which allowed ships to evolve, but he had never heard of a ship becoming so thoroughly perverted as this one while still, so far as he could tell, being able to continue functioning as a ship. It made his skin crawl just to look it. He hoped that no one living had been caught up in those transformations. The sphere of battle would encompass the ten light-seconds between Zodiacal Light and the other ship, although its focus would be determined by Volyova’s movements. It was a good volume for a war, Clavain thought. Tactically, it was not the scale that mattered so much as the typical crossing times for various craft and weapons. At three gees, the sphere could be crossed in four hours; a little over two hours for the fastest ships in the fleet. A hyperfast missile would take fewer than forty minutes to span the sphere. Clavain had already dug through his memories of previous battle campaigns, searching for tactical parallels. The Battle of Britain — an obscure aerial dispute from one of the early transnational wars, fought with subsonic piston-engined aircraft — had encompassed a similar volume from the point of view of crossing times, although the three-dimensional element had been much less important. The twenty-first century’s global wars were less relevant; with sub-orbital waverider drones, no point on the planet had been more than forty minutes away from annihilation. But the solar system wars of the latter half of that century offered more useful parallels. Clavain thought of the Earth-Moon secession crisis, or the battle for Mercury, noting victories and failures and the reasons for each. He thought of Mars, too, of the battle 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 Nightshade . ‘I’m sorry about what happened.’ ‘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 this .’ ‘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
