All the attackers needed was a single strike against the production system. Any large explosion would inevitably set off a chain reaction within the antimatter storage chambers. The resulting blast could at times be five or six times the size of a planet-buster, depending on how much of the substance was in store.
This time it was going to have to be a little different. Meredith Saldana waited impatiently on the Arikara’s bridge while the voidhawks deployed around the star in small swallow manoeuvres. Each of them launched a pack of small sensor satellites to scan the huge magnetosphere in which they were all immersed.
Locating the station was easy enough, though the sheer volume of space they were searching through made it a lengthy task. The Arikara’s tactical situation computer started to receive datavises from the satellites, blending them into a harmonized picture of the whole near-solar environment. When the information was complete, it showed the star as a dark sphere surrounded with graded shells of pale gold translucence. The innermost seethed like a restless sea as the magnetic forces fluxed and coiled, above that they smoothed out considerably.
A tiny knot of twisted copper light was sliding along a circular, five million kilometre orbit. The squadron’s comparative position was fed in, and Meredith began issuing orders. Because of their vulnerability to the star’s heat and radiation, the voidhawks maintained their orbits, enabling them to keep watch for any emerging starships. The Adamist starships flew inward. Eight frigates were vectored into high inclination orbits, a location from which they could launch a kinetic assault on the station. The remaining starships, including Lady Macbeth, aligned themselves on an interception course and accelerated along it at three gees.
When they were three million kilometres away, the Arikara pointed her main communication dish on the station, and boosted the signal to full strength.
“This communiqué is directed to the station commander,” Meredith datavised. “This is the Confederation Navy ship Arikara. Your illegal operation is now terminated. Ordinarily, you would be executed for your actions in producing antimatter, but I have been authorized to offer you transport to a Confederation penal colony planet if you cooperate with us. This offer is also applicable to any possessed who are resident at the station. I will require your answer within one hour. Failure to respond will be taken as a refusal to cooperate, and you will be destroyed.” He datavised the flight computer to repeat the message, and the squadron waited.
It took ten minutes for a static-heavy signal to emerge from the station.
“This is Renko, I’m the guy Al left in charge around here. And I’m telling you to get the fuck out of here before we smear your pansy asses across the sun. You got that clear, pal?”
Meredith glanced across the bridge’s acceleration couches to where Lieutenant Grese was lying. The intelligence officer managed to grin, despite the gee force. “That’s a break,” he said. “We got Capone’s source, no matter what the outcome.”
“I believe the Navy is due a break,” Meredith said. “Especially our section of it.”
“He’ll have to stop those bloody infiltration flights now. His fleet will need all the antimatter they’ve got left to defend New California.”
“Indeed.” Meredith was almost cheerful when he ordered the computer to datavise a reply to the station. “Consult your crew, Renko. You’re in the losing position here. All we have to do is launch a single missile once an hour. You have to fire five each time just to make sure it doesn’t get through. And we’re in no hurry, we can keep shooting at you for a couple of weeks if we have to. There’s just no way you can win. Now are you going to accept my offer, or do you want to go back to the beyond?”
“Nice try, but you don’t mean it. Not for us, leastways. I know you guys, you’ll slam us into zero-tau the second we put our hands up.”
“For what it’s worth, I am Rear Admiral Meredith Saldana, and you have my word that you will be given passage to an uninhabited world capable of supporting human life. Consider your alternatives. If we attack the station, you go back to the beyond, if I’m lying about transporting you to a planet you go back. But there is the very strong possibility that I’m not lying. Can you really reject that hope?”
Along with the rest of the squadron, Joshua had to wait another twenty minutes for the answer. Eventually, Renko agreed to surrender. “Looks like we’re on,” Joshua said. They were accelerating hard again, preventing him from smiling. But there was no hiding the rise of excitement in his labouring voice.
“Christ, the other side of the nebula,” Liol marvelled. “What’s the furthest anyone’s ever been before?”
“A voidhawk scout group travelled six hundred and eighty light years from Earth in 2570,” Samuel replied. “Their course took them directly galactic north, not in this direction.”
“I missed that,” Ashly complained. “Was there anything interesting out there?”
Samuel closed his eyes, questioning the voidhawks racing along their orbits millions of kilometres away. “Nothing unusual, or dramatic. Stars with possible terracompatible planets, stars without. No sentient xenoc species.”
“The Meridian fleet went further,” Beaulieu said.
“Only according to legend,” Dahybi countered. “Nobody knows where they vanished to. In any case, that was centuries ago.”
“Logically then, they must have gone a long way if no one’s ever found them.”
“Found the wreckage, more like.”
“Such pessimism is bad for you.”
“Really? Hey, Monica.” Dahybi lifted one hand to make an appeal before the acceleration made him lower it fast again. “Do your lot know where they went? It could be important if they’re waiting out there for us.”
