“I’m taking us in,” Joshua said. “Beaulieu, start saturating the knot.”

“Aye, Captain.”

The cosmonik switched the maser cannons to wide-angle dispersal and began hosing the microwave energy around inside the crater. It wasn’t powerful enough to damage the structure any further, but it would be lethal to any of the Mosdva creeping round inside the knot.

Joshua rolled Lady Mac and started to edge her down into the crater. He used the forward lasers to slice through the tubes and wreckage at the bottom. Sections began to drift free, vapour from their molten ends blowing them away gently. Chemical verniers fired around the starship’s equator, moving it deeper into the crater.

Oenone slipped out of its wormhole terminus thirty kilometres above the knot’s darkside. The Edenists in the life-support toroid were all borrowing its sensor blisters, looking out in admiration at the monumental diskcity. Syrinx shared a smile with Ruben, their minds cherishing the vista together. Little bursts of excitement wafted around the mental embrace which pervaded the bridge as new facets of the xenoc construction were noticed and cherished. None of the ELINT coverage compared to actually being here.

The tall pinnacles of thermal radiators glowed a steady orange in the voidhawk’s senses. It could feel the broad fans of heat they gave off, slucing away through space towards the distant nebula. In the visual spectrum, Tojolt-HI was almost black. The exception came from the area where the sunscoop had attacked. Foil sheets had either been torn free or disintegrated, allowing sharp beams of intense red light to steal through the cluttered webs.

If Wing-Tsit Chong and the therapists could see me now,syrinx said contentedly.

They don’t need to,ruben said. They know they did their job properly.

Yes, but it still galled when they said it. Just a timid tourist, indeed!

I am glad we came,Oenone said. Everything here is fresh, but old at the same time. I feel Tojolt-HI has a dependability about it.

I know what you mean,she told the enchanted voidhawk. Anything that has such a long past must surely have an equally long future ahead of it.

It did have until we arrived,ruben said.

You’re wrong. The Mosdva can’t abandon it, nor any of the others. Ashly is right, ZTT won’t give them that option. But maybe we’ll see change. Progress will begin again. I prefer to think of that as being our legacy. And who knows what they will achieve with fresh resources and new technologies.

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

You’re right.the briefest glimmer of regret appeared amid her thoughts.

I’m picking up considerable radar activity above this side of the diskcity,edwin said. I think our countermeasures are deflecting them.

Thank you,syrinx said. Nothing we can do about visual acquisition, I’m afraid. And we’re silhouetted against the nebula for all Tojolt-HI to see. Serina, have you acquired the trains?

Got them.

Cut the rails.

Five lasers stabbed out from the weapons pods clamped in Oenone ’s lower hull groove. They slashed through the rail tracks meandering across the darkside’s huge thermal radiators. Serina waited until the trains had halted, then used the lasers to chop the rail behind them.

Immobilised,she said. They can’t invade Lalarin-MG now.

They’d be pretty stupid to try,edwin said. Our electronic sensors are picking up the Lady Macbeth ’s microwave emissions from here. They’re powerful enough to leak through the knot.

Let’s go give him a hand,syrinx told Oenone .

The voidhawk darted in towards the diskcity. They came to rest directly over the knot. Oenone ’s distortion field undulated through the damaged tubes and struts, allowing the Edenists to examine its anatomy. The remaining scraps of asteroid rock in the knot’s central cavern were dark zones, their mass exerting a minuscule gravity field against space time. Next to them, the cylinder rotated slowly, its thin shell nothing more than a murky shadow to the voidhawk’s perception. Power circuits formed a grid of fuzzy violet lines permeating the whole edifice as the electron flows emitted their unique signature. The greatest concentration of energy was swirling around the magnetic bearings at each hub. Small instabilities flickered within the translucent folds, tarnishing the emissions. Barely fifty metres past the far end of the cylinder, Lady Macbeth appeared as a bright, dense twist in space-time.

“Got it, Joshua,” Syrinx said over the general communication link. “The cylinder masses approximately one-point-one-three million tonnes.”

“Excellent. That’s no problem. With the antimatter drive, Lady Mac can hit forty gees, and we mass just over five thousand tonnes. That should give us nearly a fifth of a gee thrust.”

“All right, we’ll start cutting.”

Ruben, Oxley, and Serina all issued instructions to the bitek processors governing the weapons pods. Eighteen lasers fired from the voidhawk’s lower fuselage, and under the crew’s directions began cutting through the tubes at the top of the knot.

Lady Mac ’s sensors could now focus on Lalarin-MG itself. Her lasers had scythed their way through the tangle of tubes and struts, clearing a broad passage which Joshua had steered the starship along. Hot segments of tube twirled away into the main cavity, bouncing against the metallic cylinder shell and the black lumps of rock. Light was filtering in for the first time in a hundred centuries. Trickles of red sunlight slipped past Lady Mac ’s fuselage, complemented by sizzling scarlet flashes of the lasers.

“How’s it going in there, Ione?” Joshua asked.

“We’re ready. Rotating airlocks are closed and sealed. I even got Baulona-PWM to find some padding for the Mosdva to lie on.”

“Okay, stand by.” The sensors were showing him the cylinder’s hub with its big circular bearing dead ahead. He cut the last tube free, exposing the airlock chamber, and fired the ion thrusters to spin Lady Mac , matching her rotation to the cylinder. The starship’s forward fuselage section moved into the bearing, crushing the jagged remnants of the tube. “Sarha?”

“I’ve got the molecular binding force generators on maximum.”

“Take the CAB safety limiters off line. Pump them higher. I want all the strength we’ve got in the stress structure.”

“You’ve got it.”

“We’ve cut this end free,” Syrinx said. “You’re clear.”

“Okay everyone, stand by.” Joshua fired the fusion drives, keeping their thrust to an easy one gee. Lady Mac pressed forward, compressing the remnants of the airlock chamber in towards the cylinder shell. The rim of the bearing pierced the starship’s protective foam until it was touching the fuselage.

“We’re solid,” Liol declared.

Joshua increased the fusion drive thrust. Three strands of blue-white plasma stabbed back out through the crater, twining together. Tubes and struts facing the ultraheated torrent of ions began to boil furiously, sending out twisters of gas.

“Stress structure’s holding,” Sarha said. The sound of the drive tubes was vibrating through the life support capsules, a muffled drone. She’d never heard that before.

“It’s moving,” Beaulieu called out. “Accelerating at four per cent of a gee.”

“Okay, here we go,” Joshua said. He activated the antimatter drive.

Hydrogen and anti-hydrogen collided and obliterated each other within the engine’s complex focusing field. A shaft of pure energy burst into existence behind the starship, as if a flaw in space-time had cracked open. Two hundred thousand tonnes of thrust started to push Lalarin-MG out of its rapidly dissolving chrysalis.