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“You have no option but to believe me. If you ca
“He means it,” I said forcefully. “Help us fly the ships, Muhu
He looked at me as if I was the one thing in the universe he was willing to trust. Given all that had happened to him since leaving his people, it did not surprise me in the slightest.
“Plug him in,” Qilian told the technicians. “And don’t be too tender about it.”
The name of the ship was the River Volga. She was half a li in length, her frontal stabilization spines suggesting the curving whiskers of a catfish. She had been a merchant vehicle once; later, she had been equipped for scouring the Parvan Tract for phantom relics, and, most recently, she had been hardened and weaponed for an exploratory role. She would carry six of us: Muhu
Mandate of Heaven.
The only significant distinction between the two craft was that Muhu
River Volga,
while the
Mandate of Heaven
followed close behind, slaved to follow the same trajectory to within a fraction of an
aid.
The navigation and steering mechanisms of both ships had been upgraded to permit high-agility maneuvers, including reversals, close-proximity wall skimming, and suboptimal portal transits. It did not bear thinking about the cost of equipping those two ships, or where the funds had been siphoned from, but I supposed the citizens of the Kuchlug special administrative volume would be putting up with hardships for a little while longer.
We spent five days in shakedown tests before entering the Tract, scooting around the system, dodging planets and moons in high-gee swerves. During that time, Muhu
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“Truly, Ariunaa. This ship feels as much a part of me as anything I ever flew in the Shining Caliphate.”
“But indescribably less sophisticated.”
“I would not wish to hurt your feelings. Given your resources, you have not done too badly.”
The transit, when it came, was utterly uneventful. The Mandate of Heaven reported some minor buffeting, but this was soon negated following a refinement of the control linkage between the two ships.
Then we had nothing to do but wait until Muhu
Did I seriously think that Qilian would keep his promise of returning Muhu
No; I did not think Muhu
The detection of a weakening in the tu
No matter; he had every incentive to succeed. We overshot the first weakening, but the incident gave Muhu
We had been warned that the passage would be rough; this was an understatement. Fortunately, we were all braced and ready when it came; we had had two minutes’ warning before the moment arrived.
Even then, the ship gave every indication of coming close to breakup; she whi
And then we were back in the tu
“We have become phantoms now,” Muhu
Qilian leaned over the control couch, where our pilot lay in a state of partial paralysis, wired so deeply into the River Volga’s nervous system that his own body was but an incidental detail. Around us, the bridge instruments recorded normal conditions of Infrastructure transit.
“Where are we?”
“There’s no way of telling, not with these sensors. Not until we emerge.”
“In the Gansu nexus?”
“Yes,” he replied. “Or whatever they call it. There will be risks; you will not have seen many phantoms emerge into your version of the nexus because most such ships will make every effort to slip through another weakening.”
“Why?”
He spoke as if the answer should have been obvious. “Because unless they are pilots like me, on specific intelligence-gathering missions, they would rather keep transitioning between versions of the Infrastructure, than emerge into what is likely to be a densely populated interchange. Eventually, they hope to detect the microsignatures in the tu
“Signatures that we can’t read,” I said.
“I will attempt to refine my interpretation of the sensor data. Given time, I may be able to improve matters. But that is some way off.”
“We’ll take our chances with Gansu,” Qilian said.
There was, as I understood it, a small but no