I sensed a change in our attack readiness, Clavain. I imagine it has something to do with the Demarchist ship?
[Actually, it’s a little more interesting than that. Take a look.]
Clavain offered her one end of a data feed from the ship’s sensor net. Skade accepted the feed, instructing her implants to map it into her sensorium with her usual filters and preferences.
She experienced a pleasing instant of dislocation. Her body, the bodies of her companions, the room in which they floated, the great sleek carbon-black needle of Nightshade — all these things shifted to insubstantiality.
The Jovian was a massive presence ahead, wrapped in an ever-moving geometrically complex cloud of interdicted zones and safe passages. An angry swarm of platforms and sentries whipped around the world in tight precessional orbits. Closer, but not much closer, was the Demarchist ship that Nightshade had been chasing. It was already touching the top of Tangerine Dream’s atmosphere, beginning to glow hotter. The shipmaster was taking a risk with the atmospheric dive, hoping to gain concealment beneath a few hundred kilometres of overlying cloud.
It was, Skade reflected, a move born of desperation.
Transatmospheric insertions were risky, even for ships built to make skimming passes into the upper layers of Jovians. The shipmaster would have had to slow down before attempting the plunge, and would be moving slowly again upon return to space. Aside from the camouflaging effect of the overlying air — the benefits of which depended on the armoury of sensors that the pursuing ship carried, and on what could be detected by low-orbit satellites or floating drones — the only advantage in making a skim was to replenish fuel reserves.
In the early years of the war, both sides had used antimatter as their main energy source. The Conjoiners, with their camouflaged manufactories on the edge of the system, were still able to produce and store antimatter in militarily useful quantities. Even if they could not, it was common knowledge that they had access to even more prodigious energy sources. But handling antimatter was something that the Demarchists had not been able to do for more than a decade. They had fallen back on fusion power, for which they needed hydrogen, ideally dredged from the oceans within gas giants where it was already compressed into its metallic state. The shipmaster would open the ship’s fuel scoops, sucking in and compressing atmospheric hydrogen, or might even attempt a plunge into the ‘merely’ liquid hydrogen sea overlaying the metallic-state hydrogen wrapped around the Jovian’s rocky nugget of a core. But that would be a hazardous thing to attempt in a ship that had already sustained battle damage. Very probably the shipmaster would be hoping that the scoops would not be necessary; that it might instead manage to rendezvous with one of the whale-brained tankers circling endlessly through the atmosphere, singing sad, mournful songs of turbulence and hydrocarbon chemistry. The tanker would inject slugs of preprocessed metallic hydrogen into the ship, some to use as fuel and some to use as warheads.
Atmospheric insertion was a gamble, and a desperate one, but one that had paid off enough times to be slightly preferable to a suicidal scuttling operation.
Skade composed a thought and popped it into her companions’ heads. I admire the shipmaster’s determination. But it won’t help him.
Clavain’s response was immediate. [It’s a she, Skade. We picked up her signal when she tight-beamed the other ship; they were passing through the edge of a debris ring, so there was enough ambient dust to scatter a small fraction of the laser light in our direction.]
And the interloper?
Remontoire answered her. [We always suspected it was a freighter from the moment we had a clean lock on its exhaust signature. That turns out to be the case, and we know a little more now.]
Remontoire offered her a feed, which she accepted.
A fuzzy image of the freighter sharpened in her mind’s eye, accreting detail like a sketch being worked to completion. The freighter was half the size of Nightshade, a typical in-system hauler built one or two centuries ago; definitely pre-plague. The hull was vaguely rounded; the ship might once have been designed to land on Yellowstone or one of the other atmosphere-bound bodies in the system, but it had gained so many bulges and spines since then that it made Skade think of a fish afflicted with some rare recessive mutation. Cryptic machine-readable symbols flickered on its skin, some of which were interrupted by blank acres of repaired hull cladding.
