oncerebellious second torus-of-cognition.
What is it, My ring?
You recall how the savage sooners called to our corvette, not once, but twice, using minute tickles of digital power to attract our attention?
The first time, they used such a beacon to bribe us with the location of a g’Kek hideout.
The second time? Ah, yes. It was a lure, drawing the corvette to a trap.
VERY CLEVER, MY RING!
Ah, but the comparison does not work.
There are many more sources, this time.
They are stronger, and the cognizance traces have spoor patterns typical of starship computers.
But above all, My poor ring, did you not hear our detection officer stack?
These signals cannot come from benighted sooners.
THEY FLY!
Sara
GRAVITICSS!”
The detection officer thrashed her flukes.
“Movement signs! The large emitter departss its stationary hover position. Jophur battleship now moving east at two machsss. Ten klickss altitude.”
Sara watched Gillian Baskin absorb the news. This was according to plan, yet the blond Earthwoman showed hardly any reaction. “Very good,” she replied. “Inform me of any vector change. Decoy operator, please engage swarming program number four. Start the wrecks drifting upward, slowly.”
The water-filled chamber was unlike any “bridge” Sara had read about in ancient books — a Terran vessel, controlled from a room humans could only enter wearing breathing masks. This place was built for the convenience of dolphins. It was their ship — though a woman held command.
A musty smell made Sara’s nose itch, but when her hand raised to scratch, it bumped the transparent helmet, startling her for the fiftieth time. Fizzy liquid prickled Sara’s bare arms and legs with goose bumps. Yet she had no mental space for annoyance, fear, or claustrophobia. This place was much too strange to allow such mundane reactions.
Streaker’s overall shape and size were still enigmas. Her one glimpse of the hull — peering through a viewing port while the whale sub followed a searchlight toward its hurried rendezvous — showed a mysterious, studded cylinder, like a giant twelk caterpillar, whose black surface seemed to drink illumination rather than reflect it. The capacious airlock was almost deserted as Kaa and other dolphins debarked from the Hikahi, using spiderlike walking machines to rush to their assigned posts. Except for the bridge, most of the ship had been pumped free of water, reducing weight to a minimum.
The walls trembled with the rhythmic vibration of engines — distant cousins to her father’s mill, or the Tarek Town steamboats. The familiarity ran deep, as if affinity flowed in Sara’s blood.
“Battleship passing over Rimmer mountains. Departing line-of-sight!”
“Don’t make too much of that,” Gillian reminded the crew. “They still have satellites overhead. Maintain swarm pattern four. Kaa, ease us to the western edge of our group.”
“Aye,” the sturdy gray pilot replied. His tail and fins wafted easily, showing no sign of tension. “Suessi reports motors operating at nominal. Gravitics charged and ready.”
Sara glanced at a row of screens monitoring other parts of the ship. At first, each display seemed impossibly small, but her helmet heeded subtle motions of her eyes, enhancing any image she chose to focus on, expanding it to 3-D clarity. Most showed empty chambers, with walls still moist from recent flooding. But the engine room was a bustle of activity. She spied “Suessi” by his unique appearance — a torso of wedgelike plates topped by a reflective dome, encasing what remained of his head. The arm that was still human gestured toward a panel, reminding a neo-fin operator to make some adjustment.
That same arm had wrapped around Emerson after the Hikahi docked, trembling while clutching the prodigal starman. Sara had never seen a cyborg before. She did not know if it was normal for one to cry.
Emerson and Prity were also down there, helping Suessi with their nimble hands. Sara spied them laboring in the shadows, accompanied by Ur-ronn, the eager young urs, fetching and carrying for the preoccupied engineers. Indeed, Emerson seemed a little happier with work to do. After all, these decks and machines had been his life for many years. Still, ever since the reunion on the docks, Sara had not seen his accustomed grin. For the first time, he seemed ashamed of his injuries.
These people must be hard up to need help from an ape, an urrish blacksmith, and a speechless cripple. The other youngsters from Wuphon were busy, too. Running errands and tending the glaver herd, keeping the creatures calm in strange surroundings.
I’m probably the most useless one of all. The Egg only knows what I’m doing here.
Blame it on Sage Purofsky, whose cosmic speculations justified her charging off with desperate Earthlings. Even if his reasoning holds, what can I do about the Buyur plan? Especially if this mission is suicidal—
The detection officer squealed, churning bubbles with her flukes.
“Primary gravities source decelerating! Jophur ship nearing estimated pposition of mobile observer.”
Mobile observer, Sara thought. That would be Dwer.
She pictured him in that frail balloon, alone in the wide sky, surrounded by nature’s fury, with that great behemoth streaking toward him.
Keep your head down, little brother. Here it comes.
Dwer
WITH THE RIMMERS BEHIND HIM AT LAST, THE storm abated its relentless buffeting enough to glimpse some swathes of stars. The gaps widened. In time Dwer spied a pale glow to the west. Gray luminance spread across a vast plain of waving scimitar blades.
Dwer recalled slogging through the same bitter steppe months ago, guiding Danel, Lena, and Jenin toward the Gray Hills. He still bore scars from that hard passage, when knifelike stems slashed at their clothes, cutting any exposed flesh.
This was a better way of traveling, floating high above. That is, if you survived searing lightning bolts, and thunder that loosened your teeth, and terrifying brushes with mountain peaks that loomed out of the night like giant claws, snatching at a passing morsel.
Maybe walking was preferable, after all.
He drank from his water bottle. Dawn meant it was time to get ready. Dormant machines would have flickered to life when first light struck the decoy balloons, electric circuits closing. Computers, salvaged from ancient starships, began spinning useless calculations.
The Jophur must be on the move, by now.
He reached up to his forehead and touched the rewq he had been given, causing it to writhe over his eyes. At once, Dwer’s surroundings shifted. Contrasts were enhanced. All trace of haze vanished from the horizon, and he was able to look close to the rising sun, making out the distant glimmers of at least a dozen floating gasbags, now widely dispersed far to the east, tiny survivors of the tempest that had driven them so far.
Dwer pulled four crystals from a pouch at his waist and jammed them into the gondola wickerwork so each glittered in the slanted light. A hammer waited at his waist, but he left it there for now, scanning past the decoys, straining to see signs of the Gray Hills.
I’m coming, Jenin. I’ll be there soon, Lena.
I’ve just got a few more obstacles to get by.
He tried to picture their faces, looking to the future rather than dwelling on a harsh past. Buried in his backpack was a sensor stone that would come alight on midwinter’s eve, if by some miracle the High Sages gave the all clear. If all the starships were gone, and there was reason to believe none would return. By then Dwer must find Lena and Jenin, and help them prepare the secluded tribe for either fate destiny had in store — a homecoming to the Slope, or else a life of perpetual hiding in the wilderness.
