The red giant shone through the huge circular rent in the diskcity, illuminating the end of the cylinder and a tapering slice
of the shell as if a flame was playing up the side.
Lady Mac
’s ion thrusters fired, backing her out of the crushed bearing ring. The hub had bowed inward under the enormous force she’d
exerted, but the rib spars had held. Now they were retreating from the diskcity at a leisurely thirty metres per second.
“And they’re still not shooting at us,” Liol said.
“I should hope not,” Dahybi retorted. “After that little display of power they’ll think twice about antagonising us again.”
“Look how much damage we’ve done,” Ashly said. “I’m sorry, but this is one accomplishment which doesn’t make me very proud.”
“This section of Tojolt-HI was mostly dead,” Liol said. “And the sunscoop had already destroyed the tubes which still had
viable life support functions.”
“Ashly’s right,” Joshua said. “All we’ve done is react to events. We’re in control of very little.”
“I thought that’s what life was,” Liol said. “The honour of witnessing events. You need to be a God to control them.”
“That drops us into a neat little paradox, then,” Sarha said. “We have to control events if we want to find a God. But if
we can control them, then ipso facto we’re already gods.”
“I think you’ll find it’s a question of scale,” Joshua said. “Gods determine the outcome of large events.”
“What happened here was pretty big.”
“Not compared to the destiny of an entire species.”
“You’re taking this very seriously,” Liol said.
Joshua didn’t even smile. “Somebody has to. Think of the consequences.”
“I’m not a total asshole, Josh. I do appreciate just how bad it’s going to get if no one can find an answer to all of this.”
“I was thinking what happens if we succeed, actually.”
Liol’s laugh was more a bark of surprise. “How can that be bad?”
“Everything changes. People don’t like that. There’s going to have to be sacrifices, and I don’t mean just physical or financial.
It’s inevitable. Surely you can see that coming?”
“Maybe,” Liol said gruffly.
Joshua looked over to his brother and put on his wickedest grin. “In the meantime, you’ve got to admit, it’s a wild ride.”
______
One of the serjeants stayed with Baulona-PWM and Quantook-LOU to act as an arbitrator as they tried to sort out the parameters
of a new agreement. A triumph of optimism, she thought: that both of them believed the ZTT drive would bring about a new era
among the diskcities orbiting Mastrit-PJ. It was clear that they were both conceding the remaining Tyrathca population would
be evacuated to the flightship colony worlds. Their enclaves among the diskcities would not be expanded. Such a premise made
it even more important that the two species didn’t clash over who had claim on new star systems. Retrieving the flightship
information really had become essential to the agreement. An intriguing irony. Now all she had to worry about was Quantook-LOU’s
sincerity. It made her suggest several safeguards to Baulona-PWM, such as ensuring communications were opened up to all the
remaining enclaves. Not that either of them knew how many there were scattered among the diskcities. Quantook-LOU admitted
even he didn’t know how many diskcities there were.
The other serjeant accompanied a team of six breeders that Baulona-PWM had designated to reactivate their electronics. They
escorted her to the band of fat towers around the end of the cylinder. It was Lalarin-MG’s utilities district, with the towers
housing water treatment plants, air filtration, fusion generators (appallingly crude, she thought), and the heat exchangers.
Fortunately each service was provided by parallel stations, giving it a failsoft capability. A third of the systems were inoperable,
the machinery inert and tarnished, testifying as to how long it had been since Lalarin-MG had a full population.
She was taken to a tower which the breeders said was an electrical and communications station. The ground floor was occupied
by three tokamaks, only one of which was working. A ramp spiralled up to the first floor. There were no windows, and the ceiling
lights didn’t work. Her infrared sensors showed her the silent ranks of electronic consoles, very reminiscent of those in
Tanjuntic-RI. The Tyrathca had brought portable lights with them, which they set up revealing the true state of the consoles.
Humidity had succoured a fur of algae over the rosette keyboards and display screens. Access panel catches had to be drilled
through to release them, exposing rubbery fungal growths over the circuitry inside. The breeders had to run cables down to
the generator below to power up the consoles.
