Glen Cook - The Dragon Never Sleeps

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."

WarAvocat was pressed politically. He had presented the available evidence to Kole Marmigus, the Dictats, and the Avocats. Marmigus and the Deified Pursole Styles, dct. 3 and former WarAvocat, agreed immediate action was indicated. Hereo Jaspyon, dct. 7, and the Avocats wanted to head for Starbase Dengaida. Now! They refused to believe a beaten species could pose a continued threat—despite the Ku's example.

They did not want to believe.

Aleas had broken her silence to warn him that Makarska Vis had come out of seclusion. She led a cabal dead set against handing the Ku anything but his head.

"Damn! I thought we were a sensible, pragmatic people." He was talking to himself, thinking about resigning again.

There would be no easy way out. The options were fading. He would be forced to put his immortality on the line one way or another.

Someone tapped on his door, uncertainly, then with resolution. "Enter." He was startled. "Midnight!"

"Hello, Hanaver," she said in a tiny, frightened voice.

Turtle supervised the dismantling of the vane personally. That was not difficult. The rider had been designed for easy repairs under poor conditions, in expectation the work would be done by inexperienced people with common tools.

They had the dud out within the hour. Turtle prepared a timer and destructor charge and hurled it toward the Guardship's horizon. It flew on till it encountered the screen, slid around the curve, finally blew.

Under cover of that distraction, Turtle moved ship five hundred meters, to a better hiding place.

— 142 —

WarAvocat met Provik in an empty fighter nest. Klass and Midnight accompanied him. Blessed Tregesser and Provik's girlfriend completed the other party. Midnight bustled off to Tregesser. WarAvocat maintained a face of stone, his suspicion that she had visited him to soften his heart confirmed.

Provik said, "He didn't expect you to come to him."

"The political situation has devolved into the grotesque. I have to do something quickly."

Provik's girlfriend muttered, "How many times do we have to kill her before she stays dead?" She and Klass glowered at one another.

WarAvocat finally understood. The Tregessers had replication technology. Nothing else explained the mysteries so neatly. He had not seen the obvious because it was not supposed to be there.

The fleet desperately needed newer, more flexible minds. His own generation had brains set in concrete.

"Klass. Compose yourself. We're not animals. There's more at stake than your outrage. Provik, take me to him."He had come prepared to go outside, though he had not known what to do about Midnight. There were no EVA suits for winged people.

Provik solved that with a fighter pilot's blow bag, a poor man's escape pod. They closed her into one, inflated it, and Blessed Tregesser towed it like a child's balloon once they were outside.

WarAvocat's heartbeat rose. His blood coursed as it had not in millennia. Going to meet the enemy... This was not the same as standing in WarCentral moving pawns who actually did meet the enemy eyeball to eyeball.

"WarAvocat is coming himself."

Turtle was astonished. Then suspicious. Why would the man do that? "Watch him every second."

"The female soldier is with him, Kez Maefele."

"Watch her twice as close. She's twice as dangerous."

They came to the rider's bridge. WarAvocat glanced around. "Are we this much trouble?" He was a tired old man, moving slowly.

"You are."

"To be honored by the enemy is a greater accomplishment than to be honored by one's own, I suppose. It's been an interesting few years. I'm glad you didn't want it all."

"The alternatives were less appealing. Lupo says you had great success at S. Alisonica and T. Rogolica."

"Few got away."

"Excellent. I hope the blow to your pride wasn't insupportable."

"My pride is fine. It couldn't have been managed on a cooperative basis. But I have to live with the political consequences."

"I imagine Makarska Vis is exercised."

"You imagine right. And there are others after my blood. There have been changes since you left."

"Yes? So. I gather you see a way to break our deadlock."

"A basic approach. Providing you have a functional escape pod."

"I do." Turtle was intrigued. His gut feeling was that Strate did mean to let them go. Why? Some political angle?