“I could,” Roberto said. “I’d enjoy it.” His eyes were lingering on Louise again.
“Don’t be silly, darling,” Aunt Celina said. “You have school today.”
“Fletcher Christian could chaperone us,” Louise said quickly. “He’s more than proved his worth. We’d be completely safe.”
From the corner of her eye she could see Roberto frowning.
“Well—”
“Please!” Genevieve wheedled. “I want to buy you some flowers, you’ve been so kind.”
Aunt Celina clasped her hands together. “Oh, you are a little treasure, aren’t you. I always wanted a little gal of my own,
you know. Of course you can go.”
Louise blew her cheeks out in thanks. She could just imagine what would have happened if they’d tried pulling that routine
on Mother. Genevieve had gone back to her eggs, her face a perfect composure of purity.
At the other end of the table, Roberto was chewing thoughtfully on his third slice of toast.
• • •
The sisters found Fletcher Christian in the servants’ quarters. With so many of Balfern House’s staff called away to their
militia regiments he had been put to work by the cook bringing sacks up from the storerooms.
He gave both girls a measured look as he lowered a big string bag of carrots onto the kitchen floor and bowed gracefully.
“How splendid you look, my young ladies, so refined. I always imagined you more suited to finery such as this.” Louise gave
him a
very
sharp stare. And then they were grinning at each other.
“Aunt Celina has lent us the use of a carriage,” she said in her grandest tone. “And she’s also given you leave to accompany
us, my man. Of course, should you prefer to remain here doing what you seem to do so well…”
“Ah, my lady Louise, I see you are a cruel one. But justly do I deserve such mockery. It would be my honour to accompany you.”
He picked up his jacket under the disapproving gaze of the cook, and followed Louise out of the kitchen. Genevieve picked
up her skirt hems and ran on ahead of them through the house.
“The little one seems none the worse for all she has been through,” Fletcher observed.
“Yes, thank the Lord. Was it truly awful for you last night?” Louise asked once they were out of earshot of the other servants.
“The room was dry and warm. I’ve made my bunk in sorrier circumstances.”
“I apologize for bringing you here, I’d forgotten quite how bad Aunt Celina was. But I couldn’t think of anyone else who could
extract us from the aerodrome as quickly.”
“Pay it no further heed, my lady. Your aunt is a model of enlightenment compared to some of the matrons I knew in my own youth.”
“Fletcher.” She put her hand on his arm and slowed their pace. “Are they here?”
His sturdy features turned melancholy. “Yes, my lady Louise. I can feel several dozen encamped throughout the city. And their
numbers grow with every passing hour. It will take many days, perhaps a week. But Norwich will surely fall.”
“Oh, dear Jesus, when will this ever end?”
She was aware of his arm around her as she trembled. Hating herself for being weak. Oh, where are you, Joshua? I
need
you.
“Speak not of evil, and it will pay you no heed,” Fletcher said softly.
“Really?” “So my mother assured me.”
“Was she right?”
His fingers touched her chin, tilting her face up. “That was a long time ago, and far away. But today I think if we avoid
their attentions, then you will remain out of harm’s way for longer.”
“Very well. I’ve been giving this some serious thought, you know; how to keep Genevieve and the baby truly safe. And there’s
only one way to do it.”
“Yes, my lady?”
“Leave Norfolk.”
“I see.”
“It’s not going to be easy. Will you help me?”
“You do not have to ask that of me, lady, you know I will offer you and the little one what aid I can.”
“Thank you, Fletcher. The other thing was: Do you want to come with us? I’m going to try and reach Tranquillity. I know someone
there who can help us.” If anyone can, she added silently.
“Tranquillity?”
“Yes, it’s a sort of palace in space, orbiting a star a long way away from here.”
“Ah, lady, what a temptress you are. To sail the stars I once sailed by. How could I resist such a request?”
“Good,” she whispered.
“I imply no criticism, Lady Louise. But do you really know how to prepare for such an endeavour?”
“I think so. There was one thing I learned from both Daddy and Joshua, Carmitha, too, in a way; and that is: Money makes everything
possible.”
