The other Adventist lay on his side, his chest bloody despite the protection of the armour pieces.
The ship groaned.
‘I did warn you,’ Cruz said. Her own weapon lay cold in her hand. She hadn’t fired a shot.
The second Adventist moved, clawing at his face with his hand, like a man trying to remove a bee.
‘Don’t move,’ Cruz said, approaching him cautiously. ‘Don’t move and you might make it through the day.’
He kept clawing at his face, concentrating his efforts around his eye. He dug his fingers into the socket, popping something loose. He held it between thumb and forefinger for a moment: a perfect human eye, glassily solid, bloodied like some horrid raw delicacy.
‘I said—’ Orca Cruz began.
He crunched his fingers down on the eye, shattering it. Something chrome-yellow emerged in smoky wisps. A moment later Cruz felt the nerve agent infiltrate her lungs.
No one had to tell her it would be fatal.
From the safe vantage point of his garret, the dean studied the progress of his takeover effort. Cameras around Hela offered him continuous real-time imagery of the Ultras’ ship, no matter where its orbit took it. He had seen the telling flicker of drive flame: Seyfarth’s message that the first phase of the acquisition operation had been successful. He had seen - indeed, felt - the departure of the massed ships of the Cathedral Guard, and he had also seen the gathering and co-ordination of the squadrons above Hela. Tiny, flimsy ships, to be sure, but many of them. Crows could mob a man to death.
He had no data about the ensuing activities within the ship. If Seyfarth had followed his own plan, then the twenty members of the spearhead unit would have begun their attack shortly after the signal was returned to Hela. Seyfarth was a brave man: he must have known that his chances of surviving until the arrival of reinforcements were not excellent. He was also, it had to be remembered, a career survivor. More than likely Seyfarth had lost some of his squad by now, but Quaiche very much doubted that Seyfarth himself was amongst the casualties. Somewhere on that ship he was still fighting, still surviving.
The dean craved, desperately, some means of divining what was happening in the ship at this moment. After all the planning, all the years of dreaming and scheming this mad folly into existence, it struck him as the height of unfairness not to be able to see whether events were unfolding as planned. He had always skipped over this hiatus in his imagination: it was either successful or it wasn’t, and there had been little point dwelling on the agony of uncertainty it represented.
But now he had doubts. The squadrons were meeting unexpected resistance from the ship’s hull defences. The imagery showed the ship to be surrounded by a spangling halo of explosions, like a dark and foreboding castle throwing a fireworks display. Most Ultra craft had defences of some kind, so Quaiche had not been greatly surprised to see them deployed here. His cover story had even demanded that the ship have the means to defend itself. But the scale of the defences and the speed and efficiency with which they had reacted: that had taken him aback. What if the forces within the ship were encountering the same unexpected resistance? What if Seyfarth was dead? What if everything was going slowly, catastrophically wrong?
His couch chimed: an incoming message. Shaking, his hand worked the control. ‘Quaiche,’ he said.
‘Report from Cathedral Guard,’ said a muffled voice, lashed by static. ‘Report successful incursion of relief units three and eight. Hull has been breached; no significant airloss. Reinforcement squads are now aboard the Nostalgia for Infinity. Attempting to rendezvous with elements of spearhead.’
Quaiche sighed, disappointed in himself. Of course it was going according to plan, and of course it was turning out to be a little more difficult than anticipated. That was the nature of worthy tasks. But he should never have doubted its ultimate success.
‘Keep me posted,’ he said.
The two mismatched figures - the Captain’s hulking, vacant suit and the childlike form of the pig - sloshed their way towards the scene of battle. They moved through corridors and passages that had never been fully reclaimed for human habitation: rat-ridden, rank with effluent and other toxins, crypt-dark save for the occasional weak and stuttering light source. When the Adventists had turned on him, Scorpio had known exactly where he was. But since then he had been following the Captain, allowing himself to be led into areas of the ship that were completely unfamiliar. As the tour progressed, and as the Captain ushered him through obscure hatchways and hidden apertures, he was struck by the increasing absence of the usual markers of shipwide authority: the jury-rigged electrical and hydraulic systems, the painted, luminescent direction arrows. There was only anatomy. They were navigating parts of the ship known only to the Captain, he realised: private corridors he must have haunted alone. It was his flesh and blood, Scorpio thought: up to him what he did with it.
