Kri’nni almost cooed with pleasure. “Are you telling me you have a tap on the top tincan itself?”
“Afraid not. On another Cyber, which is part of Cray’s inner group. They’re linked mentally about one-quarter of the time. So I happen to know all sorts of things, such as how many Fasts Cray is using, what sector they’re jumping from and at what angle, and when and where they’ll most likely arrive. Naturally, this information has been shared with the other squadron leaders, although not with any MC personnel at Groombridge.”
Kri’nni was amused. “You are resourceful, aren’t you, Mart? On occasions like this, I’m strongly reminded of your late, much-lamented great-grandfather, whom I was able to watch operate on some very louche PVNs.”
Mart didn’t known there were business-agent PVNs made of Jat Kell. And thinking about it, he strongly doubted there were. Was Kri’nni ragging him, or was the drug ...?
“Now, tell me truly, Mart. What could be of such concern that it draws you away from all that aggressive masculine camaraderie? Don’t lie and say it was this little present for Kri’nni?”
“Do you like it?” he asked, hating himself for asking.
“It’s nice,” she repeated.
“Nice? Curl-voles are nice! Thwwing-lottery jackpots are nice!”
“You’re right, Mart. This Zalo-Hedrezine is ... very nice! You wouldn’t have a smidgen more? No? Forget it, Mart. It’s got a bit of a time delay. I’m feeling it continue working.”
Maybe it would be enough. He had certainly planned it with care.
“So, tell me, Mart. This concern of yours?”
Mart hesitated a second, more to buy time for the drug to work than anything else, since he already knew exactly what he was going to say.
“I’d prefer not to go into details, Kri’nni. But it’s come to my attention that a new nest is in the making on Deneb XII. I think you’ll agree with me that should the outcome of tomorrow’s action be as we hope and plan, the City will need as many allies as possible within the rotting empire of Wicca Eighth.”
“You can already count on the Arth.s and Delph.s of the Orion Spur Federation.”
“The Delph.s are solid. But the O. Spur Arthropods don’t possess the qualities required for a true Three Species realliance. The only Arth.s which would automatically have those qualities, the only Arth.s who would draw all the others in the Arth. Diaspora to accept the alliance must come from a bona fide Bella=Arth. nest. And the only one of those in existence today is on Deneb XII,” Mart explained, as though she didn’t know. “The same ones who rescued Diad and Rinne!” he continued.
“I suppose,” Kri’nni admitted. “They certainly seem to have been both friendly and useful. Even if they are propelessly hovincial.”
Although her voice continued strong and unwavering, Kri’nni’s consonants were being exchanged, a sign of strong Soma inebriation. Even more important, she hadn’t even noticed that she was pulling in her lower quarters.
“I like them. They like me!” Mart went on. “They’re willing to work with the City. But they’re not a real nest yet!”
“Mell te,” she said. Tell me.
“What they lack is an appropriate queen.” Mart watched for any specific reaction. When none came, he went on, “Without the right queen, they can neither be a true nest nor obtain the loyalty of other Arth.s.”
“Pat a whity,” Kri’nni said, trying to be clever – but missing. What a pity.
“Seems their queen has to be from the First nest line. From Algenib Delta III. You wouldn’t know anything about that tradition, would you, Kri’nni? Wait a minute Sol Rad.! Aren’t you of that lineage?”
“Sure am. First of the Nest Best! So?” Her lower quarters had slid forward off the sofa, almost doubling under her.
“So! Maybe you’d agree to be their queen?”
Kri’nni tried her version of a Hume laugh. It sounded ghastly now. “Gofret it, Tarm! They’re all too prokking grovincial for us thady.”
“Might be fun, Kri’nni. Eve knows it would be prestigious. Mother of the new nest. Queen of Deneb XII and the whole grokking Bella=Arth. Diaspora. You’ll go down in history, be adored by all the pupae and larvae. Think of it! All you have to do is sit around ingesting Sopa-sugar and laying eggs all day. Your every whim, your every hint of a desire attended to. Hundreds of stalwart warriors poking their pamphrers into your egg-pouch every few minutes and stimulating you while they stir up what’s inside. Kri’nni? ... Kri’nni?”
