13

The prospect of interstellar flight had been real to certain sections of the human race for a long time before Sputnik One thundered into orbit. A notion which began with visionaries like Tsiolkovskii, Goddard, and somewhat more whimsical science fiction writers of that age, was quickly taken up and promoted by obsessive space activists when the first micro-gee factories came on line, proving that orbital manufacturing was a profitable venture. With the development of the O’Neill Halo and the Jupiter mining operation in the Twenty-first Century the concept finally began to seem practical. Asteroids were already being hollowed out and made habitable. Now it was only an engineering and finance problem to propel them out of Earth orbit and across the gulf to Proxima Centauri. There were no theoretical show stoppers; fusion or antimatter engines could be built to accelerate the giant rocks up to speeds of anything between five and twenty per cent of lightspeed, depending on which physicist you asked. Generations of crew would live, tend their machinery, and die within the rock as they crawled across the emptiness, with the anticipation that their descendants would inherit a fresh world.

Sadly, human nature being what it is, century-duration flights were just too long, the ideal of colonization too abstract to motivate the governments and large institutions of the time into building these proposed space arks. The real clincher, inevitably, was cost. There could never be any return on the investment. So it seemed as though the fresh start idealists would just have to go on dreaming.

One such thwarted dreamer was Julian Wan, who, more resourceful than his colleagues, persuaded the board of the New Kong corporation to research faster than light travel. His pitch was that it would be a small, cheap project testing the more dubious equations of Quantum Unification Theory, essentially a few wild theoretical physicists with plenty of computer time. But if it could be made to work, the commercial opportunities would be phenomenal. Noble concern for human destiny and the search for pure knowledge never got a look in.

New Kong successfully tested the ZTT drive in 2115, and the arkship concept was quickly and quietly discarded. Beautifully detailed plans and proposals drawn up by a multitude of starflight societies and associations were downloaded into university library memories to join the ranks of other never-made-it technologies like the nuclear powered bomber, the English Channel bridge, geostationary solar power stations, and continent birthing (the so-called Raising Atlantis project, where fusion bombs were proposed to modify tectonic activity). Then the Tyrathca world of Hesperi-LN was discovered in 2395, along with the news that it was actually a colony founded by an arkship. The old human plans were briefly revisited by history of engineering students, interested to see how they stood up to comparison with a proven arkship. That academic interest faded away inside of a decade.

Joshua, who fancied himself as something of a spaceflight buff, was fascinated by the dull blip of light which Lady Mac’s sensors were focused on. It was in a wildly elliptical orbit around Hesperi-LN, with a twelve thousand kilometre perigee and four hundred thousand kilometre apogee. Fortunately for their mission, it was just under three hundred thousand kilometres away from the Tyrathca planet, and climbing.

They’d emerged two million kilometres out from Hesperi-LN; a distance which put them safely beyond the planet’s known SD sensor coverage. The Tyrathca world was not a cradle for the kind of space activity found above industrialized human worlds. There were a few low-orbit docking stations, industrial module clusters, communication and sensor satellite networks, and twenty-five SD platforms supplied and operated by the Confederation Navy. Not that there was a lot of worry about pirate activity, the Tyrathca simply didn’t manufacture the kind of goods which could be sold on any human market let alone the underground one. The Confederation was far more concerned by the prospect of blackmail by a rogue starship captain armed with ground-assault weapons. Although they didn’t have consumer products, the Tyrathca did mine gold, platinum, and diamonds among other precious commodities for their indigenous industries. And the colony had been established in AD 1300; rumours of vast stockpiles accumulated over millennia persisted on every human world. Any bar or dinner party would have someone who knew somebody else who had been told of a first-hand witness who’d walked through the endless underground caverns filled with their glittering dragon hoards.

So the Navy maintained a small cost-ineffective outpost to guard against the possibility of any inter-species incident. It had been abandoned, along with all the other human-maintained systems, when the Tyrathca broke off contact. According to the briefing Monica and Samuel had given to the Lady Mac’s crew, the Tyrathca would find it difficult to keep the SD systems functional for very long.

“But we have to expect them to try,” Monica said. “Their ambassador was pretty damn insistent that we don’t intrude on them again.”

Joshua and Syrinx assumed the SD network was on-line and fully functional, and planned their tactics accordingly. The goal was to land an explorer team on Tanjuntic-RI, who would attempt to locate a reference to the Sleeping God in the arkship’s ancient electronics. Getting them inside unnoticed was the big problem.

Both craft were in full stealth mode when they emerged. Jumping into the system, Joshua had aligned Lady Mac so that her vector would carry her in a rough trajectory from the emergence coordinate towards the arkship. As long as he didn’t have to use either the fusion or antimatter drives, the starship would probably remain undetected. At this stage, they were back up; there to rush in and provide covering fire in case things got noisy and Oenone had to rescue their team. They were using passive sensors only, with just the chemical verniers firing occasionally to hold them stable; every nonessential system was in stand-by mode, reducing the power consumption and with it their thermal emission. Internal heat stores were soaking up the fusion generator output, although they could only last for a couple of days before the thermodump panels would have to be extended to dissipate the heat. Even that wasn’t too much of a problem, the radiation could be directed away from the SD network sensors. They’d have to be extremely unlucky to be discovered by anything that guarded Hesperi-LN.

“Picking up some radar pulses from the SD network,” Beaulieu reported. “But it’s very weak. They’re not scanning for us. Our hull coating can absorb this level easily.”

“Good,” Joshua said. “Liol, what about spacecraft activity?”

“Infrared’s showing twenty-three ships using their drives above the planet. The majority are travelling between low orbit and the SD platforms. Four seem to be heading up for high polar orbits. I’d say they’re complementing the platforms. But none of them are moving very fast, half a gee maximum. They are big ships, though.”

“That’s how the Tyrathca like them,” Ashly said. “Plenty of room to move round in the life support sections. It’s like being inside a bloody cathedral.”

“Offensive potential?”

“If they’re armed with human-made combat wasps, considerable,” Liol said. “With that drive signature I’m assuming they’re Tyrathca inter-planetary ships; they have a dozen asteroid settlements to provide the planetary industries with several kinds of bulk microgee compounds. Which means their payload is considerably larger than ours. They’re like highly manoeuvrable weapons platforms.”

“Wonderful.” Joshua datavised the new bitek processor array they’d installed during the last refit. “Oenone, what’s your situation?”

“I remain on schedule, Joshua. We should be rendezvousing with Tanjuntic-RI in another forty-two minutes. The exploration team is suiting up now.”

Unlike the Lady Macbeth, Oenone had been able to accelerate and manoeuvre after emerging above the planet. By reducing its distortion field to a minimum, the voidhawk could accelerate at half a gee towards the arkship. Given the distance involved, the network satellites were unable to pick up such a small ripple in space-time. The disadvantage was, with such a reduced field the voidhawk couldn’t perceive a fraction of the local environment it usually did. If for some unaccountable reason, the Tyrathca had surrounded Tanjuntic-RI with proximity mines, they wouldn’t know until they were very close indeed.

Syrinx always hated being dependent on just the sensor blisters and passive electronic arrays. The voidhawks’ ability to pervade a huge spherical volume of space around the hull was intrinsic to their flight.

We managed like this in our Navy days, Oenone said, unperturbed.

Syrinx grinned in the half-light of the bridge. The crew toroid’s internal power consumption was minimal as well. You mean back when we were young and foolish?

This is not a foolish venture, the voidhawk chided. Wing-Tsit Chong considers it of the utmost importance.

Me too. But this part just brings back memories. Of Thetis, though she didn’t mention him. Lately she’d started to wonder if her brother had managed to elude the beyond as that ever-damned Laton had promised. Mild feelings of guilt had kept her away from his strange stunted existence within the Romulus multiplicity before they left. Really, what was the point in preserving him when his soul was free?

What is our best landing point, do you think? Oenone asked.

As always, the voidhawk knew when she needed distracting. I’m not sure. Show me what we can see. She accessed the all-too scant files on Tanjuntic-RI stored in the on-board processors, and attempted to match them up with the image the voidhawk was seeing.

Tanjuntic-RI had been completely abandoned less than fifty years after it arrived in the Hesperi-LN star system. An unduly harsh treatment by human standards, but it had fulfilled every duty its long-dead builders had required of it, and the Tyrathca were not a sentimental species. Fifteen thousand years old, it had travelled one thousand six hundred light-years to ensure the Tyrathca race didn’t die along with their exploding home star. Five separate, successful colonies had been established along its route. Each time the arkship had stopped inside a star system to create a new colony, the Tyrathca had virtually rebuilt it, refuelled it, then carried on with their crusade of racial survival. Even so, there are limits to the most sturdy machinery. After Hesperi-LN was founded, Tanjuntic-RI was left to circle ceaselessly above the planet.

Borrowing Oenone’s sensor blisters, Syrinx could see the details becoming clear as they glided in for a rendezvous. Tanjuntic-RI was a dark cylindrical rock six kilometres long, two and a half in diameter. Its surface was a gentle mottle of flattened craters, resembling a wind-sculpted ice field. Remnants of vast machines sketched out a random topology of tarnished metal lines along the floors of the meandering valleys. These appurtenances had succumbed to millennia of particle impacts and vacuum ablation. What had once been a surface bristling with elaborate towers and radiator panels the size of lakes was left with little more than their stubby mounting fixtures as a reminder of past grandeur. The forward end was the most heavily speckled, due mainly to the extensive remnants of a coppery hexagonal grid.

With Tanjuntic-RI capable of travelling at over fifteen per cent lightspeed, a collision with a single pebble at that speed could result in catastrophic damage. So in flight the arkship was protected by a plasma buffer, a cloud of electrically charged gas that broke up and absorbed any mass smaller than a boulder. It rode ahead of the arkship, a luminous mushroom-shape held in place by a magnetic field generated by the superconductor grid.

Right in the centre of the grid, aligned along the rotation axis, was the arkship’s spaceport. Although the concept was the same as the counter-rotating spaceports on Edenist habitats, the Tyrathca had fashioned an elaborate conical structure made up from tiers of disks. Its peak disappeared below the surface of the rock, as if it were a kind of giant arrow tip which had impaled itself in some forgotten era. The larger disks at the top end had broken off centuries ago, probably when the magnetic bearing seized up. Those that remained were vacuum ablating, their edges fraying like worn cloth, while their flat surfaces slowly dissolved, reducing their overall thickness. With the last maintenance crew departing thirteen centuries previously, the vast sheets of metal were down to a few centimetres thickness, and perforated by thousands of micrometeorite holes.

Oenone was also relaying the image of the arkship to the little exploration team suiting up in the crew toroid’s airlock prep chamber. Given the clandestine nature of their mission, Monica Foulkes and Samuel were leading the team. There were only two technical staff coming with them; Renato Vella, who was Kempster Getchell’s chief assistant, and Oski Katsura, head of the Laymil project’s electronics division. Their job would be to reactivate Tanjuntic-RI’s electronic library and extract whatever files concerning the Sleeping God that they could locate. Tactical support was supplied by four serjeants, loaded with Ione’s personality.

Kempster Getchell and Parker Higgens were also in the prep chamber; helping with the suits when they were asked, but mainly rehearsing mission goals with Renato and Oski. The formless black silicon of the SII suits had enveloped each of the team, now they were busy clipping their rigid exoskeleton suits on top. They were using standard issue Confederation Navy Marine armour, generator reinforced monobonded carbon with power augmentation. As sleek and featureless as the SII suits, they were designed for both asteroid and ship assault roles, capable of supporting and keeping the wearer active in high gee environments, and with built in manoeuvring packs.

