against the Conjoiners at the end of the twenty-second century. The sphere of combat had reached far above the orbits of Phobos and Deimos, so that the effective crossing time for the fastest single-person fighters had been three or four hours. There had been timelag problems, too, with line-of-sight communications blocked by huge clouds of silvered chaff.
There had been other campaigns, other wars. It was not necessary to bring them all to mind. The salient lessons were there already. He knew the mistakes that others had made; he knew also the mistakes he had made in the earlier engagements of his career. They had never been significant errors, he thought, or he would not be standing here now. But no lesson was valueless.
A pale reflection moved across the cupola’s glass.
‘Clavain.’
He snapped around with a whirr of his exoskeleton. He had imagined himself to be alone until then.
‘Felka…’ he said, surprised.
‘I came to watch it happen,’ she said.
Her own exoskeleton propelled her towards him with a stiff, marching gait, like someone being escorted by invisible guards. Together they watched the dregs of the attack squadron fall into space.
‘If you didn’t know it was war…’ he began.
‘… it would almost be beautiful,’ she said. ‘Yes. I agree.’
‘I’m doing the right thing, aren’t I?’ Clavain asked.
‘Why do you ask me?’
‘You’re the closest thing I have left to a conscience, Felka. I keep asking myself what Galiana would do, if she were here now…’
Felka interrupted him. ‘She would worry, just as you worry. It’s the people who don’t worry — those who never have any doubts £hat what they’re doing is good and right — they’re the ones that cause the problems. People like Skade.’
He remembered the searing flash when he had destroyed
‘I told you to do it, Clavain. I know it was what Galiana wanted.’
‘That I should kill her?’
‘She died years ago. She just didn’t… end. All you’ve done is close the book.’
‘I removed any possibility of her ever living again,’ he said.
Felka held his age-spotted hand. ‘She would have done the same to you, Clavain. I know it.’
‘Perhaps. But you still haven’t told me if you agree with
‘I agree that it will serve our short-term interests if we possess the weapons. Beyond that, I’m not sure.’
Clavain looked at her carefully. ‘We need those weapons, Felka.’ ‘I know. But what if she — the Triumvir — needs them as well? Your proxy said she was trying to evacuate Resurgam.’
He chose his words. ‘That’s… not my immediate concern. If she is engaged in evacuating the planet, and I’ve no evidence that she is, then she has all the more reason to give me what I want so that I don’t interfere with the evacuation.’
‘And it wouldn’t cross your mind to think for a moment about helping her?’
‘I’m here to get those weapons, Felka. Everything else, no matter how well intentioned, is just a detail.’
‘That’s what I thought,’ Felka said.
Clavain knew that it was better that he say nothing in answer.
In silence, they watched the violet flames of the attack ships fall towards Resurgam, and the Triumvir’s starship.
When Khouri had finished responding to Thorn’s latest message she arrived at a troubling conclusion. Walking was even harder than it had been before, the apparent slope of the floor even more severe. It was exactly as Ilia Volyova had predicted: the Captain had increased his rate of thrust, no longer satisfied with a mere tenth of a gee. By Khouri’s estimation, and the Clavain beta-level agreed with her, the rate was now double that and probably climbing. Previously horizontal surfaces now felt as if they were sloping at twelve degrees, enough to make some of the more slippery passages difficult to traverse. But that was not what was concerning her.
‘Ilia, listen to me. We have a serious fucking problem.’
Volyova emerged from contemplation of her battlescape. The icons floated within the squashed sphere of the projection like dozens of bright frozen fish. The view had changed since the last time she had seen it, Khouri was certain.
‘What is it, child?’
‘It’s the holding bay, where we have the newcomers.’
‘Continue.’
‘It’s not designed to deal with the ship moving under thrust. We built it as a temporary holding bay, to be used while we were parked. It’s spun for gravity so that the force acts radially, away from the ship’s long axis. But now that’s changing. The Captain’s applying thrust, so we’ve got a new source acting along the axis. It’s only a fifth of a gee at the moment, but you can bet it’s going to get worse. We can turn off the spin, but that won’t change things. The walls are becoming floors.’
‘This is a lighthugger, Khouri. This is a normal transition to starflight mode.’
‘You don’t understand, Ilia. We’ve got two thousand people crammed into one chamber, and they can’t stay there. They’re already freaking out because the floor is sloping so much. They feel as if they’re on the deck of a sinking ship, and no one is telling them anything’s wrong.’ She paused; she was a little out of breath. ‘Ilia, here’s the deal. You were right about the bottleneck. I told Thorn to get things moving faster at the Resurgam end. That means we’re going to be getting thousands of people arriving very soon indeed. We always knew we’d have to start emptying the holding bay. Now we’ll just have to start doing it a bit sooner.’
‘But that would mean…’ Volyova appeared unable to complete the thought.
‘Yes, Ilia. They’re going to have to get the tour of the ship. Whether they like it or not.’
‘This could turn out very badly, Khouri. Very badly indeed.’
Khouri looked down at her old mentor. ‘You know what I like about you, Ilia? You’re such a frigging optimist.’
‘Shut up and take a look at the battle display, Khouri. We are under attack — or we will be very shortly.’
‘Clavain?’
The merest hint of a nod. ‘
‘Clavain can’t have those weapons, Ilia.’
The Triumvir, who now looked far older and frailer than Khouri ever remembered, shook her head by the barest degree. ‘He isn’t going to get them. Not without a fight.’
class='first'>They exchanged ultimatums. Clavain gave Ilia Volyova one last chance to surrender the hell- class weapons; if she complied he would recall his attack fleet. Volyova told Clavain that if he did not recall his fleet immediately, she would turn the thirteen remaining weapons against him.
Clavain readied his response. ‘Sorry. Unacceptable. I need those weapons very badly.’
He transmitted it and was only slightly startled when the Triumvir’s answer came back three seconds later. It was identical to his own. There had not been enough time for her to see his response.
CHAPTER 35
Volyova watched five of the thirteen remaining cache weapons assume attack positions beyond
