‘You’re aboard the ship. Just like you planned.’
His relief was palpable. ‘I thought it was never going to end. Four hours in that thing ... it felt like a million years.’
‘I wouldn’t mind betting that’s the first physical discomfort you’ve ever known in your life.’ The man in the black spacesuit was standing now, his legs slightly apart, braced in the half-gravity produced by the ship’s acceleration.
Anthony Theobald narrowed his eyes at the figure. ‘Do I know you?’
‘You do now.’
‘I was expecting to be met by Raichle.’
‘Raichle couldn’t make it. I came instead. You’re okay with that, I assume?’
‘Of course I’m ...’ But Anthony Theobald’s usual self-control was betraying him. The man in the suit felt waves of fear rippling off him. Waves of fear and suspicion and an arrogant unwillingness to grasp that his escape plans hadn’t been as foolproof as they’d looked when he climbed into the nonvelope. ‘Did it really happen? Is Ruskin-Sartorious gone?’
‘It’s gone. The Ultras did a good job. You got out just in time.’
‘And the others? The rest of us?’
‘I’d be surprised if there’s a single intact strand of human DNA left anywhere in the Bubble.’
‘Delphine ...’ There was a heartbreaking crack in his voice. ‘My poor daughter?’
‘You knew the deal, Anthony Theobald. You were the only one with a get-out clause.’
‘I demand to know who you are. If Raichle didn’t send you, how did you know where to find the nonvelope?’
‘Because he told me, that’s why. During interrogation.’
‘Who are you?’
‘That isn’t the issue, Anthony Theobald. The issue at hand is what you were doing sheltering that evil thing in your nice little family-run habitat.’
‘I wasn’t sheltering anything. I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
The man in the suit reached behind the small of his back and unclipped a small, handle-shaped object. He hefted it in his palm as if it might be a cosh or truncheon.
‘I think it’s about time you met a close, personal friend of mine.’
‘You’ve got it wrong. The thing underground was just—’
The man made an odd flicking motion with the handle and something whipped out, extending all the way to the floor. It was almost invisibly fine, catching the light only intermittently. It appeared to swish against the flooring of its own volition, as if searching for something.
The man let go of the handle. The handle remained where it was, its coiled filament stiffening to support it. The handle tracked around until the black cylinder of its head was aimed directly at Anthony Theobald. He raised a hand against the laser as it scratched a bright, oscillating line across his eyes.
It had a mark on him now, confirmed by a minute nod from the man in black.
‘Keep that thing away from me.’
‘This is a Model C whiphound,’ the man in the suit said. ‘It’s got a few additional features compared to the last version. One of them’s called “interrogation mode.” Shall we give it a spin?’
The whiphound began to slink closer to Anthony Theobald.
Dreyfus was alone in his quarters. He had prepared some tea, losing himself in the task. When he was finished, he knelt at a low, black table and allowed the hot ginger-coloured brew to cool before drinking it. The room filled itself with the tinkling sound of distant wind chimes, a ghost-thin melody implicit in the apparent randomness. Normally it suited his mood, but today Dreyfus waved the music quieter, until he had near-silence. He sipped at the tea but it was still too hot.
He faced a blank rice-paper wall. He raised a hand and shaped a basic conjuring gesture, one that he had practised thousands of times. The wall brightened with blocky patches of vivid colour. The colours resolved into a mosaic of faces, several dozen of them, arranged in a compositional scheme with the larger images clustered near the middle. The faces were all the same woman, but taken at different stages in her life, so that they almost looked like images of different people. Sometimes the woman was looking into the camera; sometimes she was looking askance, or had been snapped candidly. She had high cheekbones, a slight overbite and eyes of a startling bronze, flecked with chips of fiery gold. She had black hair that she usually wore in tight curls. She was smiling in many of the images, even the ones where she hadn’t been aware that she was being photographed. She’d smiled a lot.
Dreyfus stared at the pictures as if they were a puzzle he had to solve.
