Sollis jerked back as the outer airlock door opened suddenly.
“I didn’t . . .” she started.
“I know,” I said urgently. “The robots are coming. They must have sent a command to open the lock.”
“Let’s get out of the way,” Martinez said, kicking off from the wall. “Ingrid—get away from the lock. Take what you can, but make it snappy.”
Sollis started unplugging her equipment, stowing it on her belt with fumbling fingers. The machines powered nearer, the blanket of skin undulating between them like a flying carpet. They slowed, then halted, their lights pushing spears of harsh illumination through the fluid. They were looking at us, wondering what we were doing between them and the door. One of the machines directed its beam towards Martinez’s swimming figure, attracted by the movement. Martinez slowed and hung frozen in the glare, like a moth pinned in a beam of sunlight.
None of us said a word. My own breathing was the loudest sound in the universe, but I couldn’t make it any quieter. Silently, the airlock door closed itself again, as if the robots had detected our presence and decided to bar our exit from the flooded chamber.
One of the machines let go of its corner of the skin. It hovered by the sheet for a moment, as if weighing its options. Then it singled me out and commenced its approach. As it neared, the machine appeared far larger and more threatening than I’d expected. Its cone-shaped body was as long as me; its thickest tentacle appearing powerful enough to do serious damage even without the additional weapon of the laser. When it spread its arms wide, as if to embrace me, I had to fight not to panic and back away.
The robot started examining me. It began with my helmet, tap-tapping and scraping, shining its light through my visor. It applied twisting force, trying to disengage the helmet from the neck coupling. Whether it recognised me as a person or just a piece of unidentifiable floating debris, it appeared to think that dismantling was the best course of action. I told myself that I’d let it work at me for another few seconds, but as soon as I felt the helmet begin to loosen I’d have to act . . . even if that meant alerting the robot that I probably wasn’t debris.
But just when I’d decided I had to move, the robot abandoned my helmet and worked its way south. It extended a pair of tentacles under my chest armour from each side, trying to lever it away like a huge scab. Somehow I kept my nerve, daring to believe that the robot would sooner or later lose interest in me. Then it pulled away from the chest armour and started fiddling with my weapon, tap-tapping away like a spirit in a seance. It tugged on the gun, trying to unclip it. Then, as abruptly as it had started, the robot abandoned its investigation. It pulled away, gathering its tentacles into a fistlike bunch. Then it moved slowly in the direction of Nicolosi, tentacles groping ahead of it.
I willed him to stay still. There’d be no point in trying to swim away. None of us could move faster than those robots. Nicolosi must have worked that out for himself, or else he was paralysed with fright, but he made no movements as the robot cruised up to him. It slowed, the spread of its tentacles widening, and then tracked its spotlight from head to toe, as if it still couldn’t decide what Nicolosi was. Then it reached out a pair of manipulators and brushed their sharp-looking tips against his helmet. The machine probed and examined with surprising gentleness. I heard the metal-on-metal scrape through the voice link, backgrounded by Nicolosi’s rapid, sawlike breathing.
Keep it together ...
The machine reached his neck, examined the interface between helmet and torso assembly and then worked its way down to his chest armour, extending a fine tentacle under the armour itself, to where the vulnerable life-support module lay concealed. Then, very slowly, it withdrew the tentacle.
The machine pulled back from Nicolosi, turning its blunt end away, apparently finished with its examination. The other three robots hovered watchfully with their prize of skin. Nicolosi sighed and eased his breathing.
“I think . . .” he whispered.
That was his big mistake. The machine righted itself, gathered its tentacles back into formation and began to approach him again, its powerful light sweeping up and down his body with renewed purpose. The second machine was nearing, clearly intent on assisting its partner in the examination of Nicolosi.
I looked at Sollis, our horrified gazes locking. “Can you get the door—” I started.
“Not a hope in hell.”
