A hundred and fifty thousand feet away, Cyr watched Her on the Bridge screen and considered the dark swirling patterns, and how they lessened Her; Foord’s two missiles had changed everything. Made Her fight for Her life. But we haven’t seen a hundredth of what She’ll do to live. It’ll get strange.
Kaang also looked at the patterns. Like an airless version of oxidation, she thought, and forgot them.
The Bridge screen panned back, and back. Faith became invisible against the immensity of the Gulf. Ahead of Her were the inner planets, Sakhra and Horus 1 and 2. They were so far away they showed only as specks, scarcely more visible than Faith, and indistinguishable from the backdrop of stars. Only Horus itself was bigger than the other stars, and not by much.
A sound like doors slamming in a corridor ran up and down the ship. It was the locking of seat harnesses, for everyone except Kaang; hers would come later. She glanced across at Thahl and noticed that he had extended the claws of one hand and was tapping them absently on the rim of his console, tap-tap-tap, tap-tap, tap-tap-tap-tap. The sequence was irregular but, when Thahl repeated it, became part of a larger regularity; the same rhythm as the sequence of Her rolling motions, which Thahl was echoing as he watched Her on the screen. Repetition: the watered-silk patterns spreading over Her had of course been analysed for repetition, but none was found. Perhaps if there was another one of Her, or another million, the end of the sequence would be seen and it would start to repeat. That was as near, and as far, as they could get to the meaning of what was happening to Her.
Kaang watched the screen for a few moments more. Her face was expressionless.
She locked her seat harness, and wrenched the Charles Manson to port. The starboard manoeuvre drives erupted as she pushed them directly from zero to overload, and she augmented them by vectoring the main drives. The Charles Manson whipped sideways and diagonally, and flung them down a straight line which would end sixteen hundred feet on Her port side. The move was too quick for the gravity compensators, and everything loose on the Bridge exploded into midair. The ship strained and shrieked as loudly as it had at Horus 4, but there it was only fighting one force; Kaang was throwing forces at it from all directions. By the time the debris on the Bridge had landed, but before it bounced, they had almost reached the point on Her port side for which Kaang had aimed; but She rolled with the move, and still presented Her starboard side to them. Kaang did not decelerate but flew past Her, turned at fifty thousand feet and executed the same move, with the same result. She executed it again, turning the Charles Manson at twenty thousand feet this time, standing it almost vertically on its nose and plunging it under Her, to come up again on Her starboard side because Faith, again, had rolled with Kaang’s move. Kaang turned immediately and headed back, apparently on a ramming course; at nine hundred feet she wrenched the Charles Manson above Her, but again Faith rolled and presented Her starboard side. Kaang had expected this and fired the ventral manoeuvre drives, then vectored the main drives to augment them. It looked like the Charles Manson had hit an invisible wall. It stood for an instant on its stern, then pitched backwards over Her, aiming again for a point sixteen hundred feet on Her port side. This time it was closer, but still Faith rolled with the move and kept Her starboard facing them. When Kaang saw it had failed she did not decelerate or turn but continued until they were eighty thousand feet from Her, and still facing Her starboard side. Kaang brought them to rest, and glanced around the Bridge.
One by one, minor damage alarms sounded. She ignored them. She glimpsed the expressions of Foord and the others, and ignored them too. She knew it was always going to be unequal; whatever move she made, however complex and spectacular, Faith had only to wait for it and roll with it. Kaang shrugged, and started over again.
She fired the starboard manoeuvre drives, more gently this time. They fountained, and the Charles Manson moved—very slowly—to port. Kaang made some minor balancing adjustments to the ion drive, so the Charles Manson maintained distance at exactly eighty thousand feet, and began circling Her. On the Bridge screen they saw Her starboard manoeuvre drives fountain briefly, then cut; fountain again, then cut; and repeat the sequence, so that She turned minutely as the Charles Manson circled Her massively, always presenting Her starboard side. It linked them together, as if they were at opposite ends of the minute-hand of a giant clock face, they at the outer rim and She at the centre: a fixed relationship, defined by clockwork. They both knew it was a lie, and when she was ready, Kaang ended it.
She went straight to a hundred and ten percent ion drive and shot the Charles Manson down the invisible line of the minute hand. At sixteen hundred feet, when everyone expected Kaang to decelerate, she didn’t; she held the impossible speed but poured it into a series of rolls and slides and feints and somersaults which plunged them back seven years, to when she had first piloted the ship. She vectored the main drives to augment the manoeuvre drives, pushed the manoeuvre drives to thirty percent above danger level—two of the outlets burst after ten minutes, a third after fifteen minutes, and she ignored the alarms—and executed all her previous moves over and under and around Faith, but this time within the compass of only sixteen hundred feet, so She had less time to roll with the moves. But She did roll; although Her main drives were impaired Her manoeuvre drives were still operational, and they fountained in changing combinations up and down Her flank as She played them, just as Kaang did. The two ships tempted and toyed with each other as if they were knifeblades in the hands of two invisible but closely-matched opponents. Her pilot, thought Kaang after twenty minutes, is good but he isn’t a freak like me. Why can’t I find another freak like me?
After twenty-three minutes alarms were sounding throughout the Charles Manson, the minor-damage alarms now joined by the deeper notes of hull-integrity warnings, and Kaang ignored them. This will be difficult, Foord had said, She doesn’t want us there. Kaang neither knew nor cared why. She had no idea what they’d see when she finally got them there, or what they’d do about it; that wasn’t her territory. She blocked out everything except the imperative to pile move upon move until they emerged on Her unseen port side, and as time went on—it was now over thirty minutes—each move was getting them closer, and each of Her rolls was getting a little later. A little closer to too late.
Kaang poured more and more moves into the compass of sixteen hundred feet. If she’d left a visible trail, it would have looked like the tangle of tractor beams. She knew the balance was shifting but her face remained expressionless. Her hands blurred over the panels of her console, bringing convulsions to the Charles Manson with every touch, but she still seemed unhurried. The alarms and hull-integrity notes and warning headups on the screen were multiplying, and Kaang continued to ignore them. With each move she built her advantage and edged closer to a final outflanking, but with each move something burst or broke or failed. She knew exactly what she was doing to the ship, without needing alarms or headups, and she knew she was getting close to its real limits. She knew, even better than Foord, that the Charles Manson was almost alive and she was almost killing it.