“I’ve got distortion fields focusing on us,” Dahybi said drolly. “Five of them, I think.”
The flight computer alerted Joshua that targeting radars were locking on to the hull. When he accessed the sensors rising
out of their recesses, he found three voidhawks and two frigates on interception courses. Trafalgar’s strategic defence command
was directing a barrage of questions at him. He glanced over at the Edenist as he started to datavise a response. Samuel was
lying prone on his acceleration couch, eyes closed as he conversed with other Edenists in the asteroid.
Sarha grinned round phlegmatically. “How many medals do you think they’ll give us apiece?”
“Uh oh,” Liol grunted. “However many it is, we might be getting them posthumously. I think one of the frigates has just realised
our antimatter drive is ever so slightly highly radioactive.”
“Great,” she grumbled.
Monica Foulkes didn’t like the sound of that; as far as the Confederation Navy was aware, it was only Organization ships who
were using antimatter. She hadn’t wanted to take Mzu back to Tranquillity, and she certainly hadn’t wanted to wind up at Trafalgar.
But in the discussion which followed their discovery of Tranquillity’s disappearance, she didn’t exactly have the casting
vote. The original agreement between herself and Samuel had just about disintegrated when they rendezvoused with the
Beezling
.
Then Calvert had insisted on the First Admiral being the final arbitrator of what was to be done with Mzu, Adul, and himself.
Samuel had agreed. And she couldn’t produce any rational argument against it. Silently, she acknowledged that maybe the only
true defence against more Alchemists being built was a unified embargo covenant between the major powers. After all, such
an agreement almost worked for antimatter.
Not that such angst counted for much right now. Like ninety per cent of her mission to date, the critical deciding factor
was outside her control. All she could do was stick close to Mzu, and make sure the prime requirement of technology transfer
wasn’t violated. Though by allowing it to be deployed against the Organization, she’d probably screwed that up too. Her debrief
was shaping up to be a bitch.
Monica frowned over at Samuel, who was still silent, his brow creased up in concentration. She added a little prayer of her
own to all the unheard babble of communication whirling around
Lady Mac
for the Navy to exercise some enlightenment and tolerance.
Trafalgar’s strategic defence command told Joshua to hold his altitude, but refused to grant any approach vector until his
status was established. The Navy’s emergence zone patrol ships approached to within a cautious hundred kilometres, and took
up a three-dimensional diamond observation formation. Targeting radars remained locked on.
Admiral Lalwani herself talked to Samuel, unable to restrain her incredulity as he explained what had happened. Given that
the
Lady Macbeth
contained not only Mzu and others who understood the Alchemist’s principals, but a quantity of antimatter as well, the final
decision on allowing the ship to dock belonged to the First Admiral himself. It took twenty minutes to arrive, but Joshua
eventually received a flight vector from strategic defence command. They were allocated a docking bay in the asteroid’s northern
spaceport.
“And Joshua,” Samuel said earnestly. “Don’t deviate from it. Please.”
Joshua winked, knowing it was being seen by the hundreds of Edenists who were borrowing the agent’s eyes to monitor
Lady Mac
’s bridge. “What, Lagrange Calvert, fly off line?”
The flight to Trafalgar took eighty minutes. The number of antimatter technology specialists waiting for them in the docking
bay was almost as great as the number of marines. On top of that were a large complement of uniformed CNIS officers.
They weren’t stormed, exactly. No personal weapons were actually taken out of their holsters. Though once the airlock tube
was sealed and pressurized,
Lady Mac
’s crew had little to do except hand over the powerdown codes to a Navy maintenance team. Zero-tau pods were opened, and the
various bewildered occupants Joshua had accumulated during his pursuit of the Alchemist were ushered off the ship. After a
very
thorough body scan, the polite, steelfaced CNIS officers escorted everyone to a secure barracks deep inside the asteroid.
Joshua wound up in a suite that would have done a four-star hotel credit. Ashly and Liol were sharing it with him.
