The driver spins his TDV on the spot, then accelerates away from the runway, heading for the airbase boundary and the red Mars-like desert beyond.
*
But this was no single-pronged attack. Up in the sky, two shapes are growing larger; and everyone knows that the airspace should be clear when there are UNSA launches scheduled.
Kian slides back into the control seat.
‘Oh, God.’
The brakes come free and his ship begins to roll.
At the boundary the TDV brakes, its thermoacoustic motor whining. The driver calls: ‘You all right up there, pal? If you want, I could—’
But Dirk has already flung the bomb away.
‘Take us back,’ he yells. ‘Don’t hang around.’
‘Bozhe moi!’
After the explosion, a black twisting column of smoke crawls up into the sky . . . where two vessels are growing much larger, their target clear.
Kian’s ship is still on the runway, accelerating.
The first intruder ship lets rip with an energy beam, missing Kian’s ship but ploughing a trench in the runway before it, causing Kian to brake. His ship howls as it pulls off to the side, coming to a halt.
As the enemy ship banks, ready to curve back on a strafing run, the second intruder flies diagonally behind it: two sets of weapon systems on the brink of cutting loose.
Seconds remain, no more.
Then a new vessel bursts out of the sun, shining silver and delta-winged, its graser-gatlings splitting the air, and the paired intruders have no chance.
Both Zajinet ships explode.
Standing beside the TDV, the driver wipes grease from his forehead.
‘And what the Devil was that silver ship?’
Dirk’s laugh is shaky but proud.
‘That was my mother.’
Roger switched back to overview. The main narrative thread proceeded with the twins’ friend Deirdre delivering a massive kick in the groin to one of the controllers, Solly, who had planted bombs in both ships. A military team disarmed the second bomb. Roger really had to go, but he could not take this crystal with him – no personal possessions were allowed in Tangleknot, plus any item was subject to long examination before being brought inside. He tried to work out the minimum he must experience in order to understand the point.
The theme strongly pointed to one more scene in which a disaffected UNSA intelligence officer called Paula – soon to become Deirdre’s long-term lover – related what happened to the captive Solly during interrogation.
Roger jumped into the middle of the scene.
‘They pushed the questioning further than the usual “What’s your contact’s name?”, “How do you meet up?”, that sort of thing,’ Paula tells Deirdre.
The setting is an airfield beneath a grey German sky, and they are standing outside in the rain, having attended a memorial service officially for Ro McNamara, unofficially for her missing son Dirk as well.
Roger paused, realising he had gone too fast. The scene needed background to make sense.
He checked the context summary. Dirk, Kian and Deirdre, some time after the Zajinet attack on the first day of flight, were attacked during an anti-xeno demonstration in Arizona. The mob had thrown petrol-bombs, burning Kian badly, leaving him disfigured and initially close to death. A raging Dirk had let rip with a single, coherent biolaser pulse from both eyes, burning out the eyeballs of the mob, killing dozens, blinding the rest.
Under arrest, he had escaped and fled to mu-space in his ship, exiting directly from inside a hangar: a feat hard enough for modern, latest generation vessels.
As for Ro, she was missing, last seen departing an orbital called Vachss Station, thought to have flown into a Zajinet ambush.
He resumed the scene featuring the soon-to-be lovers, Paula and Deirdre, mourning for Dirk and Ro, and discussing the interrogation of Solly, the Zajinet agent who had planted bombs aboard the twins’ ships.
‘They asked the question’ – Paula means the interrogators – ‘that no one’s been able to answer: Why do the Zajinets hate humans? Why have they targeted Pilots, specific Pilots?’
‘So why? What’s the answer?’
‘Solly said: “They’ll allow the darkness to be born. It will spread across the galaxy, and they won’t fight back until billions have perished. I’ve seen it.” That’s what he said. “The Zajinets showed me the future, and I’ve seen it.” It may sound insane, but Solly believed.’ Paula looked bleak. ‘He was in no fit state for joking by that time.’
‘You’re using the past tense,’ said Deirdre.
‘He did not survive the interrogation. A pre-existing medical condition, they said.’
And that, of course, was the section Ro McNamara had wanted Roger to know about.
They’ll allow the darkness to be born.
It provided one hell of a motivation for Zajinets to prevent human expansion into space. Whether it also implied a basis for negotiation, or simply made them enemies for ever, he could not tell.
Why show me this?
You might say that he was the first Pilot who could appreciate the Zajinets’ viewpoint. But he thought it might be a little late for such understanding.
En route back to Tangleknot, he stole time for one more cup of daistral, and found that Dirk McNamara no longer occupied top position in the news. Settlements on Deighton, Berkivan deux and Göthewelt were burning after Zajinet raids, in each case centred on a Sanctuary location.
Whatever Roger’s future turned out to be, peacemaker was no longer an option.
SEVENTEEN
EARTH, 1956 AD
Walking back from lunch along Kensington Gore, with Hyde Park stretching away to their right on the other side of the road, the three of them slowed down for a minute – Gavriela and her friends Jane and Keith from Imperial – so that Keith could break off pieces of a Bournville bar. He handed them round, still a treat, two years after rationing had ended.
In the park, mounted officers of the Household Cavalry were taking their horses through drills. The three scientists watched, then walked on.
‘Add this’ – Jane waved her chocolate – ‘to travelling by bus instead of walking, and people are going to start getting fat.’
‘Chance would be a fine thing,’ said Keith. ‘Do you still feed sugar sandwiches to your son, Gabby?’
‘Not any more.’
‘See?’ said Jane. ‘It’s starting already.’
‘And smallpox will disappear,’ said Keith, ‘communism will fall apart sua sponte, and look, is that a pig flying among the clouds?’
Jane touched Gavriela’s sleeve.
‘Gabrielle? It looks as if he knows you. That chap on the corner.’
Pinstripe suit and spotlessly brushed black bowler: it was Rupert Forrester, his hair showing grey, his taut patrician face lined like porcelain.
‘I’ll see you two later,’ Gavriela told her colleagues.
Rupert looked grave as she crossed the street.
‘Gabrielle, how lovely.’ He might call her Gavriela at times, but never outdoors or in unsecured premises. ‘Shall we walk? And perhaps a spot of tea. Or coffee, if we’re being cosmopolitan.’
‘Why not?’ she said.