“Fast, please, Ashly,” Joshua datavised. “The Organization ships are only twenty-four minutes away.”

“Gotcha. I’ll have this with Beaulieu in three minutes.” He moved the first of the manipulator’s tools forwards. “Doctor?”

“Yes.”

“Why bother with a specialist carrier vehicle if it can be deployed in an ordinary combat wasp?”

“That carrier vehicle is designed to shoot the Alchemist into a star. Admittedly that’s a large target, but we can’t take starships very close to one. The carrier has to be fully insulated from the star’s heat and radiation, and it also has to be fast enough to avoid interception from combat wasps in the event we were detected. We built it to accelerate up to sixty-five gees.”

Ashly would have liked to have called her bluff. But given their current situation, ignorance and blind faith made life altogether less stressful.

Monica didn’t leave Alkad alone in the EVA preparation compartment, but she did permit her a discreet distance. Two other operatives were with her, ready to inspect the Beezling ’s crew to make sure they brought nothing threatening with them into the Lady Macbeth .

Alkad didn’t really notice the agent’s presence, every aspect of her life had been under continual observation for so long now that intrusion meant nothing. Not even for this most precious occasion.

She anchored herself to a stikpad in front of the airlock hatch, waiting with outwards patience. When she sorted through her feelings she found the rightful edgy anticipation, but perhaps not so much of it as there should have been. Thirty years. Can you really stay in love with someone for that long? Or did I just keep the ideal of love alive? One small illusion of humanity in a personality which deliberately and methodically set about excluding any other form of emotional weakness.

Well enough, there were memories of the good times. Memories of shared ideals. And of course memories of affection, adoration, and intimacy. But shouldn’t real love require the continuing presence of the loved one in order to sustain itself and constantly renew? Has Peter really become nothing more than a concept suborned, just another excuse to retain my commitment?

The doubts tempted her to turn and flee from the moment. In any case, I’m over sixty and he’s still thirty-five. A hand started up towards her face, wanting to fork her hair back or tidy it. Silly. If she was so concerned about her appearance she should have done something about it long ago. Cosmetic packages, hormone gland implants, gene therapy. Except Peter would have hated her resorting to such untruthful indignities.

Alkad forced the delinquent hand down. The LEDs on the airlock’s control processor changed from red to green, and the circular hatch swung back.

Peter Adul was first out, the others had allowed him that civility. His SII suit’s silicon film had withdrawn from his head so she could see all the features she remembered so well. He stared back at her, a frightened smile on his lips. “White hair,” he said gently. “I never imagined that. Lots of things, but never that.”

“It’s not so bad. I imagined much worse happening to you.”

“But it didn’t. And we’re here. And you came to rescue us. After thirty years, you really came back here for us.”

“Of course I did,” she said, abruptly indignant.

Peter grinned wickedly. She laughed back, and launched herself into his arms.

Joshua was accessing the MSV’s external sensors to monitor Ashly’s and Beaulieu’s efforts to integrate the Alchemist with their combat wasp. Ashly was using a waldo arm to edge the device down into the submunitions chamber which the cosmonik had cleared. The Alchemist would fit, but the restraint arms folded around it were causing problems. Beaulieu had already sliced a couple of chunks off the carbotanium struts when they scraped against the chamber walls. This was one incredibly crude kludge-up from start to finish. But it didn’t need excessive sophistication to work, just a secure mounting.

Superimposed across the sensor image were the Lady Mac ’s systems schematics, enabling him to keep a slightly more than cursory eye on their performance. Liol and Sarha were prepping the ship for high acceleration, shutting down all redundant ancillary equipment, cycling fluids back out of weight-vulnerable pipes and into their tanks, bringing the tokamaks up to full capacity so their power would be available for the molecular-binding force generators. Dahybi was running diagnostics through all the zero-tau facilities on board.

By rights the expectancy should have reduced his brain to a small knot of psychoses by now. Instead he had the oldest excuse of being too busy to worry. That and a wonderful burn of pure arrogance. It can work. After all, it was only marginally more crazy than the Lagrange point stunt.

Too bad I’ll never be able to brag about this one in Harkey’s Bar.

Which was actually more of a concern than the manoeuvre itself. I can’t stay in Tranquillity for the rest of my life. I should never have mentioned it to the agents.

He saw Ashly extract the waldo from the combat wasp, leaving the Alchemist behind. Beaulieu reached forwards to hold a hose over the top of the submunitions chamber. A frayed jet of treacly topaz-coloured foam shot out of the nozzle, surging all around the Alchemist. It was a duopoxy sealant, used by the astronautics industry for quick, temporary repairs. The cosmonik moved the nozzle in smooth assured motions, making sure the foam completely encapsulated the Alchemist, cementing it into the combat wasp.

“Ashly, take the MSV around to the main airlock and transfer over in your suit,” Joshua datavised.

“What about the MSV?”

“I’m dumping it here. It was never designed to withstand the kind of acceleration we’ll be undergoing. That makes it a hazard, especially with all the reaction thruster volatiles it has in its tanks.”

“You’re the captain. But what about the spaceplane?”

“I know. You just get back in; we’ve only got sixteen minutes left before the Organization ships get here.”

“Acknowledged, Captain.”

“Liol.”

“Yes, Captain?”

“Jettison the spaceplane, please. Beaulieu, how’s it going?”

“Fine, Captain. I’ve got it covered. The sealant is bonding, should be set in another fifty seconds.”

“Excellent work. Get back inside.” Joshua datavised the flight computer for a secure channel to the combat wasp. The drone came on-line, and he started its launch sequence program. Once its internal processors were operative he loaded in the flight vector he’d formatted. “Doc, it’s time to find out how good you are.”

“I understand, Captain.”

She accessed the processor governing the combat wasp’s chamber which the Alchemist was riding in and used it to datavise a long activation code at the device. It datavised an acknowledgement back to her. The display in Joshua’s mind opened out rapidly to accommodate the new iconic representation: parallel sheets of dark information stacked as high as Heaven. They came alive with interlocking grids of purple and yellow that shone like channelled starfire. Perspective switch, and the sheets were concentric spherical shells, coming alight from the core outwards. Information and energy arranging themselves in a precise, and very specific, pattern.

“It’s working,” Alkad datavised.

“Jesus Christ.” The neurovirtual jewel glimmered at the centre of his brain, complex beyond human comprehension. It was an outrageous irony that something so deliciously intricate and beautiful should be the harbinger of so much destruction. “Okay, Doc, set it for neutronium. I’m launching in twenty seconds—mark.”

•   •   •

Lady Mac ’s spaceplane had risen up out of her hangar as thermo-dump panels and sensor cluster booms shrank back the other way. Ashly caught one last glimpse of it as he swept down into the airlock. The circular docking ring clamped around its nose cone had just disengaged, allowing it to drift free, then Beaulieu’s shiny brass silhouette occluded the airlock hatch behind him, and that was the end of it.