The Tropic of Eternity

by Tom Toner

  And there ahead, the whining snarl that almost drowned out every other sound: Gliese, growling as if baring her teeth, as if she knew the chaos that was coming.

  The Epsilon and its hundreds of followers had already risen in a wide arc above their quarry, outpacing it while still concealed in the onrushing dark. The circumvented light shooting past their fins burned glowing emerald against the silver in rippled fans of colour, but wouldn’t give them away to something moving more slowly. To the Grand-Tile they were invisible, moving too fast to reflect anything but the Over-light, the silver gloss that showed through the mass of stars whenever a craft went superluminal.

  But they would not be intercepting the Grand-Tile in the Void. Not yet. Perception’s weapons weren’t ready. The Spirit peered back down into the depths, training its view on the twinkling rush of the Colossus’s following comets and debris. They would meet, when they finally did meet, in atmosphere, where things could go as planned.

  Spread out before them lay the many blotches of the Gliese Satrapy, a handful of estate planets, Tethered and Free moons, all held in thrall to the system’s single Vaulted Land. Perception sighted on what it believed to be the moon of Great Solob, a delicate little world currently lying partway inside Gliese’s long shadow. It extended a tendril of itself and reached into the cockpit, exciting the comms.

  Satrap Alfieri.

  “Aha. Perception, I take it?”

  Nail on the head. We’re making our approach.

  The voice of Perception drifted through the hangar, growing in volume. Lycaste jumped as it swept past him, having been engaged in the useless process of polishing his new boots and helmet. During times of intense activity, he’d found that taking a cloth and vigorously wiping something made him wonderfully invisible, and people tended to leave him alone. So far, Lycaste had successfully employed the tactic every time Perception called the crew to action.

  He felt the Spirit hovering near him.

  Please stop trying to look busy, Lycaste, not now. Get some practice in.

  Lycaste cleared his throat and nodded, putting aside his helmet and other birthday gifts—a new bandolier containing a rather solid-looking spring pistol and plenty of sparker-tipped bolts, a fine red Amaranthine cape of fur-trimmed silk and a silver wine flask engraved by all the crew—and glancing fondly at them.

  You’ll make nothing but a pretty target down there, Perception said, evidently studying Lycaste’s things, unless you learn to use that stuff.

  Lycaste snorted, picking up his glossy Amaranthine pistol and checking it over for Perception’s benefit. As he did so, he noticed the smudge of fingerprints ruining its patina; Poltor had borrowed it that morning.

  “What do you think he wanted with it?” he asked the invisible presence of the Spirit at his side, rubbing away the grubby prints.

  Brainless creatures like shiny things.

  Lycaste wrinkled his nose, making sure he’d got every last mark.

  Perception had swiftly become their captain in all but name, and had spent the few days since their departure from the Bunk Barge reordering almost every system and practice on the Epsilon India and its accompanying ships, riding fired shells between the convoy to issue orders and strategies, inspect their crews and soldiers, and examining every minute piece of equipment. Huerepo and Poltor, as Perception’s twenty fingers, had been engaged in manufacture for the last three Quarters straight, with Huerepo even devising a shorthand so that he could note down all of Perception’s myriad orders as swiftly as possible. The Oxel ran the Epsilon’s other functions and sequestered parts, and Lycaste supposed the twenty-five thousand other troops and pilots and mechanics on the six hundred following ships were the manual labour.

  Lycaste took his stance in front of the charred wooden board set up against the bulkhead, before which a selection of objects—pans, bottles, candlesticks and the dirty partial skeleton of a Filgurbear, to name but a few—had been arranged. He fiddled with his pistol, only realising after some experimentation in their makeshift firing range that he could narrow the weapon’s field of fire by turning the jewel set in its stock, a little ruby blob he’d thought purely ornamental. He did this now, thinning the range to the slimness of a blade, and aimed at Filgurbear’s skull.

  A small square section of bone punched silently out of existence, to a thickness of about an inch. A bored Oxel with a piece of tin sheeting scuttled behind the wooden panel, checking for damage to the bulkhead, before returning to his stool. Lycaste aimed again, twiddling the jewel, and zapped away four of its teeth, wondering for the hundredth time where in the galaxy they might have ended up. Once again, the Oxel climbed off the stool to check, giving him the thumbs-up.

