Scorpio did not consider himself any kind of an expert on Conjoiner spacecraft, but from what he did know, the moray-class corvette ought to have been a sleek ultra-black chrysalis of a vessel. It should have been flanged and spined like some awful instrument of interrogation. There should have been no hint of a seam in the light-sucking surface of its hull. And the ship should most certainly not have lain on one side, broken-backed, splayed open like a dissected specimen, its guts frozen in mid-explosion. The gore of machine entrails should not have surrounded the corpse, and nor should bits of the hull, as sharp and irregular as glass shards, have been lying around the wreck like so many toppled gravestones.
That wasn’t the only thing wrong with the ship. It was throbbing, making staccato purring noises at the low-frequency limit of Scorpio’s hearing. He felt it in his belly more than he heard it. It was the music.
‘This isn’t good,’ Clavain said.
‘I can still feel Aura,’ Khouri said. ‘She’s in there, Clavain.’
‘There isn’t much of it left for her to be in,’ he told her.
Scorpio saw that for an instant the muzzle of Khouri’s Breitenbach cannon tipped towards Clavain, sweeping across him. It was only for an instant, and there was nothing in Khouri’s expression to suggest that she was on the point of losing control, but it still gave him pause for thought.
‘There’s still a ship here,’ Scorpio said. ‘It may be a wreck, Nevil, but someone could be aboard it. And something’s making that music. We shouldn’t give up yet.’
‘No one was about to give up,’ Clavain said.
‘The cold’s coming from the ship,’ Khouri said. ‘It’s pouring out of it, as if it’s bleeding cold.’
Clavain smiled. ‘Bleeding cold? You can say that again.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Old joke. One that doesn’t work too well in Norte.’
Khouri shrugged. They walked towards the wreck.
At the foot of the sloping green-lit corridor down which she had been invited, Antoinette found an echoing chamber of indistinct proportions. She estimated that she had descended five or six levels before the corridor flattened out, but there was no point attempting to plot her position on the pocket blow-up of the main ship map. It had already proven itself to be hopelessly out of date even before the apparitions had summoned her down here.
She halted, keeping the torch on for now. Green light poked through gill-like slats in the ceiling. Wherever she aimed the beam she found machinery, huge rusting piles of it reaching as far away as the torchlight penetrated. The metallic junk ranged from curved scabs of hull plating taller than Antoinette to thumb-sized artefacts covered in brittle green corrosive fur. In between were bronze pump parts and the damaged limbs and sensory organs of shipboard servitors, tossed into loose, teetering piles. The effect was exactly as if she had stumbled into the waste room of a mechanical abattoir.
‘Well, Captain,’ Antoinette said. Gently, she put the helmet down in front of her. ‘Here I am. I presume you’ve brought me here for a reason.’
The machinery stirred. One of the heaps moved as if being pushed by an invisible hand. The slurry of mechanical parts flowed and gyred, animated by the still-working servitor parts that lay embedded in the charnel pile. The articulated limbs twitched and flexed with a mesmerising degree of co-ordination. Antoinette held her breath. She supposed that she had been expecting something along these lines - a fully fledged class-three apparition, exactly as Palfrey had described - but the actuality of it was still unnerving. This close, the potential dangerousness of the machinery was stark. There were sharp edges that could cut or shear, hinged parts that could crush and maim.
But the machinery did not lurch towards her. Instead it continued to shuffle and organise itself. Bits dropped to the floor, twitching stupidly. Detached limbs flexed and grasped. Eye parts goggled and blinked. The red scratches of optical lasers rammed from the pyre, sliding harmlessly over Antoinette’s chest.
She was being triangulated.
The pile collapsed. A layer of useless slurry had avalanched away to reveal the thing that had been assembling at its core. It was a machine, an accumulation of junk parts in the schematic shape of a man. The skeleton - the main armature of the thing - was composed of perhaps a dozen servitor limbs, grasping each other by their manipulators. It stood expertly balanced on the scuffed metal bulbs of ball-and-socket joints. Cables and feedlines were wrapped around it like tinsel, lashing the looser parts together. The head was a ramshackle conglomeration of sensor parts, stacked in a way that vaguely suggested the proportions of a human skull and face. In places, the cables were still sparking from intermittent short circuits. The smell of hot soldered metal hit her, slamming her back to times when she had worked on the innards of Storm Bird under the watchful supervision of her father.
