By then, the other twenty-four units had begun to fire at the source of the beam, using the same gamma-cannons that had cleared their paths through the debris cloud. On the main screen, the one that occupied the entire width of the bridge, I could even see their beams, etched bright by scattered and downshifted light as they gouged their way through the cloud. They formed a pattern like the spokes of a wheel, converging on my hidden assailant. I stared at the advancing red line on the console, conscious that the swerves were doing little to hamper the enemy. He was close enough that light-speed timelag could be easily accounted for, or perhaps ignored altogether, in his weapon’s targeting calculations.
Abruptly the beam flicked off me and concentrated its attention on the twenty-four lampreys, picking three of them off in close succession. The wheel was now missing three spokes. In the instant before the beam returned, I had Dalliance tune down her bubble and fling out another four lampreys, exhausting her entire arsenal until more could be manufactured. The beam found me again, as I had known it would, but the red line had crept perceptibly back to the left as some of that energy was dissipated.
Two of the lampreys remained with Dalliance, assisting the other tugs, while the other pair sprinted out in opposite directions to augment those already arranged in the wheel formation. The beam remained fixated on me most of the time, only occasionally snapping off to eliminate one or two elements of the wheel. There was only one weapon out there, which was a blessing. Had there been two, I doubt that Dalliance would have survived for so long. I would either be dead, or adrift in a bubble, with every expectation of dying soon after.
I was down to eight lampreys, divided equally between those serving as tugs and those returning fire against the enemy, when the weapon exploded. It blew a moon-sized hole in the debris cloud, a hole that was snatched away by our mutual velocity. When the seconds dragged on and the attack failed to resume, I allowed myself a flicker of gratification. All the same I recognised that I was still in no position to drop my guard.
I ordered the eight remaining lampreys to group ahead of Dalliance, then engaged the engine. This time I permitted the bubble to drop completely, so that the drive could operate at maximum efficiency. I chose to trade speed for armour, to put as much distance between myself and the enemy as I could. I had destroyed their weapon, but the ghost signal was still there.
That was when Hesperus called through.
‘Campion,’ he said, his image flickering into grainy unreality before me, ‘it appears that you have been attacked. Have you sustained damage? Are you debilitated?’
‘I’m still here,’ I said, having to raise my voice. I was pushing the engine harder than it liked. The noise was like some infernal threshing machine about to strip its gears. Surges of unchecked acceleration signalled the dampeners struggling to compensate. ‘Thanks for asking,’ I went on. ‘It looks as if the signal was a lure. I should have known better than to go after it, when it wasn’t purely Gentian.’
Hesperus had closed to within a minute of me.
‘But you are quite uninjured?’
‘Intact. So’s my ship. But I think the point has been proved - Fescue was right to warn us away from this system. It’s a nest of snakes. The sooner we’re out of here the better.’
‘I have an obstructed line of sight to Purslane. I shall inform her of your narrow escape. In the meantime, may I offer assistance?’
‘I’ll be fine once I’ve cleared the cloud. Concentrate your efforts on making sure you and Purslane get clear. Tell her to ignore all signals.’
‘You are certain there are no survivors?’
‘Look at this place, Hesperus. It was wishful thinking all along.’
But even as I was answering him, there was a chime from my console. I glared at the read-out, in no mood to deal with another piece of news.
Dalliance had just detected another signal. It was coming from a different location than the last one. It was stronger: powerful enough to suggest someone was tracking us and aiming a signalling device.
It was also unambiguously Gentian.
My hand hovered before the console. Reason compelled me to ignore this new signal, especially given what I had just told Hesperus. But I could not bring myself to dismiss it.
‘Campion?’
‘There’s a new signal. It’s Gentian, using the most recent protocols.’
‘A distress code?’
‘Yes.’
‘If an ambush happened here, it might not be unreasonable to assume that distress signals would have been sent from many ships. Can you be sure that the enemy did not intercept such a signal and is now simply duplicating it?’
