by Gary Gibson
‘The Wanderer,’ she said, ‘has launched an attack on us.’
Tarrant frowned, before glancing towards a display. ‘There’s no sign of it attacking anything,’ he said. ‘As far as I can tell, it’s in orbit exactly where we last saw it.’
‘As far as you can tell,’ she repeated, nodding towards the astrogation chair. ‘Just ask Szymurski,’ she said. ‘Ask him if we’re under attack.’
Tarrant’s mask of outward calm began to slip. ‘Gabrielle, nothing you’re saying makes the least damn bit of sense.’
‘He’s dead,’ she snapped. ‘He’s been dead almost since the moment we entered this system.’
Tarrant’s face darkened. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’
‘Szymurski – or what used to be Szymurski – has been altering the external sensor feeds to keep you from finding out about the attack until it’s too late.’
‘And you know this how?’
‘Bash isn’t as brain-dead as you think. He knows more than you could possibly guess, such as the fact that the Wanderer’s already started digging through the Ingersoll’s hull, to get at its nova drive. So, unless you take action right now, we’re all dead.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ said Sifra flatly. He reached into a pocket, retrieving his gloves without once taking his eyes off her.
‘No, wait a second,’ said Tarrant, stepping closer to the display he had been studying moments before. He activated a virtual panel, his hands moving through the projected light. ‘There’s something not right here.’
‘What?’ asked Sifra.
He looked back at Sifra, shock evident in his gaze. ‘The external feeds – they’ve been running on a repeating loop for the past hour!’
‘While you’re at it,’ said Gabrielle, ‘maybe you should ask Szymurski to come out of his chair.’
Tarrant glared at her, before touching another panel. ‘Szymurski, you there?’
‘Right here.’ His voice echoed across the command deck.
‘The external feed,’ said Tarrant. ‘It’s looping. We aren’t getting it in real time. Why?’
‘There’s a software glitch in the micro-relays,’ Szymurski replied. ‘It’s nothing to worry about.’
‘God damn it,’ Tarrant exploded, ‘why the hell didn’t you tell me? Do you have any idea how much danger you’ve put us in?’
‘I can monitor the real-time situation just fine from here,’ said Szymurski. ‘Everything’s quiet.’
Tarrant licked his lips, and Gabrielle saw a flicker of real fear crossing his face. ‘Step down from the chair,’ he said. ‘I want to speak to you directly, person to person.’
Gabrielle stared over towards the astrogation chair. With its petals folded up, it looked like a sculpture of a sleeping rose wrought from steel and plastic.
Szymurski didn’t respond.
Tarrant’s hands clenched by his sides. ‘Goddamn it,’ he shouted, ‘answer me!’
Still no answer.
Tarrant turned to Sifra. ‘She’s right. Something’s wrong.’
‘No.’ Sifra shook his head. ‘I don’t believe any of this. She’s lying, or bluffing. She’s a machine-head herself and, for all we know, she’s found some way of locking Szymurski inside his astrogation chair with no way to get out.’
Tarrant stared at him in disbelief. ‘Don’t be ridic—’
Something shook the bulkheads surrounding them, and in the next moment a siren began to wail.
‘When you were last here, ten years ago,’ said Gabrielle quickly, ‘the Wanderer learned a great deal about how machine-head implants work. That’s how, from the moment we jumped into this system, it was able to get inside Szymurski’s head without you ever guessing.’
Sifra jabbed at a console, his face turning pale. ‘I can’t get hold of Rohloff or anyone else,’ he said. ‘The comms systems are all down.’
‘All right, Gabrielle,’ said Tarrant finally. ‘I believe you. What do you think we should do?’
‘Just what I already said. Trigger that nova mine you put in orbit around this system’s sun, so it destroys the Wanderer.’
‘We don’t have any guarantees that we can even get ourselves out of this system before the detonation reaches us,’ said Tarrant.
‘We’re about as good as dead anyway,’ she replied. ‘And, believe me, things are going to be far, far worse for the whole human race than you could possibly imagine, if that thing gets away from here with your nova drive.’ The bulkheads shuddered violently again. ‘I mean it, Gregor. You have to trigger it now.’