Remontoire anticipated her question. [The ship’s Storm Bird, a freighter registered out of Carousel New Copenhagen in the Rust Belt. The ship’s commander and owner is Antoinette Bax, although she hasn’t been either for more than a month. The previous owner was a James Bax, presumably a relative. We don’t know what happened to him. Records show, however, that the Bax family has been running Storm Bird since long before the war, possibly even before the plague. Their activities seem to be the usual mixture of the legal and the marginally legal; a few infringements here and there, and one or two run-ins with the Ferrisville Convention, but nothing serious enough to warrant arrest, even under the emergency legislation.]
Skade felt her distant body acknowledge this with a nod. The girdle of habitats orbiting Yellowstone had long supported a spectrum of transportation ventures, ranging from prestigious high-burn operations to much slower — and commensurately cheaper, fewer-questions-asked — fusion and ion-drive haulers. Even after the plague, which had turned the once-glorious Glitter Band into the far less than glorious Rust Belt, there had still been commercial niches for those prepared to fill them. There were quarantines to be dodged, and a host of new clients rising from the smouldering rubble of Demarchist rule, not all of who were the kinds of clients one would wish to do business with twice.
Skade knew nothing about the Bax family, but she could imagine them thriving under these conditions, and perhaps thriving even more vigorously during wartime. Now there were blockades to be run and opportunities to aid and abet the deep-penetration agents of either faction in their espionage missions. No matter that the Ferrisville Convention, the caretaker administration that was running circum-Yellowstone affairs, was just about the most intolerant regime in history. Where there were harsh penalties, there would always be those who would pay handsomely for others to take risks on their behalf.
Skade’s mental picture of Antoinette Bax was almost complete. There was just one thing she did not understand: what was Antoinette Bax doing this far inside a war zone? And, now that she thought about it, why was she still alive?
The shipmaster spoke to her? Skade asked.
Clavain answered. [It was a warning, Skade, telling her to back off or face the consequences.]
And did she?
Remontoire fed her the freighter’s vector. It was headed straight into the atmosphere of the Jovian, just like the Demarchist ship ahead of it.
That doesn’t make any sense. The shipmaster should have destroyed her for violating a Contested Volume.
Clavain responded. [The shipmaster threatened to do just that, but Bax ignored her. She promised the shipmaster she wasn’t going to steal hydrogen, but made it pretty clear she wasn’t about to turn around either.]
Either very brave or very stupid.
[Or very lucky,] Clavain countered. [Clearly the shipmaster didn’t have the ammunition to back up her threat. She must have used up her last missile during some earlier engagement.]
Skade considered this, anticipating Clavain’s reasoning. If the shipmaster really had fired her last missile, she would be desperately keen to keep that information from Nightshade. An unarmed ship was ripe for boarding. Even this late in the war, there were still useful intelligence gains to be made from the capture of an enemy ship, quite apart from the prospect of recruiting her crew.
You think the shipmaster was hoping the freighter would do as she said. She detected Clavain’s assent before his answer formed in her head.
[Yes. Once Bax shone her radar on to the Demarchist ship, the shipmaster had no choice but to make some kind of response. Firing a missile woul
d have been the usual course of action — she’d have been fully within her rights — but at the very least she had to warn the freighter to back off. That didn’t work — for whatever reason Bax wasn’t sufficiently intimidated. That immediately put the shipmaster in a compromised position. She’d barked, but she sure as hell couldn’t bite.]
Remontoire completed his line of thinking. [Clavain’s right. She has no missiles. And now we know.]
Skade knew what they had in mind. Even though it had already begun to dive into the atmosphere, the Demarchist ship was still within easy range of Nightshade’s missiles. A kill could not be guaranteed, but the odds were a lot better than even. Yet Remontoire and Clavain did not want to shoot the enemy down. They wanted to wait until it had emerged from the atmosphere, slow and heavy with fuel, but still no better armed than it had been before. They wanted to board it, suck data from its memory banks and turn its crew into recruits for the Mother Nest.
