“I think the Toilers our mutual friend sought have found a new niche, no longer in space, but in gas, you see?” the Sceuri said. Even through the speaker sphere, the creature’s voice sounded pleased with itself.
“Toilers?” Y’sul said.
“Known.”
“Benign semi-swarm devices,” the other half of Quercer Janath announced. “Infra-sentient. Known for randomly building inscrutable space structures, best guess for purpose of which being as preparatory infrastructure for an invasion that never took place on behalf of a race long gone and thoroughly forgotten. Distribution very wide but very sparse. Numbers fluctuate. Rarely dangerous, sometimes hunted, no bounty.”
“So there.”
Y’sul looked surprised. “Really?” he asked,
“Oh, stop being so coy!” their host chided, creating sinuous splashing patterns in the water, as though tickled. “Of course! As though you didn’t know.” The Aumapile of Aumapile blew jets of water from each end. A scent of something vaguely rotten filled Fassin’s nose. “But I know where our friend was going to next, and you don’t. However, I shall be willing to tell you if you take me along, once I am aboard your ship. Such large places, gas-giants! And of course we have four. One thinks, Oh, who can say, where would one’s quarry be?” The Sceuri flicked its tail. Fassin got splashed. “And what do you say, sirs?”
Y’sul looked at Fassin and quietly rippled his mantle, the Dweller equivalent of a head-shake.
The travelcaptain was silent for a moment or two, then said,
“If we do take you with us…”
“Ah! But I have my own ship! Indeed, you are in it!”
“Won’t work.”
“Have to come with us in ours.”
“I have smaller ships! Many of them! A choice!”
“Makes no difference. Has to be ours.”
“Conditions of Passage.”
“Well…’ the Sceuri said.
“Passengers travel unconditionally.”
“Unconditionally.”
“What does that mean?”
“Trust us.”
“Yes. No matter what.”
“Means you get zapped unconscious every time we travel, is what it means,” Y’sul told their host. Quercer Janath made a hissing noise. “Plus,” Y’sul added, oblivious, “you may not end up where you thought you were going to.”
“How primitive! Why, of course!”
* * *
Eleven hundred ships. They were facing eleven hundred ships. All of them had to be beyond a certain size, capable of crossing the great gulf of space between the E-5 Discon and here in reasonable time, and they would probably all be armed. Ulubis could muster less than three hundred true space-capable war-craft, even after their frenzy of building. The Summed Fleet on its way to their rescue was of similar size, but its ships would be of another order of magnitude in hitting power: a full mix of destroyers, light, medium and heavy cruisers, plus the real big guys, the battlecruisers and battleships.
Ulubis had frigates, destroyers and light cruisers, and one old battlecruiser, the Carronade. They’d built a significant fleet in the centuries following the destruction of the portal, and a few more ships in the half year since the news of the coming invasion, but nothing like enough to offer the invaders serious opposition.
They’d lost about a sixth of their total fighting force in the few minutes of action in the storm on Nasqueron, months earlier, including their only other battlecruiser. Those had mostly been light units, but it had been a grievous loss.
The latest bit of bad news was that the consortium working on the rail gun had fallen so far behind schedule that it was highly doubtful they’d even get to the trials stage before the invasion took place. The giant gun was being dismantled so it wouldn’t fall into the hands of the Starveling Cultists. There was something almost sublimely elegant, Sal thought, about how perfect a waste of time, people, resources and hard work the whole project had been.
Kehar Heavy Industries and the other manufacturers had worked as hard as they could to construct, repair, upgrade and modify as many warships as they could, and had militarised dozens of civilian craft. But there was only so much they could do and it was never going to be enough. They were outnumbered. They could go down fighting, but they were going down.
“It couldn’t be any worse!” Guard-General Thovin spluttered, practically spraying his drink. They were on a requisitioned ex-cruise liner, one of the Embassy support ships, rolling in orbit around Nasqueron. Saluus and the Propylaea sub-master Sorofieve had been sent by the rest of the War Cabinet to add, if it were possible, an extra note of urgency to the talks with the Dwellers. Thovin, seconded from his Guard duties to be Commander-in-Chief, Ulubis Orbital Forces, was there in charge of the very lightly armed escort detachment because he was out of the way and couldn’t do too much harm. The grandeur of his new title seemed to almost entirely make up for the lack of viable military hardware at his disposal.
“We can’t even surrender to the Starvelings because if we do the Summed Fleet will clobber us when they arrive,” he said. “We’re going to get fucked-over twice!” He threw back his drink.
Saluus didn’t like Thovin — he was one of those people who got to the top of an organisation through luck, connections, the indulgence of superiors and that sort of carelessness towards others that the easily impressed termed ruthlessness and those of a less gullible nature called sociopathy. But sometimes, just through his sheer unthinking brusqueness and inability to think through the consequences of a remark, he said what everybody else was only thinking. A comic poet working in obscene doggerel.
“There is no need to talk of surrender,” sub-master Sorofieve said quickly, and, to Sal’s amusement, actually looked round, glancing left and right to make sure nobody else had heard the “S’ word in the old cruise ship’s lounge, which was deserted apart from a few bar staff, the three men and a half-dozen or so of their closest staff. (Liss was there, looking darkly beautiful, mostly silent, occasionally talking quietly with one or other of the other assistants, secretaries and ADCs. When the Propylaea sub-master did his glancing-around act, her gaze met Sal’s; she smiled and flexed her eyebrows.)
If there were any spies here, Sal thought, they weren’t lurking behind the furniture in the shadows, they were sitting right here, around them. The indispensable aides and helpers they all relied on to run their so-important lives were the obvious candidates for the post of spy. If anything ever got back to the Hierchon — or any other more lowly but still important branch of the Ulubine Mercatoria — regarding talk of surrender or anything else deemed Unspeakable it would probably be one of these people they’d have to thank.
Saluus knew one could never be one hundred per cent certain, but he was pretty sure that the lovely Liss wasn’t working for anybody else. He’d seemingly let slip a couple of things early on in their relationship which he’d have expected to come back to him if she’d been in the pay of somebody else. It had been a sort of recommendation that she’d come via Fassin and he’d obviously known her from decades earlier. That was far too long a game just to get to an industrialist, even Saluus Kehar.
“No need?” Thovin said, turning to his secretary, holding up his glass and winking theatrically. “It’s what we’d be talking about if the Summed Fleet wasn’t on its way. Be the rational thing to do.” He snorted. “I’m not saying we should surrender. Been ordered not to, been ordered to fight to the last, but if the Fleet wasn’t coming and we weren’t looking for this… this thing, supposedly somewhere on Nasq.” (The fabled Transform, of course, Saluus thought. The mythical magic bullet which Fassin, if he was still alive, might be chasing yet.) “What else would we be doing but thinking how to not all get ourselves killed?”