Singularity Sky

Wolf Depository Incident

The shooting began with a telegram.

Locked in a loose formation with six other capital ships, the Lord Vanek hurtled toward the heliopause, where the solar wind met the hard vacuum of interstellar space. Wolf Depository lay five light-years ahead, and almost five years in the future — for the plan was that fleet would follow a partially closed timelike path, plunging deep into the future (staying within the scope of a light cone with its apex drawn on New Prague at the time of first warning of attack), then use the black boxes attached to their drive modules to loop back into the past. Without quite breaking the letter of the Eschaton’s law— Thou shalt not globally violate causality—the fleet would arrive in orbit around Rochard’s World just after the onslaught of the Festival, far faster than such a task force would normally cover the eight hops separating them from the colony world. In the process, it would loop around any forces sent by the enemy to intercept a straightforward counter-strike — and pick up a time capsule containing analyses of the battle written by future historians, the better to aid the Admiral’s planning.

At least, that was what theory dictated. Get there implausibly fast, with more firepower than any attacker could possibly expect, and with advance warning of the attacker’s order of battle and defensive intentions. What could go wrong?

The operations room was a hive of concentration as the gold team officers — the crew shift who would be on duty at the time of the forthcoming first jump, the one that would take the fleet into the future, as well as out into deep space — ran through their set-up checklists.

Captain Mirsky stood at the rear of the room, next to the heavy airtight door, watching his officers at their posts: a running display of telemetry from the ship’s battle management systems ran up the main wall-screen. The atmosphere was tense enough to cut with a knife. It was the first time any warship of the New Republic had engaged a high-technology foe; and no one, to the best knowledge of Commodore Bauer’s staff, had ever tried to pull off this tactical procedure before. Anything could be waiting for them.

Five years into the future was as far as they dared probe in one jump; in theory, there should be a navigation beacon awaiting them, but if something went awry, the enemy might be there instead. Mirsky smiled thinly. All the more reason to get it right, he reasoned. If we mess it up, there won’t be a second time.

The military attache from Earth had invited herself in to rubberneck at the proceedings and presumably report back to her masters in due course. Not that it made any difference at this point, but it annoyed Mirsky’s sense of order to have a tourist along, let alone one whose loyalty was questionable. He resolved to ignore her — or, if that became impossible, to eject her immediately.

“First breakpoint in five-zero seconds,” called the flight engineer. “Slaved to preferential-frame compensation buffers. Range to jump initiation point, six-zero seconds.” More jargon followed, in a clipped, tense voice; the routine stockin-trade of a warship, every phrase was defined by some procedural manual.

Gunnery one: “Acknowledged. Standing by to power up laser grid.” A mass of lasers — more than a million tiny cells scattered across the skin of the ship, able to operate as a single phased array — cycled through their power-up routines and reported their status. The ship was nearing the jump point; as it did so, it sucked energy out of the energized, unstable vacuum ahead of it and stored it by spinning up its drive kernel, the tiny, electrically charged black hole that nestled at the heart of the engine room containment sphere.

Engineering: “Main inertial propulsion holding at minus two seconds. Three-zero seconds to jump.” The ship drifted closer to the lightspeed transition point. The rippled space ahead of it began to flatten, bleeding energy into the underlying vacuum state. Six more huge warships followed behind at five-minute intervals; Squadron Two, the light screen of fast-movers who had set off behind the Lord Vanek, had overhauled them the day before and jumped through six hours ago.

Comms: “Telegram from the flag deck, sir.”

“Read it,” called Mirsky.

‘Telegram from Admiral Kurtz, open, all ears. Begins: Assume enemy warships ahead, break. Initiate fire on contact with hostiles, break. For the glory of the empire. Ends. Sent via causal channel to all sister ships.“ The causal channels between the ships would die, their contents hopelessly scrambled, as soon as the ships made their first jump between equipotential points: quantum entanglement was a fragile phenomenon and couldn’t survive faster-than-light transitions.

Mirsky nodded. “Acknowledge it. Exec, bring us battle stations.” Alarms began to honk mournfully throughout the ship.

“Reference frame trap executed.” Relativistics. “Jump field engaged. We have a white box in group B, repeat, white box in B.” A captive reference frame meant the ship had mapped the precise space-time location of its origin perfectly. Using the newly installed drive controllers, the Lord Vanek could return to that point in time from some future location, flying a closed timelike loop.

Mirsky cleared his throat. “Jump at your convenience.”

No lights dimmed, there was no sense of motion, and virtually nothing happened — except for a burst of exotic particles injected into the ergosphere of the quantum black hole in the ship’s drive module.

Nevertheless, without any fuss, the star patterns outside the ship’s hull changed.

“Jump confirmed.” Almost everybody breathed a slight sight of relief.

“Survey, let’s see where we are.” Mirsky showed no sign of stress, even though his ship had just jumped five years into its own future, as well as a parsec and a half out into the unknown.

“Yes, sir: laser grid coming up.” About two gigawatts of power — enough to run a large city — surged into the laser cells in the ship’s skin: if there was one thing a starship like the Lord Vanek had, it was electricity to burn. The ship lit up like a pulsar, pumping out a blast of coherent ultraviolet light powerful enough to fry anyone within a dozen kilometers. It stabilized, scanning rapidly in a tight beam, quartering the space ahead of the ship. After a minute it shut down again.

Radar: “No obstructions. We’re well clear.” Which was to be expected. Out here, fifteen to fifty astronomical units away from the primary, you could travel for 100 million kilometers in any direction without meeting anything much larger than a snowball. The intense UV lidar pulse would propagate for minutes, then hours, before returning the faint trace of a skin signature.

“Very good. Conn, take us forward. One gee, total delta of one-zero k.p.s.” Mirsky stood back and waited as the helm officer punched in the maneuver. Ten k.p.s. wasn’t much speed, but it would take the Lord Vanek comfortably away from its point of emergence without emitting too much drive noise, leaving room for the rest of the flotilla behind them. A lidar pulse in the depths of the halo could only signify a warship on the prowl, and it would be extremely unhealthy to stay too close to its point of origin.

In the Oort cloud of an industrialized system, even the snowballs could bite.

“Ping at nine-two-six-four!” crowed Radar Two. “Range four-point-nine M-klicks, bearing one by seven-five by three-three-two. Lots of hot one-point-four MeV gammas — they’re cooking on antimatter!”

“Acceleration?” asked Mirsky.

‘Tracking … one-point-three gees, confirmed. No change. Uh, wait—“

“Comms bulletin from the Kamchatka, sir.”

“Comms, call it.”

“Message reads, quote, under attack by enemy missile layers break. Situation serious break. Where are the BBs, break. All units please respond, ends.”

Mirsky blinked. Enemy warships? This soon? Wolf Depository was right on the New Republic’s doorstep, a mining system owned and exploited by the rich, heavily industrialized Septagon Central.

What on earth were they doing allowing alien warships—

“Second burst at nine-two-six-four,” called Radar One. “Same emission profile. Looks like we scared up a swarm!”

“Wait,” grated Mirsky. He shook himself, visibly surprised by the news. “Wait, dammit! I want to see what else is out there. Comms, do not, under any circumstances, respond to signals from the Kamchatka, or anybody who came through ahead of us without clearing it with me first. If there are enemy ships out here, we’ve got no way of knowing whether our signals have been compromised.”

