26

Liol piloted Lady Mac right up to the big spacedock globe on the diskcity rim where the MSV was parked, locking position twenty metres outside the yawning hatch. Joshua was very insistent they didn’t come inside.

Working out a procedure for bringing Quantook-LOU and five of his entourage inside the starship had taken up the entire trip from the transparent bubble to the rim airlock hatch. They eventually agreed that two of Joshua’s crew, Quantook-LOU, and another Mosdva would ride the MSV out to the starship first. There would be three shuttle flights in all, and Joshua would be the last over. That way the distributor of resources would be satisfied that the starship wouldn’t fly away as soon as its captain was on board, leaving him behind. The idea that Joshua, as commander, wouldn’t desert any crew was obviously foreign to him. An interesting outlook, the humans agreed, and a good marker for future behaviour.

The xenocs were assigned the lower lounge in capsule D, which had its own bio-isolation environmental circuit. Sarha modified it to provide a mix of gas to match Tojolt-HI’s atmosphere, not that they carried a great deal of argon, and she had to omit the hydrocarbons altogether.

Once Quantook-LOU was inside and Joshua was back on the bridge, the Mosdva would provide the coordinates of their destination.

Mosdva spacesuits were made from a tight-fitting fabric and woven with heat regulator ducts. Only the upper two sets of limbs were given sleeves, the lower legs were tucked up next to the body, making the lower section look as if it was the end of a giant stocking. The helmet was chunky, with internal mechanisms bulging up like warts and a forward glass visor that had several protective slide-down shields. Their life-support backpack was a cone whose tip flared out into a fringe of small jet-black fins. A single, thick armoured cable linked it to the helmet. An oversuit web carried electronic modules and canisters the same way as their torso jackets.

Beaulieu and Ashly watched the xenocs through a ceiling sensor as they came through the connecting airlock into the lounge. They didn’t move with quite the same ease as they did back in the diskcity, lacking the fronds to give them stability. But they were adapting fast to grab hoops and the inter-deck ladders.

When the last one was inside, Ashly closed the hatch and let the new atmosphere in. Quantook-LOU waited in the middle of the lounge, while the others conducted a detailed examination. Most of the fittings had been stripped out for this flight anyway, leaving a spartan cabin. It didn’t leave them much technology to probe, and there was certainly nothing critical they could damage. The Mosdva satisfied themselves that the lounge wasn’t actively hostile, and confirmed the atmosphere was compatible before removing their suits. They quickly transferred the electronic modules from their oversuits to their usual jackets.

Beaulieu had used a neutrino-scattering detector when they were in Lady Mac’s airlock to scan the hardware they’d brought with them. Alkad and Peter joined her in analysing the function of various components. They were carrying small cylinders of chemical explosive, lasers, spooled diamond wire, and a gadget which Alkad and Peter thought would give off a powerful EM pulse. The internal molecular binding force generators could maintain the lounge decking’s integrity against any of their weapons should they get hostile.

More interesting were the number of implants each of them was loaded with. The central nervous column, running through the centre of the body, had a number of attachments spliced into it, artificial fibres spread out through the tissue to form a secondary nervous system. Biochemical devices were grafted on to glands and circulatory networks, supplementing organ functions. Compact weapons cylinders were buried in limb muscles.

“The weapons I can understand,” Ruben said when Beaulieu displayed the images over the general communication link. “But the rest seem redundant. Perhaps their organs still haven’t fully evolved to freefall conditions.”

“I disagree,” Cacus said. “Quantook-LOU doesn’t have the same degree of enhancements as the other five. I’d say his escort are the Mosdva equivalent of our boosted mercenaries. They’ll be able to keep functioning even when they’re badly damaged.”

“It’s probably significant that Quantook-LOU’s physiological condition is generally superior to the others’,” Parker said. “His bone structure is certainly thicker, and from what we can understand of his internal organs their biochemical functions have a higher degree of efficiency. That suggests to me that he was actually bred. Fifteen thousand years isn’t long enough for a full genetic evolutionary adaptation to freefall, there are just too many changes from a gravity environment to incorporate.”

“If you’re right, that would confirm an aristocracy-based social structure,” Cacus said. “Their whole administration class would be an elite.”

“He does have a large amount of processors hardwired into what passes for his cortex,” Oski said. “A lot more than the soldiers. They augment his memory and analytical abilities to a similar level as neural nanonics.”

“Physical and mental superiority,” Liol said. “That’s very fascist.”

“Only in human terms,” Ruben chided. “Imposing our values on xenocs and then going on to judge them is the height of conceit.”

“Pardon me,” Liol mumbled. He checked round the bridge to find Ashly and Dahybi grinning at the Edenist’s snobbery; Sarha gave him a thumbs up.

“An aristocracy is historically arrogant,” Syrinx said. “If all the dominions are structured the same way, it would explain why they are so quick to escalate their disagreements into war. The administration class would regard the soldiers as expendable. Like everything else here, they are resources to be exploited to the advantage of the dominion.”

“Then where exactly do we fit into their neat little hierarchy?” Sarha asked.

“What we have is valuable to them,” Parker said. “What we are, is not. They will deal with us on that level only.”

Joshua slid through the lower deck hatch into the bridge, and settled onto his acceleration couch. He datavised the flight computer for a systems review, and took over the command functions from Liol. “We’re ready,” he told Quantook-LOU. “Please give us the location.”

One of the Mosdva’s electronic modules transmitted a stream of data.

“That’s one of the tangles in the web, nine hundred kilometres away,” Beaulieu said. She datavised a string of instructions to the ELINT satellites, using the closest one to give the section a close scan. “The knot itself is approximately four kilometres across, rising seventeen hundred metres above the disk’s median level. A lot of infrared seepage in the surrounding area. Most of the knot’s web tubes are dead. The thermal exchange mechanisms around it are still functioning, but with a reduced output.”

“Somebody’s still alive there,” Sarha said.

“Looks that way.”

“We have the position,” Joshua told Quantook-LOU. “What kind of acceleration can you withstand?”

There was a slight pause. “Thirty per cent of the acceleration you used when you approached Anthi-CL would be acceptable to us,” Quantook-LOU said.

“Understood. Secure yourselves, please.” Joshua extended Lady Mac’s combat sensors and ordered the standard booms to retract. The crew went to combat alert status. A quick check of the lounge sensors showed the six Mosdva prone on the cushion padding which Beaulieu and Dahybi had laid out for them on the decking.

It wasn’t worth igniting the fusion tubes. Joshua used the secondary drive to accelerate the starship at a tenth of a gee. The vector he’d plotted took them out a hundred kilometres from the sunside, then curved across towards the knot.

“Gas plumes on this side as well,” Beaulieu warned. “They’re still fighting down there.”

Joshua called Quantook-LOU. “We can see there’s still a lot of conflict on Tojolt-HI. It would help to know if we are likely to be attacked, and by what.”

“No Tojolt-HI dominion will attack this ship unless it appears you are leaving. If I have not secured your drive technology, then our desperation will increase.”

“What form will an attack against us take? Do you have ships that can intercept us?”

“We have no ships other than the sunscoops which you have already seen. Energy-beam weapons will be used to damage you. I would speculate that many dominions will be constructing fast automated vehicles. The speed which the Lady Macbeth can travel at has been studied. They will be swifter.”

Joshua looked round the bridge. “I’d say we don’t need to worry about missiles. It’s the lasers that trouble me. The dominions have the kind of power generation capacity which makes our SD platforms look feeble.”

“But not on this side of the diskcity,” Beaulieu said. “Sensor scans have dropped considerably since we moved across the rim. Ninety per cent of their systems are mounted on the darkside.”

“They can poke a laser through the foil quick enough,” Liol said.

“We’ll be watching for it,” Sarha told him.

“I’d still like to understand the circumstances,” Joshua said. “Quantook-LOU, can you tell me which dominions are allied with Anthi-CL?”

“Outside our main alliance quartet, there is no longer any way of knowing. Your arrival has disrupted the dominions at every level. The rim dominions search for allies among the centre. The centre dominions struggle among themselves as the old alliances fall to be replaced by lies and unkeepable promises.”

“And we did all that?”

“For all our history, resources have been finite, and our society reflects this. Now you have come, and every resource has suddenly become infinite. There can only be one dominion now.”

“How so?”

“We are in balance. The central dominions have larger areas than those of the rim, but the rim is where the new mass gathered by the sunscoop ships is distributed from. Our value is therefore equal. Each rim dominion supplies its centrist allies with mass, and the amount of mass which can be delivered is obviously dependant on the number of sun-scoops. The number of sunscoop ships which can be built is dependant on the size of the alliance. Their construction absorbs a fearsome quantity of our resources. When a sun-scoop fails to return, the quantity of mass available to the alliance is reduced, causing shortages and hardship among the dominions. Then the alliance grows weak as dominions struggle against each other to obtain the level of mass they require. That is when the distributors in each dominion move to forge new alliances that will allow them to regain their old level of supply.”

“I understand,” Joshua said. “With our technology allowing you to bring new mass in from other star systems, the sunscoops will not be able to compete. Every central Tojolt-HI dominion will turn to Anthi-CL to supply them with mass, becoming your allies. Without a market, the other rim dominions will fail, and also be incorporated into the alliance.”

“And I will be the distributor of resources for all of Tojolt-HI.”

“Then why are the other dominions fighting you?”

Quantook-LOU raised his mid limbs a small distance against the gee force, slapping his torso feebly. “Because I do not yet have your drive technology. As always they search for advantage. By reducing Anthi-CL to ruin, they will deprive me of the resources to build starships. You will be forced to make the exchange with them.”

“But you said the alliances between the central dominions are unstable.”

“They are. The other distributors are greedy fools. They would destroy us all. The damage they have already caused to Tojolt-HI is on a scale we have never endured before. It will take decades to repair everything.”

“So just tell them you have our drive. I’ll back you up. We can work out the details of the exchange later. That will stop the destruction.”

“Anthi-CL’s allies know I have not yet acquired your starship drive. I maintain our primary alliance with the quartet by assuring them that this venture to acquire astronomical data will result in triumph. In turn, they barter this information to gain advantage should I fail. All of Tojolt-HI knows you have not yet exchanged the data with me. They watch to see the outcome of this flight. Once I can signal Anthi-CL that I have the data to build your drive, our quartet alliance will solidify once more. The other dominions will have no choice but to join with us. Faster-than-light travel has made our unification inevitable. All of us know this. All that remains is the question of who shall become distributor of resources for Tojolt-HI. If it is not me, then it will be another dominion’s distributor. That is why they will attack should you attempt to fly away.”

Joshua switched off the link to the lounge. “Opinions?”

“He’s very good,” Samuel said. “I think he’s realized you have a conscience, or at least some kind of ethical code. That’s why our arrival is blamed as the cause of the diskcity war. We’re also under threat not to try and leave, otherwise we’ll be shot. Everything he says is to his advantage.”

“The economic structure of Tojolt-HI certainly made sense,” Parker said. “That lends credence to the rest of the situation.”

“It’s certainly favourable for us,” Liol said. “Even if Quantook-LOU is exaggerating the political instability, everyone here wants to be the one who gets ZTT from us. They’re prepared to go to war in order to give us what we want.”

“Pity we can’t use that to negotiate some kind of peace settlement,” Syrinx said. “I can’t help but feel very uncomfortable about this.”

“We could simply beam the information across Tojolt-HI after we get a copy of the Tyrathca almanac,” Beaulieu suggested. “Even if Quantook-LOU does get us the almanac data, and we give him ZTT technology, the physical aspect of their conflict will probably continue as the consolidation into one dominion moves forward.”

“The irony of all this astounds me,” Ruben said.

“I fail to see how,” Syrinx replied quickly. “You must have a very black sense of humour to find this remotely funny.”

“I never said funny. But don’t you see what this discussion mirrors? This is how the Kiint must have debated our species when we asked them for the solution to the beyond. To the Mosdva, faster-than-light travel is obviously the answer to all their problems; they can have an infinite supply of mass, they can begin fresh colonies, and they can exterminate their old oppressors. To them it is essential we supply it, and they are willing to risk everything to gain what we have. Yet for us, with our complete understanding of ZTT, giving them the technology means releasing a genocidal crusade across this whole section of the galaxy, as well as the possibility of the Confederation going to war against them at some time in the future. Which we would probably lose, given their numbers.”

“If the Tyrathca don’t get us first,” Monica muttered out loud.

“Are you saying we shouldn’t give them ZTT?” Joshua asked.

