Going Interstellar (collection)

“Of course. If we can’t seize the Courser, then we will take the away-craft. And I’m sorry, but we’ll have to harm your pretty ship a bit as we leave. Harrod, this is your last chance.” A moment of silent waiting; then another sputter of gunfire. “Very well, Harrod. Your death—and only yours—is a waste. Your skills will be missed.”

And the circuit went dead. At the same moment, explosions rocked the ship, first pushing strongly from aft—the engines, no doubt—and then light but irregular buffeting from the other three points of the compass.

“What was that?” asked the leader of the helots.

Harrod moved to inspect the coupler. “The first jolt was the engines being sabotaged. The next was our electromagnetic shielding pods being blasted free. Without them, the radiation levels in this hull will climb rapidly. And without our engines …” House Shaddock had crippled the Ark itself. At first it seemed madness, but then Harrod perceived—and conceded—the canny inspiration behind that madness. Since House Shaddock could not hold the ship—and therefore, the high ground—it was necessary that the enemy’s seat of power be rendered useless. And that is what they had done to Photrek Courser: damaged engines and an absence of radiation shielding made this once mighty Ark a death ship. Whether it spiraled in toward the seas of Senrefer Tertius Seven, or was sucked in years later by the gas giant itself was hardly worthy of debate: in the end, the great Ark, the enabler of any further Rites of Exile, was gone. In its place was only the unremitting contention and enmity of the rival Houses.

Harrod’s comm-link hummed; he activated it.

Bikrut’s voice growled out of it. “Intendant, where are you?”

“In zero-gee habmod three, my Overlord.”

“And you know what has happened?”

“I do. Are all the ships away?”

“Yes, all taken by the Shaddock devos—may the Dread Parents feast upon the entrails of the motherless spawn.” A long pause. “You refused to give them the access codes, didn’t you?”

“Yes, my Overlord.”

“This was well done. And yet stupid: if you had it in you to dominate, to prevail, you would have gambled all, boldly—and left behind your loyalty to my wounded House. But, since you can no longer breed, I recant my earlier decree: in appreciation of the exemplary service you have rendered us, I declare you Raised, Intendant Harrod sul-Mellis.”

That declaration, and its now-monstrously diminished significance, struck Harrod as particularly ironic. But he kept the smile out of his voice as he replied, “Harrod sul-Mellis thanks his Overlord for this signal honor.”

Bikrut made a muttering sound that might have been congratulations, complaining, or mild gastric distress.

Harrod asked, “I do not understand your remark regarding my inability to breed, Overlord Bikrut.”

“I did not say that you lacked the ability; I said that you cannot do so.”

“Meaning, you will not permit me?”

“Meaning you will not survive.”

At that moment, the ship gave yet another tortured wrench aftwards, tumbling Harrod and his helots against the bow-quarter bulkhead. “Overlord Bikrut, what do you mean—and what was that?”

“The answer is the same: the survivors of House Mellis have collected in the bridge module, which we have just detached from the command hull.”

“Uncoupled the bridge module? But it is incapable of reachieving orbit, once it is used as a planetary lifeboat. Besides, it was never refurbished—”

“That is where you are wrong, Harrod: we refurbished the bridge module’s maneuver system in the sixth year of our voyage, and left no record of the activity. With all of House Shaddock still in cold sleep, that was simple enough to achieve.”

“So you will land the bridge module—where?”

“Why, right atop the traitorous devos who were assassinating my family just a few minutes ago. They are headed to the primary landing site in the southern hemisphere. And we shall follow them.”

Of course you shall. It’s all you know how to do. It’s what makes you what you are. “Farewell, Overlord Bikrut.”

But the line was already dead.

— 12 —

The four helots who wanted to see how things would end—the last actions to be performed by the Photrek Courser—accompanied Harrod to the command module. There, he used a key wrench to open what looked like an oversized closet; the accessway led into a room packed with relays and command consoles: the auxiliary bridge. Harrod activated the screens and the sensors. Within seconds he detected the Shaddock flight to the surface: about a dozen away-craft, preparing to land near the prepositioned caches and test-settlement at the eastern end of the large landmass in the south. The remains of House Mellis were hard on their heels—and unexpected, since House Shaddock had never been told that the bridge module could function as a separate vehicle.