‘Umm. Even then it might be too close to do anything about it.’

‘Most likely. And—’

‘And we’ll go flying by at twenty thousand miles per hour.’

‘Yes. But if we plan for a rendezvous, if we allow time to decelerate—’

‘Then by the time we meet Höd it will be closer yet to Mars.’

‘So what do you think?’

Freydis grinned. ‘Go for the burn. Get there as fast as possible. At minimum we can blast whatever crew is still on that ice ball with farspeaker messages; maybe the sight of the Celyn coming down their throats will persuade them to see the error of the course they’ve chosen.’

Kerys nodded grimly. ‘And if that fails we’ll think of something else.’ Although she could only think of one alternative, given the situation. ‘But the first thing we have to do is get there. Strapped in, Freydis? Taken your thrust medications?’

‘No, but I’ll survive.’

Actually, Kerys thought sadly, no, you probably won’t.

She pulled the master lever, lay back, and braced. She imagined the banks of kernels embedded in the base of the ship, etheric pulses washing over them, their strange, tiny mouths opening – the engineers always said they were like baby birds asking to be fed – but those mouths would vomit out a kind of fire that was hotter than the sun itself. Immediately Kerys felt the heavy shove of the thrust, a weight that pushed her deep into the cushions of the couch.

On a pillar of fire, the Celyn surged into the sky of Mars.

Without thinking, Kerys went into practices for high-thrust regimes as she’d been instructed, many years ago. She kept her legs still, her arms at her side, her head cushioned, and she breathed deliberately, deep and strong, pushing against that savage weight. Only an hour, she thought. Only an hour. Then, one way or another, it would be done.

Almost immediately, it seemed, the wan sky of Mars cleared away in her screens, leaving that deadly spark of light, Höd, hanging in the void. As if a last illusion had been dispelled about the reality of this situation.

The cabin was shuddering, the roar of the drive loud.

‘Onwards, nauarchus!’ Freydis yelled, defying the savage acceleration and the noise. ‘Onwards!’

To Kerys’s surprise, an internal communications link sounded with a whistle. She looked at Freydis sharply. ‘Who is that? I thought you said you cleared the ship.’

‘I did! I threw off the last of the crew at spearpoint, and they were glad to leave when I told them we were heading for Höd …’

Kerys reached up cautiously and snapped a switch. ‘Identify yourself.’

‘I am Gerloc. You may recall, the nauarchus tricked me in order to gain access to the ship.’

Kerys grimaced. ‘I apologise for that.’

Freydis snarled, ‘And I left you bound up.’

‘Not very well, it seems,’ Gerloc said.

Kerys had to grin. ‘Ha! She has you there, Freydis.’

‘I wondered if you would like a little help. I do know the ship’s systems quite well; I have had extensive training as a backup to the control crew.’

‘Hm. It wouldn’t harm. You need to understand that our mission—’

‘Is what you ordain it to be. I overheard some of your conversation.’

‘Oh, you did? Resourceful, aren’t you?’

‘Yes,’ said Gerloc without irony. ‘You are trying to avert a tremendous disaster. And you are nauarchus, you are my superior officer.’

‘And so am I, by the way,’ snapped Freydis.

‘I have trained for this, for mobility in battle situations under conditions of thrust—’

‘All right. Get up here as fast as you can, and don’t break a leg on the way.’

‘Already halfway there, nauarchus. See you soon.’

‘Ha! I like her,’ said Kerys.

‘Well, I don’t,’ said Freydis. ‘Is there any way we can increase the thrust of this bucket? That would wipe the grin off her face …’

CHAPTER 31

Once they were off the landed yacht, Mardina tried to help Penny as they made their way through an airlock, and into a cramped elevator that took them down a deep shaft sunk into the Martian ground. Then they followed Earthshine along a short passage crudely cut into the dirt.

They arrived at a bare room, with walls of rust-coloured concrete punctuated by several doors, and furnished with a few couches and low tables of metal tubing and webbing – furniture that looked to Mardina as if it had been scavenged from a spacecraft, from the Celyn, perhaps. Earthshine stood at the centre of the room as the rest filed in. None of them were at ease as they tried to walk in the unaccustomed low gravity – none save Earthshine, who looked as relaxed as if he were in a full gravity on Terra. Mardina found that irritating, as if he was making some point about his own eerie superiority.

Penny picked a chair, eased herself down on it with a lot of help from Mardina, and leaned forward on her stick, scowling at Earthshine. The rest settled: Mardina’s mother and father, Beth and Ari, on chairs as far from each other as they could get, and Chu with the ColU satchel on his back sitting modestly on the floor.

‘So here we are.’ Earthshine pointed. ‘There are facilities – a bathroom through that door, a small galley, a dormitory.’

Penny barked laughter. ‘All rather less fancy than the last time I visited you, Earthshine. The great glass hall at Hellas – the trip into your virtual mine, deep underground, where you spoke of your noostratum.’

Earthshine smiled, unperturbed. ‘I have abandoned the surface facilities now. Down here I can complete my preparations without any interference by the navies of this reality’s squabbling empires.’

Ari smiled. ‘What interference? You manoeuvred an object as enormous as Höd onto a collision course with this planet. And all in full view of the Brikanti and the Romans and the Xin – indeed you persuaded them to give you the facilities to do it!’

Earthshine shrugged. ‘These are not cultures that prepare well for natural disasters – not compared to our own reality, Penny. They don’t track rocks that might fall from space; they don’t have the technology to do it, let alone the imagination. Each other’s ships – that’s what they watch, obsessively. And so it was easy for me to smuggle Ceres onto this destructive course, yes.’

The ColU said levelly, ‘We are here to persuade you to abandon this project—’

Earthshine broke in, ‘Yes, that was your plan, your surface motivation. But under all that, deeper impulses lurk. I am your grandparent, Beth. Whatever you think of me, that remains the truth. I am all that is left of your family from before what you call the hinge. And in the final hours, you have come to me.’ He spread his hands, and looked around, at Beth, Mardina. ‘Even under the fall of the hammer itself, you, my family, have come to me. For you know I will protect you.’

The ColU said evenly, ‘They were pawns, Earthshine. A means of inducing you to allow access to this place. As for your family, what of Yuri Eden? Your son. I was with him when he died. He was far from your protection then.’

Earthshine’s synthesised face became, eerily, more expressionless. ‘I am aware of his death—’

‘It was freezer burn. That was the colloquialism he used. Your decision, Robert Braemann, all those years ago, to consign your son to a cryo tank, ultimately killed him.’

Mardina had been told about this. Even so, having it stated as baldly as this in front of this strange old monster, this relic of her great-grandfather, shocked her.

Earthshine faced Beth and Mardina, and spread his hands. ‘I meant only the best for Yuri. As I mean only the best for you—’

Penny snapped, ‘You’re being absurd. How will you protect these people, your “family”? This sandcastle of a bunker will be useless when Ceres falls.’

‘True. But it is not the bunker that will save us – all of you who choose to come with me.’