Redemption Ark

‘Have you studied the object lately, Captain?’

Of course he had. He still had morbid curiosity, if nothing else. He had watched the Inhibitors dismantle the gas giant with ridiculous ease, spinning it apart like a child’s toy. He had seen the dense shadows of new machines coming into existence in the nebula of liberated matter, components as vast as worlds themselves. Embedded in the glowing skein of the nebula, they resembled tentative, half-formed embryos. Clearly the machines would soon assemble into something even larger. It was, perhaps, possible to guess what it would look like. The largest component was a trumpet-shaped maw, two thousand kilometres wide and six thousand kilometres deep. The other shapes, the Captain judged, would plug into the back of this gigantic blunderbuss.

It was a single machine, nothing like the extended ring-shaped structures that the Inhibitors had thrown around the gas giant. A single machine that could maim a star, or so Volyova believed. Captain John Brannigan almost thought it would be worth staying alive to see what the machine would do. ‘I’ve studied it,’ he told Volyova.

‘It’s nearly finished, I think. A matter of months, perhaps, maybe less, and it will be ready. That’s why we can’t take any chances.’

‘You mean the cache?’

He sensed her trepidation. ‘You told me you would consider letting me use it, Captain. Is that still the case?’

He let her sweat before answering. She really did not appear to know about the laser signal. He was certain it would have been the first thing on her mind had she noticed it.

He asked, ‘Isn’t there some risk in using the cache, Ilia, when we have come so far without being attacked?’

‘There’s even more risk in leaving it too late.’

‘I imagine Khouri and Thorn were less than enthusiastic about hitting back now if the exodus is proceeding according to plan.’

‘They’ve moved barely two thousand people off the surface, Captain — one per cent of the total. It’s no more than a gesture. Yes, things will move more quickly once the government is handling the operation. But there will be a great deal more civil unrest, too. That’s why we have to consider a pre-emptive strike against the Inhibitors.’

‘We would surely draw their fire,’ he pointed out. ‘Their weapons would destroy me.’

‘We have the cache.’

‘It has no defensive value, Ilia.’

‘Well, I’ve thought about that,’ she said testily. ‘We’ll deploy the weapons at a distance of several light-hours from this ship. They can move themselves into position before we activate them, just like they did against the Hades artefact.’

There was no need to remind her that the attack against the Hades artefact had gone less than swimmingly. But, in fairness to Volyova, it was not the weapons themselves that had let her down.

He groped for another token objection. He must not appear too willing, or she would begin to have suspicions. ‘What if they were traced back to us… to me?’

‘By then we’ll have inflicted a decisive blow. If there is a response, we’ll worry about it then.’

‘And the weapons that you had in mind…?’

‘Details, Captain, details. You can leave that part to me. All you have to do is assign control of them to me.’

‘All thirty-three weapons?’

‘No… that won’t be necessary. Just the ones I’ve earmarked for use. I don’t plan to throw everything against the Inhibitors. As you kindly reminded me, we may need some weapons later, to deal with any reprisal.’

‘You’ve thought all this through, haven’t you?’

‘Let’s just say there have always been contingency plans,’ she told him. Then her tone of voice changed expectantly. ‘Captain, one final thing.’

He hesitated before replying. Here, perhaps, it came. She was going to ask him about the laser signal spraying repeatedly against his hull, the signal that he had been very unwilling to bring to her attention.

‘Go on, Ilia,’ he said, heavy-hearted.

‘I don’t suppose you’ve got any more of those cigarettes, have you?’

CHAPTER 30