“Here we go,” said Adler.

  The Voltran re-entered local space and the droning of its propulsion fell in volume. Straightaway, Grisham felt something at the extremes of his consciousness, like the high-pitched faraway buzzing of an insect. He turned his head to see if it would change his perception of the buzzing, and thought he sensed variations. Now it reminded him more of a whisper than an insect.

  Grisham didn’t know what – if anything – he’d detected, and then the Voltran’s sensors came online, drawing his attention away. The sensor feeds weren’t, as yet, focused on anything of interest.

  “Commencing local area scans,” said Bishop.

  “Running receptor sweep,” said Lopez. “Receptor located. The Tuvandor must have got here before us.”

  “Request a channel,” said Grisham.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “The local area scans are clear,” said Bishop. “I have the location details for Eox. I am obtaining a sensor lock.”

  “Channel request accepted,” said Lopez. “I’ll ask for coordinates of the wreckage.”

  The planet came up on one of the starboard feeds. Eox was less than a hundred thousand kilometres away and its appearance wasn’t much different to Grisham’s imaginings. The planet’s surface was a mixture of blues, greens and yellows, with extensive cloud cover. Both poles were icy and an immense cyclone was drifting across the southern ocean.

  Judging by the devastation inflicted on Eox, the Kijol and the Ax’Kol had fought a brutal and extended battle for the planet. The surface was pocked and scarred in too many places for Grisham to count, and vast areas had been scoured by incendiaries. His eyes went from city to city. Many were completely razed, while others had been extensively damaged by explosives.

  “Eox has two visible moons, Captain,” said Bishop. “One has a diameter of a thousand klicks and the diameter of the other is almost two thousand klicks.”

  Grisham’s initial attention had been focused inwards – towards the planet. The two moons were both farther out. The larger was orbiting Eox at two hundred thousand kilometres and the smaller was at a quarter of a million kilometres. Both satellites were far from the Voltran, and the larger moon was almost out of sight behind the planet.

  “We might need to scan those, Lieutenant Bishop,” said Grisham. It was hard to be sure, but he thought he could see surface imperfections on each of the moons, which might be natural, or which might be something else. “For the moment, concentrate on Eox.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Lieutenant Lopez, have you received any further information from the Tuvandor?” asked Grisham.

  He didn’t want to look at the ruined cities any longer and he adjusted the sensor array so that it was aimed at a different part of the planet. Here, the mixed wreckage of Kijol and Ax’Kol warships had crashed down all across a huge, forested area.

  Grisham visually scanned the darker pieces, hoping to identify possible targets. Nothing stood out, so he extended his mind cautiously, towards one of the largest sections of Ax’Kol debris, which was resting at the end of a twenty-kilometre furrow through the trees. The pain didn’t come, but nor did he locate a mind within the wreckage.

  “Sir, there is no specific information to be had,” said Lopez. “We asked for wreckage and the Kijol brought us here.”

  Grisham nodded. “I’ll take us closer to the planet and see if I can find anything. Ask the Tuvandor’s crew if they’re aware of any deep space wreckage as well as the pieces which came down on the planet.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Lopez.

  “Lieutenant Bishop, please identify the largest pieces of Ax’Kol wreckage on the surface and put them on the tactical.”

  “Yes, sir, I’ll do that.”

  “I’ll warm up the first psionic: focus, Captain,” said Deneuve. “I’ll keep warming them up and cancelling them as we discussed earlier, until you give me a different order.”

  “Thank you, Commander,” said Grisham.

  As he spoke, he instructed the Voltran to accelerate towards Eox. A hundred thousand kilometres wasn’t far and the distance to the planet tumbled. The Tuvandor followed, five hundred kilometres behind and a few kilometres off to portside. Grisham continued his visual scan for likely targets, but saw nothing that stood out. The debris which had come down on this side of the planet was mostly smaller pieces.

  Meanwhile, the whispering he’d noticed earlier hadn’t gone away. It was neither more intrusive, nor less, but it was becoming harder to ignore.

  “Can anyone else hear a noise?” Grisham asked. “It’s like a low, fluctuating buzzing sound. It makes me think of someone whispering in an alien language.”

