“Talk. We’re going to need help.”
“And whom do you suggest calling, cousin? We haven’t an ally left on Takis.”
“An hour ago that was true. Now… I expect we’ll find many friends in many places. We’ll ship link to the Raiyises of Houses Ss’ang, Alaa, Tandeh, and any others who aren’t held by the Vayawand by conquest.”
“What’s your thinking?” Taj asked.
“Blaise has just fissured his precious alliance. Now all that remains is for us to drive the wedge. It was one thing to forge an alliance against Ilkazam. It’s another to invite in Takis’s bitterest enemy.”
“It might work,” came Taj’s cautious support.
“It will work,” Mark said.
Zabb stared down at her, smiled, and said, “I love you.” Tis went red. “Now come along.”
“I’m coming too.” Everyone stared at Trips. He wiggled uncomfortably like a puppy in a holiday crowd. “Starshine will really dig fighting uncontrolled capitalism.”
In the center of the bridge of Zabb’s flagship StarRacer, a hologram of Takis was lazily spinning. Each satellite, station, or weapons platform was carefully detailed. The Network starship was an obsidian ball. As they watched, the ball calved, producing forty tiny replicas of itself. Tisianne bent over the scanner.
“Warships, roughly analogous to our destroyer class.”
Zabb, using both a telepathic ship link to his other captains, and a conventional tight-beam, laser-pulse communication system, issued his orders. Ilkazam’s ships, indicated as tiny white stars, broke off by twos.
It hadn’t taken much to enlist the aid of Ss’ang and Alaa, and they were coming, elegant fireflies of green and blue. The hologram now resembled a tangled skein of yarn. Tis supposed there was some sort of order to the patterns, but it eluded her, which was why Zabb had ended up military leader of House Ilkazam and she’d ended up a research scientist.
A mental nudge from the ships informed her that telepathic communication had been established with Yimkin, Raiyis of House Tandeh. Tisianne quickly outlined their current dilemma.
Ancestors know I sympathize, Prin… er, Tisianne, but this is no slow-moving Network scow loaded down with prophylactics and miracle cures to sell to a credulous load of groundlings. This is a Network starship built to fight. And that madman of a grandson of yours is crazy!
Yimkin had always had a gift for stating the obvious three or four times in the same sentence.
Absolutely, he’s trying to give us to Network.
But if I desert him, he’ll be coming after me.
The Network, Blaise, or me? Which is it to be?
God’s abortions. I suppose it must be you. You breed a strong precog line in Ilkazam…
You want one?
Please.
Done.
Make sure she’s pretty.
We don’t breed them any other way.
Now.
Tis broke the telepathic link and studied the tactical holo. We’ll need a new color for Tandeh, Tis thought. Zabb picked it up.
“You got them?”
“Yes.”
“Did Yimkin demand the family jewels?” Zabb grunted, anxious that Tandeh had driven a hard bargain.
“Just a bride,” Tis answered.
“There is no such thing as just a bride. Added together this will cost us dearly in land, wealth -”
“And lives,” Tis interrupted.
Zabb just blinked at her. Not a Takisian consideration, Tis realized.
“I think it’s time, Meadows,” Zabb said.
Mark nodded and pulled out a vial filled with bright yellow powder. Tis laid a hand on his wrist.
“Be careful,” she whispered.
“Don’t worry.” He patted her hand awkwardly. Downed his potion.
Starshine was a far bigger man than Mark Meadows. The extra mass had to come from somewhere. The easiest solution was to rob molecules of ambient air. A whirlwind wrapped itself about the writhing figure of the human. Light styluses, a loose glove, and any other unattached objects were sucked into the maelstrom. Tis staggered under the force of the wind, and Zabb grabbed her and hugged her against his chest. It was over in a matter of seconds.
Starshine was magnificent in his skintight yellow suit with the sunburst blazing on his massive chest, his curly blond hair tousled by his summoning. He dwarfed the Takisians. Puffing out his chest, the ace surveyed the bridge in ire. For a moment his square jaw worked as if he were trying to form words, or perhaps deciding against whom to launch them. His awful gaze fell upon Tisianne. It was inevitable. She was always the target – of Zabb’s lectures, Jay’s lectures, Traveler’s lectures, Cody’s lectures, Taj’s lectures…
“It’s fascinating, Doctor, how I am summoned only in cases of extreme emergency – always generated by the actions of yourself, or your rapacious relatives. If it were not for the sake of the ordinary Takisian who should be free from the yoke of unbridled Network capitalism, I would refuse to help, but -”
“You won’t,” Tis supplied.
It threw Starshine off his stride for an instant, but he soon recovered. “I feel it is also incumbent upon me to point out -”
Zabb set Tis in the bridge chair. “Will this go on for long, or will he eventually get around to fighting?”
This interruption hadn’t fazed Starshine. He was still pontificating. “…presence of these enemies in your midst is due entirely to your selfish desire to abandon the female persona in which you currently reside. It would have shown far greater courage to accept life as a woman after you have so brutally and callously preyed upon the entire sex -”
Tis discovered something. She was tired of feeling guilty. She crossed to the ace, dug her long nails into a bulky forearm to hold him in place, and delivered a slap with her free hand. It left a satisfying red mark against the white, white skin. Starshine’s green eyes flew open, and he let out a strange stuttering sound. As if the blow had sent words tumbling back down his throat like children falling down stairs.
“Shut up! And go fight!”
Tis didn’t wait to see if she was obeyed. She moved back to her position. A few moments later a faint squeak from one of the control techs brought her head around. StarRacer was giving them a picture of Starshine as he turned to face Takis’s star and sucked in the energy. Pulling his arms close to his body, he became a yellow beam, a light spear on an intercept course with battle.
“And now, gentlemen and ladies, let us follow that audacious lead,” Zabb said, and half closing his eyes, he dropped into deep rapport with his ship.
If Tisianne opened her mind, she could occasionally catch fragments of thought from the various ships and their captains and crews. But it was like listening to a symphony, a bebop combo, and a brass band tuning simultaneously. Sound signifying nothing. She watched the hologram and tried to determine if they were winning. Starshine had been added as a bright yellow star, and he was fighting to very good effect.
Zujj, military commander of Alaa, had even demanded to know what, by his ancestor’s frozen balls, that critter might be. An Ilkazam crewwoman proudly reported it to be one of Ilkazam’s Enhancer-augmented servants. She fell into abashed silence at Tisianne’s furious look.
It was hard to blame her for chattering. For the crew it was a time to hold onto their hats and wait to be useful. So far StarRacer hadn’t taken a substantial hit, so there was no damage to repair. No weapons to manually fire. The only real evidence they were in a fight was the subtle recoil when the ghost lances fired.
A Takisian space battle was very much the province of the captain and his or her ship. Some of the largest cruisers required a TacNet – three or four telepaths and the ship in close link – to run a successful combat, but such a unity of purpose wasn’t very Takisian, so the tendency was to breed single-pilot ships.