A sensation of detachment followed when Phetos withdrew his cortical matrix. The royal warden remained silent, giving away nothing of his thoughts.

‘Very well,’ he said after some time. ‘The overlord has been persuaded that the path is clear to the target world. The resonator will be arriving shortly. I have not told him of your involvement, but continue to move forward as you planned.’

‘My gratitude, Archimedion. You serve your lords and ladies well.’

‘It is my duty, nothing more,’ said Phetos as his image wavered and then disappeared.

Encouraged, Ah-hotep accelerated further, drawing out several more ships to create an outcrop of the fleet pointing directly towards the target planet. Her energy sensors spiked hard, surging across every wavelength and vibrational capacity, heralding the arrival of the blackstone resonator.

The carrier ships decelerated into the system two-thirds of an orbit behind the main fleet, subspherical waves preceding it into the inner system. The overnull grew immediately even though the resonator was not yet fully active, flooding outwards from the Szarekh dynasty ships like ancient beacon fires spreading across a wilderness. Not long after its arrival, Ah-hotep felt a backwash pushing against the overnull effect. She scoured the star system with her longest-ranged arrays, seeking the disturbance. One ship was almost at the boundary point between the gravitational pull of the star and the wastes of the outer system, where it could safely engage its engines.

She reacted immediately, tapping into emergency routines to briefly usurp the command protocols, allowing her ship and those nearby to leap forward, covering nearly a quarter of an orbit in a matter of moments. The overnull flowed with them, spearing out towards the escaping vessel like the waves of an incoming tide flowing up a beach.

‘Plasmancer, what are you doing?’ Simut broadcast directly, a voice-thought that slammed into her consciousness via her ship’s own communications network, as though she shouted at herself. Her override had not been hidden and now the overlord had reacted. Ah-hotep could feel renewed command protocols clawing at the guidance and propulsion systems of her ship, as though prising her fingers one by one from the controls.

She needed just an instant longer. The human ship was building up astromantic power at an exponential rate, ready to breach reality.

Ah-hotep flooded her systems with a purging wave of cortical power, unleashing her own personal store of power to overload the matrix. Arcs of green flared around the command chamber, earthing onto her vaporators, crackling along her limbs.

In the last moments before blindness, her sensors picked up the swell of the overnull connecting with the astromantic ripples of the departing vessel. The power of the blackstone met the pulse of the warp engine. For just an instant the plasmancer felt a cataclysmic release of energy and then everything went dark, her ship left dead in the void.

Chapter Eight

CHAPTER EIGHT

The tinny echo of Kosa’s words rang in Aeschelus’ ears louder than any bellowed warning.