One console actually burst into flames when they switched it on. Oski’s curses echoed through the general communication link.
“Ask them if we can integrate our processor blocks with their network,” she told Ione. “If I’ve got access, I’ll be able to
load some questors in. That should speed the process up. And while we’re about it, let’s see if they’ll accept a little advice
on reactivation procedures.”
______
The wormhole terminus opened six hundred kilometres above Tojolt-HI’s darkside, deep in the umbra. The
Stryla
flew out; Etchells was in his harpy form, red eyes blazing as he looked round in surprise. From his position the huge disk
eclipsed most of the sun’s surface, with a tide of crimson light appearing to sweep up over the rim, as if it was sinking
into an ooze of photons.
His distortion field billowed out, probing the xenoc structure. It also clashed with another distortion field.
What are you doing here?
Oenone
asked.
Same thing as you.
He found the voidhawk, three thousand kilometres away. It was next to a large hollow cylinder, a habitation station of some
kind. There was another Confederation ship close by. When he focused his optical senses in their direction he saw a small
glimmer of sunlight erupting through the disk directly behind them.
He quickly altered his distortion field, opening another wormhole interstice. This time he came out a hundred kilometres from
the voidhawk. Red sunlight washed over his leathery scale-like feathers, and he looked down curiously at the tear in the disk.
Its melted edges were radiating strongly in the infrared. The mountainous heat exchangers surrounding it were operating at
their upper limit, trying to radiate away the immense thermal load imposed by overheated tubes.
“I’d say the Adamist ship used its antimatter drive to push the cylinder clear of the disk,” he told Kiera. “Nothing else
could cause that kind of damage.”
“Which means they consider it important,” she said.
“I don’t see why. It’s inhabited, and very fragile. It can’t be a weapon.” His distortion field caught flocks of small chemically
fuelled missiles flitting among the sharp, hot cones bristling out of the darkside. Lasers shot at them, blowing them apart
in mid-flight. Over thirty radar beams from all sections of the disk were sweeping across him. One of the missiles plunged
down among the heat exchange mountains, exploding. Atmospheric gas puffed out into space from the tube it shattered. “And
there’s some kind of war being fought down there. Widespread by the look of it.”
“They flew all the way round the Orion Nebula, and when they get here they rip that cylinder out of a war zone,” Kiera said.
“All right, it’s important.”
“Which means it’s bad for us. Minimize your energistic effect, please.”
The hellhawk’s shape rippled back to its natural profile.
Kiera’s fingers typed quickly over the weapons console. Targeting sensors locked on to the cylinder.
Disengage your weapons, now,
Oenone
ordered.
Etchells let Kiera hear the affinity voice, routing it through one of the AV pillars on the bridge.
“Why?” she asked. “What’s in there?”
Several thousand unarmed Tyrathca. You would be committing butchery.
“What do you care? In fact, why are you here?”
To help.
“Very noble. And total bollocks.”
Do not fire,
Oenone
appealed to Etchells.
We will defend the cylinder.
That cylinder contains the means to destroy me,
Etchells replied.
I’m quite sure of that.
We are not barbarians. Physical destruction solves nothing.
Kiera fired four combat wasps at the cylinder.
The response from
Oenone
and
Lady Macbeth
was instant. Fifteen combat wasps launched on interception trajectories, scattering submunitions.
Lady Macbeth
’s defence masers speared the incoming drones as their submunitions ejected. Two hundred and fifty fusion bombs detonated
in the space of three seconds. Some pumped gamma lasers, but most were missile warheads.
Joshua absorbed the burst of sensor data disgorged by the tactical program, desperate for an overview. Visual sensors were
useless against the blaze of destruction, but none of the attacking combat wasps electronic warfare submunitions had targeted
Lady Mac
—strangely negligent programming. The starship’s sensors stared into the heart of the mayhem, filtering out the atomic and
electromagnetic interference. Three small kinetic impacts registered against the cylinder, along with several beam strikes.
But the structure remained intact.
“Sarha, kill the bastard,” he ordered.
