"How could they possibly know what we'll take through? Anyway, that's why Atropos goes first. He goes through and we follow, as many as we can. Some snugged up behind Atropos, the rest in a crazy-quilt pattern. The notion is that some get through. A lot get through."
"Oh."
"Something else they won't expect," Freddy said. "Or rather they will expect-"
"Jump shock," Omar said. "They will have experienced it. Eudoxus says it is formidable-but less so for you than us. They will not expect you to recover as quickly as you will. Our Warrior officers agree. It is a good plan."
Atropos went second. First there was a fan of twenty East India warships not much larger than Imperial corvettes traveling at high but different speeds. Their mission was to distract whatever enemy waited on the other side of Crazy Eddie's Sister.
Freddy Townsend watched in appreciation. "Any regatta commodore would be proud of that performance."
"Or fleet admiral for that matter," Renner said. "All right, there goes Atropos." Alliance warships huddled close behind the Imperial cruiser, in what would have been called "line ahead" in wet navy days. Now they vanished one by one as Sinbad hurtled toward the Jump point.
Sinbud's Warrior entourage would have been visible if the Field were not up. They were needed for more than protection. Freddy Townsend was using them for triangulation.
The Sister was thirty seconds away.
"If we make this, it'll be a record," Freddy said. "Will I be allowed to file it?"
Kevin said, "Not my decision. And if we miss, we can try again, of course, but that's three hours down the recycler, Freddy, and I don't know how important three hours is. Give it your best."
"Always."
Victoria and Omar concurred: any decent Warrior pilot could do this. With twenty Warrior pilots to triangulate, even a human pilot had a chance.
Kevin never saw Freddy hit the switch.
7 Jump Shock
Among other evils which being unarmed brings you, it causes you to be despised.
Niccolo Machiavelli
In the two days before the Khanate ships found them, Jennifer had little to do but watch Terry, and talk to Pollyanna, and pray. The God of mankind was God of the Mote, too. She prayed for solutions that would bring peace to both kinds of mind.
When the Khanate ships approached, Jennifer looped Freddy's stored data on the Contraceptive-Longevity Worm. The Khanate Warriors found it running when they burst through the wall.
For a time they ignored it. Two Engineers, four Watchmakers, and a Warrior searched once for booby traps, then in leisurely fashion for anything of interest. A Mediator and a Master arrived, discussed, examined. Cerberus's cabin was again infested with Moties.
The Mediator listened to the recording Victoria had made, the notice in trade Koine that the ship was salvage but that Medina Alliance would pay well for Jennifer and Terry. The Mediator turned to the Master and spoke. The Master spoke curtly. Both ignored the humans.
The Warrior went away. The Mediator examined Pollyanna without waking her, then took position in front of a monitor recently worked over by an Engineer. Watchmakers scurried about like big, helpful, curious spiders.
Over the next several hours Cerberus changed again. A pity Freddy couldn't see this. The Khanate found his drive, Hecate's drive, pushing too light a load. They added a truss to hold cargo, fiddled with the drive to get yet more thrust, added nets of spheroids, as if Cerberus had sprouted clusters of tremendous grapes. More cargo . .. and weaponry? Jennifer couldn't tell. Terry would have known, but Terry wasn't talking.
Terry dozed most of the time. Something would get his attention: Jennifer caressing his neck or ear, or a Watchmaker running across his back. His eyes would open; maybe he would smile, maybe he would drink some water or broth, speak a few words, and presently go back to sleep. He wasn't keeping good track of events. Jennifer had to keep her own counsel.
Help would come. Jennifer waited.
Inside, the Moties were at work. This time there was no stopping them. Their interest was in the screens, cameras, computers, communications. They didn't touch the air system. Perhaps the Tartar Engineers had sufficiently altered that.
Pollyanna woke. She and the Khanate Mediator chattered as they watched the monitor
The Master came back with a Doctor and another Engineer. Pallyanna jumped to her at once and began to nurse.
The Khanate's Doctor was distinctly different from Dr. Doolittle, smaller, frail seeming. She did little to disturb Terry, though she examined Jennifer in detail.
Pollyanna, well fed now, returned to Jennifer's shoulder and stayed there while she chatted with the Khanate Mediator. Her toes clutched Jennifer's shoulder now, while her arms waved in flamboyant gestures. The adult's answers were more concise, a flip of the wrist, right elbows rapping each other: how the hell would a human copy that? Jennifer tried to concentrate. An infant Mediator was teaching a mature one to speak Anglic! The recording would be fantastically valuable, but it would miss things, nuances...that head-and-shoulder tilt, ‘"not quite".
Terry stirred, and Jennifer looked into his eyes. Was sense returning to him?
And everything went blurry
Jennifer recovered slowly. It struck her that if she were Terry Kakumi, and uninjured, she could take the ship from these wailing, kicking Moties. But lack of sleep had done Jennifer in, and the Moties were already gathering themselves. She moved hand over hand to the telescope controls.
Cerberus had jumped, of course. The Frankenstein's monster of a spacecraft was nearly the first through to MGC-R-31. Ships were pouring through aft, accelerating, sweeping past Cerberus and leaving it behind, a crippled hybrid. Cerberus limped behind the Warrior fleet at about one Mote gravity. The drive flames of a thousand small ships retreated ahead.
And the Mediator spoke to Jennifer for the first time. "You are Jennifer Banda? Call me Harlequin. I serve the Master Falkenberg." She must have seen Jennifer's reaction-Oh, really?-but she did not try to temper the arrogance of her claim. "We must discuss your future."
"Surely yours, too," Jennifer said.
"Yes. You are ours now. If all goes best, we break free from the Empire to seek our own stars. You and Terry Kakumi with us. When finally we must confront the Empire, you or your children must speak for us."
It was hardly the future Jennifer would have chosen. But the Mediator was speaking: "Barriers wait before us. Where will the next bridging point lead us? What stands to block us?"
"The Empire of Man," Jennifer said. Terry smiled, barely, and she saw bright glints: his eyes were open.
"Detail," the Mediator said. "We find one tremendous ship and several much smaller."
"There'll be more. We got the jump on you. More ships will be coming through from New Cal, any hour. You don't know what you're facing. This is the Empire."
When Jennifer Banda was six years old, the Navy had declassified certain bob recordings. The whole school assembled to watch them.
That was twelve years after the Empire fleet had assembled off New Washington before the final Jump to New Chicago, a world that had seceded from the Empire and renamed itself Freedom. That world had been restored to the Empire, its name restored, too. There had been battles, but what Jennifer remembered was the massed might of the Empire of Man, ships the size of islands passing at meteor speeds and higher.
No Motie Mediator could see all that in her eyes. Still, Harlequin would see nothing to deny what Jennifer believed: that the power that held a thousand worlds in its gripping hand was coming down the Khanate's throat.
Harlequin said, "If we could reach the new bridging point in time-"
"You'd find our battleships just the other side. You felt the Jump shock. And they'll be waiting."
"I will show you what we plan."
Warrior and Engineer and Mediator huddled, and Pollyanna with them. On Cerberus's screens the gory details of an Engineer's autopsy were replaced with... something astronomical. The colors were poor, but this was MGC-R-31, there the little red star, there the blue sparks of Warriors retreating well ahead of Cerberus, there a lozenge next to concentric circles: undoubtedly Agamemnon and the Jump to New Cal. And there, popping out of the other target area aft: more ships, bigger.