“That's a defensive sphere,” said Selene. “They're going to a hell of a lot of effort to protect the object at the tunnel entrance.”
“Yes,” said Hessia. “You'll see why.”
She zoomed in. A single, vast device floated there, an order of magnitude greater in size than any Cathedral ship. It was also, clearly, a product of the same technological culture. Even more than the ships, it resembled a seashell to Selene: its sinuous, spiralling body looked very definitely organic. The difference was the flared ending; its whole structure was effectively one winding tube opening into a wide mouth.
Ondo said, “It looks to me like it was designed to connect with the cones of the metaspace tunnel entrances.”
“You're correct,” said Hessia. “I've scanned both, and the fit is precise. They are a part of the same mechanism. This new machine can plug into the tunnel perfectly, forming a seal.”
“This is how they built the tunnels?” Selene asked. “This device has the ability to tunnel through metaspace, built these permanent pathways?”
Ondo stood and peered more closely at the display, walking round to study it from all angles.
“I don't think that's it,” he said. “Hessia, did you pick up any flow readings of the interstellar medium in this area? You said density levels were high. Do you have any data on the pull being exerted on the dust and gas particles?”
“I do. You've worked out what this device is, haven't you? You know what I'm going to say.”
Selene saw it in that moment as well. “This is the gun. It's a weapon, built on a colossal scale. It's sucking in matter from this region of space and blasting it down the tunnel at high pressure, directly into the heart of the target star. Increasing its mass until it triggers a supernova. We wondered how the tunnels pulled their trick. This is how.”
Hessia's olfactory slits were dilating rapidly as she replied. “It is. It's a blaster constructed on a planetary scale. The device is so vast that it moves slowly, but I've been monitoring it. It is manoeuvring into position. Concordance are going to dock it with the tunnel entrance and activate it. That has to be what all this is about. They located this device and brought it here in order to begin destroying the target star. Perhaps there are other such devices, and perhaps this is the only one. My guess is that the device is metaspace-capable, although the energy required to translate so much mass is staggering. They may have only just located it, or they may have only just succeeded it making it operational. I don't know.”
Selene could sense from her words that Hessia wasn't telling them everything.
“Which world?” asked Selene. “Where does that particular tunnel lead to?”
The familiar flinch of alarm was there in Hessia's face as she replied. “Whether this is a coincidence, or whether they are sending a message to the galaxy because I'm a known renegade, I don't know. The fact remains: the tunnel leads to the star of Periarch. It leads directly to my world.”
Surtr, finally, spoke. “How many people live on your homeworld, Hessia?”
“Thirteen billion,” said Hessia. “There are thirteen billion of us.”
9. Detonation
“You should leave this region of space now,” Surtr said to Selene. “Soon it will not be safe here.”
She stood with the Aetheral within the viewing orb of its ship. They'd emerged from metaspace an hour earlier, materialising in the vicinity of the vast weapon Hessia had located. Surtr had taken great care to stay a long way distant while they sucked in further telemetry from Hessia's nanosensors. Ondo was on the far side of the zone, doing the same from the Radiant Dragon.
Hessia herself was gone. She'd chosen to return to Periarch, an action that Selene had tried and failed to talk her out of: “That's insane. If they start this device up it will destroy your sun. Everyone will die on Periarch. You know this.”
Hessia had nodded, as if acknowledging a fact of only the slightest importance. “I will attempt to warn my people, disseminate the information we have uncovered. Perhaps I can rescue one or two of them, just as you were once rescued.”
“How is it going to help if you go and get yourself killed?”
“I will try not to. But I have missed Periarch's sun-kissed lagoons and its iridescent coral. By night, in the deep oceans, the phosphorescent plankton form endless star fields, and to swim through them is to float through the sky. I shouldn't have stayed away for so long. If it is all to be swept away, I would like to bathe in those waters one final time.”
“If you survive, you can keep the memories of your people alive. You'll still be around to tell their stories. Just as I am.”
Hessia had considered that. “Perhaps you are right, but I also know that I need to go, to be with my people to face whatever unfolds.”
They'd embraced and spoken no more. Hessia had returned to her own vessel and jumped into metaspace for Periarch.
Now, standing beside Surtr, suspicion and an unexpected sense of dread trickled through Selene. It was odd how the lines of Surtr's face never changed – couldn't change – and yet she was suddenly reading sadness there. Perhaps, resolution in the face of adversity.
She felt conflicted: the destructive device was a weapon of purest evil, and that meant that the Tok who had built it had also been evil. Yet, seemingly, they had also created Surtr, just as they had created Eb. It was a mistake to think of the Tok, or any species, as being of one mind; there would have been factions and disagreements
