The combat wasps in the attacking swarm began to dispense their submunitions, stretching a dense filigree of white fire across space for tens of thousands of kilometres. Brief, tiny pulses of glowing violet gas spewed out at random as the SD network’s outer sensor satellites detonated. Then the explosions began to multiply as more and more of Arnstadt’s hardware was obliterated. The swarm swept across the first of the planet’s four asteroid settlements circling above geosynchronous orbit, overwhelming its short-range defences. Kinetic spears and nuclear-tipped submunitions pummelled the rock, biting out hundreds of irradiated craters. Vast cataracts of ions and magma flared away into space from each impact, the asteroid’s rotation curving them sharply to wrap itself in a thick psychedelic chromosphere. Second-tier SD platforms and inter-orbit shuttles were caught next. They were followed by another of the asteroids. For a moment it looked as though the pure savagery of the weapons had somehow ignited a fission reaction within the rock’s atomic structure. The lush stipple of explosions melded into a single radiative discharge of stellar intensity. Then the light’s uniformity cracked. At its core the asteroid had shattered, releasing a deluge of molten debris, kicking off a wave of cascade explosions as each fresh target was intercepted by the submunitions.
Pressed deep into his acceleration couch by air molecules heavier than lead, Motela Kolhammer watched the results through a combination of optical sensor datavises and tactical graphic overlays. The two were becoming indistinguishable as reality began to imitate the electronic displays. Distinct shells of light were enveloping the planet as clouds of plasma cooled and expanded. It was low orbit, inevitably, where the largest number of vehicles, stations, and SD hardware was emplaced.
Consequently, when the submunitions tore through them, the resultant blastwaves became a mantle of solid light that sealed the entire planet away from outside observation.
Beneath it, wreckage fell to earth in bewitchingly attractive pyrotechnic storms. Streaks of ionic flame tore through the upper atmosphere, a sleet of malignant shooting stars heating the stratosphere to furnace temperatures. A potent crimson glow rose up from the clouds to greet them.
Illustrious raced 80,000 kilometres over the south pole as the possessed on the ground chanted their spell. First warning came when the planetary gravity field quaked, warping the battleship’s trajectory by several metres. The shroud of light around Arnstadt never faded; it merely changed colour, rippling through the spectrum towards resplendent violet as it contracted. Optical-spectrum sensors had to bring several shield filters on line during the last few minutes as the source shrank towards its vanishing point.
Motela Kolhammer kept one optical sensor aligned on the accusingly empty zone as the battleship’s radar and gravitonic sensors scanned space for any sign of the planet’s mass. Every result came in negative. “Tell our escort to jump to the task force rendezvous coordinate,” he told the tactical staff. “Then plot a course for New California.”
Sarha fell through the open hatchway into the captain’s cabin, ignoring the dark composite ladder and allowing the half-gee acceleration to pull her down neatly onto the decking. She landed, flexing her knees gracefully.
“Ballet really missed out when you chose astroengineering at university,” Joshua said. He was standing in the middle of the room, dressed in his shorts and towelling off a liberal smearing of lemon-scented gel.
She gave him a hoydenish grin. “I know how to exploit low-gee to my advantage.”
“I hope Ashly appreciates it.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Humm. So how are we doing?”
“Official end of duty watch report, sir. We’re doing the same as yesterday.” Her salute lacked efficiency.
“Which was the same as the day before.”
“Damn right. Oh, I tracked down the leak in that reaction mass feed pipe. Somebody slacked off when the tanks were installed in the cargo holds, a junction was misaligned. Beaulieu says she’ll get on it later today. In the meantime I isolated the pipe; we have enough redundancy to keep the flow at optimum.”
“Yeah, right, fascinating.” He balled the towel and chucked it in a low arc across the cabin. It landed dead centre on the hopper’s open throat and slithered down.
She watched it vanish. “I want to keep the fluid volume up. We might wind up needing it.”
