Strider's Galaxy (40 page)

Oh, shit!
Most thoughts crossing Strider's mind weren't too great at the moment, but the one that had just done so was perhaps the worst of all. "Ten Per Cent Extra Free," she said urgently, "I know you can't eavesdrop on what Polyaggle's saying, but can you reassure me of one thing? That's not Kaantalech she's speaking to, is it?"

IT IS NOT KAANTALECH. HAD IT BEEN SO WE WOULD HAVE INFORMED YOU, DESPITE THE VIOLATION OF PROPRIETY.

Then who the hell was it? She was still convinced the Spindrifter wouldn't knowingly betray the
Santa Maria
, but . . .

"May I evaluate our situation?" said Lan Yi politely beside her.

"Choose your Pocket," she said, dredging up a smile from somewhere. It was nice to be looking at someone who wasn't bigger than her.

"Kortland's manoeuvre has been successful," said Leander. "The Autarch fleet seems to have decided it can pick the rest of us off later. A few warcruisers are still in Qitanefermeartha orbit, but the rest are heading towards the main fleet."

"How certain are you of that?" said Strider absent-mindedly, still concentrating on Polyaggle's back.

"The Pocket . . ."

"Yeah. OK." Maybe the Autarchy had technology capable of deceiving the Helgiolath's detectors; it was unlikely that they could delude the Pockets—or the Images. "Keep watching."

It was her enforced passivity that most rankled with Strider. Kortland was doing things. The Images were doing things. Polyaggle was doing things. All Strider and her personnel could do—at least for the while—was watch. Or, in Strider's case, watch and get angrier.

No, there was a bit more she could do.

"Pinocchio."

"Yes."

"Food. We need some food up here." In a few hours' time they were likely to be fighting it out on Qitanefermeartha: it made little sense for them to be famished. "And stuff to drink—it doesn't matter what. Get a bot on to it. Make sure the rest of the people in the shuttle parties get something to eat and drink as well."

Practicalities, practicalities, she reminded herself. Sentient species throughout The Wondervale and the Milky Way and assumedly the rest of the Universe could devise the most elaborate philosophies and technologies, but all the time they had to eat and shit. Maybe the Images didn't have to—but they weren't really in the Universe so they didn't count. When the two great fleets finally joined battle there were bound to be thousands on either side who were stuck in the john doing whatever was their species' equivalent of pulling up their trousers. It didn't speak too much for the glories of sentience.

But then neither, more importantly, did warfare. Or tyranny. Or the way that some species—and she did not entirely except the Spindrifters and certainly not the Helgiolath—seemed to consider themselves superior to others.

Polyaggle's wings had stayed motionless for over thirty seconds now. Strider didn't know if this was a good or a bad sign.

"We have twenty-eight volunteers," said Pinocchio quietly to her.

"Triage 'em down," she said. "I don't want any people going down on to Qitanefermeartha who aren't capable of handling a lazgun. If any of the kids have volunteered, tell them not to be foolish. Same goes for any of the elderly Reals who you don't think are up to it."

"I have already done these things, Leonie."

"Then just choose the best twenty." What the
hell
was the Spindrifter up to? "Be diplomatic, Pinocchio, like I would be."

The bot made a curious strangled noise.

"You know what I mean," she said.

At last Polyaggle eased her face out of the communications Pocket. Her wings were now moving agitatedly in and out of their sheaths. She looked directly towards Strider.

"I have been speaking with the Onurg of the Pridehouse," she said immediately.

"That doesn't mean anything to me."

"The Pridehouse are one of the ancient species of The Wondervale." Polyaggle tapped her claws together hard enough that Strider could hear the click. "One of the last things that Feefaar and Nerita did before our planet was disrupted was to send out a warning to all of the others of the ancient species."

Strider waited for Polyaggle to continue. Lan Yi had emerged from the fascinations of his Pocket and moved to the Spindrifter's side.

"The Pridehouse detected my presence here on this starship," said Polyaggle. "Though they have maintained their neutrality over the millennia, they were"—the Images seemed to be searching for an accurate translation of the Spindrift word that Polyaggle must have used—"they were
distressed
to hear of my species' demise. It may not be long before the Autarchy realizes that the ancient species still possess much of the technology they did before the secondary species arose, and then many more planets like Spindrift may be disintegrated."