The team started to run integration diagnostics. Arm joints bent and twisted, sensor inputs flicked through the spectrum. Monica, Samuel, and the serjeants ran their weapons interface programs, and stowed the various items of lethal hardware on their belts and racks once the suit processor confirmed the connection. Oski and Renato started picking up their blocks and equipment kits; there were too many to hang on their belts, so they were both using small chestpacks.

Kempster held Renato’s pack steady as it adhered to the armour suit. “I can’t feel the weight,” the young astronomer datavised. “I just have to balance right. And I’ve even got a program for that.”

“The wonders of science,” Kempster muttered. “Mind you, I ought to be flattered. Commando raids to acquire astronomical data. I suppose that’s a sign of how important my profession has become.”

“The Sleeping God isn’t an astronomical event,” Parker chided irritably. “We’re sure of that now.”

Kempster smiled at the blank neutral-grey back of his assistant. Now he was ready, Renato datavised Oenone’s processor array for an update on their approach. Tanjuntic-RI’s dilapidated spaceport was a hundred and fifty kilometres away, and the voidhawk’s sensor blisters had it in perfect focus. The large disks were separated by a single central column that appeared to be made up from hundreds of braided pipes. They were spaced far enough apart, a hundred metres at least, to admit ships between them. Tyrathca craft had used them as hangar floors, anchoring themselves to docking pins and plugging into the utility sockets. Now, the disks were essentially flat sheets of decaying metal; their thin lattice of ancillary systems had evaporated away along with the rim.

“We’re not going to land on those, are we?” Renato Vella asked. “They don’t look very reliable.”

Samuel used his suit’s bitek processor to datavise a reply. “Oenone will take us in under the bottom disk. We’ll go EVA and try and find a way in along the spaceport’s support column.”

“It shouldn’t be a problem,” Monica datavised. “The archaeology team from the O’Neill Halo got in easily.”

“A hundred and thirty years ago,” Kempster said. “The decay rate Tanjuntic-RI is suffering from could well make things difficult for you. The original route may be blocked.”

“This isn’t an archaeology project, doc,” Monica datavised. “We’ll just cut our way in if we have to. Decay should help us there. The structure won’t put up much resistance.”

Kempster caught Parker’s eye, the two of them registering their disapproval in unison. Cut it open, indeed!

“At least we have a basic layout file of the internal chambers,” Oski datavised. “If we really did have to explore, I doubt we’d achieve anything.”

“Yeah,” Monica agreed. “How come the Tyrathca allowed that university team in?”

“Wrong question,” Parker said. “Why shouldn’t they? The Tyrathca couldn’t understand our interest in the arkship at all. You know they seal up and abandon a house once the breeders have died? Well Tanjuntic-RI is a similar case. Once something of theirs has ended its natural life, it becomes . . . invalid, is about the nearest definition we have. They just don’t use it, or visit it again. And it’s not due to the kind of respect we have for graves; they don’t consider their relics or burial houses to be sacred.”

“Weird species,” Monica datavised.

“That’s what they think of us, too,” Parker said. “The various Lords of Ruin have asked them on several occasions if they would join the Laymil research project, another viewpoint would always be valuable. It was the same answer each time. They’re simply not interested in examining obsolete artefacts.”

Oenone folded its distortion field to almost nothing as it crept across the last kilometre to Tanjuntic-RI. The arkship was rotating around its long axis once every four minutes, with only a small wobble picked up over the centuries. Which said a lot for how well they’d managed the internal mass distribution, Syrinx thought. As a result of the minute instability, the spaceport was pursuing a small loop which the voidhawk could match easily.

They slid in under the bottom disk, which was only seventy metres in diameter. The short length of the support column which emerged from the disk’s centre to burrow into the rock was twenty-five metres wide.

That lower disk must have been used to dock the Tyrathca analogue of our MSV’s, Syrinx suggested. With the big inter-planetary ships on the top deck.

That would be logical, Oenone agreed. I wonder what they looked like?

Very similar to those the Tyrathca use today, Ruben said. They don’t innovate much. Once a system is finalized they never change it.

That doesn’t make a lot of sense, Serina said. How can you know when something is as good as possible unless you keep analyzing and tinkering with the design? A bicycle is a good, efficient method of getting from one place to another, but the car came along because we weren’t satisfied with it.

I hadn’t really thought about it, Ruben admitted. Now you mention it, thirteen hundred years is a long time to stick with one design, an awful lot more if you add their voyage time to that. We’re still improving our fusion drives, and we’ve only had them six hundred years.

And they’re a lot better than Tyrathca fusion drives, Oxley said. We’ve been selling them improvements ever since we made contact.

You’re applying human psychology to them, Ruben said. It’s a mistake. They don’t have our intuition or imagination. If it works, they really don’t try to fix it.

They must have some imagination, Cacus protested. You can hardly design an arkship without it.

Ask Parker Higgens, Ruben said. A slight tinge of defensiveness was leaking into his affinity voice. Maybe he can explain it. I guess being slow and methodical gets you there in the end.

Syrinx examined the twisted braid of pipes and girders that made up the spaceport’s support column. Following her silent urging, Oenone expanded its distortion field enough to pervade the dilapidated structure. A picture of entwined translucent tubes filled her mind. The number of black-crack flaws in the metal and composite was alarming, as was the thinness of individual tubes. That really is very fragile, she declared. Samuel, please be careful when you egress. It won’t take much to snap the spaceport clean off.

Thanks for the warning.

Oenone rotated gently, turning its crew toroid airlock towards the lead-grey shaft. Standing in the open hatch, Samuel’s suit sensors showed him the stars slip past until he was facing the wrinkled mesh of metal. Even though it was basically just a frayed mechanical structure, it had a quality that told him it wasn’t human. Neatness, he decided, it lacked neatness, the kind of confident elegance that was the signature of human astroengineering. Where humans would use failsofts and multiple redundancy, the Tyrathca built tough simple devices in tandem. If one was taken out of service for repair or maintenance they trusted the second to remain functional. And it was obviously a philosophy which worked. Tanjuntic-RI’s existence and triumph was evidence of that. It was just . . . reality at one degree from human sensibilities.

The voidhawk’s movement halted. Shadows plagued the hull, turning the marbled polyp a dingy walnut. Gravity in the airlock faded away as the distortion field flowed away from it.

This is as close as we can get, Syrinx said. The archaeology team went in just above the bearing ring.

The spaceport support column appeared to be holding steady just past the lip of the hull. Stars waved about behind it. Samuel triggered the cold gas jets in his armour, and drifted out from the airlock. Gaps in the column were easy enough to find. The original close weave of pipes and structural girders had been loosened when the bearings seized up, opening a multitude of chinks, though it was impossible to guess which one had been used by the archaeology team all those years ago. He selected one ten metres above the huge bearing ring set in the rock.

Nitrogen puffed out from tiny nozzles around his slimline manoeuvring backpack, edging him closer to the gap. It was lined with a buckled pipe on one side, and a tattered conduit casing on the other. He reached out with his left gauntlet, and made a tentative grab for one of the flaky cables inside the conduit. Dust squirted out around his fingers, and tactile receptors in his palm told him the cable had compressed slightly in his grip. But it held. His main worry had been that everything they touched along the column would disintegrate like so much brittle porcelain.

“Okay, there’s a degree of integrity left in the material,” he datavised back to the rest of the team. “You can come over. I’m going in.”

Helmet and wrist lights came on, and he shone the beams into the black cavity ahead. When the column bearings seized up, the torque stress exerted by the spaceport’s inertia had splintered hundreds of structural girders, ripping apart the multitude of pipes and cables they carried. The result was to fill the inside of the column with a forbidding tangle of wreckage. Samuel activated his inertial guidance block. Bright green directional graphics flicked up over the monochrome sensor image, and he eased himself forward. According to his suit sensors, the spaces between the interlocking struts contained a thin molecular haze from the slowly ablating metal.

The chinks were becoming smaller, with fragments scraping against his armour as he hauled himself in the direction the graphics indicated. He pulled a ten centimetre fission knife from his belt. The blade’s yellow light shone brightly, shimmering off the strands of ash-grey metal. It cut through without the slightest resistance.

I feel like some kind of Victorian soldier aristocrat hacking through a jungle, he confided to the Oenone’s crew.

Scraps of crumbling metal were whirling round him, bouncing and twirling off the corners and angles of the shambolic maze. The second armour-suited figure had reached the gap: Renato Vella, who was quickly wriggling along after him. One of the serjeants was next, followed by Monica, another serjeant, then Oski Katsura. Syrinx and the crew used the sensor blisters to watch them vanish inside one after the other.

Looking good, she said, sharing a quiet confidence with her crew.

Parker Higgens and Kempster Getchell walked into the bridge, and took the chairs Syrinx indicated. “They’re making progress,” Edwin told the two elderly science advisors. “At this rate, Samuel will have reached the main airlock chamber in another ten minutes. They could be at their target level in a couple of hours.”

“I hope so,” Tyla said. “The quicker we’re away from here, the better. This place gives me the creeps. Do you suppose the Tyrathca souls are watching us?”

“An interesting point,” Parker said. “We’ve not had any reports of our returning souls encountering a xenoc soul in the beyond.”

“So where do they go?” Oxley asked.

“We’ll put that on the list of questions for the Sleeping God,” Kempster said jovially. “I’m sure that’s quite trivial compared to—” he broke off as all the Edenists froze, closing their eyes in unison. “What?”

“A starship,” Syrinx hissed. “Oenone can sense its distortion field. Which means the Tyrathca detectors will pick it up, too. Oh . . . bloody hell.”

I see you, the Stryla gloated.

Etchells hadn’t realized that there was a voidhawk accompanying the rogue Adamist starship. Not until he swallowed in above Hesperi-LN, and started scanning round for the ship he’d pursued from the antimatter station. There was plenty of activity above the xenoc planet, big sedate ships powering their way into high inclination orbits, complementing the protective sphere thrown up by the SD platforms. The twin moons were sending out constant gravitational perturbations as they orbited round each other, half a million kilometres above Hesperi-LN itself. A network of sensor satellites. An unusually thick band of dust slithering above the upper Van-Allen belt. He had to move around cislunar space in small swallows so that his distortion field could complete a clean sweep above the planet. The Adamist starship was easy to locate, a tight curve in the uniformity of space-time. He focused on it, prying and probing at its composition by creating a multitude of tiny ripples within his distortion field, seeing how they reacted to the encounter, the diffraction pattern created as they washed across the hull and internal machinery. One thing was clear, it wasn’t a Navy ship. The layout was all wrong for that. And Navy ships didn’t have an antimatter drive. Its main fusion generators were shut down, leaving just a couple of ancillary tokamaks to power the life support capsules; and the biggest give-away of all: its thermo-dump panels were retracted. It was in stealth mode.

A Confederation Navy sanctioned starship on a clandestine mission in the Tyrathca system. It would have to be a very important mission to risk an inter-species clash at this delicate time. Etchells knew damn well it had to be connected to the issue of possession somehow. Nothing else would warrant approval. When he extrapolated its trajectory, he saw it was going to fly past a moonlet. He ran through a batch of his stolen almanac memories, discovering that the moonlet was actually an arkship, abandoned over a thousand years ago after a flight from an exploding star. His knowledge of Tyrathca history was almost zero, although the fundamentals were there. But he certainly couldn’t imagine any connection with their ancient ship and the possession crisis.

A quick swallow manoeuvre put him a thousand kilometres from Tanjuntic-RI, hours ahead of the Adamist starship, and he began to examine it. That was when he found the stealthed voidhawk lurking so close to the surface it was almost touching.

His flush of achievement was tempered by continuing worry. What the hell were they doing here? It had to be important. Critical, even. Which meant it was a threat to him. Among all his possible options, one thing was very clear. They had to be prevented from achieving their goal, whatever it was.

This is captain Syrinx of the voidhawk Oenone. Who am I addressing?

The name’s Etchells, and I’m one of Capone’s hellhawks.

