Floyd looked at her, waiting for an update.
“Closing,” she said. “Still looking good.”
Below, against the backdrop of the ocean, Floyd could just make out the glint of the ship they were chasing. It was still five hundred kilometres away, but—apart from the missile—it was the only thing moving against the face of E2, spitting a brilliant, quivering flame as it continued to make evasive course changes, still trying to dodge anything they might throw at it.
“Four hundred kilometres,” Auger said. “Missile still looking good. Tunguska might have built it in a hurry, but he did a pretty good job.”
“I’m glad he’s on our side.”
“Me, too. Floyd: this might not be the ideal time—”
“When is it ever?”
“Whatever happens from hereon in, I’m not sorry we met. I’m not sorry we had this adventure.”
“Really?”
“Never in a million years.” Then she frowned as the machines delivered another bulletin straight into her skull. “Two hundred klicks and closing. Niagara knows there’s a missile on his tail now.”
Floyd saw the little spark of Niagara’s drive flame become even more agitated, lashing from side to side like a feather in the wind. He wondered what that kind of swerving meant for anyone still alive in that ship. Perhaps Niagara and his associates were all dead by now, mashed by the forces of the escape, sacrificing themselves so that their cargo might still find its way to E2.
Or maybe he was still alive, and in pain.
Floyd knew which option he preferred.
“Something’s changing,” Auger said. “The albedo of Niagara’s ship…”
Floyd saw it too: that moving glint becoming a moving smudge of silver light, just for an instant.
It looked as if Niagara’s ship had blown up. He dared to believe that might be the case, that the missile had somehow leapt across space faster than it was meant to. But the spike of the drive exhaust continued to burn, sharp and clean as a stiletto.
“What just happened? Did we—”
“No, we didn’t. He just sloughed a large part of his hull, discarding it like an old skin. That can only mean one thing, Floyd: he’s ready to drop the spore.”
The ship shuddered. The second and last missile was away.
“First missile closing… sixty klicks… forty… twenty…”
Floyd stared down, willing an outcome with all the strength he had. But the silver smudge kept moving.
“Zero,” Auger said. “Zero. Fuck.”
The first missile cleaved into the atmosphere, pushing down into the skies above some spray of mid-Pacific islands Floyd didn’t recognise. “Can’t turn it around in time,” Auger said.
“Try it.”
But the missile had already selected its own fate. A pinprick of light blossomed, rapidly becoming bright enough to hurt, and just as quickly faded.
“Warhead self-detonated. This isn’t good.”
“Second fish?”
“Homing. Closing on three hundred klicks.”
The moving smudge of Niagara’s ship suddenly reversed its direction of thrust. Even without magnification, Floyd saw the craft visibly alter its crawl across the backdrop of the ocean. The great sea was as bright and clear and smooth as a marble, clouds and islands dappled across its unblemished face with painterly precision, in broken lines and elegant curves. It was his world, as no one had ever seen it before, and it was enough to make him gasp.
He was sorry. It was a wonderful, glorious sight, but there just wasn’t time to enjoy the view.
Maybe next time.
“Bastard’s slowing,” Auger said.
“He’s ready.”
“Two hundred and fifty klicks. Missile slowing.”
“Slowing?”
“The missile’s learning from its mate, trying not to make the same mistake.”
“I really hope it knows what it’s doing.”
“Two hundred klicks… still slowing. Maybe it’s malfunctioned. Oh shit I hope it hasn’t malfunctioned.”
“If it has, we need to think about ramming with this thing.”
Auger looked back at him. He couldn’t tell whether her expression was impressed or horrified. “Don’t worry about that,” she said. “I’ve already got the intercept programmed in.”
“Nice of you to tell me.”
“I’d have got round to it.” She blinked, started to say something. Floyd could almost feel the torrent of numbers sluicing through her head.
“The fish, Auger?”
“Slowing to one hundred kilometres… No, wait.” She hesitated. “Wait. It’s sprinting again.”
“Keep talking.”
“It’s too late. It’s not going to…”
The second warhead detonated. The same pinprick of light, swelling in size and brightness… but this time it kept on swelling. Floyd jammed his eyes shut and still that did no good, the light pushing through his skin, through his bones, cleansing every thought in his head save the acknowledgement of its own intolerable luminosity, like a proclamation from God.
And then a slow, stately fade, and then nothing.
Just empty skies.
“There were no dampeners on that detonation,” Auger said, her voice distant and disconnected, like someone speaking in a dream. “It made no effort to limit its blast. It must have been confident it could make the kill.”
“There’s nothing out there.”
“I know.”
“That means we did it,” Floyd said. “It means we saved the Earth.”
“One of them,” she corrected.
“One’s enough for today. Let’s not get greedy.”
FORTY-TWO
It was daylight over the Pacific, and therefore night over Paris. Clouds wrapped the city, fog choking its streets with cold, constricting coils. The shuttle dropped through the weather like a stone through smoke, conserving fuel, retarding its descent with the minimum expenditure of thrust. Closer to the ground, it reconfigured its flight surfaces and became passably aerodynamic. Hypersonic, then supersonic, then subsonic, until the shuttle lowered itself through the main swell of clouds into a gloomy window of clear air. Districts of the city, picked out in the lights of buildings, streetlamps and moving cars, poked through the low quilt of fog. Here the swell of Montmartre and the Sacré-Coeur; there the dark ribbon of the Seine; there the glowing carnival of the Champs-Elysées, like a river of light.
“Look,” Auger said, with a childlike glee. “There’s the Eiffel Tower. It’s still here, still intact. It’s still standing.”
“Everything’s still here,” Floyd said.
“Isn’t it wonderful?”
“It grows on you.”
“We never deserved this second chance,” she said.
“But sometimes you get what you don’t deserve.”
The console chimed. Auger strained forward and answered the call.
“Tunguska here,” they heard. “I must offer my congratulations. We saw the kill strike even at a distance of three light-seconds.”
Auger let him finish speaking before asking, “The spore? Could Silver Rain have survived the blast?”
His reply crawled back six seconds later. “Unlikely.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“I hope I am, too.” He sounded more amused than alarmed, as if he had exhausted any final reserves of worry. “I suppose at this point, all one can realistically do is hope for the best. Are you both intact?”
Auger flashed Floyd a glance. “As intact as we’ll ever be.”
“Good. You did well. I’m afraid, though, that there isn’t much time to dwell on your success. The wound is closing fast. Our bleed-drive is a little unsteady, but we can begin to limp our way to the exit.”
“Go, then,” Auger said.