"A desperate gamble," Crisler said, his eyebrows raised.
"Not really. Because of why we're here… it's simply that I came to get my people," she said. "As you see I have found them." She gestured around at her crew. "Looking at the state of the Banshee, and the number of berths on this new cycler, it doesn't look like you've got enough room for them anyway. Why not let me take them off your hands?"
Crisler looked surprised, then laughed. "A tempting offer— if I believed you about why you're here, which I don't. Or rather, I know you came for your crew, but what about them?" He pointed at Mike and the professor. "You've arrived with soldiers and scientists, just like I did. I doubt your little expedition's as small as you make it out to be. Regardless of what you want, I'm sure these people want the cycler mother."
"The what?" asked Herat.
Katz hung his head. "Self-reproducing starship technology. It's what we suspected we'd find here. When we got here and saw this place, we knew: Jentry's Envy was not made by the Lasa. It's a Chicxulub ship."
Crisler nodded. "Renegade Chicxulub— who would have thought? Katz here tells me that the Chicxulub were wiped out by their own planet-killers. But apparently not all the Chicxulub were loyal to the extermination program to begin with. There was some kind of splinter group toward the end, and they adopted the goals of the Lasa. They made the cycler mothers, and so here we are." He frowned suddenly at the glowing control sphere. "Katz, why is that thing on?"
"Sir, it seems to have come on by itself. The gunfire, maybe…"
"Well, shut it down." Katz obediently slipped into the control sphere, and began gesturing at the holographic spires and disks inside it. After a few moments he emerged, shaking his head. "Some kind of sequence has started. I can't shut it down."
"Get inscape going," snapped Crisler. "I want to see what's happening here."
Rue switched her inscape implants to receive, and watched as windows blossomed throughout the sphere. As this was happening, she noted Herat moving over next to Katz, and Mike going the opposite way, towing the autotroph canister. Crisler's men had examined it then given it back to him after deciding it wasn't a weapon.
"So what's a cycler mother?" asked Herat casually.
"This place," Katz said. Seeing that Rue was listening, he said, "All human societies have outlawed self-reproducing machines. You know the disasters that happened the few times the things were made— ecological catastrophes, nanotech-based diseases… Most other sentient species also ban them. But not the Chicxulub. They raised their creation to a fine art. All the machinery around Osiris and Apophis is part of a full-grown cycler mother— a machine that gives birth to cyclers."
"This is all very well," said Rue to Crisler, "but it doesn't get you very much, does it? Your cycler mother is stuck around a pair of brown dwarfs. How are you going to adapt it to launch FTL starships? I take it that's your plan."
Katz looked mournful. "He doesn't have to adapt it. He can just take—"
"That will be enough, Professor," said Crisler. He turned to look at an inscape window that showed stars. He frowned, and waved a hand to adjust the picture. "I thought this camera was mounted on the outside of the cycler?"
Katz glanced over. "It is." He did a double take. "Oh, that must be the fires you see…" No, those tiny pinpricks were not the luminous blue dots of the ongoing fire, but the real firmament.
"Get a bot out there!" shouted Crisler. "What's happening?" Meanwhile, he gestured to swivel the view in the window he did have open. Not surprisingly, after a moment the Banshee came into view.
Crisler popped open another window. "Banshee, answer! What's happening to the shack?"
"S-Sir… We were watching the other ships coming in, it must have just happened—"
A new window appeared, either from the bot's perspective, or the Banshee's. Rue could see the long black cylindrical shape of the shack. It appeared normal except at one end, which was flattened, belling outward a bit even. And extruding through the ferrofluid was the nose of the cycler. As she watched, the balloon-habs emerged.
"It looks like we're launching," said Herat with a smirk. "Unplanned, I take it?"
"Shut up," said Crisler. "You, and you! Take one of the seeds back to the Banshee. We can't afford to risk keeping them all in one place."
Some marines began levering one of the two large egg-shaped objects out of its socket in the wall of the chamber. As they did Herat turned to Katz, eyes wide. "Did he just call those…"
Katz nodded unhappily. "Cycler mother seeds. We think so, anyway. Each one can regrow a complete construction system like this. These are the real treasure here."
"Well, it seems that we're out of time," said Crisler briskly. "I don't understand what you hoped to achieve here, Rue, with this little band of pirates. But as you can see, our cycler's launching, and so we've got to get her crew secure, and get ready to follow in the Banshee. The newly arrived ships will remain to study the cycler mother.
"But as to you…" He scowled at Rue. "You're quite right that we don't have the resources to support you. Nor can we let you escape with word of what we found here." He nodded to two more marines. "Escort Rue and her people outside, and kill them."
"Admiral, this is insane!" Katz pushed forward, his face red. "It's murder!"
"Dr. Katz, you still have some limited usefulness," said Crisler coldly. "Unless you'd like to join your friends outside, you'll keep silent and do your job."
Rue's heart was pounding, but somehow she didn't feel fear— just fury. She looked around at the people in the sphere. The scientific team were cowed, all pressed back against the walls as Rue's crew reluctantly drifted forward.
Then Mike Bequith caught her eye. He jerked his head almost imperceptibly toward the inscape screen that showed the shack. Then he winked and reached behind him.
Behind him was the canister containing the autotroph life-forms.
She had no idea what he was planning; anything they did now was just likely to get them killed. But Rue looked Mike in the eye, and he looked right back. That mysterious smile he sometimes got was hovering around his mouth. Rue looked at the inscape window, and her heart leapt as she saw what he'd been indicating: two smudged absences of stars hung there. They would be easy to miss unless you knew they were there.
Rue caught Mike's eye and shook her head very slightly; then, using her link, Rue issued a command to the interceptors. Mike looked incredulous. He frowned and nodded back at the autotroph canister. She shook her head again.
The two marines carrying the seed were blocking the exit to the chamber. People's eyes were momentarily on them, so no one but Rue noticed as two sleek gray shapes shot out of the black smoke in which they'd been hiding, like Earth squids leaving clouds of ink. Here they came, looming closer and larger, she could see the Lasa writing on them—
"Admiral!" It was the Banshee calling. "What the hell— are those part of the cycler?"
"Admiral," cried Rue confidently, "I think you should look to your ship."
Crisler whirled to look at the inscape window. He was just in time to see two spindle-shapes, glowing brightly from the Banshee's lasers, smack into the axis assembly of the starship. Amazingly, the interceptors bounced, tumbling unhurt away from the wreckage before each regained its poise. Then as one they turned their antimatter beams on the damaged core of Crisler's ship, and the flash of light overwhelmed the camera. The inscape window went black.