Leave this star system immediately. We will not hesitate to use force to make you comply.

Tough bitch, huh? Well, give me a reason to leave. In fact, I’d like you to tell me what you two are doing here.

Our task is not your concern. Leave, now.

Wrong. I think it has a lot to do with me. Etchells launched a combat wasp at the arkship, then immediately swallowed away. The wormhole terminus opened a hundred kilometres from the Adamist starship. He loaded a hunter program into another combat wasp, and launched it as he emerged into real space.

As soon as Syrinx warned him a hellhawk had arrived, Joshua initiated combat status. He knew damn well their cover either had been, or was about to be, blown. Lady Mac’s main fusion generators powered up, the full suite of combat sensors rose out of their recesses, combat wasp launch tubes opened. Alkad Mzu and Peter Adul hurriedly secured themselves on the large, zero-tau capable acceleration couches in the lounge. Up in the bridge, webbing tightened around the crew.

“Wormhole terminus opening,” Beaulieu warned. “One hundred kilometres.”

Joshua triggered the Lady Mac’s triple fusion drives. That close wasn’t an accident, the hellhawk had their exact coordinate. “Liol, maser the bastard.”

“On it, Josh.” A targeting program went primary in his neural nanonics. Three of the starship’s eight maser cannons aligned themselves on the terminus and fired. The beams caught the hellhawk as it slid out, and tracked it perfectly. At a hundred kilometres, the inverse square law meant they couldn’t kill the hellhawk immediately. Joshua didn’t care about that. He just wanted to force it away. Lady Mac could take a lot more radiation punishment than any bitek construct if the hellhawk wanted an energy beam duel.

It didn’t. A single combat wasp shot out of its launch cradle, curving round to intercept Lady Mac. The hellhawk’s harpy shape wavered and imploded into a narrow polyp ovoid pimpled by steel-grey mechanical modules. It rolled frantically, trying to dodge the beams. After three seconds of futile manoeuvring, its distortion field applied a near-infinite force against space, and an interstice blossomed open. Joshua fired four combat wasps to intercept the incoming drone, and changed course again. His crew groaned in dismay as they accelerated at ten gees. Space behind Lady Mac’s triad of dazzling fusion drive plumes ruptured into a gale of plasma as the combat wasps ejected their submunitions. A curtain of nuclear explosions erected an impenetrable barrier while particle beams and X-ray lasers lashed out.

“I think we’re clear,” Beaulieu datavised. “Our combat wasps knocked out their combat wasp.”

Joshua reviewed the sensor data, which was calming as the expanding plasma wreathes from the explosions turned to purple then began to decay through the spectrum. Stars began to shine through the squall of enraged ions again. He reduced their acceleration to four gees, and switched course once more.

“We just ditched our softly softly policy,” Sarha grunted.

“Yeah,” Dahybi said. “Whoever possesses that hellhawk knows their tactics. One combat wasp was never going to hurt us. But it made us expose ourselves to the SD network.”

“Not just us,” Beaulieu said.

The sensors were showing them another combat wasp clash developing several hundred kilometres away from Tanjuntic-RI. “Syrinx, where the hell did it go?” Joshua datavised. “Could you get a fix?”

“It swallowed over to the moons,” Syrinx said.

Joshua already had the star system’s almanac file open. He reviewed the data on the twin moons. Airless rocks, three thousand kilometres in diameter. If they hadn’t been orbiting Hesperi-LN they’d be categorised as exceptionally large asteroids. “There’s nothing there for it,” he protested. “The Tyrathca don’t even bother mining them the ore’s so poor.”

“I know. We think it’s just a good location for a tactical withdrawal at this point in time. And it’ll be at least partially shielded from the SD sensors. The Tyrathca probably don’t know it’s here.”

“Great. Did you manage to get the team in?”

“Yes, they’re in. But Oenone is now holding station a hundred kilometres out from Tanjuntic-RI in case the hellhawk tries to swallow in and launch some more combat wasps. The arkship is very fragile, Joshua, it couldn’t withstand a nuclear assault. That leaves us totally exposed. The Tyrathca’s sensors have already locked on to us.”

The flight computer reported that three radars were already focused on Lady Mac’s hull. “Shit.” Joshua shut down the fusion drives and let the starship coast along. Their trajectory wasn’t taking them anywhere near Tanjuntic-RI anymore. “They’re watching us, too,” he told Syrinx. “Now what?”

“It’s their move. We wait.”

The message came eight minutes later, beamed at both Lady Macbeth and Oenone from one of the low orbit docking stations. “Human craft, you are not permitted here. You have fired weapons above our planet. This is an act of war. Leave now. Do not return.”

“Brief, but not open to much misinterpretation,” Ashly said as the message began to repeat. “I’m surprised they didn’t put in an or else.”

“They just have,” Beaulieu said. “Three ships on their way to intercept us. One-point-two-gee acceleration.”

“For them, that’s really racing along,” Liol said. “The Tyrathca hate high gees.”

“Another three fusion drive ignitions,” Beaulieu said. “One heading for us. Two aligning on Tanjuntic-RI.”

“At least we’re out of range from the platforms’ combat wasps,” Liol said. “That could have been nasty.”

“What’s your assessment?” Joshua asked Syrinx. He started to run the Tyrathca ship trajectories through some tactical analysis programs. While he was doing it, another two ships ignited their fusion drives and started to fly up on a course for the arkship.

“I think the situation’s still manageable,” she replied. “Providing it doesn’t escalate any further.”

“Yeah. I’m working on that aspect. We’ve got to make sure the team can continue. You’re going to have to stop that hellhawk from coming back to Tanjuntic-RI.”

“We can swallow out to the moons and keep it very busy. But that leaves the team without protection. One of those Tyrathca ships is bound to investigate the arkship. Even with their phlegmatism, they’ll want to know what we’re doing here.”

“Leave it to me. I’ll divert them. You get over to the moons.”

“Acknowledged.” Joshua lifted his head, and smiled round at his crew.

“Oh God,” Sarha moaned with unfeigned consternation. “I hate it when you smile like that!”

“Cheer up. We’re going to invade Hesperi-LN.”

The rotating airlock chamber had survived the spaceport bearing seizure almost intact. Samuel cut through the wall and floated into the big empty space. His helmet lights automatically defocused, throwing their radiance all around him. It was a cylindrical chamber, fifteen metres in diameter, and fifty long; stark even by Tyrathca standards. The walls were lined with a petrified sponge material resembling pumice stone, with thousands of regularly spaced indentations. Each one was just big enough to accept a Tyrathca breeder’s hoof.

There were three airlock hatches at each end, large circular affairs with chunky electromechanical locking rims. Precisely halfway down the chamber was a bulging hoop; the rotating seal to provide the Tyrathca with a pressurized transfer from the arkship to the spaceport. Now, its working fluid had evacuated, internal components were reduced to granular sculptures of their former selves; a technological cave etching.

Renato Vella squirmed into the chamber with jerky motions, knocking large chips of the wall material from the edge of the hole Samuel had cut. “Oh great, late era gloomy,” he pronounced. “They didn’t exactly go in for frills, did they?”

“I doubt a translator could even find an equivalent word,” Samuel datavised back.

The first serjeant was emerging from the hole, fracturing even more wall material as it came. There was an almost identical hole a third of the way round the wall, slightly larger. A matching opening had been made next to one of the airlocks at the ship end of the chamber. Samuel’s gauntlets gripped the indentations in the desiccated sponge fabric, and he moved cautiously hand over hand towards it.

“This must be where the archaeology team cut their way in,” he datavised. “Wait. Yes.” The suit sensors showed him a small plastic box fixed close to the jagged rim by a blob of epoxy, narrow lines of red human lettering covered a third of its dark blue surface. “Some kind of communication block. There are several cables running through the hole.” He ordered his suit communicator to transmit a standard interrogation signal. “No response. I guess the power’s drained by now.”

“Shame,” Renato datavised. “It would have been convenient to have some kind of communication net in there.”

“We could probably power it up again,” Oski replied. “It’s only a century old, the processors will be fully functional.”

“Forget it,” Monica told them. “The bitek processors can keep us in touch with each other and Oenone. We’re not going to be inside long enough to justify getting cosy.”

“We hope,” Samuel said. With the whole team now in the airlock chamber, his helmet lights refocused into wide beams. He grasped the edge of the old hole and pulled himself through.

The archaeology team had cut their way into a broad corridor that served one of the large jammed-up airlocks. It was a simple, square section shaft sliced straight through the rock, with the spongy hoof-grab fabric along the floor, and pipes fastened to both walls. He barely did more than look round, when Syrinx announced the presence of a hellhawk. She gave them a running commentary as the other team members emerged into the corridor.

“The Oenone is swallowing over to the moons to tag the hellhawk,” Syrinx told them. “Lady Macbeth will distract the Tyrathca.”

“For how long?” Monica asked.

“As long as possible,” Joshua replied. “Worst case, we fail completely. Their first ship should reach Tanjuntic-RI in fifty-three minutes—mark.”

“That’s no good. We won’t even have reached the second level by then.”

“I’ll swap with you any time.”

“Sorry, Joshua; that wasn’t a complaint. How did that hellhawk know we were here?”

“Probably followed us from the antimatter station,” Syrinx said. “It wouldn’t be too difficult.”

“Thank you, Captains,” Samuel datavised. “We’ll try to be as quick as we can.”

“If things get too hot, let us know,” Joshua replied.

“We’d better get on,” Samuel told the team. “Every minute of lead time could be indispensable later.” He ordered his backpack to fire the cold gas jets, and slid easily along the corridor to the first big airlock. Monica triggered her own backpack, and glided after him.

The corridor flared out around the airlock, which was a typical example of Tyrathca engineering: a square of titanium four metres in diameter with rounded corners, edged with locking seals, thick, sturdy, and reliable. And vacuum welded into place. The archaeology team had solved the egress problem by cutting out a metre-wide circle of metal from the Tyrathca slab and installing their own airlock. It was a simple mechanical hatch with frictionless hinges and seals. A chrome handle was half-recessed in the middle, with standard operating instructions stencilled beside it.

Samuel secured himself and pulled the handle. His armour’s power augmentation barely kicked in to help. The handle slid up, and rotated ninety degrees.

“One up to human engineering,” Renato datavised as Samuel pushed the hatch inwards.

“Not really,” Oski datavised. “It’s our materials science that makes the difference. The hatch was designed for longterm vacuum exposure. Their airlock was built with regular maintenance services in mind.”

There was another corridor identical to the first on the far side of the airlock. One of the serjeants shut the small hatch after them. This corridor also ended in a big titanium airlock, with an identical human hatch inserted. Samuel pulled the lever up. Before he could attempt to push the hatch open, his suit sensors advised him of an environment change. “It’s venting,” he datavised. “Very small nitrogen release, minute contamination. Pressure must be equalising.”

“Open it,” Monica datavised. “There can’t be any real atmosphere in there. We’re wasting time.”

Samuel gripped one of the titanium spars with one gauntlet, and pushed with the other. The suit’s power augmentation whined on the threshold of audibility. A whirl of silvery dust scooted around Samuel’s armour as the hatch flipped back.

“Just how many of these corridors are there?” Renato asked as he air-swam through, only to be faced with yet another blank rock shaft. His inertial guidance display showed him it was inclined slightly, heading away from the rotation axis. Though there was still no appreciable gravity.

“This is the last one, according to our file,” Samuel said.

The airlock at the far end had a human hatch in it; there was also a small plaque.

HIGH YORK UNIVERSITY
ARCHAEOLOGY EXPEDITION OF 2487

We respectfully offer our tribute to the generations of Tyrathca who ventured forth in this vessel.

In this place we have stumbled through the remnants of greatness, eternally thankful for the glimpse of nobility they reveal.

Though the Tyrathca have no god, they are clearly not devoid of miracles.