“Nicolosi,” I said, not bothering to whisper this time, “stay still and maybe they’ll go away again.”
But he wasn’t going to stay still: not this time. Even as I watched, he was hooking a hand around the plasma rifle, swinging it in front of him like a harpoon, its wide maw directed at the nearest machine.
“No!” Norbert shouted, his voice booming through the water like a depth charge. “Do not use! Not in here!”
But Nicolosi was beyond reasoned argument now. He had a weapon. Every cell in his body was screaming at him to use it.
So he did.
In one sense, it did all that he asked of it. The plasma discharge speared the robot like a sunbeam through a cloud. The robot came apart in a boiling eruption of steam and fire, jagged black pieces riding the shock wave. Then the steam—the vaporised amniotic fluid—swallowed everything, including Nicolosi and his gun. Even inside my suit, the sound hit me like a hammer blow. He fired once more, as if to make certain that he had destroyed the robot. By then the second machine was near enough to be flung back by the blast, but it quickly righted itself and continued its progress towards him.
“More,” Norbert said, and when I looked back towards the stack of skin sheets, I saw what he meant. Robots were arriving in ones and twos, abandoning their cutting work to investigate whatever had just happened.
“We’re in trouble,” I said.
The steam cloud was breaking up, revealing the floating form of Nicolosi, the ruined stump of his weapon drifting away from him. The second time he fired it, something must have gone badly wrong with the plasma rifle. I wasn’t even sure that Nicolosi was still alive.
“I take door,” Norbert said, drawing his Demarchist weapon. “You take robots.”
“You’re going to shoot us a way out, after what just happened to Nicolosi?” I asked.
“No choice,” he said as the gun unpacked itself in his hand.
Martinez pushed himself across to the big man. “No. Give it to me instead. I’ll take care of the door.”
“Too dangerous,” Norbert said.
“Give it to me.”
Norbert hesitated, and for a moment I thought he was going to put up a fight. Then he calmly passed the Demarchist weapon to Martinez and accepted Martinez’s weapon in return, the little slug-gun vanishing into his vast gauntleted hand. Whatever respect I’d had for Norbert vanished at the same time. If he was supposed to be protecting Martinez, that was no way to go about it.
Of the three of us, only Norbert and I were carrying projectile weapons. I unclipped my second pistol and passed it to Sollis. She took it gratefully, needing little persuasion to keep her energy weapon glued to her belt. The robots were easy to kill, provided we let them get close enough for a clean shot. I didn’t doubt that the surgical cutting gear was capable of inflicting harm, but we never gave them the opportunity to touch us. Not that the machines appeared to have deliberately hostile designs on us anyway. They were still behaving as if they were investigating some shipboard malfunction that required remedial action. They might have killed us, but it would only have been because they did not understand what we were.
We didn’t have an inexhaustible supply of slugs, though, and manual reloading was not an option underwater. Just when I began to worry that we’d be overwhelmed by sheer numbers, Martinez’s voice boomed through my helmet.
“I’m ready to shoot now. Follow me as soon as I’m through the second door.”
The Demarchist weapon discharged, lighting up the entire chamber in an eyeblink of murky detail. There was another discharge, then a third.
“Martinez,” I said. “Speak to me.”
After too long a delay, he came through. “I’m still here. Through the first door. Weapon’s cycling . . .”
More robots were swarming above us, tentacles lashing like whips. I wondered how long it would take before signals reached Nightingale’s sentience engine and the ship realised that it was dealing with more than just a local malfunction.
“Why doesn’t he shoot?” Sollis asked, squeezing off one controlled slug after another.
“Sporting weapon. Three shots, recharge cycle, three shots,” Norbert said, by way of explanation. “No rapid-fire mode. But work good underwater.”
“We could use those next three shots,” I said.
Martinez buzzed in my ear. “Ready. I will discharge until the weapon is dry. I suggest you start swimming now.”