“Aye aye, sir. Signal silence on all screening elements.”

“Now.” He bent his head, pondering the screen ahead. “If it is an ambush …” The gamma-ray traces lit up on the main screen, labeled icons indicating their position and vector relative to the system ahead. One-point-three gees wasn’t particularly fast, but it was enough to send cold shudders up Mirsky’s spine: it meant serious high-delta-vee propulsion systems, fusion or antimatter or quantum gravity induction, not the feeble ion drive of a robot tug. That could mean a number of things: sublight relativistic bombers, missile buses, intrasystem interceptors, whatever. The Lord Vanek would have to skim past them to get to the next jump zone. Which could give them a passing shot at over 1000 k.p.s … a speed at which it took very little, maybe a sand grain, to total a ship. If it was an ambush, it had probably nailed the entire task force cold.

“Radar,” he said, “give me a second lidar pulse, three-zero seconds. Then plot a vector intersect on those bogies, offset one-zero kiloklicks at closest pass, acceleration one-zero gees, salvo of two SEM-20s one-zero-zero kiloklicks out.”

“Aye aye, skipper.”

“Missiles armed, launch holding at minus one-zero seconds.” Commander Helsingus, stationed at Gunnery One.

“I want them to get a good look at our attack profile,” murmured the Captain. “Nice and close.” Ilya Murametz glanced at him sidelong. “Keep the boys on their toes,” Mirsky added, meeting his eye. Ilya nodded.

“Gamma burst!” called Radar Two. “Burst at one-four-seven-one. Range one-one point-two M-klicks, bearing one by seven-five by three-three-two. Looks like shooting, sir!”

“Understood.” Mirsky clasped his hands together: Murametz winced as he cracked his knuckles. “Hurry up and wait. Helm: How’s the attack course?”

“We’re prepping it now, sir.”

“Forward lidar. Looks like we are in a shooting war. And they know we’re here by now. So let’s get a good look at them.”

Comms: “Sir, new message purportedly from the Kamchatka. Message from the Aurora, too.”

“Read them.”

Mirsky nodded at the comms station, where the petty officer responsible read from a punched paper tape unreeling from the brass mouth of a dog’s head. “Kamchatka says, quote, engaged by enemy missile boats break we are shooting back break enemy warships astern painting us with target designation radar break situation desperate where are you. Ends. Aurora says, quote, no contact with enemies break Kamchatka off course stand by for orbital elements correction break what is all the shooting about. Ends.”

“Oh bloody hell.” Murametz turned red.

“Indeed,” Mirsky said drily. “The question is, whose? TacOps: what’s our status?”

‘Target acquired, sir. Range down to four-point-eight M-klicks, speed passing one-zero-zero k.p.s.

Engagement projected within two-point-four kiloseconds.“

“We have a … three-zero-zero-second margin,” said Mirsky, checking the clock display. “That should be plenty. We can get a look at the closest one without getting so close their launch base can shoot at us if it’s a missile bus. Everyone clear? Guns: I want real-time logging of those birds. Let’s see how they perform. Radar: Can you lock a spectroscope on the target?”

“At three K-klicks per second, from one-zero K-klicks away? I think so, sir, but we’ll need a big fat beacon to spot against.”

“You’ll have one.” Murametz smiled widely. “Guns: dial those birds down to point-one of a kiloton before you fire them. Standard MP-3 warheads?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Keep ‘em.”

Standing at the back of the bridge, Rachel tried not to wince. Wearing her arms inspectorate hat, she was all too familiar with the effects of americium bombs: nuclear weapons made with an isotope denser and more fissile than plutonium, more stable than californium. Just good old-fashioned fission bombs, jacketed with a high-explosive shaped charge and a lens of pre-fragmented copper needles — shrapnel that, in a vacuum engagement, would come spalling off the nuclear fireball in a highly directional cone, traveling at a high fraction of lightspeed.

The next thirty minutes passed in tense silence, broken only by terse observations from Radar One and Two. No more targets burst from hiding; there might well be others in the Kuiper belt, but none were close enough to see or be seen by the intense lidar pulses of the warship. In that time, passive sensors logged two nuclear detonations within a range of half a light-hour; someone was definitely shooting. And behind them, the telltale disturbances of six big ships emerged from jump, then powered up their combat lidar and moved out.

“Launch point in six-zero seconds,” called Helsingus. “Two hot SEM-20s on the rail.”

“Fire on schedule,” said Mirsky, straightening his back and looking directly ahead at the screen. The green arrow showing the Lord Vanek’s vector had grown until it was beginning to show the purple of relativistic distortion around its sensitive extrapolative tip: the ship was already nearing half a percent of lightspeed, a dangerous velocity. Too high a speed and it might not be able to track targets effectively: worse, it wouldn’t be able to dodge or change its vector fast, or jump safely.

“Three-zero seconds. Arming birds. Birds show green, sir.”

“I’m getting emissions from the target,” called Radar Two. “Lots of — looks like jamming, sir!”

“Laser grid. Illuminate the target,” said Mirsky. “Guns, set to passive.”

“Aye aye, sir.” Under passive homing mode, the missiles would lock onto the target, illuminated by the Lord Vanek’s laser battery, and home in on its reflection.

‘Target still accelerating slowly,“ said Radar One. ”Looks like a missile boat.“

“One-zero seconds. Launch rails energized.”

“You have permission to fire at will, Commander,” said the Captain.

“Yes, sir. Eight seconds. Navigation updated. Inertial platforms locked. Birds charged, warheads … green. Five seconds. Launch commencing, bird one. Gone.” The deck shuddered briefly: ten tons of missile hurtled the length of the ship in the grip of a coilgun, ejected ahead of the starship at better than a kilometer per second. “Lidar lock. Drive energized. Bird one main engine ignition confirmed. Bird two loaded and green … launch. Gone. Drive energized.”

“Bingo,” Ilya said quietly.

Red arrows indicating the progress of the missiles appeared on the forward screen. They weren’t self-powered; nobody in his right mind would dare load a quantum black hole and its drive support mechanism into a robot suicide machine. Rather, the ship’s phased-array lasers bathed them in a sea of energy, boiling and then superheating the reaction mass they carried until they surged forward far faster than the starship. Strictly a close-range low-delta-vee weapon, missiles were mostly obsolescent; their sole job was to get a nuclear device onto the right interception vector, like the “bus” on an ancient twentieth-century MIRV. They’d burn out after only thirty seconds, but by then the warheads would be closing the gap between the Lord Vanek’s projected course and the enemy ship itself. Shortly after the starship ran the gauntlet, its missiles would arrive — and deliver the killing blow.

“Radar One. Where are they?” Mirsky asked softly.

‘Tracking as before,“ called the officer. ”Still maintaining course and vector. And emitting loads of spam.“

“Bird one MECO in one-zero seconds,” said Helsingus. “They’re trying to jam, sir. Nothing doing.” He said it with heavy satisfaction, as if the knowledge that the anonymous victims of the attack were offering some token resistance reassured him that he was not, in fact, about to butcher them without justification.

Even committed officers found the applied methods of three centuries of nuclear warfare hard to stomach at times.

