5

My Fleet is Bigger than Yours

Kaantalech looked at her aide with what she knew was the precisely proper expression of disdain. Not that the aide would be able to pick it up, of course: any aide who grew clever enough to be able to read her body language was dangerous, and swiftly met the same fate as those who were too stupid. It was a fine line you had to tread, being one of Kaantalech's aides.

"You've found the Humans again, but they're in the middle of an eight-thousand-strong fleet of warcruisers? That's worse than it was before," she repeated disbelievingly.

"That is what's happened," said the aide tremulously. "The fleet has grown. Most of the ships are of the Helgiolath; the rest we cannot as yet identify. And then there are the Humans."

Kaantalech swore with elegant fluency. A fleet this size was sufficient to inflict considerable damage on the Autarchy, at least in the short term. She hadn't expected that other species might start to add themselves to it.

Add a few hundred warcruisers and the fleet could . . .

Now there was an idea.

Add a few hundred warcruisers and you had a fleet big enough to cause permanent damage to the current Autarchy. Then there would be a hiatus while The Wondervale sorted itself out, and then there would be the dawn of a new empire. The future suddenly looked golden.

"I have spoken with the leader of the Human contingent before," she said. "Establish contact again."

"I'll do my best," said the aide nervously.

Kaantalech hit him so hard that the sound of his bones fracturing as his body shattered against the bulkhead remained in the aural memories of her other aides for the rest of their lives.

"I want to speak with the Human-thing again," she said. "I need a volunteer to make the contact."

#

Kortland made his decision. The raid he had mounted on F-14 had been, in the most unexpected of ways, a triumph. His fleet was now twice as strong—in effect if not numerically—as it had been before, and the Autarchy's main source of weaponry was hardly functioning at all. It wouldn't be long, though, before the Autarchy shipped out more techs to repair what farewell sabotage had done to the manufactories on F-14. He credited the Humans with their bravery and the ability they had shown to survive; had they not been so ugly he might have been prepared to award them the status of honorary Helgiolath. As it was, he was content enough to have their vessel as part of his armada.

The decision he made was simply enough expressed in a single word. He had thought this was an order that he himself would never be able to give—that it would be issued only by his successor, or by his successor's successor.

"Qitanefermeartha," he said.

#

Polyaggle was attempting to establish contact with Kortland when a quite different face popped into existence in the communications Pocket. She recognized the species immediately: this was one of the Alhubra who had visited and attempted, from time to time over the years, to take over Spindrift and turn the planet to profit, and who had eventually destroyed her kind.

"You're not a Human," said Kaantalech at once.

"I'm a Spindrifter."

"There are no Spindrifters left alive."

"I am."

"I very much regretted the operational exercise which the Autarch forced me to perform. Please let me commiserate about the demise of your species."

"Please let me commiserate about the demise of yours," said Polyaggle. She had never felt an emotion like this before—she guessed she must have picked it up from the Humans. It was vengefulness.

"My species is still alive and proliferating," said Kaantalech.

"Not for long." She didn't mean it. There were doubtless good Alhubra and bad Alhubra, just as there had been good Spindrifters and bad Spindrifters.

"I want to speak with your Human commander," said Kaantalech.

"She may not want to speak with you."

"Please ask her," said Kaantalech. "I am prepared to wait." Drool was spilling out of the creature's mouth. Polyaggle, who did not salivate, was revolted.

She lifted her head from the Pocket and addressed Strider. "There is a person here who believes it can do a deal of some kind with you."

"Who is it?" said Strider, who was in the midst of trying to persuade the Images that perhaps they could resuscitate even more of the Main Computer than Polyaggle had been able to do, now that she had carried out the groundwork.

"It is a person from the Autarchy. It claims to have led the expedition that exterminated my species."

"Tell it to fuck off, then."

"It is most insistent. I believe it may have something to offer." Polyaggle hated the words even as she spoke them. Were it not for the brood of new Spindrifters that was already forming within her she would have snapped off communications with the Alhubra-thing. But the Humans had befriended her, and one of them might form the nest for her brood. It was possible that the Alhubra could benefit the Humans, help them survive.

"OK, I'll speak with it," said Strider.

Polyaggle stood aside to let Strider face the communications Pocket. In doing so she inadvertently brushed against Lan Yi, ripping his jumpsuit in several places with her bristles. He made the movement of his mouth which Polyaggle had come to realize was among the Humans a gesture of friendliness. She touched a claw to his hand by way of apology, and he made that same gesture with his mouth again. She found it very difficult to like individual Humans, but this one seemed more amenable than most.

When her brood came to full ripeness, perhaps he would be the one.

#

"I have five hundred and twenty-two ships under my command, and I am prepared to join them to the Helgiolath fleet," said Kaantalech to Strider as soon as she put her face into the communications Pocket.

"I don't think the Helgiolath will want you. You're the shit who destroyed the Spindrifters, aren't you? I thought I'd made my feelings plain enough before."

"I was under orders."

"Whose?"

"The Autarch Nalla's. He made me do it."

"You could have refused."

"If I had I would have been summarily executed."

"So you thought it was worth annihilating an entire species just to save your own life?"

"This is irrelevant," said Kaantalech. "I can add considerable might to your fleet. I can also give much by way of information: I and my puters know more about the Autarchy's military secrets than you will ever learn."

By your friends you are known, thought Strider. "What you're trying to tell me," she said, "is that this could be a mutually profitable relationship?"

"It could indeed. I am as eager to see the end of the Autarchy as you are." Kaantalech made a curious movement of her forelimbs which Strider couldn't interpret. "I wish to see peace and harmony throughout The Wondervale."

SHE'S LYING, said Ten Per Cent Extra Free.

"I knew that already," Strider subvocalized.

"We have a common cause," said Kaantalech.

"No, we don't. If I knew where you were right now I'd hit you with every beam and missile aboard this ship, and after I'd done that I'd get the entire Helgiolath fleet to do the same, and if that weren't enough I would chase you so far and so fast that you fell out of the side of the Universe. Is this clear?"

"We will talk about this again later," Kaantalech said as her face vanished from the communications Pocket.

"Another nuisance commline call," Strider explained sarcastically to O'Sondheim as she backed away from the Pocket. "If only a few of them would start talking obscenely . . ."

#

Strauss-Giolitto woke to find there was a warm body beside her on the bed, and she snuggled affectionately against it. Then she woke again to discover that there wasn't anyone there.

Of all the recurring dreams she had, this was the cruellest.

Loneliness stretched out like a lake of unlit, unruffled water behind her. Ahead of her was the same black, still surface. She could speak openly to Pinocchio and with a certain modified frankness to Lan Yi, but otherwise there was no one on board the Santa Maria whom she could count as a friend. Yes, of course she missed sex, but what she missed far more than that was intimacy—the intimacy of whispering together in the moments before falling asleep, the intimacy of being in someone else's arms and holding them in her own, the intimacy of very slowly and softly licking a kneecap or a navel, the intimacy of waking together and both wanting a pee at the same time but neither of you willing to be the first to get up and go and have it. Masturbation could—and did—regularly relieve the sexual tension, but at the same time it made her all the more lonely.

She reached an arm across her forcefield bed, in the sleepy hope that for once her dream had not deceived her.

No. Still there was no one.

#

Strider and O'Sondheim were planning to pass over control to Leander and Nelson when the instruction from Kortland came through.

"Start with the big ones, eh?" said Strider to no one in particular. Flitting into the base of her Pocket were co-ordinates that she rapidly copied on her keyboard.

"What are we doing?" said Polyaggle.

"We're heading for Qitanefermeartha. The hub of the Autarchy." Strider looked anxiously into her Pocket. She wished she could somehow divert the course of the Santa Maria so that she could take out Kaantalech, but she had no notion where Kaantalech was. In an intellectual way she knew that the Autarchy was committing crimes up to and including genocide all across The Wondervale, but that didn't match the emotions she had felt as she'd seen Spindrift die. Kortland was correct. While the time was right it was best to strike straight for the heart.

From all she had been told by Polyaggle and Segrill, the Autarch's fortress on Qitanefermeartha was impregnable. Assuming one could fight through the battalions of warcruisers there were still the forcefields to deal with. After that came the deadmetal. The alternative was to wipe out bits and pieces of the Autarchy, elsewhere in The Wondervale. Strider suspected this would involve crimes as great as the extermination of the Spindrifters. No, after all, diverting to discover Kaantalech and her fleet was not a good option.

Kaantalech could wait until later.

Strider pressed a final button, and everything in both the view-window and the Pocket changed. The vessels of the fleet were far more tightly bunched together now, so that it was possible to discern a few of the nearer ones as spacecraft rather than as just scintillating, moving pinpoints. In the Pocket itself Strider could see the overall configuration of the armada as it surrounded a small, undistinguished planet of a small, undistinguished star. In both the visual and the graphic displays of the Pocket it looked as if the fleet were forming an unbroken shell around this world, though she realized immediately that this was merely an illusion created by the Pocket's necessity to render eight thousand spacecraft as something larger than motes.

She squinted up at the view-window once again and speculated about which of the dots of the starry sky might be the planet they were surrounding. Somehow she had expected that it would be bright and awesome, as befitted its importance in The Wondervale, but of course she knew that from this distance—they were half a light-hour out—it was possible that Qitanefermeartha was not even directly visible.

The first missile hit the Santa Maria's defensive shields exactly seven minutes and thirty-three seconds afterwards.

#

"I would like to be able to study you. Would this be permitted?" said Lan Yi. There it was. At last he had been able to muster the nerve to put it directly to Polyaggle.

They were seated opposite each other with Lan Yi's chessboard between them. They were playing a variant of the four-handed version, each of them taking two teams; the objective was to obtain a misère, whereby you aimed to force your opponent into taking your pieces until finally only your two kings were left. He and Polyaggle had been contesting the game in various lengthy sessions ever since the Santa Maria had been lifted off F-14. They talked occasionally over the board; more usually they maintained silence, communicating through the moves they made—chess seemed to be not just an international but an inter-species language. The Spindrifter had taken to chess the moment Lan Yi had introduced her to the game, his underlying motive having been to lead up to the question he had just asked. Her only difficulty was in handling the pieces with her talons.

She looked at him blankly. Clearly what he had just said to her had been nothing more than a meaningless string of noise. She said something back to him, giving a little flutter of her wings as she did so. It was his turn to stare at her in incomprehension.

The Images were too busy elsewhere to be able to devote any part of their minds to interpreting between the two chess-players. This hardly ever happened. There must be some emergency brewing.

As there was absolutely nothing he could do about it, Lan Yi forced himself to relax. He shrugged at Polyaggle, returning the flick of the wings she had made towards him.

As he looked into her empty-seeming eyes, Lan Yi was hit yet again by the hugeness of the gulf that existed between them. They were learning the basics of each other's gestures, but there was no question—possibly never could be a question—of their speaking directly to each other. The principles upon which the Spindrifter's language was constructed were entirely different from those that underpinned Argot. The two tongues had been born out of completely dissimilar species experiences and emotional states: although there were many areas of overlap—as evidenced by Polyaggle's seizing upon chess—Spindrifters and humans thought quite unlike each other. Lan Yi was amazed that the Images had been able to create communications between them at all.