“Sure. How were Liol’s jumps?” He already knew, of course; Lady Mac’s log was the first thing he’d checked when he woke up. Liol had completed five jumps on the last watch, each essentially flawless according to the flight computer. That wasn’t quite the point.
“Fine.”
“Humm.”
“All right, what’s the matter? I thought the two of you were getting on okay these days. You can hardly fault his performance.”
“I’m not.” He fished a clean sweatshirt out of a locker. “It’s just that I’m asking a lot of people for advice and opinions these days. Not a good development for a captain. I’m supposed to make perfect snap judgements.”
“If you ask me a question about guiding Lady Mac I’ll be worried. Anything else …” Her hand waved limply, wafting air about. “You and I bounced around in that zero-gee cage enough to start with. I know you don’t connect the same way most people do. So if you want help with that, I’m your girl.”
“What do you mean, don’t connect?”
“Joshua, you were scavenging the Ruin Ring when you were eighteen. That’s not natural. You should have been out partying.”
“I partied.”
“No, you screwed a lot of girls between flights.”
“That’s what eighteen-year-olds do.”
“That’s what eighteen-year-old boys dream of doing. Adamist ones, anyway. Everyone else is busy falling helter skelter into the adult world and desperately trying to find out how the hell it works, and why it’s all so difficult and painful. How you handle friendships, relationships, breakups; that kind of thing.”
“You make it sound like we have to pass some kind of exam.”
“We do, though sitting it lasts for most of your life. You haven’t even started revising yet.”
“Jesus. This is all very profound, especially at this time of the morning. What are you trying to tell me?”
“Nothing. You’re the one that’s troubled. I damn well know it’ll be nothing to do with our mission. So I guess I’m trying to coax you into telling me what’s on your mind, and convince you it’s okay to talk about it. People do that when they’re close. It’s normal.”
“Ballet and psychology, huh?”
“You signed me up for my multi-tasking.”
“All right,” Joshua said. She was right, it was hard for him to talk about this. “It’s Louise.”
“Ah! The Norfolk babe. The very young one.”
“She’s not …” he began automatically. Sarha’s lack of expression stopped him. “Well, she is a bit young. I think I sort of took advantage.”
“Oh wow. I never thought the day would come when I heard you say that. Exactly why is it bothering you this time? You use your status like a stun gun.”
“I do not!”
“Please. When was the last time you went planetside or even into port without your little captain’s star bright on your shoulder?” She gave him a sympathetic smile. “You really fell for her, didn’t you?”
“No more than usual. It’s just that none of my other girlfriends wound up being possessed. Jesus, I had a hint of what that was like. I can’t stop thinking what it must have been like for her, how fucking ugly. She was so sweet, she didn’t belong in a world where those kind of things happen to people.”
“Do any of us?”
“You know what I mean. You’ve done stims you shouldn’t have, you’ve accessed real news sensevises. We know this is a badass universe. It helps, a bit. As much as anything can. But Louise—damn, her brat sister, too. We flew off and left them, just like we always do.”
“They spare c
hildren, you know. That Stephanie Ash woman on Ombey brought a whole bunch of kids out. I accessed the report.”
“Louise wasn’t a child. It happened to her.”
“You don’t know that for certain. If she was smart enough, she might have eluded them.”
“I doubt it. She doesn’t have that sort of ability.”
“She must have had some pretty amazing features to have this effect on you.”
He thought back to the carriage journey to Cricklade after they’d just met, her observations on Norfolk and its nature. He’d agreed with just about everything she’d said. “She wasn’t street-smart. And that’s the kind of dirty selfishness you need to elude the possessed.”
“You really don’t believe she made it, do you?”
“No.”
“Do you think you’re responsible for her?”
“Not responsible, exactly. But I think she was sort of looking at me as the person who was going to take her away from Cricklade Manor.”
“Dear me, whatever could have given her that impression, I wonder?”
Joshua didn’t hear. “I let her down, just by being me. It’s not a nice feeling, Sarha. She really was a lovely girl, even though she’d been brought up on Norfolk. If she’d been born anywhere else, I’d probably …” He fell silent, shifting his sweatshirt round, not meeting Sarha’s astonished stare.
