The crawler’s net slowed the tracks, which Aaron perceived first as a change in the constant vibration afflicting the cabin. When he asked it why he was shown a radar sweep. There was a rift in the ground ahead, a vertical drop of over ten metres.
‘Lady!’ Inigo exclaimed as he studied the radar profile; his face was gently shaded by the weak violet light emitted by the two polyphoto strips on the cabin roof. ‘It’s going to take half an hour to cut our way down that.’
‘You’re the expert,’ Aaron muttered sourly.
Inigo gave him a tight smile. ‘I certainly am.’ He gripped the manual control stick, and backed up, then activated the forward power blades. They extended out of the nose and began rotating. The ground crawler edged forwards again, and the spinning blades touched the ice. A wide plume of dirty ice granules shot up into the snowstorm. The screech from the blades resonated round the cabin, and the whole vehicle began to shake as they started to dig themselves a track. Inigo steered them carefully, curving round to run parallel to the rift, always descending. The plume reduced visibility to zero. He was relying on the vehicle’s sensors and his own field effect scan. The lost messiah must have had some sophisticated filter programs, Aaron decided; his own scan revealed little beyond the crawler’s bodywork. The ice they were traversing showed up as a thick unified substance laced with rock and soil, like a haze of interference; yet Inigo was able to discern the structure, knowing when to back off and when to apply pressure.
The noise of the power blades set Aaron’s teeth on edge. Its tone was constantly changing as they hit soil, then back into ice. Then the blades hit some kind of rock, and the rasping was so bad he wanted to hit something. When he glanced back at Corrie-Lyn she was pressing her hands over her ears, her teeth bared in a wild grimace of dismay. Inigo adjusted the stick fractionally, curving them away from the dense strata. Rock and ice gravel spewed out sideways, falling in a long arc down the side of the rift. Inigo drove them into the ice again, gouging a wider cut.
So they descended in a series of howling bumps and jolts, creating their own ramp. In the end it took over forty-five minutes to reach the base of the rift. The power blades retracted. Aaron gazed out in dismay at the field of ice boulders which the lightning flares revealed. They were larger than the ones at the top of the rift, and closer together.
‘Crap,’ he grunted. ‘We’re never going to get through this. How far does it extend?’ If they didn’t clear the boulder field in the next couple of hours, they would never make it to the ship before the implosion.
‘I don’t know,’ Inigo replied unperturbed. ‘We don’t exactly have survey maps.’ He steered the crawler along the base of the rift, looking for an opening.
‘You must do!’
‘Not recent ones. They’re all a thousand years out of date, and the surface ice does shift. Slowly, admittedly, but the movement throws up a fresh topography every century or so.’
‘Shit!’ Aaron finally did hit something, his fist thudding into the cabin wall. ‘We have got to make better time than this.’
‘I know.’
Corrie-Lyn came forward from her seat and slipped her arms around Inigo’s neck. The low cabin lighting made her beautiful features deeply sensual. ‘You’re doing your best, ignore him.’
Aaron growled in frustration, and hit the wall again. Back at the Olhava camp, Inigo had finally admitted he did have a private starship hidden away, for emergencies. Aaron’s elation at the escape route had quickly cooled as the ground crawler got underway. According to Inigo his ship was safe in a tunnelled-out cavern seven hundred kilometres south-east of the camp. Aaron had assumed they would make it with almost a couple of days to spare. Then they drove straight into the ice boulder field.
‘We always trailblaze through this kind of thing,’ Inigo told him as Corrie-Lyn rubbed her cheek adoringly against his. ‘That’s how I got to be so good with the power blades.’
‘Get better or we die,’ Aaron said bluntly.
Inigo flashed him a grin, then turned the ground crawler into a small gap. Razor-sharp shards of ice creaked and snapped against the bodywork as they scraped their way through. Aaron winced, convinced they’d wedge themselves in again. They’d done that once before a few hours back. He and Inigo had to go outside and use their biononic field effect to cut the vehicle free. It had felt good using his weapon functions, even on a minimum setting. He was accomplishing something.