That gulf—so vast. Presumably Polyaggle would feel closer to some of the ancient species, but otherwise she must be the loneliest being in all The Wondervale.

Are there degrees, however, of loneliness? thought Lan Yi, still looking into the vacuum of her eyes. Isn't all loneliness the same? Is she any more lonely than . . .?

It came to him that, even more than the tachyonic drive, loneliness was what drove the Santa Maria through space. The ship itself was alone in The Wondervale, carrying as its cargo a few individuals who were in the wrong galaxy and the wrong time, an outcast even when it was acting in concert with other species, as now: only the Images could fully interact with the humans, but they were so different that they could hardly be counted as companions, or friends.

Even among the people aboard the Santa Maria there were great lonelinesses. Strider, forced to keep her emotional distance from her personnel and so able to find intimacy only with a bot. The bot himself, Pinocchio, who could form friendships with human beings—but how deep were those friendships compared with what he might achieve with another bot of his own calibre? Pinocchio, too, was communicating across what was in effect a species gulf. Strauss-Giolitto, whose lesbianism was now not just a suspicion but a certainty in Lan Yi's mind: her loneliness could be no less profound just because it had been self-imposed. O'Sondheim, who seemed on the outside to be so gregarious, yet was lost in a pit of solitude whose cause Lan Yi did not yet understand.

And then there was himself, who could look back over decades of loneliness.

He lowered his eyes and moved a rook.

#

Kortland's faces suddenly appeared in one of the communications Pockets.

Leander sprang to it.

"General announcement to the commanders of all vessels," the Helgiolath said. "There can be no interruption."

Leander beckoned Strider, but Strider was lost in her own Pocket. Nelson, seeing the gesture, pulled at Strider's elbow. She moved rapidly across to join Leander.

"We have taken up formation around Qitanefermeartha, and its automated defenses have been activated. Already we have sustained some casualties. It is vital that all craft maintain their shields at all times until we start to engage directly with the Autarch's warcruisers, which are now moving outward towards us. Do not waste weaponry trying to destroy the automated ballistics: let the Autarchy waste these weapons. There will be fewer of them for us to deal with later."

In order to launch a counterattack from a warcruiser, you had to drop your defensive shield for a tiny fraction of a second. That tiny fraction could be just enough time for a ballistic or a beam to sneak through and reduce your vessel to smithereens. This had been impressed upon Strider by an earlier general communiqué Kortland had issued, and she in turn had impressed it upon Leander and the others.

"All cruisers will now place themselves in direct communication with the central puter aboard this flagship," the Helgiolath was saying. "This instruction does not apply to those craft that are carrying back-ups of the central puter. The basic instructions are as follows . . ."

Not fully understanding what she was doing, Leander found her fingers dancing across the keyboard directly beneath her at the front of the Pocket. She knew that she was just a sentient channel through which the Helgiolath was feeding codes to the keyboard: the codes, like many of the keys, made no sense at all to her. What she was doing was unnecessary—the Images must be picking up all this stuff direct—but she found herself unable to stop obeying.

A second ballistic impacted against the Santa Maria's defensive shields and exploded in a surge of fury and brilliance. Once again the craft itself was unaffected.

But there would have to come the time when the Santa Maria would be facing the might of the Autarchy head-on. A single ballistic penetrating through a momentarily dropped shield would rip the ship in half.

That time might not be long in coming.

#

Back on a hillside on F-14, when she had looked like nothing more than a naked savage as she and Segrill negotiated, Strider had had the beginnings of an idea. Later, after she'd established the Santa Maria in orbit, she'd explained it to him further.

Warcruisers are very large spacecraft—they have to be, because of all the weaponry they must carry, not to mention armored shuttles for making planetfall, when that is necessary, and of course the troopers who will be going down in those shuttles. The average Autarchy warcruiser was home to upwards of a thousand personnel, and some of those were from species whose individuals were very large indeed—although few matched the Bredai for size. Most were on roughly the same scale as human beings. Very few sentient species were as small as Segrill's, the Trok.

Although warcruisers occasionally deployed fighters in combat, more usually they did not. The fate of a fighter when it came up against a defensive shield was much the same as that of a ballistic, but ballistics were significantly easier—and cheaper—to manufacture. Also, ballistics were a lot smaller than fighters and could move and manoeuvre much more swiftly, and so they presented a far more difficult target for the enemy to track and destroy—even despite the fact that the presence of sentient creatures aboard fighters made their trajectories much more unpredictable. Most of the time, therefore, warcruisers in battle were engaged in direct combat with each other: they were accustomed, in other words, to be fighting with objects that were as big as themselves.

Even a ballistic was quite large by comparison with a Trok fighter.

Of course, a Trok fighter couldn't carry the same firepower as one designed for a species built to the scale of, say, human beings. But that didn't matter too much. Its computers were every bit as skilful and speedy, and any missiles it launched could travel as swiftly as something far larger. A bigger missile could carry a bigger payload, certainly—one that could blow a warcruiser to pieces most impressively. But that was hardly necessary: in the hostile environment of the vacuum, a crippled warcruiser was a dead warcruiser. Though only a few meters across, the Trok's fighters were each capable of transporting—and directing—at least a couple of missiles which, assuming they penetrated the enemy's defensive shield, bore charges sufficient to do significant damage to a warcruiser's outer hull. And that was all that was needed.

Ever since the Santa Maria had rejoined the Helgiolath fleet she had been surrounded by a swarm of over a hundred Trok fighters under the overall command of Segrill. By comparison with the thousands of warcruisers amassed in the armada, the number was as trifling as the size of the vessels themselves, but Strider and Segrill were convinced they could do a disproportionate amount of damage to the Autarchy's forces.

#

WE ARE PICKING UP A NEW COMMUNICATION, said Ten Per Cent Extra Free.

"What is it?" said Strider. "Put it on the communications Pocket."

THE RELEVANT INDIVIDUAL DOES NOT WISH INITIALLY TO SPEAK WITH YOURSELF, CAPTAIN LEONIE STRIDER. WE COULD INTERPRET THE COMMUNICATION DIRECTLY TO THE PERSON INVOLVED ABOARD THIS SHIP, BUT WE BELIEVED THAT WE SHOULD ASK YOUR APPROVAL FIRST.

"Who do they want to speak to?" said Strider. It was unusual for the Images to consult her about very much. This must be something unusual.

POLYAGGLE, Ten Per Cent Extra Free replied.

Strider thought for a moment. She was fairly certain in her own mind that the Spindrifter would do nothing to harm the Santa Maria, but she couldn't be a hundred per cent sure. Alien ways of thinking, as she kept telling herself, were radically different from human ones. Who could tell what was going on behind those impenetrably deep eyes?

"Can you ask Polyaggle to come to the command deck?" she said. "She can speak via Pocket. I want to be able to see what's going on."

WE CANNOT MONITOR THE POCKET AS SHE CONVERSES, said Ten Per Cent Extra Free reprovingly. IT WOULD BE AN INVASION OF PRIVACY.

Strider snorted. The Images had never been sticklers about her own privacy.

BESIDES, Ten Per Cent Extra Free added, BOTH BEINGS WOULD IMMEDIATELY RECOGNIZE OUR PRESENCE AND CEASE COMMUNICATION.

"Yeah," she said. "But I still want to be able at least to watch from outside the Pocket."

WE HAVE REQUESTED HER PRESENCE, said the Image a moment later, AND SHE IS ALREADY MAKING HER WAY HERE.

Another ballistic impacted against the defensive shield as Strider waited. The effect inside the Santa Maria was as if everyone aboard had been brushed by a moth's wing. In the Pocket in front of her she could see, graphically represented, the Autarchy's warcruisers beginning to peel out of their orbits around Qitanefermeartha. The display told her that there were over four thousand of them. They were outnumbered nearly two to one, but there were still enough of them to ensure that this was going to be no walkover—especially since the Autarchy could count on the use of its ground-based ballistics as well.

The Santa Maria, too, was shifting its position under the commands of Kortland's central puter. Strider felt disempowered—hell, she was disempowered—by being able to do no more than watch her ship being navigated by remote control. One virtue the Helgiolath very clearly lacked was the art of public relations: it was all very well telling the individual commanders what was going on at the moment, but what they needed to know was why it was going on and, if all went according to plan, what was intended to happen next. As it was, Strider felt a seriously less useful component of the Santa Maria than her busted Main Computer.

Ten Per Cent Extra Free clearly picked up her thoughts.

KORTLAND IS INTRODUCING AN IMBALANCE TO THE ATTACKING SHELL AROUND QITANEFERMEARTHA, he said. HE IS AMASSING A FAR GREATER CONCENTRATION OF CRUISERS IN ONE AREA TO FORM, IN EFFECT, A SEPARATE FLEET THAT IS ABOUT THE SAME SIZE AS THE AUTARCH'S. CERTAINLY IT IS TOO LARGE FOR THE AUTARCH'S GENERALS TO IGNORE: THEY WILL HAVE TO DIRECT THE BULK OF THEIR FORCES TOWARDS IT. THE REST OF THE SHELL WILL BE MORE SPARSELY POPULATED BY CRUISERS—FOR A WHILE.

Strider nodded. The reasoning seemed sound.

ONCE BATTLE HAS BEEN JOINED, THE REMAINING HELGIOLATH AND F-14 VESSELS WILL LIKEWISE COME TOGETHER, AND CONCENTRATE ON PIERCING STRAIGHT THROUGH THE RESIDUAL PLANETARY DEFENSES TO QITANEFERMEARTHA ITSELF.

"And in which bit of his armada has the mighty Kortland decided to put the Santa Maria?" said Strider, knowing the sarcasm would be picked up by Ten Per Cent Extra Free.

BECAUSE OF ITS ENTOURAGE OF TROK FIGHTERS, KORTLAND HAS DETERMINED THAT THE SANTA MARIA WILL BE PART OF THE FORCE THAT ATTACKS QITANEFERMEARTHA DIRECTLY.

"It would have been polite of him to mention it," she said. The Image didn't bother to reply.

She continued to gaze into the Pocket. A few Helgiolath vessels had been eliminated, but so far the situation between the opposing forces had really not changed at all. They were like two people high on ziprite who had picked a fight with each other but were still at the stage of making aggressive punches into empty air. Whenever one of those punches chanced to land it did very little damage. Soon, however, the fight would be joined in earnest. And it would be to the death.

She turned to Pinocchio. "Issue orders to everyone aboard—kids included—that they're to ensure they're properly kitted out with fully charged lazguns. Tell them to check their suits, but not to suit up yet." No need to get clumsy until you had to—and if the Santa Maria were badly damaged being in a spacesuit wasn't going to save anyone's life. "I want twenty volunteers in case we're sent down to the surface to fight—if you can't get twenty, conscript a few. O'Sondheim is not to volunteer: he is to take over command from me in the event of my death. Neither are you—he'll need you. Understood?"

"Anything else?" said the bot.

