Chapter Thirty-Nine

“Baz reporting, the Network has requested burnback from the station,” Taj was saying as the shuntlift doors opened and deposited Mark and Tis in House Defensive Operations.

The old man had a hand pressed against his mastoid as if to shut out the din in the command post. Totally unnecessary of course, the receiver-transmitter was buried deep in the bone, but Tis could appreciate the motivation. The spherical room was a morass of shouted orders, queries, answers. Zabb raced past, his combat armor hanging about his waist, his batman in close pursuit trying to complete the task of dressing his master.

“Read that!” he said, and shoved a sheaf of foil in Tisianne’s hands. “Abortion!” This directed to Taj. “Tell them to stall!” he bellowed over the noise.

Tis skimmed the sheets. She looked up at Mark, who had been reading over her shoulder. “You understand?”

“Enough. Blaise has bought ships from the Network and paid with this House. The Network is coming to take possession.”

“They have raised every objection. They’ve run out of stalls!” Taj sang out.

“Congratulations, Tis.” Zabb came raging back. “You brought them here, you -”

“And I doubt they would be quite so assiduous in their efforts to take possession if they didn’t have a little unfinished business to settle with you. So let’s not be quite so self-righteous, shall we, Zabb?” Tisianne paused, sifted the chaotic thoughts tumbling through her head. But out of chaos sometimes comes inspiration, and it came now. “He’s overstepped himself this time,” she said almost to herself.

Zabb ignored her. “Taj, you command the honor against the ships going to Vayawand. I’ll handle the ones headed for Ilkazam.”

Tis intercepted Zabb as he darted back across DefOp. “Take me with you!”

“You’re out of your mind.”

“Please, it’s my home, my world. Let me defend her.”

“Tisianne was an exemplary pilot… better even than you,” Taj said in unexpected support.

“Prince Tisianne was an extraordinary pilot because he was an extraordinary telepath. She’s almost mind blind. I’m not turning her loose in a half-wild fighting ship.” Zabb grabbed Tis’s shoulders, spun her around, and shoved her back into the center of DefOp. “Stay here. Be safe.”

She whirled on him. “There is no safe place. If you fail, the Network comes here. We will fight, and we will die. At least let me die with you.”

They hadn’t talked since that night on the mountain. Now the spoken and the unspoken were evident for everyone to read. “What do you think you can do?” Zabb asked.

“Talk. We’re going to need help.”

“And whom do you suggest calling, cousin? We haven’t an ally left on Takis.”

“An hour ago that was true. Now… I expect we’ll find many friends in many places. We’ll ship link to the Raiyises of Houses Ss’ang, Alaa, Tandeh, and any others who aren’t held by the Vayawand by conquest.”

“What’s your thinking?” Taj asked.

“Blaise has just fissured his precious alliance. Now all that remains is for us to drive the wedge. It was one thing to forge an alliance against Ilkazam. It’s another to invite in Takis’s bitterest enemy.”

“It might work,” came Taj’s cautious support.

“It will work,” Mark said.

Zabb stared down at her, smiled, and said, “I love you.” Tis went red. “Now come along.”

“I’m coming too.” Everyone stared at Trips. He wiggled uncomfortably like a puppy in a holiday crowd. “Starshine will really dig fighting uncontrolled capitalism.”

In the center of the bridge of Zabb’s flagship StarRacer, a hologram of Takis was lazily spinning. Each satellite, station, or weapons platform was carefully detailed. The Network starship was an obsidian ball. As they watched, the ball calved, producing forty tiny replicas of itself. Tisianne bent over the scanner.

“Warships, roughly analogous to our destroyer class.”

Zabb, using both a telepathic ship link to his other captains, and a conventional tight-beam, laser-pulse communication system, issued his orders. Ilkazam’s ships, indicated as tiny white stars, broke off by twos.

It hadn’t taken much to enlist the aid of Ss’ang and Alaa, and they were coming, elegant fireflies of green and blue. The hologram now resembled a tangled skein of yarn. Tis supposed there was some sort of order to the patterns, but it eluded her, which was why Zabb had ended up military leader of House Ilkazam and she’d ended up a research scientist.

A mental nudge from the ships informed her that telepathic communication had been established with Yimkin, Raiyis of House Tandeh. Tisianne quickly outlined their current dilemma.

Ancestors know I sympathize, Prin… er, Tisianne, but this is no slow-moving Network scow loaded down with prophylactics and miracle cures to sell to a credulous load of groundlings. This is a Network starship built to fight. And that madman of a grandson of yours is crazy!

Yimkin had always had a gift for stating the obvious three or four times in the same sentence.

Absolutely, he’s trying to give us to Network.

But if I desert him, he’ll be coming after me.

The Network, Blaise, or me? Which is it to be?

God’s abortions. I suppose it must be you. You breed a strong precog line in Ilkazam…

You want one?

Please.

Done.

Make sure she’s pretty.

We don’t breed them any other way.

Now.

Tis broke the telepathic link and studied the tactical holo. We’ll need a new color for Tandeh, Tis thought. Zabb picked it up.

“You got them?”

“Yes.”

“Did Yimkin demand the family jewels?” Zabb grunted, anxious that Tandeh had driven a hard bargain.

“Just a bride,” Tis answered.

“There is no such thing as just a bride. Added together this will cost us dearly in land, wealth -”

“And lives,” Tis interrupted.

Zabb just blinked at her. Not a Takisian consideration, Tis realized.

“I think it’s time, Meadows,” Zabb said.

Mark nodded and pulled out a vial filled with bright yellow powder. Tis laid a hand on his wrist.

“Be careful,” she whispered.

“Don’t worry.” He patted her hand awkwardly. Downed his potion.

Starshine was a far bigger man than Mark Meadows. The extra mass had to come from somewhere. The easiest solution was to rob molecules of ambient air. A whirlwind wrapped itself about the writhing figure of the human. Light styluses, a loose glove, and any other unattached objects were sucked into the maelstrom. Tis staggered under the force of the wind, and Zabb grabbed her and hugged her against his chest. It was over in a matter of seconds.

Starshine was magnificent in his skintight yellow suit with the sunburst blazing on his massive chest, his curly blond hair tousled by his summoning. He dwarfed the Takisians. Puffing out his chest, the ace surveyed the bridge in ire. For a moment his square jaw worked as if he were trying to form words, or perhaps deciding against whom to launch them. His awful gaze fell upon Tisianne. It was inevitable. She was always the target – of Zabb’s lectures, Jay’s lectures, Traveler’s lectures, Cody’s lectures, Taj’s lectures…

“It’s fascinating, Doctor, how I am summoned only in cases of extreme emergency – always generated by the actions of yourself, or your rapacious relatives. If it were not for the sake of the ordinary Takisian who should be free from the yoke of unbridled Network capitalism, I would refuse to help, but -”

“You won’t,” Tis supplied.

It threw Starshine off his stride for an instant, but he soon recovered. “I feel it is also incumbent upon me to point out -”

Zabb set Tis in the bridge chair. “Will this go on for long, or will he eventually get around to fighting?”

This interruption hadn’t fazed Starshine. He was still pontificating. “…presence of these enemies in your midst is due entirely to your selfish desire to abandon the female persona in which you currently reside. It would have shown far greater courage to accept life as a woman after you have so brutally and callously preyed upon the entire sex -”