The Gripping Hand (56 page)

"They trust us." Bury swept a hand to indicate the Warriors who now hung relaxed, their weapons bolstered, though still in place. Ally had turned enemy had turned ally, and no Warrior seemed surprised.

"Right. Glenda Ruth, what was the situation beyond the Sister when you left?"

"Not much different from when you came through.
Agamemnon
was on guard at the Alderson point leading out of the red dwarf system. There were three Motie ships waiting there with
Agamemnon
. Reinforcements from New Caledonia were expected, but hadn't arrived. But that was hundreds of hours ago."

"Thank you," Renner said.
But they didn't have any ships to send. Meaning we better assume there aren't any.
"They'll send their fleet through. What happens if we attack the Masters that stay behind?" Renner asked.

"They'll send for their Warriors."

"The whole fleet?"

Eudoxus spoke with the Master of Base Six. Another Master got involved, then two Warriors and an Engineer. Ultimately Eudoxus said, "As I surmised. Dividing one's forces is rarely a good idea. They will bring back all of their fleet."

"Nothing to gain. Why did they try it at all?"

"We surmise that they did not anticipate our use of Inner Base Six. We've already built up a respectable velocity for several hundred ships and an enormous fuel dump. They believe they have time to clear a path beyond the Sister. We can deny them that time. Still, Kevin—"

"Good. Then what we do is get in position, wait until their battle fleet goes through the Sister, and pounce."

"And when their fleet comes back?" Omar asked. "Several thousand ships."

"We cross that bridge when we come to it," Renner said.

"And hope the horse can sing," Glenda Ruth added, but she spoke so softly that no one but Renner could hear her.

First ponder, then dare.

 

—Helmuth von Moltke

 

No," Kevin Renner said. "Damn it, we're going into a battle!"

"I'm the only correspondent present," Joyce said. "An opportunity of a lifetime, and you can't say no!"

"You'll slow us down."

"Not I, Commodore Renner. With His Excellency aboard you're limited in how fast you can go to begin with."

"Horace . . ."

Bury was pacing a contorted path through
Sinbad
's crowded cabin: his last chance to inspect his altered ship. "Ms. Trujillo is correct, of course. Yet I must come. This is my ship, and I have messages to send, orders to give, that I can only give personally." Bury waved toward the new control panel. "
Sinbad
is better defended than she has ever been. And all that is irrelevant. Kevin, if we do not win, no one in the Empire is safe. Having Joyce aboard will not change that and will not lessen our chances."

"So who do we leave behind?"

"Jacob, I think. Nabil—"

The old man hissed in surprise. "Please, Excellency, I have served you for all of my life."

"Serve me now. Hold this message cube in safety aboard Base Six," Bury said. "Cynthia—"

"I think I should be with you, Excellency."

"Then we agree, because that was what I was about to say."

"All touching, but we have no time," Jacob Buckman said. "Horace, I think you're crazy, but good luck." He shook Bury's hand and held it an instant longer. "We—"

"Good-bye, Jacob."

"Um. Yes." He turned and joined Eudoxus and the others who would stay on Base Six.

"Mother isn't going to like this," Chris Blaine said. He took his sister by the shoulders. "Commander Rawlins is right. They need one of us here on
Sinbad
, and I'll be more useful on
Atropos
."

"If we don't bring this off, nobody's safe," Freddy Townsend said. "Anywhere. Not even Sparta."

Renner nodded to his new copilot. "I'm afraid you're right, Freddy. Okay, secure the airlocks. Everybody strap in."

Sinbad
was intensely crowded. The Motie Engineers had reworked
Sinbad
's interior and added a fuel tank outboard, where the add-on cabin had been. The control bridge held two couches for humans. It was bounded by collapsing doors that opened onto the main lounge. There they had built shaped acceleration couches for two Mediators and two Engineers, each with a Watchmaker, as well as couches for the other humans.
Sinbad
looked cluttered, with incomprehensible gadgetry attached at odd angles wherever there was space for it.

Cynthia had Bury tethered into his water bed. Bury watched the Moties settle in.

"They've all got the worm," Kevin said.

"Yes. And how does it affect these cursed little Motie brownies? We test it here for the first time!"

"We may need them for damage control," Renner said. "Omar, can you keep them from mucking about with the ship? The last thing I need is to have the control system rebuilt."

"They will do nothing without orders." Omar took his place next to Victoria of the Crimean Tartars. "Your
MacArthur
was safe until the Engineer died. A Medina Engineer, Kevin. Even then a Medina Master or Engineer could have saved her. But—"

"But we didn't allow any communications with the Engineer or the Watchmakers, and Medina was already fleeing from King Peter," Renner finished.

"Precisely. It was not all your doing. After the arrival of King Peter's ship it would have been very difficult for you to communicate with Medina."

Renner nodded to himself. Even then, thirty years ago, the Moties had known more than the humans suspected. And what did they know now? But there was work to do.

"Rawlins?" A screen showed the commander of
Atropos
watching
Sinbad
's chaos with concealed disapproval. "Let us get well clear before you move in and refuel," Renner said.

"Aye, aye. Godspeed, Commodore."

