Star Wars_ The Black Fleet Crisis 03_ Tyrant's Test - Michael P. Kube-McDowell [146]
And never before had it found others waiting—tiny creatures sharing the circles above Brath Qella, the homestone, the place of beginning. They were unfamiliar in form and did not sing. But they did not move toward the vagabond, or reach out to touch it, and so it left them alone, no imperatives having been invoked. Still, it noted them and watched them closely.
After the appointed time for waiting, the vagabond began singing. And for the first time in all its journeys home, an answer came.
But the answer did not come from Brath Qella—it came from one of the tiny eggs sharing the circles. And the answer was sung harshly, without the gentle strength of Brath Qella. The vagabond searched its memories and knew the answer to be form without substance, a deception, a predator’s lure.
And there were imperatives concerning predators.
When the vagabond finally broke its silence and broadcast a fourteen-second interrogative, only Taisden was on the flight deck to hear it.
Hammax was napping in his cabin, wearing all but the boots and gauntlets of a combat suit. Pleck was on the observation deck trying to coax what he considered a more realistic measure of the vagabond’s displacement from what he suspected was a faulty magnetometer. Pakkpekatt and Eckels were behind closed doors in Lando’s suite, engaged in a heated discussion prompted by Eckels’s belated discovery that an NRI team was aboard the Qella vessel.
Taisden’s alarm roused all of them from their other pursuits, and brought all but Pleck running forward to the flight deck.
“Don’t know what the question was, but we are responding,” Taisden told them. “And the target is changing orbit and accelerating.”
“Toward us?”
“Toward the relay satellite.”
“She sure can motor when she wants to,” Hammax said, shaking his head.
“Is this good?” Eckels demanded. “Is this what you expected?”
“Maybe,” Taisden said. “If she’s going over there to make nice, next time we can transmit our reply directly from Lady Luck—”
At that moment a blue glow appeared at the vagabond’s bow, making it suddenly bright both through the viewscreens and on the monitors.
“The scythe,” said Pakkpekatt.
“Impossible,” said Taisden. “The satellite’s three thousand klicks away from it—”
Three slender but brilliant beams of energy slashed across the darkness and came together at a point 3,409 kilometers ahead of the vagabond. Where they converged, there was a small explosion intense enough to leave an afterimage in their eyes. Then the glow vanished, and the lances disappeared, leaving a spreading cloud of atomized plasteel and metal glittering in the light of N’oka Brath.
“She did not go there to make nice,” Hammax said in awe. “What kind of weapon is that?”
Even before the vagabond turned back, Taisden had shut down the autoresponder. At the same time, Pakkpekatt pulled the throttles back, dropping them into a lower, faster orbit that would carry them away from the vagabond and over its horizon.
“She could have taken out the whole task force at Gmar Askilon at any time,” said Taisden, shaking his head.
“Give me voice to Calrissian,” said Pakkpekatt. “Run it through one of Penga Rift’s regular satellites.”
“Ready,” said Taisden. “Comm two.”
“General,” said Pakkpekatt, “this is Lady Luck. Why are you firing on us?”
“It wasn’t our doing,” Lando said. “What did you say to it? Why are you running away?”
“If your yacht has a sensor cloak or a shield of invulnerability, General, this would be a very good time to inform us.”
Lando’s answer was lost in a blast of static as the vagabond reached across nearly eight thousand kilometers and vaporized Penga Rift’s ORS-2.
“Going over the horizon from that thing looks better all the time,” said Pakkpekatt.
“Six minutes.”
“Colonel—” Eckels’s voice had a tremble. “Perhaps it is time to transmit it all while there is still