“Say it,” she said.
“Say what?”
“Probably marry her.”
“I would not marry her. All I’m saying is that if she’d been given a proper childhood instead of growing up in that ridiculous medieval pageant there might’ve been a chance that we could have had something slightly longer-term than usual.”
“Well that’s a relief,” Sarha drawled.
“Now what have I done?” he exclaimed.
“You’ve been Joshua. For a moment there I thought you were actually evolving. Didn’t you hear yourself? She hasn’t had the education to become a crew member on Lady Mac, therefore it can’t possibly work between you. There was never a thought that you might give up your life to join her.”
“I can’t!”
“Because Lady Mac is far more important than Cricklade estate, which is her life. Right? So do you love her, Joshua? Or do you just feel guilty because one of the girls you shagged and dumped happened to get captured and possessed?”
“Jesus! What are you trying to do to me?”
“I’m trying to understand you, Joshua. And help if I can. This matters to you. It’s important. You have to know why.”
“I don’t know why. I just know I’m worried about her. Maybe I’m guilty. Maybe I’m angry at the way the universe has crapped all over us.”
“Fair enough. All of us are feeling that way right now. At least we’re doing something about it. You can’t fly Lady Mac to Norfolk and rescue her; not any more. As far as anyone knows, this is the next best thing.”
He gave her a sad grin. “Yeah. I guess that’s me being selfish, too. I have to be doing something. Me.”
“It’s the kind of selfishness the Confederation needs right now.”
“That still doesn’t make it fair what happened to her. She’s suffering through no fault of her own. If this Sleeping God is as powerful as the Tyrathca believe, then it’s got some explaining to do.”
“We’ve been saying that about our deities ever since we dreamt them up. It’s a fallacy to assume it shares our morals and ethics. In fact it’s quite obvious it doesn’t. If it did, none of this would have happened. We’d all be living in paradise.”
“You mean the argument against divine intervention is forever unbreakable?”
“Yep, free will means we have to make our own choices. Without that, life is meaningless; we’d be insects grubbing along the way our instincts tell us. Sentience has to count for something.”
Joshua leant over and placed a grateful kiss on her forehead. “Getting us into trouble, usually. I mean, Jesus, look at me. I’m a wreck. Sentience hurts.”
They went out into the bridge together. Liol and Dahybi were lying on their acceleration couches, looking bored. Samuel was emerging from the hatchway.
“That was a long handover,” Liol remarked waspishly.
“Can’t you manage those yourself?” Joshua asked.
“You might have a Calvert body, but don’t forget which of us has more experience.”
“Not in all the relevant fields, you don’t.”
“I’m off watch,” Dahybi announced loudly. His couch webbing peeled back, allowing him to swing his feet down onto the decking. “Sarha, you coming?”
Joshua and Liol grinned at each other. Joshua made a polite gesture towards the floor hatch, which Liol acknowledged with a gracious bow.
“Thank you, Captain.”
“While you’re in the galley I could do with some breakfast,” Joshua shouted after them. There was no reply. He and Samuel settled down on their acceleration couches. The Edenist was becoming a proficient systems officer, helping the crew with their shifts, as had the other science team specialists travelling on board. Even Monica was chipping in.
Joshua accessed the flight computer. Trajectory graphics and status schematics overlaid the external sensor images. Space had become awesome.
Three light-years ahead, Mastrit-PJ poured a strong crimson light across the dull foam which coated the starship’s fuselage. The Orion nebula veiled half of the starscape to galactic north of Lady Mac, a glorious three-dimensional tapestry of luminescent gas with a furiously turbulent surface composed from scarlet, green, and turquoise clouds clashing as rival oceans, their million-year antagonism throwing out energetic, chaotic spumes in all directions. Inside, it was knotted with proplyds, the glowing protoplanetary disks condensing out of the maelstrom. At the heart lay the Trapezium, the four hottest, massive stars, whose phenomenal ultraviolet output illuminated and energized the whole colossal expanse of interstellar gas.
