The Naked God - Faith

glaring furiously as they tried to throw off the energy imparted by Lady Mac ’s masers during the second pass. Success was measured by the way the gas jets were slowly shrinking.

“It’s going to be close,” Liol said. “But I think we’ve done it.”

Joshua followed the flight computer’s plot. Watching the sunscoop’s relative velocity winding down, comparing the rate against the declining gas vents. Flakes of grey slush had started to clot the ever-reducing gas jets. But it was going to work, he told himself. The figures were tight, but the ship would reach zero relative velocity sixty kilometres above the diskcity.

Datavised alarms suddenly glared across his neuroiconic display. Lady Mac was under attack again. Energy impacts bloomed against the fuselage, ablating patches of foam in spurts of soot.

“Lasers again,” Beaulieu said. “They can’t stay on us for more than two or three seconds at a time, but there’s a lot of them. They’re going for a coordinated saturation. Strikes are almost constant.”

“Quantook-LOU warned us the dominions would try to stop us leaving before we handed over the data,” Samuel said. “They must think that’s what we’re doing.”

Joshua checked their vector. At their current velocity they’d fly over the rim in another hundred seconds. The course was taking them a long way round from Anthi-CL. He datavised the flight computer for a tactical analysis. “The old girl can handle this level of fire. We don’t need to jump clean yet.”

Lady Mac ’s sensors were still tracking the sunscoop ship. It was sixty-five kilometres away from the sunside, with its approach velocity down to ten metres per second. The five jets from its storage globes were still active, though the rents weren’t squirting gas any more. It was mainly liquid and slush pouring out now. At sixty-three kilometres, its velocity was two metres a second.

The vector reversed at sixty-one kilometres. For a moment the sunscoop was stationary, then it began to creep away from the diskcity again at an almost unmeasurable velocity. By now the flow from the storage globes was reduced to a splutter of mushy fluid dribbling away into space.

Its fusion drive ignited.

Joshua groaned in dismay as Lady Mac ’s flight computer translated the sensor image into pure data, providing him with the figures for the plasma’s temperature, luminosity, and flow rate. This time the sunscoop was using its full thrust. The tip of the plume seared its way downwards as the giant ship began to accelerate away. There was never going to be time for the separation distance to increase beyond the range of the plasma spear.

The drive flame hammered against the crown of the knot, instantly vaporizing every tube and foil sheet it touched. A blast wave of superheated gas roared out through the tangle of tubes inside the knot, rupturing web junctions and sending shredded tube fragments whirling deeper into the tangle. Slow structural ripples flexed their way across the sunside, radiating sinuously out from the knot. Tubes cracked open around junctions and reinforcement ribs. Hundreds of fan-shaped fountains of circulation fluid and atmospheric gas howled out into space across an area fifty kilometres across, producing a stormy pellicle of crimson mist which hung over the surface. Its centre was energized to azure blue by the fusion plume from the retreating sunscoop, expanding in a perfectly symmetrical ring, swelling and fading as it raced away across the sunside.

The devastated Mosdva dominions around the knot retaliated. Every laser that remained functional was fired at the sunscoop. Small petals of darkness opened across the glaring storage globes, distending. Sprays of molten metal drifted out from the drive nozzle, followed by boiling globules of fluid. The plasma flame began to waver as it was contaminated by streaks of impurity burning emerald and turquoise.

The thick shadows slithering over the storage globes merged together into funereal blemishes until the light was completely extinguished. They shattered in unison, belching out thick wobbling rivers of hydrocarbon fluid. It began to evaporate under the red giant’s unrelenting radiance, producing a surge of oily fog. A huge patch of shade crept over the sunside, defacing its usual gleaming hue to a dusky claret.

“Christ,” Liol gasped. “Did we do that?”

“No,” Dahybi said. “But they’ll blame us anyway.”

“Ione?” Joshua asked. “Are you all right?” He concentrated on the general communication link. The view through the serjeants’ sensors was shaking badly. The effect of the sunscoop’s plasma strike against Lalarin-MG was the same as an earthquake. Tyrathca breeders were scattered across the plaza, struggling to regain their footing. The soldiers had closed in on the three Mosdva, prodding them with their big maser rifles.

“We’re okay,” she said. The serjeants began to scan round. “No sign of structural breakdown. The cylinder is still intact and rotating.”

“That’s something.”

Above the serjeants, the Sleeping God’s effigy was moving in a circular bouncing motion, completely out of phase with the cylinder’s rotation. The axial gantry securing it bent and stretched with frighteningly loud stress creaks.

Baulona-PWM walked unsteadily over to Quantook-LOU. The distributor of resources was suffering in the aftermath of the attack, unable to lift himself up from the juddering plaza.

“Mosdva break their separation agreement,” Baulona-PWM said. “You damage Lalarin-MG. You kill our vassal castes. We will fire our weapons at Tojolt-HI. You will be exterminated.”

“Wait,” Ione said. “You cannot exterminate Quantook-LOU. He is the only Mosdva willing to deal with you. Without him there will be war. Billions of Tyrathca will die because you exterminated him. Their deaths will be your fault.”

“They will not die if you leave Mastrit-PJ. Do not give the Mosdva your faster-than-light drive. The Tyrathca here will survive. The Sleeping God will come to aid us.”

“The Mosdva will be given our drive. That is why we have come, to bring balance to the galaxy. The Tyrathca from Tanjuntic-RI were given the drive.”

“Tyrathca have faster-than-light drive?” Baulona-PWM demanded.

“Some of your worlds have it, yes. The technology is spreading slowly. Outside Mastrit-PJ your race is becoming powerful. Humans and our xenoc allies will not permit that to happen. There must be balance and harmony between races, only then can there be peace.”

Quantook-LOU heaved down a breath, but still made no effort to rise. “Humans are stupid,” he said. “Why did you give Tyrathca the drive? Can you not see what they are?”

“We know what both of you are. That is why we are here. Now you must choose. Will you mediate a new agreement? Will you pursue peace?”

“What will you do if we do not mediate an agreement?” Quantook-LOU asked.

“The balance will be enforced by us,” Ione said. “We will not tolerate war.”

“The Mosdva will mediate an agreement for peace,” Quantook-LOU said. “If the Tyrathca of Lalarin-MG do not wish to mediate with me, I will find an enclave that will.”

“Baulona-PWM, what is your answer?” Ione asked.

“I will mediate,” the breeder said. “But the Mosdva still attack Lalarin-MG. They must stop. There can be no agreement if we are dead.”

“Quantook-LOU, can you get the other dominions to withdraw?”

“I cannot. I must have the drive first, and the Lady Macbeth must leave. Only then will they be forced to ally with me.”

“You can’t have the drive until we have the Tyrathca information,” Ione said. “Baulona-PWM, how long will it take you to recover the information necessary for the agreement?”

“I am uncertain where it is stored. Our old memory centres are no longer enabled. We would have to reactivate them.”

“Wonderful,” Joshua exclaimed. “Not even total catastrophe can loosen these bollockheads up. Beaulieu, what’s happened to the trains?”

“Three of them are still en route, Captain. And the surviving Mosdva in spacesuits are still infiltrating the knot on the darkside.”

“Jesus, we have to buy Ione some time.”

“We could go back to the knot and use our firepower to defend Lalarin-MG from the Mosdva troops,” Liol suggested.

“No.” Joshua rejected it automatically. It would be messy, he knew. Lady Mac might be the most powerful ship in the system, but she wasn’t invincible. They needed some way of isolating