‘I suppose I should say hello,’ Antoinette said.
There was something in one of the Captain’s hands. She hadn’t noticed it before. The limb whipped towards her and the thing arced through the air, describing a graceful parabola. A reflex made her reach out and snatch the thing from the air.
It was a pair of goggles.
‘I guess you want me to put these on,’ Antoinette said.
The broken black hull loomed above them. There was a tall rent in the side, a gash fringed by a scurf of something black and crystalline. Scorpio watched silently as Jaccottet knelt down and examined it. The white pulse of his breath was as crisp as a vapour trail against the ruined armour. His gloved fingers touched the froth, tracing its peculiar angularity. It was a growth of dice-sized black cubes, arranged into neatly stepped structures.
‘Be careful,’ Khouri said. ‘I think I recognise that stuff.’
‘It’s Inhibitor machinery,’ Clavain said, his own voice barely a breath.
‘Here?’ Scorpio asked.
Clavain nodded gravely. ‘Wolves. They’re here, now, on Ararat. I’m sorry, Scorp.’
‘You’re absolutely sure? It couldn’t just be something weird that Skade was using?’
‘We’re sure,’ Khouri said. ‘Thorn and I got a dose of that stuff around Roc, in the last system. I haven’t seen it up close since then, but it’s not something you forget in a hurry. Scares the hell out of me just to see it again.’
‘It doesn’t seem to be doing much,’ Jaccottet said.
‘It’s inert,’ Clavain said. ‘Has to be. Galiana met this stuff as well, in deep space. It ripped through her ship, assembling itself into attack machinery. Took out her entire crew, section by section, until only Galiana was left. Then it got to her as well. Trust me: if it was functional, we’d be dead by now.’
‘Or we’d be having our skulls sucked dry of data,’ Khouri said. ‘And trust me as well, that’s not the preferred option.’
‘We’re all agreed on that,’ Clavain said.
Scorpio approached the gash after the others, making sure that they were not leaving themselves unprotected from the rear. The black crust of Inhibitor machinery had clearly erupted through the hull from the inside, haemorrhaging out under pressure. Perhaps it had happened before Skade’s ship had hit the surface, after the corvette was attacked in space.
Khouri began to squeeze through into the deeper blackness of the hull. Clavain reached out and touched her sleeve. ‘I wouldn’t rush this,’ he said. ‘For all we know, there’s active wolf machinery just inside.’
‘What other options have we got, guy? From where I’m standing they look a bit thin on the ground.’
‘None of the weapons we brought with us will be worth a damn against active Inhibitor machinery,’ Clavain said. ‘If that stuff wakes, it’d be like trying to put out a forest fire with a water pistol.’
‘At least it’ll be quick,’ Jaccottet said.
‘Actually, the one thing it won’t be is quick,’ Khouri said, with what sounded like malicious pleasure. ‘Because you probably won’t be allowed to die. It suits the machinery to keep you alive while it drinks your skull dry. So if you ha
ve any doubts about whether you want to put yourself through that, I suggest you keep back one round for yourself. If you’re lucky, you can beat the black stuff before it hits your brain and hijacks motor control. After that, you’re fucked.’
‘If it’s so bad,’ Jaccottet said, ‘how did you get away from it?’
‘Divine intervention,’ Khouri replied. ‘But if I were you, it’s not something I’d put a lot of faith in.’
‘Thanks for the tip.’ Jaccottet’s hand moved involuntarily to a small weapon on his belt.
Scorpio knew what he was thinking: would he be fast enough, if the moment came? Or would he wait that fatal instant too long?
Clavain moved, his knife humming in his hand. ‘We’ll have to trust that the stuff remains dormant,’ he said.
‘It’s stayed dormant this long,’ Jaccottet said. ‘Why would it wake up now?’
‘We’re heat sources,’ Clavain said. ‘That might make a tiny bit of difference.’
