reptilian. They were far closer to an oviparous Terrestrial mammal, if built on a rather over-powering scale. Or, at least, the females were. In his entire career, Howell had seen exactly three Rishathan males, and they were runty, ratty-looking little things. Fluttery and helpless, too. No wonder the matriarchs considered 'little old man' a mortal insult.
'Well, Merchant Howell,' the irony of the honorific came through the translator interface quite well, 'I trust you are prepared to conclude our transaction for the goods your line mother has ordered?'
'I am, Merchant Resdyrn,' he replied with matching irony and a gesture to Gregor Alexsov. His chief of staff keyed the code on a lock box and slid it to Resdyrn. The Rish lifted the lid and bared her upper canines in a human-style smile as she looked down at a prince's ransom in molecular circuitry, one of the several areas in which human technology led Rishathan.
'These are, of course, but a sample,' Howell continued. 'The remainder are even now being transferred to your vessel.'
'My line mother thanks you through her most humble daughter,' Resdyrn replied, not sounding particularly humble, and lifted a crystalline filigree of seaweed from the box. She held it in long, agile fingers with an excessive number of knuckles and peered at it through a magnifier, then grunted the alarming sound of a Rishathan chuckle as she saw the Imperial Fleet markings on the connector chips. She laid it carefully back into its nest, closed the lief once more, and crooked a massive paw protectively over it. The gesture was revealing, Howell thought. That single box, less than a meter in length, contained enough molycircuitiy to replace her freighter's entire command net, and for all her studied ease, Resdyrn was well aware of it.
'We, of course, have brought you the agreed upon cargo,' she said after a moment, 'but I fear my line mother sends your mother of mothers sad tidings, as well.' Howell sat straighter in his chair. 'This shall be our last meeting for some time to come, Merchant Howell.'
Howell swallowed a muttered curse before it touched his expression and cocked his head politely. Resdyrn raised her cranial frills in acknowledgment and touched her forehead in token of sorrow.
'Word has come from our embassy on Old Earth. The Emperor himself-' the masculine pronoun was a deliberate insult from a Rish; the fact that it was also accurate lent it a certain additional and delicious savor '-has taken an interest in this sector and dispatched his war mother Keita hither.'
'I … had not yet heard that, Merchant Resdyrn.' Howell hoped his dismay didn't show. Keita! God, did that mean they were going to have the Cadre on their backs? He longed to ask but dared not expend so much face.
'We do not know Keita's mission,' Resdyrn continued, taking pity on his curiosity (or, more likely, simply executing her own orders), 'but there are no signs that the Cadre has been mobilized. My line mother fears this may yet happen, however, and so must sever her links with you at least until such time as Keita departs. I hope that you will understand her reasoning.'
'Of course.' Howell inhaled, then shrugged, deliberately exaggerating the gesture to be sure Resdyrn noted it. 'My mother of mothers will also understand, though I'm sure she will hope the severance will be brief.'
'As do we, Merchant Howell. We of the Sphere hope for your success, that we may greet you as sisters in your own sphere.'
'Thank you, Merchant Resdyrn.' Howell managed to sound quite sincere, though no human was likely to forget the way the Rishatha had set the old Federation and Terran League at one another's throats in order to pick their joint bones. Four hundred years later, humanity was still coping with the lingering echoes of the League Wars in places like Shallingsport.
Fortunately, the Rishatha's military follow through had been less successful than their diplomatic judo throw. They'd ingested most of the old League during the First Human-Rish War while a war-weary Federation writhed in the throes of civil war, but their calculations hadn't allowed for the Empire which had arisen from the Federation's ruins under then Fleet Admiral Terrence Murphy, and Terrence I and the House of Murphy had kicked the Lizards back into their pre-war boundaries in the Second Human-Rish War.
'In that case,' Resdyrn rose, ending the unexpectedly brief meeting, 'I shall take my leave. I am covered in shame that it was I who must bring this message to you. May your weapons taste victory, Merchant Howell.'
'My daughter officers and I see no shame, Merchant Resdyrn, but only the faithful discharge of your line mother's decree.'
