here, and could feel like a touch of skin on skin the crash of microparticles against her ship’s hull.
It felt wrong to stare at her; a violation, like watching a lover asleep. But yet I continue to gaze; I could not stop myself.
For whenever Albinia was in her trance, she had a beauty of mind and spirit that haunted me. Her eyes twitched under closed lids, her lips moved involuntarily. Her face flickered constantly with emotion-fear, regret, anticipation, joy.
She was, in a word: sublime.
“We’re here,” said Phylas.
“Ease her out,” I said.
“We have readings from six separate planets,” said Morval. “This culture has colonised its entire planetary system, but their main focus is on Planet Five, the gas giant. No traces of shifting sands scars. Their Fields of Force signature is sixty-three point four. A nuclear haze, they’re a messy bunch.”
“Albinia,” I said. Her eyes flickered and then opened. She took a gasp.
“Am I done?” Albinia asked.
“You’re done,” I said softly.
“Good,” said Albinia briskly, and her face was a neutral mask again. I retreated at the touch of her inner authority.
“We think they’re pre-interstellar, recovering from a relatively recent nuclear war,” said Phylas.
“What will we call them?” asked Albinia.
“Morval?”
He clicked an oval. “The next name on the list,” he said, “is Prisma.”
“Then Prisma it is.”
“Explorer doesn’t like them,” Albinia said.
“Why not?” I asked.
“She didn’t say. I just felt it. She fears this place, and these people.”
“They’re primitives,” teased Phylas. “What is there to fear?”
“Primitives,” Morval reminded him, “once obliterated all of Caal, and all eleven Trader ships in the area.”
“We would never be,” said Phylas arrogantly, “so easily duped.”
Explorer glided through space, propelled by sub-atomic interactions in seventh dimensional geometry, or some such thing; the truth is, I can never recollect the detail of these tedious technical matters. The light from the system sun made the ship’s hull glow; I admired the image of our ship haloed with radiance on my panoramic wall- screen.
Explorer passed a pock-marked asteroid.
This solar system was, I noted, quite beautiful. There were brightly coloured gas giants with multiple rings, comets with tails, and from our angle of approach we could see all seven planets of the system in a single gaze, clustered like a family of unruly children of every different size and age.
There is nothing finer, or so I thought then, than the moment of initial approach; that first glimpse of an alien stellar system, with no hint as to what might lie within.
“Our gen-guns are being charged,” said Phylas matter-of-factly.
For a moment I didn’t take in his words. Then:
“What?” I said, startled.
“The ship is taking evasive action,” Phylas explained.
“Oh by all that’s joyous,” Morval muttered to himself, “this Master-of-the-Ship has no idea.”
“Cease,” I barked at the old man, “sarcasming.”
I could see, on the panoramic wall-screen, that Explorer was now weaving and zagging through space, in bewildering randomised patterns.
I was uncomfortable. It was proper protocol for the Ship’s Master to be informed in advance of all decisions made by the vessel’s computational mind; but on this occasion I was being ignored.
For a moment, I felt a surge of annoyance; for in truth, I hated being sidelined like this. I understood of course that my role as Master was largely ceremonial; and that all major decisions were made by the Mistress Commander and the Star-Seeker and the ship’s computational brain. But this was an ugly reminder of a truth I generally preferred to, well, ignore.
However, I hid my irritation between a mask of bonhomie, charm, and self-deprecating wit; as I always do.
“Why?” I asked courteously, with my favourite irresistible smile, “are we doing all this?”
“Missiles have been launched by Explorer; power beams are being fired by Explorer; the intended target is the asteroid,” said Phylas, ignoring my question.
“Yes but why?”
“You’ll find out,” said Morval with grim pleasure, “soon enough.”
I followed the progress of the attack on the wall-screen: our ship in space, the orb of the planetary moon looming before us; the flaring colours of the gen-gun missiles, and the pillars of energy from the light-cannons arcing a slow progress towards the asteroid. It was a stately dance of colour and light set against a black cloth of night.
I assumed that the enemy were attempting to attack us; but Albinia had still told me nothing. Her lips moved silently as she and Explorer waged space war. I was tense; for the truth was, I had never been quite so close to combat before. In all the battles in which I had played a role, I had been part of the rapidly fleeing Trader fleet, protected by Navy and Explorer vessels.
Now, I was in the front line and I could die.
I saw, on the screen, our missiles flying closer and closer to the asteroid. While, on my phantom control display, a bewildering series of graphs and equations flashed before my eyes, though I had no idea what meanings they conveyed.
“Now,” said Morval, somehow managing to guess what was about to occur.
And at just that moment, the asteroid erupted. And a flock of black triple-horned warcraft emerged from it, hurtling towards us.
“Two hundred and forty-two enemy drone missiles,” said Phylas.
“The radiation trail indicates dirty nuclear bombs,” added Morval.
“They’re attacking us!” I summarised, in a cheery fashion; playing the fool with my usual panache.
“Forgive me,” said Albinia, dreamily. “I thought it better to act first, and inform you of my decisions later.”
“Very wise, beloved Mistress,” I said generously, concealing my anger.
“Sarcasming is not a word,” Morval reminded me, with his usual long memory.
“It has a ring to it,” I said defensively.
Commander Galamea arrived on the Hub, in a blaze of implicitly-rebuking-the-rest-of-us-for-being-so-lazy energy.
“Master-of-the-Ship, report!” she barked.
“Morval, brief the Commander please,” I said, sneakily.
“Explorer seems to have detected an imminent attack, we have no more data,” said Morval, which irked me, because I could have said that much.
Albinia groaned, lost in communion with Explorer.
And, just as the last of the enemy drones emerged from the artificial asteroid, Explorer’s missiles began to silently detonate. It was like a birthday sky-fire display against the blackness of space.
Moments later, a haze appeared on the screen; and the enemy drones began to slowly fall apart, like dancers breaking away from a tableau into separated solos. There were no subsequent explosions as these craft broke up; these were merely objects sundering into their myriad pieces as if changing their minds about existing.
I realised that our gen-gun missiles were not just kinetic, they also harboured atom-disruptor particles. The snarling swarm of enemy drone bombs were being destabilised at sub-atomic level.
“What information do we have about this civilisation?” asked the Commander.
“Hostile?” guessed Morval.
“Type 3, post-nuclear, pre-shiftingsands, the home planet is the gas giant fifth from the sun but they also
