"That's the catch with all of them. That and the fact that they might be what they claim, and somebody might come looking for them. Research them. And cover any trace of them having come here."
"That'll take some doing. They made a racket coming in."
"Take Tina. If it can be gotten out of the system, she can do it. Nobody talks to people anymore. Unless they volunteer. Discourage that."
Shike smiled. "Consider it handled."
Blessed did. He always did when he suggested Cable handle something. Cable always got the job done.
— 61 —
Simon Tregesser's Voyager had been running flat out, well into the red, for nineteen days. It was seven days ahead of the schedule Provik had posited for the run to the G. Witica—S. Satyrfaelia strand.
Tregesser's crew thought him mad. Nobody pushed a ship so hard so long. It was a miracle the Q had not gone.
Simon was no more confident than they, but he was riding a nightmare hunch that if he did not get to that strand fast, he was a dead man. He had no idea why. But he trusted his hunches. They had done him right before.
They would be coming up on the strand soon. He had them feeling for it now. He wondered how Lupo was doing. He had not seen Provik since the run began. He had stopped trying to communicate.
Maybe Lupo hadn't gotten out. That would be hell. How would he manage without him? Lupo had been his rock forever.
Simon was on the operating bridge, filling half with his bell, when the Guardship broke off the Web. Right there. In his lap. Six light years from anywhere.
"Aw, shit," he said without any force. "One more signal to Provik. Warn him off." He analyzed the Guardship's motion vectors and ordered a turn that offered a chance to reach the strand before the Voyager could be destroyed.
He would not be taken, that he determined.
Provik remained amazed. "Simon is going to complete the run a week fast. Or kill himself trying."
None of his family were comfortable running in the red, though his Voyager was more suited to it than was Tregesser's and there were enough of them to close-monitor the Q.
"He should be getting close." Simon's Voyager remained at the very edge of detection.
"Message coming in."
Guardship. Right in Simon's lap. Motion vectors thus and so. He was turning so. Fifty-fifty chance of outrunning death and getting onto the Web.
"Damn! Decision time."
Tension filled the bridge. Suddenly they were all there, all offering to share the pain, wondering if he could do what, for nineteen days, they had been deliberating.
Lupo stared at the comm board. The tight beam was locked onto Simon's Voyager. The code sequence was in. The circuit was armed. The machinery was ready. Was the man?
Could he kill Simon Tregesser?
He could. But could he live with Lupo Provik afterward?
"Damn it!" His hand stabbed. "Turn us into the Guardship's vectors and shut everything down."
He sat down and cried.
Shedding their own tears, his family began trying to make the Voyager invisible by reducing its emissions.
— 62 —
WarAvocat feared he would have a minor mutiny on his hands if his move did not produce quick results. To hear OpsAvocat and ServAvocat fuss you would think VII Gemina would scatter into its component atoms shortly if it did not head for Starbase immediately. And that despite assurances from Gemina that the Guardship's wounds were neither deadly nor incapacitating.
There would be political consequences if the fugitive did not turn up. His reelection looked ever less certain. The cream of his support had been killed in that end space. The regrowth system would be a long time replacing them.
"Coming up on breakaway, WarAvocat."
"Very well." That bastard had better show.
"Breakaway."
Two seconds passed. "Holy shit. There he is."
What? Already? Impossible.
"Look at that bastard go!"
WarAvocat ran to where he could see it for himself, telling no one in particular, "He's got to have been running at the top of his red all the way. Why hasn't he blown his Q?"
"He's seen us, WarAvocat. He's turning."
WarAvocat scanned the motion vectors, range rates, relative velocities. The son of a bitch had a chance.
He gave orders quickly, moving VII Gemina not in pursuit but so as to cut off flight toward S. Satyrfaelia. Once the Voyager headed the other way it was dead. VII Gemina could overhaul it on the Web and run it till its master gave up.
Then the fireworks started.
The Voyager's Q went. The multimillion-degree fusion process erupted into the Voyager, obliterating everything inside before it reduced the more stubborn hull to stripped nuclei. Those inside the Voyager did not live long enough to realize what had happened.
Probe had time only to determine that there were five beings aboard, all apparently human.
Before the fire faded OpsAvocat asked, "Can we head for Starbase now?"
Lady Midnight fluttered into WarAvocat's mind. "It's your Guardship, OpsAvocat. Condition Yellow One. WarAvocat out."
Nothing left now but the chore of hunting down the villains behind the ambush.
— 63 —
Valerena watched figures scroll. She was pleased. The balance had shifted just enough to produce the first profitable week of the century. Better weeks would come. All you needed was the will....
"What?" she snapped. She loathed interruptions. And that was one lesson these people were too stupid to learn. She glared at the creature in the doorway.
"I was told to deliver a message." Sullen and without honorifics. "A Tregesser Voyager has broken off the Web. A man named Lupo Provik wants to talk to you. He's sending a shuttle."
Lupo? Here?
She was frightened. This should not be. He was supposed to be in that end space with Simon. Had something happened? Had they aborted?
She had a thousand questions and a hundred fears.
She was on the flying city's docking platform, suited, when the shuttle set down. The poison wind barked and whined around her.
She stepped onto the bridge of the Voyager. Lupo was there alone, waiting. There was something wrong with him. "Have you been sick?" she blurted.
He responded with a soft, sad, almost holy smile. "Only here." He tapped his chest.
She frowned, worried. Lupo Provik, of all people, going spooky and mystic?
The universe could not be that perverse.
"What's happened? Why aren't you in the end space?"
"Sit down."
There was an echo of the old whipcrack. She sat.
"It's over, Valerena. We blew it. They came earlier than we expected. VII Gemina. XXVIII Fretensis. XII Fulminata."
"Three? But..."
"Three. We got XII Fulminata and VII Gemina. But XXVIII Fretensis finished us. Your father didn't get out."
Shock. She felt lightheaded, numb. Her brain closed up shop.
"Valerena? You hear me? Simon is dead. You're the Chair."
She nodded slowly. And for once told the complete and naked truth. "I'm scared, Lupo."
"That's what Simon said the day he took over."
"It's real, isn't it?" She knew it was. Lupo would not say it if it wasn't.
"As real as death, Valerena. I'm taking you to Prime. You have to be confirmed. You have to take charge fast. The Directors will panic when they find out we failed. They might get the idea they could profit by informing. They'll need supervision."
"Yes." Tendrils of self-possession insinuated themselves through her shock.
Simon Tregesser was dead. The Tregesser empire was hers. There were things to do.
Dead! "The bastard got me again. Dying in his own time and way."