships stayed behind. East India and Medina made it too hot for them, and they fled through as well. We figure they’ll be headed for the Jump to New Cal, but they’ll have to find it first.

“Meanwhile, our group is heading toward the Sister. There’s another squadron of alliance ships that can work it so they get there just ahead of us. Atropos goes in with those. If there’s nothing there to shoot at, they’ll head directly for Agamemnon at the exit point. We’ll follow at our own speed.”

“Oh,” Joyce said. “Of course. We know where it is.”

“So we ought to get there first . . . Atropos and the Medina fleet, that is. Rawlins goes directly there, so the Khanate won’t know just how strong we are.”

“But we’re expecting trouble.”

“The Khanate is entirely likely to leave a sniper or six,” Glenda Ruth said.

“But they know how many ships we have. Don’t they?”

“How could they possibly know what we’ll take through? Anyway, that’s why Atropos goes first. He goes through and we follow, as many as we can. Some snugged up behind Atropos, the rest in a crazy-quilt pattern. The notion is that some get through. A lot get through.”

“Oh.”

“Something else they won’t expect,” Freddy said. “Or rather they will expect-“

“Jump shock,” Omar said. “They will have experienced it. Eudoxus says it is formidable-but less so for you than us. They will not expect you to recover as quickly as you will. Our Warrior officers agree. It is a good plan.”

Atropos went second. First there was a fan of twenty East India warships not much larger than Imperial corvettes traveling at high but different speeds. Their mission was to distract whatever enemy waited on the other side of Crazy Eddie’s Sister.

Freddy Townsend watched in appreciation. “Any regatta commodore would be proud of that performance.”

“Or fleet admiral for that matter,” Renner said. “All right, there goes Atropos.” Alliance warships huddled close behind the Imperial cruiser, in what would have been called “line ahead” in wet navy days. Now they vanished one by one as Sinbad hurtled toward the Jump point.

Sinbud’s Warrior entourage would have been visible if the Field were not up. They were needed for more than protection. Freddy Townsend was using them for triangulation.

The Sister was thirty seconds away.

“If we make this, it’ll be a record,” Freddy said. “Will I be allowed to file it?”

Kevin said, “Not my decision. And if we miss, we can try again, of course, but that’s three hours down the recycler, Freddy, and I don’t know how important three hours is. Give it your best.”

“Always.”

Victoria and Omar concurred: any decent Warrior pilot could do this. With twenty Warrior pilots to triangulate, even a human pilot had a chance.

Kevin never saw Freddy hit the switch.

7 Jump Shock

Among other evils which being unarmed brings you, it causes you to be despised.

Niccolo Machiavelli

In the two days before the Khanate ships found them, Jennifer had little to do but watch Terry, and talk to Pollyanna, and pray. The God of mankind was God of the Mote, too. She prayed for solutions that would bring peace to both kinds of mind.

When the Khanate ships approached, Jennifer looped Freddy’s stored data on the Contraceptive-Longevity Worm. The Khanate Warriors found it running when they burst through the wall.

For a time they ignored it. Two Engineers, four Watchmakers, and a Warrior searched once for booby traps, then in leisurely fashion for anything of interest. A Mediator and a Master arrived, discussed, examined. Cerberus’s cabin was again infested with Moties.

The Mediator listened to the recording Victoria had made, the notice in trade Koine that the ship was salvage but that Medina Alliance would pay well for Jennifer and Terry. The Mediator turned to the Master and spoke. The Master spoke curtly. Both ignored the humans.

The Warrior went away. The Mediator examined Pollyanna without waking her, then took position in front of a monitor recently worked over by an Engineer. Watchmakers scurried about like big, helpful, curious spiders.

Over the next several hours Cerberus changed again. A pity Freddy couldn’t see this. The Khanate found his drive, Hecate’s drive, pushing too light a load. They added a truss to hold cargo, fiddled with the drive to get yet more thrust, added nets of spheroids, as if Cerberus had sprouted clusters of tremendous grapes. More cargo . .. and weaponry? Jennifer couldn’t tell. Terry would have known, but Terry wasn’t talking.

Terry dozed most of the time. Something would get his attention: Jennifer caressing his neck or ear, or a Watchmaker running across his back. His eyes would open; maybe he would smile, maybe he would drink some water or broth, speak a few words, and presently go back to sleep. He wasn’t keeping good track of events. Jennifer had to keep her own counsel.

Help would come. Jennifer waited.

Inside, the Moties were at work. This time there was no stopping them. Their interest was in the screens, cameras, computers, communications. They didn’t touch the air system. Perhaps the Tartar Engineers had sufficiently altered that.

Pollyanna woke. She and the Khanate Mediator chattered as they watched the monitor

The Master came back with a Doctor and another Engineer. Pallyanna jumped to her at once and began to nurse.

The Khanate’s Doctor was distinctly different from Dr. Doolittle, smaller, frail seeming. She did little to disturb Terry, though she examined Jennifer in detail.

Pollyanna, well fed now, returned to Jennifer’s shoulder and stayed there while she chatted with the Khanate Mediator. Her toes clutched Jennifer’s shoulder now, while her arms waved in flamboyant gestures. The adult’s answers were more concise, a flip of the wrist, right elbows rapping each other: how the hell would a human copy that? Jennifer tried to concentrate. An infant Mediator was teaching a mature one to speak Anglic! The recording would be fantastically valuable, but it would miss things, nuances...that head-and-shoulder tilt, ‘”not quite”.

Terry stirred, and Jennifer looked into his eyes. Was sense returning to him?

And everything went blurry

Jennifer recovered slowly. It struck her that if she were Terry Kakumi, and uninjured, she could take the ship from these wailing, kicking Moties. But lack of sleep had done Jennifer in, and the Moties were already gathering themselves. She moved hand over hand to the telescope controls.

Cerberus had jumped, of course. The Frankenstein’s monster of a spacecraft was nearly the first through to MGC-R-31. Ships were pouring through aft, accelerating, sweeping past Cerberus and leaving it behind, a crippled hybrid. Cerberus limped behind the Warrior fleet at about one Mote gravity. The drive flames of a thousand small ships retreated ahead.

And the Mediator spoke to Jennifer for the first time. “You are Jennifer Banda? Call me Harlequin. I serve the Master Falkenberg.” She must have seen Jennifer’s reaction-Oh, really?-but she did not try to temper the arrogance of her claim. “We must discuss your future.”

“Surely yours, too,” Jennifer said.

“Yes. You are ours now. If all goes best, we break free from the Empire to seek our own stars. You and Terry Kakumi with us. When finally we must confront the Empire, you or your children must speak for us.”

It was hardly the future Jennifer would have chosen. But the Mediator was speaking: “Barriers wait before us. Where will the next bridging point lead us? What stands to block us?”

“The Empire of Man,” Jennifer said. Terry smiled, barely, and she saw bright glints: his eyes were open.

“Detail,” the Mediator said. “We find one tremendous ship and several much smaller.”

“There’ll be more. We got the jump on you. More ships will be coming through from New Cal, any hour. You don’t know what you’re facing. This is the Empire.”

When Jennifer Banda was six years old, the Navy had declassified certain bob recordings. The whole school assembled to watch them.

That was twelve years after the Empire fleet had assembled off New Washington before the final Jump to New Chicago, a world that had seceded from the Empire and renamed itself Freedom. That world had been restored to the Empire, its name restored, too. There had been battles, but what Jennifer remembered was the massed might of the Empire of Man, ships the size of islands passing at meteor speeds and higher.

No Motie Mediator could see all that in her eyes. Still, Harlequin would see nothing to deny what Jennifer believed: that the power that held a thousand worlds in its gripping hand was coming down the Khanate’s throat.

Harlequin said, “If we could reach the new bridging point in time-“

“You’d find our battleships just the other side. You felt the Jump shock. And they’ll be waiting.”

“I will show you what we plan.”

Warrior and Engineer and Mediator huddled, and Pollyanna with them. On Cerberus’s screens the gory details of an Engineer’s autopsy were replaced with . . . something astronomical. The colors were poor, but this was MGC-R-31, there the little red star, there the blue sparks of Warriors retreating well ahead of Cerberus, there a lozenge next to concentric circles: undoubtedly Agamemnon and the Jump to New Cal. And there, popping out of the other target area aft: more ships, bigger.

“The Masters come before it was intended,” Harlequin said. “Never mind. What waits beyond”-she indicated the outward target-“this?”

“Classified,” Terry said.

“Oh, good! Terry, how are you feeling?”

“I might live. Won’t like it at first. Thanks for staying.”

“Oh, no! How could I leave you?”

“Don’t tell them details. Sleep now,” Terry said, and closed his eyes.

Jennifer nodded. She’d expected him to speak earlier.

Harlequin said, “What system lies beyond the bridge? There must be other bridges.”

“I’m going to stop talking now,” Jennifer said.

“Not a problem.” Harlequin pointed at the cluster of large ships aft. “I will tell you. Twenty Master ships have come through. Our Warriors will prepare the way through to the Empire. There must be bridges to other stars. We seek the one that departs the Empire. So do you, Jennifer, for my life and yours, and to save the lives of any in our path.”

“You shouldn’t be running from the Crazy Eddie Worm,” Jennifer said. “You can surrender. Don’t you understand, you don’t have to die!”

The Warrior made a sound, and Harlequin turned. On the screen other ships were popping through behind the Khanate Masters.

Something big was crawling across Renner’s chest. A monkey or a big spider, injured, missing limbs. “Ali Baba is sick,” it said. “His Excellency is sick. So is, am I. Sick in the head, concussion, scrambled brains and wobbly eyes. Kevin?”

“It’ll be all right.” Renner hugged the little Mediator. Craning his head around made him dizzy and sicker. “Just wait, it’ll get better.”

Bury was on his back, toes pointing slightly apart, hands apart and palms upward, Yoga corpse position: he was calming himself the only way he knew how.

The screens were blurred. A voice was shouting from the background, shouting for the Captain. I’m too damned old for this.

Renner popped his restraint belts. “Townsend?” His balance was still screwy. He pulled himself around to where he could see Bury’s monitors. The medic array had turned itself off at the Jump. Now it was running a self-test loop. But here came Cynthia, moving quickly on hands and knees. She crouched above Bury and began a medical inspection, pulse, tongue, eyes...

“Townsend!”

“Here.”

“What’s-“ Renner couldn’t say it properly.

“Atropos on line. We can receive.”

But no transmissions yet. Renner slapped at the keys. The screens were still dark, but a voice was saying, “Sinbad this is Atropos. Sinbad this is Atropos. Over.”

Renner stretched experimentally. Integral e to the x dx is e to the x . . . He’d found that the computers recovered quicker than he did. Should be safe enough to test now. He woke the communications computers. A snarl of static.

