Redemption Ark

It was an hour since he had begun the attack, and he had never seriously expected that it would do more than occupy the Triumvir’s time, diverting her attention away from the other elements of the attack. If one of the slugs had hit her ship it would have delivered about a kilotonne of kinetic energy on impact; enough to cripple the lighthugger, perhaps even to rip it open, but not enough to destroy it entirely. There remained a chance of success — four slugs were still on their way — but the Triumvir had already shown every indication that she could deal with this particular threat. Clavain felt little in the way of regret; more a sense of quiet relief that they were past the negotiating stage and into the infinitely more honest arena of actual battle. He suspected that the Triumvir felt likewise.

Felka and Remontoire were floating next to him in the observation cupola, which was decoupled from the spinning part of the ship. Now that Zodiacal Light had slowed to a halt on the edge of the battle volume they no longer had need of their exoskeletons, and Clavain felt oddly vulnerable without his.

‘Disappointed, Clavain?’ asked Remontoire.

‘No. As a matter of fact I’m reassured. If anything feels too easy, I start looking for a trap.’

Remontoire nodded. ‘She’s no fool, that’s for certain, no matter what she’s done to her ship. You still don’t believe that story about an evacuation attempt, I take it?’

‘There’s more reason to believe it now than there was before,’ Felka said. ‘Isn’t that right, Clavain? We’ve seen shuttles moving between surface and orbit.’

‘That’s all we’ve seen,’ Clavain said.

‘And a larger ship moving between orbit and the lighthugger,’ she continued. ‘What more evidence do we need that she’s sincere?’

‘It doesn’t necessarily indicate an evacuation programme,’ Clavain said through gritted teeth. ‘It could be many things.’

‘So give her the benefit of the doubt,’ Felka said.

Clavain turned to her, brimming with sudden fury but hoping that it did not show. ‘It’s her choice. She has the weapons. They’re all I want.’

‘The weapons won’t make any difference in the long run.’

Now he made no attempt to hide his anger. ‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’

‘Exactly what I said. I know, Clavain. I know that everything that is happening here, everything that means so much to you, to us, means precisely nothing in the long run.’

‘And this pearl of wisdom came from the Wolf, did it?’

‘You know I brought a part of it back from Skade’s ship.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘And that means I have all the more reason to disregard anything you say, Felka.’

She hauled herself to one side of the cupola and disappeared through the exit hole, back into the main body of the ship. Clavain opened his mouth to call after her, to say something in apology. Nothing came.

‘Clavain?’

He looked at Remontoire. ‘What, Rem?’

‘The first hyperfast missiles will be arriving in a minute.’

Antoinette saw the first wave of hyperfast missiles streak past, overtaking Storm Bird with a velocity differential of nearly a thousand kilometres per second. There had been four missiles in the spread, and although they passed around her ship on all four sides, they converged ahead an instant later, the flares of their exhausts meeting like the lines in a perspective sketch.

Two minutes later another wave passed to starboard, and then a third slipped by to port, much further out, three minutes after that.

‘Holy shit,’ she whispered. ‘We’re not just playing war, are we?’

‘Scared?’ Xavier asked, pressed into the seat beside hers.

‘More than scared.’ She had already been back into the body of Storm Bird, inspecting the ferociously armoured assault squad she carried in her ship’s cargo bay. ‘But that’s good. Dad always said…’

‘Be scared if you aren’t scared. Yeah.’ Xavier nodded. ‘That was one of his.’

‘Actually

They both looked at the console.

‘What, Ship?’ asked Antoinette.

‘Actually, that was one of mine. But your father liked it enough to steal it from me. I took that as a compliment.’

‘So Lyle Merrick actually said…’ Xavier began.

‘Yes.’

‘No shit?’ Antoinette said.

‘No shit, Little Miss.’

The last wave of slugs was still on its way when Clavain escalated to the next level of his attack against Volyova. Again, there was no element of surprise. But there almost never was in space war, where hiding places and opportunities for camouflage were so few and far between. One could plan, and strategise, and hope that the enemy missed the obvious or subtle traps buried in the placement of one’s forces, but in every other respect war in space was a game of total transparency. It was war between enemies who could safely each assume the other to be omniscient. Like a game of chess, the outcome could often be guessed after only a few moves had been made, especially if the opponents were unevenly matched.