Harald paused for a moment. The fact that Lambrack had a brother aboard Corisanthe II with whom he had recently been in communication was now firmly established in the minds of any listeners. Yes, his own sister Yishna occupied a high position aboard Main but, since he was Admiral and the initiator of Fleet's present actions, his own motives would not be questioned. Lambrack's would—however, that was a lever he could use at another time. His aim now was to get Lambrack away from Davidson, and away from this entire mission.

"I have a task for which you are best suited," said Harald, "in view of your probable reluctance to be involved in what lies ahead." Lambrack just stared at him in silence so he continued, "Our satellites around Brumal have detected the launch of a ship from the planet's surface. It is a Brumallian biotech vessel and its course is presently taking it towards Sudoria."

"What?" Lambrack looked shocked.

"Yes, those who question whether the Brumallians have been complicit in recent events, or even capable of involvement, perhaps need to examine their assumptions. One doubts that such a ship—flying in flagrant breach of the surrender terms—has anything but hostile intentions. What would you think, Lambrack?"

"I think this is certainly something that needs to be checked."

"You'll do more than check, Captain Lambrack. You'll intercept and destroy this vessel, then you will progress to Brumal to destroy its launch site, which lies above BC30—the city they call ReconYork."

"You're sending me?"

"You're right for the task, Captain, and here is an enemy about whom you'll have fewer reservations."

Lambrack swore and cut the connection. A little while later, as he continued his inspection of Engineering, Harald watched the Captain's ship dropping out of formation and turning to head back towards Brumal.

McCrooger

A long intestinal corridor ran right around the ship's internal ring, the walls braced by cartilaginous bulwarks, and ceilings and floors either held together or apart by pillars of a substance like glass heavily streaked with impurities, and through which ran capillaries with lucent fluids flowing inside. With little else to do once I could manage to stand for more than a few hours at a time without falling poleaxed into sleep immediately afterwards, I walked this ring, Tigger pacing at my side, the ship wheezing and glubbing around us like a hungry stomach. Convalescence, I tasted the word and found it bitter. I had never needed to convalesce since my first visit to Spatterjay, and now found weakness abhorrent. Six days remained until we arrived at Sudoria, and by then I needed to be fully ready.

"Still no luck trying to get a transmission through?"

"Not much," said Tigger. "The EM chaff broadcast from Fleet satellites swamps everything. I could probably get something through, but it would be loud, and everyone would know where it came from."

I noticed how his heavy paws and my booted feet left bruise-like marks in the translucent floor behind us, which had faded by the time we came round full circle to this same stretch of floor again. I couldn't shake the feeling that someone else was following us just out of sight, and kept looking out for the imprints they must leave. "I think we should hold off on that for the present, though I wonder what the general reaction would be to a Brumallian ship arriving unexpectedly in orbit, if we don't get something through to them beforehand."

"The least of our worries," the drone stated.

"Um." I grimaced. "Fleet?"

"Fleet ships are a long way off right now, but watch stations will still spot us, and Harald could get a hilldigger out to squash us before we arrived at Sudoria."

"That will depend upon how much he considers us a threat."

"We won't worry him at all, but he might think it handy to tell everyone he destroyed a Brumallian ship that was heading for Sudoria. That'd make him look like the good guy."

"And what is the plan should they send such a ship?"

"There is none—as yet."

It wasn't particularly comforting to know that the virus left inside me might not, in the end, be the cause of my death.

"You must have studied this ship carefully," I said. "How well would it stand up to a hilldigger?"

"There's an old expression…a snowball's chance in hell?"

"You seem decidedly unworried about it all."

"The emotional range of a tiger's facial expression isn't huge, but like yourself I find little to recommend mortality—even more so now I am…diminished."

"Does it hurt to have lost your other half?"

"I've lost my ability to travel through space, many tools, weapons and processing space, so my loss is like yours, one of strength. Didn't lose much memory and knowledge—just a few seconds." Those amber eyes fixed on me. "Given time and materials I could easily rebuild my other half, with all its previous advantages. I might have lost a lot, but I still do possess sufficient tools."

I realised, as Tigger spoke, that he was gently prodding me in some direction. I replayed our recent conversation in my mind and asked, "So how could this ship be saved in the event of Harald sending one of his hilldiggers against it?"

"With current Brumallian technology, not a chance."

Ah.

"And how well do you understand Brumallian technology?" I asked.

"Better than them."

Tigger halted, sat back on his haunches, raised a paw and, peering down at it, extended one claw at a time for inspection. I halted as well and rested my back against a pillar, feeling a muted vibration through the ship's bones. Guessing where this conversation was leading I took a leap ahead.

"Providing the Brumallians with any technology that would give them a definite military advantage would seriously piss off Geronamid, but obviously having that AI angry with us is substantially better than being dead."

"Oh, I agree." Tigger raised his head to meet my gaze.

"Were you waiting for permission from me?"

"Well," Tigger shrugged, "I'd then only be following orders."

Tigger, who could have been a major AI but chose to be a drone, was clearly not a great lover of responsibility. He wanted me to take the rap. I considered then who we should talk to, since this being a Brumallian ship, there was no Captain aboard.

"Tell Rhodane," I said. "She can put it to the Consensus." I wondered if that would be limited to a consensus of the present crew, for Fleet's blocking of signals prevented communication back to Brumal. I saw then how their system might not work so well in some situations.

Only later did I find out how they got round that one. They asked the ship.

Harald

With AC hum permeating the air and vibrating the catwalk below his feet, Harald folded his eye-screen to one side and peered over the rail down at the linear accelerator. Having finished the final checks, the gunnery crewmen were now moving into position on their monitoring platform above the aseptic gleam of the machinery surrounding the vacuum breech. The 800-foot-long accelerator—six feet wide, wrapped in heavily insulated coil sections and cooling jackets, and trailing massive power cables—slanted down through the body of the ship, its mouth opening directly below Ironfist's nose. A conveyor belt crammed with resin-encased iron projectiles snaked down to the breech machinery. Unlike the solid projectiles fired at the military infrastructure around Brumal throughout the war, Harald knew that inside their bullet-shaped cases these consisted of a block of irregularly shaped iron fragments bound together by the resin.

"It will be interesting to see how closely fact matches theory," he commented.