His distortion field billowed out, probing the xenoc structure. It also clashed with another distortion field.

What are you doing here?Oenone asked.

Same thing as you.he found the voidhawk, three thousand kilometres away. It was next to a large hollow cylinder, a habitation station of some kind. There was another Confederation ship close by. When he focused his optical senses in their direction he saw a small glimmer of sunlight erupting through the disk directly behind them.

He quickly altered his distortion field, opening another wormhole interstice. This time he came out a hundred kilometres from the voidhawk. Red sunlight washed over his leathery scale-like feathers, and he looked down curiously at the tear in the disk. Its melted edges were radiating strongly in the infrared. The mountainous heat exchangers surrounding it were operating at their upper limit, trying to radiate away the immense thermal load imposed by overheated tubes.

“I’d say the Adamist ship used its antimatter drive to push the cylinder clear of the disk,” he told Kiera. “Nothing else could cause that kind of damage.”

“Which means they consider it important,” she said.

“I don’t see why. It’s inhabited, and very fragile. It can’t be a weapon.” His distortion field caught flocks of small chemically fuelled missiles flitting among the sharp, hot cones bristling out of the darkside. Lasers shot at them, blowing them apart in mid-flight. Over thirty radar beams from all sections of the disk were sweeping across him. One of the missiles plunged down among the heat exchange mountains, exploding. Atmospheric gas puffed out into space from the tube it shattered. “And there’s some kind of war being fought down there. Widespread by the look of it.”

“They flew all the way round the Orion Nebula, and when they get here they rip that cylinder out of a war zone,” Kiera said.

“All right, it’s important.”

“Which means it’s bad for us. Minimize your energistic effect, please.”

The hellhawk’s shape rippled back to its natural profile.

Kiera’s fingers typed quickly over the weapons console. Targeting sensors locked on to the cylinder.

Disengage your weapons, now,Oenone ordered.

Etchells let Kiera hear the affinity voice, routing it through one of the AV pillars on the bridge.

“Why?” she asked. “What’s in there?”

Several thousand unarmed Tyrathca. You would be committing butchery.

“What do you care? In fact, why are you here?”

To help.

“Very noble. And total bollocks.”

Do not fire,Oenone appealed to Etchells. We will defend the cylinder.

That cylinder contains the means to destroy me,etchells replied. I’m quite sure of that.

We are not barbarians. Physical destruction solves nothing.

Kiera fired four combat wasps at the cylinder.

The response from Oenone and Lady Macbeth was instant. Fifteen combat wasps launched on interception trajectories, scattering submunitions. Lady Macbeth ’s defence masers speared the incoming drones as their submunitions ejected. Two hundred and fifty fusion bombs detonated in the space of three seconds. Some pumped gamma lasers, but most were missile warheads.

Joshua absorbed the burst of sensor data disgorged by the tactical program, desperate for an overview. Visual sensors were useless against the blaze of destruction, but none of the attacking combat wasps electronic warfare submunitions had targeted Lady Mac —strangely negligent programming. The starship’s sensors stared into the heart of the mayhem, filtering out the atomic and electromagnetic interference. Three small kinetic impacts registered against the cylinder, along with several beam strikes. But the structure remained intact.

“Sarha, kill the bastard,” he ordered.

Five masers fired at the hellhawk. It rolled quickly and accelerated at seven gees, trying to break free from the energy strike.

Joshua fired another five combat wasps, programming them for defence minefield deployment. Their drives flared briefly, and submunitions swarmed out, forming a wide protective cluster around Lalarin-MG. If the hellhawk was serious about attacking a target outside a gravity field, its strategy would be to swallow in as close as possible, under a kilometre usually, and fire off a combat wasp salvo. Unless the target had an extensive array of SD lasers, some submunitions were bound to get through. The minefield ought to act as a temporary deterrence.

The hellhawk swallowed away.

“Syrinx, where the hell did it go?” Joshua asked.

“Standing off, two thousand kilometres.”

Oenone used the link with Lady Mac ’s flight computer to datavise the coordinate over. Sensors locked on, showing the hellhawk holding station.

“They’ve got very strange ideas about tactics,” Joshua said. “Oski, how much longer?”

“Half an hour at least, Captain. I’ve identified probable storage areas for the almanac; none of them are active.”

“Joshua, I’m not sure the cylinder can take another attack like that,” Ione said. The serjeant mediating with Baulona-PWM and Quantook-LOU had been flung to its knees when the first chunk of shrapnel punctured the cylinder shell. A small fireball had erupted out of a tower barely a hundred yards away. The plaza shook violently as the tower disintegrated, showering the area with smoking fragments of metal and burning vegetation. When she scanned round, she saw a dozen violet contrails crisscrossing through the air, molecules fluorescing from the gamma laser shots. Two had burned holes through the Sleeping God effigy. Her sensors hurriedly tracked along the axial gantry, but it hadn’t been hit.

An automated truck trundled across the plaza, heading for the wrecked tower. Air was wailing as it was sucked down through the puncture hole. Hydraulic arms unfolded from the rear of the truck, carrying a thick metal plate. It was lowered over the hole, clanging into place. Thick brown sludge was sprayed out of a nozzle, smothering the plate. It solidified quickly, completing the seal.

“The Mosdva attack again,” Baulona-PWM said.

Ione thought the breeder was going to strike Quantook-LOU.

“They didn’t,” she said quickly. “That was a human ship. It’s from a dominion we are not allied with. The Lady Macbeth has fought it off.”

“Do humans have dominions?” Quantook-LOU asked. “You did not tell us this.”

“We didn’t expect them to be here.”

“Why are they here? Why have they attacked us?”

“They do not agree that Tyrathca and Mosdva should be given the faster-than-light drive. We must complete this agreement and recover the data. Then they will be unable to prevent the exchange.”

“My family is working hard,” Baulona-PWM said. “We keep our agreement with you, allowing you to mediate.”

“And we will keep the agreement that you will be unharmed. Come now, we were deciding the message that is to be sent to other diskcity dominions.” She switched back to the general communication link. “You have to get us more time.”

“We’ll see to it,” Syrinx assured her. “Joshua, hold the fort here.”

“Acknowledged.” Lady Mac ’s gravitonic distortion detectors showed him the voidhawk opening a wormhole interstice.

Oenone emerged fifty kilometres from the Stryla. Syrinx was expecting the hellhawk to fire its lasers at them straight away. That it didn’t, she took as an encouraging sign.

I’m here to talk,she said.

And I’m here to survive,etchells replied. We know you’re here to find something you can use against us. I won’t let that happen.

Nothing will be used against you. We are trying to resolve this to everyone’s benefit.

I lack your optimism.

The hellhawk launched two combat wasps.