Monica stared stubbornly at the compartment’s ceiling, a headache building behind her compressed eyeballs that no program could rid her of.
She really hated high gees. “No,” she datavised (her throat was suffering along with the rest of her), irritated she couldn’t put any emphasis into her digitalized speech. Not that snapping at the crew would endear her to them, but their relentless discussions of utter trivia were starting to chafe. And she’d possibly got a month or more to go. “The ESA was in its infancy back when the Meridian fleet was launched. Even today I doubt we’d bother planting assets in with a bunch of paradise seeking fools.”
“I don’t want to know what’s there,” Joshua said. “The whole point of this mission is discovery. We’re real explorers going out on a limb, first for at least a century.”
“Amen to that,” Ashly said.
“Where we are now is new for most people,” Liol said. “Just look at that station.”
“Standard industrial modules,” Dahybi said. “Hardly exotic or inspiring.” Liol sighed sadly.
“Okay, we’re getting close to injection point,” Joshua announced. “Systems review, please. How’s our fuselage holding out?” The flight computer was datavising images from the localized sensors into his neural nanonics. Lady Mac’s thermo dump panels were fully extended, constantly rotating to present their narrow edges towards the raging star. Their flat surfaces were glowing radiant pink as they expelled the ship’s accumulated heat. He’d programmed a permanent spin into their vector, a fifteen minute cycle to ensure the immense thermal input was distributed evenly across the fuselage. Fine manoeuvring was slow, given the additional reaction mass they were carrying, but the balance compensation programs were handling it providing he kept tweaking them.
“No hot spots yet,” Sarha reported. “That extra layer of nulltherm foam is doing its job quite well. But it is picking up a lot of particle radiation, far more than we’re used to. We’ll have to watch that.”
“Should lose it when we get behind the shield,” Liol said. “Won’t be long now.”
“See?” Beaulieu told Dahybi. “You are surrounded by optimists.”
The squadron’s interception ships were sliding into an orbital slot three thousand kilometres behind the antimatter
station. If Renko did decide to switch off the storage confinement chambers, the radiation impact from the blast would tax the shielding on the starships to an uncomfortable degree. But they should be safe. So far, he appeared to be cooperating.
Commander Kroeber was handling the negotiation on how the hand over was to be accomplished. The civil starship already docked at the station was to depart with everyone on board. It would rendezvous with one of the squadron’s marine cruisers. The possessed would disembark and proceed directly to the brig under heavily armed guard where they would stay for the duration of the flight. Any indication of them using their energistic power, for whatever reason, would result in a forty-thousand-volt current being run through the brig. The cruiser, accompanied by two frigates, would fly directly to an uninhabited terracompatible world (currently in the middle of an ice age) where the possessed would be shot down to the tropical-zone surface in one-way descent capsules, with a supply of survival equipment. There would be no further contact with that planet by the Confederation, apart from delivering any further possessed with whom similar exceptional deals had been made.
Kroeber’s other offer, that they help the CNIS with its research into energistic power until such time as a solution was found for possession, was summarily rejected.
Once the possessed were safely incarcerated, another marine cruiser would rendezvous with the starship and take off the station’s regular crew ready to transport them to a penal planet. Complete control of the station systems was to be handed over to the Navy technical crew, who would remote test their new domain. If total access was confirmed, a third marine cruiser would dock with the station itself, and perform a boarding and securement manoeuvre.
After some haggling, mainly over the contents of the survival equipment they could take with them down to the icy planet, Renko agreed to the arrangement. Lady Macbeth’s crew watched the proceedings through the sensors. The hand-over went remarkably smoothly, taking just less than a day. A datavise from the first marine cruiser showed the possessed, dressed defiantly in double-breasted suits, laughing brashly as they were led into the brig. The station crew looked frankly relieved that they’d escaped with exile. They datavised over their access codes without a qualm.
“You may proceed to docking, Captain Calvert,” Admiral Saldana datavised. “Lieutenant Grese informs me we are now in full command of the station. There is enough antimatter in storage for your requirements.”
“Thank you, sir,” Joshua replied. He triggered the fusion drives. The simple course over to the station had been plotted for hours. Accelerate, flip, and decelerate. They were already inside the station’s umbra and commencing final rendezvous manoeuvres when the Organization’s convoy arrived.
“Eleven of them, sir,” Lieutenant Rhoecus said. “Confirmed emergence twenty-three million miles out from the star, eighty-nine million miles from the station.”
“Threat assessment?” the admiral enquired. How typical, he thought, that something should come along to thwart the squadron’s mission once again.
“Minimal.” The Edenist liaison officer appeared almost happy. “Ilex and Oenone report there are five hellhawks and six frigates in the enemy formation. Their hellhawks can’t swallow down to us, not at this altitude. And even if we assume the frigates are armed with antimatter combat wasps, they would take hours to reach us accelerating continually. I’ve never heard of a combat wasp that has an hour’s fuel in it.”
