The Consuming Fire (The Interdependency)

by John Scalzi

  “It’s a lot to suppose on,” Gamis said.

  “But it’s not a bad supposition,” Marce said. “If the engines are damaged, then the Bransid got some hits in. They’re limping home.”

  “But they are still planning to go home,” Hanton said. “Which means their field generator is still functional.”

  “As long as their engines don’t give out,” Sherrill said. “In which case they won’t have power for the field generator.”

  “Monsieur Chenevert,” Marce said, turning to the apparition.

  Who smiled. “I was wondering when you would remember I was here, Lord Marce.”

  “Can we overtake this ship?”

  “Their path takes them past Dalasýsla Prime. If we stay where we are, we’ll be behind the planet when that happens. But of course there’s no reason we have to stay where we are now. The Auvergne’s engines and power systems are fully functional at this point.” Chenevert nodded toward the command screen, which blanked out, surprising Hanton, and then reappeared with a new image, charting an intercept course.

  “If they don’t accelerate, we can intercept them in ten hours,” Chenevert said. “If they do accelerate, that changes things, but if their specs are similar to what you’ve given me for the Bransid, then we intercept them in eighteen hours at the latest. Well before they reach the Flow shoal.”

  “And then we blast the shit out of them,” Gamis said. “Do what they did to the Bransid.”

  Chenevert looked over to Marce. “Is that your intention, Lord Marce?”

  “No,” Marce said.

  “What?” Gamis was pissed at this. “These fuckers just killed our crew, sir. Returning the favor seems just about fair.”

  Marce shook his head. “Dead isn’t useful.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Marce looked over to Chenevert. “But you do, I hope.”

  “I think I do, Lord Marce,” Chenevert said.

  “Can it be managed?”

  “It depends on what shape their ship is in and what I can figure out about it from my scans and visualizations. I have to warn you that means we’ll have to get close.”

  “Define ‘close.’”

  “You won’t like it if I do.”

  * * *

  “I think they know we’re here,” Hanton said as the ship launched a pair of missiles at the Auvergne a thousand klicks out.

  Sherrill looked at the visualization of the missiles from the Auvergne’s sensors as they streaked toward them. “Those look like beehives,” she said. “They’ve got multiple warheads in them. They’ll break open just before they hit.”

  “That’s rude,” Chenevert said, and waited for the missiles to get within a hundred klicks before lancing them with his beam weapons. They vaporized soundlessly in the void.

  “Your beams are coherent a hundred klicks out,” Hanton said.

  “That’s what I want this other ship to believe, yes,” he said. “I don’t expect that our friends in that ship launched those missiles with the belief that they were going to hit us with them. They wanted to know how and when we would respond. And now they think they know.”

  “You’ve done this before.”

  “I told you that I’ve had practice being chased.”

  “How far out are they actually effective?” Marce asked.

  “Not this far,” Chenevert said. He popped up a visualization of the ship they were pursuing on the command screen. From slightly less than a thousand kilometers away, the ship was a mostly indistinct wedge. The Auvergne was coming at it from an above angle, relative to Dalasýsla system’s ecliptic plane. Death from above, thought Marce.

  “Any thoughts on this ship?” Chenevert asked.

  “It looks like a Farthing-class ship,” Sherrill said, after a minute.

  “I’m afraid that means nothing to me,” Chenevert said.

  “It’s an interceptor ship,” Sherrill said. “Small crew, fast, relatively heavily armed. It’s designed to engage pirate and smuggler ships. And by ‘engage’ I mean destroy.”

  “So there’s no doubt what it was here to do,” Marce said.

  “I think we already have the answer to that. Funny thing, when these ships are decommissioned, a lot of them get bought by pirate sorts. I think the reasoning there is they can outrun or fight the navy ships sent after them.”

  “Does that work?” Chenevert asked.

  “The navy just sends bigger ships.”

  “More missiles,” Hanton said.

