by Larry Niven
"Fuel," Kevin Renner said without turning around. "They must be desperate for fuel by now. They're trading time for fuel."
"The rest of them turned off their drives. That lasted for hours. Then we got this." Freddy put the cursor on a tight pattern of blue-white points, like a cityscape or the work lights on a half built factory. "And that's been following us, changing as it goes."
Again Kevin spoke without turning. "We think those ships are all linked up into one framework. They'd have broken up some ships to build it. It took them ten hours. Then they came after us."
"If Empire ships tried that, they'd come apart like nose wipes in the rain," Freddy said. "Even so, they're only doing a fifth of a gee. Hundreds of ships are following them from Bandit cluster, linking up."
"Fuel ships, of course. I bet they're dropping stuff on the way, too. Empty ships. Spare troops. They'll keep some framework to make their structure stronger. Unless I'm crazy. Jesus, Freddy, I wish we could see that thing better."
"It looks a lot like Vermin City, backlit," Freddy said. "Not much pattern, and that changes every minute. Okay, Joyce, Group A is still in the lead. They'll reach us first, yes? We have to outrace them."
"First, but with dry tanks. Group A can't maneuver," Kevin said. "That's not going to hurt them, unfortunately, because they've guessed where we're going. Group B might get to us late, but with fuel to maneuver."
"You're guessing, Commodore."
"But it's what Moties would do," Glenda Ruth said. "The ships they start with won't be the ships that attack you."
"Keep a watch. I want to close my eyes for an hour."
"Yessir. Hold it! Commodore?"
Drive lights flared where the cursor lay. "I see it," Kevin said. "See if you can get a better picture. I have the watch."
"What is it, Kevin?" Bury demanded.
"Won't know for an hour," Renner said.
They were building a sketchy dinner when they heard Freddy whoop. Joyce reset the oven before she followed Glenda Ruth.
Freddy was grinning. "Sanity check. We've been right all along. What do you see?"
Behind the tight pattern of blue lights that was Khanate Group B was a looser pattern, a score of drive lights well spread out and shifting in intensity. Kevin said, "Two of those just went out. Shot down by our guys?"
Freddy looked. "Our allies aren't anywhere near. It's possible of course. Warriors are just bloody damned good at killing...Enhanced view, Screen Two."
"Right. Khanate rescue ships, Freddy. They're towing that cylinder now. Rescue or salvage. And the rest are still coming... and there goes another pair. They're merging. Group B must be leaving garbage and personnel clear across the sky."
"That'll hurt ‘em."
"It will if our allies have anything to say about it. They're losing mass, losing numbers, losing firepower, all to get the fuel to reach us. You agree? It's us the Warrior ships are after. The Empire ships."
"Yes sir."
"I should talk to Atropos."
Joyce found the next hour even more confusing. It was frustrating: she had her news equipment, nothing was being kept from her, but she wasn't getting a story she could tell.
"The only thing that still concerns me is this," she heard Renner telling Atropos. "When we go through the Crazy Eddie point, we have to know that no Master ship has given the Warrior ships new orders. Otherwise we'll be abandoning the Mote system to the Khanate."
And that made sense, but how to lay it out for a viewer? If we lose, you'll never know it. Even we may never know. If we returned via New Cal and that little orange star, a year from now we could be talking to a replacement Eudoxus speaking for a replacement Medina. All Moties look alike, but these are the good guys and-?
"Maybe later," she said to Bury. "Maybe I'll understand later."
"And perhaps you never will," Bury said.
"If we lose-"
"Yes, of course, but even if we win. It has happened to me." And he launched into another tale of his terrible past, a skewed view of Empire history that Joyce could never have bought with pearls and rubies.
There had been incidents. Sometimes the Khanate fleet beamed laser light at them, forcing Sinbad and Atropos to take turns shadowing each other. Renner and Townsend had at first considered this a mere annoyance.
"Probably tryin' to distract us," Freddy said in one of the rare intervals he was off duty. Commodore Renner kept Freddy Townsend busy. When he did get a break, he often used the opportunity to talk to Horace Bury; and when that happened, Joyce invited herself into the party.