“Think what will happen if we do.”

“We’ve been through this already. The Mosdva will probably get faster-than-light travel anyway, now they know it’s possible.”

“Just as the Kiint keep saying we have to find our own solution to the souls in the beyond now we know it exists.”

“Jesus! What do you want me to do?”

“Nothing now. We were right before: the question is one of timing. I think we got the answer wrong.”

“Maybe we did,” Syrinx said. “Though I’m not convinced. But this has made our future actions very clear cut. We have got to solve the problem of possession and the beyond first. Only then will we be in a position to deal with the whole Tyrathca/Mosdva issue. And the only way we can do that now is get to the Sleeping God.”

The ELINT satellites continued to show the war across Tojolt-HI’s darkside. Blowouts were occurring with increasing frequency, sending long spumes of vapour and fluid racing out into space, propelling bodies along with them. Mosdva troops in armoured spacesuits continued to scurry across the valleys and ridges of the darkside structure. Almost all train movement had ceased.

The heaviest fighting was conducted around the boundary of Anthi-CL and its neighbouring allies. As well as the blowouts decompressing entire tubes, suited Mosdva shot at each other with beam and projectile weapons as they struggled to penetrate their enemy’s territory and disable critical systems. The satellites were also picking up powerful flashes of energy among the tall thermal dissipation towers as emplaced defensive lasers and masers swept across the ranks of advancing soldiers.

“But no nukes,” Beaulieu said. “At least not yet. I have picked up some small short-range missiles, but they use chemical rockets and warheads. They’re not very successful; the lasers usually pick them off. Hardly surprising, the maximum acceleration so far has been seven gees.”

“I wonder why they use chemical systems?” Monica asked. “One well-placed nuke would take out a whole dominion. They must have the ability to build them. Quantook-LOU said they used to move asteroids around with them, just like we do.”

“We can ask Quantook-LOU if you like,” Joshua said.

“I’d rather not,” Samuel said. “I’d hate to put ideas in his head. In any case, you’re misrepresenting the nature of conflict here. Everything is resource-based, even war. The aim must always be to kill an enemy’s population, but keep their web tubes intact. Explosive decompression will have exactly that result every time, giving the victorious dominion room to expand. A nuclear strike would obliterate a vast amount of the diskcity structure, while the shockwave would weaken even more.”

“Okay, so they use neutron bombs,” Liol said. “Kill the population and leave the structural mass intact.”

“I definitely wouldn’t mention that to Quantook-LOU.”

Etchells expanded his distortion field to scan around as soon as he slipped out of the wormhole terminus seventy-five million kilometres above the surface of Mastrit-PJ’s photosphere. Thermo dump panels slid out to their full length from every life-support capsule and subsidiary system to get rid of the heat. Electronic sensor pods opened their petal segments, extending antenna.

Red light flooded across the utilitarian bridge compartment, cutting through the heavy shielding of the main port. Kiera blinked away the rush of liquid it brought to her eyes as she sat on the acceleration couch facing it. She was content just to admire the genuine panorama, ignoring the various graphic displays that oscillated and scrolled across the consoles as they tabulated the results of the sensor sweeps.

“Nice view, if a little characterless,” she said. A pair of sunglasses appeared in her hands, and she placed them carefully on her nose. “Can you sense anything nearby?”

“Nothing,” Etchells said. “Which means nothing. Searching an entire star system is impossible for a single craft. Assuming they even came here.”

“Nonsense. They’re here. It’s the only place they could be. This damn star has been glaring at us ever since we rounded the nebula. This is where the Tyrathca came from, and it’s where that arkship came from. They have to be here, along with whatever it is they’re looking for.”

“Yes, but where, exactly?”

“That’s your department. Keep your sensors extended. Find them. When you do, I’ll keep my part of the bargain.”

“The odds are not in our favour.”

“The fact that any odds exist at all is in our favour. If there is anything left of the Tyrathca here, it must be on a planet or asteroid. You should start a survey.”

“Thank you. I’d never have thought of that.”

Kiera didn’t even bother sighing a reprimand. He could perceive her mental tone as well as she could feel his. It wasn’t that they’d been getting on each other’s nerves during the voyage, just that they weren’t natural allies. “Can you withstand the temperature?”

“Provisionally, yes,” Etchells said. “Though the particle density will have to be monitored as closely as the thermal input. The technological systems can cope with the heat; as can my hull. I estimate we can endure this environment for three days, then we will have to swallow away and cool off.”

“Okay.” She stood up and stretched elaborately. There had been too many hours spent sitting uselessly on the bridge during the flight. It gave her too much time to brood over what had gone wrong back on Monterey, when what she ought to be doing was planning how to use the weapon which the Confederation was chasing. “I’m going for a shower. Let me know when you find something.”

Beaulieu used a full-spectrum sweep against the sunside surface as Lady Mac decelerated into the coordinate Quantook-LOU had provided. The web tubes and their foil sheets matched the rest of Tojolt-HI’s sunside in composition, but here they had risen out of the median in a small hemispherical mound, which matched the bulge on the darkside.

“The knot is about three kilometres across, nine hundred metres high, and I can’t even begin to tell you what’s inside,” Beaulieu said. “Nearly eighty per cent of the knot and its surrounding webs are dead. Surface glass is cracked, and some structural ridges snapped. But that still leaves enough mass to shield the internal structure from all our sensors.”

“Don’t like it,” Liol said. “That’s over ten cubic kilometres we don’t know a damn thing about. They could be hiding anything in there.”

“Nothing that’s used very regularly,” Ashly said.

“Yeah, like their biggest-ever weapon.”

“Electrical and magnetic fields are normal,” Beaulieu said. “I’m not registering any large power sources on either side of the disk.”

“Not active ones. The energy for a blast would be stored ready.”

“Ready for what?” Sarha asked.

“I don’t know. We haven’t explored one per cent of this star system, we don’t know what else is lurking around here. Fleets of refugees from other diskcities. Xenocs that live inside the Orion Nebula. Mosdva possessed.”

“Oh, come on.”

“Point taken,” Joshua said. “We need to be cautious.”

“The Oenone can swallow in,” Syrinx said. “Our distortion field will be able to probe the interior of the knot.”

“No,” Joshua said. “I still don’t think we’re ready to give away our biggest advantage yet. Beaulieu, I want constant monitoring of the knot. Any change in its energy state and we jump clear. In the meantime, let’s see what Quantook-LOU’s prepared to tell us.” Before he asked, Joshua cleared the overlay of ship schematics from the sensor image. Tojolt-HI had been bothering him, niggling away for a while now. It wasn’t worry about what they were heading into, he acknowledged, it was the size of the diskcity. He’d been appropriately amazed and impressed with it ever since the sensors had delivered their first image to him. This was different, because their little flight had suddenly put it into perspective for him. They were flying over it, an artefact which was so densely populated it made an arcology appear vacant. Human bitek habitats were fabulous huge entities, but you didn’t fly across them in a spaceship, not for minutes at a time. And they weren’t even halfway to the centre yet.

The visual spectrum sensors showed him a tiny black spot trawling over the burnished sparkle of the glass and foil which made up sunside. Lady Mac’s shadow, smaller than the width of most web tubes. Many times he’d seen Ganymede’s shadow racing over Jupiter’s dayside clouds, a black blemish smaller than the planet’s cyclone swirls. A moon big enough to qualify as a planet, reduced to its true insignificance by the magnificent gas giant. This was exactly the same.

“We’re going to be at your designated location in a couple of minutes,” Joshua told Quantook-LOU. “I’d like to discuss the terms of the data exchange. After all, neither of us wants this deal to fall apart now.”

“I agree,” Quantook-LOU said. “I will take my escort into this section of Tojolt-HI and secure the information you require. As before, you will be given the indices of the files. If you are agreeable that it is what you want, we will perform a synchronized exchange of our respective information. You will then leave Mastrit-PJ immediately.”

“Fine by me, but won’t you be in danger? This is a long way from Anthi-CL, we can return you.”

“After the exchange I will be the only member of my race to have the information. That makes me more valuable than the sun’s mass in iron. Nobody will harm me. If I was to return to the Lady Macbeth, what guarantee could you give me that you would not simply fly off back to your Confederation, thus removing the knowledge from my race?”

“I would not be able to offer a guarantee that would satisfy you, Quantook-LOU. However, I know nothing of Tojolt-HI. I do not know what is contained within this section behind the web tubes. How do I know that it is not some powerful weapon that can destroy my ship as soon as you have the information you want?”

“This is an old section, its dominion has almost collapsed. Do your sensors not show you that it poses no threat?”

“There is nothing we can see on the surface, but I must know what is inside. I propose to send two of my crew members with you. They will only observe, they will not interfere with your activities.”

“I accept.”

Joshua ended the link. “Ione, you’re on.”

Lady Mac closed slowly on the sunside surface, using ion thrusters to manoeuvre in towards the approximate boundary of the knot. The web tubes below the starship were dead, as Quantook-LOU had requested. He had also asked that Joshua provide a method of crossing the gulf. As a result, the two suited and armoured serjeants were waiting in the open EVA airlock, ready to jet across and secure a tether to the tube surface.

Ione watched the long arched segments of glass grow larger; nothing was visible below the tarnished and pitted surface. Her armour suit sensors could just make out the faint lines of the inner spiral of piping. Lady Mac’s shadow was expanding and darkening over the glass and foil sheeting as the starship slid inwards. She saw a flickering motion sweep across the darkened glass. A multitude of anfractuous cracks spread out from the rim of the segment as though tendrils of frost were gripping the tube.

“It’s rupturing,” she told the crew.

“Thermal stress,” Liol replied. “It’s our shadow that’s causing it. Don’t forget, that material has never had its heat input interrupted before.”

“Ione,” Joshua said. “I’m locking our attitude . . . mark. You can go over whenever you’re ready.”

The curving glass was seventy metres away from the airlock hatch. The first serjeant disconnected its safety line from the chamber socket and activated the manoeuvring pack.

Attaching the end of the tether was no problem. The cracked glass had come out of the rim of the metal reinforcement hoop, leaving a gap she could loop it through. Once it was done, she moved aside. Joshua wanted the Mosdva to cut their own way in.

The xenocs hauled themselves along the tether using the powered gauntlets they wore on their midlimb hands. There was no subtlety in their entry. One of them simply used a laser to slice a circle through the glass and the piping underneath.

Ione was last in, both serjeants following one of the bodyguard Mosdva. She thought it must have been a long time since the tube was inhabited. The fronds had petrified, then ablated away in the vacuum, leaving a cloud of granular dust clogging the tube. Even with that, it was a lot brighter than the sections they’d toured in Anthi-CL. Without the fluid to shield the interior, the light from the sun was fearsome.

The Mosdva made their way purposefully along to the end of the tube. They used the tarnished plant apertures as grips, which afforded them almost the same degree of mobility as the fronds in a pressurized tube. Ione simply used the manoeuvring packs.

When they reached the end of the tube, one of the bodyguards cut through the airlock hatch with a laser. They moved through the junction and into another tube on the other side, heading into the knot.

As soon as the last serjeant was inside, Joshua used the chemical vernier thrusters to back them away from the sun-side surface. Beaulieu reported that nine small satellites had taken off from across Tojolt-HI. All of them were emitting low-power radar pulses, tracking Lady Mac.

“It looks like Quantook-LOU is heading for the apex of the knot,” Samuel said. “So far he’s staying with the surface tubes.”

“I’m analysing the signals the serjeants’ electronic warfare blocks are picking up,” Oski said. “The Mosdva are transmitting a lot of pulses, most of it’s coming from Quantook-LOU. Fairly high-order encryption, as well.”

“Who’s he talking to?” Joshua asked.

“I don’t think he is. It’s short-range stuff, and there’s no electronic activity in any of the tube systems. I think it’s all being received by his bodyguard. I’m correlating their movements and his signals, and it looks like he’s virtually remote-controlling them. The stuff they’re sending back is completely different, probably sensor feeds so he can see what they’re seeing.”

“A regular little squad of drones,” Ashly said. “I wonder if he doesn’t trust them?”

“It’s a bit late for us to start worrying about his status now,” Joshua said. “Oski, see if you can work out how to freeze up those bodyguards if the need arises.”

“I’ll try.”

Joshua fixed their position twenty-five kilometres away from the sunside surface. Waiting was difficult for him. He really wanted to be down there with Quantook-LOU, seeing what was happening. That would put him in control and ready to respond immediately to whatever the situation threw at them. Just like he’d done at Ayacucho and Nyvan. The front line was the only place he could be sure things would be done right.