"Yup. All volunteers, except those from the command deck, are to gather themselves in four of the shuttle bays. Organize them into suitable parties, Pinocchio. I'll lead one, Nelson another, Leander a third—I've just volunteered them for duty. We three will stay here until the time comes. Appoint someone else to head the fourth party and to be in overall charge of the rest until—if—we go down."

The bot started working with his commline.

Behind Strider, the lock leading from the main part of the ship to the command deck soughed open. Polyaggle emerged, with Lan Yi following behind her. Strider scowled. She hadn't asked for the scientist to be here. Still, he would probably be of some use—especially if she and Leander and Nelson had to leave the deck under O'Sondheim's control.

"Pinocchio," she said, indicating the newcomers, "get some bot or other to fetch these two's suits."

Polyaggle was moving straight towards the left-hand communications Pocket, which was automatically adjusting its height to welcome her. Strider felt a small shock of annoyance—as if the Spindrifter should have asked her permission first.

"We're beginning to pick up speed, oh darling of my dreams," said Nelson.

He seemed to be a lot calmer than she was. His calmness was infectious.

"Keep your dreams to yourself!" she snapped, beginning to grin. "And keep me posted." She nodded towards Polyaggle, who had already immersed her face into the communications Pocket. "I have other observation to do."

Two ballistics hit the defensive shield almost simultaneously. Again the sensation of their explosions was hardly detectable aboard the Santa Maria.

Strider paced from side to side, her gaze fixed on Polyaggle's back. Reading the Spindrifter's face was impossible; reading her back was doubly so—or maybe it wasn't, because occasionally the wings would rise slightly from their sheaths.

She looked at Lan Yi. "You know her better than I do. Any idea what's going on?"

He turned his hands outward. "Those movements of the wings are friendly gestures," he said. "Other than that I can't tell."

Oh, shit! Most thoughts crossing Strider's mind weren't too great at the moment, but the one that had just done so was perhaps the worst of all. "Ten Per Cent Extra Free," she said urgently, "I know you can't eavesdrop on what Polyaggle's saying, but can you reassure me of one thing? That's not Kaantalech she's speaking to, is it?"

IT IS NOT KAANTALECH. HAD IT BEEN SO WE WOULD HAVE INFORMED YOU, DESPITE THE VIOLATION OF PROPRIETY.

Then who the hell was it? She was still convinced the Spindrifter wouldn't knowingly betray the Santa Maria, but . . .

"May I evaluate our situation?" said Lan Yi politely beside her.

"Choose your Pocket," she said, dredging up a smile from somewhere. It was nice to be looking at someone who wasn't bigger than her.

"Kortland's manoeuvre has been successful," said Leander. "The Autarch fleet seems to have decided it can pick the rest of us off later. A few warcruisers are still in Qitanefermeartha orbit, but the rest are heading towards the main fleet."

"How certain are you of that?" said Strider absent-mindedly, still concentrating on Polyaggle's back.

"The Pocket . . ."

"Yeah. OK." Maybe the Autarchy had technology capable of deceiving the Helgiolath's detectors; it was unlikely that they could delude the Pockets—or the Images. "Keep watching."

It was her enforced passivity that most rankled with Strider. Kortland was doing things. The Images were doing things. Polyaggle was doing things. All Strider and her personnel could do—at least for the while—was watch. Or, in Strider's case, watch and get angrier.

No, there was a bit more she could do.

"Pinocchio."

"Yes."

"Food. We need some food up here." In a few hours' time they were likely to be fighting it out on Qitanefermeartha: it made little sense for them to be famished. "And stuff to drink—it doesn't matter what. Get a bot on to it. Make sure the rest of the people in the shuttle parties get something to eat and drink as well."

Practicalities, practicalities, she reminded herself. Sentient species throughout The Wondervale and the Milky Way and assumedly the rest of the Universe could devise the most elaborate philosophies and technologies, but all the time they had to eat and shit. Maybe the Images didn't have to—but they weren't really in the Universe so they didn't count. When the two great fleets finally joined battle there were bound to be thousands on either side who were stuck in the john doing whatever was their species' equivalent of pulling up their trousers. It didn't speak too much for the glories of sentience.

But then neither, more importantly, did warfare. Or tyranny. Or the way that some species—and she did not entirely except the Spindrifters and certainly not the Helgiolath—seemed to consider themselves superior to others.

Polyaggle's wings had stayed motionless for over thirty seconds now. Strider didn't know if this was a good or a bad sign.

"We have twenty-eight volunteers," said Pinocchio quietly to her.

"Triage 'em down," she said. "I don't want any people going down on to Qitanefermeartha who aren't capable of handling a lazgun. If any of the kids have volunteered, tell them not to be foolish. Same goes for any of the elderly Reals who you don't think are up to it."

"I have already done these things, Leonie."

"Then just choose the best twenty." What the hell was the Spindrifter up to? "Be diplomatic, Pinocchio, like I would be."

The bot made a curious strangled noise.

"You know what I mean," she said.

At last Polyaggle eased her face out of the communications Pocket. Her wings were now moving agitatedly in and out of their sheaths. She looked directly towards Strider.

"I have been speaking with the Onurg of the Pridehouse," she said immediately.

"That doesn't mean anything to me."

"The Pridehouse are one of the ancient species of The Wondervale." Polyaggle tapped her claws together hard enough that Strider could hear the click. "One of the last things that Feefaar and Nerita did before our planet was disrupted was to send out a warning to all of the others of the ancient species."

Strider waited for Polyaggle to continue. Lan Yi had emerged from the fascinations of his Pocket and moved to the Spindrifter's side.

"The Pridehouse detected my presence here on this starship," said Polyaggle. "Though they have maintained their neutrality over the millennia, they were"—the Images seemed to be searching for an accurate translation of the Spindrift word that Polyaggle must have used—"they were distressed to hear of my species' demise. It may not be long before the Autarchy realizes that the ancient species still possess much of the technology they did before the secondary species arose, and then many more planets like Spindrift may be disintegrated."

There was a short pause while the Images caught up their interpretation of what Polyaggle was saying.

"The Pridehouse have asked my consent to their sending a fleet to join us." Again that click-clack of the claws. "I told the Onurg that the decision was not mine but yours."

Strider realized at once what a concession the Spindrifter had made. Humans were a raw species; the Spindrifters had been cruising the starways while Strider's ancestors had still been hunting in packs. When Polyaggle looked at the people aboard the Santa Maria she was looking down a staircase whose steps were billennia. Polyaggle was acknowledging the human species as equals. Strider had the embarrassing sensation that there was a tear forming at the corner of her eye.

"Kortland is the one who must settle this," she said sharply. "I'm just the captain of a vessel who isn't even allowed to make her own decisions any more."

She turned to Leander. "Raise Kortland in the other communications Pocket. Doubtless you'll have to struggle through about fifty thousand bureaucrats before you get to him, but make sure you do, OK?"

Leander nodded.

"It could give me no greater pride than to have the Pridehouse among us," said Strider, keeping her words measured. "I cannot imagine that Kortland will wish to turn them away . . . but you understand the protocols."

A click together of the talons. Maybe the clicks were all subtly different from each other. Strider made the assumption that this one indicated assent.

"The Pridehouse are not the only ones," added Polyaggle. "There are also the Lingk-kreatzai, the Wreeps, the Semblances of the Eternal, the Fionnoids, the Janae and the We Are."

Seven species willing to add their collective might to the forces of the rebels: it was an awesome thought.

"When can they be here?" she said.

"Not for some while." Polyaggle shifted her wings. "By the time they can resurrect their fleets the battle over Qitanefermeartha will long ago have been won and lost, whichever way it goes. I have something to add, Captain Leonie Strider."

"What?" So the intercession of the ancient races was, after all, just a sideshow, an irrelevance. There were going to be preconditions.

"These species do not wish to be under the command of Kortland. The Helgiolath can display a ruthlessness which is not to the taste of us ancients. The Onurg asked me if I would be the leader of their combined fleet."

Oh, great, thought Strider. Ousted out of the top job yet again. "Cancel that order, Leander," she said.

It was a moment before she understood the meaning of the next few words Polyaggle spoke.

"But I told the Onurg that I owed my loyalty now to the Human species, and that you were my commander." Click. Flutter. "He has said that he will accept your leadership."

"What?"

"The ancient species will pledge their fealty to you."

"But I hardly know my way around this joint," said Strider, waving a hand in the general direction of The Wondervale. "I'm incompetent even to be a full part of the Helgiolath armada. I'm just a sort of very minor pawn in a chess-game whose board is too large for me to comprehend."

"But this is what the Onurg and I agreed," said Polyaggle. "If you will consent to accept these ancient species."

"How big is this fleet likely to be?" said Strider, asking the question more for the sake of saying something than for any other reason. Her mind was reeling.

"About forty-eight thousand craft, all told," said Polyaggle. "But only about ninety per cent of them are warcruisers," she added apologetically.

#

Kaantalech, roused by one of her aides, looked to and fro among the array of monitors in front of her. In order to co-ordinate their attack on Qitanefermeartha, the Helgiolath had of necessity had to dispense with their communications shield, and for the first time she realized quite how huge a space-navy it was that the Humans had joined. She watched the way that the Helgiolath commander focused most of his firepower in one area, and put a forefoot to her proboscis in acknowledgement: this was exactly the tactic she would have used. The Autarch was too irremediably stupid to realize that the decoy could be larger than the killer force. His underlings would be too terrified of him to argue, because they knew that to do so meant a quick and certain death and their replacement by others more amenable to the Autarch's instructions, until at last, after some quick slaughter, the Autarch's fleet would be controlled by his catspaws. Better to take your chances in battle than to be killed out of hand by the Autarch. There was always just the chance that you might win.

Not this time, Kaantalech believed.

The Helgiolath had superiority not only in numbers but in intelligence and technology. If the battle started going against them they could flit themselves away singly to every corner of The Wondervale. The Autarch's warcruisers could follow them individually or severally, but in so doing would leave the home planet open to attack. Unless there was a lucky strike, those infuriatingly intractable Humans could harass the remaining Autarchy cruisers—and there were thousands of other Helgiolath vessels prepared to do the same.

No, Kaantalech reckoned, Qitanefermeartha was doomed.

Better for her and her fleet to stay out of it.

The holo to the side of her lit up, and she looked towards it with an appropriate expression of reverence and humility. There was, she supposed, just the most remote possibility that the Autarchy might defeat the rebels after all. A little token subservience could do no harm.

"Stars' Elect," she said respectfully.

"I require your fleet to come to Qitanefermeartha immediately," said the Autarch Nalla without preamble. Kaantalech could hardly believe it, but yet again he was taking part of his time out to copulate with one of his concubines. More than anything else, this persuaded her that she could find herself fighting on the wrong side of the war.

She gave a signal to an aide. Much as most of them loathed her, they loathed the Autarch more. Among the very first things they were trained to do was to recognize this rarely used signal.

What it meant was: Interference of communications—and damn' soon.

The aide quickly obeyed, pressing his foot to a large square on the floor—a square that normally the aides made very sure they avoided.

The image of the Autarch in the holo began to disintegrate, shards of the colors that composed it starting to drift aimlessly towards the edges of the cubicle.

