The drop ship was no sort of high-performance military unit; all it was supposed to do was take the gascraft from the Facility to the gas-giant and pick them up later. It was rugged, able to take the strain of operating inside Nasqueron's gravity well and its various pressure environments down to the liquid-hydrogen level, and it had the power to lift itself and its charges easily enough out of Nasqueron's grip. But it was not especially manoeuvrable, carried no armament or defensive systems and far from being stealthed had been designed from its invitation-to-tender spec, onwards to be as easy to see with as many different senses as it was possible to imagine, just so that no mischievous Dweller could crash something into it and then claim, sorry, they hadn't seen it.
'How you doing down there?' Apsile asked. He sounded in control, unworried.
'Fine, for myself,' the colonel said.
- Ditto, Fassin sent. - Got an ETA yet?
Trips from Third Fury to Nasq. usually took about an hour. Fassin hoped they could do it in less than half that.
'With the main drive maxed we should make turnaround in about ten minutes,' Apsile said, 'then decelerate for another ten and then take . . . hmm, another handful - five at most, I'd hope - to get deep enough into the atmosphere.'
He meant deep enough into the atmosphere to be beyond any but the most scary weapons. Obviously not counting the scary weapons the Dwellers possessed.
- Anything we can clip off that? Fassin asked.
'Maybe we could make it down in less time once we hit the cloud tops,' Apsile said. 'Steeper, carrying more speed. Maybe. Hmm.' Fassin got the impression somehow that the man was rubbing his chin. 'Yes, maybe, if we let the heat and stress levels creep just a tad beyond tolerance.' A pause. 'Though of course that's always assuming that the ship didn't take any damage we don't know about when the hangar dome got blown.'
- Always assuming, Fassin agreed.
'Master Technician,' Colonel Hatherence said, 'are we being pursued or under unit-specific attack?' 'No, colonel.' 'Then I suggest we adopt your first entry profile.'
- Decision's yours alone, Herv, Fassin sent.
'Copy.'
'Can you access any military comms traffic, Master Technician?'
'I'm afraid not, ma'am, not unless they choose to target us with a clear beam or broadcast.'
'That is unfortunate. What seems to be happening?'
'Looks like there's been some sort of firefight. Still going on, possibly. Drives spreading away from the moon, heading in the direction the hostile munitions appeared to be coming from. Woh!'
The flash attracted Fassin's second-hand attention as well; another, even larger crater glowing white on the surface of Third Fury.
'What of the people still back within the Third Fury moonlet?' the colonel asked.
'Been listening,' Apsile said. 'I'll try and contact them direct. Give me a moment.'
Silence. Fassin watched space wheel around them through the carrier ship's sensors. He checked the drop ship's system profile, oriented, then searched for and found 'glantine; a tiny shining dot, far away. The sensors let him zoom in until the planet moon was a shining gibbous image, scintillating with magnification artefacts, hints of its topography just about visible. Could that be the uplands? There, that light patch - the Sea of Fines? A spark. There, back up ... A tiny flash? Had he seen that?
Something colder and more invasive than any gel tendril seemed to invade him, clutching at his stomach and heart. No, surely not. Just another artefact of the system. He looked for the sensor-replay controls.
'Shit, there's a fucking wreckage—' Apsile said, then the craft bucked and swung. Fassin, turning his focus of attention back to what Apsile was looking at saw it too now: a field of dark specks across the face of the planet ahead of them like a ragged flock of birds far in the distance. They were at near-maximum velocity. The carrier started to turn.
A rush of dark scraps, tearing by on all sides like a thin shell of soot-black snow flakes. Fassin felt his arms, held by the cloying shock-gel, attempt to draw themselves in towards his body, instinctively trying to make himself a smaller target. Then they were through. No impacts.
After a moment, Fassin felt the drop ship start to swing round to present its drive tubes towards the planet, ready to begin deceleration. 'I think,' Apsile said cautiously, 'that we just about got away with—'
Something slammed into them. The ship lurched - there was a concussive snap! that Fassin felt through the carrier ship, through the gascraft, even through the shock-gel. He lost the patch-through connection with the drop ship. He was back in his own little arrowhead again. They were whirling. And there was light, synched with the whirling. Light?
