Ultima (20 page)

Beth touched her arm. “What truth, dear?”

“That that's what this terrible old monster with the pretty name, Earthshine, probably intended you to do all along. That he's been manipulating you all for decades.”

There was a shocked silence.

Then the ColU said, “Even I hadn't thought of that.”

The deceleration of the
Malleus Jesu
into Martian space was ferocious.

Nobody would tell Penny how high they ramped it up in the end. Clearly it was far higher than an Earth gravity, the Roman ship's standard kernel-driven acceleration regime. And that itself said something of the urgency of the mission. But Penny had little energy to fret, as she lay pressed down into her deep couch, scarcely daring to move a muscle, to lift a finger.

She was given a private room on the seventh deck, officer country—she was told it was part of Centurion Quintus's own suite—a very Roman affair, though the couches were riveted to the floor and the tapestries fixed with heavy iron nails, and everything was
sturdy
, built to withstand the surges of acceleration to be expected of a warship. On the other hand, the
Malleus
, veteran of several interstellar missions and as a result of cumulative time dilation several decades out of its own era, was an antique. The ship had already been subjected to years of acceleration stress, and the sleeting radiations and corrosive dust and ice grains of interstellar space, and now she was to be put through what in some ways was likely to be her toughest assignment yet. It might only take one component failure, a structural element buckling somewhere, a bulkhead or a hull plate cracking under the unbearable stress, for the whole mission to unravel—and their lives to be lost.

So Penny lay there in her couch, listening to the deep, almost subsonic thrumming of the kernel engines, and the fabric of the grand old ship popping and banging and creaking around her, and waiting for the end. She did feel an odd empathy for the ship. For what was her own body but a relic, the wreckage of a too-long life—and nearly unable to bear these immense accelerations? She couldn't have blamed the
Malleus
if the ship had failed. Just as she couldn't have blamed her own wretched body if it had given up as she put it through one unbearable strain too many.

The crew, however, was trained for operation under this kind of acceleration regime. She didn't lack for company. Even the Greek
medicus,
Michael, visited her in a wheelchair, tightly strapped in, with a metal brace to support his neck and head.

What was still more impressive was the legionary assigned to push Michael around the ship in his wheelchair, triple-gravity acceleration or not: Titus Valerius, the big one-armed veteran. He walked with the support of an exoskeleton, creaking and clanking, powered by the crude electric motors—“etheric engines”—that were, apart from kernel engines, handheld radio communicators, which they called “farspeakers,” and some ferocious weaponry, just about the height of mechanical engineering achievement in his world. Penny could see how Titus's muscles bulged under the strain, how the veins were prominent in his heavily supported neck. But he got the job done, as, evidently, did the rest of Quintus's highly trained crew.

“You're doing fine,” Michael told her from his chair, as he examined her. “I can assure you, you're a tougher old eagle than you look, or may feel. As long as you do as I say, as long as you lie there and don't take chances, and are patient—”

“My catheter itches.”

He laughed. “Bad luck. You'll have to fix that yourself.”

Penny's most welcome attendant, however, was Titus's daughter, Clodia, just fifteen years old by her own subjective timekeeping, who had spent most of her young life aboard the
Malleus
during its mission to the Romulus-Remus double-star system. Clodia was evidently strong, able to get around the ship under gravity using a chair and prosthetic aids built for an adult twice her size, and turned out a bright, chatty kid.

At first, she brought Penny her meals—that is, she changed the drip bags according to Michael's schedule. But as the ship's watches passed, and they got to know each other better, she responded to Penny's other needs. She turned out to be the kindest of Penny's team of aides in changing her catheter bag, and washing her face, and even changing the diaper-like garment that soaked up her old-lady poop. Penny had done her level best not to be embarrassed at having to be changed, at one end of her long life, like the infant she'd been at the other.

Penny was surprised Clodia had volunteered for this mission, however. On the last day, as the ship approached Mars and they waited for the end of acceleration, they talked about this.

“Let me get it straight. You were just a toddler when your father took you with him on the
Malleus Jesu
, the journey to Romulus and Remus.”

