And Galiana?
[When she returned we knew we’d been right. And she gave a name to our enemy, Clavain. We owe her that much, if nothing else.]
Then Skade reached into his head and planted an image. What she showed him was pitiless blackness studded by a smattering of faint, feeble stars. The stars did nothing to nullify the darkness, serving only to make it more absolute and cold. This was how Skade now perceived the cosmos, as ultimately inimical to life as an acid bath. But between the stars was something other than emptiness. The machines lurked in those spaces, preferring the darkness and the cold. Skade made him experience the cruel flavour of their intelligence. It made the thought processes of the Master of Works seem comforting and friendly. There was something bestial in the way the machines thought, a furious slavering hunger that would eclipse all other considerations.
A feral, ravenous bloodlust.
[They’ve always been out there, hiding in the darkness, watching and waiting. For four centuries we’ve been extremely lucky, stumbling through the night, making noise and light, broadcasting our presence into the galaxy. I think in some ways they must be blind, or that there are certain kinds of signal they filter from their perceptions. They never homed in on our radio or television transmissions, for instance, or else they would have scented us en masse centuries ago. That hasn’t happened yet. Perhaps they are designed only to respond to the unmistakable signs of a starfaring culture, rather than a merely technological one. Speculation, of course, but what else can we do but speculate?]
Clavain looked at the twelve brand-new starships. And now? Why start shipbuilding again?
[Because now we can. Nightshade was a prototype for these twelve much larger ships. They have quiet drives. With certain refinements in drive topology we were able to reduce the tau-neutrino flux by two orders of magnitude. Far from perfect, but it should allow us to resume interstellar travel without immediate fear of bringing down the wolves. The technology will, of course, have to remain strictly within Conjoiner control.]
Of course.
[I’m glad you see it that way.]
He looked at the ships again. The twelve black shapes were larger, fatter versions of Nightshade, their hulls swelling out to a width of perhaps two hundred and fifty metres at the widest point. They were as fat-bellied as the old ramliner colonisation ships, which had been designed to carry many tens of thousands of frozen sleepers.
But what about the rest of humanity? What about all the old ships that are still being used?
[We’ve done what we can. Closed Council agents have succeeded in regaining control of a number of outlaw vessels. These ships were destroyed, of course: we can’t use them either, and existing drives can’t be safely converted to the stealthed design.]
They can’t?
Into Clavain’s mind Skade tossed the image of a small planet, perhaps a moon, with a huge bowl-shaped chunk gouged out of one hemisphere, glowing cherry-red.
[No.]
And I don’t suppose that at any point you thought that it might help to disclose this information?
Behind the visor of her crested helmet she smiled tolerantly. [Clavain… Clavain. Always so willing to believe in the greater good of humanity. I find your attitude heartening, I really do. But what good would disclosure serve? This information is already too sensitive to share even with the majority of the Conjoined. I daren’t imagine what effect it would have on the rest of humanity.]
He wanted to argue but he knew she was correct. It was decades since any utterance from the Conjoiners had been taken at face value. Even a warning as bluntly urgent as that would be assumed to have duplicitous intent.
Even if his side capitulated, their surrender would be taken as a ruse.
Maybe you’re right. Maybe. But I still don’t understand why you’ve suddenly begun shipbuilding again.
[As a purely precautionary measure, should we need them.]
Clavain studied the ships again. Even if each ship only had the capacity to carry fifty or sixty thousand sleepers — and they looked capable of carrying far more than that — Skade’s fleet would have sufficed to carry nearly half the population of the Mother Nest.
Purely precautionary — that’s all?
[Well, there is the small matter of the hell-class weapons. Two of the ships plus the prototype will constitute a taskforce for the recovery operation. They will be armed with the most advanced weapons in our arsenal, and will contain recently developed technologies of a tactically advantageous nature.]
Like, I suppose, the systems you were testing?
[Certain further tests must still be performed, but yes…]
Skade unhitched herself. ‘Master of Works — we’re done here for now. My guests have seen enough. What is your most recent estimate for when the ships will be flight ready?’
The servitor, which had folded and entwined its appendages into a tight bundle, swivelled its head to address her. ‘Sixty-one days, eight hours and thirteen minutes.’
Thank you. Be sure to do all you can to accelerate that schedule. Clavain won’t want to be detained a moment, will you?‘
Clavain said nothing.
‘Please follow me,’ said the Master of Works, flicking a limb towards the exit. It was anxious to lead them back to the surface.
Clavain made sure he was the first behind it.
He did his best to keep his mind as blank and calm as possible, concentrating purely on the mechanics of the task in hand. The journey back towards the surface of the comet seemed to take much longer than the trip down had. The Master of Works bustled ahead of them, straddling the tunnel bore, picking its way along it with fastidious care. The servitor’s mood was impossible to read, but Clavain had the impression that it was very glad to be done with the three of them. It had been programmed to tend the operations here with zealous protectivity, and Clavain could not help but admire the grudging way it had entertained them. He had dealt with many robots and servitors in his lifetime, and they had been programmed with many superficially convincing personalities. But this was the first one that had seemed genuinely resentful of human company.
