After a moment Baskin said: ‘He was known to me. As of course were all the high-ranking strategists.’
‘Was Struxer involved in the Tactician?’
If Baskin meant to hide his hesitation, he did a poor job of it. ‘To a degree. The Tactician required a large staff, not just to coordinate the feeding-in of intelligence data, but to analyse and act on the results. The battle computers I mentioned...’
‘But Struxer was close to it all, wasn’t he?’ Merlin was guessing now, relying on hard-won intuition, but Baskin’s reactions were all he needed to know he was on the right track. ‘He worked closely with the computer.’
‘His defection was... regrettable.’
‘If you can call it a defection. That would depend on what those brigands actually want, wouldn’t it? And no one’s been terribly clear on that with me.’
Baskin’s face was strained. ‘They’re against peace. Is there anything more you need to know?’
Merlin smiled, content with that line of questioning for now. ‘Prince, might I ask you something else? You know I took an interest in your constitutional history when we were on Havergal. Assassinations are commonplace, aren’t they? There was that time when almost the entire ruling house of Havergal was wiped out in one strike...’
‘That was twelve or thirteen centuries ago.’
‘But only a little after the visitation of the Shrike. That was why it caught my eye.’
‘No other reason?’
‘Should there be?’
‘Don’t play games with me, Merlin – you’ll always lose. I was the boy who dreamed of war, remember.’
The door behind them opened. It was Teal, awake sooner than Merlin had expected. Her face had a freshly scrubbed look, her hair wetted down.
‘Are we close?’
‘About thirty minutes out,’ Merlin said. ‘Buckle in, Teal – it could get interesting from any point onwards, especially if their sensors are a little better than the Prince believes.’
Teal slipped into the vacant seat. Befitting her Cohort training, she had adapted well to the two gees, moving around Tyrant with a confident, sinewy ease.
‘Have you run that genetic scan again?’ she asked.
‘I have,’ Merlin said. ‘And I came up with the same result, only at a higher confidence level. Do you want to tell him, or should I?’
‘Tell me what?’ Baskin asked.
‘There’s a glitch in your family tree,’ Merlin said, then nodded at Teal for her to continue.
‘I’ve already been to your world,’ she said, delivering the words with a defiant and brazen confidence. ‘I was on the diplomatic party, aboard the swallowship Shrike. I was with them when they sold you the syrinx.’ Before he had a chance to voice his disbelief, she said: ‘A little later, our ship ran into trouble in a nearby system. The Huskers took us, wrecked the ship, but left just enough of us alive to suffer. We went into frostwatch, those of us who remained. And one by one we died, when the frostwatch failed. I was the last living survivor. Then Merlin found me, and we returned to your system. You know this to be possible, Prince. You know of frostwatch, of near-light travel, of time-compression.’
‘I suppose...’ he said.
‘But there’s more to it than that,’ Teal went on. ‘My daughter stayed on Havergal. She became Cupis, Queen Cupis, after Tierce was promoted to the throne. You said it yourself, Prince: there was something in my face you thought you recognised. It’s your own lineage, your own family tree.’
‘Except it isn’t, quite,’ Merlin said. ‘You see, you’re not related, and you should be. I ran a genetic cross-match between the two of you on Havergal, and another since you’ve been on Tyrant. Both say there’s no correlation, which is odd given the family tree. But I think there’s a fairly simple explanation.’
Baskin glanced from Merlin to Teal and back to Merlin, his eyes wide, doubting and slightly fearful. ‘Which would be?’
‘You’re not Prince Baskin,’ Merlin said. ‘You just think you are.’
‘Don’t be absurd. My entire life has been lived in the public eye, subject to the harshest scrutiny.’
Merlin did his best not to sound too callous, nor give the impression that he took any pleasure in disclosing what he now knew to be the truth. ‘There’s no doubt, I’m afraid. If you were really of royal blood, I’d know it. The only question is where along your family tree the birth line was broken, and why. And I think I know the answer to that, as well ...’
The console chimed. Merlin turned to it with irritation, but a glance told him that the ship had every reason to demand his attention. A signal was beaming out at them, straight from Mundar.
