Hugh Cook - The Worshippers and the Way

And the probabilities were that Asodo Hatch would die in the dust outside the gates of the Combat College, going down to his death with the Lady Murasaki, and with his wife, his poor Talanta, once so sweetly beautiful. And – worst and cruelest of all deaths – his daughter Onica.

"A boy," said Hatch to himself. "A brute in his boyhood. I wish I could meet him face to face. Face to face and kill him."

A thought occurred to him. A thought from Dith-zora-ka-mako, the Mystical Way of the Nu-chala-nuth:

– To drink the sea, you must first set your lips to the water.

"Sir?" said the Officer of the Watch, the restrained and professional San Kaladan.

Hatch turned to him. He drew his sword, a short and brutal sword, part of the uniform Hatch had long ago specified for all his MegaCommand illusion tank battles.

"What is this?" said Hatch, brandishing the sword.

"Sir?" said the Officer of the Watch.

"This!" said Hatch, giving the sword a shake, as if it was Lon Oliver's throat.

"Sir. It is a sword, sir."

"What is its purpose?"

"It is a weapon of death, sir. A weapon of war. But, sir, I doubt it a weapon suited to our present purpose."

"All war is a unity," said Hatch.

Grinning in something close to triumph. Because now he had the answer. Now he knew!

"San Kaladan," said Hatch, addressing the Officer of the Watch by his rightful name.

"Sir."

"Order all hands to suit up for close quarters battle."

"Sir?"

"We will fight the enemy at close quarters and I – I will hack off my enemy's head."

Thus spoke Asodo Hatch. And back in Forum Three there was a great stir of speculation amongst the assembled Startroopers, Combat Cadets and Free Corps graduates of the Combat College, for the order Hatch had just given was a nonsense. MegaCommand Cruisers fought with the Weapons Major of the Nexus: heavybattle weapons which manipulated probability, warped space and wrecked matter down to the constituent parts of its atoms.

A battle of MegaCommand Cruisers could be a brutal clash of force against force, shield against shield. Or it could be a subtle duel of wits as the commanders slid their ships in and out of local space, probing, laying traps and seeking to subvert each other's instrumentation. But one thing was for certain: swords, and the hacking off of heads with the same, had no part to play in such warfare, and never had, and never could.

The consensus in Forum Three was very simple: Asodo Hatch was stark staring raving mad.

Asma: computational machine of the Nexus which, as an intelligent and self-aware observer, is capable of manipulating the probability structure of whichever universe it finds itself in, and hence of altering reality.

The technic of the Nexus is largely based on such manipulation of probability, a process which is fraught with peril. Such manipulations strain the very structure of reality itself, and the history of the Nexus records catastrophic disasters in which an entire cosmos, overstrained, has disintegrated into Fundamental Chaos.

Breath within breath the dark

By boot and bruise creates

The armies which by whisper stumble Toward the crack which breaks the night from day:

A scalpel, and a line of liquid red.

Hatch stood close to the Officer of the Watch, close enough to kiss or kill. The man was sweating. The MegaCommand Cruiser was cool, yet San Kaladan was perspiring like a sledgehammer laborer at high noon on the thirstiest day of the year.

"Field collapse imminent," said San Kaladan.

"Count," said Hatch, speaking in the curt and brutal Code Five, the military dialect of the Nexus Ninetongue.

His clipped one-word order had a specific meaning. In the course of his training, Hatch had memorized seven dozen such orders. This one told San Kaladan to give him a countdown to the point where the probability disruption field would collapse.

At that point, battle would be joined.

"Twenty," said his subordinate, watching the command console.

"And. Nineteen. And. Eighteen. And. Seventeen. And."

"Instigate one," said Hatch. "Now."

San Kaladan broke off the count and pressed a button to instigate the first series of preprogrammed ship commands.

There was no sense of acceleration, for the MegaCommand Cruiser had state-of-the-art effect insulation technology. The ship commanded by Asodo Hatch could have blasted through space under an acceleration of a thousand gravities and he would never have felt a thing. It was a world away from the rough and tumble of a Scala Nine singlefighter.

But the command console told the story.

The ship bearing Asodo Hatch to his destiny was now accelerating directly toward Lupus Lon Oliver's vessel – and toward the disintegrating probability disruption field – at three gravities.

"Count," said Hatch.

"Field collapse in twelve," said his subordinate, watching the command console. "And. Eleven. And. Ten. And. Nine. And."

And.

And Asodo Hatch, watching the disruption field collapse, thought briefly of Dalar ken Halvar and of the Arena which, in the Season, became the burning focus of the life of the City of Sun.

Hatch touched a hand to the hilt of his sword.

– My father.

His father had fought. His father had died. And now Hatch in turn was facing his Season in this strange Arena where he must meet Lupus Lon Oliver in a combat which would decide whether he lived or whether he died.

"And. Three. And. Two. And. One. And. None."

An immaculate countdown.

On the word "none", the probability disruption field collapsed entirely. A few wisps of purple light smoked briefly in the vacuum of interstellar space then vanished.

"Instigate two," said Hatch. "Now."

The Officer of the Watch, the impeccably correct San Kaladan, pressed the instigation button a second time.

And -

And the world wavered.

The image on the gigantic main battle display screen buckled, collapsed to a point of light then died into absolute darkness.

Though Hatch had been prepared for this, he nevertheless experienced a frisson of the purest horror. This was every starwarrior's worst nightmare: a ship dying in the wastelands of interstellar space.

The main command console went dead.

The consoles minor were dead already.

A moment later, the lights went out.

Darkness made its cave. Hatch closed his eyes, allowed them time to adjust. When he opened them, weak emergency lights were already on. In the main command console, a small panel had come to life. It was a piece of electrical-based equipment. San Kaladan, the Officer of the Watch, was struggling to preserve his immaculate calm, to remain cool and collected in the face of an entirely unorthodox tactical situation. He studied the readouts and telltales of that small panel, studied it for longer than was necessary while he perfected his control of his own emotions. Then he addressed his commander:

"Sir. All three asmas are down, sir. Destroyed, sir. They self-destructed, sir. We have total failure of all ship systems based on probability manipulation. Total loss of main and auxiliary manoeuvering capacity. Total loss of all heavybattle weapons systems. Total loss of all shield systems. Emergency electricals are operative. Electrical-based emergency computational and navigational equipment operative. Otherwise our ship is null and dead. We are on a collision course for the enemy Galactic Class MegaCommand Cruiser."

That was Nexus style. Spell it out. Not "the cruiser", the one and only cruiser sitting out there in the vacuum of interstellar space. Not "the enemy cruiser". Not "the enemy MegaCommand Cruiser". But the whole thing, "the enemy Galactic Class MegaCommand Cruiser", spelt out in full. The maintenance of working routines under extreme pressure: that was the military ideal of the Nexus.