I looked at Nicolosi’s drifting form, which was still as inert as when he had emerged from the steam cloud caused by his own weapon. “I think he’s dead,” I said softly, “but we should still—”
“No,” Norbert said, almost angrily. “Leave him.”
“Maybe he’s just unconscious.”
Martinez fired three times; three brief, bright strobe flashes. “Through!” I heard him call, but there was something wrong with his voice. I knew then that he’d been hurt as well, although I couldn’t guess how badly.
Norbert and Sollis fired two last shots at the robots that were still approaching, then kicked past me in the direction of the airlock. I looked at Nicolosi’s drifting form, knowing that I’d never be able to live with myself if I didn’t try to get him out of there. I clipped my gun back to my belt and started swimming for him.
“No!” Norbert shouted again, when he’d seen my intentions. “Leave him! Too late!”
I reached Nicolosi and locked my right arm around his neck, pulling his head against my chest. I kicked for all I was worth, trying to pull myself forward with my free arm. I still couldn’t tell if Nicolosi was dead or alive.
“Leave him, Scarrow! Too late!”
“I can’t leave him!” I shouted back, my voice ragged.
Three robots were bearing down on me and my cargo, their tentacles groping ahead of them. I squinted against the glare from their lights and tried to focus on getting the two of us to safety. Every kick of my legs, every awkward swing of my arm, seemed to tap the last drop of energy in my muscles. Finally I had nothing more to give.
I loosened my arm. His body corkscrewed slowly around, and through his visor I saw his face: pale, sweat-beaded, locked into a rictus of fear, but not dead, nor even unconscious. His eyes were wide open. He knew exactly what was going to happen when I let him go.
I had no choice.
A strong arm hooked itself under my helmet and began to tug me out of harm’s way. I watched as Nicolosi drifted towards the robots, and then closed my eyes as they wrapped their tentacles around his body and started probing him for points of weakness, like children trying to tear the wrapping from a present.
Norbert’s voice boomed through the water. “He’s dead.”
“He was alive. I saw it.”
“He’s dead. End of story.”
I pulled myself through a curtain of trembling pink water. Air pressure in the corridor contained the amniotic fluid, even though Martinez had blown a man-sized hole in each airlock door. Ruptured metal folded back in jagged black petals. Ahead, caught in a moving pool of light from their helmet lamps, Sollis and Martinez made awkward, crabwise progress away from the ruined door. Sollis was supporting Martinez, doing most of the work for him. Even in zero gravity, it took effort to haul another body.
“Help her,” Norbert said faintly, shaking his weapon to loosen the last of the pink bubbles from its metal outer casing. Without waiting for a reaction from me, he turned and started shooting back into the water, dealing with the remaining robots.
I caught up with Sollis and took some of her burden. All along the corridor, panels were flashing bright red, synchronised with the banshee wail of an emergency siren. About once every ten metres, the ship’s persona spoke from the wall, multiple voices blurring into an agitated chorus. “Attention. Attention,” the faces said. “This is the Voice of Nightingale. An incident has been detected in Culture Bay Three. Damage assessment and mitigation systems have now been tasked. Partial evacuation of the affected ship area may be necessary. Please stand by for further instructions. Attention. Attention . . .”
“What’s up with Martinez?”
“Took some shrapnel when he put a hole in that door.” She indicated a severe dent in his chest armour, to the left of the sternum. “Didn’t puncture the suit, but I’m pretty sure it did some damage. Broken rib, maybe even a collapsed lung. He was talking for a while back there, but he’s out cold now.”
“Without Martinez, we don’t have a mission.”
“I didn’t say he was dead. His suit still looks as if it’s ticking over. Maybe we could leave him here, collect him on the way back.”
“With all those robots crawling about the place? How long do you think they’d leave him alone?”
I looked back, checking on Norbert. He was firing less frequently now, dealing with the last few stragglers still intent on investigating the damage. Finally he stopped, loaded a fresh clip into his slug-gun, and then after waiting for ten or twenty seconds turned from the wall of water. He began to make his way towards us.
