The Gripping Hand (41 page)

"Any Motie family could learn the truth by observation and deduction," Bury said. "But Byzantium already knew. Perhaps Byzantium grew unhappy with the notion that Medina would command the Sister, so far from Byzantium's sway. Then Byzantium might seek allies easier to dominate."

"Ah."

"Only a passing thought. Finish your tale, Eudoxus."

The Motie needed a moment to react. "Tale? . . . Easily told. We were already embattled when East India signaled that a token ship intended for the Crazy Eddie point had failed to pop through to the Eye. We sent tokens along the arms of the arc where the Sister was to be expected. An expedition of ten ships was launched after, provisioned and manned well in advance, and all running from the firefight with the Khanate fleet. The rest of the Medina fleet followed in a guarded retreat, abandoning our little comet, intending to take possession of Crazy Eddie's Sister.

"By then East India Company's neutrino gauges and telescopes must have seen the action. They have reason for complaint, as you point out. They took our territory by force. Then they donated resources to the exercise: ten years' or more worth of their pitiful token ships. Now they learn that the Sister is not where they were told, but Medina's fleet is in place. They sent ships.

"None of this surprised us much. But when the Crimean Tartars fleet followed us, we were taken by surprise. Medina expected the entire Khanate fleet to remain with the comet. When our first ship disappeared, the Tartars were seen to correct course. They must have known what they were doing."

Jacob Buckman's head popped up at Renner's ear. "They knew better than Medina."

Renner turned. "Talk to me."

"Why did the Khanate attack now? Now puts the Tartars in just the right position to take the Sister. It looks like some genius among the Tartars—"

"Figured out exactly when the Curdle would collapse. Uh-huh. Eudoxus, you concur?"

"It's not my field, Captain Renner. I'll ask. Or they might have been told."

"By whom?"

"By anyone! Do you believe I have told you of all the families here?"

"Okay. Go on."

"The Tartars destroyed two of the ten Medina expedition ships. One missed the Sister. The rest of us reached the orange dwarf. Our fleet tried to hold the Sister until Byzantium's reinforcements could arrive, but these were not expected soon, or with confidence. Mote Beta is too far. But they held long enough for us all to pop through into an ongoing battle."

'But not long enough to protect
Hecate
."

"No. And that brings us to present time. In ten hours we will reach Inner Base Six."

Rebellious angels are worse than unbelieving men

 

—St. Augustine,
City of God

 

Base Six had changed. Shaped charges blasted most of the un-worked mass of what had been a comet into shards. A snowstorm of dirty ice and ammonia and rock, all useful ores until the advent of the Sister, expanded in the direction of the battle raging at the Sister. If the detritus didn't shield Base Six from weapons, it would at least blind all watchers. Only Medina's Masters would guess what was happening here, and they only because they had shared in the planning.

The white sphere that remained was colder than a comet need be. East India had known of the refineries that made hydrogen and the ships that took it away, but had never known of the heat pumps. The hydrogen hadn't all been used to fuel ships, and most of the ships hadn't gone all the way out to Medina Trading.

Medina Base Six had become a compact hydrogen iceball with a shell of foamed hydrogen ice. Thus insulated and minutely cooled by evaporation, it would hold its cold for decades; possibly centuries. Buried in the iceball was an industrial-sized Empire-style shield generator that had served all six inner bases.

Base Six was too close to the action, too vulnerable.

Its three dozen ships were mostly disassembled. They always had been, always visibly under repair. East India's visiting Master had complained of this, but had never seen the significance of all those dismounted rocket motors.

Now Medina's Engineers mounted forty-one fusion motors in a ring aft of the half-klick snowball. In hours, Base Six had become a warship. It began accelerating immediately, outward, toward Medina Trading.

Most of Base Six's ships, and the hydrogen they carried, had traveled only as far as the odd-shaped black bubble Mustapha thought of as the Storehouse: odd shaped to avoid detection by radar and other means. Within the Storehouse was a growing store of hydrogen, and a population of Warriors that did not grow because tournaments kept their numbers steady.

Now troopships full of Warriors moved to rendezvous with Base Six. Some would land, some would orbit.

Base Six was an armed carrier and fuel dump and warship, the heart of a fleet capable of defending whatever treasure had emerged from Crazy Eddie's Sister.

Sinbad
accelerated at .8 gravities, comfortable enough for Mo-ties, not too great a strain on Bury. Behind them the Mote was not much more than a star. It had a barely discernible disk and was just too bright for unprotected human eyes. Murcheson's Eye was a dull red smear off beyond the Mote.

Four Motie ships, with Eudoxus in the lead; then
Sinbad
, closely followed by
Atropos
; finally, four more Motie warships.

"That's all I can detect, Captain Renner," Commander Rawlins said. "I have the general impression there are more ships moving around out there. We get a sudden detection flash, but nothing we can lock onto. Like . . . stealthed ships that change shape?"

"Thank you."

"Sir. We watched the Motie ships during the battle. This gives us another look."

"Have any conclusions?"

"They're pretty good. High performance. We saw nothing but gun actions, no torpedoes. Their ships tend to be small. We could certainly defeat any four of what we've seen so far, barring big surprises."

"I would not rule out surprises."

"No, sir, I sure don't. Captain, can you explain what's going on?"