Fletcher smiled respectfully. “A worthy saying. And do you have this money?”
“Not on me, no. But I’m a Kavanagh, I can get it.”
Ione Saldana’s palatial cliff-base apartment was empty now, apart from herself; the guests from the Tranquillity Banking Regulatory
Council had been ushered out politely but insistently. The convivial party most definitely over. And they had known better
than to argue. Unfortunately, they were also astute enough to know they wouldn’t be turned out unless it was a real crisis.
Word would already be spreading down the length of the giant habitat.
She had reduced the output of the ceiling’s electrophorescent cells to a sombre starlight glimmer. It allowed her to see out
through the glass wall which held back the sea, revealing a silent world composed entirely from shades of aquamarine. And
now even that was darkening as the habitat’s light tube allowed night to claim the interior. Fish were reduced to stealthy
shadows slithering among the prickly coral branches.
When Ione was younger she had spent hours staring out at the antics of the fish and sand-crawling creatures. Now she sat cross-legged
on the apricot moss carpet before her private theatre of life, Augustine nesting contentedly in her lap. She stroked the little
xenoc’s velvety fur absently, eyes closed to the world.
We can still send a squadron of patrol blackhawks after Mzu,
Tranquillity suggested.
I am aware of the
Udat’s
worm-hole terminus coordinate.
So are the other blackhawks,
she replied.
But it’s their crews I worry about. Once they’re away from our SD platforms, there really is nothing we can do to enforce
their loyalty. Mzu would try to make a deal with them. She’d probably succeed, too. She’s proved astonishingly resourceful
so far. Fancy even lulling us into complacency.
I was not complacent,
the habitat personality said irksomely.
I was caught off guard by the method. Which in itself I find disturbing. It implies a great deal of thought went into her
escape. One wonders what her next move will be.
I’ve got a pretty good idea, unfortunately. She’ll go for the Alchemist. There’s no other reason for her to behave like this.
And after she’s got it: Omuta.
Indeed.
So no, we don’t send the blackhawks after her. She may lead them to the Alchemist. That would give us an even worse situation
than the one we’ve got now.
In that case, what do you want to do about the intelligence agency teams?
I’m not sure. How are they reacting?
• • •
Lady Tessa, the head of the ESA’s Tranquillity station, had been badly frightened by the news of Alkad Mzu’s escape, a fact
which she managed to conceal behind a show of pure fury. Monica Foulkes stood in front of her in the starscraper apartment
which doubled as the ESA team’s headquarters. She had reported to Lady Tessa in person rather than use the habitat’s communications
net. Not that Tranquillity was unaware (hardly!), but there were a great number of organizations and governments who knew
nothing of Mzu’s existence, nor the implications arising from it.
It was twenty-three minutes since the physicist’s escape, and a form of delayed shock had begun to infiltrate Monica’s body
as her subconscious acknowledged just how lucky she’d been to avoid vanishing down the
Udat
’
s
wormhole. Her neural nanonics were helpless to prevent the cold shivers which spiralled their way around her limbs and belly
muscles.
“I won’t even dignify your performance by calling it a disaster,” Lady Tessa stormed. “Great God Almighty, the principal reason
we’re here is to make sure she remained confined to the habitat. Every agency endorses that policy, even the bloody Lord of
Ruin supports it. And you let her stroll out right in front of you. I mean, Jesus Christ, what the hell were you all doing
on that beach? She stops to put on a spacesuit, and you didn’t even move in closer to investigate.”
“It was not exactly a
stroll
, Chief. And I’d like to point out for the record that we are just an observation team. Our operation in Tranquillity has
always been too small to guarantee Mzu remains inside should she make a determined effort to leave, or if someone uses force
to extract her. If the agency wanted to be certain, it should have allocated a bigger team to monitor her.”
“Don’t datavise the rule flek at me, Foulkes. You’re boosted, you’ve got weapons implants”—she flinched, and glanced up at
the ceiling as though expecting divine censure—“and Mzu is in her sixties. There is no way she should have ever got near that
bloody blackhawk, let alone have it snatch her away.”
