"The way people are treating us? I guess. They're so scared they won't have anything to do with us."

"Check. Check there too. Part of it's the Sangaree woman, Moyshe. She's telling stories on us again. Trying to isolate us. I wonder why? One move to mate."

They batted possibilities around. Moyshe so loathed the one that occurred to him that he refused to mention it right away.

His game grew increasingly poor. He became irritable. The I want grew stronger, louder, mocking him, telling him that he was on the threshold of its fulfillment and was too blind to see it.

"I can't hold off much longer," Mouse said, taking a pawn with a savage grab. "Next time she gouges me, or the next, I'll bend her, and damned be the consequences."

"Please don't. We're almost home. We've only got five weeks to go."

Mouse slaughtered a knight. "You think we should let her set us up?"

BenRabi glanced at Mouse's emotionless face, back to the disaster already developing on the chessboard. "I yield." The more he reflected, the more he was sure he knew what Marya was planning. He stood abruptly, scattering chessmen. "We may have to."

"Have to what?"

"Bend her. For our own good. I know what she's doing. We ignored the obvious. Suppose she has the same kind of tracer we did? They've got the technology. And suppose she has control and didn't turn it on till after the Seiners stopped worrying about things like that?"

"Got you. Let's not bend her. Let's just chop the tracer out." Mouse returned his chessmen to their box with loving care, then recovered a wicked homemade plastic knife from beneath his mattress. "Let's go."

BenRabi thought of a dozen reasons for putting it off, but could not articulate a one. It was time Marya was put out of the game. She was too dangerous.

They were halfway to her cabin when he stopped, struck by a sudden thought. "Mouse, what if she's expecting us?"

"Doesn't seem likely."

"You can't overlook anything in this business."

"That's true. Let me think a minute."

For months they had known that the Seiners sometimes listened in on them. When they did not want to be overheard they carefully lipread one another, never verbalizing anything that might excite an eavesdropper.

"I think I made a mistake bringing this up in your cabin."

"Yeah. Maybe. But it's too late to cry. If she bugged us, she bugged us."

"What're you going to do?"

"I'm thinking. I don't got a whole lot of use for Pyrrhic victories, you know."

They continued talking quietly, ten meters from Marya's door.

Three Seiners on a flying scooter squealed round a corner and skidded to a stop at Marya's door. They wore Security patches. One moved toward Mouse and benRabi, hand on his weapon, then stood easy. They tried to look like curious bystanders. The other Security men eyed the door.

"Looks like we get it done for us, Mouse."

"They're not thinking!" Mouse growled. BenRabi's heart pounded out a flamenco. These guys were too sure of themselves.

They overrode the door closure. A pair of explosions greeted them. One man fell in the doorway. The other flung himself inside.

The one facing Mouse and benRabi whirled, charged into the cabin too. His face had gone grey.

They heard grunts and a cry of pain. "Homemade gunpowder weapons!" benRabi gasped. "Nice welcome she had for us."

Mouse looked up and down the passageway. "Come on. Before we draw a crowd."

BenRabi did not know what Mouse planned, but he followed. Mouse went in the door low, scooping the weapon from the hand of the dying Seiner. BenRabi scrambled after him, seizing another fallen handgun.

The Sangaree woman had her back to the door. She was struggling with the last Security man. Her left hand darted past his guard, smashing his windpipe. He gagged. She followed up with a bone-breaking blow over his heart.

BenRabi's grunt of sympathy warned her of enemies to her rear.

"Slowly," Mouse said as she started for the Seiner's weapon. "I'd hate to shoot."

For once she had no instantaneous retort. Mouse's tone made it clear there was nothing he would hate less than killing her. Emotional pain twisted her face when she turned. Once again, from her viewpoint, they had out-maneuvered her—and this time might be fatal.

Her agony turned into a strained smile after a moment. "You're too late." The smile broadened. It became anticipatory. "They're on their way by now."

"Moyshe, get that man in here and close the door. How bad is he?"

"He's gone."

"Better be nice," Marya said as benRabi forced the door shut. She had the sense to keep her voice neutral. To survive, to enjoy her victory, she had to overcome the obstacle she had made of Mouse. "They'll be here soon. You won't want them mad at you."

"This one's gone too," benRabi said. "The other one might make it. Marya, don't think the Seiners will hand over a harvestfleet because a few raidships turn up."

She smiled that gunmetal smile.

He remembered ruined merchantmen left in the wake of Sangaree raiders. They would come with enough gunpower. There would be no survivors.

An alarm began hooting. It was a forlorn call to arms.

"General quarters, Mouse. She's for real." The borrowed weapon seemed to swell painfully in his hand. A part of him was telling him it was time he finished what he had started on The Broken Wings.

Sixteen: 3049 AD

Operation Dragon, Combat

Time telescoped, then coiled around itself like some mad snake trying to crush itself. It detached Marya's battlefield cabin from the macro-universe, establishing an independent timeline. Ten seconds became an eternal instant.

BenRabi was afraid.

Something clicked inside Mouse. He slipped into assassin's mind. BenRabi vacillated between answering the alarm and staying to restrain the organic killing machine.

Danion shivered. Moyshe recognized the feel of service ships launching.

"I'm going on station, Mouse. Keep her here till Jarl's people come. And keep her alive."

Mouse nodded mechanically. He was easily guided while in assassin's mind—if Psych had keyed him to accept your direction. He would be upset later. He wanted to show the woman the death of a thousand cuts, or something equally grisly.

He was on his way back to the real universe already. "Take the guns, Moyshe. Hide them."

"What about?... "

"This." He tapped the plastic knife thrust through a tool loop on his jumpsuit.

"All right." BenRabi collected the weapons. He hid them in Mouse's cabin, then headed for Damage Control South.

"What's up?" he asked one of his teammates when he arrived.

"Sangaree raidships. They say there's at least fifty of them. That's scary."

"In more ways than one."

"What do you mean?"

"That their show is being put on by a consortium. No one Family has that kind of muscle. The last time they put that many ships together was for the Helga's World thing during the Shadowline War."

The Seiner regarded benRabi with a puzzled fearful frown. Moyshe was talking foreign history.

Moyshe found his fellow landsmen in a low-grade panic. They had no faith in Seiner arms. And they were sure the Starfishers would fight. He did not understand till he heard the Seiners themselves second-guessing Payne.

Fleet Commander Payne had refused to negotiate or back down. He had told the Sangaree that he would fight to the last harvestship.

"What're we fighting about?" Moyshe asked plaintively.

His Seiner companions refused to enlighten him.

He felt that touch of panic himself. He never had wanted to die with his boots on. Not since he had given up boyhood daydreams. He had no interest in dying at all. Not for several thousand years.

Time moved with the haste of pouring treacle. He knew the Sangaree ships were maneuvering in the darkness outside. Outgunned service ships were moving to meet them. The death dance had begun.