“My mother died when I was very small, before we left Terra. There was only my father and me—”

“Yes. I'm sorry. So you spent a few years running around on the planet. And then, age ten or so, you're scooped up and brought back to Earth—I mean, Terra. I'd have thought you'd find Terra a lot more exciting than life on the ship. All the different people, the cities.”

Clodia pulled a face. “Lutetia Parisiorum is a dump. And it's badly laid out from a defensive point of view. I suppose I'd like to see Rome. And the great cities of Brikanti as well, of course—”

“There's no need to be polite with me, child!”

Clodia grinned. “But wherever you go on the ground there's no, no . . . People sort of wander around doing whatever they want.”

“No discipline?”

“That's it. It's not like when you're on the march, and you build your camp every night, and everything's in the same place each time, exactly where it should be. Night after night.
That's
what I like.”

“You're an army brat, and there's nothing wrong with that. Well, I'm glad you're here, Clodia; you've been a comfort to me . . . What of the future, though? Even your father can't last in the legion forever. What will you do? I can't imagine you being satisfied to be some soldier's wife.”

“I don't remember my mother, but I saw the women in camp, at Romulus. Having babies and baking bread and washing clothes, day after day?” She pulled a face. “That's not for me.”

“Then what? They don't allow women in the Roman army, do they?”

“Not into the legions, no. Not in the fighting infantry. But there are masses of other jobs you can do. In administration, in training, in logistics. A lot of that is based in the cities, the big central military establishments. And there are jobs in the front line women can take, even in the fighting units, some kinds of auxiliary. Or I might become a weapons specialist. Go into training.”

“Or be a
medicus
. There are plenty of front-line jobs there. You ought to talk to Michael about that.”

Again, a self-deprecating face-pull. “Maybe I could be a nurse. I'm not sure I'm clever enough otherwise. I can strip down field artillery pieces, but an injured legionary . . . I'll find something.”

“I'm sure you will—”

That was when the warning trumpet sounded, filling the hull with its shrill note.

Clodia said, “Just lie still, until it's over.”

And Penny, lying in her couch, felt the cessation of the kernel engines, a deep shudder transmitted through the ship's fabric. That chorus of creaks and alarming bangs ceased immediately too, as the strain of three gravities was removed. And only then, it seemed, did the sense of heavy acceleration lift from her body.

“Ah,” she murmured. “It's as if your father has been sitting on my chest for two days, and now he's got off.”

Clodia impatiently unbuckled the restraints that held her in her chair, pushed aside her exoskeletal aids, and let herself drift up into the air, whooping. “I always love this bit!”

“How long were we—”

“Fifty hours. Twenty-five accelerating at three weights, and then the turnover, and twenty-five decelerating. And here we are at Mars, just like that. We couldn't have got here any quicker. Roman ships are the best performing in the world, and the
trierarchus
will have pushed us as hard as she could.”

“Oh, I don't doubt it, child. But we might be too late even so.” She struggled to emerge from her cocoon of blankets and cushions, an aged butterfly. “Oh, help me out of this thing.”

Clodia hovered dubiously. “If I don't keep you here until the
medicus
has checked you over, I'm going to be walking back to Terra . . .”

•   •   •

It was another hour before Penny, fuming with frustration, was at last allowed onto the bridge of the
Malleus
.

And beyond the observation windows, before her eyes, once more Mars loomed huge, like a plasterwork in oranges and browns, scarred by craters and dry canyons, the silver bands of the canals glowing softly in the sunlight.

When she arrived, a kind of council of war was already under way, involving Quintus, his second-in-command, Gnaeus, and his ship's
trierarchus,
Movena, as well as Stef, Beth, Mardina, Ari Guthfrithson, Kerys, and the ColU borne on the shoulders of Chu Yuen. Stef barely glanced at her sister. All of them looked beat-up to Penny, their skin blotchy, their eyes puffy. There was a faint smell of body odor in the crowded room—but then probably none of them had washed for days, Penny reflected; they hadn't all had the comprehensive medical support she'd enjoyed.

And Jiang was here. He too looked wrung-out. But he held on to a rail, supporting himself in the air, and took her hand in his. “Mars again,” he said. “Where we first met.”

“Yes. All those years ago, at the UN-China conference at Obelisk.”

