She was approaching the Charles Manson, slowly and apparently with caution. She was still shrouded.
Whatever She was, She existed physically. There was an inside and an outside. Inside was a crew, or something else not yet imaginable, which studied them. It moved, and reached for a conclusion.
•
Faith’s last known position was 15-10-16 approximately. She was approaching Horus 4 from the direction of the Belt and Horus 5; the Charles Manson was on Horus 4’s opposite side, beyond which lay the Gulf, Sakhra, the inner planets, and the sun Horus. She was still coasting and slowing, all drives cut, otherwise they’d have reacquired Her position from drive emissions, and a series of alarms and screen headups, now dead, would come to life all over the Bridge; but they could estimate where She was from Her probable rate of slowing.
The Bridge screen, unasked, superimposed a schematic showing Her last known and present estimated position. Relative to the Charles Manson, She was somewhere below the horizon of Horus 4. When She came for them, either visible or shrouded, She would at some point rise above the horizon like another sun, but in opposition to the sun Horus; perhaps where a moon should be, except that Horus 4 had no moons. It had destroyed them all.
Foord became aware of a faint background noise on the Bridge: a rustling, like a woman moving inside a ballgown. Thahl and Cyr had also noticed it.
“Gravity on the hull,” Smithson said. “Horus 4. It’ll increase.”
It did. And She continued to come closer.
She studied them.
They were well aware of Her superiority over Commonwealth ships, even Outsiders, in the areas of scanners and communications. She had a large repertoire of techniques and devices which were normally undetectable, although on the Bridge they could sometimes sense when She was using them; it was a difference in the quality of Her silence. Cyr was usually quickest to sense it.
“Yes” she told Foord. “I feel it too. She’s looking at us.”
The noise from outside changed, from rustling to rasping.
She studied them. Given that She’d changed course, cut drives and was heading towards them, this was hardly surprising; but they needed the confirmation, to get them past the next series of Ifs. They’d planned it meticulously, but it still depended on the Ifs. Not only the obvious ones they’d all recited, but the more subtle and troubling ones.
If She believed they were planning a move of some kind.
If She believed they intended to use Horus 4 somehow as a part of their move.
(And if that was how Her thought-processes worked, in linear paths like theirs.)
If She believed that they’d hurriedly brought their plan forward when She cut drives and they could no longer track Her.
And most of all, if She acted then as they would have acted, and came closeup to finish them. If She did that, it would not only help them, it would diminish Her. They’d know there was at least one part of Her that was like them, among all the other parts that weren’t.
•
The Charles Manson’s ion drive flared twice and took them in a wide elliptical orbit round Horus 4, but the orbit had been entered too hurriedly. There was something wrong about it, and something inside Her noticed.
The Charles Manson shuddered as the ion drive took it and whirled it towards Horus 4. The bits of debris on the Bridge, untouched by the compensator Foord had deliberately left unrepaired, moved in response, gearing down the ship’s larger movements to small rodent scurryings across the floor.
Nobody spoke, so they never knew that they were all thinking the same thing at the same time: they had left the Bridge, and themselves, untidied since the Belt as Foord asked, and were beginning to notice the mess and smell. It was in their nature, perhaps learnt from Foord, to notice things like that at times like this.
Foord looked around the Bridge, and nodded. The weapons core gave instructions to one of the sub-computers serving it, which checked for time and place, and started a countdown. At the calculated point the two missiles were released; not fired or launched, but dropped. It was done without ceremony or comment and done while the Charles Manson was still moving, like an animal defecating while walking. The Charles Manson continued on its way. Behind it the missiles just floated, like two turds.
A little later, Foord again looked around the Bridge and nodded. Again a sub-computer, this time one instructed by the navigation core, checked for time and place and started a countdown. Again the Charles Manson shuddered as another ion burst whirled it closer to Horus 4. Both bursts had been calculated, repeatedly. This one was not significantly different to the earlier one, and produced a similar flurry of rollings and slidings from the bits of debris strewn over the floor; but this was the one which finally trapped them in orbit around Horus 4. Kill them all, Foord had said. All your reactions.
The torsion-sound from outside became almost continuous. The gravitational stress on the hull during orbit had of course been part of their calculations, but the sound hadn’t. They were used to the ship filtering and compensating everything before it intruded upon them, but this time it couldn’t. The sound increased as the planet reached into them.
The two missiles were in orbits parallel to that of the Charles Manson, but further out from Horus 4 and not yet trapped by its gravity. Their orbits were the product of the Charles Manson’s motion when they were dropped, and would decay soon as they were not travelling under power. Apart from the low-powered and shortsighted lenses peering through the transparent nosecones, they were inert. They would remain inert until She appeared. And if She didn’t, or if She did and they didn’t work, they’d overtake the Charles Manson on its way down to Horus 4.
And down was where Horus 4 now was. The realignment was complete, although they were still a massive distance away and saw it as a complete sphere; a giant autistic face, empty of expression. Unlike other planets, it wasn’t cloud-cover that made it look out of focus, but something its gravity did to light and space. And perhaps also to time.
Foord looked through the Bridge screen at the same segment of Horus 4’s horizon as that which the missiles were scanning. He wanted to watch Her rise over that horizon, unshrouded, so he could see Her destroyed before anyone knew what She was or where She came from. Thahl looked out at the same horizon; he too wanted Her destroyed, for reasons which at that time would have been incomprehensible, even to Foord. Cyr hoped the missiles would damage but not destroy Her, so she could finish Her while She was wounded. And Smithson, watching Foord trying to tempt Her closer, was reminded of his ancestors on the plains of Emberra: how they would tempt and trick those hunting them to come closer so they could tear them to pieces, and how the outcome of those combats was that one species of herbivores evolved to dominance while several species of carnivores and omnivores didn’t.
None of them spoke, so another moment passed in which, unknowingly, they all shared similar thoughts. Except Kaang, who was busy deliberately making them a prisoner of Horus 4.
They had built something which wasn’t real, but had all the internal consistencies and inconsistencies of something which was. They’d built a detailed narrative of how they’d acted hurriedly; not in panic, just hurriedly. As a further detail they flared their manoeuvre drives and reversed their ion drive, deliberately a few nanoseconds after it would do no good. Then—because the initial hurriedness would have been understandable, but panic would have been inconsistent with their reputation, and therefore unconvincing—they cut all drives and went with the orbit, conserving energy until the orbit’s high point where they could escape Horus 4’s gravity; and they powered up their closeup weapons and checked their flickerfields, consistent with a calm and rational reaction.