“Fine by me, but won’t you be in danger? This is a long way from Anthi-CL, we can return you.”
“After the exchange I will be the only member of my race to have the information. That makes me more valuable than the sun’s mass in iron. Nobody will harm me. If I was to return to the Lady Macbeth , what guarantee could you give me that you would not simply fly off back to your Confederation, thus removing the knowledge from my race?”
“I would not be able to offer a guarantee that would satisfy you, Quantook-LOU. However, I know nothing of Tojolt-HI. I do not know what is contained within this section behind the web tubes. How do I know that it is not some powerful weapon that can destroy my ship as soon as you have the information you want?”
“This is an old section, its dominion has almost collapsed. Do your sensors not show you that it poses no threat?”
“There is nothing we can see on the surface, but I must know what is inside. I propose to send two of my crew members with you. They will only observe, they will not interfere with your activities.”
“I accept.”
Joshua ended the link. “Ione, you’re on.”
Lady Mac closed slowly on the sunside surface, using ion thrusters to manoeuvre in towards the approximate boundary of the knot. The web tubes below the starship were dead, as Quantook-LOU had requested. He had also asked that Joshua provide a method of crossing the gulf. As a result, the two suited and armoured serjeants were waiting in the open EVA airlock, ready to jet across and secure a tether to the tube surface.
Ione watched the long arched segments of glass grow larger; nothing was visible below the tarnished and pitted surface. Her armour suit sensors could just make out the faint lines of the inner spiral of piping. Lady Mac ’s shadow was expanding and darkening over the glass and foil sheeting as the starship slid inwards. She saw a flickering motion sweep across the darkened glass. A multitude of anfractuous cracks spread out from the rim of the segment as though tendrils of frost were gripping the tube.
“It’s rupturing,” she told the crew.
“Thermal stress,” Liol replied. “It’s our shadow that’s causing it. Don’t forget, that material has never had its heat input interrupted before.”
“Ione,” Joshua said. “I’m locking our attitude . . . mark. You can go over whenever you’re ready.”
The curving glass was seventy metres away from the airlock hatch. The first serjeant disconnected its safety line from the chamber socket and activated the manoeuvring pack.
Attaching the end of the tether was no problem. The cracked glass had come out of the rim of the metal reinforcement hoop, leaving a gap she could loop it through. Once it was done, she moved aside. Joshua wanted the Mosdva to cut their own way in.
The xenocs hauled themselves along the tether using the powered gauntlets they wore on their midlimb hands. There was no subtlety in their entry. One of them simply used a laser to slice a circle through the glass and the piping underneath.
Ione was last in, both serjeants following one of the bodyguard Mosdva. She thought it must have been a long time since the tube was inhabited. The fronds had petrified, then ablated away in the vacuum, leaving a cloud of granular dust clogging the tube. Even with that, it was a lot brighter than the sections they’d toured in Anthi-CL. Without the fluid to shield the interior, the light from the sun was fearsome.
The Mosdva made their way purposefully along to the end of the tube. They used the tarnished plant apertures as grips, which afforded them almost the same degree of mobility as the fronds in a pressurized tube. Ione simply used the manoeuvring packs.
When they reached the end of the tube, one of the bodyguards cut through the airlock hatch with a laser. They moved through the junction and into another tube on the other side, heading into the knot.
As soon as the last serjeant was inside, Joshua used the chemical vernier thrusters to back them away from the sun-side surface. Beaulieu reported that nine small satellites had taken off from across Tojolt-HI. All of them were emitting low-power radar pulses, tracking Lady Mac .
“It looks like Quantook-LOU is heading for the apex of the knot,” Samuel said. “So far he’s staying with the surface tubes.”
“I’m analysing the signals the serjeants’ electronic warfare blocks are picking up,” Oski said. “The Mosdva are transmitting a lot of pulses, most of it’s coming from Quantook-LOU. Fairly high-order encryption, as well.”
