The Night's Dawn Trilogy (457 page)

“Well that’s a relief,” Sarha drawled.

“Now what have I done?” he exclaimed.

“You’ve been Joshua. For a moment there I thought you were actually evolving. Didn’t you hear yourself? She hasn’t had the
education to become a crew member on
Lady Mac
, therefore it can’t possibly work between you. There was never a thought that you might give up your life to join her.”

“I can’t!”

“Because
Lady Mac
is far more important than Cricklade estate, which is her life. Right? So do you love her, Joshua? Or do you just feel guilty
because one of the girls you shagged and dumped happened to get captured and possessed?”

“Jesus! What are you trying to do to me?”

“I’m trying to understand you, Joshua. And help if I can. This matters to you. It’s important. You have to know why.”

“I don’t know why. I just know I’m worried about her. Maybe I’m guilty. Maybe I’m angry at the way the universe has crapped
all over us.”

“Fair enough. All of us are feeling that way right now. At least we’re doing something about it. You can’t fly
Lady Mac
to Norfolk and rescue her; not any more. As far as anyone knows, this is the next best thing.”

He gave her a sad grin. “Yeah. I guess that’s me being selfish, too. I have to be doing something. Me.”

“It’s the kind of selfishness the Confederation needs right now.”

“That still doesn’t make it fair what happened to her.

She’s suffering through no fault of her own. If this Sleeping God is as powerful as the Tyrathca believe, then it’s got some
explaining to do.”

“We’ve been saying that about our deities ever since we dreamt them up. It’s a fallacy to assume it shares our morals and
ethics. In fact it’s quite obvious it doesn’t. If it did, none of this would have happened. We’d all be living in paradise.”

“You mean the argument against divine intervention is forever unbreakable?”

“Yep, free will means we have to make our own choices. Without that, life is meaningless; we’d be insects grubbing along the
way our instincts tell us. Sentience has to count for something.”

Joshua leant over and placed a grateful kiss on her forehead. “Getting us into trouble, usually. I mean, Jesus, look at me.
I’m a wreck. Sentience hurts.”

They went out into the bridge together. Liol and Dahybi were lying on their acceleration couches, looking bored. Samuel was
emerging from the hatchway.

“That was a long handover,” Liol remarked waspishly.

“Can’t you manage those yourself?” Joshua asked.

“You might have a Calvert body, but don’t forget which of us has more experience.”

“Not in all the relevant fields, you don’t.”

“I’m off watch,” Dahybi announced loudly. His couch webbing peeled back, allowing him to swing his feet down onto the decking.
“Sarha, you coming?”

Joshua and Liol grinned at each other. Joshua made a polite gesture towards the floor hatch, which Liol acknowledged with
a gracious bow. “Thank you, Captain.”

“While you’re in the galley I could do with some breakfast,” Joshua shouted after them. There was no reply. He and Samuel
settled down on their acceleration couches. The Edenist was becoming a proficient systems officer, helping the crew with their
shifts, as had the other science team specialists travelling on board. Even Monica was chipping in.

Joshua accessed the flight computer. Trajectory graphics and status schematics overlaid the external sensor images. Space
had become awesome.

Three light-years ahead, Mastrit-PJ poured a strong crimson light across the dull foam which coated the starship’s fuselage.
The Orion nebula veiled half of the starscape to galactic north of
Lady Mac
, a glorious three-dimensional tapestry of luminescent gas with a furiously turbulent surface composed from scarlet, green,
and turquoise clouds clashing as rival oceans, their million-year antagonism throwing out energetic, chaotic spumes in all
directions. Inside, it was knotted with proplyds, the glowing protoplanetary disks condensing out of the maelstrom. At the
heart lay the Trapezium, the four hottest, massive stars, whose phenomenal ultraviolet output illuminated and energized the
whole colossal expanse of interstellar gas.

Joshua had come to adore the infinitely varied topology of the nebula as they’d slowly flown out of Confederation space to
soar around it. It was alive in a way no physical biology could match, its currents and molecular shoals a trillion times
as complex as anything found in a hydrocarbon-based cell. The young, frantic stars which cluttered the interior were venting
tremendous storms of ultra-hot gas, propagating shockwaves that travelled over a hundred and fifty thousand kilometres an
hour. They would take the form of loops which curled and twisted sinuously, their frayed ends shimmering brightly as they
fanned away the wild energy surging along their length.