Yet if Ayacucho and Nyvan had taught him anything, it was that there was more to command than good piloting. He trusted his crew to handle the starship’s systems well enough. Deploying the experts he had with him was an extension of that principal. That second time in Anthi-CL, when Quantook-LOU had become insistent, he’d known right away he shouldn’t have been there in person. So now it was guilt rather than professionalism behind the decision to send the serjeants into the knot.

At least no one had protested that they should have been sent as well. He rather suspected that the diskcity was getting to the others in the same way as it did to him.

They’d been holding station for fifteen minutes when Beaulieu’s sensor monitoring programs alerted her that the sunscoop ship had altered its orbit. The massive fusion engines were firing, propelling it at a steady fiftieth of a gee. “It is now on an interception trajectory with us,” Beaulieu told the bridge crew.

“Jesus, how long have we got?”

“Approximately seventy minutes.”

Ione listened to Joshua’s news about the sunscoop ship and told him: “All right, I’ll ask Quantook-LOU.”

They were in another of the dead tubes, the fifth so far, still churning up the dust as they swept through. Apart from the lack of air and fluid, they’d all seemed in reasonable condition. She could see no physical reason for their abandonment. Although at some point they’d certainly been stripped of all their ancillary equipment. Even a couple of the tube-end bulkheads had been salvaged, leaving gaping openings into the junctions.

She switched her communication block to the frequency the Mosdva were using. “Quantook-LOU, the captain has been in touch with me. He wants you to know that the sun-scoop ship has changed direction and is now heading for the Lady Macbeth. Do you know anything of this?”

“I do not. The sunscoop belongs to the dominion of Danversi-YV. They are not allied to us on any level.”

“Is it likely to pose a threat to our ship?”

“It does not carry any weapons. Their strategy will be to intimidate the Lady Macbeth into dealing with them, and to place their own group in this location in an attempt to block my progress. Do you have weapons capable of destroying it?”

“We are not sure of the effect our weapons would have. Captain Calvert does not wish to fire upon an unarmed ship.”

“His views will change when the sunscoop’s fusion drive is pointing at the Lady Macbeth. Tell him that the dominion of Danversi-YV has suffered the loss of two sunscoops in the last fifteen years. They have been much weakened by this: their alliance has shrunk, diminishing their influence. They will be the first rim dominion to fail once I have the faster-than-light drive. That makes them the most desperate to obtain it for themselves.”

“Understood.”

The Mosdva glided out into a large junction chamber that had seven tubes radiating away from it.

“This could be interesting,” Ione told the others. “Judging by the position of two of these airlock hatches, the tubes behind them lead up into the knot. If they are tubes.”

“We have your location,” Liol replied. “You’re only a hundred and fifty metres from an inhabited surface tube.”

The Mosdva launched themselves from the bulkhead rim one after the other, heading unwaveringly for the first airlock hatch that led into the knot. They cut an oval of carbon-based composite out of the centre and went through.

“Looks like we’re avoiding the locals,” Ione said.

It was completely dark inside the tube. When the first serjeant squirmed through the hole its helmet sensors picked out six broad beams of ultraviolet light coming from the Mosdva up ahead. They were moving fast along the wall of the tube.

“I recognise this surface,” Ione said with as much excitement as her bitek neurones allowed her to generate.

The walls of the tube were made up from the same baked-sponge material that the Tyrathca had used in Tanjuntic-RI’s zero-gee sections. The serjeant’s armoured gauntlets could fit into the regular indentations, allowing them both to swarm up the tube after the Mosdva.

“No such thing as coincidence,” Joshua said.

“The airlock ahead is a different design,” Ione said. “Not like those on Tanjuntic-RI, but not like the ones we’ve just come through, either.”

The hatch at the centre of the bulkhead was a thick titanium square, with fat rim seals and piston-like hinges. It was three metres in diameter. Her infrared sensors showed it was a lot warmer than the tube walls.

The Mosdva had stopped at the bulkhead to apply small sensor patches to the metal. “The next section is in use,” Quantook-LOU said. “I wish to avoid contact for now. We will go outside.”

A patch of the ossified sponge was scraped off the wall with a power tool, revealing the glossy inner casing. They cut through it with a laser and slid out.

Ione switched her helmet sensors to infrared. They were deep inside the convoluted knot. She could see no order or pattern; tubes criss-crossed through space leaving small irregular gaps which were caged by thick struts, forming a bird’s-nest filigree around her. Brilliant red threads revealed heat conduits running outside the tubes, while magnetic sensor imagery overlaid the translucent emerald lines of power cables.

“Plenty of activity here,” Ione said. “But every tube is solid and opaque. Can’t see in yet.”

“What about where you’re going?” Joshua asked. “Any ideas?”

“Not a chance. This is just too big a tangle to see more than a hundred metres in any direction.”

Thick strips of the sponge material had been laid lengthways along each tube, allowing them to move about easily. The Mosdva started off with little fuss. Ione’s guidance blocks told her they were moving still deeper into the knot.

After two hundred metres the clutter of tubes came to an abrupt end. The centre of the knot was a cavity over two kilometres broad. A cylinder eight hundred metres in diameter filled the centre, its hubs fixed to the surrounding tubes with heavy magnetic bearings, allowing it to rotate slowly. A band of regular triangular ridges covered twenty per cent of the outer surface up at one end. Ione’s infrared sensors showed the band glowing a soft uniform pink, much warmer than the rest of the shell. A radiator disposing of the cylinder’s internal heat. Which meant the systems inside were functional.

“Well, well,” she said. “Look at this. Somebody still enjoys a gravity field to live in.” She scanned her sensors round. The cavity around the cylinder resembled a spaceport maintenance bay, gantry arms and support girders stuck out of the surrounding bulwark of tubing, threaded with conduits and hoses. They ended in sturdy clamp rings that sprouted long drill bits, inert and folded inwards like defunct sea anemones. Most were empty, though some of the clamps were gripping lumps of jet black rock. They’d been cut like diamonds, with hundreds of small sheer facets. There was no standard shape or size. One piece was so large it needed ten gantry arms to hold it in place, its contoured surface following the curve of the central cylinder. Most required only two or three clamps, while there were scraps that had been skewered by just a single drill bit. Units of machinery were clinging to the rock, so dark and cold they could have been complicated freak outcrops. Except for one, in the middle of the largest chunk, which glowed salmon pink with internal heat.

“A refinery of some kind,” Ione guessed. “I think most of this rock is carbonaceous chondrite.” As her sensor sweep continued, she picked out several dense magnetic fields. The equipment producing them was mounted on bulky platforms that encircled the cylinder. They looked like fusion drive tubes.

“Who lives here?” she asked Quantook-LOU. “It’s the Tyrathca, isn’t it?”

“This is Lalarin-MG. It is their designated location. I am displeased to find that they are still alive.”

“But you hate them, they’re your old slave masters. I thought you’d killed them off. That’s what you implied.”

“Those that remained at the end of the time of change grouped together in their enclaves. They became difficult to dislodge. It was not worth challenging their defences. We excluded them from contact with the newformed dominions, and allowed them to decline in isolation. Only those that were the largest still exist.”

“That’s incredible,” Samuel said. “They’re like the grain of sand in an oyster; the Mosdva simply grew around them.”

“A very big grain,” Sarha said. “Take a close look at that cavity. I’ll bet you it was all asteroid rock when the diskcity was built, probably with a biosphere cavern hollowed out in the centre. They’ve had to refine it away over the millennia to supply themselves with fresh minerals, and the cylinder is most likely what the biosphere evolved into. They couldn’t expand like the Mosdva, so they just kept to the same size. We know they can keep that kind of society running indefinitely. Tanjuntic-RI was fully operational for the same length of time as this enclave. Except that one day they’re going to run out of rock to consume.”

“That fits what I can see, except for the rocket engines,” Ione said. “Why keep them functional when you need to expend every effort to maintain a highly artificial environment in adverse circumstances?”

“They might have been spaceship rockets originally,” Liol said. “Not any more. I think they were adapted into the defence system Quantook-LOU mentioned. Don’t forget, the Mosdva revolution happened when the diskcities were in their embryonic stage. The enclave asteroid would already be attached to the rest of the cluster at that time. If you use a fusion plume like a flame thrower, it would have caused havoc, completely broken apart the asteroids, destroyed the new inhabited tubes and thermal exchange mechanisms. The Tyrathca didn’t have anything to lose, but the Mosdva sure did. So both sides agreed to the isolation.”

“And the Tyrathca being unimaginative SOBs, kept their end of the threat in full working order all this time,” Ashly said. “Fusion plumes could still do a lot of damage to a diskcity, even today.”

“Except they’re not all in full working order,” Ione said. “I can see ten, of which only three have magnetic fields.”

“Yes, but the Mosdva don’t know that.”

“They do now.”

Quantook-LOU and the Mosdva bodyguard were on the move again, crawling along the tubes around the circumference of the cavity. Ione set off after them. “Looks like we’re heading for the hub of the cylinder,” she said. “He must be planning on going in to meet them.”

“I’m beginning to respect old Quantook-LOU,” Joshua said. “He’s been pretty linear with us. Coming straight to a Tyrathca civilization is a good indication he genuinely wants to get the almanac for us.”

“I wouldn’t attribute his behaviour entirely to fair play,” Syrinx said. “Our appearance gave him a simple choice. Go for the number one position, or see Anthi-CL be absorbed by someone else’s unifying alliance. He doesn’t want the almanac data, he needs it desperately.”

“You never used to be this cynical.”

“Not before I met you, no.”

Joshua chuckled, wishing for the first time ever that he had an affinity bond. Not that he needed to check his own crew. Liol would be covering a grin, while Sarha would be casting a sly look his way and Dahybi would pretend it was all going way over his head.

“Trains are moving again,” Beaulieu said. “The ELINTs are tracking five; they all started in the last ten minutes.”

“So tell us why that’s bad.”

“They are all within a hundred and fifty kilometres of the Tyrathca enclave, and are heading towards it.”

“Jesus! Wonderful. Ione, did you get that?”

“Confirmed. I’ll tell Quantook-LOU, not that we can speed things along much at this point.”

The serjeants were now climbing along a tube directly underneath the end of the cylinder, an uncomfortable position. The gap was gradually narrowing as they approached the hub, and the cylinder’s monstrous inertia had become terribly apparent. Ione knew if she was fully human she’d be having constant memory recall of the day when she got her hand caught in her bicycle wheel (six years old, and she’d reached down to try and move a jammed brake block before Tranquillity could stop her). As it was, she could just appreciate the associative link.

“We will enter here,” Quantook-LOU announced. The Mosdva stopped around an airlock hatch in a web junction. One of them placed an electronic module over the rosette keypad on the rim. After a moment, the module’s green LEDs displayed a string of figures. They were tapped into the keypad, and the hatch locks disengaged, allowing it to swing down into the airlock chamber.

“We will go first,” Quantook-LOU said.

Ione waited until the cycle had run, then both serjeants pushed down into the chamber. The inner hatch opened into the junction. Her suit sensors had to disengage filter programs to adapt to the light inside. It was white. She wondered how the Mosdva would cope with that—if they could actually see colour. Not that the question was high on her agenda.

The junction was a sphere thirty metres across, with seven hatchways set into it. Ten soldier-caste Tyrathca were standing around it at conflicting angles, their hoofs wedged deep into the sponge indentations, holding them perfectly still. They were pointing thick maser rifles at the Mosdva group.

Chittering and loud agitated whistles rang through the air as Quantook-LOU talked insistently to the single Tyrathca breeder who was standing among the soldiers. The distributor of resources had taken his suit helmet off.

“What are they?” the breeder asked, its hazel eyes had locked on the serjeants.

“Proof of what I say,” Quantook-LOU replied. “They are the creatures who have come from the other side of the nebula.”

“What Quantook-LOU says is true,” Ione said. “We are happy to meet you. I am Ione Saldana, one of the crew from the starship Lady Macbeth.”

Several of the soldiers rustled their antennae when she spoke. The breeder was silent for a moment.

“You speak as us, yet your shape is wrong,” it said. “You are not a caste we know. You are not a Mosdva either.”

“No, we are humans. We learned your language from the Tyrathca who came to our domain on the flightship Tanjuntic-RI. Do you know of it?”

“I do not. The memories of that age are no longer passed on.”