“Who’s he talking to?” Joshua asked.
“I don’t think he is. It’s short-range stuff, and there’s no electronic activity in any of the tube systems. I think it’s all being received by his bodyguard. I’m correlating their movements and his signals, and it looks like he’s virtually remote-controlling them. The stuff they’re sending back is completely different, probably sensor feeds so he can see what they’re seeing.”
“A regular little squad of drones,” Ashly said. “I wonder if he doesn’t trust them?”
“It’s a bit late for us to start worrying about his status now,” Joshua said. “Oski, see if you can work out how to freeze up those bodyguards if the need arises.”
“I’ll try.”
Joshua fixed their position twenty-five kilometres away from the sunside surface. Waiting was difficult for him. He really wanted to be down there with Quantook-LOU, seeing what was happening. That would put him in control and ready to respond immediately to whatever the situation threw at them. Just like he’d done at Ayacucho and Nyvan. The front line was the only place he could be sure things would be done right.
Yet if Ayacucho and Nyvan had taught him anything, it was that there was more to command than good piloting. He trusted his crew to handle the starship’s systems well enough. Deploying the experts he had with him was an extension of that principal. That second time in Anthi-CL, when Quantook-LOU had become insistent, he’d known right away he shouldn’t have been there in person. So now it was guilt rather than professionalism behind the decision to send the serjeants into the knot.
At least no one had protested that they should have been sent as well. He rather suspected that the diskcity was getting to the others in the same way as it did to him.
They’d been holding station for fifteen minutes when Beaulieu’s sensor monitoring programs alerted her that the sunscoop ship had altered its orbit. The massive fusion engines were firing, propelling it at a steady fiftieth of a gee. “It is now on an interception trajectory with us,” Beaulieu told the bridge crew.
“Jesus, how long have we got?”
“Approximately seventy minutes.”
Ione listened to Joshua’s news about the sunscoop ship and told him: “All right, I’ll ask Quantook-LOU.”
They were in another of the dead tubes, the fifth so far, still churning up the dust as they swept through. Apart from the lack of air and fluid, they’d all seemed in reasonable condition. She could see no physical reason for their abandonment. Although at some point they’d certainly been stripped of all their ancillary equipment. Even a couple of the tube-end bulkheads had been salvaged, leaving gaping openings into the junctions.
She switched her communication block to the frequency the Mosdva were using. “Quantook-LOU, the captain has been in touch with me. He wants you to know that the sun-scoop ship has changed direction and is now heading for the Lady Macbeth . Do you know anything of this?”
“I do not. The sunscoop belongs to the dominion of Danversi-YV. They are not allied to us on any level.”
“Is it likely to pose a threat to our ship?”
“It does not carry any weapons. Their strategy will be to intimidate the Lady Macbeth into dealing with them, and to place their own group in this location in an attempt to block my progress. Do you have weapons capable of destroying it?”
“We are not sure of the effect our weapons would have. Captain Calvert does not wish to fire upon an unarmed ship.”
“His views will change when the sunscoop’s fusion drive is pointing at the Lady Macbeth . Tell h
im that the dominion of Danversi-YV has suffered the loss of two sunscoops in the last fifteen years. They have been much weakened by this: their alliance has shrunk, diminishing their influence. They will be the first rim dominion to fail once I have the faster-than-light drive. That makes them the most desperate to obtain it for themselves.”
“Understood.”
The Mosdva glided out into a large junction chamber that had seven tubes radiating away from it.
“This could be interesting,” Ione told the others. “Judging by the position of two of these airlock hatches, the tubes behind them lead up into the knot. If they are tubes.”
“We have your location,” Liol replied. “You’re only a hundred and fifty metres from an inhabited surface tube.”
The Mosdva launched themselves from the bulkhead rim one after the other, heading unwaveringly for the first airlock hatch that led into the knot. They cut an oval of carbon-based composite out of the centre and went through.