For the crews in both
Lady Mac
and
Oenone
, watching the nebula had replaced all forms of recorded entertainment. Its majesty had lightened their mood considerably;
theirs was now a true flight into history, no matter what the outcome.

Joshua and Syrinx had decided on flying around the galactic south of the nebula, an approximation of Tanjuntic-RI’s flightpath.
During the first stages they’d utilized observations from Confederation observatories to navigate around the quirky folds
of cloud and glimmering prominences visible from human space, even though the images were over 1,500 years out of date. But
after the first few days they were traversing space never glimpsed by human telescopes. Their speed slowed as they had to
start scanning ahead for stars and dust clouds and parsec-wide cyclones of iridescent gas.

Long before Mastrit-PJ itself was visible, its light coloured the cooler outer strands of the nebula. The ships flew onwards
with its thick red glow deepening around them. As soon as the star rose into full view 700 light-years ahead, parallax measurements
enabled
Oenone
to calculate its position, enabling them to plot an accurate trajectory straight for it.

Now Joshua was piloting
Lady Mac
to her penultimate jump coordinate. Radar showed him
Oenone
1,000 kilometres away, matching their half-gee acceleration. The burn was stronger than Adamist ships usually employed, but
they hadn’t been altering their delta-V much during the flight round the nebula, choosing to wait until they got a fix on
Mastrit-PJ before matching velocity with the red giant.

“Burn rate is holding constant,” Samuel said, after they’d run their diagnostic programs. “You have some quality drive tubes
here, Joshua. We should have just under sixty per cent of our fusion fuel left when we jump in.”

“Good enough for me. Let’s hope we don’t soak up too much delta-V searching for the redoubt. I want to hold all the antimatter
in reserve for the Sleeping God.”

“You are positive about the outcome, then?”

Joshua thought about the answer for a moment, mildly surprised by his own confidence. It was a pleasant contrast to the disquiet
he felt over Louise. Intuition, a tonic against conscience. “Yeah. Guess I am. That part of it, anyway.”

The orange vector plot which the flight computer was datavising into his neural nanonics showed him the jump coordinate was
approaching. He started reducing their acceleration, datavising a warning to the crew. Samuel began retracting the sensor
booms and thermo-dump panels.

Lady Mac
jumped first, covering two and a half light years.
Oenone
shot out of its wormhole terminus six seconds later, a healthy hundred and fifty kilometres away. Mastrit-PJ wasn’t quite
a disk, though its brilliant glare would make it hard for the naked eye to tell. From a mere half light-year distance its
red light was sufficient to wash out the nebula and most of the stars.

“I’ve been hit by lasers with less power,” Joshua muttered as the sensor filters cut in to deflect the rush of photons.

“It’s only recently ended its expansion phase,” Samuel said. “In astrological terms, this has only just happened.”

“Stellar explosions are fast events. This happened fifteen thousand years ago, at least.”

“Once the initial expansion occurs, there is a long period of adjustment within the photosphere as it stabilises. Either way,
the overall energy output is most impressive. As far as this side of the galaxy is concerned, it outshines the nebula.”

Joshua checked the neuroiconic displays. “No heat, and precious little radiation. Particle density is up on the norm, but
then it’s been fluctuating the whole time we’ve chased round the nebula.” He datavised the flight computer to establish a
communication link with
Oenone
. “How are we doing with the final coordinate?”

“I was pleasingly correct with my earlier estimates,” the voidhawk replied. “I should have the final figure ready for you
in another five minutes.”

“Fine.” After their first sighting of Mastrit-PJ, Joshua had checked the figures which
Oenone
had supplied a couple of times, out of interest rather than distrust. Each time they’d been better than any reading
Lady Mac
’s technological sensors could provide. He didn’t bother after that.

“We should be able to measure the photosphere boundary to within a thousand kilometres,” Syrinx datavised. “Defining exactly
where it ends and space begins is problematical. Theory has an effervescence zone measuring up to anything between five hundred
to half a million kilometres thick.”

