Kiera dropped her pizza back into the therm box and squinted against the glare. Right in the middle of the port was a dazzling white spark. As she watched, it grew longer and longer.
“What is that?”
“An antimatter drive.”
She smiled grimly “It must be the Confederation Navy ship.”
“Possibly. If it is, there’s something wrong. An antimatter drive should accelerate a ship at over thirty-five gees. Whatever’s producing that drive flare is barely moving.”
“We’d better take a look then. How far away are they?”
“Roughly a hundred million kilometres.”
“But it’s so bright.”
“Nobody really appreciates how powerful antimatter actually is until they encounter it first hand. Ask the ex-residents of Trafalgar.”
Kiera gave the apparition a respectful look, then went over to the weapons console. She started arming the combat wasps. “Let’s go.”
Joshua switched all the starship’s drives off as soon as Lalarin-MG cleared the crest of the knot. The flight computer had to tell him where that was. Tojolt-HI’s structure had simply melted away from the antimatter drive, leaving a hole over eight kilometres wide where the knot had been. The fringes glowed cerise, extending bent tendrils of molten metal. Only the largest lump of asteroid rock had survived intact, although it was down to a quarter of its original size. It tumbled in towards the photosphere, its surface baked to a cauldron of bubbling tar, spewing out a guttering tail of petrochemical fog.
The red giant shone through the huge circular rent in the diskcity, illuminating the end of the cylinder and a tapering slice of the shell as if a flame was playing up the side. Lady Mac’s ion thrusters fired, backing her out of the crushed bearing ring. The hub had bowed inward under the enormous force she’d exerted, but the rib spars had held. Now they were retreating from the diskcity at a leisurely thirty metres per second.
“And they’re still not shooting at us,” Liol said.
“I should hope not,” Dahybi retorted. “After that little display of power they’ll think twice about antagonising us again.”
“Look how much damage we’ve done,” Ashly said. “I’m sorry, but this is one accomplishment which doesn’t make me very proud.”
“This section of Tojolt-HI was mostly dead,” Liol said. “And the sunscoop had already destroyed the tubes which still had viable life support functions.”
“Ashly’s right,” Joshua said. “All we’ve done is react to events. We’re in control of very little.”
“I thought that’s what life was,” Liol said. “The honour of witnessing events. You need to be a God to control them.”
“That drops us into a neat little paradox, then,” Sarha said. “We have to control events if we want to find a God. But if we can control them, then ipso facto we’re already gods.”
“I think you’ll find it’s a question of scale,” Joshua said. “Gods determine the outcome of large events.”
“What happened here was pretty big.”
“Not compared to the destiny of an entire species.”
“You’re taking this very seriously,” Liol said.
Joshua didn’t even smile. “Somebody has to. Think of the consequences.”
“I’m not a total asshole, Josh. I do appreciate just how bad it’s going to get if no one can find an answer to all of this.”
“I was thinking what happens if we succeed, actually.”
Liol’s laugh was more a bark of surprise. “How can that be bad?”
“Everything changes. People don’t like that. There’s going to have to be sacrifices, and I don’t mean just physical or financial. It’s inevitable. Surely you can see that coming?”
“Maybe,” Liol said gruffly.
Joshua looked over to his brother and put on his wickedest grin. “In the meantime, you’ve got to admit, it’s a wild ride.”
One of the serjeants stayed with Baulona-PWM and Quantook-LOU to act as an arbitrator as they tried to sort out the parameters of a new agreement. A triumph of optimism, she thought: that both of them believed the ZTT drive would bring about a new era among the diskcities orbiting Mastrit-PJ. It was clear that they were both conceding the remaining Tyrathca population would be evacuated to the flightship colony worlds.
Their enclaves among the diskcities would not be expanded. Such a premise made it even more important that the two species didn’t clash over who had claim on new star systems. Retrieving the flightship information really had become essential to the agreement. An intriguing irony. Now all she had to worry about was Quantook-LOU’s sincerity. It made her suggest several safeguards to Baulona-PWM, such as ensuring communications were opened up to all the remaining enclaves. Not that either of them knew how many there were scattered among the diskcities.
Quantook-LOU admitted even he didn’t know how many diskcities there were.
The other serjeant accompanied a team of six breeders that Baulona-PWM had designated to reactivate their electronics. They escorted her to the band of fat towers around the end of the cylinder. It was Lalarin-MG’s utilities district, with the towers housing water treatment plants, air filtration, fusion generators (appallingly crude, she thought), and the heat exchangers. Fortunately each service was provided by parallel stations, giving it a failsoft capability. A third of the systems were inoperable, the machinery inert and tarnished, testifying as to how long it had been since Lalarin-MG had a full population.
She was taken to a tower which the breeders said was an electrical and communications station. The ground floor was occupied by three tokamaks, only one of which was working. A ramp spiralled up to the first floor.