The only benefit of the journey was that Corrie-Lyn hadn’t touched a drop of alcohol since they started.
‘So have you any idea who was in that starship?’ Inigo asked.
‘No. I didn’t even realize we were being followed, which is disturbing enough. To track the Artful Dodger you’d need something as good if not better. That kind of hardware is mighty difficult to come by, so it was either ANA or a Faction. But ANA wouldn’t use an m-sink like that, and I’m kind of surprised a Faction did.’
‘No honour among thieves, eh?’
‘None,’ Aaron agreed. ‘Using an m-sink has the sure taste of desperation to it.’
‘Hold a mirror up,’ Corrie-Lyn said. ‘It was a ruthless despicable act, slaughtering all those people without warning or reason. The pilot must have been just like you.’
‘There are people in this universe a lot worse than me.’
‘That I don’t believe.’
But it’s true. He smiled privately.
‘So where were you supposed to coerce me into going?’ Inigo asked.
‘I’ll know when we’re safe on the ship.’
‘Really? That’s . . . interesting.’
‘It’s depraved,’ Corrie-Lyn said.
‘Actually, it’s a simple and safe security measure,’ Aaron told them. ‘If I don’t know, I can’t be forced to reveal it.’
‘But you do know,’ she said. ‘It’s buried somewhere in your subconscious.’
‘Yes, but I can’t get to it unless the circumstances are coming up straight aces.’
‘You’ve damaged your own psyche with so much meddling.’
‘I’ve told you often before, and I’ll enjoy telling you many times again: I like what I am.’
‘Oh Lady, now what!’ Inigo exclaimed as the crawler’s net halted them again. He glanced at the radar screen with its concentric orange bands swirling round like an accelerated orrery. ‘That’s weird.’ His grey eyes narrowed as he squinted through the windscreen. The headlights revealed a white blur of snow, but no boulders. Lightning flashes turned the black night to a leaden smog. There were no discernible shapes ahead of them.
Aaron’s field scan revealed the ice had flattened out in front of the crawler’s tracks. Then it ended in another sharp-edged rift. He couldn’t pick up anything beyond. ‘There’s nothing out there.’
‘I think that’s the problem.’
They both suited up to take a look. Inigo said he didn’t want to get the crawler too close to the rift until they knew what they were dealing with. Aaron shrugged and went with it. He didn’t like wearing the surface suit – his biononics could produce a good defence against Hanko’s foul environment – but it added an extra layer of protection, which his instinct insisted was the right thing in a situation with so many unknowns.
The two of them kept close to the headlight beams, leaning into the wind. As they shuffled closer to the edge, Aaron’s field scan still couldn’t detect anything beyond.
‘Where the hell’s the ground gone?’ he demanded. His field scan probed the ice beneath his feet. There were a few centimetres of crisp snow, then clear ice down as far as the scan could reach. It was as though they were on the top of some giant frozen wave.
‘Must be a gully of some description,’ Inigo replied. ‘If the pressure is right the ice can fissure instead of throwing up a ridge.’
‘Great.’
‘It should close up soon. I’ve never seen an ice fissure over five hundred metres long. You check that way. And don’t go too near the edge.’
‘Ri
ght.’ Aaron started to walk parallel to the edge, keeping a good three or four metres between him and the drop. He soon came to a flat triangular prominence jabbing out from the verge, which he shuffled along cautiously, feeling the slight stirrings of vertigo. If anywhere would allow him a decent look into the gulf below, it would be here.
He extended his field scan to its maximum, sweeping it through the heavy swirl of snow. Even at full resolution he couldn’t detect the other side of the rough fissure. Nor was there any sign of a bottom. He was standing on the brink of some massive abyss. Instinct kicked in, firing up his misgivings. Something Nerina said back at the camp registered. ‘Hey, are we—’ His scan showed him Inigo’s field function was switching, reformatting energy currents. His own biononics responded instantaneously, strengthening his integral force field, shielding him from any damage Inigo’s outdated systems could possibly inflict. Accelerants rode his nerve paths ready to implement his response. Tactical routines rose out of macrocellular clusters, fusing effortlessly with his thoughts, analysing his situation. That was when he realized just how badly he’d screwed up by trusting Inigo. ‘Shiiiit!’