Halfway along the throat, Clavain halted suddenly. Wait a moment.
[What’s wrong?]
I don’t know. My suit’s registering a small pressure leak in my glove. Something in the wall may have ripped the fabric.
[That’s not possible, Clavain. The wall is mildly compacted cometary ice. It would be like cutting yourself on smoke.]
Clavain nodded. Then I cut myself on smoke. Or perhaps there was a sharp chip embedded in the wall.
Clavain turned around and held his hand up for inspection. A target-shaped patch on the back of his left gauntlet was flashing pink, indicating the general region of a slow pressure loss.
[He’s right, Skade,] Remontoire said.
[It’s not serious. He can fix it when we’re back on the corvette.]
My hand feels cold. I’ve lost this hand once already, Skade. I don’t intend to lose it again.
He heard her hiss, an unfiltered sound of pure human impatience. [Then fix it.]
Clavain nodded and fumbled the spray from his utility belt. He dialled the nozzle to its narrowest setting and pressed the tip against his glove. The sealant emerged like a thin grey worm, instantly hardening and bonding to the fabric. He worked the nozzle sinuously up and down and from side to side, until he had doodled the worm across the gauntlet.
His hand was cold, but it also hurt because he had pushed the blade of the piezo-knife clean through the gauntlet. He had done it without removing the knife from the belt, in one fluid gesture as he moved one hand across the belt and angled the knife with the other. Given the difficulties, he had done well not to escape a more severe injury.
Clavain returned the spray to his belt. There was a regular warning tone in his helmet and his glove continued to pulse pink — he could see the pink glow around the edges of the sealant — but the sense of cold was diminishing. There was a small residual lea
k, but nothing that would cause him any difficulties.
[Well?]
I think that’s taken care of it. I’ll take a better look at it when we’re in the corvette.
To Clavain’s relief the incident appeared closed. The servitor bustled on and the three of them followed it. Eventually the tunnel breached the comet’s surface. Clavain had the usual expected moment of vertigo as he stood outside again, for the comet’s weak gravity was barely detectable and it was very easy via a simple flip of the perceptions to imagine himself glued by the soles of his feet to a coal-black ceiling, head down over infinite nothingness. But then the moment passed and he was confident again. The Master of Works packed itself back into the collar and then vanished down the tunnel.
They made quick progress to the waiting corvette, a wedge of pure black tethered against the starscape.
[Clavain… ?]
Yes, Skade?
[Do you mind if I ask you something? The Master of Works reported that you had doubts… was that an honest observation, or was the machine confused by the extreme antiquity of your memories?]
You tell me.
[Do you appreciate the need to recover the weapons, now? I mean on a visceral level?]
Nothing’s ever been clearer to me. I understand perfectly that we need those weapons.
[I sense your honesty, Clavain. You do understand, don’t you?]
Yes, I think so. The things you showed me made it all a lot clearer.
He was ahead of Skade and Remontoire by ten or twelve metres, moving as quickly as he dared. Suddenly — when he had reached the corvette’s nearest grappling line — he stopped and spun around, grasping the line with one hand. The gesture was enough to make Skade and Remontoire stop in their tracks.
[Clavain…]
He ripped the piezo-knife from his belt and plunged it into the plastic membrane that wrapped the comet. He had the knife set to maximum sharpness and worked it lengthways, gouging a gash in the membrane. Clavain edged along like a crab, slicing first a metre then a two-metre rift, the knife whistling through the membrane with the barest hint of resistance. He had to keep a firm hold of the grapple, so he was only able to open up a four-metre-wide gash.
Until he had made the cut, he had no way of judging whether it would be sufficiently long. But a sliding sensation in his gut told him that it was enough. The entire patch of membrane under the corvette was being tugged back by the elasticity of the rest of the fabric. The gash was ripping wider and longer without his encouragement: four metres, then six, then ten… unzipping in either direction. Skade and Remontoire, caught on the far side, were tugged away by the same elastic pull.
The whole thing had taken one or two seconds. That, however, was more than enough time for Skade.
Almost as soon as he had plunged the knife in he had felt her claw at his mind, understanding that he was attempting to escape. In that moment he sensed brutal neural power that he had never suspected before. Skade was unleashing everything that she had against him, damning caution and secrecy. He felt search-and-destroy algorithms scuttle across the vacuum on radio waves, burrowing into his skull, working their way through the layered strata of his mind, questing and grasping for the basal routines that would allow her to paralyse him, or throw him into unconsciousness, or simply kill him. Had he been a normal Conjoiner she would have succeeded in microseconds, instructing his neural implants to self-destruct in an incendiary orgy of heat and pressure, and he would have been lost. Instead he felt a pain as if someone were driving an iron piton into his skull, one cruel tap at a time.
