Simut did not dignify her outburst with a response but instead waited patiently for the plasmancer to correct her oversight.

‘My lord,’ she added, realising the rebuke within his silence.

‘I will consider your petition,’ Simut replied.

He raised a hand and the tomb ship cut off the communications relay, scattering the plasmancer’s image to falling static. The overlord turned his attention to the royal warden. Feeling his disappointment, Phetos bent to one knee, gaze averted.

‘I exist to serve, my lord.’

‘You do,’ Simut replied, leaning back in the throne. ‘Remember that.’

Chapter Seven

CHAPTER SEVEN

There was a point at which the extraordinary became ordinary. Praxa­medes was not sure when the Ithraca’s Vengeance had passed that point with regard to the slingshot jumps. Likely it was at some time between the eighth and tenth, he decided, as he watched the main display chrono­meter count down to the next translation.

In his studies, he had read that during one period of Terran war the sea-going ships had been powered by the wind, catching its strength in massive sails. Though this allowed ancient Terrans to harness this natural, inexhaustible energy it also left them prey to the vagaries of the weather. When such a vessel was becalmed, a ship’s commander might order that boats be put out, attached to the ship with long rope, and rowed by the crew. It was a slow, back-breaking ordeal for those involved, and its purpose would be to bring the ship to a place where the wind might again be caught and the ship able to proceed under the power of its sails once more.

Instead of sailors bent to the oars, the Ithraca’s Vengeance relied upon angular physical momentum at the instant its warp drive was engaged. Requiring precise timing to ensure the maximum amount of inertia was sustained and carried into the warp, the slingshot manoeuvre taxed not only the two remaining functioning Navigators but also the calculations of the tech-priests and the discipline of the command crew. In order to preserve the motion as long as possible the Geller fields that captured a bubble of reality around the ship could not be engaged until the last moment. Any delay beyond this point would mean exposing the ship to the raw warp. Premature activation would bleed off the momentum attained and shorten the distance of the jump.