“I have your permission to go ahead?”
“I just told you.”
Another wave of static.
“So I have your permission to go ahead.”
Muttering, Copeland closed the comm link. Reminding himself not to relax for an instant, he relaxed for an instant and watched the forward screen. Slowly and solemnly, as solemnly as only mindless things could manage, the twenty-eight assemblies of spheres and girders were jerking and shuffling into a tight line ahead, the manned lead freighter marshalling and fussing them. A few minutes passed, punctuated by occasional bursts of static and an icily polite argument between the convoy leader and the Landing staff at Khan’s over the length of intervals between the freighters’ individual landings. This was something Copeland expected; it had happened with each of the previous convoys. The freighters were so large that ground around each one needed to be cleared before the next could be allowed down, since once they landed they would never fly again. Copeland, lulled by the detail of the argument, almost hotsoaking in it, started thinking things like Khan sounds OK, I’ve never met her, I’ll enjoy meeting her, so that the slowly gathering emergency did not immediately register.
It did not register when the convoy leader took seven minutes to get the freighters into landing formation, an operation which should have taken less than five. It did not register when the communications interference mounted gradually from being an exception to becoming the rule. It registered only when, for the third time, the freighters’ remote guidance systems malfunctioned.
And this time, it was all of them. The entire formation broke, and freighters cartwheeled solemnly across the screen as if from the centre of an unseen explosion.
“Captain,” Signals said, “we have a ….”
“Convoy leader to Wulf! Convoy leader to Wulf!”
“…a strong override signal. Those freighters are being jammed. It’s coming from…”
“Khan to Copeland. Captain, we have an emergency.”
“Coming from where? The planet?”
“No, Captain, from the moon. Planetside.”
Copeland swore and hit the alarms.
“Convoy leader to Wulf. Convoy leader to Wulf.”
“Somebody, shut him up… Weapons, stand by. Scanners, pinpoint that signal. Pilot and Engineering, ready for immediate move.”
“Khan to Copeland. Captain, we have an emergency.”
“Doctor, it’s Her. You bet it’s an emergency. This is the biggest emergency you’ve ever had.”
“But how? Where?”
“Just over your horizon. How, I don’t know. That comes later. Your people missed Her, and so did we until now.”
“Captain, handle this any way you like, but I need those freighters.”
“Been there all this time… Her shroud is perfect when She’s not moving...No drive emissions,” Copeland muttered, half to himself. “Scanners, I want that signal pinpointed! Weapons, Pilot, Engineering, I want immediate…”
“Captain,” someone on the Bridge shouted, “look at the screen.”
“Convoy leader to Wulf. Convoy leader to Wulf.”
The end of the emergency had registered as slowly as its beginning, but now it was over. The twenty-eight freighters were regrouping into classic landing formation; if anything, more smoothly and tidily than before.
Copeland subsided. His chair creaked.
“Convoy leader to Wulf.”
“Copeland speaking. Why didn’t you call?”
“Captain…”
“Never mind. Just tell me, what was that? And if you say a malfunction in the….”
“Captain,” the convoy leader snapped, “whoever is preparing this convoy to land, it isn’t me.”
On the screen they were continuing to regroup, briskly and very precisely.
Copeland’s control came close to leaving him. You asked how She was going to do it, he told himself, and now She’s shown you. He was already seeing three moves ahead. Expressions of horror at what was about to happen were passing across his face like cloud-shadows across Anubis 4.
“Scanners, Captain. The override signal is unstoppable. Source is 02-05-03.”
“So. She’s closer than I thought.”
“Just below the horizon. Do we engage Her now?”
“Of course not! Don’t you understand yet? Copeland to Khan. Copeland to Khan.”
“Yes, Captain?”
“Doctor Khan, did you hear that last call from the convoy leader?”
“I did. It seems we’re getting our freighters after all.”
I’d really enjoy meeting her, Copeland thought. I wish there was more time.
The screen showed a very precise line ahead landing formation emerging; Copeland caught himself admiring its tidiness.
“Doctor, I need to know, very quickly, what defences you can deploy down there.”
“Captain, what you need to know is that we have nothing Down Here capable of stopping twenty-eight freighters from crashlanding on us.”
“Then you must….”
“No, Captain, there’s no time to evacuate, and nowhere to go.”
Freighter One was peeling off to commence descent. Freighter Two was moving forward to follow it. The rest held their formation tidily. One at a time, thought Copeland incredulously, She’s even going to observe that last detail and crashland them one at a time.
“It seems we’ve run out of choices, Doctor.”
“It seems we never had any, Captain. Go ahead. Do what She wants.”
“Copeland to convoy leader. Abandon the convoy. Take your ship out of the area. You have ten seconds.” Ten seconds during which Copeland reflected on his own slowness, the inadequacy of his scanners, and how he’d had the instinct to know She would come here, but not the imagination, or the strangeness, to guess how She would make Herself known.
“Convoy leader, confirm you’re now clear.”
“Confirmed, but….”
Copeland cut the channel. He took a deep breath.
“Weapons, destroy the freighters. One at a time, as each one peels off for landing.”
Freighter One had already commenced landing descent when the Wulf’s particle beam found it and reduced it to less than dust. The screen filtered out the momentary flare. Focus shifted. Freighter Two was peeling off downwards and again the particle beam stabbed out, again the screen filtered and refocused, and showed nothing; no wreckage, not even the afterimage of wreckage. Three moved forward and peeled off, and the beam stabbed out; flare, filter, refocus, nothing. Four moved forward and peeled off, and the beam stabbed out; flare, filter, refocus, nothing. It became a rhythm, the dispassionate rhythm of a culling.
Copeland had no language for what was happening. From the empty space on the screen where Three and Four had gone, and where Five and Six were going... his gaze wandered to a spot he couldn’t see, just below the horizon of Anubis 4’s single moon. He tried to imagine Her there, and tried in particular to imagine Her commander—for surely, whatever She was and wherever She came from, there would be something inside Her like a commander—who had done this.
She could easily have attacked the convoy direct. She could easily have destroyed the Wulf—though he would never, never have said this in anyone’s hearing—and then destroyed the convoy. But this had such flavour, such symmetry: to get them to do it for Her, while She scrupulously observed the one-at-a-time landing protocols which they themselves had negotiated. He had no language for it. Foord, he thought, if it’s true that they’re sending you to face Her at Horus, I hope you’re strange enough. I’m not.