The estate manager let out a cry of shock.
“What is it?”
He pointed back towards the coast. Gil scrabbled up the trunk of the nearest bush. Clawing the leaves aside, he peered in the direction of the Kevesingod fjord.
The parapets of Castle Nulth broke the flat horizon.
Beside the castle—twice its height—stood a rocket.
*
“It’s got a sort of antique charm,” said the Rat. “Does it actually fly?”
Gil had summoned the admiral immediately. The Rat had come down from the Unsinkable in his personal shuttle, which was now parked near Dhjerga Lizp’s rocket. The sleek, modern spacecraft contrasted shockingly with this prehistoric-looking obelisk. Gil circled the rocket, sniffing the faint odor of steel forged on an alien planet. Its stabilizer fins and angled legs were discolored, less than smooth—and cool to the touch.
“It flies all right,” Dhjerga Lizp said. “But I didn’t fly it here. I just brought it. Much faster.”
Gil asked the question whose answer he was dreading. “Where is Colm?”
“I told you he wouldn’t be coming,” Dhjerga said. He wore an outlandish, foppish outfit that he said was the garb of his own people: baggy sleeves, tight trousers, billowing cloak. He held a blocky little device with an antenna. He calmly watched the Rat’s technicians climb the rocket’s access ladder.
“If I hadn’t dishonorably discharged him already,” the Rat said bitterly, “I’d do it now, in absentia.” He was clearly unimpressed, with the rocket; with Dhjerga; with Colm’s non-appearance. “What’s his excuse?”
“Drink and drugs,” Dhjerga said succinctly. Gil winced.
“Sir!” one of the human technicians shouted down from the airlock at the top of the rocket. She was waving a handheld scanner. The display could not be read from the ground, but the fear on her face could. “He’s got a nuke in here!”
“Three nukes, actually,” Dhjerga said.
The words galvanized everyone on the ground. The humans ran for their shuttle. The queazels ran for the castle. Neither refuge would protect them if the nukes went off, so Gil stayed where he was. So did the Rat. He strode up to Dhjerga Lizp, and would probably have punched him if not for the radio-control detonator in Dhjerga’s hands. “What the hell are you playing at?”
“You wanted help. I’ve brought it.”
*
Gil cajoled the humans into the castle and served them drinks in the library, hoping this would foster a more amicable atmosphere. Admiral Hyland ignored the Ghost, tapping on his computer. Dhjerga Lizp poured Gil’s hawbrother liquor down his neck with gusto, while keeping his radio control device on his knee. He would have slouched extravagantly, Gil thought, as he did on the Vienna, were that possible, but when sitting on a bench less than a foot off the floor, a human’s only option was to sit bolt upright with the legs inelegantly splayed. The whole room, of course, was queazel-sized. Shelves held books written by Gil’s ancestors, and ornate frames displayed Gil’s own pictures of Uzzizriat. The humans were incongruous. So too were the three steel cylinders lying on the flagstones behind Dhjerga.
The Fleet technicians had scanned the nukes and reported that they were implosion assemblies with uranium cores. They’d grudgingly confirmed Dhjerga’s assertion that the devices were well shielded. Yet the nukes were so crude—and powerful—that this was scant comfort. One stray chirp on the wrong frequency and Castle Nulth would slide into the fjord. Gil’s back fur clumped into tufts with nervous sweat.
“These faerie spaceships,” Dhjerga said. “Where are they now?”
“In the zero-gravity field, fast approaching Betelgeuse,” Gil said.
“What do they look like?”
Gil sighed, and searched the castle computer. “Here. This is one,” he said, flashing an image of the late, unlamented Ruddiganmaseve up on the screen. It looked like a dead branch, with more spikes.
“Ugly as sin, aren’t they?” Dhjerga said.
“Yes.”
“What about the inside of the ship? Where do they keep the engines?”
Wondering what the point of this was, Gil searched for interior images. He had a library of schematics from the Barjoltan shipyards. While he was selecting the best images, Admiral Hyland said to Dhjerga, “Why are you interested in the interior layout of sentrienza ships?”
“I’m going to help you,” Dhjerga said.