Five masers fired at the hellhawk. It rolled quickly and accelerated at seven gees, trying to break free from the energy strike.
Joshua fired another five combat wasps, programming them for defence minefield deployment. Their drives flared briefly, and
submunitions swarmed out, forming a wide protective cluster around Lalarin-MG. If the hellhawk was serious about attacking
a target outside a gravity field, its strategy would be to swallow in as close as possible, under a kilometre usually, and
fire off a combat wasp salvo. Unless the target had an extensive array of SD lasers, some submunitions were bound to get through.
The minefield ought to act as a temporary deterrence.
The hellhawk swallowed away.
“Syrinx, where the hell did it go?” Joshua asked.
“Standing off, two thousand kilometres.”
Oenone
used the link with
Lady Mac
’s flight computer to datavise the coordinate over. Sensors locked on, showing the hellhawk holding station.
“They’ve got very strange ideas about tactics,” Joshua said. “Oski, how much longer?”
“Half an hour at least, Captain. I’ve identified probable storage areas for the almanac; none of them are active.”
“Joshua, I’m not sure the cylinder can take another attack like that,” Ione said. The serjeant mediating with Baulona-PWM
and Quantook-LOU had been flung to its knees when the first chunk of shrapnel punctured the cylinder shell. A small fireball
had erupted out of a tower barely a hundred yards away. The plaza shook violently as the tower disintegrated, showering the
area with smoking fragments of metal and burning vegetation. When she scanned round, she saw a dozen violet contrails crisscrossing
through the air, molecules fluorescing from the gamma laser shots. Two had burned holes through the Sleeping God effigy. Her
sensors hurriedly tracked along the axial gantry, but it hadn’t been hit.
An automated truck trundled across the plaza, heading for the wrecked tower. Air was wailing as it was sucked down through
the puncture hole. Hydraulic arms unfolded from the rear of the truck, carrying a thick metal plate. It was lowered over the
hole, clanging into place. Thick brown sludge was sprayed out of a nozzle, smothering the plate. It solidified quickly, completing
the seal.
“The Mosdva attack again,” Baulona-PWM said.
Ione thought the breeder was going to strike Quantook-LOU.
“They didn’t,” she said quickly. “That was a human ship. It’s from a dominion we are not allied with. The
Lady Macbeth
has fought it off.”
“Do humans have dominions?” Quantook-LOU asked. “You did not tell us this.”
“We didn’t expect them to be here.”
“Why are they here? Why have they attacked us?”
“They do not agree that Tyrathca and Mosdva should be given the faster-than-light drive. We must complete this agreement and
recover the data. Then they will be unable to prevent the exchange.”
“My family is working hard,” Baulona-PWM said. “We keep our agreement with you, allowing you to mediate.”
“And we will keep the agreement that you will be unharmed. Come now, we were deciding the message that is to be sent to other
diskcity dominions.” She switched back to the general communication link. “You have to get us more time.”
“We’ll see to it,” Syrinx assured her. “Joshua, hold the fort here.”
“Acknowledged.”
Lady Mac
’s gravitonic distortion detectors showed him the voidhawk opening a wormhole interstice.
Oenone
emerged fifty kilometres from the
Stryla
. Syrinx was expecting the hellhawk to fire its lasers at them straight away. That it didn’t, she took as an encouraging sign.
I’m here to talk,
she said.
And I’m here to survive,
Etchells replied.
We know you’re here to find something you can use against us. I won’t let that happen.
Nothing will be used against you. We are trying to resolve this to everyone’s benefit.
I lack your optimism.
The hellhawk launched two combat wasps.
Oenone
immediately swallowed out, emerging from a terminus on the opposite side of the hellhawk from the combat wasps, twenty kilometres
away. It fired ten lasers at the other’s polyp hull.
Etchells swallowed away. He emerged a hundred metres above one of the diskcity’s heat radiator cones.
Oenone
emerged just behind him. He’d expected that. His maser cannon fired on the voidhawk. It darted down behind the silvery cone,
then curved round to shoot at Etchells.