"What?"
"It turns out that our estimates of the Serke situation were not quite right. They have no direct contact with the alien. What they have is a very large alien ship orbiting a planet. They have been studying it and appropriating from it, while they wait for its builders to come looking for it."
"But ... "
"Give me a chance, Marika. There is a story. I'd better tell it so you know what I'm talking about."
"I think you'd better. Starting from the beginning."
"All right. Here it is. Way back, a venturesome Serke Mistress of the Ship ... "
"Kher-Thar Prevallin?"
"Exactly. That most famous of the farwanderers. A legend of our own times. But if you keep interrupting you will never hear the story."
"Sorry."
"Way back, Kher-Thar decided she wanted to see what lay on the far side of the dust cloud. While she was passing through she decided to rest her bath at a particular world. An almost optimally friendly one, by all accounts. After several days down she had just reached orbital distance departing when the alien ship appeared, I take it out of the Up-and-Over. The way I was told, it was not there one moment, and there the next. It detected the darkship and gave chase. Out of curiosity, apparently."
Marika grumbled beneath her breath. He was stretching it.
"No. There was no evidence the creatures aboard were hostile. But Kher-Thar, you will recall, was not known for her cool head. She panicked. Thinking she was being attacked, she attacked first. The aliens were unable to deal with her, though she was not known for the strength of her talent for the dark side. The aliens abandoned the chase. Kher-Thar scrambled into the Up-and-Over and scurried home, nearly killing her bath."
"I always thought she was overrated. She was a total misfit, which is why the Serke put up with her wandering in the first place. They wanted her out of their fur."
"You would understand that better than I."
"Vicious, Bagnel. Tell your story."
"Let me."
"Well?"
"The aliens who survived Kher-Thar's attack managed to get their ship into a stable orbit around the planet, but could not save themselves. When Kher-Thar returned, accompanied by a horde of Serke investigators, they were all dead. The investigators knew the importance of their find, but could make no sense of it. After long and often savage debate their ruling council voted to ask the dark-faring brethren bonds for help. Ever since, for more than twenty years, they have been studying the alien ship, appropriating equipment and technology, and waiting for another ship to come looking for the first."
"Why do they think one will come? We seldom send anyone to look for a lost darkship."
"I am not certain. But they are convinced one will. Perhaps because of the investment such a vessel would represent. The prisoners said it is huge. That for us to build it would take an effort on the scale of the mirror project."
"Then everything they did to us in the Ponath was purely on speculation? They might have gotten nothing at all for their trouble?"
"Apparently. Even under truthsaying the prisoners insist that no meth has ever met one of the aliens alive."
"Idiots."
"Maybe. You don't know how you would have reacted in identical circumstances. One like your Gradwohl, obsessed with making the Reugge Community into a power, might have done the same. Or worse. You dare not fault the Serke without faulting all silth. They were being silth."
"I will not argue that. I will only say they behaved in the most stupid fashion possible in being silth. And they continue in their stupidity. All those years and no ship has come? And they have not given up?"
"How long have you been looking for them?"
"More years than some care to count. Grauel and Barlog are not happy with me."
"It is the only hope they have left, Marika. If the aliens do not come, sooner or later you will. And, as I said, they are afraid Bestrei is no longer what she was.
"Suppose that ship was an explorer, the same as Kher-Thar's? With no more fixed a routine than hers? Suppose she had been lost instead? How long have you looked, knowing the place existed?"
"Even so ... I suppose I understand."
"So I think you should go on looking, though I am sure the search is wearing. You have to be getting closer, if only by the process of elimination. But so must the aliens. I wouldn't like to guess what might happen if the Serke were to make common cause with them."
"The weapons that destroyed TelleRai."
"Not to mention those mounted on the ships the rogues used. We have studied those endlessly, from fragments we captured, and we can make no sense of them. I fear we are just too far away in knowledge and technology. They might as well be your witchcraft. Nevertheless, brethren in the sciences believe larger weapons of the same sort could be used against planetary targets."
"I will admit I have been tempted to give up the hunt."
"I thought so when I saw you, Marika. You look tired. As if you're ready to accept defeat. But enough of that. I really did not come here on business. I'm dedicated to carrying out my orders, which are to spend a few months without worrying."
"How is the project coming?"
"Seventy percent completion on the leading mirror. Forty on the trailing. The orbitals for making fine and local adjustments are in place. We're getting almost forty percent of peak output. I understand that they have begun to have an effect. There was no measurable advance of the permafrost line this past winter."
"How far did it get?"
"Almost to the tropics. Well past Ruhaack. But it should begin to fall back soon. If the dust gets no thicker. And the probes we have run in the direction the sun is moving show no increase in density along the path to be followed for the next five hundred years. I think we will win the battle against the long winter. And, though you have spent very little time on it since you got it going, you will be remembered as the dam of the project."
"I am not much concerned about how the future recalls me, so long as there is a future. And I am still battling for it out here. In a hunt that, I am sure, will not be in vain, and that will not last much longer."
Bagnel bowed his head as if to mask his expression.
"Well, tradermale. Adventurer. Want to make it a working holiday? I can squeeze another body onto my darkship. You could be the first male ever to see new worlds."
III Bagnel stepped down off the darkship and surveyed the encampment with the look of one returning home. "I'll confess this, Marika. I never once worried about the project."
Marika lifted a lip in amusement. "It could not have been that bad. It wasn't the same as traveling in High Night Rider?"
"No. It was not the same. As you know perfectly well. It was more like falling forever. It was more unnerving than riding a darkship at home. There is something under your feet there, even if it is several thousand feet down. Still ... "
"What is that look in your eye?" Marika kept one eye on her bath and Grauel and Barlog, making sure they made sure the darkship was being readied for its next journey. She ruled the base strictly. She insisted all darkships be ready to lift at a moment's notice. The Serke could strike at any time. Would strike, she suspected, if they knew where to find her. She was stuck to their trail like the stubbornest hunting arft.
"Wonder, I suppose. I have to admit that, harrowing as it was, the experience touched something in me. I could develop a taste for exploration."
"Give up the mirrors, then. I am here. The darkship is here."
He looked at her narrowly, startled and tempted. "I think not, Marika. Your sisters would not understand."
"I suppose not. It was just a thought. Maybe someday. When the project is complete. When the Serke have been disposed of. When the aliens have been found and some sort of accommodation with them has been reached. Wouldn't it be in the grand tradition for us to fly away and never be seen again?"
He picked it up as a game. "Yes. We could just go on exploring, skipping from star to star, forever. We might be touched occasionally, in the far distance, and rumors would rise about a ghost darkship flitting out on the edge of the void. Young, fresh Mistresses would bring their darkships out to hunt the legend."