“Bloody hell!” Ione exclaimed over the general communication band. “They’ve junked their records.”

“It doesn’t mean that at all,” Parker said. “The Tyrathca pass useful memories down the generations via their chemical program glands. The details from fifteen thousand years ago are hardly likely to be relevant enough to be maintained in that fashion.”

“He’s right,” Joshua said. “We’re after their electronic files, not family legends.”

“I would like to mediate with the family that governs the electronics of Lalarin-MG,” Quantook-LOU said. “That is why we are here.”

“Tyrathca and Mosdva do not mediate,” the breeder said. “It is the separation agreement. You should not have come here. We do not come to your dominions. We maintain the separation agreement.”

“What about the humans?” Quantook-LOU said. “Should they be here? They are not a part of the separation agreement. The universe outside Tojolt-HI has changed for Mosdva and Tyrathca. A new agreement must be mediated. I can do this. Allow me to mediate. All will benefit, Mosdva, Humans and Tyrathca.”

“You may mediate with Baulona-PWM,” the breeder said. “Two of your escort may accompany you, and the humans. Follow me.”

The tube which the breeder led them down was six metres in diameter, with a cable stretched along the centre supporting clusters of lights at regular intervals. All the Tyrathca walked along the walls as though they were in a gravity field. Their whip-like antennae were waving about with vigorous sweeping motions, like undersized wings. Ione realized the breeder’s antennae were much longer than those of the Tyrathca she was familiar with.

“We always believed them to be balance aids,” Parker said. “It would appear low gravity has encouraged their reuse.”

Her sensors swept over the breeder. It was about ten per cent smaller than Confederation breeders, although it appeared fatter. A smattering of the scales on its sienna-coloured hide had turned pale grey, and there were small lumps on its leg muscles. Its breathing seemed to be mildly erratic, almost as if it was wheezing. When she checked the soldiers, they had similar blemishes. Two of them were also running a temperature.

“They haven’t come through the isolation as well as the Mosdva,” she said.

“Small population base,” Ashly said. “They’ll be running into inbreeding problems. Couple that with the kind of medical difficulties which you get from exposure to freefall, and they’ll probably have a high number of invalid eggs. Considering they don’t have a research base to examine and counter the problems, they’ve done well to survive this long.”

The last tube opened out into the rotating airlock. It was a layout remarkably similar to the one in Tanjuntic-RI, a long cylindrical chamber with three large airlock hatches at the far end leading into Lalarin-MG and a pressure seal halfway along. A low rumbling sound vibrated through the atmosphere as the giant cylinder revolved.

The flightship design was carried over on the other side of the airlock. A waiting freight lift was flanked by archways leading directly onto spiral ramps.

Everyone crowded into the lift together, and it started to descend. Gravity built slowly, causing trouble for the three Mosdva. They had to remove their spacesuits entirely to free their hindlimbs, allowing them to stand on them and their midlimbs. It wasn’t easy; their club-like hind feet were evolving away from dexterity, while their midhands were almost too delicate to carry half of their body weight. When the lift reached the base of the cylinder, gravity was fifteen per cent Earth standard. The Tyrathca were perfectly comfortable with it; Ione reprogrammed her suit actuators to take it into account, making sure the serjeants didn’t go power leaping and compensating for the coriolis factor. Quantook-LOU staggered slowly, moving his limbs with painful unfamiliarity. His two bodyguards were a little better off; they had prosthetic midlimbs to take the weight. Servo mechanisms whined loudly with their every movement. Ione wondered what kind of strain weight was putting on their organs and heart.

The lift doors opened, revealing the interior of the cylinder. Ione had to bring more filters on line to compensate for the glare.

Lalarin-MG was a single open space enclosed by a cyclorama of aluminium alloy. The floors were fully occupied by rank after rank of buildings, the standard tapering towers of all Tyrathca settlements. Here, though, they were built out of some jet-black composite; thick pipes and knobbly segments of equipment protruded from the walls, as if they were machines rather than residences. Countering that impression were lush vines with broad, droopy emerald and lavender leaves that scaled the walls, sprouting rings of large hemispherical turquoise and gold flowers. Thin strata of mist drifted up from the grid of streets, merging together into an unwavering pearl-grey haze as they curved their way towards the axis. Every rooftop supported a battery of brilliant lights which shone directly upwards, their broad beams intersecting within the haze and diffusing slightly before they illuminated the section of floor directly overhead.

The cylinder’s sheer endwalls were simple circles of moss, broken into an elaborate tessellation pattern by structural reinforcement ribs and interconnecting spars. A slender axial gantry ran the length of the cylinder. With one interruption.

“Oh my God,” Ione said. “Can everybody see that?”

“We see it,” Syrinx said.

In the absolute centre of the cylinder, suspended from its tips by the axial gantry, was an effigy of the Sleeping God. From tip to tip it measured two hundred metres, giving it a diameter of a hundred and fifty at the flared central disk. Originally the surface had been given a polished metallic sheen, now it was streaked by thick runnels of algae, with tufts of sickly brown fungi sprouting from pocks and cracks. Both spires were mottled by encrustations of lichen.

The Mosdva paid it no attention as they walked painfully along the narrow streets between the towers. Humidity was high. Every surface was beaded with condensation, horizontal ledges and pipes dripped constantly. The eternal background pattering sounded like a gentle rainfall.

Tyrathca breeders (always in pairs, Ione noticed) crowded every intersection along the street, chittering among themselves as the procession made their way into the cylinder. There were few vassal castes in evidence, and most of those were soldiers. Farmers tended the curtains of vines with slow arthritic movements, training new shoots up the trellis and picking the ripe clusters of dark purple fruit.

As they walked slowly through the buildings, her impressions of Lalarin-MG clarified. The interior of the cylinder had the same pattern of lethargic decay that was present across all of Tojolt-HI. Some buildings were in good repair; one or two were actually new, their siege of vines barely reaching up to the first floor windows. But for every new one, four were disused. Even the equipment on the walls of the occupied towers was allowed to fail; magnetic and infrared sensors revealed the casings were inert, sharing the ambient temperature.

“They’re on the border between stability and stagnation,” she said. “And edging over the wrong way.”

“It’s the biological aspect,” Ashly said. “It has to be. It’s the one negative factor at work here. They need to interbreed, inject some vitality back into the family bloodlines. They’ll die out for sure otherwise.”

They finally came out on an annular plaza directly underneath the Sleeping God effigy. It was paved with slabs of aluminium coated with a rough layer of quartz for traction. Overhead, long ribbons of algae dangled from the effigy’s rim, as if it had been given a raggedy skirt. Water showered down from the fringes, falling in a wide curve to sprinkle the whole plaza.

Tyrathca breeders were lined up along the edge of the aluminium slabs, sheltered from the drizzle. They were sitting on their hindquarters, antennae rising high from the shaggy manes running down their spines.

The soldier caste guard all halted at a single piping command from the breeder. Quantook-LOU immediately sank down so his lower belly was resting on the slabs. His breathing was coming very fast.

A breeder rose from the row of Tyrathca and came over to stand in front of the serjeants. An old one, Ione guessed. Its hide was covered in white and grey patches, rheumy fluid leaked from its eyes, and it seemed to have some trouble focusing.

“I am Baulona-PWM, my family regulates electronics throughout Lalarin-MG. The Mosdva I know of. You I do not.”

“We are humans.”

“The Mosdva distributor of resources claims you have travelled from the other side of the nebula to visit Mastrit-PJ.”

“We have.”

“Did the Sleeping God send you?”

“It did not.”

Baulona-PWM tilted its head back against the soft warm rain, and let out a soft keening. The other Tyrathca around the plaza followed suit. A mournful chorus of dismay.

“Do humans know of the Sleeping God?”

“We do.”

“Have you seen it?”

“No.”

“We have called to the Sleeping God for its aid since before the separation agreement. We called when the Mosdva began the slaughter of our clans. We called when we were herded into our enclaves. We have called to it continuously for every moment since. There is always one of us here to call. The clan riding in Swantic-LI said it sees the universe. They said it is our ally. Why then does it not answer?”

“The Sleeping God is a long way from Mastrit-PJ. It might take a considerable time for it to arrive to help.”

“You bring us nothing new.”

Quantook-LOU straightened his midlimbs, rising off his belly to look from the serjeants to Baulona-PWM. “What is this Sleeping God?”

The old breeder hooted loudly. “One day you will know. The Sleeping God is our ally, not yours.”

“I am here to make new allies. Humans have changed our agreements. They have come here in a ship that travels faster than light.”

Baulona-PWM’s head pushed forward to within ten centimetres of the first serjeant. “The Sleeping God knows how to travel faster than light. How can you do this without its help?”

Ione used the general communication band to say: “I think we should avoid anything that sounds like blasphemy at this point. Suggestions?”

“Tell them it was a gift from our God,” Syrinx said. “They can hardly argue with that.”

“I don’t want to put any pressure on,” Joshua said, “but we haven’t got much time until that sunscoop ship rendezvous. And those trains are still closing on you. If it looks like Quantook-LOU can’t swing a deal, then we’ll just have to deal with the Tyrathca directly.”

“Understood,” Ione said. “The faster-than-light drive was given to us by our God,” she told the old Tyrathca breeder.

“You have a God?”

“Yes.”

“Where is it?”

“We don’t know. It visited our world a long time ago, and hasn’t yet returned.”

“The humans will give me the faster-than-light drive,” Quantook-LOU said. “It will provide the Mosdva dominions with fresh resources. We will build new diskcities. We will be able to leave Mastrit-PJ as the Tyrathca did.”

“Give us the drive,” Baulona-PWM said.

“The drive is mine,” Quantook-LOU said. “If you want it, you will mediate with me. That is why I have come to you.”

“What do you want from Lalarin-MG?”

“All data and records on the Tyrathca flightships.”

Baulona-PWM hooted sharply. The soldiers shuffled round, agitated.

“You would know where our new worlds are,” Baulona-PWM said. “You would destroy all Tyrathca. We know the Mosdva. We never forget.”

“Neither do we,” Quantook-LOU hooted back. “That is why we must mediate now. If not, then Mosdva and Tyrathca will wage war again. You know this. Humans say they will help neither of us unless we have a new arrangement that will prevent war.”

“Smart argument,” Ione said to the others. “I think I can see where he’s taking it.”

“What is the new arrangement?” Baulona-PWM asked.

“The humans do not want war in this part of the galaxy. If we are to have the faster-than-light drive, then Mosdva must not use it to fly to stars with Tyrathca worlds. We must know where they are to avoid this.”

“That’s the condition we make for giving you the drive,” Ione said. “We know of your history, and the conflict between you. We will not permit that conflict to begin again and engulf other species. There is room in this galaxy for the Mosdva and Tyrathca to exist peacefully. It will be like the separation agreement you have here, but on a much larger scale.”

“We have our weapons to make the Mosdva obey the separation agreement here,” responded Baulona-PWM. “What will make them obey after you give them the faster-than-light drive, and they know where our new planets are? With this drive they will leave Tojolt-HI. Our weapons will mean nothing. They will destroy all Tyrathca at Mastrit-PJ. They will destroy all Tyrathca new worlds.”

“You destroy,” Quantook-LOU said. “We build.”

“Mosdva do not keep agreements. You send your soldiers against Lalarin-MG. They are here now. We will use our weapons against all of Tojolt-HI.”

“Can you confirm this?” Ione asked the Lady Mac’s crew.

“We’re picking up some Mosdva movement on the darkside,” Joshua said. “Looks like they’re infiltrating the tubes around the edge of the knot.”

“How many?”

“Several hundred. It’s a large infrared signature.”

“Are these the ones from the trains?”

“No. The first train won’t be there for another fifteen to twenty minutes.”

“They are not Anthi-CL soldiers,” Quantook-LOU said. “They are from the dominions who would use the human’s drive for themselves. I will mediate with Tyrathca, I will make agreements with Tyrathca. They will not. Give me the information. Once I have the drive, they will have to retreat from Lalarin-MG.”

“Make them retreat now,” Baulona-PWM said. “When they are gone, I will mediate with you.”

“I cannot mediate with the other dominions until I have the information.”

“I will not give you the information until you mediate.”

On the Lady Mac’s bridge Joshua banged a fist into his couch cushioning. “Jesus! What is wrong with these people.”

“Twenty thousand years of hatred and strife has become hereditary in both of them,” Samuel said. “They can’t trust each other, not any more.”

“Then we’re going to have to break the deadlock.”

