For a few minutes I was alone, nothing within my immediate sensor reach, but then the other ships began to lock into formation around me, matching my acceleration for the time being. The three craft that lay ahead of us belonged to Charlock, Orache and Agrimony. Five ships followed. Mine was one of them; Betony’s another. The other three belonged to Sorrel, Tansy and Henbane, with Charlock, Orache and Agrimony riding as passengers. Soon we would be accompanied by a sixth, for Galingale had broken off from his patrol duties to join the chase. He was pushing at twelve hundred gees, coaxing Midnight Queen to give up her last newton of pseudo-thrust. Of all the ships that would eventually make up the pursuit squadron, his had the best chance of closing the distance on Silver Wings of Morning, even though he would not be able to match Purslane’s cruise ceiling.
Within an hour we had put more than three light-minutes of space between us and Neume - it was now just a bright star astern, almost washed out by the light of its sun. With our engines stable, pushed to the currently agreed limit of a thousand gees, we gathered our ships close enough for realtime conversation. A circular table formed in my bridge, duplicating the one that would appear on the other craft. Imagos of my fellow shatterlings popped into existence around it. Except for Galingale, all of them were rendered solid. Galingale’s smokiness was to remind us that he was still more than a minute down-range, and could not be expected to respond immediately to any point of debate.
‘At noon, none of us expected to be in our ships before sundown, racing away from Neume,’ Betony said. ‘But say what you like about us, we’ve always been quick and adapatable when the moment forces it upon us. Charlock, Orache and Agrimony: thank you for dispatching your ships ahead of you. Rest assured that the Line won’t forget your magnanimity.’
‘Whisking’s too dangerous, but if we can push to eleven hundred gees, even twelve, we can creep within shuttle range of our ships,’ Orache said, her hands resting on the table before her. She had long, sharp fingernails, painted midnight black for Cyphel’s funeral. ‘I know I’d rather be aboard mine than sitting back here, watching her from a distance. The three ships are already too far downstream for effective realtime control, and mine carries no protocols for this situation.’ Keeping her voice level, she added, ‘I mean battle protocols, if it wasn’t obvious.’
‘We’ll deal with protocols in a moment,’ Betony said. ‘First, I’d like Campion to speak. He knows Purslane better than any of us, and for once I don’t intend that as a criticism. We’re beyond that now. If he has insights, anything that might bear on this crisis, we should hear them.’
‘I have no insights,’ I said, ‘except for what I’ve already told you, which is that this definitely isn’t Purslane’s doing. She’s either dead, murdered by the robots, or she’s their prisoner.’
‘Why would the robots do this?’ Charlock asked. ‘They’ve nothing to gain by taking her prisoner, or even killing her. The ship was already theirs.’
‘If Purslane chose to go against the Line—’ Tansy began.
‘She didn’t,’ I snapped back. ‘I was with her just before she went up. She wasn’t thrilled about losing Silver Wings, but she was resigned to it. She also wanted the robots to help Hesperus as best they could - if that meant donating her ship, she was happy to oblige.’
‘Could she have been bluffing?’ asked Sorrel, scratching at the fine, grey-flecked down of his beard. ‘I’m sorry, but someone has to ask. If Purslane had this planned out in advance, she wouldn’t have wanted you to know about it.’
‘She wasn’t bluffing.’
‘You can’t know that for sure. None of us are mind-readers. If she was sufficiently determined ...’
I stared Sorrel down. We had never crossed swords before, but neither had I ever counted him a close friend. ‘Trust me: Purslane had no intention of taking her own ship.’
‘We’ll assume Campion’s right for now,’ Betony said. ‘Our primary objective is stopping that ship. Once we’ve done that, once we’ve recovered her, we can work out what happened.’
‘How do you propose to stop Silver Wings, short of destroying her?’ Tansy enquired. ‘Sorry, I probably could have put that better, but you can’t just throw a rope around her and hope she slows down.’
