‘Get some illumination here,’ Volyova said into her bracelet as the elevator entered the cache chamber.
Weight rushed back as the box slowed to a halt. Immediately they had to squint as the chamber lights glared on, shining on the enormous, cradled shapes of the weapons.
‘Where is it?’ Khouri asked.
‘Wait,’ Volyova said. ‘I have to get my orientation.’
‘I don’t see anything moving.’
‘Me neither… yet.’
Volyova was squashed flat against the glass side of the elevator, straining to peer around the corner of the weapon which bulked largest. Swearing, she made the elevator descend another twenty, thirty metres, then found the order which killed the pulsing red lighting and the interior klaxon.
‘Look,’ Khouri said, in the relative calm which followed. ‘Is that something moving?’
‘Where?’
She pointed, almost vertically downwards. Volyova squinted after her, then spoke into the bracelet again. ‘Auxiliary lighting — cache chamber quadrant five. ‘Then to Khouri: ‘Let’s see what the svinoi’s up to.’
‘You weren’t really serious, were you?’
‘About what?’
‘A glitch in the monitoring systems.’
‘Not really,’ Volyova said, squinting even more as the auxiliaries came online, spotlighting a portion of the chamber far beneath their feet. ‘It’s called optimism — but I’m losing the hang of it fast.’
The weapon, Volyova said, was one of the planet-killers. She was not really sure how it functioned; still less exactly what it was capable of doing. But she had her suspicions. She had tested it years ago at the very lowest range of its destructive settings… against a small moon. Extrapolating — and she was very good at extrapolating — the weapon would have no trouble dismantling a planet even at a range of hundreds of AU. There were things inside it which had the gravitational signatures of quantum black holes, yet which, strangely, refused to evaporate. Somehow the weapon created a soliton — a standing-wave — in the geodesic structure of spacetime.
And now the weapon had come alive, without her bidding. It was gliding through the chamber, riding the network of tracks which would eventually deliver it to open space. It was like watching a skyscraper crawl through a city.
‘Can we do anything?’
‘I’m open to suggestions. What did you have in mind?’
‘Well, you have to appreciate I haven’t given this a hell of a lot of thought…’
‘Say it, Khouri.’
‘We could try blocking it.’ Khouri’s forehead was furrowed, as if, on top of all this, she was battling with a sudden migraine attack. ‘You’ve got shuttles on this thing, haven’t you?’
‘Yes, but —’
‘Then use one to block the exit. Or is that too crude for you?’
‘Right now, the expression “too crude” isn’t in my vocabulary.’
Volyova glanced at her bracelet. All the while the weapon was moving down the chamber wall, for all the world like an armoured slug retracing its own slime-trail. At the bottom of the chamber a vast iris was opening; the track led through the aperture into the dark chamber nested below this one. The weapon was almost level with the aperture.
‘I can move one of the shuttles… but it’ll take too long to get it outside the ship. I don’t think we’d get there in time…’
‘Do it!’ Khouri said, every muscle in her face screaming tension. ‘Piss around any more and we won’t even have this option!’
Volyova nodded, regarding the recruit suspiciously. What did Khouri know about all this? She seemed less bewildered than Volyova, although she also looked far more agitated than Volyova would have expected. But she had a point; the shuttle idea was worth a try, even though it was unlikely to succeed.
‘We need something else,’ she said, calling up the shuttle-control subpersona.
The weapon was halfway through the transfer iris, sliding into second chamber. ‘Something else?’
‘In case this doesn’t work. The problem’s in the gunnery, Khouri — and maybe that’s where we should attack it.’
She blanched. ‘What?’
‘I want you in the seat.’
While they dropped towards the gunnery, accelerating so hard that the floor inverted to become the ceiling — and Khouri’s stomach felt like it had done something similar — Volyova whispered frantic, breathless instructions into her bracelet. It took a maddening few seconds to access the right subpersona, another few to bypass the safeguards which prevented unauthorised remote control of the shuttles. Still more to warm up the engines of one of the shuttles, and then longer still while the machine declamped from the docking restraints and vectored out of its holding bay, beyond the hull, handling — Volyova said — like the damn thing was still half asleep. The lighthugger was still under thrust, so the manoeuvre was doubly tricky.
