Had the Majhellain techs been thorough? Should he go ahead and incarcerate Hanhl Cholot? Should he backtrack and try to brownnose that prick Haget into letting him off?
Nova light.
"Guardship breaking off the Web," some genius said.
"Bet I could have figured that out for myself."
A less confident voice announced, "Chief, that's our old buddy IV Trajana."
Timmerbach's stomach went into freefall. He stepped to nav comp and brought up back course data. "Shit."
Hanhl Cholot—or whatever—said, "Take us back to dock, Chief."
"Like hell. I'm not dragging anybody else across their sights."
"That's an order, Chief. If you won't execute it, I'll replace you with someone who will."
"I doubt it." Timmerbach's bridge people continued turning the Traveler, laying it into the groove headed toward the Web.
Cholot started to bluster.
Timmerbach said, "Master-at-Arms."
A hard-looking woman approached Cholot. "To your stateroom, sir." She showed him a pacifier.
"Hey, Chief. Check this."
Timmerbach turned away as Cholot walked out ahead of the Master-at-Arms. "What?"
"Pair of fighters off the Guardship headed this way like they want to see if you can burn holes in vacuum."
Timmerbach sighed and slumped into his command chair. He had no reserves left. He was accursed, and he accepted it. He wanted to go to sleep and shut the universe out.
But he could not. He had an obligation to passengers and crew and House. He kept Glorious Spent in the groove, headed for the Web.
He understood why IV Trajana was here. Web geometry. The strands they had taken leaving that anchor point converged again here. That bastard Haget had seen that. He must have deadmanned the Traveler. "Should have known better. You can't beat them."
The fighters spread out. Timmerbach's last hope vanished as they began curving in. One took station ahead. The other came in on his quarter in firing attitude, snapped three sudden shots that scrubbed three Web tractor vanes. Glorious Spent could not run away.
"Guess that's a message, eh? All right. Guide on that lead fighter."
What the hell could he do? How was he going to deal with this? IV Trajana was not VII Gemina.
The fighter guided him straight to the Guardship, to an empty rider bay. The Guardship grabbed hold. It began accelerating, headed for the strand leading back the way the Traveler had come.
Warning lights flared. Main cargo hatch gave way. Timmerbach heard noises in the passageway. He faced the hatchway.
A pack of little machines scurried in, accompanied by a feeble ghost. The ghost surveyed the bridge, fixed on Timmerbach. It said, "Come."
— 57 —
The wound in VII Gemina's shoulder was three kilometers long and half a kilometer deep. It had been scarred over enough to ignore till the Guardship reached Starbase Tulsa. WarAvocat had no intention of heading there immediately.
A Voyager had been detected sneaking away just before VII Gemina hit the rock.
That mastermind was in for uncomfortable times.
The guns in the end space were silent. The task now was to root the survivors out and find out what other throats needed cutting. Thus far the sword of evidence only pointed Outside.
The one clue he found intriguing came out of the heart of the command asteroid, the wreckage of a monster artificial environment. A few squiggles of data suggested the system had been occupied by a monster like those aboard the Cholot Traveler and the invader destroyed by XXVIII Fretensis.
— 58 —
The crew of the Sveldrov Traveler were unfriendly but surprisingly cautious. They isolated the hold and that was that, initially.
The Traveler broke off the Web at the first anchor point up, made station, then the crew surged in and tossed the stowaways out dockside. Then the Traveler scooted before Station Master or STASIS could act. It refused anything but responder communication.
Turtle was baffled. He could think of nothing that would explain such behavior.
"Remain calm," he told Midnight. STASIS personnel and dock workers eyed them warily. "Let me do the talking. Don't say anything if you can help it. If you can't, don't contradict me. I'm going to blow smoke in their faces." He looked at Amber Soul, no longer in a coma but certainly in a fugue of some sort, lying on the deckplates, panting, changing external appearances as though trying to find one that would protect her from what she feared.
What the hell had it been about that Traveler?
He told Midnight, "Just pretend you're too stupid to understand their questions." There were advantages to belonging to the underclasses. One was that you never disappointed the master race by being stupid.
Bureaucracy ground slowly where for ages it had had no need to handle the unusual. Turtle had plenty of time to rehearse an elaborate fable.
— 59 —
Seated against the wall, Jo was first to sense the strange, short vibrations. They filled her with undirected dread. "Anybody else feel the station shaking?"
Everyone did. AnyKaat, Degas, and Colonel Vadja looked grimly uncomfortable. But Haget just sat there grinning. "I suggest you all get yourselves up to military specs."
Eleven days in close confinement had produced one plus. Seeker was communicating. Some.
A killer ship has come, Jo heard within her head. It is attacking. It has not communicated with the station.
Jo glared at Haget. "A Guardship is here. You knew it was coming. How did you do that?"
Haget grinned some more. "The routes IV Trajana and Glorious Spent took come back together at M. Carterii. When Timmerbach started acting strange, I rigged a dead-man signal on a longwave transmitter and concealed it in the main hold. It carried a copy of our mission log. It had to be reset daily to keep it from broadcasting a mayday."
"Clever. And you kept it all to yourself."
"If I'd told you, I'd have been telling everyone else who happened to be listening. They might have moved us out of here. They're coming. Let's look like soldiers."
I Am A Soldier. Jo grunted, got up, joined Haget at the cell door. The others fell in behind them. Even Seeker prepared to move. Haget smiled pleasantly when Station Master, the STASIS chief, and a squad of retainers appeared. "Buck up, girls. We all screw up."
"Don't overdo it," Jo muttered.
The station people let them out and returned their possessions and equipment, loaded them aboard a bus. The bus took them to a docked ridership guarded by an unstable hologram of a youth clad in a style unseen for three thousand years.
"WatchMaster Commander Haget, take your party aboard. Station Master, I've surveyed your data reservoir. The following persons are to be delivered to me." Followed a list of forty-six, with job titles.
Station Master started to protest.
"I have loosed a Hellspinner. This station can survive no more than seven."
Station Master got the message.
"I am remanding to this station the crew and passengers of the confiscated Cholot Traveler Glorious Spent. All passengers will be delivered to their contracted destinations at the expense of House Cholot and will be reimbursed for their inconvenience and lost time."
There were no comforts aboard the ridership. Prisoners and rescuees alike were crowded into a compartment that soon stank of fear and excretions for which no facilities existed. Some prisoners babbled pleas to Haget.