The relative motions seemed odd. "We are moving past it."

"I told you this was the most unusual strand on the Web."

"Then this is not Starbase."

"No. We call it Gateway. It's a decoy."

"No one outside even suspects." He never had.

"No. It's totally automated. Its complement consists of dupes of Deified from the fleet. Starbase itself runs the same way."

The supergiant rolled beneath VII Gemina. Turtle asked, "What is in that atmosphere to give it those blue tones?"

"I don't know. I can access the information."

"Never mind. It isn't important."

WarAvocat watched the supergiant dwindle. He wondered why he'd never been curious about its coloration, nor been particularly cognizant of the planet's beauty, with those thousand pearls in its hair. Nor even much curious about a strand that had a double anchor, supergiant and red dwarf, with a gap between.

VII Gemina clambered back onto the interrupted strand.

The construct waiting off the nether tag end was much larger than Gateway. It was a vast rectilinear shape guarded by eight orbital fortresses poised on the points of a cube. The array orbited a feeble yellow star that had no planetary family.

One more curiosity on this particular strand. The star was there but the strand was loose. An end, period. There was no strand leading away in any other direction.

The Ku said, "A battery of adjectives suggest themselves. But none are adequate."

"I know. It still awes me. I used to see it as the ultimate construct, the product of a golden age, never to be equalled. Its builders probably thought that, too. But Starbase Dengaida will make it look like a pyramid raised by clever neolithics."

"Starbase Dengaida?"

"The inevitable consequence of being what we are."

The Ku looked puzzled.

"Invincible. Canon has grown so vast we have a problem with travel times. We have Guardships operating against pirates beyond the Roberquan Rim, which did not exist when you went into hiding on V. Rothica 4. Their patrols take them a thousand light years Outside. The Rim keeps advancing. It can take them six months to reach Starbase. A year in and back. The problem will worsen. Soon after the Enherrenraat incident, foreseeing the problem, Starbase recommended we build a new Starbase out there."

"Word never filtered down into Merod Schene."

"Wasn't meant to. I doubt anyone outside the fleet and House Horigawa has guessed yet. It isn't something we want broadcast. Construction works are vulnerable."

"And it will be bigger than this?"

"A lot. We couldn't find another site to compare with this one, though. So we had to make it tougher to crack."

The Ku's attention remained fixed on Starbase.

Cues on the wall said Gemina was in touch with the Guardship already docked. Data flowed both ways, and back and forth between Gemina and Starbase Core. He picked the ID code out. "Kez Maefele, the Guardship already docked is XII Fulminata."

The Ku eyed him. "You do not seem excited."

"They aren't a social bunch, XII Fulminata crew." He turned away. "Access, OpsAvocat. WarAvocat here. I'd consider it a great favor if you docked us on the same face as XII Fulminata. Out." He turned back to the Ku. "They want to cut themselves a slice of our action. I'm going to let them gobble till they choke. We owe them one."

Starbase was spotted like a domino, with eight black circles to a face, in rows of four. As VII Gemina approached the block it appeared to rotate, bringing another face uppermost. On that face one black circle had been obliterated. XII Fulminata docked.

WarAvocat did not look forward to his next few days.

— 39 —

The Outsider broke off the Web in the Closed System M. Meddinia. It boiled off its mask as it drove toward the system's archaic, ramshackle station. It should have shed its disguise before invading Canon space.

It had not finished when its gaseous surround was backlighted by the violence of XXVIII Fretensis breaking away.

The Guardship wasted no time asking questions. When the corona cleared, twelve riderships were running free and swarms of smaller craft were boiling off. XXVIII Fretensis seemed to be disintegrating.

A barrage preceded the riders. Boiling through space ahead of shells and missiles were a half dozen glimmering balls spit from Hellspinner pits. The best Twist Master ever had no hope of a hit at that range, though. The idea was to frighten the Outsider into raising its screen. Hellspinners terrified anyone who knew anything about them.

The Outsider stuck out its tongue. It did not raise screen. It took M. Meddinia 4A under fire.

The one Hellspinner that looked like the worst throw broke down and in and brushed the Outsider. Tonnes of matter erupted in a geyser of shattered nucleons.

The fastest attackers raced toward the hit, looking for a soft spot.

XXVIII Fretensis developed data on the Outsider's displacement. WarAvocat ordered a supplementary launch. A ship that large might carry secondaries of its own.

It did, but none were active. The Outsider had come expecting no resistance. In quickly, a message delivered, and out, silent and unseen....

The attackers closed in. The Outsider raised screen. Word went back: The screen was Guardship quality.

The Outsider could not have been in a poorer position. It could not deploy riders. A more powerful enemy lay between it and access to the Web. And it was deeper in the gravity well.

Attackers englobed the Outsider. They floated just meters off the screen. XXVIII Fretensis rotated to present its broadest face, closed to three hundred meters. At that range even the most inept Twist Master could not miss.

A hundred pulsating green eyes burned on the Guardship's face.

WarAvocat XXVIII Fretensis ordered his Hellspinners loosed. Those balls of mad energy drifted onto the Outsider's screen like the slow fall of a fine oil mist onto the surface of a summer-warmed pond. Rainbow points spread and faded slowly. Fighters darted to the impact points like fish to motes of food. They pounded those spots, probing for an opening or weakness.

The screen withstood the salvo. But the Twist Masters had permission to loose at will. No screen could absorb Hellspinners long.

The Outsider finally grasped the gravity of its situation. It began to move.

Its assailants moved with it.

Here, there, soft spots in the screen yielded. A one-meter gap opened and persisted for seven seconds. An interceptor put one hundred rounds of 40mm contraterrene shot through the hole. The Outsider's skin blossomed, a garden of small fires.

Other gaps opened. Some attack craft chose marksmanship, gunning for specific installations. Others just blazed away. None tried running the gaps. A screen shielded both ways. A fighter inside would become the target of every Outsider weapon otherwise unable to fire.

The gaps grew larger and lasted longer. The Twist Masters began pairing, hoping to get a second Hellspinner through a gap cut by a first.

The Outsider dropped inside the orbit of the station.

The riders armed their axial cannon, which hurled 250kg projectiles at 8000 meters per second. The projectiles spun off slivers of contraterrene iron as they rattled through a target.

Orders went out to the attackers: penetrate the screen and silence the Outsider's drives.

WarAvocat XXVIII Fretensis had guessed the reason for the Outsider's move planetward. It meant to eliminate evidence by throwing itself into atmosphere.

Cluster shells began getting through. So did Hellspinners and massed barrages from the secondaries. The Outsider was ablaze within the envelope of its shield, surrounded by a shrapnel metalstorm. The attack ships that went in had to use their own lesser screens till they reached firing position.