I can’t consent to a boarding operation. The risks to Nightshade outweigh any possible benefits.
She sensed Clavain trying to probe her mind. [Why, Skade? Is there something that makes this ship unusually precious? If so, isn’t it a little odd that no one told me?]
That’s a matter for the Closed Council, Clavain. You had your chance to join us.
[But even if he had, he wouldn’t know everything, would he?]
Her attention flicked angrily to Remontoire. You know that I’m here on Closed Council business, Remontoire. That is all that matters.
[But I’m Closed Council and even I don’t know exactly what you’re doing here. What is it, Skade — a secret operation for the Inner Sanctum?]
Skade seethed, thinking how much simpler things would be if she never had to deal with old Conjoiners. This ship is precious, yes. It’s a prototype, and prototypes are always valuable. But you knew that anyway. Of course we don’t want to lose it in a petty engagement.
[There’s clearly more to it than that, though.]
Perhaps, Clavain, but now isn’t the time to discuss it. Allocate a spread of missiles for the Demarchist ship, and spare another for the freighter.
[No. We’ll wait for both ships to come out the other side. Assuming either survives, then we’ll act.]
I can’t allow that. So be it, then. She had hoped it would not come to this, but Clavain was forcing her hand. Skade concentrated, issuing a complex series of neural commands. She felt the distant acknowledgement of the weapons systems recognising her authority and submitting to her will. Her control was imprecise, lacking the finesse and immediacy with which she addressed her own machines, but it would suffice; all she had to do was launch a few missiles.
[Skade… ?]
It was Clavain; he must have sensed that she was overriding his control of the weapons. She felt his surprise at the fact that she could do it at all. Skade assigned the spread, the hunter-seeker missiles quivering in their launch racks.
Then another voice spoke quietly in her head. [No, Skade.]
It was the Night Council.
What?
[Release control of the weapons. Do as Clavain wishes. It will serve us better in the long run.]
No, I…
The Night Council’s tone became more strident. [Release the weapons, Skade.]
Furious, feeling the sting of reprimand, Skade did as she was told.
Antoinette reached her father’s coffin. It was lashed to the cargo-bay storage lattice, precisely as it had been when she had shown it to the proxy.
She placed one gloved hand on the upper surface of the casket. Through the glass of the viewing window she could see his profile. The family resemblance was quite evident, though age and gravity had shaped his features into an exaggerated masculine caricature of her own. His eyes were closed and the expression on his face, what she could see of it, was almost one of bored calm. It would have been typical of her father to snooze through all the excitement, she thought. She remembered the sound of his snoring filling the flight deck. Once she had even caught him peering at her through nearly closed eyelids, just pretending to be asleep. Watching to see how she handled whatever crisis was in progress; knowing that one day she would have to do it all herself.
Antoinette checked the rigging that bound the coffin to the lattice. It was secure; nothing had come adrift during the recent manoeuvres.
‘Beast…’ she said.
‘Little Miss?’
‘I’m down in the hold.’
‘One is uncomfortably aware of that, Little Miss.’
‘I’d like you to take us subsonic. Call me when we’re there, will you?’
She had steeled herself for a protest, but none came. She felt the ship pitch, her inner ear struggling to differentiate between deceleration and descent. Storm Bird was not really flying now. Its shape generated very little aerodynamic lift, so it had to support itself by vectoring thrust downwards. The vacuum-filled hold had provided some buoyant lift until now, but she had never planned on going deep with a depressurised hold.
Antoinette was acutely aware that she really should have been dead by now. The Demarchist shipmaster should have shot her out of the sky. And the pursuing spider ship should have attacked before she had time to dive into the atmosphere. Even the dive should have killed her. It had not been the gentle, controlled insertion she had always planned, but more of a furious scramble to get beneath the clouds, riding the vortex that the Demarchist ship had already carved. She had appraised the damage as soon as level flight had been restored, and the news was not good. If she made it back to the Rust Belt, and that was a big ‘if’ — the spiders were still out there, after all — then Xavier was going to be very, very busy for the next few months.