It was coming from below, where the hold doors were. He could see Colonel H's esuit, hanging alongside him. Oh-oh . . .
The ship began to come out of the spin, steadying. The light from below faded but did not go away. It had the spectrum to be light reflected from Nasqueron. Light from the gas-giant coming in through supposedly closed doors. Fassin flipped the gascraft's sensor ring to look straight down at the doors.
'Oh fuck,' he tried to say. There was a small but ragged hole, stuff hanging like spilled guts. The Nasqueron light was reflecting in off some polished-looking surfaces.
Force, building; very like the main drive decelerating them more or less on schedule. He retried the intercom, then broadcast a radio signal. - Herv?
'Here. Sorry about that. Hit something after all. Got her straight and rearward. Back on track. No read-outs from the hold at all, though. Including the door.'
- Think that's where it hit. I can see a hole.
'How big?'
- Maybe a metre lateral by two.
'I too can see the hole,' the colonel told them, also joining in the radio-broadcast fun. 'It is as Seer Taak describes.' 'Too small for you guys to get out of,' Apsile said.
- How's the rest of the ship? Fassin sent.
'Holding together for now. Can't see where whatever hit us exited, or just went on to hit inside.'
'I suspect it hit me,' Hatherence said. 'My esuit casing, that is to say. Probably.'
A pause. Then Apsile said, 'And . . . are you all right?'
'Perfectly fine. Your hold doors took most of the energy out of it and my esuit is of exceptional quality, durability and damage-tolerance. Scarcely a scratch.'
- If we can't open the doors, we can't get out and the whole thing's pointless, Herv, Fassin sent.
'We can still hide in the carrier, under the clouds,' Apsile said. 'I'm not getting much from the Facility. That last hit looked like it must have shaken them pretty hard. We might still be safer under the gas than hanging around out here in clear view of whoever.'
Nothing comprehensible was coming out of the Shared Facility on Third Fury, and no military vessels were talking on civilian frequencies. Interference on EM bands, a problem at the best of times anywhere near Nasqueron, was especially intense. Apsile raised a couple of the Facility's equatorial relay satellites, but, exceptionally, could not through-patch via their transceivers and could get only static and meaningless rubbish out of them. He even tried some Dweller mirror sats, where the surprise would have been getting anything other than drivel, but there the service was perfectly normal. 'Ouch,' they heard him say. 'Third Fury just took another hit. We're going in. Fairly slowly, to allow for the damage, but we're going in.'
'Whatever you think is best, Master Technician,' the colonel said.
The carrier craft began to shudder as it met the upper atmosphere of Nasqueron, carving a glowing trail above the cloud tops. They slowed. Weight began to return to them. And kept on increasing. Creaks and ticking sounds came through the solids joining them to the drop ship. The buffeting decreased, grew and fell away again; soft whumps and crisp bangs also communicated through the drop ship's structure announced debris being torn off the ragged surrounds of the breach in the hold doors, which glowed and sparked as the space around them filled with gas and Fassin began to detect
sound in the hold again. They were getting heavy, really heavy now. Fassin could feel the shock-gel tightening around him, like the sound of snow cramping beneath your feet. He could almost sense any remaining gas bubbles in his body pancaking like blood cells. Good and heavy now . . .
'Master Technician,' the colonel said suddenly.
'Hold on,' Apsile said. 'That—'
The whole ship shook once, then rolled suddenly.
- Herv? Fassin sent.
'Got some sort of targeting—' Apsile began, then broke off as the craft shook again and slewed wildly across the sky.
'We are indeed being targeted by something,' Hatherence announced. 'Master Technician,' she shouted across the frequencies. 'Are you yet able to release us?'
'Eh? What? No! I—'
'Master Technician, attempt to perform a roll or part of an internal loop on my command,' Hatherence told him. ‘Ishall release us.'
'You will?' Apsile shouted.
'I shall. I will. I carry weapons. Now, excuse me, and good luck.'
