He immediately regretted having interrupted her, because Jocelyn’s eyes narrowed angrily. “We should take that mechplex ’fore it attacks us.”

“Our target’s a world, not a tin box in space,” Killeen said easily. He knew he would come out ahead if he let her lose her temper.

“With that in our hands, we can control what reaches the surface!” she said excitedly.

“And alert whatever’s on the surface before we can land the Argo,” he said.

“Well, Fanny would never—”

“Lieutenant Jocelyn, belay that Fanny stuff. I’m Cap’n now.”

She looked startled. He had always thought that she was best at following a planned tactic. She fumbled when time came for fast footwork and a shift of attack. “Uh, aye-aye, but—”

“And I say we’re going straight in. Got that? We’ll skip the station.”

“Damnall, that station’ll give us—”

—Cap’n!—

The call came not from the circle but from Killeen’s own belt. He was startled at the tinny voice that spoke from his waist: Shibo.

“Yeasay,” he answered. Abruptly he lost interest in Jocelyn. Shibo seldom called on ship comm. For her to do so meant something important.

—The board—Shibo began, but Killeen cut the switch. He never allowed crew to overhear officers’ messages unless he wanted to leak something deliberately.

He got up, nodded briskly at Jocelyn, and set off up the spiral to the control vault. He disliked leaving his dispute with Jocelyn hanging. He had blunted her momentum, but left a core of resistance in her still. And ambition, as well.

When he came through the hatch, Shibo was standing with uncharacteristic immobility, meditative: her arms wrapped around herself, thumbs hooked into her shiny black exskell ribs. Normally her hands would be moving restlessly over the boards, summoning forth the Argo’s energies and microminds.

“Cap’n, I have a problem. New kind, too.” Her luminous eyes and chagrined mouth could not conceal her alarm.

“Is it the station?”

“In a way.” Her exskell shifted like a cage of black bones, framing her gesture: something halfway between a shrug and a vexed wave of dismissal. “The board is frozen. I can’t dictate trajectory anymore.”

“Why not?”

“Some override command.”

“From where?”

“Maybe ‘From when?’ is the right question.”

“The Mantis?”

“Could be. It’s taking us on a slightly different tack from planetary rendezvous.”

“You can’t countermand it?”

“No.”

When Shibo admitted defeat he was sure she had struggled with the problem to her limits. He frowned. “Where are we going?”

“Toward that station. Against our will.”

EIGHT

Deep bass moans ran the length of Argo, like the songs of great swollen beasts.

The dust outside hummed and rubbed against the life-zone bubbles as the ship decelerated. It was as though the thin flotsam of the Galactic Center, spiraling in toward the shrouded star ahead, played the Argo like a great taut instrument. Melodies of red lightning danced about the burnished bow.

Killeen watched the approach of the station. He stood with his back to the assembling crew and peered through the forward port. Their trajectory ahead was clear. Argo was coming down to fly parallel to the station’s great circular plain, skimmed along it by unseen forces. Shibo could do nothing with Argo’s helm.

He allowed himself a smile of self-derision. His proud show of decisiveness had come to nothing. Jocelyn’s cagey—and insubordinate—egging on of the crew, and her public disagreement, had angered him. She had taken advantage of the Family context to attack his piloting decisions. Now, ironically, her whetting of appetites for action served his purposes.

He had to rouse the crew for an assault that promised little success. They were going in against unknown opponents, across a mechtech terrain they had never seen the likes of before. Hard-learned Family tactics would mean nothing here—perhaps worse than nothing, for they might well be exactly the wrong thing to do.

The swelling disk below revealed its silvery intricacies as he watched. At their present speed, blunted somehow by the station as they approached, it would take over an hour to reach the central tower. If that was their destination, he had time to carry out the ruse he had planned. If not, there was a surprise squad set at a spot mechs would probably not anticipate.

Killeen wore his full ceremonial tunic of blue and gold over his gray coverall, and a full belt of tools and weapons beneath that. He would waste no time changing if events interrupted the ceremony. Battle squads were poised at every small lock of the ship, ready to pour forth on signal. The remaining crew, gathered here, were for effect. Killeen had no way of knowing if whatever ran the station had already planted bugs on the hull, listeners powerful enough to pick up conversation. But he had to allow that this might be true, and use it against the enemy if he could.

Ahead, the scintillant, perfectly circular disk filled half the sky. Phosphorescent waves spiraled inward on the disk, their troughs brimming silver, their peaks moving rims of gold. The luminescence hovered like a fog over the actual metal-work of the disk. Arcs formed at the disk’s rim, where they washed and fretted in random rivulets.

Somehow this chaos resolved itself into distinct waves which grew and glowed with each undulation, oozing inward to join a whirlpool that twisted with majestic deliberation toward the towering spike at the disk center. That bristly central axis harvested the inward-racing waves in a spray of rainbow glory as they hammered against its ribbed base.

Jutting above and below the disk, the light-encrusted central tower tapered away, many kilometers long. Web antennae bristled along it. One end of the tower poked into a vapor of forking flux that burned steadily, silent and ivory against the backdrop of a passing dustcloud. The other ended in a burnished stub.

The waves seemed to be drawing Argo down in a long, scalloping glide across the circular plain. Bulkheads crackled and the deck rippled in sluggish, muscular grace, like something roused from sleep. Killeen fretted about how much of such flexing the ship could take.

Shibo said to him quietly, so the gathering Family behind them could not hear, “Lie doggo?”

“A little longer. Looks like whatever’s bringing us in is taking no other precautions.”

“Maybe it thinks we’re a mech ship?”

“Hope so.” Killeen watched luminous discharges warp and merge in the plain beyond. He had the sensation of skating over a huge sea, and remembered the time he had spent in a place like this—the interior digital world of the Mantis, a great gray ocean of the mind.

“What now?” she prompted.

“We zag against their zig.”

He turned when he sensed the room become still. Lieutenants Cermo and Jocelyn had ranked and ordered the Family into lines precise and attentive.

This was the atmosphere he wanted, had carefully programmed. Here, he reflected, was all of humanity he would probably ever know again. The nearest brothers were back at Snowglade, an unfathomable distance behind. For all he knew, this small band might well be the only shred of their race that yet lived.

“Dad? Uh, Cap’n?”

He turned, startled, to find Toby at his elbow. “You’re out of ranks, midshipman,” he said severely.

“Yeah, but I gotta carry this damn thing, and it’s ’cause a you.” Toby twisted his neck uncomfortably at the cowling that wrapped around his shoulders, snug against his helmet ring.

“You’ll carry your designated ’quipment into battle,” Killeen said stiffly.

“This’ll just slow me down!”