"I'm having difficulty making out what you're saying," said Kaantalech emolliently. "Aide!" she cried off to one side. "See if you can fix this thing."

One of the aides started forward as if to obey, and she froze him with a glare.

Forming her words very carefully and clearly, Kaantalech said to the Autarch's dissolving likeness: "I am trying to hear you, but we seem to be being jammed by Qitanefermeartha's defenses. Which part of The Wondervale is it that you wish me to patrol?"

The holo of the Autarch faded into a nondescript miasma of brown-grey. On Qitanefermeartha he would be seeing Kaantalech's image doing exactly the same.

Once she had hoped he would turn his back towards her so that she could easily glide in the knife—twisting it as the whim took her. Now she was pleased that he had turned his back instead on the Helgiolath, and the Humans, and the F-14s and who knew how many other species. In tearing the Autarchy to pieces the rebels would be so reduced as to find themselves in a parlous state. The time would be right, then, for Kaantalech to ascend to the throne.

Autarch.

The Mighty One.

She gave her aides a few terse instructions, and her fleet began moving across the face of The Wondervale on what would seem like urgent business.

As if they were obeying Nalla's misunderstood orders.

#

Once the battle was joined in earnest things moved remarkably quickly. Strider, forcing to the rear of her mind the possibility that she might soon find herself at the head of an armada of nearly fifty thousand vessels (How the hell are you going to cope with that, Leonie? Stop goddam thinking, brain: you'll almost certainly be dead before then), applied herself to a Pocket. The Helgiolath's central puter was still enforcing its instructions on the Santa Maria's Images, who were shifting the craft according to Kortland's dictates. The secondary fleet was beginning slowly to move together.

But it was what was happening to the main Helgiolath fleet that held Strider's attention. The Pocket couldn't display the deaths of individual warcruisers: all it could show was statistics.

These started off depressingly—the Helgiolath were taking terrible punishment—but then became more reassuring as the rebels fought back ferociously. As she had when bombarding the manufactories on F-14, Strider found herself regretting the horrendous loss of life. Every Helgiolath warcruiser that died represented the lives of perhaps a thousand sentient beings. The same went for the Autarchy's vessels. All of these people were dying for something that wasn't even properly an ideal. They were being burnt alive or being spilt into space as if they were expendable—which was the way, Strider realized, that they were regarded. She had left three people behind on F-14 because they'd got lost, and she had realized fully the ruthlessness of that act—she still woke up, sometimes, from sleep in misery about it—but she'd never throw millions of people into the fray on the basis that more of them might survive than would of the enemy. Now she was facing herself honestly, what really started her from sleep was the question: If I thought I had to, would I?

Little sparkles of communication flashed in from other vessels of the secondary Helgiolath fleet. She assumed the Images were able to understand what they meant, and were operating themselves and the remnants of the Main Computer accordingly.

Polyaggle was still on the command deck, and clearly comprehended what was going on more than Strider did. Lan Yi was waiting around as if he wanted to be given a job to do, but at the moment Strider couldn't think of one to give him. She and the rest of her officers were too busy trying to stay on top of things as they and several thousand other vessels moved slowly, hopefully grouping not too obtrusively, towards Qitanefermeartha.

Abruptly their velocity picked up. However things were going for the bulk of the rebel fleet—the displays of that battle in the Pocket were now such a jumble of constantly changing statistics and graphic images that it was impossible to make sense of them—Kortland must have decided that the Autarchy's defenses were as fully engaged as they were going to get. Although she had no real religion, Strider found herself praying briefly to Umbel that the Autarch's cruisers were taking the brunt of the damage. The ancient species didn't like the Helgiolath very much, but she liked the Autarchy even less. Many of the Autarchy's people were probably conscripts—if not slaves—which meant that they, as individuals, hardly deserved to die; but then neither did the Helgiolath troopers. Every time one of the Autarch's warcruisers went down it was another step towards the end of the tyranny. Every time a Helgiolath warcruiser met its explosive end, by contrast, the more likely it was that the tyrannization would continue. The equation wasn't hard to solve. Even so, Strider found herself morally uneasy about the death that the rebels were dealing out.

Which she herself might soon be dealing out.

#

The Santa Maria found itself at the spearhead of the secondary attack—as always, Kortland was regarding the Humans as expendable. There was nothing Strider could do about it: the commands of his central puter were being obeyed to the letter by the Images.

Suddenly the situation went beyond some limit of her patience. To hell with just hanging around passively hoping for nothing better than to not get obliterated. She was fed up with the way Kortland was treating her and her personnel as expendable surrogate Helgiolath. She was in command of the entirety of one of The Wondervale's sentient species, just as Kortland was. It was time she started behaving accordingly—time to move from the passive to the active.

The volunteers for ground action were already in place.

Through a communications Pocket, she established contact with Segrill.

"Are you still with us?" she said.

The alien's voice, when he spoke, sounded puzzled. "We surround your craft," he said. "Of course we are with you."

"What I meant was, are you still prepared to act in concert with us?"

There was a note of relief in Segrill's reply. "Yes. That has been agreed. We Trok keep to our agreements."

"Then I think it's about time that I took the Santa Maria out from under Kortland's control." Assuming the Images will cooperate, Strider added mentally.

WE ACCORD WITH YOUR ANALYSIS, said Ten Per Cent Extra Free.

"This is reasonable," said Segrill.

"I want to go for it," she said. "I don't just want to be the cannon fodder up front. I want us to be the ones who lead the assault."

"My species has little reason to love the Autarchy," said Segrill. "I will collaborate with you in any way you wish."

"Then let's leave the rest of the pack behind."

"This would please my people."

"Ten Per Cent Extra Free," said Strider, "I want you to increase our acceleration even further."

Certainly.

She cut communications with Segrill and moved to another Pocket. In it she could see, almost immediately, the Santa Maria begin to move away from the rest of the wedge of warcruisers. Small darts of light around the image of her ship showed that the swarm of Trok fighters was doing likewise. This was probably the stupidest thing she had ever done in her life—and it might be the last thing—but she didn't regret it. Attack was the best form of defense. Or something.

"Shouldn't we have discussed this move?" said O'Sondheim from somewhere behind her.

"No," she said.

She amplified the representation of Qitanefermeartha in her Pocket. Aside from the vast domed city, the planet looked much like Earth's Moon—although rather less hospitable. Behind the visual image, the Pocket was gabbling out data, the only important part of which, as far as Strider was concerned, was that there were only forty-nine warcruisers still waiting in orbit around the planet. Kortland's tactics had succeeded admirably. Hell, but right now she was in such a mood that she felt she could take out all forty-nine single-handed.

The speed with which the Santa Maria was moving ahead of the other rebel vessels had become giddying, even in the representation offered by the Pocket.

She sent a mental instruction to the Images, and Segrill's face appeared in her Pocket above the display of the Santa Maria's position relative to the rest of the fleet.

"Once we're within a few light-seconds of those babies," she said, "they're going to start opening fire on us. They probably won't notice you. That's when I want you to strike."

"This is understood." The Trok was concentrating hard on something else—presumably the instrumentation of his fighter. "If it were otherwise we wouldn't be here."

"Gonna be a rocky ride," said Strider.

"Too true," said Segrill. "Gonna be even rockier if you keep interrupting me."

"Stay in contact."

"Will do."

She maintained the image of Segrill's face in the Pocket but focused on the graphic display at the base. The Santa Maria was now closer to Qitanefermeartha than it was to the Helgiolath vessels trailing behind it. Spots of light told her that the Autarchy had finally noticed her ship's approach and were sending out a further flotilla of ballistics. They didn't worry her. The Santa Maria's defensive shield had soaked up the energies of all the impacting ballistics so far, and she was pretty certain it would continue to do so—the Images would have told her had it been otherwise.

More of a hazard were the forty-nine warcruisers.

She wanted to get this over with as soon as possible. Chances were that she and all her personnel would die, but that had been the case ever since they'd emerged into The Wondervale. This was probably their best shot to stay alive. She hoped so.

"Danny," she said, "here is what I want you to do."

#

The disc of Qitanefermeartha more than filled the view-window now, but Strider didn't have the time to admire it. Face deep in her Pocket, she was busy watching the disposition of the guarding warcruisers. As yet they didn't seem to regard the solitary craft as much of a threat, and the longer they continued to feel that way the better it suited Strider. By now they must have spotted that there was a fleet of several thousand vessels behind her. One ship alone could do little damage to Qitanefermeartha, they must be reasoning: ground defenses could repel it easily enough—if it was even worth their trying to do so. Better to concentrate on the imminent arrival of the main force.

Fingers crossed, Leonie.

"Segrill," she said out loud into the Pocket.

The alien turned his attention towards her. Seeing just his face in the Pocket, it was hard to remember how tiny he actually was.

"Now is the time?" he said.

"Yes. One of my Images will enter your squadron and give you any navigational assistance you require."

"We don't need any, Strider. You forget that we Trok have been a spacefaring species for several thousand years. We know what we are doing."

There was no discourtesy in the response, but even so Strider felt rebuked. Sizeist! she said to herself.

"Good luck from here, Segrill."

"See you downside if we both make it, Strider. If not . . ." The alien showed her his teeth in what she assumed was a smile.

Within seconds the Trok swarm was off. She imagined the little craft as being like stinging bees, and the Images therefore represented them in her Pocket as exactly that. The fighters spread out with astonishing rapidity towards Qitanefermeartha and then in both directions along the rough line of the planet's equator, the belt in which almost all of the warcruisers still orbited. She hoped the Autarchy wasn't able to monitor the course of the Trok fighters as clearly as she was: if so, they were dead before they even started.

There was a peculiar trace of guilt in her: the Trok craft were so small and the warcruisers were so large. Then she remembered what Segrill had just said about having been a spacefaring species for so many thousands of years. Yeah, it was a contest of equals.

Things became even more equal when the first warcruiser went up. Strider, fascinated despite herself, amplified the representation in the Pocket. The huge ship was peeling itself open as if someone were cutting it apart with a knife. When the knife got to the drive unit at the rear the effects were spectacular.

So you were worried about the Trok, Leonie? she thought.

"Any chances of one or more of you three going at these bastards, like you did around Spindrift?" she asked the Images.

IT WOULD BE MOST UNWISE. YOU NEED US AMONG YOU. It was Angler who was speaking this time. He was the Image whom she knew least well, if it could be said that she knew any of the Images at all. Even more so in a short while.

"How short a while?"

If you wish to take the best advantage of the circumstances, we would suggest that you disengage within the next ten minutes.

Another Autarchy warcruiser seemed to be splitting itself open, almost as if it wanted to do so.

YOU MUST MOVE QUICKLY, BEFORE THE REST OF THE FLEET ARRIVES. AS SOON AS IT DOES, THE SANTA MARIA IS CERTAIN TO BECOME THE OBJECT OF ENEMY FIREPOWER.

"Who's staying with the Santa Maria?"

WE ARE, warbled Heartfire and Angler together.

"Look after Danny and the rest," she said.

WE WILL.

"He's not that bad."

Um.