“Atropos, this is Sinbad.”

“Sinbad, stand by.”

“Rawlins here.”

“Status report?” Kevin croaked.

“Critical. We’re under attack by half a dozen ships. One of them’s a big mother. Sir.”

Green lights showed on one corner of Renner’s control board. “Freddy! She’s waking up, see if you can see anything.”

“Right.”

“We’re recovering,” Renner said. “How bad is it?”

Rawlins: “We’re peaking in green. I won’t last forever, and I can’t shoot back. No chance to send a message to Agamemnon.”

Renner shook his head. Critical. Can’t shoot back. Why can’t he shoot back? Energy. Energy control. More green lights on his console.

Bury’s machinery started suddenly: displays hunting, then drips to adjust his chemical balance.

The Mediators were thrashing feebly.

A screen came to light. Then another.

“Rawlins,” Renner said. His voice was still thick. “Hang in there. We’re going past.”

“Here’s a battle picture. I’ll relay as long as I can.”

The enemy fleet was a scattering of black dots across MGC-R31’s orange-white glare, visibly receding with Sinbad’s velocity. They’d positioned themselves well, Renner thought. Just sunward of the Sister, to foul an intruder’s sensors; near enough to blast them at point-blank.

Atropos was glowing far brighter than the little sun. Nothing smaller than Atropos would have survived this long, without Atropos itself as shield. Too few Medina ships were adrift behind Atropos, firing around the shield, easing back. When Atropos went, they’d go, too.

It was going to be tricky. The Moties aboard were no use at all. Sinbad’s computers were Navy quality, three independent systems, each working the same test problems until they all got the same answers-and they weren’t getting them.

“Townsend!”

“Sir?”

“Get the Flinger going! Hit that Motie fleet. Especially the big ship.”

“Will do. Launcher self-check. In order. Erecting.” The Field blinked for a second as the loops of the linear accelerator eased up through the black energy shell. “Launcher outside Field. I’m getting direct camera information. Trajectory analysis-“

Sinbad was flashing past the battle. They had almost no time.

“Trajectory computers give divergent answers!” Freddy shouted. “Rape it. Launching. Stand by!”

Sinbad recoiled. Then again. “On the way. Automatic loaders are working,” Freddy said.

A muted keening sound had to be coming from Glenda Ruth.

“Stand by,” Freddy said. “On the way. Dispersion pattern. Continuous fire, stand by!”

There was a floodlight glare from every screen, then all screens went dark. “They hit us. That’s it for the cameras,” Freddy said. “Captain, the Flinger’s dry. We’d have to bring it in to reload.”

“Never mind.”

Bury was trying to crawl up Kevin’s ankle with just one hand. “Bring it in. Kevin, bring it in!”

“Okay, I’m doing it. Lie still, Horace.” Unseen, the loops of the Flinger were sinking through the Field into the hull.

“Superconductor,” Bury said.

“Ah.” Sinbad’s finger was a linear accelerator made with Motie superconductor. That was why it hadn’t melted in the glare of Khanate lasers. If it wasn’t withdrawn, it would conduct the energy of the laser attack into Sinbad.

“We’re still getting relays from Atropos,” Renner said. The relays would be progressively out of date as Sinbad moved away from the battle. “And I’ve got a camera on-line.”

Someone, human or Motie, made a strangling sound. Glenda Ruth wailed again. The black beyond the windows began to glow dull red.

An image formed on Renner’s screen, a composite of the relay and direct observation. It showed a cluster of Motie ships receding as Sinbad moved past the battle. Beams reached from three smaller Motie ships toward Sinbad. Six others held Atropos pinned like a bug. One of the Motie ships attacking the Imperial cruiser was nearly as large as Atropos.

“Blue field,” Renner muttered. Give him another five minutes. Then he’s gone and so are we.

“Five. Four,” Freddy counted. “Three. Two. One. Zero. Maybe the timer’s off. Or the trig-“

Something flashed intolerably bright beyond the larger Motie ship. The larger Motie ship went from green to bright blue, expanding. Another flash. Another. The blue shaded toward violet.

“Jesus, Horace,” Renner muttered. “Fifty megatons? More? How long have we had those aboard?”

“You would not...” Bury’s voice was weak but held a note of ironic triumph. “You would not have approved. At what those cost I nearly did not approve myself.”

“It’s working!” Joyce shouted. “They’re not attacking Atropos anymore. They’re-“

She fell silent. Two of the Motie ships flashed violet and beyond and were gone. The largest ship was now glowing blue-white, and Atropos was firing at it. “He can’t last,” Joyce said.

The big Motie ship flashed and vanished. Now a score of bright dots clustered around the fading glow that was Atropos and accelerated toward the remaining Tartar ships.

“Sinbud, this is Atropos.”

“Go ahead, Commander.”

“Well done, sir. We’ve won this battle,” Rawlins said. “The Moties can clean up the rest of their blockade fleet. Sir, there was no opportunity to contact Agamemnon. I suggest you do that.”

“Right. Carry on, Rawlins. Townsend!”

“Here.”

“Find Agamemnon. Send that message.”

“On it.”

“You fight like vermin,” Harlequin said with contempt.

Jennifer flinched at the insult, then wondered at its meaning. But the Mediator had kicked himself aft without giving her a chance to reply. Now the Moties huddled, chattering, and Jennifer turned back to the display.

There had been a battle. Ships had died. It looked as if the intruders had won.

Harlequin was back, with the Warrior hovering behind her. “I apologize,” the Motie said. “I understand now. You throw away resources like vermin, but it is not that you are animals. You have endless resources.”

“If you win everything you want, your descendants will think the same way,” Jennifer said.

“Yes. Our battle plan has changed, Jennifer, We no longer believe we can pass to New Cal.”

“Surrender,” Jennifer said. “Accept the Crazy Eddie Worm. No Motie need die because there are too many.”

A wave dismissed the notion. “We have considered this. There are domains to be fought for, and we may yet win.”

And Mediators speak for the Masters. “You can’t win. The Empire has-you’ve seen the resources we have. This hasty little expedition. A civilian ship was enough to harm your war fleet and alter your plans, and you haven’t seen what the Empire can do! Harlequin, talk to your Masters!”

“I have done so. You have none of your altered parasite. There is no time to test it, and your altered parasite might well be fiction.” Harlequin might not even have seen her reaction. “In any case, our options are not ended. Your representatives have made agreements with our rivals. Medina Consortium, Pollyanna calls them. Very well, we need only conquer Medina and take their place. Then we will have a gripping hand on the vast resources offered by your Empire.”

This at first seemed ludicrous to Jennifer. “All Moties look alike?”

“We must assume that you passed messages describing your situation, describing promises made to Medina Consortium, describing battle plans. But if we silence every human voice, and if we make our rivals extinct, who will tell your Masters which of us was Medina Consortium?”

Jennifer sensed that her answer would be taken very seriously; so, very seriously, she thought it through.

“What if you fail? One voice could destroy you all.”

“Humans are conspicuous. They require their special life support systems. We will find you.”

“What are you going to do?”

“It is done. Our Warriors will follow your human-built ships and destroy them. Others may remain on Medina’s major carrier, but my Warrior adviser calls it a mere hydrogen snowball, conspicuous and slow, easy to capture.”

She’s crazy! But all Moties look different. It’s no better than looking all alike. It could work, Jennifer thought. And Harlequin knows I believe it might work. Damn. “What of us?”

“We may have need of you.”

“Of course.” If the Khanate failed, she or Terry would convey surrender terms to the Empire. So, they would be the last to die. I have to think. There must be some way to convince them that this is madness. “Crazy Eddie.”

Harlequin had not mastered the art of appearing to shrug, but her inflection conveyed the same sentiment. “As you say. These are Crazy Eddie times. But time is short, and if we seek this option, we must seek it now. We will speak later.”

Freddy Townsend said, “Sir, I have some other ships in view. Interested?”

“No. Find Agamemnon.”

“Waiting.”

“Making coffee,” Joyce said. “Strong, with hot milk?”

Freddy said, “If Agamemnon has shields up, I won’t find it, period. What if we just beam your message at the Jump point?”

“Good, Freddy. Do that. Then keep trying.”

“Aye, aye.”

Lights dimmed. All of Sinbad’s power was going into that one blip.

“Oh, Lord,” Freddy said.

“Talk to me, Townsend.”

“More ships under acceleration. Fusion drives, high acceleration. I count sixteen no more than five million klicks away, all with a redshift and no drift, and I don’t know where they’re aimed but it isn’t at the Jump to New Cal.”

Renner brought the images in closer.

“Kevin, what is it?” Joyce demanded.

“Not enough data.”

“There’s more,” Freddy said. “A whole sparkling field of drive lights at maybe sixty million klicks, all of ‘em between us and Agamemnon.”

“They’ve cut us off,” Joyce said.

“That they did,” Freddy said. “Skipper, I’ve got four minutes integration on them now. They’re showing a decreasing redshift and no drift.”

“Thrust?”

“Close enough to three standard gee.”

“Bound to be Warriors.”

“All redshifted?” Joyce asked. “That means they’re going away from us.”

“Decreasing redshift,” Freddy said. “Going away, but they’re thrusting toward us. An airplane would be turning around, but you can’t do that in vacuum.”

Renner touched the intercom buttons. “Omar, have you been following this?”

“Yes, Commodore.”

The Motie’s voice conveyed weariness, confusion, and determination at the same time. Never off duty, Renner thought. “Watch. That group I just marked. That’s the main body of the Khanate fleet. Best estimate is that their Warriors were going all out toward Agamemnon and the Jump point to New Cal until the Masters popped through.”

“That is reasonable.”

“Okay. But now the Masters are all moving away from the Sister, and the Warriors are slowing, probably coming back. What are they likely to think they’re doing?”

“The Warriors are swarming back to defend the Masters from us. The Masters have many options. Their target may be a place of hiding, perhaps the comets around the brown dwarf star. They seem to have given up the Jump point out of the system. Something has convinced them that your defense at the Jump is too formidable.”

“Jennifer,” Freddy said. “She must have convinced them.”

“Those bombs did not weaken her arguments,” Omar said. ”Whatever else you have done, you have shown that you are willing to expend resources.”

“Resources to burn,” Joyce said. “Which we quite literally-“

All the screens whited out. Kevin moved two dial displays, in haste. The screens dimmed to a scattering of laser-green points. Sinbad was under attack.

“Whatever. Now what’s happening?” Renner mused. “Omar, that Warrior fleet is aimed right at us. Or at the gate back to the Mote system. Which is it?”

“Why not both?”

“Both.”