“They’d have to be custom built,” Grese said. “Which is unlikely for Capone. And even if they do exist, we can evade them easily at this distance.”
“Then Calvert can carry on?” the admiral asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“Very well. Kroeber, inform the Lady Macbeth to proceed as planned. I’d appreciate it if the good captain didn’t dawdle.”
“Aye, sir.”
Meredith reviewed the tactical display. The Oenone was barely five million kilometres from the cluster of Organization ships. “Lieutenant Rhoecus, voidhawks to group together twenty-five million kilometres directly above the antimatter station. I don’t want them isolated, it might give the hellhawks ideas. Commander Kroeber, move the rest of the squadron up to rendezvous with the voidhawks, the frigates in high inclination orbits to meet us there. Two of our frigates to remain with the station until Lady Macbeth has completed her fuelling. Once they’re at a safe distance, the station is to be destroyed.”
“Aye, sir.”
Meredith instructed the tactical computer to compile options. The resulting assessment just about matched his own opinion. The two sides were evenly matched. He had more ships, but the Organization was expected to be armed with antimatter combat wasps. And if he did order the squadron up to intercept, it would take hours to reach them. The Organization ships could simply jump away, leaving only the voidhawks to pursue them—who would then be outgunned.
Effectively, it was a stand-off. Neither side could do much to affect the other.
Yet I cannot allow them to go unchallenged, Meredith thought, it sets a bad precedent. “Lieutenant Grese? What do we know about the non-possessed crews on board Organization ships? Just how much of a hold does Capone have on them?”
“According to the debriefings we’ve conducted; they all have family being held captive on Monterey. Capone is very careful about who is given command authority over antimatter. So far it’s a strategy that’s worked for him. A number of crews on ordinary Organization starships have managed to eliminate their possessed officers and desert. But we’ve never had any indication of attempted mutiny on ships equipped with antimatter.”
“Pity,” Meredith grunted as the Arikara started to accelerate up to the rendezvous with the voidhawks. “Nevertheless, I’ll issue them with the same ultimatum as the station was given. Who knows, the opportunity to capitulate might be enough to spark a small rebellion.”
Etchells listened to the admiral’s message as it was beamed out to the convoy. Slippery, vague promises of pardons and safe passage. None of it was relevant to him.
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He could sense the uncertainty rumbling through their affinity bond. But none of them were brave enough to challenge him directly. Satisfied he’d kept them in line for now, Etchells asked the convoy’s commander what he intended to do. Withdraw, came the answer, there’s nothing else we can do.
Etchells wasn’t so sure. The Navy hadn’t destroyed the station. And that went against everything the Confederation stood for. There had to be a phenomenal reason for such a change of policy. We should stay, he told the convoy commander. They cannot engage us for hours yet. That gives us a chance to discover what they are doing here. If they’re going to start using antimatter against us, Capone should be told. Reluctantly, the commander agreed. However, he did order the Adamist ships to accelerate towards a new jump coordinate that would take them back to New California, leaving the hellhawks to observe the station.
It was difficult to look directly into that dangerous glare. Etchells’s sensor blisters began to suffer from glare spots, similar to purple after-images which plagued human eyes. He started to roll lazily, flicking his ebony wingtips to bank against the gusts of solar particles, switching the view between the blisters. Even then, concentrating on that tiny speck millions of kilometres away was inordinately stressful. A headache began to pound away inside his stolen neurone structure.
None of the electronic sensors loaded into his cargo cradles were any use, they were mostly military systems, intended for close defence work.
And his distortion field couldn’t reach that far. The visual spectrum provided him with t
he greatest coverage. He could see the Navy’s Adamist ships accelerating up out of the star’s enormous gravity field, little sparks of light, actually brighter than the photosphere.
After half an hour, three more fusion drives ignited around the station.
Two of them started to follow the Navy squadron. The last one took a different course altogether; curving round the star’s southern hemisphere on a very high inclination trajectory.
Etchells opened his beak wide to let out an imaginary warble of success.
Whatever it was doing, the lone starship had to be the reason behind the Navy’s strange action. He issued a flurry of instructions to the other hellhawks. Despite his brute-boy attitude, Etchells had actually absorbed a great deal of information from his host’s mentality. The façade of toughness was a deliberate ploy—always let your opponents believe you’re dumber than you are. Becoming Kiera’s most dependable and trusted hellhawk made sure she wouldn’t risk him on those mad seeding flights, or any other dangerous actions. Convoy escort was about the safest duty to pull.
Wasted decades spent bumming round pointless mercenary actions across the Confederation, had taught him to disguise his true potential. Survival was dependent on intelligence and the lowest cunning, not worthy courage.
And he knew for sure that surviving his current situation was going to take a great deal of ingenuity. Like Rocio in the Mindori, he had come to admire his new bitek form, finding it utterly superior to a human body.
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