"Tell you what," said Goth. "You fish out those cards you found in the Agandar's kit and I'll play you snap."
"Don't feel like snap," snapped the Leewit. But she pulled the pack from an inner pocket anyway.
She always seemed to have them with her, Pausert noticed. The hand-painted cards had been found in the Agandar's personal kit after the pirate's death, and the Leewit had expropriated them. The cards were probably valuable antiques, given that the pirate lord had been fabulously wealthy and successful. Pausert had occasionally wondered if he should try to keep them safe from the Leewit, but it hadn't seemed worth the fight it would entail. Money was only worth its face value, but a contented Leewit was a jewel past price. And she was mostly pretty happy playing endless games of snap or patience.
But it appeared she'd been broadening her horizons. "Let's play poker," she piped.
Pausert raised an eyebrow. "Where did you learn that game?"
"Vezzarn taught me."
"I should have guessed. Well," said the captain, setting the course for Gentian's Star and clicking on the long-range detectors, "we'll play for spillikins. Every ten you win, I'll buy you a packet of candy at the next spaceport. Every ten I win, you bathe without a fight. And wash behind your ears."
She looked darkly at him. "Twenty."
"Fifteen."
"S'a deal. But I'm not too sure how you play poker, really."
The captain had been around the witches too long to fall for that one. He was a lucky gambler because of klatha, and as soon as he heard that statement he knew he'd need to be.
"Deal me in," said Goth, sliding bonelessly into the chair next to the chart table they used for cards. "I'm not too old for candy."
"But you wash behind your ears, anyway!" protested the Leewit.
"I'm not planning to lose, so what does it matter?"
"Huh!" said the Leewit scornfully. "You're getting to be just like Maleen."
"Deal," said the captain, before this well-used argument could get any more exercise.
A few minutes later Vezzarn came up from the engine room and joined the game. And the captain soon realized that he had fallen among thieves, or at least cardsharps. If the witches or Vezzarn ever needed money, they had a profession lined up already. Pausert was quite relieved when the ship-detector alarm went off.
CHAPTER 27
Here, near the Empire's center, ship traffic was much heavier. There was virtually no way to keep out of detection range of all of them. And it very soon became evident that the ISS was searching hard, and that the Imperial Space Navy now had orders: destroy the Venture on sight.
Twice now their ship had come within detector range of ISN vessels and had not even been given the chance to try deception. She'd been pursued and fired on—despite being within hailing distance.
"Communicator chatter indicates we've been fingered as a plague carrier, Captain," said Vezzarn indignantly. Aft of the Venture, space was lit up again by the blue lightnings of Imperial guns.
"It's more like the other way around," grunted Pausert. "We're the antibiotic and this is the disease trying to keep us away."
Goth stared at the ship detectors. "Guess we'll have to use the Sheewash Drive, Captain. Those Space Navy jobs are gaining on us."
Pausert nodded. "I'd rather not have to, because it gives them a definite fix on where we are, again. But I don't think we have a choice. We're certainly not going to win a battle with that many Imperial cruisers." Seeing the littlest witch glaring, he added diplomatically: "Not even with the Leewit at the nova guns."
That seemed to satisfy the Leewit's touchy sense of honor. So, once again, she and Goth made orange fire dance over the twisted pattern of black wires. Pausert found himself staring so hard at the pattern that his eyes felt as if they'd crossed. It was almost making sense.
The Venture leapt away from the Imperial Space Navy ships. The acceleration was fantastic—except . . .
Looking at his instruments, Pausert knew that it wasn't what the ship could do, or used to do, when the witches of Karres pushed her along with Sheewash Drive. They used to move faster than his instruments could cope with measuring. Now the Venture merely ambled along at about double her normal top speed. Enough to shake pursuit, certainly, but not enough to break through the cordon that the Imperial Space Navy was putting around the heart of the Empire.
"I'm sorry, Captain," said Goth tiredly. "That pushing through jelly feeling is back."
"I wish I could help," said Pausert, apologetically. "I've almost got that klatha pattern."
Goth shook her head. "You can't force klatha, Captain. It'll come when you're ready. I've got an idea that may work. They obviously know what the Venture looks like. But I could do a light-shift on her external appearance. Make her look like . . . say a Sirian passenger liner."
"Could work," said the Leewit. "They wouldn't fire on a passenger liner. Not a Sirian one, anyway."
"And we could get you to talk to them in Sirian, missy," said Vezzarn, "before you switch to Universum."
"Let's try it," said Pausert, decisively.
Hantis looked a little uncertain. "It's going to put a lot of strain on you, Goth," she pointed out.
The slim brown-haired witch shrugged. "I think I can do it, and you're supposed to be there before another fifteen ship's-days pass, Hantis. We've got to do something."
So they moved slowly forward, towards the globe of ships that the ISN seemed to have clustered around the spaceways to the inner worlds of the Empire.
"I don't see that the Nanites have very much left to take over," grumbled Pausert, as they came within detector range of yet another flotilla of Imperial Space Navy ships.
"You're quite wrong," said Hantis, coolly. "All they've done is to infiltrate the ISS and probably taken over one or two admirals. That gives them leverage but not control—and certainly not ownership. If they had full control over the Empire, they wouldn't bother to try to stop us at all. In a queer, backhanded sort of way, Captain, this is hugely encouraging."
Pausert decided she was probably right. However, if so . . .
"It also means," he said, "that we have to fight shy of actual shooting combat, even if we might win."
Hantis looked thoughtfully at Captain Pausert, as if looking right into him. The Nartheby Sprite was supposed to be a truth-hearer.
At length, she said, "Yes, Captain, I know you don't want to kill innocents. But the stakes here are very high."
"We'll try to avoid it," said Pausert, tersely. That issue had been worrying him for a while now.
A few minutes later he had other things to worry about.
The Leewit was giving the commodore of the Imperial Space ships some lip. In Sirian, fortunately, which they recognized but didn't understand. Then she switched to Universum. "Syrian registered passenger liner, Pride of Vorvian. What ship?"
"Ah. Pride of Vorvian. This is the ISN Huntinglea. Slow your acceleration. Please give us more details on your registry and port of origin."
"There are two ships peeling off into flanking position," hissed Goth.
"We're out of Shebreith's World, of course, registered on Lepper," said the Leewit, imitating perfectly the typical arrogance of Sirians. "That's in the Regency of Sirius, if your knowledge of astrography is up to the usual Imperial standards. Why do you wish to know?"
The ISN commodore ignored the implied insult. Wisely, Pausert thought. The Regency of Sirius was powerful enough—and certainly belligerent enough—to give pause even to the Empire.