“We come, then,” Drunisine said, “to the question of why the Ulubis Mercatoria Disconnect thought it might be a wise or profitable idea to enter Nasqueron in such a manner and in such numbers in the first place. Any ideas? Anybody?” The ancient Dweller looked round at all of them.
“I think it might have something to do with me,” Fassin admitted.
“You, Seer Taak?” Drunisine asked.
“I’ve been here attempting to track down some information.”
“And you needed the help of a small war fleet to extract it?”
“No. However, they might have thought I was in danger.”
“From whom?”
“I don’t know.”
“So, we are talking about information that the Mercatoria might consider momentous enough to start a war for? When they are already facing an invasion in the next few months or years? This must be information of some importance. Perhaps we can help. What is it?”
“Thank you. However, I think I may finally be close to finding it.”
“Ah,” Valseir said. “About that.”
“What?” Fassin asked him.
“All that stuff about the folder and the safekeep box and taking it personally to Chimilinith of Deilte?”
“Yes?”
“Not entirely true.”
“Not entirely?”
“Not entirely.”
“So how much of it was true?”
Valseir rocked back a fraction, seemingly thinking. Patterns of surprise crossed his signal skin. “Actually, most of it,” he said.
“And the part that wasn’t?” Fassin asked patiently.
“There was no folder in the safekeep box.”
“So Chimilinith hasn’t got the information.”
“Correct.”
“I see.”
“I am still waiting for enlightenment regarding the exact nature of this exemplary, if shy, information,” Drunisine said frostily, looking at Valseir.
Oh shit, Fassin thought, if Valseir tells them what it is, and it really exists, they might just kill us all.
Possibly the same thought had occurred to Valseir. “It allegedly involves a method for travelling faster than light,” he told the ancient commander.
Setstyin’s carapace flashed hilarity, quickly damped. Drunisine looked about as thoroughly unimpressed as it was possible for an elderly Dweller to look. “What?” he said.
“An ancient addition to a still more ancient book — which Seer Taak here traded over two hundred years ago during a ‘delve’, as the Quick call these things — makes mention of a method of achieving FTL travel without recourse to Adjutage and Cannula,” Valseir said, using what Fassin recognised as the Dweller terms for portals and wormholes. Fassin thought — and sincerely hoped — that Valseir had put just the right amount of apology and wry amusement into his voice. “Seer Taak has been sent here to try to find the details of this, ah, unlikely technology.”
“Indeed?” Drunisine said, looking at Fassin.
“Algebra,” he blurted.
“Algebra?” Drunisine asked.
“The data looks like a piece of algebra, apparently,” Fassin said. “It defines some sort of warping device. A way of bending space. Conventional to start with, but using this technique to exceed light speed.” Fassin made a gesture of resignation. He let embarrassment patterns show on his arrowhead’s skin. “Iwas seconded without any real choice into a paramilitary part of the Mercatoria and ordered to undertake this mission. I am as sceptical as I imagine you are, sir, regarding the likelihood of it coming to a successful conclusion.”
Drunisine let the most formal amusement pattern show on his skin. “Oh, I doubt that you are, Seer Taak.”
“What’s going on?”
“I was about to ask you the same question,” Setstyin told Fassin. “Shall we trade?”
“All right, but I asked first.”
“What exactly do you want to know?”
They were still in the reception sphere inside the giant globe. Commander Drunisine had left. Two Adult medical orderlies were dealing with the few small injuries that Y’sul and Valseir had picked up during the battle. “What is this thing?” Fassin asked, gesturing to indicate the whole ship. “Where did it come from? Who made it? Who controls it? How many are there in Nasqueron?”
“I’d have thought the title said it all,” Setstyin said. “It’s a machine to protect the planet. From willed aggression of a certain technical type and sophistication. It’s not a spacecraft, if that’s what you mean. It’s limited to in-atmosphere. It came from the Depths, where stuff like this is usually stored. We made it. I mean Dwellers did, probably a few billion years ago. I’d have to check. It’s controlled by people in the control centre, who’ll be Dwellers with military experience who’ve sim-trained for this sort of device specifically. As to numbers… I wouldn’t know. Probably not the sort of information one’s meant to share, really. No offence, Fass, but in the end you’re not actually one of us. We have to assume your loyalties lie elsewhere.”
“Built billions of years ago? Can you still—?”
“Ah, that would count as a follow-up question,” Setstyin said, chiding. “I think it’s my turn first.”
Fassin sighed. “All right.”
“Are you really looking for this warp-drive FTL technology data? You do realise it doesn’t exist, don’t you?”
“It’s data that the Mercatoria believe might give them a better chance of winning the fight against the E-5 Discon. They are desperate. They’ll try anything. And I have my orders, no matter what I might think about the whole thing. Of course I know independent FTL drives don’t exist.”
“Will you still obey these orders, given the chance?”
Fassin thought about Aun Liss, about the people he’d known in Hab 4409, about all the other people he’d ever known throughout Ulubis system over the years. “Yes,” he said.
“Why do you obey these orders?” Setstyin sounded genuinely puzzled. “Your family and Seer Sept colleagues are almost all dead, your immediate military superior was killed in the recent battle and there is nobody nearby now to take her place.”
“It’s complicated,” Fassin told Setstyin. “Perhaps it’s duty or a guilty conscience or just the desire to be doing something. Can you still make more of these planetary protection machines?”
“No idea,” Setstyin admitted. “Don’t see why not, though. I’d suggest asking somebody who might know, but even if the true answer was no we’d be bound to say yes, wouldn’t we?”
“Was it my call to you that set all this in motion?”
“You’re getting a lot of free questions, aren’t you? However, yes, it did. Though I suspect that watching dozens of recently modified gas-capable warcraft suddenly parking themselves in orbit around us might have started a few alarm bells ringing amongst us even without your timely warning. Still, we’re grateful. I don’t think I’m entirely out of formation in saying that there is a feeling we probably owe you a favour.”
“And if the Mercatoria ever finds out,” Fassin said, “I’ll be executed as a traitor.”
“Well, we won’t tell if you don’t,” Setstyin said, perfectly seriously.
“Deal,” Fassin said, unconvinced.
The great spherical craft Isaut floated deep within a vast cloud of streaming gas, moving swiftly, seeming not to. It had started to submerge into the storm’s curdled floor of slowly swirling gas almost as soon as Fassin and the others had been brought aboard. Sinking, sidling, rising slightly again, it had entered into the Zone 2 weather band, quickly assumed its speed, and was now, in the late evening that was becoming night, half a thousand kilometres away from the storm where the battle had taken place, and adding another three hundred kilometres to that value with every passing hour.
Fassin, Y’sul, Valseir and Setstyin floated over a narrow platform set at the great vessel’s equator, near the body of Colonel Hatherence. A weak light and weaker breeze lent an appropriate atmosphere of quiet gloom to the scene. The colonel’s torn, burned body had been discovered along with hundreds of others, floating at the level at which Dweller bodies usually came to rest. Hers had come to rest a little higher than the others, as would a child’s.