“We’re about out of time on that front,” Liol said. “The sunscoop has just reduced its deceleration thrust.”

“Oh shit,” Joshua mumbled. He knew what that meant. The flight computer datavised the huge ship’s new trajectory into his neural nanonics. With a reduced thrust the sunscoop wouldn’t have nullified its velocity in time to stop beside the Lady Mac, twenty kilometres above Tojolt-HI’s sunside. According to the new vector, it would end up one kilometre above the darkside of the knot which contained Lalarin-MG. And as it was approaching the knot drive first, its fusion plume would slice clean through the Tyrathca enclave, vaporizing the entire structure. It was also due to pass uncomfortably close to Lady Mac.

“I think we’re going to have to take a more active interest,” Joshua told the bridge crew. He aligned Lady Mac’s main dish on the sunscoop. “Attention sunscoop ship. Your present course will result in the destruction of Lalarin-MG. Members of my crew are currently inside this dominion. Increase your deceleration thrust immediately.”

“Josh, it’s over four kilometres across,” Liol said. “That’s not a ship, it’s a mountain. Even if you nuke it, the debris will still rip this section of Tojolt-HI to pieces. In fact you’ll probably do more damage that way.”

“I thought I’d told you how I dealt with Neeves and Sipika in the Ruin Ring.”

“Oh,” Ashly said dryly. “You mean that was a true story?”

Joshua gave the pilot a wounded look.

“No response from the sunscoop,” Liol said. “And no change in thrust. They’re still going to burn through the knot in eight minutes.”

“Okay, if that’s how they want it. Combat stations, please.”

Lady Mac’s thermo dump panels folded down into their hull recesses. Joshua ignited the main fusion tubes, and closed on the sunscoop at one and a half gees.

“This is going to be one very fast flyby,” he said. “ Sarha, you have primary fire control.”

“Aye, Captain,” she acknowledged. Her neuroiconic display was already showing her the sunscoop: a cluster of incandescent globes sitting on top of an even brighter flame of plasma that stretched out over thirty kilometres before dissolving into a hazy tip of blue ions. It descended relentlessly towards the vivid copper sunside like some gigantic insect stinger.

The flight computer datavised a stream of targeting data, overlaying her image with a bright purple grid. Under her guidance, it split into five segments and wrapped each piece around one of the incandescent globes. She upped the power level from the main tokamak generators and activated the maser cannon.

Lady Mac swept past the sunscoop in a shallow curving trajectory, keeping a constant twenty kilometres away from the fusion plume. Her masers fired at the five storage globes, each beam piercing clean through the radiant thermal dissipation material. Fissures of darkness streaked out from the impact points. The beams began to chew round in a tight spiral, widening the holes. Whatever the casing material was, its physical resistance to the microwaves was minimal. Ninety per cent of their energy went directly into the massive reservoir of hydrocarbon fluid stored inside. It started boiling immediately, belching out clouds of hot vapour. Pressure began to build up inside the globes, sending vast jets of blue-grey gas roaring out through the gashes.

“Delta-V change,” Liol reported. “The punctures are creating thrust. Christ, Josh, it works.”

“Thank you. Sarha, keep those lasers centred, I want to heat as much fluid as we can. Stand by, reducing thrust. Let’s try and avoid coming back for a second pass.”

“Captain,” Beaulieu called. “The sunscoop drive is switching off.”

Lady Mac’s combat sensor clusters tracked the sunscoop, showing Joshua the fusion plume dwindling away. “Shit, did we do that?”

“Negative,” Sarha said. “My shooting’s not that bad. Drive systems are intact.”

“Liol, give me a trajectory update please.”

“They’ve got a smart captain. Without the fusion drive, the gas plumes aren’t enough to kill their velocity. They’re going to hit the knot. Impact in four minutes.”

“Damn it.” Joshua immediately began plotting a new vector, taking Lady Mac round for another pass. The starship began accelerating at four gees. He had to be careful their own plume didn’t wash across the sunside webs.

“Sunscoop gas vents are reducing,” Ashly said. “The fluid must be cooling again. That thermal dissipation mechanism of theirs is bloody good, Joshua. It’s worth giving them the ZTT drive in exchange for that.”

Lady Mac was racing back towards the sunscoop. Sarha fired the masers again, to be rewarded by the sight of the gas jets thickening. The glare of the storage globes fluoresced them a blazing silver-white as they emerged from the holes; then they shaded down along their length until their diffuse tails shimmered cerise.

Two lasers struck Lady Macbeth, fired from somewhere on the diskcity’s sunside. Joshua rolled the ship fast as their thermal protection foam flash-evaporated, scoring long black lines across the fuselage.

“No penetration,” Beaulieu called. “We can handle this energy level for eight minutes. Thermal reservoirs will be saturated after that.”

“Acknowledged.” Joshua accelerated the starship at eight gees, heading back down to the sunside surface. Everyone tensed against the crushing gravity as the sensors showed them the red and gold corrugations hurtling towards them. Lady Mac flattened out, flying parallel to the diskcity, sixty metres from the tops of the web tubes. Her fusion drive cut out, leaving them in freefall.

“Lasers lost us,” Beaulieu said. “They can’t track us at this altitude.”

Behind them the sunscoop continued on its approach towards the knot. The five storage globes were glaring furiously as they tried to throw off the energy imparted by Lady Mac’s masers during the second pass. Success was measured by the way the gas jets were slowly shrinking.

“It’s going to be close,” Liol said. “But I think we’ve done it.”

Joshua followed the flight computer’s plot. Watching the sunscoop’s relative velocity winding down, comparing the rate against the declining gas vents. Flakes of grey slush had started to clot the ever-reducing gas jets. But it was going to work, he told himself. The figures were tight, but the ship would reach zero relative velocity sixty kilometres above the diskcity.

Datavised alarms suddenly glared across his neuroiconic display. Lady Mac was under attack again. Energy impacts bloomed against the fuselage, ablating patches of foam in spurts of soot.

“Lasers again,” Beaulieu said. “They can’t stay on us for more than two or three seconds at a time, but there’s a lot of them. They’re going for a coordinated saturation. Strikes are almost constant.”

“Quantook-LOU warned us the dominions would try to stop us leaving before we handed over the data,” Samuel said. “They must think that’s what we’re doing.”

Joshua checked their vector. At their current velocity they’d fly over the rim in another hundred seconds. The course was taking them a long way round from Anthi-CL. He datavised the flight computer for a tactical analysis. “The old girl can handle this level of fire. We don’t need to jump clean yet.”

Lady Mac’s sensors were still tracking the sunscoop ship. It was sixty-five kilometres away from the sunside, with its approach velocity down to ten metres per second. The five jets from its storage globes were still active, though the rents weren’t squirting gas any more. It was mainly liquid and slush pouring out now. At sixty-three kilometres, its velocity was two metres a second.

The vector reversed at sixty-one kilometres. For a moment the sunscoop was stationary, then it began to creep away from the diskcity again at an almost unmeasurable velocity. By now the flow from the storage globes was reduced to a splutter of mushy fluid dribbling away into space.

Its fusion drive ignited.

Joshua groaned in dismay as Lady Mac’s flight computer translated the sensor image into pure data, providing him with the figures for the plasma’s temperature, luminosity, and flow rate. This time the sunscoop was using its full thrust. The tip of the plume seared its way downwards as the giant ship began to accelerate away. There was never going to be time for the separation distance to increase beyond the range of the plasma spear.

The drive flame hammered against the crown of the knot, instantly vaporizing every tube and foil sheet it touched. A blast wave of superheated gas roared out through the tangle of tubes inside the knot, rupturing web junctions and sending shredded tube fragments whirling deeper into the tangle. Slow structural ripples flexed their way across the sunside, radiating sinuously out from the knot. Tubes cracked open around junctions and reinforcement ribs. Hundreds of fan-shaped fountains of circulation fluid and atmospheric gas howled out into space across an area fifty kilometres across, producing a stormy pellicle of crimson mist which hung over the surface. Its centre was energized to azure blue by the fusion plume from the retreating sunscoop, expanding in a perfectly symmetrical ring, swelling and fading as it raced away across the sunside.

The devastated Mosdva dominions around the knot retaliated. Every laser that remained functional was fired at the sunscoop. Small petals of darkness opened across the glaring storage globes, distending. Sprays of molten metal drifted out from the drive nozzle, followed by boiling globules of fluid. The plasma flame began to waver as it was contaminated by streaks of impurity burning emerald and turquoise.

The thick shadows slithering over the storage globes merged together into funereal blemishes until the light was completely extinguished. They shattered in unison, belching out thick wobbling rivers of hydrocarbon fluid. It began to evaporate under the red giant’s unrelenting radiance, producing a surge of oily fog. A huge patch of shade crept over the sunside, defacing its usual gleaming hue to a dusky claret.

“Christ,” Liol gasped. “Did we do that?”

“No,” Dahybi said. “But they’ll blame us anyway.”

“Ione?” Joshua asked. “Are you all right?” He concentrated on the general communication link. The view through the serjeants’ sensors was shaking badly. The effect of the sunscoop’s plasma strike against Lalarin-MG was the same as an earthquake. Tyrathca breeders were scattered across the plaza, struggling to regain their footing. The soldiers had closed in on the three Mosdva, prodding them with their big maser rifles.

“We’re okay,” she said. The serjeants began to scan round. “No sign of structural breakdown. The cylinder is still intact and rotating.”

“That’s something.”

Above the serjeants, the Sleeping God’s effigy was moving in a circular bouncing motion, completely out of phase with the cylinder’s rotation. The axial gantry securing it bent and stretched with frighteningly loud stress creaks.

Baulona-PWM walked unsteadily over to Quantook-LOU. The distributor of resources was suffering in the aftermath of the attack, unable to lift himself up from the juddering plaza.

“Mosdva break their separation agreement,” Baulona-PWM said. “You damage Lalarin-MG. You kill our vassal castes. We will fire our weapons at Tojolt-HI. You will be exterminated.”

“Wait,” Ione said. “You cannot exterminate Quantook-LOU. He is the only Mosdva willing to deal with you. Without him there will be war. Billions of Tyrathca will die because you exterminated him. Their deaths will be your fault.”

“They will not die if you leave Mastrit-PJ. Do not give the Mosdva your faster-than-light drive. The Tyrathca here will survive. The Sleeping God will come to aid us.”

“The Mosdva will be given our drive. That is why we have come, to bring balance to the galaxy. The Tyrathca from Tanjuntic-RI were given the drive.”

“Tyrathca have faster-than-light drive?” Baulona-PWM demanded.

“Some of your worlds have it, yes. The technology is spreading slowly. Outside Mastrit-PJ your race is becoming powerful. Humans and our xenoc allies will not permit that to happen. There must be balance and harmony between races, only then can there be peace.”

Quantook-LOU heaved down a breath, but still made no effort to rise. “Humans are stupid,” he said. “Why did you give Tyrathca the drive? Can you not see what they are?”

“We know what both of you are. That is why we are here. Now you must choose. Will you mediate a new agreement? Will you pursue peace?”

“What will you do if we do not mediate an agreement?” Quantook-LOU asked.

“The balance will be enforced by us,” Ione said. “We will not tolerate war.”

“The Mosdva will mediate an agreement for peace,” Quantook-LOU said. “If the Tyrathca of Lalarin-MG do not wish to mediate with me, I will find an enclave that will.”

“Baulona-PWM, what is your answer?” Ione asked.

“I will mediate,” the breeder said. “But the Mosdva still attack Lalarin-MG. They must stop. There can be no agreement if we are dead.”

“Quantook-LOU, can you get the other dominions to withdraw?”

“I cannot. I must have the drive first, and the Lady Macbeth must leave. Only then will they be forced to ally with me.”

“You can’t have the drive until we have the Tyrathca information,” Ione said. “Baulona-PWM, how long will it take you to recover the information necessary for the agreement?”

“I am uncertain where it is stored. Our old memory centres are no longer enabled. We would have to reactivate them.”

“Wonderful,” Joshua exclaimed. “Not even total catastrophe can loosen these bollockheads up. Beaulieu, what’s happened to the trains?”

“Three of them are still en route, Captain. And the surviving Mosdva in spacesuits are still infiltrating the knot on the darkside.”

“Jesus, we have to buy Ione some time.”

“We could go back to the knot and use our firepower to defend Lalarin-MG from the Mosdva troops,” Liol suggested.

