realms.
But now he felt returning his older, original sense of what a Cap’n needed. Bold initiative, laced with sober calculation.
Ingenuity and quickness. Moral and physical courage, both. Tactful handling of Family who were in ship’s terms underlings,
but in the full compass of life were the dearest people he would ever know.
Those were the crucial qualities. He only hoped he had some of them. So much depended on him, and he had only his memories
of Fanny and of Abraham—whose wind-worn face swam before him now, split by a fatherly grin—to guide him.
His personal sensory net resounded with pinpricks. Timing was essential now, and he wanted the mech acoustic bugs—if any—to
register human zest and celebration, and so be unprepared for what came next.
“Cap’n!” Cermo called.
As the Family dissolved into chattering knots, Killeen turned to Cermo and from the corner of his eye caught a hint of movement
upon the immense perspectives outside.
They were moving swift and sure toward the central axis. Fresh energies surged on the intricate disk floor below them. It
was as though the activity he glimpsed took place beneath a tossing ocean, and he could catch only a flickering of a vastly
larger plan beneath the waves. Oblong forms shot swiftly among bulky pods. Machines whirled on rails, angularities moved like
schools of darting fish—yet it all had the appearance of orderly iabor, carried out beneath the surging bands of luminescence.
Bass notes rolled through the deck. Metal rang.
Something felt for purchase on the
Argo’
s outer skin.
Killeen switched to his shielded comm frequency and whispered the code: “Hoyea! Hoyea!”
He patched a line in from Shibo’s control survey. It bloomed in his left eye, a view uphull from the lifezone bubbles.Against the
Argo
’ burned and nicked hull, those moist, filmy swellings seemed like abnormal growths run wild. From small slits in the opalescent
bubbles came quick, darting figures. They shot downward, through the roiling waves of electro-luminescence, and into the protecting
grooves of the disk.
Killeen blinked twice and got a view looking forward. Long, tubular mechs had appeared from somewhere and were moving rapidly
toward the airlocks of the
Argo
. He nodded to himself, seeing only the flexing forms that flew to meet them.
Good timing. They would be at the locks in a few moments, undoubtedly sent by the mechmind to take advantage of the momentary
human rituals.
So the mechs in this station knew something of humans—enough, at least, to recognize them as enemies. That could be useful.
Killeen had learned certain patterns of thought from the Mantis, oblique ways of viewing humanity. Mech ways were now more
intelligible, though no less hateful.
These station mechs were probably following the orders of the Mantis, sent before the
Argo
lifted from Snowglade. Whatever the intention of the Mantis in sending
Argo
here, the Family was united on one point—they would destroy whatever agency tried to control them. They had smashed the small
mechs aboard
Argo
immediately after liftoff. At the slightest sign of interference they would attack the station. Some thought the Mantis’s
plans may have been benign, but they were a minority.
Killeen stood amid the fading revelry of the Family, seeing and hearing nothing except the silent drama beyond the hull.
“Arm!” he whispered over comm. Ringing clicks answered him.
Slender, coiling forms now neared the main and side locks of the
Argo
. Killeen waited until the first made contact. It wriggled, forming a hoop around the lock door. Killeen saw small borers
fork out, bite into
Argo
’s hull. The others had reached their locks, were settled—
“Fire!” Beside each lock the planted mines exploded. Each made a billowing blue-shot cloud that ripped through the mech bodies,
shredding them.
Killeen allowed himself a smile. This first blow had gone well, but now there would be
But now he felt returning his older, original sense of what a Cap’n needed. Bold initiative, laced with sober calculation.
Ingenuity and quickness. Moral and physical courage, both. Tactful handling of Family who were in ship’s terms underlings,
but in the full compass of life were the dearest people he would ever know.
Those were the crucial qualities. He only hoped he had some of them. So much depended on him, and he had only his memories
of Fanny and of Abraham—whose wind-worn face swam before him now, split by a fatherly grin—to guide him.
His personal sensory net resounded with pinpricks. Timing was essential now, and he wanted the mech acoustic bugs—if any—to
register human zest and celebration, and so be unprepared for what came next.
“Cap’n!” Cermo called.
As the Family dissolved into chattering knots, Killeen turned to Cermo and from the corner of his eye caught a hint of movement
upon the immense perspectives outside.
They were moving swift and sure toward the central axis. Fresh energies surged on the intricate disk floor below them. It
was as though the activity he glimpsed took place beneath a tossing ocean, and he could catch only a flickering of a vastly
larger plan beneath the waves. Oblong forms shot swiftly among bulky pods. Machines whirled on rails, angularities moved like
schools of darting fish—yet it all had the appearance of orderly iabor, carried out beneath the surging bands of luminescence.
Bass notes rolled through the deck. Metal rang.
Something felt for purchase on the
Argo’
s outer skin.
Killeen switched to his shielded comm frequency and whispered the code: “Hoyea! Hoyea!”
He patched a line in from Shibo’s control survey. It bloomed in his left eye, a view uphull from the lifezone bubbles.Against the
Argo
’ burned and nicked hull, those moist, filmy swellings seemed like abnormal growths run wild. From small slits in the opalescent
bubbles came quick, darting figures. They shot downward, through the roiling waves of electro-luminescence, and into the protecting
grooves of the disk.
Killeen blinked twice and got a view looking forward. Long, tubular mechs had appeared from somewhere and were moving rapidly
toward the airlocks of the
Argo
. He nodded to himself, seeing only the flexing forms that flew to meet them.
Good timing. They would be at the locks in a few moments, undoubtedly sent by the mechmind to take advantage of the momentary
human rituals.
So the mechs in this station knew something of humans—enough, at least, to recognize them as enemies. That could be useful.
Killeen had learned certain patterns of thought from the Mantis, oblique ways of viewing humanity. Mech ways were now more
intelligible, though no less hateful.
These station mechs were probably following the orders of the Mantis, sent before the
Argo
lifted from Snowglade. Whatever the intention of the Mantis in sending
Argo
here, the Family was united on one point—they would destroy whatever agency tried to control them. They had smashed the small
mechs aboard
Argo
immediately after liftoff. At the slightest sign of interference they would attack the station. Some thought the Mantis’s
plans may have been benign, but they were a minority.
Killeen stood amid the fading revelry of the Family, seeing and hearing nothing except the silent drama beyond the hull.
“Arm!” he whispered over comm. Ringing clicks answered him.
Slender, coiling forms now neared the main and side locks of the
Argo
. Killeen waited until the first made contact. It wriggled, forming a hoop around the lock door. Killeen saw small borers
fork out, bite into
Argo
’s hull. The others had reached their locks, were settled—
“Fire!” Beside each lock the planted mines exploded. Each made a billowing blue-shot cloud that ripped through the mech bodies,
shredding them.
Killeen allowed himself a smile. This first blow had gone well, but now there would be
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