Lady Macbeth flew cover a hundred kilometres above it, sensors and maser cannon deployed to strike any missile which acquired lock-on. The starship had to make continual adjustments to its flight vector to keep the spaceplane within its protective radius. Joshua watched its drive flaring, reducing velocity, accelerating, switching altitude. Five times its masers fired to destroy incoming submunitions.
By the time the spaceplane had reached orbit and was manoeuvring to dock, the sky above Nyvan had calmed considerably. Only three other starships were visible to Lady Mac ’s sensors, all of them were frigates belonging to local defence forces. None of them seemed interested in Lady Mac , or even each other. Beaulieu began a thorough sensor sweep, alert for the inevitable chaotic showers of post-explosion debris which would make low orbit hazardous for some time to come. Some of the returns were odd, making her redefine the sweep’s parameters. Lady Mac ’s sensors shifted their focus away from the planet itself.
Joshua slid cleanly through the hatchway into the bridge. His clothes had dried out in the hot air of the spaceplane’s cabin, but the dirt and stains remained. Dahybi’s ship-suit was in a similar state.
Sarha gave him an apprehensive glance. “Melvyn?” she asked quietly.
“Not a chance. Sorry.”
“Bugger.”
“You two did a good job up here,” Joshua said. “Well done, that was some fine piloting to stay above the spaceplane.”
“Thanks, Josh.”
Joshua looked from Liol, who was anchored to a stikpad by the captain’s acceleration couch, to Sarha, whose expression was utterly unrepentant.
“Oh, Jesus, you gave him the access codes.”
“Yes, I did. My command decision. There was a war up here, Joshua.”
It wasn’t, he decided, worth making an issue out of, not in view of everything else that was happening. “That’s why I left you in charge,” he said. “I had confidence in you, Sarha.”
She frowned suspiciously. He sounded sincere. “So you got Mzu, then. I hope it was worth it.”
“For the Confederation I suppose it is. For individuals . . . you’d have to ask them. But then individuals have been dying because of her for some time now.”
“Captain, please access our sensor suite,” Beaulieu said.
“Right.” He rolled in midair, and landed on his acceleration couch. The images from the external sensor clusters expanded into his mind. Wrong. They had to be wrong. “Jesus wept!” His brain was already acting in conjunction with the flight computer’s astrogration program to plot a vector before he’d fully admitted the reality of the tide of rock descending on the planet. “Prepare for acceleration, thirty seconds—mark. We have to leave.” A fast internal sensor check showed him his new passengers hurrying towards couches; images superimposed with purple and yellow trajectory plots that wriggled frantically as he refined their projected trajectory.
“Who did that?” he asked.
“No idea,” Sarha said. “It happened during the battle, we didn’t even know until afterwards. But it sure as hell wasn’t random combat wasp strikes.”
“I’ll monitor the drive tubes,” Joshua said. “Sarha, take systems coverage, please. Liol, you’ve got fire control.”
“Aye, Captain,” Liol said.
It was a strictly neutral tone. Joshua was satisfied with that. He triggered Lady Mac ’s fusion drives, bringing them up to a three-gee acceleration.
“Where are we going?” Liol asked.
“Bloody good question,” Joshua said. “For now I just want us out of here. After that, it rather depends on what Ione and the agents decide, I expect.”
There must be someone who knows. One of you.
We know it is real. We know it is hidden.
Two bodies await. A male and a female. Youthful, splendid. Do you hear them? Do you taste them? Pleading for one of you to enter them. You can. All the riches and pleasures of reality can be yours again. If you have the admission price, one tiny piece of information. That’s all.
She didn’t hide it by herself. She had help from somebody. Probably many. Were you one?
Ah. Yes. You. You are being truthful. You know.
Come then. Come forwards, come through. We reward you with—
He cried out in wonder and misery as he struggled his way into the victim’s agonized nervous system. There was pain, and shame, and humiliation to cope with; tragic, terrible pleas from the body’s true soul. One by one, he faced them down, mending the broken flesh, suppressing and ignoring the protest, until there was only his own shame left. Not so easily abandoned.
“Welcome to the Organization,” said Oscar Kearn. “So, you were part of Mzu’s mission?”
“Yes. I was with her.”
“Good. She’s a clever woman, that Mzu. I’m afraid she’s eluded us once again, thanks to that traitor bitch Barnes. Even so, only the amazingly resourceful can duck an ironberg when it’s falling on their heads. I didn’t realize what I was dealing with before. I don’t suppose she would have helped us even if we had caught her. She’s like that, tough and determined. But now her luck’s run out. You can tell me, can’t you? You know where the Alchemist is.”
“Yes,” Ikela said. “I know where it is.”
Alkad Mzu floated into the bridge, accompanied by Monica and Samuel. She acknowledged Joshua with a small twitch of her lips, then blinked when she saw Liol. “I didn’t know there were two of you.”
Liol grinned broadly.
“Before we all start arguing over what to do with you, Doctor,” a serjeant said. “I’d like you to confirm the Alchemist does or did exist.”
Alkad tapped her toe on a stikpad beside the captain’s couch, preventing herself from drifting about. “Yes, it exists. And I built it. I wish to Mary I hadn’t, now, but the past is past. My only concern now is that it doesn’t fall into anybody’s hands, not yours, and certainly not the possessed.”
“Very noble,” Sarha said, “from someone who was going to use it to kill an entire planet.”
“They wouldn’t have been killed,” Alkad said wearily. “It was intended to extinguish Omuta’s star, not turn it nova. I’m not an Omutan barbarian; they’re the ones who kill entire worlds.”
“Extinguish a star?” Samuel mused in puzzlement.
“Please don’t ask for details.”
“I propose Dr Mzu is taken back to Tranquillity,” the serjeant said. “We can formalize the observation to insure she doesn’t pass the information on. I don’t think you will anyway, Doctor, but intelligence agencies are highly suspicious entities.”
Monica consulted Samuel. “I can live with that,” she said. “Tranquillity is neutral territory. It isn’t all that different to our original agreement.”
“It isn’t,” Samuel agreed. “But, Doctor, you do realize you cannot be allowed to die. Certainly not until the problem of possession has been resolved.”
“Fine by me,” Alkad said.
“What I mean, Doctor, is that when you are very old, you must be placed in zero-tau to prevent your soul from entering the beyond.”
“I will not give anyone the Alchemist technology, no matter what the circumstances.”
“I’m sure that is your intention at the moment. But how will you feel after a hundred years trapped in the beyond? A thousand? And to be indelicate, the choice is not yours to make. It is ours. You lost the right to self-determination when you built the Alchemist. If you give yourself enough power to make a galaxy fear you and what you can achieve, you abrogate that right to those whom your actions affect.”