‘What worries me,’ Khouri said, ‘is what the weapon plans to do once it gets outside. Are we in range of anything?’
‘Resurgam, conceivably.’ Volyova raised her eyes from the bracelet. ‘But maybe now it won’t get a chance.’
The Mademoiselle chose that moment to blink into existence, somehow managing to accommodate herself within the elevator without intruding on the volume already claimed by Khouri and the Triumvir. ‘She’s wrong. This isn’t going to work. I control more than just the cache-weapon.’
‘Admitting it now, are you?’
‘What’s to deny?’ The Mademoiselle smiled pridefully. ‘You recall that I downloaded an avatar of myself into the gunnery? Well my avatar now controls the cache. Nothing I can do can influence her actions. She’s as far beyond my reach as I am beyond the reach of my original self on Yellowstone.’
The elevator was slowing now, Volyova engrossed by the complex little readouts patterning her bracelet. A schematic holo showed the shuttle moving along the lighthugger’s hull; a tiny remora nosing along the smooth flank of a basking shark.
‘But you gave her orders,’ Khouri said. ‘You know what the hell she’s up to, don’t you.’
‘Oh, her orders were very simple. If control of the gunnery placed at her disposal any systems which could quicken the completion of the mission, she was to make whatever arrangements were necessary to hasten that end.’
Khouri shook her head in abject disbelief.
‘I thought you wanted me to kill Sylveste.’
‘The weapon may now make that end achievable rather sooner than I anticipated.’
‘No,’ Khouri said, after the Mademoiselle’s remark had had time to settle in. ‘You wouldn’t wipe out a planet just to kill one man.’
‘Discovered a conscience all of a sudden, have we?’ The Mademoiselle shook her head, lips pursed. ‘You exhibited no qualms over Sylveste. Why should the deaths of others trouble you so much? Or is it simply a question of scale?’
‘It’s just…’ Khouri hesitated, knowing what she was about to say would not trouble the Mademoiselle. ‘Inhuman. But I don’t expect you to understand that.’
The elevator halted, door opening to reveal the semi-flooded access way which led to the gunnery. Khouri took a moment to get her bearings. Ever since the descent had begun, she had been suffering the worst headache imaginable. It seemed to be lessening now, but she had no wish to dwell on what might have caused it.
‘Quickly,’ Volyova said, traipsing out.
‘What you don’t understand,’ the Mademoiselle said, ‘is why I would go to the trouble of destroying an entire colony just to ensure one man’s death.’
Khouri followed Volyova, boots disappearing to the knees in the flood.
‘Damn right I don’t. And I’d try and stop you whether I did or not.’
‘Not if you grasped the facts, Khouri. You’d actually be urging me on.’
‘Then it’s your fault for not telling me.’
They pushed through bulkhead seals, dead janitor-rats bobbing by as the water levels equalised, loosened fro
m the little crannies where they had curled up to expire.
‘Where’s the shuttle?’ Khouri called.
‘Parked over the space-door,’ Volyova said, turning back to look Khouri in the eye. ‘And the weapon hasn’t emerged yet.’
‘Does that mean we won?’
‘Means we haven’t lost yet. But I still want you in the gunnery.’
The Mademoiselle had gone now, but her disembodied voice lingered, wrongly echoless in the cramped corridor.
‘It won’t do you any good. There’s no system in the gunnery that I can’t override, so your presence would be futile.’
‘So why are you obviously so keen to talk me out of going in there?’
The Mademoiselle did not answer.
Two bulkheads further, they reached the ceiling access point which led to the chamber. They were running by that point, and it took a few moments for the water to stop sloshing up and down the angled sides of the corridor. When it did, Volyova frowned.
‘Something’s up,’ she said. ‘What?’
‘Can’t you hear it? There’s a noise.’ She angled her head. ‘Seems to be coming from the gunnery itself.’
Khouri could hear it for herself now. It was a high-pitched mechanical sound, like ancient industrial machinery going haywire.
