Dark Tempest

by Manda Benson

  “I know what you do fear.” Wolff glowered down on her. “I ask you, Jed, does there exist the science to duplicate men?”

  “Why do you ask these stupid questions? This is no time for them!”

  “Answer it!”

  “Yes, then. There has been for millennia, although it is wasteful of time and resources and has no use. What rubbish do you talk?”

  “When I was down there, I saw something.”

  “What did you see? You see nothing, Gerald Wolff!”

  “I saw Taggart!”

  Jed took a deep breath and realised her shoulders had become rigid. She forced them into a more relaxed posture. “You did not see Taggart. I saw to it thoroughly that he was dead. His jugular artery was severed and the body was cast into the void. No man could have survived it. What you saw was his identical twin, or a clone of him as you said, although I see no reason why a Bloodless low-caste imbecile such as he should be cloned. Or, most probably, you just saw someone of low caste, for you all look alike anyway, and your irrational imagination made you think it was Taggart.”

  “Whatever I saw,” Wolff said savagely, “it is not a contingency I can ignore.”

  Jed turned away from him, back toward the window. Of course Taggart was dead. There was no way it could be otherwise, and Wolff’s idea that someone would clone a low-caste man was beneath entertainment. But this information raised other possibilities. Kuiper belters were isolated populations, and as she’d said, they all looked similar. It would be reasonable to assume that, if Taggart had originated from this Kuiper belt, all its other inhabitants would look much the same as him. And if Taggart had come from here, he must have hijacked the Shamrock with the intention of it playing a part in his scheme, and that meant that he might well still want it.

  “Then there is no alternative,” she finally said, and she took a cube of conurin from the pouch at her side. “We move to open water.”

  Wolff remained silent, but Jed thought she saw an air of relief in him and the morran both.

  She tried to keep the ship as low as she could, but the turbulence its motion generated in the water and the drifting debris interfered with the scanning equipment, and she lost track of the craft following the Shamrock. As they passed the building foundations, the water became clearer, and she knew she must breach now.

  The Shamrock accelerated, rising to cut the waves with its dorsal wing and breaking into the air, ventral surface dripping. Behind, the pursuing ships came back into view. They fell back as her speed climbed and they manoeuvred to intercept. Jed checked the status of each. All were armed with weapons primed to maim the Shamrock. The question of why they seemed intent on the capture of her ship, as they had been on Carck-Westmathlon, worried her, but she spared it little attention, looking instead ahead and focusing. Capture or destruction were both the same to her.

  Already the pursuers were gaining. Jed tried to turn upward, in order to force her ship on a vertical climb to the sky, but the manoeuvre was impossible without loss of lateral speed. Already they were upon her, blocking the only exit point. With the ships following from behind, the Shamrock was surrounded, a glittering dark plane of water below and the starry sky barred by the glowing tail lights of the attackers.

  Wolff stepped forward beside her and looked at the monitor panels on the console, one of which showed the view directly above. “Faster,” he muttered.

  The roar of air rushing over the hull surface became audible on the bridge as Jed pushed the engines as hard as they would go. The Shamrock was not designed to race in an atmosphere. Putting the main fusion engine online with a broken trap would cause the exhaust to ignite in the air, and the smaller craft had the acceleration advantage. The three forerunners were moving ahead to block her path.

  “The only way I can go is down!” she cried.

  “Ever shot at fish?”

  Jed looked to Wolff and, with realisation of his meaning, cut the engines suddenly. The Shamrock plummeted as it went forward. The keel smashed into the surface with an outflinging of spray, the jolt sending all three of them forward against the console, and the ship skimmed the surface before sinking. The pursuers’ speed advantage was turned against them as they overshot and fought to turn. Jed vented carbon dioxide from the ballast thruster on the upper side of the tail, to rotate the prow upward toward the surface into a vertical takeoff position. The ship turned painfully slowly, the weight of the water gripping it. A column of bubbles trailed from the tail to the surface. Dawn was breaking over the ocean, and through the clear waters Jed could see the ships returning, and as they passed over they fired, not at the Shamrock itself, but at the optical illusion resulting from the change in refractive index between water and air, and blasts of energy flew past the ship, sending shockwaves of superheated vapour for the surface. Not one hit the hull. The water boiled. Vapour engulfed the pursuing craft.