"They've scattered their fleet," Joyce said. "Some of the ships used all their power and now can't keep up. Why would they do that, Freddy?"
Freddy said, "I can tell you what they're doing, but why is out of my department. You'll be famous even if you don't know why."
Horace Bury chuckled. "I should instruct my brokers to invest in your network. You will have the highest ratings in Imperial history, I think."
"A few weeks ago I would have resented your saying that," Joyce said. "And even more resented it if you'd actually bought stock in IBC."
"And now?"
Joyce shrugged. "It's your ship, and we're all on it."
"Besides, his brokers will already have made the investments," Glenda Ruth said.
"Cautiously. They'll buy too little," Bury said. "After all, it was not certain that we would be bringing Miss Trujillo to the Mote."
"Or that we'd come out alive," Joyce said.
"Well, if we don't, it won't matter if the investment's no good," Freddy said.
"Oh, Freddy, that's silly," Glenda Ruth said. "His Excellency- "Acceleration warning. "Action stations."
"Oh, Lor', what now?" Freddy demanded.
"It's a big mess of junk under high velocity," Renner said.
Most of the leading Khanate ships were in deceleration mode at high thrust. Most of them. A few were burning fuel at a prodigious rate and converting that to energy beamed at Sinbad; and out of the glare of that beam came a dark mass on a collision course.
"We'll have to dodge," Freddy said. Sinbad began to turn.
"Yeah. Horace, Group A ran up to maximum velocity and then stripped their ships. It could be mostly fuel tanks. Freddy's turning the ship."
"It won't cost us too much fuel."
"No, but I should- Atropos calling, good." Joyce heard Renner setting a direction for the other ship. Sinbad and Atropos would diverge.
Four minutes later-the lightspeed gap-Group A's junk pile pulled into two masses. They'd armed it with motors. Freddy spoke of raping his lizard; Renner called Atropos and ordered a laser barrage.
Four minutes later the junk pile flared with the light of Atropos's barrage. An instant later it flashed a hundred times as bright! The camera overloaded and burned out before Freddy could enfold Sinbad in the Langston Field. Glenda Ruth was cowering with an arm over her eyes, and Joyce was waiting for glowing spots to disappear. She knew better than to interrupt Freddy or Kevin.
Freddy spoke anyway. "They had a mirror. The clever little nightmares waited for our beam and then threw it back at us. It's way dimmer now, but they're still throwing sunlight at us. It's nothing, Glenda Ruth. Just another goddamn nuisance attack."
And more to understand. Medina Alliance ships trailed the Khanate fleet, darted in toward it with a reckless expenditure of resources, fired lasers and missiles, then darted away again, fuel gone, coasting away from the battle to be rescued by unarmed ships from other clans.
"Another major development," Joyce dictated. "There's a big fleet, two hundred ships and more, trailing the Khanate war fleet. They're rescuing ships that run out of fuel. Khanate and Alliance ships alike, they're retrieving stragglers. We thought they were Khanate allies, but they're not. They're neutrals.
"We've changed Mote politics like nothing else in their history. A hundred families and clans in cooperation, hundreds more gathering their strength, but all of them staying uncommitted.
"Our Motie
allies say this is a good sign.
"Joyce Mei-Ling Trujillo, Imperial Post-Tribune Syndicate."
"We are ninety minutes from the Alderson point everyone calls the Crazy Eddie point. The Moties are getting nervous. No one likes Jump shock much, but our Motie friends really dread it. We can hope the prospect makes the Khanate Warriors nervous.
"The situation is this: Sinbad and Atropos are on course for the Jump point and decelerating. The leading elements of a war fleet from Byzantium, the most powerful of our allies, have already reached the Crazy Eddie point and are standing by for orders.
"Meanwhile, things are happening in the pursuing fleet." Joyce zoomed in on a screen.
The structure they'd been calling Khanate B was under heavy deceleration. The tremendous junk pile was no longer a single object. The bright sparks of fusion drives were separating in pairs.
Another screen showed a blurry picture relayed from Atropos: two Khanate ships docked and remained docked until one reconstructed ship began to decelerate, leaving part of its mass as debris.
