“Captain Kouritz, you and your squad to the airlock, please,” Syrinx said when they began to slow for rendezvous. “Be advised,
the blackhawk’s cabin space is approximately four hundred cubic metres.”
Vermuden
hung in space three hundred kilometres away, a dusky crescent, slightly ginger in colour. She could feel Chi locking the
proximity defence lasers onto the black-hawk, a mix of electronic and bitek senses providing the focus.
“I’ll go with them,” Eileen Carouch said. She tapped her restraint-strap release catch.
“Make sure the
Vermuden
’s captain is brought straight back here,” Syrinx said. “I’ll send one of my people with you to fly
Vermuden
back to Fleet headquarters.” Without its captain, the blackhawk would have to obey an Edenist.
Oenone
flipped over as it approached
Vermuden
, inverting itself so that it seemed to be descending vertically towards the blackhawk’s upper hull. An airlock tube extended
out from the crew toroid. The marine squad waited in the chamber behind it, fully armoured, weapons powered up. Gravity throughout
the toroid had returned to a welcome Earth standard.
Syrinx ordered the
Vermuden
’s captain to extend the blackhawk’s airlock.
The
Dymasio
exploded.
Its captain, faced with the total certainty of a personality debrief followed by a Confederation Navy firing squad, decided
his crew and ship were a worthwhile price to pay for taking
Graeae
with him. He waited until the voidhawk was a scant kilometre away, beginning its docking manoeuvres, then turned off the
antimatter-confinement chambers.
Five hundred grams of antimatter rushed to embrace an equal mass of ordinary matter.
From
Oenone
’s position, two thousand kilometres away, the elemental energy wavefront split the universe in two. On one side the stars
burnt with their usual untroubled tranquillity; opposite that infinity vanished, replaced by a solid flat plane of raging
photons. Syrinx felt the light searing into
Oenone
, scorching optical-receptor cells into crisps. Affinity acted like a conductor for purple-white light, allowing it to shine
straight into her own mind, a torrent of photons that threatened to engulf her sanity. In amongst the glare were fissures
of darkness, fluttering around like tiny birds caught by a gale. They called out to her as they passed, mental cries, sometimes
words, sometimes visions of people and places, sometimes smells—phantasm tastes, a touch, the laughter, music, heat, chill,
wetness. Minds transferring into
Oenone
’s neural cells. But broken, incomplete. Flawed.
Thetis!
Syrinx cried.
She couldn’t find him, not amid such turmoil. And the light had become a pervasive pain. She howled in anguish and hatred.
Vermuden
’s distortion field distended, strengthened, applying stress against the perpetual structure of reality. An interstice yawned
wide.
Chi fired the gamma lasers. But the beams raked emptiness. The interstice was already closing.
Less than two seconds after the
Dymasio
exploded, a blast wave of particles arrived to assault
Oenone
’s hull, supplementing the corrosive electromagnetic radiation already striking against the foam. The voidhawk looked past
the immediate chaos, observing
Vermuden
’s wormhole forming, a tunnel through empty dimensions. Size and determinant length defined by the blackhawk’s energy input.
Oenone
knew the terminus coordinate exactly, twenty-one light-years away, the blackhawk’s utter limit.
This time!
Oenone
thought tempestuously. Energy blazed through its own patterning cells.
No!
Syrinx shouted, shocked out of her grief.
There is a way, I know how. Trust me.
She waited helplessly as the interstice engulfed them, some treacherous aspect of her subconscious granting the voidhawk permission,
urging them on towards retribution. Worry faded when she saw the wormhole was only thirteen light-years long. As its terminus
began to open, she felt the patterning cells activate again. Realization was instantaneous, and she laughed with vengeful
fury.
Told you so,
Oenone
said smugly.