Renato floated over to the silvered plaque after Monica moved aside. “Well that’s a nice way to start,” he datavised. “The archaeology expedition never found any reference to a Tyrathca god.”

“We knew that already,” Oski datavised. “Besides, I doubt they were looking. The only memory files they accessed were in the systems management architecture. We’ve got to go a lot deeper than that to find anything useful.”

Samuel shifted his sensors from the plaque to the hatch. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt more like a grave robber.”

“There have been worse assignments,” Monica datavised. “For you as well as me, I suspect.”

Samuel didn’t reply. He grasped the hatch’s handle and pulled up. This time there was a significant gas vent.

“This is it,” Oski datavised. “We’re in. Terracompatible nitrogen oxygen mix, several trace gases. Three per cent standard atmospheric pressure. No water vapour content. Guess it’s too cold. Registering thirty degrees below zero.”

“Checks with the file,” Monica confirmed. Samuel pushed the hatch open and glided through.

The archaeology expedition had spent six weeks exploring the interior of Tanjuntic-RI. Given the timescale, it could hardly be thorough. But the main sections were all mapped, allowing the nature of the arkship’s engines and environmental maintenance mechanisms to be inspected. Tanjuntic-RI was arranged in three principal levels. Along the rotation axis were three long cylindrical chambers six hundred metres wide. Each contained a shallow lake which served as the principal biological recycling system. The water was a combination fish-tank/ algal air regenerator, powered by a thermal lighting array strung along the axis. Surrounding that was an extensive warren of hemispherical caverns linked by kilometre after kilometre of broad corridors. This level was devoted to engineering and flight maintenance; the caverns filled with machinery, everything from fusion generators to chemical filtration plants, cybernetic factories to mineral storage silos. The rear quarter of the caverns were all used to house support systems and fuel for the fusion engines.

Encircling the second level were the eight principal life support rings. Tunnelled out of the rock and lined with metal, like giant binding bands; they had a rectangular cross section, five hundred metres wide, a hundred metres high. Their floor was a single looped strip of Tyrathca tower houses threaded by narrow roads of greenery, a computer design program’s notion of urban pleasantries.

“We need the third level, ring five,” Oski datavised as soon as they were through the last airlock. “That’s where the archaeologists found the control offices.” A three dimensional map of the interior expanded into her mind. Her guidance block extended a glowing green line through the tunnels, linking her present location to ring five.

The last airlock had brought the team into a standard-sized corridor that circled the forward end of the arkship. Over a hundred other corridors branched off from it. Gravity was barely noticeable, taking several minutes to pull objects towards the floor. Monica used her gas jets to take her over to a clump of human crates stacked against the wall. The thin, freezing atmosphere had turned the white plastic a faint cream. She read some of their labels. “Nothing we can use,” she datavised. “It’s their camp equipment. Programmable silicon shelters, life support units, microfusion generators; that kind of thing.”

“What about lighting?” a serjeant asked.

“Good question.” Monica shifted position, scanning more labels. “Yes, here we go. Monochrome projectors, three hundred metre illumination radius. I don’t think they’re self powered, though.”

“Leave it,” Samuel datavised. “We don’t have the time.” He fired his manoeuvring pack and started drifting along the corridor. The wall opposite the airlocks had archways leading away into the interior, their depth defeating his suit sensors and lights. “There should be a lift here somewhere. Ah.” The fifth archway had a palm-sized plastic disk stuck on the wall beside it, a small lifelong beacon light in the centre. Samuel couldn’t resist flicking it with a gauntlet finger as he went past. There was no spark of light from the beacon, its tritium-decay power source had been exhausted decades ago.

His gas jets squirted strongly, steering him through the archway. Fifteen metres down the corridor was a lift door: a single panel of metal ten metres long and three high. The team didn’t even pause by it. There was a smaller door on either side, each heading a ramp that spiralled, DNA-fashion, around the entire length of the lift shaft. One of them was open; it had a dead light beacon just inside.

“This should take us nearly a kilometre straight down,” Samuel datavised.

“At least it’ll be a smooth ride once the gravity kicks in,” Renato datavised. “Thank god the Tyrathca don’t use steps. Can you image the size and spacing?”

Monica halted in mid-air beside the doorway and focused her suit beams through the gap. The downward slope was barely noticeable, though the curve was pronounced. She took a tube dispenser from her belt, and thumbed out the first disk. Jupiter had supplied the little bitek sensors, completely transparent disks a centimetre wide. Their affinity range was only a few kilometres—enough for this mission. She pressed it against the door rim. It stuck instantly. When she requested an affinity bond with it from her suit’s bitek processor, the disk revealed a fish-eye view of the corridor, with the suits floating before the ramp doorway.

“Pity we don’t have a swarm of bitek insects covering the interior,” she datavised. Samuel didn’t rise to the jibe. “But this’ll give us plenty of warning. There’s a motion trigger if anything starts moving around behind us.”

“Onward, then,” Samuel datavised. His gas jets flared, pushing him along the ramp.

Everyone’s bitek processor received Joshua’s troubled hail. “I’m afraid you’re going to have company,” he announced.

Lady Mac was accelerating at six gees, a quarter of a million kilometres above Hesperi-LN and heading in a shallow curve around the planet’s north pole. Two five-strong formations of Tyrathca ships were heading out to intercept, rising from their hundred thousand kilometre orbits at one and a half gees. He wasn’t worried about them, nor the three ships that were on course for the twin moons to investigate the antics of the two bitek starships. Another group of four ships were flying straight for Tanjuntic-RI, seventy-five thousand kilometres from Lady Mac.

“Definite interception course,” Beaulieu confirmed. “Looks like they want to know what was going on there.”

“Wonderful,” Joshua grunted. “The only way to stop them is if they think we’re hostile.”

“I think they know that already,” Sarha said with as much irony as five gees allowed.

As soon as they’d accelerated along their present course, Joshua had launched three combat wasps. There was no real target designation, just the planet; and they were programmed to detonate ten thousand kilometres above the atmosphere if they managed to get that far. But the Tyrathca didn’t know that. All they’d seen was three nuclear missiles charging in towards their planet at twenty-seven gees: an unprovoked attack from a human starship that was continuing to manoeuvre in a hostile manner.

Joshua changed course again, flying along a vector which would take him below the ships heading for Tanjuntic-RI—logically, a position he could bombard the planet from. Another two combat wasps flew out of their tubes, searing fusion drives thrusting them towards the four ships.

It was a good tactical move, which almost paid off. Three of the Tyrathca ships changed course to defend themselves against the combat wasps and pursue Lady Mac. The fourth remained on course for the arkship.

“Thirteen ships heading right at us,” Beaulieu confirmed. “Twelve SD platforms have also acquired lock on. No combat wasp launch yet.”

Joshua reviewed the tactical situation display again, purple and orange vector lines flipping round inside his skull. Lady Mac was now heading in almost the opposite direction to the last Tyrathca ship. There was nothing left he could do to distract it. The only option left was an attack, which wasn’t an option at all. First he would have to reverse his current vector which would take up a vast amount of time and delta-V, then he would have to fight his way past the three other ships with their potentially large stock of combat wasps. And even if he achieved that, he’d have to kill the ship to stop it rendezvousing.

It was a bad deal. The Tyrathca crewing the ship were innocent—just trying to defend themselves and their world against aggressive xenocs. Although, if you looked at it in an abstract way, they could well be all that stood between the exploration team and salvation from the possessed. Can you really allow a dozen Tyrathca to bring about the end of an entire race because of what was essentially a communication breakdown on a multitude of levels?

Joshua used the bitek array to call the exploration team and warn them of the approaching ship. “We estimate it’ll dock in another forty minutes,” he said. “Just how long do you need?”

“If everything goes without a hitch, a couple of hours,” Oski said. “But I would think a day would be more realistic.”

“A day is out of the question,” Joshua said. “If I get seriously noisy out here I might be able to buy you an hour or so.”

“That’s not necessary, Joshua,” a serjeant said. “This is a very big ship. If they do come on board, they’ll have to find us.”

“Not too difficult with infrared sensors.”

“That’s assuming a straightforward pursuit scenario. Now we know the Tyrathca are coming, we can make that pursuit extremely difficult for them. And there is also the Horatius option to consider. We four are expendable, after all.”

“Our weapons are superior, as well,” Monica said. “Now we haven’t got to worry about the hardware glitching on us, we can deploy some real firepower.”

“What about getting out afterwards?” Dahybi asked.

“Advance planning for a situation this fluid is a waste of time,” Samuel said. “Let’s wait until we have the relevant data before we consider how to achieve extraction.”

“Okay,” Joshua said reluctantly. “Your call. But we’re here if you need us.” He returned to the tactical situation. Lady Mac wasn’t in any real danger from the planet’s defences. She was too far away from the Tyrathca ships and SD platforms. At this separation distance, any combat wasp would take a minimum of fifteen minutes to reach them. The starship could jump out of trouble long before that.

“Right, let’s keep these bastards busy,” Joshua said. He instructed the flight computer to fire another combat wasp at the planet.

Halfway down the giant spiral ramp, the easiest way to descend was to sit and slide. Black frost had coated the floor, sending broad tendrils scurrying up the wall like frigid creepers. Along with the others Monica was bumping along on her bum as if she was on an après ski glissade, gradually picking up speed, and ignoring the total lack of dignity. Clouds of filthy ice motes were spraying up from where the suit was making its grinding contact with the ramp. Every now and then she’d hit an uneven patch and glide through the air for a metre.

“Getting near the bottom,” Samuel datavised.

He was two people down the line from Monica, nearly obscured by the black particle haze. Suit beams were jouncing about chaotically, throwing discordant shadows across the walls.

Monica put her gauntlets down to try and brake her speed. They just skipped and skidded about. “Just how do we slow down?” she asked.

“Manoeuvring pack.” Samuel triggered the jets at full throttle, feeling the gentle thrust slow him. The serjeant directly behind bumped into his back. “Everybody at once, please.”

The ramp shaft was suddenly full of whirling pearly-white fog as ice granules and nitrogen blended together, boosting the air pressure. Suit lights fluoresced it to a uniform opacity.

Monica shifted to micro-radar as her speed slowed drastically. This time when she put her hands down she pressed hard enough to activate the augmentation. It allowed her to dig her fingertips into the sheet of ice, producing a loud wince-inducing screech as they gouged out ten straight furrows. She halted on a relatively flat section. Radar showed her the end of the ramp fifteen metres ahead and the other armour suits skating elegantly to a halt around her. The white fog vanished as quickly as it’d emerged, sucked away back up the ramp, and out through the archway ahead.

They picked themselves up and scanned round. The ramp had come out at an intersection of eight corridors. Beacons had been stuck on each archway. The ice along the floor of every corridor was slightly rumpled, like stone paving slabs worn by centuries of feet. Nothing else showed the archaeology expedition had once passed this way.

“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, high-voltage 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.

A cache of human machinery was spread out before the door at the end of the ramp: a couple of microfusion generators, mobile cherry-picker platforms, industrial thermal inducer plates, hydraulic rams, and electromechanical actuators; all hooked together with loosely bundled cables and flexible hoses. The archaeology expedition had used them to reactivate the massive airlock. It was a quarter open, allowing them access to ring five. Four small jeeps were parked just inside, standard airless-planet mobility vehicles, with large low-pressure tyres and a composite latticework chassis. Ridiculously dainty in comparison to the engineering on display around them.

Samuel went over and inspected them, flicking switches on the dashboard. “I’m getting a response from the control processor,” he datavised. “There’s some power left in the standby circuits, but that’s about all. The main energy cells are dead.”

“Irrelevant,” Monica datavised. She ordered her suit lamps to emit a high-wattage pulse, and readied the sensors. Her neural nanonics memory froze the image when the lights flared. Buffer programs isolated the image for her to examine.

