The Night's Dawn Trilogy (314 page)

“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.”

“I agree,” the serjeant said. “You will be placed in zero-tau before you die.”

“Why not just put me in now?” Alkad said crustily.

“Don’t tempt me,” Monica said. “I know the kind of contempt you moron intellectuals hold the government services in. Well
listen good, Doctor, we exist to protect the majority so they can run around living their lives as decently and as best they
can. We protect them from
shits
like you, who never fucking stop to think what you’re doing.”

“You didn’t protect my bloody planet, did you!” Alkad yelled back. “And don’t you dare lecture me on responsibility. I’m prepared
to die to stop the Alchemist being used by anybody else, especially your imperialist Kingdom. I know my responsibilities.”

“You do now.
Now
you realize what a mistake you made, now people are dying just to keep your precious arse safe.”

“Okay, that’s it,” Joshua said loudly. “We’re all agreed where the doc is going, end of discussion. Nobody is going to start
shouting about moral philosophy on my bridge. We’re all tired, we’re all emotional. Pack it in, the pair of you. I’m going
to plot a course to Tranquillity, you go to your cabins and cool off. We’ll be home inside of two days.”

“Understood,” Monica said through clenched teeth. “And .. . thank you for getting us off. It was—”

“Professional?”

She almost snapped back at him, but that grin… “Professional.”

Alkad cleared her throat. “I’m sorry,” she said apologetically. “But there is a problem. We can’t go straight back to Tranquillity.”

Joshua massaged his temple and asked: “Why not?” if only to stop Monica from flying at Mzu’s throat.

“The Alchemist itself.”

“What about it?” Samuel asked.

“We have to collect it.”

“All right,” Joshua said in a far-from-reasonable tone. “Why?”

“Because it isn’t secure where it is.”

“It’s managed to stay secure for thirty years. Jesus, just take the secret of its location to zero-tau with you. If the agencies
haven’t found it by now, they never will.”“They won’t have to look anymore, nor will the possessed, especially if our current
situation continues for more than a few years.”

“Go on, we may as well hear it all.”

“There were three ships on our strike mission against Omuta,” Alkad said. “The
Beezling
, the
Chengho
, and the
Gombari. Beezling
was the Alchemist’s deployment vessel, I was on board; the other two were our escort frigates. We were intercepted by blackhawks
before we could deploy the Alchemist. They destroyed the
Gombari
, and hit us and the
Chengho
pretty badly. We were left for dead in interstellar space. Neither of us could jump, and the nearest inhabited star was seven
light-years away.

“After the attack, we spent a couple of days repairing our internal systems, then we rendezvoused. It was Ikela and Captain
Prager who came up with the eventual solution.
Chengho
was smaller than
Beezling
, it didn’t need as many energy patterning nodes to perform a ZTT jump. So the crew removed some of the
Beezling’s
intact nodes and installed them in the
Chengho
. We didn’t have the proper tools for that kind of job; and then the nodes had different power ratings and performance factors,
they had to be completely re-programmed. It took us three and a half weeks, but we did it. We rebuilt ourselves a ship that
could make a ZTT jump—not very well, and not very far, but it was functional. That was when things started to get difficult.
The
Chengho
was too small to take both crews, even for just a small jump. There was only one life-support capsule, and it could hold
eight of us at a push. We knew we couldn’t risk a flight back to Garissa, the nodes would never last that long, and we guessed
that Omuta would have launched some kind of big attack by then. After all, that’s why we’d been dispatched in the first place,
to stop them. So we jumped to the nearest inhabited star system, Crotone. The idea was that we’d charter a ship and get back
to Garissa that way. Of course, when we arrived at Crotone, we heard about the genocide.

“Ikela and Prager had even formulated a worst case option. Just in case, they said. We’d brought some antimatter with us on
the
Chengho;
if we sold that together with the frigate it would fetch millions. Assuming the Garissan government no longer existed, we
would have all the money we needed to operate independently for decades.”

“The Stromboli Separatist Council,” Samuel said suddenly.

“Right,” Alkad acknowledged. “That’s who we sold it to.”

“Ah, we never did find out how they got their antimatter. They blew up two of Crotone’s low-orbit port stations with the stuff.”

“After we left, yes,” Alkad said.

“So Ikela took the money and founded T’Opingtu.”

“Correct; once we found out that the Confederation Assembly granted the Dorados to the survivors of the genocide, all seven
navy officers were given an equal share. The plan was for them to invest the money in various companies, the profits from
which would be used to help fund the partizans. We needed committed nationalists to crew the ship that they were supposed
to prepare for me. After that, they would buy or charter a combat-capable starship to complete the Alchemist mission. As you
know, Ikela didn’t fulfill the last part of the plan. I don’t know about the others.”

“Why wait thirty years?” Joshua asked. “Why didn’t you just hire a combat-capable starship as soon as you had the money from
the sale of the frigate, and go straight back to the
Beezling
?”

“Because we couldn’t be sure exactly where it was. You see, we didn’t just repair the
Chengho
. There were thirty people and the Alchemist left behind on the
Beezling
. Suppose the
Chengho
didn’t make it, or suppose we were caught and interrogated by the CNIS or some other agency? There was even the possibility
the blackhawks might return. We had to plan for all those factors as well, the remaining crew had to be given their chance,
too.”