There was a short pause while the Images caught up their interpretation of what Polyaggle was saying.

"The Pridehouse have asked my consent to their sending a fleet to join us." Again that click-
clack
of the claws. "I told the Onurg that the decision was not mine but yours."

Strider realized at once what a concession the Spindrifter had made. Humans were a raw species; the Spindrifters had been cruising the starways while Strider's ancestors had still been hunting in packs. When Polyaggle looked at the people aboard the
Santa Maria
she was looking down a staircase whose steps were billennia. Polyaggle was acknowledging the human species as equals. Strider had the embarrassing sensation that there was a tear forming at the corner of her eye.

"Kortland is the one who must settle this," she said sharply. "I'm just the captain of a vessel who isn't even allowed to make her own decisions any more."

She turned to Leander. "Raise Kortland in the other communications Pocket. Doubtless you'll have to struggle through about fifty thousand bureaucrats before you get to him, but make sure you do, OK?"

Leander nodded.

"It could give me no greater pride than to have the Pridehouse among us," said Strider, keeping her words measured. "I cannot imagine that Kortland will wish to turn them away . . . but you understand the protocols."

A click together of the talons. Maybe the clicks were all subtly different from each other. Strider made the assumption that this one indicated assent.

"The Pridehouse are not the only ones," added Polyaggle. "There are also the Lingk-kreatzai, the Wreeps, the Semblances of the Eternal, the Fionnoids, the Janae and the We Are."

Seven species willing to add their collective might to the forces of the rebels: it was an awesome thought.

"When can they be here?" she said.

"Not for some while." Polyaggle shifted her wings. "By the time they can resurrect their fleets the battle over Qitanefermeartha will long ago have been won and lost, whichever way it goes. I have something to add, Captain Leonie Strider."

"What?" So the intercession of the ancient races was, after all, just a sideshow, an irrelevance. There were going to be preconditions.

"These species do not wish to be under the command of Kortland. The Helgiolath can display a ruthlessness which is not to the taste of us ancients. The Onurg asked me if I would be the leader of their combined fleet."

Oh, great,
thought Strider.
Ousted out of the top job yet again.
"Cancel that order, Leander," she said.

It was a moment before she understood the meaning of the next few words Polyaggle spoke.

"But I told the Onurg that I owed my loyalty now to the Human species, and that you were my commander." Click. Flutter. "He has said that he will accept your leadership."

"
What?
"

"The ancient species will pledge their fealty to you."

"But I hardly know my way around this joint," said Strider, waving a hand in the general direction of The Wondervale. "I'm incompetent even to be a full part of the Helgiolath armada. I'm just a sort of very minor pawn in a chess-game whose board is too large for me to comprehend."

"But this is what the Onurg and I agreed," said Polyaggle. "If you will consent to accept these ancient species."

"How big is this fleet likely to be?" said Strider, asking the question more for the sake of saying something than for any other reason. Her mind was reeling.

"About forty-eight thousand craft, all told," said Polyaggle. "But only about ninety per cent of them are warcruisers," she added apologetically.

#

Kaantalech, roused by one of her aides, looked to and fro among the array of monitors in front of her. In order to co-ordinate their attack on Qitanefermeartha, the Helgiolath had of necessity had to dispense with their communications shield, and for the first time she realized quite how huge a space-navy it was that the Humans had joined. She watched the way that the Helgiolath commander focused most of his firepower in one area, and put a forefoot to her proboscis in acknowledgement: this was exactly the tactic she would have used. The Autarch was too irremediably stupid to realize that the decoy could be larger than the killer force. His underlings would be too terrified of him to argue, because they knew that to do so meant a quick and certain death and their replacement by others more amenable to the Autarch's instructions, until at last, after some quick slaughter, the Autarch's fleet would be controlled by his catspaws. Better to take your chances in battle than to be killed out of hand by the Autarch. There was always just the chance that you might win.

Not this time, Kaantalech believed.

