Terry Kakumi slept curled in his couch like an egg in an egg cup. Glenda Ruth watched for dreams to chase themselves across his round features, but really, he was remarkably relaxed for a man who was about to enter mystery.
"He does that better than anyone I know," Freddy said. "If he knows nothing is going to happen for twenty minutes, he's out like a light. I guess that's what they mean by old campaigner."
"You think it's a warrior's skill?"
"It never would have occurred to me before. Sauron, heh?"
The chaotic industrial complex was considerably closer now. Its shape had changed, had closed around the gap left by the one departing section, which was still in view a few kilometers away, under desultory thrust. There was motion on the surface, a doubly silent rustling: windows glinting (not many), small vehicles racing along wire tracks, mirrors rippling as they swung to block a laser spear, a sudden spray of . . . missiles? Tiny ships?
Sporadic ruby beams bathed Cerberus with no effect. Just once the entire mirror-sail complex focused white light with enough energy that the cameras had to be pulled in. Several minutes later the screen was glowing with just a touch of red heat. More minutes later the probe was out again, and Pandemonium showed almost unchanged.
"They ran out of power," Jennifer surmised. "What do you suppose is in there? Watchmakers and what?"
"Maybe nothing we know about," Glenda Ruth said. "Watchmakers alone might have built this. You saw Renner's recording: they ran riot through MacArthur and finally turned it into something alien."
A tube poked from near the center of the structure, and extended, longer and longer. Like a cannon. "Grab something," Jennifer said, and reached to tighten Terry's straps.
His eyes opened; with a shrug he freed his arms and folded Jennifer into his chest.
The screen went dark. In the airlock Merlin snapped some command; every Motie form snatched for handholds. Cerberus torqued about them. In the screen was a red glow . . . orange, yellow . . . holding.
Victoria popped up beside Merlin, with several other Motie shapes behind her. They all held close to their handholds. A Messenger was towing one of their pressure suits.
"Terry, you may travel with us, unarmed," Victoria said. "You'll want hands for your camera anyway. We have restored it to the state you are accustomed to. Don't try to leave your escorts."
Terry took the camera from the Engineer. He made adjustments. One of the screens lit with a close view of Victoria, blurred, then sharper. Terry said, "How long?"
"Suit up now."
The Field was orange and cooling.
Terry and Freddy examined the suit, whispering. Hecate's pressure suits had been confiscated and stowed on the other side of the oval airlock. They were hard suits, rigid pieces shaped to slide over one another, with a fishbowl helmet. Now green-gray sludge in a flaccid plastic bag rode the jet pack on the suit's back. The helmet's view had been expanded; the sunblind visor was gone; the helmet itself was no longer quite symmetrical.
"You trust it?"
"No choice, boss. I'm bored." Terry worked his way into the suit. Before he'd finished, the Engineer and three Watchmakers were already at work on him. Freddy and Jennifer smiled to watch. Glenda Ruth's stomach was a hard knot.
He could die.
Terry was zipped up when the alarms sounded again. He knew that one: Anchor against attack!
When the screen cleared, Pandemonium was very close. The pipe still protruded near the center of the complex, but it pointed askew of Cerberus. More conspicuously, the mirrors were gone . . . shredded, trailing outward in comet's configuration.
"It was a double attack on us," Terry said for his companions' benefit. "The laser cannon isn't maneuverable, but you had to take out the mirrors, too, right, Victoria?"
She waved it off. "Battle is no skill of mine."
Motion swarmed around the shreds of mirror. Glimmers and flashes: they began to re-form. The laser cannon jerked into sudden motion, too slow to catch Cerberus drifting around the city's edge. Others of Captor Fleet were moving into position.
"Come," Victoria said. She leapt for the airlock, and Terry, almost as agile, followed.
The Moties could hardly be unaware that they were showing him Cerberus's Motie sections for the first time, and on record. Terry waved his camera where he would. He was not trying for detail, but rather looking for whatever would bear further investigation.
He didn't get much of that. He was in a tube that curved like a loop of intestine. Here a dark opening, here a bulge and an armed Warrior clinging to handholds, here a lighted opening and a first glimpse of an older Master. "Studying me. I'd better not stop," he said. "Victoria isn't."