Comms Two, voice ragged with tension: “Jamming stopped, sir! I’m receiving a distress beacon.

Two — no, three! I say again, three distress beacons. It’s like they’re bailing out before we hit them.”

“Too late,” said Helsingus. ”We’ll have ’em in three-two seconds. They’ll be inside the burst radius.” Rachel shuddered. Suddenly a horrible possibility began to rise to the surface of her mind.

Mirsky cracked his knuckles again, kneading his hands together. “Guns. I want a last-ditch evasion program loaded, activate at closest approach minus one-zero seconds if we’re still here.”

“Yes, sir,” Helsingus said heavily. “Laser grid support?”

“Anything you like.” Mirsky waved a hand magnanimously. “If we’re still here to enjoy the light show.” Helsingus began flipping switches like a man possessed. On the screen, the outgoing birds passed their main engine cutout points and went ballistic; more enemy missiles began hatching like sinister blue fingers reaching out from the target point.

“Captain,” Rachel said slowly.

“—One-zero seconds. They’re jamming hard, sir, but the birds are still holding.”

“What if Kamchatka is wrong? What if those are civilian mining ships?” Captain Mirsky ignored her.

“Five seconds! Bird one ready to go — range down to one-zero K. Three. EMP lockdown is go. Sensor stepdown mag six is go. Optics shielded — bang. Sir, I confirm that bird one has detonated. Bang. Bird two is gone.”

“Radar. What do you see?” asked Mirsky.

“Waiting on the fog to clear — ah, got sensors back sir. Incoming missiles still closing. Fireball remnants hashing up radar, lidar is better. Uh, the impact spectroscope has tripped, sir, we have a confirmed impact on the target alpha. Oxygen, nitrogen, carbonitrile emissions from the hull. I think we holed him, sir.”

“We holed him—” Mirsky stopped. Turned to glance at Rachel. “What did you say?” he demanded.

“What if they’re civilians? We have only Kamchatka’s word that they’re under attack; no direct evidence other than bombs going off — which could be hers.“

“Nonsense.” Mirsky snorted. “None of our ships could make a mistake like that!”

“Nobody is actually shooting live missiles at us. The pre-jump briefing warned everyone to look out for enemy missile boats. How likely is it that the Kamchatka ran down a civilian mining ship by mistake and got a bit trigger-happy? And what you’re seeing as an attack is actually just the cruiser screen shooting in the dark at anything that moves?”

Dead silence. Enlisted men and officers alike stared at Rachel disapprovingly: nobody spoke to the captain like that! Then from behind her: “Spallation debris on radar, sir. Target is breaking up. Uh, humbly reporting, Captain, we have distress beacons. Civilian ones …” The Lord Vanek was going far too fast to slow down, and as flagship and lead element of the squadron, had a duty not to do so. Nevertheless, they signaled the squadron astern; and behind them, one of the elderly battleships peeled off to pick up any survivors from the disastrous attack.

The big picture, when it finally gelled some eight hours later, was very bad indeed. The “missile carriers” were actually refinery tugs, tending the migratory robot factories that slowly trawled the Kuiper-belt bodies, extracting helium 3 from the snowballs. Their sudden burst of speed had a simple explanation; seeing alien warships, they had panicked, dumping their cargo pods so that they could clear the area under maximum acceleration. One of the distant explosions had been the Kamchatka, landing a near miss on one of the “enemy battleships”—the cruiser India. (Minor hull damage and a couple of evacuated compartments had resulted; unfortunately, the cruiser’s chaplain had been in one of the compartments at the time, and had gone to meet his maker.)

“Ser-erves ’em right for being in the way, dammit,” quavered Admiral Kurtz when Commodore Bauer delivered the news in person. “Wha-what do they think this is?” He half rose to his feet, momentarily forgetting about his glass legs: “Simply appalling stupidity!”

“Ah, I believe we still have a problem, sir,” Bauer pointed out as Robard tried to get his master settled down again. “This system is claimed by Septagon, and, ah, we have received signals as of half an hour ago indicating that they have a warship in the area, and it’s engaging us on an intercept trajectory.” The Admiral snorted. “What can one warship d-do?” Rachel, who had inveigled her way into the staff meeting on the grounds that, as a neutral observer, it was her duty to act as an intermediary in situations such as this one, watched Bauer spluttering with mordant interest. Can he really be that stupid? she wondered, glancing at the admiral, who hunched in his chair like a bald parrot, eyes gleaming with an expression of fixed mania.

“Sir, the warship that is signaling us is, ah, according to our most recent updates, one of their Apollo-class fleet attack carriers. Radar says they’ve got additional traces indicative of a full battle group.

We outnumber them, but—”

Rachel cleared her throat. “They’ll eat you for breakfast.” Bauer’s head whipped around. “What did you say?” She tapped her PA, where it lay on the table before her. “UN defense intelligence estimates suggest that Septagon’s policy of building carriers, rather than the standard laser/missile platform that your navy has adopted, gives them a considerable advantage in the ability to cover an entire system.

Simply put, while they lack short-range firepower, they’re able to launch a swarm of interceptors that can pound on you from well outside your own engagement envelope. More to the point, they’re frighteningly good, and unless I’m very much mistaken, that carrier, on its own, outmasses your entire fleet. I wouldn’t want you to get the idea that I don’t rate you against the Septagon Navy, but if you’re planning on fighting them, do you think you could let me know in advance? I’d like a chance to grab a survival pod first.”

“Well, we can’t argue with the government of Earth’s defense estimates, can we, Commander?” Bauer nodded pointedly at his executive officer.

“Ah, no, sir. The Colonel is quite correct.” The young and somewhat flustered Lieutenant avoided looking at Rachel; it was a minor slight she was getting plenty of practice at ignoring.

“Damned newfangled inventions,” mumbled Kurtz under his breath. “Blasted many-angled ones don’t want us to succeed, anyway — per-per-perfidious technophiles!” Louder: “We must press on!”

“Absolutely.” Commodore Bauer nodded sagely. “If we press on to Point Two on schedule, leaving the diplomatic niceties to the embassy — speaking of which — Lieutenant Kossov. What of the update?

Where do we stand with respect to further information about this Festival, its order of battle and motives? What have we learned?”

“Ah.” Lieutenant Kossov, removed and polished his pince-nez nervously. “Well, there’s something of a problem. The deposition from the Admiralty doesn’t seem to have arrived. We were supposed to be seeing an ordnance beacon, but although we quartered the designated orbital path, there’s nothing there.

Either they’re late — or they never planted it.”

‘This orbital beacon.“ Rachel leaned forward. ”A standard target buoy, right? With a diplomatic package containing anything the Republic’s intelligence services have learned about the Festival in the five years since our jump?“

Kossov glanced warily at the Commodore, who nodded. “Yes, Colonel. What of it?”

“Well, if it isn’t there, that can imply three things, can’t it? Either it was there, but somebody else stole or disabled it. Or—”

“Perfidious Septagonians!” Robard hastily leaned over his charge, then looked up and shrugged, eloquently.

“Indeed, Admiral. Or, as I was saying, the second option is that it hasn’t been put there yet — some miscalculation, or they couldn’t determine any useful information about the enemy, or they forgot about us, or something.”

