The asteroids grew smaller and dwindled away to the rear and the last phase of the journey began, the crossing of space between the Belt and Horus 5. Foord called for the adoption of the final stages of battle stations. Bulkheads slid across corridors to seal off the Bridge and the burrows of the ship’s nine other inhabited sections—no more than a ritual gesture, since each section was self-sustaining and its functions could be transferred elsewhere if damaged, and in any case Foord tended to run his ship as if the bulkheads were always there. On the Bridge, and in the sub-centres of each inhabited section, seats configured to full harness. Communications were shut off, except through Foord. The Codex told its sentience cores to tell the onboard computers to ignore everything outside the mission parameters. Finally, the ship switched to a navigational sphere of reference of which it was the centre.
Until further notice, the ship designated itself the centre of the universe.
The caretaker went out into the darkened hallway. He had put a lot of time and care into his preparations, as he always did. He had forgotten the tenants of the twenty-nine apartments who summoned him when they heard footsteps in the hall and on the stairs; it was their business to speculate about the cause and origin of the footsteps, his to make sure they were never heard again.
7
Horus 5 clamoured over all wavelengths. It boiled with upheavals—gravitational, magnetic, ionospheric, volcanic, tectonic—and continued to exist because of them, borrowing and re-borrowing its existence from the accountancy which decreed that creation and destruction must balance each other. The red upper levels of its atmosphere were shot with lightning and swirling with vortexes; at its surface there was enough pressure to liquefy rock, and more heat than had ever filtered down from Horus; and in the purple and ochre of its middle atmosphere it bred new hydrocarbon-based lifeforms to replace the old ones it was destroying. They were strange and beautiful things, tinting the thick atmosphere as they slid through it. It was said they were sentient, and lived in family groups.
Horus 5 would still have clamoured if nobody was there to hear it, but now it had the Charles Manson, floating almost at rest just inside its orbit; and something else, perhaps not unlike the Charles Manson, floating at absolute rest just outside. The Charles Manson was approaching very slowly, on a course which kept the planet between them.
“Status reports, please.”
“Nothing, Commander,” Thahl said. “Sakhra has not attempted to communicate. Neither has Faith.”
“All our probes have been blocked, but otherwise She’s inert,” Joser said. “And shrouded. We’ve detected no probes from Her. Her position is 99-98-96 and—”
“Use the self-centred sphere of reference from now on, please,” Foord said with a trace of impatience.
“I’m sorry, Commander. Her position is 09-07-09 and holding.”
“Proceeding on ion drive at one percent,” Kaang said. “At a range 1.91 from Horus 5.”
“All weapons are at…” Cyr began.
There was a hiss of static from Horus 5. It ceased abruptly, and the Bridge returned to its customary near-silence.
Cyr glanced pointedly at Thahl, and waited.
“I’m sorry, that was an unusually big atmospheric discharge.”
“Are you sure,” Foord asked Thahl, “that’s all it was?”
“Yes, Commander.” Since they were not in private, Thahl did not bristle at the question, except privately. “It coincided with an upper atmospheric prominence on the planet. I’ve adjusted the filters.”
“Thank you. Cyr, please continue.”
“All weapons are at immediate readiness, Commander.”
“All drives,” Smithson said, “are at immediate readiness.”
“Including MT?” Foord asked quickly. “She might head out of the system, not in.”
“Yes, Commander, I know that. I said, All drives.”
Foord glanced up at the Bridge screen, the entire front semicircle of which was taken up by Horus 5. The planet’s upper atmosphere was purple and ochre and, predominantly, dark red; it was heavily filtered but it still bloodwashed the Bridge, almost but not quite matching the shade of the red Battle telltales which glowed politely from each console. Foord had seen many gas giants before, some more spectacular than this one—they were common in the outer reaches of main-sequence systems like Horus—and he was accustomed to being able to gaze directly into their faces for as long as he wanted. With this one, however, he couldn’t quite. He looked away, frowning.
“Joser, can you increase the screen filtering, please? I still find that light a little livid…Thank you.”
“Range now 1.88 from Horus 5, Commander,” Kaang said. “Do you wish us to come to a halt yet?”
“Not yet, thank you. I’d prefer to be a little closer, say 1.85 or less…Thahl, about that burst of static just now.”
“Yes, Commander, I’ve made the adjustments.”
“Thank you. I just want to be sure that That Planet,” he lounged in his seat against the backdrop of Horus 5 and talked about it as if he was talking about someone at a neighbouring restaurant table, and intending to be overheard, “doesn’t intrude into conversations on the Bridge. That’s all.”
They didn’t balk at his obsessiveness, even now when they were about to engage the strangest opponent they would ever face; in fact, to some extent they shared it.
She was motionless, and inert on all wavelengths. They could easily bend their long-range viewers around the planet, as (presumably) could She; but there was nothing to see, because She was shrouded. She always went shrouded into engagements, only becoming visible later, usually at some point of maximum psychological impact. The shrouding didn’t hide Her drive emissions, so if She moved, She could be tracked; but when She didn’t move, as now, She was invisible.
The Bridge screen had patched in a small insert showing a simulation of the other side of Horus 5, with a white dot marking Her position, and Foord looked at it and thought, Whatever happens next I’ve won the first point; I knew you’d wait. I would, if I was you.
“Our range from Horus 5 is now 1.85, Commander,” Kaang said.
“Thank you. Disengage ion drive and bring us to rest, please.”
With an almost insolent lack of haste, and a negligent precision like that of a diner’s fork suspended between mouth and plate during conversation, the Charles Manson brought itself to rest relative to Horus 5. The move was accomplished by the disengagement of ion drive—as always, Kaang made it barely perceptible—and a brief fountaining of manoeuvre drives round the front and midsection of the hull.
Soon, thought Foord, it will start. The two of us are already closer to each other than we’ve ever been.
He looked round at Cyr and Smithson. “Commence launch procedures, please.” It was a strangely low-key start to an engagement which, he knew, would either end his life or change it.
From a series of small bays near the ship’s nose, a swarm of slender objects slid out horizontally. From a larger ventral bay a single object, of a much different shape and size, dropped vertically towards the planet.
•
A few days earlier, when the Charles Manson had made planetfall at Sakhra, and before he had gone up to Hrissihr, Foord had attended one of Swann’s welcome receptions—as it turned out, the only one he would attend. It was a large-scale event, with figures from lowlands business, media, political and military circles. It was held in a ballroom in one of the exquisite civic buildings which Foord had seen on his way through the Bowl; this one was the Friendship House at Three Bridges, a few miles outside Blentport. Foord was there with his Bridge officers and a few other crew members. Each of them performed as they usually did on such occasions.