"We do appreciate the difficulty." If mental speech could have tones, that would be dry wit, Dupaynil thought. He sent a mental flick of the fingers to the Ssli and Weft, still swimming with apparent unconcern in the tank. Easy for them, he thought sourly, and then realized it wasn't. He would be even more miserable if he'd been stuck in a tank like that.
Despite the rising tension, he had actually fallen asleep when a screech from the Ryxi brought him upright, blinking. The viewscreen snowed what he presumed to be the real outer view, although he had no way of knowing which of the ship's outer sensors had produced the image. Darkness, points of light, some visibly moving. A Seti voice from the wallspeaker interrupted the Ryxi's tantrum.
"Captives, observe," it began, with typical Seti tact. "See your feeble hopes destroyed."
The view shown shifted from one angle to another. The outside of the Grand Luck with a long pointed snout oozing from a recess to slide past, aimed at some distant enemy. A zooming view of nearby ships, lifting them from points of light to toylike shapes against a dark background. Then another view, of the star around which the Federation Central Zone planets swung, a star which now looked scarcely bigger than any of the others.
"Share again!"
Dupaynil tried to relax. He had already passed on all he'd learned from the Bronthin. Now he watched the screen, listened to the Setis' boastful commentary and hoped the Ssli/Weft pair could contact another Ssli. Time passed. The view shifted every few minutes, from one sensor to another.
"Contact."
Dupaynil wasn't sure if the triumphant tone came from the Ssli or his own reaction. He expected to hear more, but the Ssli did not include him in whatever link it and the Weft had formed with that distant Ssli. The Ryxi clattered its beak, shifted from one great knobby foot to another, fluffed and sleeked its feathers, staring wide-eyed at the viewscreen. The Bronthin refused to look. Its closed eyes and monotonous hum could be either sleep or despair. And the Lethi, as before, simply stuck to each other and the sulfur.
Dupaynil had the feeling that he should do something more to prepare for the coming battle. Now that the Ssli had warned its fellow. Now surely that alarm was being passed on. He felt free to consider more immediate problems. Could they possibly break free of this compartment? Could they steal weapons? Find some kind of escape vehicle? Or, failing escape, do something disasterous to this ship and destroy it? He and the Ryxi were the only two who might actually do something, for noone had ever heard of a Bronthin being violent. He edged over to the hatch, and prodded its complicated-looking lock.
A roar of Seti profanity from outside made it clear that wouldn't work. He was looking around for something else to investigate, when the viewscreen blurred, cleared, blurred, and cleared again after a couple of short FTL skips. Then it grayed to a pearly haze and the ship trembled.
"Battle started!" came the announcement in Standard over the speaker. Then a long complicated gabble of Seti that must be orders.
"Sassmak is not aboard her ship." That fell into his mind like a lump of ice. "She disappeared onplanet. Wefts can't land to find her."
"Other ships?"
He had assumed she would be aboard her ship. He had assumed she would be wary, as alert as he'd always known her. What was she doing, playing around onplanet with her ship helpless above, with its weapons locked down, with no captain? Without at least taking Wefts with her?
"No other ships larger than escort insystem."
"Stupid woman!"
He didn't realize he'd said it aloud until he saw the Bronthin's eyes flick open, heard the Ryxi's agitated chirp.
"Never mind!" he said to them, glaring.
Here he had gone through one miserable hell after another, all to get her information she desperately needed, and she wasn't where she was supposed to be.
"Zaid-Dayan moving."
That stopped his mental ranting. Then the Grand Luck lurched sharply, as if it had run into a brick wall, and as his feet skidded on the floor he realized his head had nowhere to go but the corner of the Ssli transport tank.
Chapter Sixteen
FedCentral
"You're joking." Cons stared at her. "You don't realize…"
"I realize precisely what will happen to all of us if we don't take the initiative." Sassinak was on her feet now and the others were stirring restlessly, not committed to either side of this argument. "If you'd wanted death, or a mindwipe, and the rest of your life at hard labor, you'd have managed it before now. It's easy enough, even yet. Just wait for them to come after me. Because Temi is quite right. They will. I'm too dangerous, even by myself." She paused a careful measure, then added, "But with you, I could be dangerous enough to win."
"But we don't… We aren't…" Jemi's nervous looks around got no support. Most were staring fascinated at Sassinak.
"Aren't what? Strong enough? Brave enough? You've been strong and brave enough to survive and stay free. How long, Coris?"
"I been here eight years. Jemi, six. Fostin was here when I came…"
"Years of your lives," Sassinak said, almost purring it.
"You survived capture, slavery, prison, all the disasters. And you survived this life below the city. Now you can end it. End the hiding, end the fear. End the suffering, your own and others."
They stirred. She could feel their need for her to be right, their need for her to be strong for them. Give them time and they'd revert, but she had this instant.
"Come on," she said. "Show me what you've got. Right now."
Slowly, they stood, eyeing her and each other with hope that was clearly unfamiliar.
"Any weapons? We've got this." She pulled out the snub-nosed weapon Aygar had taken from the first row. "How many are you, altogether?"
They had weapons, but not many and most, they explained, were carried by their roving scouts. Nor did they have an accurate count of their own numbers. Twenty here, a dozen there, stray couples and individuals, a large band whose territory they overlapped in one direction, and a scattering of bands in another. They had specialists, of a sort. Some were best at milking the mass-service food processors without detection and some had a knack for tapping into the datalinks.
"Good," Sassinak said. "Where's this godlike Parchandri you say is running the backscenes on Fed-Central?"
"You're not going after him!" Coris's shock was mirrored on every face. "There'll be guards - troops - we can't do that! It's like starting a war."
"Coris, this became a war the second a warrior dropped into it. Me. I'm fighting a war. War means strategy, tactics, victory conditions." She tapped these off on her fingers. "You people can squat here and get wiped out as the enemy chases me or you can be my troops and have a chance. I don't promise more than that. But if we win, you won't have to live down here, eating tasteless mush and drinking bilgewater. It'll be your world again. Your lives! Your freedom!"
The big-framed man she'd noticed before shrugged and came up beside Coris. "Might's well, Coris. They'll be after her, after us. Using gas again, most likely. I'm with her."
"And me!"
More than one of the others; Coris gave a quick side-to-side glance, shrugged, and grinned.
"I should've slit you back up there," he said, jerking his chin in what Sassinak assumed was the right direction.
Aygar growled, but Sassinak waved him to silence. "You're right, Coris. If you're going to take out a threat, do it right away. Next time you'll know."