The Algebraist

Another terrific judder rang the Stormshear like a dull bell. The thin, uncoiling tracks combed the sky ahead of them.

· An algorithm? the colonel said.

· Elegance is an algorithm.

The screens showed the blue target quaking under the impact of a handful of shells. Hatherence glanced at Y’sul, who was trying to blow purple smoke rings and pierce them with a rim arm.

· And it’s all run by clubs, she said. — Of enthusiasts.

— Yes.

· Clubs?

· Big clubs, Hatherence.

· So is all this why their war technology is so awful? She asked.

· Is it?

· Fassin, Hatherence said, sounding amused now. — These people claim to have been around since the week after reionisation and building these Dreadnought things for most of that time, yet that target is less than a dozen klicks ahead, each salvo is thirty-six shells—

· Thirty-three. One of the turrets is out of action.

· Regardless. They are only hitting that effectively unmoving target with every second or third round. That is simply pathetic.

· There are rules, formulae.

· Insisting on ludicrously inefficient gunnery?

· In a sense. No guided shells, all guns and aiming systems to be based on ancient patterns, no jet engines for the Dreadnoughts, no rocket engines for the missiles, no particle or beam weapons at all.

· Like duels fought with ancient pistols.

· You’re getting the idea.

· And this is meant to keep them all in martial trim in case they are invaded by outside hostiles?

· Well, yes, Fassin agreed. — That does begin to look like a slightly hollow claim when you actually see the technology, doesn’t it? Of course, they claim they’ve got star-busting hyper-weapons hidden about the place somewhere, just in case, and the skills are somehow transferable, but…

· Nobody’s ever seen them.

· Something like that.

The Stormshear unleashed its mighty anti-ship missiles, loosing what was probably meant to be a twelve-strong broadside. The eleven tiny, slim projectiles came screaming from all sides of the great vessel — the slave-children yelped again and some dropped their trays — and hurtled out towards the distant blue target drone on smoky, twisting plumes of jet exhaust like deranged darts. Two of the missiles drifted too close to one another; each appeared to identify the other as its intended target and so both swung wildly at their opposite number, missed, twisted round in a sweeping double braid, flew straight at each other and this time met and exploded in a modest double fireball. Some Dwellers in the observation lounge — distracted, perhaps sarcastic — cheered.

A third missile seemed to take the nearby explosion as a sign that it ought to perform an upward loop and head straight back at the Stormshear. “Oh-oh,” Y’sul said.

The oncoming missile settled into a flat, steady course, becoming a small but rapidly enlarging dot, aimed straight at the nose of the Dreadnought.

“They do have destructs, don’t they?” Hatherence said, glancing at Fassin.

Some Dwellers started looking at each other, then made a dash for the access tube to the Stormshear’s armoured nose, creating a jam around the door. Slave-children, also trying to escape, either got through ahead of the rush or were thrown roughly out of the way, yelping.

The dot in the sky was getting bigger.

“They can just order it to blow up, can’t they?” the colonel said, roting backwards. A high, whining noise seemed to be coming from somewhere inside the colonel’s esuit. The yelling, cursing knot of Dwellers round the exit didn’t seem to be shifting. The Stormshear was starting to turn, hopelessly slowly.

“In theory they can destruct it,” Fassin said uneasily, watching the still unshifting melee around the exit. “And they do have close-range intercept guns.” Another frantic slave-child was ejected upwards from the scrum by the door, screaming until it slapped into the ceiling and dropped lifeless to the slowly tilting deck.

The missile had real shape now, no longer a large dot. Stubby wings and a tailplane were visible. The Stormshear continued to turn with excruciating slowness. The missile plunged in towards them on a trail of sooty exhaust. Hatherence rose from her dent-seat but moved closer to the diamond-sheath nose of the observation blister, not further away.

— Stay back, major, she sent. Then a terrific tearing, ripping noise sounded from above and behind them, a net of finger-fine trails filled the gas ahead of the ship’s nose and the missile first started to disintegrate and then blew up. The interceptor machine gun somewhere behind continued firing, scoring multiple hits on the larger pieces of smoking, glowing missile wreckage as they tumbled on towards the Stormshear, so that when the resulting shrapnel hit and punctured the observation blister it caused relatively little damage, and only minor wounds.

The Dreadnought took them as far as Munueyn, a Ruined City fallen amongst the dark, thick gases of the lower atmosphere where slow coils of turbulence roiled past like the heavy, lascivious licks of an almighty planetary tongue, a place all spires and spindles, near-deserted, long unfashionable, a one-time Storm-Centre now too far from anything to be of much interest to anybody, a place that might have garnered kudos for itself had it been near a war zone, but could hope for almost none at all because it was within one. A wing-frigate took them from the Dreadnought and deposited them in the gigantic echoing hall of what had once been the city’s bustling StationPort, where they were greeted like returning heroes, like gods, by the local hirers and fliers. They found a guest house for negative kudos. They were, in effect, being paid to stay there.

“Sir!” Sholish said, rising from the mass of petitioners in the small courtyard below. “A hostelier of impeccable repute with excellent familial connections in the matter of wartime travel warrants beseeches you to consider his proposal to put at your disposal a veritable fleet of a half-half-dozen finely arrayed craft, all in the very best of condition and working order and ready to depart within less than an hour of their arrival.”

“Which will be when, precisely, banelet of my already too-long life?”

“A day, sire. Two, at the most. He assures.”

“Unacceptable! Utterly and profoundly so!” Y’sul proclaimed, frilling the very idea away with a shudder. He was nestled within a dent on a flower-decked terrace outside and above the Taverna Bucolica, close enough to the city’s central plaza to smell the mayor’s desperation. He dragged deep of a proffered pharma cylinder and with the exhalation breathed, “Next!”

Fassin and the colonel, floating nearby, exchanged looks. Hatherence floated closer.

· We could just take off, you and I.

· All by ourselves?

· We are both self-sufficient, we are both capable of making good time.

· You reckon?

The colonel made it obvious that she was looking his arrow-craft over. — I think so.

I think you called up the specs on this thing before we left Third Fury and know damn well so, he thought.

He sent, — So we go haring off into the clouds together, just we two.

— Yes.

· There is a problem.

· Indeed.

· In fact, there are two problems. The first one is that there’s a war on, and we’ll look like a pair of warheads.

· Warheads? But we shan’t even be transonic!

· There are rules in Formal War regarding the speed that warheads can travel at. We’ll look like warheads.

· Hmm. If we went a little slower?

· Slow warheads.

· Slower still?

· Cruise mines. And before you ask, any slower than that and we’ll look like ordinary monolayer float mines.

Hatherence bobbed up and down, a sigh. — You mentioned a second problem.

· Without Y’sul it’s unlikely that anybody will talk to us.