Redemption Ark

‘Skade’s offered to turn Felka over provided I abandon the chase. She’ll drop her behind Nightshade, in a shuttle. At maximum burn it can shift to a rest frame we can reach with one of our shuttles.’

Remontoire nodded. Clavain sensed his friend thinking deeply, chewing over permutations and possibilities.

‘And if you refuse?’

‘She’ll still ditch Felka, but she won’t make it easy for us to catch her. At best, I’ll have to forfeit the chase to ensure a safe recovery. At worst, I’ll never find her. We’re in interstellar space, Rem. There’s a hell of a lot of nothing out there. With Skade’s flame ahead of us and ours behind, there are huge deadspots in our sensor coverage.’

There was another long silence while Remontoire thought again. He eased back on to the bed, assisting the flow of blood to his brain.

‘You can’t trust Skade, Clavain. She has absolutely no need to convince you of her sincerity, since she doesn’t think you’ll ever have anything she needs or anything that can hurt her. This is not a two-prisoner game, like they taught you back on Deimos.’

‘I must have scared her,’ Clavain said. ‘She wasn’t expecting us to catch up so easily.’

‘Even so…’ Remontoire hovered on the edge of saying something for several minutes.

‘You realise why I woke you now.’

‘Yes, I think I do. Run Seven was in a similar position to Skade when he had Irravel Veda on his tail, trying to get back her passengers.’

‘Seven made you serve him. You were forced to give him advice, tactics he could use against Irravel.’

‘It’s an entirely different situation, Clavain.’

‘There are enough similarities for me.’ Clavain made his frame elevate him to a standing position. ‘Here’s the picture, Rem. Skade will expect a response from me in a matter of days. You’re going to help me choose that response. Ideally, I want Felka back without losing sight of the objective.’

‘You thawed me out in desperation, then? Better the devil you know, as they say?’

‘You’re my oldest and closest friend, Rem. I just don’t know if I can trust you any more.’

‘And should the advice I give you be good…?’

‘That might put me in a more trusting frame of mind, I suppose.’ Clavain forced a smile. ‘Of course, I’d also have Felka’s advice on that as well.’

‘And if we fail?’

Clavain said nothing. He just turned and left.

* * *

Four small shuttles arced away from Zodiacal Light, each falling into its own half-hemisphere of the relativistically distorted starscape. The exhaust streams of the ships glittered in the backwash from Zodiacal Light’s main flames. The trajectories were achingly beautiful, flung out from the mother ship like the curved arms of a chandelier.

If only this wasn’t an action in a war, Clavain thought, then it might almost be something to be proud of …

He watched their departure from an observation cupola near the prow of his ship, feeling an obligation to wait until he could no longer make them out. Each shuttle carried a valued crewmember, plus a quota of fuel that he would rather not have had to spend before reaching Resurgam. If all went well, Clavain would get back the four shuttles and their crew. But he would never see most of the fuel again. There was only a tiny margin of error, enough that one ship could bring back a human-mass payload in addition to its pilot.

He hoped he was playing this one correctly.

It was said that the taking of hard decisions was something that became easier with repetition, like any difficult activity. There was, perhaps, some truth in that assertion. But if so, Clavain found that it most certainly did not apply in his own case. He had taken several extraordinarily difficult decisions lately, and each had been, in its own unique way, harder than the last. So it was with the matter of Felka.

It was not that he did not want Felka back, if there was a way that could be achieved. But Skade knew how much he wanted the weapons as well. She also knew that it was not a selfish issue with Clavain. He could not be bargained with in the usual sense, since he did not want the weapons for his own personal gain. But with Felka she had the perfect instrument of negotiation. She knew that the two of them had a special bond, one that went back to Mars. Was Felka really his daughter? He didn’t know, even now. He had convinced himself that she might be, and she had told him she was… but that had been under possible duress, when she had been trying to persuade him not to defect. If anything, that admission had only served to slowly undermine his own certainties. He would not know for sure until he was again in her presence, and he could ask her properly.