Redemption Ark

‘I’ll take care of the evacuees,’ Clavain said, moved at what had just happened. He nodded at Khouri as well. ‘You have my word on that. I promise you I will not let you down, Triumvir.’

Volyova dismissed him with one weary wave of her hand. ‘I believe you. You appear to be a man who gets things done, Clavain.’

He scratched his beard. ‘Then there’s just one other thing.’

‘The weapons? Who gets them in the end? Well, don’t worry. I’ve already thought of that.’

He waited, studying the series of abstract grey curves that was the Triumvir’s bed-ridden form.

‘Here’s my proposal,’ she said, her voice as thin as the wind. ‘It happens to be non-negotiable.’ Then her attention flicked to Antoinette again. ‘You. What did you say your name was?’

‘Bax,’ Antoinette said, almost stuttering on her answer.

‘Mm.’ The Triumvir sounded as if this was the least interesting thing she had heard in her life. ‘And this ship of yours… this freighter… is it really as large and fast as is claimed?’

She shrugged. ‘I suppose so.’

‘Then I’ll take it as well. You won’t need it once we’ve finished evacuating the planet. You’d just better make sure you get the job done before I die.’

Clavain looked at Bax, and then back to the Triumvir. ‘What do you want her ship for, Ilia?’

‘Glory,’ Volyova said dismissively. ‘Glory and redemption. What else did you imagine?’

Antoinette Bax sat alone on the bridge of her ship, the ship that had been hers and her father’s before that, the ship that she had loved once and hated once, the ship that was as much a part of her as her own flesh, and knew that this would be the last time. For better or for worse, nothing would be the same from this moment on. It was time to finish the process that had begun with that trip from Carousel New Copenhagen to honour a ridiculous and stupid childhood vow. For all its foolishness it had been a vow born out of kindness and love, and it had taken her into the heart of the war and into the great crushing machine of history itself. Had she known — had she had the merest inkling of what would happen, of how she would become embroiled in Clavain’s story, a story that had been running for centuries before her birth and which would see her yanked out of her own environment and flung light-years from home and decades into the future — then perhaps she might have quailed. Perhaps. But she might also have stared into the face of fear and been filled with an even more stubborn determination to do what she had promised herself all those years ago. It was, Antoinette thought, entirely possible that she would have done just that. Once a stubborn bitch, always a stubborn bitch — and if that wasn’t her personal motto, it was about time she adopted it. Her father might not have approved, but she was sure that in his heart of hearts he would have agreed and perhaps even admired her for it.

‘Ship?’

‘Yes, Antoinette?’

‘It’s all right, you know. I don’t mind. You can still call me Little Miss.’

‘It was only ever an act.’ Beast — or Lyle Merrick, more properly — paused. I did it rather well, wouldn’t you say?‘

‘Dad was right to trust you. You did look after me, didn’t you?’

‘As well as I was able to. Which wasn’t as well as I hoped. But then again, you didn’t exactly make it easy. I suppose that was inevitable, given the family connection. Your father was not exactly the most cautious of individuals, and you are very much a chip off the old block.’

‘We came through, Ship,’ Antoinette said. ‘We still came through. That has to count for something, doesn’t it?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Ship… Lyle…’

‘Antoinette?’

‘You know what the Triumvir wants, don’t you?’

Merrick did not answer her for several seconds. All her life she had imagined that the pauses were inserted cosmetically into the subpersona’s conversation, but she knew now that they had been quite real. Merrick’s simulation experienced consciousness at a rate very close to normal human thought, so his pauses indicated genuine introspection.

‘Xavier did inform me, yes.’

Antoinette was glad at least that she did not have to reveal that particular piece of the arrangement. ‘When the evacuation is done, when we’ve got as many people away from the planet as we can, then the Triumvir wants to use Storm Bird for herself. She says it’s for glory and redemption. It sounds like a suicide mission, Lyle.’

I more or less came to the same conclusion as well, Antoinette.‘ Merrick’s synthesised voice was quite unnervingly calm. ’She’s dying, so I gather, so I suppose it isn’t suicide in the old sense… but that’s a fairly pointless distinction. I gather she wishes to make amends for her past.‘

‘Khouri, the other woman, says she isn’t the monster the people on the planet make out.’ Antoinette struggled to keep her own voice as level and collected as Merrick’s. They were skirting around something dreadful, orbiting an absence neither wished to acknowledge. ‘But I guess she must have done some bad stuff in the past anyway.’