“One was certainly Lagan, and the other was the unknown vessel we had previously pursued.”
“Isn't it likely that they attacked the device?”
“We saw nothing. They got nowhere near.”
“You captured images?”
“One of the Cathedral ships relayed them to us before it was engulfed by the blast.”
“Show me.” She indicated the wall of the convocation, instructing him to project the video stream. He complied immediately. There was the vast machine, its twisted, alien form putting her in mind of some nightmare deep-ocean creature, with its helical structure that flared into a wide mouth. As always, it took her a few moments to grasp the scale of what she was seeing, but then she picked out the specks of white that were, in actuality, Cathedral ships in attendance of the device.
She watched as it began to move, following a swirling pattern that described a large circle in a series of backwards-and-forwards loops like the petals of a flower, the cone of the tunnel entrance moving with it. It was scooping up gas and plasma from the interstellar medium, compressing and accelerating it before blasting it down the tunnel.
Or, at least, it was supposed to. Instead, there came a moment when the huge device was blown backwards by a titanic explosion, ejecting it from the mouth of the cone even as it disintegrated into searing fire. A white light like the flare of a sun in nova, or the detonation of a million atmospheric nukes flashed out, filling the whole scene, blinding Godel and everyone else. Then there were no more images, the blast-wave from the detonation striking the ship that had been recording them, instantly vaporizing it. The power of the blast had been off the scale of all the sensors they had in the area – but, in truth, it mattered little. She knew that nothing had survived. The device, the collection cone, the gateway and the fleet of attendant ships were all gone.
Godel watched the sequence three, four times over, trying to pick out some detail of what had happened. It was hard to be sure, but it seemed to her that the initial explosion had not come from the stellar engineering device at all. Rather, it appeared to have blasted out of the tunnel at the device, hurling it clear even as it disintegrated. It was as if the tunnel had functioned in the wrong direction.
Yet, she knew that had not taken place, from their observations taken at Periarch. It was intact; had suffered no loss of mass. Which suggested either that something else within the tunnel mechanism had malfunctioned, or that she was interpreting the images incorrectly and it was the device that had triggered the blast in some way.
Or – third possibility – that someone had intervened, attacking her to destroy her operation. Were Ondo Lagan and Selene Ada capable of that? She doubted it. There was also Hessia Aperion – it had amused Godel to pick Periarch for that very reason – but surely none of them were capable of engineering so cataclysmic a blast.
She'd crossed paths with the outlaws too often, and it was an uncomfortable thought that she and they were following a similar journey around the galaxy as they all sought knowledge. They were both unravelling the tangled yarns of the same story. And how was it that Lagan had deactivated the AI incursion bug she'd struck his ship with? She barely understood how the devices functioned, yet the heretics had succeeded in deactivating this one before it could even begin broadcasting. Was it possible she was underestimating them? How could it be that they'd navigated the network of tunnels when she could not?
They were lucky, that was all. She'd track them down sooner or later. The more she considered, the more likely it seemed that it was the machinery itself that had rebelled against her, refusing to carry out her plans, just as the Cathedral ships had. There was some devilry about the alien technology that continued to trouble her. Were they really wise to rely on it? Was it, truly, the gift of Omn, as Carious and all the prior Primos had claimed?
She doubted that now. She was beginning to see, in fact, that the course Omn intended her to take was a very different one. The stellar engineering device was a dead-end, a distraction. But its failure did not mean that she had failed.
She had her other plans, a different route to take. It wasn't only the existence of the metaspace tunnels that she'd uncovered in her long years of investigation and excavation. The fact was amusing in its own way: like Lagan, she, too, had spent her days scraping away in the dust of long-ruined worlds, seeking hidden truths. Their methods might be oddly similar at times, their paths crossing and recrossing, but their purposes could not be any more different.
The Void Walkers still stood in a circle before her, like a pack of wolves waiting to be told who to attack next. They were useful creatures, but limited. Sometimes she wished there was another Augur she could confide in. She trusted none of them. Like Lagan, she followed a lonely path. It was another irony of their respective situations.
“Return to your ships,” she said. “Await further instructions. We will make no more attempts to use the alien machinery to explode stars.”
She picked up the glances of confusion that passed between the assembled Walkers. As before, it was Kane who spoke.
“Where should we deploy to?”
“I will send you further orders when the time is right,” she said. “For now, follow the commands given you by any of the First Augurs. Blend in. But tell me, always, what instructions are given to you. I will expect regular updates on everything you see and hear, yes?”
The Walkers dipped their heads in unison, giving her their assent, then turned to leave without further comment.
She let out a long breath, then instructed the ship