  As the tail swung down into position, Jed fired on all thrust, the frantic dash for safety hidden in the shroud of confusion. The water around the ship exploded in the wake, the blast stripping hydrogen from oxygen. The air deflagrated into a roaring hemisphere of fire, consuming the pursuers, before the ocean fell back upon the hole that had been blown in it.

  The Shamrock rose on an actinic fountain amid a curtain of steam. Although Jed’s feet were firmly planted on what was technically now a vertical floor, she felt the nauseating tidal forces as the ship’s inertia dampers fought against gravity and acceleration. She did not look at the inferno below.

  As the Shamrock passed the stratosphere, Jed adjusted the angle of the ship to move into slingshot. The sky grew darker, and the stretch of ocean and continents spread out beneath her gradually receded to a glowing arc of horizon. The Shamrock left a dirty grey trail above the white vortexes of weather systems. Far below lurked the massive hammerhead shape of the Bellwether, hanging suspended in its geostationary orbit above the bright ocean. The Shamrock was now upside-down with respect to the surface of the planet, and Wolff gasped when he recognised the enemy vessel.

  “Our vector will carry the Shamrock away before it can possibly reach us,” Jed said, but she watched the ship nonetheless.

  “What is that weapon?” said Wolff. “It obliterated an ion tram. I have never seen destructiveness of the like.”

  “I have seen one only once afore. They are one of the greatest challenges of engineering, and they are scarcely seen and even scarcer deployed. It is a singularity ballista.”

  Wolff's face tensed. “Singularity? A black hole?”

  “An ignorant term of description for it, befitting only men of low caste.”

  “I am ignorant and of low caste.” Wolff grinned in his idiotic way. “So it befits me.”

  “Yes,” said Jed with a sigh of disgust. “It fires black holes at things.”

  “Forgive my low-caste ignorance,” said Wolff, “but how in the name of the Pagan Atheist does a ship carry about ammunition of black holes with it, let alone load them onto a giant crossbow and shoot it?”

  “The ship does not carry singularities with it.” Jed scowled. “That would be illogical. It compresses some matter down to a very small volume. It need only be a ton or so of refuse, to form a singularity, in position on the ballista, when required. Such a singularity would have an infinitesimal half life, so it must be contained within an inertia field to prevent it from evaporating or imploding the ballista apparatus. It is drawn by means of its own gravity to an unshielded part at the rear of the ballista. As soon as the protective field touches the attractor, an electrostatic charge is neutralised, causing the ballista to fire. As soon as the missile strikes the target, the protective inertia field fails, and the singularity evaporates…returns to mortal matter-and-energy state. Explodes.”

  “Why do the inventions of men always turn to purposes of destruction?” Rh’Arrol said from behind.

  “As opposed to the inventions of morrans, which do not exist and can therefore serve no purpose,” Jed retorted. The sun set behind the
ship, the atmosphere blurring the terminator. Over the curve of the planet Jed detected twelve points of electromagnetic energy following her course.

  “They follow! Abaft!”

  She ran down the port corridor to the arsenal. Wolff followed her.

  “I do not see them,” he said as she opened the rear loophole.

  “Fool! If you could see them, we would be captured or dead by now!” Jed seized her bow and some arrows—not the kind she used for hunting, but a heavier sort filled with antimatter explosives. She bit down on conurin, chewed, felt concentration heighten again, and as soon as she nocked the arrow she was at Equilibrium.

  The pursuers were nowhere near as difficult to hunt as chimaera. Jed released the first arrow, and it struck one of them.

  “Did you hit it?” Wolff asked.

