‘Thank you, Colonel Kalinski—’

And suddenly Earthshine was here. Standing in the cabin before them. He was tall, urbane, wearing a suit that was not unlike Brikanti garb, Mardina thought, but was too smart, sharp – too finely made – and his shoes were polished leather. He wore a brooch on one lapel, a bit of carved stone at which Ari stared greedily.

It had to be him. Mardina had never seen him before but she knew of no other being with such powers of projection. Yet there was an air of unreality about him, a translucence, a hint of an inner golden glow. When he smiled, even his teeth shone faintly golden.

Still, this was an intrusion into a military vessel. Eilidh reached for a weapon.

Ari Guthfrithson called out sharply, ‘Be calm! This is not real. He is an image – like a reflection in a mirror. And he can no more harm you than could such a reflection.’

Penny glared. ‘Well, don’t try your tricks on me, you chimera. How are you doing this? This craft doesn’t have the technological substrate to support virtual reality.’ She used the English phrase.

‘But I do,’ the ColU said mournfully from his satchel, which Chu held to his chest. ‘I received a signal from the ground, a request for interfacing, transmission capacity. I would have warned you all—’

‘But I overrode you, didn’t I?’ Earthshine said. ‘You are just a farm robot after all. Well, not even that any more. Whereas I, you see, am in control of the situation. As always.’

‘No,’ said Penny Kalinski. ‘You can’t grab hold of this ship, can you? Because it’s too primitive for your interfaces.’

‘I could shoot you down in an instant.’

‘But you won’t,’ Ari said. ‘Because she’s on board.’ He gestured at Beth; Mardina’s mother, as so often when challenged like this, was shut in on herself, angry, resentful. ‘And her – Mardina, your great-granddaughter.’

‘You seek to manipulate me, in your crude ways.’

‘It worked, didn’t it?’ Penny laughed, showing the remains of her teeth. ‘For all you’re so powerful, you have human weaknesses still.’

‘Weaknesses? Would you call a capacity for loyalty to one’s family a weakness? Oh, but I forgot; you’ve spent most of your life fighting against your own rejection by your impossible sister, haven’t you? What do you know, then, of family?’

She was still glaring at him. ‘Only that you helped me rediscover it once. In Paris, remember? Shame on you for speaking to me this way now, Earthshine.’

And to Mardina’s astonishment it was Earthshine who dropped his head first.

Ari watched this exchange, fascinated and amused. ‘Well, well. Perhaps it was worth bringing along this wizened matriarch after all.’

‘We do have history,’ Earthshine said. ‘So here we are. I believe I know what you want. But why don’t you tell me, in your own words?’

‘We want to know what you’re doing here, Earthshine,’ Penny said clearly. ‘Here on Mars. And we want to know why you’re bringing an asteroid crashing down on this planet – on your own head, apparently. Though I’m quite certain you don’t intend to die here – if to “die” means anything to you at all.’

‘Oh, I think it does—’

‘We want you to stop,’ Eilidh said. ‘My commanders. My government. My people, those who know about you – about all of you from beyond the jonbar hinge. We want you to stop meddling with our lives. With our worlds.’ She looked heated, almost embarrassed to have spoken.

Ari said, ‘And of course they want you to deflect Höd. Give up this destructive course you seem to be on.’

‘I’m afraid I can’t do that,’ he said evenly.

Beth spoke, for the first time, bravely. ‘Then you’ll kill us all – grandfather. Me too. Because I agree with them. This isn’t our world, it’s not our history. We, you, have no right to meddle like this. I’m not going anywhere. If Ceres falls, it kills me too.’

‘I doubt very much that that’s going to happen. But we still have time for a chat before the end game.’ He turned to Eilidh. ‘You may bring your craft down. Well, then.’ He smiled at them all. ‘As your English ancestors would have said, Mardina, I’ll pop home and put the kettle on. See you soon!’

And he vanished in a brief blizzard of light blocks.

Eilidh looked to the heavens, muttered a quick prayer, and turned to her controls. ‘The coordinates are here. I’ll put us down as quick as I can, and make a report to the Malleus. We’ve no time to waste.’

As the ship’s position shifted, an overhead window tracked a swathe of the copper sky, and Mardina glimpsed Höd, a tiny disc now, brilliant enough to hurt her eyes.

CHAPTER 30

Kerys lay on her back in an acceleration couch, on the bridge of the Celyn, the ship she had stolen. The prow of the ship, a thick shield of metal and dirt designed to defy the erosion of the sparse grime of interplanetary and interstellar space, had no forward ports, but various instruments peered around the shield, and screens around her showed her images of what lay beyond the ship: a glowing jewel hanging over a pale brown landscape.

Surely by now the destination of the asteroid must be obvious to the authorities on Terra. Kerys had moved in elevated enough circles to be able to imagine the consternation that must be unfolding in the capitals, Brikanti, Xin and Roman: the fear, the raised voices, the unbelieved denials that this was an intentional act of war. She prayed for cool judgements, but on a world that was more or less continually at war, she feared judgement would be lacking. And she feared for Brikanti – for her family, her sister and her nephews …

Meanwhile it was just three hours from impact. And still the Celyn sat on the ground.

‘Come on, Freydis, come on—’

‘I’m here, nauarchus.’ Freydis scrambled up a ladder into the cabin, kicked a hatch closed behind her, and hauled herself into a couch alongside Kerys.

‘At last!’ Kerys immediately started snapping switches and pulling levers. She felt the ship shudder as the huge assemblies of etheric engines that controlled the kernel banks began to power up. ‘I’d bite your head off if I didn’t know how many hatches you had to close, and systems to flush down …’

‘Yes, nauarchus.’

‘And if it hadn’t also taken me all this time to get the controls in order also. The crew here were doing a sloppy job.’

Freydis thought that over. ‘That strange creature Earthshine is in control of all of this. Maybe he doesn’t care about this ship. He’s safe in his bunker – well, at least until Höd falls. Maybe he thought the presence of the ship and the crew on the surface would be enough of a deterrent to anybody who was thinking of intruding.’

‘We’re never going to know. And from now on our priority is that.’ Kerys tapped a screen that glowed with an image of the falling Eye.

Freydis glanced at a clock. ‘Just three hours until Höd falls. I didn’t realise how much time we’ve lost.’

‘I did. I’ve been watching that damn bit of clockwork tick away our remaining time. And I’ve been trying to figure out a flight plan. Right now Höd is a hundred and thirty thousand Roman miles from Mars. That’s over thirty planetary diameters. Which sounds a lot until you remember that the thing is coming in at over ten Mars diameters every hour.’ She glanced at Freydis, who was taking this all in very calmly, very seriously – looking more like an earnest student in a classroom than a soldier, Kerys thought, a soldier who was about to lay down her life. ‘So, you tell me. Given the knucklebones as they’ve fallen, what play would you have us make next?’

Freydis pulled her lip. ‘Our objective is to deflect Höd from an impact with Mars. The further out from the planet we meet Höd the better. Our highest acceleration is three weights—’

‘Yes. If we just blast out of here at three weights, we will encounter Höd in less than an hour.’