Reynolds, Alastair: Redemption Ark

“I saved my head, Clavain. I feared that you would destroy Nightshade once I gave you back Felka, even though I didn’t think you would have the courage to do it when you knew I had Galiana aboard . . .” She smiled, her expression strangely close to admiration. “I was wrong about that, wasn’t I? You were a far more ruthless adversary than I had ever imagined, even after you did this to me.”

“You had Galiana’s body, not Galiana.” Clavain held his voice steady. “All I did was give her the peace she should have had when she died all those years ago.”

“But you don’t really believe that, do you? You always knew she was not really dead, but merely in a state of deadlock with the Wolf.”

“That was as good as death.”

“But there was always the chance the Wolf could be removed, Clavain . . .” Her voice became soft. “You believed that, too. You believed there was a chance you could have her back one day.”

“I did what I had to do,” he said.

“It was ruthlessness, Clavain. I admire you for it. You’re more of a spider than any of us.”

He stood up from the stump and made his way to the water’s edge until he was only a few metres from Skade. She hovered in the mist, neither fully solid nor fully anchored to the ground. “I did what I had to do,” he repeated. “It was all I ever did. It wasn’t ruthlessness, Skade. Ruthlessness implies that I felt no pain when I did it.”

“And did you?”

“It was the worst thing I have ever done. I removed her love from the universe.”

“I feel sorry for you, Clavain.”

“How did you survive, Skade?”

She reached up and fingered the curious collar where armour joined flesh. “After you left with Felka, I detached my head and placed it inside a small warhead casing. My brain tissue was buffered by interglial medichines to withstand rapid deceleration. The warhead was ejected backwards from Nightshade, back towards the other elements of the fleet. You never noticed because you were concerned only with the prospect of an attack against yourselves. The warhead fell through space silently until it was well beyond your detection sphere. Then it activated a focused homing pulse. One element of the fleet was delegated to change velocity until an intercept was feasible. The warhead was captured and brought aboard the other ship.” She smiled and closed her eyes. “The late Doctor Delmar was aboard another fleet vessel. Unfortunately it happened to be the ship you destroyed. But before his death he was able to finish the cloning of my new body. Neural reintegration was surprisingly easy, Clavain. You should try it one day.”

Clavain almost stumbled on his words. “Then . . . you are whole again?”

“Yes.” She said it tartly, as if the subject was a matter for mild regret. “Yes. I am whole again now.”

“Then why do you choose to manifest this way?”

“As a reminder, Clavain, of what you made of me. I am still out there, you see. My ship survived the engagement. There was damage, yes—just as there was damage to your ship. But I haven’t given up. I want what you have stolen from us.”

He turned back to Felka, who was still watching patiently from her wooden stump. “Is this true? Is Skade still out there?”

“We can’t know for sure,” she said. “All we know is what this beta-level tells us. It could be lying, trying to destabilise us. But in that case Skade must have shown astonishing foresight to create it in the first place.”

“And the surviving ships?”

“That’s sort of why we woke you. They are out there. We have fixes on their flames even now.” And then she told him that the three Conjoiner ships had streaked past at half the speed of light relative to Nostalgia for Infinity, just as the simulations had predicted. Weapons had been deployed, their activation sequences as carefully choreographed as the individual explosions in a fireworks performance. The Conjoiners had used particle beams and heavy relativistic railguns for the most part. Infinity had fired back with lighter versions of the same armaments, while also deploying two of the salvaged cache weapons. Both sides made much use of decoys and feints, and in the most critical phase of the engagement savage accelerations were endured as the ships tried to deviate from predicted flight-paths.

Neither side had been able to claim victory. One Conjoiner ship had been destroyed and damage wrought on the other two, but Clavain considered this almost as close to failure as having inflicted no damage at all. Two enemies were almost as dangerous as three.

And yet the outcome could have been so much worse. Nostalgia for Infinity had sustained some damage, but not enough to prevent it from making it to another solar system. None of the occupants had been hurt and none of the critical systems had been taken out.

“But we’re not home and dry,” Felka told him.

Clavain turned from Skade’s image. “We’re not?”

“The two ships that survived? They’re turning around. Slowly but surely, they’re sweeping back around to chase us.”

Clavain let out a laugh. “But it’ll take them light-years to make the turn.”

“It wouldn’t if they had inertia-suppression technology. But the machinery must have been damaged during the engagement. That doesn’t mean they can’t repair it again, however.” She looked at Skade, but the image made no reaction. It was as if she had become a statue poised at the water’s edge, a slightly macabre decorative feature of the glade.

“If they can, they will,” Clavain said.

Felka agreed. “The Triumvirate ran simulations. Under certain assumptions, we can always outrun the pursuing ships—at least in our reference frame—for as long as you care to specify. We just have to keep crawling closer and closer to the speed of light. But that isn’t much of a solution in my book.”

“It isn’t in mine either.”

“Anyway, it doesn’t happen to be practical. We do need to stop to make repairs, and sooner rather than later. That’s why we woke you, Clavain.”

Clavain walked back to the tree stumps. He lowered himself on to his with a crick of leg joints. “If there’s a decision to be taken, there must be some choices on the table. Is that the case?”

“Yes.”

He waited patiently, listening to the soothing white-noise hiss of the waterfall. “Well?”

Felka spoke with a reverent hush. “We’re a long way out, Clavain. The Resurgam system is nine light-years behind us and there isn’t another settled colony for fifteen light-years in any direction. But there’s a solar system dead ahead of us. Two cool stars. It’s a wide binary, but one of the stars has formed planets in stable orbits. They’re mature, at least three billion years old. There’s one world in the habitable zone that has a couple of small moons. Indications are that it has an oxygen atmosphere and a lot of water. There are even chlorophyll bands in the atmosphere.”

Clavain asked, “Human terraforming?”

“No. There’s no sign of human presence ever having established itself around these stars. Which leaves only one possibility, I think.”

“The Pattern Jugglers.”

She was evidently pleased that it did not need to be spelled out. “We always knew we’d stumble on more juggler worlds as we moved further out into the galaxy. We shouldn’t be surprised to find one now.”

“Dead ahead, just like that?”

“It isn’t dead ahead, but it’s close enough. We can slow down and reach it. If it’s anything like the other Juggler worlds there may even be dry land; enough to take a few settlers.”

“How many is a few?”

Felka smiled. “We won’t know until we get there, will we?”