“This is where we should split up,” one of the serjeants datavised. “Two of us will lay heat trails, while you head for ring
five.”
Monica accessed the archaeology expedition’s map file, and integrated it with her inertial guidance block. Orange graphics
overlaid her sensor vision, indicating the corridor they should take. She took another sensor disk from the tube and stuck
it on the wall. “Okay. You two take care, they’ll be here in another twenty minutes. Oski, Renato, let’s go.” The four humans
and two remaining serjeants started off down the corridor, bouncing along in low glides in the one-third gravity field.
Ione’s quad mind started to melt away into four more individual, independent identities as the serjeants separated from each
other. One of her chose a corridor which the map file showed would lead towards a chemical plant of some kind. She drew a
laser pistol and datavised it to a very low power setting, with an intermittent discharge varying over three seconds. As she
walked forwards in long loping steps she began sweeping it in a short arc, keeping the muzzle pointed at the ground. Speckle
points of warmth blossomed around her feet—never enough to thaw the ice, just to make an imprint. To an infrared sensor it
would appear as if several people had walked along beside her.
The darkness which contracted around the bubble of light from her suit lights was absolute, isolating her to an unnerving
degree, a fact only slightly alleviated by affinity contact with her other three selves and Samuel.
My third experience of life outside Tranquillity, and it’s just rock tunnels not much different from Ayacucho. But a lot more
oppressive, and that’s without the possessed after me.
The others in the team were feeling the same low harmonic of unease. Monica was leading now, a locomotion auto-balance program
keeping her movements smooth and steady in the low gravity. Despite the depressing surroundings, their easy progress was confidence
enhancing. She’d had a lot of misgivings about the whole mission, and this part most of all. In her mind during the flight
here, Tanjuntic-RI had taken on the appearance of a large chunk of debris, just like the fragments that made up the Ruin Ring.
Reality was considerably better. Nothing was broken inside the arkship, merely neglected and cold. She could even imagine
revitalizing the old wanderer. If the fusion generators could be started up again, and power fed through the distribution
net, it would be a simple matter for light and heat to return.
“How come they abandoned this?” she asked. “Why not rendezvous with an asteroid and use it as a ready-made base for their
microgee industry?”
“Because of the upkeep,” Oski datavised back. “The whole thing is interdependent, you can’t just keep a life support ring
going and dump the rest. And it’s big. Keeping it functioning would take too much effort for the level of return. They were
much better off building smaller-scale asteroid habitation caverns from scratch.”
“Shame. At the very least the Tyrathca could have made a fortune selling it as a human tourist destination.”
“That’ll be that famous phlegmatism of theirs. They just don’t care about it.”
After five minutes they came to the first second-level cavern. A hemisphere two hundred metres high, the walls ribbed by bands
of tubes. There was a single huge machine in the centre, supported by ten three-metre-thick pipes that rose out of the ground
to act as its legs. Another ten pipes emerged from the top of the machine to vanish into the chamber’s apex. The team stood
just inside the entrance, playing their suit beams over the metal beast. Its sides were fluted with long glass columns, tarnished
on the inside with heat-blackened chrome. Valves, coils, relays, motors, intake grids, highvoltage transformers, and pumps
protruded from the rest of the edifice like metallic warts.
“What in Christ’s name is that?” Renato asked.
“Access your file,” Oski told him. “It’s some kind of biological reactor. They bred a lot of organic compounds inside it.”
Renato walked over to one of the big pipes and took a look directly underneath the reactor’s formidable bulk. The casing had
cracked as the arkship lost its heat, allowing ragged strings of some blue green compound to ooze out all over the base. They’d
clotted in hanging webs before freezing solid. Smears and stains of other liquids were splattered across the floor.
“There’s something wrong with all of this,” Renato datavised.
“What do you mean?” Samuel asked.
“Just look at this thing.” The young astronomer slapped his hand against the pipe. Even in the rarefied atmosphere, the suit
audio sensors could pick up a faint clang. “It’s, like… immortal. I can’t imagine anything else occupying this chamber since
the day they left their star. I know they’ll have rebuilt it a hundred times during the voyage. And I know they go for the
brute strength engineering solutions. But I don’t understand how nothing can have changed in fifteen thousand years. Nothing,
for Christ’s sake. How can you draw a line across your technology and say we will never develop anything that goes beyond
this?”
