“Breech on E-17,” said Damage Control. A ceramic striking at high-v had pierced the ship like a needle through butter. Muted chimes summoned the damage party to E-deck.
Fir Li said, “Power. At deadline, engage alfvens. Two-league jump, random vector outside the sheaf. Enter.”
“Entered,” said Power; and Ships rang the chimes that announced upcoming alfven yanks: short-long, short-long, over and over.
“If you knew more of Alfven Theory,” Fir Li heard Grimpen tell Bridget ban, “you’d not be so calm.” But he was answered with laughter like breakers on an empty strand.
The visuals had grown insensibly coincident with real-time positions. The “grab hold” chimes sounded and the alfvens snatched whole handfuls of the threaded fabric of space and yanked Hot Gates violently aside. Too late to compensate, the Molnar’s corvette was past almost before they saw her coming and she dopplered downward into Sapphire Point itself.
“At that velocity,” Traffic observed, “she can’t vector aside before…”
The command deck fell silent, watching while the Cynthian ship fell toward the sun. She tried to maneuver, but the gravitational field of the blue giant pulled her insistently. For a time, it seemed as if she might make it anyway, perhaps only graze the photosphere. But then something happened—it was not clear what—and all attempts at maneuver ceased.
It was a long fall. Even at near-light speed, it was two more watches before the Cynthian ship had been finally engulfed by the blue giant, and another two before they saw it happen on the screens.
Long before then, Fir Li had left the control center, giving command back to Commodore Wildbear. “I’ll expect damage reports for ship and squadron, and an accounting of the Cynthian ships as well. At least three succeeded in making the Palisades.” As usual, he had been watching everything.
The commodore could not conceal his surprise at being returned to command, but before he could speak, Fir Li had spun on his heel. “Graceful Bintsaif.”
“Yes, Cu.”
“You know what to do.”
“Yes, Cu.”
And with that, Fir Li and his colleagues left the command deck, Gwillgi sparing one last smile for the commodore.
“What does Graceful Bintsaif know what to do?” Grimpen asked when they had returned to Fir Li’s quarters.
Gwillgi answered in Fir Li’s place. “Why, to take command of the ship should Wildbear show further weakness.”
“He was only showing caution,” Bridget ban said.
Gwillgi’s laugh was like broken glass. “That’s what I said.”
Grimpen poured himself a tumbler of channel wine from the pitcher on the sideboard and drank it empty before pouring another. “A hard fate,” he said. The others knew he meant the Molnar and they all glanced at the clock to see how much longer before Shree Newton accepted this new sacrifice.
“He loved it,” said Bridget ban, “the Molnar did; or didn’t you notice. When he turned to give orders to his watch, I saw that he was hugely aroused.”
“He certainly tried to fuck us good,” said Gwillgi.
“And it was a madman’s chance,” said Fir Li, who had entered his quarters last of all. “That’s why I knew he would try it, or something like it.”
“Yes,” said Gwillgi. “I noticed. You brought the alfvens online as soon as you entered the command center. You meant to destroy him from the first.” Gwillgi approved, of course.
“And what you did wasn’t mad?” suggested Grimpen. “There’s a reason no one engages the alfvens this far down the gravity well. Can’t you smell the burnt insulation, the tang of overheated ceramics and melted metals and plastics? Hot Gates isn’t going anywhere soon.”
Fir Li shrugged. “I hadn’t planned on going anywhere. Damage Control is at work. If needs be, Justiciar can order materials and components. I’m sending her off-station for yard repairs, so she can carry any requisitions with her. But I hope our own stores and shops can repair things.”
Gwillgi had drifted to the viewscreen and adjusted the coordinates until Sapphire Point seethed and churned in the center. “I wonder,” he said. “At the speed he was going, he could be out the other side of the star before the temperature and pressure could matter.”
Grimpen shook his massive head. “A star may be nothing but hot gases, but at those speeds, it would be like hitting a stone wall.”
“A stone wall,” murmured Bridget ban, looking upon some childhood memory. With a part of his attention, Fir Li caught that momentary lightening of her features, and would have thought nothing of it, except that she closed up immediately after.
“Radiation will have cooked him long before,” Gwillgi said.
“Well,” said Grimpen, placing his drink on the sideboard. “I’m off to the Old Planets.”
Gwillgi turned from the viewscreen and cocked an eyebrow. “There, you think?”
The man-mountain shrugged. “Perhaps.”
“’Tis tae Peacock Junction, I’ll be going,” Bridget ban announced. “Someone thought enough of this Twister to be taking it from the Molnar; and the Molnar came all the way from the Hadramoo to fetch it off New Eireann. Perhaps I can catch the scent of this black fleet there.”
“Yes,” said Grimpen. “All the way from the Hadramoo.”
He knows something, Bridget ban concluded. Or he thinks he does. But we’ll see who gets to the root sooner. She gave Grimpen a pleasant smile and wondered if the other Hounds even knew the tale of King Stonewall’s Twisting Scepter. They had been raised in the interior, not on Die Bold, as she had been; and stories about “the Folk of Sand and Iron” did not circulate that far into the Spiral Arm.
Fir Li turned to Gwillgi. “Then, that leaves only you to cross into the CCW and learn about the lost ships.”
“Sorry, Dark-hound,” replied the other. “Business on Hanower. Maybe, after. No rush. Ships’ve been disappearing for years, you say.”
Seeing that his plans had come to nothing, Fir Li sighed. “Perhaps Greystroke will learn what I need.”
Bridget ban realized that Fir Li did not understand the possibilities of the Scepter. He was too focused on the Rift, on the long-awaited Confederate invasion, on the mysterious disappearances. The Twister had in effect passed directly across his field of vision without once registering on his consciousness. All the better. There would be much honor at the Ardry’s court to whomever brought the Scepter in. Better that it be Bridget ban than Fir Li.
If one fleet had thought to seize the Scepter, and another fought to take it, it might be something worth the having. If nothing else, it would be a quest out of the ordinary. And if she found the Scepter, and if she could take it from those who had wrecked the Molnar’s fleet, and if it had the powers that legend gave it, possession of it might give the Ardry at last the power to rule. That was a lot of “ifs,” but she was a Hound.
Still, even should the Stonewall Scepter prove as inert as the Ourobouros Circuit, the Ardry would at least have another bauble for the Royal League Museum on High Tara. Tully O’Connor was an art lover, and fancied himself an amateur archaeologist. He would be pleased with whoever brought him such an artifact, and favor at court was not something to be shunned.
But it bothered her that she didn’t know what Grimpen knew, or thought he knew.
An Craic
“And what is it you know, or think you know?” the scarred man asks, so suddenly that the harper at first does not realize that he had broken the thread once more.