Star tracker sensors slid out of their recesses, gathering up the faint harvest of photons. Navigation programs correlated what was there, defining their position.
Joshua triangulated on their target, an unremarkable point of light only thirty-two light-years away now. Their next jump coordinate sprang into his mind, blinking purple at the end of a long neuroiconic tube of orange circles. The star was slightly to one side of it, a distance that represented relative delta-V. Starship and star were still moving at very different velocities as they orbited the galactic core.
“Stand by,” he said. “Accelerating.”
There were groans across the bridge. They dried up soon enough as he activated the antimatter drive. Four gees pushed everyone down into their couches except for Kempster Getchell; the old astronomer had gone into a zero-tau pod after the second jump. “Too much for my bones,” he’d complained gamely. “Fetch me out when we get there.”
Everyone else stuck it out. Not that the crew had a choice. Seventeen jumps in twenty-three hours, each one fifteen light-years long. In itself, probably a record. Nobody was counting now; they’d devoted themselves entirely to keeping the systems functioning smoothly, a professionalism not many could match. Pride had increased to accompany an edgy anticipation as the Sleeping God star grew closer.
Joshua remained in his acceleration couch, piloting them to each coordinate with his usual sublime competence. Nothing much was said as the Orion Nebula shrank away behind them. It was smaller in every star tracker scan, dwindling down to a diminutive fuzzy patch of light the last familiar astronomical feature left in the universe. Every fusion generator was running at maximum capacity, recharging the nodes fast. That was why Joshua used high gees between coordinates, instead of the usual one tenth. Time. It had become the most precious commodity left to him.
Instinct drove him on. That enigmatic, bland star holding steady at the apex of the sensor lock was giving out the same siren song as those strikes in the Ruin Ring once had. So much had happened on this flight. So much of his own hope had been invested now. He couldn’t, didn’t, believe that it had all been for nothing. The Sleeping God existed. A xenoc artefact, powerful enough to interest the Kiint. They’d been right all along, the discoveries made throughout the flight continually emphasising its importance.
“Nodes charged and ready, Captain,” Dahybi reported.
“Thanks,” Joshua said. He automatically ran a vector check. The old girl was performing well. Three more hours, two more jumps, and they’d be there. The flight would be over. That was the part he found hard to credit. There were so many roots elevating the Lady Mac to this encounter. Kelly Tirell and the mercs back on Lalonde. Jay Hilton and Haile (wherever they were now). Tranquillity escaping the Organization fleet. Further back than that, a single message being passed across 1,500 light-years of empty space, loyally relayed from star to star by a species that never should have escaped their sun’s expansion in the first place. And Swantic-LI, finding the Sleeping God originally. Improbable chances in an event chain 15,000 years long linking that single unlikely meeting to the fate of an entire species.
He didn’t believe in odds that long. That just left destiny, divine intervention.
Interesting, given what they were supposedly flying towards.
Louise awoke in some confusion. A young man was lying on top of her. Both of them were naked.
Andy, she remembered. It was his flat: small, grubby, cluttered, and so warm the air itself seemed to have thickened. Condensation had licked every surface to glisten in the dark-pink light of dawn that drizzled through the fogged window.
I will not regret what we did last night, she told herself firmly. I have no reason to feel guilty. I did what I wanted to. I am entitled to do that.
She tried to ease him to one side and slip out from underneath, but the bed simply wasn’t big enough. He stirred, frowning as he focused on her. Then he flinched in shock.
“Louise!”
She gave him a brave smile. “At least you remembered my name.”
“Louise. Oh God.” He lurched back into a kneeling position. His eyes stared down greedily at her body, and his mouth twisted into a beatific smile. “Louise. You’re real.”
“Yes. I’m real.”
His head darted forward, and he kissed her. “I love you, Louise. Darling, my darling, I love you so much.” He lowered himself against her, kissing her face urgently; his hands cupped her breasts, fingers teasing her nipples exactly the way she’d cherished last night. “I love you, and we’re together at the end.”
“Andy.” She shifted round, wincing at how sore her breasts were. For someone so skinny, he was surprisingly strong.
“Oh God, you’re so beautiful.” His tongue was licking over her lips, desperate to be inside her mouth.
“Andy, stop.”
“I love you, Louise.”
“No!” She pushed herself up. “Listen to me. You don’t love me, Andy, and I don’t love you. It was just sex.” Her mouth parted in a small smile, softening the blow as much as she could. “All right, it was very good sex. But nothing else.”
“You came to me.” His pleading voice came close to cracking, there was so much hurt in the words.
Louise’s guilt was awful. “I told you that everyone else I know has either left the arcology or been captured by the possessed. That’s why I’m here. As for the rest . . . well, we both wanted that. There’s no reason not to now.”
“Don’t I mean anything to you?” he asked in desperation.
“Of course you do, Andy.” She stroked his arm, and leaned in closer, making the contact more intimate. “You don’t think I’d do that with just anyone, do you?”
“No.”
“Remember what we did?” she whispered in his ear. “How bad we were?”
Andy blushed, unable to look at her. “Yes.”
“Good.” She kissed him lightly. “This is one night we’ll keep with us forever. Nobody can ever take it away from us, no matter what happens to us now.”
“I still love you. I have ever since I saw you. That’ll never change.”
“Oh Andy.” She cradled him against her chest, rocking gently. “I didn’t want to hurt you. Believe me, please.”
“You haven’t hurt me. You couldn’t. Not you.”
Louise sighed. “Funny how different life could be, so many things that make you take one route instead of another. If only we could live them all.”
“I’d live them all with you.”
She hugged him tighter. “I think I’m going to envy the girl who winds up with you. She’s going to be so lucky.”
“Won’t happen now, will it?”
“No. I suppose not.” She gave the opaque window a resentful look, hating the day outside, the way time was advancing and what it would invariably bring. There was something else coming through the glass, riding the crimson light: a sense of rancour. It made her uneasy, almost fearful. And that red light was very deep for a dawn sun, it reminded her of Duchess.
She let go of Andy and padded over to the high window. Standing on one of the boxes brought her face up level with it. She smeared the condensation away.
“Oh dear Jesus.”
“What’s the matter?” Andy asked. He hurried across and peered over her shoulder.
It wasn’t dawn shining in, that was still two hours away. A large circular swirl of red cloud hung in the centre of the Westminster dome, a few hundred yards above the ground. Its malign glow glimmered off the geodesic crystal above, turning the struts to a lattice of burnished copper. The underside shone a blood-red light down on the roofs and walls of the city, staining them all an unhealthy magenta. Its leading edge was less than a mile away from the tenement, undulating gently.
“Shit!” he hissed. “We’ve got to get out of here.”