The tube ended in a canister full of Warriors in armored pressure suits.
Victoria waved him in. The Warriors watched him, every one. "Forty armed and armored Warriors, no two weapons alike, no two suits alike, and . . . that one's pregnant, and that one." Distinct bulges in the armor, where a human heart would be. Terry let the camera hold on four others: "And I don't know what to make of those."
There was a couch just for him. It had an orthopedic look and a plenitude of straps. Terry gave the camera a good look before he strapped in. "Looks like an Engineer and Doctor tried to design this for a human spine. Let's see . . . Not bad. Not many humans build chairs this good."
The airlock was sealed and Victoria was gone.
"Three windows, one fore and one aft . . . whichever . . . and this. Considerate bastards." The amidships window was right before his face. One of the odd ones handed Terry a big folded umbrella, nearly weightless. "They've taken me for a Pom."
He was being judged. He chattered because of nerves.
The tradition of Terry Kakumi's family was never to dwell on tradition. Flexibility was a virtue. Landing on one's feet was a graceful thing to do. In anarchy and in war and in the Empire's peace, on Tanith and a score of other worlds, their numbers had grown. But he and they knew their ancestry.
The Kakumis were of Brenda Curtis's line.
Brenda Curtis had lived nearly four hundred years ago. She'd had six children of her own, and over two hundred had passed through her orphanage farm on their path to adulthood. They tended to intermarry because they understood each other.
Brenda Curtis had been a Sauron superman.
Current tales of the Sauron breeding centers were entirely imaginary. Terry had no idea what his ancestor had escaped from. Only the bald fact of her origin was known, and only to her children . . . and their fathers? Who could tell, now?
But twenty-four gene-tailored Motie Warriors were about to learn whether a child of Brenda Curtis could take care of himself.
He was not required to fight, Terry reminded himself. He would be judged by whether he survived.
The canister surged. Aft defined itself: the window was wreathed in pale flame. Terry's chair rotated; the others didn't. "They're pampering me, I think."
His eye and camera found a broad patch of black against the stars, and a scattering of blunt cylinders accelerating alongside his own. The black edged across the stars. The troopship struck it with a surge and an ominous crunch.
The troopship turned powerfully. Thrust distorted Terry's voice. "We've punched through the mirror. It's stronger than I expected. Maybe they reinforced it after Cerberus's attack. I can see a ragged black hole— ooppshit!" Pellets blasted through the cabin.
Terry hadn't even had a chance to curl around himself. He took a moment to understand that he was alive, unhurt. The rest—
"Some Warriors are hit, but they're ignoring it." He let the camera watch Warriors place meteor patches in a tearing hurry. "The ship's decelerating hard. The hailstorm isn't over. Maybe you can hear the impacts, but the pellets aren't hitting the life support system anymore. We're thrusting, too. Something—" Terry grabbed handholds.
The ship smacked nozzles-first into a wall, with a booming recoil.
Terry's vision cleared quickly. One of the odd ories had already cut
the ship's hull wide open, and the Warriors were pouring through. Terry searched for a strap release.
The four odd ones moved last.
Terry cut himself free and followed them out. "I'd bet anything that one's a Warrior-Doctor," he told his audience. "Those two are officers: better armor, and the widgetry they're carrying looks like communications, not weapons." The officers separated quickly. The last Motie was more compact, larger head, the hands more delicate. "That one looks like a cross between Warrior and Engineer. I'll follow it."
The starscape was gaudy, but the mirrors were brighter yet. Terry opened his silver umbrella . . . his laser shield.
Pandemonium was brilliantly backlit by the mirrors. The troops were jetting into a madman's maze. One and another Warrior flashed red, then puffed neon-red gas. Answering fire made actinic flares among the spires and blocks. Warrior troops swarmed from other directions. The ships of Captor Fleet were on all sides of Pandemonium.
Once Terry looked back. He reported, "The troopship's wrecked and nobody cares. They must be counting on their Warrior-Engineer to build them a way home. They'll guard him pretty carefully." But Terry was no longer sure of that. Pandemonium was very close.