The Helgiolath had superiority not only in numbers but in intelligence and technology. If the battle started going against them they could flit themselves away singly to every corner of The Wondervale. The Autarch's warcruisers could follow them individually or severally, but in so doing would leave the home planet open to attack. Unless there was a lucky strike, those infuriatingly intractable Humans could harass the remaining Autarchy cruisers—and there were thousands of other Helgiolath vessels prepared to do the same.

No, Kaantalech reckoned, Qitanefermeartha was doomed.

Better for her and her fleet to stay out of it.

The holo to the side of her lit up, and she looked towards it with an appropriate expression of reverence and humility. There was, she supposed, just the most remote possibility that the Autarchy might defeat the rebels after all. A little token subservience could do no harm.

"Stars' Elect," she said respectfully.

"I require your fleet to come to Qitanefermeartha immediately," said the Autarch Nalla without preamble. Kaantalech could hardly believe it, but yet again he was taking part of his time out to copulate with one of his concubines. More than anything else, this persuaded her that she could find herself fighting on the wrong side of the war.

She gave a signal to an aide. Much as most of them loathed her, they loathed the Autarch more. Among the very first things they were trained to do was to recognize this rarely used signal.

What it meant was:
Interference of communications—and damn' soon.

The aide quickly obeyed, pressing his foot to a large square on the floor—a square that normally the aides made very sure they avoided.

The image of the Autarch in the holo began to disintegrate, shards of the colors that composed it starting to drift aimlessly towards the edges of the cubicle.

"I'm having difficulty making out what you're saying," said Kaantalech emolliently. "Aide!" she cried off to one side. "See if you can fix this thing."

One of the aides started forward as if to obey, and she froze him with a glare.

Forming her words very carefully and clearly, Kaantalech said to the Autarch's dissolving likeness: "I am trying to hear you, but we seem to be being jammed by Qitanefermeartha's defenses. Which part of The Wondervale is it that you wish me to patrol?"

The holo of the Autarch faded into a nondescript miasma of brown-grey. On Qitanefermeartha he would be seeing Kaantalech's image doing exactly the same.

Once she had hoped he would turn his back towards her so that she could easily glide in the knife—twisting it as the whim took her. Now she was pleased that he had turned his back instead on the Helgiolath, and the Humans, and the F-14s and who knew how many other species. In tearing the Autarchy to pieces the rebels would be so reduced as to find themselves in a parlous state. The time would be right, then, for Kaantalech to ascend to the throne.

Autarch.

The Mighty One.

She gave her aides a few terse instructions, and her fleet began moving across the face of The Wondervale on what would seem like urgent business.

As if they were obeying Nalla's misunderstood orders.

#

Once the battle was joined in earnest things moved remarkably quickly. Strider, forcing to the rear of her mind the possibility that she might soon find herself at the head of an armada of nearly fifty thousand vessels (
How the hell are you going to cope with that, Leonie? Stop goddam
thinking
, brain: you'll almost certainly be dead before then
), applied herself to a Pocket. The Helgiolath's central puter was still enforcing its instructions on the
Santa Maria
's Images, who were shifting the craft according to Kortland's dictates. The secondary fleet was beginning slowly to move together.

But it was what was happening to the main Helgiolath fleet that held Strider's attention. The Pocket couldn't display the deaths of individual warcruisers: all it could show was statistics.

These started off depressingly—the Helgiolath were taking terrible punishment—but then became more reassuring as the rebels fought back ferociously. As she had when bombarding the manufactories on F-14, Strider found herself regretting the horrendous loss of life. Every Helgiolath warcruiser that died represented the lives of perhaps a thousand sentient beings. The same went for the Autarchy's vessels. All of these people were dying for something that wasn't even properly an ideal. They were being burnt alive or being spilt into space as if they were expendable—which was the way, Strider realized, that they
were
regarded. She had left three people behind on F-14 because they'd got lost, and she had realized fully the ruthlessness of that act—she still woke up, sometimes, from sleep in misery about it—but she'd never throw millions of people into the fray on the basis that more of them might survive than would of the enemy. Now she was facing herself honestly, what really started her from sleep was the question:
If I thought I had to,
would
I?