‘We’ll aim to cripple her, without hurting anyone onboard,’ said Betony. ‘That’s the best we can hope for now.’
‘Has anyone tried signalling Purslane?’ asked Charlock.
Betony nodded. ‘We’ve been trying from the moment she broke orbit, but there’s been no response.’
‘Which proves nothing,’ I said. ‘If the robots have taken control, they’re not going to have any interest in talking to us.’
‘Do you think Purslane’s still alive?’ Tansy asked me.
‘I hope so.’
‘That’s a non-answer.’
‘It’s the best I’ve got. Please don’t press the point.’
To my relief, she chose not to.
‘There’s something we do need to consider, before engaging Silver Wings,’ Orache said, tapping the tips of her nails against the ghost surface of the table. ‘If the robots have taken control, we can assume that they’re acting as agents of the Machine People. Firing on Purslane’s ship, even with the intention of slowing her down, could be construed as a hostile act. Viewed from certain quarters, it could be interpreted as a declaration of war against the Machine People.’
‘No one would be that stupid,’ Agrimony said. ‘This is an isolated incident, a ship taken without due explanation. We have every right to reclaim Line property.’
Orache’s expression was steely, brooking no dissent. ‘I said “from certain quarters”. At the very least, we might be banished from the Commonality. I need hardly tell you how catastrophic that would be for Gentian Line, especially in this time of maximum need. At worst, we might provoke the robots into retaliatory action.’
‘We’ll justify our actions,’ Betony said.
‘Then you’d better hope someone’s ready to listen. In between those outcomes is a spread of possibilities, almost all of them bad. Another Line might decide to attack us, just to show the robots where they stand. If a sufficient number of turnover civilisations decided to combine their forces against us, we might face difficulties.’
‘We’ll crush them, if they have the temerity,’ Betony told her. ‘If the Machine People turn on us, we’ll crush them as well. They’re fast and strong, but we’ve been around a lot longer than they have.’
I raised what I hoped was the voice of reason. ‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. There’s a lot we don’t know about those robots - a lot we don’t know about the Machine People, for that matter.’
‘What are you driving at?’ Charlock asked.
‘Just that we ought to keep open minds. We already have grounds to assume that it was my visit to the Vigilance that somehow caused the ambush in the first place. Doctor Meninx had his reasons for visiting the Vigilance; so did Hesperus. The same might also have applied to Cadence and Cascade.’
‘They came to us, not the Vigilance,’ Sorrel said.
‘My point still stands. The Vigilance was suddenly the focus of lots of attention, and because of my strand we got entangled in the same affair. The machines may have decided it was in their interests to visit us instead.’
Sorrel looked unconvinced. ‘I don’t see why that would be the case. If the Vigilance is the thing everyone’s interested in, why not go there directly?’
‘The Vigilance won’t deal with robots, only organic intelligences. Ask them why. Hesperus was planning to disguise himself as a human, but that would have involved considerable sacrifices for him, paring down his abilities until he could only just get by - he may never have succeeded. Cadence and Cascade may not have been prepared to go that far, or had already judged that there was too much risk of detection. Can you imagine how bad it would have looked if the Machine People were found to be infiltrating human civilisations? That would probably have been enough to
trigger a galaxy-wide diplomatic crisis, irrespective of anything we do. So they came to us instead, knowing that we’d obtained data from the Vigilance that was in some way sensitive. They were hoping to access the information through us, bypassing the Vigilance completely.’
Sorrel asked, ‘You think they were paying us that much attention?’
‘Someone was,’ I said, with a weary shrug.
‘You think there’s a connection between the robots and the House of Suns?’ Betony asked.
‘Everything’s connected,’ I answered. ‘That doesn’t mean everyone’s working towards the same goal.’
‘I was prepared to believe that we might have incurred the wrath of another Line,’ Betony said. ‘That the ambush might have been our payment for something we did a dozen circuits ago, some careless act we barely gave a second thought to at the time.’
