Iain Banks - The Algebraist

Somewhere, her nervousness would be being noted, too. Even if a live human medical officer wasn’t watching her life signs now, a program would be flagging her current state of anxiety as worth further investigation later. No privacy. Well, she’d known that when she joined up.

Taince took her mind away from these perplexing, almost embarrassing feelings and watched the data coming back from the lead ships.

What happened now, what these twelve craft discovered or didn’t discover as they crossed the system at accelerated particle speeds, would determine how the next part of her life was lived out.

There had been some odd energy and drive signatures from the system over the last few days, though nothing as bizarre as the sudden commotion around Nasqueron a few days ago. Twenty-plus antimatter explosions. All but one, it looked like, spread around the planet in a neat if wavy circle. They’d detonated too far out to do any great damage to the gas-giant itself or to its inhabitants, and the explosions had been very messy, almost as if they hadn’t been functioning warheads detonating efficiently but rather twenty — very big — ships losing M\AM containment at exactly the same time. Then, a minute or two later, an even bigger AM burst less than a light second out from Nasqueron, with the profile of something the size of the behemoth ship they’d identified earlier getting thoroughly blasted.

Then nothing, apart from the ambiguous maybe-leaving indications.

Because one plausible explanation that fitted most of the signs — no explanation anyone had come up with so far fitted all of them — was that the bad guys were pulling out. Nobody in fleet command really believed this was what could be happening -the Starveling Cult force had crossed decades of space to get to Ulubis: they wouldn’t turn tail and face the equally long trek back after just a few weeks, would they? — but it looked like one of the more likely explanations.

The data about to arrive would decide it one way or the other.

The battlecruiser 88, the advance squadron’s flagship, collating the real-time intelligence of the spearhead-shaped force and signalling it back to the main fleet, reported three heavy craft within detection though not attack range of the first, point destroyer. It signalled two of the following cruisers to adjust their trajectories and prepare remote munitions, guided and dumb. Little comms bleed. Possibly this was just good discipline or marginally better tech than they’d anticipated. Flank cruisers and destroyers reported a few missile platforms, firing at them, futilely, given their speed. A lot of mines, well spread. Evidence of AM material still floating free near the planet Nasqueron, in a debris profile that fitted exactly twenty ships having blown up at the same time eight days earlier. One big debris field, still heading outwards from the gas-giant, spreading, consistent with a very large ship having been destroyed.

A few other small enemy ships showing, the closest responding to their passing, firing beam weapons. No hits. The destroyer Bofors passed within a kilo-klick of a vessel of about the same size as it, identified it as a hostile before the other ship had even registered the craft hurtling past and hit and destroyed it with a high-X-ray laser from its phase-modulation collar turret before the hostile had time to react.

Halfway across the system now. Still just the three big targets. There should be hundreds.

The four craft at the trailing end of the advance squadron’s spear-point had time to spare while they nudge-deflected and picked off some of the targets that the point and mid-body ships had identified. They turned long-range sensors on the outer system and beyond, in the general direction of the E-5 Discon, getting a straight-down look along that track which the main fleet had only ever been able to view at a ninety-degree angle.

Drive signatures. Hundreds of them. Most of a thousand ships, all heading for home, taking a slightly acutely angled route that had hidden their drives from the main body of the fleet for the last six or seven days.

Half an hour later, it was like party time. The advance squadron was almost all the way through the system, braking hard to return in a few dozen days, and the small formations of ships between them and the main body of the fleet had been ordered to forget about follow-up high-speed passes and start decelerating at their individual safe maxima.

All the signs were that the system was almost clear of enemy ships and the Starveling Cult’s main fleet was in high-speed retreat back along roughly the course it had approached on. Even the three big targets were powering up now and heading in the same direction as the decamping invasion force. A few dozen smaller drives lit up as smaller, lighter craft got set to bail out too. There would be some clearing-up to do, and no doubt various mines and automatic munitions to try and keep them occupied while the enemy fleet made its escape, but there would be no main fleet engagement in Ulubis system, no mega-battle.

Their orders were to retake Ulubis system at any cost and hold it. A fast, light force of a dozen or so ships might be sent to harry the tardier fringes of the retreating fleet and provide continuing incentivisation for their speedy withdrawal, but they were specifically not to risk chasing en masse for some decisive battle. They had already achieved victory. They were expressly forbidden from taking the slightest risk of throwing it all away.

The command staff were celebrating. Taince lay curled in her pod, listening to her colleagues babbling with happiness and obvious relief. Various people talked to her, gabbing away about how the mere threat of their arrival could turn away a fleet three times the size of theirs, how they wished now they’d been with the advance squadron, just to have seen some action, dammit, and how they were probably going to get a heroes’ welcome when they got to Ulubis. She tried to respond in kind, mustering expressions of tension released and fears assuaged and all the time pretending to pretend that she’d have preferred a proper fight.

— Vice Admiral?

The image of Admiral Kisipt appeared in front of her, automatically displacing all the other images of celebrating crew.

· Sir. She tried to pull her thoughts away from the sick feeling inside.

· You must be pleased. We won’t have to turn your home system into too much of a battleground.

· Of course, sir. Though there will be mines, booby traps, no doubt.

· No doubt. And I’m keeping a full sweep alert in operation between here and the system, just in case. Kisipt paused. The old Voehn’s head tipped to one side as he regarded her. -1 think it has been very stressful for you, anticipating what might happen when we got to Ulubis, yes?

— I suppose so, sir. Taince wondered if he’d already been alerted to her earlier nervousness, if this was a conversation — even a kind of evaluation — inspired by that.

· Hmm. Well, the place doesn’t look too badly shot up, judging from the advance results. You ought to be able to relax soon. We’ll need you for liaison and ceremonial duties mostly, I should think. The Admiral made a smile. — That will be all right?

· Of course, sir. Thank you.

· Good. The Admiral made a show of looking around at the other images distributed about his own icon. — Well, I’d better talk to a few more people, calm them down, remind them there’s still a job to be done. As you were, Vice.

— Sir.

The Admiral’s image disappeared. Taince didn’t bring any of the others to the fore, but turned away from the social space altogether for Tacspace.

What have I become? she thought, staring into the dark volumes of Tacspace, watching and not watching coloured lines move and slowly extend, groups of figures, groups of ships tracing their way through the deep space skies bordering Ulubis system. I wanted a proper battle. Death and destruction. I wanted death and destruction. I wanted the chance to die, the chance to kill, the chance to die…