Had he saved enough fuel to manage a powered reentry? Greg hoped he wouldn’t have to find out. Of course, better that than running out of whatever air they had sealed in with them. What the Uther provision of life support systems was, he had no idea—but maybe, just maybe, they were designed to operate without power. He was certainly breathing OK for now.
A tortured hoot reminded him that they had an Uther on board. Kanti sang at it, and it sang back.
“It’s OK, just stunned,” she said. “ ‘Space, this blackness, is?’ it asks.”
“Yes,” Greg replied. “Space, this blackness is.”
“We’ve got company!” Kanti announced. “Come over here!”
Greg, belatedly, released himself from the couch and pushed himself over to the port. Not a kilometer away was a human shuttle, growing closer. Their launch, Greg thought, must have given the cyberservants quite a surprise—and their human masters nothing less than a shock once their liftoff plume revealed the rest of the disguised fleet.
Bach toned several chords. Kanti translated. “Fay D-flat Seege plans other humans now know. Spacecraft Fay D-flat Seege not now launch. Too late that action would be.”
An idiot that Uther was not, Greg thought. “If they wanted any chance at the station at all, Fay D-flat Seege’s best move would be to launch immediately. But I think that would still be too late—the base should have effective countermeasures together in hours.”
“Effective? You mean to kill all the attackers?”
“I wouldn’t think so. I’m not sure what they’d come up with, but it might be that our replicators are already turning out hundreds of tiny robot tug spacecraft that would rendezvous with the Fay D-flat Seege ships and push them back toward Epona. Knute won’t kill anyone if he doesn’t have to.”
Kanti frowned. “Not so simple. The Fay D-flat Seege would be humiliated—other flocks would do the killing.”
Greg shook his head. “Maybe they’ll work out some kind of face-saving compromise.”
Kanti didn’t look hopeful. “Maybe,” she said. “Meanwhile, I think it’s going to be a disaster for human-Uther relations down there.” Then she translated for Bach.
The Uther hooted, then spoke in triads.
Kanti laughed herself. “I guess I don’t know everything. What Bach said was ‘Fay D-flat Seege ship you humans scavenge. Much respect outside Fay D-flat Seege you humans win now. ’ Now that it said that, I can see it. But that creates another whole set of relationship questions, doesn’t it?”
Greg nodded. Be careful of what you wish for; you may get it. “Yes, it will take some time for all the ramifications of our little adventure to work themselves out.”
Bach glided over to the viewport with a ripple of its forewings. Then it took, from its ventral pouch, a small transparent box with rounded corners. In that, on a bed of what looked to be packed dirt, were a few flecks of green, gold, and crimson, and with its roots wrapped around a small rock, a tiny pagoda plant.
Kanti looked at Greg. There was no spontaneous outburst, as there might have been from the child he knew only two days ago. Instead, he met the eyes of a woman who had learned to deal with consequences. Her voice was quiet. “Fair play, I suppose. It’s going to be hard on Mom. At least it looks like we’ll get to the starbase before her. We can try to explain.”
Greg nodded; it would be hard on Kanti, too. He wished he had a human comm set.
The blue white orb of Epona turned slowly below them as the human rescue spacecraft matched their course. As if by common consent, the three of them savored a few moments of silence before the universe of events devoured them again.
Bach spoke. The three tone groups it uttered were, as usual, devoid of emotion in human terms, but Kanti whispered the translation: “Too heavy a carcass this Uther may try to carry, but into that carcass my teeth are forever sunk. My wings, providence must lift.”
That, Greg Konstantis thought, made two of us.