“Looks like we’re avoiding the locals,” Ione said.
It was completely dark inside the tube. When the first serjeant squirmed through the hole its helmet sensors picked out six broad beams of ultraviolet light coming from the Mosdva up ahead. They were moving fast along the wall of the tube.
“I recognise this surface,” Ione said with as much excitement as her bitek neurones allowed her to generate.
The walls of the tube were made up from the same baked-sponge material that the Tyrathca had used in Tanjuntic-RI’s zero-gee sections. The serjeant’s armoured gauntlets could fit into the regular indentations, allowing them both to swarm up the tube after the Mosdva.
“No such thing as coincidence,” Joshua said.
“The airlock ahead is a different design,” Ione said. “Not like those on Tanjuntic-RI, but not like the ones we’ve just come through, either.”
The hatch at the centre of the bulkhead was a thick titanium square, with fat rim seals and piston-like hinges. It was three metres in diameter. Her infrared sensors showed it was a lot warmer than the tube walls.
The Mosdva had stopped at the bulkhead to apply small sensor patches to the metal. “The next section is in use,” Quantook-LOU said. “I wish to avoid contact for now. We will go outside.”
A patch of the ossified sponge was scraped off the wall with a power tool, revealing the glossy inner casing. They cut through it with a laser and slid out.
Ione switched her helmet sensors to infrared. They were deep inside the convoluted knot. She could see no order or pattern; tubes criss-crossed through space leaving small irregular gaps which were caged by thick struts, forming a bird’s-nest filigree around her. Brilliant red threads revealed heat conduits running outside the tubes, while magnetic sensor imagery overlaid the translucent emerald lines of power cables.
“Plenty of activity here,” Ione said. “But every tube is solid and opaque. Can’t see in yet.”
“What about where you’re going?” Joshua asked. “Any ideas?”
“Not a chance. This is just too big a tangle to see more than a hundred metres in any direction.”
Thick strips of the sponge material had been laid lengthways along each tube, allowing them to move about easily. The Mosdva started off with little fuss. Ione’s guidance blocks told her they were moving still deeper into the knot.
After two hundred metres the clutter of tubes came to an abrupt end. The centre of the knot was a cavity over two kilometres broad. A cylinder eight hundred metres in diameter filled the centre, its hubs fixed to the surrounding tubes with heavy magnetic bearings, allowing it to rotate slowly. A band of regular triangular ridges covered twenty per cent of the outer surface up at one end. Ione’s infrared sensors showed the band glowing a soft uniform pink, much warmer than the rest of the shell. A radiator disposing of the cylinder’s internal heat. Which meant the systems inside were functional.
“Well, well,” she said. “Look at this. Somebody still enjoys a gravity field to live in.” She scanned her sensors round. The cavity around the cylinder resembled a spaceport maintenance bay, gantry arms and support girders stuck out of the surrounding bulwark of tubing, threaded with conduits and hoses. They ended in sturdy clamp rings that sprouted long drill bits, inert and folded inwards like defunct sea anemones. Most were empty, though some of the clamps were gripping lumps of jet black rock. They’d been cut like diamonds, with hundreds of small sheer facets. There was no standard shape or size. One piece was so large it needed ten gantry arms to hold it in place, its contoured surface following the curve of the central cylinder. Most required only two or three clamps, while there were scraps that had been skewered by just a single drill bit. Units of machinery were clinging to the rock, so dark and cold they could have been complicated freak outcrops. Except for one, in the middle of the largest chunk, which glowed salmon pink with internal heat.
“A refinery of some kind,” Ione guessed. “I think most of this rock is carbonaceous chondrite.” As her sensor sweep continued, she picked out several dense magnetic fields. The equipment producing them was mounted on bulky platforms that encircled the cylinder. They looked like fusion drive tubes.
“Who lives here?” she asked Quantook-LOU. “It’s the Tyrathca, isn’t it?”
“This is Lalarin-MG. It is their designated location. I am displeased to find that they are still alive.”