‘If they could do that, why didn’t they start with a true Gentian signal?’
‘I have no answer for that,’ Hesperus said quietly. ‘But I would still urge caution. Should I inform Purslane of developments?’
‘Wait,’ I said, my hand still hovering before the console. Dalliance was now telling me that she had detected a second layer of embedded content in the signal: not merely a distress code, but a modulation on that transmission that could be interpreted as an audio-visual message.
My hand still hovered. If I opened the message, it might be persuasive.
I might not wish to be persuaded.
I could turn around now and argue that all I had done was ignore a second lure, albeit one constructed with more care than the first. Perhaps the enemy had only switched to a Gentian format when they concluded that I was likely to be a shatterling of that Line.
‘Campion,’ Hesperus said, ‘forgive me for taking this liberty, but I decided to inform Purslane of the message.’
I was more bewildered than angry. ‘I told you not to.’
‘I felt that the information was too important not to disseminate. Purslane now knows that there is an agency in this system capable of imitating Gentian signals. That agency may be Gentian, but equally it may not be. Now she has that information, and it may help her even if we are destroyed.’
I did not have the energy to argue with Hesperus, especially when a begrudging part of me knew he was right.
‘Did she say anything?’
‘Purslane was of the opinion that it would be wise to ignore the message. She argued this point most strenuously.’
I smiled - I had no doubt that Hesperus was understating the matter. At the same time I ordered Dalliance to play the audio-visual transmission, projecting it into the air onto a flat surface just beyond the circular disc of the control platform.
A face appeared.
I knew her. Her name was Mezereon. She was one of us.
‘I hope I’m talking to Campion,’ she said. ‘I think I must be. That ship of yours - I’d recognise it anywhere. I must have told you to get rid of it a dozen times, but I’m so glad now that you didn’t. I’m sorry you were attacked, but I didn’t notice you until then. Please don’t respond just yet; not until we’re closer. I could see you from half the system away now, but I’m still camouflaged, and I hope no one is listening in on this beam.’ Mezereon licked her dry, colourless lips, as if she was thirsty. She was a plain woman, by the standards of the Line. The most attractive Gentian attributes: the cheekbones, the mismatched eyes, the shape of the mouth - had been toned down almost as far as they could go without vanishing altogether. Her hair was tied back in simple fashion, pulling the skin on her forehead drum tight. She wore a purple dress or blouse that left one shoulder bare, and the read-out-crammed wall behind her told me she was speaking to me from inside a ship. ‘I guess you know something about the ambush by now,’ she said. ‘I was in abeyance, primed to be woken if anything went off. When they opened fire with the Spitting Cobra, I knew someone must have arrived.’ A sudden, savage anger transformed her features. ‘They didn’t get us all. There are other shatterlings with me, a handful I managed to pick up while all hell was breaking loose, and I’m sure there are more hiding out around the system. And there are our prisoners. But we can’t move. We can’t leave
. I don’t have an engine any more. I could crawl out of this cloud, but they’d catch up with me sooner or later.’
I mouthed a question, half-whispered, ‘What do you want me to do about it?’
Mezereon breathed in heavily. ‘Time’s running out for us. We’re out of Synchromesh and I’ve already used up nine lives in the stasis cabinet. My ship’s dying. It can’t repair itself any more, and the impassor’s about the last thing still working.’ She looked at me with a probing intensity, as if our eyes were meeting and she was daring me to look away. ‘Let me know you’ve received this message - even if you choose not to act on it. Alter your course just enough to send me a signal. I want to know that someone got it. Because there’s something you need to know, something you need to get to the rest of Line even if you leave us here to die. I told you about the prisoners. Fescue didn’t know about them, so I don’t think there’s any way you can know about them either. We got something out of one of them. His name’s Grilse - he’s a rogue shatterling of Marcellin Line. That’s how they got hold of the H-guns. But don’t blame the Marcellins just yet - we think Grilse and his friends were acting alone. If this is Campion I’m speaking to, I don’t know how you’re going to take this-but Grilse told us that this was somehow your fault.’ Mezereon shook her head in frustration. ‘No, I don’t mean fault. I mean somehow something you did, innocently enough, led to this. You were the catalyst. You triggered the ambush - whether you knew it or not.’
