Inhibitor Phase

by Alastair Reynolds

  Heatproof compartments had been built into its skin for equipment too bulky to be stowed inside along with my suit. I kicked at these scorched hatches until they sprang open, then collected the items stored inside. I fixed them onto the many attachment points on my suit. Survival rations, medical supplies, small arms, ammunition – and one heavy machine gun, which I stowed on a specially engineered rig across my lower back, beneath my rear life-support pack.

  I checked the dropship over one final time, making sure I had left nothing, then sent the verbal command that instructed it to self-bury. Parts of its hull moved counter to each other in a complex, spiralling pattern, cutting surfaces digging into the ground and slowly gaining traction. It looked like a dark, squirming maggot. I stood back and watched for the five minutes it took the dropship to fully submerge itself. It would keep going down until it hit bedrock, and then begin an even slower process of auto-catalytic breakdown, denying the Conjoiners any useful components or materials, if they were ever lucky enough to find the burial spot.

  I scuffed over the disturbed ground with my heel. The surface disturbance was actually quite minor. Winds were due in a few days and would soon conceal evidence of the burial. In the meantime, it would simply look like the impact point of a piece of debris from the asteroid.

  Exactly as planned.

  Footprints were more of a problem. Each of us had to cross hundreds of kilometres to the rendezvous point, and still more to the capsule. Fortunately, the mission planners had considered this detail. My suit had thickened bulges around its ankles and sleeves. These were a mission-specific augmentation, containing telescopic stilts. I deployed the ankle stilts a step at a time, teetering on my rising height, until they were at their maximum extension. After a few seconds of unsteadiness my balance came back. We had trained well enough that using the legs was mostly second nature. The sleeve-mounted stilts were reserved for scrambling over difficult terrain, and I would not need them immediately.

  The stilts had been carefully engineered to leave the minimum possible ground disturbance, while just supporting my weight. They were also made of a strong thermal insulator, so that we minimised our heat transfer to the terrain – critical as we would need to keep moving in the hours of darkness.

  The final adaptation to the suit was a huge, self-deploying camouflage parasol. It popped out of a compartment in the top of my backpack, pushed up on a stalk above my head, then flung out overlapping segments to an adjustable radius of up to three metres. The parasol had a domed profile, so that its edges drooped to within about a metre of the surface. It obstructed my sightline, but the parasol was sewn with arrays of sensors which fed a visual overlay to my visor. In an emergency, I could squat low, blending with the ground under total concealment. The parasol’s upper surface was constantly adjusting itself to achieve a seamless match of colour, texture and temperature with the ground underneath it. It was a lot of trouble to go to, given that the Conjoiners had little opportunity for overhead surveillance. But its main purpose was to deceive the neutral Demarchists into believing that the Coalition was still fully compliant with its treaties.

  I moved off, making four-metre strides with each swing of my stilts. There was no transition, no easy build-up. I was immediately into my rhythm, moving at the unforgiving pace we had trained for. Through the numbing fog of the drugs, I still felt the protestation of my joints and muscles. If it became unbearable, the suit could increase its anaesthetic dosage. But the one thing I could not do – would not permit myself to do – was to slow or to stop. A pulse on my faceplate showed the direction I needed to go, and the estimated distance to the rendezvous point.

  Six hundred kilometres. Under training conditions I had averaged two hundred kilometres a day, if the terrain was not too treacherous.

  Three days continual movement, without rest.

  Undaunted, emptying my mind of all thoughts except the need to make the next stride, I strode on. Nevil would not thank any of us for delaying his escape, least of all me.

  The ship ushered me to the control room without delay. Before I took my seat, the false windows were already giving me a good idea of our position. An ochre haze arced away from the ship to port and starboard, darkening to black overhead. I could see a few stars, and maybe a few dull moving glints from whatever was left of the Rust Belt, but we were not yet in space. There had been ample time, though, given the time I had been with Glass, so Scythe must have been delaying its exit for a reason. The only one I could think of was that it was already considered too dangerous for us to lose the relative cover of the atmosphere.

