The Ascendant Stars - Michael Cobley [33]
The atmosphere on the bridge of the Starfire was sombre. In a monotone voice, the tactical officer gave a running commentary while on screen the Tygran ship, rent by internal detonations, exhibited its death throes.
‘The Imisil are hailing us,’ said the tac officer.
Ash gave Greg a wintry smile. ‘I believe that’s your cue.’
A moment later Greg was once more face to face with the Imisil commander, Presignifier Remosca. The humanoid was as composed as before while his facial spot-clusters glowed in shades of green.
‘Greetings to you, Captain Cameron, or should I address you as First Commodore?’
‘Aye, well, apologies for that wee diversionary exaggeration there, Presignifier. And our profound gratitude for intervening … ’
‘After you alerted the Ezgara to our presence.’
‘Ach, I know it was a bit presumptuous but that was a tight spot we were in. And I reckoned that you’d have to deal with them anyway, whether we were still around or not. Glad to see that you’re a reasonable people.’
The Imisil commander gave a slight turning nod. ‘Our civilisation does aspire to certain minimum standards of conduct. I decided to aid you on the basis of the enmity which the Ezgara clearly bear towards you.’
Right, my enemy’s enemy, Greg thought as he relaxed and sat back. ‘Once again, I am very grateful to you, Presignifier – hopefully, any future joint operations will demonstrate that we can be worthy allies. But in the meantime, we wait for the rest of your fleet to arrive, aye? Perhaps you could give me some idea about why the Imisil Mergence sent you all this way.’
‘It is not out of a desire to acquire territory, I assure you. But there are more pressing matters for our mutual attention – since our first exchange I received a message from the Expeditionary Fleet, saying that they encountered a hostile force of unknown designation. Fierce fighting means that they will be delayed for an indeterminate time period. I have been given command discretion as to whether we remain in this system or hasten to rejoin them.’
‘And yet here you are,’ Greg said.
‘We have been gathering data from sensor probes left in the second tier of hyperspace,’ the Imisil officer went on. ‘There is another group of vessels heading for this system, a Hegemony carrier battle group. It appears that the Sendrukans have decided to usurp the Brolturans’ ascendancy in this matter. This is in keeping with their murderous history.’
Greg felt a sick dread in his chest. ‘Can even three of us stand up to this kind of invasion?’
Off to the side, Ash gave a weary shake of the head.
‘That is highly doubtful, Captain Cameron,’ said Remosca. ‘But it may be possible to wound them badly. Our scans reveal a number of salvageable elements among the battle debris orbiting your world. But while we complete a recovery assessment there is one thing I would like to know from you.’
‘What would that be, Presignifier?’
‘How did you know that I had a second ship?’
JULIA
Talavera let her have a beach house and a golden retriever to run along the sands with and some fishing rods and a low wooden jetty and a white rowing boat. And Julia would sit out on the veranda with a tall glass of vargr wine, enjoying the sun’s heat on her skin even though she was enveloped in cascades of information, a cloud of data in continual motion.
And she worked on tailored heuristic navigator systems for a hundred anti-dark matter missiles to be launched from hyperspace, targeted on a hundred planets, on a hundred deadly people who had to die.
Or so Talavera’s story went: that whole process of kidnapping Julia and the other Enhanced and making them modify thermonuclear missiles for use against the ships orbiting Darien, then confining them to full-body virtuality tanks, was only her way of testing their abilities and mettle before revealing this most vital of projects. And it was a great shame that the distrust felt by the Enhanced had required Talavera and her people to resort to a certain degree of coercion. She had told Julia all this two subjective days after the foiling of her attempt to