‘Wait one minute,’ said Sifra. ‘I still say this is bullshit. She’s tricking us.’
‘Just open your eyes and ears,’ Gregor rounded on him. ‘Something’s attacking us.’
‘Then how the hell does she know all this?’ Sifra demanded, his voice shrill. ‘How could she unless Jacinth’s already made a deal with the Wanderer, and she’s in on it?’
Tarrant peered at her intently. ‘You said Bash told you all this, but how did he do that exactly? You mean he just sat up and started talking?’
‘Something like that. He’s capable of lucid moments, very occasionally. And he can get inside the Wanderer’s mind in some way.’
‘Right,’ said Sifra. ‘So a man with the intellectual capacity of a piece of broccoli spontaneously started having a conversation with you.’ He turned to Tarrant, his expression defiant. ‘Are you honestly going to listen to this bullshit? They’re both skilled manipulators, her and Jacinth, and now they’re spinning this insane story just to get us to back off.’
‘For God’s sake, Anil,’ Tarrant exploded, ‘didn’t you hear something slamming into the ship? And yet our sensor arrays tell us there’s nothing out there.’
‘If what you say is true, Anil,’ said Gabrielle, ‘I wouldn’t be asking you to destroy the Wanderer, and quite possibly kill all of us in the process as well.’
‘Have you forgotten what Jacinth did to us, back on the Beauregard?’ Sifra demanded, staring at Tarrant. ‘How she tricked us?’
Around them the ship shook with even greater violence than before, as Tarrant confronted him. ‘No more arguments,’ he said, moving away from his console. ‘We need to get Szymurski out of that astrogation chair, and put Gabrielle in his place.’
‘No,’ said Sifra. ‘Not without General Schelling’s authorization first.’
‘Anil,’ said Tarrant, ‘I’ve about had it up to here with your endless whining. We can’t manage to raise Rohloff or anyone else on this ship. For all we know, they’re all already dead.’
Gabrielle thought of Bash, still back in their quarters, and wondered if she had made some terrible mistake by leaving him there . . . But, no, if she had brought him along with her, they might never have got past that guard. She just had to hope he would be all right.
Tarrant took a step towards the astrogation chair.
‘No,’ yelled Sifra, darting up behind him.
Gabrielle hadn’t noticed Sifra pulling on his gloves. Now, before she could move, he had grabbed hold of Tarrant’s arm.
Tarrant’s face twisted into a death’s head grimace, then he crumpled to the floor, while a thin, high-pitched whine emerged from his throat. His legs and arms twitched violently as Sifra bent over him.
Sifra finally let go of him and stood up again, breathing heavily. He then looked over towards Gabrielle, who still clasped the gun in both hands. Her arms were starting to ache mightily.
She swallowed hard as Sifra stepped closer. ‘You,’ he stabbed one gloved finger towards her, ‘how long have you and Jacinth been plotting all this?’
‘Stay back,’ said Gabrielle, aware of a tremor in her voice.
‘Why?’ asked Sifra, bringing his gloved hands up as he advanced. ‘Because you might shoot me?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’re lucky you didn’t hurt yourself the first time you fired that thing. Your second shot was just beginner’s luck.’ He nodded towards the weapon in her hands
. ‘Believe me, I can see just by looking at it that you’re a lot more likely to kill yourself if you pull that trigger.’
‘Don’t try bluffing me, Anil. Just stay back.’
He had closed the gap between them, swinging his gloved hands from side to side so that the silver filaments glittered under the multiple lights of the command deck. Her arms were now so weary that their nerve endings felt alive with pain.
‘That’s far enough, Anil,’ she said, forcing a little more determination into her voice.
To her surprise, he came to a halt. She had moved so far back that she was now almost up against the wall.
Sifra glanced towards the door, with an expression of relief. ‘You took your time,’ he said.
Gabrielle made the mistake of glancing round. It didn’t even occur to her that she hadn’t heard the door sliding open.
Sifra crossed the remaining gap between them in an instant.