"Do I detect a note of pathos? All right. It's time for a council of war while we have secure communications." Renner thumbed the intercom. "Please have Lieutenant Blaine come up, and if His Excellency is up to a conversation, he ought to listen in.

"Rawlins, we're not going to Mote Prime. They're out of it. The important players are all offplanet civilizations, and there are a lot of those. The one that was best prepared for the new I-point is Medina Trading, ruled by Caliph Almohad, and his chief negotiator is Eudoxus, the Mediator we're following, all names chosen by Eudoxus. Okay so far?"

"Yes, sir. Who are we fighting?"

"There are a whole bunch of factions." Renner's fingers danced. "I made notes. Here."

"Got it." Rawlins's eyes focused offstage. "Oh boy."

"And that's just the important ones."

"Khanate's got the comet . . . nobody cares . . . the Tartars hold the new Jump point, and a ship . . . oh, my God."

"Yeah.
Hecate
is a civilian ship piloted by the Honorable Frederick Townsend with Chris Blaine's sister, Glenda Ruth Fowler Blaine, aboard as passenger."

"Oh, my God. Captain, Lord Blaine isn't going to be happy about
that!
Are we going to rescue them?"

"Could we?"

Rawlins was quiet for a moment. "I don't know, but I'd sure as hell hate to go back without trying."

"I see your point, but Eudoxus doesn't think we have enough ships even with yours. Right now the best evidence is that they're safe, and our Motie allies are trying to deal with the Tartars. Meanwhile, we're headed for a Medina Traders base. Until recently it was a joint base with East India Trading, but apparently there's been a readjustment of that alliance."

"Readjustment?"

"That's the word Eudoxus used."

"Somebody else to fight?"

"Maybe."

Chris Blaine came to the bridge and took a place near Renner.

Commander Rawlins said, "Are things usually this complicated with Moties? Captain, what the hell is our objective?"

"Good question," Renner said. "First is to survive. Second, get Glenda Ruth Blaine back. She's got a cargo that may change things . . . may affect our third objective, which is bringing order out of chaos."

"Cargo?"

Renner said, "Lieutenant Blaine?"

"Yes, sir. As Captain Renner said, there's another objective to consider. The Moties are loose, and that's got to be dealt with, by us or a battle fleet."

"Only there's no battle fleet." Renner sighed. "Okay, Chris. The cargo." Renner caught Cynthia's eye; he negotiated for coffee.

Blaine nodded. "Commander Rawlins, just how much do you know about Moties?"

"Not much. I skipped the classes on Motie society back in the blockade squadron. Studied their tactics, but I didn't see any need to understand them, since all we were supposed to do was kill them."

"Yes, sir. You must have a crewman who was that curious. Find him. Meanwhile, I lecture.

"To begin with, we all know Moties are a strongly differentiated species. Masters are the only Motie class that really counts; whereas the Mediators do all the communicating. Mediators are so likable that we tend to forget that they're not really in charge, that they take orders from Masters."

"But not always," Renner said.

"Okay, consider the three Moties sent to the Empire. Two of King Peter's Mediators, with an older Master related to King Peter but not previously in charge of Jock and Charlie. That gave Jock and Charlie some leeway. They didn't have to obey every order Ivan gave, although they usually did. There must have been rules, but I never learned them. Ivan only lasted six years, and then they were on their own.

"I once asked Jock what Ivan's last orders were. Jock told me, 'Act in such a way as to decrease the risk to our kind in the long term. Keep each other sane. Make us look good! I think she left out considerable detail. And Mediators would lie to us if Ivan had told them to.

"So here we are back in Mote system and everything we know is a little bit wrong. We're dealing with a space civilization, not a planet. All the Classes will be a little different, some a lot different, even including the Masters. Motie civilization is old. The asteroids have been settled for over a hundred thousand years, time enough for
evolutionary
changes, and we know the Moties have used radical breeding programs on themselves as well."

"Like Saurons," Rawlins said.

"Well, not really," Renner said. "Different objectives, different reasons."

"Yes, sir." Rawlins didn't sound convinced.

"We've had one piece of luck, maybe," Blaine said. "Horace Bury's Mediator apparently left King Peter entirely and sold her services to the highest bidder. Bury-trained Mediators seem to be swapped around out here like money."

"Must make His Excellency happy," Rawlins said. "Is that the reason for all the Arab names they give themselves?"

Chris's forefinger wagged. "No, no! Skipper, these names were all chosen by Medina's Bury-trained Mediator, Eudoxus, probably for their emotional impact on Horace Bury. Tartars are enemies of Arabs. Medina Traders sounds good to an Arab. Eudoxus was a famous Levantine trader who operated out of the Red Sea and discovered the original Arab trade route to India."

"Ho, ho," Rawlins said. "And of course Bury knew that."

"Of course. There is another thing. Motie Masters don't really form societies the way we do. The subordinate classes generally obey the Masters, but Masters don't have any instinct to obey each other, and whatever it is about humans that makes us form societies is largely missing in Masters. Motie Masters will cooperate, and one will take a subordinate position to another, but as far as I can make out, the only loyalties are to a gene line. There's no loyalty at all to any abstraction like an empire, or a city. That's more like an Arab civilization than it's like the Empire, which may account for the popularity of Bury Mediators. Mister Bury is likely to understand things here better than any of us."