Omar and Victoria conferred briefly. Then Omar said, “If we threaten the Khanate Masters, they will attack us, of course. But consider this. If they have abandoned the notion of forcing their way past Agamemnon, then the Khanate may have instructed their Warriors to return through the Sister to prepare a path of safety for their return to Mote system.”

“They’re giving up?” It was the first time Glenda Ruth had spoken since the battle.

“Perhaps.” Omar shrugged. “Or they may attack Medina, to soften our power for later negotiation. Or something else. This is a matter for military strategy.”

Victoria said, “They’ll kill or capture the humans if they can. If your Empire has only the Khanate to negotiate with, any contract would favor the Khanate.”

“Bet?”

Victoria answered in Motie. Glenda Ruth laughed as their speech became faster and faster. She said, “Uncle Kevin, they’re betting! Descendants for their Masters! Victoria’s giving four to one-“

“Later, Glenda Ruth. Omar, it looks like their whole fleet of Warriors is coming straight at us.”

The cabin went dark. “I’ve found Agamemnon,” Freddy reported. “I’m beaming your message again.”

“Good. Very good. Now we’ve got to get out of here. Suggestions?”

No one answered. “Freddy, turn us around. Get us on course to go back through the”-hell-“through the Sister.”

“Through the Sister. What thrust?”

Renner let the computer work for a moment. “That’s a god-awful amount of radiation they’re aiming at us. If it keeps up, we’ll have to duck. What are they trying to do?”

“Kill us?” Freddy suggested.

“Well, if they can, but what else?” Renner studied the screens. If the Motie fleet continued on course, it would get to the Sister in about twenty-five hours. Another moment of indecision. Then, “Keep it reasonable. Say point three for now.” The Field was dull red. Not bad, but they’d be bathed in that green laser glare for hours to come. “I want to see what those Warriors will do.”

“What of our ships?” Omar asked.

“I’ll keep Atropos,” Renner said. “Have all your Motie ships reinforce Balasingham. Look, he’s going to be a bit wary of them.”

“We have discussed this,” Omar said. “Our ships will position themselves to aid your warship without threatening it.”

Horace Bury’s voice trembled with exhaustion, but there was triumph, too. “Mercy of Allah! Kevin, we have sent our message to the Empire, and the Khanate has turned back. We have fulfilled our mission, whatever happens. Now we survive if Allah wills it.”

“We may have fulfilled the mission,” Kevin said. “It all depends on that Khanate Warrior fleet. We don’t know what they’re going to do, and as long as they’re in this system, they’re dangerous. They could still batter their way past Balasingham.” Renner studied the screen again. “Well, as long as they’re chasing us, they’re not doing that. If they’re back in Mote system, they’re for sure not doing that. Maybe we can lead them there.”

“Good,” Bury said.

Kevin thought, Can you take another Jump? and didn’t speak. What if he said no? “I’ll tell Rawlins.”

“My viewers may not understand,” Joyce said. “I’m not sure I understand. First we come through to the red dwarf system. Then we fight. We win. Now for the past four hours we’ve been slowing down, and we’re headed back the way we came.” She looked at her screens, noted the yellow glow of the Field. Sinbad was under continuous attack.

“It’s all part of the same battle,” Freddy Townsend said.

“The important thing is that the Khanate fleet is moving toward the Sister, not going after Agamemnon,” Glenda Ruth said. “We have to keep them heading toward us.”

“But are they after us, or would they go back to the Mote anyway?”

“It doesn’t matter, Joyce,” Victoria said. “Anything that gets them back into the Mote system.”

“So we’re bait,” Joyce said. “I guess that wouldn’t be so bad-but to be bait when you don’t even know it’s you they’re after!”

“They’re after us,” Freddy said.

“How can you be sure?” Joyce demanded.

“If they’re not, they’re sure wasting a lot of energy,” Freddy said. “They can’t spare the fuel. I think it’s this way. If they can kill us, they won’t go through, but if we run through, they’ll follow us. Glenda Ruth?”

“Best bet,” Glenda Ruth said.

Joyce said, “And there you have it.”

“Situation unchanged, Commodore,” Rawlins said. “They haven’t tried to intercept the allied ships we sent to reinforce Balasingham. It’s us they care about, all right, and there’s too many to fight. Our only chance is to run. I suggest we increase acceleration. The less of this fire we take, the better chance we’ll have once we’re through.”

“Agreed. Take it up to one point five gee.”

“One point five, aye, aye.” Rawlins’s image turned away for a moment.

“Once we’re stabilized in the Mote system, thrust along this vector,” Renner said. There was a twitter of data. “And I had the Moties record some orders. You’ll recover before we do. Send these messages to Base Six as soon as you can.”

“Messages to Base Six. Aye, aye.”

“Keep the comm link,” Renner said. He sighed and touched the intercom buttons. “Stand by for increased gravity. One point five g.” He touched another button. “Horace-“

“I will survive.”

“Yeah. If they keep that beam on us too long-“

“Kevin, you will do what you must do.”

Renner had been at work. Sailing Master aboard MacArthur, Bury’s pilot for thirty years: this he could have done in his sleep. “Horace, can you take one point seven gee for eleven minutes?”

“Yes, of course, Kevin.”

Of course. The danger to Bury wasn’t from another increase in thrust, but from Jump shock. “Townsend, do it.”

Ali Baba’s eight kilograms hit him in the chest. The pup cried, “No, Kevin! Not again!”

“Here, Ali Baba,” Bury said, and the Mediator went, fearfully. Freddy said, “Aye, aye. Done. Any margin of error there?”

“We’ll be violet when we go through the Eye.” Freddy shuddered.

The Engineers were up and crawling; the Mediators watched. Kevin bit back his questions and presently understood. The Moties had Cynthia’s couch disassembled and were putting it back together next to Bury’s water bed. That crowded Glenda Ruth, so they had to move her couch before they could return to their couches and collapse.

“Commodore? I’ve got the Master ships’ target. It’s the brown dwarf. Maybe they expect to take cover in the ring.”

“Once they kill us.”

Cynthia had finished her exercise set in the kitchen space. The view through the window was a uniform cheerful green.

On the enlarged screen that the Watchmakers had finished erecting, one blazing point reached the Sister and disappeared without exploding. Then the second. Jennifer heaved a great sigh of relief. “They’re through,” she said.

Terry squeezed her foot. She reached around to pat his cheek. “How are you doing?”

“Healing. You?”

Just waiting. Harlequin’s up front getting battle data. Should I really stop talking, or try to talk them into something?”

“Talk. They’ll read you anyway.”

But it was over an hour before Harlequin rejoined them. “The Sister hides your ships for the moment,” he said. “We did not expect they could survive our barrage.”

“That’s another thing about resources,” Jennifer said. “Our ships are bigger, better defended, more powerful.”

Harlequin laughed in great amusement and some scorn: Freddy’s laugh. Harlequin must have had it from Pollyanna. “Another thing about our breeding problem: our ships are more numerous by far! Jennifer, our intentions are not your concern. We will discuss strategy. These two ships-“

“I must stop listening-“

But the Mediator’s big left palm was out, pause a minute, while the Warrior spoke.

They finished. Harlequin said, “Jennifer, we sent most of our Warriors to chase your two Empire ships down, under the command of our junior Master. Medina’s lizard-raping Warriors managed to destroy that command ship as they passed, but our Warrior ships are nearly untouched. They will follow your Empire-built ships through the Sister to Mote system. They can’t hide, Jennifer, their drives are too peculiar.”

In fact, the blue sparks of the Warrior ships’ drives were disappearing even as Harlequin spoke. Other, larger sparks had flown past: the Khanate Master ships were on their way to Bury’s Star. “Where will your Masters hide?”

“In the rocks. Does it matter? We’ve given up hope of bursting through the other bridging point into your Empire. We must wait until our Warriors report success at the Mote.”

“You intend to kill us all?”

“Yes. Your ships will have the advantage in the first instants because they will go through first and recover first from the shock. Unless humans tolerate the shock worse than we do?”

Jennifer laughed.

Harlequin frowned. “No? We watched you. You recovered very slowly.”

“Harlequin, I’m half-dead of fatigue. Poor Terry’s half-dead, period.” An instant later she could have bitten her tongue off. Too late: Harlequin was leaping aft.

Terry’s hand closed on the Motie’s ankle and yanked him backward. Jennifer shrieked, “Kill him! Kill him, Terry!”

The Warrior was arrowing toward them.

Terry’s arms closed around the Motie’s head and shoulders. He twisted. “Dammit!” he muttered, and set himself and twisted much harder. The lopsided head turned with a pop like a branch breaking, and then the Warrior was wrapped around Terry like strangler vine, with his gun in Terry’s ear.

Terry let go. Harlequin floated loose, still screaming thinly.

Under the Warrior’s gun, they watched the Doctor pull and twist the Motie’s head back into place. Harlequin’s screaming died to a moan.

“No good,” Terry said. “I forgot. No vertebrae, just that kind of handle that connects the skull to the shoulders. I only dislocated it, and the spinal cord isn’t even in it, it’s underneath. He’ll talk.”

“Jump shock. It hurts them much worse than it hurts us. They didn’t know it.”

“Yeah. But that was the last Warrior ship going through. I’m right, aren’t I, Jennie?”

Jenny looked. “Yeah. Those other lights are all big Master ships, and they’re all past the Sister.”

“Hah. Slowed Harlequin down just enough. Now their whole Warrior fleet is in Mote system chasing down Sinbad and Atropos, and no Master to tell them different. Isn’t that interesting? I wonder what a Navy man can do with that.”

“We may not live to see it.”

“Jenny, that took everything I had. If they decide to shoot me, don’t bother to wake me.” Terry’s eyes closed.

8 Stern Chase

Retreat, hell! We’re just attacking in the opposite direction!

US. Marine Corps commander, Changjin Reservoir, Korea

I’m just too damned old for this. Renner gradually became aware...

Cynthia was swearing in a loose-lipped mumble. Her body covered Bury’s, obscenely, kissing . . . breath for him, squeeze his rib cage closed, blow into his mouth, squeeze...

Freddy said, “Atropos calling.”

“Put’m through... Hello, Rawlins.”

“Commodore, you’re a flawless diamond on black velvet, Brilliant blue-white.”

“Flattering. Ss’a quote-“ From a historical novel, The Taking of Serpons Peak, just before the ship exploded. “Any threats here?”

“We’re clear. Bandit Group One-Two-Three pulled well back from the Medina ships. East India is still holding the Crazy Eddie point for us, but not with enough ship to defeat what’s coming here. Byzantium hasn’t got here yet. Nobody’s shooting at us. What’s our move?”

Reimer’s eyes were properly focusing now.

“General order: Make for the Crazy Eddie point. Keep station with Sinbad. Are we in communication with the Motie fleet?”

“Yes. I’ll relay.”