Joshua had come to adore the infinitely varied topology of the nebula as they’d slowly flown out of Confederation space to soar around it. It was alive in a way no physical biology could match, its currents and molecular shoals a trillion times as complex as anything found in a hydrocarbon-based cell. The young, frantic stars which cluttered the interior were venting tremendous storms of ultra-hot gas, propagating shockwaves that travelled over a hundred and fifty thousand kilometres an hour. They would take the form of loops which curled and twisted sinuously, their frayed ends shimmering brightly as they fanned away the wild energy surging along their length.
For the crews in both Lady Mac and Oenone, watching the nebula had replaced all forms of recorded entertainment. Its majesty had lightened their mood considerably; theirs was now a true flight into history, no matter what the outcome.
Joshua and Syrinx had decided on flying around the galactic south of the nebula, an approximation of Tanjuntic-RI’s flightpath. During the first stages they’d utilized observations from Confederation observatories to navigate around the quirky folds of cloud and glimmering prominences visible from human space, even though the images were over 1,500 years out of date. But after the first few days they were traversing space never glimpsed by human telescopes. Their speed slowed as they had to start scanning ahead for stars and dust clouds and parsec-wide cyclones of iridescent gas.
Long before Mastrit-PJ itself was visible, its light coloured the cooler outer strands of the nebula. The ships flew onwards with its thick red glow deepening around them. As soon as the star rose into full view 700 light-years ahead, parallax measurements enabled Oenone to calculate its position, enabling them to plot an accurate trajectory straight for it.
Now Joshua was piloting Lady Mac to her penultimate jump coordinate.
Radar showed him Oenone 1,000 kilometres away, matching their half-gee acceleration. The burn was stronger than Adamist ships usually employed, but they hadn’t been altering their delta-V much during the flight round the nebula, choosing to wait until they got a fix on Mastr
it-PJ before matching velocity with the red giant.
“Burn rate is holding constant,” Samuel said, after they’d run their diagnostic programs. “You have some quality drive tubes here, Joshua. We should have just under sixty per cent of our fusion fuel left when we jump in.”
“Good enough for me. Let’s hope we don’t soak up too much delta-V searching for the redoubt. I want to hold all the antimatter in reserve for the Sleeping God.”
“You are positive about the outcome, then?”
Joshua thought about the answer for a moment, mildly surprised by his own confidence. It was a pleasant contrast to the disquiet he felt over Louise. Intuition, a tonic against conscience. “Yeah. Guess I am. That part of it, anyway.”
The orange vector plot which the flight computer was datavising into his neural nanonics showed him the jump coordinate was approaching. He started reducing their acceleration, datavising a warning to the crew.
Samuel began retracting the sensor booms and thermo-dump panels.
Lady Mac jumped first, covering two and a half light years. Oenone shot out of its wormhole terminus six seconds later, a healthy hundred and fifty kilometres away. Mastrit-PJ wasn’t quite a disk, though its brilliant glare would make it hard for the naked eye to tell. From a mere half light-year distance its red light was sufficient to wash out the nebula and most of the stars.
“I’ve been hit by lasers with less power,” Joshua muttered as the sensor filters cut in to deflect the rush of photons.
“It’s only recently ended its expansion phase,” Samuel said. “In astrological terms, this has only just happened.”
“Stellar explosions are fast events. This happened fifteen thousand years ago, at least.”
“Once the initial expansion occurs, there is a long period of adjustment within the photosphere as it stabilises. Either way, the overall energy output is most impressive. As far as this side of the galaxy is concerned, it outshines the nebula.”
Joshua checked the neuroiconic displays. “No heat, and precious little radiation. Particle density is up on the norm, but then it’s been fluctuating the whole time we’ve chased round the nebula.” He datavised the flight computer to establish a communication link with Oenone. “How are we doing with the final coordinate?”