“Deve-amned prokking grovinc!” she sputtered, completely folded now, her palps splayed out beside her at bizarre angles, one antenna whipping around feebly in smaller and smaller circles.
When she was completely still, Mart stepped outside the suite and tapped into his ear-set.
“The lady’s ready!”
The Bella=Arth. team led by Ckw’esso and Mcr’ass’t were efficient and fast. They had already detached the top of the suite earlier. Now they simply craned it out of place from above, lowered the netting, and rolled Kri’nni into it. She flailed weakly a few times, then settled in.
Before she vanished from sight into the Bella=Arth. freighter’s gondola, she moaned, and Mart thought he heard his name called.
“Kri’nni?” he asked. “You feeling all right?”
“Zalo-Hedrezine,” she muttered. “Nery vice, Tarm!”
For Cray’s fleet, the action began with an accident.
Cybers coming out of Fast jump reacted differently than Humes. The seemingly instantaneous folding and unfolding in order to pass through space/time usually disoriented Humes for anywhere from two seconds to six minutes, depending upon their jump experience. Something different affected every Cyber built: a complete and incomprehensible anomaly. It required at least one full minute Sol Rad. for the Cyber to totally check through each circuit and chip until the anomaly could be discovered. It never was discovered, of course, but by then the Cyber had time to realize what had just happened, to remember that this was the side effect of a Fast jump.
The effect upon Cray 12,000 was the same, with the additional difference that, with Cray’s consciousness, Cray also felt a bit of Hume disorientation. For that reason, as well as for another, more strategic reason pertaining to the physics of those short-range Fast jumps used in interstellar warfare, Cray had programmed the fleet of 120 to arrive at the red binary solar system of Groombridge XXXIV inside a dodecahedral formation, with each spaced to arrive about twenty seconds apart. Three Fasts would arrive near a specific point and immediately form a triad that was designed to “hold” the three possible angles of each of the twelve planes of the dodecahedron formation.
Now Cray was coming to and performing the useless, but common Hume habit of shaking its head as though to clear it, at the same time as Cray’s inner workings were going momentarily berserk to discover the cause of the anomaly, when something new impinged on Cray’s consciousness.
Cray immediately checked the location against four dimensions. Once those checked out correctly, Cray comm.ed to each of the forty Fasts heading a triad, to reestablish full and continuous communication.
Only thirty-nine comm.ed back. Cray was about to request another count when the Vegan unit interrupted: “It’s gone!”
“What’s gone?” Cray asked.
“Triad leader Unit 7RIG81-376! Look out your viewport at minus seventy-one degrees point thirty-four minutes, nine seconds by –”
Cray tilted the viewport for the angle and saw an enormous bright light where none should be.
“What the ...?”
“That’s Unit 7RIG81-376’s exact arrival position,” the Vegan unit said. “Evidently some unknown object not plotted into our Fast jump trajectory was in that very spot when the Unit 7RIG81-376’s Fast arrived there.”
The Antarean unit joined in their communication. “Leader, look! The imploding Fast is drawing in the other two Fasts from its triad.”
“Gravitational attraction,” another unit reported. “The implosion of Uni
t 7RIG81-376’s Fast will completely displace the normal fluctuation of that sector of space. It might pull more distant Fasts in, too.”
“Leader,” the Antarean unit spoke. “I suggest elimination of the dodecahedral formation temporarily in that area.”
“The formation is essential to our plans,” Cray argued.
“If we don’t, the gravitational pull of that imploding mass will draw other Fasts into it.”
“Can’t those other two be gotten out?” Cray asked.
“Impossible. The implosion has already formed an event horizon. It’s reading chaotically all over our dials. You can even see it. Look at those thin blue lines forming an irregular double loop. That’s known as a ‘strange attractor.’ It’s created by material arriving at the same place as other material which in turn so disturbs space/time as to create instant chaos.”