Bury was trying to sit up. Cynthia braced him.

Renner didn’t recognize the Motie on-screen. A young Mediator, presumably male. “Commander Rawlins has informed us that a large Khanate war fleet, too large for our power, will arrive here through the Sister within the hour,” the Motie said. “I am ready to convey your instructions to our Master.”

“Avoid combat with the main fleet,” Renner said. “Preserve your power, but we want you to take out any command ship that comes through. We expect the main Khanate fleet to chase us. As long as it does, leave it alone, but we don’t want that fleet to get new instructions.

“Same for the Jump point. Make it expensive to go back through the Sister. Their main war fleet can do anything it wants to, and you can’t stop them, but you can stop them reporting back to the Masters on the other side with anything short of a real battle group. Do that, please.”

“Instruction received. Stand by for acknowledgment.”

What else? “Townsend, get us moving toward the Crazy Eddie point. Cynthia, how much can he stand?”

“Pulse is strong.”

“Anything,” Bury said. “Kevin, do what you must. It is now in the hands of Allah.”

“Yeah.” And I think I’m too old for this. “Run up to one gee, Townsend. There’s a stunt I want to try.”

The communications screen lit again. “Your instructions will be obeyed,” the Mediator said. “We will do what we can.”

“Thank you. Rawlins, you stay with us.”

“I can boost harder than you can.”

“I thought of that, but no. I need you with us.”

“You’re assuming they’re sending their whole fleet.”

“I sure hope so,” Renner said. “The warships anyway.” His last observation in the red dwarf system was of the Master ships making for Bury’s Star at low thrust. It didn’t look as if they’d be coming back to the Mote system soon. And as long as the Warriors were chasing Sinbad- “We’re bait,” he said to no one in particular.

After Rawlins rang off, Renner looked around his ship. Horace was breathing by himself, eyes open, jaw slack, full of funny chemicals. Borloi extract, no doubt: no prohibition in the Koran against borloi. It was amazing that he could talk at all.

Freddy had recovered from Jump shock with stunning speed. Renner resented that. Glenda Ruth Blaine still looked as if she’d been blackjacked. The Moties were worse off, still keening in pain and angst. That couldn’t last. Renner needed them.

The Empire ships fell toward the Crazy Eddie point at zero gee, following forty-five minutes of thrust. Renner couldn’t tell them how long that would last. Cynthia was leading Horace Bury through a program of stretches. Joyce was preparing a sketch lunch. Nobody had ever asked if the reporter could cook. She could.

Telescopes aboard Atropos, then aboard Sinbad, observed small hot ships emerging through an invisible hole at high velocity and high acceleration. They dimmed, reducing thrust while they sought their targets. Presently they flared and moved at low acceleration toward the position of Bandits One-Two-Three.

“It worked.”

“Why are you whispering? Call Atropos.”

Freddy cleared his throat. “Yessir.”

“They can’t have taken time to refuel,” Renner told Rawlins. “They’re burning fuel they can’t spare. Which means we can beat them to the Crazy Eddie point at anything above one point one gee.”

If they chase us.”

“Yeah. Assume they will.”

“Then their best bet is to take it easy,” Rawlins said. A stern chase is a long chase. Easy to use all your fuel in the chase and have none for the battle, Of course, they won’t know where you’re headed.” Pause. “Or if they do figure it out, they won’t know why.”

“Okay. All we have to do is make sure they don’t cripple us. I want to beat them to the Crazy Eddie point, but not by much, and I want to make sure we have plenty of maneuvering fuel when they catch up to us. Meanwhile, maintain your watch. You, too, Freddy. I want to know instantly if large ships with cooler exhaust and lower acceleration come through.”

“Aye, aye, sir.” Rawlins signed off.

At least he didn’t ask if I know what I’m doing.

An hour later Freddy saw the Khanate Warriors turning. “They’ve found us,” he said. “Somehow.”

Renner grinned widely. “They’ve found us and they’re chasing us. Stand by for acceleration. Horace, how does one standard gee sound? We’ll take it up slowly.”

“Heavenly,” Bury said.

“Stand by.” Weight returned slowly.

“There,” Freddy said. “You can unstrap now. It should be steady enough.”

Behind Sinbud, little dots of fusion flame now numbered over a hundred and rising. As many more Khanate ships had not turned: they were still on route toward the massed Khanate allies, Bandits One-Two-Three. Other lights . . . what were they doing? Converging, then going out one by one.

Renner said, “Omar, get on the horn to our forces around the Sister. Orders unchanged: leave the main fleet alone, but watch for stragglers. Keep it expensive going through the Sister, but stay alive.”

“Fleet in being,” Victoria said.

“Right-where did you learn that phrase?”

“It was in one of the books MacArthur left behind. The reference was to sea power, but-“

“Mahan,” Joyce said. “He wrote before space travel.”

“Oh. Victoria, I need your help.”

“Yes, Kevin.”

“I need some work done. Get the Engineers on it. We need some alterations in Sinbad’s Langston Field. Townsend can show you what we need.”

“Right away.”

“Horace, how are you feeling?”

“I’ve been better, Kevin. I’ve been altering my will. I will need you to witness that it is my work, and that I am in my right mind.”

“Bizarre. You never were before.”

“Kevin, you will need to be convincing. Truly. Now say, ‘Horace Bury was in his right mind,’ without smiling.”

“Maybe another approach. Tonight, Igor, we must build a convincing duplicate of Kevin Renner.”

“May we have doglike devotion this time, Master? I wanted doglike devotion last time.”

Glenda Ruth was staring. It was something, to have shaken Glenda Ruth Blaine.

“But it might interfere with his sense of humor, Igor!”

“Yes, Master, yes, yes! Please may we interfere with his sense of humor. . . . I don’t have the energy, Kevin.”

“Yeah. Give me a sanity check, Horace. Glenda Ruth, listen up. Here’s what I have in mind....”

Joyce’s hand was steady as she poured tea into Cynthia’s cup. Acceleration was down to one-half gravity for the moment, but she didn’t expect that to last. For the past ten hours there had been sudden and random accelerations as Sinbad avoided different attacks from the hundreds of ships following.

“If someone tells me that ‘a stern chase is a long chase’ one more time,” Joyce said, “I’ll scream.” She sipped carefully, then looked at the older woman, not bothering to conceal her curiosity. “You’ve been with Bury a long time. Is it always like this?”

Cynthia’s smile might have been painted on. “Not precisely. When my uncle Nabil offered me service with His Excellency, I knew we would face many enemies, but few of them had warships. Mostly we are concerned with assassination.”

“What’s it like, working for a man who has that many enemies?”

“He has enemies because he is a great man,” Cynthia said. “I feel honored to serve him. When I graduated from medical school-“

Joyce was startled and showed it despite her news training. “You’re a doctor?”

“Yes. Does that seem so unlikely?”

“Well, no, but-yes, actually. I thought you were a bodyguard.”

Cynthia’s smile softened. “I do that as well. But you were supposed to assume I am a concubine. Thank you, I will have more tea.”

“I’m supposed to think you’re a concubine. Are you?”

“The appearance is a professional duty. Nothing else is required.”

Which could mean anything. “It must be a strange career for a doctor.”

“Call it my first career. I will have others after I retire from His Excellency’s service. And think of the stories I can tell my children!” Cynthia’s laugh was almost inaudible. “Of course first I will have to find a father for them.”

Joyce laughed. “Looking at you, I wouldn’t think that would be so hard to do.”

Cynthia shrugged. “I have no difficulty finding lovers. And our culture is changing. Not just on Levant.”

“That’s for sure.” Joyce looked around Sinbad’s crowded lounge, humans and aliens, magnate and aristocrats and naval officer, and grinned. “That’s for damned sure.”

The Empire ships fled across the Mote system. For Joyce it had been three days of trying to make sense out of myriad details.

Sinbad and Atropos had jumped into Mote system, then accelerated toward the inner system for forty-five minutes, then coasted. Minutes later the Khanate Warrior ships had poured through an invisible hole, paused, then blasted away in the wrong direction. They’d used up an hour’s fuel-but at low thrust-before they found Sinbad and Atropos.

Since then it had been a race; but there were nuances.

Bury’s couch was located near the door to the control cabin. It made a convenient gathering point when the cabin door was open. When Freddy went over to tell Bury what was happening, Joyce went to listen-and noticed that Glenda Ruth didn’t come over until after Joyce had joined the party.

“We laid low. Got them moving in the wrong direction for a while,” Freddy said. “Odds are they can recognize our exhaust, so we didn’t give them one. Maybe they found Atropos’s old-style Langston Field. But this much for sure, they’re chasing us.”

“Flattering,” Glenda Ruth said.

Freddy didn’t answer.

“Getting all our enemies into one bunch,” Bury said. “It is not the first time. On Tabletop-but that was a long time ago.”

“Yeah. Well, it isn’t quite working,” Freddy said. “We’ve got maybe a hundred twenty on our tail, out of a thousand. Three hundred kept going; they’ve just about reached the Bandit cluster. We still don’t know what they think they’re guarding, but never mind that. I’ve lost five hundred of the buggers.”

Kevin Renner said, “They haven’t disappeared. It only means they’re not under thrust.”

“What are they doing?” Glenda Ruth asked.

Freddy shrugged. Kevin said, “Something else. Something interesting.”

Horace Bury spoke suddenly. “The thing to remember is that we’ve won.”

Joyce said, “I beg your pardon?”

“The Khanate Axis will not pass Agamemnon. Will not burst free into the Empire. They can never reclaim that option. Now their only hope is to replace the Medina Alliance. Well, what of that? They must reproduce Medina’s agreements and fulfill them as best they can. They must even be over cooperative, to cover promises they might be expected to remember.”

Joyce thought that through. “But they’d have to kill us all. And our friends.”

“Silence every voice, yes. But the Empire of Man is safe now. The Mote will be organized according to our wishes and custom. We have won that war now,” said Horace Bury. “We have protected the Empire of Man, indeed.”

And Kevin Renner was trying to swallow a laugh; but why?

Wait- “You could do it!” Joyce cried. “I mean, I’m being very unprofessional here, but-if push came to shove, if they’ve got us in a box, you could still negotiate. The Empire could get what it wants from the Khanate instead.”

They were looking at her. Joyce was sorry she’d spoken. Nobody spoke until Renner said, “Yup.”

“Would you? Rather than, um, die?”

“No.”

Now the eyes turned away, and only Glenda Ruth sighed in relief. Joyce thought, Why not? and said, “Okay.”

“We don’t want to teach the wrong lesson here, Joyce. Treachery can become habit-forming.”

Five days: part acceleration, part coasting, Sinbad and Atropos led the enemy fleet across Motie space. Five days to observe, not just the battle, but the people.