“But you hate them, they’re your old slave masters. I thought you’d killed them off. That’s what you implied.”
“Those that remained at the end of the time of change grouped together in their enclaves. They became difficult to dislodge. It was not worth challenging their defences. We excluded them from contact with the newformed dominions, and allowed them to decline in isolation. Only those that were the largest still exist.”
“That’s incredible,” Samuel said. “They’re like the grain of sand in an oyster; the Mosdva simply grew around them.”
“A very big grain,” Sarha said. “Take a close look at that cavity. I’ll bet you it was all asteroid rock when the diskcity was built, probably with a biosphere cavern hollowed out in the centre. They’ve had to refine it away over the millennia to supply themselves with fresh minerals, and the cylinder is most likely what the biosphere evolved into. They couldn’t expand like the Mosdva, so they just kept to the same size. We know they can keep that kind of society running indefinitely. Tanjuntic-RI was fully operational for the same length of time as this enclave. Except that one day they’re going to run out of rock to consume.”
“That fits what I can see, except for the rocket engines,” Ione said. “Why keep them functional when you need to expend every effort to maintain a highly artificial environment in adverse circumstances?”
“They might have been spaceship rockets originally,” Liol said. “Not any more. I think they were adapted into the defence system Quantook-LOU mentioned. Don’t forget, the Mosdva revolution happened when the diskcities were in their embryonic stage. The enclave asteroid would already be attached to the rest of the cluster at that time. If you use a fusion plume like a flame thrower, it would have caused havoc, completely broken apart the asteroids, destroyed the new inhabited tubes and thermal exchange mechanisms. The Tyrathca didn’t have anything to lose, but the Mosdva sure did. So both sides agreed to the isolation.”
“And the Tyrathca being unimaginative SOBs, kept their end of the threat in full working order all this time,” Ashly said. “Fusion plumes could still do a lot of damage to a diskcity, even today.”
“Except they’re not all in full working order,” Ione said. “I can see ten, of which only three have magnetic fields.”
“Yes, but the Mosdva don’t know that.”
“They do now.”
Quantook-LOU and the Mosdva bodyguard were on the move again, crawling along the tubes around the circumference of the cavity. Ione set off after them. “Looks like we’re heading for the hub of the cylinder,” she said. “He must be planning on going in to meet them.”
“
I’m beginning to respect old Quantook-LOU,” Joshua said. “He’s been pretty linear with us. Coming straight to a Tyrathca civilization is a good indication he genuinely wants to get the almanac for us.”
“I wouldn’t attribute his behaviour entirely to fair play,” Syrinx said. “Our appearance gave him a simple choice. Go for the number one position, or see Anthi-CL be absorbed by someone else’s unifying alliance. He doesn’t want the almanac data, he needs it desperately.”
“You never used to be this cynical.”
“Not before I met you, no.”
Joshua chuckled, wishing for the first time ever that he had an affinity bond. Not that he needed to check his own crew. Liol would be covering a grin, while Sarha would be casting a sly look his way and Dahybi would pretend it was all going way over his head.
“Trains are moving again,” Beaulieu said. “The ELINTs are tracking five; they all started in the last ten minutes.”
“So tell us why that’s bad.”
“They are all within a hundred and fifty kilometres of the Tyrathca enclave, and are heading towards it.”
“Jesus! Wonderful. Ione, did you get that?”
“Confirmed. I’ll tell Quantook-LOU, not that we can speed things along much at this point.”
The serjeants were now climbing along a tube directly underneath the end of the cylinder, an uncomfortable position. The gap was gradually narrowing as they approached the hub, and the cylinder’s monstrous inertia had become terribly apparent. Ione knew if she was fully human she’d be having constant memory recall of the day when she got her hand caught in her bicycle wheel (six years old, and she’d reached down to try and move a jammed brake block before Tranquillity could stop her). As it was, she could just appreciate the associative link.
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