  “No, sir,” said Deneuve, staring closely at him.

  “Nope, nothing,” said Kinsey.

  Grisham shrugged. He wasn’t ready to dismiss the buzzing as something imagined – since it might potentially be indicative of a consciousness down on Eox – but he couldn’t spend time thinking about it when he had other means to locate Ax’Kol wreckage.

  “The tactical is populating, sir,” said Bishop. “I’ve listed the objects in order of their estimated mass.”

  “Thank you,” said Grisham.

  He picked the top target from the list, which was an irregular lump jutting above the surface of a western ocean, not far from land. Which part of a warship this debris had once formed, Grisham couldn’t even begin to guess. He reached out with his telepathy and located no sign of a mind.

  “I’ll take us eastwards around the planet at a five-thousand-klick altitude,” he said.

  “The Tuvandor’s crew confirm there was plenty of debris in space around the planet, Captain,” said Lopez. “However, the conflict here ended seven years ago, so that debris has either drifted away or crashed into the planet’s surface. There may be some pieces left in orbit – I’ll scan for those and let you know if I find anything.”

  “I can confirm there’s nothing orbiting on this side of the planet, sir,” said Bishop. “If there’s any debris orbiting out of sight, we should catch up with it if we stay on this heading.”

  “Acknowledged,” said Grisham.

  He held the Voltran on his chosen heading around Eox. More of the surface was revealed and the story was the same as elsewhere – debris and ruins. Grisham used his telepathy to scan the wreckage as it came into sight, but he found nothing. He didn’t know how long the Ax’Kol minds could remain alive – if that was the right word – and seven years had elapsed since the engagement at Eox. Perhaps any which had survived the fighting had simply withered and died with the passing of time.

  Grisham desperately hoped this search would bear fruit. He gritted his teeth and held steady.

  EIGHT

  A short time later, the Voltran had completed a single circuit of the planet. With assistance from the Tuvandor, every significant piece of Ax’Kol debris had been detected, and Grisham had scanned them all for signs of dormant minds, without success. His frustration was in danger of turning into anger.

  “I’d feel a damned sight better if I knew how efficient the Gholaxas is at pursuing its targets,” said Grisham.

  “What worries me is the thought our enemy can track us while they’re at lightspeed,” said Adler. “Like you said before, Captain, they must be using telepathy, but we don’t have the faintest idea what set of rules their method follows.”

  “If the Gholaxas’s telepathy doesn’t function at lightspeed, it presumably won’t have been able to detect us for the entire nine hours of the journey to Eox,” said Deneuve. “Then the enemy vessel will have to travel here, which we can assume will take several additional hours.”

  “Or the Gholaxas’s mind can detect a spaceship travelling at lightspeed and can alter its own course to maintain pursuit,” said Grisham. “That would be bad news for us.”

  “And would also mean the enemy vessel might arrive here at any moment,” said Adler.

  Grisham pursed his lips. “I guess I’ve been assuming the worst-case scenario is the most likely scenario ever since the Gholaxas showed up at Dodaxa. Whatever the truth, all we can do is be ready.”

  “We’ve identified every major piece of Ax’Kol wreckage on Eox, Captain,” said Lopez. “Are there any left you want to scan?”

  The list of targets was long, but Grisham had checked each one, including some of the smaller pieces of debris. He suddenly realised his head wasn’t hurting at all. “I’m done with the list, Lieutenant,” he said.

  “We located no significant debris in the planet’s orbit, Captain,” said Bishop. “That leaves the two moons. According to the Tuvandor, the larger moon is called Eox-Eran, and the smaller one is Eox-Ir. The former is within our sensor sight, but the other is currently obscured by the planet.”

  “We’ll scan Eox-Eran first,” said Grisham.

  He accessed one of the feeds aimed at the moon and the surface markings he’d noticed earlier seemed more prominent than before. A command sent the Voltran away from Eox and the warship accelerated towards Eox-Eran. The Tuvandor followed and Grisham made no effort to outpace the Eternus. Having hated the crushing technological superiority of the Kijol battleships for most of his adult life, Grisham now found their presence strangely reassuring. If the Gholaxas appeared, he wanted the Tuvandor as near as possible when it happened.

