The Naked God - Faith

“Jesus! What do you want me to do?”

“Nothing now. We were right before: the question is one of timing. I think we got the answer wrong.”

“Maybe we did,” Syrinx said. “Though I’m not convinced. But this has made our future actions very clear cut. We have got to solve the problem of possession and the beyond first. Only then will we be in a position to deal with the whole Tyrathca/Mosdva issue. And the only way we can do that now is get to the Sleeping God.”

The ELINT satellites continued to show the war across Tojolt-HI’s darkside. Blowouts were occurring with increasing frequency, sending long spumes of vapour and fluid racing out into space, propelling bodies along with them. Mosdva troops in armoured spacesuits continued to scurry across the valleys and ridges of the darkside structure. Almost all train movement had ceased.

The heaviest fighting was conducted around the boundary of Anthi-CL and its neighbouring allies. As well as the blowouts decompressing entire tubes, suited Mosdva shot at each other with beam and projectile weapons as they struggled to penetrate their enemy’s territory and disable critical systems. The satellites were also picking up powerful flashes of energy among the tall thermal dissipation towers as emplaced defensive lasers and masers swept across the ranks of advancing soldiers.

“But no nukes,” Beaulieu said. “At least not yet. I have picked up some small short-range missiles, but they use chemical rockets and warheads. They’re not very successful; the lasers usually pick them off. Hardly surprising, the maximum acceleration so far has been seven gees.”

“I wonder why they use chemical systems?” Monica asked. “One well-placed nuke would take out a whole dominion. They must have the ability to build them. Quantook-LOU said they used to move asteroids around with them, just like we do.”

“We can ask Quantook-LOU if you like,” Joshua said.

“I’d rather not,” Samuel said. “I’d hate to put ideas in his head. In any case, you’re misrepresenting the nature of conflict here. Everything is resource-based, even war. The aim must always be to kill an enemy’s population, but keep their web tubes intact. Explosive decompression will have exactly that result every time, giving the victorious dominion room to expand. A nuclear strike would obliterate a vast amount of the diskcity structure, while the shockwave would weaken even more.”

“Okay, so they use neutron bombs,” Liol said. “Kill the population and leave the structural mass intact.”

“I definitely wouldn’t mention that to Quantook-LOU.”

Etchells expanded his distortion field to scan around as soon as he slipped out of the wormhole terminus seventy-five million kilometres above the surface of Mastrit-PJ’s photosphere. Thermo dump panels slid out to their full length from every life-support capsule and subsidiary system to get rid of the heat. Electronic sensor pods opened their petal segments, extending antenna.

Red light flooded across the utilitarian bridge compartment, cutting through the heavy shielding of the main port. Kiera blinked away the rush of liquid it brought to her eyes as she sat on the acceleration couch facing it. She was content just to admire the genuine panorama, ignoring the various graphic displays that oscillated and scrolled across the consoles as they tabulated the results of the sensor sweeps.

“Nice view, if a little characterless,” she said. A pair of sunglasses appeared in her hands, and she placed them carefully on her nose. “Can you sense anything nearby?”

“Nothing,” Etchells said. “Which means nothing. Searching an entire star system is impossible for a single craft. Assuming they even came here.”

“Nonsense. They’re here. It’s the only place they could be. This damn star has been glaring at us ever since we rounded the nebula. This is where the Tyrathca came from, and it’s where that arkship came from. They have to be here, along with whatever it is they’re looking for.”

“Yes, but where, exactly?”

“That’s your department. Keep your sensors extended. Find them. When you do, I’ll keep my part of the bargain.”

“The odds are not in our favour.”

“The fact that any odds exist at all is in our favour. If there is anything left of the Tyrathca here, it must be on a planet or asteroid. You should start a survey.”

“Thank you. I’d never have thought of that.”

Kiera didn’t even bother sighing a reprimand. He could perceive her mental tone as well as she could feel his. It wasn’t that they’d been getting on each other’s nerves during the voyage, just that they weren’t natural allies. “Can you withstand the temperature?”

“Provisionally, yes,” Etchells said. “Though the particle density will have to be monitored as closely as the thermal input. The technological systems can cope with the heat; as can my hull. I estimate we can endure this environment for three days, then we will have to swallow away and cool off.”

“Okay.” She stood up and stretched elaborately. There had been too many hours spent sitting uselessly on the bridge during the flight. It gave her too much time to brood over what had gone wrong back on Monterey, when what she ought to be doing was planning how to use the weapon which the Confederation was chasing. “I’m going for a shower. Let me know when you find something.”

Beaulieu used a full-spectrum sweep against the sunside surface as Lady Mac decelerated into the coordinate Quantook-LOU had provided. The web tubes and their foil sheets matched the rest of Tojolt-HI’s sunside in composition, but here they had risen out of the median in a small hemispherical mound, which matched the bulge on the darkside.

“The knot is about three kilometres across, nine hundred metres high, and I can’t even begin to tell you what’s inside,” Beaulieu said. “Nearly eighty per cent of the knot and its surrounding webs are dead. Surface glass is cracked, and some structural ridges snapped. But that still leaves enough mass to shield the internal structure from all our sensors.”

“Don’t like it,” Liol said. “That’s over ten cubic kilometres we don’t know a damn thing about. They could be hiding anything in there.”

“Nothing that’s used very regularly,” Ashly said.

“Yeah, like their biggest-ever weapon.”

“Electrical and magnetic fields are normal,” Beaulieu said. “I’m not registering any large power sources on either side of the disk.”

“Not active ones. The energy for a blast would be stored ready.”

“Ready for what?” Sarha asked.

“I don’t know. We haven’t explored one per cent of this star system, we don’t know what else is lurking around here. Fleets of refugees from other diskcities. Xenocs that live inside the Orion Nebula. Mosdva possessed.”

“Oh, come on .”

“Point taken,” Joshua said. “We need to be cautious.”

“The Oenone can swallow in,” Syrinx said. “Our distortion field will be able to probe the interior of the knot.”

“No,” Joshua said. “I still don’t think we’re ready to give away our biggest advantage yet. Beaulieu, I want constant monitoring of the knot. Any change in its energy state and we jump clear. In the meantime, let’s see what Quantook-LOU’s prepared to tell us.” Before he asked, Joshua cleared the overlay of ship schematics from the sensor image. Tojolt-HI had been bothering him, niggling away for a while now. It wasn’t worry about what they were heading into, he acknowledged, it was the size of the diskcity. He’d been appropriately amazed and impressed with it ever since the sensors had delivered their first image to him. This was different, because their little flight had suddenly put it into perspective for him. They were flying over it, an artefact which was so densely populated it made an arcology appear vacant. Human bitek habitats were fabulous huge entities, but you didn’t fly across them in a spaceship, not for minutes at a time. And they weren’t even halfway to the centre yet.

The visual spectrum sensors showed him a tiny black spot trawling over the burnished sparkle of the glass and foil which made up sunside. Lady Mac ’s shadow, smaller than the width of most web tubes. Many times he’d seen Ganymede’s shadow racing over Jupiter’s dayside clouds, a black blemish smaller than the planet’s cyclone swirls. A moon big enough to qualify as a planet, reduced to its true