‘That isn’t possible,’ Baskin said. ‘We’re still three light seconds out – much too far for their sensors.’
Teal said: ‘Perhaps you should see what it says.’
The transmission used local protocols, but it only took an instant for Tyrant to unscramble the packets and resolve them into a video signal. A man’s head appeared above the console, backdropped by a roughly hewn wall of pale rock. Merlin recognised the face as belonging to Struxer, but only because he had paid close attention to the intelligence briefings. Otherwise it would have been easy to miss the similarities. This Struxer was thinner of face, somehow more delicate of bone structure, older and wearier looking, than the cold-eyed defector Merlin had been expecting.
He started speaking in a high steady voice, babbling out a string of words in the Havergal tongue. Tyrant was listening in, but it would be a little while before it could offer a reliable translation.
Merlin turned to Teal.
‘What’s he saying?’
‘I’m just as capable of telling you,’ Baskin said.
Merlin nodded. ‘But I’d sooner hear it from Teal.’
‘He’s got a fix on you,’ she said, frowning slightly as she caught up with the stream of words. ‘Says he’s had a lock since the moment you were silly enough to turn those scanning systems onto Mundar. Says you must have thought they were idiots, to miss something that obvious. Also that we’re not as stealthy as we think we are, judging by the ease with which he’s tracking our engine signature.’
‘You fool,’ Baskin hissed. ‘I told you it was a risk.’
‘He says he knows what our intentions are,’ Teal went on. ‘But no matter how much force you throw at them they’re not going to relinquish the Iron Tactician. He says to turn back now, and avoid unnecessary violence.’
Merlin gritted teeth. ‘Ship, get ready to send a return transmission using the same channel and protocols. Teal, you’re doing the talking. Tell Struxer I’ve no axe to grind with him or his brigands, and if we can do this without bloodshed no one’ll be happier than me. Also that I can take apart that asteroid as easily as if it’s a piece of rotten fruit.’
Baskin gave a thin smile, evidently liking Merlin’s tone.
‘Belligerent enough for you, was it?’ Merlin asked, while Teal leaned in and translated Merlin’s reply.
‘Threats and force are what they understand,’ Baskin said.
It took three seconds for Teal’s statement to reach Mundar, and another three for Struxer’s response to find its way back to Tyrant. They listened to what he had to say, Merlin needing no translator to tell him that Struxer’s answer was a great deal more strident than before.
‘You can forget about them handing it over without a struggle,’ Teal said. ‘And he says that we’d be very wise not to put Mundar’s armaments to the test, now that the Iron Tactician’s coordinating its own defence plans. They’ve got every weapon on that asteroid hooked directly into the Tactician, and they’re prepared to let it protect itself.’
‘They’d still be outgunned,’ Merlin said. But even he couldn’t quite disguise the profound unease he was beginning to feel.
‘It’s a bluff,’ Baskin said. ‘The Tactician has no concept of its own self-preservation.’
‘Can you be sure?’ Teal asked.
‘Tell Struxer
this,’ Merlin said. ‘Surrender the Iron Tactician and I won’t lay a finger on that asteroid. All they have to do is bring it to the surface – my proctors can take care of the rest.’
Teal relayed the statement. Struxer barked back his answer, which was monosyllabic enough to require no translation.
‘He says if we want it, we should try taking it,’ Teal said.
Merlin nodded – he had been expecting as much, but it had seemed worth his while to make one last concession at a negotiated settlement. ‘Ship, give me manual fire control on the torp racks. We’re a little further out than I’d like, but it’ll give me time to issue a warning. I’m taking out those kinetic batteries.’
‘You have control, Merlin,’ Tyrant said.
Baskin asked: ‘Are you sure it isn’t too soon?’
Merlin gave his reply by means of issuing the firing command. Tyrant pushed out its ventral weapons racks and the charm-torps sped away with barely a twitch of recoil. Only a pattern of moving nodes on the targeting display gave any real hint that the weapons had been deployed.