The noise of Kurtz’s snoring cut into her exposition. All eyes turned to the admiral; Robard straightened up. “I’m afraid the Admiral’s legs have been paining him considerably of late, and the dosage of his medication is not conducive to lucidity. He may sleep for some hours.”

“Well, then.” Bauer looked around the conference table. “I believe if you would be so good as to return His Excellency to his cabin, I will continue as his proxy and prepare a minuted report of this meeting for him to review later, when he’s feeling better. Unless anyone has any comments that specifically require the Admiral’s ear?” Nobody demurred. “Very well then. Recess for five minutes.” Robard and an enlisted man gingerly rolled the Admiral’s chair away from the table; then, using the lift just outside the room, disappeared with him in the direction of his quarters. Everybody stood, and saluted, while the snoring officer was wheeled out of the meeting. Rachel held her face expressionless, trying to conceal the disgust and pity the sight pulled from her. He’s young enough to be my grandson.

How can they do this to themselves?

Eventually, Bauer, assuming the admiral’s position at the head of the table, rapped his hand on the brass bell. “Meeting will resume. The Terran attache has the floor. You were saying?”

“The third possibility is that the New Republic no longer exists,” Rachel said bluntly. She continued, ignoring the outraged gasps around the table. “You are facing an enemy about whose capabilities you are largely ignorant. I’m afraid to say, the UN knows little more about them than you do. As I noted, there are three reasons for the New Republic not to have contacted you, and their total defeat in the intervening time is only one of them, but not one it’s safe to ignore. We’re now in the outbound leg of a closed, timelike loop, which will eventually clip itself out of the world line of this universe if you succeed in looping back into our relative past — but the New Republic’s absolute immediate future — and taking the intruders by surprise. This has some odd implications. History reaching us inside this loop may not bear any relationship to the eventual outcome we seek, for one thing. For another—” She shrugged. “If I’d been consulted prior to this expedition, I would have strongly counseled against it. While it is not technically a breach of the letter of Clause Nineteen, it is dangerously close to the sort of activity that has brought down intervention by the Eschaton in the past. The Eschaton really doesn’t like time travel in the slightest, presumably because, if things go too far, someone might edit it out of existence. So there’s the possibility that what you’re up against isn’t just the Festival, but a higher power.”

“Thank you, Colonel.” Bauer nodded politely, but his face was set in a mask of disapproval. “I believe that, for now, we shall disregard that possibility. If the Eschaton chooses to involve itself, there is nothing we can do in any case, so we must work on the assumption that it will not. And in that case, all we are up against is the Festival. Kossov. What did we know about it before we left?”

“Ah, um, well, that is to say—” Kossov looked around wildly, shuffled the papers on his blotter, and sighed. “Ah, good. Yes. The Festival—”

“I know what it’s called, Lieutenant,” the Commodore said reprovingly. “What is it and what does it want?”

“Nobody knows.” Kossov looked at his supreme commander’s deputy like a rabbit caught in the blinding headlights of an oncoming express train.

“So, Commissioner.” Bauer cocked his head on one side and stared at Rachel, with the single-minded analytical purpose of a raptor. “And what can the esteemed government-coordinating body of Earth tell me about the Festival?” he asked, almost tauntingly.

“Uh.” Rachel shook her head. Of course the poor kid had done his best — none of these people could know anything much about the Festival. Even she didn’t. It was a big yawning blank.

“Well?” Bauer prodded.

Rachel sighed. “This is very provisional; nobody from Earth has had any direct contact with the agency known as Festival until now, and our information is, therefore, secondhand and unverifiable. And, frankly, unbelievable. The Festival does not appear to be a government or agency thereof, as we understand the term. In fact, it may not even be human. All we know is that something of that name turns up in distant settled systems — never closer than a thousand light-years, before now — and it, well, the term we keep hearing used to describe what happens next is ‘Jubilee’, if that makes any sense to you. Everything …

stops. And the Festival takes over the day-today running of the system for the duration.” She looked at Bauer. “Is that what you wanted to know?”

Bauer shook his head, looking displeased. “No it wasn’t,” he said. “I was after capabilities.” Rachel shrugged. “We don’t know,” she said bluntly. “As I said, we’ve never seen it from close-up.” Bauer frowned. “Then this will be a first for you, won’t it? Which leads us to the next issue, updates to navigation plan Delta …”

A few hours later, Rachel lay facedown on her bunk and tried to shut the world out of her head. It wasn’t easy; too much of the world had followed her home over the years, crying for attention.

She was still alive. She knew, somehow, that she should feel relieved about this, but what she’d seen in the briefing room screen had unnerved her more than she was willing to admit. The admiral was a senile vacuum at the heart of the enterprise. The intelligence staff were well-meaning, but profoundly ignorant: they were so inflexible that they were incapable of doing their job properly. She’d tried to explain how advanced civilizations worked until she could feel herself turning blue in the face, and they still didn’t understand! They’d nodded politely, because she was a lady — even if a somewhat scandalous one, a lady diplomat—and immediately forgotten or ignored her advice.

You don’t fight an infowar attack with missiles and lasers, any more than you attack a railway locomotive with spears and stone axes. You don’t fight a replicator attack by throwing energy and matter at machines that will just use them for fuel. They’d nodded approvingly and gone on to discuss the virtues of active countermeasures versus low-observability systems. And they still didn’t get it; it was as if the very idea of something like the Festival, or even the Septagon system, occupied a mental blind spot ubiquitous in their civilization. They could accept a woman in trousers, even in a colonel’s uniform, far more easily than they could cope with the idea of a technological singularity.

Back on Earth, she had attended a seminar, years ago. It had been a weeklong gathering of experts; hermeneutic engineers driven mad by studying the arcane debris of the Singularity, demographers still trying to puzzle out the distribution of colony worlds, a couple of tight-lipped mercenary commanders and commercial intelligence consultants absorbed in long-range backstop insurance against a return of the Eschaton. They were all thrown together and mixed with a coterie of Defense SIG experts and UN

diplomats. It was hosted by the UN, which, as the sole remaining island of concrete stability in a sea of pocket polities, was the only body able to host such a global event.

During the seminar, she had attended a cocktail party on a balcony of white concrete, jutting from a huge hotel built on the edge of the UN city, Geneva. She’d been in uniform at the time, working as an auditor for the denuclearization commission. Black suit, white gloves, mirrorshades pulsing news updates and radiation readings into her raw and tired eyes. Hyped up on a cocktail of alcohol antagonists, she sipped a bitter (and ineffective) gin with a polite Belgian cosmologist. Mutual incomprehension tinged with apprehension bound them in an uncomfortable Ping-Pong match of a conversation. “There is so much we do not understand about the Eschaton,” the cosmologist had insisted, “especially concerning its interaction with the birth of the universe. The big bang.” He raised his eyebrows suggestively.

“The big bang. Not, by any chance, an unscheduled fissile criticality excursion, was it?” She said it deadpan, trying to deflect him with humor.

“Hardly. There were no licensing bodies in those days — at the start of space-time, before the era of expansion and the first appearance of mass and energy, about a billionth of a billionth of a millionth of a second into the life of the universe.”