“They went into zero-tau,” Joshua said. “How does that prevent you from knowing the exact coordinate?”

“Yes, obviously they went into zero-tau, but that’s not all. We also repaired their reaction drive. They flew a vector to
an uninhabited star which was only two and a half light-years away.”

“Jesus, a sub-lightspeed journey through interstellar space? You’ve got to be kidding. That’s impossible, it would take—”

“Twenty-eight years, we estimated.”

“Ah!” Realization came to Joshua like the silent detonation of Norfolk Tears after it hit the stomach. He felt a surge of
admiration for those lost desperate crews of thirty years ago. Not caring what the odds were, just going for it. “They used
antimatter propulsion.”

“Yes. We transferred every gram from our remaining combat wasps into the
Beezling’s
confinement chambers. It was enough to accelerate them up to about nine per cent lightspeed. So now tell me, Captain, how
difficult would it be to locate a ship that is moving away from its last known coordinate at eight or nine per cent lightspeed?
And if you did find it, how would you rendezvous?”

“Not possible. Okay, you have to wait until the
Beezling
decelerated and arrived at that uninhabited star. How come you didn’t make a dash for them two years ago?”

“Because we weren’t sure just how efficient the drive would be over such a long period of use. Two years gave us an adequate
safety margin; and of course as it turned out, the sanctions would be over. There was always a remote chance the Confederation
Navy blockade squadron would detect us, after all it’s their job to be looking for sanction-buster starships emerging in odd
places around Omuta. So after we sold the
Chengho
we decided on thirty years.”

“You mean the
Beezling
is just orbiting that star waiting for you to make contact?” Liol asked.

“Yes. Providing everything worked as it was supposed to. They are supposed to wait for another five years; the time is irrelevant
in zero-tau, but the support systems cannot last indefinitely. If they hadn’t been contacted by then, either by myself and
the
Chengho
crew, or the Garissan government, they were to destroy the Alchemist and start signalling for help. Uninhabited star systems
within the Confederation boundaries are inspected on a regular basis by navy patrol ships to make sure they aren’t being used
by antimatter production stations. They would have been rescued eventually.”

Joshua glanced around to the serjeant, wishing the construct had some way of displaying emotion; he’d like to know what Ione
made of the story. “Makes sense,” he said. “What do you want to do?”

“We have to see if the
Beezling
completed its journey,” the serjeant said.

“And if it has?” Samuel asked.

“Then the Alchemist must be destroyed. After that, any surviving crew will be taken back to Tranquillity.”

“Question, Doc,” Joshua said. “If anybody sees the Alchemist, will that give them a clue to its nature?”

“No. You have no worries on that score, Captain. There is however someone among the crew who could tell you how to build another.
His name is Peter Adul, he will have to remain in Tranquillity with me. After that, you will be safe again.”

“Okay, what’s the star’s coordinate?”

It was a long time before Alkad said: “Mother Mary, this is not what was meant to be.”

“Nothing ever is, Doc. I learned that long ago.”

“Ha! You’re too young.”

“Depends how you fill the years, doesn’t it?”

Alkad Mzu datavised the coordinate over.

•  •  •

A wormhole terminus is opening,
Tranquillity announced. At the time, Ione was standing knee deep in the warm water of the cove, rubbing Haile’s flank with
a big yellow bath sponge. She straightened her back and began wringing out the sponge. Her real attention was focused on a
point in space a hundred and twenty thousand kilometres away from the habitat where the vacuum’s gravity density was building
rapidly. Three SD platforms orbiting the emergence zone locked their X-ray lasers on to the terminus as it expanded. Five
patrol blackhawks accelerated in at four gees.A large voidhawk slipped out of the two-dimensional rent.
Oenone
, Confederation Navy ship SLV-66150, requesting approach and docking permission,
it said.
Our official flight authentication code follows.

Granted,
Tranquillity replied after it verified the code. The SD platforms were switched back to alert status. Three of the blackhawks
resumed their patrol, while the remaining two curved around to form an escort as
Oenone
accelerated in towards the habitat.

“I’m going to have to leave you,” Ione said.

Jay Hilton’s vexed face peeped over the top of Haile’s gleaming white back. “What is it this time?” she asked petulantly.

“Affairs of state.” Ione started wading towards the shore. She scooped some water up and tried to flush the sand out of her
bikini top.

“You always say that.”

Ione gave the disgruntled girl a forlorn smile. “Because it always is, these days.”
Sorry
, she added.

Haile formshifted the tip of an arm into a human hand and waved.
Goodbye, Ione Saldana. I have much sorrow you are leaving, my endlegs itch like hell.

Haile!

I form a communication wrongness? I have shame.

Not wrong, exactly.

Gladness. That was a Joshua Calvert expression. Much favoured.

Ione snapped her teeth together. That bloody Calvert! Anger gave way to something more confusing, a sort of resentment… possibly.
Hundreds of light-years away, and he still intrudes.
It would be. Please don’t use it around Jay.

Understanding is me. I have a great many human emphasis phrases conveyed by Joshua Calvert.

I’ll bet you have.

I want properness in my communication. I ask your assistance in reviewing my word collection. You may edit me.

Yes, all right.

Much gladness!

Ione took another pace, then laughed. Reviewing everything Joshua had said to the young Kiint would take hours. Hours she
hadn’t been spending on the beach of late. Haile was becoming very crafty.