“You’re very confident, aren’t you? You defeated us; that doesn’t mean you’ll be able to defeat the sentrienza.”
“We didn’t win that war,” Dhjerga said. “You lost it.”
The Rat sighed. Confirming Gil’s high opinion of him, he acknowledged, “You may be right. We kept expecting the sentrienza to come and save us.”
Dhjerga nodded. “We should have been fighting them all along. But I didn’t know that until I came here.”
“I knew it,” Hyland said bitterly. “But how can we fight them? I’ve got us into a war that can only have one outcome. Our obliteration.” The crisis had cracked his professional shell, leaving only raw, self-aware honesty.
“Chin up, sir,” Dhjerga said. “I’ve got a trick or two up my sleeve.” He thrust his head forward, focusing on Gil’s images.
Puzzled, Gil resumed his lecturer’s role. “This is a capital ship,” he said. “But they are all much the same, with a greater or lesser number of modules.” He had stitched the schematics together into a virtual tour. On the screen, their viewpoint slithered through uneven tunnels, and into a cavern filled with the machinery of an antiquark drive. “This is the drive module.”
“The bit that makes it go?”
“Yes.”
“And what about the bit that …” Dhjerga’s forehead creased. “That makes it travel between stars?”
“The zero-gravity field generator.” Gil moved their viewpoint to the other side of the cavern, and tapped the screen with a claw. “This unit. It runs off the power generated by the antiquark field, as does the drive, so they are in the same module.”
“Good.” Suddenly, Dhjerga smiled fiercely. “I’ll be back.”
Before Gil or Admiral Hyland could say a word, he had vanished.
The nukes remained, their hand-burnished surfaces catching the light from the screen.
Dhjerga had taken the detonator.
Man and queazel stared at the devices for a long moment. Gil wondered if they were going to go off. The Rat spoke into his computer. “Phil? Yeah, this is Bastian. Guess there’s no hurry, after all.”
CHAPTER 37
BETELGEUSE, DIPPING CLOSE TO the horizon, stretched the shadows of three spaceships across the hillside: the Son Of Saturn, Admiral Hyland’s shuttle, and the sub-orbital spaceplane in which Philip K. Best had arrived with an escort of Marines. The soldiers were not there to protect Governor Best. They were there to guard Best’s companion, Emnl ki-Sharongat. Best had scooped her off the Vienna to see what she made of the Ghost’s claims. “But where is the Ghost?” she said scornfully. They had no answer except to point to Dhjerga Lizp’s ship.
The nukes remained inside the castle. Gil had thought it prudent to evacuate his household as well as his guests. They all regrouped four kilometers away, behind a hill which would protect them in the event of a blast. After a while, Gil sent two servants back to the castle to fetch refreshments.
Hyland and Best spoke about evacuating Juradis. It was a recurrent topic but a futile one. Even had they the ships to transport everyone, where would they go?
Gil climbed to the hilltop to await the return of his servants. He curled himself on a sun-warmed rock. Looking seawards, he could see the little town of Kevesingod at the mouth of the fjord. The bay sparkled in the midnight sun. Inland, his ragfruit orchard and the edge of his barley fields furred the land. His castle’s towers flew the brave flags of Uzzizriat and the Human Republic.
He grabbed his binoculars and screwed them, trembling, to his eyes.
Two queazels had just come out of the g
ate, walking on their hind legs, carrying picnic baskets. And between them limped a man.
*
“I told you I’d come back,” Dhjerga said, when he reached the others. “A mage keeps his word.”
Although everyone else was standing, the Ghost had sat down on the ground. He looked worn out. Gil prodded a servant to offer him something to drink. Dhjerga drained half a bottle of orange fizz in a single gulp.
“I’m done in. That was a lot of flitting.”
So they all sat down on the rocky hillside, and the servants, not knowing what else to do, spread out the picnic.
“Where’ve you been?” Admiral Hyland demanded.
“Achar feadha's feadh achair,” Dhjerga replied, helping himself to mutton stew.
“What?”
“Colm showed me the magic of space travel, the tekne. So I looked for these faerie ships you described. I found thirty-seven of them. Was that all?”