“Surely the Eschaton can’t have been responsible for that. It’s a modern phenomenon, isn’t it?”

“Maybe not responsible,” he said, choosing his words carefully. “But maybe circumstances arising then formed a necessary precondition for the Eschaton’s existence, or the existence of something related to but beyond the Eschaton. There’s a whole school of cosmology predicated around the weak anthropic principle, that the universe is as it seems because, if it was any other way, we would not exist to observe it. There is a … less popular field, based on the strong anthropic principle, that the universe exists to give rise to certain types of entity. I don’t believe we’ll ever understand the Eschaton until we understand why the universe exists.”

She smiled at him toothily, and let a Prussian diplomat rescue her with the aid of a polite bow and an offer to explain the fall of Warsaw during the late unpleasantness in the Baltic. A year or so later, the polite cosmologist had been murdered by Algerian religious fundamentalists who thought his account of the universe a blasphemy against the words of the prophet Yusuf Smith as inscribed on his two tablets of gold. But that was typical of Europe, half-empty and prey to what the formerly Islamic world had become.

Somewhere along the line she, too, had changed. She’d spent decades — the best part of her second, early-twenty-second-century life — fighting the evils of nuclear proliferation. Starting out as a dreadlocked direct-action activist, chaining herself to fences, secure in the naive youthful belief that no harm could befall her. Later, she’d figured out that the way to do it was wearing a smart suit, with mercenary soldiers and the threat of canceled insurance policies backing up her quiet voice. Still prickly and direct, but less of a knee-jerk nonconformist, she’d learned to work the system for maximum effect. The hydra seemed halfway under control, bombings down to only one every couple of years, when Bertil had summoned her to Geneva and offered her a new job. Then she’d wished she’d paid more attention to the cosmologist — for the Algerian Latter-Day Saints had been very thorough in their suppression of the Tiplerite heresy — but it was too late, and in any event, the minutiae of the Standing Committee’s investigations into chronological and probabilistic warfare beckoned.

Somewhere along the line, the idealist had butted heads with the pragmatist, and the pragmatist won.

Maybe the seeds had been sown during her first marriage. Maybe it had come later; being shot in the back and spending six months recovering in hospital in Calcutta had changed her. She’d done her share of shooting, too, or at least directing the machinery of preemptive vengeance, wiping out more than one cell of atomic-empowered fanatics — whether central-Asian independence fighters, freelance meres with a bomb too many in their basement, or on one notable occasion, radical prolifers willing to go to any lengths to protect the unborn child. Idealism couldn’t coexist with so many other people’s ideals, betrayed in their execution by the tools they’d chosen. She’d walked through Manchester three days after the InterCity Firm’s final kickoff, before the rain had swept the sad mounds of cinders and bone from the blasted streets. She’d become so cynical that only a complete change of agenda, a wide-angle view of the prospects for humanity, could help her retain her self-respect.

And so to the New Republic. A shithole of a backwater, in her frank opinion; in need of remodeling by any means necessary, lest it pollute its more enlightened neighboring principalities, like Malacia or Turku.

But the natives were still people — and for all that they tampered with the machineries of mass destruction in apparent ignorance of their power, they deserved better than they’d receive from an awakened and angry Eschaton. They deserved better than to be left to butt heads with something they didn’t understand, like the Festival, whatever it was: if they couldn’t understand it, then maybe she’d have to think the unthinkable for them, help them to reach some kind of accommodation with it — if that was possible. The alarming aspect to the UN’s knowledge of the Festival — the only thing she hadn’t told Bauer about — was that antitech colonies contacted by it disappeared, leaving only wreckage behind when the Festival moved on. Just why this might be she didn’t know, but it didn’t bode well for the future.

Nothing quite concentrates a man’s mind like the knowledge that he is to be hanged in four weeks; unless it is possibly the knowledge that he has sabotaged the very ship he sails in, and he — along with everyone else in it — will be hanged in three months. For while the execution may be farther away, the chances of a reprieve are infinitely lower.

Martin Springfield sat in the almost-deserted wardroom, a glass of tea at his hand, staring absently at the ceiling beams. A nautical theme pervaded the room; old oak panels walled it in, and the wooden plank floor had been holystone-polished until it gleamed. A silver-chased samovar sat steaming gently atop an age-blackened chest beneath a huge gilt-framed oil painting of the ship’s namesake that hung on one wall. Lord Vanek leading the cavalry charge at the suppression of the Robots’ Rebellion 160 years ago — destroying the aspirations of those citizens who had dreamed of life without drudge-labor in the service of aristocrats. Martin shivered slightly, trying to grapple with his personal demons.

It’s all my fault, he thought. And there’s nobody else to share it with.

Comfortless fate. He sipped at his glass, felt the acrid sweet bite of the rum underlying the bitterness of the tea. His lips felt numb, now. Stupid, he thought. It was too late to undo things. Too late to confess, even to Rachel, to try to get her out of this trap. He should have told her right at the beginning, before she came on board. Kept her out of the way of the Eschaton’s revenge. Now, even if he confessed everything, or had done so before they tripped the patch in the drive kernel controllers, it would only put him on a one-way trip to the death chair. And although the sabotage was essential, and even though it wouldn’t kill anyone directly—

Martin shuddered, drained the glass, and put it down beside his chair. He hunched forward unconsciously, neck bowed beneath the weight of a guilty conscience. At least I did the right thing, he tried to tell himself. None of us are going home, but at least the homes we had will still be there when we’re gone. Including Rachel’s unlived-in apartment. He winced. It was next to impossible to feel guilt for a fleet, but just knowing about her presence aboard the ship had kept him awake all night.

The mournful pipes had summoned the ship to battle stations almost an hour ago. Something to do with an oncoming Septagonese carrier battle group, scrambled like a nest of angry hornets in response to the fiasco with the mining tugs. It didn’t make any difference to Martin. Somewhere in the drive control network, an atomic clock was running slow, tweaked by a folded curl of space-time from the drive kernel. It was only a small error, of course, but CP violation would amplify it out of all proportion when the fleet began its backward path through space-time. He’d done it deliberately, to prevent a catastrophic and irrevocable disaster. The New Republican Navy might think a closed timelike loop to be only a petty tactical maneuver, but it was the thin end of a wedge; a wedge that Herman said had to be held at bay. He’d made his pact with a darker, more obscure agency than Rachel’s. From his perspective, the UN DISA people merely aped his employer’s actions on a smaller scale — in hope of preempting them.

Good-bye, Belinda, he thought, mentally consigning his sister to oblivion. Good-bye, London. Dust of ages ate the metropolis, crumbled its towers in dust. Hello, Herman, to the steady tick of the pendulum clock on the wall. As the flagship, Lord Vanek provided a time signal for the other vessels in the fleet.

Not just that; it provided an inertial reference frame locked to the space-time coordinates of their first jump. By slightly slowing the clock, Martin had ensured that the backward time component of their maneuver would be botched very slightly.

The fleet would travel forward into the light cone, maybe as much as four thousand years; it would rewind, back almost the whole distance — but not quite as far as it had come. Their arrival at Rochard’s World would be delayed almost two weeks, about as long as a rapid crossing without any of the closed timelike hanky-panky the Admiralty had planned. And then the Festival would — well, what the Festival would do to the fleet was the Festival’s business. All he knew was that he, and everyone else, would pay the price.