The Vegan unit added, “Once the imploding energy is all used up, it will condense into a less-stable structure. And dissipate eventually.”
Cray could see the multicolored but mostly blinding white of the implosion surrounded at some distance by a thin double ring of flickering blue.
“It’s a phenomenon specific to chaotic reactions,” the Antarean unit explained. “The risks are so great that –”
Cray interrupted, “Go ahead then. Distort the formation if it means saving more of the fleet!”
Cray watched helplessly as the second Fast was rapidly drawn into and through that apparently harmless, almost-immaterial blue halo. The instant it passed within the horizon, the Fast vanished. But the already-bright implosion now flared enormously, signifying that the second ship had imploded alongside its leader. Now the doubling of the blue halo became quadruple, then eightfold and sixteenfold, as the third Fast from the original triad was pulled into the halo’s smaller, more-distant loop. It, too, vanished instantly, causing the implosion to grow even larger and the thin blue halos to thicken with astonishing speed. The entire structure expanded massively, turning this way and that so that the blue rings dwarfed the implosion to a minuscule dot.
“Re-form the dodecahedron as soon as feasible,” Cray ordered. “Despite our distance, surely this phenomenon has been noticed by MC scanners. What could have caused it, Unit 6BVE-371? You prepared the schematics for the jump.”
“It could have been anything, Leader. We assumed that due to its importance, this Groombridge sector is swept at all times. But an object a half meter cubed might... in fact, given the size of the original implosion, I suspect that’s the correct size.”
“Leader, we are receiving the last automatic visual readings from the triad’s lead Fast before it imploded,” the Antarean unit announced. “The object which it emerged inside of is flashing on the holo-screen now.”
Cray was looking at a tiny piece of space debris. It was about one-eighth meter in size, more or less rectangular, battered, obviously made of cheap Plastro, and on its side he could read the etched directions – “Not recommended for use along with Triapenthazime, Dihapodrol, or Panthenama-Sopazine. Avoid while driving vehicles or operating heavy machinery as it might cause drowsiness. Take before bedtime.”
“An injection flask!” Cray said, although every Cyber watching a holo could see what it was. Silently, Cray thought, what a joke! We’ve just lost three perfectly good Fasts and their crew because one of them happened to emerge precisely where an accidentally discarded medicine jar happened to be floating.
“A chance occurrence,” the Antarean unit said. “Not placed there on purpose.”
“I can see that,” Cray said and turned to the viewport where the triad implosion and its resulting phenomenon were still visible, although fading. “Unit 6BVE-371? How soon before the original formation can be made?”
“Never, Leader. That spot is now forbidden. But if you’ll order these triads to sweep their sectors for any other debris, we can then form another dodecahedron with only slightly differing parameters.”
It was done, and the new dodecahedron formed. In this new formation, the fleet now approached its object, the satellite upon which the MC Military Academy had been built. Although the closest triad was still a million kilometers away from the moon, the formation was so designed that as long as it kept steady and continued to be pulled tight, any Fasts attempting a short-range jump within the area would be limited to its dodecahedral boundaries. Longer Fast jumps weren’t affected – only those used for battle: those which MC Fasts would have to take to attack or counterattack.
“We’ve been spotted!” the Antarean unit announced. “I’m picking up Fast jump traces from dozens of positions that can’t be ours.”
“They’re taking the bait,” Cray said. “And their security is good. It’s taken them, what? Eight minutes into action since we arrived? Cover the areas they’re coming from. Monitor how many are making the short-range jump. And all Fasts release the weapon containing our new virus for the widest possible spread. This entire area must be saturated in it!”
The Vegan unit had arranged their dodecahedron formation on a webbed holo for Cray to see. Highly irregular in the size of its planes and angles, it extended from just between the orbit of the sixth planet – one giant gaseous world – to just within the orbit of the eighth planet, effectively trapping MC Military Fasts to action close to the Groombridge Academy on the fourth moon of the seventh planet. Cray watched as three – then six – then more than a score of flashing dots representing the MC Fasts attempted short-range jumps to get outside of a formation they couldn’t even know existed. And failed.
