“I have just one question,” Floyd said. “If you can do this, if you can have everything you want, whenever and wherever you want it—then why are some of you so keen on getting your hands on Earth?”
“That’s a shrewd question,” Cassandra said.
“So answer it,” Auger said.
“We want Earth because it is the one thing we cannot have,” Cassandra said. “And that, for some of us, is intolerable.”
Cassandra was waiting when the veined lid peeled aside. “Well, Auger? Was the reintegration as painless as I predicted?”
“I’ll cope. Can you help me out of this thing?”
“Certainly.”
Another Slasher was already helping Floyd out of his casket. Auger looked around with bleary eyes while the last remnants of the blue fluid gathered into larger blobs and flowed back into the open maw of the casket.
“Come,” Cassandra said. “I’ll bring you up to speed. We’re very near Earth.”
They returned to the tactical room, which was almost as Auger remembered it except for the absence of any Slashers. “They’re still in their acceleration caskets,” Cassandra explained. “If we need to make a sudden movement, they’ll be better able to manage the tactical situation.”
“Are we still being chased by Niagara?”
“Niagara—or whoever was in that ship—isn’t a problem anymore. It ran into one of our missiles just before we reached the outer cordon of Tanglewood defences.”
“You mean he’s dead?”
“Someone’s dead. It may or may not be Niagara. If it isn’t, we’ll find him sooner or later.”
“You better had.”
“Perhaps if you told me exactly why it was so important to reach Caliskan, I might be able to do a little more to help you.”
“I’ve told you as much as you need to know,” Auger said firmly.
“You only told me half of the story.”
“And I’m not quite ready to trust you with the rest of it. Maybe when I’ve spoken to Caliskan… Are you close enough to send a tight-beam message to him?”
“There’ll always be a slight risk of interception… but yes, we’re close enough now.” With a flourish of her fingers—a gesture that Auger suspected was as much theatrical as anything else—Cassandra assigned part of the wall as a flat screen. For a moment it was blank, awaiting a response. “You may speak,” she said, prompting Auger with a nod of her head.
“What’s my location?” she asked.
Cassandra told her.
“Caliskan,” she said. “This is Verity Auger. I believe you wanted to hear from me. I’m alive and well, within half a light-second of Tanglewood. I’m aboard a Slasher spacecraft, so you’ll have to pull some strings to let me get any closer without all hell breaking loose.”
A second or two later, the assigned panel lit up with swathes of blocky primary colours, which quickly sharpened into a flickering, low-time-resolution pixel image.
“That’s Caliskan?” Floyd said, when the face of the white-haired man had assumed a recognisable shape.
“The man who sent me to Paris, and the only one who has a hope of sorting out this mess,” Auger said.
“Face looks familiar. It’s almost as if I know him,” Floyd said, peering more closely at the image.
“You can’t possibly know him,” she said. “You’ve never met him.”
Floyd touched the side of his head, as if in salute. “Whatever you say, Chief.”
Caliskan’s glasses flared light back at the camera. “Auger… you’re alive. You can’t imagine how much this pleases me. Please pass my thanks on to Cassandra. I didn’t dare believe you’d made it out of the Phobos catastrophe.”
“We made it, sir. Both of us did.”
She waited for the response. The one-second delay was just long enough to impose a certain stiltedness on the conversation, as if both of them were speaking a language neither felt comfortable with.
“Both of you, Auger? But Skellsgard said that the war babies had killed Aveling and Barton before you helped her escape.”
“And so they did, sir. I’m with a man called Floyd, who was born on E2.”
Behind Caliskan, she could make out the ribs, spars and instruments of a spacecraft cabin interior: a modern Thresher ship, but something much less advanced than the Slasher vessel she had woken up inside.
“That’s a serious development,” he said.
“There’s more we need to talk about,” Auger said. “Can you clear our approach with the Tanglewood authorities?”
“Check the news, Auger: there are no authorities. The Tanglewood administration’s made a run for the hills. I’m already having a hard time evading the pirates and looters, and I have a fast shuttle.”
“My children are in Tanglewood.”
“No,” he said. “Peter took them away a couple of days ago. As soon as Skellsgard came through, we began to fear that something bad was imminent. Your children are safe.”
“Where are they?”
“Peter thought it best not to tell anyone. He said he’d make contact with you as soon as the situation calms down.”
Auger closed her eyes and said a small, silent prayer of thanks.
“Sir,” Auger said after a moment, “I have important news. There’s something I really need to tell you. I know what Susan White was on to, and it’s big. You have to act now… use all your contacts to pull in assistance before it’s too late.”
“It’s all right,” Caliskan said. “We figured out most of the details from Skellsgard. It was remarkably brave of you to send her back the way you did.”
“Is she all right?”
“Yes, she’s fine. Safe and sound.”
That was another debt to add to the pile. Her children were safe and so was her small, scowling friend from Phobos.
“I still need to talk to you,” she said. “Can you suggest a suitable rendezvous point?”
“I already have a place in mind. It’s somewhere the pirates and looters won’t dare follow us. I suspect even the Slashers will have second thoughts.”
She knew exactly where he meant, and it scared her. “You’re not serious, Caliskan.”
“I’m more than serious. Does that ship you’re in have transatmospheric capability?”
She turned to Cassandra. “Well?”
“We can fly in. But there’s more to a trip to Earth than just flying in. A Thresher ship may be sufficiently robust for the furies not to pose an immediate risk, but we are rather more… susceptible.”
“I thought the Slashers had protection against furies now. Isn’t that why you’re so keen to get your hands on Earth?”
“Experimental countermeasures,” Cassandra said. “Which—I regret to inform you—this ship doesn’t happen to be carrying.”
Auger turned back to Caliskan. “No dice. She says the ship isn’t equipped to fend off furies. We’ll have to pick another RV point.”
“Tell her not to worry,” Caliskan said. “The fury count near my designated RV is low. I know because I have direct feeds from Antiquities monitoring stations in the vicinity. Our enemies won’t have this information, which is why they won’t be so keen to come charging in.”
Auger glanced at Cassandra. “Does that sound reasonable to you?”
“He spoke of a low count, not a zero one,” Cassandra said. “I can’t risk taking my ship deep into the atmosphere, especially with eighteen evacuees in my care.”
“This is very important.”
“In which case,” Cassandra said, “we’ll have to consider an alternative means of transportation.”
“You mean the Twentieth’s shuttle?”
“There isn’t much fuel left aboard, but it should still be capable of making the round trip.”
“Can it fly itself?”
“It doesn’t have to,” Cassandra said. “I can take care of that.”