‘Sorry to interrupt your flow,’ he said gently when Thalia didn’t look up.
‘Sir,’ she said, starting. ‘I thought you were still outside.’
‘Word obviously gets around.’
Thalia froze the scroll. ‘I heard there was some kind of crisis brewing.’
‘Isn’t there always?’ Dreyfus plopped a heavy black bag down on her desk. ‘I know you’re already busy, Thalia, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to add to your burden.’
‘That’s okay, sir.’
‘Inside that bag are twelve beta-level recoverables. We had to pull them out of a damaged core, so in all likelihood they’re riddled with errors. I’d like you to fix what you can.’
‘Where did they come from?’
‘A place called Ruskin-Sartorious. It doesn’t exist any more. Of the nine hundred and sixty people who used to live there, the only survivors are the patterns in these beta-levels.’
‘Just twelve, out of all those people?’
‘That’s all we got. Even then, I doubt you’ll get twelve stable invocations. But do what you can. Call me as soon as you recover something I can talk to.’
Thalia looked back at the code wall. ‘After I’m done with this, right?’
‘Actually, I’d like those invocations as quickly as possible. I don’t want you to neglect Perigal, but this is looking more serious by the hour.’
‘What happened?’ she breathed. ‘How did those people die?’
‘Badly,’ Dreyfus said.
The safe-distance tether jerked him to a halt in Jane Aumonier’s presence.
‘Forensics are on the case,’ he said. ‘We should have an answer on those samples within the hour.’
‘Not that there’s much room for doubt,’ Aumonier said. ‘I have every confidence — if that’s the word — that they’ll tie the damage to the output beam of a Conjoiner drive.’ She directed Dreyfus’s attention to a portion of the wall she had enlarged before his arrival. Frozen there was a sleek silver-grey thing like a child’s paper dart. ‘Gaffney’s been talking to Centralised Traffic Control. They were able to backtrack the movements of this ship. Her name is
‘They can place her at the Bubble?’
‘Close enough for our purposes. No other lighthugger was anywhere near.’
‘Where’s she now?’
‘Hidden in the Parking Swarm.’
Aumonier enlarged another portion of the wall. Dreyfus saw a ball of fireflies, packed too tightly in the middle to separate into individual motes of light. A single ship would have no difficulty losing itself in the tight- packed core.
‘Have any left since the attack?’ he asked.
‘None. We’ve had the Swarm under tight surveillance.’
‘And in the event that one should break cover?’
‘I’d rather not think about it.’
‘But you have.’
She nodded minutely. ‘Theoretically, one of our deep-system cruisers could shadow a lighthugger all the way out to the Oort cloud. But what good would it do us? If they don’t want to stop, or let us board… nothing
‘Do we have any priors on this ship?’
‘Nothing, Tom. Why?’
‘I was wondering about a motive.’
‘Me, too. Maybe one of the recoverables can shed some light on that.’
‘If we’re lucky,’ Dreyfus said. ‘We only got twelve, and most of those are likely to be damaged.’
‘What about back-ups? Ruskin-Sartorious wouldn’t have kept all their eggs in that one basket.’
‘Agreed. But it’s unlikely that the squirts happened more frequently than once a day, if that. Once a week is a lot more likely.’
‘Stale memories may be better than nothing, if that’s all we have.’ Her tone shifted, becoming more personal. ‘Tom, I have to ask another favour of you. I’m afraid it’s going to be even more difficult and delicate than Perigal.’
‘You’d like me to talk to the Ultras.’
‘I want you to ride out to the Swarm. You don’t have to enter it yet, but I want them to know that we have our eye on them. I want them to know that if they attempt to hide that ship — or aid its evasion of justice in any way — we won’t take it lightly.’
Dreyfus skimmed mental options, trying to work out what kind of ship would send the most effective signal to the Ultras. Nothing in his previous experience with the starship crews had given him much guidance.
‘I’ll leave immediately,’ he said, preparing to haul himself back to the wall.
‘I’d rather you didn’t,’ Aumonier replied. ‘Get some rest first. We’re up against the clock on this one, but I still want the Ultras to stew a little, wonder what our response is going to be. We’re not totally clawless. We can hit them in the trade networks, where it really hurts. Time to make
Elsewhere, an object fell through the Glitter Band.
It was a two-metre-wide sphere, following a carefully calculated free-fall trajectory that would slip it through the transient gaps in civilian, CTC and Panoply tracking systems with the precision of a dancer weaving between scarves. The nonvelope’s path was simply an additional precaution that had cost nothing except a tiny expenditure of computing time and an equally small delay to its departure time. It was already nearly invisible, by the standards of all but the most probing close-range surveillance methods.
Presently it detected the intrusion of light of a very particular frequency, one that it was programmed not to deflect. Machinery deep in the nonvelope processed the temporal structure of the light and extracted an encoded message in an expected format. The same machinery composed a response and spat it out in the opposite direction, back to whatever had transmitted the original pulse.
A confirmatory pulse arrived milliseconds later.
The nonvelope had allowed itself to be detected. This was part of the plan.
Three hours later, a ship positioned itself over the nonvelope, using gravitational sensing to refine its final approach. The nonvelope was soon safely concealed inside the reception bay of the ship. Clamps locked it into position. Detecting its safe arrival, the nonvelope relaxed the structure of its quickmatter envelope in preparation for disgorging its cargo. As lights came on and air flooded into the bay, the nonvelope’s surface flicked to the appearance of a large chromed marble. Weight returned as the ship powered away from the rendezvous point.
A figure in an anonymous black spacesuit entered the bay. The figure crouched next to the nonvelope and observed it open. The sphere cracked wide, one half folding back to reveal its occupant. A glassy cocoon of support systems oozed away from his foetal form. The man was breathing, but only just on the edge of consciousness.
The man in the suit removed his helmet. ‘Welcome back to the world, Anthony Theobald Ruskin- Sartorious.’
The man in the nonvelope groaned and stirred. His eyes were gummed with protective gel. He pawed them clean, then squinted while they found their focus.
‘I’ve arrived?’
‘You’re aboard the ship. Just like you planned.’
His relief was palpable. ‘I thought it was never going to end. Four hours in that thing… it felt like a million years.’
‘I wouldn’t mind betting that’s the first physical discomfort you’ve ever known in your life.’ The man in the black spacesuit was standing now, his legs slightly apart, braced in the half-gravity produced by the ship’s acceleration.
Anthony Theobald narrowed his eyes at the figure. ‘Do I know you?’
