Redemption Ark

There had been thirty-three before she had left for Resurgam. Volyova had deployed eight of them before the Captain tried to destroy himself. But just from the paucity of hovering shapes, Khouri could see that there were a lot fewer than twenty-five weapons left here. She counted the hovering shapes and then counted again, steering her suit deeper into the chamber just in case there was a problem with the transponder. But her first suspicion had been correct. There were only thirteen weapons left aboard Nostalgia for Infinity. Twenty of the damned things were unaccounted for.

Except she knew exactly where they were, didn’t she? Eight were outside somewhere, and so — presumably — were the other twelve that had gone missing. And, very probably, they were halfway across the system, responsible for at least some of the glints and flashes she had seen from the shuttle.

Volyova — or someone, anyway — had thrown twenty cache weapons into battle against the Inhibitors.

And it was anyone’s guess who was winning.

Know thine enemy, Clavain thought.

Except he didn’t know his enemy at all.

He was alone on the bridge of Zodiacal Light, sitting in rapt concentration. With his eyes nearly closed and his forehead creased by habitual worry lines, he resembled a chess master about to make the most vital move of his career. Beyond the steeple of his fingers hung a projected form: a deeply nested composite view of the lighthugger that held the long-lost weapons.

He recalled what Skade had told him, back in the Mother Nest. The evidence trail pointed to this ship being Nostalgia for Infinity; her commander most likely a woman named Ilia Volyova. He could even remember the picture of the woman that Skade had shown him. But even if that evidence trail was correct, and he really would be dealing with Volyova, it told him almost nothing. The only thing he could trust was what he learned with his own extended senses, in the present.

The image before him composited all salient tactical knowledge of the enemy craft. Its details were constantly shifting and re-layering as Zodiacal Lights intelligence-gathering systems improved their guesswork. Long baseline inter-ferometry teased out the electromagnetic profile of the ship across the entire spectrum from soft gamma rays to low-frequency radio. At all wavelengths the backscatter of radiation was perplexing, making the interpretive software crash or come up with nonsensical guesses. Clavain had to intervene every time the software threw up another absurd interpretation. For some reason the software kept insisting that the vessel resembled some weird fusion of ship, cathedral and sea urchin. Clavain could see the underlying form of a plausible spacecraft, and had to constantly nudge the software away from its more outlandish solution minima. He could only imagine that the lighthugger had cloaked itself in a shell of confusing material, like the obfuscatory clouds that Rust Belt habitats occasionally employed.

The alternative — that the software was correct, and that he was merely enforcing his own expectations on it — was too unnerving to consider.

There was a knock against the frame of the door.

He turned around with a stiff whirr of his exoskeleton. ‘Yes?’

Antoinette Bax stalked into the room, followed by Xavier. They both wore exoskeletons as well, though they had ornamented theirs with swirls of luminous paint and welded-on baroquework. Clavain had observed a lot of that amongst his crew, especially amongst Scorpio’s army, and had seen no reason to enforce a more disciplined regime. Privately, he welcomed anything that instilled a sense of camaraderie and purpose.

‘What is it, Antoinette?’ Clavain asked.

‘There’s something we wanted to discuss, Clavain.’

‘It’s about the attack,’ Xavier Liu added.

Clavain nodded and made the effort of a smile. ‘If we are very lucky, there won’t be one. The crew will see reason and hand over the weapons, and we can go home without firing a shot.’

Of course, that outcome was looking less likely by the hour. He had already learned from the weapon traces that twenty of them had been dispersed from the ship, leaving only thirteen aboard. Worse than that, the specific diagnostic patterns suggested that some of the weapons had actually been activated. Three of the patterns had even vanished in the last eight hours of shiptime. He didn’t know what to make of that, but he had a nasty feeling that he knew exactly what it meant.

‘And if they don’t hand them over?’ Antoinette asked, easing into a seat.

‘Then some force may be in order,’ Clavain said.

Xavier nodded. ‘That’s what we figured.’

‘I hope it will be brief and decisive,’ Clavain said. ‘And I have every expectation that it will be. Scorpio’s preparations have been thorough. Remontoire’s technical assistance has been invaluable. We have a well-trained assault force and the weapons to back them up.’