The pig was under no illusion that he was actually in the Captain’s physical presence. The suit was just a focus for his attention; in every other respect the Captain was as omnipresent as ever, surrounding him in every sinew of the architecture. But for all that Scorpio would have preferred something with a face to talk to rather than the empty suit, it was a lot better than being on his own. He knew that he had been hurt badly by the Adventist leader, and that sooner or later he was going to feel the delayed shock of those injuries. How hard it would hit him, he couldn’t say. He’d have shrugged off the wounds twenty years ago. Now, shrugging off anything seemed unlikely. Yet while he had some form of companion, he felt he could keep delaying that moment of accounting. Just give me a few hours, he thought, just long enough to sort out this mess.
A few hours were all he needed; all he wanted.
‘There’s something we need to discuss, Scorp. You and me. Before it’s too late.’
‘Captain?’
‘I need to do something before it becomes impractical. We came here on Aura’s instructions, in the hope that we’d find something that might make a difference against the Inhibitors. Quaiche and the scuttlers were always the key, which is why we sent Aura into Hela society nine years ago. She was to gather information, to infiltrate the cathedrals through the back door, without anyone ever suspecting her connection to us. That was a good plan, Scorp. It was the best we had at the time. But we mustn’t neglect Haldora itself.’
‘No one’s neglecting it,’ Scorpio said. ‘Aura already thinks she’s made contact with the shadows, via that suit. Isn’t that good enough for now?’
‘It might have been if the Adventists hadn’t betrayed us. But we don’t control that suit: Quaiche does, and he’s no longer a man we can trust. It’s time to up the ante, Scorp. We can’t put all our faith in that one line of negotiation.’
‘So we launch the instrument packages, just like we always planned.’
‘The packages were only ever intended as a precursor. More than likely, they’d have told us nothing we haven’t already learned from Aura. Sooner or later we’d have had to bring in the big guns.’
For a moment Scorpio had forgotten his pain. ‘So what have you got in mind?’
‘We need to know what’s inside Haldora,’ the Captain said. ‘We need to break through the camouflage, and we can’t afford to sit around waiting for a vanishing.’
‘The cache weapon,’ Scorpio said, guessing his companion’s intentions. ‘You want to use it, don’t you? Fire it into the face of that planet, and see what happens?’
‘Like I said, it’s time to bring out the big guns.’
‘It’s the last one we’ve got. Make it count, Captain.’
The suit studied him with the blank aperture of its faceplate. ‘I’ll do my best,’ it said.
Presently, the suit slowed its pace. The pig halted, using the wide bulk of the suit for cover.
‘There’s something ahead, Scorp.’
Scorpio looked into darkness. ‘I don’t see anything.’
‘I sense it, but I need the suit to take a closer look.
I don’t have cameras here.’
They rounded a slight bend, easing their way through a knuckle of interconnected corridors. Suddenly they were back in a part of the ship Scorpio thought he recognised - one of the corridors he had taken the Adventists down earlier that day. Dull sepia light dribbled from sconces in the wall.
‘There are bodies here, Scorp. It doesn’t look good.’
The suit strode ahead, sloshing through unspeakable fluids. The bodies were shadowed lumps, half-submerged in the muck. The suit’s head-light flicked on, playing over the forms. Feral janitor rats fled from the glare.
‘They’re not Adventists,’ Scorpio said.
The suit knelt down next to the closest of the bodies. ‘Do you recognise them?’
Scorpio squatted on his haunches, grimacing at the twin spikes of pain on either side of his chest. He touched the body nearest to the Captain, turning it over so that he could see the face. He fingered the rough leather of an eyepatch.
