The old Dweller roted forward a metre, taking up the slack on the float-trailer’s traces. — Farewell, Seer Taak, he signalled. — Remember me to our mutual friend, if you’d be so kind.
He turned and floated away into the deep hot darkness. In a few moments he was lost to most passive senses. Fassin waited until there was no sign of him at all, then rose slowly back up to the house.
“Ah, Fassin, I understand commiserations are in order,” Y’sul said, floating up to the bubble house’s reception balcony from the Poaflias. Nuern, Fassin and Hatherence had watched the ship motor out of the dim haze, hearing its engines long before they’d seen it.
“Your sympathy is noted,” Fassin told Y’sul. He’d got Hatherence to call the Poaflias the day before and order it back from its hunting patrol. The little ship returned with a modest number of trophies strung from its rigging: various julmicker bladders, bobbing like grisly balloons on sticks, three gas-drying RootHugger hides, the heads of a brace of gracile Tumblerines and — patently the most prized, mounted above the craft’s nose — a Dweller Child carcass, already gutted and stretched wide on a frame so that it looked like some slightly grotesque figurehead, flying just ahead of the ship. Fassin had sensed the colonel’s esuit rolling fractionally back when she’d realised what the new addition to the Poaflias’s nose actually was.
“What is your state of mind, Fassin, now that you have lost so many of your family?” Y’sul asked, coming to a stop in front of the Seer. “Are you decided to return to your own people?”
“My state of mind is… calm. I may still be in shock, I suppose.”
“Shock?”
“Look it up. I have not decided to return to my own people yet. There are almost none to return to. We are, however, finished here. I wish to return to Munueyn.”
He’d told the colonel that morning that he’d discovered something and they needed to leave.
“What have you discovered, major? May I see it?”
“I’ll tell you later.”
“I see. So where next are we bound?”
“Back to Munueyn,” he’d lied.
“Munueyn? Our captain will be pleased,” Y’sul said.
They left that evening. Nuern and Livilido seemed relaxed, positively cheered, that they were departing. Y’sul had returned with news of the war, in which two important Dreadnought actions had already taken place, resulting, in one engagement alone, in the loss of five Dreadnoughts and nearly a hundred deaths. The Zone forces were retreating in two volumes at least and the Belt certainly had the upper grasp at the moment.
Fassin and Hatherence recorded short messages of gratitude for Jundriance to read at his leisure.
Nuern asked them if they wanted to take any of the books or other works from the house.
“No, thank you,” Fassin said.
“I found this humorous thesaurus,” the colonel said, holding up a small diamond-leaf book. “I’d like this.”
“Be our guest,” Nuern told her. “Anything else? Diamond-based works like that will burn up in a few decades when the house has dropped further into the heat. Take all you want.”
“Over-kind. This alone is most sufficient.”
“The GasClipper regatta?” Captain Slyne said. He scratched his mantle. “I thought you wanted to go back to Munueyn?”
“There was no reason to let our hosts know where we were really heading,” Fassin told Slyne.
“You are suspicious of them?” Y’sul asked.
“Just no reason to trust them,” Fassin said.
“The regatta takes place around the Storm Ultra-Violet 3667, between Zone C and Belt 2,” the colonel said. “Starting in sixteen days. Have we time to get there, captain?”
They were in Slyne’s cabin, a fairly grand affair of flickering wall-screens and antique furniture, the ceiling hung with ancient ordnance: guns, blaster tubes and crossbows all swaying gently as the Poaflias powered away at half-throttle from Valseir’s old house. So far Fassin had told Hatherence where they were really going, though not why.
Slyne let himself tilt, looking as though he was about to fall over. He did some more mantle scratching. “Ithink so. I’d better change course, then.”
“Leave the course change for a little longer, would you?” Fassin asked. They were only a half-hour away from the bubble house. “Though you might go to full speed.”
“Have to anyway, if we’re to get to that Storm in time,” Slyne said, turning and manipulating a holo cube floating over his halo-shaped desk. The largest screen, just in front of him, lit up with a chart of the volume and quickly became covered in gently curved lines and scrolling figure boxes. Slyne peered at this display for a few moments, then announced: “Full speed, we can be there in eighteen days. Best I can do.” Slyne gripped a large, polished-looking handle sitting prominently on his desk and pushed it, with a degree of obvious relish, if also a little embarrassment, to its limit. The tone of the ship’s engines altered and the vessel began to accelerate gradually.
“We might contact Munueyn and hire a faster ship,” Y’sul suggested. “Have it rendezvous with the Poaflias en route and transfer to it.”
Slyne rocked back, staring at the older Dweller with patterns of betrayal and horror (non-mild) spreading across his signal skin.
“Eighteen days will have to do, captain,” Fassin told Slyne. “I don’t think we need be there for the very start of the tournament.”
“How long do these competitions last, in generality?” Hatherence asked.
Slyne tore his gaze from an unconcerned-looking Y’sul and said, “Ten or twelve days, usually. They might cut this one a little short because of the War. We’ll be there in time for most of it.”
“Good,” Fassin said. “Stay on your current course for another half-hour, if you please, captain. Turn for the Storm then.” Slyne looked happier. “Consider it done.”
Slyne took advantage of a WindRiver, a brief-lived ribbon of still faster current within the vast, wide jet stream of the whole rotating Zone, and they made good time. They were challenged twice by war craft but allowed to continue on their way, and slipped through a mine net, a wall of dark lace thrown across the sky, dotted with warheads. Dreadnought-catcher, nothing to worry them, Slyne assured them. They had, oh, tens of metres to spare on almost every side.
The screwburster Poaflias got to very near the bottom of the Storm called Ultra-Violet 3667 within sixteen days, arriving more or less as the regatta began.
“Keep clipped on! Could get a bit rough!” Y’sul yelled, then repeated the warning as a signal, in case they hadn’t heard.
Fassin and Hatherence had come up on deck when the Poaflias had started bucking and heaving even more than usual. The gas around them, darker even than it had been at Valseir’s house, though less dense and hot, was fairly shrieking through the ship’s vestigial rigging. Ribbons and streaks, just seen coiling briefly round the whole vessel, were then torn away again as the ship plunged into another great boiling mass of cloud.
The human and the oerileithe, still within the relative calmness of the companionway shelter, exchanged glances, then quickly put the crude-looking harnesses on. The colonel’s fitted well over her esuit. Fassin’s-tied tight enough but looked messy, not designed forhis alien shape. Slyne had insisted that everybody should wear the things whenever they went on deck while the Poaflias was at full speed, even though both Hatherence and Fassin — in the unlikely event that they were somehow blown off the deck — could easily have caught up with the ship under their own power.
“What’s going on?” Hatherence shouted as they neared Y’sul, clinging to the rails near the bow harpoon gun. “Going to shoot the storm!” Y’sul bellowed back. “That sounds dangerous!” Hatherence yelled. “Oh, assuredly!”
“So, what does it entail, exactly?”