"He's not."

Silence.

She pulled herself away from the Pocket—possibly this was the final time she would ever do this—and barked to the command deck in general: "Anyone who's volunteered for ground duty, it's time to move it."

Nelson and Leander moved immediately towards the lockers along the wall. Lan Yi was already suited up except for his helmet, which surprised Strider: she'd hardly thought of him as a warrior. Pinocchio was nowhere to be seen, which startled her even more: where the fuck had the bot got to? She didn't have time to worry about things like this if the urgency in the Images' paired voices were anything to go by. Polyaggle had vanished as well: the Spindrifter had probably separated up into her component bits again so that she could re-infest the remnants of the Main Computer. Strider herself jostled past Leander and dragged her suit from its locker.

The Santa Maria was going to be left with a skeleton crew, she thought dourly. Not the funniest of her jokes, in the circumstances.

Going down in the elevator she felt herself shaking all over. Way back when they'd been in orbit around Ganymede she'd done all the practices a shuttle pilot should do, but that had been several years ago. Before that she'd shuttled between Phobos and Mars, as part of her training. It seemed a very long time in the past. Did she still have the reflexive speed of reaction that she'd developed then?

There was only one way to find out.

First stop off: Nelson.

Second stop off: Leander.

Third stop off: Strider herself. She hoped Pinocchio had lined up someone good for the fourth shuttle.

Four suited figures turned to look at her as she burst through the lock into the bay where Shuttle A awaited her. Their visors masked their faces entirely, so that she could recognize none of them—except one, the alien design of whose suit betrayed her identity.

"No, Polyaggle!" yelled Strider as she raced across the floor of the blister towards the shuttle. "If you die your whole goddam species dies."

The Spindrifter made no sign of having heard her. Dammit—the Images seemed always to be deserting her at the wrong moments. What to do? Leave it—that was the best thing. If the bloody alien wanted to kill herself that was her own affair. At least she was wearing a lazgun, so maybe she could take out a few of the enemy before they got her.

"Into the shuttle!" Strider shouted unnecessarily. The four were already following her.

She waited impatiently while the shuttle's outer lock door operated. The Images had made modifications here as well, and the whole cycle was very much shorter than it had originally been, but it still seemed to her to be taking forever. She just hoped the modifications hadn't been so dramatic that she no longer knew how to fly the craft at all.

Finally the five of them were permitted by the automatics to enter the lock. There was barely enough room for Strider to fit on her helmet as they waited for the inner door.

Helmet on, she tongued her suit radio. Shit—she should have remembered to plug in a commlink. Too late now. There'd be some on the shuttle—probably in the first-aid box. You're a creature of a different era, Leonie my gal, and sometimes you shouldn't be.

"If you want to back out, this is your last opportunity," she said.

There were assorted mumbles of dissent. No one was backing out. She felt atavistically proud of them.

The lock's inner door opened—at last.

The Images had made the interior of the shuttle roomier, but hadn't thought to add any extra seating. Strider threw herself into the pilot's chair and pointed Polyaggle towards the other. The remaining three personnel would have to fend for themselves as best they could in the space behind the seats.

She tongued her radio to the command deck's frequency, hoping O'Sondheim would have the sense to be listening in.

He had.

"Shuttle A is loaded and ready," she told him as she strapped herself into her restrainer belt and surveyed the console in front of her. Not too much seemed to have changed except that, where before there had been an array of keyboards, there was now just a single, massively elaborate one. As when the keyboards had first been introduced to the Pockets, she found herself recognizing the symbols and functions on this. She wondered how many other minor alterations the Images had made to her . . .

"Shuttles B, C and D are likewise," O'Sondheim responded.

"Who's piloting D?"

"Pinocchio."

Strider would have surged up out of her seat had it not been for her restrainer belt.

"For fuck's sake! I explicitly told him he wasn't to . . ."

"It's a bit late now." O'Sondheim sounded laconic. "He's an independent-minded bot."

"He's going to get an independent-minded hole lazzed right through his head next time I see him," muttered Strider. Louder, she said: "Better start counting us down, Danny."

The blister portal directly in front of her slowly opened to reveal bleak space with just the thinnest of crescents of Qitanefermeartha cutting across the bottom left. Hearing O'Sondheim's countdown as just a reassuring drone in her earphones, she twisted around in her seat to see how the three people behind her were getting on. They'd moored themselves, using their belt-ropes, to the rears of the seating. Strider nodded. It was as good a way as any of keeping themselves secure.

She returned her attention to what O'Sondheim was saying just in the nick of time.

." . . one . . . now!"

She pressed what she knew to be the right combination of two buttons on her keyboard and the shuttle shot forward. She was jammed back into her seat by the abrupt imposition of gees as the shuttle was suddenly on its own above the disc of the planet.

She tongued her suit radio.

"Status aboard Shuttle A?" she said.

There was a brief cacophony from Polyaggle, which presumably meant that the Spindrifter was all right. "Uncomfortable," said another voice, which Strider recognized as Strauss-Giolitto's; so now she knew who at least two of the personnel with her were. "OK," said a third voice: Strider couldn't immediately identify it.

There was no fourth voice.

"Can you two check . . .?" began Strider. She didn't need to finish the question.

"It's Bartleby," Strauss-Giolitto said a few seconds later. "His neck's broken."

So the arrangement with the belt-ropes hadn't been so good after all. Strider swore under her breath. There was nothing she could do to save the man—whom she recalled as a rather jovial, amiable ecologist.

The gees faded away as the shuttle ceased accelerating.

"Get the oxygen and recycling units off his suit, then," she said. "They might come in handy. And pass his lazgun forward to me."

Before anyone could protest she had called up O'Sondheim. "Patch me through to the other three shuttles, will you, Danny. We've had a casualty here—guy called Bartleby. Sam, I think his first name was. I want to get the status of the other crews."

There had been no further casualties. Strider decided she would administer Pinocchio's rollicking later—there wasn't time right now for everything she wanted to say to him.

"How are the Trok making out, Danny?" she said.

"Better than you would ever believe."

He began to cite figures, but just as he started she realized they were being displayed on one of the screens in front of her: what she had assumed was just some kind of interference pattern was in fact a perfectly comprehensible list of statistics. She glanced sideways at Polyaggle and saw that the Spindrifter was leaning forward, reading them intently. So the display worked in two entirely unrelated languages? Maybe the Images had been making a few minor adaptations to Polyaggle as well. Quite how much had they done to everyone?

Strider decided not to answer her own question in case she frightened herself.

She looked at the screen again. Somebody somewhere in The Wondervale had surely realized before that it could be a good idea to deploy the minuscule Trok fighters, but they must have forgotten. Segrill and his people had so far taken out twenty-seven of the defending warcruisers and themselves lost only three craft: if Kortland ever got to Qitanefermeartha he was going to have to get a lot of extremely small medals made. Most of the Trok fighters had now divested themselves of their complement of missiles, and were beginning to move either towards space rendezvous with Strider or downwards to the planetary surface.

"Give me those co-ordinates, Danny," she said.

He fed them direct into the four shuttles' puters.

"And now tell Ten Per Cent Extra Free that I want him here," she said. "Ask him nicely."

A few moments later the familiar voice trilled in her ear. I AM ABOARD THE SHUTTLE, CAPTAIN LEONIE STRIDER.

She tongued off her radio. "You know what I'm about to do, don't you?"

Of course.

"You've said your goodbyes to Heartfire and Angler?"

BUT WE'RE NOT GOING TO BE SEPARATED, said Ten Per Cent Extra Free, EXCEPT IN THIS REALITY. IN OUR OWN WE ARE STILL INTERMINGLED, AS WE ALWAYS SHALL BE.

Strider abandoned the line of questioning. Later, maybe.

She tongued her radio back to the Santa Maria's frequency once more.

"'Bye, Danny," she said. "Get the Santa Maria the shit out of here as fast as you can. If you get back to the Solar System give it my love. Maybe I'll join you someday."

A second later the monitors indicated to her that the Santa Maria had shifted away via tachyon drive—it could be anywhere in The Wondervale by now. But Strider didn't need the monitors to tell her this. She had felt her ship go.

Her ship.

#

The shuttles had been originally designed for landing on planets that had atmospheres: they had retro-jets and air-brakes to slow things down. The new-style, heavily armed versions the Images had tailored were a bit more versatile than that, but Strider was still virtually suicidal by the time the craft came to rest halfway up the side of a small crater.

"If I ever say anything bad about you again, Umbel," she said raggedly, "you have my permission to smite me."

"Little lady, I wouldn't smite you unless you asked me real nice," said a voice in her earphones.

Damned radios. No privacy.

"Umbel!" she said. "You're down safely?"

"As safe as we can be," said Nelson, "in a shuttle that's never going to lift off this planet again unless you use a crane. That was . . . well, put it this way: they ought to fit out suits with dispose-alls."

"Is there a problem?" Vomiting inside a suit could very easily be fatal.

"No, we all held it down. Or, rather, up. This here shuttle's lying on her back just at the moment. Only a few bruises are all we've got to worry about." Nelson sounded relaxed—but then he usually did.

"Stop hogging the air, then," said Strider. "Leander? Pinocchio?"

"We have landed in perfect safety," said the bot into her ear. "Not the finest of lan—"

"Yeah, fine," said Strider brusquely. Bloody bot—too good at everything. "Leander?"

"Maloron Leander has broken her nose," said Lan Yi's prim voice. "Fortunately Shuttle C was not structurally damaged during the landing, so we have been able to remove her helmet and are now administering first aid."

"How is she otherwise?"

"Swearing very considerably."

Strider smiled. So Leander was all right.

"Rendezvous as you can," she said. "Shuttle D sounds as if it's best placed. Pinocchio, give us something we can triangulate on."

#

Nelson's shuttle was certainly a write-off—Strider could see that as soon as she crested the rim of the crater—but the other three might one day be reclaimed. Who would do the reclaiming was a different issue. Probably not humans: the prospect of nineteen humans—no, there were only eighteen of them now—a Spindrifter and a bundle of Trok bringing down the might of the Autarchy seemed much more remote than it had when she'd been up on the command deck of the Santa Maria, surrounded by the reassuring glow of her Pocket. Still, look what the Trok had managed to do to the Autarchy's warcruisers . . . Maybe small was beautiful after all.

The sky was beautiful as well, studded with more stars than it seemed could possibly exist. Here and there a sudden flare of light appeared—a new nova, as another warcruiser met its doom—and then very swiftly vanished. But nobody was paying any attention to the sky.

Their planned landing site had been some twenty kilometers towards the equator from the city of Qitanefermeartha, and despite the hazards they had all come down within no more than a few kilometers of each other. The only thing that anybody wanted to look at from here was the impossibly vast dome of the city. It seemed more like a landform—some inspiration that had occurred to plate tectonics on a day when it had nothing else to think about—than anything which had been constructed. It dwarfed any mountain range in the Solar System—even Mars's Olympus Mons would have looked merely plaintive beside it. The dome itself was difficult to discern clearly because of the motley of forcefields coruscating around it: it looked as if all the electrical storms in The Wondervale had come together for a convention.

