They had almost hit a light-sail, possibly one of many hundreds that Skade had dropped behind her. The sails were probably close to being monolayers: films of matter stretched to a thickness of one atom, but with artificially boosted inter-atomic rigidity. The sails must have been unfurled when they were some distance behind Nightshade, so that its exhaust would not incinerate them. Probably they had been spun up for additional rigidity.
Then she had trained her lasers on them. That was why they had seen coherent light emanating from Nightshade. The photon pressure from the lasers had rammed against the sails, pushing them back, decelerating them at hundreds of gees until they were moving only slowly in the local stellar rest frame. But the tightly focused lasers had kept pushing, accelerating and kicking the sails back towards Clavain. Skade’s positional fix was sufficiently good that the sails could be aimed directly at Zodiacal Light.
It was, as ever, a numbers game. God only knew how many sails they had nearly collided with, until one appeared directly in front of them. Perhaps Skade’s gambit had never had a high probability of success, but knowing her the odds would not have been too bad.
There were, Clavain was certain, many other sails out there.
Even when the worst of the damage was being repaired, Clavain and his cohort of experts were devising a counter-strategy. Simulations showed that it should be possible to blast their way through an incoming sail, opening an aperture large enough to fly through, but only if the sails were detected further out than was currently possible. They would also need something to blast with, but the program to install hull weapons had been one of those hampered by Skade’s attack. The short-term solution was for a shuttle to fly one hundred thousand kilometres ahead of Zodiacal Light, serving as a buffer against any further sail strikes. The shuttle was uncrewed, stripped down to little more than an unpressurised shell. Periodically it had to be refuelled with antimatter from the other craft parked in the lighthugger’s spacecraft hold, which necessitated an energy-costly round-trip with another ship, including a hazardous fuel transfer operation. Zodiacal Light needed no antimatter herself, but it was essential to conserve some for operations around Delta Pavonis. Clavain was only prepared to use half of his reserve supplying the buffer shuttle, which gave them one hundred days to find a longer-term solution.
In the end the answer was obvious: a single sail could kill a starship, but it would only take another sail to kill a sail. Zodiacal Light’s own manufactories could be programed to make light-sails — the process did not require complex nanotechnology — and they did not need to be anywhere near as large as Skade’s, nor manufactured in any great number. The ship’s anti-collision lasers, never sufficiently effective as weapons, could be easily tuned to provide the necessary photon pressure. Skade’s sails had to be pushed at hundreds of gees; Clavain’s only had to be pushed at two.
They called it the shield sail. It was ready in ninety-five days, with a reserve of sails ready to be pushed out and deployed should the first be destroyed. In any case, the sails had a fixed lifetime due to the steady ablation caused by interstellar dust grains. This only became worse as Zodiacal Light climbed closer and closer to light-speed. But they could keep replacing the sails all the way to Resurgam and they would only have expended one per cent of the ship’s total mass.
When the shield sail was in place, Clavain allowed himself to breathe again. He had the feeling that Skade and he were making up the rules of interstellar combat as they went on. Skade had won one round by killing a fifth of his crew, but he had responded with a counter-strategy that rendered her current strategy obsolete. She was undoubtedly watching him, puzzling over a smudge of photons far to her stern. Very probably Skade would figure out what he had done from that sparse data alone, even if she had not sewn high-resolution imaging drones along her flight path, designed to capture images of his ship. And then, Clavain knew, Skade would try something else, something different and currently unguessable.
He would just have to be ready for her, and hope that he still had some luck on his side.
Skade, Molenka and Jastrusiak, the two inertia-suppression systems experts, were deep in Nightshade’s bowels, well into the bubble of suppressed inertia. Skade’s armour coped well with the physiological changes, but even she had to admit that she did not feel entirely normal. Her thoughts shifted and coalesced with frightening speed, like clouds in a speeded-up film. She flickered between moods she had never known before, terror and elation revealed as opposed facets of the same hidden emotion. It was not just the effect of the armour’s blood chemistry, although that was considerable, but the field itself, playing subtle games with the normal ebb and flow of neurochemicals and synaptic signals.
Molenka’s concern was obvious. [Three gees? Are you certain?]
I wouldn’t have ordered it otherwise.
The curved black walls of the machinery folded around them, as if they were crouched inside a cavern carved into smooth and surreal shapes by patient aeons of subterranean water. She sensed the tech’s disquiet. The machinery was in a stable regime now, and she saw no reason to tamper with it.
[Why?] Molenka persisted. [Clavain can’t reach you. He might have squeezed two gees out of his own ship, but that must have been at enormous expense, shedding every gram of non-essential mass. He’s far behind, Skade. He can’t catch you up.]
Then increase to three gees. I want to observe his reaction to see if he attempts to match our new rate of acceleration.
[He won’t be able to.]
Skade reached up with one steel hand and caressed Molenka under the chin with her forefinger. She could crush her now, shattering bone into fine grey dust, if she dared.
Just do it. Then I’ll know for certain, won’t I?
Molenka and Jastrusiak were not happy, of course, but she had expected nothing less. Their protestations were a form of ritual that had to be endured. Later, Skade felt the acceleration load increase to three gees and knew that they had acquiesced. Her eyeballs sagged in their sockets, her jaw feeling like solid iron. It was no more of an effort to walk since the armour took care of that, but she was aware now of how unnatural it was.
She walked to Felka’s quarters, heels pounding the floor with jackhammer precision. Skade did not hate Felka, nor even blame her for hating her back. Felka could hardly be expected to endure Skade’s attempts to kill Clavain. Equally, however, Felka had to see the necessity of Skade’s actions. No other faction could be allowed to obtain the lost weapons. It was a matter of Con-joiner survival, a matter of loyalty to the Mother Nest. Skade could not tell Felka about the governing voices that told her what to do, but even without that information she must see that the mission was vital.
The door to Felka’s quarters was shut, but Skade had the authority to enter any part of the ship. She knocked politely nonetheless, and waited five or six seconds before entering.
Felka. What are you doing?
Felka was on the floor, sitting down cross-legged. She appeared calm, nothing in her composure betraying the increased effort of performing virtually any activity under three gees. She wore thin black pyjamas that made her look very pale and childlike to Skade.
She had surrounded herself with small white rectangles, many dozens of them, each of which was marked with a particular set of symbols. Skade saw reds and blacks and yellows. The rectangles were something she had encountered before, but she could not remember where. They were arrayed in excessively neat arcs and spokes, radiating out from Felka. Felka was moving them from place to place, as if exploring the permutations of some immense abstract structure.