Judas Unchained

All five of the Raiel’s eye stalks swiveled around in unison to focus on her. “Your concern is touching, Paula. There is no need for alarm. I will be able to digest human food. I estimate I will consume as much as five human adults per day. With the exception of curry. It does not agree with my digestive process.”

“Hey, me neither,” Tiger Pansy chirped in.

“Are you all right?” Paula asked her. “I can spell you if you want to sleep.”

“That’s real kind. I’m okay, though. I grabbed a few hours in here a while back.”

“Do you and Mr. Elvin intend to argue with each other?” Qatux asked. “You have been adversaries for many years now. I would find such contrary and emotional discourse to be most elating.”

“I’m not looking for a fight,” Paula said stiffly. “This is a new situation, for both of us.”

Adam looked up at the Raiel. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Old human saying.”

“Do you really set aside old battles so easily?”

“Put it into context with the threat of humanity’s extermination, and you’ll understand,” Paula said.

“It’s kinda sweet,” Tiger Pansy said. “That we can all just get along, you know.”

“Thank you, my dear,” Qatux said. “That was a most impressive feeling of sympathy and, I believe, camaraderie.”

“That’s why I get the big bucks,” she said, giggling. “Not!”

Paula turned to Bradley. “The good news is that if the Starflyer does close the wormhole behind it, we will be able to survive.”

“You might, my dear, but for me such failure will be worse than death.”

“I understand. I’d like to know now, what exactly are your plans. I might be able to help.”

“Plans,” Bradley murmured sadly. “I had grand plans, Investigator. Once. Today, things have become somewhat fluid. All we can do is hope that our friends on Far Away find some way of preventing the Starflyer from going through the wormhole until we arrive at Port Evergreen. That way we might still manage to corner it and kill it. Dreaming heavens, I cannot believe it has come to this.”

Paula glanced over at the Volvos lurking in the gloom around her, their tops nearly touching the roof of the cargo hold. “So what are they carrying? What have you been smuggling to Far Away all these years?”

“Don’t look at me.” Adam grunted. “I’m just the hired hand who arranges shipment.”

“Bradley?” Paula asked.

“I had devised a scheme to give the planet its revenge. It requires a great deal of sophisticated force field technology to implement.”

“How does force field technology kill the Starflyer? Do you trap it inside one?”

“Oh no, the planet’s revenge is designed to destroy the Marie Celeste. I intended to release it when we knew the Starflyer was on its way back. Without its ship, it will be truly marooned on Far Away. It can’t go home, and it can’t return to the Commonwealth. We can hunt it down and kill it.”

“So if it does get through the wormhole to Far Away ahead of us, will the Guardians be able to release this revenge scheme?”

“Possibly; though without the equipment we’ve brought it will be weaker than I would like. And of course the data you and Senator Burnelli retrieved from Kazimir is extremely important.”

“As far as we could determine, it was just meteorological information from Mars.”

“You determined right, my dear. We intend to channel Far Away’s weather at the Marie Celeste. As well as being extremely effective against that brute machine, it is fitting to give Far Away the chance for retribution. It was the flare bomb released by the Marie Celeste which came so close to totally annihilating the entire planetary biosphere.”

“Weather?” Paula frowned, even she couldn’t work out the variables in that puzzle. “You’re going to use the weather against a starship?”

“Yes. Did you know the Halgarth Dynasty commands the lion’s share of force field sales in the Commonwealth because of the systems given to them by the Starflyer in the guise of Institute research?”

“I know they’re the market leaders, yes.”

“It was inevitable, really. The Marie Celeste traveled through space at near relativistic velocity for hundreds of years. It had to have superb force fields to survive such a punishing environment. That makes it extremely difficult for us to attack. It would certainly be impervious to fusion bombs, even if we wanted to employ them on Far Away. The kind of modern, sophisticated weapons powerful enough to break the Marie Celeste’s force field are essentially impossible to obtain. They are simply not available on the black market. Their manufacture would be even more difficult. The Commonwealth has an effective monitoring network in place for dual use manufacturing systems, which even Adam would have trouble circumventing.”

“So how do you use weather when our best weapons are ineffective?”