They were approaching a windowless Wall. The lasers that menaced them were suddenly unable to reach them, except for stragglers . . . such as Terry Kakumi, crouched behind his umbrella. A red dot played across it, and then he, too, was out of the lasers' view. He moved his umbrella-mirror and saw a bulging crater in the wall, and Captor troops diving through.
Too fast. He activated his backpack jets, then swore luridly for his audience and posterity. "Sorry. I'm getting low thrust. Watchmakers must have fixed my bloody jet pack." The crater came up, too fast, and he steered to miss the edge. "Must think I don't mass that much after all." He clutched his camera to his chest, pointing down into the dark.
* * *
A racer's crew must see what's going on. A warship is a different matter, and most of Hecate's window space had disappeared . . . but not all.
So Cerberus's human crew had three views of the battle. There was Freddy's telescope, and the window, and Terry's camera. Mostly they watched the feed from Terry's camera.
Thirty-four black-armored Warriors had plunged through a black wall, and the camera POV plunged after. Mirrorlight glowed through from behind, illuminating a honeycomb structure too small for humans or normal Moties. Ruby and green flared within the structure. An explosion ripped open a score of rooms. Then tiny forms in silver armor were jetting among the larger Warrior shapes, riding bullet-shaped rockets no larger than themselves, swerving at terrific accelerations, or just blasting through walls and Warriors and into space carrying dead passengers. Terry's voice said, "Watchmakers, I think."
Jennifer said, "Right. It's like films from MacArthur."
Terry's voice ran on. "They're using projectile weapons, and so are the Warriors: spray guns with tiny bullets."
Jennifer clutched Freddy's arm and pointed through a window. Glenda Ruth didn't turn around. In a moment Freddy touched her shoulder and said, "Somebody's arrived, some other ship. Real Moties, not—vermin. We can see the ripples in the skin of Cerberus. Maybe your brother's arranged something."
"Great," Jennifer said. She started to say something to Glenda Ruth and fell silent.
"Glenda Ruth?" Freddy said. "Are you—"
"Not okay, Freddy. Not. He's so scared!"
"Traces of the original structure here, I think. Nickel-iron being shaped on site. This may have been an icy asteroid rather than a comet, closer to the sun before all these mirrors altered its orbit—"
"I never saw you like this. How do—"
"Can't you hear the fear in his voice? He could be killed. That's why Mediators can't stand battle. They're all trying to chew each other up, the Warriors and those little Hell beasts and whatever's out of sight and—oh God!" The view jerked and skewed, and Terry's voice stopped. Her hands clamped hard on Freddy's arm.
Freddy didn't speak. Glenda Ruth saw that her nails had drawn blood. Her voice rose into a hysterical whine. "They shot him!"
* * *
This looked solid, some kind of support strut. Terry had dodged behind it when the bullets sprayed across him. He huddled behind it, reaching. Engineers and Watchmakers had been at work on his suit, and he could only hope— there, the pouch of meteor patches.
He pulled one open. His fingertip traced three tiny holes across his chest carapace, between his right nipple and right shoulder. They'd nearly closed themselves; the hiss had dwindled. The patch covered all three.
But the hiss continued, and he wondered how he would reach his back. The pain and wet were just over his shoulder blade.
The Warriors had gone on. A big Motie head poked around a partition (big was friendly), looked him over (officer?) and withdrew. Another such shape floated nearby, leaking fog through scores of tiny holes, its laser weapon spinning nearby. Maybe the little demons had gone after it deliberately. It was the Warrior-Engineer.
"Doctors probably aren't intelligent." Terry had forgotten his audience; he was talking to himself. "Probably. One to treat any class, but none to treat a human. Who's going to treat me? Three bullets through my right lung."
With his fingers on the edge of the second patch, he reached behind him, forced it past the pain, then rubbed his back across the support strut. The hiss stopped.
A cough would have worried him. He'd be coughing blood before this was over. Meanwhile, for his audience: "These were high-velocity slugs intended to penetrate armor. Fast but small. No tumble. No stopping power. They're for Watchmakers or something not much bigger. Infections aren't any danger out here. Ronald Reagan was shot through the lung with a bigger bullet than these, seventy years old in FDA-era medicine, and he went on to finish two terms as president of the United States of America." And Reagan hadn't had Brenda Curtis for an ancestor.
