‘I gathered we were on a ship,’ Remontoire said. ‘And we’re accelerating very, very hard. I wanted to find something I could drop to the floor, so that I might have an idea of exactly how hard. But you’ve done a very good job of leaving me with nothing. Still, I can guess. What is it now — four and a half gees?’
‘Five,’ Clavain said. ‘And we’ll soon be pushing to six and higher.’
‘This room doesn’t remind me of any part of Nightshade. Have you captured another lighthugger, Clavain? That can’t have been easy.’
‘I had some help.’
‘And the high rate of acceleration? How did you manage that without Skade’s magic box of tricks?’
‘Skade didn’t create that technology from scratch. She stole it, or enough pieces to figure out the rest. She wasn’t the only one with access to it, however. I met a man who had tapped the same mother-lode. ’
‘And this man is aboard the ship?’
‘No, he left us to our own devices. It’s my ship, Rem.’ Clavain whipped out an arm encased in the support rig and patted the rough metal wall of Remontoire’s cell. ‘She’s called Zodiacal Light. She’s carrying a small army. Skade’s ahead of us, but I’m not going to let her get her hands on those weapons without a struggle.’
‘Ah. Skade.’ Remontoire nodded, smiling.
‘Something amusing you?’
‘Has she been in touch?’
‘In a manner of speaking, yes. That’s why I woke you. What are you getting at?’
‘Did she make it clear what had…’ Remontoire trailed off, leaving Clavain aware that he was being observed closely. ‘Evidently not.’
‘What?’
‘She nearly died, Clavain. When you escaped from the comet, the one where we met the Master of Works.’
‘Clearly she got better.’
‘Well, that very much depends…’ Again, Remontoire trailed off. ‘This isn’t about Skade, is it? I can see that concerned paternal look in your eye.’ In one easy movement he swung himself off the bed, sitting quite normally on the edge, as if the five gees of acceleration did not apply to him at all. Only a tiny twitching vein in the side of his head betrayed the tension he was under. ‘Let me guess. She still has Felka, doesn’t she.’
Clavain said nothing, waiting for Remontoire to continue.
‘I tried to have Felka come with me and the pig,’ he said, ‘but Skade wasn’t having it. Said Felka was more useful to her as a bargaining chip. I couldn’t talk her out of it. If I’d have argued too strenuously, she wouldn’t have let me come after you at all.’
‘You came to kill me.’
‘I came to stop you. My intention was to persuade you to come back with me to the Mother Nest. Of course, I’d have killed you if it came to it, but then you’d have done precisely the same to me if it was something you believed in sufficiently.’ Remontoire paused. ‘I believed I could talk you out of it. No one else would have given you a chance.’
‘We’ll talk about that later. It’s Felka who matters now.’
There was a long silence between the two men. Clavain adjusted his position, determined that Remontoire should not see how uncomfortable he was.
‘What’s happened?’ Remontoire asked.
‘Skade’s offered to turn Felka over provided I abandon the chase. She’ll drop her behind Nightshade, in a shuttle. At maximum burn it can shift to a rest frame we can reach with one of our shuttles.’
Remontoire nodded. Clavain sensed his friend thinking deeply, chewing over permutations and possibilities.
‘And if you refuse?’
‘She’ll still ditch Felka, but she won’t make it easy for us to catch her. At best, I’ll have to forfeit the chase to ensure a safe recovery. At worst, I’ll never find her. We’re in interstellar space, Rem. There’s a hell of a lot of nothing out there. With Skade’s flame ahead of us and ours behind, there are huge deadspots in our sensor coverage.’
There was another long silence while Remontoire thought again. He eased back on to the bed, assisting the flow of blood to his brain.
‘You can’t trust Skade, Clavain. She has absolutely no need to convince you of her sincerity, since she doesn’t think you’ll ever have anything she needs or anything that can hurt her. This is not a two-prisoner game, like they taught you back on Deimos.’
‘I must have scared her,’ Clavain said. ‘She wasn’t expecting us to catch up so easily.’
‘Even so…’ Remontoire hovered on the edge of saying something for several minutes.
‘You realise why I woke you now.’
‘Yes, I think I do. Run Seven was in a similar position to Skade when he had Irravel Veda on his tail, trying to get back her passengers.’
‘Seven made you serve him. You were forced to give him advice, tactics he could use against Irravel.’
‘It’s an entirely different situation, Clavain.’
‘There are enough similarities for me.’ Clavain made his frame elevate him to a standing position. ‘Here’s the picture, Rem. Skade will expect a response from me in a matter of days. You’re going to help me choose that response. Ideally, I want Felka back without losing sight of the objective.’
‘You thawed me out in desperation, then? Better the devil you know, as they say?’
‘You’re my oldest and closest friend, Rem. I just don’t know if I can trust you any more.’
‘And should the advice I give you be good… ?’
‘That might put me in a more trusting frame of mind, I suppose.’ Clavain forced a smile. ‘Of course, I’d also have Felka’s advice on that as well.’
‘And if we fail?’
Clavain said nothing. He just turned and left.
Four small shuttles arced away from Zodiacal Light, each falling into its own half-hemisphere of the relativistically distorted starscape. The exhaust streams of the ships glittered in the backwash from Zodiacal Light’s main flames. The trajectories were achingly beautiful, flung out from the mother ship like the curved arms of a chandelier.
If only this wasn’t an action in a war, Clavain thought, then it might almost be something to be proud of…
He watched their departure from an observation cupola near the prow of his ship, feeling an obligation to wait until he could no longer make them out. Each shuttle carried a valued crewmember, plus a quota of fuel that he would rather not have had to spend before reaching Resurgam. If all went well, Clavain would get back the four shuttles and their crew. But he would never see most of the fuel again. There was only a tiny margin of error, enough that one ship could bring back a human-mass payload in addition to its pilot.
He hoped he was playing this one correctly.
It was said that the taking of hard decisions was something that became easier with repetition, like any difficult activity. There was, perhaps, some truth in that assertion. But if so, Clavain found that it most certainly did not apply in his own case. He had taken several extraordinarily difficult decisions lately, and each had been, in its own unique way, harder than the last. So it was with the matter of Felka.
It was not that he did not want Felka back, if there was a way that could be achieved. But Skade knew how much he wanted the weapons as well. She also knew that it was not a selfish issue with Clavain. He could not be bargained with in the usual sense, since he did not want the weapons for his own personal gain. But with Felka she had the perfect instrument of negotiation. She knew that the two of them had a special bond, one that went back to Mars. Was Felka really his daughter? He didn’t know, even now. He had convinced himself that she might be, and she had told him she was… but that had been under possible duress, when she had been trying to persuade him not to defect. If anything, that admission had only served to slowly undermine his own certainties. He would not know for sure until he was again in her presence, and he could ask her properly.