“No.” Joshua rejected it automatically. It would be messy, he knew. Lady Mac might be the most powerful ship in the system, but she wasn’t invincible. They needed some way of isolating Lalarin-MG while the Tyrathca breeders found the almanac. And maybe Quantook-LOU really could negotiate some kind of peace settlement. Nice bonus.

He let the factors stream through his mind. With that arrogant Calvert certainty that they had to act on Lalarin-MG, it was just a matter of running through options. Thinking what he had available to work with.

Joshua started chuckling wickedly.

Ashly closed his eyes in prayer. “Oh shit.”

“Syrinx,” Joshua called. “I need Oenone down here.”

One of the serjeants bent down beside Quantook-LOU. The distributor of resources had rolled partially on his side, which was why he couldn’t right himself. His bodyweight was trapping his midlimb. Ione pushed his flank as hard as she dared; too much pressure would snap his bones.

“I thank you,” Quantook-LOU said as his midlimb wriggled free. “You would make an excellent Mosdva. Even I am adrift among your mediating strategies.”

“A compliment indeed. My prime requirement, however, remains unchanged.”

“I understand. I will play my part.”

“Good.”

“In the expectation of reward.”

“You will collect the drive. Humans keep their word.”

“A welcome assurance at this point.”

The other serjeant had gone to talk to Baulona-PWM. They stood in the middle of the plaza, with the dirty rain from the effigy falling around them. The drops were less frequent, but larger, as the effigy continued its slow gyrations. “My ship tells me that the Mosdva troops are invading the area around this cylinder,” Ione said. “Can your soldiers hold them off long enough for you to retrieve the information?”

“How do you know this? We can detect no communication with your ship.”

“It is a method you are not familiar with. Now, can you hold them off?”

“We have no soldiers left outside Lalarin-MG. All is wrecked. Our food is grown in the tubes. There is no air, no fluid. Our communication links are failing. Our fusion weapons are disabled. Does your ship have weapons which can help us?”

“Not weapons, but we can certainly help. I will need your agreement to act as the mediator between you and Quantook-LOU.”

“Why?”

“If you supply me with the information which makes the agreement between Tyrathca and Mosdva possible, I may be able to offer all the Tyrathca of Lalarin-MG passage to one of the new Tyrathca worlds. It will not be today, but after we return to our home we can send larger ships to collect you. They could be here in three to four weeks.”

“We will be dead within one hour. Mosdva will come to break open Lalarin-MG’s shell.”

“My ship can move Lalarin-MG away from Tojolt-HI. The Mosdva will no longer be able to reach it. This will give you time to retrieve the information and mediate an agreement with Quantook-LOU.”

“You can move Lalarin-MG?”

“Yes.”

“Once we leave the shadow of Tojolt-HI, we will be unable to get rid of the sun’s heat. Our radiator bands are only sufficient to rid us of the heat we produce inside.”

“Mediating the agreement won’t take that long. You will find and supply the astronomical information to me. When I am satisfied it is correct, I will release the drive to Quantook-LOU and leave. All hostilities will then cease and the agreement will become active. You can travel back to another enclave to wait for our ships to collect you.”

“I agree to this.”

Joshua varied Lady Mac’s acceleration at random as they flew back to the wrecked knot, making targeting difficult.

“Nobody’s shooting at us,” Liol said. It was almost a complaint. Heavy fire might have made Joshua rethink this whole idea. Then again, part of him was looking forward to this with disgraceful childish glee. As he suspected his younger brother was, as well. The rest of the crew treated the notion with an air of tolerant amusement. And Ione was doing a good job talking rings around the xenocs.

He had to admit, everything was falling into place.

“That’s because we’re going the wrong way to be shot at,” Monica said. “We’re coming back to them. It’s leaving they object to.”

“I wonder what they’ll make of this, then,” Joshua said.

Lady Mac glided over the edge of the knot. Virtually all of the foil sheets had been torn away from its sunside slopes, letting the red sunlight illuminate the snarl of dark tubes which made up the interior. Space around the knot was heavy with particles, crystals and scraps of foil reflecting the sunlight in a blossom of crimson scintillations. The sun-scoop’s plasma torch had blown out a huge crater at the crest of the knot. Three hundred metres in diameter, its walls were a stipple of fractured tubes with melted ends. They were still glowing coral red from the immense thermal barrage.

“I’m taking us in,” Joshua said. “Beaulieu, start saturating the knot.”

“Aye, Captain.”

The cosmonik switched the maser cannons to wide-angle dispersal and began hosing the microwave energy around inside the crater. It wasn’t powerful enough to damage the structure any further, but it would be lethal to any of the Mosdva creeping round inside the knot.

Joshua rolled Lady Mac and started to edge her down into the crater. He used the forward lasers to slice through the tubes and wreckage at the bottom. Sections began to drift free, vapour from their molten ends blowing them away gently. Chemical verniers fired around the starship’s equator, moving it deeper into the crater.

Oenone slipped out of its wormhole terminus thirty kilometres above the knot’s darkside. The Edenists in the life-support toroid were all borrowing its sensor blisters, looking out in admiration at the monumental diskcity. Syrinx shared a smile with Ruben, their minds cherishing the vista together. Little bursts of excitement wafted around the mental embrace which pervaded the bridge as new facets of the xenoc construction were noticed and cherished. None of the ELINT coverage compared to actually being here.

The tall pinnacles of thermal radiators glowed a steady orange in the voidhawk’s senses. It could feel the broad fans of heat they gave off, slucing away through space towards the distant nebula. In the visual spectrum, Tojolt-HI was almost black. The exception came from the area where the sunscoop had attacked. Foil sheets had either been torn free or disintegrated, allowing sharp beams of intense red light to steal through the cluttered webs.

If Wing-Tsit Chong and the therapists could see me now, Syrinx said contentedly.

They don’t need to, Ruben said. They know they did their job properly.

Yes, but it still galled when they said it. Just a timid tourist, indeed!

I am glad we came, Oenone said. Everything here is fresh, but old at the same time. I feel Tojolt-HI has a dependability about it.

I know what you mean, she told the enchanted voidhawk. Anything that has such a long past must surely have an equally long future ahead of it.

It did have until we arrived, Ruben said.

You’re wrong. The Mosdva can’t abandon it, nor any of the others. Ashly is right, ZTT won’t give them that option. But maybe we’ll see change. Progress will begin again. I prefer to think of that as being our legacy. And who knows what they will achieve with fresh resources and new technologies.

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

You’re right. The briefest glimmer of regret appeared amid her thoughts.

I’m picking up considerable radar activity above this side of the diskcity, Edwin said. I think our countermeasures are deflecting them.

Thank you, Syrinx said. Nothing we can do about visual acquisition, I’m afraid. And we’re silhouetted against the nebula for all Tojolt-HI to see. Serina, have you acquired the trains?

Got them.

Cut the rails.

Five lasers stabbed out from the weapons pods clamped in Oenone’s lower hull groove. They slashed through the rail tracks meandering across the darkside’s huge thermal radiators. Serina waited until the trains had halted, then used the lasers to chop the rail behind them.

Immobilised, she said. They can’t invade Lalarin-MG now.

They’d be pretty stupid to try, Edwin said. Our electronic sensors are picking up the Lady Macbeth ’s microwave emissions from here. They’re powerful enough to leak through the knot.

Let’s go give him a hand, Syrinx told Oenone.

The voidhawk darted in towards the diskcity. They came to rest directly over the knot. Oenone’s distortion field undulated through the damaged tubes and struts, allowing the Edenists to examine its anatomy. The remaining scraps of asteroid rock in the knot’s central cavern were dark zones, their mass exerting a minuscule gravity field against space time. Next to them, the cylinder rotated slowly, its thin shell nothing more than a murky shadow to the voidhawk’s perception. Power circuits formed a grid of fuzzy violet lines permeating the whole edifice as the electron flows emitted their unique signature. The greatest concentration of energy was swirling around the magnetic bearings at each hub. Small instabilities flickered within the translucent folds, tarnishing the emissions. Barely fifty metres past the far end of the cylinder, Lady Macbeth appeared as a bright, dense twist in space-time.

“Got it, Joshua,” Syrinx said over the general communication link. “The cylinder masses approximately one-point-one-three million tonnes.”

“Excellent. That’s no problem. With the antimatter drive, Lady Mac can hit forty gees, and we mass just over five thousand tonnes. That should give us nearly a fifth of a gee thrust.”

“All right, we’ll start cutting.”

Ruben, Oxley, and Serina all issued instructions to the bitek processors governing the weapons pods. Eighteen lasers fired from the voidhawk’s lower fuselage, and under the crew’s directions began cutting through the tubes at the top of the knot.

Lady Mac’s sensors could now focus on Lalarin-MG itself. Her lasers had scythed their way through the tangle of tubes and struts, clearing a broad passage which Joshua had steered the starship along. Hot segments of tube twirled away into the main cavity, bouncing against the metallic cylinder shell and the black lumps of rock. Light was filtering in for the first time in a hundred centuries. Trickles of red sunlight slipped past Lady Mac’s fuselage, complemented by sizzling scarlet flashes of the lasers.

“How’s it going in there, Ione?” Joshua asked.

“We’re ready. Rotating airlocks are closed and sealed. I even got Baulona-PWM to find some padding for the Mosdva to lie on.”

“Okay, stand by.” The sensors were showing him the cylinder’s hub with its big circular bearing dead ahead. He cut the last tube free, exposing the airlock chamber, and fired the ion thrusters to spin Lady Mac, matching her rotation to the cylinder. The starship’s forward fuselage section moved into the bearing, crushing the jagged remnants of the tube. “Sarha?”

“I’ve got the molecular binding force generators on maximum.”

“Take the CAB safety limiters off line. Pump them higher. I want all the strength we’ve got in the stress structure.”

“You’ve got it.”

“We’ve cut this end free,” Syrinx said. “You’re clear.”

“Okay everyone, stand by.” Joshua fired the fusion drives, keeping their thrust to an easy one gee. Lady Mac pressed forward, compressing the remnants of the airlock chamber in towards the cylinder shell. The rim of the bearing pierced the starship’s protective foam until it was touching the fuselage.

“We’re solid,” Liol declared.

Joshua increased the fusion drive thrust. Three strands of blue-white plasma stabbed back out through the crater, twining together. Tubes and struts facing the ultraheated torrent of ions began to boil furiously, sending out twisters of gas.

“Stress structure’s holding,” Sarha said. The sound of the drive tubes was vibrating through the life support capsules, a muffled drone. She’d never heard that before.

“It’s moving,” Beaulieu called out. “Accelerating at four per cent of a gee.”

“Okay, here we go,” Joshua said. He activated the antimatter drive.

Hydrogen and anti-hydrogen collided and obliterated each other within the engine’s complex focusing field. A shaft of pure energy burst into existence behind the starship, as if a flaw in space-time had cracked open. Two hundred thousand tonnes of thrust started to push Lalarin-MG out of its rapidly dissolving chrysalis.

“I think we might have something,” Etchells said.

Kiera looked up from the pizza slice she was munching through. A couple of the console displays were showing elongated stars being lassoed by turquoise nets, columns of scarlet figures scrolling past too fast to be read. So far all the hellhawk had found was some radar-type pulses coming from (presumably) stations orbiting the huge star. They gave nothing away, other than the fact they weren’t Confederation. Kiera and Etchells both wanted to see if anything else existed before they started investigating.

“What have you seen?” she asked.

“Take a look for yourself.”

The gauzy iridescent clouds of the nebula slid across the bridge’s main port as the hellhawk swung round. Bright crimson light shone in as it faced the red giant again.

Kiera dropped her pizza back into the therm box and squinted against the glare. Right in the middle of the port was a dazzling white spark. As she watched, it grew longer and longer.

“What is that?”

“An antimatter drive.”

She smiled grimly “It must be the Confederation Navy ship.”

“Possibly. If it is, there’s something wrong. An antimatter drive should accelerate a ship at over thirty-five gees. Whatever’s producing that drive flare is barely moving.”

“We’d better take a look then. How far away are they?”

“Roughly a hundred million kilometres.”

“But it’s so bright.”

“Nobody really appreciates how powerful antimatter actually is until they encounter it first hand. Ask the ex-residents of Trafalgar.”

Kiera gave the apparition a respectful look, then went over to the weapons console. She started arming the combat wasps. “Let’s go.”