  The only evidence of affirmation Jed gave was a quick dip of her head as she fitted the second arrow and singled out another ship, choosing a central one at strategic advantage. She checked and rechecked, but before she could release, synchrotron radiation lanced out from the closest follower, and struck the Shamrock low in the stern. The ship bucked with the impact, and Jed felt the tremor before Wolff pulled her back from the window and slapped his hand down on the loophole panel that sealed the hull. Sequestered from the battle in the gloom of the armoury, Wolff’s arm holding her firmly about the shoulders, Jed felt the deflection field fail momentarily, before coming back on line. That could have been lethal.

  “Is it safe yet?”

  “I think so.” Jed paused. “Your actions were expedient.”

  Wolff let out a hollow laugh. “Is that Archer gratitude?” He relinquished his grasp of her, and she reopened the firing window, taking up position quickly and shooting, this time at the ship that had opened fire on hers.

  Jed let out an angry protest as Wolff appeared beside her, an arrow fitted to one of the spare bows. He held it incorrectly—the bow in one hand and the tail of the arrow in the other, square on to his shoulders so the arrow pointed diagonally from left to right across his chest. When he released it into the deflection field, it ignited askew, and flew away to miss by nearly an hour of arc.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I thought I might hit something.” Wolff leant his head through the gap in the wall to look at the following ships.

  “You hit naught but that within three inches of your nose!”

  Wolff reached for another arrow, but Jed kicked them away. “Cease this wasting of these arrows of mine! If you must hone your worthless aim, use one of the cutting lasers! They at least have magnification detectors!”

  Jed ground more bitter conurin between her teeth, and tried to concentrate over the noise he made in search of the laser. Launching another arrow, she smote a third ship. Wolff moved up beside her, the four-inch aperture and long, cumbersome barrel of the laser balanced on his shoulder. Jed cursed him as he knelt down to lean the weapon through the gap.

  “Shoot over me,” he told her.

  “Get in the way and I shall shoot through you instead.” Now the flotilla was falling behind. The small two-chimaera ships had the upper hand as far as acceleration at low speeds was concerned, but the Shamrock had more stamina once it got up to relativistic velocities, even with a blown-out ion trap.

  One of the pursuers was firing something, and Jed could detect it on the tachyon scanners. Before she was even aware of what she was doing, she was taking aim. The arrow intercepted the unseeable missile mere leagues from the Shamrock’s stern, and it exploded in a flash of blue light that streaked away from them. Wolff yelled out and fired the laser at the blue thing.

  “What was that?” he demanded. “It looked like something hit us and bounced off!”

  “It was a superluminal antimatter missile,” said Jed breathlessly. “What you fired at was the optical illusion of the light of its approach reaching your eyes after the object did. It’s called a reverse ghost.”

  “Superluminal—you mean it was moving faster than light? How d’you hit it?”

  “Instinct.”

  Jed felt the ship’s revelling thrust as its exalted momentum grew, riding ahead as those who had chased it fell back. The greater ship left them far behind and fading, their light redshifting and dwindling away. The thunder of the ship taking the upswing of the light barrier excised their puny race from the scanners.

  “We’re safe now?” Wolff’s gaze remained on the patch of vacuum they’d left for a moment. In the dim light, she felt his fingertips connect with hers, and looking to him she saw his relief. She wondered where her anger had gone. Nothing unites like war, it was said.

  Wolff touched the panel to close the window. “So, it was expedient, was it?”

  “Yes.” Jed realised her breathing had become rapid and ragged between words. “It showed presence of mind I perhaps failed to give you due credit for.”

  Her pulse slowed, the adrenaline of the fight metabolising away. She felt her heart thumping, decelerating, the conurin’s enrichment still fortifying her senses. In her complacency, assurance of her own safety realised, a latent craving stirred within her, and an angry lust, poisoning her reason.

  Jed turned her head away from Wolff and tried to regain control. This irrational feeling was imbalance, disequilibrium, and everything in her training compelled her to restrain it and crush it back with the rest of the emotions that could never be allowed to run amok. However hard she tried, she could not block out the perception of Wolff’s presence behind her, as though the man belittled the whole armoury, and she could not regain her equilibrium.