It was little wonder that the Autarchy's defenses had not been much concerned by the arrival of four shuttles; they probably hadn't even noticed the Trok fighters.

"This is going to be a tough nut to crack," said Strauss-Giolitto.

"That's an understatement," said Strider drily. Early in the mission she had been tempted to have the teacher bounced out of it, but something had happened to Strauss-Giolitto on Spindrift that had changed her. Quite what it had been Strider had never been able to discover, although she knew that Pinocchio had played a part in it. It hardly mattered. Now Strider found herself able to place her full trust in Strauss-Giolitto as a comrade in arms. It was a good feeling to know that the woman was here.

"Well," said Strider after a few moments had gone by, "shall we get going?"

The question was an order.

She began to leap forward. The surface gravity of Qitanefermeartha was about half Mars-standard, so progress was quick: twenty kilometers here was the equivalent of only a few kilometers at home. The little Trok spacecraft leapfrogged around the humans every once in a while, waiting like land-mines on the dusty surface until the jumping, lumbering figures had passed them by before lifting briefly into the sky again.

Strider's plan had been to get down on to Qitanefermeartha and then attack. Her thinking had gone no further than this. Everything had gone fine so far, but now her head was empty of ideas. All she had was the conviction that the Helgiolath had got it wrong: Qitanefermeartha had been constructed to be able to repel huge space armadas rather than a few people in suits.

They skirted the edge of a small crater. Off to their left they could see a huge spaceport, although even this was dwarfed by the size of the domed city, which now seemed to crowd the sky. Still there had been no reaction from the city's defenses. Strider felt as if they were a few ants crossing a floor: who bothers to stamp on the ants when someone is firing a lazgun in through the windows?

She called a halt a couple of kilometers short of the flickering forcefields. Even though running was comparatively easy on Qitanefermeartha, her own breath was coming in rough gusts, and the rest of the party, Polyaggle excepted, seemed similarly exhausted.

She tongued off her radio and said: "I could do with a little inspiration here."

DAWDLE, said Ten Per Cent Extra Free.

"Say again?"

Dawdle.

"No, what I meant was that I'd be grateful if you could amplify on your advice."

YOU WERE PERFECTLY CORRECT TO ASSUME THAT THE CITY'S DEFENSES ARE GEARED TO WATCHING OUT FOR BIG THINGS RATHER THAN SMALL THINGS, CAPTAIN LEONIE STRIDER, JUST AS THE AUTARCHY'S WARCRUISERS WERE INCAPABLE OF DEALING WITH THE TROK CRAFT. Ten Per Cent Extra Free paused, then continued. QITANEFERMEARTHA'S DEFENSES ALSO EXPECT ANY THREAT TO MOVE SWIFTLY—LIKE A BALLISTIC OR A BEAM, OR POSSIBLY EVEN JUST A POWERED VEHICLE. THEY WILL ALMOST CERTAINLY FAIL TO REGISTER SOMETHING THAT IS MOVING SLOWLY. SO I SUGGEST THAT YOU DAWDLE THE REST OF THE WAY. I SHALL ASK THE TROK TO DO THE SAME.

"Strolling along isn't going to help us much when we hit those forcefields," she said.

NO. BUT I AM.

#

Reaching back through the layers of reality.

In the embrace of Heartfire and Angler.

Wrongness: Nightmirror missing. Not for ever. Knowledge that Nightmirror will return.

Holding on to Heartfire and Angler. They the anchors that moor Ten Per Cent Extra Free to The Truthfulness as he re-enters The Wondervale.

Extending himself until he becomes the finest filament that can connect universes.

Within the domed city of Qitanefermeartha. Some here can see me. Pink, crystalline walls are safety. Shift electromagnetic charge within one crystal and so spring to next. Becomes easier very soon. Now at optimum rate down the tunnel of emf. Spreading out, rippling through the structure until a mote of oneself everywhere.

Become Qitanefermeartha.

Power centers. Some here, some there. Focus on the larger power centers first. Some immediate allies: willingly accept demise. Others reluctant: require debate. Radiant energy absorbed as each dies, adding to strength, to bliss. Hard, now, to retain oneself within walls—so much to give to the charged molecules of Qitanefermeartha's atmosphere—but self must restrain. One only power center recalcitrant. Concentrate self on it. Hold pattern around it. Very pretty pattern: surely power center want to be a part of it. Colors of life and of light.

Temptation.

Final and largest power center submit, although only temporarily—not to die. Self agree it not die.

At last self is able to swallow forcefields and become so mighty. Too mighty for Wondervale. Release all into Truthfulness, where Heartfire and Angler receive it, and instantly begin to multiply.

Immediate glory.

Ten Per Cent Extra Free is the mighty father. Joy is throughout The Truthfulness.

Now smaller power centers. Nip one here, nip one there. Lasers die. Holos die. Cabbles die. All for the added greatness of The Truthfulness.

One day The Wondervale die . . . all for the added greatness of The Truthfulness.

#

No messenger was required to tell the Autarch Nalla that something . . . undesirable had happened. As soon as the lights dimmed he had called up a display of the status of Qitanefermeartha and seen that the screens were down. What had happened to make them so he did not know, and his interest was not great. Then the monitors themselves had died. The city seemed to have been drained of all power.

The most important thing for him now was self-preservation. It was the task of his guards and courtiers to defend the city. If they succeeded in doing so, he would return as their acknowledged ruler. If they did not—well, there was a galaxyful of replacements to draw upon.

Another Qitanefermeartha could be built, somewhere far across The Wondervale.

He lumbered from his throne-room through a concealed door and into a darkened corridor. The door slid shut behind him, but the lights did not come on, as they should have.

The Autarch paused momentarily. This was unexpected. His slow brain was always nonplussed by the unexpected, because it so rarely happened: the throngs around him relied for their lives on the fact that nothing should startle the Autarch.

He pushed on down the corridor nevertheless. It narrowed progressively until its walls were almost brushing his shoulders as he forged ahead. Despite the darkness, Nalla had no fears. This passage had no branches: it led to one place alone.

His escape route.

A worrying thought began to trickle across his mind. If the lights refused to operate as they were supposed to, perhaps the escape hatch might prove equally recalcitrant?

No. Surely not. Back-ups backed up back-ups several times over to ensure that it would always function, no matter what happened to the rest of the city. An elevator would carry him hundreds of kilometers down towards the core of the planet, where there was a fully kitted bunker constructed out of deadmetal. Even if the world were blown apart he would be safe, for the bunker was rigged with full automatics and a tachyonic drive—it would take him across The Wondervale to safety without him having to lift so much as a suction-pad.

But, even so . . .

Agitated, he began to shuffle forwards even more quickly.

He discovered the doors of his escape route by the simple means of slamming his head against them. Let the might of the Autarchy curse this darkness! He reached with a forelimb up the side of the doors, seeking the sensor that would allow him ingress.

He found the sensor pad, and sucked at it with his paw.

Nothing happened.

Incredulous, he sucked at it again.

Still nothing.

He battered at the doors with his bony head, but they refused to yield.

He gave a loud trumpet of anguished frustration, and the noise echoed down the long dark corridor behind him.

The long dark narrow corridor.

He didn't have room to turn round.

#

In other circumstances the sight of a gang of Trok in spacesuits might have made Strider grin. Here, however, her first preoccupation—until the Trok and the humans started to keep a respectful distance from each other—was to make sure she didn't stand on one of them.

"Have you succeeded?" she said to Ten Per Cent Extra Free as soon as the forcefields around the dome of the city ceased their glittering display.

Yes. Qitanefermeartha has been leached of its power. Its forcefields are no more, and its defensive weaponry will not function—I have even drained individual lazguns.

"How many airlocks are there?" she said, staring at the blank door of the outermost.

Seventeen.

"How are we going to get them open if there's no power?"

Why do we need to get them open? If there is no power the city of Qitanefermeartha is sealed off entirely, and its inhabitants have no means of setting themselves free. It is only a matter of time—a short time—before the city will be dead. Already the temperature in there is beginning to drop, although as yet only by a small fraction of a degree.

"Fahrenheit or Kelvin?" said Strider.

Explain, please.

"Aw, forget it."

She raised her glove towards her helmet, trying to push her hand back through her hair before she realized the futility of the movement. They were by now no more than a few hundred meters from the grim gateways into Qitanefermeartha, the Autarch's citadel. From here it was very difficult to see anything else but the dull surface of the deadmetal.

"Could you get those locks open if I asked you to?"

It would present no great problem. I can draw energy back from my reality into this one.

"And could you get them shut again?"

Yes.

"Then I think our difficulties are over."

She tongued her spacesuit radio to change frequencies.

"Pinocchio . . ." she began as the sky above her flared into implausible brightness.

#

Segrill thought quickly. After the destruction he and his Trok colleagues had wreaked, there were probably as few as twenty Autarchy warcruisers still in orbit around Qitanefermeartha, and even the smaller of the two rebel fleets was not going to take very long to account for them.

Although it was useless pouring firepower down on to a dome made of deadmetal, somebody was, sooner or later, going to try it.

This would have unpleasant consequences for anyone who happened to be standing, to seize a figure at random, a few hundred meters away from the main ingress to the city.

He tried to raise Strider on his suit emfer, but the humans were all operating in frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum to which his own equipment did not have access. The more elaborate set-up back in his ship . . .

Yes. That was it. From there he could perhaps even be able to contact Kortland as well, which would be much more to the point.

How long would it take him to get there? The Trok had finally grounded their fleet only a kilometer or so back, but a kilometer was a long way for a Trok.

Half an hour, if he was lucky.

He set off, hopping along the barren, dusty surface.

The other Trok followed him.

#

"Half an hour, if I'm lucky," said Pinocchio.

"Then get to it," said Strider. "I want to have this done by the time Kortland gets here. I want to show him we're not just some hick species from an out-of-town galaxy. I want to wipe that smug grin off his . . . well, you get my general meaning."

The bot turned instantly and began to lope away across the breccia. Although many of the emotions he had observed in human beings were not as yet understandable to him, he was beginning to enlarge his range. He felt something towards Strider, while at the same time he was perplexed on the occasions when she acted quite unreasonably in the condition which she called "angry." He knew what "physical passion" was, because he had observed hers at close quarters, but the emotion itself was something fathomless to him. At this moment, however, he knew that what he was feeling was the thing called "pleasure": he was moving at his own natural speed rather than at the speed even the most athletic of the humans could achieve; it was a pleasure to be able to do so after all this time.

Strider's shuttle was jammed midway up the inner side of a crater. Nelson's shuttle was lying on its broken back. But either Leander's or more likely Pinocchio's own . . . There was a chance, a good chance.

Just as he left, he noticed that the Trok were likewise departing. He could think of no reason why. Surely the Helgiolath would not be so illogical as to try to bring firepower to bear on the domed city: it was well known that bombarding deadmetal was simply a waste of energy.