  The journey time to Eox-Eran wasn’t much more than five minutes and, at the halfway point, Eox-Ir became visible over the cusp of the planet. At the same time, light from the distant sun glinted through the Eox atmosphere, creating spears of yellow that cut through the darkness and made Grisham stare in wonder.

  “There’s plenty of wreckage on Eox-Eran, sir,” said Bishop.

  Grisham hauled his attention to the forward feeds. His sensor team had been busy identifying the debris which was scattered about the moon’s surface. A few pieces had a greater mass than anything which had crashed into Eox, though the modest size of their craters suggested the impacts had been at a low velocity.

  A scan of the first target revealed it contained no dormant mind. Before Grisham could aim his telepathy at the next target, the distant buzzing whispers, which had been ever-present since he’d come to Eox, suddenly turned frantic. Clickings and hissings were discernible among the usual noise, along with other sounds Grisham didn’t have words to describe. The volume – or rather the distance – of it remained constant, though now he was sure that a message was contained within the sound.

  Not a message. A warning, or an alarm.

  “I think the Gholaxas is here,” said Grisham. “Scan for it!”

  “Yes, sir,” said Lopez, without questioning why he was so sure the pursuing vessel was close by.

  “I’ll let the Tuvandor know,” said Bishop.

  “We have to get behind Eox-Eran,” said Grisham.

  At the Voltran’s current velocity, it would be around the moon and blind side of Eox in less than two minutes. Given what Grisham had seen of the enemy spaceship, that would be too long.

  “We have a psionic: focus ready to discharge, Captain,” said Deneuve. “At the first sight of the Gholaxas I’ll attempt to knock it offline with a psionic: suppress. Maybe with the first strike we can come out on top.”

  “There’s no sign of the enemy, sir,” said Lopez.

  “I guess the telepathic shield you instructed the Voltran to maintain didn’t work,” said Adler. “Damn.”

  “There’s got to be a way to prevent our detection,” said Grisham. “We just haven’t found it yet.” Once again, he was confronted by the knowledge that he was a neophyte when it came to telepathy, while the mind on the Gholaxas was – he believed – an amalgamation of millions, perhaps billions, of Ax’Kol minds. Against such numbers, he couldn’t stand alone. The only hope was that the Voltran and the billions of vengeful souls within its consciousness, would be able to learn how to combat the threat presented by the pursuing Gholaxas.

  However, Grisham remembered how easily the mind on the Ax’Kol vessel had intruded upon the Voltran, and without being detected. He needed to enter the grey, to rally the dead and to exhort them to greater efforts. They had to find a way to shield the Voltran from the enemy spaceship, else the Gholaxas would have all the advantages in the coming engagement.

  On a whim, Grisham swept out with his mind, seeking the enemy spaceship. Within a couple of seconds, he felt the first signs of a headache, though mercifully it was only a hint, rather than a full-on pounding in his skull. His telepathic search didn’t find the Gholaxas, but Grisham thought that perhaps the faraway noise, which was still filled with alarm, had become louder.

  He cast his mind out further, but quickly pulled back his search. The Gholaxas was the number one priority and he didn’t want to give himself an agonising headache before the seemingly inevitable confrontation.

  By now, the Voltran was nearing Eox-Eran and Grisham adjusted course so that the warship would sweep around the moon.

  “Captain, what are you intending?” asked Deneuve.

  “I’m still hoping we’ll find a dormant mind in some of the Ax’Kol wreckage, Commander,” said Grisham. “And I’m also hoping I might figure out a way to block the Gholaxas’s detection long enough for us to extract that mind.”

  Deneuve gave a thin smile in response, but didn’t say anything.

  For the next few seconds, Grisham did his best to watch the sensors, pilot the Voltran, and scan the pieces of wreckage on the surface of Eox-Eran. The warship was travelling at such a high velocity that his mind was unable to cope with the demands he placed upon it. Several pieces of debris went unscanned, but Grisham didn’t dare slow until the Voltran was completely behind the moon.