  “Where has that urchin gone?” she asked, trying to think of anything but this.

  “I don’t care,” Wolff answered. She heard him put down the laser, gently, and Jed leant her bow against the arsenal door. The Shamrock sensed him take a tentative step toward her.

  “I didn’t know I had a mind, let alone that it was present.” Wolff was very close now, and Jed felt his breath. She could see him moving his hand toward her, but a shiver still ran down her back when his fingers touched her arm.

  The noise of his breathing and the smell of him filled her senses, and the plight of this ship and the galaxy through which it fled became insignificant from this intense perspective. She gripped Wolff’s back, his deep-set, grey eyes fixing upon her. He was not an unattractive man, with his strong, symmetrical features and thin, unsmiling mouth.

  Once all the fights in the small, conceited world of some distant ancestor of men, all battles had been for the right to a mate. Jed felt it in herself, and in Wolff, she saw the same ancient victor’s prerogative.

  She wanted to rid herself of this feeling, this fiery, irrational part of Jed she’d never considered, the part that was all visceral emotion and instinct. Never before had she fought like this within herself. This was not Equilibrium.

  The lighting faltered, and the pitch of the Shamrock’s engine rose a fraction in response to her mind’s revolt.

  The cold metal of the bulwark pillar against her back made a stark contrast to Wolff’s fervid warmth as they both fumbled and struggled with an awkward urgency. Lost in the conflict of her own thoughts, the room she’d known all her adult life seemed suddenly alien and unfamiliar, unclear in the heat. All her senses were lensed and focused on his mass against hers, his hot breath on her face and the rub of the stubble on his chin, the press of his lips against her own, the febrile stirring in his loins, and the hot throb of him against her.

  “Stop!” Jed fought to lever his body away from hers. “I can’t do this.”

  “Yes, you can,” Wolff muttered. “Everyone can do it.”

  Jed knew she could stop him if she’d wanted to. The neutron pistol was still holstered at her waist. She could stop him for good. So why didn’t she? She tried to twist her back to ease the pressure of him. “It’s not supposed to feel like this.” This was not what the Code said! Archers didn’t do it. Perhaps Archers couldn’t do it. What if something had been done to her, beyond the
reach of memory, to prevent her from doing it?

  The feeling was like orbiting a star so close, as she had sometimes done, that she could see the seething forms in the photosphere, filtered through the Shamrock’s senses–awe, wonder, intensity, and something that was almost horror. And when he moved, it stimulated every raw sense Jed and the Shamrock were capable of feeling.

  It was with a savage ecstasy, so sharp it was almost an unbearable pain, that she surrendered herself to the conflagration.

  Chapter 10

  Aftermath

  Lost from meaning, and unwhole,

  I hesitate to go forth,

  In the desolation of my soul,

  I cannot find my North.

  Jed awoke trapped under Wolff’s arm, and for a moment she couldn’t think what had happened and she panicked. Then the disgust at the prior events, unmitigated by conurin as it had been at the time, flooded back as horrified recollection.

  She pulled her weight forward on her elbows and tried to move away, but her movements roused him. His arm tensed around her. “Stay,” he pleaded, in a barely audible voice.

  Jed’s back was pressed against his chest, which felt hairy and sweaty. What had she done? He’d...stuck himself up her. They’d come back up on to the bridge, then into the sleeping quarters. What had possessed her? The Code... Mathicur... Steel and Flame!

  She didn’t want to do it, but she had to look, for she could hardly believe she’d done such a thing herself. She twisted her neck to look over her shoulder. The man looked back at her in the gloom of the sleeping quarters, in her own bed. When he saw her face, he shut his eyes and made an expression so full of regret and loss it frightened Jed because it made her think of something she dared not let herself remember.

  She lay back down and pushed her face into the pillow, wishing she could take back what was done, wishing for once that the universe was not of Steel and Flame, that the line connecting cause and consequence could be stretched and broken.