Nova War

Trader's fins flicked in acknowledgement. 'I know all this. Get to the point.'

'The previously unlikely possibility that something could happen to the Dreamers – and therefore, presumably, to our own home-world – has started drifting further and further into that central range of predictions than ever before.'

'That isn't possible,' Trader protested.

'No, Trader, it's always been possible theoretically,' Desire countered. 'You should listen to the Dreamers' priests more carefully. Then you'd realize that one of their favourite thought experiments is to question whether the Dreamers could see beyond a point at which they themselves had ceased to exist. It seems, in short, that there is a very real possibility that what we do here and now might bring about our own destruction.'

'May I remind you, General, that I am acting both on your orders and your authority, however secretly I am briefed.'

'I appreciate that, Trader. However, listen carefully to what I'm saying. There have been significant changes since we captured that Bandati spy, and the Dreamers' predictions have been undergoing severe fluctuations by the hour. Whatever happens here within the next short while is going to change the face of our galaxy for ever – and there are too many unknown variables entering the equation. The Emissaries may be too strong, may be-'

'The Emissaries?' Trader signalled derision. 'Listen to yourself, you old fool. You play spy games with your little clique of ageing fish while I, General, I risk life and skin to keep our secrets secret. What are you saying now, that we should recall the nova mines?'

'Perhaps, yes. Perhaps we should.'

'General, General.' Trader swam yet closer. A formidable fighter Desire might be, yes; but the General was old, and had seen little in the way of direct action for several centuries. 'Neither of us is important in the grand scale of things, because all that matters is the survival of the Hegemony, and of the Shoal. If you try to prevent those mines from activating at the appropriate moment, I will hunt you down, and the rest of your miserable cadre, and kill you all. And if by chance I fail in that, I will make sure your conspiracy is exposed in full detail to the Hegemony'

Backing away a little, he took on a more conciliatory tone. 'You have a case of last-minute nerves, General, that's all. It's a momentous occasion. The Emissaries are our greatest challenge and, if you allow me to do my work, they will be beaten back. They're a race of congenital idiots – psychotic, murderous and swayed by some irrational religious impulse possibly only they themselves understand. They simply had the luck to stumble across a Maker cache – haven't you read the reports? It's the perfect demonstration of what enormous power can mean when it's placed in the hands of primitives who barely understand what they have. The chance they would have held back from revealing some secret advantage this long is ridiculous, given their brute-force tactics up to now.'

'Trader, let me be more explicit. Within certain ranges, the Dreamers are failing to predict anything whatsoever. There are blank areas within the current probability ranges – possible outcomes that are completely unknown to us. And amongst the range of probabilities is this – that the Hegemony may suffer irreversible damage if the extent of our conspiracy should be revealed. There is a good reason, after all, why you are expected to bear sole responsibility if you are uncovered.'

'I placed the mines, I provided the means, and my signal activates the network. I will be entirely to blame. I took this burden on willingly, General, so why remind me of that now? Are these waters getting too deep for you to swim?'

Desire said nothing in reply, simply floating there in the darkness, and waiting. 'We were always in agreement that war is inevitable,' Trader continued. 'All we can do is try and control the place and the time to our own best advantage.'

'You've served us well, Trader, but you've grown inflexible. That could be dangerous.'

'If war is inevitable, General, then let it come now, for I won't allow such a pivotal moment to pass without acting on it. We'll be heroes, Desire. We'll be remembered long after our conscious matrices have been given to the Dreamers.'

'And, yet,' Desire concluded, 'consider the risks – if you fail.'

'But I won't fail. The nova war will be limited in scope, and will not greatly affect the Hegemony as a whole. Some worlds will die, but not as many as otherwise might; and the Emissaries will be driven back for ever. I've worked too long towards this moment to believe any other outcome is possible.'

'For your sake, Trader,' Desire replied, preparing to thrust himself back up out of the deep well, 'I hope, with the deepest sincerity, that you're right.' Twenty-one Honeydew was waiting for Corso when he returned to the upper level of the docking bay. The Piri Reis was now silent and still.

'Do you have the complete protocols?' Honeydew asked, stepping forward. A group of armed Bandati warriors stood nearby.

'Like I said, I've got about enough to rebuild-'

Honeydew punched him hard, and Corso folded under the assault. The alien next gestured to two of the warriors, who stepped forward, lifted him by the arms and held him upright. Honeydew punched him again, and Corso felt bile surge in his windpipe.

It hurt. A lot.

The two Bandati then released Corso and he collapsed, curling up on the deck. Despite his pain, he was once again amazed that a creature so relatively small and fragile-looking could be so strong.

'You have been lying to us, Mr Corso,' Honeydew declared, his synthesized voice maintaining the same unchanging contralto. 'Therefore the Piri Reis will now be handed directly over to the Emissaries.'

The two warriors once more grabbed Corso under the arms and dragged him inside a ship-to-ship shuttle that was locked into a nearby cradle. The rest of the Bandati warriors followed them inside, as did Honeydew himself. Corso was forced down and secured into a gel-chair, while nearby a viewscreen built into a bulkhead showed an image of field-shielded bay doors opening wide.

Corso found himself face-to-face with Honeydew, now locked into the gel-chair opposite. He found he wanted to look anywhere but into the alien's deep, dark eyes.

Moments later, they were in space, and pushing away from the Bandati dreadnought with enough speed to take Corso's breath away during the first seconds of hard acceleration. The view on the screen rapidly changed as the shuttle rotated, showing the vast, dark curve of a ringed planetary body – a gas giant, Corso judged from the dense striped pattern of its clouds.

He studied the viewfeed, fascinated despite his confined circumstances. He noted how the gas giant's atmosphere was being sucked upwards like a whirlwind in reverse, a thin column of gas visibly rising upwards and disappearing into a brightly flickering point of light, like a tiny star that orbited the planet.

It was quite shockingly beautiful, but the image soon rotated back out of sight as the shuttle swung around. He spotted the Bandati warship slipping into the distance with alarming speed, but beyond it loomed a far larger vessel – one bearing a distinct resemblance to the ship from which KaTiKiAn-Sha had emerged.

When the gas giant came back into view a minute later, it was noticeably larger, and growing larger by the second.

Corso twisted in his restraints, leaning forward to try and see better where they were heading as much as to avoid Honeydew's implacable, unflinching gaze.

At first he had assumed they were heading for the tiny star-like object orbiting the gas giant, which he then realized with a shock, might actually be a black hole. If it wasn't for his more pressing predicament, he'd have been endlessly fascinated. He realized he was almost certainly the first human being ever to witness a black hole up close.