‘Torps armed and running,’ Tyrant said.
‘Teal, tell them they have a strike on its way. They’ve got a few minutes to move their people deeper into the asteroid, if they aren’t already there. My intention is to disable their defences, not to take lives. Make sure Struxer understands that.’
Teal was in the middle of delivering her message when Tyrant jolted violently and without warning. It was a sideways impulse, harsh enough to bruise bones, and for a moment Merlin could only stare at the displays, as shocked as he had been when Teal had slapped him across the face.
Then there was another jolt, in the opposite direction, and he understood.
‘Evasive response in progress,’ Tyrant said. ‘Normal safety thresholds suspended. Manual override available, but not recommended.’
‘What?’ Baskin grimaced.
‘We’re being shot at,’ Merlin said.
Tyrant was taking sharp evasive manoeuvres, corkscrewing hard even as it was still engaged in a breakneck deceleration.
‘Impossible. We’re still too far out.’
‘There’s nothing coming at us from Mundar. It’s something else. Some perimeter defence screen we didn’t even know about.’ He directed a reproachful look at Baskin. ‘I mean, that you didn’t know about.’
‘Single-use kinetics, perhaps,’ Baskin said. ‘Free-floating sentries.’
‘I should be seeing the activation pulses. Electromagnetic and optical burst signatures. I’m not. All I’m seeing are the slugs, just before they hit us.’
They were, as far as Tyrant could tell, simply inert slugs of dense matter, lacking guidance or warheads. They were falling into detection range just in time to compute and execute an evasion, but the margins were awfully fine.
‘There are such things as dark kinetics,’ Baskin said. ‘They’re a prototype weapon system: mirrored and cloaked to conceal the launch pulse. But Struxer’s brigands have nothing in their arsenal like that. Even if they had a local manufacturing capability, they wouldn’t have the skills to make their own versions ...’
‘Would the Tactician know about those weapons?’ Teal asked.
‘In its catalogue of military assets... yes. But there’s a world of difference between knowing of something and being able to direct the duplication and manufacture of that technology.’
‘Tell that to your toy,’ Merlin murmured. He hoped it was his imagination, but the violent counter-manoeuvres seemed to be coming more rapidly, as if Tyrant was having an increasingly difficult time steering between the projectiles. ‘Ship, recall six of the charm-torps. Bring them back as quickly as you can.’
‘What good will that do?’ Baskin snapped. ‘You should be hitting them with everything you’ve got, not pulling your punch at the last minute.’
‘We need the torps to give us an escort screen,’ Merlin said. ‘The other six can still deal with all the batteries on the visible face.’
It had been rash to commit all twelve in one go, he now knew, born of an arrogant assumption as to his own capabilities. But he had realised his mistake in time.
‘Struxer again,’ Teal said. ‘He says it’s only going to get worse, and we should call off the other missiles and give up on our attack. Says if he sees a clear indication of our exhaust, he’ll stand down the defence screen.’
‘Carry on,’ Baskin said.
‘Charm-torps on return profile,’ Tyrant said. ‘Shall I deploy racks for recovery?’
‘No. Group the torps in a protective cordon around us, close enough that you can interdict any slugs that you can’t steer us past. And put in a reminder to me to upgrade our attack countermeasures.’
‘Complying. The remaining six torps are now being reassigned to the six visible targets. Impact in... twenty seconds.’
‘Struxer,’ Merlin said, not feeling that his words needed any translation. ‘Get your people out of those batteries!’
A sudden blue brightness pushed through Tyrant’s windows, just before they shuttered tight in response.
‘Slug interdicted,’ the ship said calmly. ‘One torp depleted from defence cordon. Five remaining.’
‘Spare me the countdown,’ Merlin said. ‘Just get us through this mess and out the other side.’
The six remaining charm-torps of the attack formation closed in on Mundar in the same instant, clawing like a six-taloned fist, gouging six star-hot wounds into the asteroid’s crust, six swelling spheres of heat and destruction that grew and dimmed until they merged at their boundaries. Merlin, studying the readouts, could only swallow in horror and awe, reminded again of the potency of even modest Cohort weaponry. Megatonnes of rock and dust were boiling off the asteroid even as he watched, like a skull bleeding out from six eye-sockets.