Freddy Townsend was busy, too busy to talk . . . but it was more than that.

Freddy was avoiding Glenda Ruth, just a bit. Joyce was willing to learn why, but she hadn’t thought of an excuse to probe. And Freddy would clam up a bit when Joyce was wearing her “reporter” hat.

But he would talk to both women. Joyce found herself coming on to him a little; when she caught herself at that, or when Glenda Ruth did, she would back off; but she could loosen his tongue that way. There was so much to understand, and Freddy was her best source of information.

“But this is the part we’re wondering about,” Freddy said, and with a woman peering over each shoulder, he moved his cursor about the screen. “Here, a quarter of the fleet turned around to chase us. Another third went on to join the Bandit cluster, the Khanate allies that never went through. What are they after? Why did they think they’d find Sinbad and Atropos in that direction?”

“Fuel,” Kevin Renner said without turning around. “They must be desperate for fuel by now. They’re trading time for fuel.”

“The rest of them turned off their drives. That lasted for hours. Then we got this.” Freddy put the cursor on a tight pattern of blue-white points, like a cityscape or the work lights on a half built factory. “And that’s been following us, changing as it goes.”

Again Kevin spoke without turning. “We think those ships are all linked up into one framework. They’d have broken up some ships to build it. It took them ten hours. Then they came after us.”

“If Empire ships tried that, they’d come apart like nose wipes in the rain,” Freddy said. “Even so, they’re only doing a fifth of a gee. Hundreds of ships are following them from Bandit cluster, linking up.”

“Fuel ships, of course. I bet they’re dropping stuff on the way, too. Empty ships. Spare troops. They’ll keep some framework to make their structure stronger. Unless I’m crazy. Jesus, Freddy, I wish we could see that thing better.”

“It looks a lot like Vermin City, backlit,” Freddy said. “Not much pattern, and that changes every minute. Okay, Joyce, Group A is still in the lead. They’ll reach us first, yes? We have to outrace them.”

“First, but with dry tanks. Group A can’t maneuver,” Kevin said. “That’s not going to hurt them, unfortunately, because they’ve guessed where we’re going. Group B might get to us late, but with fuel to maneuver.”

“You’re guessing, Commodore.”

“But it’s what Moties would do,” Glenda Ruth said. “The ships they start with won’t be the ships that attack you.”

“Keep a watch. I want to close my eyes for an hour.”

“Yessir. Hold it! Commodore?”

Drive lights flared where the cursor lay. “I see it,” Kevin said. “See if you can get a better picture. I have the watch.”

“What is it, Kevin?” Bury demanded.

“Won’t know for an hour,” Renner said.

They were building a sketchy dinner when they heard Freddy whoop. Joyce reset the oven before she followed Glenda Ruth.

Freddy was grinning. “Sanity check. We’ve been right all along. What do you see?”

Behind the tight pattern of blue lights that was Khanate Group B was a looser pattern, a score of drive lights well spread out and shifting in intensity. Kevin said, “Two of those just went out. Shot down by our guys?”

Freddy looked. “Our allies aren’t anywhere near. It’s possible of course. Warriors are just bloody damned good at killing...Enhanced view, Screen Two.”

“Right. Khanate rescue ships, Freddy. They’re towing that cylinder now. Rescue or salvage. And the rest are still coming . . . and there goes another pair. They’re merging. Group B must be leaving garbage and personnel clear across the sky.”

“That’ll hurt ‘em.”

“It will if our allies have anything to say about it. They’re losing mass, losing numbers, losing firepower, all to get the fuel to reach us. You agree? It’s us the Warrior ships are after. The Empire ships.”

“Yes sir.”

“I should talk to Atropos.”

Joyce found the next hour even more confusing. It was frustrating: she had her news equipment, nothing was being kept from her, but she wasn’t getting a story she could tell.

“The only thing that still concerns me is this,” she heard Renner telling Atropos. “When we go through the Crazy Eddie point, we have to know that no Master ship has given the Warrior ships new orders. Otherwise we’ll be abandoning the Mote system to the Khanate.”

And that made sense, but how to lay it out for a viewer? If we lose, you’ll never know it. Even we may never know. If we returned via New Cal and that little orange star, a year from now we could be talking to a replacement Eudoxus speaking for a replacement Medina. All Moties look alike, but these are the good guys and-?

“Maybe later,” she said to Bury. “Maybe I’ll understand later.”

“And perhaps you never will,” Bury said.

“If we lose-“

“Yes, of course, but even if we win. It has happened to me.” And he launched into another tale of his terrible past, a skewed view of Empire history that Joyce could never have bought with pearls and rubies.

There had been incidents. Sometimes the Khanate fleet beamed laser light at them, forcing Sinbad and Atropos to take turns shadowing each other. Renner and Townsend had at first considered this a mere annoyance.

“Probably tryin’ to distract us,” Freddy said in one of the rare intervals he was off duty. Commodore Renner kept Freddy Townsend busy. When he did get a break, he often used the opportunity to talk to Horace Bury; and when that happened, Joyce invited herself into the party.

“They’ve scattered their fleet,” Joyce said. “Some of the ships used all their power and now can’t keep up. Why would they do that, Freddy?”

Freddy said, “I can tell you what they’re doing, but why is out of my department. You’ll be famous even if you don’t know why.”

Horace Bury chuckled. “I should instruct my brokers to invest in your network. You will have the highest ratings in Imperial history, I think.”

“A few weeks ago I would have resented your saying that,” Joyce said. “And even more resented it if you’d actually bought stock in IBC.”

“And now?”

Joyce shrugged. “It’s your ship, and we’re all on it.”

“Besides, his brokers will already have made the investments,” Glenda Ruth said.

“Cautiously. They’ll buy too little,” Bury said. “After all, it was not certain that we would be bringing Miss Trujillo to the Mote.”

“Or that we’d come out alive,” Joyce said.

“Well, if we don’t, it won’t matter if the investment’s no good,” Freddy said.

“Oh, Freddy, that’s silly,” Glenda Ruth said. “His Excellency- “Acceleration warning. “Action stations.”

“Oh, Lor’, what now?” Freddy demanded.

“It’s a big mess of junk under high velocity,” Renner said.

Most of the leading Khanate ships were in deceleration mode at high thrust. Most of them. A few were burning fuel at a prodigious rate and converting that to energy beamed at Sinbad; and out of the glare of that beam came a dark mass on a collision course.

“We’ll have to dodge,” Freddy said. Sinbad began to turn.

“Yeah. Horace, Group A ran up to maximum velocity and then stripped their ships. It could be mostly fuel tanks. Freddy’s turning the ship.”

“It won’t cost us too much fuel.”

“No, but I should- Atropos calling, good.” Joyce heard Renner setting a direction for the other ship. Sinbad and Atropos would diverge.

Four minutes later-the lightspeed gap-Group A’s junk pile pulled into two masses. They’d armed it with motors. Freddy spoke of raping his lizard; Renner called Atropos and ordered a laser barrage.

Four minutes later the junk pile flared with the light of Atropos’s barrage. An instant later it flashed a hundred times as bright! The camera overloaded and burned out before Freddy could enfold Sinbad in the Langston Field. Glenda Ruth was cowering with an arm over her eyes, and Joyce was waiting for glowing spots to disappear. She knew better than to interrupt Freddy or Kevin.

Freddy spoke anyway. “They had a mirror. The clever little nightmares waited for our beam and then threw it back at us. It’s way dimmer now, but they’re still throwing sunlight at us. It’s nothing, Glenda Ruth. Just another goddamn nuisance attack.”

And more to understand. Medina Alliance ships trailed the Khanate fleet, darted in toward it with a reckless expenditure of resources, fired lasers and missiles, then darted away again, fuel gone, coasting away from the battle to be rescued by unarmed ships from other clans.

“Another major development,” Joyce dictated. “There’s a big fleet, two hundred ships and more, trailing the Khanate war fleet. They’re rescuing ships that run out of fuel. Khanate and Alliance ships alike, they’re retrieving stragglers. We thought they were Khanate allies, but they’re not. They’re neutrals.

“We’ve changed Mote politics like nothing else in their history. A hundred families and clans in cooperation, hundreds more gathering their strength, but all of them staying uncommitted.

“Our Motie allies say this is a good sign.

“Joyce Mei-Ling Trujillo, Imperial Post-Tribune Syndicate.”

“We are ninety minutes from the Alderson point everyone calls the Crazy Eddie point. The Moties are getting nervous. No one likes Jump shock much, but our Motie friends really dread it. We can hope the prospect makes the Khanate Warriors nervous.

“The situation is this: Sinbad and Atropos are on course for the Jump point and decelerating. The leading elements of a war fleet from Byzantium, the most powerful of our allies, have already reached the Crazy Eddie point and are standing by for orders.

“Meanwhile, things are happening in the pursuing fleet.” Joyce zoomed in on a screen.

The structure they’d been calling Khanate B was under heavy deceleration. The tremendous junk pile was no longer a single object. The bright sparks of fusion drives were separating in pairs.

Another screen showed a blurry picture relayed from Atropos: two Khanate ships docked and remained docked until one reconstructed ship began to decelerate, leaving part of its mass as debris.

“We don’t know what this means,” Joyce said. Reporterspeak for I don’t know. Kevin and Freddy had given over arguing about it, but Renner had taken time off to talk with Bury. Marooned face up in a water bed at high gee, Horace Bury could at least use the entertainment. Joyce turned the camera on them; they didn’t notice.

“So what have we got?” Renner said. “Group A boosted to high velocity, coasted, and is now under deceleration. Classic. They’d get to the Crazy Eddie point about the same time we do, but we can fix that.”

Bury wasn’t asking, so Joyce did. “How?”

Renner’s glance showed his irritation. “Low thrust deceleration now, high thrust later, brings us in sooner. They can’t play that game. They’re at max thrust with no spare fuel.”

“But high thrust-“

“As Allah wills, Joyce. What of Group 13, Kevin?”

“Aye, there’s the rub. They never turned off their drives. They did low thrust forever, right up to midpoint turnover, and dropped mass every step of the way. Fuel tanks, Engineers, that mirror thing, who knows? It looks like they’ll get to the Crazy Eddie point just behind Group A, but with plenty of fuel to spare. If we miss our Jump, I’d say we’re dead. So, we’re forced to jump.”

“If so, Kevin, they’ve made themselves very vulnerable to Medina. The Medina forces will face seven hundred Khanate ships strung in a long line. Is this a winning strategy? They must do more than silence all human voices. They must control the Sister. When the Empire comes again, the Khanate must speak first.”

“You’re missing something,” said Glenda Ruth Blaine.

An odd source, but- Kevin said, “Okay. What?”