“Maybe there aren’t going to be any more robots.”
“There will,” Norbert said, joining us. “Many more. Nowhere safe, now. Ship on full alert. Nightingale coming alive.”
“Maybe we should scrub,” I said. “We’ve lost Nicolosi . . . Martinez is incapacitated . . . we’re no longer at anything like necessary strength to take down Jax.”
“We still take Jax,” Norbert said. “Came for him, leave with him.”
“What about Martinez?”
He looked at the injured man, his face set like a granite carving. “He stay,” he said.
“But you already said that the robots—”
“No other choice. He stay.” And then Norbert brought himself closer to Martinez and tucked a thick finger under the chin of the old man’s helmet, tilting the faceplate up. “Wake!” he bellowed.
When there was no response, Norbert reached behind Martinez’s chest armour and found the release buckles. He passed the dented plate to me, then slid down the access panel on the front of Martinez’s tabard pack, itself dented and cracked from the shrapnel impact. He scooped out a fistful of pink water, flinging the bubble away from us, then started making manual adjustments to the suit’s life-support settings. Biomedical data patterns shifted, accompanied by warning flashes in red.
“What are you doing?” I breathed. When he didn’t appear to hear me, I shouted the question again.
“He need stay awake. This help.”
Martinez coughed red sputum onto the inside of his faceplate. He gulped in hard, then made rapid eye contact with the three of us. Norbert pushed the loaded slug-gun into Martinez’s hand, then slipped a fresh ammo clip onto the old man’s belt. He pointed down the corridor, to the blasted door, then indicated the direction we’d all be heading when we abandoned Martinez.
“We come back,” he said. “You stay alive.”
Sollis’s teeth flashed behind her faceplate. “This isn’t right. We should be carrying him . . . anything other than just leaving him here.”
“Tell them,” Martinez wheezed.
“No,” Norbert said.
“Tell them, you fool! They’ll never trust you unless you tell them.”
“Tell them what?” I asked.
Norbert looked at me with heavy-lidded eyes. “The old man . . . not Martinez. His name . . . Quinlan.”
“Then who the fuck is Martinez?” Sollis asked.
“I,” Norbert said.
I glanced at Sollis, then back at the big man. “Don’t be silly,” I said gently, wondering what must have happened to him in the f
looded chamber.
“I am Quinlan,” the old man said, between racking coughs. “He was always the master. I was just the servant, the decoy.”
“You’re both insane,” Sollis said.
“This is the truth. I acted the role of Martinez . . . de flected attention from him.”
“He can’t be Martinez,” Sollis said. “Sorry, Norbert, but you can barely put a sentence together, let alone a prosecution dossier.”
Norbert tapped a huge finger against the side of his helmet. “Damage to speech centre, in war. Comprehension . . . memory . . . analytic faculties . . . intact.”
“He’s telling the truth,” the old man said. “He’s the one who needs to survive, not me. He’s the one who can nail Jax.” Then he tapped the gun against the big man’s leg, urging him to leave. “Go,” he said, barking out that one word as if it was the last thing he expected to say. And at almost the same moment, I saw one of the tentacled robots begin to poke its limbs through the curtain of water, tick-ticking the tips of its arms against the blasted metal, searching for a way into the corridor.
“Think the man has a point,” Sollis said.
It didn’t get any easier after that.
We left the old man—I still couldn’t think of him as “Quinlan”—slumped against the corridor wall, the barrel of his gun wavering in the rough direction of the ruined airlock. I looked back all the while, willing him to make the best use of the limited number of shots he had left. We were halfway to the next airlock when he squeezed off three rapid rounds, blasting the robot into twitching pieces. It wasn’t long before another set of tentacles began to probe the gap. I wondered how many of the damned things the ship was going to keep throwing at us, and how that number stacked up against the slugs the old man had left.