“No matter what we go through, Mars, it seems, endures.”

Quintus Fabius faced her. “Maybe Mars has not yet changed very much, Academician. But it will shortly. Look up there.” He pointed to a slice of dark sky, beyond Mars's western limb.

Where hung a single brilliant star.

“Ceres,” Penny whispered.

“Höd, yes.”

“How close is it? That thing looks almost large enough to show a disc.”

Stef said, “Penny, we haven't been troubling you with updates during the voyage. We hoped you'd sleep through it—”

“Oh, shut up, you fusspot.”

Quintus said, “Höd is larger than the width of Venus, as seen from Earth. So the Arab observers assure me.”

Penny tried to work that out. “Then it must be—what, a few million kilometers out?”

“Rather less,” Stef said. “The asteroid has undergone episodes of immense thrust. We suspect Earthshine has ordered the use of significant chunks of the body's own material to use as reaction mass. The observers on the
Malleus
have computed the new trajectory.”

Penny could see the conclusion of all that in her sister's expression. “My God.”

Stef took a deep breath. “Ceres is going to impact Mars. That's finally confirmed. It's probably what Earthshine intended all along.”

Quintus looked furious, as if this was some personal betrayal. “But why?”

“We've no idea,” Stef said. “Not yet.”

Penny looked at Stef. “How long?”

“The Arabs estimate twelve hours. No more.”

“As little as that? Very well. That's the time we have remaining to stop Earthshine.”

Quintus nodded grimly. “Of course we must. This great act, this hurling of cosmic masses, can be intended to do nothing but harm. It may even start a war. We have to stop him. But we will face resistance.”

“Then,” Penny said drily, “I'm glad I'm on a ship full of Roman legionaries. Let's work out our plan.”

But as the soldiers began to discuss tactics and fallbacks, a clock in Penny's head began a dreadful countdown.

Twelve hours, and counting.

To Stef's relief, Penny submitted to Michael's insistence that she needed rest.

“And make sure she straps down again,” the centurion called as she was led from the bridge. “We may have some more hard acceleration to undergo before the day is done.”

“As you wish, Centurion.”

The rest of them inspected Quintus's images of the layout of Earthshine's latest base on the ground, at Terra Cimmeria. They were large-scale photographs, grainy wet-chemistry productions like all Roman or Brikanti imagery, but good enough, Stef thought, to get a sense of the layout. She saw three broad clusters of facilities, grouped close together. Farther out, the ground was marked by swaths of scorching, places where the ground had melted altogether: the relics of multiple landings of kernel-drive rockets.

“So, Colonel Kalinski,” Quintus said. “We have been scouting this area for some time—for years, as Earthshine has developed his operation. But I welcome your input now. This is the location where you say that the Xin had their Martian capital in your world.”

“Slap in the heart of the highland we called the Terra Cimmeria, yes.”

“Which was no doubt why Earthshine chose it,” the ColU said from Chu's backpack, “because of that resonance. Everything Earthshine does will be shaped by an awareness of competing realities. And it is also, no doubt, why the site of a city that was called Obelisk for its greatest single building should be marked here by—point for me, Chu Yuen, left and down—
that
.” The slave seemed to work well with the master he carried; his finger stabbed down on the image of one of the three clusters of domed buildings.

Stef peered down. “I see a sharp stripe on the ground. Wait—where is the sun? That's a shadow, of something very tall—”

“A tree,”
the ColU said. “Not an obelisk. A tree. Encouraged to grow to some four hundred meters, which is three times the maximum theoretical height on Terra. A tree's height is limited by the need to lift water to its uppermost leaves—”

“But on Mars, with its one-third gravity,” Stef said, “you can grow as tall as this. It must have been force-grown.”

“Yes. Earthshine has been established on Mars for some years, but not
that
long. Force-grown and encased in some kind of enclosure to retain air and moisture. We don't have good enough images to determine the species yet. An impressive stunt.”

Beth leaned closer to see. Beth and Mardina had been quiet since Penny's brief visit to the bridge. Only Ari had been quieter, Stef thought; the
druidh
had not spoken a word.