“I don’t know.” She perched on the edge of the water bed and scratched behind Ali Baba’s ear. “But they’re Warriors. They’re following a Master’s orders, but that doesn’t make them silly. Remember their mission and look again.”

Cynthia knew how to prepare Turkish coffee. Bury sipped his and said, “Fuel matters here. The Khanate ships are depleted. Are we? Base Six is following us, of course.”

“They’ll be a hundred and ten hours late. They can rescue any ship that ran dry, but that doesn’t help us fight. Still, we could refuel from a Medina ship. I don’t think we even need to, And we’ll go through the Crazy Eddie point at three hundred per, just like last time, with the East India ships to triangulate for us.”

“Ah!”

Cynthia snapped alert. “Excellency?”

“I’m all right, Cynthia. Kevin, the debris. The mass, the junk left over when two ships merged at a thousand klicks per second. Set Atropos to tracking the course of the junk. You’ll find that a mass equivalent to over a hundred spacecraft is on course to pass straight through the Crazy Eddie point just when we would like to do that.”

“Okay, lie down already. Freddy?”

“I’m on it.” Freddy Townsend was working his control board hard. A screen lit: Rawlins’s talker.

Now why am I less scared than I was? Renner wondered. Because my people are getting the right answers? No, more; because Horace Bury’s mind is alive and alert.

While Freddy was at work, Renner said, “Omar, I need that debris blocked somehow. The only ships that have to go through the Crazy Eddie point are Atropos and Sinbad. Will you inform Medina’s Masters?”

“I will learn,” Omar said.

Now no one had time to explain things, and her questions were distracting. Joyce could only record everything and hope to make sense of it later. “We’ve heard about the ‘fog of war,’ “ Joyce dictated. “It’s all too real. I don’t know what’s going on, and neither does anyone else, not really. Sometimes you just have to make choices and stick with them.”

With twenty minutes to go, Kevin gave the order to strap in. The Khanate ships’ stream of high-V debris couldn’t be far away.

“I have a feed from Atropos,” Freddy said. “On Screen Three.”

Star-sprinkled black. Kevin said, “I don’t...One bluer than the others. That stellar background ...? Freddy, it’s a Master ship that’s just popped through. Now prove me wrong.”

Medina called. “We have a Khanate Master ship just emerged from the Sister. One ship only. It made no attempt to communicate, so our man has fired on it. He reports an overpowered shield.”

“One lousy Master. That’s all it takes,” Renner said. “We’re dead.”

Bury was chuckling. “Why, Kevin?”

“This whole thing falls apart if the Khanate Warriors get the right orders. Here’s a Master, just in time, and hell, it’s even too late for us to abort!”

Bury was laughing with some effort. “Yes, Kevin, they can send orders to their Warriors, but what would they say? What can they learn in time, across a lightspeed gap of thirty-eight minutes?”

Medina was still speaking, had said something about the barrage. Renner hadn’t caught it. “What did he say, Freddy?”

“The Warriors will solve it. Hold to the plan.”

Pity Omar hadn’t been at the comm. The lightspeed gap was already too great to get any answers. Eight minutes. Everyone strapped in? “Joyce! Strap in!”

“Okay, Skipper.” She’d been standing on her chair to get altitude, photographing them at work. She dropped and strapped in, cheerful as hell, hugging the camera like her own baby.

The Khanate Master ship was still in view, glowing fiercely bright in green. Medina’s forces must be bathing her in energy. She’d never get a message through that.

The feed from twenty East India ships was providing good triangulation: he would hit the point dead center. Bury was doing savasama, but his heartbeat and brain-wave displays were all over the place. Scared. Calling his attention to it would be worse than useless. Behind Sinbad a darkness was growing . . . black dots crowding out the stars. What the hell?

Two minutes. And weird lighting effects among the black dots, sparks in rainbow colors.

The Byzantium fleet! They were blocking the Khanate barrage, catching the stuff with their Langston Fields.

And the Crazy Eddie point was here, now, unseen, passing at three hundred klicks per second as Freddy touched the contact.

Orange murk looked in through the screens. Renner, bemused and groggy, enjoyed the appearance of a mechanical hell in which men and monsters writhed in torment and confusion. But his memory was already organizing itself, and he barked, though it came out a croak, “Townsend.”

“Renner. Captain. Get us behind Atropos?”

“When I start the drive.”

Sinbad was coming alive again, but slowly. Now Afro pos was a black near-circle against white light, unmistakable, a few hundred miles distant . . . almost toward the core of Murcheson’s Eye, according to Sinbad’s instruments.

Fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes to get ready, then all hell.

There was a lot to do, but some of it would have to wait for the Motie Engineers, and they were flat out of action.

Communications. “Atropos, this is Sinbad. Atropos, this is Sinbad, Sinbad, Sinbad...”

It would just be dawning on Joyce Mei-Ling Trujillo that they were inside a star. Wonder and terror and a reflex reach for the camera. Glenda Ruth was a basket case, no better off than the Moties. “Atropos, this is Sinbad...” Others were moving. Renner craned his head around. At least Bury wasn’t thrashing. “Atropos, this is Sinbad...”

Bury was too still. “Cynthia!”

She was already loose, pulling herself against him, fingers on his throat. “No pulse.”

“Do something. Sorry, of course you will.” The drive test lights blinked green. Renner enabled the drive. “Move her, Townsend.”

“Aye, aye. Acceration. Stand by.”

“Sinbad, this is Atropos.”

“Blaine. Good. Situation unchanged as of our Jump time.”

“Unchanged as of your Jump time. Acknowledged, sir.”

“Report.”

“Yes, sir. We’re broadcasting on Fleet hailing frequencies. Nobody’s shot at us yet. That may be a good sign.”

“Not shooting, but not answering.”

“No answer yet, Commodore.”

Where the hell was Weigle and the Crazy Eddie Squadron? Silly question. Weigle could be anywhere. “Keep trying. We’ll hide behind you when we get there.”

“Right. I’ll leave the channel open.”

More movements behind him. Cynthia had reattached the medical systems to Bury. He thrashed suddenly, and quieted. Electric shock. Still dead. Skeletal metal arms lifted from the box, for the first time in Kevin’s memory, and began to work on Horace Bury.

Ali Baba howled in terror.

“Victoria. Glenda Ruth. Anyone,” Kevin shouted.

“Yes, Kevin.” Renner turned joyfully. It was Bury’s voice! It was Omar.

Not Omar’s fault. Renner said, “When the Engineers recover, make sure the Flinger is ready and loaded, and keep double checking the Field generator.” They had rebuilt the Field generator, altered it so that it would not expand and present a larger surface area to the wispy super hot star stuff around them. Now it matched all the Crazy Eddie Squadron ships, including Atropos.

“Stand clear!” Cynthia shouted. “Glenda Ruth, take Ali Baba! Clear!” Horace Bury thrashed again. Once more.

Glenda Ruth made crooning noises. The medical-panel lights glowed, but no sign of heart or brain activity. Dead panel, or- Glenda Ruth said, “Kevin, Cynthia, my God, stop! He’s dead!” You never know- Kevin bit it back. She would know.

They were alongside Atropos now. Townsend matched velocities. “Stay alongside,” Renner said. “Blaine.”

“Sir?”

“I’m changing the plan. If I’m going to use the Flinger at all, it’ll have to be before we build up too much heat, so we’ll stay alongside you for the first phase of the battle.”

“Yes, sir?”

“Keep relaying data.”

“Aye, aye, sir. Data relay set,” Blaine said.

“Got it. Any luck contacting the Fleet?”

“Not yet. Any further orders, Sir?”

Renner looked back into the cabin once more. “Yes. I’m canceling the instructions on avoiding high gees. Use any acceleration the tactical situation demands.”

They saw through the eyes of Atropos. A black dot popped into place, then another, then two more. A green thread from Atropos to one of the intruders. The intruder’s Field flared, expanded.

“It’s working,” Renner said. “The Khanate ships have an expanding Langston Field, which is great for most battles, but in here when it expands, it picks up even more heat.”

“Could they have done what you did?” Joyce asked. “Got their Engineers to rebuild it?”

“Omar?”

“No data. I would not have thought of it.”

More black dots. “Freddy, stand by the finger. We’ll aim for the center of the cluster.”

“Right.”

The black dot expanded, ran through colors, and vanished. Atropos’s green thread moved to another ship.

“Atropos.”

“Aye, aye, Commodore.”

Not Blaine. “Tell your skipper we’ll commence firing when we have twenty-five targets. Watch the data link for exact time.”

“You will fire when you have twenty-five, that’s two five, targets. Observe data link for exact time. Aye, aye, sir.”

Joyce’s camera was running. Why not? What could it matter now if everyone learned that Sinbad carried nuclear weapons?”

“We’ve got another edge,” Renner said. Imperial Autonetics has developed a ship’s coating that only becomes a superconductor at forty-four hundred Kelvin. That’s two hundred degrees cooler than what it takes to soften the hull. I can run a superconducting wire into Sinbad’s water tank and then vent the steam.

“In short, we can stay alive a long time.”

“We may need to,” Freddy said. “Twenty-four.”

“Load.”

“Erecting the Flinger. Loading. Wow, it’s warm out there. Fire. Retracting the Flinger into the Field.”

A timer began on Renner’s console. Twenty-nine seconds. Twenty-eight...

A bright star within the star. Twenty black dots expanded, stretched, added their stored heat to the white glare. Green lines converged on another. It flashed and was gone.

And thirty more ships appeared.

“Stand by Flinger,” Renner said.

Scattered across a brilliant orange sky were sixty to seventy colored balloons. The eye couldn’t tell their distance: sizes varied too widely. Most were red. Fewer were orange, and those faded into invisibility until they grew hotter. A handful were green and blue, inflating as their temperature rose, until one or another made a brief nova. It was a kindergarten astronomy class, the stars colorcoded to their places on the Hertzsprung-Russel diagram.

“Three. Two. One. Bingo,” Freddy droned.

Another flare. Red and yellow bubbles inflated suddenly, green, blue, flashflashflash.

“How many is that?” Joyce demanded.

“Counting what Atropos bagged, over a hundred.”

“Should we be cheering? Sorry, Glenda Ruth.”

“It’s all right. They’re only Warriors. To the Moties they’re valuable property, but-“

“Retracted. Seven warheads left,” Freddy said. “Timing’s about right, we’ll be too hot to use it pretty soon. Captain, I have to say this is easier than I thought it would be.”

“Too easy,” Renner said. “Atropos, let me speak with Captain Rawlins, please.”

“Rawlins here.”

“This was Group A, agreed?”

“Yes.”

“I think it’s time to get the hell out of here before the B group arrives.”

“Agreed. What course?”

“Out of the star. Head for the Jump point to New Cal. I’ll lead. And keep calling for the Fleet.”

