I kept an eye on the sensor screen, waiting for the arrival of… whatever it was. I saw nothing, which was unlikely unless she planned on us waiting for another five or six hours. It had already taken hours to get into observation position, as well as a complicated and uncomfortable series of acceleration and deceleration. There was no way we wouldn’t be able to detect a dozen fusion drives…
“There they are,” Deke said, and I scanned each section of the screen yet still saw nothing. “They’re running against the radiation belt.”
“There’s no way the radiation belt on even a planet this size could hide that many drive signatures,” I protested, finally spotting the dim glow of the sensor readings. “Those aren’t nearly bright enough to be…”
“Those aren’t fusion drives,” Deke told me, and I don’t know who looked more surprised, Marakit or me. “They’re antimatter reactors hooked to something called the em-drive.”
“I wasn’t aware the Fleet trained its commandos in advanced physics, Mr. Conner,” Marakit said.
“Yeah, that,” I added.
“Operating on our own, weeks away from support, fighting outnumbered, having to jump into one system after another without being spotted.” Deke shrugged. “You bet your ass we learned advanced physics. The em-drive was one of those little oddities physicists have been working on for a couple centuries. Turns energy into thrust with no middleman and high efficiency. Last I heard, Fleet R&D and Corporate Council black projects were both still working on it, and both of them agreed it would take antimatter to power it.” He fixed Marikit with a frank stare. “Though how the hell you and your little group got your hands on that kind of tech way out here…”
“Just watch the show, Mr. Conner,” she said, the Yin-Yang blend of metal and flesh on her face cryptic and enclosed. “It’s quite an expensive one.”
I’d expected their approach to take a while, maybe an hour or more, but they grew impossibly fast on the screen, from distant sensor dots to batlike shapes with a faint glow at the rear.
“Jesus,” I muttered. “They’re boosting at at least forty gravities. That’s fucking impossible.” At least without the Predecessor gravity drives, or so I’d believed a moment ago. “Boosting that hard, they need to turn now and start braking…”
“Or perhaps not,” Marakit commented dryly.
She wasn’t lying. The spacecraft kept boosting until they were at least two-thirds of the way to the old destroyer, only minutes, before they flipped around as if the same pilot were at the helm of each of the ships, connected by the same brain. Engines flared, though not nearly as bright as a fusion drive would have been, a muted orange glow that didn’t seem as if it could possibly have produced the sixty or seventy gravities of thrust that took their headlong rush into a tactical approach.
When the twelve ships reversed again, the scanners told a more complete story. They were each about the size of an Intercept cutter, yet there was no way even Deke’s specialized Dutchman II could pull off a move like that without draining her entire fuel tank. They surrounded the ancient hulk like sharks surrounding the carcass of a whale, and farther away than I would have thought possible, they fired.
Not proton cannons. I would have recognized the thermal signature from those weapons, I’d seen them thousands of times. These were… lasers? Something like lasers, but powered by those antimatter reactors, they had double the range, and when they struck the Tahni hulk they didn’t punch holes through it, they disintegrated it. The superstructure glowed like a supernova, and when the white light cleared, there was nothing left of it.
“Was that satisfactory, Marakit?” The voice that came over the cockpit speakers was female, a pleasant contralto, friendly and attentive.
“More than satisfactory, Illyana,” Marakit replied. “Thanks so much. Your ships can return to base.”
“Yes, ma’am. Happy to help.”
The cutters arced away from the explosion, maneuvering thrusters in synchronization, and when their drives lit up again, the new course took them back around the terminator of the gas giant and, in minutes, they were gone.
“What the fuck was that?” I blurted, even though I knew.
“That, my dear Mr. Alvarez, is the reason we don’t need protection, the reason we don’t need your new Commonwealth government holding our hand. The Confluence has no interest in aggression, no interest in conquest, but anyone who tries to attack us will regret it… for the rest of their life.”
“Which will be measured in seconds,” Vagabond added.
“Take us home, Kana,” Marakit said to the pilot before turning back to the two of us. “Then we can discuss further, if there’s anything further to discuss.”
Harsh thumps pounded the outside of the shuttle as the pilot turned the little ship without using her hands. I met Deke’s eyes, silently asking if we should bring up the elephant in the room. He nodded but spoke before I could.
“There’s one thing further to discuss, Marakit,” he said, hooking his thumbs in the shoulder straps of his safety harness. “One big, fucking elephant in the room, if you know what I mean. Let’s leave aside the fact that you somehow got hold of top-secret, antimatter-powered ships that are each, individually, more powerful than a cruiser. Shit’s lying around now, and it’s finders keepers as far as I’m concerned.”
“How enlightened,” Marakit commented, but Deke ignored the sarcasm.
“No, what bothers me is that this is pretty obviously autonomous, AI-piloted armed drones, which is so fucking against the law that if anyone caught you in possession of it, they’d execute you on general principles.”
“They could try,” Vagabond suggested quietly. “And again, their life would be measured in seconds.”
“Hey, not me, bud,” Deke assured him, raising his hands. “I’m an easygoing, live-and-let-live type, you know. No problems. But that’s me.”
The main drive kicked in with a rumble of disapproval, as if the shuttle were clearing its throat to tell us to behave.
“I thought we’d just established,” Marakit countered, “that things are different now. No laws, no government other than what we make. The rules we make.”
“Some rules exist for a reason,” I put in, trying to imitate the teaching voice Skipper used for us officers when he wanted to give us a life lesson. “I think we all know the reason for this one. When human kill humans, someone is responsible. Someone gave the order, someone can stand trial for it if it comes down to that. Someone can disobey it if the order’s illegal.”
“And I’m sure you’ve disobeyed orders in wartime for your conscience’s sake,” Marakit scoffed.
“You’d be surprised,” I shot back. I looked over at Pol-Kai. “Isn’t this part of your religion, the whole thing about only a being with a soul can kill another being with a soul?”
“We have you to thank for our religion failing us,” the Tahni replied. “Now, our people worship nothing. Believe in nothing. That’s why we’re here, with the Confluence, because at least it’s a direction. And if it takes something we once found abhorrent to defend our one refuge, to protect our influence and kill those who would kill us, then so be it.”
“You say you need this AI weapon to defend yourselves.” I addressed the words to Marakit, sensing that Pol-Kai was a lost cause. “But there’s another way. If we joined forces, all of us survivors, we could watch each other’s backs, pledge to our mutual defense. Without selling our souls to something that doesn’t have one.”
I find that personally offensive, Cam, Jim told me. My personality matrix is based on a human being, and I have ever bit the soul that you do.
We’ll debate that some other time, I assured him, when we’re not in the middle of a bunch of people who’d just as soon kill us.
“Join your new government, in other words?” Marakit suggested. “And who, exactly, voted for your government, for this Randall Munroe? Because I certainly wasn’t asked.”
Back into the atmosphere, the part that made me nervous, but I shut out the shaking and pitching and yawing.
“And who voted for you?” Deke asked her.