- Wait a minute, Fassin began.
'Seer Taak,' the colonel said tersely, 'shield your senses.' The big discus hanging beside him sent a pulse of blinding blue-white light straight downward at the doors, which blew away in a brief gout of sparks. Rushing yellow-brown clouds spun by outside. Fassin's little arrowcraft was seeing spots. It got busy shuffling its damaged sensors round for working ones. He guessed he hadn't shielded his senses in time. He shut them down now. 'Releasing in three seconds,' the colonel said. 'Make your manoeuvre now if you please, Master Technician.'
A blast of radiation and a spike of heat from above coincided with a sudden roll. The cradle holding Fassin in the drop ship gave way, sending him shooting from the hold like a cannon ball. The colonel in her oerileithe esuit came whirling after him a moment later, quickly drawing level. He glimpsed the drop ship above, still rolling, then saw a violet ray appear suddenly to one side, slicing through the gas around them, searing his barely mended vision. The beam just missed the carrier craft, then clouds of yellow fog rolled quickly up between them and the drop ship and it was just him and the colonel, a tiny arrow shape and a spinning coin of dirty grey, hurtling down into the vast chaotic skies of Nasqueron.
*
'"It is a given amongst those who care to study such matters that there is, within certain species, a distinct class of being so contemptuous and suspicious of their fellow creats that they court only hatred and fear, counting these the most sincere emotional reactions they may hope to excite, because they are unlikely to have been feigned."' The Archimandrite Luseferous looked up at the head on the wall. The head stared straight across the cabin, eyes wide with pain and terror and madness.
The assassin had died not long after they'd set out on their long journey towards Ulubis, the upper set of fangs finally penetrating his brain deeply enough to produce death. The Archimandrite had had the fellow's eyelids slit open again when the medical people said death was likely within a few days; he'd wanted to see the look on the man's face when he died.
Luseferous had been asleep when death had finally come for the nameless assassin, but he'd watched the recording many times. (All that happened was that the man's face stopped contorting, his eyes rolled backwards and then came slowly back down, slightly cross-eyed, while the life-signs read-out accompanying the visuals registered first the heart stopping and then a few minutes later the brain flat-lining. Luseferous would have preferred something more dramatic, but you couldn't have everything.) He'd had the fellow's head removed and mounted near that of the rebel chief Stinausin, pretty much in the first head's eye line, so that was what Stinausin had to look at all day.
The Archimandrite glanced up at the staring, nameless head. 'What do you think?' He looked over the passage again, lips moving but not actually reading it aloud. He pursed his lips. 'I think I agree with what's being said, but I can't help feeling there's a hint of criticism implied at the same time.' He shook his head, closed the ancient book and glanced at the cover. 'Never heard of him,' he muttered.
But at least, he reflected, this holier-than-thou intellectual had a name. It had come to annoy Luseferous rather a lot that he didn't have a name for the failed assassin. Yes, the fellow had failed, yes, he had paid dearly for his crime, and yes, he was dead and now reduced to a mere trophy. But somehow the fact that his name had never been revealed had begun to strike Luseferous as almost a kind of triumph for the assassin, as though successfully withholding this nugget of information meant that Luseferous's victory over the wretch would never quite be complete. He had already sent word back to Leseum to have the matter investigated more thoroughly.
His chief personal secretary appeared behind the sheet of mirrored diamond forming the main inner door of the stateroom-study.
'Yes?'
'Sir, the Marshal Lascert, sir.'
'Two minutes.'
'Sir.'
He saw the Beyonder marshal in the primary stateroom of the Main Battle Craft Luseferous VII, his fleet flagship. (Luseferous thought terms like 'battleship' and 'fleet carrier' and so on sounded old-fashioned and too common.) He'd had the craft remodelled to provide accommodation befitting his rank, but there had come a point where the naval architects had actually started to cry because letting what they called 'voids' grow beyond a certain volume weakened the ship too much. The result was that the stateroom wasn't really as extensive or as intimidating as he'd have liked, so he'd had some mirrors installed and a few holo projectors which made it look bigger, though he always had the nagging feeling that people could see through the illusion. The style he'd chosen was New Brutalist: lots of exposed faux concrete and rusty pipes. He'd taken a fancy to the name but had gone off the look almost immediately.