Not even the suit’s lights could penetrate the gloom right across the ring. As a result, the curvature effect was completely lost. She was standing in a metal cave, walls, floor, and ceiling made up from millions of aluminium alloy panels, heat sealed to the naked rock underneath and welded together. Plants had been grown up the walls while the arkship was occupied, vigorous creepers clawing their way along metal trellises. Their leaves were black and wizened now, dead from lack of water and light long before the heat seeped away into space. But the cold had arrived before they’d fallen in their final autumn, sprinkling them with frost then freezing them into place against the dull metal tiling.

The ring’s ceiling had an analogue in human warehouse roofs; criss crossed with thick pipes and sturdy gantry crane rails, giving the vast chamber an overtly industrial feel. Its illumination had been provided by thousands of large circular disks of smoked glass, which peered out of the gaps.

“A winter wonderland palace,” Monica datavised. “Even if it was built by the devil’s own elves.”

“How could they live in this, for Christ’s sake?” Renato asked. “It’s just a machine. There’s no attempt to make it pleasing or hospitable. You couldn’t stay inside all of your life, it would drive you insane.”

“Us,” Oski datavised. “Not them. They don’t have our psychological profile.”

“I expect they would find one of our habitats to be equally disenchanting,” Samuel said.

“The Tyrathca have arrived,” one of the serjeants datavised.

Everyone saw it through the sensor disk Monica had left up in level one. A flash of light from the airlock which led up to the spaceport support column. Large jagged sections of the square titanium hatch flew into the corridor, rebounding from the walls amid cascades of ice chips to twirl away in both directions. The Tyrathca emerged, and began moving in a slow canter towards the entrance to the spiral ramp. They were in spacesuits, which made it hard to tell between breeders and soldiers. Although the SII had tried many times to sell them programmable silicon suits modified to their physiology, they’d resolutely stuck to their own original design.

The body of Tyrathca spacesuits was made from a tough flexible plastic, a silvery blue in colour, like metallic silk. They formed overalls that were loose and baggy enough for the big creatures to slip into easily, with concertina-like tubes for legs and arms. After that, instead of inflating them with oxygen, they were pumped full with a thick gel, expelling all the air. Given how many limbs (and therefore joints) a Tyrathca body had, such a concept neatly did away with the problem of providing multiple pressurized joints on every suit. In order to breathe, they wore simple tight-fitting masks inside the suits. Oxygen tanks, a regulator mechanism, and a heat exchanger were worn in a pack along their backs, with two black radiator fins running along their spine. Additional equipment was carried on a harness around their necks.

“Looks like subtlety is another trait we don’t share,” Monica datavised. “They must have blown out every airlock along that first corridor to get inside. The sensor disk is registering a lot of gas motion in that corridor. They just don’t care that Tanjuntic-RI is going to vent its remaining atmosphere.”

“If they don’t, we shouldn’t,” Renato datavised. “It won’t affect our mission.”

“They’re all armed,” Samuel datavised. “Even the breeders.”

The Tyrathca were each carrying a pair of long matt-black rifles, with coiled leads plugged into power packs on their harnesses. Monica put an armaments library file into primary mode, and let it run through the catalogue for a match. “Masers,” she datavised. “Fairly basic medium-output projectors. Our armour should withstand an energy strike from them. But if we get caught in a saturation situation we’ll be in trouble. And they’re carrying other ordnance as well. I think I can make out some guided rockets, and EE grenades on those harnesses. Human-built.”

“I wonder who sold those to them,” Oski datavised. “I thought the Confederation didn’t permit armaments sales to the Tyrathca.”

“Not relevant,” Samuel datavised. “Come on, let’s locate that control office the archaeology expedition found.”

Monica bled in her suit sensor’s infrared visualization as they moved off. The Tyrathca buildings materialized around her, tapering towers of a pale blue luminescence, like flame frozen against the empty blackness which stretched out along the ring. It was a cold necropolis, with every street and building identical, as if each section had been stamped from the same die and laid out end to end. Gardens of tangled plants besieged each of the towers, their entwined stalks caught in the act of sagging. Unrelenting cold had turned the vegetation as hard and black as cast iron. Fanciful leaves, strangely shaped flowers and bloated seed pods had all been reduced to the same sombre shade of charcoal.

“Damn, those Tyrathca can move fast in low-gee,” Samuel datavised. They hadn’t been walking ten minutes, and already the Tyrathca had reached the bottom of the first spiral ramp. A sensor disk showed one of them sweeping a portable electronic scanner over the floor while the others waited behind. The group split into three, following the various thermal trails.

“I make that eighteen coming our way,” Monica datavised. “I think we’ve got four breeders. They’re slightly larger.”

“I will return to the entrance,” one of the serjeants datavised. “I will have time to lay several false heat trails before they reach this ring. That should split them again. And I may manage to close the airlock door. Either way, it will reduce the force that will ultimately pursue you.”

“Thank you,” Monica datavised.

The serjeant turned round, and walked back down the road.

“And then there were five,” Renato muttered uneasily round his respirator tube.

Ione wanted to know as soon as possible what the Tyrathca intended. The knowledge would certainly help her plan the kind of tactics needed to keep them away from the team. The two diversion serjeants had busily laid their heat trails, meandering between several of the big machinery chambers on the second level. That was when she found that the map made by the archaeologists was not perfect. Several times, she’d had to use her inertial guidance to work out where she was when corridors didn’t correspond to the indicated layout. It was a factor to consider when she sketched in her possible escape routes. The Tyrathca wouldn’t suffer from such misinformation. Tanjuntic-RI’s exact topology would be known to them; passed down from generation to generation via their chemical program glands.

One of the diversion serjeants was now hanging back from the archway that opened into a hemispherical chamber. It was a big space, occupied by what appeared to be a refinery constructed entirely out of glass. Colonnades, spheres, bulbs, and minarets formed their own miniature city, bound together with a tangled lattice of tubes. Individual containers were full of coloured liquids that had turned to ice. Cracks were visible everywhere. If heat ever did return to this chamber, the whole edifice would probably collapse.

There were three other entrances to the glass refinery, the one opposite the serjeant was where the heat trail from the ramp led. Sensor disks on the corridor wall showed Ione the Tyrathca advancing steadily along it. Ione waited. She knew her suit’s heat signature would be visible to the Tyrathca as soon as they entered the refinery chamber, shining with the tenacity of a red dwarf star against the arctic corridor.

The first Tyrathca came in. Stopped. Raised the scanner it was holding, pointing it directly at her. Her suit communication block picked up a burst of encrypted data. The whole column of Tyrathca came to a halt. Then two of them moved up to support the first. They immediately fanned out on either side of the chamber, reducing her target opportunity.

Damn, she said. I think we can kiss the entrapment goodbye. The rest are waiting to see what happens.

It was to be expected, Samuel replied. They are soldier-caste, after all. Bred for conflict. The breeders don’t need to impart chemical programs of tactics among them; such knowledge is instinctive.

The serjeant moved out of the shallow alcove which had been masking it. Ione was ordering the communication block to open a channel on the frequency the Tyrathca were using when both the soldiers fired their maser rifles. The beams struck the serjeant’s armour, almost overloading its energy dissipation web. She jumped, a movement enhanced considerably by low gravity and the suit’s augmentation. At the same time she triggered the EE charges she’d placed above each of the chamber’s entrances. Tonnes of rock descended in four separate avalanches, sealing the three Tyrathca in.

Ione climbed to her feet, and focused the suit sensors back. The jump had sent her soaring fifty metres down the corridor, barely avoiding hitting the roof. Small lumps of rock were spinning and bouncing towards her in lazy motions. The sensor disks in the refinery chamber showed nothing but a swirling cloud of dust, while the others showed the remaining Tyrathca retreating swiftly. They started to split up, vanishing down side corridors where there were no sensors to follow them.

The bad news is they’re operating a shoot-to-kill policy, she said. I guess they’re not curious why we’re here.

That’s to be expected, Samuel said. You don’t evolve an entire caste devoted to aggression unless you have a great need for them. The Tyrathca social structure is based around a clan hierarchy, they are extremely territorial. And we’re violating their oldest piece of territory in defiance of their explicit instructions.

Yes. Well at least you know what to expect when they reach ring five. Now I’d better get out of here before they pop up from some secret passage and shoot me.

The control offices were a series of rooms bored into the wall of ring five, fourteen hundred metres from the spiral ramp. Simple open rectangles, plated in aluminium alloy, with the floor covered in composite. Each room was lined by bulky computer terminals, with twin rosette keyboards for Tyrathca fingers. The walls above them were covered by long display screens to project the arkship’s engineering schematics and navigational plot. To all intents and purposes, this was Tanjuntic-RI’s bridge.

According to the archaeology expedition there was less frost and ice inside, which had permitted them to reactivate several of the electronic systems without much trouble. The control offices were on an independent environmental circuit with a much reduced humidity level; and the airlocks were shut prior to the arkship’s final evacuation so there was no contamination from ring five’s damper atmosphere.

The archaeology expedition had known the sealed rooms were important; they’d traced the arkship’s internal communication network, and discovered the principal node was inside. With due respect, they’d installed their own hatches in the Tyrathca airlocks, as they had up in level one. There was no worry about atmospheric contamination any more, not with all the water frozen out. But they wanted to maintain the environmental integrity. This was the first human exploration through an artefact belonging to a sentient xenoc species; ethics was a paramount concern—even though the Tyrathca were indifferent to such matters.

So, Monica and the others discovered, was someone else.

The large titanium rectangles leading to the control offices had been reactivated and opened, swinging back against the chamber wall. Not only that, the safety interlocks had somehow been circumvented, allowing all three to be opened at once. The five suited figures stood in front of the opening, scanning round with their sensors.

“This has got to be it,” Monica datavised. “The human hatches are still here. The archaeologists didn’t install them anywhere else.”

“Has there been another expedition since the first?” Renato asked.

“If there was, then neither Earth, Jupiter, nor Kulu knew anything about it,” Samuel datavised. “I have to say that’s extremely unlikely.”

“In any case, why not just use the archaeology team’s hatches?” Renato asked. “We know they work. It must have taken a lot of effort to get these brutes open again.”

Oski stepped forward gingerly, using a hand-held sensor pad to scan around the airlock rim. “I can’t pick up any electrical impulses. But this was opened very recently. There’s still some very faint thermal traces in the surrounding structure. They probably had to warm the airlocks back up to their operating temperature to get them to function again.”

Monica resisted the instinct to whirl round and check the streets of the necropolis behind. Her suit’s micro radar was scanning constantly for any sign of local movement. But the arkship’s chill had somehow managed to stroke her skin through the armour. “How recent?” she asked.

“Within the last five days.”

“And not human,” Renato datavised.

“Why do you say that?”

“Obvious. If it was our species, they would have used the hatches the archaeologists installed. Whoever it was, they were too big to fit through them.”

“It has to be the Kiint,” Samuel datavised. “After all, they are partly the reason we’re here. Ione and Kelly were right, Lieria was interested in the Sleeping God. And this is the obvious place where information on it would be stored. They must have teleported in here not long after they left Tranquillity. And simply opening the original airlock is the kind of elegance I’d expect from them. We’ve seen what the Tyrathca do to doors that won’t budge for them.”

“Why not just teleport directly inside the control offices?” Monica asked.

“They’re extremely small on a cosmic scale. I’m guessing such an action would require impossible accuracy, especially over three hundred light years from Jobis.”

“Could be. Do you think they’re still here?”

Oski pointed her sensor pad along the short airlock tunnel. “It’s inert as far as I can tell.”

“And our time is running out,” Monica datavised. “Let’s get in there.”