“Well now,” Liol said as the door closed behind them. “Guilty of carrying antimatter, flung in prison by secret police who’ve
never heard of civil rights, and after we’re dead, Al Capone is going to invite us to have a quiet word.” He opened the cherrywood
cocktail bar and smiled at the impressive selection of bottles inside. “It can’t get any worse.”
“You forgot Tranquillity being vanquished,” Ashly chided. Liol waved a bottle in apology.
Joshua slumped down into a soft black leather chair in the middle of the lounge. “It might not get worse for you. Just remember,
I know what the Alchemist does, and how. They can’t afford to let me go.”
“You might know what it does,” Ashly said. “But with respect, Captain, I don’t think you would be much help to anyone seeking
the technical details necessary to construct another.”
“One hint is all it takes,” Joshua muttered. “One careless comment that’ll point researchers in the right direction.”
“Stop worrying, Josh. The Confederation passed that point a long time ago. Besides, the Navy owes us big-time, and the Edenists,
and the Kulu Kingdom. We pulled their arses out of the fire. You’ll fly
Lady Mac
again.”
“Know what I’d do if I was the First Admiral? Put me into a zero-tau pod for the rest of time.”
“I won’t let them do that to my little brother.”
Joshua put his hands behind his head, and smiled up at Liol. “The second thing I’d do, would be to put you in the pod next
to mine.”
______
Planets sparkled in the twilight sky. Jay could see at least fifteen of them strung out along a curving line. The nearest
one appeared a bit smaller than Earth’s moon. She thought that was just because it was a long way off. In every other respect
it was similar to any of the Confederation’s terra-compatible planets, with deep blue oceans and emerald continents, the whole
globe wrapped in thick tatters of white cloud. The only difference was the lights; cities larger than some of Earth’s old
nations gleamed with magisterial splendour. Entire weather patterns of cloud smeared across the nightside diffused the urban
radiance, soaking the oceans in a perpetual pearl gloaming.
Jay sat back on her heels, staring up delightedly at the magical sky. A high wall ringed the area she was in. She guessed
that the line of planets extended beyond those she could see, but the wall blocked her view of the horizon. A star with a
necklace of inhabited planets! Thousands would be needed to make up such a circle. None of Jay’s didactic memories about solar
systems mentioned one with so many planets, not even if you counted gas-giant moons.
Friend Jay. Safe. Gleefulness at survival.
Jay blinked, and lowered her gaze. Haile was trying to run towards her. As always when the baby Kiint got overexcited her
legs lost most of their coordination. She came very close to tripping with every other step. The sight of her lolloping about
chaotically made Jay smile. It faded as she began to take in the scene behind her friend.
She was in some kind of circular arena two hundred metres across, with an ebony marble-like floor. The wall surrounding it
was thirty metres high, sealed with a transparent dome. There were horizontal gashes at regular intervals along the vertical
surface, windows into brightly lit rooms that seemed to be furnished with large cubes of primary colours. Adult Kiint were
moving round inside, although an awful lot of them had stopped what they were doing to look directly at her.
Haile thundered up; half-formed tractamorphic tentacles waving round excitedly. Jay grabbed on to a couple of them, feeling
them palpitate wildly inside her fingers.
“Haile! Was that you who did this?”
Two adult Kiint were walking across the arena floor towards her. Jay recognized them as Nang and Lieria. Beyond them, a black
star erupted out of thin air. In less than a heartbeat it had expanded to a sphere fifteen metres in diameter, its lower quarter
merging with the floor. The surface immediately dissolved to reveal another adult Kiint. Jay stared at the process in fascination.
A ZTT jump, but without a starship. She focused hard on her primer-level didactic memory of the Kiint.
I did,
Haile confessed. Her tractamorphic flesh writhed in agitation, so Jay just squeezed tighter, offering reassurance.
Only us were designated to evacuate the all around at lifeloss moment. I included you in designation, against parental proscription.
Much shame. Puzzlement.
Haile turned her head to face her parents.
Query lifeloss act approval? Many nice friends in the all around.
We do not approve.
