Talking with the Hegemony was a pain at the best of times, unless they had some of their pet humans aboard to translate. Even then you never quite knew if you were getting the alien masters’ intended meaning. They weren’t hasty, though. They loved their pomp and posturing, as befitted a species that had evolved sitting on its fundament.
‘Their guns are hot!’ one of Khefi’s people was shouting as Havaer hit the bridge. ‘They’re not slowing.’
The hell? ‘Are they responding to hails?’ Havaer demanded. The central screen showed a model of objects in near-space buzzing with trajectory lines and a host of numbers. The left screen showed an image of the newcomer, enlarged and cleaned up in all its disturbing glory. The right panel displayed technical data – including the fact that those twisted petals hid a dozen heavy-duty accelerator cannon. All of these were currently spiking the Hegemony ship’s gravitic field.
Is this it? Did we go to war with the Hegemony and this is the first news we’ve had of it?
‘Hail incoming, in Colvul,’ the comms officer reported, sounding calmer than Havaer felt.
‘Let’s hear it.’
Over the comms came a bell-like voice. For some reason it sounded familiar as it declaimed, ‘Take flight, O villains crouching so to shield the right inheritor of all our wrath. Begone, lest all our fury fall upon you like your namesake.’
‘The fuck . . .?’ Khefi muttered, at Havaer’s elbow.
‘Ship name is Broken Harvest,’ the comms officer confirmed. And Havaer sighed in a weird relief. It was the Essiel from the concrete bunker. Not war then. Not yet, anyway.
‘Stall them, something ritual, respectful, basically timewasting,’ he directed. ‘Tell them we’re taking them seriously and are convening our most important people to prepare a fitting response.’
‘What is this, Agent?’ Khefi demanded.
‘Believe it or not, they’re a crime syndicate.’
‘That is one hell of a big ship for gangsters.’
‘Don’t I know it. What do we think they can do?’ And Havaer could only goggle at the Broken Harvest as it came at them. Was it named after the gang, or did the ship come first? It wasn’t a full-on Hegemony diplomatic barge, but it was still twice the size of the Mordant’s Hammer. Scans showed superior firepower and what looked to be some advanced gravitic shielding. On the other side of Jericho, the old Samphire was getting underway from dock. However, the Hammer could have run rings about the antique warship, and the Harvest could take them both.
‘What do they want?’ Khefi demanded.
‘They want the Vulture,’ he said. ‘Can we run?’
‘Not and take the salvage ship with us,’ Khefi said. ‘The Vulture could actually run faster if she carried us. But we’d still both be slower than that thing.’
‘Can we sync drives?’
‘Not in the time we’ve got.’ Because you really didn’t want to hit unspace in two locked ships, where one drive wasn’t perfectly aligned with the other. Havaer had seen the result one time, and it had started a brief panic about the return of the Architects.
‘They’re hailing us again,’ the comms officer said.
‘Hegemony don’t shoot first,’ Khefi muttered. ‘They bluster, and they defend themselves, but they don’t . . .’
‘This one will,’ Havaer decided. ‘It’s renegade . . . mad maybe.’ The Unspeakable Aklu, the Razor and the Hook. And perhaps it wasn’t even madness. Perhaps Essiel society threw up outliers like Aklu to fill a pro-active void that would otherwise remain empty, and was occasionally useful?
‘Orders, Agent?’
He’d made his decision, he realized. It was a bittersweet one, but today was not the day to die for a good cause, not even for Mordant House.
‘Get me the Vulture,’ he said.
Idris
The crew of the Vulture had been desperately trying to get the Hammer on comms. The sudden arrival of a Hegemony maybe-warship hadn’t gone unnoticed by them either. And when Havaer’s voice finally came through, as they crowded around the captain’s chair, the release of tension was an almost physical shock.
‘Some old friends of yours,’ Havaer told them. ‘Broken Harvest. Demanding we give you up.’
‘And are you going to?’ Kris demanded.
‘Telemmier there?’
‘What?’ Idris demanded, leaning in beside Kris. ‘Why me?’
‘Get to your pilot’s station, Telemmier,’ Havaer told him shortly. ‘This is how it’s going to go. We’re pulling back, but not as fast as their ship’s coming on. And it’s a full-on Hegemony fighting ship, which means my little sloop won’t hold her off for long.’