Who did they think they were kidding, anyway? Claiming they planned to use the maneuver just to reduce transit time, indeed! Even a toddler could see through a subterfuge that transparent, all the way to the sealed orders waiting in the admiral’s safe. You can‘t fool the Eschaton by lying to yourself.

Maybe Herman, or rather the being that hid behind that code name, would be waiting. Maybe Martin would be able to get off the doomed ship, maybe Rachel would, or maybe through a twist of fate the New Republican Navy would defeat the Festival in a head-to-head fight. And maybe he’d teach the horse to sing …

He stood up, a trifle giddily, and carried his glass to the samovar. He half filled it, then topped it up from the cut-glass decanter until the nostril-prickling smell began to waft over the steam. He sat down in his chair a bit too hard, numb fingertips and lips threatening to betray him. With nothing to do but avoid his guilt by drinking himself into a paralytic stupor, Martin was taking the easy way out.

Presently, he drifted back to more tolerable memories. Eighteen years earlier, when he was newly married and working as a journeyman field circus engineer, a gray cipher of a man had approached him in a bar somewhere in orbit over Wollstonecroft’s World. “Can I buy you a drink?” asked the man, whose costume was somewhere between that of an accountant and a lawyer. Martin had nodded.

“You’re Martin Springfield,” the man had said. “You work at present for Nakamichi Nuclear, where you are making relatively little money and running up a sizable overdraft. My sponsors have asked me to approach you with a job offer.”

“Answer’s no,” Martin had said automatically. He had made up his mind some time before that the experience he was gaining at NN was more useful than an extra thousand euros a year; and besides, his employing combine was paranoid enough about some of its contracts to sound out its contractor’s loyalties with fake approaches.

“There is no conflict of interest with your current employers, Mr. Springfield. The job is a nonexclusive commission, and in any event, it will not take effect until you go freelance or join another kombinat.”

“What kind of job?” Martin raised an eyebrow.

“Have you ever wondered why you exist?”

“Don’t be—” Martin had paused in midsentence. “Is this some religious pitch?” he asked.

“No.” The gray man looked him straight in the eye. “It’s exactly the opposite. No god exists yet, in this universe. My employer wishes to safeguard the necessary preconditions for God’s emergence, however.

And to do so, my employer needs human arms and legs. Not being equipped with them, so to speak.” The crash of his glass hitting the floor and shattering had brought Martin to his senses. “Your employer—”

“Believes that you may have a role to play in defending the security of the cosmos, Martin. Naming no names”—the gray man leaned closer—“it is a long story. Would you like to hear it?” Martin had nodded, it seeming the only reasonable thing to do in a wholly unreasonable, indeed surreal, situation. And in doing so, he’d taken the first step along the path that had brought him here, eighteen years later: to a drinking binge alone in the wardroom of a doomed starship, only weeks left to play out the end of its role in the New Republican Navy. Minutes, in the worst possible case.

Eventually, he would be reported lost, along with the entire crew of the Lord Vanek. Relatives would be notified, tears would be shed against the greater backdrop of a tragic and unnecessary war. But that would be no concern of his. Because — just as soon as he finished this drink — he was going to stand up and weave his way to his cabin and lie down. Then await whatever would follow over the next three months, until the jaws of the trap sprang shut.

It was hot and somewhat stuffy, in Rachel’s room, despite the whirring white noise of the ventilation system and the occasional dripping of an overflow pipe behind the panel next to her head. Sleeping wasn’t an option; neither was relaxation. She found herself wishing for someone to talk to, someone who would have an idea what was going on. She rolled over on her back. ”PA,“ she called, finally indulging an urge she’d been fighting off for some time. ”Where’s Martin Springfield?“

“Location. Ship’s wardroom, D deck.”

“Anyone with him?”

“Negative.”

She sat up. The crew were at their action stations: what on earth was Martin doing there on his own?

“I’m going there. Backdoor clause: as far as the ship is concerned, I am still in my cabin. Confirm capability.”

“Affirmative. Backdoor tracking master override confirmed.” They might have rebuilt the ship’s fire control and propulsion systems, but they’d left the old tab/badge personnel tracking grid in place — unused, probably, because it reduced the need for tyrannical petty officers. Rachel pulled on her boots, then stood up and grabbed the jacket that lay on the upper bunk. She’d take a minute to look presentable, then go and find Martin. She was irresponsible to leave her airtight cabin while the ship was cleared for action — but so was he. What was he thinking of?

She headed for the wardroom briskly. The access spaces of the warship were eerily quiet, the crew all locked down in airtight compartments and damage control stations. Only the humming of the ventilation system broke the silence; that, and the ticking of the wardroom clock as she opened the door.

The only occupant of the room was Martin, and he looked somewhat the worse for wear, slumped in an overstuffed armchair like a rag doll that had lost its stuffing. A silver-chased tea glass sat on the table in front of him, half-full of a brown liquid which, if Rachel was any judge of character, was not tea. He opened his eyes to watch her as she entered, but didn’t say anything.

“You should be in your cabin,” Rachel observed. “The wardroom isn’t vacuum-safe, you know.”

“Who cares?” He made a rolling motion of one shoulder, as if a shrug was too much effort. “Really don’t see the point.”

“I do.” She marched over and stood in front of him. “You can go to your cabin or come back to mine, but you are going to be in a cabin in five minutes!”

“Don’t remember signing a contractual … of employment with you,” he mumbled.

“No, you didn’t,” she said brightly. “So I’m not doing this in my capacity as your employer, I’m doing it as your government.”

“Whoa—” Rachel heaved. “But I don’t have a gummint.” Martin stumbled out of the chair, a pained expression on his face.

“The New Republic seems to think you have, and I’m the best you’ll find around here. Unless you’d prefer the other choice on offer?”

Martin grimaced. “Hardly.” He staggered. “Got some 4-3-1 in left pocket. Think I need it.” He staggered, fumbling for the small blister pack of alcohol antagonists. “No need to get nasty.”

“I wasn’t getting nasty; I was just providing you with an inertial reference frame for your own good.

‘Sides, I thought we were going to look out for each other. And I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t get you out of here and into a cabin before someone notices. Drunkenness is a flogging offense, did you know that?” Rachel took him by one elbow and began gently steering him toward the door. Martin was sufficiently wobbly on his legs to make this an interesting experience; she was tall, and had boosters embedded in her skeletal muscles for just such events, but he had the three advantages of mass, momentum, and a low center of gravity. Together, they described a brief drunkard’s walk before Martin managed to fumble his drug patch onto the palm of one hand, and Rachel managed to steer the two of them into the corridor.

By the time they reached her cabin, he was breathing deeply and looking pale. “In,” she ordered.

“I feel like shit,” he murmured. “Got any drinking water?”

“Yup.” She pulled the hatch shut behind them and spun the locking wheel. “Sink’s over there; I’m sure you’ve seen one before.”

“Thanks, I think.” He ran the taps, splashed water on his face, then used the china cup to take mouthful after mouthful. “Damned alcohol dehydration.” He straightened up. “You think I should have more sense than to do that?”

