He could not yet see the face, although the voice was already whispering across the years to him. When vision came — when Falkender completed the neural interface — he remembered.
‘Who is she?’ Sluka asked.
‘Her name — when last we met — was Ilia Volyova.’ Sylveste shrugged. ‘It may or may not have been real. All I do know is that whatever threats she goes on to make, she’s fully capable of backing them up.’
‘And she’s — what? The Captain?’
‘No,’ Sylveste said, distracted. ‘No, she’s not.’
The woman’s face was unremarkable. Almost monochromatically pale of complexion, short dark hair, and a facial structure somewhere between elfin and skeletal, framing deepset, narrow, slanted eyes which dispensed little compassion. She had hardly changed at all. But then, that was the point of Ultras. If subjective decades had passed for Sylveste since their last meeting, then for Volyova it might only have been a handful of years; a tenth or a twentieth of the time. For her, their last meeting would be a thing of the relatively recent past, whereas for Sylveste it felt like an event consigned to the dusty annals of history. It placed him at a disadvantage, of course. For Volyova, his mannerisms — the more predictable aspects of his behaviour — would still be fresh in her mind; he would be an adversary not long met. But Sylveste had barely recognised Volyova’s voice until now, and when he tried to recall whether she had been more or less sympathetic to him on their previous meeting, his memory failed him. Of course, it would all come back, but it was that very slowness of recall which gave Volyova her undoubted edge.
Odd, really. He had assumed — stupidly, perhaps — that it would be Sajaki who was making this announcement. Not the true Captain, of course, or else why would they have come for him? The Captain had to be ill again.
But then where was Sajaki?
He forced his mind to disregard these questions and concentrate on what Volyova had to say.
After two or three repetitions, he had the whole of her monologue assembled in his head, and was almost certain he could have regurgitated it word for word. It was indeed curt. They knew what they wanted, these Ultras. And they knew what it would take to get it. ‘I am Triumvir Ilia Volyova of the lighthugger Nostalgia for Infinity’ was how she introduced herself. No helloes; not even a perfunctory admission of gratitude for the fates having allowed them to cross space to Resurgam.
Such niceties, Sylveste knew, were not exactly Ilia Volyova’s style. He had always thought of her as the quiet one; more concerned with housekeeping her hideous weapons than condescending to engage in anything resembling normal social intercourse. More than once he had heard the other crewmembers joke — and they hardly ever joked — about how Volyova preferred the company of the vessel’s indigenous rats over her human crewmates.
Perhaps they had not really been joking.
‘I am addressing you from orbit,’ was how she continued. ‘We have studied your state of technological advancement and concluded that you pose us no military threat.’ And then she paused, before continuing in what to Sylveste sounded like the tones of a schoolteacher warning pupils against committing an act of minor disobedience, like gazing out the window, or not keeping their compads well organised. ‘However, should any act be construed as a deliberate attempt at inflicting damage on us, we will retaliate in a massively disproportionate sense.’ She almost smiled at that point. ‘Not so much an eye for an eye, so to speak, as a city for an eye. We are fully capable of destroying any or all of your settlements from orbit.’
Volyova leant forwards, her leonine grey eyes seeming to fill the screen. ‘More importantly, we also have the resolve to do it, should the need arise.’ Volyova again allowed herself an over-dramatic pause, doubtless aware that she had a captive audience at this point. ‘If I chose, it could happen in a matter of minutes. Don’t imagine I’d lose much sleep over it.’
Sylveste could see where all this was heading.
‘But let us put aside such vulgarities, at least for the moment.’ She really smiled at that point, though as smiles went, it was near-cryogenic in its frostiness. ‘You’re doubtless wondering why we’re here.’
‘Not me,’ Sylveste said, loud enough that Pascale heard him.
‘There is a man amongst you we seek. Our desire to find him is so absolute, so pressing, that we have decided to bypass the usual…’ Volyova’s smile reappeared; an even colder phantom of itself. ‘… diplomatic channels. The man’s name is Sylveste; no further explanation should be necessary, if his reputation hasn’t waned since our last meeting.’
‘Tarnished, perhaps,’ Sluka commented. Then, to Sylveste, ‘You’re really going to have to tell me more about this prior meeting, you know. It can hardly do you any harm.’
‘And knowing the facts won’t do you a blind bit of good,’ Sylveste said, immediately returning his attention to the broadcast.
‘Ordinarily,’ Volyova said, ‘we’d establish lines of dialogue with the proper authorities and negotiate for Sylveste’s handover. Possibly that was our original intention. But a cursory scan of your planet’s main settlement from orbit — Cuvier — convinced us that such an approach would be doomed to failure. We surmised that there was no longer any power worth dealing with. And I’m afraid we don’t have the patience to bargain with squabbling planetary factions.’
Sylveste shook his head. ‘She’s lying. They never intended to negotiate, no matter what state we were in. I know these people; they’re vicious scum.’
‘So you keep telling us,’ Sluka said.
‘Our options are therefore rather limited,’ Volyova continued. ‘We want Sylveste, and our intelligence has confirmed that he is not… how shall I put it — at large?’
‘All that from orbit?’ Pascale asked. ‘That’s what I call good intelligence.’
‘Too good,’ Sylveste said.
‘This then,’ Volyova added, ‘is how things will proceed. Within twenty-four hours Sylveste will make his presence and location known to us via a radio-frequency broadcast. Either he emerges from hiding or those who are holding him set him free. We leave the details to you. If Sylveste is dead, then irrefutable evidence of his death must be offered in place of the man himself. Whether we accept it will be entirely at our discretion, of course.’
‘Good job I’m not dead, in that case. I doubt there’s anything you could do to convince Volyova.’
‘She’s that intransigent?’
‘Not just her; the whole crew.’
But Volyova was still speaking: ‘Twenty-four hours, then. We will be listening. And if we hear nothing, or suspect deception in any form, we will enact a punishment. Our ship has certain capabilities — ask Sylveste, if you doubt us. If we have not heard from him within the next day, we will use that capability against one of your planet’s smaller surface communities. We have already selected the target in question, and the nature of the attack will be such that no one in the community will survive. Is that clear? No one. Twenty-four hours after that, if we have still heard nothing of the elusive Dr Sylveste, we will escalate to a larger target. Twenty-four hours after that, we will destroy Cuvier.’ And Volyova proffered another brief smile at that point. ‘Though you seem to be doing an admirable job there yourselves.’
The message ended, then recommenced from the beginning, with Volyova’s blunt introduction. Sylveste listened to it in its entirety twice more before anyone dared interrupt his concentration.
‘They wouldn’t do it,’ Sluka said. ‘Surely not.’
‘It’s barbaric,’ Pascale added, eliciting a nod from their captor. ‘No matter how much they need you — they couldn’t possibly intend to do what she said. I mean, destroy a whole settlement?’