He still slipped into unconsciousness. The moment could only have lasted two or three seconds, but when he emerged he felt a yawing dislocation, unable to remember where he was or what he was doing. All that remained was a searing chemical imperative, written in the adrenalin that was still flooding his blood. He didn’t quite know what had caused it, but the feeling was inescapable: an ancient mammalian fear. He was running away from something and his life was in great danger. He was suspended by one hand from a taut metal line. He glanced along the line — up — and saw a ship, a corvette, hovering above him, and knew, or hoped, that this was where he needed to be.
He started to tug himself up the line towards the waiting ship, half-remembering something that he had initiated and that he needed to continue. Then the pain notched itself higher and he fell back into unconsciousness.
Clavain came around as he drifted to a halt — Tell‘ was too strong a word for it — against the plastic membrane. Again he felt a basic urgency and struggled to make sense of the predicament he vaguely knew himself to be in. There above him was the ship — he remembered it from last time. He had been inching up the line, trying to reach it. Or had he been inching down it, trying to get away from something aboard it?
He looked laterally across the surface of wherever he was and saw two figures beckoning him.
[Clavain…]
The voice — the female presence in his head — was forceful but not entirely lacking in compassion. There was regret there, but it was the kind of regret a teacher might entertain for a promising pupil that had let her down. Was the voice disappointed because he was about to fail, or disappointed because he had nearly succeeded?
He didn’t know. He sensed that if he could only think things through, if only he could have a quiet minute alone, he could put all the pieces back together. There had been something, hadn’t there? A huge room full of dark, menacing shapes.
All he needed was peace and quiet.
But there was also a ringing tone in his head: a pressure-loss alarm. He glanced at his suit exterior, searching for the telltale pulse of pink that would highlight the wound. There it was: a smudge of rose across the back of his hand, the one that now held a knife. He returned the knife to the vacant position on his belt and reached instinctively for the sealant spray. Then he realised that he had already used the spray; that the smudge of pink was leaking around the sides of an intricately curved and curled scab of hardened sealant. The solidified grey worm appeared to form a complex runic inscription.
He looked at the glove from a different angle and saw a message scrawled in the tangled track of the worm: SHIP.
It was his handwriting.
The two figures had reached the ends of the wound-shaped gash in the ice and were now converging on his position as quickly as they were able. He judged that they would arrive at the base of the grapple in under a minute. It would take him almost as long to work his way along the line. He wondered about jumping for it, hoping that he could judge it correctly and not sail past the corvette, but at the back of his mind he knew that the adhesive membrane would not allow him to kick off. He would have to shin up the line hand-overhand, despite the pain in his head and the constant feeling that he was on the verge of teetering back into unconsciousness.
He blacked out again, but more briefly this time, and when he saw his glove and the figures converging below him he guessed that he was right to head for the ship. He reached the lock at the same time as the first of the figures — the one with the ridged helmet, he saw now — arrived at the barbed grapple.
His perceptions now told him that the surface of the comet was a vertical black wall, with the tether lines emerging horizontally. The two others were flies glued to that wall, crouched and foreshortened and about to traverse the same bridge he had just crossed. Clavain fell back into the lock and palmed the emergency repressurisation control. The outer door snicked silently shut; air began to flood in. Instantly he felt the pain in his head lessen, and gasped in the sheer relief of the moment.
The override permitted the inner door to open almost before the outer door had sealed. Clavain hurled himself into the corvette’s interior, kicked off from the far wall, knocked his skull against a bulkhead and then collided with the front of the flight deck. He did not bother getting into his seat or fastening restraints. He simply fired the corvette’s thrusters — full emergency burn — and heard a dozen klaxons scream at him
that this was not an auspicious thing to do.
Advise immediate engine shutdown. Advise immediate engine shutdown.
‘Shut up!’ Clavain shouted.
For a moment the corvette pulled away from the comet’s surface. The ship made perhaps two and half meters before the grapple lines extended to their maximum tension and held taut. The jolt threw him against a wall; he felt something break like a dry twig somewhere between his heart and his waist. The comet had moved too, of course, but only imperceptibly; he might as well have been tethered to an immovable rock at the centre of the universe.
‘Clavain.’ The voice came over the corvette’s radio. It was extraordinarily calm. His memories had begun to reassemble, fitfully, and with some hesitation he felt able to apply a name to his tormentor.
‘Skade. Hello.’ He spoke through pain, certain that he had broken at least one rib and probably bruised one or two others.
‘Clavain… what exactly are you doing?’
‘I seem to be attempting to steal this ship.’
He pulled himself into the seat now, wincing at multiple flares of pain. He groaned as he stretched restraint webbing across his chest. The thrusters were threatening to go into autonomous shutdown mode. He threw desperate commands at the corvette. Grapple retraction wouldn’t help his situation: it would just reel in Skade and Remontoire — he remembered both of them now — and then the two of them would be on the outside of the hull, where they would have to stay. They would probably be safe if he abandoned them in space, drifting, but this was a Closed Council mission. Almost no one else would know they were out here.