“The thought had crossed my mind,” she said drily. She crossed her arms and watched him. He shook himself like a bedraggled water rat and sat down heavily on Rachel’s neatly folded bunk.

“I needed to forget some things very badly,” he said moodily. “Maybe too badly. Doesn’t happen very often but, well, being locked up with nobody for company but my own head isn’t good for me. All I get to see these days are cable runs and change schematics, plus a few naive young midshipmen at lunch.

That spook from the Curator’s Office is hanging around all the time, keeping an eye on me and listening to whatever I say. It’s like being in a fucking prison.”

Rachel pulled out the folding chair and sat on it. “You’ve never been in prison, then. Consider yourself lucky.”

His lips quirked. “You have, I suppose? The public servant?”

“Yeah. Spent eight months inside, once, banged up for industrial espionage by an agricultural cartel.

Amnesty Multinational made me a prisoner of commerce and started up a trade embargo: that got me sprung pretty quick.” She winced at the memories, grey shadows of their original violent fury, washed out by time. It wasn’t her longest stretch inside, but she had no intention of telling him that just yet.

He shook his head and smiled faintly. “The New Republic is like a prison for everyone, though. Isn’t it?”

“Hmm.” She stared through him at the wall behind. “Now you mention it, I think you could be stretching things a bit far.”

“Well, you’ll at least concede they’re all prisoners of their ideology, aren’t they? Two hundred years of violent suppression hasn’t left them much freedom to distance themselves from their culture and look around. Hence the mess we’re in now.” He lay back, propping his head against the wall. “Excuse me; I’m tired. I spent a double shift on the drive calibration works, then four hours over on Glorious, troubleshooting its RCS oxidant switching logic.”

“You’re excused.” Rachel unbuttoned her jacket, then bent down and slid off her boots. “Ow.”

“Sore feet?”

“Damned Navy, always on their feet. Looks bad if I slouch, too.” He yawned. “Speaking of other things, what do you think the Septagon forces will do?” She shrugged. “Probably track us the hell out of here at gunpoint, while pressing the New Republic for compensation. They’re pragmatists, none of this babble about national honor and the virtues of courage and manly manhood and that sort of thing.”

Martin sat up. “If you’re going to take your boots off, if you don’t mind—” She waved a hand. “Be my guest.”

“I thought I was supposed to be your loyal subject?”

She giggled. “Don’t get ideas above your station! Really, these damned monarchists. I understand in the abstract, but how do they put up with it? I’d go crazy, I swear it. Within a decade.”

“Hmm.” He leaned forward, busy with his shoes. “Look at it another way. Most people back home sit around with their families and friends and lead a cozy life, doing three or four different things at the same time — gardening, designing commercial beetles, painting landscapes, and bringing up children, that sort of thing. Entomologists picking over the small things in life to see what’s twitching its legs underneath. Why the hell aren’t we doing that ourselves?”

“I used to.” He glanced up at her curiously, but she was elsewhere, remembering. “Spent thirty years being a housewife, would you believe it? Being good God-fearing people, hubby was the breadwinner, two delightful children to dote over, and a suburban garden. Church every Sunday and nothing — nothing — allowed to break with the pretense of conformity.”

“Ah. I thought you were older than you looked. Late-sixties backlash?”

“Which sixties?” She shook her head, then answered her own rhetorical question: “Twenty-sixties. I was born in forty-nine. Grew up in a Baptist family, Baptist town, quiet religion — it turned inward after the Eschaton. We were all so desperately afraid, I think. It was a long time ago: I find it hard to remember.

One day I was forty-eight and the kids were at college and I realized I didn’t believe a word of it. They’d gotten the extension treatments nailed down by then, and the pastor had stopped denouncing it as satanic tampering with God’s will — after his own grandfather beat him at squash — and I suddenly realized that I’d had an empty day, and I had maybe a million days just like it ahead of me, and there were so many things I hadn’t done and couldn’t do, if I stayed the same. And I didn’t really believe: religion was my husband’s thing, I just went along with it. So I moved out. Took the treatment, lost twenty years in six months. Went through the usual Sterling fugue, changed my name, changed my life, changed just about everything about me. Joined an anarchist commune, learned to juggle, got into radical antiviolence activism. Harry — no, Harold — couldn’t cope with that.”

“Second childhood. Sort of like a twentieth-century teenage period.”

“Yes, exactly—” She stared at Martin. “How about you?”

He shrugged. “I’m younger than you. Older than most everyone else aboard this idiotic children’s crusade. Except maybe the admiral.” For an instant, and only an instant, he looked hagridden. “You shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be here.”

She stared at him. “You’ve got it bad?”

“We’re—” He checked himself, cast her a curious guarded look, then started again. “This trip is doomed. I suppose you know that.”

“Yes.” She looked at the floor. “I know that,” she said calmly. “If I don’t broker some sort of cease-fire or persuade them not to use their causality weapons, the Eschaton will step in. Probably throw a comet made of antimatter at them, or something.” She looked at him. “What do you think?”

“I think—” He paused again and looked away, slightly evasively. “If the Eschaton intervenes, we’re both in the wrong place.”

“Huh. That’s so much fun to know.” She forced a grin. “So where do you come from? Go on, I told you—”

Martin stretched his arms and leaned back. “I grew up in a Yorkshire hill farming village, all goats and cloth caps and dark satanic mills full of God-knows-what. Oh yes, and compulsory ferret-legging down the pub on Tuesday evenings, for the tourist trade tha’ knows.”

“Ferret-legging?” Rachel looked at him incredulously.

“Yup. You tie your kilt up around your knees with duct tape — as you probably know, no Yorkshireman would be seen dead wearing anything under his sporran — and take a ferret by the scruff of his neck. A ferret, that’s like, uh, a bit like a mink. Only less friendly. It’s a young man’s initiation rite; you stick the ferret where the sun doesn’t shine and dance the furry dance to the tune of a balalaika. Last man standing and all that, kind of like the ancient Boer aardvark-kissing competition.” Martin shuddered dramatically.

“I hate ferrets. The bloody things bite like a cask-strength single malt without the nice aftereffects.”

“That was what you did on Tuesdays,” Rachel said, slowly beginning to smile. ‘Tell me more. What about Wednesdays?“

“Oh, on Wednesdays we stayed home and watched reruns of Coronation Road. They remixed the old video files to near-realistic resolution and subtitled them, of course, so we could understand what they were saying. Then we’d all hoist a pint of Tetley’s tea and toast the downfall of the House of Lancaster.

Very traditional, us Yorkshirefolk. I remember the thousandth-anniversary victory celebrations — but that’s enough about me. What did you do on Wednesdays?” Rachel blinked. “Nothing in particular. Defused terrorist A-bombs, got shot at by Algerian Mormon separatists. Uh, that was after I kicked over the traces the first time. Before then, I think I took the kids to soccer, although I’m not sure what day of the week that was.” She turned aside for a moment and rummaged in the steamer trunk under her bunk. “Ah, here it is.” She pulled out a narrow box and opened it. “You know what? Maybe you shouldn’t have used that sober patch.” The bottle gleamed golden beneath the antiseptic cabin lights.

“I’d be lousy company though. I was getting all drunk and depressed on my own, and you had to interrupt me and make me sober up.”