  ‘Ship,’ I said, buckling myself in. ‘Glass says that you’ll accept my commands, up to a point. Put me in contact with Lady Arek, as securely as you can manage.’

  Lady Arek’s voice emerged from the console a moment later. ‘Hourglass?’

  ‘No, it’s me. Glass is out of action for the time being. How much do you know?’

  ‘Almost nothing: we have our own situation out here and it is not improving. Glass is hurt? What about you and Pinky?’

  ‘We’re both all right – both safe on the ship, and clear of Chasm City. The ninecats turned on Glass, but she says the ship can help her recover her from her injuries. Is it safe to remain in communication?’

  ‘You will know the moment it isn’t.’

  I studied the location fix, by which the laser was maintaining its lock on Lady Arek’s ship. Her position was a few hundred kilometres higher than my own, well out of the atmosphere, and moving so as to blend in with the flow of debris around the planet, but she was not on any sort of trajectory that would bring her back to the stronghold.

  ‘We have a complication, Lady Arek. I don’t know how much Glass or the ship communicated to you, but we’re carrying hyperpig evacuees from the Swinehouse.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘I haven’t done a head count. Around a hundred, I’d guess, maybe a few more.’

  ‘What are your intentions with them?’

  ‘I don’t have any: Glass rescued them without telling us. Can the stronghold make room for them, until we come up with something better?’ I felt as if I was talking into a void. ‘Lady Arek?’

  Her voice sounded broken, drained of the last drop of hope. ‘It’s finished. The wolves have identified it as a source of organised human activity, and now they’re massing. The defences have been activated, but the best they can manage is a delaying action. I’ve aborted my return. The only safe action now is to dock with Scythe and exchange the Gideon stones.’

  ‘What about the people still there?’

  ‘I am afraid there is no way out for them. They know this, Clavain. They are as resigned to it as I am.’

  ‘We can’t just give in!’ I protested.

  ‘We’re not giving in.’ There was a fierce rebuttal in her words. ‘We have the stones. All nine. I brought the single stone with us, in case a comparison was needed. Now all we need is to arrange a rendezvous, for which the destruction of the stronghold will provide a useful distraction.’ Lady Arek was silent for a moment. ‘I imagine you think that I take this all a little coldly. You underestimate me. I’ve thought this through a thousand times, considered every possible response, every possible get-out clause. Nothing works. The only good outcome we can achieve today is not dying. Are you intending to die, Warren Clavain?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Then here are my instructions. Follow them.’

  I told the ship to instigate my orders in five minutes, which gave me time to get back down to Pinky and the refugees.

  ‘Did you see Glass?’

  ‘Yes – and I think she’ll be all right, once she’s spent some time in the infirmary. For now we’re on our own, though. I’ve spoken to Lady Arek: our best course of action lies in an immediate rendezvous with her ship.’

  ‘Why don’t we wait until we’re safe inside the stronghold?’

  ‘It’s tactically inadvisable.’

  ‘Why?’

&nb
sp; I nodded out over the heads of the refugees, recognising the most prominent of them and making mental notes of some of the others, and speaking to all of them. ‘In a few minutes we’re going to accelerate hard. If I know the ship, then it will orientate its interior surfaces to minimise the risk of injury, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be hard. Spread yourself out as best you can and get as low to the floor as possible. If you have clothing or other items that can serve as cushioning, use it. Do what you can for the injured and infirm. The acceleration won’t last long, after which we’ll be weightless. That carries its own hazards, of course. Do not allow yourselves to drift too far from any surface, in case the ship needs to make a sudden course change.’ I raised my hands slowly, as if in surrender. ‘I wish this wasn’t the welcome, but for the moment it’s all we can offer. In about two hours we make rendezvous with another ship. If that goes well, we can begin to talk about the future. But for now, concentrate on getting through these next two hours.’

  ‘Something’s not going to plan,’ said the hyperpig called Barras.