There were no windows, and the ceiling lights didn’t work. Her infrared sensors showed her the silent ranks of electronic consoles, very reminiscent of those in Tanjuntic-RI. The Tyrathca had brought portable lights with them, which they set up revealing the true state of the consoles. Humidity had succoured a fur of algae over the rosette keyboards and display screens. Access panel catches had to be drilled through to release them, exposing rubbery fungal growths over the circuitry inside. The breeders had to run cables down to the generator below to power up the consoles.
One console actually burst into flames when they switched it on. Oski’s curses echoed through the general communication link.
“Ask them if we can integrate our processor blocks with their network,” she told Ione. “If I’ve got access, I’ll be able to load some questors in. That should speed the process up. And while we’re about it, let’s see if they’ll accept a little advice on reactivation procedures.”
The wormhole terminus opened six hundred kilometres above Tojolt-HI’s darkside, deep in the umbra. The Stryla flew out; Etchells was in his harpy form, red eyes blazing as he looked round in surprise. From his position the huge disk eclipsed most of the sun’s surface, with a tide of crimson light appearing to sweep up over the rim, as if it was sinking into an ooze of photons.
His distortion field billowed out, probing the xenoc structure. It also clashed with another distortion field.
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He quickly altered his distortion field, opening another wormhole interstice. This time he came out a hundred kilometres from the voidhawk.
Red sunlight washed over his leathery scale-like feathers, and he looked down curiously at the tear in the disk. Its melted edges were radiating strongly in the infrared. The mountainous heat exchangers surrounding it were operating at their upper limit, trying to radiate away the immense thermal load imposed by overheated tubes.
“I’d say the Adamist ship used its antimatter drive to p
ush the cylinder clear of the disk,” he told Kiera. “Nothing else could cause that kind of damage.”
“Which means they consider it important,” she said.
“I don’t see why. It’s inhabited, and very fragile. It can’t be a weapon.” His distortion field caught flocks of small chemically fuelled missiles flitting among the sharp, hot cones bristling out of the darkside. Lasers shot at them, blowing them apart in mid-flight. Over thirty radar beams from all sections of the disk were sweeping across him. One of the missiles plunged down among the heat exchange mountains, exploding. Atmospheric gas puffed out into space from the tube it shattered. “And there’s some kind of war being fought down there. Widespread by the look of it.”
“They flew all the way round the Orion Nebula, and when they get here they rip that cylinder out of a war zone,” Kiera said.
“All right, it’s important.”
“Which means it’s bad for us. Minimize your energistic effect, please.”
The hellhawk’s shape rippled back to its natural profile.
Kiera’s fingers typed quickly over the weapons console. Targeting sensors locked on to the cylinder.
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Etchells let Kiera hear the affinity voice, routing it through one of the AV pillars on the bridge.
“Why?” she asked. “What’s in there?”
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“What do you care? In fact, why are you here?”
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“Very noble. And total bollocks.”
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Kiera fired four combat wasps at the cylinder.
The response from Oenone and Lady Macbeth was instant. Fifteen combat wasps launched on interception trajectories, scattering submunitions.
Lady Macbeth’s defence masers speared the incoming drones as their submunitions ejected. Two hundred and fifty fusion bombs detonated in the space of three seconds. Some pumped gamma lasers, but most were missile warheads.
Joshua absorbed the burst of sensor data disgorged by the tactical program, desperate for an overview. Visual sensors were useless against the blaze of destruction, but none of the attacking combat wasps electronic warfare submunitions had targeted Lady Mac—strangely negligent programming. The starship’s sensors stared into the heart of the mayhem, filtering out the atomic and electromagnetic interference. Three small kinetic impacts registered against the cylinder, along with several beam strikes. But the structure remained intact.
“Sarha, kill the bastard,” he ordered.
Five masers fired at the hellhawk. It rolled quickly and accelerated at seven gees, trying to break free from the energy strike.
Joshua fired another five combat wasps, programming them for defence minefield deployment. Their drives flared briefly, and submunitions swarmed out, forming a wide protective cluster around Lalarin-MG. If the hellhawk was serious about attacking a target outside a gravity field, its strategy would be to swallow in as close as possible, under a kilometre usually, and fire off a combat wasp salvo. Unless the target had an extensive array of SD lasers, some submunitions were bound to get through. The minefield ought to act as a temporary deterrence.
The hellhawk swallowed away.
“Syrinx, where the hell did it go?” Joshua asked.
“Standing off, two thousand kilometres.”
Oenone used the link with Lady Mac’s flight computer to datavise the coordinate over. Sensors locked on, showing the hellhawk holding station.
“They’ve got very strange ideas about tactics,” Joshua said. “Oski, how much longer?”
“Half an hour at least, Captain. I’ve identified probable storage areas for the almanac; none of them are active.”