'You are kind.' Resdyrn bestowed another graceful bow upon him and left. Howell made no effort to accompany her. Despite her 'merchant's' role, Resdyrn niha Turbach remained a senior war mother of the Rishathan Sphere, and the suggestion that she could not be trusted aboard his vessel without a guard would have been an intolerable insult to her honor. This once, he was just as glad of it, too. Contingency plans or no, this little bit of news was going to bollix the works in fine style, and he needed to confer with his staff.
'Jays, Skipper,' one member of that staff said. 'Now what the bloody hell am I supposed to do?'
'Keep your suit on, Henry, Howell replied, and his long, cadaverous quartermaster leaned ostentatiously back in his chair.
'No problem-yet. But we're gonna look a bit hungry in a few months with our main supply line cut.'
'Agreed, but Greg and I knew this-or something like it-might happen. I wish it had waited a while longer, but we've set up our fallbacks.'
'Oh? I wish you'd told me about them,' Commander d'Amcourt said.
'We're telling you now, aren't we? You want to lay it out, Greg?'
'Yes, sir.' Alexsov leaned slightly forward, cold eyes thawed by an atypical amusement as he met d'Amcourt's lugubrious gaze. 'We've set up alternate supply lines through Wyvern. It'll be more cumbersome, because our purchase orders will have to be spread out carefully, and it was certainly convenient to have the Rishatha as a cutout in our logistics net, but there are advantages, too. For one thing, we can get proper spares and missile resupply direct. And we've already been dumping a lot of luxury items through Wyvern. I don't see any reason we can't fence the rest of our loot there-they certainly won't object.'
He shrugged, and heads nodded here and there. Most Rogue Worlds were fairly respectable (by their own lights, at least), but Wyvern's government was owned outright by the descendants of the captain-owners of one of the last piratical fleets of the League Wars to go 'legitimate.' It bought or sold anything, no questions asked, and was equally indiscriminate in the deals it brokered. Many of its fellow Rogue Worlds might deplore its existence, yet Wyvern was too useful an interface (and too well armed) for most of them to do anything more strenuous. Which, since the Empire had both the power and the inclination to smack the hands of those who irritated it, gave Wyvern's robber-baron aristocracy a vested interest in anything that might disrupt the nascent Franconian Sector's stability.
'As for our other support-' Alexsov paused, mentioning no names or places even here, then shrugged '-this shouldn't pose any problems. Unless, of course, Keita's presence means the Cadre plans to shove its nose in.'
'Exactly, and that's what worries me most,' Howell agreed. He glanced at the rather fragile-looking commander seated at Alexsov's right elbow. Slim, dark-skinned Rachel Shu, Howell's intelligence officer, was the sole female member of his staff … and its most lethal. Now she shrugged.
'It worries me, too, Commodore. My sources didn't say a thing about Keita's coming clear out here, so my people don't have any idea what he's up to. On the face of it, I'm inclined to think the Rishatha have overreacted. They don't dare antagonize the Empire by getting caught involved in something like this, and they remember what Keita and the Cadre did to them over the Louvain business, so they're pulling in their horns and getting ready to disclaim any responsibility. But I don't think my sources could have missed the signs if the Cadre were being committed on any meaningful scale.'
'Then why's Keita here? Wasn't he their point for Louvain, too?'
'He was, but the Cadre's too small for him to have pulled out any major force without my people noticing it. Besides, my last reports place him in the Macedon Sector, not on Old Earth, so this looks more like a spur of the moment improvisation, and the timing's about right for it to be in response to Mathison's World. He was right next door and they banged him on out-they didn't deploy him from the capital. I suspect he's on some sort of special intelligence-gathering mission for Countess Miller. She's always preferred to get a reading through Cadre Intelligence to crosscheck on ONI, and Keita's always been happier in the field than an HQ slot. If he hadn't, he'd have the general's stars and Arbatov would be his exec.'
'Which means we could see the Cadre yet,' Rendlemann pointed out.
'Unlikely,' Shu replied. 'Our support structure's very well hidden and dispersed, and the Cadre's a precision