  ‘We’re in the woods,’ I said. ‘But there’s a way out, provided we make the right decisions.’ I made a lowering gesture with my hands, encouraging them to get down on the floor. In ones and twos they began to comply, until Barras spoke up and made them scramble for a patch of floor. Quickly the pigs rummaged around among their rags, plumping up anything that would offer a degree of cushioning. ‘You too, Pinky,’ I said, lowering myself as well. ‘We’ll ride this out down here. The ship knows what it needs to do.’

  He settled next to me, both of us picking a spot of floor space on the edge of the refugees, but not separated from them.

  In a low gruff tone he said: ‘You didn’t answer my question.’

  I looked down at my folded legs.

  ‘There’s a reason for that.’

  ‘How bad is it?’

  ‘Bad enough that there are things Lady Arek would rather you heard from her lips.’

  ‘Then whatever promise you made to her, you’ve already half-broken it.’

  ‘Actually, I think I may have broken all of it.’

  ‘Then you might as well tell me whatever it is she doesn’t think I need to know right now.’

  I felt as if I were sitting next to a bomb, and had just begun to play with a naked flame. I wondered about the rage that might be in him, and the imperfect control he had over that rage. Perhaps Lady Arek had only ever been trying to spare me, as the bringer of bad news. Perhaps she knew what he was capable of doing to me.

  ‘We can’t go back.’

  ‘Can’t or shouldn’t?’

  ‘The wolves are already there.’

  His next question was all the more unsettling for its calm reasonableness. It only made me wonder what was being bottled up, under steadily rising pressure.

  ‘Snowdrop and the others are gone?’

  ‘Lady Arek says they’re putting up a defence.’

  ‘They know it won’t make a difference. Once a wolf agglomeration locks on in force, it’s only a matter of time.’ He settled on his haunches. Squat-trunked and bow-legged as he was, he seemed more comfortable on the floor than I did. ‘They know it’s futile. They could end it in a second by over-loading the stronghold’s reactors.’

  ‘But they won’t,’ I answered, ‘because they want to give us a chance. While they can provide a distraction, the wolves won’t necessarily pick up on our ships.’

  ‘Is Lady Arek in contact with Snowdrop, or inferring this from long-range observations?’

  ‘She didn’t say.’

  ‘I’d like to know.’

  I had not been keeping a mental count, but the five minutes must have expired because the acceleration began to rise. It was a gradual shift to begin with and I was relieved to find that my sense of vertical did not begin to wander. The ship was pressing us against the floor, but at least we were not being dashed against the walls, buried in a suffocating, bone-shattering pile. Groans and cries came from the refugees, and I imagined some of them were having old or recent injuries put under unpleasant stress. But if they could get through these next two minutes, I might at least be able to keep them alive for another two hours.

  ‘There’s something else we need to discuss,’ I said quietly.

  ‘Now that we’ve got that small business of the death of my partner and most of my community out the way, you mean?’

  ‘I don’t mean that. Once we’re weightless, we’ll go forward and see if we can re-establish contact with Lady Arek. But there’s a snag with this plan. You and I will be all right: there are acceleration couches in the control room. Glass will be all right as well: she’s in some kind of suspension bottle. But everyone else will need to be prepared for ten gees of deceleration.’

  Pinky lifted his head against the strain of two additional gravities and glanced out at the refugees.

  ‘A snag, you call it.’

  ‘There was no other way that made this feasible. The one saving grace is that it won’t be for long.’

  He regarded me for a long moment, then nodded. ‘You looked at the other options.’

  ‘Yes, and they were all significantly worse.’

  ‘And when we get the Gideon stones, what then?’

  ‘Glass said something about Ararat: not the first time it’s come up, either.’

  ‘Have you been to Ararat, Stink?’

  ‘No. Is there a reason I should have?’

  He chose his answer carefully. ‘It’s an interesting place.’

  ‘You’d know?’

  ‘We were all there. Me, Lady Arek . . . the old man. Lived there awhile. Bad things happened on Ararat, and then we left. Part of me would be very happy never to have to go back.’