  This time the beehives launched their payloads early and one of the smaller missiles got within ten clicks of the Auvergne before Chenevert destroyed it.

  “You’re still toying with them, right?” Gamis asked.

  “If it makes you more comfortable if I say yes, then yes,” Chenevert said.

  “It doesn’t when you put it like that.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  When the Auvergne was two hundred klicks out the ship hit them with its own particle beams. They were on the Auvergne for a full tenth of a second before they were gone, and small puffs of debris were visible coming off the attacking ship.

  “Oh, nice,” said Gamis.

  “What just happened?” Marce asked Chenevert.

  “I was waiting for the ship to open fire to confirm which features on the ship were the beam weapons. Once I knew, I took them out. And then also took out every other feature on the visible portion of the ship that resembled the beam weapons. Just to be safe.”

  “More missiles,” Hanton said, pointing at the command screen.

  “Mind you, that doesn’t get rid of every defense they have,” Chenevert said. “Excuse me for a moment.”

  Fifty klicks out and small details of the ship were clear to Marce and the rest of the crew on the command screen.

  “Are we close enough?” Marce asked.

  “Almost,” Chenevert said.

  Forty klicks.

  “Anytime,” Marce said.

  “Getting there.”

  Thirty klicks, and the ship was visibly growing in the command screen without magnification.

  “I’m getting a little nervous,” Marce said.

  “Soon,” Chenevert said.

  “Missiles,” Hanton said.

  “That was nervy,” Chenevert said, a second later. There was a tinkling sound as the debris of one of the missiles collided with the Auvergne.

  Ten klicks.

  “Now,” Chenevert said, and fired his beam, not at the engine itself, but at a small area up and to the right of it on the hull. The beam bored a hole into the hull, and lanced at the inside of the ship. Air and steam and a small amount of debris vomited out. Marce heard a thrumming inside Auvergne, a sign of adjustments being made so the Auvergne would be stationary relative to the other ship and not ram into it, destroying them both.

  “That’s it?” Gamis asked.

  “That’s enough,” Chenevert said, and turned to Marce. “I needed to get close enough to get an idea of how energy routed through the ship,” he said. “We assumed the engine was already damaged, so I didn’t want to risk that. I sent the beam through what looked like a central energy exchange route. My guess is that it stops functioning, and the engines and power systems shut down to avoid an explosion, until it’s repaired.”

  “How long until it’s repaired?” Marce asked.

  “Well, I destroyed it, so, never. At this point I assume they are running ship systems on their emergency power setup.”

  “That’s enough to keep them alive for now, but not enough to run their field generator,” Sherrill said. “If they go through the Flow shoal without a space-time bubble they’re screwed.”

  “They’re still on a glide path into the Flow shoal,” Hanton said. “They’ll hit it in nine hours, fifteen minutes.”

  “What do we do now?” Gamis said.

  “Have a protein bar and wait for their call,” Marce said.

  * * *

  The call came four hours ahead of the shoal.
<
br />   “Unidentified ship, this is The Princess Is in Another Castle,” the voice said, over the radio connection. Hanton had given Chenevert the frequencies that were most likely to be used for communication, and Chenevert had set the Auvergne the task of cycling through them until something came through. “Captain Cav Ponsood speaking. Please respond.”

  “Hello, Princess,” Marce said. “This is the Auvergne. Lord Marce Claremont here.”

  There was a long pause. “You said Lord Marce Claremont.”

  “That’s right.”

  There was an even longer pause this time.

  “What the hell?” Gamis said.

  “Lord Marce, you have disabled our ship and we are adrift,” Ponsood said when he returned. “We are without main power, and our emergency power is drawing down.”

  “Acknowledged,” Marce said. “Also, your current path takes you directly into the Flow shoal in”—he looked at the command screen, where Chenevert had helpfully set a timer—“three hours, fifty-two minutes. Please be advised that if you enter the shoal in your present condition, without your field generator, you will be instantly rendered into nothingness.”