The desperate twenty-one light-year swallow had stretched
Vermuden
’s energy loading capacity virtually to breaking point. It could sense its captain prone on his acceleration couch, muscles
locked solid, back arched, the exertion twinned. The wormhole’s pseudofabric slithered round the hull, not a physical pressure,
but tangible none the less. Finally, up ahead, the terminus manifested. Starlight traced strange shapes as it filtered through.
Vermuden
popped out into the clean vacuum of normal space, mind radiating vivid relief.
Well done,
its captain said.
Vermuden
felt arm and chest muscles slacken, an indrawn breath.
Powerful laserlight illuminated its hull, washing out its optical receptor cells in a pink dazzle. A lens-shaped mass a hundred
and fifteen metres in diameter hung eighty metres off its central spire in the direction of Betelgeuse’s demonic red gleam.
“What the fuck… How?” the captain yelped.
This is just the targeting laser,
Oenone
said.
If I sense any flux change in your patterning cells I’ll switch to the gamma lasers and slice you in half. Now extend your
airlock. I have some people on board keen to meet you.
“I didn’t know voidhawks could do that,” Eileen Carouch said a couple of hours later.
Vermuden
’s captain, Henry Siclari, and the blackhawk’s other two crewmen, were in
Oenone
’s brig; and the navy prize crew, headed by Cacus, were familiarizing themselves with the blackhawk’s systems. Cacus reckoned
they would be able to take the ship back to Oshanko in a day. “Sequential swallows?” Syrinx said. “Nothing to stop them, you
just need a voidhawk with an acute spacial sense.”
Like you.
I love you,
Oenone
replied, unabashed by the alternate praise and admonitions the Edenists had been bombarding it with since the manoeuvre.
Got an answer to everything, haven’t you?
she said. But the humour wasn’t there.
Thetis. His broad, smiling face covered in boyish freck-les, the uncombed sandy hair, the lanky, slightly awkward body. All
the hours together spent roving around Romulus.
He was a part of her identity in the same way as
Oenone
. Soulsibling, so much had been shared. And now he was gone. Torn away from her, torn out of her, the voyages together, frustrations
and achievements.
I mourn for him too,
Oenone
whispered into her mind, its thoughts drenched with regret.
Thank you. And
Graeae
’s eggs have been lost as well. What a terrible, filthy thing to do. I hate Adamists.
No, That is beneath us. See, Eileen and the marines share our loss. It is not Adamists. Only individuals. Always individuals.
Even Edenists have our failures, do we not?
Yes. We do,
she said, because it was true enough. But there was still that fraction of her mind which remained vacant, the vanished smile.
Athene knew something was shockingly wrong as soon as
Oenone
emerged above Saturn. She was in the garden lounge, feeding two-month-old Clymene from a bitek mammary orb when the cold
premonition closed about her. It made her clutch at her second great-great-grandchild for fear of the future and what it held.
The infant wailed in protest at the loss of the nipple and the tightness of her grip. She hurriedly handed Clymene back to
her great-grandson, who tried to calm the baby girl with mental coos of reassurance. Then Syrinx’s alarmingly dulled mind
touched Athene, and the awful knowledge was revealed in full.
Is there nothing of him left?
she asked softly.
Some,
Syrinx said.
But so little, I’m sorry, Mother.
A single thought would be enough for me.
As
Oenone
neared Romulus it gave up the thought fragments it had stored to the habitat personality. A precious intangible residue of
life, the sole legacy of Thetis and his crew.
Athene’s past friends, lovers, and husbands emerged from the multiplicity of Romulus’s personality to offer support and encouragement,
cushioning the blow as best they could.
We will do what we can,
they assured her. She could feel the tremulous remnants of her son being slowly woven into a more cohesive whole, and drew
a brief measure of comfort from that.
Although no stranger to death, Athene found this bereavement particularly difficult. Always at the back of her mind was the
belief that the voidhawks and their captains were somehow immortal, or at least immune to such wasteful calamity. A foolish,
almost childish belief, because they were the children she prized the most. Her last link with
Ia-sius
, their offspring.