“To New Cal. Damn right we’ll keep calling! Acceleration?”

“Two gee’s?”

“Good enough.”

“Here they come!” The Atropos talker was shouting. “Hundreds of them!” Then in a calmer voice, “Sinbad, this is Atropos. Enemy fleet coming through the Alderson point. The count is three hundred ships. We are firing torpedoes.”

“Maybe this would be a good time to use our last loads,” Townsend said.

“I hate to fire ourselves dry, but, yeah.” Renner touched keys.

“Atropos, designate us a target group, please.”

The screen jumped, and a ring appeared indicating a cluster of ships moving together at high velocity away from the Jump point. Other ships were appearing every second.

“Hail Mary,” Freddy Townsend said. “Okay, I’ve got a solution...erecting . . . on the way. Eighty-nine seconds.” The timers began the countdown. “Of course you know we can’t fight all those ships.”

“All true,” Renner said. “Of course we don’t have to.”

“They’re not going to give up,” Joyce said. “Omar, Victoria, can’t they see they’ve been defeated? It won’t do them any good to destroy us now!”

“They have their orders,” Glenda Ruth said. “Victoria, do Warriors ever question a Master’s orders? Joyce is right, this can’t do them any good, not now. Whatever they do to us, they get back to the Mote overheated and out of fuel, and the Alliance fleets will be waiting. Do they know that?”

“They know it better than you,” Victoria said.

“And they have their orders.” Glenda Ruth shuddered.

“I think it is more than that,” Omar said. “If they return, it will be the first time that Mote ships have done that. Many neutrals will join them just for that reason. And if a sizable group comes over to them-“

“Bandwagon,” Joyce said. “Glenda Ruth, you agree?”

“I guess I have to.”

“I have a new target group for you,” Atropos said.

“Engaging.”

“Rawlins here. Commodore, we’re getting no answer from the Fleet, and we’re going to be overwhelmed.”

“Suggestions?”

“Run for it while we can. Pop back into the Mote system, where we have allies.”

“It’s not much of a chance.”

“More than we have now,” Rawlins said, “Sir.”

“Actually, it’s a good plan, for you,” Renner said. “It won’t work for us, we don’t have the acceleration, but- Yeah. You do that. Commander Rawlins, I’m ordering you to detached service. Your mission is to survive and report to any Imperial fleet.”

“Just a minute-“

“No, we don’t have any time at all. I’m staying on course. You run like hell. Rawlins, somebody’s got to survive this. Our Moties analyze it this way. If the enemy gets back alive, the neutrals will join the Khanate. We can’t let that happen! Rawlins, you get back into the Mote system and let everyone know the Empire is coming!”

There was a long pause. “Aye, aye, sir. Godspeed.”

“Godspeed. Freddy, get the Flinger ready.”

“Sinbad’s last stand,” Freddy said. He nodded toward Bury. “I guess he deserves a Viking’s funeral. Only there’s no dog at his feet.”

The cameras went dark. “We’ve lost the link to Atropos,” Joyce dictated quietly.

“No shadow from Atropos now,” Renner said. “Our field temp’s going up. Stand by, you’ll have to fire blind after I get a quick look.”

“I’ve got a tentative target group. Give me a look to be sure. Right. Launching. Retracting. Captain, I think that’s it for the Flinger.”

“Agreed.”

“I hate being blind!” Joyce shouted.

“Who doesn’t?” Freddy said.

“In the days before superconductors, we’d be getting burn throughs now,” Renner said. “I recall the battle off New Chicago. Captain Blaine-Commander then-got his arm half-burned off. Now we sit here comfortable.”

“Whoopee. How long do we have?” Glenda Ruth asked.

“Hour anyway,” Renner said.

“The Engineers are rebuilding cameras,” Victoria said. “And I am informed there is a new antenna ready that might be able to communicate with your other ship.”

“Bless you,” Renner said. “Antenna, Freddy. I don’t much like blind either.”

“Identify yourself.”

“What the hell? God damn! Imperial Fleet, this is Imperial auxiliary destroyer Sinbad, Commodore Kevin Renner commanding.”

A short delay, then the regular communications screen lit. “Imperial Fleet, this is INSS Atropos, William Hiram Rawlins. We are part of the task force Agamemnon, detached to duty with Commodore Renner.”

“Are there other Imperial ships with you?”

“None. Atropos and Sinbad,” Renner shouted. “Get us a data link and I’ll prove who we are.”

“I may have a better way. Put Lieutenant Blaine on.”

“Atropos here. Here’s Blaine. Admiral, if you’re going to help us, you better be damn quick about it! We’re in trouble.”

“We can see that. Blaine, who am I?”

“Captain Damon Collins,” Blaine’s voice answered quickly.

“Right. Blaine, tell me something a Motie wouldn’t know.”

“Poker. That first game. I know how you beat me, Captain.”

“Remind me.”

Renner made sure the mike was off. “I hope it’s not a long story.”

But Blaine was talking fast. “I’d never played Big Squeeze before. High-low, six cards plus a replacement. We had our six. I was showing two little pair up, and two down cards. You had three hearts and a something, club six maybe-“

“It’s coming back.”

“-nothing bigger than a nine I threw a down card. You threw the nine of hearts. Pulled the jack of hearts. We declared, both high. You had the flush.”

“You swore you’d never figure out how I did that.”

“I worked it out after the next game. What happened was, you already had your flush, but you had a shot at low hand, too. I was betting like I had a full house. You believed me. You threw your flush away and got it back with your low hand ruined. ‘Rape my lizard,’ you said to yourself-“

“And beat you for the very last time.”

“Fyunch(click).”

“Enough,” another voice said. “Is it Blaine?”

“Definitely, Admiral.”

“Sinbad and Atropos. Converge on the Flag. We’re sending escorts. All squadrons, engage enemy closely.”

Epilogue Endgame

To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Inner Base Six had lost 80 percent of its mass. Its skin was wrinkled and folded. Despite the Engineers’ busy maintenance, pipes and lines were bent in curves and loops, and domes edged against each other. The sky was clotted with spacecraft waiting to be refueled.

From the stretched-taffy look of the ice around the Mosque, it must have been twisted almost horizontal, then later pulled back to true. No damage showed. If anything, it had been improved.

The tremendous space of the Great Hall now sprouted semicircular balconies at every level. Men and Moties clustered on the balconies in groups of three or ten, sometimes shouting or even jump/flying from balcony to balcony. Diplomacy moved at a breakneck pace here, slowing down at times to accommodate human minds.

What Joyce was doing wouldn’t have worked in the older Mosque; wouldn’t have worked without the gyrostabilized camera either.

In the diminished gravity Joyce Mei-Ling Trujillo was leaping from balcony to balcony stopping to swing the camera at Nabil and a handful of Moties, again with Glenda Ruth and her brother to do a short interview, then leaping on. She looked like some lovely goddess moving from cloud to cloud, gradually approaching earth.

She reached the floor flushed with the exercise, started to say something to Kevin, then swung toward the great monitor screen.

The great blue-and-white sphere filled most of the view. Cloud patterns streamed sluggishly across continents whose borders were marked all in circles. “That’s Mote Prime! Isn’t it, Kevin? I can see the craters. I came to see Mote Prime, and we’ve been here seven bloody months without coming anywhere near it!”

He put a hand out to steady her in the minuscule gravity. “You won’t get any closer this trip. The good news is, they still don’t seem to have any kind of access to space. That footage was taken from a Medina ship skimming just above the clouds, pole to pole, and nobody tried to shoot back.”

“I would have loved to see the Zoo.”

“Probably gone by now. Things don’t last among Moties.”

Joyce and camera faced him. “So it’s a blockade again, but with Moties in charge.”

“Subject to approval from home.”

“Of course.” Joyce switched off the camera. “Off the record? You don’t have any doubts, do you, Kevin?”

“Plenty. How do we use the worm here? We could pick a faction on Mote Prime-maybe King Peter’s family survived-and distribute it. Or not. Or not yet. The Crazy Eddie Worm is still experimental. Say . . .”

“What?”

“Bear with me a second, Joyce. Victor! Dammit, that worm’s done it. Mediators really do all look alike now. Victor? All just out of adolescence.”

The Mediator who had been the Tartars’ Victoria bounded toward them in a low arc. “Kevin?”

“Yeah. Victor, sooner or later you’ll be in contact with Mote Prime. We want certain bodies returned to us for proper burial. Three human males, Midshipmen Potter, Staley, Whitbread. They may have been dissected, God knows what, but please retrieve them at your earliest convenience.”

“It will be done. If there is any successor to the group that held them. Things change rapidly there.”

“Some don’t. Try.”

“Yes. Anything else?”

“Yeah. Joyce, guess what the Bandit Group was guarding?”

“Some weapons cache that was too far away to use,” Joyce said promptly.

“No. It was the Khanate’s main base, including all their wealth. They offered it all as bribes to their allies, and the allies have turned it all over to Medina. Victor, did your people find any surprises?”

“Not to us. We’ll make holos, Kevin. Their Engineers are ingenious; you’ll see some interesting innovations in the hardware.”

Joyce considered the nuances. She turned the camera on Victor.

“Then it’s over? The Khanate didn’t just surrender, they meant it.”

Kevin caught Glenda Ruth Blaine’s semaphore wave, halfway up the Great Hall’s curved roof, and her all-too-knowing smile. Kevin grinned and waved back. No hiding anything. Dammit, Joyce had caught it, too.

“We control all of what was Khanate wealth,” Victor answered. “The families have returned from hiding at Bury’s Star, and all of them now carry the worm. I see no way in which they could harm us or you, ever again. Their line is at an end, unless we choose differently; would not that satisfy Horace Bury’s anger?”

Joyce answered carefully. “As much as I came to know Bury, I think he had no anger left for Moties. This was his last corporate war. I believe he enjoyed it very much.”

The Motie smiled and moved on. Kevin felt his eyes begin to sting. He said, “That was wonderfully well said.”

“Thank you. I actually miss him, Kevin. Not like you, I expect. Almost thirty years.”

“Yeah. But he did go out a winner, and .. . I can’t seem to decide how to feel about finally being free of the old man’s power games, Life is about to turn simpler.”

“What was the smirk about?”

“Smirk?” Joyce’s black eyebrows came together and he said, “It’s a secret. There are still secrets. Dammit, Joyce, is every woman going to go around reading my mind for the rest of my life?”

“This isn’t any diplomatic secret, Kevin. And it isn’t a scandal because you’d never be stupid enough ... you wouldn’t.”

“Joyce, there is a secret you should not hear. Just like last time, when Eudoxus read your feet.”

She swallowed her first answer. “Maybe, but I have to have it.”

“Okay.” Kevin Renner began to talk.

