“Ah, here we are,” Setstyin said, and pulled out a large handgun. Suddenly perfectly steady, he aimed and fired before the little gascraft could react.
The beams tore the arrowhead apart, slamming through it and sending it whirling back against a stack of library crystals and then somersaulting over and over as Setstyin kept firing the gun, spreading fire and scattering wreckage all over the library floor. Wildly spinning pieces of debris were sent shrapnelling across the glittering stacks, cracking spines and smashing crystal pages to powder. What was left of the little craft crashed into the windows by the balcony, shattering the diamond as though it was sugar glass. Setstyin stopped firing.
Debris pattered down. Smoke drifted, gradually sucked towards the shattered window.
The big Dweller roted carefully over to the broken window, keeping the gun trained on the smoking remains of the little craft as he approached.
“Sir?” his servant called over the house intercom. “Sir, are you all right? I thought I heard—”
“Fine,” Setstyin called, not shifting his attention from the wreckage as he drew closer. “I’m fine. Be some cleaning up to do in due course, but I’m fine. Leave me, now.”
“Sir.”
A warm breeze ruffled his robes as Setstyin floated out of the window and drew up almost on top of the guttering wreck. He prodded the ruined gascraft with the muzzle of the gun. He prised part of the craft’s upper shell away.
He peered inside.
“Fucker!” he screamed, and whirled back into the library, tearing through the gas to the desk. “Desk! SecComms, now!’
Aun Liss watched the man as his little craft, his second skin, was destroyed.
Fassin winced just the once, twitching as though pained.
Aun thought he did not look well. His body was thin inside the borrowed fatigues and he was trembling slightly but continually. His face looked much older than it had, pinched and drawn, eyes sunken and surrounded with darkness. His hair, looking crinkled and thin, had grown a little while he’d been inside the gascraft. His eyes and the edges of his ears and nostrils, plus the corners of his mouth, were red from the effects of coming out of the shock-gel — and having the gillfluid come out of him — after all this time.
He turned to look at her. She was glad to see there was a twinkle in his eye, despite it all. “So. Still think I’m crazy?” he asked.
She smiled. “Pretty much.”
They sat in the bright, if cramped, command space of the Ecophobian, a Beyonder shockcraft, a medium-weight warship half a light second out from Nasqueron, linked to the now-defunct gascraft via a twin of the eyeball-sized microsat which had been exactly where it was supposed to be a day earlier, when Fassin had pinged it from the high platform in Quaibrai.
They were, amazingly, still receiving basic telemetry from the shattered gascraft, though no sensory content. The machine had been very thoroughly blasted.
On a side-screen, they had a freeze of the last visual that the little gascraft had sent: Setstyin levelling a sizeable handgun straight at the camera, a tiny sparkle of light just starting in the very centre of the weapon’s dark barrel. Fassin nodded at the image. “I hasten to add that that does not constitute standard Dweller hospitality.”
“I’d guessed. Sure it wasn’t because you just wouldn’t shut up?”
“I’m serious.”
“You’re serious? What do you call the guy with the big fuck-off gun?”
“Aun,” Fassin said, sounding tired now. “Do you believe me?”
She hesitated, shrugged. “I’m with your belligerent friend; I believe you believe.”
The gascraft telemetry cut off.
The Chief Remotes Officer leaned in, manipulating holos above one of the displays. “That wasn’t the gascraft totalling,” she told them, “that was the microsat getting fried. Fast work. Suggest hightail promptly.”
“Hold on to your hats,” the captain said. “Sit well back.”
They were thrown, pressed, then rammed back into their seats as the ship accelerated, the command officers shifting to control by induction rather than physical manipulation. The whole gimballed command sphere swung to keep the gee-forces pressing on their chests.
“Were you serious, Mr Taak?” the captain asked, her voice strained against the clamping power of the acceleration.
“Yuh,” was the best Fassin could manage.
“So there’s a secret network of ancient Dweller wormholes linking — what? — every Dweller gas-giant?”
Fassin took the deepest breath he could and forced out, “That’s the idea.” Another breath. “You send all we… got from the… gascraft to… your high command?”
The captain managed to laugh. “Such as they are, yes.”
“Shit,” said the Defence Officer, his voice strained. “Lock on.” They heard him breathing hard. “It’s fast! Can’t outrun. In fourteen!”
“Fire everything,” the captain said crisply. “Ready Detach Command. We’ll risk adrifting, hope the Impavid’s local.”
“Need to yaw before the Detach or we’ll be hit by the debris spray,” the Tactics Officer said.
“Copy,” the captain said. “Shame. Always liked this ship.”
The ship wheeled wildly, Fassin blacked out and never felt the explosive detach.
The joltship Impavid picked the command sphere up three days later.
* * *
“Taince,” Saluus Kehar said. He grinned. “Hey. So, so good to see you again.” He came up to her and put his arms round her.
Taince Yarabokin had succeeded in producing a smile. She’d chosen an old-fashioned formal cap as part of her uniform and so had the unspoken excuse that she needed to keep this clamped between her elbow and her side for not being able to hug him back with any great enthusiasm. Sal didn’t seem to notice anyway. He pulled away, looked at her.
“Been a while, Taince. Glad you made it back.”
“Good to be back,” Taince said.
They were in a hangar in the Guard Security Holding Facility Axle 7, a triple-wheeled habitat orbiting ’glantine. Saluus had been held there for the past couple of months while the authorities had decided whether they really believed him about having been kidnapped rather than having run away or even turned traitor.
He’d consented to and undergone dozens of brain scans -more than enough to put the matter beyond any doubt in an ordinary case, and of course he had connections and friends in high places who would normally have been only too happy to have discreet words in probably quite receptive ears. But there had been a feeling that this was an exceptional matter, that Sal was rich enough to have afforded technologies or techniques that would fool the brain scans, that the Starvelings themselves might have been able to implant convincing false memories, and — anyway — such a fuss had been made at the time when Saluus had, seemingly, gone over to the invading forces that to let him meekly out just because it looked like he was blameless somehow didn’t seem right.
When Saluus had disappeared, apparently turning traitor, there had been strikes and attacks on Kehar family and commercial property and he’d been denounced by every part of the Ulubine Mercatoria in terms that owed as much to finally having something understandable to hit out at as to any moral indignation. People who had called Sal a friend and been regular guests at many of his family homes had decided that they owed it to the popular mood and their intense personal sense of betrayal — not to mention their future social standing and careers to compete in out-vituperating each other in their condem-nation of his odious perfidy. The calumnies heaped upon Sal’s absent head had amounted to a thesaurus of despite, an entire dictionary of bile. In the end he was kept incarcerated as much for his own safety as for anything else.
— When the Starveling forces left and the Summed Fleet arrived, the general feeling of relief and euphoria pervading the Ulubis system meant that news of Sal’s shocking innocence traded rather better on the floor of the public’s perception, and it could be announced that he was to be released in due course. Most people chose to recant their earlier expressions of hatred and condemnation, though it was still felt best for all concerned if Sal’s return to public life and rehabilitation was gradual rather than abrupt.