“Got that first craft up and running?” he asked.

“Uh—” Jocelyn touched her left temple and conferred with her squads over comm. “Yeasay, Cap’n. The other Flitters will take a while. Y’know—rev up, check out, things like that.”

“But the first one?”

“It’s ready.”

“Good. Let’ s move it out from the station.”

Jocelyn blinked, surprised. “Uh, why?”

Killeen gave her a mirthless smile. “Just do it.”

“I don’t—”

“Do it, Lieutenant.”

“Yessir!”

Killeen made his way up through the open cargo hold of the Flitter just as the doors began to close behind him. He wanted to get a full view of the station, and this was a quick way. It would be a while—he checked with Shibo and got an exact figure, 1.68 hours—before the large craft could arrive.

He wanted to see what he could use for maneuver, what the station could do as a defensive fortification. The immense crackling energies that worked over the disk surface would presumably not hinder the humans as they moved and fired at the incoming antagonist, since they had not reacted to the Argo as it approached. But he could be sure of nothing.

He wormed his way through narrow dark passages and soon he was in the cramped control room, a geometrically precise cylinder densely rimmed with electronic gear.

Jocelyn was floating beside some complex mechtech. “I’ve just ’bout got it revved up, Cap’n,” she began. Then something abruptly shifted. Killeen could feel ratcheting signals course through his own sensory net.

The Flitter moved under him.

“What—?”

Jocelyn’s eyes widened. “I—I dunno. This ship’s movin’—but I didn’t start it.”

Killeen sprang to the end of the long cylinder. It was transparent and showed the wide loading bay beyond…which was drifting silently away.

“We’re pulling out.”

Jocelyn cried, “But I didn’t—”

“I know. Something else is.”

The loading bay coasted away and he saw that they were backing out the entrance tube. The Flitter buzzed and clicked under them, finding its head.

Killeen switched to general comm. “Unjack all Flitters!”

Faint confirming replies came back.

“What’s doing this?” Jocelyn asked, punching in commands on her wrist module. They had no effect.

“That big ship coming toward us. It’s overriden our work.”

“Maybe we can get out.” Jocelyn tried to open the cargo-bay doors. No response.

“We’re trapped,” Killeen said. His mind raced through possibilities. Did the approaching ship know humans were inside here?

There must be an emergency exit from this craft, something manually activated. The design of the Flitter was strange, seeming to follow no pattern of bilateral symmetry even though the exterior features and hull did. He would have to explore it carefully and see what resources they could marshal.

Whatever was coming would probably unlock the Flitter to see what sort of vermin it had caught inside. He had a quick image of himself and Jocelyn being plucked forth and held up to the light by something immense and terrible.

Jocelyn gazed with a pale, stricken expression out the viewport. They were out of the bay now and the Flitter had made a powered turn. Now it accelerated steadily away from the station, which turned in luminous silvery glory below them.

Jocelyn gritted her teeth but did not give way to excitement. She was a good officer. Killeen knew she thought she should rightfully be Cap’n. Women had usually led the Family, and Jocelyn had been Cap’n Fanny’s best lieutenant.

But her normally brisk voice shook slightly as she turned to him. “Why’s…why’s it want this Flitter?”

“We’ll find out,” Killeen said.

PART TWO

Starswarmer

ONE

Clinking

clacking

jittering,

Quath strode the slashed land.

A final hill loomed between her and the Syphon. Quath articulated widely, legs grating, yawning—and surged over the apex.

A stone outcrop shattered against her underbelly and ground away with a brittle shriek. Quath tuned out the wail of tearing metal, even as she felt the alloy rip. A storage vat popped, the sulfuric mix gurgling out.

She peered ahead. There, blooming skyward in golden plumes, would grow the Syphon.

<Where are you, slit-eye?> came a burst in Nimfur’thon’s sweet-sour tongue.

<Coming askew you, monopod,> Quath spat in reply, though hissing with warm friendship to take the sting from her jibe. To call anyone one-legged was a deep insult within the elaborate status-conventions. But the image of anything hopping about on one pod was also funny enough to be a joke among friends.

<You will stumble, prang yourself, and be late.>

<You told me you would be far from the Syphon. Yet I read you to be ahead of me.>

<Catch me!> Nimfur’thon sent.

<You are too close!>

<For you, maybe. Not for me.>

Quath rumbled on, edging closer to the place where the Syphon would come. Already clouds writhed red and tortured overhead. The golden carving line had already passed once within view. Soon it would reappear, casting stark shadows. It could sear if Quath and Nimfur’thon got too close.

<The Tukar’ramin specifically warned us! Modes of the jet can snarl outward.>

When she and Nimfur’thon had boasted and challenged each other to come out here they had both been brave beyond question. Now Quath felt timid strains lacing her speech, fed from her subminds. Those were always cautious. They demanded incessant consultation. They made basso doubt and hesitation ride out beneath her carrier wave. She hated how these unwanted clues to her inner nature slipped through her filters, making her easy to read.

Nimfur’thon said confidently, <They are mere statistical fluctuations, low-limper friend. Feedback stabilization will catch the bulge and tuck it back into its mother sac.>

Quath stopped to measure her position, using fixes on two nearby peaks. No moons circled this world; for easy navigation, she sighted on the high station captured from the mechs by her brood. This glimmering spoil of warfare pleased Quath’s subminds, a sign of their thundering success on this world. They had deftly gutted the mech-station superintendents, the Horde of Podia descending with complete surprise and zestful courage. Quath was proud to be part of such a daring thrust into an inner mech province.

Quath surged downhill—clanking, jingling, ringing—as her pods found footing on skittering stones. She arrowed on Nimfur’thon’s peeping redness. Calmly, letting no color into her warble, she said, <Still, we are very close….>

<Monopody, you are. Stop worrying!>

Quath’s mind clogged for an instant as she sensed a servo whine hotly—eeeeeeii—in a forepod. She thought of the Tukar’ramin safely working in the Hive, beyond the brimming ridgeline. She and Nimfur’thon should be there, celebrating with the rest of the Hive’s brood.

Quath had tramped these hills many days with Nimfur’thon as they labored together. They had struggled with the fluxtube cannisters. Nimfur’thon had splintered a pod bone when a bulkhead tipped over. She had been unable to walk without agony until Quath fetched an artificial replacement.