Part 38 (1/2)

Will the approach of another craft endanger him? Soz asked.

Yes, Rasmuss thought. The closer the s.h.i.+ps, the greater the effect. The fluctuations that triggered the JG-8 were large, from the collapse of the bottle holding Heald's s.h.i.+p. But if a Jag gets closer to him, even minor field fluctuations could trigger an explosion.

Heald, abandon s.h.i.+p, Soz thought. Ko, pick him up. All s.h.i.+ps maintain present course and speed. Don't fire thrusters.

Got it. The response came simultaneously from Heald and Ko.

The air lock of Heald's Jag dilated and he floated out, wearing an environment skin with its hood inflated. As he moved away from his Jag, Primary Ko began maneuvers to rendezvous with a ”man overboard” at 0.05 light speed. A probe glided out from Ko's Jag, tethered by a spider-thin line of reinforced fullerene tubes, and homed in on Heald. As soon as he caught it, Ko reeled him in. The air lock of her Jag dilated- And Heald's s.h.i.+p exploded.

Ko, report! Soz thought. Did you get him? The s.h.i.+ps had gone into quasis, but Soz had no need of protection on the Orbiter. Even seeing the explosion, though, she couldn't tell if the field of Ko's s.h.i.+p had caught Heald in time.

He's here, Ko thought. She sounded subdued.

Soz eased her mind into Ko's Jag. Its EI also felt subdued. She was startled to find that with the Triad enhancing her already Rhon-powered mind, she could even submerge into the picoweb formed by repair nan.o.bots in the s.h.i.+p's hull. She saw Heald floating in the cabin, his head down. Ko had peeled herself out of the c.o.c.kpit and was moving toward him.

Gently Soz thought, Heald?

He lifted his head. I'm all right, Imperator Skolia. Grief saturated his thoughts.

Soz's mindscape registered the relief of personnel on the dreadnought and Orbiter as they picked up Heald's thought. But Casestar remained silent, as did the Jagernauts and a few others who realized the magnitude of the loss Heald had suffered. His s.h.i.+p had been part of his mind.

Ko took Heald into her arms and they floated, holding each other, while the Jag's EI controlled the s.h.i.+p. Soz and the other pilots offered regrets and praise for the lost s.h.i.+p.

Eventually Soz withdrew and checked the rest of the team. Professor Rasmuss and Jase Furlon were studying the explosions, trying to understand the problem. Apparently twisting an object that contained its own Klein fields in or out of a larger Klein bottle created instabilities.

Eventually Soz withdrew from the link and became aware of the War Room again. Jon Casestar swung up to her in his crane.

”Well, we did it.” He looked fatigued, but a wary sense of jubilance touched his thoughts. ”We actually put s.h.i.+ps in a Klein bottle.”

Soz blew out a gust of air. ”Hiding in Klein s.p.a.ce does us no good if we blow up when we come out of it.”

The signal made no sense.

Domino Squadron consisted of sixteen ISC Wasps headed for the ISC army base in Edge Sector. They had just dropped into sublight s.p.a.ce to run the standard checks when Lieutenant Jen Bollings picked up a telop signal. Still plugged into her telop station, she said, ”Captain Kaller, I just got a signal over the web on an unsecured channel.”

Kaller glanced back from his pilot's seat. ”What source?”

”Unknown,” Bollings said. ”It was clumsy. Like a child trying to hack the web.”

Kaller frowned. ”Did the other s.h.i.+ps pick it up?”

”I'll check.” Bollings submerged into her link with the other Wasps. Anyone pick up a hacker? Awkward, like a kid?

Fourteen telops answered: No. The fifteenth had picked up a whisper he couldn't identify. But even the faintest murmur could be a warning. As soon as Bollings informed Kaller, he said, ”Prepare to invert-”

The blare of a siren cut him off. All around them, eight ESComm s.h.i.+ps dropped into real s.p.a.ce, Solo starfighters, the Trader equivalent of Jags, appearing all at once in perfect formation, their hulls glinting silver and black.

Bollings identified them immediately: Hawkracer Squadron. That name was her last thought before an ESComm missile hit the abdomen of her Wasp and exploded its antimatter bomb.

Jon Casestar paced Soz's office on the Orbiter. ”The Hawkracers dropped out of inversion simultaneously.”

Soz was sitting at the long table that had been Kurj's desk, a clear slab embedded with web components. She mourned the loss of Domino Squad. ”Maybe the traders hadn't been superluminal long enough to lose cohesion.”

”It was too precise.” He stopped in front of her. ”They came out at Domino's exact location, obliterated them, and then inverted out of there, all within seconds.”

Soz swore. ”It sounds like a web extraction.”

”Yes.” Casestar resumed pacing, his face creased with worry. ”They may be using psibertech now, but we still have the advantage. I doubt ESComm will go into full-scale psibertech development, given their att.i.tude toward their providers. If they do try, they face severe limitations. They have almost no trained telops and no access to a psi-berweb. Even with the tech they steal from us, they can't link more than a few nodes. They don't have power for more.”

Soz nodded. Without a web, ESComm could access psibers.p.a.ce only by hacking Skolian nodes, which they had been doing, or trying to do, for decades. She looked over the report of the Domino ma.s.sacre. ”Their telops are clumsy.” But that hadn't helped her people.

”We can set up a system to detect them,” Casestar said.

”For now. They're bound to get better at it.” She scowled. ”Any psibertech ESComm uses cuts our edge. And we don't have much edge.”

He halted again. ”I'll check with Professor Rasmuss. Maybe they've solved the problem with the Radiance Project.”

”Our web-extraction program also needs work.” She leaned forward, her fingers laced together. ”We need a way to locate other extractors in inversion.”

Casestar grinned. ”Train extractors to extract extractors?”

Soz felt her face relax into a smile. ”It would seem so.”

After Casestar left, Soz sat back in her chair. A, attend, she thought. With more than one node now, she had to distinguish among them. The first still had no name, so she simply called it A and labeled the new ones accordingly, by letters.

Attending, A thought.

Do I have any mail in the urgent queue?

One message, from First Councilor Tikal: It reads: ”Imperator Skolia, please meet me in the Mentation Chamber.”

Any idea what he wants?

Based on records of his behavior patterns, I a.s.sume he is in a perturbed state due to actions by one or more members of your family.

Soz smiled. That sounds like his normal state of mind.

He apparently retires to the Mentation Room when the perturbation rises past what he considers an acceptable level.

Ah well. I should go see what he wants.

Accompanied by her bodyguards, Soz headed for the Mentation Room. As she walked ”uphill,” her weight lessened. The room was near the north pole, 180 degrees around the Orbiter from the Solitude Room. The two chambers were similar, except Mentation had no command chair, only a small table.

Soz left her Jagernauts outside the chamber with Tikal's bodyguards. She found him inside, sitting at the table, staring at its surface.

”My greetings,” she said.