  Lycaste turned and glanced at the sleekly red three-man jet sitting bolted into gantries near the hangar’s large doors. Perception had shown a passing interest in it, and had dictated a long list of improvements for Huerepo to make to the thing. Sometimes, in the depths of the ship’s false night, Lycaste would climb out of bed and come to sit at the jet’s controls amid the pungent scent of rubber, running his fingers over the knobs and dials without touching anything, always fearful that someone might spot him and give him a telling-off. Soldered to its dented snout was a bolt rifle, operated by crude wires running inside the cockpit, and accompanied at the rear by a meaty-looking lumen turret pilfered from a Lacaille corsair. Lycaste watched Poltor unscrewing the nose and inspecting the insides, his whole body disappearing as he climbed inside, and found himself—despite the sheer terror flying must surely entail—envying the Oxel that would get to pilot it.

  Maneker observed Lycaste’s movements around the hanger, turning his head carefully lest his fancy trinket fell from its socket. He saw the ship’s interior now, shabby and cluttered and almost unbearably cramped—a quality in a vessel that had served him well as a blind man, needing only to stretch out his fingers and trace the sticky passages to and from his chamber—but above all dark. Most of it was lit with half-busted strips of light-wire that ran along the ceilings and floors, fizzling and snapping on and off.

  But he could see. Anchored inside his eye socket was a little marble of Perception’s devising, a simple light-gathering pellet designed to collect the monochrome signal and feed it into his optic nerve. As usual, however, the Spirit had done its job too well. Maneker had screwed it in to see, for the first time, the crew he’d travelled with for so long, recognising only the grotesque but somehow welcome faces of Lycaste and Huerepo as they swam out of the murk towards him.

  What he hadn’t been prepared for was the extra shadow each person trailed behind them, his skin crawling at the sight of a dozen creeping ghosts.

  “Are you happy with it?” Lycaste asked, clumping sweatily past.

  Maneker studied the Melius’s new shadow.

  He should be, the voice said at their side. But this time Maneker didn’t just hear it. A writhing, snake-like smudge fell across his lap as the voice had spoken, forcing Maneker to recoil. All around the hangar he could see it, spread like a giant amphibious serpent waiting in a swamp for its prey. Perception’s tendrils lay everywhere, snaking and worming their way into the very matter of everything.

  Maneker glanced down and flinched, noticing how the dull shadows had made their way across his lap and up his belly.

  You see me.

  “I do,” he breathed.

  Lycaste had stopped beside them, wide-eyed.

  I had a choice of spectra; thought I’d combine a few.

  Lycaste glanced up, habitually, at the sound of the Spirit’s voice. “But you can’t see yourself, can you, Percy?”

  I cannot.

  Maneker smiled, turning his wicked-looking prosthetic on Lycaste. The thing had been made by Poltor from a couple of cracked lenses (which Maneker remembered belonged to one of the defunct optisock-ets in the flight deck) and contained a dark blob of something mechanical, like a pupil, deep beneath the glass, which stared perpetually.

  “Can you see mine?” Lycaste a
sked.

  Maneker nodded with pleasure, observing the oil slick drift and settle as Lycaste moved a little, like something greasy dribbled into deep water. The Spirit’s shadow swam close, almost protectively, around Lycaste, and Maneker saw something he hadn’t anticipated: Lycaste’s smoky, scummy shadow was reaching out towards Perception’s, sucked as if by a gust of wind, and had become intermingled a little in its depths. Maneker sat back, understanding that he was watching the Spirit’s own powerful gravity at work before him, drawing other souls towards it.

  He looked down and observed his own shadow drifting inexorably closer, coiling, blending.

  Huerepo struggled over the riveted doorframe into the hangar, hauling the wheeled cart behind him. It juddered as it mounted the step, bouncing back down and almost rolling away before he could catch it. It was a good thing he had, for it contained almost every dangerous invention Perception had so far come up with on their voyage: an agglomeration of horrors designed for maximum carnage. He glanced around as he dragged the thing in, noting with satisfaction the looks on Maneker’s and Lycaste’s faces. Here was the fruition of his six days’ labour, more important by half than whatever they’d both been up to.

