Redemption Ark

‘Antoinette… it’s me again. I hope you made it back safely.’ Nevil Clavain paused, scratching at his beard. ‘I’m bouncing this transmission through about fifteen relays. Some of them are pre-plague, some of them may even go back to the Amerikano era, so the quality may not be of the best. I’m afraid there’s no possibility of you being able to reply, and no possibility of my being able to send another message; this is emphatically my one and only shot. I need your help, Antoinette. I need your help very badly.’ He smiled awkwardly. I know what you’re thinking: that I said I’d kill you if our paths ever crossed again. I meant it, too, but I said it because I hoped you’d take me seriously and stay out of trouble. I really hope you believe that, Antoinette, or else there isn’t much chance that you’re likely to agree to my next request.‘

‘Your next request?’ she mouthed, staring in disbelief at the compad.

‘What I need, Antoinette, is for you to come and rescue me. I’m in rather a lot of trouble, you see.’

She listened to what he had to say, but there was not a great deal more to the message. Clavain’s request was simple enough, and it was, she admitted, within her capabilities to do what he wanted. Even the co-ordinates he had given her were precise enough that she would not have to do any real searching. There was a tight time window, very tight, actually, and there was a not inconsiderable degree of physical risk, quite aside from any associated with Clavain himself. But it was all very feasible. She could tell that Clavain had worked through the details himself before calling her, anticipating almost all the likely problems and objections she might have. In that respect, she could not help but admire his dedication.

But it still didn’t make a shred of difference. The message was from Clavain, the Butcher of Tharsis; the same Clavain who had lately started inhabiting her dreams, personifying what had previously been the merely faceless terror of the spider induction wards. It was Clavain who presided over the glistening machines as they lowered themselves into her brainpan.

It didn’t matter that he had once saved her life.

‘You have got to be fucking kidding,’ Antoinette said.

* * *

Clavain floated alone in space. Through his spacesuit visor he watched the corvette curve away on automatic pilot, dwindling slowly but surely until its sleek flintlike shape was difficult to distinguish from a faint star. Then the corvette’s main drive flicked on, a hard and bright violet-blue spike, carefully angled away from his best guess for the position of Nightshade. The acceleration would certainly have crushed him had he remained aboard. He watched until even that spike of light had become the slightest pale scratch against the stars, until the point where he blinked and lost it altogether.

He was alone, about as truly alone as it was possible to be.

As rapid as the corvette’s acceleration now was, it was nothing that the ship could not sustain. In a few hours the burn would take it to a point in space and give it a velocity consistent with its last recorded position as determined by Nightshade. The drive would ramp down then, back to a thrust level consistent with carrying a human passenger. Skade would redetect the corvette’s flame, but she would also see that the flame was flickering with some irregularity, indicating an unstable fusion burn. That, at least, was what Clavain hoped she would think.

For the last fifteen hours of his flight he had pushed the corvette’s motors as hard as he could, deliberately circumventing the safety overrides. With all the excess mass aboard the corvette — weapons, fuel, life-support mechanisms — the corvette’s effective acceleration ceiling had not been far above his own physiological tolerance limit. It had been prudent to accelerate as hard as he could stand, of course, but Clavain had also wanted Skade to think that he was pushing things just slightly too hard.

He had known that she must be watching his flame, studying it for any hint of a mistake on his part. So, by tapping into the engine-management system he had introduced evidence of an imminent failure mode. He had forced the engine to operate erratically, cycling its temperature, allowing unfused impurities to clot the exhaust, showing every sign that it was about to blow.