Reality Dysfunction — Expansion

left us.”

“Oh, Jay, darling Jay. You know I never would.” He cradled her head and rocked her gently. Then the other children came streaming down the homestead’s ramshackle steps, squealing and shouting. He smiled at them all and held out his arms once more.

“We were scared,” Eustice said.

“The sky’s gone real funny.”

“It’s so hot.”

“Nobody collected the eggs.”

“Or milked the cows.”

Bo narrowed her eyes as the mercenaries climbed out of the hovercraft. “Are these the marines you promised?” she asked sceptically.

“Not quite,” Horst said. “But they’re just as good.”

Danny goggled up at Sewell. The big combat-adept had gaussrifles plugged into both elbow sockets. “What is he?” the boy asked.

Horst grinned. “He’s a special sort of soldier. Very strong, very clever. Everything is going to be all right now. He’ll look after you.”

Kelly had kept her retinas on wide-field focus, scanning the whole reunion scene. There was a big dry lump forming in her throat.

“Holy Jesus, will you look at it all,” Shaun Wallace said in a small demoralized voice. “What kind of a God could do this to us? Not the one I was taught about, that’s for sure. Look at them all, little children. Crying their bloody damn eyes out. And all for what?”

Kelly turned round at the unaccustomed savagery and bitterness in his tone. But he was already striding towards Reza, who was watching Horst and the children impassively.

“Mr Malin?”

“Yes, Mr. Wallace?”

“You have to move these children away now.”

“I intend to.”

“No, I mean right now. My kind, they’re over there in the edge of the jungle. There’s a couple of hundred of them, if not more. They’re meaning to get you, Mr. Malin, to end the threat once and for all.”

Reza focused his sensors on the first rank of stunted, scrappy trees four or five kilometres away. The cloud over the jungle was still glowing a sombre red, giving the leaves a coral tinge. Heat shimmer and fluttering leaves defeated him, he couldn’t tell. “Pat, what can Octan see?”

“Nothing much. But there’s definitely a few people roving round in there, and . . . Oh my God.”

The pages emerged first, young boys, ten or twelve years old, holding their heraldic banners high. Then the drums started up, and the pikemen marched out of the cover of trees. It was a long solid black line, almost as if the trees themselves were advancing. Following, and holding a tight formation at the centre, came the mounted knights. Silver armour shone by its own accord under the unbroken veil of leaden clouds.

The army assembled itself in front of the trees to the order of the drummer. Knight commanders rode up and down, organizing stragglers. Then when the ranks were neatly laid out, a single bugle note rang across the savannah. They started to tramp over the uneven grassland towards the homestead.

“OK,” Reza said equably. “Time to go.”

Along with all the other children Jay found herself being hurriedly lifted into one of the hovercraft by a mercenary and told to hang on. Boxes and equipment were being tossed out to accommodate them. Father Horst was in the other hovercraft; Jay wanted to be with him, but she didn’t think the mercenaries would listen if she asked. Shona was plonked down beside her, and Jay smiled timidly, reaching for the disfigured girl’s hand. Their fingers pressed together urgently.

There was a lot of shouting going on all around. Everyone was moving at such a rush. One of the big (really big) mercenaries dashed into the homestead and came out half a minute later carrying Freya.

“Put her in my hovercraft,” Horst said. “I’ll look after her.” The limp girl was laid on the front bench, and he eased a bundle of cloth under her head.

Through all the confusion and bustle Jay saw one of the mercenaries strap a dark globe to the neck of a huge dog. A man (who she thought looked a bit like Rai Molvi) and a lady who had come with the mercenaries were arguing hotly in front of the cabin. It ended when she made a slashing motion with one arm and climbed into the pilot’s seat of the second hovercraft. The other mercenaries were ransacking the ammunition boxes that lay on the ground, slotting magazines into their backpacks. Then the impellers on Jay’s hovercraft began to spin and the decking wobbled as it rose up. She wondered where the mercenaries were going to fit, her hovercraft had seventeen children packed in between the pilot’s seat and the fan at the rear. But when both vehicles swung round and began to pick up speed she realized they were jogging alongside.

“Where are we going?” Shona shouted above the teeth-grating buzz of the fans.

The small hairless pilot didn’t seem to hear.

Aethra watched the Lady Macbeth streak across the ring. Triple fusion exhausts twining into a single braid of near-pure radiation that stretched for over two hundred kilometres behind the fleeing starship.

Murora VII was a thousand kilometres ahead of her. A battered sphere of grey-brown rock not quite a hundred and twenty kilometres in diameter. Along with the other three shepherd moonlets it brought a certain degree of order to the edge of the ring, creating a tidy boundary line. Dust, iceflakes, and pebbles extended out across the gas giant’s ecliptic plane far past the immature habitat’s orbit, although their density slowly dropped away until at a million kilometres it was no different to interplanetary space. But none of the larger particles, the flying mountains and icebergs, were to be found beyond the hundred and eighty thousand kilometre limit where the shepherds orbited.

Lady Macbeth ’s exhaust plume yawed a degree, then straightened out again, honing her trajectory. Three thousand kilometres behind her, five combat wasps, arranged in a precise diamond configuration, were accelerating at twenty gees. It had taken the Maranta a long time to respond to the break-out, its possessed crew wasting seven expensive seconds before launching the combat wasps—though they couldn’t know that. Now the drones could never catch her.

Aethra had never known emotional tension before. Always, it had reflected the feelings of the supervisory station staff. Now though, as it watched the starship curving over the moonlet, it knew—understood—the meaning of trepidation. It willed the starship to succeed.

The station staff were lying on their acceleration couches, that wicked gee force squeezing them relentlessly. Aethra could see the ceiling of the cabin through a dozen sets of pained eyes, feeling the cushioning give below overstressed back muscles.

Three seconds away from the Lagrange point. Lady Macbeth ’s fusion drives reduced to four gees as she skimmed eight kilometres above Murora VII, tracing a slight parabola around its minuscule gravity field. A couple of ion thrusters fired. The pursuing combat wasps cleared the edge of the ring.

Aethra prepared thirty-three storage areas in its neural strata. Ready to receive the memories of the Edenists on board. Although it would be so quick . . .

An event horizon eclipsed the Lady Macbeth .

Her fusion plume lingered briefly like a broken-hearted wraith before melting away. Then there was no physical evidence left of her ever having existed.

Five combat wasps converged on the Lagrange point. Their courses intersected, drive exhausts a dazzling asterisk, and they sped outwards on divergent vectors, electronic brains crashing in program overload confusion.

“I told you Joshua could fly that manoeuvre,” Warlow said.

Aethra tasted smugness in the subsidiary mentality’s thoughts. It wasn’t used to that, but then the last twenty-four hours had contained a lot of unknowns. “Yes, you did.”

“You should have more faith.”