  “Is all this what I think it is?” Maneker asked, striding up and focusing that unpleasantly beady new eye of his.

  Huerepo doffed his little cloth cap that doubled as a rag and gave the Amaranthine a flamboyant bow. “Perception’s latest crop of inventiveness, Sire, for your consideration.”

  “Please,” Maneker said, the excitement in his features clearly visible. “Show me.”

  Huerepo took the edge of the cloth and flapped it aside, exposing the jumbled contents of the little wooden cart.

  “Perception has striven for ruthlessness,” Huerepo said, poring through the goods. Under the hangar’s lighting strips, the collection looked more than a little home-made, built as it was from anything they had to spare aboard the Epsilon.

  “Splendid,” Maneker whispered, shouldering his way past Lycaste and gazing into the trolley.

  Huerepo climbed in and sorted through the weaponry. He hefted out a rifle with a funnel-shaped barrel that could fire bolts around corners and passed it to the Amaranthine. “Same principle as those winged bullets we took from the Lacaille ship, Sire. Repelled by hard stuff, attracted to soft.”

  My first stab at the problem, Perception said, as if from within the trolley. Useful, but nothing groundbreaking. Indeed, I lifted the entire concept from your own Decadence technology.

  “Now, let’s not be modest, Perception,” Maneker said, eyeing the haul greedily. “Show me what else you have.”

  “Sunbombs,” Huerepo said, holding out a handful of little misshapen lumps of solder, like factory offcuts. “Throw these into a room and they detonate with a little flicker of sunlight.”

  “Sunlight?” Maneker asked, taking one dubiously.

  Fusion, on a tiny scale. Will probably burn a hole through the floor and disappear, blinding everyone in the process. To be used sparingly, I think.

  Maneker put it back.

  “Now then,” Huerepo muttered, searching. “This should please you.” He opened a chest and handed the Amaranthine a needle-fine filament possessed of a tiny bulb of blown glass at one end. Inside the bulb, a small amount of waxy white paste had stuck to the inner curve.

  “What’s this?” the Amaranthine asked, handling it carefully.

  Only my life’s work, Perception said beside them.

  “Spider venom,” Huerepo supplied. “Cultivated over the centuries by Perception in its tower.” Carefully, he took it back and returned it to the chest with the others. Perception had designed a bespoke high-velocity needle rifle to fire the things, capable of piercing the thickest armour. Having tested the venom on the various stowaway vermin aboard the ship, Huerepo could reliably state that anything the size of a Lacaille would probably go down after a second or so and be dead within a minute. Huerepo had the first rifle made, displaying it proudly above his bunk.

  “How did you get the poison out?” Lycaste asked, peering carefully into the chest, as if the very act of going near the needles might be dangerous.

  “That was a bad business,” he responded, closing the lid of the chest and latching it shut. “Catching the buggers and milking them. I had the Oxel do it. They stamped on a few, so I had to do a lot of scooping with Smallbone’s desert spoon.” He looked thoughtfully at Lycaste, hoping what he said next wouldn’t be taken badly. “There might be one or two still . . . on the loose. Poltor said he saw one in his bunk, but it must have sloped off to one of the warmer places on the ship.” Lycaste looked a little pale all of a sudden, and Huerepo remembered that the Melius occupied one of the hottest chambers above the battery.

  I searched through the ship and synthesised some of my own poisons, too, Perception said. From rust and mould and whatnot. They’re in little canisters inside the nail bombs. Be sure to get out of the way if someone throws one.

  Huerepo nodded vigorously. Perception had thought up some truly indiscriminate weaponry, capable of maiming enemy and friends alike if it wasn’t lobbed far enough.

  That said, I have some armour replacements for you. Huerepo— if you’d do the honours.

  Huerepo nodded, opening up another crate and lifting out the heavy garment at the top. It was a simple Voidsuit reinforced with steel-plate armour: nothing a billion Prism didn’t have stashed away in their ships’ cupboards. He adjusted something at the shoulders, fastening twin pauldrons of dazzling coppery chain mail and connecting them via a wire to the suit’s backpack generator.

  Do you see the chain?