Half an hour later, dressed in a plain jet-black ship-tunic, Athene stood in the spaceport reception lounge, a proud, solitary
figure, the lines on her face betraying every one of her hundred and thirty-five years as they never had before. She looked
out over the ledge as
Oenone
and its anxious escort of two voidhawks from the Saturn defence squadron crept out of the darkness.
Oenone
sank onto a vacant pedestal with a very human mindsigh of relief. Feed tubes in the pedestal stirred like blind stumpy tentacles,
searching for the female orifices on the voidhawk’s underside; various sphincter muscles expanded and gripped, producing tight
seals.
Oenone
gulped down the nutrient fluid which Romulus synthesized, filling its internal bladders, quenching the thirst which leached
vitality from every cell. They hadn’t stayed at Oshanko any longer than it took to hand Henry Siclari and his crew over to
the Fleet port authorities, and allow Edenist bonding-adjustment specialists to assume command of
Vermuden
. After that Syrinx had insisted on coming direct to Saturn.
Athene looked out at the big voidhawk with real concern rising.
Oenone
was in a sorry state: hull foam scorched and flaking, toroid thermo-dump panels melted, electronic sensor systems reduced
to rivulets of congealed slag, the sensor blisters that had faced the
Dymasio
roasted, their cells dead.
I’m all right,
Oenone
told her.
It’s mostly the mechanical systems that were damaged. And the biotechnicians can graft new sensor blisters into me. I’m never
going to complain about being covered in foam again,
it added humbly.When Syrinx came through the airlock her cheeks had become almost hollow, her hair was hanging limp over
her skull, and she walked as though she had been condemned. Athene felt the tears come at last, and put her arms round her
woebegone daughter, soothing the drained thoughts with an empathic compassion, the maternal balm.
It’s not your fault.
If I hadn’t…
Don’t,
Athene ordered sternly.
You owe Thetis and
Graeae
this much, not to sink into pointless remorse. You’re stronger than that, much stronger.
Yes, Mother.
He did what he wanted to. He did what was right. Tell me how many millions of lives would have been lost if that antimatter
had been used against a naked planetary surface?
A lot,
Syrinx said numbly.
And he saved them. My son. Because of him, they will live, and have children, and laugh.
But it hurts!
That’s because we’re human, more so than Adamists can ever be. Our empathy means we can never hide from what we feel, and
that’s good. But you must always walk the balance, Syrinx; the balance is the penalty of being human: the danger of allowing
yourself to feel. For this we walk a narrow path high above rocky ground. On one side we have the descent into animalism,
on the other a godhead delusion. Both pulling at us, both tempting. But without these forces tugging at your psyche, stirring
it into conflict, you can never love. They awaken us, you see, these warring sides, they arouse our passion. So learn from
this wretched episode, learn to be proud of Thetis and what he accomplished, use it to counter the grief. It is hard, I know;
for captains more than anyone. We are the ones who truly open our souls to another entity, we feel the deepest, and suffer
the most. And knowing that, knowing what you would endure in life, I still chose to bring you into existence, because there
is so much joy to be had from the living.
* * *
The circular house snug in arms of its gentle valley hadn’t changed, still a frantic noisy vortex of excited children, slightly
weary adults, and harassed bitek housechimps. Syrinx might never have been away. With eighteen children, and, so far, forty-two
grandchildren, eleven great-grandchildren, and the two newest fourth-generation additions, Athene headed a family that never
gave her a moment’s rest. Ninety per cent of the adults were involved with spaceflight in one field or another, which meant
long absences were the norm. But when they came back, it was the house and Athene they always visited first, staying or passing
through as the fancy took them.
“Athene’s boarding-house, bordello, and playpen,” the old ex-captain had called it on more than one occasion.
The younger children were delighted to see Syrinx, whooping as they gathered round her, demanding kisses and stories of the
planets she’d visited, while the adults offered subdued condolences. Being with them, knowing and feeling the heartache being
shared, lifted the load. Slightly.