In Beya’s flitter, her father’s voice was as clear as if he was riding alongside her. She was determined to keep her voice level. ‘Can’t you see me, Father? I’m up around your ten o’clock – oh, but your blister is blacked out.’
‘What the hell are you doing?’
The flitter ducked sideways, jolting her against her restraints. ‘I’m taking fire, that’s what I’m doing. Dad, if you’ve got a spare laser, cover me!’
Now the flitter swept around. She was heading straight for the Poole hub, a tangle of wormhole mouths, powder-blue. She saw the three ships of the rebel fleet backing up, pirouetting clumsily into their defensive position. But the Imperial Navy ships swept across her view, soulless, mechanical, spitting missiles at the rebels, bathing them with laser light. There were so many of them, a dozen against three.
And as she watched, a Navy missile got through, hammering into the GUTdrive pod of the Mercy and Tolerance. Slowly the great ship began to drift out of position. But even as she did so she spat fire in Beya’s direction, and picked a Navy missile out of the sky.
‘Thanks, Mercy,’ she whispered.
‘You’re welcome,’ came a reply.
‘Beya, what are you doing?’
‘Dad, do you trust me?’
‘I – you know I do. What kind of question is that?’
‘Well enough to gamble your life on my say-so?’
‘I may not have a choice. If you’d just tell me—’
‘Just another bit of Solar System history, Father. Something I read, an incident at a planet called Pluto, long ago . . .’ She stared out at the dazzling sky-blue of the nearest portal’s exotic-matter tetrahedral frame. The faces were like semi-transparent panes of silvered glass; she could make out the watercolour oceans of Jupiter, swirled around in a fashion the eye could not quite track, like visions in a dream. ‘So beautiful.’
‘Beya?’
She drove the flitter straight at the Interface. She ran a quick calculation on her data desk.
‘Five seconds, Father.’
‘Until what?’
‘Fire up on my mark, and get out of there with everything you have.’
She passed through the glimmering face as if it did not exist, and now she was inside the blue frame of the Interface.
Her father’s voice was distorted. ‘Beya, please—’
‘This is for you, for Mother, for Alpha. Remember me. Mark!’ And she stabbed down her finger at her data desk.
The flitter’s engine exploded.
Something slammed into her back. Electric-blue light flared all around her.
Remarkably, she was still alive. She was jammed up in the little ship’s cabin, which had been ejected from the wreck. She gasped with the pain of broken bones. She made herself look around.
There was something wrong with space. A ball of light, unearthly, swelled up behind her, and an irregular patch of darkness ahead was like a rip in the sky. Tidal forces plucked at her belly and limbs. Nobody had been on a ride like this in a thousand years.
And she saw Navy ships scattered like bits of straw in a wind.
The tides faded. The darkness before her healed, to reveal the brilliance of Sol. And the flitter cabin imploded, without fuss.
It took long minutes before the crew got the tumbling of the Facula under control.
Pella came to Stillich, her brow bloodied. ‘Damage report—’
‘Never mind that. What just happened?’
‘An Alcubierre wave.’
‘A what?’
Pella dragged her fingers through mussed hair. ‘Captain – a wormhole is a flaw in space. It’s inherently unstable. The throat and mouths are kept open by active feedback loops involving threads of exotic matter. That’s matter with a negative energy density, a sort of antigravity which—’
‘What’s an Alcubierre wave?’
‘Something exploded inside the Interface. And the Interface’s negative energy region expanded from the tetrahedron, just for a moment. The negative energy distorted a chunk of spacetime. The chunk containing us.’
On one side of the wave, spacetime had contracted like a black hole. On the other side, it expanded – like a rerun of the Big Bang, the expansion at the beginning of the universe.
Pella scanned her data desk. ‘We lost contact altogether with five of our ships. None of the rest are operational. The Facula—’
‘What about the surviving rebels?’
‘Two disabled.’ She looked up. ‘One got away. It’s heading for Earth.’
‘Can we give chase?’
‘No, sir, we—’
‘Get me a line to Admiral Kale. Patch it through to the Palace if you can—’
She looked up from her slate, shocked. ‘Sir. I’ve a standing order, to become operative in case of failure.’
‘Get on with it.’
‘You’re relieved of command. In fact, you’re under arrest.’
Stillich laughed. ‘Fine. I’m in your custody, Number One. Now get hold of a working flitter and get me back to Earth.’
S-Day plus 11. Orbit of Neptune.
The final attempt to stop the relativistic Fist ships was the most dramatic.
After ice-moon debris had put an end to One and then Four, it was a GUTship that tried to halt the two last survivors, Three and Two. Not far within the orbit of Pluto, on the rim of the Solar System proper, moving at a fraction of the attackers’ near-light-speed, it tried to ram them. It was an extraordinary bit of relativistic navigation. Fist Three, taking the lead, destroyed it with an equally remarkable bit of sharp-shooting. But the detonation hurled debris into the path of Three, and that was that.
When it was done, there was Fist Two, alone, sailing within the orbit of Neptune at over ninety-eight per cent of light-speed. This was the fastest velocity ever attained within the Solar System, it was believed, save for cosmic rays, atomic nuclei ejected from distant supernovas. But Fist was no subatomic particle. Fist was a warship, a relativistic weapon, manned, sailing among the fragile worlds of the mother System.
It was wrong, Densel Bel thought. It was monstrous. And yet here he was. Densel Bel was glad the time remaining to him was so brief.
Stillich was brought to the Empress’s New York bunker in shackles.
Admiral Kale was here. With an impatient command he ordered the shackles removed, and dismissed the guard.
Beside the logic pool, in its eerie, shifting light, the Empress brooded. Some Virtual display was playing itself out before her: a globe, a point of light, a glowing splinter – over and over.
Stillich approached his superior, rubbing his ankles. ‘Sir. How long?’
Kale snapped his fingers; a small Virtual data display appeared in the air. ‘That fucking relativistic ship is crossing Saturn’s orbit.’
Stillich thought. ‘Seventy-eight minutes from Earth, then.’
‘And we’re still waiting on this rebel bastard – this Flood.’
After the Imperial Navy had been scattered at Jupiter, there had been nothing left to stand in the way of the Freestar’s advance on Earth. At last the rebel ship had entered orbit around Earth itself, and Flood was descending to discuss surrender terms.
‘Do you think we’ve a choice but to accept whatever he demands?’