Inigo fired the biggest disruptor pulse his biononics could produce. It slammed into the ice a couple of metres short of Aaron’s feet. For a moment, the whole prominence fluoresced an elegant jade. As the light faded, a single giant crack appeared with incredible speed, splitting the prominence off the edge of the Asiatic glacier.
Aaron stared in shock at the ruptured ice. Tactics programs rushed to find a counter—
‘Sorry,’ Inigo said simply. The thoughts leaking out of his gaiamotes even proved he meant it. ‘But sometimes to do what’s right . . .’
The entire prominence split away cleanly. To Aaron’s accelerated nervous system it appeared to hang there for some terrible eternity. Then gravity pulled the colossal chunk of ice straight down with Aaron standing at the centre. It began to twist as the edges screeched down the cliff. His force field reconfigured, extending into a twin swept-petal shape – wings that could glide him away. Not good in the midst of this snowstorm, but better than anything else. That was when the vast cataract of avalanching snow triggered by Inigo’s shot thundered into him, engulfing the tumbling prominence and him with it.
The whole mass continued to plummet down the mile-high cliff, taking a long time to reach the bottom.
Silverbird arrowed through the Gulf, the immense expanse of ruined stars and tattered ion storms which lay between the dense halo of ancient globular clusters that comprised the Wall stars and the boundary of the Void itself. Justine was receiving the hysradar and quantum scanner images direct, surrounding herself with the mass structure of the real universe translated into scarlet and turquoise mists. Tiny points of emerald light shone within the shifting cosmic oceans, showing her the supermassive stars which had so far retained their integrity during their long spiral into oblivion. Less than a hundred lightyears ahead of her was the frosty glow of the loop, an orbiting band of supercharged matter ten lightyears across which emitted a galaxy-spanning blaze of X-rays. Beyond that was the awesome black surface of the Void boundary. She watched its topology fluctuate, marvelling at how ocean-like the waves were, with peaks and troughs ripping about chaotically, stirred by incomprehensible internal storm-forces. Quite often she would see an undulation swell out to reach the elongated plume of a disintegrating star that was still lightmonths away. Phenomenal gravity sucked the matter down into the event horizon with a last devastating flare of ultra-hard radiation, the kind which had powered the loop for a billion years. Even that siren call would end soon. At its current expansion rate the Void would engulf the loop in another week. Then it would just be the Wall and the Raiel DF defences that stood between the boundary and the rest of the galaxy.
Justine felt her body shiver again. It was hard to comprehend the scale of the forces outside. She was feeling very small and alone.
‘Dad?’
‘Still here, darling. The relay is holding. Big Bronx cheer for the old Navy techs who put it together.’
‘We left the last known sensor systems behind five minutes ago. The link might not last much longer.’
‘Course it will, angel. This was meant to be.’
‘Yeah, right.’
‘I’m looking at the access figures for the unisphere. You’ve got over half of humanity looking over your shoulder right now.’
‘Hi there, half of humanity,’ she said brittley.
‘You’re doing fine. And I’m in deep shit with ANA for publically admitting there’s such a thing as ultradrive.’
‘Ha! You’re always in trouble.’
‘True. Without me, lawyers would just wither away and die. They think of me as their messiah. Remember when we got caught planting the Florida estate with alien vines?’
‘Hell, yes. The UFN Environmental Commissioners went apeshit with us.’
‘There are banks we own on the External worlds still paying off that fine.’
Justine barked a laugh. Drew down a juddering breath. She desperately wanted out of her ancient body with all its silly biochemical-derived fright. Anyone would think her personality was genuinely scared. ‘Any sign the Second Dreamer accessed your appeal?’
‘Not yet. I expect he’ll be talking to the Skylord quite soon now. After all, he’ll have to face me if he doesn’t start getting his ass in gear. Isn’t that right, Second Dreamer?’