Jay flicked a nervous gaze at the two adults, and pressed herself closer against Haile. Nang formshifted his tractamorphic
appendage into a flat tentacle, which he laid across his daughter’s back. The juvenile Kiint visibly calmed at the gesture
of affection. Jay thought there was a mental exchange of some kind involved, too, sensing a hint of compassion and serenity.
Why did we not help?
Haile asked.
We must never interfere in the primary events of other species during their evolution towards Omega comprehension. You must
learn and obey this law above all else. However, it does not prevent us from grieving at their tragedy.
Jay felt the last bit was included for her benefit. “Don’t be angry with Haile,” she said solemnly. “I would have done the
same for her. And I didn’t want to die.”
Lieria reached out a tentacle tip, and touched Jay’s shoulder.
I thank you for the friendship you have shown Haile. In our hearts we are glad you are with us, for you will be completely
safe here. I am sorry we could not do more for your friends. But our law cannot be broken.
A sudden sensation of bleak horror threatened to engulf Jay. “Did Tranquillity really get blown up?” she wailed.
We do not know. It was under a concerted attack when we left. However, Ione Saldana may have surrendered. There is a high
possibility the habitat and its population survived.
“We left,” Jay whispered wondrously to herself. There were eight adult Kiint standing on the arena floor now, all the researchers
from Tranquillity’s Laymil project. “Where are we?” She glanced up at the dusky sky again, and that awesome constellation.
This is our home star system. You are the first true human to visit.
“But… ” Flashes of didactic memory tumbled through her brain. She looked up at those enticing, bright planets again. “This
isn’t Jobis.”
Nang and Lieria looked at each other in what was almost an awkward pause.
No, Jobis is just one of our science mission outposts. It is not in this galaxy.
Jay burst into tears.
______
Right from the start of the possession crisis the Jovian Consensus had acknowledged that it was a prime target. Its colossal
industrial facilities were inevitably destined to produce a torrent of munitions, bolstering the reserve stocks of Adamist
navies which thanks to budgetary considerations were not all they should be. The response of the Yosemite Consensus to the
Capone Organization had already shown what Edenism was capable of achieving along those lines, and that was with a mere thirty
habitats. Jupiter had the resources of four thousand two hundred and fifty at its disposal.
Requests for materiel support started almost as soon as Trafalgar issued its first warning about the nature of the threat
which the Confederation was facing. Ambassadors requested and pleaded and called in every favour they thought Edenism owed
them to secure a place in production schedules. Payment for the weapons involved loan agreements and fuseodollar transfers
on a scale which could have purchased entire stage-four star systems.
On top of that, it was Edenism which was providing the critical support for the Mortonridge Liberation in the form of serjeant
constructs to act as foot soldiers. It was the one utterly pivotal psychological campaign waged against the possessed, proving
to the Confederation at large that they could be beaten.
Fortunately, the practical aspects of assaulting one or more habitats were extremely difficult. Jupiter already had a superb
Strategic Defence network; and among the possessed only the Organization had a fleet which could hope to mount any sort of
large-scale offensive, and the distance between Earth and New California almost certainly precluded that. However, the possibility
of a lone ship carrying antimatter on a fanatical suicide flight was a strong one. And then there was the remote possibility
that Capone would acquire the Alchemist and use it against them. Although Consensus didn’t know how the doomsday device worked,
a ship certainly had to jump in to deploy it, which in theory gave the Edenists an interception window to destroy the device
before it was deployed.
Preparations to solidify their defences had begun immediately. Fully one third of the armaments coming out of the industrial
stations were incorporated into a massively expanded SD architecture. The 550,000-km orbital band containing the habitats
was the most heavily protected, with the number of SD platforms doubled, and seeded with seven hundred thousand combat wasps
to act as mines. A further million combat wasps were arranged in concentric shells around the massive planet out to the orbit
of Callisto. Flotillas of multi-spectrum sensor satellites were dispersed among them, searching for any anomaly, however small,
which pricked the potent energy storms churning through space around the gas-giant.