Something was missing. In his mind’s eye he could see the woman in the pictures turning to him with flowers in her hand, kneeling in newly tilled soil. The image was vivid, but when he tried to focus on any particular part of it the details squirmed from his attention. He knew that memory had to come from somewhere, but he couldn’t relate it to any of the images already on the wall.
He’d been trying to place it for nearly eleven years.
The tea was cool enough to drink at last. He sipped it slowly, concentrating on the mosaic of faces. Suddenly the composition struck him as jarringly unbalanced in the top-right corner, even though he’d been satisfied with it for many months. He raised a hand and adjusted the placement of the images, the wall obeying his gestures with flawless obedience. It looked better now, but he knew it would come to displease him in time. Until he found that missing piece, the mosaic would always be disharmonious.
He thought back to what had happened, flinching from the memory even as he embraced it.
Six missing hours.
‘You were okay,’ he told the woman on the wall. ‘You were safe. It didn’t get to you before we did.’
He made himself believe it, as if nothing else in the universe mattered quite as much.
Dreyfus made the images disappear, leaving the rice-paper wall as blank as when he’d entered the room. He finished the tea in a gulp, barely tasting it as it sluiced down his throat. On the same portion of the wall he called up an operational summary of the day’s business, wondering if the forensics squad had managed to get anything on the sculpture Sparver and he had seen in Ruskin-Sartorious. But when the summary sprang onto the wall, neither the images nor the words were legible. He could make out shapes in the images, individual letters in the words, but somewhere between the wall and his brain there was a scrambling filter in place.
Belatedly, Dreyfus realised that he’d neglected to take his scheduled Pangolin shot. Security dyslexia was kicking in as his last clearance boost faded.
He stood from the table and moved to the part of the wall where the booster was dispensed. As he reached towards the pearly-grey surface, the booster appeared in an alcove. It was a pale-grey tube marked with the Panoply gauntlet and a security barcode matching the one on his uniform. Text on the side of the booster read: Pangolin clearance. To be self-administered by Field Prefect Tom Dreyfus only. Unauthorised use may result in permanent irreversible death.
Dreyfus rolled up his sleeve and pressed the tube against the skin of his forearm. He felt a cold tingle as the booster rammed its contents into his body, but there was no discomfort.
He retired to his bedroom. He slept fitfully, but without dreams. When he woke three or four hours later, the summary on the wall was crystal clear.
He studied it for a while, then decided he’d given the Ultras long enough.
CHAPTER 4
An alert chimed on the cutter’s console. Dreyfus pushed the coffee bulb back into the wall and studied the read-out. Something was approaching from the Parking Swarm, too small to be a lighthugger. Guardedly, he notched up the cutter’s defensive posture. Weapons unpacked and armed, but refrained from revealing themselves through the hull. Dreyfus concluded that the approaching object was moving too slowly to make an effective missile. A few moments later, the cutter’s cams locked on and resolved the foreshortened form of a small ship-to-ship shuttle. The vehicle had the shape of an eyeless equine skull. Black armour w
as offset with a scarlet dragonfly, traced in glowing filaments.
He received an invitation to open audio-only communications.
‘Welcome, Prefect,’ said an accentless male voice in modern Russish. ‘How may I be of assistance?’
With some effort, Dreyfus changed verbal gears. ‘You can be of assistance by staying right where you are. I haven’t entered the Swarm.’
‘But you’re very close to the outer perimeter. That would suggest an intention to enter.’
‘To whom am I speaking?’
‘I might ask the same question, Prefect.’
‘I have legal authority in this airspace. That’s all you need to know. I presume I’m dealing with an assigned representative of the Swarm?’
After a pause - which had nothing to do with timelag - the voice replied: ‘You may call me Harbourmaster Seraphim. I speak for all ships gathered in the Swarm, or docked at the central servicing facility.’
‘Would that make you an Ultra?’
‘By your very narrow definition of the term, no. I do not owe my allegiance to any single ship or crew. But while they are here, all crews are answerable to me.’
