Redemption Ark

‘You never said goodbye to me before you defected,’ she said.

‘I know.’ Clavain poked a finger into the folds of one eye. He looked weary, older than she remembered him from their last meeting. ‘I know, and I apologise. But it was deliberate. You’d have talked me out of it.’ His tone became accusatory. ‘Wouldn’t you?’

‘I only wanted you to take care of yourself. That was why I convinced you to join the Closed Council.’

‘On balance, that was probably a mistake, wasn’t it?’ His tone had softened. He was, she was reasonably certain, smiling.

‘If you call this taking care of yourself, then yes, I’d have to admit it wasn’t quite what I had in mind.’

‘Did Skade take care of you?’

‘She wanted me to help her. I didn’t. I became… withdrawn. I didn’t want to hear that she had killed you. She tried very hard, Clavain.’

‘I know.’

‘She has Galiana.’

‘I know that as well,’ he said. ‘Remontoire, Scorpio and I placed demolition charges across her ship. Even now we could destroy it, if I was prepared to delay our arrival at Resurgam.’

Felka forced herself into a sitting position. ‘Listen to me carefully, Clavain.’

‘I’m listening.’

‘You must kill Skade. It doesn’t matter that she has Galiana. It’s what Galiana would want you to do.’

‘I know,’ Clavain said. ‘But that doesn’t make it any easier to do.’

‘No.’ Felka raised her voice, not afraid to sound angry with the man who had just saved her. ‘No. You don’t understand. I mean it is exactly what Galiana would want you to do. I know, Clavain. I touched her mind again, when we met the Wolf.’

‘There’s no part of Galiana still there, Felka.’

‘There is. The Wolf did its best to hide her, but… I could sense her.’ She looked into his face, studying its ancient, latent mysteries. Of all the faces she knew, this was the one she had the least trouble recognising, but what exactly did that mean? Were they united by anything more than contingency, circumstance and shared history? She remembered how she had lied to Clavain about being his daughter. Nothing in his mood suggested that he had learned of that lie.

‘Felka

‘Listen to me, Clavain.’ She clasped his hand, squeezing it to demand his attention, ‘Listen to me. I never told you this before because it disturbed me too much. But in the Exordium experiments, I became aware of a mind reaching towards mine, from the future. I sensed unspeakable evil. But I also sensed something that I recognised. It was Galiana.’

‘No…’ Clavain said.

She squeezed his hand harder. ‘It’s the truth. But it wasn’t her fault. I see it now. It was her mind, after the Wolf had taken her over. Skade allowed the Wolf to participate in the experiments. She needed its advice about the machinery.’

Clavain shook his head. ‘The Wolf would never have collaborated with Skade.’

‘But it did. She convinced it that it needed to help her. That way she would recover the weapons, not you.’

‘How would that benefit the Wolf?’

‘It wouldn’t. But it was better that the weapons be seized by an agency that the Wolf had some influence over, rather than a third party like yourself. So it agreed to help her, knowing that it could always find a way to destroy the weapons once they were close at hand. I was there, Clavain, in its domain.’

‘The Wolf allowed that?’

‘It demanded it. Or rather, the part of it that was still Galiana did.’ Felka paused. She knew how difficult this must be for Clavain. It was agonising for her, and yet Galiana had meant even more to Clavain.

‘Then there would have to be a part of Galiana that still remembers us, is that what you mean? A part that still remembers what it was like before?’

‘She still remembers, Clavain. She still remembers, and she still feels.’ Again Felka paused, knowing that this was going to be the hardest part of all. ‘That’s why you have to do it.’

‘Do what?’

‘What you always planned to do before Skade told you that she had Galiana. You have to destroy the Wolf.’ Again she looked into his face, marvelling at its age, feeling sorrow for what she was doing to him. ‘You have to destroy the ship.’

‘But if I do that,’ Clavain said suddenly and excitedly, as if he had spotted a fatal flaw in Felka’s argument, ‘I’ll kill Galiana.’

‘I know,’ Felka said. ‘I know. But you still have to do it.’

‘You can’t know that.’

‘I can, and I do. I felt her, Clavain. I felt her willing you to do this.’

He watched it alone and in silence, from the vantage point of the observation cupola near Zodiacal Lights prow. He had given instructions that he was to remain undisturbed until he made himself available again, even though that might mean many hours of solitude.

After forty-five minutes his eyes had become highly dark-adapted. He stared into the sea of endless night behind his ship, waiting for the sign that the work was done. The occasional cosmic ray scratched a false trail across his vision, but he knew that the signature of the event would be different and impossible to mistake. Against that darkness, too, it would be unmissable.