  Maneker agreed that he did, fingering the links. Huerepo thought he’d done a damn fine job.

  Magnetic fields, strong enough to taste, the Oxel tell me. Should repel any metal ordnance fired your way, or at least soften the blow enough for your plate armour to take the shock. Lumens, of course, they cannot deflect. It paused. Lycaste—are you listening?

  “Hmmm?” Lycaste looked up, flummoxed.

  Lumens. Get out of the way if they’re firing bolts of light.

  “Ah, yes. Just the metal stuff.”

  Good.

  Huerepo couldn’t help but smile. The Spirit cared very dearly for poor old Lycaste, and he was glad. They’d have lost the Melius a handful of times now at least if it hadn’t been for their invisible friend.

  “You’ve shared all this with the allied ships?” Maneker asked. “And the Satrap Alfieri?”

  Perception hesitated. Was I supposed to?

  Maneker scowled.

  The laugh that rebounded through their heads was rich and throaty. Of course I did.

  “The Jurlumticular have their own arsenal, too, of course,” Huerepo added, swinging down from the trolley and checking nothing had fallen out. I believe they’ve got an Amaranthine skycharge sitting around on one of their ships—”

  “The Diaphene, yes,” Maneker said. “It was stolen while I was still Satrap of Cancri, a hundred years ago. At the time, of course, I was livid.”

  “They’ve a haul of Lacaille fizzbombs,” Huerepo continued, “good vintage ones with the seals still intact. Should make a big old mess when we drop them.”

  “Good,” Maneker said, as if to himself. “If we’re to fight them inside the world as Perception wishes, that’ll be what we need.” He looked in the direction Perception’s last words had come from, no doubt seeing the Spirit properly as the others could not. “A big old mess.”

  Huerepo looked doubtfully at him, then at Lycaste. Both he and the Melius had been there when Perception roundly defeated Maneker in the making of their grand strategy, humiliating the Amaranthine enough to send him scuttling off to his chamber. Only the gift of the artificial eye had drawn him sulkily from his room.

  Maneker’s plan, carefully worked out during his blind nights alone, had consisted of isolating and attacking the Grand-Tile while it was still hurrying through the Void; mobbing the Colossus and pummelling it wit
h everything they had before it could reach its destination and release its legions from its single great hangar. Hearing this, Perception had swiftly and loftily interjected, delivering a step-by-step strategy to replace Maneker’s own and relegating him awkwardly to the sidelines of the conversation. The Spirit had a better plan, one guaranteed to bring down the Grand-Tile almost instantaneously, but it could only be achieved inside Gliese’s atmosphere, where there was a greater risk of it releasing its thousands of bombers, jets and troops—let alone awakening all the dormant Decadence weaponry that might be buried, waiting—before it could be destroyed.

  Huerepo, for his part, was inclined to trust Perception, but still he was frightened.

  A grand mess is a fine idea, Huerepo, Perception continued. One can reliably ruin any fool’s plan with a show of smoke and mirrors, I think.

  “You consider the Long-Life a fool, do you?” Maneker smirked, staring directly at the space above Huerepo’s head. “You think he doesn’t have some reinforcement on its way from the Investiture? He would never risk so much, his entire force, his whole ancient plan, without such backup.”

  I believe he tried, of course, but things did not go quite to plan. He’s out there on his own now.

  “How can you tell?” Maneker blustered, his rage building again. “You proclaim all these things with such damn confidence, but really you know nothing! It’s all guesswork!”

  Estimation, Hugo.

  Huerepo could only admire the Spirit’s patience. He hoped it was right.

  GREAT SOLOB

  Great Solob, the smallest of the multifarious moons hiding in Gliese’s looming shadow, was a desertified wasteland, a world composed of cracked escarpments of salt and wild groves of scrawny black trees. It was a brittle, dead place, inhabited only by algae and pollen spores and crawling pink shrimp, for it had been mined and panned to extinction by ancient Amaranthine engineering to fuel the industrial successes of Gliese over thousands of years. The moon and its sister, Opolie, were now seldom visited, despite their proximity to the greatest Vaulted Land in the Firmament, and for that reason it was here that Perception had arranged their meeting with the Satrap of Virginis and his forces.