‘Now, Dad,’ she chided.
‘Yeah, yeah.’
‘I think I’m going to skim round the loop. That radiation is strong enough to slice through the Silverbird’s force fields as if they were tissue paper. Can you believe the figures I’m getting.’
‘You’ll be quite safe in hyperspace.’
‘I know, but . . .’
‘Whatever makes you comfortable, angel.’
Justine instructed the smartcore to fly to galactic south of the loop. ‘That’s odd.’ The sensors were picking up an artificial signature over forty lightyears behind her. She focused on the origin, which the smartcore displayed as two amber circles. ‘Uh, Dad, are you getting this?’
Gore took a moment to answer. ‘Yes.’
‘Whatever they are, they’re travelling ftl.’
‘See that.’
‘I didn’t know there was anyone else flying round this part of the galaxy.’ Tabulated data flowed up into her exovision. ‘Christ, they’re massive.’ A wild thought surfaced. ‘Do you think they’re Skylords?’ she asked eagerly.
‘No, darling, I don’t. They’re bigger than that. And that’s an interception course.’
‘Oh.’ Her mood dropped fast. ‘The Raiel. And they’re fast, too. Faster than Silverbird. Just.’ It would be touch and go if she reached the boundary ahead of them. ‘I don’t suppose they’re here to escort me in safely.’
‘I’m calling Qatux right now. He’ll sort this out.’
‘Okay, Dad.’
The external sensor visualization flashed white for a microsecond, as if a lightning bolt had zipped through it. Once it cleared, there was an ominous translucent lavender shell emerging where the Raiel ships were, expanding rapidly. Secondary data streams showed her the anomaly was centred on a mass point the size of Earth’s moon that had been curving in towards the Void on a ten-million-year journey to its death. Had been. It had vanished, converted directly to exotic energy which was now flowing through hyperspace.
‘Oh FUCK,’ Justine yelled. Silverbird strengthened every defensive system it had.
The hyperspace shockwave struck the little ultradrive ship with the force of a wayward dinosaur. Justine screamed as she was flung out of the couch, crashing into the forward bulkhead. Alarms shrieked back at her. A multitude of exovision schematics turned amber and red.
The crowd of anti-invasion protestors down in the park gasped in unison as the Silverbird juddered, then let out a long ‘Ohooo,’ of wonder and relief. Araminta couldn’t help but join in, thankful Justine had survived the third shockwave propag
ated by the pursuing Raiel warships and was now picking herself up off the cabin floor again. It was a sound which was replicated right across Colwyn City and beyond. A long way beyond.
She slipped in through the apartment block’s underground garage entrance. The door was still open a couple of metres, not wide enough to admit a capsule, but sufficient for her to take her trike out. She’d deactivated the mechanism as she left, opening up the little control box and physically disconnecting the wiring. Now she plugged the coloured cables back into their blocks. The door slid shut behind her, and she hurried through the near-deserted concrete cave to the lifts.
‘You okay?’ Gore asked.
‘Bastards!’ Justine replied shakily. ‘What, this isn’t hard enough already?’
Araminta sank back against the cool metal wall of the lift, feeling the way Justine looked. She’d driven round for an hour on the trike before parking it in a public bay at the Tala mall. Now there was nothing to prove she was at the apartment block – it was the best cover she could think of. The walk back to the Bodant district had taken forty minutes, during which the Raiel warships had started blowing up small moons to try and stop Justine. Everyone accessed that. It made her kind of conspicuous; she was just about the only person moving on Colwyn’s streets.
‘You’re doing fine,’ Gore assured his daughter. ‘Just fine.’
Araminta used her old override code to unlock the door to Danal’s apartment. Neither he nor Mareble were in. Presumably they were out partying with the occupying army, she thought resentfully. The bare structure of the place had just been finished when Araminta handed it over. Since then, Mareble had moved in a few basic furnishings. Araminta gave the cooker a critical glare, the big metal thing looked ridiculously primitive. It had taken Mr Bovey a long time to find it for her, and installing it had been a nightmare.