Three of the cordon torps were lost before Tyrant began to break free into relatively safe space, but by then Merlin’s luck was stretching perilously thin. The torps could interdict the slugs for almost any range of approach vectors, but not always safely. If the impact happened close enough to Tyrant, that was not much better than a direct hit.
They were through, then, but not without cost. The hull had taken a battering from two of the nearer detonations, and while none of the damage would ordinarily been of concern, Merlin had been counting on having a ship in optimum condition. Limping away to effect repairs was scarcely an option now.
The consolation, if he needed one, was that Mundar had taken a much worse battering.
‘Is Struxer still sending?’ Merlin asked.
‘He’s trying,’ Teal said.
Struxer’s face appeared, but speckled by interference. He looked strained, glancing either side of him as he made his statement. Teal listened carefully.
‘He says they’ve still got weapons, if we dare to come any nearer. His position hasn’t changed.’
‘Mine has,’ Merlin said. ‘Ship, send in the remaining torps, dialled to maximum yield. Strike at the existing impact sites: see if we can’t open some fracture plains, or punch our way deep inside.’ Then he enlarged the asteroid’s schematic and began tapping his finger against some of the secondary installations on the surface – what the intelligence dossiers said were weapons, sensor pods, airlocks. ‘Ready nova-mines for dispersal. Spread pattern three. We’ll pick off any moving targets with the gamma-cannon.’
Teal said: ‘If you hit Struxer’s antenna you’ll take away our means of communicating.’
‘I’m past the point of negotiation, Teal. My ship’s wounded and I take that personally. If you want to send a last message to Struxer, tell him he had his chance to play nicely.’
Baskin leaned forward in his seat restraints. ‘Don’t do anything too rash, Merlin. We came to force his hand, not to annihilate the entire asteroid.’
‘Your primary consideration was stopping the Tactician falling into the wrong hands. I’m about to guarantee that never happens.’
‘I want it intact.’
 
; ‘It was never going to work, Prince. There was never going to be any magic peace, just because you had your battle computer back.’ A sudden indignation passed through him. ‘I know wars. I know how they play out. Squeeze the enemy hard and they just find new ways to fight back. It’ll go on and on and you’ll never be any nearer victory.’
‘We were winning.’
‘One tide was going out. Another was due to come back in. That’s all it was.’
The charm-torps were striking. Set to their highest explosive setting, the bursts were twenty times brighter than the first wave. Each fireball scooped out a tenth of the asteroid’s volume, lofting unthinkable quantities of rock and dirt and gas into space, a ghastly swelling shroud lit from within by pulses of lightning.
Lines of light cut through that shroud. Kinetics and lasers were striking out from what remained of the asteroid’s facing hemisphere, sweeping in arcs as they tried to find Tyrant. The ship swerved and stabbed like a dancing snake. The edge of a laser gashed across part of its hull, triggering a shriek of damage alarms. Merlin dispatched the nova-mines, then swung the nose around to bring the gamma-cannon into play. The flashes of the nova-mines began to pepper the shrouded face of Mundar. The kinetics and lasers were continuing, but their coverage was becoming sparser. Merlin sensed that they had endured the worst of the assault. But the approach had enacted a grave toll on Tyrant. One more direct hit, even with a low-energy weapon, might be enough to split open the hull.
Tyrant had reduced its speed to only a few kilometres per second relative to the asteroid. Now they were beginning to pick up the billowing front of the debris cloud. Tyrant was built to tolerate extremes of pressure, but the hot, gravelly medium was nothing like an atmosphere. Under other circumstances Merlin would have gladly turned around rather than push deeper. But Tyrant would have to cross the kinetic defence screen to reach empty space, and now he had used up all his charm-torps. If the Tactician had indeed been coordinating Mundar’s defences, then Merlin saw only one way to dig himself out of this hole. He could leave nothing intact – even if it meant butchering whoever was left alive in Mundar.