Inner Base Six had been following the Empire ships. Renner took his own sweet time returning thence, sending the Blockade Fleet ships on ahead, thrusting at half a gee while he and his people healed. It still took him only eight days.

On the afternoon of the sixth day he found Glenda Ruth perched on the arm of his chair with a tray in her hand. He settled in with his lunch and said, “Talk.”

She didn’t seem able to.

“Freddy,” he said. “Aristocrat. Just a touch lazy by my admittedly rigorous standards. Didn’t want to join the Navy. He’ll have precious little choice now. They’ll hit him with major medals and a Reserve commission.”

“Good motivation,” Glenda Ruth said. “Put him in charge of avoiding a war so he won’t have to work.”

“He tenses up when you’re around. What’s he afraid of? You’re too sensitive?”

“Squeamish,” she said. “Whoever gets hurt around me, child or adult or cat or Motie, I feel it. But I had as much to do with saving us as he did. More. Kevin-“

“Glenda Ruth.”

“Oh. Sorry.” She shifted to the navigator’s empty chair and slumped a little and smiled at him.

“I was going to say . . . oh.” That wide, her smile looked a little vacuous. “You got it.”

Glenda Ruth said, “Please turn down the sex appeal because it makes me uncomfortable.”

“Yeah. And I don’t doubt you could turn it up again if I need to remember what gender I am.”

“Maybe not. Kevin, you’ve stopped thinking of me as not quite human.”

“Don’t test that out, okay?” Unless you mean it .. . no, dammit, seducing Lord Blaine’s daughter is one of the many things I’m going to skip in this life. “Sure you’re human. You may be a great many humans. Every child does a lot of role-playing. You and Chris would do it better than most. What kind of role have you been playing with Freddy?”

“I haven’t been playing! Uncle Kevin, I was running a game on the Tartars, for our lives and the Empire. There wasn’t room to play that many games. He’s seen what I am. I’m squeamish. When it all gets too much for me, I hide.”

“You could get him back. He can’t drop you, he’s got obligations, and if you work on him for an hour, he’ll never want to again. So what’s really bothering you, Glenda Ruth? Turn it off!”

She shifted in her chair. The blood was thundering in Renner’s ears. To his skewed perception she was going off and on like a light bulb. She asked, “What if I’m serious?”

“Get frivolous!”

“You’re so wary of rubbing up against a lord’s daughter. I can talk anyone into anything, Kevin. I can make mistakes and damage people, and I’ve done it, and so’s Chris. You’d think I was a real fool, wouldn’t you, if I weren’t testing my limits?”

Kevin considered retreating to his own cabin and locking his door. But first he said, “I’m not just your randomly chosen dirty old man. I’m the junior officer who ordered Lady Sally Fowler to Captain Roderick Blaine’s room when I felt it necessary to their survival. You’re my responsibility.”

She stared, then burst out laughing. That was better. He asked, “What do I have to do to get you to turn off?”

She was off. She said, “I’m sorry.”

“I’m human. You don’t need proof.”

“I’ve been in Freddy’s bed. He’d have gone crazy . . . well, antisocial, at least, if I hadn’t. But I’ve only just got some freedom. What I think I want to do is turn Freddy loose with the option to marry him later. But he saw me do something he didn’t like, and now I could lose him.”

“Let’s see. He’d marry you-“

“Because he’d have to.”

“You’re a nineteen-year-old girl. Being confused is part of the game. But look: he thinks he’d like to avoid you for a while. Let him. You free him of all obligation, you make it clear you mean it, and you’re not mad. He’ll be meeting you for years, lady! You’re the heroes of the Mote Conquest! When you want him back, flash him. Agh! Not me!”

“Yes, Uncle.”

“I think you’ll want him. Good genes, good attitude, your families will approve, and in a pinch you’re both survivors. Finding that out can be very expensive.”

“Still breeding Blaines, are we, Uncle?” And she’d gone away. And Kevin Renner was suddenly very tired....

“So I went for a nap. And two hours later you were at my door-“

“Horny as hell.”

“Suddenly taken horny, and curious, too. You wouldn’t let me get back to sleep after-“

“We didn’t just talk.”

“No.”

“And nobody smirked when I moved into your cabin.”

“They were much relieved. Two extra cubic inches for everyone aboard Sinbad. Luxury beyond your wildest dreams. But-“

“I can’t think what took me so long,” Joyce Mei-Ling said. “I guess I was still mad at Chris. No, he didn’t lie to me, I guess-“

“Sure he-“

“But this is no secret, Kevin! You and Glenda Ruth know something.”

“But do you remember what I asked you?”

Her brow furrowed. She said, “Where did I just come from? I was in the galley with a tea bulb. Where was Glenda Ruth Blaine? Having tea with me. You laughed. Then I rubbed up against you and the conversation went all to hell.”

“She sent you. She was grateful, so she sent me a gift.”

“Oh, the hell she did! Kevin, all we talked about...”

He waited for her to finish. Presently he said, “All I had to ask was, ‘Who were you talking to a moment ago?”

“But I just . . . came to realize. You’re the quintessence of availability. No visible ties, wealth, heroism, and you know more about current Mote affairs than any other human being in the Empire of Man! Glenda Ruth didn’t ... we only talked about ... dammit.”

“I don’t really know if you’ll ever want to see me again, Joyce. But if you do, there are secrets that you should not know, and by God I will keep the next one.”

There were two message cubes labeled and dated. One had been given to Nabil for safekeeping aboard Base Six. The other was dictated during the long chase across the Mote system and completed just before Sinbad jumped across into Murcheson’s Eye.

“Should we be looking at this?” Renner asked. “I thought we were supposed to wait for lawyers.”

Nabil’s leathery face was a mask. “Commodore, His Excellency has instructed on the package that you review this immediately.” He pointed to a scrawl in Arabic. “This is your name.”

“Okay.”

“It also instructs me to invite witnesses, specifically Glenda Ruth Blaine and Frederick Townsend, and as many alliance Motie Mediators as may conveniently be assembled,” Nabil said. “Beyond that I know nothing.”

They began with the cube dictated aboard Sinbad. It showed Bury in his couch. His face was drawn and his voice exhausted. The authenticity of the cube was witnessed by Joyce Mei-Ling Trujillo and Glenda Ruth Blaine.

“That’s one picture of me I’ll never put on the news,” Joyce said.

“I am Horace Hussein al-Shamlan Bury, trader, Magnate Citizen of the Empire of Man, pasha and citizen of the planetary principality of Ikhwan al-Muslimun, known commonly as Levant.

“This is a codicil to my will and testament left in the safekeeping of my true and faithful servant Nabil Ahmed Khadurri. I hereby confirm all bequests made in that previous testament, except as may be directly and explicitly contradicted in this codicil. I dictate this document in the full knowledge that neither it nor this ship is likely to survive our present mission; but Allah may will differently.

“I hereby name Kevin Renner, commodore of the Imperial Space Navy, as executor to my will and confer on him full executive power to execute my wishes and dispose of my property in accordance with my original will as amended by this codicil. This supersedes the appointment of ibn-Farouk named as executor in the original testament. Kevin, I suggest but do not require that you delegate the detailed implementation of my will, and particularly supervising the bequests of entailed property on Levant, to the law firm of Farouk, Halstead, and Harabi, and I commend to you its senior partner, ibn-Farouk, as a longtime friend and counselor. I believe you will recall meeting him from time to time.

“I confirm the bequest of my house, my lands, and all entailed properties on Ikhwan al-Muslimun shall be divided among my blood relatives by the laws of my home planet; except that to my great-nephew Elie Adjami I leave the sum of one crown and what he has stolen from me. It is less than the law would have given him, but the choice was his.

“It is my strong recommendation to the Empire that Kevin Renner be appointed the first governor of the Mote system, and it is my belief that the Empire will make that appointment.”

“Great Ghu,” Renner said.

“My God, Kevin, I think they will,” Joyce said.

“Governor or not, I know that Kevin Renner will be ridden by demons if he cannot observe future events in the Mote system. I confess I wish I could be there myself. To aid Kevin Renner in satisfying his compulsive curiosity, I bequeath to him my personal ship known as Sinbad; and since I know that he has not stolen any of my money, and certainly has not enough to operate my ship, I leave to him the sum of ten million crowns in cash to be paid after liquidation of assets other than Imperial Autonetics as described in the main body of my will, such to be deducted from the residual properties; and also I leave to Kevin Renner ten thousand and one shares of voting stock in Imperial Autonetics. Kevin, that’s five percent plus one share of the company, and there’s a reason I want you to have it.

“The balance of my holdings of Imperial Autonetics, amounting to an additional sixty-five percent of the total voting stock, shall be divided as follows:

“To my oldest living grandson, thirty-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine shares. To Eudoxus as representative of the Motie family known as Medina Traders, thirty thousand shares. To Omar as representative of the Motie Family known as the East India Company, twenty thousand shares. To Victoria as representative of the Motie Family known as the Crimean Tartars, five thousand shares. To the Motie Mediator known as Au Baba, thirty thousand shares.”

Bury’s image chuckled. And well he might, Renner thought. “The remaining shares are held by partners, banks, business concerns, and other humans scattered through the Empire. If you care to contemplate the possible voting blocks, you will find the combinations interesting. Kevin, Allah has willed that you shall live in interesting times, and I do no more than abet His will.

“One final bequest: to Roderick, Lord Blaine, onetime captain of the Imperial cruiser MacArthur, I bequeath the personal sealed files designated with his name. They contain information about agents who have been useful to the Empire of Man, but who may now be dangerous. I know that Lord Blaine will satisfactorily carry the moral obligations of this knowledge.

“As for the rest, you will find the details in the cube I have entrusted to Nabil. I have provided generously for those who have served me faithfully. I believe that I have faithfully discharged my duties to Allah, to my compatriots, and to the Empire; and whatever Allah wills for my future, I am content that we have done all we could do.

“Witness my voice and signature, Horace Hussein al-Shamlan Bury, aboard the ship Sinbad somewhere in the Mote system.”

Look round our world; behold the chain of love.

Confirming all below and all above,

See plastic nature working to his end,

The single atoms each to other tend,

Attract, attracted to, the next in place

Form’d and impell’d its neighbor to embrace.

See matter next, with various life endu’d

Press to one center still, the gen’ral good.

See dying vegetables life sustain,

See life dissolving vegetate again;

All forms that perish other forms supply,

(By turns we catch the vital breath and die)

Like bubbles on the sea of matter born,

They rise, they break, and to that sea return.

Nothing is foreign; parts relate to whole;

One all-extending all-preserving soul

Connects each being, greatest with the least;

Made beast in aid of man and man of beast;

All serv’d, all serving! nothing stands alone;

The chain holds on, and where it ends, unknown.

Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man