Before Horza could answer, the small drone appeared from the corridor leading from the accommodation section. It floated in, looked round the mess room, then sat itself bodily on the table in the middle. “Did I hear something about it being explanation time?” it said. It was facing Horza.
Horza looked away from Balveda, to Aviger and Dorolow, then to Yalson and the drone. “Well, you might as well all know that we are now heading for a place called Schar’s World. It’s a Planet of the Dead.”
Yalson looked puzzled. Aviger said, “I’ve heard of those. But we won’t be allowed in.”
“This is getting worse,” the drone said. “If I were you, Captain Kraiklyn, I would turn back to The Ends of Invention and surrender yourself there. I’m sure you’d get a fair trial.”
Horza ignored the machine. He sighed, looking round at the mess, stretched his legs and yawned. “I’m sorry you’re all being taken, perhaps against your will, but I’ve got to get there, and I can’t afford to stop anywhere to let you off. You’ve all got to come.”
“Oh we do, do we?” said the small drone.
“Yes,” Horza said, looking at it, “I’m afraid so.”
“But we won’t be able to get anywhere near this place,” Aviger protested. “They don’t let anybody in. There’s some sort of zone around them they don’t let people into.”
“We’ll see about that when we get there.” Horza smiled.
“You’re not answering my questions,” Yalson said. She looked at Balveda again, then down at the gun lying on the table. “I’ve been zapping this poor bitch every time she flicks an eyelid, and I want to know why I’ve been doing it.”
“It’ll take a while to explain it all, but what it boils down to is there’s something on Schar’s World which both the Culture and the Idirans want. I have… a contract, a commission from the Idirans, to get there and find this thing.”
“You really are a paranoid,” the drone said incredulously. It rose off the table and turned round to look at the others. “He really is a lunatic!”
“The Idirans are hiring us — you — to go after something?” Yalson’s voice was full of disbelief. Horza looked at her and smiled.
“You mean this woman,” Dorolow said, pointing at Balveda, “was sent by the Culture to join us, infiltrate… Are you serious?”
“I’m serious. Balveda was looking for me. Also for Horza Gobuchul. She wanted to get to Schar’s World, or to stop us from getting there.” Horza looked at Aviger. “There was a bomb in amongst her gear, by the way; it went off just after I rotated it out the tubes. It blew the police ships away. We all got a blast of radiation, but nothing lethal.”
“And what about Horza?” Yalson said, looking grimly at him. “Was that just some trick, or did you really meet him?”
“He is alive, Yalson, and as safe as any of us.”
Wubslin appeared through the door from the bridge, still with an apologetic look on his face. He nodded at Horza and sat down near by. “All looking fine, Kraiklyn.”
“Good,” Horza said. “I was just explaining to everybody else about our journey to Schar’s World.”
“Oh,” Wubslin said. “Yeah.” He shrugged at the others.
“Kraiklyn,” Yalson said, leaning forward on the table and looking intently at Horza, “you just about got us all killed fuck knows how many times back there. You probably did kill quite a few people during those… in-door aerobatics. You’ve saddled us with some secret agent from the Culture. You’re practically kidnapping us to take us towards a planet in the middle of a war zone where nobody’s even allowed in, to look for something both sides want enough to… Well, if the Idirans are hiring a decimated bunch of second-rate mercenaries, they must be pretty desperate; and if the Culture really was behind the attempt to keep us in that bay, they must be scared stiff to risk violating the neutrality of the Ends and breaking some of their precious rules of war.
“You may think you know what’s going on and think the risk is worth it, but I don’t, and I don’t like this feeling of being kept in the dark at all, either. Your track record recently’s been crap; let’s face it. Risk your own life if you want to, but you don’t have any right to risk ours, too. Not any more. Maybe we don’t all want to side with the Idirans, but even if we did prefer them to the Culture, none of us signed up to start fighting in the middle of the war. Shit, Kraiklyn, we’re neither… equipped nor trained well enough to go up against those guys.”
“I know all that,” Horza said. “But we shouldn’t be encountering any battle forces. The Quiet Barrier round Schar’s World extends far enough out so that it’s impossible to watch it all. We go in from a randomly picked direction, and by the time we’re spotted, there’s nothing anybody could do about it, no matter what sort of ship they have. A Main Battle Fleet couldn’t keep us out. When we leave it’ll be the same.”
“What you’re trying to say is,” Yalson said, sitting back in her seat, “ ‘Easy in, easy out’.”
“Maybe I am,” laughed Horza.
“Hey,” Wubslin said suddenly, looking at his terminal screen, which he had just taken from his pocket. “It’s nearly time!” He got up and disappeared through the doors leading to the bridge. In a few seconds the screen in the mess changed, the view swivelling round until it showed Vavatch. The great Orbital hung in space, dark and brilliant, full of night and day, blue and white and black. They all looked up at the screen.
Wubslin came back in and sat in his seat again. Horza felt tired. His body wanted rest, and lots of it. His brain was still buzzing from the concentration and the amount of adrenalin it had required to pilot the CAT through and out of The Ends of Invention, but he couldn’t rest yet. He couldn’t decide what was the best thing to do. Should he tell them who he was, tell them the truth, that he was a Changer, that he had killed Kraiklyn? How loyal were any of them to the leader they didn’t yet know was dead? Yalson the most, perhaps; but surely she would be glad to know that he was alive… Yet she was the one who had said that perhaps they weren’t all on the Idirans’ side… She had never shown any sympathy for the Culture before when he had known her, but perhaps she had changed her mind.
He could even Change back; there was a fairly long journey now during which it shouldn’t be beyond him, perhaps with the help of Wubslin, to change the fidelities in the CAT’s computer. But should he tell them — should he let them know? And Balveda: what was he going to do with her? He had had some idea of using her to bargain with the Culture, but it looked as though they had escaped now, and next stop was Schar’s World, where she would at best be a liability. He ought to kill her now, but he knew, first of all, that that might not go down well with the others, especially Yalson. He also knew, although he didn’t like to admit it, that he would find it personally painful to kill the Culture agent. They were enemies, they had both been very close to death and the other had done little or nothing to intervene, but actually to kill her would be very difficult.
Or maybe he only wanted to pretend that he would find it very difficult; maybe it would be no bother at all, and the sort of bogus camaraderie of doing the same job, though on different sides, was just that: a fake. He opened his mouth to ask Yalson to stun the Culture agent again.
“Now,” Wubslin said.
With that, Vavatch Orbital started to disintegrate.
The view of it on the mess-room screen was a compensated hyperspace version, so that, although they were already outside the Vavatch system, they were watching it virtually in real time. Right at the appointed hour the unseen, unnamed, very much still militarised General Systems Vehicle which was somewhere in the vicinity of the Vavatch planetary system started its bombardment. It was almost certainly an Ocean class GSV, the same one which had sent the message that they had all watched some days ago on the mess screen, heading in towards Vavatch. That would make the warcraft very much smaller than the behemoth of The Ends of Invention, which was — for war purposes — obsolete. One Ocean class could fit inside either of the Ends’ General bays, but while the larger craft — by that time an hour out from the Orbital — was full of people, the Ocean class would be packed with other warships, and weaponry.