Dreyfus racked his memory, but he did not recall any prior dealings with anyone called Seraphim, Ultra or otherwise.
‘That’ll make life a lot easier, then.’
‘I’m sorry, Prefect?’
‘It could be that I need access to one of your crews.’
‘That would be somewhat irregular.’
‘Not as irregular as turning a drive beam on a habitat containing nine hundred and sixty people, Harbourmaster.’
Again, there was a lengthy pause. Dreyfus felt a prickle of sweat on the back of his hands. He had jumped the gun by mentioning Ruskin-Sartorious, which was in express contravention of Jane Aumonier’s instructions. But Aumonier had not counted on Dreyfus being approached by someone willing to speak for the entire Swarm.
‘Why are your weapons in a state of readiness, Prefect? I can see them through your hull, despite your baffle-cladding. You’re not nervous, are you?’
‘Just sensible. If I could see your weapons, I’d expect them to be in a state of readiness as well.’
‘Touché,’ Harbourmaster Seraphim said, with a chuckle. ‘But I’m not nervous. I have a duty to protect my Swarm.’
‘One of your ships could do a lot more damage than one of ours. I think that’s already been adequately demonstrated.’
‘Yes, so you said. That’s a serious accusation.’
‘I wouldn’t make it if I didn’t have solid proof.’
‘Such as?’
‘Shipping movements. Forensic samples from the habitat, consistent with torching from one of your drives. I can even give you the name of a ship, if you—’
‘I think we need to speak in person,’ Harbourmaster Seraphim said, with an urgency Dreyfus hadn’t been expecting. ‘Stand your weapons down, please. I am about to approach and initiate hard docking with your ventral airlock.’
‘I haven’t given you permission.’
‘But you’re about to,’ Harbourmaster Seraphim replied.
As the lock cycled - coping with the different pressure and atmospheric-mix protocols in force on both ships - Dreyfus emptied his mind of all preconceptions. It never paid to make assumptions about the physical manifestations of Ultras. They could look as fully human as any Panoply operative, and yet be crawling with furtive and dangerous machines.
Dreyfus had seen stranger than Harbourmaster Seraphim, though. His limbs and torso were encased in the bright green armour of a powered exoskeleton. His head had a shrunken look to it, his mouth and nose hidden behind a grilled silver breathing device that appeared to be grafted in place. There was a chrome-plated input socket set into the left side of his skull - Ultras favoured direct hook-up when they interfaced with their machines - but other than that there was no suggestion of extensive cyborgisation. He had long, black hair drawn back into a single braided tail. His delicate, pale hands reminded Dreyfus of the imprint of a bird’s wings in ancient rock.
‘Thank you for letting me aboard,’ Seraphim said, the voice emanating from somewhere beneath his throat.
Dreyfus introduced himself, then escorted the Ultra into the cutter’s habitation area. ‘Is there anything I can offer you by way of hospitality?’
‘Can you run to blood dialysis?’
‘I’m afraid not.’
‘That’s a pity. My ship’s having trouble purging my fatigue poisons. I think the filters need changing, but I can’t ever seem to find the time to return to the central servicing facility.’
‘How about coffee instead?’
‘I’ll pass, Prefect. Now: concerning this disagreeable subject we were about to touch on.’
‘Nine hundred and sixty casualties. That’s way beyond disagreeable. Those people weren’t ever on my radar, Harbourmaster. That means they were just decent human beings trying to get on with their lives without hurting anyone else. None of them made it out alive.’
‘I’m sorry about the deaths. Truly, I am. We do have souls, Prefect Dreyfus. We do have consciences. But I assure you this could not have been what it appears to be.’
‘I can place the Accompaniment of Shadows near enough to rule out the involvement of any other ship.’
Seraphim touched one hand to the side of his breather mask, as if making some microscopic adjustment to his airflow settings. ‘Have you considered the possibility that someone else committed the crime, yet wished it to appear the work of an innocent crew who just happened to be in the neighbourhood?’