  When Eox was no longer visible, he commanded the warship to decelerate and the velocity gauge fell.

  “This side of Eox-Eran suffered a bunch of impacts,” said Lopez. “I’m adding them to the tactical.”

  Thousands of pieces of warship debris had struck the moon across a fifth of its entire visible surface. Many of the craters were vast and they overlapped each other. Fissures snaked through the rock, joining in places, to make this side of Eox-Eran look as if it were ready to break apart.

  Grisham didn’t need the tactical list to identify his targets. He spotted four or five right away, these being massive sections of Ax’Kol warships. As he scanned the first, Grisham wondered how the enemy were able to grow their fleet if every victory required them to lose so many resources. Perhaps, he thought, the Ax’Kol didn’t actively seek growth. Perhaps their only desire was to endure, so that they might continue to bring death to other species.

  The first target contained no dormant mind, nor did the second or the third. The fourth, however, was different. This piece of wreckage was a five-billion-ton section of an Indredalus, which had crashed down not far from a mangled, fifteen-billion-ton old-generation Eternus. Each impact had formed a crater, along with dozens of fissures which looked as if they might be many kilometres deep.

  “There’s a mind in target #4,” said Grisham. “It’s dormant and it’s dying.”

  “Does that mean it’s too weak to be any use to us?” asked Deneuve.

  “We’ll extract it and find out,” said Grisham. “Lieutenant Lopez, advise the Tuvandor that we’re heading down to target #4. Remember that we’re proposing to draw energy from this wreckage – energy we need to power our psionic attacks.” The lie was only a slight alteration of the truth, but Grisham felt dirty repeating it. An alliance with the Kijol would go better for both sides if everyone felt able to just speak the truth.

  “Yes, sir,” said Lopez. “I’ll let them know.”

  Grisham didn’t wait for Lopez to pass on the message. The target debris was less than twelve hundred kilometres east and he aimed for it, reducing the Voltran from its thousand-kilometre altitude as it approached.

  In the short time available, Grisham scanned several other pieces of debris. As the Voltran’s altitude decreased, some of the targets dropped out of the warship’s visibility arc, but his telepathy wasn’t impeded by the solidity of the moon. He searched for other minds, but found none.

  “It’s looking as if the mind in target #4 is the only one which survived,” he said.

  “Captain Riondalix would like to know how long the operation will take, sir,” said Lopez. “Should I tell him the truth?”

  “Yes,” said Grisham without hesitation. “Also tell him there may be some unpredictable variation.”

  “I don’t think Captain Riondalix is too happy about that, sir,” said Lopez a few moments later. “I reckon he thought we’d be done much sooner. He expects the Gholaxas to locate us quickly.”

  “I expect that too,” said Grisham. The target wreckage was only a few kilometres below and, in a moment, he’d have to enter the grey to give the extraction command. “This is what we have to do, Lieutenant.”

  “Yes, sir. I’ll handle the questions,” said Lopez.

  “Captain, if we’re stationary above the wreckage, and the Gholaxas attacks from low altitude, the Kijol might feel their only option is to drop incendiaries,” said Deneuve. “It’s possible we’ll be caught in the splash.”

  “That’s a good point, Commander,” said Grisham. “We’ll just have to be aware.” He tapped the side of his head three times, which was the sign he’d agreed with the other crew members to indicate he was about to enter the grey. Deneuve nodded in acknowledgement.

  Grisham entered the Voltran’s consciousness and the familiar vortex of souls formed around him. He gave them an instruction to extract the mind in the wreckage below and they understood.

  Instead of withdrawing immediately, Grisham lingered. There had to be a way to make the Voltran undetectable to the Gholaxas, and the spirits here would be the ones to accomplish it. They understood what he wanted and they understood the need, but the means was beyond their knowing.

  Grisham remembered the time when the Voltran had been trapped within the Inojor, while the death factory inserted a second mind into the warship. Back then, when he’d tried to deny the entry of an Ax’Kol crew, the Inojor had extended a fragment of itself onto the bridge of the Voltran.