The Temporal Void (36 page)

‘I’m not quite sure we can achieve that,’ Lucian said. ‘The
Yenisey
packs a hell of a punch, but there’s over two and a half thousand ships out there, including nine hundred Starslayers. If even twenty of them combine, they can get through our shields.’

‘Lucian, I could never countenance disabling the fleet in deep space, not when they’re already so far past the Empire’s boundary. They simply don’t have the ships nor resources to mount a viable rescue operation. The crews would perish. That is not something I wish to have on my conscience, nor that of any of my officers. No, today is simply a reminder of our technological superiority. I suspect it will have to be repeated several times until they realize they cannot physically achieve their goal.’

‘Understood, sir,’ Lucian said with some relief.

The four of them settled on their couches in the main cabin, and merged with the smartcore. It gave them a perceptual viewpoint from the front of the fuselage.
Yenisey
curved away beneath them, the main hull was a fat cylinder eighty metres long, with a conical nose section. Midships sprouted three radial fins supporting bulbous weapons nacelles, each of which curved down to a sharp point. A uniform luminous blue representation of hyperspace flowed around them, as though they were some yacht sailing an ocean.

Lucian was fed senses that revealed flaws in the blueness, a constellation of dark splinters surrounded by a green haze of exotic energy: the Ocisen warships. He directed the
Yenisey
until it was holding station a kilometre away from the command ship.

‘Are we ready?’ he asked quietly.

‘Yes, sir,’ Kylee replied.

‘Excellent. Gieovan, you have fire authority as of now. Keep scanning for any anomalous activity – just in case. Toi, I want total systems availability, high-status.’ He scanned the Ocisen ship. It was two hundred and fifty metres long, a fat ovoid shape, with thin edges like curving wings. The hull was rough, strewn with irregular lumps, as if it had somehow become encrusted with barnacles during its flight. Although the scan couldn’t perceive its colour, he knew it would be a dull metallic shade, dappled by furry green patches. All Ocisen starships were like that after they developed their semi-organic extrusion technology.

‘Pull it out,’ he told Kylee.

The
Yenisey
’s energy manipulators produced wildly fluctuating waveforms that intersected the exotic energy cascading fluidly around the Starslayer. Instabilities immediately started to skitter along its wormhole. Kylee analysed the modifier effects which the warship’s drive exerted in an attempt to regain control, and simply overwhelmed them with the raw power available to the
Yenisey
’s systems. The rest of the fleet shot away from them as the wormhole’s pseudofabric broke down. Within a second they had vanished into the blueness.

Spacetime reasserted itself, swamping the blueness with infinite black. Stars shone with unwavering intensity. Eight hundred metres away, the massive Ocisen warship started a laborious tumble. Its protective force fields flickered dangerously as uncontained energy pulses swept out from the ruined drive.

‘Attention Ocisen ship,’ Lucian broadcast. ‘This is the Greater Commonwealth Navy ship
Yenisey
. You are hereby ordered to turn your fleet around and return to—’

‘Oh, shit,’ Gieovan gulped.

A smooth spherical starship appeared from nowhere a kilometre ahead of the Starslayer. Its force fields were impenetrable. The
Yenisey
couldn’t even get an accurate quantum signature scan to determine what kind of drive it used.

‘Admiral,’ Lucian called urgently. ‘We can’t—’

The unknown ship fired.

‘What the fuck was that!’ Gore yelled as the secure link abruptly vanished.

Kazimir took a second to review the TD link data, he was so surprised. His tactical staff had produced a number of scenarios, mostly incorporating the Ocisens utilizing weapons technology they’d procured from a more advanced species.
This
hadn’t been a remote consideration.

‘I don’t recognize that design at all,’ Ilanthe said. ‘Do we have any spherical ship on the Navy’s intelligence registry?’

‘There are some species that utilize a sphere,’ Kazimir said slowly as his u-shadow supplied their most highly classified data. ‘But we don’t list anything that can disable the River-class starships quite that quickly.’

‘Disable?’ Gore snapped. ‘What is that, the new politically correct term for blowing it to shit?’

‘All we know so far is that the
Yenisey
’s TD link has failed—’ Kazimir began.

‘Come on!’