‘There’s nothing my boss and I would rather have than an excuse not to stir up trouble with the Ultras. But we know of only one thing that could have sliced open the Ruskin-Sartorious Bubble, and that’s a Conjoiner drive.’
‘You’ve ruled out the possibility of something else: a weapon, for instance?’
‘There’s nothing that could have done that.’
‘Maybe nothing known to us now. But no one would deny that things were created in the past - terrible, destructive things - that may have survived into the present era. We’ve all heard talk of the hell-class weapons—’
‘I’m a prefect, Seraphim,’ Dreyfus said patiently. ‘I deal in known facts, not speculation. And I don’t have to look for some fabled weapon from the dark ages. I have proof that a drive was involved. That’s all I need.’
‘There must still be a mistake. No crew would perpetrate such an atrocity.’
‘Even if a deal went sour?’
‘Children act out of spite, Prefect Dreyfus. We’re not children.’
‘All right. What about an accident?’
‘A Conjoiner drive doesn’t just switch on spontaneously.’
‘Fine. Then someone had to have their hands on the controls. Glad we cleared that up.’
‘We’ve cleared nothing up. What are you expecting me to do?’
‘I want you to prevent the Accompaniment of Shadows from leaving the Swarm. That’s step one. Step two is you stop any of her crew from jumping ship. Step three is you use your influence to bring the captain to justice.’
‘That’s a lot of steps you’re asking for, Prefect.’
‘It’s my job.’
‘And if I don’t do as you say?’
‘We’ll have to review the existing trading arrangements. There are ten thousand habitats open for business in the Glitter Band, Harbourmaster. But you don’t get to talk to any of them without our blessing.’
‘We’d find workarounds.’
‘I don’t doubt it. But I’d like to see how your profit margins hold up. I imagine things might get very unpleasant for a man in your position.’
‘Don’t ever threaten us, Prefect,’ the Harbourmaster said.
‘Why not?’
‘Because you need us a great deal more than we need you.’
Sparver knocked before entering Thalia’s office, even though the passwall was transparent. As a Deputy Field III - the hi
ghest ranking before promotion to full field status - Sparver was two full grades above Thalia. He would have been within his official rights had he walked in unannounced, as Dreyfus would most likely have done. But in all his dealings with Thalia, ever since she’d joined the team, Sparver had scrupulously treated her as an exact equal. The daughter of Jason Ng had enough to deal with without petty displays of rank, especially from another deputy.
‘Boss man keeping you busy?’ he said, as Thalia looked around from her work.
‘It can’t be helped.’ She took a swig from a coffee flask before rubbing her eyelids. ‘The Perigal issue was already a high-priority item before Ruskin-Sartorious came in. I’m just glad that Dreyfus trusts me to handle both tasks.’
Sparver stood next to her console, scanning the information scrolling past on multiple panes. Thalia made light of her speed-reading ability, but her Klausner index was still much higher than his own.
‘The boss trusts you. Don’t worry about that.’
‘But he has his doubts.’
‘Why d’you say that?’
Thalia stopped the scrolling panes. ‘It would have made sense for me to go out to the Ruskin-Sartorious Bubble. I know core architecture better than anyone.’
‘But you were already busy.’
‘I’m even busier now. That wasn’t really an argument for me not coming along.’
‘Dreyfus knew I could take care of the core,’ Sparver said. ‘If we’d run into anything thorny, you could have signed out a cutter and met us at the Bubble within an hour.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Thalia, listen to me. The boss thinks very highly of you. He may not show it, but that’s just his way. He wouldn’t have brought you onto the team in the first place if he thought otherwise. Trust me on this.’
‘I’m just worried that he thinks I’m underperforming.’
‘Has he said anything to that effect?’
Thalia frowned. ‘Not exactly, no.’
‘Well, then.’
‘I still can’t help wondering why he didn’t ask me along to the Bubble.’
‘Because it was a potentially dangerous operation.’
‘More so than a lockdown?’