Reality Dysfunction — Expansion

“Point to your body, Mr. Wallace, the one you were born with,” Reza said. “After that I’ll talk morality and ethics with you all day long.”

They stared at each other.

Darkness began to fall. Kelly looked up to see the red light bleeding from the cloud, leaving behind a swollen slate-grey mantle massing sinisterly low overhead. A blade of purple-white lightning screwed down on the savannah to the east.

“What’s happening?” Kelly shouted as thunder crashed over the hovercraft.

“You are happening, Miss Kelly. They sense you. They fear and hate you now your true nature and power has been exposed. This is the last mercenary team left, you see. None of the others survived.”

“So what will they do?”

“Hunt you down, whatever the cost below the muzzles of your weapons.”

Two hours after Warlow had left Lady Mac Joshua was accessing the flight computer’s memory cores, looking for records of starships jumping from inside a Lagrange point. He and Dahybi had gone through the small amount of available data on Murora VII, using it to refine their computations of the Lagrange point’s size and position, locking the figures into the trajectory plot. He could pilot Lady Mac right into its heart—no doubt about that: now he wanted to know what would happen when the energy patterning nodes were activated. There was a lot of theory in the physics files about how it should be possible, but no actual verified ZTT jump.

Who’s going to be stupid enough to take part in an experiment like that? he asked himself. But he was lying on his acceleration couch, and Dahybi, Ashly, and Sarha were on the bridge with him, so he kept any qualms to himself. He was just wondering if there would be a reference in a history file, surely the ZTT pioneers would want to know the limits of their craft, when Aethra datavised him.

“Warlow wants to talk with you,” the habitat said.

He cancelled the link to the memory cores. “Hello, Warlow. How’s it going?”

“Superbly,” Warlow said.

“Where are you?” The cosmonik ought to be back on board in another twenty minutes if everything was running on schedule. Joshua had helped draw up the flight vector through the ring.

“Twenty kilometres from Gramine .”

“What?”

“I can see it.”

“Jesus shit, Warlow. What the fuck are you playing at? The schedule doesn’t have any margin for error.”

“I know. That’s why I’m here. I’m going to make certain that Gramine is destroyed by the blast. I shall detonate it when the ship is in an optimum position.”

“Oh, Jesus, Warlow, get your iron arse back here now!”

“Sorry, Captain. Maranta will only be seven thousand three hundred kilometres away when Gramine is eliminated. But that will still give you an eighteen-second lead on the combat wasps. That’s easily enough time.”

“Warlow, stop this. We can wait until the end of the next sweep and position the bomb again. That’s only another five hours. We’ll still be at Lalonde before Amarisk’s evening.”

“Joshua, you have six minutes before I detonate. Make sure everyone is strapped down, please.”

“Don’t do it. Jesus, Warlow, I’m begging you.”

“You know this has to be done properly. And I can ensure it is.”

“Not like this. Please, come back.”

“Don’t worry about me, Joshua. I’ve thought it out, I will be quite all right.”

“Warlow!” Joshua’s face was crushed into a mask of anger and desperation. He jerked round to look at Ashly. The pilot was moving his lips silently, eyelashes sticky with tears. “Say something,” Joshua commanded. “Get him back.”

“Warlow, for Heaven’s sake come back,” Ashly datavised. “Just because you can’t navigate properly there’s no need for this. I’ll do it next time, and do it right.”

“I would like you to do me a favour, Ashly.”

“What?”

“Next time you come out of zero-tau, in fifty years or so, I want you to come back here and visit me.”

“Visit you?”

“Yes. I am transferring my memories to Aethra. I’m going to become one of the multiplicity. I won’t die.”

“You crazy old bastard.”

“Gaura!” Joshua shouted. “Can he do that? He’s not an Edenist.”

“The datavise has already begun,” Gaura replied. “He is doing it.”

“Oh, Jesus wept.”

“Is everyone in their acceleration couches?” Warlow asked. “I’m giving you the chance you really need to escape the rings. You’re not going to waste that, are you, Joshua?”

“Shit.” A hot steel band was constricting Joshua’s chest, far worse than any gee force. “They’re getting onto the couches, Warlow.” He datavised the flight computer for an image from the cabin cameras, watching Edenists tighten the webbing around themselves. Melvyn was swimming about, checking they had done it properly.

“And what about the thermo-dump panels, have you retracted them? There’s only five minutes left.”

Joshua datavised the flight computer to retract the thermo-dump panels. Systems schematics appeared as he prepped the generators and drive tubes; mostly green, some amber. The old girl was in good shape. Sarha started to help him with the checklist.

“Please, Warlow?”

“Fly the bastards into the ground, Joshua. You can do it.”

“Jesus, I don’t know what to say.”

“Promise me something.”

“Yes.”

“Gotcha. You should have asked me what it was first.”

Joshua coughed. Laughed painfully. It made his vision all blurred for some unfathomable reason. “What is it?”

“Hard luck, you committed. I want you to be more considerate to your girls. You never see the effect you have on them. Some of them get hurt, Joshua.”

“Jesus, cosmonik and social worker.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

“You were a good captain, Joshua. Lady Macbeth was a great way to finish. I wouldn’t have had it any other way.”

Sarha was sobbing on her acceleration couch. Ashly was clenching and unclenching his fists.

“I would,” Joshua said silently.

Aethra showed them Gramine . The starship was traversing the ring surface with the suavity of a maglev train, straight and sure. Three thermo-dump panels were extended to the full, shining a dull vermilion. A long, narrow flame of blue ions flickered for an instant.

“Who’d have thought it,” Warlow datavised. “Me, an Edenist.”

Joshua had never felt so pathetically worthless as he did then. He’s my crewman.

The bomb exploded. It sent a flat circle of sheer white light flaring out across the ring surface. Gramine was a tiny dark speck above its centre.

Joshua fired the restraint bolts. Taut silicon-fibre cables tethering the Lady Macbeth to its rock shield recoiled from the hull, writhing in serpentine coils. Lights inside the four