“We’ll stick to plan-A, then,” Joshua datavised back.

“I think so. Everything’s checked out as we expected so far. Kempster has activated every sensor we’re carrying, recording
it like flek memories are infinite. I expect he’ll let us know if he and Renato spot any anomalies.”

“Okay. In the meantime I’ll plot an initial vector to leave
Lady Mac
with a neutral relative velocity. I can refine it when you’ve finished working out the coordinate.” He suspected
Oenone
could supply him with the appropriate vector within milliseconds. But damn it, he had some pride.

Lady Mac
’s star trackers locked on to the new constellations they’d mapped. He brought his navigation programs into primary mode and
began feeding in the raw data.

______

Joshua and Syrinx had decided on an interval of several hours before making the final jump to Mastrit-PJ. Partly it was due
to their lack of knowledge on its real position and size. Once that was determined, they intended to emerge in the ecliptic
plane, a safe distance above the top of the photosphere, with their velocity matched perfectly to the star’s. It meant the
only force acting on them would be the star’s gravity, a tiny tide-like pull inwards. From that vantage point they would be
able to scan space for a considerable distance. Logically, the remnants of the Tyrathca’s redoubt civilization should be orbiting
the star’s equator. Possibly on a Pluto-type planet that had survived the explosion, or a large Oort-ring asteroid. Although
the volume of space was admittedly huge, by jumping in steady increments round Mastrit-PJ’s equator they should eventually
be able to find it.

Oenone
would also spend the time to completely recharge its energy patterning cells from cosmic radiation, saving its fusion fuel.
Not only would that prepare the voidhawk to carry out the search, it would then have the ability to withdraw across a considerable
distance, matching
Lady Mac
’s sequential jump facility should they unwittingly enter a hostile armed xenoc environment. That was an imaginative worst-case
scenario dreamt up by Joshua, Ashly, Monica, Samuel, and (surprisingly) Ruben; which everyone else cheerfully told them verged
on outright paranoia. As it turned out, they’d done quite a good job.

______

A star is a perpetual battleground of primal forces, principally those of heat and gravity which manifest themselves as expansion
and contraction. At its core, a main-sequence star is a giant hydrogen fusion reaction, heating the rest of the mass sufficiently
to counter gravitational contraction. However, fusion is only as finite as its fuel supply, while gravity is eternal.

After billions of years of steady luminescence, Mastrit-PJ exhausted the hydrogen atoms of its core, burning them into inert
helium. Fusion energy production continued within a small shell of hydrogen wrapped around the central region. Temperature,
pressure, and density all began to change as the envelope took over from the core as the principal source of heat. As the
transformation of its internal structure progressed, so Mastrit-PJ left its original stable luminous sequence behind at an
ever increasing rate. Its outer layers began to expand, heated by convection currents surging up from the growing fusion envelope.
While on the inside of the envelope, the core continued its gravitational contraction as a snow of helium atoms drifted downwards
adding to its mass.

Mastrit-PJ divided into two distinct and very different entities: the centre burning with renewed vigour as it continued its
contraction, and the outer layers bloating out and cooling through the spectrum from white through yellow and into red. That
was the epoch of stellar evolution from which the Tyrathca had fled. The expanding star inflated out to over four hundred
times its original radius, eventually settling down with a diameter of one thousand six hundred and seventy million kilometres.
It swept across the three inner planets, including the Tyrathca homeworld, and quickly devoured the two outer gas-giants.
There was no exact line to show where the star ended and space began, instead the inflamed hydrogen thinned out into a thick
solar wind which blew steadily out into the galaxy. However, for catalogue and navigational purposes,
Oenone
had defined Mastrit-PJ’s periphery at seven hundred and eighty million kilometres from its invisible core.

______

Lady Macbeth
was the first to emerge, a respectable fifty million kilometres above the wispy radiant sea of dissolving particles. Normal
space had ceased to exist, leaving the starship coasting between two parallel universes of light. On one side, the spectral
eddies of the nebula jewelled with young stars; on the other, a flat, featureless desert of golden-hot photons.