Now Beth asked, “But why would Earthshine grow a tree on Mars? It doesn't seem to fit.”

“It's for his allies,” said Kerys grimly. The
nauarchus
had also been quiet during this voyage on a Roman ship, Stef had observed, but she had watched and listened, evidently filing everything away. Now she pointed to another shadow traced on the Martian ground, in a second compound some distance to the north of the tree. “
That
is a ship—a ship of the Brikanti Navy, called the
Celyn
. Earthshine has at least one ship's company's worth of support on the ground with him, and most of them drawn from Brikanti ranks.” She glared at Quintus, defiant. “We don't have time for blame games. This monster, this Earthshine, was after all found, fortuitously, by a Brikanti ship—my ship, all those years ago. How I wish now we had simply thrown the boxes that sustain him out into the Skull of Ymir! Even if we had preserved the rest of you.”

“Thanks,” Beth said drily.

“It was natural that as he began to lay out his schemes for the exploitation of other worlds, he would gather support from the Brikanti government at first. We believed we could control the situation—control
him
.”

“Well, you were wrong,” Quintus said.

“It began with his subversion of the crews of the ships we sent out to support him. He persuaded them to betray their nation—to follow dreams of greed and power, under
him
. That is what we believe happened. But they are Brikanti.”

“Ah,” Stef said. “I've been reading up on this during the journey home. To the
druidh
, in the Brikanti tradition, the tree is a sacred symbol.”

Ari spoke now. “Whatever other projects they are pursuing, they will have relished the chance to nurture what may still be the only tree on Mars, and certainly the greatest—greater than any on Earth. Even Christians would respond to the symbol. You Romans nailed Christ to a wooden cross, and His blood nurtured the roots of the World Tree Yggdrasil, which—”

“Yes, yes,” Quintus said impatiently. “Hardly the time for a theology lesson,
druidh
. So—the holy tree. And around it, as you see, a series of domed habitats that we believe are residences for Earthshine's human supporters, or most of them, along with workshops, stores. To the north, and a reasonably safe distance away from the tree, you see the
Celyn
standing, and accompanying support facilities for a kernel craft. Room for others to land too, and we have seen craft shuttling between Mars and Höd in the last few years.”

“Relief crews,” Kerys said. “There are teams working up on Höd, manning the kernel banks there. They seem to be swapped every month or so.”

Quintus said, “And we believe that Earthshine himself, or at least the gadgets that support him, must be
here
.” And he pointed to the third complex of buildings.

Stef leaned down to see better, silently cursing aging eyes. “More domes. But the heart of it is that tilted rectangular slab.”

“A reinforced bunker,” Quintus said. “A familiar design. Hardened against our ground-based weapons, hardened even against any rock pushed from orbit short of anything massive enough to destroy the whole site altogether. No doubt Earthshine is down in a hole deeper still.”

Stef grunted. “That would be characteristic. He likes his holes in the ground, the bunkers he shared with his Core AI brothers back on Earth, his hold-out under Paris, his pit under Hellas . . .”

Beth said, “But this whole planet is going to be hammered by Ceres. I can't believe he's going to stay around for that. He'll want to survive, whatever he's trying to do here. Just as he got away from Earth before the Nail fell.”

“Right,” said Stef. “And if Ceres is going to fall within twelve hours, his only way out of here will be aboard that ship, the
Celyn
.”

“Very well,” Quintus said. “That is the configuration on the ground. Now I want a tactical plan. It would not be hard to be destructive. Frankly, we could go in with our kernel drive blazing, and melt all of this back into the Martian sand.”

“But we're not here to destroy,” the ColU said. “We need to get to Earthshine. The purpose is to deflect Ceres, if it is still possible.”

“Our foes know that too,” said Quintus. “So they will be waiting for us to attempt a softer approach, perhaps a landing. They may have missiles, even kernel-driven, to shoot us down as we approach, as is standard protection for our great cities on Terra—”

“Maybe not,” put in Movena, Quintus's
trierarchus.
“The scans we've been able to do of the surface would show us any such missiles. There are kernels here”—she pointed—“under Earthshine's bunker. But they aren't a configuration we recognize—they certainly aren't being used in missiles.”

