"Awaken the others," she bade Suth then, and the youngling moved at once to obey.
Mission tape stood at zero.
They had arrived.
A quick look at scan showed the human ship riding close at hand, but the humans would hardly be organized yet. Often during the voyage Sharn had awakened for consultation with Suth, and each time she had known the humans slower than regul in coming to focus after jump: drugs; they had not the biological advantage of hibernation. Some few were operating, but they were still hazed. This was known; the mri, who needed neither hibernation nor drugs, had always been able to take advantage of it.
And about them lay the mri home system.
That thought sent chills through Sham's blood and set her two hearts pumping almost out of time. From her remote console, she called up new plottings, activated her instruments, and sent the ship easing away from the human escort while they were still dazed. Automatic challenge sounded on the instruments, a human computer advising her that she was breaking pattern. She ignored it and increased speed in real space.
She was bound for the inner planets. Behind her, humans stirred to wakefulness, and sent her furious demands to return. She ignored them. She was ally, not subject, and felt no obligation to their commands. About her, the younglings stirred to life again under the ministrations of the skillful youngling provided her by the bai a measure of his esteem, this lending of his personal attendant: Sharn reckoned diz-zyingly of her own possible favor, as well as her own present dangers.
"We will serve as probe," she sent the angered humans at last, deigning to reply. "It is needful, human allies, that we quickly learn what manner of armed threat we face, and Shirug has sufficient mobility to evade.
It was not the regul habit to go first.
But regul interests were at stake. Dead world after dead world: the incredible record of devastation enforced what decisions had been made on Kesrith. Doch-survival was personal survival, and more than that incredible in itself there was consciousness of threat against the regul species, that no regul had ever had to reckon.
Behind her, visible on the screens, the human ship seemed to fragment. Saber shed her riders, the little in-system fighter Santiago and the harmless probe Flower. Neither warships nor probe had the star-capable flexibility of Shirug, medium-sized and heavily armed, capable of evading directly out of the system and back again, capable of near-world maneuvers which would prove disaster for vast and fragile Saber, that was all shielding and firepower.
The humans were not happy. Saber gathered speed and her riders stayed with her. It was not pursuit. Sharn was nervous for a time, and snapped pettishly at her recovering younglings, but she determined at last that the humans were not going to take measures against her, not with all of them in reach of the mri. Their threats, had they issued them, would have made no difference. Sharn had her orders from Hulagh, and while she distrusted the Alagn elder's sometimes youngling-impulsive decisiveness, she also trusted his knowledge and experience, which was a hundred twelve years longer than hers.
In particular, Hulagh knew humans, and evidently had confidence that the peace which was in force would not be breached, not even if regul pressed it hard. This was a distasteful course. Regul were not fighters; their aggressiveness was verbal and theoretical. Sharn would have felt far more secure had she a mri aboard to handle such irrational processes as evasion and combat. Random action was something at which mri excelled. But of course they were facing mri, and the unaccustomed prospect of fighting against mri disturbed her to the depth.
Destroy.
Destroy and leave the humans to mop up the untidiness. Regul knew how to vise the lesser races. Regul decided; the lesser species simply coped with the situation and Hulagh in his experience found that the humans would do precisely that.
A beacon-pulse came faintly: hearts pounding, Sharn adjusted the pickup and amplified.
Friendship, it said. Friendship.
In human language.
Treachery.
Just such a thing had Hulagh feared, that the mri, who had left regul employ, would hire again. There was a human named Duncan, a contact with the mri, who worked to that end.
Sharn sighted on the source of the signal, fired. It ceased.
Human voices chattered at her in a few moments, seeking to know why she had fired. They had not, then, picked up the signal.
"Debris," Sham answered. Regul did not lie; neither did they always tell the truth. The answer was, perhaps, accepted. There was no comment. Shirug's lead widened. It was possible she' had the advantage of speed. Possibly the human craft were content to let her probe the inner system defenses, taking her at her word, reasoning no further into it. She doubted that. She had confidence rather in Shirug's speed: strike-and-run, that was the ship's build Saber's was that of a carrier, stand-and-fight. Doubtless the insystem fighter, Santiago, was the speed in the combination, and it was no threat to Shirug. Flower was not even considerable in that reckoning.
Sharn dismissed concern for them: Hulagh's information was accurate as it had been consistently accurate. Shirug, stripped of riders according to their operating agreement, still had the advantage in everything but shielding and firepower.
She gave whole attention to that matter and allotted the chatter of humans to Suth's attention thereafter. There was the matter of locating the world itself, of reaching it first.
Destroy, and leave the humans to cope with what followed.
Chapter Nineteen
IT WAS painful to stop, with the city in view, so close, so tan-talizingly close but the night was on them, and Niun saw that Duncan was laboring: his breath came audibly now. And at last Melein paused, and with a sliding glance toward Duncan that was for Niun alone, signaled her intent to halt.
"Best we rest here the night," she said.
Duncan accepted the decision without so much as a glance, and they spread the mats for sitting on the cold sand and watched the sun go down. Its rays tinted the city spires against the hills.
"I am sorry," Duncan said suddenly.
Niun looked at him; Duncan remained veiled, not out of reticence, he thought, but that the air hurt him less that way. He felt the mood behind that veil, an apartness that was itself a wound.
"Sov-kela," Niun hailed him softly, kel-brother, the gentlest word of affection but true brother. "Come sit close to us. It is cold.
It was less cold for them, but Duncan came, and seemed cheered by it, and perhaps more comfortable, for his body heat was less than theirs. They two leaned together, back to back, lacking any other rest. Even Melein finally deigned to use Niun's knee for her back. They said nothing, only gazed at the city that was sunk in dark now, and at the stars, fewer than those in skies he had known ... so that he wondered if they lay at the very rim of the galaxy, first-born perhaps, as Duncan's folk came from inward.
A long, long journey, that of the People inward. He almost wished that this trek last forever, that they might forever walk toward that city, still with hope, and not know what truth lay there. And yet Duncan had claimed to have detected power use in that place. Niun bit at his lip and shifted his weight, so that everyone shifted uncomfortably, and was aware, subtly, of that which had suddenly disturbed him.
Dus-presence.
"They are back," he said softly. "Yes," said Duncan after a moment.