“You’ll be able to ask them soon,” Monica datavised. “Their ship will reach us in another ten minutes. Look, Renato, I know
this is all fascinating, but we really don’t have the time. Okay?”
“Sure, I’m sorry. I just hate unsolved puzzles.”
“That’s what makes you a good scientist. And I’m glad you’re here to help us. Now, this is the corridor we want.” Monica left
another sensor disk on one of the stolid pipes and started walking again. Renato took a last glance at the ancient reactor
and followed her. The two serjeants brought up the rear.
______
“The Tyrathca ship is definitely docking,” Beaulieu said. “They’ve matched velocities with Tanjuntic-RI.”
“Bugger,” Joshua grunted. They were enjoying a slight lull in the three-dimensional chess game that was the high-orbit diversion.
Lady Mac
was accelerating at one gee, sliding over Hesperi-LN’s pole at a hundred and seventy-five thousand kilometres altitude. Eighteen
combat wasps were arrowing in towards her from every direction, a classic englobing manoeuvre. The closest one would reach
them in another four minutes. At least the hellhawk wasn’t a current factor. Syrinx confirmed they were still chasing the
Stryla
round the two moons.
“Liol, break the bad news to the team, will you?” Joshua concentrated on the starship’s systems schematic, ordering the flight
computer to configure the hull for a jump. Somewhere near the back of his mind, almost in the subconscious, was a smiling
astonishment that he could now be so confident about taking part in a space battle. Contrast his, and the crew’s, calm responses
and performance today to the frantic shouting and adrenaline powered high-gee desperation above Lalonde, and it was as though
they used to belong in an alternative universe. The major difference, of course, was that he’d initiated this, he was calling
the shots.
“Dahybi?”
“Nodes charged and on line. Ready to jump, Captain.”
“Great. Let’s see how accurate we can be.” He cut the fusion drives and initiated the jump.
The watching Tyrathca saw the dangerous invader vanish from the middle of their combat wasp swarm. SD sensors picked up its
emergence point simultaneously, fifty thousand kilometres from where it had jumped. Its fusion drive came on again, powering
it back down towards the planet, presenting fresh danger to the population. The pursuing craft all changed course to resume
their chase.
______
A crackling smog of hot ions splashed across the front of Tanjuntic-RI as the Tyrathca ship finished its approach manoeuvre.
Electrical discharges flashed along the remnants of the superconductor grid, burning off the fragile surface molecules in
scintillating spectral fountains. The pilot hadn’t bothered to rendezvous at a distance and nudge in towards the spaceport
cone using secondary drives. Their flight vector was projected to bring them to a halt less than a kilometre from the arkship,
completely disregarding the damage the fusion drives would inflict on the ancient vessel.
The ship was a typical Tyrathca inter-planetary craft, a simple cylinder a hundred and fifty metres wide, three hundred long.
Unlike human designs which were built round a load-carrying gantry to which modules and capsules were attached as required,
this had everything encased inside an aluminium hull. A basic, ugly workhorse of a ship, discoloured by years of exposure
to the thermal and ultraviolet emissions of Hesperi-LN’s star. Four big rectangular hatches were spaced equidistantly round
its front end, while five stumpy fusion rocket nozzles protruded from the rear.
When it finished its deceleration burn it was floating parallel to Tanjuntic-RI’s spaceport, two kilometres out. Small chemical
rockets flared around its edges, brilliant sulphur yellow flames pushing the ship in towards the rotation axis. It started
to turn at the same time, aligning its base towards the spaceport. The chemical rockets around its front end throttled up
to maximum, and two fusion rockets ignited briefly. Their plasma plumes stabbed out, twin incandescent spears transfixing
the centre of the spaceport. The burn didn’t last for more than a couple of seconds, nor was it particularly powerful. But
the damage caused was immense. Metal and composite detonated into vapour, roaring out from the impact point.
