There was life at Gateway. Of a sort. Gateway's orbitals had been destroyed. Gateway was beyond recognition. But its Core had survived.

It did not know the fate of Starbase. Nothing friendly had come out. Very little unfriendly had.

Tight-lipped, WarAvocat ordered the Guardship onward.

— 133 —

The number two rider drifted as though it had been crippled, ignored. Then it blew the main drive off Delicate Harmony's opponent. "Tricky," Turtle said. "Keep working. They haven't quit."

He saw what his people planned. Stupid. A bet against long odds. But they were going to try. He had to cooperate.

He backed to the nearest hatch, jammed it with a shot, did the same with a second, then stepped through a third, jammed it from the outside, headed toward the rider locks.

He ran headlong into the Damage Control party he had summoned. There was a tense moment. A shot sent them scurrying.

In minutes the whole ship would be alert. Even if they took him off, how did they figure to pull out again under fire?

He knocked out spy eyes, welded hatchways shut. He created a zone where he could not be pinpointed. Then he examined the rider hatches. They could not be sealed by remote.

Delicate Harmony shuddered. Lighting faded, came back. A mechanical clanging started aft, hysterical in intensity. The ship lurched, lurched again. What the devil? It was hell being blind to everything but that passage.

He picked a spot near the middle hatch and prepared to make the stand so likely to get puffed in legend.

New noises started up forward. They had begun breaking through the sealed hatches.

Delicate Harmony continued to stumble and lurch and clatter.

The passageway was full of fire. On the deck were six Outsiders who had tried to be heroes. Turtle did not miss.

They could not get a clear shot without exposing themselves. Stalemate. Till the bunch working their way forward set up a crossfire.

Turtle had maybe three shots left. He was considering saving the last for himself. Or should he go out hand to hand, risking capture, torture, sacrifice?

Zap! A running Outsider pitched headlong. Two shots left. Or one and the easy way out.

He had refused that option when they ground the Dire Radiant down.

Boom! Boom! Boom! The outboard hatches blew inward. Grenades tumbled through with Ku warriors right behind.

The shooting was over in seconds. An assault team headed forward. Ah! They meant to hit Combat so there could be no shooting when the rider pulled away.

He reeled as Midnight smashed into him. "Oh! You're all right. I was so worried."

"You'd better get back..."

The Outsiders from back aft arrived. Turtle shoved Midnight through the hatchway. A wild beam gnawed at his back. He grunted, shoved her at Provik. "Hang onto her!" He raced to the rider's Combat Center, ignoring pain.

Only one soldier was on duty. "Any comm off ship?"

"No, sir."

"Damn." But he had expected it. He tried to estimate how long to reach Combat, how much resistance, while catching up on the situation outside.

That was going exactly as choreographed.

He went to the nearest outboard lock. It was quiet out there now. They were waiting to cover the assault team. He asked one of his people, "You arrange to unload the rider crew?"

"They go out fore and aft, shielding us as we fall back through the midships hatchway. They've been told they have forty seconds before we disconnect and decompress the passageway."

"Good. Carry on. I'll be in Combat."

He did not make it. His wound was worse than he thought. Blessed, Midnight, and the Valerena dragged him to the rider's rudimentary dispensary.

The rider had been away two hours, tumbling like a derelict, when Turtle did reach Combat. "I ought to court-martial you all. But where would I find an unbiased court?"

They were drifting away from the action. The attack was nearing its peak. It would continue a long time unless the Godspeakers had an uncharacteristic attack of strategic sense.

"We pulled it off," he said. "And have a chance of getting out." Six hours and the rider would be outside detection range. There would be futures to consider, probably in the guest colonies Outside.

— 134 —

WarAvocat watched the minutes drag. The suspense was worse than it had been going into that end space ambush. "I want to break away moving dead slow, screen up."

"You think we'll find?..." Aleas's voice caught.

"We'll find Starbase beat all to hell and the Outsider fleet wiped out."

"Why?"

"Or I could be wrong. He could have fooled me again."

VII Gemina broke away into a warships' graveyard. Nothing moved, except as it had died. The heat had fled most of the wreckage. It had been over a long time.

"Prophylactic screening," WarAvocat ordered. "Ahead slow. Anything from Starbase?"

"Negative, sir."

"Scan." Most of the wreckage would have drifted out of detection already. He was awed by what the Ku had brought to the slaughter.

"We have a signal from Orbital Six, sir. Starbase Core survived but lost ninety percent plus outports. It's using that capacity to seek breaches in its environmental armor."

He exchanged glances with Aleas. Starbase would be no help taming Gemina. She said, "You were going to vent a theory about the Ku."

"About how he used us. He stepped into the middle and manipulated everything so it came out to his specs."

She thought he was mad.

"How many got away at S. Alisonica? At T. Rogolica? How many here? He planted them where he could squash them. Without killing any bystanders."

She scowled. She could not believe the Ku had put them through hoops.

The next few decades would be difficult for some Guardship people.

Aleas said, "What I see is the death of the myth of our invincibility. He engineered this, and he failed. Another triumph for us. And that's all. But if news of this gets around, we'll have fires on all the Rims."

She was right. The rest of the universe should hear only of another crushing defeat for Canon's enemies.

How long till Starbase repaired itself? Centuries?

She had made a point within her point. The fleet could not brag about what had happened. The Outsiders would not admit their forces had been crushed. But if the Ku remained at large...

He was at twenty-eight percent of strength with no hope for replacements short of getting in line at Starbase Dengaida. He could not go there till he knew about the Ku.

He cued a conference of rider commanders and fighter pilots, told them he needed Outsider ships with surviving personnel or data systems capable of yielding information. He sent them out. Then he asked Orbital Six for everything about the fighting. When the data was in, he settled to watch the replay.

Simple little thing like history, Jo thought. This happened. So and so did that. Whatchamacaliit reacted thus. Facts and dates in serial, maybe with a body count if that shed any light. History.

Seeker did not see it that way. Specific events, times, persons, had little meaning. History was process and context and slowly oscillating emotion in a psychically unified, intimately interconnected milieu where the players never changed. History was a sluggish, silty river, and he was a fish in a school. The river could not be sliced.

It had looked like a straightforward job of translating, slow but not insurmountable. It had turned into a nightmare of misinterpretations, misapprehensions, mistakes, and miseries. She could not have sustained the task without AnyKaat. Seeker could not have survived without Amber Soul.