  “Uh, yes,” Ponsood said. “We are aware of that information, and thank you for that.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “Lord Marce, it has come to our attention that despite disabling our ship, you have not elected to destroy us.”

  “That is correct, Captain Ponsood.”

  “We are wondering what your intentions are now, Lord Marce.”

  “Well, Captain, the answer to that rests entirely on you.”

  “Please explain.”

  “Why did you destroy the Oliveer Bransid?”

  “We were hired to.”

  “Who hired you?”

  “I don’t know. We were hired by intermediaries who wouldn’t tell me the identity of the primary contractor. I, uh, work in a very specialized contracted business field. I don’t always know who is hiring me.”

  “Thank you, Captain Ponsood. Enjoy oblivion.” Marce looked over to Chenevert, who nodded.

  “The circuit is muted on this end,” he said.

  “You think he’s lying about who contracted him,” Sherrill said.

  Marce nodded. “We’ll find out soon enough.”

  Five minutes later Ponsood was back on the circuit, asking for Marce. Marce nodded to Chenevert, who opened up the circuit. “Yes?”

  “Lord Marce, we were hired by an intermediary. A representative of the Wu family.”

  Marce frowned at this. “You were hired by the imperial family?”

  “No, not by the royal family. By the Wus that run the merchant house. Cousins of the emperox.”

  “Who were the Wus acting as an intermediary for?”

  “I asked that of the representative. I’ve done business with the Wus before—it’s why they contacted me in the first place—but never with them as the intermediary. They were always the primary client. Their representative didn’t want to say, but I told him there was no way I would take the job without knowing. The job was time-sensitive and the Wus didn’t really have any other option, so the rep swore me to secrecy and told me: the Countess Nohamapetan.”

  “How did the Nohamapetans know about the Bransid in the first place?”

  “She heard about it from the Wus. The Wus heard it from an admiral, is what I was told. The navy is obviously close with the Wus. They get all their weapons and ships from them.”

  “That doesn’t make sense. The Wus aren’t close with the Nohamapetans.”

  “I don’t know the relationships of the great families, Lord Marce. I don’t have time to keep up with gossip. You asked who contracted me, and I’m telling you.”

  “Okay, but why would the Countess Nohamapetan want to attack the Bransid?”

  “She didn’t,” Ponsood said, and an exasperated Marce was about to mute the line again, but Ponsood continued from there. “She didn’t care about the ship one way or the other. It was a means to an end for her actual target.”

  “Who or what was that?”

  There was a pause on the line. Then, “It was you, Lord Marce. The Countess Nohamapetan wanted you dead bad enough to send us to attack the Bransid to get to you.”

  Marce stared in disbelief. He looked around the bridge of the Auvergne to see every other set of eyes on him.

  “Hello?” Ponsood said. Marce had been silent for nearly a full minute.

  “Why?” Marce asked.

  “I wasn’t told that. Just that we were to make sure you were dead. I asked if that meant I could leave the Bransid crew alive if they surrendered you, and I was told that the Bransid could not be allowed to return to Hub, and I had a choice of destroying it, or destroying its field generator. That would have meant marooning the crew here to a slow death by starvation or suffocation. I opted for the faster way. It seemed more humane to me. You should know, Lord Marce, that the Bransid put up a hell of a fight. You wouldn’t have captured us without the damage they did to us first.”

  “And the Dalasýslans?”

  “The who, Lord Marce?”

  “The people who inhabit this system, Captain.”

  “I don’t know who you’re talking about, sir. I was focused on the Bransid, which was keeping me busy enough. Are you saying that there are still people alive here? After eight hundred years?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s just as well I didn’t know about them. It wouldn’t have done to leave anyone who could attest to what we did here.”

  “Except for the one person you came specifically to kill.”

  “The irony of this does not escape me, Lord Marce. I’m telling you because I have no other choice. Neither I nor my crew wants to die here, or like this.”

  “You’re asking me to give you an option that you wouldn’t give to the crew of the Bransid.”

