beam to lock on to. The risk of attack had dropped even further, leaving the crew free to concentrate on the mission’s primary objective. Data from the approaching system became steadily more comprehensive, too, focusing minds on the specifics of the recovery operation.
It was clear that something very odd was happening around Delta Pavonis. Scans of the planetary system showed the inexplicable omission of three moderately large terrestrial bodies, as if they had simply been deleted from existence. More worrying still was what had replaced the system’s major gas giant: only a remnant of the giant’s metallic core now remained, enveloped in a skein of liberated matter many dozens of times wider than the original planet. There were hints of an immense mechanism that had been used to spin the planet apart: arcs and cusps and coils that were in the process of being dismantled and retransformed into new machinery. And at the heart of the cloud was something even larger than those subsidiary components: a two-thousand-kilometre-wide engine that could not possibly be of human origin.
Remontoire had helped Clavain build sensors to pick up the neutrino signatures of the hell-class weapons. As they had neared the system they had established that thirty-three of the weapons were in essentially the same place, while six more were dormant, waiting in a wide orbit around the neutron star Hades. One weapon was unaccounted for, but Clavain had known about that before he left the Mother Nest. More detailed scans, which became possible only when they had slowed to within a quarter of a light-year of their destination, showed that the thirty-three weapons were almost certainly aboard a ship of the same basic type as
Now, finally, they had some measure of their adversary. But what of Resurgam itself? There was no radio or other EM-band traffic coming from the system’s sole inhabited planet, but the colony had clearly not failed. Analysis of the atmosphere’s constituent gases revealed ongoing terraforming activity, with sizeable expanses of water now visible on the surface. The icecaps had withered back towards the poles. The air was warmer and wetter than it had been in nearly a million years. The infra-red signatures of surface flora matched the patterns expected from terran genestock, modified for cold, dry, low-oxygen survivability. Hot thermal blotches showed the sites of large brute-force atmospheric reprocessors. Refined metals indicated intense surface industrialisation. At extreme magnification, there were even the suggestions of roads or pipelines, and the occasional moving echo of a fat transatmospheric cargo vehicle, like a dirigible. The planet was certainly inhabited, even now. But whoever was down there was not much interested in communicating with the outside world.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Scorpio told Clavain. ‘You came here to take the weapons, that’s all. There’s no need to make this any more complicated than it has to be.’
Clavain had been alone until the pig had visited him. ‘Just deal with the starship, is that it?’
‘We can start negotiations immediately if we transmit a beta-level proxy. They can have the weapons ready for us when we arrive. Nice quick turnaround and we’re away. The other ships won’t even have reached the system.’
‘Nothing’s ever that easy, Scorp.’ Clavain spoke with morose resignation, his eyes focused on the starfield beyond the window.
‘You don’t think negotiation will work? Fine.We’ll skip it and just come in with all guns blazing.’
‘In which case we’d better hope they don’t know how to use the hell-class weapons. Because if it comes to a straight fight, we won’t have a snowball’s chance.’
‘I thought that Volyova turning the weapons against us wasn’t going to be a problem.’
Clavain turned from the window. ‘Remontoire can’t promise me that our pacification codes will work. And if we test them too soon we give Volyova time to find a workaround. If such a thing exists, I’m pretty sure she’ll find it.’
‘Then we keep trying negotiation,’ Scorpio said. ‘Send the proxy, Clavain. It will buy us time and cost us nothing.’
The man did not answer him directly. ‘Do you think they understand what’s happening to their system, Scorpio?’
Scorpio blinked. Sometimes he had difficulty following the swerves and evasions of Clavain’s moods. The man was far more ambivalent and complex than any human he had known since his time aboard the yacht.
‘Understand?’
‘That the machines are already there, already busy. If they look into the sky, surely they can’t miss what is happening. Surely they must realise that it isn’t good news.’
‘What else can they do, Clavain? You’ve read the intelligence summaries. They probably don’t have a single shuttle down there. What can they do but pretend it isn’t happening?’
‘I don’t know,’ Clavain said.
‘Let us transmit the proxy,’ Scorpio said. ‘Just to the ship, tight-beam only.’
Clavain said nothing for at least a minute. He had turned his attention back to the window, staring out into space. Scorpio wondered what he hoped to see out there. Did he imagine that he could unmake that glint of light, the one that had signalled Galiana’s end, if he tried hard enough? He had not known Clavain as long as some of the others, but he viewed Clavain as a rational man. But he supposed grief, the kind of howling, remorse-filled grief Clavain was experiencing, could smash rationality to shards. The impact of so familiar an emotion as sadness on the flow of history had never been properly accounted for, Scorpio thought. Grief and remorse, loss and pain, sadness and sorrow were at least as powerful shapers of events as anger, greed and retribution.
‘Clavain…?’ he prompted.
‘I never thought there’d be choices this hard,’ the man said. ‘But H was right. The hard choices are the only ones that matter. I thought defecting was the hardest thing I had ever done. I thought I would never see Felka again. But I didn’t realise how wrong I was, how trivial that decision was. It was nothing compared with what I had to do later. I killed Galiana, Scorpio. And the worst thing is that I did it willingly.’
‘But you got Felka back again. There are always consolations.’
‘Yes,’ Clavain said, sounding like a man grasping for the last crumb of comfort. ‘I got Felka back. Or at least I got someone back. But she isn’t the way I left her. She carries the Wolf herself now, just a shadow of it, it’s true, but when I speak to her I can’t be sure whether it’s Felka answering or the Wolf. No matter what happens now, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to take anything she says at face value.‘
‘You cared for her enough to risk your life rescuing her. That was a difficult choice as well. But it doesn’t make you unique.’ Scorpio scratched at the upraised snout of his nose. ‘We’ve all made difficult choices around here. Look at Antoinette. I know her story, Clavain. Set out to do a good deed — burying her father the way he wanted — and she ends up entangled in a battle for the entire future of the species. Pigs, humans… everything. I bet she didn’t have that in mind when she set out to salve her conscience. But we can’t guess where things will take us, or the harder questions that will follow on from one choice. You thought defecting would be an act in and of itself, but it was just the start of something much larger.’
Clavain sighed. Perhaps it was imagination, but Scorpio thought that he detected the slightest lightening of the man’s mood. His voice was softer when he spoke. ‘What about you, Scorpio? Did you have choices to make as well?’
‘Yeah. Whether I threw my weight in with you human sons of bitches.’
‘And the consequences?’
‘Some of you are still sons of bitches that deserve to die in the most painful and slow way I can envisage. But not all of you.’
‘I’ll take that as a compliment.’
‘Take it while you can. I might change my mind tomorrow.’
Clavain sighed again, scratched his beard and then said, ‘All right. Do it. Transmit a beta-level proxy.’
‘We’ll need a statement to accompany it,’ Scorpio said. ‘A laying-down of terms, if you like.’
‘Whatever it takes, Scorp. Whatever the hell it takes.’
