"He's screwed up royal," Degas said. "Why doesn't the Deified jump him?"
Jo could not defend Haget.
Vadja said, "Not to worry, Jo. We scavenged every bit of information except what's locked up inside human minds. He'll come back. When he does, we'll know what questions to ask."
Vadja launched a record pod that would lie dormant till a Guardship broke off the Web.
Jo worried for Haget. Everybody thought his decision stupid. The Deified probably did, too. But he exercised no opinion. He never spoke. He just watched. It was easy to forget he was there.
Eight months. The Horigawa Traveler visited a hundred systems, finding no sign of a Lost Child or phantom, catching only an occasional whiff of a methane breather long gone.
The venture was not a waste. It established with certainty a sinister rot spreading throughout that end of Canon space. Which scared Jo.
They had stumbled onto something big.
Haget assembled Jo, Vadja, and the Chief. "This search was a mistake. You've rubbed it in, never saying a word, making me wallow in it, good little soldiers carrying out every order. Waiting for me to run out of ways to save face. All right. I'm out. I fucked up. I made a dumb decision and compounded it by not backing down." He gutted himself.
"Let's get back in stride. Any suggestions?"
Vadja said, "Back to M. Shrilica, sir. Between the phantom's visit and ours, only two ships stopped there. One was VII Gemina. Data from the abandoned in-system station suggests the phantom did approach station close enough to have docked briefly."
"So?"
"Six days later Canon's only agent there, tolerated because he was an honorary, was killed in a freak accident. Following his death there was a twenty percent rise in shuttle traffic between Tregesser Xylag and station. That increase was noted by the old station but not by the new. No personnel transfers are noted officially, but new names begin appearing in official reports and old ones are not seen again."
Haget maintained his composure. He dared not ask how long Vadja had possessed that information. Vadja would tell him. It would go on record.
"Lieutenant. Is that the place to start?"
"Yes, sir."
"Smokey. Head for M. Shrilica."
The Traveler broke off the Web.
Seeker's thought was a bellow. The methane breathers are here!
The Traveler lurched. Its screen activated without a murmur of command. The ship rotated violently, facing back the way it had come. Its weapons belched CT projectiles. A long black needle of a ship, a type like none Jo had ever seen, became a garden of flame.
Though that ship had been in ambush, it never got off a shot.
Bruised, abraded, bleeding from mouth and nose, Jo picked herself up and blessed WarAvocat for having stuck them with that miserable damned spying Deified.
AnyKaat said, "There are five more ships near station."
Haget snarled, "Let's go get them."
— 84 —
The siege of the gas giant was frustrating. Outsiders kept arriving and making themselves obnoxious.
The situation grew less irksome after the sixth month.
XII Fulminata arrived and assumed picket duty, eating reinforcements as fast as they appeared.
— 85 —
Hanaver Strate burned with frustration. He was going to spend his entire second term as Dictat in repair dock. It had taken Starbase only five months to recreate XII Fulminata. Meantime, VII Gemina languished, always facing an endless series of repairs.
Guardships came and went, mostly to learn what was happening. V Gallica. VIII Furia. X Gemina. Most recently, XII Victrix. III Parthica and XXVI Ulpia had come in in tandem after a twelve-year campaign beyond the Mauvain Rim. Both were on the Web now, carrying news and warnings to Starbase Dengaida.
And VII Gemina languished. And the only amusement for an otherwise unemployed WarAvocat was running a miniscule fleet of chartered, armed Horigawas.
The data supplied by Haget's team had been electrifying. The Deified had authorized commissioning five Horigawa privateers. The Horigawas had been seduced by the prospect of claiming prize ships.
Where the hell had Haget gotten to since?
A three-ship section of the Barbican had been converted to support the privateers—and only days after WarAvocat loosed them, their prey had vanished from the Web. Everywhere. Though they left ample evidence that they had been around.
Amazing. All this had been going on for centuries. But even a Guardship could overlook something it was not seeking.
Nor had the mess gone unnoticed. IV Trajana had gotten onto it—but no one would listen.
A grim picture. A big one.
He was confident that he had seen but a shadow of a shadow so far.
What the hell had become of Haget?
— 86 —
"Let's get the bastards!" Haget said. And the Deified spoke for the first time.
"Negative, Colonel. There are five of them. Get onto the Web. You know the destination of the Voyager that visited the system. Follow it up."
Jo let loose a breath she had not known she was holding. An ambush. Maybe special for them. Why? That ship they'd just killed... that had not been built for anything but fighting. No Traveler was designed for combat. In Canon battle was the province of Guardships.
The Traveler clambered onto the Web. Seeker was pleased. They were back on the trail of his Lost Child.
Jo was sure they were off to scare up another dead end.
— 87 —
Lupo left the update feeling melancholy. Times were quiet. Tregesser Prime, Tregesser Horata, and the Pylon had been tamed. Likewise the Valerena Others and the Directorate, despite the Worgemuth and Maserang murders. The killer's testimony had exonerated Valerena.
Five Valerena Others survived. The most reliable was ensconced atop the Pylon. Valerena herself spent all her time aboard "her" Guardship.
Blessed had taken over his mother's castle and seemed content to bide his time. He amused himself with absurd theme parties and expanding the alien zoo he had begun collecting. He was scraping them out of every DownTown in the Presidency. He had gathered another four Ku, to Lupo's certain knowledge.
Putting together his team. Maybe riding the wave of the future. There were few competent, imaginative, innovative, uncommitted humans around.
The renovation of VI Adjutrix was going well. Valerena had the damned thing eating out of her hand.
Week after week, month after month. Routine.
Which left time for the old game of Guardship watching.
Something big was taking shape. Starbase traffic was heavy. To his dismay, XII Fulminata had been seen coming out. VII Gemina's survival he could accept. But XII Fulminata had been destroyed. He had tapes.
At least three Guardships were operating beyond the Atlantean Rim, for the first time in millennia, in the direction whence Simon had drawn support. Unsettling.
There were reports of armed Travelers roaming the Web in VII Gemina's name. An unprecedented tactic. That word had killed the shadow side of commerce. It spoke of ships destroyed and stations savaged by Guardship soldiers.
What were they after?
Two stepped in. "An armed Traveler broke off the Web a while ago. It's ordered us to turn over the cumulative ship's logs for the Voyager Marion Tregesser. It invoked the name of VII Gemina as its right. It also wants Blessed, Cable Shike, and Nyo Bofoku."