Emnl ki-Sharongat said in her high voice, “That is the ship-count of the Rigel fleet.”
“And then, Ghost?” the Rat growled.
“Then I fetched my nukes into their engine parts and I set them off.” Dhjerga gave a tired, triumphant grin. “It was very tricky, the timing of it! I had to be in and out—” he snapped his fingers— “like this! There were faeries all over the place, of course.” He gave Emnl a hard cold look. “I was the last thing they ever saw.”
This claim stunned the humans into silence. It was left to Gil to say, “Are you serious? You blew them all up?”
“I felt the heat from the explosions,” Dhjerga said, touching his slightly reddened cheeks.
The humans shouted aloud and high-fived each other. The Rat whooped, “Get this man some rad pills! He’s single-handedly destroyed the Rigel fleet.”
Emnl buzzed, “Our ships are modular! An explosion in one module, even if it truly occurred, could not destroy the whole ship.”
“Maybe not,” Hyland said. “But if the ships lost their zero-gravity field generators in the middle of interstellar space, the result’d be the same, wouldn’t it?”
Everyone crowded around Dhjerga to hug and thank him. Gil’s servants ran in circles like kits, chasing each other for joy. Had Gil not had his position to think of he would have done the same thing. And yet the experienced diplomat in him wondered if it was too good to be true.
Dhjerga took a computer out of an inside pocket of his embroidered vest. It was not a human or a queazel computer. It looked like a rusty geode. “I got this from the first ship,” he said. “I had to flit away to a different part of the ship before I set off the nukes. So I picked this up from the place with all the faerie books.”
“The bridge,” Hyland said, grabbing it.
It took them the rest of the night to get into the sentrienza computer, with Emnl’s grudging assistance. What they found on it, decoded and translated, cast a pall on the celebratory mood.
“‘Extinction protocol authorized,’” the Rat read in a hoarse whisper. “This is a letter from the Gray Emperor himself. ‘Target: Homo sapiens.”
“Do you think that includes us?” Dhjerga said.
“Of course it does, Ghost,” said Philip K. Best. “Of course it does.”
They had returned to the castle and were sitting in the refectory, with a crackling fire going. The translation on the screen of the computer made it feel icy cold. Gil scanned the words. The Emperor’s letter said nothing about queazels. His species had been relegated to the status of collateral damage, too unimportant even to mention.
“The protocol is to be applied to the following planets,” he read. “Juradis, Barjoltan, Noom, Gliese 581g, Kepler 442b, Ross 128b, Mu Arae d, Monoceros f, Majriti IV …” The list included every single one of Earth’s former colony worlds, now Ghost colony worlds. Gil reached the final entry: “… and Earth.”
Emnl ki-Sharongat broke the stunned silence. “But what about me?” she said plaintively.
Gil took a certain pleasure in saying to her, “The Gray Emperor has clearly decided that you are to be relegated to the role of collateral damage, too unimportant even to mention.”
“The Rigel fleet was armed with planet-killing weapons,” Hyland read on. He sat down on one of the too-low benches and rubbed his face with his hands.
“Walking Guns,” Emnl buzzed. “Just one of them can destroy a planet, you know.”
“And now they are to be loosed on Earth.” Hyland looked at Dhjerga. “What you did to the Rigel fleet. Could you do that again? Could you … keep doing it?” Gil saw how much it cost him to ask this of his former foe.
“I don’t know,” Dhjerga said. “There’s only one of me and there’s lots of them, aren’t there? And I can’t be everywhere at once.” He brightened. “But I know people all over the colony worlds. I could teach them the tekne of space travel. I think they’d help.”
The Rat did not seem encouraged by this vague promise. He said to Best, “We must return to Earth.”
“It’s an 18-month voyage,” Best said despairingly. “By the time we get there, Earth will be a black hole.”
Emnl buzzed, “The process is not that rapid. It would take an estimated twenty-one standard Earth months from the introduction of a miniature black hole into the crust of an Earth-sized planet until the planet was consumed.”
“Thanks for that information,” Best growled. “Is that supposed to make me feel better? My son and grandson are there!”
Dhjerga said, “Don’t fret! I’ll sort it.”