"I'm going for the gun," Terry said, and leapt. Turning, he snatched the Warrior-Engineer's laser rifle and impacted his feet against a wall, the camera and gun turned down. The wall shuddered, and his camera caught six silver shapes plunging through.
His gun caught them, too, in a spray of projectiles. There was no answering fire, only a twinkling of edged weapons. His tiny bullets were cutting them up good, but six had become twenty jumping in pursuit as Terry Kakumi's recoil and suit jets hurled him up through the crater hole. And now they were all bright in mirrorlight and starlight, and Terry held his camera on the swarm.
A fireball blasted out of Pandemonium, half behind an angular bulge. Terry didn't bother with it. The camera recorded the shock wave surging through the city.
His breathing was going ragged; he'd have to stop talking soon. But: "They don't fit the suits. There are slack parts. Six-limbed suits, Watchmaker suits, with one limb tied down, and—" He coughed and stopped trying. Let the camera speak for him.
They wore borrowed pressure suits with the lower left arm tied down. Half of them had used up their jets and jumped anyway. Animals. Others were fleeing the light; but three turned and made for Terry. He held the camera on them and slashed them with high-V pellets.
Nice. Two merely died, but one silver suit, filleted, puffed its occupant thrashing into space. They weren't Watchmakers at all. They were something nastier.
* * *
"I never saw . . ." Freddy peered at the display. "Victoria? What in hell—" Victoria was missing. "Glenda Ruth? I've seen 'em before."
She didn't want to look. She made herself look and considered what she was seeing. She said, "The Zoo on Mote Prime," and watched them, remembering.
Fourth floor: a Motie city, struck by disaster. Cars overturned and rusted in littered, broken streets. Aircraft had embedded their wreckage in the ruins of fire-scorched buildings. Weeds grew from cracks in the pavement. In the center of the picture was a sloping mound of rubble, and a hundred small black shapes darted and swarmed over it.
Every student at the Institute had studied that scene. The Mo
tie cycle of boom and bust was so dependable that plants and animals had evolved specifically for ruined cities!
One had a pointed, ratlike face with wicked teeth. But it was not a rat. It had one membranous ear, and five limbs. The foremost limb on the right side was not a fifth paw; it was a long and agile arm, tipped with claws like hooked daggers.
"But those were quite different," Jennifer said. "Look, these are all hands, and longer, leaner. Freddy, can you summon up a copy of What I Did on My Summer Vacation? I think the skulls are bigger, too!"
"They're changed," Glenda Ruth said. "Evolution must have moved much faster for them. Shorter generations, bigger litters. Why not? Freddy, I've got to get Victoria."
Terry Kakumi's voice was much weakened. "I don't know how to tell Warriors that I need medical help. Freddy, if you're still hearing me, s-s-s—" Coughing.
Freddy nodded. He floated toward the airlock, slowly, hands visible for the Warrior on duty. When Freddy reached the lock, the Warrior put his gunpoint in Freddy's ribs.
Freddy put his head in the lock and yelled, "Victoria! Now! Terry's been shot! Do you hear me?"
A lopsided face wreathed in white fur confronted him. Freddy wondered if he was seeing Ozma. The Master spoke a word to the Warrior, who pointed its gun elsewhere. The Master turned full away and hiss-whistled.
Victoria came. Freddy explained rapidly; Victoria translated; the Master went away; so did Victoria. The Warrior reached, turned Freddy around, and pushed him back to the control center.
On-screen, a pair of Warriors had retrieved Terry. Freddy could glimpse them at the screen's edge, towing him. Voiceless, Terry pointed the camera to pick up:
A snowstorm of dead war rats, big as greyhounds and small as puppies, all armed with edged weapons, some armed with guns.
A factory, empty, scaled down. That looked to be a distillery; that, a smelter. Even in the asteroid mines of most systems, humans would align their furniture. Here boilerplate-bulky machines pointed off at all angles, leaving almost no waste space.
The Gripping Hand Page 31
