‘And now? Earthshine, you look rather pleased with yourself.’
‘So I should be. The noostratum. It has replied. And it has given me the means to save you all.’ He gestured to a door. ‘This way …’
CHAPTER 32
Höd grew visibly in the monitors of the Celyn now, heartbeat by heartbeat.
‘It’s coming at us so quickly,’ said Gerloc.
Her voice was small now, Kerys realised, with little remaining of the cool competence of the young officer who had held her position by the Celyn. The difference was, Kerys supposed, unlike herself and Freydis, Gerloc hadn’t had the time to get used to all this – to being trapped in a speeding mote of a vessel, caught between two colliding cosmic bodies. Like a fly, she thought, between the tabletop and the descending fist.
Freydis, at least, was calmly checking her instruments. ‘We’re approaching our full speed now. We’re actually moving far faster than Höd itself; most of the closing velocity is ours.’
Gerloc stared through a thick window. ‘It is the eye of a god, opening slowly.’
Kerys snapped, ‘No mythology now, Gerloc. It is just a lump of rock and ice. A big one, and representing awesome energies. But it is not divine. And if not for human intervention, it would not be here at all, high above Mars.’
Freydis said, ‘We have less than half an hour to closest approach. When we arrive, we’ll pass by the thing before we can count to ten. If we’re going to do something, we need to decide soon.’
‘Do something? Such as what?’ Gerloc asked.
Kerys glanced at Freydis, who she was sure understood the full situation, and shook her head. Not yet. Let Gerloc work it out for herself. She said aloud, ‘Still no response from the crews on the surface?’
‘None,’ Freydis said. ‘I think there’s still activity down there, however. Höd hasn’t been abandoned, and the big kernel banks are still firing.’
‘A suicide crew, then.’
‘It looks like it. And if so, they won’t welcome visitors.’ Freydis glanced at Gerloc. ‘You understand we can’t land. We don’t have the power, the time, to slow down and make a rendezvous.’
‘Of course I understand that,’ Gerloc said dismissively.
‘Even if we could attempt some kind of landing they’d probably try to shoot us out of the sky first,’ Kerys said. ‘And even if we had come earlier, it was probably always too late – Höd is probably too close to be deflected anyhow, by any conceivable push even from the kernel banks. Small tweaks to its momentum from far away: that’s how Höd has been delivered onto this course. It was worth a try, though. To come, to try to talk to the surface crew.’
Gerloc nodded. ‘Then if we can’t deflect the asteroid, what can we do?’
Kerys glanced at Freydis, and closed her eyes. ‘There may be one option. I have to tell you something very strange, Gerloc, and I apologise that there is no time to explain it fully. There are people in our universe – some of them are down there on Mars now – who are not from our history. They do not share our past. Freydis understands some of this … Now, Gerloc, the important point is this. That history was ended with a terrible war, at the climax of which a tremendous mass – some kind of huge ship I think – was slammed into the surface of the planet Mercury. They called it the Nail. In their history, as in ours, Mercury was the source of the first kernel mines.’
Freydis put in, ‘This has been studied in our own academies, based on the strangers’ description. There was a tremendous detonation – a huge release of energy. It’s thought that the kernels, caught up in the impact of the incoming mass, opened wide in response. And the release of energy—’
‘It was enough to scorch worlds clean,’ Kerys said.
Gerloc looked at Freydis, and then at Kerys, who closed her eyes. ‘I think I understand where this is leading. So we crash the ship into Höd – and not just at any random point. Directly onto the kernel banks. In the hope of blowing this lump of ice apart with kernel energies.’
‘That’s the idea.’
‘Thus saving Mars.’
‘And, with any luck, averting a war on Terra.’
‘Well, if that’s your plan, we have a lot of work to do to make it happen, and not much time to do it in.’
Kerys grinned. Not a word about the sacrifice of their own lives – just the mission objective. ‘Good response. And you’re right. We need to turn the ship around. Shut down the kernel drive first, use the secondary thrusters to swivel her. Then we light up the drive again, so that when we come down on Höd, it’s with our own kernels blazing away.’
Freydis nodded. ‘It could work.’ Her voice was brittle, her eyes too bright. ‘But right now we aren’t on a trajectory to hit Höd at all, let alone the kernel facility down there. We’ll need to make a course correction before we pivot the ship.’
‘Yes,’ Gerloc said. ‘And of course we’ll need to take into account the effect of our decelerating thrust on our trajectory, all the way down …’
Good, Kerys thought savagely. They would have to work, to actively pilot the ship, all the way in. It would be complex, demanding work, that would allow them no time to think.
Impulsively she reached out and grabbed their hands. ‘Whether we succeed in this or not, we will ignite a light that will be seen across the solar system, on every world. People will know who we were; our families will know what we tried to do, today. All right? Are you ready for this?’
Impulsively Freydis grabbed Gerloc’s hand, so they closed the circle. ‘Let’s get it done.’
‘Agreed,’ Gerloc said.
They broke the circle and turned to their posts.
CHAPTER 33
The chamber to which Earthshine led them was just a cavern in the deep rocks. There was a scatter of chairs near the door, a small chemical toilet, and heaps of equipment, including a heavy-looking cylinder of some plain white material. The light came from suspended fluorescents, a very mundane glow. Mardina and Beth together helped Penny over to one of the chairs; she couldn’t stand for long any more.
The central area of the floor was roped off, the barrier containing a smoother area within.
Earthshine had an air of smug triumph, Mardina thought. The others seemed subdued, even confused, as they were drawn deeper into Earthshine’s arcane plan, his mysteries – his layer of mind, deep in the rock.
A Navy radio communicator in Mardina’s pocket chimed, her farspeaker, a soft mechanical bell. She pulled out the little gadget, held it up to her ear. She walked towards Penny. ‘You need to hear this. All of you … I’m getting a signal down here.’
Earthshine nodded. ‘You should. I had my support from the Brikanti Navy install relays and repeaters inside the bunker, and then in this chamber when we discovered it.’
‘It’s from the Malleus, in space. They see Höd. The crew say it’s now about the size of the sun as seen from Earth, and growing fast.’
Penny nodded, eyes closed. ‘It would be by now—’
‘There was a detonation. On Höd.’
Chu, the slave boy, with the ColU’s slate on his chest, muttered a prayer in his native Xin.
Penny said, ‘The Celyn.’
‘Yes,’ Mardina said. ‘They rammed it.’
Penny said, ‘I bet they were trying to destroy the asteroid, by detonating the kernels.’ She turned to Beth. ‘Remember? Just like the Nail when it struck Mercury. Why, maybe Kerys even got the idea from our descriptions of that event.’
‘But they didn’t succeed,’ Mardina said. ‘According to the Malleus crew. Höd has a new crater, but is intact. Even such an immense explosion—’
Penny said firmly, ‘It was a worthy effort. And I suppose there was nothing more they could do, given the time. Kerys and her crew will be remembered for their heroism.’