Khouri pushed through into the belly of the ruined ship. Her torchlight bounced back through the gash, picking out the stepped edges of the froth. Under a fine patina of ice the machinery gleamed like freshly hewn coal. Where Jaccottet had rubbed his fingers across it, however, the stuff was pure black, lacking any highlights or lustre.
‘There’s more of the shit in here,’ she said. ‘It’s spread over everything, like black vomit.’ The torchlight played around again, their shadows wheeling over the walls like stalking ogres. ‘But it doesn’t seem to be any more active than the stuff outside.’
‘All the same,’ Clavain said, ‘don’t touch it, just to be on the safe side.’
‘It wasn’t on my to-do list,’ Khouri replied.
‘Good. Anything else?’
‘The music’s louder. It comes in blasts, speeded up. It’s almost as if I recognise it.’
‘I do recognise it,’ Clavain said. ‘It’s Bach - Passacaglia and Fugue in C Minor, if I’m not mistaken.’
Scorpio turned to his Security Arm man. ‘I want you to stay out here. I can’t afford to leave this exit uncovered.’
Jaccottet knew better than to argue.
Scorpio and Clavain climbed in after Khouri. Clavain played his torch around the mangled interior of this part of the corvette, pausing now and then as the beam alighted on some recognisable but damaged structure. The black invasion resembled a prolific fungal growth that had all but consumed the fabric of the spacecraft.
The hull, Scorpio realised, was a shattered ruin, barely holding itself together. He watched where he put his feet.
‘It subsumes,’ Clavain said quietly, as if wary - despite the intermittent pulses of music - of alerting the machinery. ‘It only takes one element to invade a whole ship. Then it eats its way through the entire thing, converting as it goes.’
‘What are those little black cubes made of?’ asked Scorpio.
‘Almost nothing,’ Clavain told him. ‘Just pure force maintained by a tiny mechanism deep inside, like the nucleus of an atom. Except we never got a look at the mechanism.’
‘I take it you had a go?’
‘We removed some cubic elements from Galiana’s crew by mechanical force, breaking the inter-cube bonds. They just shrank away to nothing, leaving a tiny pile of grey dust. We presumed that was the machinery, but by then there wasn’t a lot it could tell us. Reverse engineering wasn’t really an option.’
‘We’re in a lot of trouble, aren’t we?’ Scorpio said.
‘Yes, we’re in trouble,’ Khouri said. ‘You’re right about that part. Matter of fact, we probably don’t know how much trouble we really are in. But understand one thing: we’re not dead, not yet, and not while we have Aura.’
‘You think she’ll make that much of a difference?’ Clavain asked.
‘She made a difference already, guy. We wouldn’t have made it to this system if she hadn’t.’
‘Do you still think she’s here?’ Scorpio asked her.
‘She’s here. Just can’t say where.’
‘I’m picking up signals as well,’ Clavain said, ‘but they’re fractured and confused. Too many echoes from all the half-functioning systems in this ship. I can’t say if it’s one source or several.’
‘So what do we do?’ Scorpio asked.
Clavain angled his torch into the gloom. The beam knifed against fabulous crenellations and castellations of frozen black cubes. ‘Back there should be the propulsion systems compartment,’ he said. ‘Not a very likely place to look for survivors.’ He swung around, hunting with the beam, squinting at the unfamiliarity of it all. ‘Through here, I think. It seems to be the source of the music, as well. Careful, it’ll be a tight squeeze.’
‘Where will that take us?’ Scorpio said.
‘Habitat and flight deck. Assuming we recognise any of it when we get there.’
‘It’s colder that way,’ Khouri said.
They stepped towards the part of the ship Clavain had indicated. There was a gap ahead, the remains of a bulkhead. The air felt as if it was only a breath away from freezing solid altogether. Scorpio glanced back, his mind playing tricks on him, conjuring languid ripples and waves of motion in the black tar of the wolf machinery.
Instead, something moved ahead. A section of shadow detached itself from the wall, black against black.
Khouri’s gun tipped towards it.
‘No!’ Clavain shouted.
Scorpio heard the click of the Breitenbach cannon’s trigger. He flinched, steeling himself for the energy discharge. It was not really the weapon of choice for close-quarters combat.
Nothing happened. Khouri lowered the weapon’s muzzle an inch. She had pulled back on the trigger, but not enough to fire.