The control offices were noticeably warmer. Suit sensors detected thermal concentrations around three of the computer terminals in the second room. “This is the astrogration centre,” Oski datavised. “One of our information targets. If we’re to get a fix on the Sleeping God’s location, we ought to find it stored in here.”

“Get started,” Monica datavised. The sensor disks were showing her the Tyrathca moving through the second level chamber with the biological reactor. They’d slowed their advance slightly since the diversion serjeant’s attempted entrapment, treating each chamber with suspicion, never allowing more than three soldiers inside together. Even so, they’d be at the spiral ramp leading to ring five in another fifteen minutes.

Oski and Renato knelt down beside one of the terminals, and spread out their equipment. Monica, Samuel, and the last serjeant quickly searched the remaining rooms, then went back out into ring five.

“We should backtrack a bit and lay some false heat trails,” Monica datavised. “That will give us a few minutes more.”

“I don’t think it will,” Samuel replied. “By the time they get here, it will be obvious to them that we came for the control offices. Diversions won’t work. We shall have to defend our position.”

“Shit, I hope not, because this is a tactical lost cause. They can come at us from all sides, and we don’t have a way out.”

“But we do have superior weaponry. Let’s just hope we don’t have to use it.”

“Fine. And now we’ve actually reached the mission target, why don’t we start thinking of a way out of here.”

The second diversion serjeant had rigged a hundred-and-fifty-metre length of corridor. A simple enough entrapment: wait until the lead Tyrathca reached the EE charge, then trigger both of them. The length of corridor should trap all twelve of the pursuing xenocs between the rockfalls. But when the lead Tyrathca approached the first EE charge, it slowed, and the others stopped. Ione cursed as it moved forwards carefully, waving its scanner round. She must have left an abnormal thermal trace in the corridor when she was placing the EE charges.

The Tyrathca consulted the scanner display a final time, and pointed its maser rifle at the corridor roof. If the beam did wash over the EE charge’s trigger electronics, the radiation would destroy them.

Annoyed, Ione set off the EE charge, bringing down a five metre section of roof. It didn’t harm any of the Tyrathca. They cantered back down the corridor and split up, presumably to bypass the blockage and pick up the diversion serjeant’s heat trail again. Although without any sensor disk coverage, she couldn’t be sure where they were. She started to move again, heading deeper into the arkship’s interior, certain they weren’t ahead of her, at least.

Oski was in her element. Worry about her physical predicament had vanished completely as she and Renato removed the computer terminal panels, exposing the circuitry inside. Tyrathca electronics lagged behind current human systems by several generations—if not centuries. She hadn’t dealt with anything this crude since her compulsory History of Electronics semester while she was studying for her degree.

Renato followed her datavised instructions efficiently, tracing the terminal’s main power cable and splicing in one of the energy matrices they’d brought with them. Small coloured symbols ringing the rosette keyboard lit up.

“Thank heavens they don’t have any imagination,” Oski datavised. “I’d hate to try and do this kind of thing on nonstandard systems in the timescale we’ve got. But that’s a null concept for the Tyrathca.”

“Which I still think is a paradox,” Renato datavised. “Imagination is the root cause of all fresh ideas. You can’t design a starship without it. It’s the Siamese twin of curiosity.”

“Which they also don’t seem to have much of.”

“But probing your environment is a basic survival trait. You have to know if there’s any kind of threat out there if you want to keep on living. Then you have to work out how to overcome it.”

“I’m not arguing. Let’s just save it for another time, okay?” Oski began attaching the processor blocks she’d brought to the databuses inside the terminus; unspooling long ribbons of fibre optic cable with custom built interface plugs on the end. The Laymil project had the specifications of known Tyrathca electronic systems on file in Tranquillity, of course; but she’d referenced the archaeology expedition’s records to be sure. Tanjuntic-RI’s systems were identical to those used today, even down to the size and configuration of the sockets. Fifteen thousand years of standardisation! Renato was right: that wasn’t merely odd, it was downright eerie.

The interface plugs clicked smoothly into their sockets, and the block datavised that the high density photonic link had been established. Which was ridiculous. She’d been waiting to apply a chemical spray that would have eased the plugs into place. It had been invented by her division to clean up optical contacts that had been exposed to the vacuum, dust, and general degradation of the Ruin Ring; they used a lot of it on the scant remnants of Laymil electronics they acquired.

She put the spray canister down and picked up a micro scanner. “I can accept that their electronics are in a much better condition than the Laymil modules we have,” she datavised. “The environment here is so much more benign, and they haven’t been abandoned as long. But this lucky is absolutely impossible.” The blocks finished assembling an iconographic display of the terminal’s architecture. “The entire terminal is on-line, there isn’t a single element not functioning. The Kiint didn’t just access this, they repaired the damn thing to full operational status. Some of these components are brand new, for heaven’s sake.”

“How much of it is new?”

“According to my scanner, it’s just processors and some support circuitry. The memory crystals are original. Which makes sense. They want the data stored inside them, just like us.”

“Can you get it?”

“No problem.” They already knew the Tyrathca program language, and there was certainly no such thing as security protocols or codes to guard against unauthorised access. Before leaving Tranquillity, the division’s software experts had written customised questors that could examine all the information contained within Tyrathca memory crystals. Oski datavised the first batch of pre-formatted programs into the terminus architecture. Some of them were hunting for distinct references, while the others were classifying the information according to file type. The pair of them accessed the questor results as they returned.

“Well, it would have been too much to expect a direct reference to the Sleeping God,” Renato datavised.

“No mention of an unusual cosmological event, either,” Oski observed. She studied the file index, seeing what kind of database they’d activated, and shaping the next batch of questors accordingly. “We have plenty of navigational fixes.”

“I’m going to see if the questors can find a list of star fixes they used to align their communication laser during the flight. At least that’ll give us an idea of their contact protocol with the other arkships.”

“Good idea. I’ll see if any other arkship flight paths are stored in here. That should tell us what kind of spatial volume we’re dealing with.”

The questors revealed several tens of thousands of star fixes performed to align the interstellar communication laser. Eighty-five per cent of them were performed during the first six thousand years of the flight, after that the number of communiqués transmitted and received by the arkship dropped off considerably. During the latter stages of the flight, the star fixes were performed almost exclusively to align the laser on the five colony planets which Tanjuntic-RI had established.

With the fixes established, Oski began to search for associated files. “The messages aren’t stored in here,” she datavised eventually. “I keep getting a link code with all the laser alignment files. But it’s to a different system altogether.”

“Do you know where it is?” Renato asked.

“Not yet.” She composed a new batch of questors, and sent them probing through the terminal’s basic management routines. “How are you doing?”

“Unpleasantly successful. The Tyrathca built over a thousand arkships.”

“Good god.”

“Yeah, quite. If they all travelled as far as this one, that gives us a phenomenal area to search through for their Sleeping God. We’re talking about a percentage of the entire galaxy. Small, admittedly. But everything is relative. Parker and Kempster will love this.”

The questors started to display their answers to Oski. “Ah, here we go. The files we want are stored in some kind of principal archive. I’ve got the identification code.”

“But it could be anywhere. We can’t access anything from here.”

“Yes. Come on. We want the office which dealt with the arkship’s general systems. We’ll see if we can activate one of the terminals in there, and call up a general schematic.”

The maser beam caught the diversion serjeant on its thigh as it was crossing one of the hemispherical chambers. Ione’s response was automatic, a fast powered dive behind a huge clump of machinery. The beam cut off as she fell behind it. Her armour’s electronic warfare block had pinpointed the origin. The Tyrathca was shooting from just inside one of the corridors.

She loaded the coordinate into her weapons hardware. A homing grenade shot out of her belt dispenser, curving over the top of the sheltering machinery. An EE explosion obliterated the corridor entrance. Another maser slashed across the serjeant’s armour. Ione rolled quickly, swinging the launcher round. A second homing grenade eliminated the corridor the Tyrathca soldier was charging out of.

They’re moving bloody fast, she told her other selves and Samuel. It was a good pincer manoeuvre. She used the suit’s sensors to scan down the corridor ahead. No motion or anomalous infrared source was detectable.

You can’t go back, the serjeant with Monica and Samuel down in ring five told her. You know they’re behind you.

Yes. She unclipped a magazine from her belt and slotted it into her multi-barrelled launcher as she walked over to the one remaining corridor entrance. Three slender missiles were fired at two second intervals, streaking away down the lightless tunnel. The serjeant flattened itself against the wall.

Each of the three missiles was tipped with a neutron pulse warhead. They detonated simultaneously, soaking a five hundred metre length of the corridor with a lethal cascade of radiation. If there had been any Tyrathca lurking down there, the neutron bombardment would have killed them almost instantaneously. Holding the fat missile launcher in one hand, and an X-ray laser in the other, the diversion serjeant started to creep down the radioactive corridor.

“Oski, progress report, please,” Monica datavised. A sensor disk showed her the Tyrathca massing at the top of the spiral ramp which led down to ring five. “We’re getting a little critical out here.”

“I’m in the general systems layout. Should have the archive location any second now. This is another terminal the Kiint have refurbished. That must mean we’re on the right track.”

“Oski,” Samuel datavised. “Please store as much of the layout as possible. It might help us to get out of here.”

“To get out?” Monica queried.

“Yes. I have an idea.”

“I’d love to hear it.”

“One moment.” Syrinx?

Yes Samuel. Are you making progress?

Not as much as I’d like, but yes. Oski will start to datavise the information we have acquired so far to you and the Lady Macbeth in case we do not get out.

There’s still only one Tyrathca ship at Tanjuntic-RI. They’ll be no match for Oenone. As long as you can get back up to what’s left of the spaceport support column, you’ll be fine.

That may prove difficult. The Tyrathca soldier-caste are very capable, as the serjeants are discovering. And they know where we have to return to. An ambush would be easy for them.

What do you propose?

Monica and I were both present when Dr Mzu escaped from Tranquillity.

Now wait a minute—Syrinx protested.

I could do that, Oenone said. If the Udat can, I can. There was considerable eagerness in the voidhawk’s mental tone.

No, Syrinx said, instinctively protective. Tanjuntic-RI is a hell of a lot smaller than Tranquillity. You’d never fit into one of the rings.

But I would fit into the level-one chambers.

That was what I was going to suggest, Samuel said. We ought to be able to reach one of them. And I doubt the hellhawk could swallow in to harass you. Whereas if you came back here to fight your way past the Tyrathca ship, it could certainly complicate the situation for you.

I can do it, Oenone insisted.

Are you sure? This isn’t just bravado, is it?

You know I can. And we would honour Udat’s memory by doing so.

All right. Syrinx couldn’t hide the pride and simmering excitement in her mind. Samuel, we’ll attempt to pick you out from one of the axial chambers.

Thank you, Samuel said emphatically.

Oski and Renato were almost running as they emerged from the control office airlock. Their suit programs were having to limit the augmentation to stop them from hitting their heads on the airlock chamber ceiling. “I’ve found the archive.” Renato datavised the layout file over to Monica, Samuel, and the serjeants. “It’s on the other side of the ring, a kilometre away.”

“Move out,” Monica datavised. Her guidance block was analysing the new data, incorporating it into existing files.

“According to this file, there’s a ramp up to the second level just past the archive,” Samuel datavised. “I’ll blow the airlock hatch, and we’ll evacuate through there as soon as you’ve got the information.”

“Sounds good,” Renato datavised.

The five of them were skating along the lightless streets in long low bounds, utterly reliant on their guidance programs. Nothing changed around them. At every turn, the wintered towers were the same ahead and behind, their infrared signatures identical.

“The Tyrathca are on their way down the ramp to this ring,” datavised the serjeant who was guarding the entrance. “I’ve rigged the airlock. Do you want me to blow it?”

“No,” Monica datavised. “Wait until they’re all inside the ring, then blow it.”

“You want to trap them in here?” Renato datavised. “With us?”

