‘He says they’ve still got weapons, if we dare to come any nearer. His position hasn’t changed.’
‘Mine has,’ Merlin said. ‘Ship, send in the remaining torps, dialled to maximum yield. Strike at the existing impact sites: see if we can’t open some fracture plains, or punch our way deep inside.’ Then he enlarged the asteroid’s schematic and began tapping his finger against some of the secondary installations on the surface – what the intelligence dossiers said were weapons, sensor pods, airlocks. ‘Ready nova-mines for dispersal. Spread pattern three. We’ll pick off any moving targets with the gamma-cannon.’
Teal said: ‘If you hit Struxer’s antenna you’ll take away our means of communicating.’
‘I’m past the point of negotiation, Teal. My ship’s wounded and I take that personally. If you want to send a last message to Struxer, tell him he had his chance to play nicely.’
Baskin leaned forward in his seat restraints. ‘Don’t do anything too rash, Merlin. We came to force his hand, not to annihilate the entire asteroid.’
‘Your primary consideration was stopping the Tactician falling into the wrong hands. I’m about to guarantee that never happens.’
‘I want it intact.’
‘It was never going to work, Prince. There was never going to be any magic peace, just because you had your battle computer back.’ A sudden indignation passed through him. ‘I know wars. I know how they play out. Squeeze the enemy hard and they just find new ways to fight back. It’ll go on and on and you’ll never be any nearer victory.’
‘We were winning.’
‘One tide was going out. Another was due to come back in. That’s all it was.’
The charm-torps were striking. Set to their highest explosive setting, the bursts were twenty times brighter than the first wave. Each fireball scooped out a tenth of the asteroid’s volume, lofting unthinkable quantities of rock and dirt and gas into space, a ghastly swelling shroud lit from within by pulses of lightning.
Lines of light cut through that shroud. Kinetics and lasers were striking out from what remained of the asteroid’s facing hemisphere, sweeping in arcs as they tried to find Tyrant. The ship swerved and stabbed like a dancing snake. The edge of a laser gashed across part of its hull, triggering a shriek of damage alarms. Merlin dispatched the nova-mines, then swung the nose around to bring the gamma-cannon into play. The flashes of the nova-mines began to pepper the shrouded face of Mundar. The kinetics and lasers were continuing, but their coverage was becoming sparser. Merlin sensed that they had endured the worst of the assault. But the approach had enacted a grave toll on Tyrant. One more direct hit, even with a low-energy weapon, might be enough to split open the hull.
Tyrant had reduced its speed to only a few kilometres per second relative to the asteroid. Now they were beginning to pick up the billowing front of the debris cloud. Tyrant was built to tolerate extremes of pressure, but the hot, gravelly medium was nothing like an atmosphere. Under other circumstances Merlin would have gladly turned around rather than push deeper. But Tyrant would have to cross the kinetic defence screen to reach empty space, and now he had used up all his charm-torps. If the Tactician had indeed been coordinating Mundar’s defences, then Merlin saw only one way to dig himself out of this hole. He could leave nothing intact – even if it meant butchering whoever was left alive in Mundar.
Debris hammered the hull. Merlin curled fingers into sweat-sodden palms.
‘Merlin,’ Teal said. ‘It’s Struxer’s signal again. Only it’s not coming from inside Mundar.’
Merlin understood as soon as he shifted his attention to the navigational display. Struxer’s transmission was originating from a small moving object, coming toward them from within the debris field. The gamma-cannon was still aimed straight at Mundar. Merlin shifted the lock onto the object, ready to annihilate it in an instant. Then he waited for Tyrant’s sensors to give him their best estimate of the size and form of the approaching object. He was expecting something like a mine or a small autonomous missile, trying to camouflage its approach within the chaos of the debris. But then why was it transmitting in the first place?
He had his answer a moment later. The form was five-nubbed, a fat-limbed starfish. Or a human, wearing a spacesuit, drifting through the debris cloud like a rag doll in a storm.
‘Suicidal,’ Baskin said.
There was no face now, just a voice. The signal was too poor for anything else. Teal listened and said: ‘He’s asking for you to slow and stand down your weapons. He says we’ve reached a clear impasse. You’ll never make it out of this area without the Tactician’s cooperation, and you’ll never find the Tactician without his assistance.’
Merlin had manual fire control on the gamma-cannon. He had settled one hand around the trigger, ready to turn that human starfish into just another crowd of hot atoms.
‘I said I was past the point of negotiation.’
‘Struxer says dozens have already died in the attack. But there are thousands more of his people still alive in the deeper layers. He says you won’t be able to destroy the Tactician without killing them as well.’
‘They picked this fight, not me.’
‘Merlin, listen to me. Struxer seems reasonable. There’s a reason he’s put himself out there in that suit.’
‘I blew up his asteroid. That might have something to do with it.’
‘He wants to negotiate from a position of weakness, not strength. That’s what he says. Every moment where you don’t destroy him is another moment in which you might start listening.’
‘I think we already stated our positions, didn’t we?’
‘He said you wouldn’t be able to take the Tactician. And you can’t, that’s clear. You can destroy it, but you can’t take it. And now he’s asking to talk.’
‘About what?’
Teal looked at him with pleading eyes. ‘Just talk to him, Merlin. That woman you showed me – your mother, waiting by that window. The sons she lost – you and your brother. I saw the kindness in her. Don’t tell me you’d have made her proud by killing that man.’
‘My mother died on Plenitude. She wasn’t in that room. I showed you nothing, just ghosts, just memories stitched together by my brother.’
‘Merlin…’
He squeezed the fire control trigger. Instead of discharging, though, the gamma-cannon reported a malfunction. Merlin tried again, then pulled his shaking, sweat-sodden hand from the control. The weapons board was showing multiple failures and system errors, as if the ship had only just been holding itself together until that moment.
‘You cold-hearted…’ Teal started.
‘Your sympathies run that deep,’ Merlin said. ‘You should have spoken up before we used the torps.’
Baskin levelled a hand on Merlin’s wrist, drawing him further from the gamma-cannon trigger. ‘Perhaps it was for the best, after all. Only Struxer really knows the fate of the Tactician now. Bring him in, Merlin. What more have we got to lose?’
Struxer removed his helmet, the visor pocked and crazed from his passage through the debris cloud. Merlin recognised the same drawn, weary face that had spoken to them from within Mundar. He made an acknowledgement of Prince Baskin, speaking in the Havergal tongue – Merlin swearing that he picked up the sarcasm and scorn despite the gulf of language.
‘He says it was nice of them to send royalty to do their dirty work,’ Teal said.
‘Tell him he’s very lucky not to be a cloud of atoms,’ Merlin said.
Teal passed on this remark, listened to the answer, then gave a half smile of her own. ‘Struxer says you’re very lucky that the Tactician gave you safe passage.’