Well, at least it would keep him out of trouble.
‘Subsonic now, Little Miss,’ Beast reported.
‘Good.’ For the third time, Antoinette made sure that she was bound to the lattice as securely as the coffin, and then checked her suit settings again. ‘Open the number-one bay door, will you?’
‘Just a moment, Little Miss.’
A brilliant sliver of light cracked open at her end of the lattice. She squinted against it, then reached up and tugged down the bottle-green glare visor of her suit.
The crack of light enlarged, and then the force of the in-rushing air hit her, slamming her against the lattice’s strut. Air filled the chamber in a few seconds, roaring and swirling around her. The suit’s sensor analysed it immediately and sternly advised against opening her helmet. The air pressure had exceeded one atmosphere, but it was both lung-crackingly cold and utterly toxic.
An atmosphere of choking poisons and shocking temperature gradients was, Antoinette reflected, the price you paid for such exquisite coloration when seen from space.
‘Take us twenty klicks deeper,’ she said.
‘Are you certain, Little Miss?’
‘Fuck, yes.’
The floor pitched. She watched as the suit’s barometer ticked off the increments in atmospheric pressure. Two atmospheres; three. Four atmospheres and rising. Trusting that the rest of Storm Bird, which was now under negative pressure, would not fold open around her like a wet paper bag.
Whatever else happens, Antoinette thought, I’ve probably blown the warranty on the ship by now…
When her confidence had risen, or rather when her pulse had dropped to something like a normal level, Antoinette began to inch along towards the open door, dragging the coffin with her. It was a laborious process, since now she had to fasten and unfasten the coffin’s moorings every couple of metres. But the last thing she felt was impatience.
Looking ahead, now that her eyes had adapted she saw that the light had an overcast silver-grey quality. Gradually it became duller, taking on an iron or dull bronze pall. Epsilon Eridani was not a bright star to begin with, and much of its light was now being filtered out by the layers of atmosphere above them. If they went deeper it would get darker and darker, until it was like being at the bottom of an ocean.
‘All right, Beast, hold her nice and steady. I’m about to do the deed.’
‘Take care now, Little Miss.’
There were cargo-bay entrance ports all over Storm Bird, but the one that had been opened was in the ship’s belly, facing backwards along the direction of flight. Antoinette had reached the lip now, the toes of her boots hanging an inch over the edge. It felt precarious, but she was still safely anchored. Her view above was obstructed by the dark underside of the hull, curving gently up towards the tail; but to either side, and down, nothing impeded her vision.
‘You were right, Dad,’ she breathed, quietly enough that she hoped Beast would not pick up her words. ‘It is a pretty amazing place. I think you made a good choice, all things told.’
‘Little Miss?’
‘Nothing, Beast.’
She began to undo the coffin’s fastenings. The ship lurched and swayed once or twice, making her stomach twist and the coffin knock against the lattice’s spars, but by and large Beast was doing an excellent job of holding altitude. The speed was now highly subsonic relative to the current airstream, so that Beast was doing little more than hover, but that was good. The wind’s ferocity had died down except for the odd squall, as she had hoped it would.
The coffin was almost loose now, almost ready to be tipped over the side. Her father looked like a man catching up on forty winks. The embalmers had done a superlative job, and the coffin’s faltering refrigeration mechanism had done the rest. It was impossible to believe that her father had been dead for a month.
‘Well, Dad,’ Antoinette said, ‘this is it, I guess. We’ve made it now. Not much more needs to be said, I think.’
The ship did her the courtesy of saying nothing.
‘I still don’t know whether I’m really doing the right thing,’ Antoinette continued. ‘I mean, I know this is what you once said you wanted, but…’ Stop it, she told herself. Stop going over that again.
‘Little Miss?’
‘Yes?’
The Revelation Space Collection (revelation space) Page 147