‘How could I have triggered it?’ I asked, stunned. ‘How could I have triggered it when I wasn’t even here?’
I relayed Mezereon’s message to Purslane so that she could hear the part about the Marcellins and my supposed involvement in the ambush. I did not wait for her answer before beginning my turn. A few moments later, Hesperus shadowed my course change, powering hard to position his ship ahead of mine. He must have been notching close to five thousand gees, far beyond the capabilities of any dampening field I had ever heard of.
Mezereon was not long in responding. ‘Thank you, Campion. I hoped you might turn, but I didn’t dare count on it. Whatever happens ... you have my undying gratitude. I know bad things have been said about you ... including things said by people like me, who should have known better. You didn’t deserve any of that. You’re a jewel in the Line, someone we can all be proud of.’
‘Wait until I’ve rescued you,’ I said.
‘I’m sending you our position now,’ Mezereon said. ‘It’s not precise, but I can’t determine it any more accurately than that. When you get close, you should be able to sniff us out from our bubble spillage. I’ll do what I can to talk you in, of course. I still think it would be unwise for you to signal me directly.’
Numbers appeared on the console. On the main screen, an icon popped into existence against the brown smear of the cloud. Mezereon lay about fifteen degrees north of the original signal, a little deeper inside the veil. At my present acceleration, I would arrive at her position inside the hour. I stared intently into the fog of pulverised planet, in the absurd hope that my eyes might pick out some buried threat before the infinitely more acute sensors of my ship.
Hesperus, who was still able to talk, said, ‘She mentioned a Spitting Cobra. I confess my memory is silent on the matter.’
‘Do you know much about wormholes, Hesperus?’
‘A little. The Rebirthers use them for rejuvenating stars.’
‘That’s because there’s not much else you can use them for. They’re a joke from God. Maybe the Priors found a way to send ships and information down them, but if they did, we don’t have a clue how it’s done. The best we can do is squeeze matter down them. Fine for siphoning fuel from one star to another, but not much use for anything else. Maybe the Machine People have figured out a way to embed information into that matter flow, but we’ve never managed it. Modulate the flow at one end, the signal is still smeared out by the time the matter emerges.’
‘We encountered the same difficulty,’ Hesperus said.
‘Well, luckily for us you can use wormholes to kill things. You take a Rebirther wormhole, but you only anchor one end in a star. You let the fuel spew out of the other end into naked space. Surround the throat with machinery to open and close the flow of matter, and to aim it at whatever you want to kill. It’s a flame-thrower, basically.’
‘Would the other end be in this system?’
‘Doesn’t have to be. Could be hundreds of years away. One star might have multiple taps, leading to multiple throats.’
‘Do you think there was more than one of them here?’
‘No way of telling, I’m afraid. We might not even have damaged the one we hit. Disabled the throat mechanisms, maybe, but I doubt we did anything that can’t be fixed, given time.’
‘Why would they use that weapon, and not the H-guns?’
‘Range, basically. A Spitting Cobra’s got a longer reach, even if it isn’t as destructive. Someone had to get close in with those Homunculus weapons. If the ambushers took out the reunion world, they would have needed to be nearby before they did it.’
‘Could the H-guns have been concealed?’
‘Only inside ships.’
‘The ships would be seen,’ Hesperus said.
‘But no one would suspect anything if they were ships of the Line, arriving with Gentian recognition signals.’
Hesperus did not respond at first. I do not think he was shocked by my suggestion, but more that he wished to accord it a respectful silence. Given the evidence, I had little doubt that he had drawn a similar conclusion himself.
