‘We want you to stop,’ Eilidh said. ‘My commanders. My government. My people, those who know about you – about all of you from beyond the jonbar hinge. We want you to stop meddling with our lives. With our worlds.’ She looked heated, almost embarrassed to have spoken.
Ari said, ‘And of course they want you to deflect Höd. Give up this destructive course you seem to be on.’
‘I’m afraid I can’t do that,’ he said evenly.
Beth spoke, for the first time, bravely. ‘Then you’ll kill us all – grandfather. Me too. Because I agree with them. This isn’t our world, it’s not our history. We, you, have no right to meddle like this. I’m not going anywhere. If Ceres falls, it kills me too.’
‘I doubt very much that that’s going to happen. But we still have time for a chat before the end game.’ He turned to Eilidh. ‘You may bring your craft down. Well, then.’ He smiled at them all. ‘As your English ancestors would have said, Mardina, I’ll pop home and put the kettle on. See you soon!’
And he vanished in a brief blizzard of light blocks.
Eilidh looked to the heavens, muttered a quick prayer, and turned to her controls. ‘The coordinates are here. I’ll put us down as quick as I can, and make a report to the Malleus. We’ve no time to waste.’
As the ship’s position shifted, an overhead window tracked a swathe of the copper sky, and Mardina glimpsed Höd, a tiny disc now, brilliant enough to hurt her eyes.
CHAPTER 30
Kerys lay on her back in an acceleration couch, on the bridge of the Celyn, the ship she had stolen. The prow of the ship, a thick shield of metal and dirt designed to defy the erosion of the sparse grime of interplanetary and interstellar space, had no forward ports, but various instruments peered around the shield, and screens around her showed her images of what lay beyond the ship: a glowing jewel hanging over a pale brown landscape.
Surely by now the destination of the asteroid must be obvious to the authorities on Terra. Kerys had moved in elevated enough circles to be able to imagine the consternation that must be unfolding in the capitals, Brikanti, Xin and Roman: the fear, the raised voices, the unbelieved denials that this was an intentional act of war. She prayed for cool judgements, but on a world that was more or less continually at war, she feared judgement would be lacking. And she feared for Brikanti – for her family, her sister and her nephews …
Meanwhile it was just three hours from impact. And still the Celyn sat on the ground.
‘Come on, Freydis, come on—’
‘I’m here, nauarchus.’ Freydis scrambled up a ladder into the cabin, kicked a hatch closed behind her, and hauled herself into a couch alongside Kerys.
‘At last!’ Kerys immediately started snapping switches and pulling levers. She felt the ship shudder as the huge assemblies of etheric engines that controlled the kernel banks began to power up. ‘I’d bite your head off if I didn’t know how many hatches you had to close, and systems to flush down …’
‘Yes, nauarchus.’
‘And if it hadn’t also taken me all this time to get the controls in order also. The crew here were doing a sloppy job.’
Freydis thought that over. ‘That strange creature Earthshine is in control of all of this. Maybe he doesn’t care about this ship. He’s safe in his bunker – well, at least until Höd falls. Maybe he thought the presence of the ship and the crew on the surface would be enough of a deterrent to anybody who was thinking of intruding.’
‘We’re never going to know. And from now on our priority is that.’ Kerys tapped a screen that glowed with an image of the falling Eye.
Freydis glanced at a clock. ‘Just three hours until Höd falls. I didn’t realise how much time we’ve lost.’
‘I did. I’ve been watching that damn bit of clockwork tick away our remaining time. And I’ve been trying to figure out a flight plan. Right now Höd is a hundred and thirty thousand Roman miles from Mars. That’s over thirty planetary diameters. Which sounds a lot until you remember that the thing is coming in at over ten Mars diameters every hour.’ She glanced at Freydis, who was taking this all in very calmly, very seriously – looking more like an earnest student in a classroom than a soldier, Kerys thought, a soldier who was about to lay down her life. ‘So, you tell me. Given the knucklebones as they’ve fallen, what play would you have us make next?’
Freydis pulled her lip. ‘Our objective is to deflect Höd from an impact with Mars. The further out from the planet we meet Höd the better. Our highest acceleration is three weights—’
‘Yes. If we just blast out of here at three weights, we will encounter Höd in less than an hour.’
‘Umm. Even then it might be too close to do anything about it.’
‘Most likely. And—’
‘And we’ll go flying by at twenty thousand miles per hour.’
‘Yes. But if we plan for a rendezvous, if we allow time to decelerate—’
‘Then by the time we meet Höd it will be closer yet to Mars.’
‘So what do you think?’
Freydis grinned. ‘Go for the burn. Get there as fast as possible. At minimum we can blast whatever crew is still on that ice ball with farspeaker messages; maybe the sight of the Celyn coming down their throats will persuade them to see the error of the course they’ve chosen.’
Kerys nodded grimly. ‘And if that fails we’ll think of something else.’ Although she could only think of one alternative, given the situation. ‘But the first thing we have to do is get there. Strapped in, Freydis? Taken your thrust medications?’
‘No, but I’ll survive.’
Actually, Kerys thought sadly, no, you probably won’t.
She pulled the master lever, lay back, and braced. She imagined the banks of kernels embedded in the base of the ship, etheric pulses washing over them, their strange, tiny mouths opening – the engineers always said they were like baby birds asking to be fed – but those mouths would vomit out a kind of fire that was hotter than the sun itself. Immediately Kerys felt the heavy shove of the thrust, a weight that pushed her deep into the cushions of the couch.
On a pillar of fire, the Celyn surged into the sky of Mars.
Without thinking, Kerys went into practices for high-thrust regimes as she’d been instructed, many years ago. She kept her legs still, her arms at her side, her head cushioned, and she breathed deliberately, deep and strong, pushing against that savage weight. Only an hour, she thought. Only an hour. Then, one way or another, it would be done.
Almost immediately, it seemed, the wan sky of Mars cleared away in her screens, leaving that deadly spark of light, Höd, hanging in the void. As if a last illusion had been dispelled about the reality of this situation.
The cabin was shuddering, the roar of the drive loud.
‘Onwards, nauarchus!’ Freydis yelled, defying the savage acceleration and the noise. ‘Onwards!’
To Kerys’s surprise, an internal communications link sounded with a whistle. She looked at Freydis sharply. ‘Who is that? I thought you said you cleared the ship.’
‘I did! I threw off the last of the crew at spearpoint, and they were glad to leave when I told them we were heading for Höd …’
Kerys reached up cautiously and snapped a switch. ‘Identify yourself.’
‘I am Gerloc. You may recall, the nauarchus tricked me in order to gain access to the ship.’
Kerys grimaced. ‘I apologise for that.’
Freydis snarled, ‘And I left you bound up.’
‘Not very well, it seems,’ Gerloc said.
Kerys had to grin. ‘Ha! She has you there, Freydis.’
‘I wondered if you would like a little help. I do know the ship’s systems quite well; I have had extensive training as a backup to the control crew.’
‘Hm. It wouldn’t harm. You need to understand that our mission—’