Bajan’s fists squeezed, mimicking the pressure he was placing on the mind held within. “Sequential jumps. The ship can do it. That can throw off any pursuer.”
“Do it,” Quinn ordered simply.
Three jumps later, spanning seven light-years, they were alone in interstellar space. Four days after that, they jumped into a designated emergence zone two hundred thousand kilometres above Earth.
“Home,” Quinn said, and smiled. The frigate’s visible-spectrum sensors showed him the planet’s nightside, a leaden blue-grey crescent which was widening slowly as the Tantu ’s orbit inched them towards the edge of the penumbra. First magnitude stars blazed on the continents: the arcologies, silently boasting their vast energy consumption as the light from the streets, skyscrapers, stadiums, vehicles, parks, plazas, and industrial precincts merged into a monochrome blast of photons. Far above the equator, a sparkling haze band looped around the entire world, casting the gentlest reflection off the black-glitter oceans below.
“God’s Brother, but it’s magnificent,” Quinn said. They hadn’t shown him this view when he’d been brought up the Brazilian orbital tower on his way to exile. There were no ports in his deck of the lift capsule, nor on the sections of the mammoth docking station through which the Ivets had passed. He’d lived on Earth all his life, and never seen it, not as it should be seen. Exquisite, and tragically fragile.
In his mind he could see the dazzling lights slowly, torturously, snuffed out as thick oily shadows slid across the land, a tide which brought with it despair and fear. Then reaching out into space, crushing the O’Neill Halo, its vitality and power. No light would be left, no hope. Only the screams, and the Night. And Him.
Tears of joy formed fat distorting lenses across Quinn’s eyeballs. The image, the conviction, was so strong. Total blackness, with Earth at its centre; raped, dead, frozen, entombed. “Is this my task, Lord? Is it?” The thought of such a privilege humbled him.
The flight computer let out an alarmed whistle.
Furious that his dreams should be interrupted, Quinn demanded: “What is it?” He had to squint and blink to clear his vision. The holoscreens were filling with tumbling red spiderwebs, graphic symbols flashed for attention. Five orange vector lines were oozing inwards from the edge of the display to intersect at the Tantu ’s location. “What is happening?”
“It’s some kind of interception manoeuvre,” Bajan shouted. “Those are navy ships. And the Halo’s SD platforms are locking on.”
“I thought we were in a legitimate emergence zone.”
“We are.”
“Then what—”
“Priority signal for the Tantu ’s captain from Govcentral Strategic Defence Command,” the flight computer announced.
Quinn glowered at the AV projection pillar which had relayed the message. He snapped his fingers at Bajan.
“This is Captain Mauer, commander of the CN ship Tantu ,” Bajan said. “Can somebody tell me what the problem is?”
“This is SD Command, Captain. Datavise your ship’s ASA code, please.”
“What code?” Bajan mouthed, completely flummoxed.
“Does anybody know what it is?” Quinn growled. Tantu had already datavised its identification code as soon as the jump was completed, as per standard procedure.
“The code, Captain,” SD Command asked again.
Quinn watched the fluorescent orange vectors of another two ships slide into the holoscreen display. Their weapons sensors focused on the Tantu ’s hull.
“Computer, jump one light-year. Now,” he ordered.
“No, the sensors . . .” Bajan exclaimed frantically.
His objection didn’t matter. The flight computer was programmed to respond to Quinn’s voice commands alone.
The Tantu jumped, its event horizon slicing clean through the carbon-composite stalks which elevated the various sensor clusters out of their recesses. Ten of them had deployed as soon as the starship emerged above Earth: star trackers, midrange optical sensors, radar, communications antennae.
All seven warships racing towards the Tantu saw it disappear behind ten dazzling white plasma spumes as its event horizon crushed the carbon molecules of the stalks to fusion density and beyond. Ruined sensor clusters spun out of the radioactive mist.
The SD Command centre duty officer ordered two of the destroyers to follow the Tantu , cursing his luck that the interception squadron hadn’t been assigned any voidhawks. It took the two starships eleven minutes to match trajectories with the Tantu ’s jump coordinate. Everybody knew that was too long.
Soprano alarms shrilled at painful volume, drowning out all other sounds on the Tantu ’s bridge. The holoscreens which had been carrying the sensor images turned black as soon as the patterning nodes discharged, then flicked to ship schematic diagrams. Disturbing quantities of red symbols flashed for attention.
“Kill that noise,” Quinn bellowed.
Bajan hurried to obey, typing rapidly on the keyboard rigged up next to his acceleration couch.
“We took four hull breaches,” Dwyer reported as soon as the alarm cut off. He was the most ardent of Quinn’s new apostles, a former black stimulant program pusher who was murdered at the age of twenty-three by a faster, more ambitious rival. His anger and callousness made him ideal for the cause. He’d even heard of the sects, dealing with them on occasion. “Six more areas have been weakened.”
“What the fuck was that? Did they shoot at us?” Quinn asked.
“No,” Bajan said. “You can’t jump with sensors extended, the distortion effect collapses any mass caught in the field. Fortunately it’s only a very narrow shell which covers the hull, just a few micrometers thick. But the atoms inside it get converted directly into energy. Most of it shoots outwards, but there’s also some which is deflected right back against the hull. That’s what hit us.”
“How much damage did we pick up?”
“Secondary systems only,” Dwyer said. “And we’re venting something, too; nitrogen I think.”
“Shit. What about the nodes? Can we jump again?”
“Two inoperative, another three damaged. But they’re failsoft. I think we can jump.”
“Good. Computer, jump three light-years.”
Bajan clamped down on his automatic protest. Nothing he could do about the spike of anger and exasperation in his mind though, Quinn could perceive that all right.
“Computer, jump half a light-year.”
This time the bridge lights sputtered almost to the point of extinction.
“All right,” Quinn said as the gloomy red illumination grew bold again. “I want some fucking sensor visuals on these screens now. I want to know where we are, and if anyone followed us. Dwyer, start working around those damaged systems.”
“Are we going to be okay, Quinn?” Lawrence asked. His energistic ability couldn’t hide the sweat pricking his sallow face.
“Sure. Now shut the fuck up, let me think.” He slowly unbuckled the straps holding him into his acceleration couch. Using the stikpads he shuffled on tiptoe over to Bajan’s couch. His black robe swirled like bedevilled smoke around him, the hood deepening until his face was almost completely hidden. “What,” he asked in a tight whisper, “is an ASA code?”
“I dunno, Quinn, honest,” the agitated man protested.
“I know you don’t know, dickhead. But the captain does. Find out!”
“Sure, Quinn, sure.” He closed his eyes, concentrating on the captain’s mind, inflicting as much anguish as he could dream of to wrest free the information. “It’s an Armed Ship Authorization designation,” he grunted eventually.
“Go on,” Quinn’s voice emerged from the shadows of his hood.
“Any military starship which jumps to Earth has to have one. There’s so much industry in orbit, so many settled asteroids, they’re terrified of the damage just one rogue ship could cause. So the captain of every Confederation government navy ship is given an ASA code to confirm they’re legally entitled to be armed and that they’re under official control. It acts as a fail-safe against any hijacking.”