Renner grinned slightly and hit the control keys. "Eudoxus."
"Here, Kevin."
Bury smiled softly, but said nothing.
"There may be another ship coming through anytime in the next five hundred hours," Renner said. "A very valuable ship. With a"-he saw Chris Blaine easing into place off camera-"a human female Mediator aboard. Be sure your people bring that ship to us when it comes."
"We'll try."
"Do more than try. The ship is valuable, and two of the passengers are Imperial aristocracy. Influential. Very influential."
"Ah. I will convey the urgency of the request."
"Good. Now, where are you taking us?"
"Medina Trading is among the nearer comets, above the plane of the Mote planetary system. There is an intermediate base, closer, well defended. We'll go direct to Medina Home unless we're interrupted, but on a course that lets us get to the base at need. Here is your course vector."
Renner examined it. "About twenty-five hours to turnover at something near one and a half standard gee. Everybody okay on that?"
"It is better than being caught in a battle," Bury said.
Renner glanced at the telltales, then caught Nabil's eyes. Nabil nodded slightly.
"Fair enough. Lead off," Renner said.
Chris looked okay; so did Alysia. Bury was fully alert and mad as hell. Good; Renner could use their opinions. He said, "Buckman, I need Atropos, but maintain the link to Phidippides. I'm sounding acceleration warning."
He let Sinbad's corridors turn raucous while he ran the thrust up to one gee. Nabil and Cynthia hovered around Bury like worker ants feeding a queen. Bury's medical monitors were drawing a forest of needles, but why wouldn't they? Horace Bury hadn't been shot at since...
The Outies at Pierrot? Rape my lizard, was it that long ago? And Blaine and Trujillo were staying well clear of each other's privacy bubbles, and neither was saying anything. There may not be as much help there as I thought.
Phidippides was easing away at a gee and a half, almost two Mote gravities. Renner ran his thrust up to match.
Atropos was aglow, black to glare green in a few seconds. The Motie ships looked tiny compared to the empire cruiser, but they had expanding Fields and Atropos didn't. Not good... but somewhere behind them a red point blossomed into a violet sun and dissipated. Atropos began to cool. Rawlins was fast with his guns.
The battle was mostly behind them now. Friendly and enemy ships looked too much alike; in the telescopes each was unique; but one squadron was definitely deploying to form a barrier behind the three fleeing ships. Another group converged on a ship trying to get past the barrier force.
Renner sighed. Until he knew more, what the hell else could he do but run? He made eye contact with Chris Blaine: Do you see anything I don't?
Blaine shook his head and pointed to the battle screen. "Rawlins is right, it's unlikely we'd get a message back to Agamemnon even with help from Medina's fleet, and without Atropos we're in big trouble. Other than that, we're fine. Rawlins knows how to fight, and whoever our allies are, they're pretty good. And willing to take punishment for us."
"They'll be Warriors," Renner said. Nightmare creatures like those statuettes in the Moties' Time Machine sculpture, perhaps altered by selective breeding for life in low gravity. Warriors on both sides.
"Horace?"
"I think of nothing you have not. I feel as if I have deceived myself."
"Which you did," Buckman said, chuckling.
"Mote Beta?" Joyce asked.
"We called the main Mote planet Mote Prime," Renner said. "There's a gas giant we called Beta."
"And almost certainly another planet," Buckman said. "Mote Gamma. Almost certainly a gas giant. There are also two large clusters of asteroids sharing the orbit of Mote Beta. Nearly all of them were moved into place."
"Moved," Joyce said. "Isn't that a lot of work, moving asteroids?"
"Sure is," Renner said. "Enough. We're committed."
"Alea jacta est," Joyce said
"Onk?"
"The die is cast," Bury translated. "Indeed.
"Right. Okay, mike's live again. All right, Eudoxus," Renner said. "Keep talking. What in Hell is a Bury's Fyunch(click) doing in the Mote asteroids?"
Freddy Townsend woke when Kakumi's voice barked at him from the intercom. He woke quickly as he always did when he slept at the bridge console.
"Freddy, there's a radio message. General communications band. Talk to them, Freddy. You there?"
Freddy reached tentatively for the console. The timer showed nearly an hour since the shift. His hand was steady, and his head felt clear. He flipped a switch to put the incoming message on the speakers:
"WARNING. YOU HAVE ENTERED AN INTERDICT ZONE. THIS SYSTEM HAS BEEN PLACED UNDER INTERDICT BY AUTHORITY OF THE VICEROY GOVERNOR GENERAL OF TRANS-COAL SACK SECTOR! THIS SYSTEM IS PATROLLED BY THE IMPERIAL NAVY. BROADCAST YOUR LOCATION MJD IDENTITY ON THIS BAND AND WAIT FOR INSTRUCTIONS, FAILURE TO COMPLY MAY RESULT IN DESTRUCTION OF YOUR SHIP. WARNING."
"Well, that's pretty explicit," Freddy said. He typed quickly on the control console. "Glenda Ruth, I think you should include something in your code so they can be sure its you. That message wasn't friendly at all."
"All right." She connected the interface cable into her computer and scribbled. "Clementine, code that with my private key."
"Yes, dear."
"I wonder about this," Glenda Ruth said. "That message sounds pretty positive."
"You think something has happened?"
"I don't know, but I bet we don't have long to wait." The reply came four minutes later:
HECATE THIS IS INSS AGAMEMNON, REQUEST YOU RENDEZVOUS WITH US IMMEDIATELY. VECTORS FOLLOW. WE HAVE MESSAGES FOR THE HON. GLENDA RUTH FOWLER ELAINE. BALASINGHAM."
Freddy's fingers played. She'd seen him more tense, his fingers moving faster, during a Sauron Menace game... when the penalties for mistakes weren't so high. "Not far. We can be there in ten minutes. Glenda Ruth, I can't find a blinker."
"A what?'
"Normally they'd give us a laser spot to follow. This close, with lOOx mag, I should see something that big directly... unless the Langston Field is up. Nice that we were expected, though. And it's a request, at least so far."
"They've gone stealth," Glenda Ruth said. "And no comment regarding Sinbad or my brother. Freddy, I think it's happened. The Moties are loose."
"Uh-huh." He tapped at console keys. "ACCELERATION WARNING. Stand by for half-standard gravity."
"The Fyunch(click)s of humans were very diverse," Eudoxus said, "and so were their various fates. Captain Roderick Elaine's went mad. Sally Fowler's remained sane enough to advise, but was rarely considered trustworthy. Jacob Buckman's never had a problem. Chaplain Hardy's played abstract intellectual games; even some of the Masters found them interesting. Kevin, yours won so many arguments that she was made a teacher, but always under supervision."
"Flattering," Renner said. "Did you meet her?"
"No. I know these things due to observations by Horace Bury's Fyunch(click). That individual-shall we call her Bury-One? She was young, male, when he studied Horace Bury."
"After MacArthur's departure he saw a ruinous war shaping itself. He made some efforts to avert it, then to shape any kind of refuge for knowledge that would be lost. When these attempts had clearly failed, Bury-One left her Master. With a tangle of alliances and bluffs collapsing about her, she built and provisioned a spacecraft, reached the asteroids, and announced that her services were for sale."
Eudoxus waited patiently through Kevin Renner's laughter. Others were laughing, too, and even Bury was smiling in... pride?
Presently Renner said, "I take it your Medina Trading-"