Alastiar Reynolds

Clavain nodded, more for his benefit than Remontoire’s. He imagined the kind of parabolic trajectory Storm Bird had to be on. She might not have reached the apex of that parabola yet, but sooner or later Antoinette Bax was going to start sliding back towards the cloud deck. He imagined, too, the kind of desperation that would have led her to issue a general distress signal when the only ship within answering distance was a Conjoiner vessel. In Clavain’s experience, the majority of pilots would have chosen death rather than capture by the spiders.
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I realise .
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Clavain nodded again, thinking of the times he had seen prisoners scream and thrash as they were led to the recruitment theatres, where their heads would be pumped full of Conjoiner neural machinery. They were wrong to fear it; he knew that better than anyone, since he had once resisted it himself. But he understood how they felt.
And he wondered if he wanted to inflict that terror upon Antoinette Bax.

A little while later Clavain saw the bright blue spark as the enemy ship hit the gas giant’s atmosphere. The timing had been accidental, but she had hit on the dark side, illuminating stacked cloud layers in purple strobe flashes as she plummeted deeper. It was impressive, beautiful, even, and Clavain momentarily wanted to show it to Galiana, for it was exactly the kind of visual spectacle that would have delighted her. She would have approved of his scuttling method, too: nothing as wasteful as a missile or a demolition charge. Instead, he had attached three tractor rockets from Nightshade , tiny drones which had glued themselves to the enemy’s hull like remora. The tractors had whisked the enemy ship towards the gas giant, only detaching when she was minutes from re- entry. The angle of attack had been steep, and the enemy craft had incinerated impressively.
The tractors were haring home now, accelerating at high burn to catch up with Nightshade , which had already turned back towards the Mother Nest. Once the tractors had returned the operation could be considered closed; there would only be the matter of the prisoner to attend to, but the pig’s fate was of no great urgency. Of Antoinette Bax… well, irrespective of her motives, Clavain admired her bravery; not just because she had come so far into a war zone, but also because of the way she had so brazenly ignored the shipmaster’s warning and, when it became necessary, the way she had summoned the courage to ask the Conjoiners for help. She must have known that it was an unreasonable request; that by the illegality of her trespass into the war zone she had forfeited any right to assistance, and that a military ship was hardly likely to waste time or fuel helping her out. She must also have known that even if the Conjoiners did save her life, the penalty she would pay for that would be conscription into their ranks, a fate that the Demarchist propaganda machine had made to seem hellish in the extreme.
No. She could not have reasonably expected rescue. But it had been brave of her to ask.
Clavain sighed, teetering on the edge of self- disgust. He issued a neural command instructing Nightshade to tight-beam the stricken freighter. When the link was established, he spoke aloud. ‘Antoinette Bax… this is Nevil Clavain. I am aboard the Conjoiner vessel. Can you hear me?’
There was some timelag now, and the return signal was poorly focused. Her voice sounded as if it was coming from somewhere beyond the furthest quasar.
‘Why are you answering me now, you bastard? I can see you’ve left me to die.’
‘I’m curious, that’s all.’ He held his breath, half- expecting that she would not reply.
‘About what?’
‘About what made you ask for our help. Aren’t you terrified of what we’ll do to you?’
‘Why should I be terrified?’
She sounded nonchalant but Clavain wasn’t fooled. ‘It’s generally our policy to assimilate captured prisoners, Bax. We’d bring you aboard and feed our machines into your brain. Doesn’t that concern you?’
‘Yes, but I’ll tell you what concerns me a fuck of a lot more right now, and that’s hitting this fucking planet.’
Clavain smiled. ‘That’s a very pragmatic attitude, Bax. I admire it.’
‘Good. Now will you fuck off and let me die in peace?’
‘Antoinette, listen to me carefully. There’s something I need you to do for me, with some urgency.’
She must have detected the change of tone in his voice, although she still sounded suspicious. ‘What?’
‘Have your ship transmit a blueprint of itself to me. I want a complete map of your hull’s structural integrity profile. Hardpoints, that kind of thing. If you can persuade your hull to colour itself to reveal maximum stress contours, all the better. I want to know where I can safely put a load without having your ship fold under the strain.’
‘There’s no way you can save me. You’re too far away. Even if you turned around now, it’d be too late.’
‘There’s a way, trust me. Now, that data, please, or I’ll have to trust my instincts, and that may not be for the best.’
She did not answer for a moment. He waited, scratching his beard, and only breathed again when he felt Nightshade’s acknowledgement that the data had been uploaded. He filtered the transmission for neuropathic viruses and then allowed it into his skull. Everything he needed to know about the freighter bloomed in his head, crammed into short-term memory.
‘Thank you very much, Antoinette. That will do nicely.’
Clavain sent an order to one of the returning tractor rockets. The tractor peeled away from its brethren at whiplash acceleration, executing a hairpin reversal that would have reduced an organic passenger to paste. Clavain authorised the tractor to ignore all its internal safety limits, removing the need for it to conserve enough fuel for a safe return to Nightshade .
‘What are you going to do?’ Bax asked.
‘I’m sending a drone back. It will latch on to your hull and drag you to clear space, out of the Jovian’s gravity well. I’ll have the tractor give you a modest nudge in the direction of Yellowstone, but I’m afraid you’ll be on your own from then. I hope you can fix your tokamak, or else you’ll be in for a verv long fall home.’
It seemed to take an eternity for his words to sink in. ‘You’re not going to take me prisoner?’
‘Not today, Antoinette. But if you ever cross my path again, I promise one thing: I’ll kill you.’
He had not enjoyed delivering the threat, but hoped it might knock some sense into her. Clavain closed the link before she could answer.