‘What is it?’
‘I don’t know.’ Volyova paused. ‘At least, I hope I don’t. Let’s get inside.’
Volyova reached up and tugged at the overhead access door, budging it open, a small shower of ship-sludge loosening from its seals, spattering their shoulders. The alloy ladder descended, the industrial noise intensifying. It was clearly coming from the gunnery itself. The gunnery’s bright internal lights were on, but they appeared to be unsteady, as if something were moving around up there interrupting the light-beams. Whatever it was was moving quickly as well.
‘Ilia,’ she said. ‘I’m not sure I like this.’
‘Join the club.’
Her bracelet chimed. Volyova was bending to examine it when an almighty shudder rammed through the entire fabric of the ship. The two of them slipped into the floodwater, falling against the slippery corridor-sides. Khouri was struggling to her feet when a tiny tidal wave of viscous sludge upended her. She hit the deck. For a moment she was swallowing the stuff, the closest to eating shit since her army days. Volyova hooked her by the elbows, hauling her to her feet. Khouri gagged and spat out the sludge, though the awful taste lingered.
Volyova’s bracelet was in scream-mode again.
‘What the hell…’
‘The shuttle,’ Volyova said. ‘We just lost it.’
‘What?’
‘I mean it just got blown up.’ Volyova coughed. Her face was wet; she must have taken a good mouthful of the stuff herself. ‘Far as I can tell, the cache-weapon didn’t even have to push its way out. Secondary weapons did the job — turned on the shuttle.’
Above, the gunnery was still making frightening noises.
‘You want me to go up there, don’t you?’
Volyova nodded. ‘Right now, getting you in the chair is the only option we have left. But don’t worry. I’m right behind you.’
‘Listen to her,’ the Mademoiselle said, quite suddenly. ‘All ready to have you do what she hasn’t the guts to do herself.’
‘Or the implants,’ Khouri shouted, aloud.
‘What?’ Volyova said.
‘Nothing.’ Khouri planted one foot on the lowest rung. ‘Just telling an old friend to go stuff herself.’ Her foot slid off the slime-encrusted rung. Next attempt, she found something approximating a grip and planted her second foot on the same rung. Her head was poking into the little access tunnel which fed into the gunnery, no more than two metres above.
‘You won’t get in,’ the Mademoiselle said. ‘I’m controlling the chair. As soon as you put your head into the chamber, you lose it.’
‘I’d love to see the look on your face, in that case.’
‘Khouri, haven’t you grasped things yet? The loss of your head would be no more than a minor inconvenience.’
Her head was just below the chamber entrance now. She could see the gimballed chair, moving in whiplash arcs through the chamber’s volume. It had never been designed for such acrobatics; Khouri could smell the ozone of fried power-systems greasing the air. ‘Volyova,’ she called, shouting above the din. ‘You built this set-up. Can you cut the power to the chair from below?’
‘Cut power to the chair? Certainly — but what good would it do us? I need you linking in to the gunnery.’
‘Not everything — just enough to stop the bastard moving around.’
There was a brief pause, during which Khouri imagined Volyova summoning ancient wiring diagrams to mind. The woman had constructed the gunnery herself — but it might have been decades and decades of subjective time ago, and something as vulgarly functional as the main power trunk had probably never needed to be upgraded since.
‘Well,’ Volyova said, eventually. ‘There’s a main feed line here — I suppose I could sever it…’
Volyova left, trudging quickly out of sight below. It sounded simple; severing the power feed. Maybe, Khouri thought, Volyova would have to fetch a specialised cutter from elsewhere. Surely there was not that much time. But no; Volyova had something. There was that little laser, the one she used to flense away samples from Captain Brannigan. She always carried it. Agonising seconds passed, Khouri thinking of the cache-weapon, easing slowly beyond the hull, entering naked space. By now it would be locking on target — Resurgam — going to final power-up, preparing to unleash a pulse of gravitational death.
Above, the noise stopped.
All was still, the light steady. The chair hung motionless within its gimbals, a throne imprisoned within an elegantly curved cage.
