Stavros’ intervention. Stavros knew him, had not trusted him let loose without restraint.
And in a sudden flash of apprehension he flicked the scan to maximum. A moving dot appeared at the limit of the field, moving in fast.
He cursed and put in a panicked call to Santiago, complaining of it.
“Fox, Fox,” came the reply at last, “this is Saber via Santiago, assigned escort. Request acknowledgment.”
Duncan leaned forward, adjusted the pickup, his other hand clenched. “Saber, this is Fox. Advise you no escort was in my orders. Pull off. Pull off.”
There was no acknowledgment in the expected time. Nothing.
Saber did not vary course. “Request explanation,” Duncan sent at them. Nothing came in reply. Saber continued on intercept. In a very little time there would be no options at all.
Duncan swore at them. “Saber,” he urged. “Saber, relay the following message to Santiago. Pull out of my scan: repeat, pull out of my scan. This ship is ready to jump, and your mass is registering. Request following message to be officially logged: Santiago, you have ignored five prior warnings. I will jump this ship on manual override in fifteen minutes. If you do not take immediate evasive action, you will be caught in my field. Advise you pull out now. Fifteen minutes, mark, and counting.”
The seconds ticked off. His hand sweated on the override. The dot that was Santiago began to move away, but Saber was still coming in fast.
“Fox,” he heard. “This is Saber, Koch speaking. Advise you this operation henceforth ours too. We are assigned to track. Orders of the Hon. G. Stavros, governor Kesrith territories.”
It hit him at the pit of the stomach: O God, out of this, out of this, he wished, either them or him, he did not know. He was shaking with the strain of the long-held position.
A kilometer-long warship, with escort scout. He watched Saber moving in, not yet close enough for her great mass to register, but closing. They were coming hi on Santiago’s track, and Santiago, not star-capable, would link and ride Saber’s ungainly structure into jump.
Warships, not a probe mission. He had been made a guide for warships.
No, no, no! he raged at them in his mind, and in an action both impulse and deliberate, slammed his hand forward and hit the manual override. Jump.
He held onto the panel while the whole of his body told him lies at once, while walls flowed like water, while forms eemed to twist inside out and space was not; and was again; and the flow reversed itself, wrenching them back into normality.
The stars in the screens were different. Duncan shivered in disorientation, fighting out of it as a man must who had flown combat out of deep space.
He reached for controls to scan, finding vertigo in the tiniest imbalance of his body, the impression that interstices still existed into which he could fall, neither up nor down. If there was time in jump, the mind did not perceive it, drew nothing with it out of that abyss, only that terrible wrenching inward. He swept the scan.
There was nothing but star noise.
There was nothing.
He slumped in the cushion and fought against the emotional dissolution that often hit after transition; and this time it was more than physical. He had made a terrible, irrevocable mistake not for the mri, not for them: he had at least bought them time, while Koch and Stavros sorted out the thing that he had done, consulted and reckoned what side he was playing, and what should be done with him.
The regul are living, Stavros had said: their victims aren’t. So we deal with the regul, who are a force still dangerous.
Warships, not Flower, not the likes of Boaz and Luiz. The half of Stavros’ military forces had prepared to follow in unarmed Fox’s wake, even with regul threatening Kesrith: warships, and himself before them, with mri aboard, to probe the defenses an unarmed ship, and then the others.
To seek and destroy mri bases, whatever contacts the tape could locate: to finish what the regul had begun.
He bowed his head into his arms and tried to take his breath again, muscles shaking with rage and reaction. For a moment he could do nothing else; and then, fingers still shaking convulsively, he sought after the ampoule he had carried for days in his belt, never knowing at what time jump might come. He broke it, almost dropped it, then inserted the needle and let the drug enter his bloodstream.