He did not inspire confidence, sagging by the fire, hiccuping.
Admiral Hyland said, “Regardless, we have to go back. We have to do what we can, even if all we can do in the end is say a prayer over Earth’s shrunken corpse.” He jumped up, seemingly ready to embark for Earth on the spot.
Gil rose to his full height. “No, Admiral,” he said. “Governor Best.” He met the eyes of the two anguished men. “I understand your feelings. You face the loss of your homeworld. Nothing is more frightening. But your place is here. Millions of humans, mara, and shablags depend on your leadership and protection.” He held up his foremost legs to forestall their protests. “I will go to Earth. And if all that can be done is to say a prayer over a dead planet … then I shall say it.”
*
It took him the rest of the night to talk them into agreeing. Weary, but triumphant, Gil left the castle at dawn to break the news to his estate manager. He climbed into his car and bumped along the dirt road that skirted the cliffs above the fjord.
Betelgeuse was so low in the sky that other stars could—just—be perceived at the opposite horizon. As Gil drove, a sparkling in the purple empyrean caught his eye. He stopped the rover and looked up. Gone; no—there it went again! And again, and again!
The computer in his vest pocket quacked. He took it out and said, “Hello, Admiral. Have you been watching this peculiar meteor shower?”
“Now we know what an antiquark drive looks like when it explodes,” the Rat said. “The Ghost was right. They were big ships.”
“Yes; and only a few light hours away.”
“Yes.”
They rang off. Gil drove on soberly.
When he reached the ragfruit orchard and parked in the employee parking area, the first thing he heard was Dhjerga Lizp’s voice.
“You’re married, then?”
Gil eased out of the car. Quietly, as only a queazel could, he crept around the trees at the end of the parking lot, and climbed one of them, digging his claws into the crumbly bark. Peering between the leaves, he could see over the fence into the orchard. Dhjerga Lizp stood outside the estate manager’s cottage, talking to the estate manager himself.
“I’m sorry.” Dhjerga Lizp spoke in an altogether different tone from usual—no bravado, nor exaggerated confidence. “I didn’t mean to wake her.”
“Oh, she’s always awake at this hour,” said the estate manager. He was holding his baby daughter, a chubby five-month-old, named—much to Gil’s embarrassment�
��Gilliam, after Gil himself. “It’s her mum sleeps like the dead. I get up with Gillie in the night; it’s easier!”
“Her mum …”
“Yes, my wife,” the estate manager said.
From his perch in the tree, Gil could see into the bedroom window of the cottage. The woman in question lay in bed inside. She was very pretty, for a human, even if she was sleeping with her mouth open. A refugee from Earth, she had found new love and a new purpose in life here on the Nulth estate. Gil felt proud that he had made that possible. He also felt proud of Janz, the estate manager. The human had turned up in Kevesingod after the uprising, ragged and penniless and unwilling to discuss his past. Gil had taken a chance on him and been amply rewarded.
“Sorry, sir, do I know you?” Janz said with a hint of perplexity. “It’s just I keep thinking you look familiar.”
“N-no. I just … saw you from a distance … and wanted to say hello.”
Janz scratched his head. Baby Gilliam was beginning to grizzle. “Well, it’s time for breakfast. Care to come in and have a bite with me and the Mrs.? Any friend of Lord Nulth’s …”
“Thank you, but no.” Dhjerga turned aside. He took a couple of paces towards Gil’s tree. The queazel saw him covertly wipe tears from his eyes. “I have to be on my way. It was … good to meet you.”
He vanished.
*
The next day Gilliam Tripsilion Nulth embarked for Earth aboard the Unsinkable, with a skeleton crew of humans and queazels.
CHAPTER 37
COLM HAD BEGUN TAKING the Shihoka on long-range flights in search of food and supplies. Unlike Axel, he did not have a child to think about, and he needed to do something to help the family. His destinations were usually spaceports, which tended to be deserted by humans and Ghosts alike. In the post-apocalyptic quiet, he worked by himself, overhauling and refueling the Shihoka. Then he would scrounge around the warehouses and spaceport concessions, and go home with the ship’s hold full of food and useful bits and bobs.
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