Joshua switched all the starship’s drives off as soon as Lalarin-MG cleared the crest of the knot. The flight computer had to tell him where that was. Tojolt-HI’s structure had simply melted away from the antimatter drive, leaving a hole over eight kilometres wide where the knot had been. The fringes glowed cerise, extending bent tendrils of molten metal. Only the largest lump of asteroid rock had survived intact, although it was down to a quarter of its original size. It tumbled in towards the photosphere, its surface baked to a cauldron of bubbling tar, spewing out a guttering tail of petrochemical fog.

The red giant shone through the huge circular rent in the diskcity, illuminating the end of the cylinder and a tapering slice of the shell as if a flame was playing up the side. Lady Mac’s ion thrusters fired, backing her out of the crushed bearing ring. The hub had bowed inward under the enormous force she’d exerted, but the rib spars had held. Now they were retreating from the diskcity at a leisurely thirty metres per second.

“And they’re still not shooting at us,” Liol said.

“I should hope not,” Dahybi retorted. “After that little display of power they’ll think twice about antagonising us again.”

“Look how much damage we’ve done,” Ashly said. “I’m sorry, but this is one accomplishment which doesn’t make me very proud.”

“This section of Tojolt-HI was mostly dead,” Liol said. “And the sunscoop had already destroyed the tubes which still had viable life support functions.”

“Ashly’s right,” Joshua said. “All we’ve done is react to events. We’re in control of very little.”

“I thought that’s what life was,” Liol said. “The honour of witnessing events. You need to be a God to control them.”

“That drops us into a neat little paradox, then,” Sarha said. “We have to control events if we want to find a God. But if we can control them, then ipso facto we’re already gods.”

“I think you’ll find it’s a question of scale,” Joshua said. “Gods determine the outcome of large events.”

“What happened here was pretty big.”

“Not compared to the destiny of an entire species.”

“You’re taking this very seriously,” Liol said.

Joshua didn’t even smile. “Somebody has to. Think of the consequences.”

“I’m not a total asshole, Josh. I do appreciate just how bad it’s going to get if no one can find an answer to all of this.”

“I was thinking what happens if we succeed, actually.”

Liol’s laugh was more a bark of surprise. “How can that be bad?”

“Everything changes. People don’t like that. There’s going to have to be sacrifices, and I don’t mean just physical or financial. It’s inevitable. Surely you can see that coming?”

“Maybe,” Liol said gruffly.

Joshua looked over to his brother and put on his wickedest grin. “In the meantime, you’ve got to admit, it’s a wild ride.”

One of the serjeants stayed with Baulona-PWM and Quantook-LOU to act as an arbitrator as they tried to sort out the parameters of a new agreement. A triumph of optimism, she thought: that both of them believed the ZTT drive would bring about a new era among the diskcities orbiting Mastrit-PJ. It was clear that they were both conceding the remaining Tyrathca population would be evacuated to the flightship colony worlds. Their enclaves among the diskcities would not be expanded. Such a premise made it even more important that the two species didn’t clash over who had claim on new star systems. Retrieving the flightship information really had become essential to the agreement. An intriguing irony. Now all she had to worry about was Quantook-LOU’s sincerity. It made her suggest several safeguards to Baulona-PWM, such as ensuring communications were opened up to all the remaining enclaves. Not that either of them knew how many there were scattered among the diskcities. Quantook-LOU admitted even he didn’t know how many diskcities there were.

The other serjeant accompanied a team of six breeders that Baulona-PWM had designated to reactivate their electronics. They escorted her to the band of fat towers around the end of the cylinder. It was Lalarin-MG’s utilities district, with the towers housing water treatment plants, air filtration, fusion generators (appallingly crude, she thought), and the heat exchangers. Fortunately each service was provided by parallel stations, giving it a failsoft capability. A third of the systems were inoperable, the machinery inert and tarnished, testifying as to how long it had been since Lalarin-MG had a full population.

She was taken to a tower which the breeders said was an electrical and communications station. The ground floor was occupied by three tokamaks, only one of which was working. A ramp spiralled up to the first floor. There were no windows, and the ceiling lights didn’t work. Her infrared sensors showed her the silent ranks of electronic consoles, very reminiscent of those in Tanjuntic-RI. The Tyrathca had brought portable lights with them, which they set up revealing the true state of the consoles. Humidity had succoured a fur of algae over the rosette keyboards and display screens. Access panel catches had to be drilled through to release them, exposing rubbery fungal growths over the circuitry inside. The breeders had to run cables down to the generator below to power up the consoles.

One console actually burst into flames when they switched it on. Oski’s curses echoed through the general communication link.

“Ask them if we can integrate our processor blocks with their network,” she told Ione. “If I’ve got access, I’ll be able to load some questors in. That should speed the process up. And while we’re about it, let’s see if they’ll accept a little advice on reactivation procedures.”

The wormhole terminus opened six hundred kilometres above Tojolt-HI’s darkside, deep in the umbra. The Stryla flew out; Etchells was in his harpy form, red eyes blazing as he looked round in surprise. From his position the huge disk eclipsed most of the sun’s surface, with a tide of crimson light appearing to sweep up over the rim, as if it was sinking into an ooze of photons.

His distortion field billowed out, probing the xenoc structure. It also clashed with another distortion field.

What are you doing here? Oenone asked.

Same thing as you. He found the voidhawk, three thousand kilometres away. It was next to a large hollow cylinder, a habitation station of some kind. There was another Confederation ship close by. When he focused his optical senses in their direction he saw a small glimmer of sunlight erupting through the disk directly behind them.

He quickly altered his distortion field, opening another wormhole interstice. This time he came out a hundred kilometres from the voidhawk. Red sunlight washed over his leathery scale-like feathers, and he looked down curiously at the tear in the disk. Its melted edges were radiating strongly in the infrared. The mountainous heat exchangers surrounding it were operating at their upper limit, trying to radiate away the immense thermal load imposed by overheated tubes.

“I’d say the Adamist ship used its antimatter drive to push the cylinder clear of the disk,” he told Kiera. “Nothing else could cause that kind of damage.”

“Which means they consider it important,” she said.

“I don’t see why. It’s inhabited, and very fragile. It can’t be a weapon.” His distortion field caught flocks of small chemically fuelled missiles flitting among the sharp, hot cones bristling out of the darkside. Lasers shot at them, blowing them apart in mid-flight. Over thirty radar beams from all sections of the disk were sweeping across him. One of the missiles plunged down among the heat exchange mountains, exploding. Atmospheric gas puffed out into space from the tube it shattered. “And there’s some kind of war being fought down there. Widespread by the look of it.”

“They flew all the way round the Orion Nebula, and when they get here they rip that cylinder out of a war zone,” Kiera said.

“All right, it’s important.”

“Which means it’s bad for us. Minimize your energistic effect, please.”

The hellhawk’s shape rippled back to its natural profile.

Kiera’s fingers typed quickly over the weapons console. Targeting sensors locked on to the cylinder.

Disengage your weapons, now, Oenone ordered.

Etchells let Kiera hear the affinity voice, routing it through one of the AV pillars on the bridge.

“Why?” she asked. “What’s in there?”

Several thousand unarmed Tyrathca. You would be committing butchery.

“What do you care? In fact, why are you here?”

To help.

“Very noble. And total bollocks.”

Do not fire, Oenone appealed to Etchells. We will defend the cylinder.

That cylinder contains the means to destroy me, Etchells replied. I’m quite sure of that.

We are not barbarians. Physical destruction solves nothing.

Kiera fired four combat wasps at the cylinder.

The response from Oenone and Lady Macbeth was instant. Fifteen combat wasps launched on interception trajectories, scattering submunitions. Lady Macbeth’s defence masers speared the incoming drones as their submunitions ejected. Two hundred and fifty fusion bombs detonated in the space of three seconds. Some pumped gamma lasers, but most were missile warheads.

Joshua absorbed the burst of sensor data disgorged by the tactical program, desperate for an overview. Visual sensors were useless against the blaze of destruction, but none of the attacking combat wasps electronic warfare submunitions had targeted Lady Mac—strangely negligent programming. The starship’s sensors stared into the heart of the mayhem, filtering out the atomic and electromagnetic interference. Three small kinetic impacts registered against the cylinder, along with several beam strikes. But the structure remained intact.

“Sarha, kill the bastard,” he ordered.

Five masers fired at the hellhawk. It rolled quickly and accelerated at seven gees, trying to break free from the energy strike.

Joshua fired another five combat wasps, programming them for defence minefield deployment. Their drives flared briefly, and submunitions swarmed out, forming a wide protective cluster around Lalarin-MG. If the hellhawk was serious about attacking a target outside a gravity field, its strategy would be to swallow in as close as possible, under a kilometre usually, and fire off a combat wasp salvo. Unless the target had an extensive array of SD lasers, some submunitions were bound to get through. The minefield ought to act as a temporary deterrence.

The hellhawk swallowed away.

“Syrinx, where the hell did it go?” Joshua asked.

“Standing off, two thousand kilometres.”

Oenone used the link with Lady Mac’s flight computer to datavise the coordinate over. Sensors locked on, showing the hellhawk holding station.

“They’ve got very strange ideas about tactics,” Joshua said. “Oski, how much longer?”

“Half an hour at least, Captain. I’ve identified probable storage areas for the almanac; none of them are active.”

“Joshua, I’m not sure the cylinder can take another attack like that,” Ione said. The serjeant mediating with Baulona-PWM and Quantook-LOU had been flung to its knees when the first chunk of shrapnel punctured the cylinder shell. A small fireball had erupted out of a tower barely a hundred yards away. The plaza shook violently as the tower disintegrated, showering the area with smoking fragments of metal and burning vegetation. When she scanned round, she saw a dozen violet contrails crisscrossing through the air, molecules fluorescing from the gamma laser shots. Two had burned holes through the Sleeping God effigy. Her sensors hurriedly tracked along the axial gantry, but it hadn’t been hit.

An automated truck trundled across the plaza, heading for the wrecked tower. Air was wailing as it was sucked down through the puncture hole. Hydraulic arms unfolded from the rear of the truck, carrying a thick metal plate. It was lowered over the hole, clanging into place. Thick brown sludge was sprayed out of a nozzle, smothering the plate. It solidified quickly, completing the seal.

“The Mosdva attack again,” Baulona-PWM said.

Ione thought the breeder was going to strike Quantook-LOU.

“They didn’t,” she said quickly. “That was a human ship. It’s from a dominion we are not allied with. The Lady Macbeth has fought it off.”

“Do humans have dominions?” Quantook-LOU asked. “You did not tell us this.”

“We didn’t expect them to be here.”

“Why are they here? Why have they attacked us?”

“They do not agree that Tyrathca and Mosdva should be given the faster-than-light drive. We must complete this agreement and recover the data. Then they will be unable to prevent the exchange.”

“My family is working hard,” Baulona-PWM said. “We keep our agreement with you, allowing you to mediate.”

“And we will keep the agreement that you will be unharmed. Come now, we were deciding the message that is to be sent to other diskcity dominions.” She switched back to the general communication link. “You have to get us more time.”

“We’ll see to it,” Syrinx assured her. “Joshua, hold the fort here.”

“Acknowledged.” Lady Mac’s gravitonic distortion detectors showed him the voidhawk opening a wormhole interstice.

Oenone emerged fifty kilometres from the Stryla. Syrinx was expecting the hellhawk to fire its lasers at them straight away. That it didn’t, she took as an encouraging sign.

I’m here to talk, she said.

And I’m here to survive, Etchells replied. We know you’re here to find something you can use against us. I won’t let that happen.

Nothing will be used against you. We are trying to resolve this to everyone’s benefit.

I lack your optimism.

The hellhawk launched two combat wasps.

Oenone immediately swallowed out, emerging from a terminus on the opposite side of the hellhawk from the combat wasps, twenty kilometres away. It fired ten lasers at the other’s polyp hull.

Etchells swallowed away. He emerged a hundred metres above one of the diskcity’s heat radiator cones. Oenone emerged just behind him. He’d expected that. His maser cannon fired on the voidhawk. It darted down behind the silvery cone, then curved round to shoot at Etchells.

The hellhawk accelerated at eight gees, tearing along a valley of cylindrical radiator towers. Kiera let out a muted yell of surprise and pain as she was squashed back into her acceleration couch.

“Give me fire control,” Etchells told her. “You can’t program the combat wasps for this scenario. I can.”

“That would make me nothing,” she said. “No deal. Fly us out of this.”