“Good tactics,” Samuel confirmed. “If we block them now, we won’t know where they are, nor how they gain entry. But once they’re in, they can’t get out easily, and we can monitor them via the sensor disks. It gives us the strategic high ground.”

A glimmer of infrared started to shine down the corridor ahead of the diversion serjeant, like an autumnal dawn. Ione stopped and slapped a magazine of smart-seeker missiles in the launcher, datavising the Tyrathca profile into their processors. Suit sensors showed a similar infrared glow expanding behind her.

Surrounded, she informed her other selves. Be warned. They really are making good use of their knowledge.

A couple of neutron pulse tipped missiles were fired at the group behind her. She dropped a grenade, and started to run forwards. Smart-seeker missiles sliced out of the big launcher ahead of her. The neutron pulses went off. She triggered the grenade, bringing down the corridor roof. Small EE detonations were flaring up ahead as the missiles punctured the Tyrathca spacesuit fabric, burying themselves deep in the xenoc bodies before detonating.

Infrared vision was wiped out in splashes of brilliant crimson. Still firing missiles. Something like a medium-sized cannonball hit her right leg. Exploding. She was flung violently against the ceiling, bouncing down against the floor. Internal bones snapped. Cracks multiplied across her exoskeleton. But the armour held, reinforced by the molecular binding generators.

The diversion serjeant raised its head, dislodging various rocks which were lodged on its helmet. It moved its arms, actuators pushing hard against the weight of rocks holding its torso down. More rocks slithered off the armour. Two soldier-caste Tyrathca were bounding towards it. Ione waited until they were fifteen metres away, and fired a couple of homing grenades.

The sensor disk by the spiral ramp up in level one noted a rise in the thermal environment beyond its pre-set parameters, and broadcast an alert. Visual observation showed twenty new Tyrathca marching into the interior.

“Oh God,” Monica datavised. “Just what we need.”

“It will take them forty minutes to reach ring five,” Samuel datavised. “If Oski hasn’t retrieved what we need by then I doubt it will matter.”

They were fifty metres short of the ring wall, passing the last of the towers. Five sets of suit lights slithered erratically over the wall, kindling small refractive auras from the curtain of frosted creeper leaves.

“There,” Renato datavised. Rather uselessly, he raised an arm and pointed. But the others saw where his suit lights had come to rest, and focused their own beams on the spot. The airlock door to the archive was very similar to those of the control offices. And like them, open.

“It’s recent,” Oski datavised. “Several faint infrared footprints, very similar to those at the control offices.”

“Monica, you go in with them,” Samuel datavised. “I’ll set the charges ready to open that ramp for us.”

Monica drew an X-ray laser rifle from her belt, and switched her homing grenades to active mode. Feeling slightly more confident, she stepped through the open airlock. Oski and Renato had been issued with the same weapons suite as she, but not even full field combat programs could turn a pair of academics into decent troops. She didn’t have surprise on her side. Instead she went for speed, flashing through the final doorway with sensor gain on maximum. Radar and infrared covered the whole interior of the archive chamber in milliseconds. The results filtered through her tactical location program, which declared there was nothing active inside.

“You can come in,” she datavised.

The archive was substantially different to the control offices. A lot larger, a long hall tunnelled out of naked rock, with an arching ceiling thirty metres high. Despite having Tyrathca-sized computer terminals and display cases, it was the most human place they’d seen in Tanjuntic-RI.

Principally, Monica decided, because it was instantly recognisable: a museum. Five-metre glass cube display cabinets were standing in regimented rows the whole length of the hall. The glass was fogged by grime and ice. When they shone their suit beams on the cabinets, the contents were visible only as intriguing dark shadows. From what they could discern, it was machinery inside; the outlines had too many flat sides and regular angles to be anything biological.

Each line of cubes was divided into sections by broad areas given over to computer terminals clustered round a central hexagonal pedestal of giant display screens. Oski walked over to the nearest one. “These zones must be the archive’s operating stations,” she datavised. Her light beams fanned up and down the casings, then settled on the screens. “There’s a plaque here.” Neural nanonics put her Tyrathca translation program into primary mode. “Atmospheric engineering,” she read out. “They must cover different disciplines at each station. Try and find anything relating to navigation or communications.”

“Can you see if the Kiint repaired any of the terminals?” Renato asked. “That would save a minute or two.”

“Nothing like that showing yet,” Monica datavised.

Renato walked along a row of the big cubes, annoyed they were all so opaque. The first station of terminals was mineral distillation, followed by thermal maintenance, then distillation mining. On impulse he wiped a gauntlet against the ice on one cube, upping the brightness on his suit lights. It was a chunk of machinery inside. “These gizmos look like they’re brand new,” he datavised. “I’m not sure this is a museum. Could be they archived actual physical components, the ultimate template back-up in case something screwed up their electronics.”

“Any kind of disaster big enough to eradicate their crystal memories would wreck these machines first,” Oski datavised. “Besides, think how many different components there are to make Tanjuntic-RI work. A hell of a lot more than we can see in here.”

“Okay, so it’s just the really critical ones.”

“I think I’ve found it,” Monica datavised. “This terminal has been spruced up, and it’s still a couple of degrees warmer than the rest.”

Oski scanned her suit sensors round to locate the ESA operative. “What’s the station?”

“Planetary habitation.”

“That doesn’t sound quite right.” She hurried over to where Monica was standing, suit lights converging on one of the terminals.

“The Tyrathca are now in ring five,” the serjeant guarding the ramp entrance datavised. “I am blowing the airlock behind them.”

Despite her high suit sensor resolution, Monica could receive no indication of the explosion. “Oski, we really don’t have any more time to hunt round,” she datavised. “Just get what you can from this terminal, and pray the Kiint knew what they were doing.”

“Confirmed.” The electronics specialist knelt down beside the terminal, and started working on the front panel.

Ione was tracking the Tyrathca through multiple observation points as they spread out through the streets of ring five. As soon as the airlock detonated and collapsed behind them, trapping the last two in the rubble, they had deployed in a wide sweep formation. The sensor disks were picking up microwave radar pulses from several of the soldiers. Their emissions helped to target the first batch of homing grenades which she launched, eliminating a further three. Then they wised up to that and switched the radars off. She launched a swarm of smart seeker missiles, programming them to flit above the tops of the towers. Arrowing down as soon as they located a suit.

The launch betrayed her general direction. Ultimately, another plus point. She was on the other side of the airlock from the control offices and archive, drawing them away from the exploration team.

One of the sensor disks showed a soldier raise a rifle the size of a small human cannon. Ione started running, not caring about the lack of cover. A tower disintegrated behind her; the blast strong enough to create a rumble in the ring’s near-non-existent atmosphere. Big nodules of debris crashed into neighbouring towers, shattering the brittle concrete. Three of them toppled over, throwing up thick clouds of black dust which surged along the streets in every direction, blocking vision in all spectrums.

Monica followed what she could of the fight via the sensor disks. Nervous energy created a nasty itch along her spine and ribs. It was impossible to scratch through the suit. Even twisting round inside the armour was useless. There was nothing she could do to assist Oski and Renato. The pair of them had exposed the terminal’s electronics, and were busy attaching their own blocks to the primitive components inside. Their fluid motions were bringing effective results. Little lights were flashing around the rosette keyboard, and the monitor screen was producing a snowstorm of green and scarlet graphics.

She started walking round the outlying display cubes, alert for any other signs of Kiint activity. It was the one contribution she could still make. Not that it would be a lot of use at this point. It wasn’t until after she’d started on her second circuit of the planetary habitation station that her subconscious alarm grew strong enough to make her stop and take a proper look at what she was seeing. The shapes inside the opaque cubes were no longer nice and regular.

With real unease replacing her anxiety now, Monica swiped her gauntlet over the crinkled, sparkling ice, rubbing a patch clear. Her suit lights brightened, converging on the cube. Visual sensors altered their focus. Monica took a half step back, breath catching in her throat. Her medical monitor program warned her of a sudden fast heart rhythm. “Samuel?” she datavised.

“What is it?”

“They’ve got xenocs in here. Xenocs I’ve never seen before.” She scanned her sensors across the creature inside the cube, building up a pixel file image for the Edenist. It was bipedal, shorter than a human, with four symmetrically arranged arms emerging from mid-torso. No elbow or knee joints were apparent, the limbs moved as a single unit. Bulbous shoulder/hip joints hinted at a considerable articulation. All four arms ended in stumpy hands with four claw-fingers; while the legs finished in rounded pads. The head was a fat cone, with deep folds of skin ringing a thick neck, which would permit a great deal of rotation. There was a vertical gash, which could be either a nose or mouth, and deep sockets that could have held eyes.

“My God, Samuel, it’s sentient. It’s wearing things, look.” She focused on an arm, where a silver bracelet was wrapped around the wizened caramel skin. “That could be a watch, I think. It’s certainly technological. They caught a sentient xenoc and stuffed the poor bastard for their kids to look at in this freak show. Oh for Christ’s sake, what are we dealing with here?”

“You’re jumping to some very wild assumptions, Monica.”

“Then you explain what the fucking hell it’s doing in here. I’m telling you, they put it on show. It must have come from one of the planets they stopped at.”

“You’re in an archive, not a circus zoo.”

“Is that supposed to make me happy? So this is scientific not entertainment. What were they doing studying it? It’s sentient. It’s not a laboratory creature.”

“Monica, I know it’s shocking, but it isn’t relevant to our current situation. I’m sorry, but you’ll just have to ignore it for the moment.”

“Jesus fucking wept.” She spun round, and marched back towards the terminal where Oski and Renato were working. Heat and anger kept her going for several paces. Then she stopped and scanned the cube again. Her suit lights refracted off the gritty ice with its dark adumbrate core of sorrow and suffering.

When they’d come on board, she’d wondered about Tyrathca souls watching them. Now all she could think about was the soul of the unknown xenoc; lost and alone, crying out desperately for others of its kind. Could it see her now? Was it shouting its pleas for salvation from some obscure corner of the dreadful beyond? Unheard even by its own deities?

The medical monitor warned Monica she wasn’t breathing properly. She made an effort to inhale in a regular motion. “Oski? How are you doing?”

“I’m not sure. There are some files in here that look like communiqués. I’ve just reverted to our fall-back option. We’re copying every memory to analyse later.”

“How long?”

“Programming is almost complete. It’ll take half an hour to datavise all their files over to our processors.”

“We can’t afford that.”

“I know. The bitek processors can shunt the information directly over to Oenone and Lady Mac in real time. We just have to hope the Tyrathca don’t come in here and find out what we’re doing until it’s finished.”

“That’s a safe enough bet. I expect they’ll be too busy chasing us.”

How the hell did they get up there? Ione asked.

At least three Tyrathca soldiers were cantering along ring five’s ceiling gantries. The narrow metal walkways threaded amongst the crane rails and irrigation pipes were shaking alarmingly as the heavy bodies thundered down them. But they were holding. And they provided the Tyrathca with a dangerously effective vantage point.

There were now six separate smears of billowing dust blotting out entire sections of the ring, evidence of shattered towers caught in the increasingly brutal crossfire. Tyrathca bodies lay everywhere, bleeding fluid and heat onto the cold alloy floor. One of the two remaining serjeants was limping badly, its suit leg crushed almost flat around the knee. Caught by a huge chunk of debris whose inertia defeated the binding generators. Several processors and hardware units on its belt were dead, ruined by maser fire.

Worse, from a tactical viewpoint, only one Tyrathca was currently stalking it. The remainder had moved away from the mayhem it’d unleashed to chase down the remaining heat trails. Four of them, including one breeder, were congregating round the open airlock into the control offices.

“They know we went in there now,” Samuel datavised.

“The ones on the gantries will be looking for us,” Ione datavised. “And they’ll see us soon enough.”

