Infinity's Shore

Ling shrugged. “Millions of years, I guess. You hear about watchers being sent for storage, but I’ve never known of a WOM being read during the present epoch. I guess when you put it that way, it kind of sounds like a contradiction in terms. A typical Galactic hypocrisy. Or maybe I don’t grasp some subtlety of the concept.”

You and me, both, Lark thought, dismissing the watcher from his mind, like a slab of stone.

“Look,” he said, pointing toward one end of the Jophur headquarters chamber. “Those big screens show the outside! Seems we just passed over the Rimmers.”

“Toward the sun.” Ling nodded. “Either it’s morning or—”

“Nothing on the Slope looks like that prairie. That’s poison grass. So it is morning and that’s east.”

“See the clouds,” Ling commented. “They’re breaking up, but it must’ve been some stor—” She stopped, blinking. “Hear that? The Jophur are excited. Maybe I can adjust these knobs and—”

Sound abruptly boomed through the observation deck. A screech and ratchet of accented GalTwo.

“ … COMMANDED TO CORRECT THE DISSONANCE/DISAGREEMENTS BETWEEN YOUR VARIED REPORTS! JUSTIFY THIS PATTERNED SEARCH! EXPLAIN REASONS WHY WE SHOULD NOT RETURN TO OUR PRIMARY MISSION — SIFTING FOR THE WOLFLING CRAFT!”

Lark saw the Jophur on the central dais gesticulate along with these word glyphs, so perhaps that one was in command. If only I had a weapon, he mused. But the glasslike barrier was probably too strong for anything as crude as a Jijoan axe or rifle.

“We/I cannot recommend departing this area until we verify/rebuke the possibility of foe ships/smallships,”replied a nearby stack, using a less imperious version of the same dialect. “Starship cognizances hover nearby, undetectable on any other band! But how can that be? Flight without gravitics? The Jophur, great and mighty, must have/pierce this secret, for safety’s sake!”

Another ring stack edged forward, and Lark felt a shiver of recognition. That awkward pile of ragged toruses had once been the former traeki High Sage, though its speech held none of the unassuming gentleness of Asx.

“I/we offer this wisdom — that the scent indicators we pursue have all the stink of an elaborate ruse! Recall the flame-tube weapons that the savage sooners used against our corvette! Now our comrades in the captured Biblos Archive report they have identified the wolfling trick as ‘rockets.’ Contradicting the tactics officer, I/we must point out that these rockets flew quite successfully without gravitics! I/we further maintain that—”

Another stack interrupted.

“Localization! One of the nearby cognizance sites has remained active long enough to verify its location.”

The commander vented compact clots of purple vapor.

“PROCEED ON ATTACK VECTOR! PREPARE A CAPTURE BOX FOR SEIZURE OF SOURCE! WHETHER IT IS A SOPHISTICATED STAR ENEMY OR ANOTHER SOONER RUSE, WE SHALL SECURE IT FOR LATER INSPECTION, THEN RETURN TO OUR PRINCIPAL OBJECTIVE.”

The ring piles reacted more swiftly than Lark had ever witnessed traeki move, setting to work in a whirl of base feet and flailing tendrils. Soon the outside monitors showed clouds and prairie rushing by in a blur, depicted in many spectral bands. On some displays, flashing concentric circles closed in.

“Targeting brackets—” Ling explained. But the circles seemed to contain nothing. Only open space.

Lark’s right hand drifted under his shirt, stroking the sliver of the Egg. “I feel …”

Ling tugged his arm. “Look at the far left screen!”

He squinted, and began to make out something small and round. A ghostly shape, depicted as nearly transparent. Blur cloth, he realized, recognizing the effects of that specialized g’Kek weaving. All at once Lark understood. The Jophur were streaking toward an object that was invisible to nearly all their sensors, because it was made of nothing but air and fabric plaited to smear light.

If only his rewq had not lapsed into exhausted hibernation! The hazy globe loomed larger, even as Lark’s heart beat faster. His amulet throbbed in response.

“What is it?” Ling wondered, perplexed.

Before he could answer, without warning, all the forward viewing screens abruptly went black.

One Jophur let out a shrill wail. Several vented colored steam. The commander flexed and blared.

“HOSTILITIES ALERT! ROBOTIC DEFENSE! ALL STATIONS PREPARE FOR THE DRAWBA—”

Gillian

DETONATION!”

Streaker’s detection officer shouted excitedly. “One of our proximity bombs just went off, almost on t-top of the Jophur!”

The bridge filled with neo-dolphin cheers. “Maybe that got the bastardss,” someone chittered hopefully.

Gillian called for quiet.

“Keep it down, everyone. That firecracker won’t do more than scratch their paint.” She took a deep breath. It was the crucial moment of decision, for commitment to the plan.

“Launch the swarm!” she ordered. “Get us up, Kaa. Exactly the way we planned.”