“Fuck you.” He abandoned the secondary manipulation of the distortion field, which countered the acceleration. Kiera groaned as the full eight gees rammed her down into the couch. She began channelling her energistic power to strengthen her body. Lasers raked across his hull, and Etchells looped round a glass spiral turret, pulling twelve gees. The radiator mechanisms were a constant leaden smear to his optical senses, he was navigating by distortion field sense alone. And going too fast: the valley end was a sharp turn, almost a right angle. He swooped up above the peaks, decelerating madly as he turned. For a moment the two starships were in direct line of sight. Lasers and masers slashed across the gulf. Then Etchells dived back down into a deep gully of vertical mirror-surface dissipaters.

Oenone matched the manoeuvre and fired again. Etchells flicked from side to side, accelerating and decelerating in wild bursts. His own masers fired back. The energy beams ripped long gashes across the cliffs of dissipaters as both starships twirled and rolled. Magenta effluvium percolated out, clotting the whole valley.

Etchells shot out of the smog blizzard with cyclonic eddies rolling away from his hull. He swung round a splayed clump of black pentangular pillars, then used a mushroom-like industrial refinery to slalom again.

The way Syrinx’s hands dug into the acceleration couch padding was nothing to do with the appalling gee forces washing across the bridge. The image of the craggy diskcity surface hurtling past mere metres away was shining directly into her brain. Her eyes were tight shut from reflex, and it wasn’t the slightest use. There was no escape. Oenone’s steady determination as it pursued the hellhawk prevented any censure. To doubt her love now would be selfish betrayal. She fought her own fear to bestow trust and pride.

On the other side of the bridge, Oxley was emitting a constant low moan of dismay without ever needing to draw breath.

Its resolve weakens, Oenone claimed buoyantly. It is slowing to turn now. We will catch it soon.

Yes. There was absolutely nothing in the tactical programs she could use to help this situation. If they rose above the artificial valleys, the hellhawk would be able to fire combat wasps straight at them. They couldn’t fire back down, one errant submunition would slaughter thousands of Mosdva. So the chase continued, which was ultimately to their advantage. It prevented the hellhawk from firing on Lalarin-MG. At a terrible cost to her nerves.

Another wormhole terminus opened a hundred kilometres above them.

Hello Etchells, Rocio said.

You? Etchells exclaimed in shock. Shoot the shit chasing me, they’ve found something here that’ll wipe us out.

The Mindori fired three lasers at a glass cone heat exchanger a couple of kilometres ahead of Etchells. The mechanism detonated, shattering into crystalline splinters spinning inside a writhing gas cloud. Etchells screamed his fury into the affinity band and accelerated at seventeen gees, desperately trying to rise above the lethal kinetic debris. Irradiated gas streaked over the hellhawk’s polyp. Energistic power flared, warding off the crystals with a ragged shield of white fire. Etchells’s barrel rolled up away from the bloating indigo nimbus.

Oenone had a few extra seconds before collision. It pulled up fast, skirting the boundary of the whirling crystals. The Stryla was only thirty kilometres ahead of it. Oenone’s targeting radar locked on to the hellhawk. Then the electronic sensors warned Syrinx that the Mindori was targeting their hull.

Don’t shoot, Rocio warned.

Kill them, Etchells demanded.

Syrinx aimed five lasers at the Mindori.

Etchells also targeted the other hellhawk with three masers. Kill them now, he said.

I won’t shoot if you don’t, Rocio said to Syrinx. Two of his lasers were aligned on the Stryla. At least find out why we’ve come here first.

So tell us, Syrinx said.

Jed and Beth were pressed against the port in the bridge, gazing in veneration at the xenoc artefact spread out below the hellhawk. There weren’t many details, it was so dark, but the rim was close enough to see a silhouette of enticing geometries in the backscatter of red light. Gerald Skibbow was sitting on the acceleration couch behind the weapons console, Loren Skibbow studying the tactical displays keenly, watching the voidhawk and hellhawk rising fast from the darkside.

Traitor, Etchells spat, pushing his shaky anger behind the word.

To what, exactly? Rocio asked. What’s your crusade, Etchells? What do you care about other than yourself?

I’m trying to stop these people from flinging us all back into the beyond. Maybe you’re all for that.

Don’t be absurd.

Then for fuck’s sake help us wipe out that cylinder. Whatever they’ve come here for, it’s in there.

There’s no weapon in there, Syrinx said. I’ve already told you that.

Maybe I’ll take a look later, Rocio said.

Shithead, Etchells raged. I’ll blow you to fucking pieces if you don’t help wipe out that voidhawk.

And that’s why I’m here.

What? What are you fucking talking about?

Rocio enjoyed the irritation and confusion Etchells was emitting. Death, he said. You’re very keen to see others die, aren’t you. You never gave Pran Soo a chance.

You’ve got to be shitting me. You came after me because of her?

And Kiera. I’ve got someone on board who would like to see our ex-leader.

Kiera is on board? Syrinx asked.

Yes, Rocio said.

Listen you half-wit dickbrain, we’re on the same side, Etchells said. I know the hellhawks have found another supply of nutrient fluid. That’s brilliant. We’re free of doing any fighting for people like Capone and Kiera. That’s what I want.

You were Kiera’s number-one cheerleader. You’re still doing what she wants even with the blackmail removed.

I was looking out for me. Just like you were doing for yourself. We had different methods, but we want the same thing for ourselves. That’s why you’ve got to help us. Together we can beat those Confederation ships and destroy the cylinder.

Then what?

Then whatever we want, of course.

You don’t really think we’d let you share our nutrient supply, do you? After what you’ve done.

You’re starting to piss me off.

Jed and Beth saw the monstrous bird rise into view through the port, a jet-black shadow against the ruddy darkness of the umbra. Malevolent eyes gleamed scarlet, looking straight in at them. They backed away from the port together. To one side of the bird was another shadow, an elongated oval.

“Gerald,” Jed said nervously. “Mate, there’s things out there.”

“Yes,” he said. “The Oenone and the Mindori. Isn’t it wonderful?” He sniffed, wiping moisture from his sunken bloodshot eyes. His voice became high again: Loren’s. “She’s there. And there’s nowhere for the bitch to run anymore.”

Jed and Beth gave each other a defeated look. Gerald was activating a lot of systems on the console.

“What are you doing?” Rocio asked.

“Bringing the remaining generators on line,” Gerald answered. “You can route their power into the lasers. Kill it with one shot.”

“I’m not so sure that’s a good idea.”

“YES IT IS!” Gerald cried. “Don’t you try to back out now.” He clutched the edge of the console, blinking in confusion.

“Gerald?” Beth pleaded tremulously. “Please, Gerald, don’t do anything rash.”

Loren’s face flicked up over Gerald’s tortured expression. “Gerald’s fine. Just fine. Don’t you worry.”

Beth started sobbing, clutching at Jed. His arms went round her as he stared miserably at the mad figure hunched over the console. When Skibbow had just been bonkers it’d been bad enough. This new demented combination was hell’s own gatekeeper.

Loren ignored the two kids. “Rocio. Ask the voidhawk to help. It’s to their advantage. We don’t want any mistakes now.”

“Very well.” There was an edge of worry in the voice. I have a proposition, he said to Syrinx, on singular engagement.

Go ahead.

I have no quarrel with you, nor do I care about your mission. Etchells and Kiera threaten both of us.

Then why did you stop us from firing at them?

Because I need to capture Kiera alive. The father and mother of the body she possesses are on board. Unfortunately, they have fire authority over my combat wasps. My energistic power can disable the missiles, but the Skibbows would be able to detect my intent. There is no way of telling how they’d react; they are not a stable combination. They could choose to kamikaze; in which case I’m not sure if I could block their commands to the warheads in time.

I see. What do you suggest?

From this range, my lasers are quite capable of killing the Stryla’s central organ cluster in one shot. Etchells will be flung back into the beyond, and Kiera will be left intact. I will dock, and the Skibbows can deal with her.

So what do you want us to do?

Nothing. Do not interfere when I shoot. That’s all I ask.

What about Kiera’s control over the Stryla’s combat wasps?

A second laser strike will eliminate the combat wasps in their launch cradles. I can be fast. She will not have time to launch or detonate them.

You hope.

Can you provide an alternative?

Etchells spoke into the general affinity band: Rocio, I can see you’ve powered up your weapon pod generators. Know this, Kiera and I have rigged my combat wasps. Any energy beam strike against me or my life-support module will result in every warhead blowing simultaneously. Both of you are well inside the lethal blast radius.

All right, Rocio said. We’ve all been real smart and blocked each other. Nobody can win now, so why don’t we all just back off?

No, Syrinx said. If either of you accelerate away or attempt to open a wormhole interstice, I will fire. I will not give you the freedom to return to the cylinder.

So just what the hell are we supposed to do now? Rocio demanded.

We are negotiating for the cylinder to be evacuated, Syrinx said. When all the Tyrathca have left, I will permit the three of us to retreat simultaneously. Not before. You will not slaughter innocent entities to appease your paranoia.

For fuck’s sake, Etchells said. Rocio, join me, we’ll blow this voidhawk to shit and stop them getting the weapon.

There is no weapon, Syrinx insisted.

I’ll tell you something, Etchells, Rocio said. If it comes to a choice, I’m with Captain Syrinx.

Shithead traitor! You’d better pray their weapon works and pray real hard, because if it doesn’t I will personally track you down past the end of the universe.

You won’t have to chase me anywhere.

Syrinx looked over at Ruben and pouted her lips. “Maybe we should just let them go at it.”

“Nice thought. I wonder what the Mosdva dominions are making of all this.”

“As long as they don’t start shooting at us, I don’t care.”

“We’re getting something,” Oski announced. “It’s not the full almanac, but I’m accessing files with colony planet locations; they’re linked to star map references.”

“Can you access their star map files?” Syrinx asked.

“Loading a questor now,” Oski said. “Stand by.”

Syrinx and Oenone waited eagerly as the information began to trickle across the communication link. The first maps the questors accessed showed unknown starfields, but the third has a portion of the Orion Nebula covering a quarter of the picture. Oenone matched the image to the navigational plot of the nebula it had made on the voyage to Mastrit-PJ, instinctively correlating the Tyrathca coordinate formula into its own astronomical reference frame. More star maps followed, allowing the voidhawk to expand and refine the coordinate grid, correlating with recognizable star patterns. After eight minutes it could visualize a globe of space five thousand light-years across, centred on Mastrit-PJ. Tyrathca designations tagged the constellations.

Syrinx’s thoughts flowed through the mental construct, filled with quiet pride as she absorbed the detailed configuration.

It was easy, Oenone said modestly.

You handled it superbly, she said. That needs to be said.

Thank you.

Syrinx made an effort to compress her sadness. But you do realize we probably won’t get to go there.

I understand. We need to keep the hellhawks at bay.

I’m so sorry. I know how much you wanted to go.

So did you. We must not be selfish, though. There is more at stake than our feelings. And we have explored further than anyone else.

Oh yes!

Joshua will do well.

I know. Amusement lifted her spirits. A year ago I wouldn’t have been saying that.

It is not just you who has changed.

You always did like him, didn’t you?

He was what you feared to become. Your envy became disdain. You should never be scared of what you are, Syrinx. I will always love you.

And I you. She sighed contentedly. “Joshua, Swantic-LI found the Sleeping God at an F-class star three hundred and twenty light years from here. Coordinates coming over.” She ordered the bridge processors to datavise the file over to Lady Mac’s flight computer.

“Hey, good work, Oenone.”

“Thank you, Joshua.”

“Okay, how do you want to break up the stand-off? If I launch a combat wasp salvo from here, they’ll be forced to swallow out. We can combine to protect the cylinder. Maybe we’ll get lucky and they’ll wipe each other out before they come back for it.”

“No, Joshua. We can handle the stand-off. You take off now.”

“Jesus, you’re kidding.”

“We can’t waste the time which protecting the cylinder is going to take; it’ll be days most likely. And we certainly can’t take the risk that we might both get damaged or killed in a fight with the hellhawks. You have to leave. Once the stand-off’s over, we’ll follow.”

“That’s very cold and logical.”

“It’s very rational, Joshua. I am an Edenist after all.”

“All right. If you’re sure?”

“Who better?” She relaxed serenely on her acceleration couch, sharing Oenone’s perception of local space. Waiting. Lady Macbeth’s jump registered as a sharp twist in spacetime, gone in a nanosecond.

Syrinx looked round at her crew, reaching out to them so their thoughts and regrets could mingle with hers. Sharing herself to achieve that cherished equipoise of their culture. It must have worked; for eventually she asked: “Anyone bring a pack of cards?”