Hunger of the Destroyer sat on the Web nearby, recovering its riders. It would resume shadowing VII Gemina once it had its riders aboard.
He scanned the intercepted messages. "Klass?" That did not seem possible. How much had she passed to the Guardship?
Enough, probably.
"Who has seen these?" he asked.
One of his own said, "You and the tech who transcribed them."
Good. The tech would say nothing. He would not. No telling what the Tregesser hostages would do if they heard.
Something suicidal, surely. This meant the game was up for House Tregesser.
What else it might mean remained to be seen. The wizard would have to chew on it.
Delicate Harmony continued its headlong plunge toward Canon space.
— 125 —
WarAvocat let Klass's decrypted report scroll a few lines, stopped it. He glanced over to see how they were doing rounding up the chunks of the Pioyugov Traveler, to see if they were keeping that in the Guardship's shadow relative to the Outsider, which had broken off the Web again. Then he looked up.
The Deified had abandoned their screens. All but the Deified Kole Marmigus, who grinned a monster of a grin. Marmigus winked.
WarAvocat rolled the message back to start. "Aleas. Read this with me."
She did not look pleased but joined him. He let the message scroll. It ran a half hour at his reading speed, hitting the high points of Klass's adventures.
Aleas had nothing to say.
If it stunned her, how much more impact on those Deified after his gonads? "Access, OpsAvocat. WarAvocat here. We'll be returning to Canon space as soon as we've completed recovery. Destination is P. Benetonica 3. Out."
Aleas said, "So. You win a big round with the Deified."
"I sure do. May take them weeks to start aggravating me again." He rose, confident that his power never had been greater or more secure, faced a ragged and badly aged Lieutenant Klass, who'd come into WarCentral with the other survivors from the Pioyugov Traveler.
Aleas asked, "What'll you do about the other Klass?"
Jo nearly lost it when she saw WarAvocat. AnyKaat caught her arm and steadied her. "Not yet, Jo. We're almost there."
Seeker touched her with a similar sentiment, though most of his attention was on Amber Soul, who was on her way to Hospital with several injured Pioyugovs.
Even the crew had been lucky, relatively. Only eight were missing.
Jo got hold of herself, advanced toward Strate, pleased that he was still in charge. Could she keep from smashing his face if he came up with some typical tight-ass officer's crap about her appearance?
He came to meet her. He wrapped his arms around her and held her. Must be shipwide cameras watching, she thought. "Welcome home, Colonel."
The bastard had her confused with Haget!
But she accepted his welcome, and enjoyed it till she collapsed.
— 126 —
Turtle followed VII Gemina's progress closely. The Guardship zigged, zagged, ducked in and out of starspace, doubled back, tried to ambush Hunger of the Destroyer. And could neither shake its shadow nor catch it. Hunger hung on like a tail.
Its commander deserved a commendation. Not only was he carrying out his assignment, he was causing VII Gemina to fall farther and farther behind by taunting it into wasting time on those maneuvers.
The wizard had reasoned it out. There had been a Meddinian aboard the Traveler. Probably one of the two he had talked Provik into sending home. Having concluded that, he studied the messages that had crossed the Web since the countdown began.
They might have gotten enough to anticipate the strike at Capitola Primagenia.
If they'd just break off to vent their spleen on Tregesser Prime...He could advance the S. Alisonica attack. All units would be in position early. If VII Gemina could be drawn to Capitola Primagenia it would be too far away to interfere at Starbase.
This would be delicate.
Delicate Harmony crossed the Rim into Canon space. He shifted the countdown from a daily to an every four hour count on the chance the Meddinian had survived the destruction of its Traveler. He would not put that hope to the test till VII Gemina had paid its respects at Tregesser Prime. If it did.
It did.
Turtle gave the Guardship time to become preoccupied with the surprises he had bestowed upon P. Benetonica. Then he rattled the Web with a coded torrent.
His Godspeaker masters approved what he was trying to do.
Good. Their minds had to be adjusted to a specific set, too.
— 127 —
WarAvocat had not mistaken Jo for Haget. He had promoted her. Hardly had she been cleared by Medical than she was chin deep in planning a chastisement operation against House Tregesser. Her assignment was WarAvocat's idea of a reward.
She was to lead the regimental combat team assigned to capture Tregesser Horata and the villains.
He made no mistake calling her Colonel. His mistake was failing to wonder what mischief Kez Maefele had been up to during his stay on Tregesser Prime.
VII Gemina broke off the Web and swooped in the grand Guardship style, attacking without warning, without explanation to a system that went into a whining panic, wanting to know what they had done. They always did.
The change came when Jo's assault craft reached four thousand meters altitude, while riderships filled with invaders began forcing dockage all around station 3B.
Some unsuspected, undetected, automated system wakened.
A shaped blast gutted every docked rider. Soldiers already disembarked hurtled out of the ring, carried by the winds of decompression.
VII Gemina fighter patrols came under fire from a thousand small killer satellites.
Jo's assault craft encountered a barrage so accurate and intense forty percent did not reach the ground intact.
The survivors arrived scattered, disorganized, and without communications because a heavy jam blanket had spread over the whole region. Automatic strongpoints, indistinguishable from workaday structures, responded to the presence of unknown weapons. They were proof against all but the regiment's heaviest weapons.
It got worse when the city's shields went up. And worse still when Tregesser security forces counterattacked.
They were no untrained, disorganized rabble.
Jo survived the landing. She wondered if she would be as lucky with the inquiry certain to follow the fighting. This would not be an auspicious entry in her record.
WarAvocat had gone a sickly gray. He stood nose to nose with the worst moment of his life. WarCentral's wall display screamed debacle. Casualties already between forty-five hundred and six thousand. Those for the landing team were uncertain. VII Gemina had no contact with the ground.
Every station in the system had raised Guardship quality screens. The 3A, an antique supposedly out of service, was spewing seeker mines that made fighter deployments suicidal.
Down below every significant population center had vanished behind a pearlescent screen.
WarAvocat had not encountered that before. He did not like it. He had the firepower to scorch Tregesser Prime several times over. If he tried, when he ran out of ammunition, those cities would be sitting there still. The atmosphere itself protected them from his most powerful arguments.
Aleas came. "Message just arrived via system traffic band. You'd better listen."
He accessed Communications. The shimmer behind his shoulder said, "Invader, your hostile behavior has triggered an automated doomsday defense which cannot be deactivated by anyone in this system. It will remain active till it is destroyed, you are destroyed, or its control is satisfied that you have withdrawn."