‘It’s Orca Cruz,’ he said.
His own voice sounded detached, matter-of-fact. She’s dead, he thought. This woman who was loyal to you for more than thirty years of your life is dead; this woman who aided you, protected you, fought for you and made you laugh with her stories, is dead, and she died because of your mistake, your stupidity in not seeing through the Adventists’ plans. And all you feel now is that something you own has been stepped on.
There was a hiss of pistons and servo-mechanisms. The monstrous gauntlet of the Captain’s suit touched him gently on the back. ‘It’s all right, Scorp. I know how you feel.’
‘I don’t feel anything.’
‘That’s what I mean. It’s too soon, too sudden.’
Scorpio looked at the other bodies, knowing that they were all members of the Security Arm. Their weapons were gone, but there was no obvious indication of injury on any of them. But he wouldn’t forget the expression on Cruz’s face in a hurry.
‘She was good,’ he said. ‘She stuck by me when she could have carved out a little empire of her own in Chasm City. She didn’t deserve this. None of them deserved this.’
He forced himself to his full height, steadying himself against the wall. First Lasher, on the trip to Resurgam. Then he’d had to say goodbye to Blood, probably for ever. Now Cruz was gone: his last, precious link to that half-remembered life in Chasm City.
‘I don’t know about you, Captain,’ he said, ‘but I’m about ready to start taking things personally.’
‘I’ve already started,’ the empty suit said.
Battle continued to rage within the Nostalgia for Infinity. Slowly, however, the tide was turning against the Adventist boarders. Around the ship, the last elements of the Cathedral Guard had either tunnelled through to the interior or were being picked off by the hull-mounted defences. Damage had been sustained: fresh craters and scars gouged into the already treacherous landscape of the starship’s hull. The tiny ships that had reached the hull and anchored themselves in place - with projectile barbs, epoxy-pads, rocket grapples and drilling equipment - resembled mechanical ticks half-embedded in the flesh of some monstrous animal. Elsewhere, the mashed corpses of other ships lay entangled in the crevices and folds of the Nostalgia for Infinity’s architecture, quills of escaping air and fluid bleeding into space. Other ships had been ripped apart before they got close to the lighthugger, their hot, mangled wreckage trailing the larger vessel as it orbited Hela. No additional reinforcements had been launched from the moon: the assault had been designed to be total and overwhelming, and only a handful of Cathedral Guard units had not been mobilised during the first wave.
The few elements still trying to make their boarding approach must have known that their chances were not excellent. The resistance had been greater than expected: for the first time, a group of Ultras had actually downplayed the effectiveness of their defences. But the regular soldiers of the Cathedral Guard were blood-loyal to the Adventist order, Quaicheist doctrine running thick and true in their veins, and for them retreat was literally unthinkable. They did not have to know the purpose of their mission to understand that it was of the utmost importance to the dean.
Preoccupied with the matter of finding a safe route to the hull, none of them observed the opening of a space-door in the side of the Nostalgia for Infinity, a chink of golden-yellow light amidst the complexity of the Captain’s transformations. The door looked tiny, but that was only because of the dizzying scale of the ship itself.
Something emerged, moving with the smooth, unhesitating autonomy of a machine. It did not look very much like a spacecraft, even the ungainly sort used for ship-to-ship operations. It resembled a strange abstract ornament: a surreal juxtaposition of flanged bronze-green shapes, windowless and seamless, as if carved from soap or marble, the whole thing encased in a skeletal black harness, a geodesic framework stubbed with docking latches, thrusters and navigation and aiming devices.
It was a cache weapon. There had been forty of the hell-class devices once; now only this unit remained. The science that had made it, the engineering principles embodied in its construction, were almost certainly less advanced than those in the latest additions to the Infinity’s arsenal, like the bladder-mines or the hypometric weapons. No one would ever know for sure. But one thing was clear: the new weapons were instruments of surgical precision rather than brute force, so the cache weapon still had its uses.