“The blackhawk tipped the physical balance heavily in her favour. It simply wasn’t a contingency we allowed for. Tranquillity
had two serjeants eliminated during our attempt to stop her boarding. Personally, I’m surprised the starship was allowed to
swallow inside at all.” Now Monica glanced guiltily around the naked polyp walls.
Lady Tessa’s baleful expression didn’t alter, but she did pause. “I doubt there was much it could do. As you say, that swallow
manoeuvre was completely unprecedented.”
“Samuel claimed that not many voidhawks could be that precise.”
“Thank you. I’ll be sure to include that most helpful unit of data in my report.” She got up out of the chair and walked over
to the oval window. The apartment was two thirds of the way down the StEtalia starscraper, where gravity was approaching Earth
standard. It was a location which gave her a unimpeded view across the bottom of the vast curving burnt-biscuit-coloured habitat
shell, with just a crescent of the counter-rotating spaceport showing beyond the rim as if it were a metallic moon rising.
Today, as for the last four days, there were few starships arriving or departing from its docking bays. Big SD platforms glinted
reassuringly against the backdrop of Mirchusko’s darkside as they caught the last of the sunlight before Tranquillity sailed
into the penumbra.
And what use would they be against the Alchemist? Lady Tessa wondered sagely. A doomsday device that’s supposed to be able
to kill stars…
“What’s our next move?” Monica asked. She was rubbing her arms for warmth in an attempt to stop the shaking. Grains of sand
were still falling out of her sweater’s sleeves.
“Informing the Kingdom is our primary responsibility now,” Lady Tessa said in a challenging tone. There was no reaction from
the AV pillar sticking up out of her desktop processor block. “But it’s going to take time for them to respond and start searching.
And Mzu will know that. Which means she’s got two options, either she takes the
Udat
straight to the Alchemist, or she loses herself out there.” She tapped a gold-chromed fingernail on the window as the myriad
stars drifted past in slow arcs.
“If she was smart enough to get away from all the agency teams tagging her, she’ll know that she’ll never stay lost, not forever,”
Monica said. “Too many of us are going to be looking now.”
“And yet the
Udat
doesn’t have any special equipment rigged. I checked the CAB registry, it hasn’t had any refitting for eight months. Sure,
it has got standard interfaces for combat wasp cradles and heavy-duty close defence weapons. Almost every blackhawk has. But
there was nothing unusual.”
“So?”
“So if she does take
Udat
straight to the Alchemist, how will they fire it at Omuta’s sun?”
“Do we know what equipment is necessary to fire it?”
“No,” Lady Tessa admitted. “We don’t even know if it does need anything special. But it was different, new, and unique; that
means it’s non-standard. Which may give us our one chance to neutralize this situation. If there is any hardware requirement
involved, she’s going to have to break cover and approach a defence contractor.”
“She might not have to,” Monica said. “She’ll have friends, sympathisers; certainly in the Dorados. She can go to them.”
“I hope she does. The agency has kept the Garissa survivors under surveillance for decades, just in case any of them try to
pull any stupid revenge stunts.” She turned from the window. “I’m sending you there to brief their head of station. It’s a
reasonable assumption she’ll turn up there eventually, and it may help having someone familiar with her on the ground.”
Monica nodded in defeat. “Yes, Chief.”
“Don’t look so tragic. I’m the one who’s going to have to report back to Kulu and tell the director we lost her. You’re getting
off lightly.”
• • •
The meeting in the Confederation Navy Bureau on the forty-fifth floor of the StMichelle starscraper was synchronous with that
of the ESA in both time and content. In the bureau it was an aghast Commander Olsen Neale who accessed the sensevise memory
of Mzu’s abrupt exit from the habitat as recorded by a thoroughly despondent Pauline Webb.
When the file ended he asked a few supplemental questions and came to the same conclusions as Lady Tessa. “We can assume she
has access to the kind of money necessary to buy whatever systems she needs to use the Alchemist, and install them in a combat-capable
ship,” he said. “But I don’t think it’ll be the
Udat;
that’s too high profile now. Every navy ship and government is going to be hunting it inside a week.”
“Do you think the Alchemist really does exist then, sir?” Pauline asked.