Clavain’s knife trembled in his hand like an elver.
The black presence became a person in black vacuum armour. The armour moved stiffly, as if rusted into seizure. It clutched a dark shape in one hand. The figure took another step and then keeled towards them. It hit the ground with a crack of metal against ice. Black cubes splintered away in all directions, frosted with ice. The weapon - or whatever it was - skidded away and knocked against the wall.
Scorpio knelt down to pick it up.
‘Careful,’ Clavain said again.
Scorpio’s trotters closed on the rounded contours of the Conjoiner side arm. He tried to close his hand around the grip in such a way that he could still depress the trigger. It wasn’t possible. The grip had never been engineered for use by pigs.
In fury he tossed it to Clavain. ‘Maybe you can get this thing to work.’
‘Easy, Scorp.’ Clavain pocketed the weapon. ‘It won’t work for me, either, not unless Skade was very careless with her defences. But we can keep it out of harm’s way, at least.’
Khouri shouldered the cannon and lowered herself down next to the crashed armour of the figure. ‘It ain’t Skade,’ she said. ‘Too big, and the helmet crest isn’t the right shape. You picking up anything, Clavain?’
‘Nothing intelligible,’ he said. He stilled the shivering blade of his knife and slipped it back into one of his pockets. ‘But let’s get that helmet off and see where we are, shall we?’
‘We don’t have time to waste,’ Scorpio said.
Clavain started working the helmet seals. ‘This will only take a moment.’
The extremities of Scorpio’s hands were numb, his co-ordination beginning to show signs of impairment. He did not doubt that Clavain was suffering much the same thing; it must be taking real strength and precision to unlock the intricate mechanism of the helmet seal.
There was a latching sound, then a scrape of metal against metal and a gasp of equalising air pressure. The helmet popped off, trapped between Clavain’s trembling fingertips. He placed it gently on to the ice, rim down.
The face of a young female Conjoiner looked back at them. She had something of the same sleekly sculpted look as her mentor, but she was clearly not Skade. Her face was wide and flat-featured, her bloodless skin the colour of st
atic on a monitor. Her neural crest - the heat-dissipating ridge of bone and cartilage running from the very top of her forehead to the nape of her neck - was less extravagant than the one Scorpio remembered seeing on Skade, and was almost certainly a much less useful indicator of her state of mind. It probably incorporated a more advanced set of neural mechanisms, with lower heat-dissipation burdens.
Her lips were grey and her eyebrows pure chrome white. She opened her eyes. In the torchlight her irises were a metallic blue-grey.
‘Talk to me,’ Clavain said.
She coughed and laughed at the same time. The appearance of a human expression on that stiff mask shocked them all.
Khouri leaned closer. ‘I’m only picking up mush,’ she said.
‘There’s something wrong with her,’ Clavain replied quietly. Then he held the woman’s head from behind, supporting it off the ice. ‘Listen to me carefully. We don’t want to hurt you. You’ve been injured, but if you help us we will take care of you. Can you understand me?’
The woman laughed again, a spasm of delight creasing her face. ‘You . . .’ she began.
Clavain leaned closer. ‘Yes?’
‘Clavain.’
Clavain nodded. ‘Yes, that’s me.’ He looked back at the others. ‘Damage can’t be too severe if she remembers me. I’m sure we’ll be able . . .’
She spoke again. ‘Clavain. Butcher of Tharsis.’
‘That was a long time ago.’
‘Clavain. Defector. Traitor.’ She smiled again, coughed, and then hacked a mouthload of saliva into his face. ‘Betrayed the Mother Nest.’
Clavain wiped the spit from his face with the back of his glove. ‘I didn’t betray the Mother Nest,’ he said, with an alarming lack of anger. ‘It was actually Skade who betrayed it.’ He corrected her with avuncular patience, as if putting right some minor misapprehension about geography.
She laughed and spat at him again. The power of it surprised Scorpio. It caught Clavain in the eye and made him hiss in pain.
Clavain leant closer to the woman, keeping a hand over her mouth this time. ‘We have some work to do, I think. A little bit of re-education. A little bit of attitude adjustment. But that’s all right, I’ve got plenty of time.’
The Revelation Space Collection Page 257
