The Charitable View reported another smooth increase in the Sleeper Service's rate of progress leading to another step, another pause. It was increasing its own acceleration to match.
The Yawning Angel sped after the two of them, already fearing the worst. Do the sums, do the sums. The Sleeper Service had filled at least four of its General bays with extra engine, bringing-them on line two at a time, balancing the additional impetus…
Another increase.
Six. Probably all eight, then. What about the engineering space behind? Had that gone too?
Sums, sums. How much mass had there been aboard the damn thing? Water; gas-giant atmosphere, highly pressurised. About four thousand cubic kilometres of water alone; four gigatonnes. Compress it, alter it, transmute it, convert it into the ultra dense exotic materials that comprised an engine capable of reaching out and down to the energy grid that underlay the universe and pushing against it… ample, ample, more than enough. It would take months, even years to build that sort of extra engine capacity… or only days, if you'd spent, say, the last few decades preparing the ground.
Dear holy shit, if it was all engine even the superlifter wouldn't be able to keep up with it. The average Plate class could sustain about one hundred and four kilolights more or less indefinitely; a good Range class, which was what the Yawning Angel had always been proud to count itself as, could easily beat that by forty kilolights. A Cliff class superlifter was ninety per cent engine; faster even than a Rapid Offensive Unit in short bursts. The Charitable View could hit two-twenty-one flat out, but that was only supposed to be for an hour or two at a time; that was chase speed, catch-up speed, not something it could maintain for long.
The figure the Yawning Angel was looking at was the thick end of two-thirty-three, if the Sleeper Service's engineering space had been packed with engine too.
The Charitable View's tone had already turned from one of amusement to amazement, then bewilderment. Now it was plain peevish. The Sleeper Service was topping the two-fifteen mark and showing no signs of slowing down. The superlifter would have to break away within minutes if it didn't top-out soon. It asked for instructions.
The Yawning Angel, still accelerating for all its worth, determined to track and follow for as long as it could or until it was asked to give up the chase, told its offspring craft not to exceed its design parameters, not to risk damage.
The Sleeper Service went on accelerating. The superlifter Charitable View gave up the chase at two-twenty. It settled back to a less frenetic two hundred, dropping back all the time; even so it was still not a speed it could maintain for more than a few hours.
The Yawning Angel topped out at one forty-six.
The Sleeper Service finally hit cruise at around two-thirty-three and a half, disappearing ahead into the depths of galactic space. The superlifter reported this but sounded like it couldn't believe it.
The Yawning Angel watched the other GSV race away into the everlasting night between the stars, a sense of hopelessness, of defeat, settled over it.
Now it knew it had shaken off its pursuers the Sleeper Service's course was starting to curve gently, no doubt the first of many ducks and weaves it would carry out, if it was trying to conceal its eventual goal, and assuming that it had a goal other than simply giving the slip to its minders… Somehow, the Yawning Angel suspected its Eccentric charge — or ex-charge — did have a definite goal; a place, a location it was headed for.
Two hundred and thirty-three thousand times the speed of light. Dear holy fucking shit. The Yawning Angel thought there was something almost vulgar about such a velocity. Where the hell was it heading for? Andromeda?
The Yawning Angel drew a course-probability cone through the galactic model it kept in its mind.
It supposed it all depended how devious the Sleeper Service was being, but it looked like it might be headed for the Upper Leaf Swirl. If it was, it would be there within three weeks.
The Yawning Angel signalled ahead. Look on the bright side; at least the problem was out of its fields now.
The avatar Amorphia stood — arms crossed, thin, black-gloved hands grasping at bony elbows — gaze fastened intently upon the screen on the far side of the lounge. It showed a compensated view of hyperspace, vastly magnified.
Looking into the screen was like peering into some vast planetary airscape. Far below was a layer of glowing mist representing the energy grid; above was an identical layer of bright cloud. The skein of real space lay in between both of these; a two-dimensional layer, a simple transparent plane which the GSV went flickering through like a weaving shuttle across an infinite loom. Far, far behind it, the tiny dot that was the superlifter shrank still further. It too had been bobbing up and down through the skein on a sine wave whose length was measured in light minutes, but now it had stopped oscillating, settling into the lower level of hyperspace.
The magnification jumped; the superlifter was a larger dot now, but still dropping back all the time. A light-point tracing its own once wavy now straight course even further behind was the pursuing GSV. The star of the Dreve system was a bright spot back beyond that, stationary in the skein.
The Sleeper Service reached its maximum velocity and also ceased to oscillate between the two regions of hyperspace, settling into the larger of the two infinities that was ultraspace. The two following ships did the same, increasing their speed fractionally but briefly. A purist would call the place where they now existed ultraspace one positive, though as nobody had ever had access to ultraspace one negative — or infraspace one positive, for that matter — it was a redundant, even pedantic distinction. Or it had been until now. That might be about to change, if the Excession could deliver what it appeared to promise… Amorphia took a deep breath and then let it go.
The view clicked off and the screen disappeared.
The avatar turned to look at the woman Dajeil Gelian and the black bird Gravious. They were in a recreation area on the Ridge class GCU Jaundiced Outlook, housed in a bay in one of the Sleeper Service's mid-top strakes. The lounge was pretty well standard Contact issue; deceptively spacious, stylishly comfortable, punctuated by plants and subdued lighting.
This ship was to be the woman's home for the rest of the journey; a life boat ready to quit the larger craft at a moment's notice and take her to safety if anything went wrong. She sat on a white recliner chair, dressed in a long red dress, calm but wide-eyed, one hand cupped upon her swollen belly, the black bird perched on one arm of the seat near her hand.
The avatar smiled down at the woman. "There," it said. It made a show of looking around. "Alone at last." It laughed lightly, then looked down at the black bird, its smile disappearing. "Whereas you," it said, "will not be again."
Gravious jerked upright, neck stretching. 'What?" it asked. Gelian looked surprised, then concerned.
Amorphia glanced to one side. A small device like a stubby pen floated out of the shadows cast by a small tree. It coasted up to the bird, which shrank back and back from the small, silent missile until it almost fell off the arm of the chair, its blue-black beak centimetres from the nose cone of the tiny, intricate machine.
"This is a scout missile, bird," Amorphia told it. "Do not be deceived by its innocent title. If you so much as think of committing another act of treachery, it will happily reduce you to hot gas. It is going to follow you everywhere. Don't do as I have done; do as I say and don't try to shake it off; there is a tracer nanotech on you — in you — which will make it a simple matter to follow you. It should be correctly embedded by now, replacing the original tissue."