It cleared the space-door. Around the skeletal framework of the harness, thrusters sparked blue-white. The glare lit the Nostalgia for Infinity, throwing hard radiance across the black shapes of the last few ships of the Cathedral Guard.
No one noticed.
The cache weapon wheeled around, the harness aligning itself with the looming face of Haldora. Then it accelerated, climbing away from the Nostalgia for Infinity, away from the battle, away from the scratched face of Hela.
Vasko and Khouri stepped into the mirror-filled room of the garret. Vasko looked around, satisfying himself that the room was much as they had left it. The dean was still sitting in the same couch, in the same part of the chamber. Rashmika was seated at the table in the middle of the room, watching their arrival. She had a tea set before her: a neat china service. Vasko observed her reactions carefully, wondering how much of her memory she had recovered. Even if she had not recalled everything, he could not believe that the sight of her mother’s face would not elicit some reaction. There were certain things that cut through memory, he thought.
But if there was a flicker of reaction from Rashmika, he missed it. She simply inclined her head towards them, the way she would have to greet any arriving visitors.
‘Just the two of you?’ Dean Quaiche asked.
‘We’re the advance party,’ Vasko said. ‘There didn’t seem to be any need to send down dozens of us, not until we’ve assessed the facilities.’
‘I told you there were many rooms available,’ he said, ‘for as many delegates as you cared to send.’
Rashmika spoke up. ‘They’re not mad, Dean. They know what’s going to happen in a few hours.’
‘The crossing concerns you?’ he asked the Ultras, as if the very thought was ludicrous.
‘Let’s just say we’d rather observe it from a distance,’ Vasko said. ‘That’s fair enough, isn’t it? There was nothing in our agreement that said we absolutely had to remain aboard the Lady Morwenna. The disadvantage is on our side if we choose not to have delegates present.’
‘I’m disappointed, all the same,’ Quaiche said. ‘I’d hoped you would want to share it with me. The spectacle won’t be anywhere near as impressive from a distance.’
‘I don’t doubt that for a moment,’ Vasko said. ‘All the same, we’ll leave you in peace to enjoy it first-hand.’ He looked at Khouri, choosing his words carefully. ‘We wouldn’t want to interfere with a sacred event.’
‘You wouldn’t be interfering,’ the dean said. ‘All the same, if that’s what you wish . . . I can hardly stop you. But we’re still twelve hours from th
e crossing. There’s no need to get nervous just yet.’
‘Are you nervous?’ Khouri asked him.
‘Not in the slightest,’ he said. ‘That bridge was put there for a reason. I’ve always believed that.’
‘There’s the wreckage of another cathedral at the bottom of the rift,’ Vasko said. ‘Doesn’t that worry you at all?’
‘It tells me that the dean of that cathedral lacked faith,’ Quaiche said.
Vasko’s communicator chimed. He lifted the bracelet to his ear, listened carefully. He frowned, then turned and whispered something into Khouri’s ear.
‘Something the matter?’ Quaiche asked.
‘There’s some trouble on the ship,’ Vasko said. ‘I’m not sure exactly what it is, but it seems to have something to do with your delegates.’
‘My delegates? Why would they be causing trouble?’
‘It seems they’re trying to take over the ship,’ Vasko said. ‘You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?’
‘Well, now that you mention it—’ Quaiche made a very poor imitation of a smile ‘—I might have an inkling.’
One of the doors to the garret swung open. Six red-uniformed Adventist guards walked in, carrying weapons and looking as if they knew what to do with them.
‘I’m sorry it’s come to this,’ Quaiche said, as the guards motioned for Vasko and Khouri to sit down opposite Rashmika. ‘But I really need your ship, and - let’s be honest - there was never much chance of you just giving it to me, was there?’
‘But we had an agreement,’ Vasko said, one of the guards prodding him on the shoulder. ‘We offered you protection.’
‘The trouble was, it wasn’t protection I was after,’ Quaiche said. The rim of his eye-opener flashed polished brass. ‘It was propulsion.’
The Revelation Space Collection Page 302