#

"Look at him go," said Strauss-Giolitto. She was leaning casually on Lan Yi's suited shoulder, her free hand holding one of her lazguns clear of her side. Although so much smaller than her, the out-of-Taiwanese seemed not to resent her weight. She was confused about her relationship with him. Had he been a woman, they would have been lovers by now—she was not unaware of the way that he felt towards her. In an ideal universe she would have been able to ignore how repugnant she found his body, but this was not an ideal universe. Once she had been in his cabin aboard the Santa Maria when he, unaware of her arrival, had emerged from the shower toweling his wet hair, a casual erection jutting towards his navel. She had laughed about the incident, as if it meant nothing to her, but the reminder of his masculinity had deeply distressed her.

Through the fabric of two spacesuits, however, she could tolerate some degree of physical intimacy with him.

Pinocchio she could hold close to her, but that was different. He could not threaten. He could not invade.

"Start moving away," said Strider over the suit radios' general frequency. Everyone turned towards her except Polyaggle, who seemed oblivious. Strider was gesticulating to them that they should move away around the edge of the domed city. Strauss-Giolitto knew that the edge was curved, but this close it seemed straight. Easing her weight off Lan Yi's shoulder, she moved across to the Spindrifter and waved her glove in front of Polyaggle's visor. Inscrutable eyes looked back through the plastite at her. As always when as close to Polyaggle as this, Strauss-Giolitto felt a sudden arousal of sexual tension: intervening spacesuits didn't seem to make any difference. She pointed towards Strider, who was already beginning to move off. Polyaggle nodded—a gesture Strauss-Giolitto jealously knew the alien had learnt from Lan Yi—and made to follow.

Travelling across the ashen plain in the sort of slow lurching run that seemed best accommodated to the low gravity of Qitanefermeartha, Strauss-Giolitto saw that the Trok, like a small pack of lemmings, were slowly working their way in a different direction. What the hell were they up to? What the hell was she up to? She was following orders that had been issued perfunctorily by Strider, without having any notion of the reason why those orders had been given. She had no expectations that she would live out the hour: her anticipation had been that by now she would have gone out in a blaze of glory, wielding her lazgun like some old-fashioned pre-holo cowboy hero as she cut a swathe through alien monstrosities until in the end "Oh, God, they got me. [Cough.] This is it, buddy. [A second and rather more anguished cough. A mixture of spittle and blood appears between the lips.] I only hope my death ain't been in [a long pause—a pause for which the word 'pregnant' could have been coined] vain." It would be the best way to go.

She had so little that she wanted to live for.

#

The craft which he had himself piloted had indeed made by far the better landing, concluded Pinocchio as he crested a low ridge to see shuttles C and D lying not very far away from each other on the rocky grey plain. For that reason it would be the more likely to be able to lift off again.

I AGREE WITH YOUR ANALYSIS, said Ten Per Cent Extra Free from somewhere inside him.

Not breaking stride, Pinocchio leapt towards Shuttle D. There were further eruptions of light in the sky, but he paid them no attention. He cared very little which set of aliens killed which other set except insofar as the outcome accorded with the wishes of Leonie Strider.

The whole enterprise was going to require a remarkable degree of synchronization with the Image. Seated in front of the shuttle's main console, checking off the various systems to make sure that nothing of importance was malfunctioning, Pinocchio allowed Ten Per Cent Extra Free to infiltrate both himself and the shuttle's puter entirely. Within a small fraction of a second the three of them had become in effect a single machine, operating in perfect consonance. For Pinocchio the experience was unlike anything he'd known before—as if he were both more than himself and only a part of himself.

Half an hour, he'd said. He'd/they'd managed to do it all in just over twenty-five minutes. Five minutes to wait, in case Strider and the others were being laggardly.

A very long five minutes.

#

Segrill was first to reach his fighter and he virtually threw himself into the cockpit, flicking on its emfer as he did so. Luckily the instrument was still trained on Strider's frequency. Through his observation shield he could see that some of the other Trok had made almost as good time as himself.

"Strider!" said Segrill urgently.

There was no reply, although he could hear the sort of noises from her that he knew constituted a Human voice. Where was the Image? Ten Per Cent Extra Free wouldn't have deserted them, would he?

"Strider!" he bellowed with the full power of his lungs.

Still her voice went on. Perhaps she thought he was just static on the line.

He could see through his monitors the small party of suited figures. They were moving slowly away from the airlock doors—far too slowly. The first Helgiolath beam that hit those doors was going to render the Humans indistinguishable from the plain around them.

He jacked up the volume, and yelled again.

This time there was a reaction. Her voice ceased abruptly, and then after a short pause she said something—something utterly incomprehensible to him.

He swore bitterly. Was there nothing he could . . .?

Wait a second—try the bot. If the Image was anywhere he was going to be with the bot.

But the bot no longer seemed to be with the Humans. Strider had now obviously called her party to a halt, and was staring towards the fleet of landed fighters. She'd at least worked out that the noise she'd picked up in her helmet had come from the Trok. With any luck she'd start moving in this direction—that would save time later.

She said something more. To him it sounded like "Sheeeeeeaaagroooolllla."

"Strider," he said again to encourage her. He wondered what sort of bastardization his voice was making of her name.

The bot didn't respond either. Of course, it was somewhere out of the line of sight. Qitanefermeartha almost certainly didn't have much of an ionosphere. Segrill could try contacting the Helgiolath or the Bredai directly, but they were still busy finishing off the planet's defenders and would have other things on their minds than listening out for communications from the surface.

Nothing for it but to change the line of sight.

Segrill barked a general instruction to his personnel that they were to stay exactly where they were and then rapidly powered up his own fighter, cursing the fact that his spacesuited hands were so clumsy on the switches and buttons because he hadn't taken the time to reoxygenate the craft's interior.

The whole fighter seemed to screech as he cut in the upthrusters at twice the boost level he'd ever tried before. For a moment he thought the craft might actually shake itself to pieces. For a moment he thought the boost might actually shake him to pieces. He forced himself not to pass out as the light on the altimeter glowed red, then orange.

That should be enough—the bot could have got only so far in this time.

Off with the upthrusters. Slam on the downthrusters.

Shit! He hadn't belted himself in.

Again consciousness became something to be groped for as his helmet hammered against the cockpit's ceiling. Then he dropped like a stone, landing belly downwards spreadeagled across the control panel.

Keep a cool head, he told himself as reality ebbed and flowed.

Yes, but where am I keeping it right at the moment? Somewhere in Heaven's Ancestor, it feels like.

He threw himself off the console and scanned it rapidly through blurring eyes to ensure his fall hadn't done anything bizarre. Hit the wrong switch and you might be half a parsec away—or heading straight for the nearest disrupting warcruiser.

No. The worst that had happened was that the heating had been turned up.

Ship's radio on to broad-band. Get moving.

He had difficulty speaking. When he first tried to say the bot's name he discovered that there was a more particular pain mixed up in his general bodily agonies. If he hadn't broken his jaw he'd done something very like it. He moved his mouth experimentally. Attempted to move his mouth.

Other races had gods. He wished that the Trok did, so that he could call upon a few of them now.

No, his jaw wasn't broken. He wasn't going to allow it to be broken. He must just have jarred it numb when he'd crashed against the top of the cockpit.

Jaw, he thought, if you've gone and broken yourself, after this is all over I'm going to break you again.

He'd lost a few teeth. They'd grow back soon, but at the moment the bits were floating around disconcertingly between his eyes and his visor.

He made another attempt.

"Pinocchio."

The bot came on-line instantly. "Segrill."

"Cannot speak Strider," said the Trok laboriously, keeping the words down to a minimum and hoping the Image would be able to make sense of what he was saying.

And then Ten Per Cent Extra Free was in his mind.

THERE IS NO NEED FOR YOU TO TALK. JUST THINK AT ME. PINOCCHIO WILL HEAR EVERYTHING THAT I HEAR.

Segrill obeyed, swiftly explaining what was very likely about to happen and his madcap scheme for trying to prevent it.

YOU ARE CORRECT. THERE IS NO REAL ALTERNATIVE. I WILL CONVEY ALL THIS TO CAPTAIN LEONIE STRIDER.

#

"That's insane!" yelped Strider out loud before she could stop herself. The rest of the party stopped and turned to look at her—all except Polyaggle, who continued trudging towards the Trok fleet. The fighter that had rocketed skyward a short while earlier was now returning more sedately to the ground.

"Nothing," Strider said. She hoped she sounded adequately reassuring. "I'm just fixing something up with Ten Per Cent Extra Free."

She tongued off her suit radio.

"What do you think our chances are?"

BETTER THAN IF YOU STAY WHERE YOU ARE. THAT IS TO SAY, CONSIDERABLY BETTER THAN ZERO. SEGRILL IS PERFECTLY CORRECT. IT WAS VERY STUPID OF ALL OF US NOT TO HAVE THOUGHT OF THIS BEFORE, BUT IT WAS PARTICULARLY STUPID OF ME. I PRESENT MY APOLOGIES.

Apologies from an Image? This was something Strider had thought she would never hear.

"It's OK," she said casually. "Just don't do it again, huh?"

She wondered how she was going to persuade her personnel to go through with this—persuading herself was going to be no easy task. They must have reasoned it out by now that this was likely to be a suicide mission all along, but there were better ways and worse ways to go. Being flash-fried seemed one of the better ways: one moment you were there and the next you weren't. No pain, no hassle—no funeral expenses. Dropping from a great height on to an airless planet struck Strider as being one of the worse ways.

"What does Pinocchio think about it?"

He is in total agreement with me.

There was something vaguely chilling in the way that Ten Per Cent Extra Free said this, but Strider didn't have time to think about it.

"All right. We'll do this. Can you hook me in with Polyaggle as well?"

Certainly.

Diplomacy, thought Strider, has always been my strongest suit—followed closely by tact, of course. I will handle this like the masterful politician I might have become had the romantic lure of starside—the glorious mysteries of the Universe—not been so great. I will cajole my people into accepting my point of view. I will use sweet reason and . . . aw, fuck it.

Drawing a lazgun from her belt, she tongued her suit radio to the general frequency.

"Look, you bastards," she said, "here's what's going to happen. Anyone who objects"—she waved the lazgun—"is going to be breathing vacuum about one split second from now. Got that?"

#

"You pilot this damned thing damned carefully now," said Strider.

There was no reply. Ten Per Cent Extra Free had returned to more urgent duties with Pinocchio, promising her that he and the bot would give her people another half-hour to get clear. If the Trok pilot directly beneath her had heard what she had said at all it was obviously just gabble to him.

A Trok fighter is designed to carry a crew of between one and four Trok, who between them probably mass no more than a quarter of a kilogram, plus their personal equipment, food, essential supplies and so forth—perhaps another couple of kilograms. This is, in terms of the fighters' capabilities, the unimportant part of their payload. What they are designed to lift is an extra ton of weaponry, including at least two ballistics that are rather larger and heavier than the fighter itself. The fighters on Qitanefermeartha no longer had to carry ballistics—they'd used them all to devastating effect against the Autarchy's warcruisers.

Trok fighters come in various shapes and sizes, but most of them have the approximate form of a domed lozenge some three meters long and some two meters wide. The only way a human being would be able to get inside one would be by transforming herself or himself into toothpaste. But the craft is easily capable of lifting and transporting the mass of a human being.

