The comfortable era of the quagmites couldn’t last forever; nothing ever did. It was when the universe was thirty times older than it was at the end of the matter-antimatter conflict that the first signs of the quagmites’ final disaster were detected.
Chapter 48
After five weeks of Kimmer’s ten, Exultant Squadron was to be transferred to Orion Rock, from which the assault on Chandra would be mounted.
It took three days for Rock 492 to be evacuated: the living areas emptied out, the squadron’s fifteen greenships lifted off the surface. When Pirius Red had first arrived on 492 it had been a garbage heap, but now that it was time to leave he was sorry. After all, he and Torec had taken this ruin and made it, not just their base of operations, but their home.
And, of his motley assembly of superannuated veterans and misfits, two had died in operations run out of this Rock. So there was blood soaked into its silvery regolith, human bones buried in its loose dirt, as they were buried on a billion other worlds and moons and asteroids across the face of the Galaxy.
On the last night, as the close-out crews did their work, Pirius kept Torec back. In their skinsuits they wandered through the empty chambers, the stripped-out barracks and refectories and dispensaries, the big engineering bays with their floors grooved and shaped to take equipment now removed. They could hear systems shutting down, one by one, the vibrations diminished, the circulation of air and water stopping, as if the Rock itself was slowly dying. As they walked from one chamber to the next, the light cut out behind them, so they were always walking out of darkness.
In the last chamber, they found a corner where they unzipped their skinsuits. The air was rapidly losing its heat, making them both shiver deliciously. They pushed the seams of their suits together and sealed themselves inside.
The inertial generators shut down. They found themselves rising from the floor. All around them specks of asteroid dust, disturbed by the Rock’s residual vibrations, rose up to make the air sparkle.
Deep inside the Cavity, a long way inside the Front, Orion Rock was buried in the North Arm of the Baby Spiral.
To reach it, Exultant Squadron formed a tight convoy. The ten prime greenships, with five backups, were at the center. All the greenships had been modified with the gear for Project Prime Radiant, but the equipment was bedded in now, and after the hours of training flights the crew knew how to handle their ungainly craft. The fighting ships were accompanied by equipment freighters, tenders, and other support craft, and a handful of command vessels, including Commissary Nilis’s corvette. One massive Spline warship loomed over them. Bristling with weapons, its moonlike bulk dwarfed its charges.
It was an unlikely flotilla, Pirius supposed. It was strange to reflect that on this handful of battered, hastily modified old hulks might rest the destiny of the Galaxy.
The group sailed through the Front and made their way down the spine of the Baby Spiral’s arm, moving in a series of FTL hops and sublight-drive glides. Despite the time pressure, the only way to proceed was cautiously: the spiral arm was a crowded corridor of molecular dust, drifting rock, and young stars, a difficult jaunt. But there was so much noise and clutter here in this tunnel of bombarded gas that there was a good chance they would remain undetected by Xeelee scouts all the way in.
After two sleepless days and nights, with the crews stressed-out and weary, they reached Orion Rock.
Pirius, sitting in his pilot’s blister, gaped. He had never seen anything like it. The Rock shone.
Like every asteroid of its size, it was an aggregate shape as lumpy as a clenched fist, deeply pocked by impact craters. But on this Rock the surface had been worked, every square centimeter of it. Every crater hosted a landing pad or a dry dock or a portal, and away from the craters the land had a peculiar ridged texture. As they approached, Pirius saw it was covered by a dense scribble of trenches and foxholes, zigzagging at precise ninety-degree corners. It was ornate, even decorative, like a maze. You could tell that people had been here for a long time.
Orion had been spawned out of random accretions in this spiral arm long ago, and had since drifted down its center line. As it had required no human intervention to steer it onto a path that directed it straight at the Xeelee concentrations, the Rock was a marvelous natural blind. It had been occupied by humans for a thousand years, and the results of that occupation were visible on its surface — and yet it was still unsuspected as a military asset by mankind’s foe.
The greenships and their escorts settled on a landing pad at the center of the largest crater — all save the big Spline, which took up a watchful position directly overhead, like a fleshy eye.
All the crews were eager to get out of their stinking skinsuits, and to eat, bathe, screw, and otherwise get the tension of the flight out of their systems. But Marshal Kimmer came on the loop and ordered the whole squadron from Pirius Red on down to form up before his command corvette. There was nothing for it but to comply gracefully.
They clambered down to a surface of some black, hard substance so smooth and flat it was almost slippery. Near Kimmer’s corvette, Pila, Nilis, Kimmer, Guild-master Eliun and various other command staff and civilians gathered in a loose circle. Captain Marta was here, the stern training officer from Quin Base who Pirius had drafted at the suggestion of his older self to oversee the set up of operations on this Rock. Their skinsuits looked bright and fresh, and the military types were adorned with animated decorations.
And a Silver Ghost rolled complacently above the polished ground, unperturbed by the vacuum and hard radiation of the Core.
Pirius had practiced no parade drill with his squadron; there had been no time for such luxuries. Still, he drew them up in good order, though he accepted a little assistance from Commander Darc, who helped get the rows spaced out and lined up properly. Compared to the glittering gathering of commanders and civilians, the greenship crews looked shabby and exhausted. But as they stood to attention — Burden and Torec, Jees with her silvery prostheses returning sharp highlights from the starlight, even his own older self, all of them in scuffed and grimy skinsuits — Pirius felt a burst of pride.
A party approached. In the lead marched a block of soldiers in gleaming white skinsuits, following a track that ran arrow-straight from the crater wall. Pirius estimated there must be a thousand of them. Their commanders stood to attention on discs that hovered a meter above the floor.
On the squadron’s comm loop, Pirius heard muttering. “I don’t believe it,” Blue said. “It’s a welcoming committee.”
“Belay that,” Pirius Red murmured. “We’re going to have to work with these characters. Let’s get off to a good start.” The muttering subsided.
The lead party on those discs slowed smoothly before Marshal Kimmer. The marching troops came to a crisp halt, as precise as bots.
As the welcoming committee clambered down from their discs, Nilis, unmistakable in his antiquated skinsuit, gestured clumsily at Pirius. Reluctantly, Pirius abandoned his squadron and walked forward to join Kimmer and the other dignitaries. He stood beside Pila; she looked amused at his discomfiture.