It was too much for the enfeebled spaceport structure to withstand. The entire cone of stacked disks snapped off close to
the base, tumbling away. Individual disks tore loose, spinning off in every direction, spewing fragments as they went. One
disk actually collided with Tanjuntic-RI, crumpling as if it were made from paper before it started to rebound. All that was
left of the spaceport’s support column was a shattered ten metre stub sticking out from the rock. It was rapidly eclipsed
as the massive Tyrathca ship positioned itself directly overhead. Two hatches hinged open, and several dozen pale ovoid shapes
were ejected. At first they drifted as aimlessly as thistledown in a zephyr, then puffs of gas erupted from small spouts around
their crests, and they started to fly in towards the broken end of the support column.
______
Hesperi-LN’s twin moons were not a hospitable location for spacecraft. Their clashing gravity fields had drawn in a great
deal of cosmic debris since their formation, and continued to do so. Dust, sand, and smaller motes were eventually liberated
by the solar wind, light-pressure and high energy elementary particles blowing them back out towards the stars. But the larger
chunks remained. Pebbles, boulders, entire asteroids; once they’d fallen into a looping orbit, they were slowly hauled in
over the millennia as the ever-changing gravity perturbed their new orbit. Ultimately, they wound up at the central Lagrange
point, poised equidistantly between the moons. It was a cluttered zone over a hundred kilometres across, visible from the
surface of Hesperi-LN as a fuzzy grey patch. In composition, it mimicked a galaxy, with the largest asteroids clumped together
at the centre, surrounded by a whirl of smaller boulders and stony nuggets.
A place, then, where the use of combat wasps and energy beams was essentially impossible. You could stay within its fringes
and observe your enemy waiting outside with impunity. Providing you could ward off the clouds of dark, high-velocity gravel
swirling endlessly around the periphery of the Lagrange cluster.
Oenone
’s attempts to pursue the hellhawk inside the cluster had come to nothing. After twenty minutes of dangerous slaloming and
weaving, during which it gained barely a hundred metres on the contemptuous hellhawk, Syrinx had decided enough was enough.
They were draining the energy cells at an alarming rate to maintain the distortion field, essential to deflect the hail of
stone from the hull. And they would need that power later, no matter what the outcome at Tanjuntic-RI. She told
Oenone
to halt and match the orbital vector of the surrounding particles.
Once Etchells realized he was no longer being actively pursued, he also eased back, and simply held his position. They were
no more than fifteen kilometres apart. Though the only way they knew that was by sensing each other with their distortion
fields, visual or radar observation was impossible.
This is not a valid status quo,
Syrinx told the hellhawk.
There are three Tyrathca ships on their way to us. You cannot stay inside the cluster forever. Leave this system.
Not a chance,
Etchells said.
You’ve got to stay here with me, now. That means I’ve won. You can’t achieve whatever the fuck you came here to do. And your
Adamist pals are in deep shit. They’re neutered, too.
With reservations, I will accept that observation,
she told him, careful not to let any emotional context slip into the affinity contact. He obviously wasn’t aware they’d landed
the team in Tanjuntic-RI. All they had to do was keep him here until Oski and Renato had accessed the files.
String him along,
she told the crew.
I want to monitor the spacecraft situation. We may have to move in a hurry.
Of course,
Cacus said.
Ruben, get our new fusion generators on line. I’d like
Oenone
’s energy cells recharged as fast as possible. When we leave here, I want to be able to leave this hellhawk far behind.
Understood.
Ruben ordered the processor array to begin the generator power up sequence.
______
The links between the second and third levels on Tanjuntic-RI were mainly cargo lifts. Again, each of them was wrapped by
the ubiquitous spiralling ramps. The exploration team had to engage their boot spikes as they made their way down one which
led to ring five. Icy floors combined with the strengthening gravity provided a treacherous environment.
There was a large airlock chamber at the bottom, with doors more suited to bank vaults than spaceships. But this had been
the Tyrathca’s first line of defence against a breach in the upper levels, their design philosophy had come into its own here.
As tribute to that efficiency, Tanjuntic-RI’s caverns and rings still retained a tiny atmosphere after thirteen centuries
of disuse.