‘But you don’t feel that way now,’ I said.
‘Not if the machines are involved. And let’s face it - they appear to be, don’t they?’ Betony glanced around at all of us. ‘No disrespect to Sainfoin—’
‘But it looks as if they used her to get to us,’ I said. ‘In which case whatever we’re involved in is of direct interest to the Machine People. They sent Hesperus. I think they also sent Cadence and Cascade. The only question is, did they all have the same objectives?’
‘If they all originated with the Machine People, can’t we take that as read?’ Sorrel asked.
‘Not necessarily. The Machine People may be just as fractious as any human civilisation.’ Just thinking through the permutations, trying to shuffle the evidence of recent events into some kind of rational structure, was making my head throb. I pressed fingers against my brow. ‘All I’m saying is, Cadence and Cascade may have been following different orders from Hesperus, or been given more latitude to accomplish whatever it was they were sent to do.’
‘From where I’m sitting, they didn’t do very much at all,’ Tansy said. ‘Came to the reunion, survived the ambush, spent time on Neume and then agreed to return home with news of the attack. What am I missing?’
‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Apart from the fact that they had Hesperus with them when they left, which presumably wasn’t a detail they’d planned for. Other than that, though - unless they were being sneakier than we realised - they didn’t gain access to any of our secrets, or learn anything on Neume that we didn’t learn as well. I don’t even remember them paying much attention to the interrogations - I got the impression they were never particularly interested.’
‘Maybe they already knew everything Grilse and the others were likely to say,’ Charlock said.
‘So if it wasn’t our secrets, if it wasn’t the information known by the prisoners, what were they after?’ asked Sorrel.
‘Something else, obviously,’ I said. ‘Something that’s either staring us in the face, something so obvious that we can’t see it, or something even we don’t know about.’
‘But which has something to do with us,’ Charlock said.
Galingale’s smoky image spoke for the first time. ‘Excuse the interruption, but it seems to me that we’re all agreed on one thing: this is not in character for Purslane. I’m with Campion: she’s been duped by the robots. Let’s not forget that they were the ones who first dropped hints that they needed a fast ship. It was just Purslane’s bad luck that hers happened to fit the bill, and that she needed her wrists slapped.’
Betony stiffened his jaw, but didn’t interrupt.
‘She’s a victim of circumstance here, nothing more. Luckily, this is Purslane we’re talking about. She’s smart and adaptable, and it’s her ship that they’ve tried to steal. I’d imagine the chances are excellent that she’s still alive. At the same time, we can’t disregard the possibility that the robots may have gained control of Silver Wings’ weapons. It may be something of a challenge to approach her.’
‘There are safeguards, to prevent one Line ship firing on another,’ Sorrel said.
After a minute, Galingale answered, ‘None that can’t be circumvented, if those robots are sufficiently resourceful. I just don’t think we should be blind to the risks. But we have armour, impassors, weapons of our own and a clear numerical advantage. I propose that we disable acceleration safeguards on the three lead ships and let them get as close to Purslane as they can.’
Orache was indignant. ‘I’m still planning on being aboard my ship.’
‘Me too,’ said Charlock.
‘Ships can be replaced,’ Galingale responded. ‘The least of us is worth more than any ship.’
‘And if this fails?’ Betony asked. ‘If we lose three ships, where does that leave us?’
‘My ship has the best chance of closing the gap,’ Galingale said. ‘I also have armour and weapons the equal of anything else in the pursuit squadron. I’ll be the next to go, if it comes to that.’ He smiled tightly. ‘You can be sure that I’m making this suggestion with a full appreciation of the consequences.’
‘If you go in, we all go in,’ I said.
‘That’s very noble of you, Campion, but we have to think of the Line - too much selfless bravery, too many heroic gestures, and there won’t be a Line. To survive, we have to indulge in a little tactical cowardice.’ Galingale smiled again - it was the smile of a man who did not place a high premium on his chances of seeing out another circuit. ‘I’m not the bravest of men. None of us are natural cowards, of course, but we all have a healthy sense of self-preservation. Nonetheless, I have the fastest ship, so I am obliged to use her in the way that best benefits the Line.’