He entered with only his private secretary going before him. Guards, courtiers, admin, army and naval people bowed as he strode past.
'Marshal.'
'Archimandrite.' The Beyonder marshal was a woman, dressed in light armour which looked like it had been polished up but still gave off an impression of practicality and scruffiness. She was tall, slim and proud-looking, if somewhat flat-chested for Luseferous's taste. Bald women always repelled him anyway. She gave a formal nod that was probably the very least acknowledgement of his status that anybody who didn't patently hate him and-or was about to die had given him for several decades. He couldn't decide whether he found it insulting or refreshing. Two senior officers behind her were jajuejein, currently in their standard tumbleweed configuration, no part of their glittering plate armour higher than the marshal's waist. He suspected that the woman had been selected because she was human, just because he was; almost all the Beyonder High Command were non-human.
He sat. It wasn't really a throne, but it was an impressive seat on a dais. The Beyonder marshal could stand. 'You wanted to talk, Marshal Lascert.'
'I speak on behalf of the Transgress, the True Free and the BiAlliance. We have wanted to talk to you for some time,' the marshal said smoothly. Deep voice for a woman. 'Thank you for agreeing to this meeting.'
'A pleasure, I'm sure. So. How goes your end of our little war? Last you heard, obviously.'
'It goes well, as far as we know.' The marshal smiled. Lights reflected on her bald scalp. 'I understand your own campaign has gone from victory to victory.'
He waved a hand. 'The opposition has been light,' he said. 'Your main fleet should be at the outskirts of Ulubis system in, what? One more year?' 'Something like that.'
'This is somewhat later than we had all planned for.' 'It is a big invasion fleet. It took time to put together,' Luseferous said, trying to show that he resented her implied criticism while also giving the impression that what she thought was of no great importance to him.
They were behind schedule, though. He had personally assured these - temporary - allies of his that he would be ready to invade nearly a full half-year earlier than it now looked would be possible. He supposed it was his fault, if fault it was. He liked to keep
his fleet together rather than let it split up according to speed and then re-form as needed for the invasion proper. His admirals and generals insisted (though not too strongly if they knew what was good for them) that they didn't need all units of the fleet to be together at all times, but Luseferous preferred it. It seemed more cohesive, more impressive, just more tidy and pleasing somehow.
It also meant that the Beyonders would shoulder rather more of the responsibility for preparing Ulubis system for invasion than they might have expected, so that the invasion fleet's job would be all the easier and the Beyonders' - hopefully much-depleted - forces would be in a position of weakness relative to his own mass of ships.
'Still,' Lascert said, 'we imagine your advance units may be attacking even now.'
'We've had some automated scout-warning ships and highspeed drone attack craft there or on their way for a while now,' Luseferous told her. 'Always best to be prepared for any eventuality. Some needed reprogramming but we believe they should be effective in beginning the softening-up process.' He smiled. He watched her react to the clear diamond teeth. 'I am a great believer in the usefulness of spreading a little panic, marshal. Better still, a lot of panic. After a long-enough exposure, people will welcome any power that brings an end to uncertainty, even if they might have resisted it before.'
The marshal smiled too, though it looked like she was making an effort. 'Of course. And we thought now might be an appropriate moment to talk in more depth about what you see your strategy being once you reach Ulubis.'
'I intend to take it, marshal.'
'Indeed. Of course, it may be quite well defended.'
'I expect it might. That's why I've brought such a big fleet with me.'
They were between systems, way out in the empty wilderness of near-nothingness less than a year from Ulubis. The Beyonder fast cruiser and its two escort destroyers had rendezvoused with his own fleet only hours earlier, skid-turning and matching velocities with a grace and rapidity that he could see his own naval people envied. Fine ships, indeed. Well, they had the ships and he had the systems; just another opportunity to trade, maybe. Now those three fast ships lay embedded in a fleet of over a thousand craft, even if they were rather plodding in comparison.