She was bound for the inner planets. Behind her, humans stirred to wakefulness, and sent her furious demands to return. She ignored them. She was ally, not subject, and felt no obligation to their commands. About her, the younglings stirred to life again under the ministrations of the skillful youngling provided her by the bai a measure of his esteem, this lending of his personal attendant: Sharn reckoned diz-zyingly of her own possible favor, as well as her own present dangers.
“We will serve as probe,” she sent the angered humans at last, deigning to reply. “It is needful, human allies, that we quickly learn what manner of armed threat we face, and Shirug has sufficient mobility to evade.”
It was not the regul habit to go first.
But regul interests were at stake. Dead world after dead world: the incredible record of devastation enforced what decisions had been made on Kesrith. Doch-survival was personal survival, and more than that… incredible in itself… there was consciousness of threat against the regul species, that no regul had ever had to reckon.
Behind her, visible on the screens, the human ship seemed to fragment. Saber shed her riders, the little in-system fighter Santiago and the harmless probe Flower. Neither warships nor probe had the star-capable flexibility of Shirug, medium-sized and heavily armed, capable of evading directly out of the system and back again, capable of near-world maneuvers which would prove disaster for vast and fragile Saber, that was all shielding and firepower.
The humans were not happy. Saber gathered speed and her riders stayed with her. It was not pursuit. Sharn was nervous for a time, and snapped pettishly at her recovering younglings, but she determined at last that the humans were not going to take measures against her, not with all of them in reach of the mri. Their threats, had they issued them, would have made no difference. Sharn had her orders from Hulagh, and while she distrusted the Alagn elder’s sometimes youngling-impulsive decisiveness, she also trusted his knowledge and experience, which was a hundred twelve years longer than hers.
In particular, Hulagh knew humans, and evidently had confidence that the peace which was in force would not be breached, not even if regul pressed it hard. This was a distasteful course. Regul were not fighters; their aggressiveness was verbal and theoretical. Sharn would have felt far more secure had she a mri aboard to handle such irrational processes as evasion and combat. Random action was something at which mri excelled. But of course they were facing mri, and the unaccustomed prospect of fighting against mri disturbed her to the depth.
Destroy.
Destroy and leave the humans to mop up the untidiness. Regul knew how to vise the lesser races. Regul decided; the lesser species simply coped with the situation… and Hulagh in his experience found that the humans would do precisely that.
A beacon-pulse came faintly: hearts pounding, Sharn adjusted the pickup and amplified.
Friendship, it said. Friendship.
In human language.
Treachery.
Just such a thing had Hulagh feared, that the mri, who had left regul employ, would hire again. There was a human named Duncan, a contact with the mri, who worked to that end.
Sharn sighted on the source of the signal, fired. It ceased.
Human voices chattered at her in a few moments, seeking to know why she had fired. They had not, then, picked up the signal.
“Debris,” Sham answered. Regul did not lie; neither did they always tell the truth. The answer was, perhaps, accepted. There was no comment. Shirug’s lead widened. It was possible she’ had the advantage of speed. Possibly the human craft were content to let her probe the inner system defenses, taking her at her word, reasoning no further into it. She doubted that. She had confidence rather in Shirug’s speed: strike-and-run, that was the ship’s build Saber’s was that of a carrier, stand-and-fight. Doubtless the insystem fighter, Santiago, was the speed in the combination, and it was no threat to Shirug. Flower was not even considerable in that reckoning.
Sharn dismissed concern for them: Hulagh’s information was accurate as it had been consistently accurate. Shirug, stripped of riders according to their operating agreement, still had the advantage in everything but shielding and firepower.