"Thank you."

Refuel only. No Motie would ever touch
Atropos
.
Paranoid, but am I paranoid enough? After thirty years with Horace Bury?
Renner said, "All right, Mr. Townsend, let's launch."

An hour after
Sinbad
's departure, Rawlins called to report launch from Inner Base Six with full tanks.

One of Renner's screens displayed
Atropos
as a black dot on a violet-white glare. Another display, unmagnified, showed violet dots weaving a slow pattern about
Sinbad
. Another showed Commander Rawlins sprawled in his acceleration chair, and Chris Blaine behind him in a similar couch. The strain of three-gee acceleration showed in both faces.

"First things," Renner said. "The Moties report that our message to the Crazy Eddie Fleet went through as planned. No way to know if the Admiral got it."

"But he ought to," Rawlins said.

"And no way to know what he'll do about it. Right," Renner said. "Anyway, for once things are pretty simple."

Rawlins lifted an eyebrow with some effort. "If so, it's the first time."

"Yeah. Bury and I have discussed the Khanate's options with the Moties, and we're all pretty much agreed on how things have to be. They've got two options. Plan A, they go through the Sister with everything they've got, hit whatever's waiting, and get through into Empire space, where they scatter. The Khanate is used to living off slim pickings: give them any kind of a system, and they'll soon be breeding like mad, if they can get their colony ships through."

Rawlins said, "What's to stop them? Why have a Plan B?"

"Well, they don't know they can get through," Renner said. "Or what they'll find when they do."

"They're risking everything they have," Glenda Ruth said. "Those colony ships are the Khanate. Everything they have, and they don't really know what they're facing. By now they'll have Terry and Jennifer, so they'll know
Agamemnon
was all there was a couple of hundred hours ago."

"Pity that engineer didn't just get himself killed," Rawlins said.

Freddy bridled; Renner spoke quickly to head him off. "What they don't know, because nobody on
Hecate
could know, is what reinforcements
Agamemnon
may have picked up."

"It won't be a lot," Rawlins said. "But maybe something. We did have some ships under repair, and this wouldn't be the first time Sinclair and his crew at the Yards passed a miracle."

"We're presuming they can talk to Terry and Jennifer," Freddy Townsend said. "The first Tartar group couldn't."

"The Khanate is richer than the Tartars," Glenda Ruth said. "They could have bought a half-trained Bury Fyunch(click) by now. I hope so."

"Why?" Rawlins asked.

"Jennifer admires Bury," Glenda Ruth said. "And she's impressed by the Empire. She'll be sure there'll be a big fleet with
Agamemnon
because she's got a romantic view of our competence. If they could talk to Joyce, it would be a different—"

"Now, Glenda Ruth, I don't—"

"We can hope," Renner said. "It may have happened that way. Whatever the Khanate learned from Jennifer Banda and Terry Kakumi, they're playing it plenty cautious. They're sending their warships through, but so far they've left their Masters behind. Those are still in Mote system with nothing but a corporal's guard."

Renner touched the screen controls and brought up images of the remaining Khanate ships. They were big ships, like civilian cruise ships in the Empire, and not one resembled any other. They were accompanied by a score of smaller ships.

"Two dozen—actually twenty-six of the big ships. That's the target. The thing is, a Master's family and entourage are a colony. Those are all the Masters and everything they need to survive, plants, symbiotes, useful Classes, everything. Each family a little colony.

"We go after those. Medina is vectoring everything onto those ships. So are East India and the Tartars. Byzantium has agreed to help. In about twenty hours, things are going to be plenty hot for the Khanate Masters."

"That part I understand. Fine by me," Rawlins said.

Blaine said, "It won't be a surprise attack by the time we hit them, but right now they don't know how fast we're coming. They won't have factored in the boost from Inner Base Six. The Medina Alliance is bigger than they thought, too, as they'll soon find out. So—what choices do they have? Either they pop through to get support from their war fleet, or they send for help. Quite possibly both, that is, they go through and then yelp for assistance, which means recalling the war fleet. That should buy some time for
Agamemnon
."

"Yeah, it just might," Rawlins said. He looked thoughtful. "If they do that, maybe we can reinforce Balasingham in time to do some good."

"Good thinking," Renner said.

"What's Plan B, Commodore?"

Renner said, "Our best guess is that the Khanate's Plan B is the same as Medina's. If they can't blast past
Agamemnon
, then they come back here, put together a big alliance that can defeat Medina, and offer to negotiate with the Empire."

"So the important thing is to see they don't get past
Agamemnon
. Other than that—do we care who wins?" Rawlins asked.

Kevin Renner had never thought of that at all.

"The Empire may not care," Bury said. "But we do."

Rawlins frowned.

"I'll second that," Freddy Townsend said.

Both men were civilians. Rawlins couldn't quite suppress a patronizing tone. "Now, I know you like these Moties, but Imperial policy is not to get involved with the internal affairs of candidate systems."

"We all know it happens," Freddy said.

"Maybe, but this is at a policy level a hell of a lot higher than any of us," Rawlins said. "Even with the Blaine heirs aboard."