The Dragon Never Sleeps

— 124 —

Excluding Delicate Harmony, all ships of the new class had names like Sword of Shadow, Fang of Darkness, Voice of Doom. Turtle thought the Outsiders a real uplifting, cheerful bunch.

He had been summoned to combat because Hunger of the Destroyer, shadowing VII Gemina, and Edge of Night, chasing a mystery Traveler, had them a situation.

He entered combat, glanced at a display of that remote encounter. "What have we got?"

An Outsider brought him the brittle yellow paper they used for hard copy. "Transcript of in-clear messages from the Traveler to the Guardship. They transmitted more by coded squirt."

The Traveler had been fading when he arrived. Now a missile, making an appreciable percentage of the velocity of light, caught Edge of Night. End of that story.

Hunger of the Destroyer sat on the Web nearby, recovering its riders. It would resume shadowing VII Gemina once it had its riders aboard.

He scanned the intercepted messages. "Klass?" That did not seem possible. How much had she passed to the Guardship?

Enough, probably.

"Who has seen these?" he asked.

One of his own said, "You and the tech who transcribed them."

Good. The tech would say nothing. He would not. No telling what the Tregesser hostages would do if they heard.

Something suicidal, surely. This meant the game was up for House Tregesser.

What else it might mean remained to be seen. The wizard would have to chew on it.

Delicate Harmony continued its headlong plunge toward Canon space.