The Sea is Full of Stars

and I’ve seen the other outmaneuver our Geldorian friend with some sort of impressive martial arts. Unless you’re under sedation or isolation from me, I don’t think I can afford to have either of you loose.”

“Ship coming in!” Ari announced. “Pazir class. A minor warship, but it’s got enough power to catch us and enough to tow a mod at least two light-years given a fuel hookup.”

Wallinchky frowned. “Our Captain won’t like that. Pazir class aren’t adapted to breathers.”

“I doubt if he expects the Emperor to be aboard or anywhere near here,” Martinez responded. “He’ll try and chase or get aboard.”

“A good point. Are we well away from the ship? I don’t know what they have in mind, but it would be nice to be on their side of their guns.”

“I can’t quite do that,” Martinez said, “but I don’t think we’re close enough to get harmed. I’m station- keeping with the two water lifeboats and they seem satisfied.”

A ship entering from null-space was an eerie sight; there was no bright flash, no spectacular opening in space-time, at least not that anyone could see. It was just as if a ship emerged from nothing, or from a narrow slit that nothing could detect. It was unlike going into null-space, where there was a substantial energy flow and discharge.

The warship looked like nothing so much as three large gunmetal-gray balls one after the other, with the center section ringed by smaller balls of the same type. Although huge when measured against the lifeboats, it was minuscule when contrasted to the massive City of Modar, whose engine and bridge section alone was a good forty times the warship’s size.

The small balls ringing the center section suddenly flared up with a blaze of yellow light that quickly went to white, resembling nothing so much as searchlights going out into space from the ship. As suddenly, the beams converged, and at the point of convergence well ahead of the warship a brilliant thin white beam so bright it overloaded the lifeboat cameras shot out and struck the City of Modar at and just forward of the bridge. A huge section of it vaporized; the interior, which had been under pressure, blew out, scattering debris, and the transparent tunnel and catwalk linking it to the passenger module was sliced off and twisted away from the blast.

The beam winked off, then quickly back on again, this time coming down on the hapless freighter like a knife through soft bread, slicing through the docking mechanism and connectors, literally severing the engine and bridge module, and the main computer, from the tow.

“I’m sorry you can’t see this,” Jules Wallinchky told his prisoners, fascinated by the sight. “It’s pretty impressive.”

The colors on the small balls now changed from white back to yellow, and then to a bright orange, converging again about a quarter of the distance to the now adrift but still station-keeping power plant of the big ship. A series of bright burning fireballs of the same bright orange emerged from the convergence, struck the City of Modar, exploded there, and literally pushed it away and on a different trajectory than the rest of the long train of modules. It got, perhaps, a kilometer away, and then exploded in a spectacular silent fireball.

“Wow! Now that was a good show!” Wallinchky enthused. He turned to the back. “Teynal? It’s your turn to take over negotiations here.”

“Why do they have to negotiate?” Ming asked, almost taunting him, even though speaking hurt her parched throat. “They have the train and maybe two weeks minimum lead time. They could just blow us away and take everything.”

The serpentine Rithian leader came forward and took the portable communicator from Jules Wallinchky. “Not exactly,” he hissed. “Even if they are thinking along those lines, now is the time to disabuse them of that.”

With that, the Rithian spoke into the communicator. It was in a local Rithian dialect and in code; translator modules couldn’t handle it, and all they heard were the deep, inhuman sounds the creature actually uttered.

There was a sudden flare at the connector between the now exposed passenger module and the next mod up the train. Small jets automatically fired, moving it away from the others, whereupon it exploded spectacularly on its own.

“Goodness me! I hope the Captain wasn’t in either of those units,” Jules Wallinchky said in a sarcastic tone that implied exactly the opposite sentiment. “I don’t underestimate him, though. I just wonder what his plan really is, out of plain curiosity.”

“You blew up the passenger mod? Why?” Angel asked him.

“It’s not like anybody who counted was left on it. I suspect it was evacuated fully,” Wallinchky replied. “And now they know we can blow up what they want, just as they can blow us up. It makes a wonderful basis for trust and mutual exchange. The Ha’jiz are the very best at their job.”

“Signal coming in!” Ari told him.

Teynal’s cobralike head bobbed in satisfaction. “Put it on speaker. I will use this for responses.”

A voice came through the lifeboat’s public address unit, sounding a bit tinny but otherwise okay. “You’ve made your point,” it said in a high, reedy tone that gave no clue as to the race of the speaker. “So how do we make the exchange?”

“I assume you wish the entire module?” the Rithian asked him. “It certainly will be easier to move that way.”

“Yes, that is satisfactory. Any problems?”

If Rithians laughed, Teynal would have. “Some. You should know that Jeremiah Wong Kincaid was aboard and that he stumbled over our plans.”

There was a long pause, then, “Kincaid! Oh, they will love that! You dealt with him?”

“Probably not. My best guess is that he is still here, in this area, not on one of the lifeboats, but that he intends to somehow board you and have you take him to your leader, as it were.”

“Any idea where he might be hiding?” the suddenly worried-sounding voice from the warship asked.

“We have some ideas. The most logical is that he located our cargo and is hidden within the module somewhere in an environment suit. You will have to take it with you and thus him, and it would be ridiculous to try and ferret him out in this environment. I could be wrong, but it is the only idea that makes sense to me.”

The man on the warship considered it. “Sounds logical to us, too. All right, I think we can contain that. In fact, I suspect that His Imperial Highness will be overjoyed to have old Kincaid on our turf, as it were, now that we know he’s out there. All right. Which module is it?”

“Twenty-seven. It is, remember, wired—we shall transmit the codes in due course—but we can do an automated disconnect safely. Stand by.”

Again the Rithian spoke some noises none but one of his kind could speak into the communicator, using the preestablished command frequency. Well out in front, virtually too far up the tow to see, the magnetic locks slipped back, the module turned using small steering jets, and it rolled out of line, spinning, until the jets reversed and stopped it. Module 27 was now station-keeping about a hundred meters from the rest of the tow.

“We just scanned it, can’t pick up any life signs,” the ship reported. “Of course, he would have thought of that. Very well. We are going to catch it with a tractor beam and bring it into line with us. Remain where you are until we’re done.”

“Think they’ll pull a fast one?” Wallinchky asked, sounding worried for the first time in the operation.

“They better not,” Teynal hissed. “If they do, it will blow up on them. And I do not think that there’s another of those to be had.”

Angel could only hang against the seat and listen, imagining the sights they were watching on the screen behind her and also watching Jules Wallinchky’s face. He was in fact nervous, but he also seemed to be enjoying the stirring of his own fear. He’d gotten where he was by rising to the criminal top as a man of action and a consummate risk-taker; it probably had been a long time since he’d put himself on the line, and it was feeding some inner need in him. She had to wonder if personally taking these risks wasn’t necessary to his well-being, perhaps a better explanation for ventures like this than the desire to own the jewels or whatever else he might “acquire.”

Still, a warship shouldn’t be so easily fooled by a captain who’d had command only a few days and certainly was winging this. She was certain Kincaid wasn’t dead; she could feel his presence out