Dark Tempest by Manda Benson Page B

speaking of the Archers who were such an enigma to them. Maybe he would embroider his tale. Perhaps he would be the one who held the weapon in local legend, or perhaps he might even say he seduced an Archer, and that her name was Jed.
    It felt strange to think of him returning to the habitats of men, a world now so distant to Jed the memories were senseless fragments of an evanescent dream.
    As they returned to the bridge, Jed felt the ship slowing further, and looked to the sun they were now aimed straight at.
    Wolff looked also. “You know this system?”
    “It is the sun of Satigenaria. I have traded here before.”
    “Surely we cannot be heading for the sun itself?” Wolff’s voice held a note of uncertainty, and perhaps even fear.
    “So your faith in Taggart’s deliverance wavers?”
    “He would not program a course directly for a star. Taggart was no fool.”
    “Then perhaps as you said, he foresaw his own death through some intellectual portent, and rather than avert it, wrote in a failsafe to secure his own vengeance.”
    Jed twitched. A slow-moving and inconspicuous object had just come into detection range. Wolff seemed to notice. “Where are we?”
    “We have passed the Kuiper belt, and our vector remains aimed directly at the Satigenarian sun.”
    Wolff shifted his weight ever so slightly, onto one foot. “You bluff, Archer.”
    “I lie not.” Jed raised her chin and blinked, not looking at him.
    “You insinuate your ship dives toward the star?”
    “I insinuate nothing. If you have not the artifice to make alternative deductions, Gerald Wolff, then you are blinded by your own myopia.”
    “Some planetary conjunction bisects our course?”
    “This system contains only two planets, the innermost fifty radians starboard of our course, and the other nearly at opposition. Where we journey is a place closer than the innermost planet, but if one were to accurately aim a projectile at the sun anywhere within the ecliptic, one would be sure to hit it.”
    “Damn you,” Wolff muttered. “A planet innermost from the innermost planet, which permanently occupies the whole span of its orbit—an artificial construction to house the population, a circumfercirc.”
    She’d frustrated him, but Jed was irritated that he’d managed to solve her riddle. She said sourly, “Three, to be precise.”
    The Shamrock drew closer to the object, and Jed could now see what it was. Soon it came into view, the sharp reflective arc of its parabolic sail making a strange silver crescent in the front viewport.
    Wolff’s mouth fell open. “What in Pilgrennon’s name is that?”
    “A stellar galleon,” replied Jed nonchalantly. “And whilst you are aboard this ship, I will not have you use the name of the Blood paragon in disrespect.” As the Shamrock passed, the galleon’s sail revealed itself to be many large mirrors, supported by rigging of silvery hypertensile wire to form one huge parabolic surface with which to catch the stellar wind. A giant mast, three miles in height, speared through the golden hull of the comparatively tiny ship to support the sail, streams of coruscating metallic flags trailing from the galleon’s lagging blades as it wandered by on the outward journey to the Oort cloud.
    Jed watched through the window, but as the galleon passed she felt Wolff’s attentions turning on her back. The Shamrock ’s interior acuities confirmed it–the man was watching her.
    “Why do you stare so?” she said, without looking round.
    She heard Wolff shifting his posture. From the Shamrock , she envisioned him to be leaning his weight back on his heels and grinning theatrically. “If I may not touch, would you deny me the privilege of looking?”
    Jed turned around, twisting her mouth and sighing through her nose. “You stink, Gerald Wolff. Away and cleanse yourself.”
    Wolff flashed his irritating and, Jed thought, lecherous smile, shrugged and sat.
    The Satigenaria Circumfercirc became visible some