“Well, maybe you should just have tried to find someone to get drunk with instead of doing it on your own.” Two small glasses appeared. She leaned close. “Do you want it watered?” Martin eyed the bottle critically. Replicated Speyside fifty-year malt, a cask-strength bottling template. If it wasn’t a nanospun clone of the original, it would be worth its weight in platinum. Even so, it would be more than adequately drinkable. “I’ll take it neat and report to sick bay for a new throat tomorrow.” He whistled appreciatively as she poured a generous measure. “How did you know?”

“That you’d like it?” She shrugged. “I didn’t. I just grew up on corn liquor. Didn’t meet the real thing till a job in Syrtis—” Her face clouded over. “Long life and happiness.”

“I’ll drink to that,” he agreed after a moment. They sat in silence for a minute, savoring the afterbloom of the whisky. “I’d be happier right now if I knew what was going on, though.”

“I wouldn’t be too worried: either nothing, or we’ll be dead too fast to feel it. The carrier from Septagon will probably just make a fast pass to reassure itself that we’re not planning on spreading any more mayhem, then escort us to the next jump zone while the diplomats argue over who pays. Right now, I’ve got the comms room taking my name in vain for all it’s worth; hopefully, that’ll convince them not to shoot at us without asking some more questions first.”

“I’d be happier if I knew we had a way off this ship.”

“Relax. Drink your whisky.” She shook her head. “We don’t. So stop worrying about it. Anyway, if they do shoot us, wouldn’t you rather die happily sipping a good single malt or screaming in terror?”

“Has anyone ever told you you’re cold-blooded? No, I take it back. Has anyone ever told you you’ve got a skin like a tank?”

“Frequently.” She stared into her glass thoughtfully. “It’s a learned thing. Pray you never have to learn it.”

“You mean you had to?”

“Yes. No other way to do my job. My last job, that is.”

“What did you do?” he asked softly.

“I wasn’t joking about the terrorist A-bombs. Actually, the bombs were the easiest bit; it was finding the assholes who planted them that was the hard part. Find the asshole, find the gadget, fix the gadget, fix the dump they sprang the plute from. Usually in that order, unless we were unlucky enough to have to deal with an unscheduled criticality excursion in downtown wherever without someone mailing in a warning first. Then if we found the asshole, our hardest job would be keeping the lynch mob away from them until we could find out where they sourced the bang-juice.”

“Did you ever lose any?” he asked, even more quietly.

“You mean, did I ever fuck up and kill several thousand people?” she asked. “Yes—”

“No, that’s not what I meant.” He reached for her free hand gently. “I know where you’ve been. Any job I do — if it doesn’t work, somebody pays. Possibly hundreds or thousands of somebodies. That’s the price of good engineering; nobody notices you did your job right.”

“Nobody’s actually trying to stop you doing your job,” she challenged.

“Oh, you’d be surprised.”

The tension in her shoulders ebbed. “I’m sure you’ve got a story about that, too. You know, for someone who’s no good at dealing with people, you’re not bad at being a shoulder to cry on.” He snorted. “And for someone who’s a failure at her job you’re doing surprisingly well so far.” He let go of her hand and rubbed the back of her neck. “But I think you could do with a massage. You’re really tense. Got a headache yet?”

“No,” she said, slightly reluctantly. Then she took another sip of her whisky. The glass was nearly empty now. “But I’m open to persuasion.”

“I know three ways to die happy. Unfortunately, I’ve never tried any of them. Care to join me?”

“Where did you hear about them?”

“At a seance. It was a good seance. Seriously, though. Dr. Springfield prescribes another dose of Speyside life-water, then a lie down and a neck massage. Then, even if the many-angled ones decide to come in shooting, at least fifty percent of us get to die happy. How’s that sound?”

“Fine.” She smiled tiredly and reached for the bottle, ready to top his glass up. “But you know something? You were right about the not knowing. You can get used to it, but it doesn’t get any easier. I wish I knew what they were thinking …”

Bronze bells tolled on the bridge of the Fleet attack carrier Neon Lotus. Incense smoldered in burners positioned above air inlet ducts; beyond the ornate gold-chased pillars marking the edges of the room, the brilliant jewels of tracking glyphs streamed past against a backdrop consisting of infinite darkness.

Shipboard Facilities Coordinator Ariadne Eldrich leaned back in her chair and contemplated the blackness of space. She stared intently at the cluster of glyphs that intersected her vector close to the center of the wall. “Cultureless fools. Just what did they think they were doing?”

“Thinking probably had very little to do with it,” Interdictor Director Marcus Bismarck noted drily. “Our Republican neighbors seem to think that too much mind-work rots the brain.” Eldrich snorted. “Too true.” A smaller cloud of diadems traced a convergent path through the void behind the New Republican battle squadron; a wing of antimatter-powered interceptors, six hours out from the carrier and accelerating on a glare of hard gamma radiation at just under a thousand gees. Their crew — bodies vitrified, minds uploaded into their computational matrices — watched the intruders, coldly alert for any sign of active countermeasures, a prelude to attack. “But who did they think they were shooting at?”

A new voice spoke up. “Can’t be sure, but they say they’re at war.” A soft soprano, Chu Melinda, shipboard liaison with the Public Intelligence Organization. “They say they mistook the mining tugs for enemy interceptors. Although what enemy they expected to meet on our turf—”

“I thought they weren’t talking directly to us?” asked Bismarck.

“They aren’t, but they’ve got a halfway-sensible diplomatic expert system along. Says it’s a UN observer and authenticates as, uh, a UN observer. It vouches for their incompetence, so unless the Capitol wants to go accusing the UN of lying, we’d better take it at face value. Confidence factor is point-eight plus, anyway.”

“Why’d they give it access to their shipboard comms net?”

“Who but the Eschaton knows? Only, I note with interest that all but one of those craft was built in a Solar shipyard.”

“I can’t say I’m best pleased.” Eldrich stared at the screen moodily. The ship sensed some of her underlying mood: a target selection cursor ghosted briefly across the enemy glyphs, locking grasers onto the distant projected light cones of the enemy flotilla. “Still. As long as we can keep them from doing any more damage. Any change in their jump trajectory?”

“None yet,” Chu commented. “Still heading for SPD-47. Why would anybody want to go there, anyway? It’s not even on a track for any of their colonies.”

“Hmm. And they came out of nowhere. That suggest anything to you?”

“Either they’re crazy, or maybe the UN inspector is along for a purpose,” mused Bismarck. “If they’re trying to make a timelike runaround on some enemy who’s—” His eyes widened.

“What is it?” demanded Ariadne.

“The Festival!” he exclaimed. His eyes danced. “Remember that? Five years ago? They’re going to attack the Festival!”

“They’re going to attack?” Ariadne Eldrich spluttered. “A Festival? Whatever for?” A brief glazed look crossed Chu’s face, upload communion with a distributed meme repository far bigger and more powerful than every computer network of preSingularity Earth. “He’s right,” she said. “The rejectionists are going to attack the Festival as if it’s a limbic-imperialist invader.” Ariadne Eldrich, Shipboard Facilities Coordinator and manager of more firepower than the New Republican Navy could even dream of, surrendered to the urge to cackle like a maniac. “They must be mad!”