"We don't know what this means," Joyce said. Reporterspeak for I don't know. Kevin and Freddy had given over arguing about it, but Renner had taken time off to talk with Bury. Marooned face up in a water bed at high gee, Horace Bury could at least use the entertainment. Joyce turned the camera on them; they didn't notice.
"So what have we got?" Renner said. "Group A boosted to high velocity, coasted, and is now under deceleration. Classic. They'd get to the Crazy Eddie point about the same time we do, but we can fix that."
Bury wasn't asking, so Joyce did. "How?"
Renner's glance showed his irritation. "Low thrust deceleration now, high thrust later, brings us in sooner. They can't play that game. They're at max thrust with no spare fuel."
"But high thrust-"
"As Allah wills, Joyce. What of Group 13, Kevin?"
"Aye, there's the rub. They never turned off their drives. They did low thrust forever, right up to midpoint turnover, and dropped mass every step of the way. Fuel tanks, Engineers, that mirror thing, who knows? It looks like they'll get to the Crazy Eddie point just behind Group A, but with plenty of fuel to spare. If we miss our Jump, I'd say we're dead. So, we're forced to jump."
"If so, Kevin, they've made themselves very vulnerable to Medina. The Medina forces will face seven hundred Khanate ships strung in a long line. Is this a winning strategy? They must do more than silence all human voices. They must control the Sister. When the Empire comes again, the Khanate must speak first."
"You're missing something," said Glenda Ruth Blaine.
An odd source, but- Kevin said, "Okay. What?"
"I don't know." She perched on the edge of the water bed and scratched behind Ali Baba's ear. "But they're Warriors. They're following a Master's orders, but that doesn't make them silly. Remember their mission and look again."
Cynthia knew how to prepare Turkish coffee. Bury sipped his and said, "Fuel matters here. The Khanate ships are depleted. Are we? Base Six is following us, of course."
"They'll be a hundred and ten hours late. They can rescue any ship that ran dry, but that doesn't help us fight. Still, we could refuel from a Medina ship. I don't think we even need to, And we'll go through the Crazy Eddie point at three hundred per, just like last time, with the East India ships to triangulate for us."
"Ah!"
Cynthia snapped alert. "Excellency?"
"I'm all right, Cynthia. Kevin, the debris. The mass, the junk left over when two ships merged at a thousand klicks per second. Set Atropos to tracking the course of the junk. You'll find that a mass equivalent to over a hundred spacecraft is on course to pass straight through the Crazy Eddie point just when we would like to do that."
"Okay, lie down already. Freddy?"
"I'm on it." Freddy Townsend was working his control board hard. A screen lit: Rawlins's talker.
Now why am I less scared than I was? Renner wondered. Because my people are getting the right answers? No, more; because Horace Bury's mind is alive and alert.
While Freddy was at work, Renner said, "Omar, I need that debris blocked somehow. The only ships that have to go through the Crazy Eddie point are Atropos and Sinbad. Will you inform Medina's Masters?"
"I will learn," Omar said.
Now no one had time to explain things, and her questions were distracting. Joyce could only record everything and hope to make sense of it later. "We've heard about the ‘fog of war,' " Joyce dictated. "It's all too real. I don't know what's going on, and neither does anyone else, not really. Sometimes you just have to make choices and stick with them."
With twenty minutes to go, Kevin gave the order to strap in. The Khanate ships' stream of high-V debris couldn't be far away.
"I have a feed from Atropos," Freddy said. "On Screen Three."
Star-sprinkled black. Kevin said, "I don't...One bluer than the others. That stellar background ...? Freddy, it's a Master ship that's just popped through. Now prove me wrong."
Medina called. "We have a Khanate Master ship just emerged from the Sister. One ship only. It made no attempt to communicate, so our man has fired on it. He reports an overpowered shield."
"One lousy Master. That's all it takes," Renner said. "We're dead."
Bury was chuckling. "Why, Kevin?"
"This whole thing falls apart if the Khanate Warriors get the right orders. Here's a Master, just in time, and hell, it's even too late for us to abort!"
