'We must be right on their tail. They were half a day ahead of us, no more. Damn this interference. Wait-'
What?'
He said something I couldn't hear over the cacophony.
'Say again!'
Maxilla cancelled the screaming sirens. The juddering and shaking continued, and now we could hear the groaning and creaking of the Essene's hull under stress. He pointed to the pict-plate that overviewed the Essene's sensor operations.
'I'm picking up their drive-wake and gravitational displacement, but in these conditions it's getting really hard to read them with accuracy. There-' He tapped a gloved finger on the plate. That's undoubtedly a drive-wake, but how do you explain it?'
I shook my head. I'm no mariner.
They've split/ said Midas, looking over our shoulders. The main portion has fallen back, maybe out of the system itself to a safe distance, and a smaller, core group has continued on in. Maybe five ships, six at most/
That's how I read it too/ Maxilla agreed. 'A fleet division. I'd guess they didn't want to risk sending their biggest ships into this maelstrom/
'I can see why/ murmured Bequin, gazing at the seething turmoil on the main display.
'Forget about the ones that have withdrawn. Follow the lead group in/ I said.
'I would advise-' Maxilla began.
'Do it!'
With the aid of his navigational servitors, he adjusted the Essene's trajectory and set on after the drive-wake of the smaller group, driving in system.
There! There, look!' Maxilla called out suddenly, adjusting a secondary display unit to magnify and enhance an image. It was distant, but we could see the burst-open hulk of an Imperial cruiser drifting in a halo of slowly dissipating energy.
'Definitely one of Estrum's ships. Holed by meteor storms. They ran into trouble the moment they pressed on/
The Essene shook again.
What about us?' I asked.
Maxilla conferred with Betancore. There was a particularly violent shudder and the main lights went out for a second.
'We need shelter/ Maxilla told me frankly.
As far as the Essene's bewildered and over-taxed sensors could establish, there were fifteen planets in the system, as well as millions of planetoid fragments, mostly ragged embers of wasted rock and venting energy. Our
quarry's drive wake led directly to the third largest, one of the inner worlds. It was a scabby, ruined, semi-shattered ball with lingering swathes of swirling bluish atmosphere. Craters covered its northern hemisphere-some impacts had been so large that they had torn open the mantle and exposed the livid red core beneath, like a skull cracked with devastating wounds. Even as we watched, we saw scatters of light dot and blossom across the surface as meteors struck and incinerated continents far below.
We tore in through the convulsing fabric of space, past moons of blood and striated mackerel clouds of dust. A vast sheet of stellar fire swept out at us, throwing the ship wildly off course and hurling silver lumps of rock and ice against our shields.
'Madness!' cried Fischig. They wouldn't have come here! It's death!'
Maxilla looked at me, as if hoping I'd agree with the chastener and call us off for the sake of the Essene.Той are sure of their traces?'
Maxilla, his hands flexing on the controls, swallowed and nodded.
'Get us down there, into whatever shelter the planet's bulk can give us. At least let's confirm their corpses before we leave/
Descent took twenty minutes, none of them smooth and none of them guaranteeing a sequel. I wanted to use the time to get Lowink or Maxilla's astropaths to check on the approach of the task force from Gudrun that had set out, on my instructions thirty weeks ago, to rendezvous with us here.
But it was impossible. The stellar distortion rendered astrotelepathy blind.
I cursed.
We went in steeply, down towards the dark side of the wounded planet. Blooms of fire consumed crater-pocked landmasses in the darkness below and ammoniacal storms raged in oceanic measures. Even here, with the planet between us and the convulsing sun, the ride was hard and rough. We saw, for a second as we passed, another ship ruin, another of Estrum's fleet splintered and destroyed. A death world; a death system.