‘I’m afraid I agree with Gore,’ Ilanthe said. ‘That was not a warning shot.
Yenisey
is a warship, one of the best we’ve got, and designed to operate at long distances. The last thing that fails is the communication. After all, we kept in touch with Justine until the Void swallowed her. ’

‘My staff will run a full analysis,’ Kazimir said. ‘It should help define the nature of the attack.’

‘The weapon, you mean,’ Crispin said. ‘I’m with Gore on this, Admiral, you can’t start hiding behind language. All of us here today are long past that.’

‘You are correct,’ Kazimir said, knowing that they were right, the
Yenisey
was lost with all hands. It was hard, he hadn’t lost a starship in combat in six hundred years, not since the last Ocisen expansion wave. The crew would be re-lifed, of course, but still he had to endure the fact that he’d sent them out there into a hostile environment, while they were woefully under-equipped. It was a classic command failure, deploying your people on the basis of bad information under political pressure.
The wonder of hindsight.

‘In the light of this catastrophe, I propose we send our deterrent fleet to intercept the Ocisen Empire ships,’ Ilanthe said. ‘I don’t believe we have any choice. Following the loss of the
Yenisey
, we are seeing a very real and credible threat to the entire Commonwealth. Who knows what that unknown ship is capable of.’

‘They are still a long way off,’ Kazimir said. ‘We can use that interval to discover what their full potential is.’

‘You’re playing God with our future,’ Creewan said. ‘I for one won’t tolerate that.’

Kazimir gave him a withering look. ‘I hardly think one unknown warship constitutes an end to our civilization.’

‘You don’t know it’s just one,’ Ilanthe said. ‘You don’t know if that was their best weapon, or their equivalent of a bow and arrow. Kazimir, what is wrong with you? You are charged with defending our entire species. Will you please act as if you care?’

‘I care very much indeed. I continue to maintain we need intelligence on the ally which the Ocisens have found themselves. I would like to propose that we send at least one more scout mission to determine what we can of the threat level. We do have time, and I am reluctant to formulate a final response without greater intelligence.’

Ilanthe glanced round the table. ‘I will support that on the condition you at least mobilize the deterrent fleet. If the next interception is destroyed, then the deterrent fleet must be deployed against the Ocisens.’

‘I second that,’ Gore said.

The other three gave their assent.

‘I will dispatch four Capital-class ships,’ Kazimir said. ‘They should be there within five days.’

‘I’m not familiar with Capital-class ships,’ John Thelwell said. ‘Are they part of the deterrent fleet?’

‘No. They are a grade below that. But I am confident they will be able to hold their own, at least until we know more about the Ocisen’s allies.’

Gore and Kazimir remained in the perceptual reality after the others left. Outside the window, the ice meteorites fell in silent splendour, triggering vast electron webs across the dark sky.

‘You know, in all my time, and for all my clout with ANA, I’ve never managed to get a single hint out of it concerning the deterrent fleet,’ Gore said.

‘I would hope not,’ Kazimir told him. ‘It is our ultimate defence. Its nature should not be available for scrutiny and discussion, however well intentioned. It is enough that we have it.’

‘Now there’s the thing, see. Down at my most basic level, I’m an old-fashioned boy, rooted in the physical and distrusting of politicians. I’d hate to think our entire survival prospects are based on a cosmic-sized poker bluff.’ His golden face looked straight at Kazimir. ‘Do we actually have a deterrence fleet, son? Is it real?’

‘It is real, Grandfather. And if the Ocisen allies prove stronger than our Capital-class, I will personally lead it into battle against the Empire’s fleet.’

‘All right then. Forgive an old man his quirks.’

‘Of course.’

‘So what do we do about your mother?’

‘Wait until she contacts us.’

‘You think she will?’

‘I think she’s probably Mayoress of Makkathran by now.’

‘Yeah,’ Gore grunted. ‘You’re probably right. But how will we ever know?’

‘Ask the Second Dreamer.’