Bury was laughing with some effort. "Yes, Kevin, they can send orders to their Warriors, but what would they say? What can they learn in time, across a lightspeed gap of thirty-eight minutes?"
Medina was still speaking, had said something about the barrage. Renner hadn't caught it. "What did he say, Freddy?"
"The Warriors will solve it. Hold to the plan."
Pity Omar hadn't been at the comm. The lightspeed gap was already too great to get any answers. Eight minutes. Everyone strapped in? "Joyce! Strap in!"
"Okay, Skipper." She'd been standing on her chair to get altitude, photographing them at work. She dropped and strapped in, cheerful as hell, hugging the camera like her own baby.
The Khanate Master ship was still in view, glowing fiercely bright in green. Medina's forces must be bathing her in energy. She'd never get a message through that.
The feed from twenty East India ships was providing good triangulation: he would hit the point dead center. Bury was doing savasama, but his heartbeat and brain-wave displays were all over the place. Scared. Calling his attention to it would be worse than useless. Behind Sinbad a darkness was growing... black dots crowding out the stars. What the hell?
Two minutes. And weird lighting effects among the black dots, sparks in rainbow colors.
The Byzantium fleet! They were blocking the Khanate barrage, catching the stuff with their Langston Fields.
And the Crazy Eddie point was here, now, unseen, passing at three hundred klicks per second as Freddy touched the contact.
Orange murk looked in through the screens. Renner, bemused and groggy, enjoyed the appearance of a mechanical hell in which men and monsters writhed in torment and confusion. But his memory was already organizing itself, and he barked, though it came out a croak, "Townsend."
"Renner. Captain. Get us behind Atropos?"
"When I start the drive."
Sinbad was coming alive again, but slowly. Now Afro pos was a black near-circle against white light, unmistakable, a few hundred miles distant... almost toward the core of Murcheson's Eye, according to Sinbad's instruments.
Fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes to get ready, then all hell.
There was a lot to do, but some of it would have to wait for the Motie Engineers, and they were flat out of action.
Communications. "Atropos, this is Sinbad. Atropos, this is Sinbad, Sinbad, Sinbad..."
It would just be dawning on Joyce Mei-Ling Trujillo that they were inside a star. Wonder and terror and a reflex reach for the camera. Glenda Ruth was a basket case, no
better off than the Moties. "Atropos, this is Sinbad..." Others were moving. Renner craned his head around. At least Bury wasn't thrashing. "Atropos, this is Sinbad..."
Bury was too still. "Cynthia!"
She was already loose, pulling herself against him, fingers on his throat. "No pulse."
"Do something. Sorry, of course you will." The drive test lights blinked green. Renner enabled the drive. "Move her, Townsend."
"Aye, aye. Acceration. Stand by."
"Sinbad, this is Atropos."
"Blaine. Good. Situation unchanged as of our Jump time."
"Unchanged as of your Jump time. Acknowledged, sir."
"Report."
"Yes, sir. We're broadcasting on Fleet hailing frequencies. Nobody's shot at us yet. That may be a good sign."
"Not shooting, but not answering."
"No answer yet, Commodore."
Where the hell was Weigle and the Crazy Eddie Squadron? Silly question. Weigle could be anywhere. "Keep trying. We'll hide behind you when we get there."
"Right. I'll leave the channel open."
More movements behind him. Cynthia had reattached the medical systems to Bury. He thrashed suddenly, and quieted. Electric shock. Still dead. Skeletal metal arms lifted from the box, for the first time in Kevin's memory, and began to work on Horace Bury.
Ali Baba howled in terror.
"Victoria. Glenda Ruth. Anyone," Kevin shouted.
"Yes, Kevin." Renner turned joyfully. It was Bury's voice! It was Omar.
Not Omar's fault. Renner said, "When the Engineers recover, make sure the Flinger is ready and loaded, and keep double checking the Field generator." They had rebuilt the Field generator, altered it so that it would not expand and present a larger surface area to the wispy super hot star stuff around them. Now it matched all the Crazy Eddie Squadron ships, including Atropos.
"Stand clear!" Cynthia shouted. "Glenda Ruth, take Ali Baba! Clear!" Horace Bury thrashed again. Once more.