The wazoon chattered a warning.
"I know!" she snapped. "Don't you think I know my business? So there's a watcher probe up ahead. One of you go take care of it and don't bother me! Can't you see I'm busy?"
The eyes blinked at her. One pair vanished as the wazoon scuttled into its tiny ship and closed the hatch. In a moment a small shudder passed through the scout as the probe departed.
Luck to you, small wazoon, faithful client, she thought.
Feigning nonchalance, she watched as the tiny probe danced up ahead amongst the planetoidal debris, sneaking toward the watcher probe that lay in Beie's path.
One expendable scout, she thought bitterly. The Tymbrimi are fighting for their lives. Earth is besieged, half her colonies taken, and still we Synthians wait and watch, watch and wait, sending only me and my team to observe.
A small flame burned suddenly, casting stark shadows through the asteroid field. The wazoon let out a low groan of mourning, stopping quickly when Beie looked their way.
"Do not hide your feelings from me, my brave wazoon," she murmured. "You are clients and brave warriors, not slaves. Mourn your colleague, who died so well for us."
She thought about her own cool, careful people, amongst whom she always felt a stranger.
"Feel!" she insisted, surprised by her own vehemence. "There is no shame in caring, my little wazoon. In this you may be greater than your patron race, when you are grown up and on your own!"
Beie piloted closer to the water world, where the battle raged, feeling more akin to her little client-comrades than to her own ever-cautious race.
25 ::: Thomas Orley
Thomas Orley looked down upon his treasure: a thing he had sought for twelve years. It appeared to be intact, the first of its kind ever to fall into human hands.
Only twice had micro-branch Libraries designed for other races been captured by human crews, from ships defeated in skirmishes over the last two hundred years. In each case the repositories were damaged. Attempts to study them were informative, but one mistake or another always caused the semi-intelligent machines to self-destruct.
This was the first ever recovered intact from a warship of a powerful Galactic patron race. And it was the first taken since certain Tymbrimi had joined in this clandestine research.
The unit was a beige box, about three meters by two by one, with simple optical access ports. Halfway along one side was the rayed spiral symbol of the Library.
It was lashed to a cargo sled along with other booty, including three probability coils, undamaged and irreplaceable. Hannes Suessi would ride back to Streaker, protecting those as a mother hen her eggs. Only when he saw them safely in Emerson D'Anite's hands would he turn around to come back here.
Tom wrote routing instructions on a waxboard. With any luck, the crew back at Streaker would turn the micro-branch unit over to Creideiki or Gillian without undue attention. He adhered the shipping slip so that it covered the Library glyph.
Not that his interest in a captured micro-branch was particularly secret. The crew here had helped him pry it from the Thennanin ship. But the fewer who knew the details the better. Especially if they should ever be captured. If his instructions were followed, the unit would be plugged into the comm in his own cabin, to outward appearances a normal communications screen.
He imagined the Niss would be impressed. Tom wished he could be there when the Tymbrimi machine found out what it suddenly had access to. The smug thing would probably be speechless for half a day.
He hoped it wouldn't be too stunned. He wanted something from it right away.
Suessi was already asleep, tethered to his precious salvage. Tom made sure the instructions were well secured. Then he swam up toward the sheer outcrop of rock overlooking the wrecked alien starship.
Neo-fen swarmed over the hulk, making detailed measurements from without and within. At word from Creideiki charges would be set off beginning a process that would leave the giant battleship's core a reamed and empty cavity.
By now the scout they had sent back should have reached Streaker with his initial report, and a sled should already be returning down the new shortcut they had found, bringing a monofilament intercom line from home. It ought to meet the salvage sled about halfway.
All this assumed "home" was still there. Tom guessed the battle still raged above Kithrup. Space war was a slow thing, especially as practiced by the long-viewed Galactics. They might still be at it in a year or two, though he doubted it. That much time would allow reinforcements to arrive and produce a war of attrition. It was unlikely the fanatic alliances would let things come to that pass.
In any event, Streaker's crew had to act as if the war were about to end any day now. So long as confusion reigned above, they still had a chance.
Tom went over his plan again, and came to the same conclusion. He had no other choice.
There were three conceivable ways they might escape the trap they were in — rescue, negotiation, and trickery.
Rescue was a nice image. But Earth herself didn't have the strength to come and deliver them. Together with her allies she could barely match one of the pseudo-religious factions in the battle over Kithrup.
The Galactic Institutes might intervene. What law there was demanded that Streaker report directly to them. Problem was, the Institutes had little power of their own. Like the feeble versions of world government Earth had almost died of in the Twentieth Century, they relied on mass opinion and volunteer levies. The majority "moderates" might finally decide that Streaker's discovery should be shared by all, but Tom figured it would take years for the necessary alliances to form.
Negotiation seemed as faint a hope as rescue. In any event, Creideiki had Gillian and Hikahi and Metz to help him if it ever came to negotiations with a victor in the space battle. They didn't need Tom for that.
That left clever schemes and subtle deceptions… finding a way to thwart the enemy when rescue and negotiation fail.
That's my job, he thought.
The ocean was deeper and darker here than in the region only fifty kilometers to the east, where strings of metal-mounds grew in the hilly shallows along the edges of a thin crustal plate. In the area where Hikahi's party had been rescued, the water was metal-enriched by a chain of semiactive volcanoes.
There were no true metal-mounds in this area, and the long-dead volcanic islands were worn down to the water's surface.
When he looked away from the crumpled Thennanin wreck, and the trail of havoc it had left before coming to rest, Tom found the scenery restful, its beauty calming. Drifting, dark-yellow fronds of danglevine, waving like corn silk from the surface, reminded him of the color of Gillian's hair.
Orley hummed to himself a melody that few other human beings could attempt. Small gene-crafted sinuses reverberated under his skull, sending a low refrain into the water around him.
* In sleep, your caring
Touches me,
* Where, waking, I let it not
* In distance, I will
Call to you,
* And touch you as you sleep *
Of course Gillian couldn't actually hear his gift poem. His own psi powers were quite modest. Still, she might pick up a hint. Other things she had done had surprised him more.
The dolphin escort had gathered at the sled. Suessi had awakened and was checking his lashings with Lieutenant Tsh't.
Tom launched himself from his aerie toward the group. Tsh't saw him and took a quick breath from an airdome before swimming up to meet him halfway.