“Cyr?”
“The Breathtaker is on course and on schedule, Commander; just over seven hours to go. And functioning perfectly.” She glanced at Smithson.
Foord looked at the beaker on his chairarm; it was quite steady. Conceitedly, he thought it important not to look too much at the headups on the Bridge screen. If something happened, he didn’t want to look like he’d been waiting for it. So when it did, he wasn’t; he missed the first warning flicker of headup displays on the screen.
“Commander,” Joser said, “missiles Three, Eleven and Eighteen are gone.”
“How?”
“They’re just not there anymore. If She fired on them, we didn’t detect it.”
“Any pattern to it?”
“Not that we can see. They’re all on random orbits, and they weren’t close together. It seems as random as their launch pattern. And whatever She did, we didn’t detect it.”
“Yes, you said that. It’s still data, so no doubt your people will analyse it.”
“Yes, Commander.”
“Thank you. You can turn the alarms off now…and Joser, this is likely to happen again. Don’t sound the alarms each time.”
Two hours passed; then “Ten, Fourteen and Fifteen have gone, Commander. No attack on them was detected.”
Thirty-five minutes later, one more. Ten minutes, two more. Two hours, and getting closer to impact, two more. Fifteen minutes, and another seven. Fifty-five minutes, three more.
They tried, unsuccessfully, to discern some mathematical progression in the times and numbers of their destruction, or some spatial pattern determining which ones were destroyed, and how they were destroyed. Nothing. Especially about how they were destroyed.
Foord tried to tell himself that it was still data, that they could still analyse it and draw conclusions. But it wasn’t, and they couldn’t. She had given them nothing. She had stayed silent and shrouded, and yet twenty-one of their missiles, so far, were gone. This isn’t a simple military engagement. It’s already stranger than that, and will get stranger still.
“And the Breathtaker?”
“Still exactly on schedule and course, Commander. Now ninety-one minutes to go.”
Foord frowned slightly.
“Are all the readings from the Breathtaker satisfactory, Cyr?”
“Yes, Commander. Atmospheric pressure is well within its tolerance, the turbulence hasn’t deflected it, and all its onboard systems are functioning.”
“I see.”
The Breathtaker was beginning to worry him. He still assumed that She would destroy it, but he hadn’t expected it to get so far without apparent detection or response. If it got much further he might start thinking it could succeed, and then the engagement would end early—something he didn’t want for a number of reasons, all of them ambiguous. Or, if She did respond, it might be something unreadable and patternless, as with the missiles. As with Her visits to Commonwealth solar systems. As with everything She did.
It was like throwing a stone into water, and watching it sink without ripples.
“Joser—”
“If it’s about the Breathtaker, Commander, we’ve scanned the entire length of its projected path since its launch.”
“Like you did with the missiles,” Cyr muttered.
“Even She,” Joser continued, still speaking to Foord, “might find it difficult to put any beam on the Breathtaker through all that atmosphere.”
“Thank you, Joser.” Foord noted the Might, but let it pass. “Cyr, any further observations?”
“No, Commander.”
Another hour passed. Five more missiles went, and then two; the last two. The Breathtaker continued to plough its way through Horus 5’s lower atmosphere with bovine unconcern—an unconcern matched, apparently, only by Her. Suddenly time was running out.
“Breathtaker’s due to detonate in six minutes,” Cyr said. Foord nodded.
“She’s going to move,” Kaang announced. She looked around, aghast at the flurry of activity this remark had produced, and added lamely “I’m sorry, I was talking aloud. I mean thinking aloud. I mean, I think She’s going to move. I mean, She must know it’s there… ”
The Bridge of the Charles Manson had many kinds of silence, for use on different occasions. The one which now lengthened around Kaang was the shape of pursed lips.
“It’s fine,” Foord said, eventually. “And I agree, She must have detected it. We never made it to be undetectable.”
“Even if She hasn’t detected it yet, She can hardly fail to when it starts making holes in the atmosphere and shooting bits of Horus 5 at Her. Can She? And then, all She has to do…” Joser trailed away.
“All She has to do is outrun it, which She probably can, and watch the slug of hydrogen lose momentum and dribble back to where it came from. We never expected it to succeed. We expected it to make Her respond, and make Her wonder.”
Of course we did, said the silence on the Bridge. The Breathtaker was a powerful weapon, but crude and unproven, and easily avoided. In fact, if it could only survive another few minutes, and if Smithson’s theory and cobbling-together worked, an absolutely devastating weapon. But easily avoided.
Cyr spoke something into one of her command needlemikes, and after a moment nodded.
“The Breathtaker has sent its second confirmation. It’s in position, directly underneath Her.”
“Arm it, please,” Foord said.
Cyr touched a sequence of panels, and looked up at him.
“The arming signal has been sent and received, Commander. Detonation in two minutes.”
“Now She’ll move,” Kaang whispered.
But She didn’t. Another minute passed, somehow.
Now perhaps She’ll move, thought Foord. He shot a glance at Joser, who was now the focus of a nest of command needlemikes. Joser shook his head; She continued to do nothing, or nothing detectable. Foord frowned—something he was now beginning to do regularly—but made no further comment.
“Forty-five seconds to detonation,” said Cyr.
It would have been a good moment for Joser to hit the alarms and announce a sudden change in Her position, or the sudden approach of a swarm of unidentified objects, but none of this happened. They entered the last thirty seconds, then the last ten, and Cyr started counting down. At Five, Joser said “It’s gone, Commander! Like the missiles, no detectable attack but there’s nothing there.”
“Zero.” Cyr said. Then, “No detonation. There’s nothing there.”
Joser turned to Smithson. “I don’t know what She did, but your weapon is gone.”
“Then,” Smithson said, “we should both be disappointed. Me, because my weapon is gone. You, because you don’t know what She did.”
Joser did not reply. He couldn’t; he was hitting the alarms.
“Unidentified object approaching, Commander.”
“That’s better,” Foord said, and genuinely meant it. “What, where, how many and how long to impact?”
“If its speed stays unchanged, just over nine minutes. Apparently a single object. Position 06-04-08 and closing. Travelling on low ion power, from the direction of Her last position. Readings suggest a missile, but a large one, about three times the size of those we launched. More results are coming in, and we should have a visual any moment.”
If; Apparently; Suggest; About; Should Have. Cyr was right, thought Foord. Mediocre. The weakest of us, in the area where She’s the strongest.
“Thank you. Please superimpose the visual, and give me the rest later. Kaang, ion drive, please, at forty percent in reverse for ten seconds; no more. Just move us further out, and hold.”