Redemption Ark

Volyova emerged from contemplation of her battlescape. The icons floated within the squashed sphere of the projection like dozens of bright frozen fish. The view had changed since the last time she had seen it, Khouri was certain.

‘What is it, child?’

‘It’s the holding bay, where we have the newcomers.’

‘Continue.’

‘It’s not designed to deal with the ship moving under thrust. We built it as a temporary holding bay, to be used while we were parked. It’s spun for gravity so that the force acts radially, away from the ship’s long axis. But now that’s changing. The Captain’s applying thrust, so we’ve got a new source acting along the axis. It’s only a fifth of a gee at the moment, but you can bet it’s going to get worse. We can turn off the spin, but that won’t change things. The walls are becoming floors.’

‘This is a lighthugger, Khouri. This is a normal transition to starflight mode.’

‘You don’t understand, Ilia. We’ve got two thousand people crammed into one chamber, and they can’t stay there. They’re already freaking out because the floor is sloping so much. They feel as if they’re on the deck of a sinking ship, and no one is telling them anything’s wrong.’ She paused; she was a little out of breath. ‘Ilia, here’s the deal. You were right about the bottleneck. I told Thorn to get things moving faster at the Resurgam end. That means we’re going to be getting thousands of people arriving very soon indeed. We always knew we’d have to start emptying the holding bay. Now we’ll just have to start doing it a bit sooner.’

‘But that would mean…’ Volyova appeared unable to complete the thought.

‘Yes, Ilia. They’re going to have to get the tour of the ship. Whether they like it or not.’

‘This could turn out very badly, Khouri. Very badly indeed.’

Khouri looked down at her old mentor. ‘You know what I like about you, Ilia? You’re such a frigging optimist.’

‘Shut up and take a look at the battle display, Khouri. We are under attack — or we will be very shortly.’

‘Clavain?’

The merest hint of a nod. ‘Zodiacal Light has released squadrons of attack craft, around a hundred in total. They’re headed here, most of them at three gees. They won’t take more than four hours to reach us, no matter what we do.’

‘Clavain can’t have those weapons, Ilia.’

The Triumvir, who now looked far older and frailer than Khouri ever remembered, shook her head by the barest degree. ‘He isn’t going to get them. Not without a fight.’

They exchanged ultimatums. Clavain gave Ilia Volyova one last chance to surrender the hell-class weapons; if she complied he would recall his attack fleet. Volyova told Clavain that if he did not recall his fleet immediately, she would turn the thirteen remaining weapons against him.

Clavain readied his response. ‘Sorry. Unacceptable. I need those weapons very badly.’

He transmitted it and was only slightly startled when the Triumvir’s answer came back three seconds later. It was identical to his own. There had not been enough time for her to see his response.

CHAPTER 35

Volyova watched five of the thirteen remaining cache weapons assume attack positions beyond Nostalgia for Infinity. Their coloured icons floated above her bed like the kinds of bauble that were used to amuse infants in cots. Volyova raised a hand and poked it through the ghostly representation, pushing against the icons, adjusting the positions of the weapons relative to her ship, using its hull for camouflage wherever possible. The icons moved stubbornly, reflecting the sluggish real-time movements of the weapons themselves.

‘Are you going to use them immediately?’ Khouri asked.

Volyova glanced at the woman. ‘No. Not yet. Not until he forces my hand. I don’t want the Inhibitors to know that there are more cache weapons than the twenty they already know about.’

‘You’ll have to use them eventually.’

‘Unless Clavain sees sense and realises he can’t possibly win. Maybe he will. It isn’t too late.’

‘But we don’t know anything about the kinds of weapons he has,’ Khouri said. ‘What if he has something equally powerful?’

‘It won’t make a blind bit of difference if he has, Khouri. He wants something from me, understand? I want nothing from him. That gives me a distinct advantage over Clavain.’

‘I don’t…’

Volyova sighed, disappointed that it was necessary to spell this out. ‘His strike against us has to be surgical. He can’t risk damaging the weapons he so badly wants. In crude terms, you don’t rob someone by dropping a crustbuster on them. But I’m bound by no such constraint. Clavain has nothing that I want.’