Shadow of the Warmaster

XIII

1. 30 days after the meeting on Gerbek.

Lift-Off.

On the bridge, her hands alternately at rest and working with a swift sureness across several sensor pads, Adelaar sat half-lost in a recapitulation of her Listening Station, part environment, part sculpture, part haphazard stack of blackbox units, playing her sup-withthe-devil-games with target and tie-line, blocking approach alarms, feeding in false readings, singing the ancient shipBrain to sleep.

Quale was taking the tug up on a long gentle arc, moving west to chase the night, the ar-grav blending so smoothly with the drives that the only sense of movement the passengers had, on the bridge or in the hold, came through the screens that showed Tairanna curving more and more beneath them.

Elmas Ofka stood beside Quale, watching the screens, her hands closed into fists, her body stiff. She’d had it with strangeness, her own world was complicated and difficult enough, she needed all her skills, her intellect and energy to deal with the disintegration of the society she’d been horn into. This extra element of confusion threatened to wrench control from her and destroy any possibility of a return to order. At least, to the sort of order she remembered. If she could have expunged these aliens from the Horgul system, closed it away from the Outside as Adelaar planned to encyst an area of the shipBrain, she’d have done it without a second thought. Too intelligent to linger mournfully on impossible dreams, she forced herself to concentrate on limiting the damage the aliens could do. She could feel the one called Aslan watching her. The most dangerous of all of them, if Parnalee wasn’t lying to her. Aslan knew too much. She was capable of too subtle a twisting; the play-maker Parnalee showed her how Aslan had turned the Prophet’s Life on the lathe of her knowledge and imagination and used Pradix to rouse the Hordar out there watching, innocent victims of the woman’s will to power. Ruthless, he said, you can never trust her because she can manipulate you without you knowing a thing about what was happening to you. She gazed at the back of Quale’s head, cold dislike washing over her though she knew that was foolish. Thing. Bought thing. Cat on a leash, dancing for whoever pulls it. With regret and resentment she thought of the pouch of prime rosepearls she’d handed over once her fighters were loaded in the tug. No threat voiced, no threat in his posture, but he didn’t need to make explicit what was implied by his control of the machine. No, she had no choice; the rosepearls bought her this standing space, bought her a chance at the Warmaster, a chance at liberation for all Hordar. Divers did what they must to stay intact. Discipline was life. She disciplined her fears and forebodings and watched the screens, watched the Warmaster swimming smoothly toward them.

Though its image was at that moment little larger than her hand, its mass was palpable. And she knew from evidence of her own eyes how huge it was. Two days ago she’d seen it gliding south over the Mines. Two days ago it descended over them to smother them with its immensity, its power. Two days ago it went south to Guneywhiyk to burn a Sanctuary down to bedrock. It could have been the Mines. But for the Prophet’s Hand over them, it could have been the Mines. Two days ago. She felt the dead clustering over her, swimming through the incense of all these alien souls, puff of unseen smoke, bouncing under the ceiling of this alien place. Forgive me, she breathed at them. She sang in her mind the Litany of Dismissal/ The Promise of Return. Return to a quieter, gentler world, a world of calm and order. She sang the litany over and over as the Warmaster grew until there was nothing in the screen but a cratered black surface whose pits and flaws were more and more apparent, a calligraphy of age. She sang the litany over and over, sang it for herself, gentling herself, sloughing off her responsibilities, her plans and fears… odd, when she had so many anxieties and frustrations, how free she felt. As if the moment would permit nothing less. Free. For the first time she began to understand the seduction of war. How it stripped away everything but the need to survive, how it narrowed life to the Now, how it freed you from the niggling irritations and ambiguities of ordinary life. She was enthralled and appalled. The power of it. The temptation. She looked over her shoulder at Aslan; the woman’s face seemed wide open, utterly without defense. She looked into those cool amber eyes, strange eyes, and saw… she didn’t know what she saw, but it terrified her. Aslan knew her, knew what tempted her, knew so much it was an obscenity. Moments passed before Elmas Ofka found the courage to look away. She shook briefly with fear, then the Now took her again, she turned back to the screen and forgot to be afraid.

Karrel Goza leaned against the wall, its vibration playing in his bones, not shaking but a note sung in a voice so deep he felt it rather than heard it. He watched Tairanna drop away, savoring this pale small taste of flight. Otherwise the tug gave him nothing, how could he feel himself flying without a symbiosis of soul and air; shut inside here how could he feel, anything? He was sad. The skips were fast and reliable and nearly indifferent to storms. Within a generation they and their cousins would most likely replace the airships; they were too tempting and with Outsiders coming in and out with no controls on them, Family businesses would be replacing airships as fast as they could import these machines. Would start building them as soon as they had the necessary mechanics trained. Not all airships would go, cost still meant something; but yosspod bags would be left to claw out a poor living on the fringes of transport and hauling. More change.

He sighed. For over two decades, since a childhood he remembered as calm, slow, ordered, he’d watched the world pass through wrenching transformations because the Outside, the OutThere, intruded. What they were doing this day would wrench the world yet more violently from that remembered time, but it might (only might, he couldn’t see beyond the hour, let alone so long into the what-will-be), it might ensure the coming of a new tranquility. If he were fortunate and outlived this day, he might see that time within this life; if not, he was content to wait for the next. He, like Elmas Ofka, surrendered to the point-Now and watched the Warmaster swimming toward them; he forgot sadness, forgot speculation. Immense. Gargantuan. Enormous. Colossal. Feeble, all those adjectives. No words were adequate. It seemed to him impossible that men had made that immensity, it seemed to him that it must have been some demon also beyond words which had laid so impossible an egg. Which was absurd. Men had made it, of course they had. How many men labored how many years in that making?

Parnalee stood across the room from Aslan, where she could see him and be afraid; he enjoyed her fear, though he knew she’d tried to thwart him. Useless. He was here. There was nothing she could do to him, but he could play with her until he was ready to finish it. Omphalos knew far more about these ancient battleships than any jumped-up tinkerer; whatever that woman did to the Brain he knew he could undo, if he had to. He had other strings to pull, more powerful ones than she could have any concept of. Once he had the Warmaster tamed to his hands… He drifted off in dreams of burning Huvved, of a world burnt clean of life, burning burning, of power like a god’s in his hands, HIS hands.