“Our formation is holding them from getting out,” the Antarean unit crowed.
“Which unit said before that it knew how to tap into MC ship-to-ship comm.s?” Cray asked.
“Unit 5DV02-355 reporting.” Cray recognized that it was comm.ing through another unit. “Installation and repair of the Inter. Gal. Comm.s was my work before I joined the rebellion.”
“I want to know exactly what’s going on inside one of those MC Fasts. Can it be done from this distance?” Cray asked.
“Working on it,” the unit said. A few seconds later, it replied, “The transmission may be a little scratchy, but here it is!”
Cray’s holo-screen displayed the transmission, and as the installation and repair unit had said, it was by no means of the finest quality. But it was good enough for Cray to see the comm. end of an MC Fast interior displayed from a high, odd angle. The three women in sight all wore Flower Cult regalia of one sort or another – a collar or cape or breast shield. But, in addition, they wore transparent helmets, with curious pouchlike thickenings on each side, out of which thin tubes rose to enter each woman’s nostrils. At the moment, the woman closest to view was the communicator, and although the sound Cray was receiving was patchily poor, he long ago had learned Hume lip-reading and knew she was trying to find out from other MC Fast communicators why they couldn’t short-range Fast jump.
“Speculations as to the function of those helmets and tubes?” Cray asked.
“For the intake of depressant or antidepressant drugs!” the Antarean unit suggested. “A feeble attempt to counter the effects of our battle virus.”
Several of the other lead units agreed, especially when they saw one woman turn to her left side and inhale deeply from one tube.
“Clever!” Cray allowed. “Will it work?”
“Short term, possibly,” the Vegan unit comm.ed. “But once the virus enters their system, the disorientation will be so great, it’s unlikely they’ll be able to tell which to use at what time.”
Watching the screen, spying on the women, it was obvious to Cray that the virus wasn’t affecting them yet – or, if so, not strongly enough to counter their very evident confusion over their inability to move into the tactical positions from which they preferred fighting.
“Unit 5DV02-355,” Cray ordered, “can a tap be made into another MC Fast?”
The second transmission seemed at first identical to the first one: the same high, angled point of v
iew, the same arrangement of three women, all wearing the transparent helmets, two of them speaking.
“How long before our precise positions are discovered?” Cray thought out loud.
“It’s already happened,” another unit reported. “We’ve just received a directed comm. from an MC Fast arriving at the lead craft of the triad located at angle nine in our formation.”
“Let’s see it!” Cray said and waited.
The tapped-into scene inside the MC Fast was shoved to one side of the holo-screen as a much more solid holo-transmission appeared: on it a woman officer appeared in full face, also wearing the transparent helmet with tubes. “If you do not identify yourself immediately, the harshest measures will be taken against your craft and its occupants. This is Commander Orval of the Matriarchal Council Military Forces. Identify yourself now and –”
“Leader!” the Antarean unit interrupted. “Look! On the holo inside the other MC Fast. The virus is working.”
Cray glanced and at first saw nothing unusual. But a closer look confirmed the Antarean unit’s point. On the helmets of all three women officers, the pouchlike devices were now colored pink, evidently a warning sign of the virus’s presence. All the women were trying out one or another of the intake tubes, meanwhile checking the patches for any alteration in its color.
“Yes, the battle virus is working,” Cray admitted. “But we don’t know how much it’s going to stop or slow them down. I’ll answer Orval’s comm. But get all of those MC Fasts in your sights. We’re going to have to move quickly, and errors must be minimal.”
A second later, Cray opened the comm. to nonvisual and said, “Commander Orval, this is Cyber rebel leader Cray 12,000.”
Cray would have paid dearly to freeze the look that appeared on her face. She inhaled deeply from one tube. Her helmet pouch was only pale pink.
“What do you want, Cray? What are you doing here?”
The question, and the ages-old Hume ritualism behind the question amused but also strangely touched Cray. Soon enough, that Hume-based politesse would be gone from the galaxy, rendered as obsolete as the species that used it.
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