“When?”

“In a few days.”

“Does starship have the power to kill elemental cloud? Tyrathca scared of cloud over rivers. We cannot defeat it.”

“No,” Reza said forlornly. “The starship can’t kill the cloud.” Especially if Shaun Wallace is telling the truth. The thought was one he had been firmly suppressing. The implications were too frightening. Just how would we actually go about fighting them?

The Tyrathca let out a clamorous hoot, almost a wail. “Cloud will come here. Cloud will devour us; breeders, children, vassals. All.”

“You could leave,” Kelly said. “Keep ahead of the cloud.”

“Nowhere is ahead of the cloud for long.”

“What are you doing here?” she asked, raising her arm to point at the park, the congregation of breeders. “What is that structure you have built?

“We are not strong. We have no elemental s among us. Only one can now save us from elemental humans. We call to our Sleeping God. We show our belief by our homage. We call and call, but the Sleeping God does not yet awake.”

“I didn’t know you had a God.”

“The family of Sireth-AFL is a custodian of the memory from the days of voyage on flightship Tanjuntic-RI. He shared the memory with us all after attack by elemental humans. Now we are united in prayer. The Sleeping God is our hope for salvation from elemental humans. We build its idol to show our faith.”

“This is it?” she asked. “This is what the Sleeping God looks like?”

“Yes. This is the memory of shape. This is our Sleeping God.”

“You mean the Tyrathca on the Tanjuntic-RI actually saw a God?”

“No. Another flightship passed the Sleeping God. Not Tanjuntic-RI.”

“The Sleeping God was in space, then?”

“Why you want to know?”

“I want to know if the Sleeping God can save us from the elemental s,” she said smoothly. “Or will it only help Tyrathca?” Christ, this was beautiful, the story to end all stories; human dead and secrets the Tyrathca had kept since before Earth’s ice age. How long had their arkships been in flight? Thousands of years at least.

“It will help us because we ask,” Waboto-YAU said.

“Do your legends specifically say it will return to save you?”

“Not legend!” the breeder hooted angrily. “Truth. Humans have legends. Humans lie. Humans become elemental . The Sleeping God is stronger than your race. Stronger than all living things.”

“Why do you call it “ ‘Sleeping’?”

“Tyrathca say what is. Humans lie.”

“So it was Sleeping when your flightship found it?”

“Yes.”

“Then how do you know it is strong enough to ward off the elemental s?”

“Kelly!” Reza said with edgy vexation.

Waboto-YAU hooted again. The soldiers shifted restlessly in response, eyes boring into the obsessed reporter.

“Sleeping God strong. Humans will learn. Humans must not become elemental . Sleeping God will awaken. Sleeping God will avenge all Tyrathca suffering.”

“Kelly, shut up, now. That’s an order,” Reza datavised when he saw her gathering herself for more questions. “Thank you for telling us of the Sleeping God,” he said to Waboto-YAU.

Kelly fumed in moody silence.

“Sleeping God dreams of the universe,” the breeder said. “All that happens is known to it. It will hear our call. It will answer. It will come.”

“The human elementals may attack you again,” Reza warned. “Before the Sleeping God arrives.”

“We know. We pray hard.” Waboto-YAU twittered mournfully, head swinging round to gaze at the disk. “Now you have heard the fate of Coastuc-RT. Are you able to assist soldier caste in defence?”

“No.” Reza heard Kelly’s hissed intake of breath. “Our weapons are not as powerful as those of your soldiers. We cannot assist in your defence.”

“Then go.”

Vast tracts of electric, electromagnetic, and magnetic energy seethed and sparked across a roughly circular section in the outermost band of Murora’s rings, eight thousand kilometres in diameter. Dust, held so long in equilibrium, exploited its liberation to squall in microburst vortices around the solid imperturbable boulders and jagged icebergs which made up the bulk of the ring, their gyrations mirroring the rowdy cloudscape a hundred and seventy thousand kilometres below. The epicentre, where the Lady Macbeth had plunged into the drive-fomented particles, was still glowing a nervous blue as brumal waves of static washed through the thinning molecular zephyr of vaporized rock and ice.

The total energy input from the starship’s fusion drives and the multiple combat-wasp explosions was taking a long time to disperse. Their full effect would take months if not years to sink back to normality. Thermally and electromagnetically, the rippling circle was the equivalent of an Arctic whiteout to any probing sensors.

It meant the Maranta and the Gramine knew little of what was going on below the surface. They kept station ten kilometres above the fuzzy boundary where boulders and ice gave way first to pebbles and then finally dust; all sensor clusters extended, focused on the disquieted strata of particles under their hulls. For the first couple of kilometres the image was sharp and reasonably clear, below that it slowly disintegrated until at seven kilometres there was nothing but a sheet of electronic slush.

The possessed who commanded the starships now had started their search right at the heart, the exact coordinate where Lady Macbeth had entered. Then Maranta had manoeuvred into an orbit five kilometres lower, while the Gramine had raised its altitude by a similar amount. They slowly drifted apart, Maranta edging ahead of the phosphorescent blue splash, Gramine falling behind.

There had been no sign of their prey. Nor any proof to confirm the Lady Macbeth had survived her impact with the rings. No wreckage had been detected. Although it was a slim chance any ever would. If she had detonated when she hit, the blowout of her drive tubes’ escaping plasma would probably have vaporized most of her. And any fragments which did survive would have been flung over a huge area. The ring was eighty kilometres thick, enough volume to lose an entire squadron in.

They were further hindered by the way their energistically charged bodies interfered with on-board systems. Sensors already labouring at the limit of their resolution to try and unscramble the chaos suffered infuriating glitches and power surges, producing gaps in the overall coverage.

But the crews persevered. Debris was virtually impossible to locate, but an operating starship emitted heat, and electromagnetic impulses, and a strong magnetic flux. If she was there, they would find her eventually.

The soldier-caste vassals stayed with them until the hovercraft reached the top of the Coastuc-RT’s valley. More tumid rain-clouds were approaching fast from the east, borne by the obdurate breeze. Reza judged they should just about reach the other hovercraft by the time they arrived. Both land and sky ahead were grey. Northwards, the red cloud cast a dispiriting corona, looking for all the world as though magma was floating, light as thistledown, through the air.

“But why ?” Kelly demanded as soon as the soldiers were left behind. “You saw how well armed they were, we would have been safe there.”

“Firstly, Coastuc-RT is too close to the Juliffe basin. As your friend Shaun Wallace said, the cloud is spreading. It would reach the valley long before Joshua gets back. Secondly, that valley is tactical suicide. Anyone who gets onto the high ground above the village can simply bombard it into submission, or more likely destruction. There aren’t enough soldier and hunter vassals to keep the slopes clear. Right now Coastuc-RT is wide open to anything the possessed care to throw at it. And all the Tyrathca are doing to defend themselves is building giant effigies of spacegods and having a pray-in. We don’t need that kind of shit. By ourselves we stand a much better chance; we’re mobile and well armed. So tomorrow at first light we start doing exactly what Joshua said: we run for it, through the mountains.”