“This conversation is inefficient.” Ari Guthfrithson stepped forward now, cold, clinical. “We must focus on the goal and work backward. We have to get to Earthshine; we have to persuade him to deflect Höd, if this is still possible. Well, then. You have brought my family here—”

Beth snarled, “We are not your family.” Mardina clutched her arm.

Ari ignored her. He tapped the image of the bunker. “You must land us here. The three of us, mother, father, daughter—
his
granddaughter and great granddaughter. And the farm machine, one mechanical mind that may be able to communicate with another.”

“Thanks for thinking of me,” the ColU said drily.

“Earthshine will take us into his bunker. He has saved you before, Beth, you know that, when he brought you on the
Tatania
, out of the bonfire of your Earth. He will save you again today. For I am sure you are right. He will have no ambition to be extinguished. And he will be motivated to take us with him, wherever he goes.”

Quintus prompted, “And once you're down there . . .”

“We try to persuade him to stop. But this will rely on us getting to that bunker unhindered.”

Quintus nodded. “We have yachts; we can get you down there. But in the meantime we'll have to draw off the bulk of whatever forces he has. We have a
testudo
that we can have some fun with on the ground . . .” He pulled his lip. “Earthshine's forces will be pretty well dug in.”

Movena smiled. “But these are my people. Brikanti. I know how they think. And I have a suggestion to divert their attention.”

“Which is?”

“They have to protect two of their three facilities on the ground: the launch site, the bunker. So, attack the third.”

Quintus smiled. “Ah. The big tree. The Brikanti will be drawn away to save
that
, being the superstitious barbarians they are.”

Kerys, visibly dismissing the insult, shook her head. “These are standard plays. We need something more. A backup plan. Even if Beth Eden Jones and the others get through to Earthshine, there's no guarantee he will listen to them. We need to think about other ways of stopping Höd.”

“Such as?” Quintus asked. “There are troops on Höd itself; they will no doubt stay up there to defend it until the last possible minute. If we try to approach in the
Malleus,
they will blast us out of the sky—or do their level best.”

“True. So we don't approach in the
Malleus
. Or rather, I don't.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that I will take a small crew, Brikanti-trained—just a couple of us would do—and take
that
ship, from the ground. The
Celyn.
It's the same class as my own last command, the
Ukelwydd
. I could fly it blindfold. We will eliminate it as a threat to the
Malleus
, if nothing else. And perhaps we can be a backup to this strategy of persuasion. I could simply blast up to Höd, which is conveniently hurtling in toward us, and use the ship's communication codes, and maybe my own rank, as cover to approach. And then—”

Quintus frowned. “Yes, and then?”

“I don't know. I'll have to improvise. The crew on Höd must have some kind of abort facility.”

“Not necessarily,” the ColU murmured.

“Well, if there isn't, we'll think of something else.”

Movena nodded enthusiastically. “It may be a slim chance, but better than none at all.”

Kerys said, “If you drop me below the base's horizon, perhaps on the same pass when you drop Beth and her party for the bunker—”

“Beth, and her party, and me.” The voice wavered, but was forceful.

Stef turned, and to her dismay saw Penny in the doorway, clinging to a rail with one clawlike hand, her gray hair a cloud around her head. “Penny—go back to your couch.”

“I will not, and I don't answer to you now, Stef, if I ever did. Listen to me. I know Earthshine better than any of you. I was even a colleague of sorts, once, and have been here again, on this side of the jonbar hinge. Drop me onto Mars in a wheelchair—in a pressurized sack, whatever—I can help you.” She smiled thinly. “At the minimum it might distract him. Another diversion of forces.” She glared at her sister. “I trust you're not going to put up any more objections?”

Stef felt anger surge. “You never belonged in my life anyway. To see you leave it now will be no loss to me.”

Quintus held up his hands. “We don't have time for this. We have a plan, and it's the best we're going to find. Prepare for your drops in—” He glanced at his
trierarchus
.

“One hour,” Movena said.

“One hour.” He glanced around at the group. “We will probably never meet again like this, those of us assembled here. And many of us may not survive the day at all. If you believe in Jesu, may He be at your side now.” He clapped his hands, breaking the moment. “Go, go!”