The rocketry is concentrated at what would be the corners if the fighter had been a rectangle rather than a lozenge. There are upthrusters there, and downthrusters; forward and retro-rockets. It doesn't really matter in this instance what the purpose of each of these rockets is in moving the spacecraft around: if you're in the direct line of fire of one of them you're very soon going to be toast. So attaching a belt-rope to the bottom of a Trok fighter and hoping to tag along behind is a very bad idea indeed, because sooner or later some part of your body is going to get burnt off. This would be painful. If you were lucky—or unlucky, depending on your personal tolerance of pain—the flare would fuse your spacesuit to the cauterized stump of your limb, so you might just survive.

Until the next time you flailed into the path of one of the rockets.

But there is one safe (Safe? Hah! thought Strider) way for a human being to be transported by a Trok fighter. Using your belt-rope, tie yourself tightly to the top of it, arms straight ahead and legs straight behind, tidily out of reach of all of the rocketry.

It's not pretty. It's not elegant. But it just might work.

Just might.

Strider had positioned herself so that she could see over the leading edge of the fighter to which Segrill had allocated her. If she and the Trok craft were going to end up screaming towards the surface of Qitanefermeartha at several hundred kilometers per hour she at least wanted to be able to watch—more accurately, she didn't want to spend the entire duration of the flight assuming this was exactly what was happening. As she fastened herself down she noticed that most of the rest of her party had chosen the same option—some of them, like Strauss-Giolitto, were tall enough to have very little alternative. Strider, her arms wrapped carefully around the front of the little vessel, was currently looking at one of her own footprints in the dust, only half a meter away. In every sense, Polyaggle was the odd one out. Possessing no belt-rope, she seemed quite unconcerned—although it was difficult to tell—by the fact that she was perched in a sort of upright squatting position atop the fighter she had selected, firmly gripping items of its superstructure. The pilot of that particular craft had a tricky task ahead.

The first few laden Trok fighters were already gingerly lifting off, gaining good altitude before darting off towards the pole—northern or southern, Strider didn't know. As more and more people secured themselves, assisted by busily moving Trok, lift-offs became more frequent. Through Ten Per Cent Extra Free, Strider had told Segrill that she wanted to be last: it was her duty as captain to take the greatest risk. He had pointed out acidly that the people taking the greatest risk were in fact the pilots of the fighters who were not carrying burdens, because they would be the very last to leave.

She could feel the fighter beneath her powering up. Ahead of her she could see Polyaggle being cautiously lifted into the sky—how much strength could there be in those gloved claws? Strider abruptly suspected that the answer was: quite a lot. Her own pilot was using equal skill, cutting in his upthrusters very gradually so as to minimize the chance of her being affected by splashback. The noise inside her suit, transmitted via the frame of the fighter, was almost literally deafening; she raised her helmet slightly in the hope of cutting down the din, but the manoeuvre didn't seem to make much difference.

Slowly the footprint she had been watching—had become almost fond of—began to recede from her, and then it was erased entirely as the upthrusters threw the dust into turmoil. I am never, ever going to travel this way again, she told herself.

There was a spurt of altitude. As Segrill had warned all of them most forcefully, she looked neither to right nor to left in case a close-up glimpse of the upthrusters blinded her. On second thoughts, she closed her eyes and used her tongue to blacken out her visor: time enough to look at the scenery once the upthrusters had cut out. "Above all else, keep absolutely still," Segrill had said. Strider reckoned she could have given a marble statue close competition.

There was a lessening and a change in the nature of the racket filling her head. At the same time the pressure on her belly eased. Her pilot had switched off the upthrusters. She prepared herself for the inevitable backwards drag as the main rockets came on, and sure enough it came. She felt her belt-rope cutting into the underside of her buttocks, her groin, her shoulderblades . . . too many pains in too many parts of the body to be counted. It was half a minute before she plucked up the courage to clear her visor.

When she did so, she was entranced.

They were travelling only about ten kilometers up, at a guess—high enough to clear all but the highest of Qitanefermeartha's sharp mountains. A crater-strewn landscape was rapidly unfolding beneath her. Most of its variations in color were created purely by shadows, but it was fascinating nevertheless. Whatever had happened during the planet's geological and meteorological past, various forces had conspired to produced every possible shape and form of pockmark, impact ray, lava spread and sinuous rille. She was reminded of the way the surface of Mars had looked before humans had got around to starting to terraform that planet, but all of this was on a smaller scale: it was a finely detailed miniature rather than a portrait that covered half the wall. She wished she could tell the pilot to go down a bit lower—although that would have meant she could make out less of the surface, because now they really were picking up speed.

Earlier she had promised herself should would never do this again. Now she wondered if she wasn't in at the birth of a great new leisure industry.

The chronometer display at the upper right of her visor told her that by this time Pinocchio and Ten Per Cent Extra Free must have launched the programmed shuttle. With luck the bot would for some while now have been legging it away from the city of Qitanefermeartha as fast as he could. Assuming the Helgiolath cruisers didn't start bombarding the city for another hour, he should be safely distant.

She tongued her suit radio to the general frequency. The static was abominable.

"Has anyone else survived this so far?" she said.

There was a confusion of voices.

"Quiet!" she shouted.

After a few moments the babble died down.

"I thought I might have been the only one," she said into the comparative quiet. "I guess we won't be able to count ourselves until we get to wherever it is the Trok are taking us. But, if you can all attain what is politely called radio silence, I want to check on one person."

There was stillness.

It was impossible for her to mimic the notes of the Spindrifter language using the various tonalities available to Argot, but, very slowly and deliberately, she did her best.

"Poll. Eee. Aaag. Ull."

Just above the static she could hear something that sounded halfway between a chirrup and a whisper. It didn't matter what the detail of the message was, as Polyaggle must have realized even as she spoke—because in a different sense the message had a very precise meaning.

Assuming their luck kept up, not just one but two of the species currently extant in The Wondervale had been saved by the Trok from possible extinction.

To hell with whether the Helgiolath got round to coining all those little medals: Strider was going to do it herself—with her bare teeth, if necessary.

#

From the outset Pinocchio had known that, whatever Strider might think, this was a venture from which he was not going to return; now that he was in virtual symbiosis with the Image, the knowledge was an integral part of his make-up. And Ten Per Cent Extra Free—or, rather, the part of the Gestalt that could be conceptually partitioned off as Ten Per Cent Extra Free—had conspired in keeping the truth from her. She might have done something foolish and typically human like countermand her earlier instructions to the bot. Pinocchio could disobey direct orders, especially if he believed that by doing so he was acting in Strider's best interests, whether she knew it or not—he wouldn't be down on Qitanefermeartha had that not been the case—but even then it was very difficult for him.

He watched, with Ten Per Cent Extra Free also watching through Pinocchio's photoreceptors, the ships of the little Trok fleet lift off one by one and then speed away overhead. From here even Pinocchio's acute vision could not make out anything more than the flares of the rockets. He wondered which of them bore Leonie—knowing her, it would be the last to leave. He felt something inside him which, after a millisecond's thought, he identified as sorrow. Farewell, Leonie. There was still that other of those things called emotions inside him—the one which as yet he had been unable to identify, though it had been increasingly affecting his behavior in minor ways for some time.

The main body of the Trok fighters lifted off now, much more quickly, and streaked towards the pole.

He/they waited a further two minutes.

Time, he/they thought.

There is a limit to the accuracy with which a shuttle's course can be pre-programmed, especially a shuttle that is lifting itself from a slightly sloping, treacherously soft plain of dust: a tiny subsidence beneath it can throw all the calculations off by a crucial few meters. There is also a limit to the number of actions even an Image can manage to perform simultaneously.

Strider had imagined that the bot would be able to leave the shuttle before it flew on its final, deadly mission. In fact, his puter was required to assist the ship's own rudimentary puter make all the small adjustments that would be necessary during the flight. The Image would have been able to do this, of course, except for the fact that the Image was going to be otherwise employed.

I WILL REMAIN IN CONSTANT MENTAL CONTACT WITH YOU, said the Ten Per Cent Extra Free fragment of the Gestalt, BUT NOW I MUST RELOCATE TO THE INTERIOR OF THE CITY.

Pinocchio knew this, for the thought was in part his own. He nodded his head—a human reaction that had been written into his software. Perhaps it would be the last human reaction he would ever display. His inheritance.

He/they triggered the launching procedure, and rockets struggled to raise the vehicle off the plain. It weaved slightly as it ascended, and he/they reflexively made a trivial alteration to the program. The dust roiled beneath the shuttle. The stars were very bright—they seemed brighter even than Qitanefermeartha's dim red sun, which was lying just above the horizon. All were outshone by the occasional brief flares of destruction still continuing above him/them. The Autarchy's defenders were putting up a better fight than expected.

He/they primed every ballistic on the shuttle—every weapon down to the last spare lazgun—and then programmed the drive for auto-destruct. Finally he/they set the shuttle into full forward thrust, with an acceleration of over ten gees.

Low across the plain it sped as straight as a laser beam towards the city's gloomy deadmetal airlock doors.

The Ten Per Cent Extra Free part of the symbiosis drew back from The Truthfulness some of the energy he had earlier stolen from the city.

All seventeen of the airlocks suddenly opened just as the shuttle approached. Pinocchio hardly had time to register them as the shuttle, streaming vengeful fire, shot straight through them. They closed tidily behind it as swiftly as they had opened.

Beyond, further—less substantial—barriers awaited. They shattered under the colossal impact of the howling spacecraft. Even Pinocchio's night-vision could see nothing now—the plastite forescreen was completely obscured by debris. The Gestalt of himself and Ten Per Cent Extra Free had started to use senses that, mixing machine and Image perceptions, were utterly alien to the human experiential world. Nano-trickles of electrical current within Pinocchio's and the shuttle's puters interrelated with equally tiny pulses of trans-reality energy as the vessel plowed through the flimsy walls and other structures of Qitanefermeartha, leaving thousands of dead and dying in the darkness of their wake.

The bot made a few more minuscule alterations. The impacts kept inducing trivial deviations into the shuttle's trajectory. 2.339081 seconds to go. 2.339080. 2.339079 . . .

Pinocchio made a guess at the emotion his software had serendipitously developed towards Leonie.

Ten Per Cent Extra Free drew power from The Truthfulness, expanding his being until it contained almost as much energy as he had originally taken from the city.

And then he returned it to Qitanefermeartha's main power-generating station, a vast installation right at the hub of the city.

Priming it.

Everywhere—even in the tunnel where the Autarch Nalla struggled and cursed—the lights came on.

That was of only passing interest to Qitanefermeartha's citizens, however, because just under a quarter of a second later the powerful ballistic that the shuttle had become struck the very center of the unstable bomb that the power-generating station had become.

A dome of deadmetal not only keeps things out: it keeps things in. There was nowhere for the fireball to go.

"At last, I've become a Real Boy," thought Pinocchio in the instant that he, the shuttle, the central power-generating station and everything else for a hundred kilometers around were vaporized.

It took a little longer for the entire interior of the city to be sterilized.

Oh, several seconds.