Volyova shouted, ‘Khouri, there’s a secondary power-source. The gunnery can tap it, if it senses a drain from the main feed. Means you might not have much time to reach the chair…’
Khouri sprang into the gunnery, heaving her body weight out of the hole in the floor. The slender alloy gimbals now looked sharper than before. She moved fast, monkeying through the feed lines, hopping under or above the gimbals. The chair was still static, but the closer she got, the less room she would have if the apparatus swung into motion again. If it happened now, she thought, the walls would be rapidly redecorated in sticky, coagulating red.
And then she was in. Khouri buckled, and the instant she closed the clasp, the chair whined and shot forwards. The gimbals rolled about her, swerving the chair backwards and forwards, upside down and sideways, until all sense of orientation was lost. The motion was neck-breaking, and Khouri felt her eyeballs bulging out of their sockets with each hairpin reversal — but the motion was surely less vicious than before.
She wants to deter me, Khouri thought, but not kill me… yet.
‘Don’t attempt to hook in,’ the Mademoiselle said.
‘Because it might screw up your little plan?’
‘Not at all. Might I remind you of Sun Stealer? He’s waiting in there.’
The chair was still bucking, but not so violently as to hinder conscious thought.
‘Maybe he doesn’t exist,’ Khouri said, subvocalising. ‘Maybe you invented him to have more leverage over me.’
‘Go ahead then.’
Khouri made the helmet lower itself down over her head, masking the whirling motion of the chamber. Her palm rested on the interface control. All it would take was slight pressure to initiate the link; to close the circuit which would result in her psyche being sucked into the military data-abstraction known as gunspace.
‘You can’t do it, can you? Because you believe me. Once you open that connection, there’s no going back.’
She increased the pressure, feeling the slight give as the control threatened to close. Then — either via some unconscious neuromuscular twitch, or because part of her knew it had to be done, she closed the connection. The gunnery environment enfolded around he
r, as it had done in a thousand tactical simulations. Spatial data came first: her own body-image become nebulous, replaced by the lighthugger and its immediate surroundings, and then a series of hierarchical overlays conveying the tactical/strategic situation, constantly updating, self-checking its own assumptions, running frantic realtime-extrapolated simulations.
She assimilated.
The cache-weapon was holding station, several hundred metres away from the hull. Its prong was pointed in the direction of flight, straight towards Resurgam — allowing, Khouri knew, for the tiny relativistic light-bending effects caused by their moderate velocity. Near the space-door from which the weapon had emerged, the shuttle had left a black smear along the side of the hull. There were damage-points there; Khouri felt them as little pricks of discomfort, numbing as auto-repair systems phased in. Gravity sensors felt ripples emanating from the weapon; Khouri felt periodic — and quickening — breezes wash over her. The black holes in the weapon must be spinning up, orbiting quicker and quicker around the torus.
A presence sniffed her, not from outside, but from within the gunnery itself.
‘Sun Stealer’s detected your entry,’ the Mademoiselle said.
‘No problem.’ Khouri reached out into gunspace, slipping abstract hands into cybernetically realised gauntlets. ‘I’m accessing ship’s defences. A few seconds is all I need.’
But something was wrong. The weapons felt differently from the way they had in simulation; unwilling to budge to her whims. Quickly she intuited: they were being fought over, and she was merely joining in the struggle.
The Mademoiselle — or rather, her avatar — was trying to block the hull defences, prevent them from being turned on the cache-weapon. The weapon itself was firmly out of Khouri’s reach, veiled by numerous firewalls. But who — or what — was resisting the Mademoiselle, trying to bring those weapons to bear? Sun Stealer, of course. She could sense him now. Vast, powerful, but also intent on invisibility and slyness, careful to camouflage his actions behind routine data movements. For years that had worked, and Volyova had known nothing of his presence. But now Sun Stealer was driven to recklessness, like a crab forced to scuttle from one hideaway to another by the retreating tide. Nothing remotely human; no sense that this third presence in the gunnery was anything so mundane as another downloaded personality simulation; what Sun Stealer felt like was pure mentality, as if this data-representation was all that he had ever been; all that he ever would be.