“The Mosdva attack again,” Baulona-PWM said.
Ione thought the breeder was going to strike Quantook-LOU.
“They didn’t,” she said quickly. “That was a human ship. It’s from a dominion we are not allied with. The Lady Macbeth has fought it off.”
“Do humans have dominions?” Quantook-LOU asked. “You did not tell us this.”
“We didn’t expect them to be here.”
“Why are they here? Why have they attacked us?”
“They do not agree that Tyrathca and Mosdva should be given the faster-than-light drive. We must complete this agreement and recover the data. Then they will be unable to prevent the exchange.”
“My family is working hard,” Baulona-PWM said. “We keep our agreement with you, allowing you to mediate.”
“And we will keep the agreement that you will be unharmed. Come now, we were deciding the message that is to be sent to other diskcity dominions.” She switched back to the general communication link. “You have to get us more time.”
“We’ll see to it,” Syrinx assured her. “Joshua, hold the fort here.”
“Acknowledged.” Lady Mac ’s gravitonic distortion detectors showed him the voidhawk opening a wormhole interstice.
Oenone emerged fifty kilometres from the Stryla. Syrinx was expecting the hellhawk to fire its lasers at them straight away. That it didn’t, she took as an encouraging sign.
I’m here to talk,she said.
And I’m here to survive,etchells replied. We know you’re here to find something you can use against us. I won’t let that happen.
Nothing will be used against you. We are trying to resolve this to everyone’s benefit.
I lack your optimism.
The hellhawk launched two combat wasps.
Oenone immediately swallowed out, emerging from a terminus on the opposite side of the hellhawk from the combat wasps, twenty kilometres away. It fired ten lasers at the other’s polyp hull.
Etchells swallowed away. He emerged a hundred metres above one of the diskcity’s heat radiator cones. Oenone emerged just behind him. He’d expected that. His maser cannon fired on the voidhawk. It darted down behind the silvery cone, then curved round to shoot at Etchells.
The hellhawk accelerated at eight gees, tearing along a valley of cylindrical radiator towers. Kiera let out a muted yell of surprise and pain as she was squashed back into her acceleration couch.
“Give me fire control,” Etchells told her. “You can’t program the combat wasps for this scenario. I can.”
“That would make me nothing,” she said. “No deal. Fly us out of this.”
“Fuck you.” He abandoned the secondary manipulation of the distortion field, which countered the acceleration. Kiera groaned as the full eight gees rammed her down into the couch. She began channelling her energistic power to strengthen her body. Lasers raked across his hull, and Etchells looped round a glass spiral turret, pulling twelve gees. The radiator mechanisms were a constant leaden smear to his optical senses, he was navigating by distortion field sense alone. And going too fast: the valley end was a sharp turn, almost a right angle. He swooped up above the peaks, decelerating madly as he turned. For a moment the two starships were in direct line of sight. Lasers and masers slashed across the gulf. Then Etchells dived back down into a deep gully of vertical mirror-surface dissipaters.
Oenone matched the manoeuvre and fired again. Etchells flicked from side to side, accelerating and decelerating in wild bursts. His own masers fired back. The energy beams ripped long gashes across the cliffs of dissipaters as both starships twirled and rolled. Magenta effluvium percolated out, clotting the whole valley.
Etchells shot out of the smog blizzard with cyclonic eddies rolling away from his hull. He swung round a splayed clump of black pentangular pillars, then used a mushroom-like industrial refinery to slalom again.
The way Syrinx’s hands dug into the acceleration couch padding was nothing to do with the appalling gee forces washing across the bridge. The image of the craggy diskcity surface hurtling past mere metres away was shining directly into her brain. Her eyes were tight shut from reflex, and it wasn’t the slightest use. There was no escape. Oenone ’s steady determination as it pursued the hellhawk prevented any censure. To doubt her love now would be selfish betrayal. She fought her own fear to bestow trust and pride.
On the other side of the bridge, Oxley was emitting a constant low moan of dismay without ever needing to draw breath.
Its resolve weakens,Oenone claimed buoyantly. It is slowing to turn now. We will catch it soon.
Yes. There was absolutely nothing in the tactical programs she could use to help this situation. If they rose above the artificial valleys, the hellhawk would be able to fire combat wasps straight at them. They couldn’t fire back down, one errant submunition would slaughter thousands of Mosdva. So the chase continued, which was ultimately to their advantage. It prevented the hellhawk from firing on Lalarin-MG. At a terrible cost to her nerves.
Another wormhole terminus opened a hundred kilometres above them.
Hello Etchells,rocio said.
You?etchells exclaimed in shock. Shoot the shit chasing me, they’ve found something here that’ll wipe us out.
The Mindori fired three lasers at a glass cone heat exchanger a couple of kilometres ahead of Etchells. The mechanism detonated, shattering into crystalline splinters spinning inside a writhing gas cloud. Etchells screamed his fury into the affinity band and accelerated at seventeen gees, desperately trying to rise above the lethal kinetic debris. Irradiated gas streaked over the hellhawk’s polyp. Energistic power flared, warding off the crystals with a ragged shield of white fire. Etchells’s barrel rolled up away from the bloating indigo nimbus.
Oenone had a few extra seconds before collision. It pulled up fast, skirting the boundary of the whirling crystals. The Stryla was only thirty kilometres ahead of it. Oenone ’s targeting radar locked on to the hellhawk. Then the electronic sensors warned Syrinx that the Mindori was targeting their hull.
Don’t shoot,rocio warned.
Kill them,etchells demanded.
Syrinx aimed five lasers at the Mindori .
Etchells also targeted the other hellhawk with three masers. Kill them now,he said.
I won’t shoot if you don’t,rocio said to syrinx. two of his lasers were aligned on the Stryla.At least find out why we’ve come here first.
So tell us,syrinx said.
Jed and Beth were pressed against the port in the bridge, gazing in veneration at the xenoc artefact spread out below the hellhawk. There weren’t many details, it was so dark, but the rim was close enough to see a silhouette of enticing geometries in the backscatter of red light. Gerald Skibbow was sitting on the acceleration couch behind the weapons console, Loren Skibbow studying the tactical displays keenly, watching the voidhawk and hellhawk rising fast from the darkside.
Traitor,etchells spat, pushing his shaky anger behind the word.
To what, exactly?rocio asked. What’s your crusade, Etchells? What do you care about other than yourself?
I’m trying to stop these people from flinging us all back into the beyond. Maybe you’re all for that.
Don’t be absurd.
Then for fuck’s sake help us wipe out that cylinder. Whatever they’ve come here for, it’s in there.
There’s no weapon in there,syrinx said. I’ve already told you that.