“Joshua, I’m not sure the cylinder can take another attack like that,” Ione said. The serjeant mediating with Baulona-PWM and Quantook-LOU had been flung to its knees when the first chunk of shrapnel punctured the cylinder shell. A small fireball had erupted out of a tower barely a hundred yards away. The plaza shook violently as the tower disintegrated, showering the area with smoking fragments of metal and burning vegetation. When she scanned round, she saw a dozen violet contrails crisscrossing through the air, molecules fluorescing from the gamma laser shots. Two had burned holes through the Sleeping God effigy. Her sensors hurriedly tracked along the axial gantry, but it hadn’t been hit.
An automated truck trundled across the plaza, heading for the wrecked tower. Air was wailing as it was sucked down through the puncture hole.
Hydraulic arms unfolded from the rear of the truck, carrying a thick metal plate. It was lowered over the hole, clanging into place. Thick brown sludge was sprayed out of a nozzle, smothering the plate. It solidified quickly, completing the seal.
“The Mosdva attack again,” Baulona-PWM said.
Ione thought the breeder was going to strike Quantook-LOU.
“They didn’t,” she said quickly. “That was a human ship. It’s from a dominion we are not allied with. The Lady Macbeth has fought it off.”
“Do humans have dominions?” Quantook-LOU asked. “You did not tell us this.”
“We didn’t expect them to be here.”
“Why are they here? Why have they attacked us?”
“They do not agree that Tyrathca and Mosdva should be given the faster-than-light drive. We must complete this agreement and recover the data. Then they will be unable to prevent the exchange.”
“My family is working hard,” Baulona-PWM said. “We keep our agreement with you, allowing you to mediate.”
“And we will keep the agreement that you will be unharmed. Come now, we were deciding the message that is to be sent to other diskcity dominions.” She switched back to the general communication link. “You have to get us more time.”
“We’ll see to it,” Syrinx assured her. “Joshua, hold the fort here.”
“Acknowledged.” Lady Mac’s gravitonic distortion detectors showed him the voidhawk opening a wormhole interstice.
Oenone emerged fifty kilometres from the Stryla. Syrinx was expecting the hellhawk to fire its lasers at them straight away. That it didn’t, she took as an encouraging sign.
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The hellhawk launched two combat wasps.
Oenone immediately swallowed out, emerging from a terminus on the opposite side of the hellhawk from the combat wasps, twenty kilometres away. It fired ten lasers at the other’s polyp hull.
Etchells swallowed away. He emerged a hundred metres above one of the diskcity’s heat radiator cones. Oenone emerged just behind him. He’d expected that. His maser cannon fired on the voidhawk. It darted down behind the silvery cone, then curved round to shoot at Etchells.
The hellhawk accelerated at eight gees, tearing along a valley of cylindrical radiator towers. Kiera let out a muted yell of surprise and pain as she was squashed back into her acceleration couch.
“Give me fire control,” Etchells told her. “You can’t program the combat wasps for this scenario. I can.”
“That would make me nothing,” she said. “No deal. Fly us out of this.”
“Fuck you.” He abandoned the secondary manipulation of the distortion field, which countered the acceleration. Kiera groaned as the full eight gees rammed her down into the couch. She began channelling her energistic power to strengthen her body. Lasers raked across his hull, and Etchells looped round a glass spiral turr
et, pulling twelve gees. The radiator mechanisms were a constant leaden smear to his optical senses, he was navigating by distortion field sense alone. And going too fast: the valley end was a sharp turn, almost a right angle. He swooped up above the peaks, decelerating madly as he turned. For a moment the two starships were in direct line of sight. Lasers and masers slashed across the gulf. Then Etchells dived back down into a deep gully of vertical mirror-surface dissipaters.
Oenone matched the manoeuvre and fired again. Etchells flicked from side to side, accelerating and decelerating in wild bursts. His own masers fired back. The energy beams ripped long gashes across the cliffs of dissipaters as both starships twirled and rolled. Magenta effluvium percolated out, clotting the whole valley.
Etchells shot out of the smog blizzard with cyclonic eddies rolling away from his hull. He swung round a splayed clump of black pentangular pillars, then used a mushroom-like industrial refinery to slalom again.
The way Syrinx’s hands dug into the acceleration couch padding was nothing to do with the appalling gee forces washing across the bridge.
The image of the craggy diskcity surface hurtling past mere metres away was shining directly into her brain. Her eyes were tight shut from reflex, and it wasn’t the slightest use. There was no escape. Oenone’s steady determination as it pursued the hellhawk prevented any censure. To doubt her love now would be selfish betrayal. She fought her own fear to bestow trust and pride.
On the other side of the bridge, Oxley was emitting a constant low moan of dismay without ever needing to draw breath.
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Yes. There was absolutely nothing in the tactical programs she could use to help this situation. If they rose above the artificial valleys, the hellhawk would be able to fire combat wasps straight at them. They couldn’t fire back down, one errant submunition would slaughter thousands of Mosdva. So the chase continued, which was ultimately to their advantage. It prevented the hellhawk from firing on Lalarin-MG. At a terrible cost to her nerves.
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