The ambush could not have happened without Gentian collaboration.
The console chimed to inform me that Mezereon was signalling me again. Her message was brief, simply a string of coordinates. Dalliance adjusted her course minutely and gave me an ETA for the rendezvous. Allowing for deceleration, we would be on Mezereon’s position in twelve minutes.
‘Campion,’ Hesperus said, after a while, ‘I do not wish to alarm you, but I am seeing something beyond Mezereon. It was not there a few moments ago. Whatever it is is large, and it is moving towards us.’
Dalliance pushed her faculties to the limit, lowering her detection thresholds now that I had independent evidence that something else was lurking in the cloud. In a few moments, something appeared in the displayer - a hazy blob, framed in a box and accompanied by the exceedingly sparse data my ship had managed to extract. The object was well camouflaged but large - five or six kilometres wide - and Hesperus had been right about it coming nearer.
‘It could be a big ship, or a big ship carrying a Homunculus weapon, or just one of the weapons on its own,’ I said.
‘I see smaller signals grouped around it - other ships, perhaps.’
At that moment Mezereon returned. We were close enough now that she was able to send an imago without risk of interception. The figure appeared before me, to the right of Hesperus. She was trying to be firm, but there was a crack in her voice that she could not quite conceal.
‘You have to turn back now, Campion. They’re moving one of the H-guns onto you. If you turn tail and go to maximum power, you may stay out of range. They’ll still chase you, but maybe you can keep ahead of them.’
This time Mezereon’s message protocol permitted me to answer her.
‘They must have been counting on killing me with the Spitting Cobra, but I damaged it.’
‘Good for you,’ she said, a gleam of admiration in her eyes. ‘It won’t stop them, but at least you showed them there’s still fire in the Line.’
‘I hope so.’
‘Turn around now. You’ve done your best, Campion, but there’s no sense in dying to make a point. I’ve told you what I can. I wish I could have given you the prisoners, but—’
‘I’m still coming in,’ I said.
‘If you are committed to this rescue,’ Hesperus said, ‘then I will do what I can to draw the fire of the Homunculus weapon. I will pass Mezereon’s position at speed and increase
my visibility.’
‘Are you certain about doing this?’
‘Already committed. I will make my closest approach to Mezereon’s position in three minutes. Then I will adjust my impasse emissions and engine signature to lure the Homunculus weapon. Even if it can still see you, I doubt that it will be able to resist a closer target.’
‘Whatever happens, Hesperus ... I’m grateful.’
‘I am going silent now. I shall see you in interstellar space, when we have put this unfortunate place behind us.’
His imago rippled and vanished, leaving me alone with Mezereon.
‘You were just talking to a Machine Person, weren’t you? How in God’s name did you pull that off?’
‘I’m full of surprises.’
The next three minutes passed like an age as I watched Hesperus streak forward and then slam past Mezereon’s position, missing her by barely half a million kilometres. By then, my view of the approaching object and its escort of ships had improved substantially. That it was a Homunculus weapon was beyond argument: I was seeing it from a foreshortened perspective, but Dalliance was able to extrapolate its true form, and the delicate, slender-stalked flower-like shape, its maw a coronet of diaphanous petals, veined like dragonfly wings, was an uncanny match against data in the trove. It must have arrived hidden in the belly of one of our ships, but there was no need to conceal it now; the slender form might have looked vulnerable, but that fragility was deceptive. The field-reinforced, field-armoured weapon was being propelled by tugs much like my own lampreys: they were clamped onto the stem like thorns and had sharp skein-drive signatures.
Once he had passed Mezereon, Hesperus began to tune his hull to make himself more conspicuous. He fired his own weapons against the Homunculus device and its escort vehicles, not with any obvious expectation of doing harm, but in the hope of goading it into a response. His drive emissions became noisier: Hesperus could have been tracked from across the system by now. Purslane would have been aware of his actions even if she did not grasp their full significance.
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