Across three thousand feet, they watched their cloud billowing out to meet Hers. Theirs was light in colour and Hers was dark, but that didn’t imply any symbolism. The lightness of their cloud was the colour of dirty bandages, and the darkness of Hers carried the iridescence of jewels. They met, and this time there was no stalemate. Their cloud crawled over and under and inside Hers, putting out the jewelled colours one by one as if it had grown fingers and was poking out eyes. Her cloud collapsed under the pale crawling shadow of theirs, folding back into itself until it ceased to exist. In the space between the two ships their cloud was left suddenly alone, like something floating in a toilet. Cyr touched a panel and it folded back into nothing, like Hers.
Iridescence, thought Cyr. I’d almost forgotten. “Commander, please have Kaang take us to sixteen hundred feet. I have an idea.”
•
In the Charles Manson’s underbelly, something moved. A door in the rear ventral section of the hull started to slide open; then jammed. Cyr switched to backup systems and it started moving again. At one point it actually creaked (an incongruous, gothic noise which they could hear even on the Bridge) as it resisted, but the backup systems forced it to continue. It slid back, opening a dark gash in the Charles Manson’s underside.
The weapon which would emerge from the gash had never been used operationally. It had only been tested once, seven years ago when Foord took command of his ship on its first proving flight. The test had been successful but Foord and Cyr had both thought the weapon was too elaborate and specialised.
Seven years later, he glanced at her.
“Fire Opals,” he said. “I’d almost forgotten.”
“So had I,” said Cyr. “We were both wrong.”
The starboard manoeuvre drives fountained. Kaang brought them back to exactly one thousand, six hundred and twelve feet. Faith did not respond, but was watching them closely. They could feel it.
Out of the gash poured a stream of iridescent globes, each one the size and colour of an opal. The Fire Opals were designed (in Foord’s opinion, over-designed) to attack an already damaged opponent in a particularly roundabout way. Each globe was individually programmed to enter a ship’s hull through openings caused by battle damage, to seek out electronic and bionic circuits, get close to them, and burn itself to destruction. The circuits they attacked would not be destroyed outright, but—perhaps worse—would function too erratically to be trusted. Any ship they entered would be lobotomised, deprived of senses and sentience.
Seven years ago, Foord had said that if you’d knocked a hole in your opponent you wouldn’t need such an oblique way of finishing him. Now, he told himself, if such a hole existed the Fire Opals could be decisive; and Faith, on Her unseen port side, had two.
They dropped endlessly out of the gash in the Charles Manson’s belly like eggs out of a fish. After the darkly beautiful iridescence of Her plasma cloud, their greens and pinks and blues were as fresh as rain in sunlight. There were a hundred and ninety thousand of them.
The Fire Opals extended underneath the Charles Manson in a long rippling filament. The door in the ship’s underbelly slid back, buckling slightly as the backup mechanisms forced it past the point where it had jammed on opening.
Cyr touched a panel and the Fire Opals whipped out from underneath, then up, and hung quivering in the space between the two ships. She smiled to herself, then touched a few more panels. The Fire Opals formed themselves into a slender openwork sculpture: a delta shape with Her proportions, woven in opalescent ice. Cyr indulged herself further, and touched more panels. The sculpture started to hump up and down in imitation of Her crippled gait, and two holes appeared in its port side, one amidships and one at the stern.
Faith made no response.
“That’s enough,” Foord snapped. “Just get it done.”
Cyr’s sculpture melted. She reached into it through her panels and pulled out the forces holding it together, and it collapsed back into what it had always been, a large swarm of small opalescent globes. The Fire Opals were still under Cyr’s control and would remain so until she locked in their path and launched them; then they would become individually self-directing, like Foord’s missiles.
She pressed Launch, and said goodbye to them.
The path she had locked in for them existed for microseconds and was gone, as they flowed into and out of it. It was a straight line to Faith, converging at a point only fifty feet from Her starboard, then branching in a giant Y, arching over Her and down towards the two craters on Her unseen port side. The path existed only when they travelled it, closing in their wake until all that remained of it were the two prongs of the Y above Her, pointing down at the craters like mantis claws. Then that was gone too. They had entered Her.
Cyr locked off her panels. “They’re self-directing now, Commander.”
Foord nodded, and stared into the Bridge screen.
Sixty seconds’ propulsion, as they entered Her through the craters and found paths through the wreckage, seeking circuitry. Then thirty seconds’ burning. Most of them would find nothing and would fall and die alone in an unimaginable interior, in a darkness they would illuminate briefly but uselessly; but some would succeed. Maybe another two minutes, and the effect would be visible.
It would act like a nerve poison. First convulsions, violent rolling and pitching motions; then erratic flaring of Her manoeuvre drives and what remained of Her main drives; then desperate attempts to use Her scanners and probes; then shutdown, as She realised that Her senses were crippled.
Foord watched, across the cramped space they now shared with Her after having fought Her through half a solar system. Again he thought of a cellar with a naked bulb swinging from the ceiling. That was the kind of place where you did things like this.
After three minutes She started to shudder. It was not a convulsion, just a gentle pitching motion which overlaid the rolling caused by the damage they had already done to Her, but it was visible. Foord leapt to his feet and stared greedily into the Bridge screen, trying to pull more movement out of Her image, but after another minute it subsided. Only the original rolling remained.
“What…”
Cyr waved him to silence, and continued watching the Bridge screen closely. After thirty seconds she straightened.
“They’ve failed, Commander.”
“You said they’d destroy Her.”
“They didn’t.”
“But you said…” He could hear an almost indignant note in his voice. Listen to yourself, something tried to tell him, but he ignored it. She’d wronged him: Cyr, or Faith, or both.
“…you said they’d destroy Her.”
“They didn’t. She’s still there.” After a moment, Cyr added “Look. You can see Her, if you study the screen. Instead of yourself.”
“All of them? All of them went inside Her and all of them died?”
Cyr threw up her hands, making her clothes move interestingly.
“Yes, Commander. And we still have to destroy Her. If that’s what you want.”
“Of course it’s what I want! I even…”
“You even had the words ready. I saw your face. Playing at regret. ‘We’ll never know who or why; Her undeclared war; Her strangeness and beauty; Was there no other way?’ You had the words ready. I saw your face.”
“But you said…”