  “Lord Marce, if I didn’t believe you would entertain the option, I wouldn’t have opened my mouth.”

  “Hold on,” Marce said, and looked at Chenevert, who nodded and muted the connection. Marce sat down heavily in a chair, put his face in his hands, and sobbed.

  “It’s—” Hanton began, but Marce held up a hand at him. Hanton stopped and looked uncomfortable. It was a common look around the room.

  After a minute Marce nodded to Chenevert, who opened the connection again. “You’re going to testify about all of this, Captain Ponsood.”

  “If that is what it takes to keep my crew alive, Lord Marce, I’ll repeat everything I told you to any judge you pick.”

  “You’re not going to tell it to a judge, Captain. You’re going to tell it to the emperox. To her face. And I will be there as you do it.”

  There was a long silence. Then, “Understood, Lord Marce. With that said, I officially surrender the Princess to you. You are in command now.”

  Marce nodded, then realized that Ponsood would not be able to see that over an audio connection. “Thank you, Captain. My associate Mr. Chenevert will be discussing with you soon all the details of transferring yourselves over to the Auvergne. Be ready.”

  “I will. The sooner, the better.”

  “Understood.” Marce nodded to Chenevert. “You can handle that?”

  “I’m already talking to Captain Ponsood about it.”

  Marce was momentarily confused about this until he remembered that Chenevert was a virtual being. He supposed a virtual being could make as many versions of himself as he wanted. He nodded his understanding.

  “Is there anything specific we want brought over from the Princess?” Chenevert asked. “Aside from the crew, of which I am informed there are seven.”

  “Small crew,” Sherrill said.

  “Ours is smaller.”

  “I want as many of their ship’s records as possible,” Marce said. “Plus any evidence Ponsood has for contracting with the Wus.”

  “I’m guessing this was a cash enterprise,” Gamis said.

  “It probably was, but I still want as much
evidence as I can get.”

  “We need as much food as they can bring over,” Gamis said to Chenevert. “Everything they have. I’m already sick of protein bars.”

  “Is there any way we can salvage that ship?” Marce said. “The Dalasýslans could probably scavenge everything from that.”

  “Captain Ponsood tells me the Princess has a small shuttle, which they will use to transport themselves and food over,” Chenevert said. “Depending how much time we take bringing things over, and whether it’s remotely pilotable, I can probably use it to nudge the Princess out of the path of the Flow shoal. Note it will likely damage both the shuttle and the Princess.”

  “Better than nothing.”

  “Quite literally in this case,” Chenevert agreed. “If after that time the shuttle is not too damaged, then I will see if I can program it to push the Princess along to the Dalasýslans. Then they can salvage both ships.”

  “I want to leave them the Bransid shuttle as well,” Marce said. “No place for it here anyway. I don’t want to leave it parked over Dalasýsla Prime.”

  “We have to go back and get Seve and Lyton,” Sherrill said. “We can’t leave them here.”

  “I can program our shuttle to fly itself to the Dalasýslans’ ship,” Hanton said. “Then pick up Seve and Lyton and the data from the Bransid, and back through the shoal to Hub.”

  “If the Wus knew where the Bransid was, then they know there’s a possibility of it coming back,” Sherrill said. “The Bransid could have fought off the Princess.”

  “So you think they’ll have someone waiting for us on the other end of the shoal,” Marce said.

  “I would,” Sherrill said. “If I were them.”

  “We’re not going to be in the Bransid,” Gamis said.

  “No, but we’ll be coming through the Flow shoal from Dalasýsla,” Sherrill said. “If I were them I’d be blasting anything that came through that, including the Princess. The fewer witnesses the better.”

  Marce thought about that and turned to Chenevert. “Ask Captain Ponsood if he has any message drones.”

  “He does,” Chenevert said a moment later. “He says they intended to send one after the Bransid was destroyed but forgot because they were too busy trying to get the ship to the Flow shoal and then fighting us off.”