‘You do nothing until we’ve closed the distance with the first three ships,’ Betony said. ‘Even then, no action is to be taken unilaterally.’
‘So it’s decided, then?’ Orache asked. ‘Our ships become expendable?’
‘Better them than you,’ Betony said, his tone of voice letting us all know that he considered the matter closed. ‘We’ve held at a thousand gees since leaving Neume. Is there anyone who isn’t prepared to increase to twelve hundred, as an emergency measure?’
None of us answered immediately; we all knew that we would be pushing our ships harder than we ever had before. Even if the engines held, we would be at the mercy of inertia nullifiers operating well outside their normal regime. There was a slow exchange of glances, a shared sense that we were in this together, prepared to shoulder a collective risk.
‘I’ll do it,’ I said.
‘We’ll all do it,’ Charlock said. ‘All or nothing, the Gentian way.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Hesperus turned from the console aboard my shuttle and shook his magnificent golden head. ‘It isn’t good, Purslane.’
‘Could the shuttle have been damaged when we tried to escape?’
‘I doubt that there is anything at fault with either the sending or receiving apparatus. Most likely, Silver Wings is blocking her signals, or obstructing the return signal from Neume or from the ships that we may be certain are following us.’
‘It’s just a shuttle,’ I said, wondering how he could be sure that we were being pursued. We could not have been under way for more than three hours, by my reckoning. The Line took that long to have breakfast sometimes. ‘Nobody ever imagined it would need to send a signal across more than a few seconds, or through another ship’s drive field,’ I said, gloom rising in me like a black tide.
Nothing was going to daunt my companion. ‘I asked you to give some thought to moving to one of the other craft, if it could serve us better either as a place of sanctuary or a means of escape. Have you made a shortlist?’
Tiredness was beginning to dull my thoughts. It was still only early evening by Neume time, but I felt as if I had lived through several days since the robots’ takeover. ‘There are some possibilities.’
Hesperus crossed his massive gold arms. ‘Good. Tell me about them.’
‘There’s a ship about two kilometres up-bay, back in the direction we came from.’
‘So even
further from the door?’
‘Afraid so. But I’ve thought about all the ships in the bay and this is the one I keep coming back to. It’s as if it’s telling me to take shelter inside.’
‘Can it keep us alive indefinitely?’
‘It’s an old ark, built by nascents. Some other civilisation found it drifting and refitted it with a stardrive and a few other bits and pieces. It should be able to send a signal beyond Silver Wings. It’ll have power and functioning makers.’
‘Abeyance devices?’
‘I think so.’
‘You think so.’
‘I’m trying my best, Hesperus. It’s been a while since I was last inside, but yes, there should be caskets - something I can use, anyway. I don’t know about you.’
‘I’ll manage. We should leave now, before Cadence and Cascade turn their minds to us. Is there a maker inside this shuttle?’
‘Only a small one. What were you thinking of?’
‘I was hoping we might be able to make you a spacesuit, assuming there isn’t one already aboard.’
‘A spacesuit?’
‘You may need one. We can’t whisk to the other ship, and we can’t count on the presence of air in your cargo bay.’
I blinked hard. ‘I can’t remember the last time I wore a spacesuit. No, wait ... I got into one when I visited the Vigilance—’
‘That was Campion, if I’m not mistaken.’
‘Memory bleed. No, the maker won’t be able to help us - it would have to assemble the suit in pieces. There might be one tucked away in the back hold, I suppose.’
‘Do you consider it likely?’
‘Not at all. A ship like this, you’d only ever need a spacesuit once in a million years.’
‘Welcome to that moment. Go and look for a suit, but only spend two minutes doing so. If you haven’t found one by then, we leave anyway.’
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