“We’ve finished programming the file extraction,” Oski said. “The data is being received by the starships.”

“Excellent. Get out of the archive, I’m about to blow the airlock. Ione, can you take out the soldiers on the gantries?”

“I’ll try.”

“At this point, you’re not expendable to us, okay? We’re going to need back-up to get out of here.”

“Understood. But only one of me will be able to keep up with you on the ramp.”

The injured serjeant raised its missile launcher, and fired the two remaining smart seeker missiles. They soared off into the gloom, twin spikes of intense amber light, seemingly rising out of sight around the ring’s curvature. It began to limp into the seething dust, heading back towards the archive. Searching round on its belt, Ione found a magazine containing neutron pulse missiles. Only four of the twelve responded to a datavise. She slipped the magazine into the launcher anyway.

When the others made it to the shelter of the ramp, she could then make life seriously unpleasant for the Tyrathca left in ring five.

Samuel and the last serjeant were waiting for Monica, Oski, and Renato right outside the archive. Monica’s thoughts were still in such turmoil after finding the xenoc that she didn’t trust herself to say anything to him.

“There’s still one soldier-caste left up on the gantry,” Samuel datavised. “Not that it matters much now.” He triggered the charges he’d laid around the airlock.

They were close enough to see the flash: a dazzling ripple of pure white light that burst across the ring, fading fast.

Samuel started running straight at it. They only had a hundred and fifty metres to go. He datavised instructions to the others, who activated their rocket launchers. A semicircle of towers fell in unison as the missiles pulverised their ground floors. Dust strangled the thin plumes of potent flame, sending out a curtain of impenetrable darkness that fountained straight upwards.

The airlock leading to the ramp had been wrenched to one side by the charges Samuel had laid around its rim, buckling the thick slab of titanium like so much plastic sheeting. A tide of rock had spewed out of the gap, narrowing it still further. His boots dislodged small loose fragments as he scrambled up. There was enough space to pass through, providing he turned sideways. As soon as he was on the other side, he started slapping EE charges on the walls. Monica and the others wriggled through the gap, with the serjeant bringing up the rear.

Eighteen combat wasps were closing on Lady Mac, the third time in an hour Hesperi-LN’s defences had launched such a salvo at them. Each time, Lady Mac had simply jumped away before any of them were in range, leaving the drones to search round helplessly for their target.

“Good job the Tyrathca never met anything hostile when they were on their voyage here,” Joshua remarked. “I mean, Jesus, they are absolutely crap at space warfare. Why do they keep firing salvos when we’re far enough above the planet to jump?”

“They’re lulling us into complacency,” Ashly said cheerfully. “They’ve worked out roughly where we’ve got to emerge next time, and they’ve flown their superweapon there ready to zap us.”

“Nope. Keeping the jump emergence coordinate as a random variable is file-one in the combat manual.”

“They wouldn’t have a superweapon anyway,” Liol said. “Building stuff like that takes inventive flair. And they just ain’t got it.”

“They do seem to be very dogmatic,” Dahybi said. “As they haven’t got a combat capable starship to field against us, their options are limited.”

“Limited, yes,” Joshua agreed. “But not to one.” He studied the tactical display. The nearest combat wasp would be close enough to start deploying submunitions in another two minutes. “Stand by for jump. Sarha, how’s the memory dump coming on?”

“No problems, Joshua. The bitek array is accepting the load.”

“Great, let’s hope there’s something useful in there.” He cut the fusion drives, holding the starship stable with ion thrusters. The flight computer showed him the energy patterning node status as the combat sensors retracted. “Here we go.” They emerged forty thousand kilometres from the combat wasp swarm. Hesperi-LN’s SD network took nearly three minutes to acquire lock on.

“Are you launching another combat wasp?” Liol asked.

“Not yet,” Joshua said. He datavised the bitek array for a link to the exploration team. “Where are you?”

“Coming up to level two,” Monica replied. “The ramp is sealed behind us, so if we don’t get ambushed, we’ll be at level one in another twelve minutes.”

“Okay, thanks, Monica. Syrinx, we’d better start finalizing our next move.”

“Agreed. We must assume the blackhawk will try and follow us again.”

“I can throw it off with multiple consecutive jumps. Can you do something similar?”

“No problem. Designate a rendezvous coordinate.”

“That’s trickier. This bloody diversionary battle has screwed around with our vector. I can get a rough alignment on the second planet with a small burn. We’ll slingshot around it, and re-align on the Orion nebula. After that, we can lose the hellhawk.”

“Very well. Oenone will swallow out to the second planet as soon as we’ve picked the team up. See you there.”

The second level cavern housed a gigantic fusion generator, three pale metal spheres standing one on top of the other, eighty metres high. Arching buttresses of pipes and cables were wrapped around the main section like mechanized viaducts, sinking away into the walls and floor. A quintet of heat exchangers surrounded it. Fluids had leaked from their valves and feed tube junctions, dribbling down the casings to solidify in colourful multi-layered ribbons. The cavern’s irradiated rock kicked off datavised Geiger warnings as soon as the exploration team bounded in from one of the corridors.

“This is it,” Samuel datavised. “Our shortcut.”

“It will be very short with this radiation level if we’re not careful,” Monica datavised. “This is as bad as a fission core meltdown. What kind of fuel did they use?”

“Heaven only knows.” Samuel scanned his sensors across the pipes that disappeared into the curving apex overhead. “Any of those three.” His suit’s tactical program datavised the designation icon to the others, highlighting the pipe he’d chosen. “According to the file Oski pulled from the control offices it’s a thermal gas duct. The exchangers transferred some of their heat along it to keep the level-one lakes warm. It’s an express route straight there. All we have to do is slice it open.”

Monica didn’t argue with him, despite the sudden doubts. She’d stayed with Oski and Renato in the archive, leaving details of their withdrawal to Samuel. That was teamwork. And it was as though he’d been her partner forever. They knew they could rely on each other now. She took the stumpy laser rifle from her belt, datavised its control processor for a continual burn, and lined it up on the pipe he’d designated.

Five ruby red beams stabbed out, puncturing the pipe. Bright molten metal droplets drizzled down slowly, losing their radiance before they reached the ground. Monica’s radar caught the movement just before the maser beam hit her suit. A couple of homing grenades fired immediately from her dispenser, looping through the three dimensional maze of pipes to smash the corridor entrance where the Tyrathca soldier was lurking.

Backwash from the EE blast rolled her across the ground to clang against the base of a heat exchanger. Her infrared sensor caught a blur of motion away on the other side of the chamber. Radar was useless, there was too much machinery in the way.

“They’re in,” she warned.

“Oski, Renato, finish cutting the pipe open,” Samuel ordered. “We’ll take care of them.”

One of the Tyrathca cannon fired, blowing a hole in the side of the fusion generator. Monica grabbed her missile launcher, and fired off a pair of smart seekers. Samuel was kangaroo jumping up the side of a heat exchanger. Homing grenades spat out of his dispenser, zipping away to pummel the corridor entrances. Maser beams slashed at him. Monica’s sensors triangulated their origin, and she launched more smart seekers in retaliation. Explosions ripped round the chamber as the corridor entrances were closed.

“Pipe’s open,” Oski datavised.

“Go straight in,” Samuel datavised. “We’ll cover you.”

Monica dived under a buttress, scanning at ground level. The lower section of four hot Tyrathca spacesuit legs was visible ahead of her, below a coil-wound beam. She chopped them with the laser, slashing straight through the fabric. Large globs of weird purple gel burped out, oscillating wildly as they bounced off the floor and machinery. The Tyrathca stumbled and fell. Monica slid the laser along its flank. A tidal wave of gel blobs erupted. Then the body went into explosive decompression.

Oski’s manoeuvring pack fired at full power, lifting her towards the apex of the cavern. Every suppresser program she had that could squash down on her fear was in primary mode. They must have worked, she was quietly delighted at how calmly she was reacting to being shot at. Guidance programs bent her flight around the clutter of arching pipes as she rose higher and higher. She actually passed a two metre section of the pipe on her way up, its edges still glowing pink as it tumbled end over end.

A maser beam struck her legs. The suit’s tactical program shot a homing grenade down in response. Then she was concentrating solely on her flight, arrowing for the gaping hole they’d sliced in the pipe. Its rim flashed past her, catching her shoulder, and scraping along her arms. Then she was completely inside. Radar was the only sense which functioned in here, showing a rigid, featureless tube stretching out above her for nearly three hundred metres. Her manoeuvring pack thrusters throttled down, slowing her to a less reckless speed as the gravity dropped off. A second armour suit slid into the pipe below her.

“Hell of an escape route,” Renato datavised.

Etchells had no warning that the Oenone was going to swallow away from the twin moons. The crew were still boring him crazy with their promises and propaganda when it happened. But he felt it go, a massive tear in the uniformity of his distortion field.

What are you doing? he asked. The Tyrathca ships were still hours away.

We’re leaving now, Ruben said. Why don’t you go home? Think about what we’ve been saying.

There was a momentary lapse in the affinity contact. Etchells observed the amount of energy Oenone applied to open the wormhole interstice, determining the terminus location. They had returned to that damn arkship!

Why are you here? he demanded. What’s so special about that ship?

If you join our efforts to solve this crisis, then such questions will be answered for you, Syrinx said.

Fuck your psychobabble bullshit. He sent the energy flashing through his patterning cells, uncomfortably aware of how much he had expended in warding off impacts from the Lagrange point particles. A wormhole opened, and he dived down it, emerging into real space again, barely twenty kilometres from the arkship.

The Oenone was probing the ancient vessel very thoroughly with its distortion field (an act which Etchells didn’t understand). And the large Tyrathca ship was firing its secondary drive, moving up from its holding position at the front of Tanjuntic-RI. Etchells didn’t really want to go into combat against the xenocs at this point, especially not with uncertain allies like the Edenists.

Oenone was performing another swallow manoeuvre.

You can’t elude me, Etchells said.

Fine, Syrinx replied with icy superiority. Follow us in, then.

Etchells derived the voidhawk’s wormhole terminus. Which was impossible. They were swallowing inside the arkship. There were cavities in there, he could feel them. Tenuous bubbles within the hard rock. So very small.

He didn’t dare. That kind of accuracy was staggering.

The Tyrathca ship had risen above the arkship’s horizon. It launched fifteen combat wasps straight at him. He swallowed away fast.

The level-one cavern was quickly and silently saturated with light, revealing the cyclorama of frozen water. Ripples and waves were caught in mid-swell, drained of colour as they had been of heat. The endocarps were different. Flat cliffs of rock, rimmed with ledges of metal just above the ice. One of them boasted a tiny pinprick of warmth. Five armour-suited figures hovered in front of it, watching the light source expand; twisted fragments of starlight threaded through the length of the wormhole to spray out at random. There was no other indication of the terminus opening.

As the light dimmed it shone across Oenone’s marbled blue hull, glinting off the crew toroid. The huge voidhawk swept round the lake’s curvature towards the exploration team, skirting the rickety old axial gantry with simple grace.

You’ve no idea how good it is to see you, Samuel said, accompanying the statement with a wash of gratitude and relief.

You too, Oenone replied. I knew I could do this.

Etchells conceded defeat. He wasn’t going to find out why the two starships had come here, not now. Oenone was inside the arkship for less than five minutes before swallowing away again. Its wormhole terminus opened out above the star system’s second planet. The Adamist ship jumped there as well.

Etchells joined them, at a non-threatening distance, observing the Adamist ship fly round the planet on a tight slingshot trajectory. When it jumped, Etchells tried to follow. But it must have used multiple consecutive jumps, because he couldn’t find it anywhere near the emergence coordinate. With his energy patterning cells badly depleted, and his nutrient reserve getting low, he began the long, lonely trip back to New California. It was time to hand the whole problem over to Kiera and Capone.