Redemption Ark

‘I’m not sure. I suppose the radar might be confused, picking up a false return from our wake vortex. I could switch to a focused active sweep, but I really don’t want to provoke anything I don’t have to. I suggest we get away from here while we still can. I’m a firm believer in listening to warnings.’

Thorn tapped the console. ‘And how do I know that you didn’t arrange for that bogey to appear?’

She laughed the sudden, nervous laugh of a person caught completely unawares. ‘I didn’t, believe me.’

Thorn nodded, sensing that she was telling the truth — or at least lying very well indeed. ‘Perhaps not. But I still want you to steer us towards the impact site, Ana. I’m not leaving until I see what’s happening here.’

‘You’re serious, aren’t you?’ She waited for him to answer, but Thorn said nothing, looking at her unflinchingly. ‘All right,’ Vuilleumier said finally. ‘We’ll get close enough that you can see things for yourself. But no closer than that. And if that other thing shows any signs of coming nearer, we’re out of here. Got that?’

‘Of course,’ he said mildly. ‘What do you think I am, suicidal?’

Vuilleumier plotted an approach. The impact point was moving at thirty kilometres per second relative to Roc’s atmosphere, its pace determined by the orbital motion of the moon that was extruding the tube. They came in from the rear, shadowing the impact point, increasing their speed. The hull contorted itself again, dealing with the increasing Mach numbers; all the while the smudge on the passive radar lingered behind them, shifting in and out of clarity, sometimes vanishing entirely, but never moving relative to their own position.

‘I feel lighter,’ Thorn said.

‘You will. We’re nearly orbiting again. If we went much faster I’d have to apply thrust to hold us down.’

In the wake of the impact the atmosphere was curdled and turbulent, rare chemistries staining cloud layers with sooty reds and vermilions. Lightning flickered from horizon to horizon, arcing across the sky in stuttering silver bridges as transient charge differentials were smoothed out. Furious eddies whirled like dervishes. The ship’s manifold passive sensors probed ahead, groping for a trajectory between the worst of the storms.

‘I don’t see the tube yet,’ Thorn said.

‘You won’t, not until we’re much closer. It’s only thirteen kilometres across, and I doubt that we could see more than a hundred kilometres in any direction even without the storm.’

‘Do you have any idea what they’re doing?’

‘I wish I did.’

‘Planetary engineering, obviously. They ripped apart three worlds for this, Ana. They must mean business.’

They continued their approach, the ride becoming rougher. Vuilleumier dipped them up and down by tens of kilometres, until she decided not to risk any further use of the Doppler radar. Thereafter she held a steady altitude, the ship bucking and shaking as it slammed through vortices and shear walls. Alarms went off every other minute, and now and again Vuilleumier would swear and tap a rapid sequence of commands into the control panel. The air around them was growing pitch-dark. Mighty black clouds billowed and surged, contorted into looming visceral shapes. Thunderheads larger than cities whipped past in an instant. Ahead, the air pulsed and blazed with constant electrical discharges: blinding forked white branches and twisting sheets of baby blue. They were flying into a small pocket of hell.

‘Doesn’t seem like quite such a good idea now, does it?’ Vuilleumier commented.

‘Never mind,’ Thorn said. ‘Just keep us on this heading. The bogey hasn’t come any closer, has it? Maybe it was just a reflection from our wake.’ As he spoke, something else snared Vuilleumier’s attention on the console. An alarm started whooping, a chorus of multilingual voices shouting incomprehensible warning messages.

‘Mass sensor says there’s something up ahead, seventy-odd kilometres distant,’ she said. ‘Elongated, I think — the field geometry’s cylindrical, with an inverse «r» attenuation. That’s got to be our baby.’

‘How long until we see it?’

‘We’ll be there in five minutes. I’m slowing our rate of approach. Hold on.’

Thorn pitched forwards in his seat restraints as Vuilleumier killed the speed. He counted out five minutes, then another five. The smudge on the passive radar display held its relative position, slowing as they did. Strangely, the ride became even smoother. The clouds began to thin out; the savage electrical activity became little more than a constant distant strobing on either side of them. There was a horrible sense of unreality about it.

‘Air pressure’s dropping,’ Vuilleumier said. ‘I think there must be a low-pressure wake behind the tube. It’s slicing through the atmosphere super-sonically, so that the air can’t immediately rush around and close the gap. We’re inside the Mach cone of the tube, as if we were flying right behind a supersonic aircraft.’

‘You sound like you know what you’re talking about — for an Inquisitor, anyway.’