  ‘Part of you?’

  ‘Actually, make that all of me.’

  By the time Scythe shrugged itself clear of Yellowstone’s atmosphere it was already moving ballistically, with just enough excess speed to intersect Lady Arek’s orbit. The pigs took to weightlessness quite well to begin with – even after all they had been through it was a pleasant novelty to experience for the first time – but I knew very well that a host of unpleasant side-effects were likely to come their way shortly, and few, if any, of them would be prepared. The air circulators were going to be dealing with a lot more than just gaseous waste products, so I hoped Glass had insisted on ample redundancy.

  Pinky took to the weightlessness with no difficulty. Between us we made quick progress back up to the control room, with me mentally counting down the minutes until we would need a system in place to safeguard the refugees. Pinky and I agreed that we would coordinate our tasks in tandem: he would signal Lady Arek, getting clarification on the situation at the stronghold, and I would try to persuade the ship that it needed to provide protection for the new passengers. If all else failed, I was counting on Glass still being this side of consciousness so that she could instruct the ship directly. But I was starting to worry that she had already withdrawn into herself.

  ‘You can tell Lady Arek we’re on our way,’ I said to Pinky, once I had instructed the ship to open a channel for him. ‘Our estimated time of arrival will be . . . one hundred and nine minutes from now. In all likelihood, she won’t see any trace of us until we’re right on top of her and slowing down hard, so warn her to stand down any anti-ship weapons she might have armed.’

  ‘Worried she’ll hurt us?’

  ‘More worried what Scythe might do in return.’

  Pinky and Lady Arek communicated, and although my attention was on the task of making arrangements for the refugees, I still caught most of the exchange. For two old allies – two old friends, as far as I could tell – it was not far off a screaming argument. Lady Arek was furious with me for telling Pinky what was happening to the stronghold. Pinky was furious with Lady Arek for presuming to think that he would not be level-headed enough to process this news like a rational being. Lady Arek in turn was furious at him for having the temerity to presume upon the wisdom
of her reticence, and to dare to suggest that it was rooted in anything other than kind concern and a deep-seated understanding of the extremes he might go to in the service of a lost cause.

  ‘You are the bravest of all of us!’ she was shouting. ‘The one who only today offered up his life for the greater cause of our struggle! But then there was a chance, a shred of a hope, just enough reason to believe. With the stronghold we are far past that point. Nothing can be done, nothing at all, and I will not risk the life of my dearest friend twice in one day!’

  ‘How dare you call me brave, and then keep this from me, while telling him—’

  ‘He needed to know that the stronghold was not a viable destination!’ she replied, her voice breaking on her fury.

  And so it went, while I kept on trying to find some way of alerting the ship that it needed to take care of its own. Perhaps my message had got through, perhaps it had not. There was no way to tell.

  Gradually the shouting and screaming gave way to something loosely resembling reasoned dialogue, and after some deliberation Lady Arek was persuaded to share the intelligence she was gathering from the stronghold. We only got a small part of it, since the data had to be compressed to the point where it could share the voice-only laser-link without degrading the signal.

  It was enough. From what we were shown it was clear that we had no hope of rescuing Snowdrop and the others. The stronghold was still intact, but it was wreathed in a thickening cloud of black machines, partially or totally obscuring the view of it from the monitoring eyes Lady Arek had sprinkled around the Rust Belt. The wolves were concentrating in shell-like waves, clotting around the little asteroid and then falling inward. Where the view was clearest, we could see that the stronghold was fighting back, with bursts of energy stabbing out from dozens of previously concealed weapons emplacements.

  I felt for the burden of decision that must have befallen Snowdrop as she committed to those defences. They were only ever going to be capable of staving off the wolves for a limited time, and in deploying them they removed any doubt that there were humans still around Yellowstone; humans with potent machines and a will to survive. Snowdrop had probably been condemned from the moment the wolves took any sort of exceptional interest in the stronghold. In discharging the defences, she had as good as signed her own death warrant.