*

Aaron was making good time. He’d already retraced the entire route back to the Olhava camp. Now it was just a simple jog across nine hundred kilometres of a dead planet’s broken, frozen, radioactive ground, and he’d be back at Jajaani. Which the impact would have reduced to a fractured nightmare of geology where the few survivors from the outlying camps would be mounting futile rescue attempts. Still, it was his only chance. Not that cheating death meant anything to him. This way was the only possible way to salvage his mission. He was still furious at himself for being so gullible. Inigo must have been playing him from the moment he walked into the excavation chamber. Leaking weak thoughts and meek emotions into the gaiafield, lulling him to a level of trust.

Stupid. I would never have let it happen if I was thinking straight.

But too late for self-recrimination now. If he did get out of this, he’d have to maintain a keen watch on his own motivations and responses, make sure they hadn’t degraded further under the assault of the unknowns in his subconscious.

The land he was jogging through was an ancient undulating volcanic plain, scoured of vegetation and crisped over by a thick skin of ice; residue of the deluge that had swept down from the highlands to the south during the last burst of weather before the temperature plummeted. Odd splinters of rock stuck up through the dull grey crust, torn out of the bedrock by the final inundation of water. Ice particles swirled constantly, as patchy as any summer morning fog. Dense clouds zephyred round in the windshadow of the outcrops, drumming hard on his suit as he moved through them.

His macrocellular clusters were still picking up the beacon line back to Jajaani. There was no communication traffic – other than his own distress call. The beacons simply stood there, tiny glows of virtual light across the forlorn world. The next one was eight kilometres ahead.

Aaron’s u-shadow reported someone sweeping a communication beam across him. He shook his head in disbelief, momentarily suspicious this was another attempt by his subconscious to subvert him. Exovision displays started to show solid data. The broadcast point was directly overhead, and using the same emergency band as his own distress call.

‘This is the Navy scout ship
Lindau
, are you receiving us?’

Aaron stopped dead, and lifted his head to the dreadful tumble of grey clouds. ‘Hello?’

The signal beam immediately strengthened and focused. ‘Ozzie be damned, who the hell are you?’

‘Cyrial,’ he said, picking a name at random from the Restoration staff they’d interviewed back at Jajaani.

‘Well, Cyrial, this is the luckiest day of your lives. Stay put, we’re coming down to pick you up.’

‘Have you found anyone else?’

‘No, sorry, you’re the first.’

Aaron stood and waited as the scoutship fought its way through the clouds in a burst of violent lightning. Ingrav units strained against the wind, lowering it metre by metre. The ship was a broad cylinder, thirty-eight metres long, its comprehensive sensor clusters retracted into stumpy fins around its midsection. Two thermal dissipater rings around the rear fuselage glowed a bright ruby red, indicating how much power it was drawing on to hold steady against the fierce atmosphere. Snow hammered against its force field, kicking out a blue sparkle.

Malmetal landing struts swelled out fore and aft, and it came to rest ten metres in front of him.

‘You will never believe how good you look to me,’ Aaron told his rescuers.

‘We got us a pretty good idea.’ The airlock expanded open, and a short ramp slid out. ‘Sorry about this, but we’ve been told we have to take precautions. Nobody knows who attacked the Restoration project base. We have to hold you in isolation while we scan you and confirm your identity.’

‘Man, you can shack up with every daughter I ever fathered for all I care. I’ll even give you their unisphere codes. Pretty things they are, too.’ Aaron brought every weapons insert he had to full power, adjusted his biononic energy currents for extreme combat, and walked up the ramp.

The moment after Justine realized she wasn’t dead was the most tranquil point in her entire life. What, as a five-year-old, she’d imagined walking into biblical heaven would be like, just lacking the angels. Once she acknowledged she actually was still alive, she checked round while the feeling shrank back down, as if wounded by her practicality. She could hear her heart beating. She was breathing. Exoimages revealed other body functions were nominal, including the macrocellular clusters and biononics. The cabin lighting remained on. Gravity field held steady.

‘Status?’ she asked the
Silverbird’
s smartcore.

‘Life support operational. Secondary systems performing at optimal post-damage level. Hyperdrive inoperative.’

‘What’s wrong with it?’

The smartcore didn’t respond at once, which sent a chill down her spine. If it was taking this long to diagnose the failure, the damage must be significant. She stood up, and walked over to the galley alcove. The bruising on her legs and back from getting thrown around made her draw a breath.