"Maybe he'd like another shower of CT."
"He might worry if your gunners could hit the broad side of a Guardship."
"I see. So. You once said, ‘We have our own politics to survive.' I have my own politics to survive."
Provik shrugged. "All the same to them. They've made up their minds to die. They won't bargain."
He had feared that. Damned Ku style. "And you Tregessers?"
"We wrote ourselves off way back. We have nothing to gain from you."
Too true. Life was the only chip he had on his side of the table. And they would not play for that stake. He glanced at Klass. Provik seemed untroubled by her presence.
"We have an impasse. I don't know how to break it."
"Ask Gemina."
Crew were troubled enough. If Gemina offered an unpopular suggestion... Even so. "Access, Gemina. You have been monitoring. Respond to Mr. Provik's suggestion, please."
It was a long wait. Bad. It might mean.... It did.
"Enlist the Ku according to recent fleet directives. Assign them detached duty with orders to report at an unspecified date."
Impractical. "The Directive disallows anyone who has stood in arms against Canon."
"Hire him as a special operative, independently assigned, under suspended death sentence."
Interesting. Gemina understood Ku warrior psychology. Enlisted, their concepts of faith and honor would compel them to fulfill whatever obligation they undertook. It would lay a fat temptation before Kez Maefele, who wanted to get his people out. The unspoken agreement would be no commentary ever about what had happened to Starbase.
"Do you understand the undertaking there, Provik?"
It would not be politically acceptable, but he could order it. If he did not mind putting his Deification more at risk than it was.
Once he had been ready to risk it to get the Ku. Must he now risk it to silence an enemy more terrible and repugnant?
"Tell the Ku I'm considering dealing. On about those terms. If he convinces me totally that this Outsider hideout is dangerous."
"I see the angles, Strate." Provik walked out.
WarAvocat looked at Klass. "Well?"
"You haven't kept up on my work with the Meddinians."
"I haven't had time. What have I missed?"
"Seeker claims it's critical that we beat the Godspeakers now, before they dig in. If we don't, we'll never beat them completely. They'll devour us in the long run. He says. In fact, he goes on like we may have missed our chance already."
"I'll review the material. See what you'll need if we have to deal with the Ku the hard way."
"Yes, sir." She went.
He reviewed the material though he was too tired to concentrate.
Turtle said, "Let me think," after hearing Provik's report. The snare was patent. They would turn him into a living endorsement for the fleet.
He should not have survived Starbase. If his people had followed orders, they would be safely away. He would not be eyeball to eyeball with another moral monster.
They would insist on keeping the attack secret. But the Ku needed to know that their ignominy had been redeemed. But the news running free might hamstring the Guardships when they needed everything to end the Godspeakers' threat.
Had he hurt them too much? Had he made it impossible for them to compromise?
Jo eased into the darkness outside VII Gemina. It had been a long time since EVA school. She had to be careful. She was wearing a field combat suit for the sake of its detection capacity. It would be clumsy in free fall and had no maneuvering jets. She attached a safety line and jumped.
She stopped paying out after two hundred meters, studied the damage, looked for sentinels. She could find none.
The motion vectors of her jump, the unyielding safety line, and the slow rotation of the Guardship swung her out over the damage. When she was headed for the horizon, she began paying out again. There were twenty kilometers of monofilament on the reel, more than enough.
Hey! Didn't that look like a tractor vane, that trapezoidal regularity in the wilderness of twisted metal? Hard to be sure. No way to make sure without getting too close.
What the hell? She worked the rocket launcher around, sighted, launched, hit rewind. The takeup reeled her in so fast she did not see the rocket strike.
WarAvocat needed no convincing when Provik returned. He believed the Meddinians. The Godspeakers would constitute a deadly threat while they maintained belief in a Destroyer deity.
The Godspeakers understood the Web less than did any other race.
The Presence radiated dread as a defense, as a tool with which it frightened away destructive vermin. Only a pest encountered repeatedly risked destruction. Predisposed by evolution to dark interpretations, the Godspeakers had seen the Presence as a manifest avatar of a greater power, a child sent by the Darkness to demonstrate Truth.
They had stumbled onto a way of summoning the Presence. Announcements attributed to it were fancies or wishful thinking. They lied to their human allies, who lied in turn to the subject races.
WarAvocat entered a directive: obtain that summons. Web maintenance could be concentrated in Canon space.
The murder rites did affect the Presence. Seeker suggested that was because it misread the sacrifices.
Provik presented a crude starchart. "There's what you'll have to dig them out of if you let them get ready."
WarAvocat plugged it in, let Gemina translate, stared.
Grim.
"They're providing themselves with habitats capable of surviving there?"
"Construction was ahead of schedule when we left."
War Avocat glared at the chart."I can find it now."
"But how long will that take?"
WarAvocat accessed the data from VI Adjutrix. What he needed still was not there. He glanced up. Provik grinned.
Had they gotten aboard VI Adjutrix during its stay at P. Benetonica? That would explain a lot. "I'll need a face-to-face on this."
No protest. No argument. "I'll tell him. I'd like to see Midnight and Valerena before I go. I have messages for them."
That hurt. He had made no headway with the artifact. "I'll have someone take you. Don't dally."
Provik grinned again. "We're not in any hurry. There's no time pressure on us."
The clang rang through the rider. "What was that?"
Turtle had it in a minute. "Something hit one of the vanes." He could not get a good look. "Someone will have to go look."
One of his people went out. His report was not good. "There is an anti-armor rocket embedded in the vane. It did not detonate."
"A dud? Or intentional?" Turtle worried. They knew where he was now.
"That will be the big question."
Turtle accessed the ship's schematics. They went to work figuring out how much damage the warhead could do and what options existed.
Turtle muttered the whole time. He had a damned good idea who had put the rocket there.
Blessed told the women, "I'm here because we're negotiating. We've almost closed a deal."
The Valerena was not excited. "Oh."
"We have something they want."
"The Outsider hideout?"
"Yes."
"I don't want to go back, Lupo. I like it here."
One raised an eyebrow. He did not tax her, though. "Midnight?"
"I go with Blessed. Wherever he goes."
One nodded. He saw the weariness the Ku had mentioned, the encroachments of time. "It shouldn't be long. WarAvocat is pressed for time."