The pain was just as dreadful as the last time he had used his gloves on her. She screamed as Sifra snatched the gun away from her.
He gazed down at her, panting and grinning. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘if we really are under attack from the Wanderer, there’s really no more point in keeping you alive.’
He aimed the gun at her, his finger already tightening on the trigger.
There was a flash of light, and Sifra jerked suddenly to one side. Gabrielle saw his hair was on fire. Then there was another flash, and flames erupted from his mouth and nostrils.
Gabrielle scrambled away from the burning corpse, before turning to look over at Tarrant. He still lay where Sifra had left him, but with a gun gripped in his right hand.
He let the weapon clatter to the deck, then clamped his hand over his left shoulder. ‘There’s a manual override for the astrogation chair,’ he gasped. ‘You need to throw it.’
She came to kneel by him. ‘What happened to the rest of the crew?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know,’ said Tarrant, his face looking grey and pinched. ‘I can’t feel anything on my left side. I think I must be having a stroke.’
Unable to think of anything to say, she made her way over to the astrogation chair.
‘Look down at the base,’ Tarrant instructed from behind her. ‘There’s an emergency release lever, hidden inside a panel. You need to throw it.’
She kneeled down next to the chair and searched around for a few moments. ‘I see it.’ She had found a small hook in one side and, when it popped out, she saw a lever within. When she pressed this, it clicked into a recess.
Gabrielle scrambled quickly out of the way as the petals unfolded from around the chair above. Szymurski was seated within, his mouth slack and eyes rolling in their sockets, and she noticed that his chin and clothes were spattered with vomit. Judging by the smell, he had soiled himself, too.
She turned to Tarrant, who was staring at Szymurski with dread. ‘When I spoke to him just a minute ago,’ he declared, ‘he sounded fine.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘You spoke to something, but it wasn’t him.’
‘You need to get him out of that chair,’ said Tarrant. ‘Can you manage it?’
‘I think so.’
She stepped gingerly up on to the base of the chair, and leaned in closer to Szymurski. Like Bash, he showed no apparent awareness of either her or his surroundings. Hooking a hand under one armpit and the other around his neck, she gently tugged him forward. He slumped against her, with his drool staining her jacket, and after another few seconds he slid out of the chair.
‘Leave those petals folded down,’ instructed Tarrant, as she pulled herself into the vacated seat. Though he had dragged himself around so as to see her better, he already sounded weaker than a moment before. ‘Just lean your head back until it touches the plate built into the headrest.’
The moment the back of her skull came into contact with the plate, menus blossomed around her.
‘Before you do anything,’ said Tarrant, ‘you need to try and figure out where everyone else is. They should have come running here long before now.’
Occupying the astrogation chair made her feel as if she had been born to sit in it – which, in a sense, she had. Screens and menus and query options popped up the instant she thought of them.
As if it’s reading my mind, she thought, then realized that was precisely what it was doing.
The chair guided her swiftly to the information she needed. ‘They’re all dead,’ she told him, after a few moments’ investigation.
He closed his eyes for a moment. ‘What happened to them?’ he asked, in a voice barely above a whisper.
‘As far as I can tell, the life-support systems across most of the ship were disabled.’ Only a few corridors and rooms immediately adjacent to the command deck, and the quarters she shared with Bash, remained pressurized. ‘I think they suffocated.’
‘You’re telling me the two of us are the only ones still alive on this whole damn ship?’
‘No,’ she said, ‘not just us. Bash is still alive, back in our cabin.’
‘That doesn’t make sense,’ Tarrant whispered. ‘Why keep him alive? Or even us, for that matter? Szymurski could have easily dumped the atmosphere from the command deck, and us along with it.’
The answer, when it came to her, filled Gabrielle with a sick horror. ‘Because it wants me and Bash alive, that’s why.’
‘See if you can access the external feeds,’ urged Tarrant. ‘Tell me what you see.’
Images appeared at her command, showing the outer hull of the Ingersoll. A dozen alien-looking forms clung to the outside of the ship, just like maggots burrowing into carrion.
‘I can see it,’ she announced. ‘The Wanderer’s coming apart, separating into thousands of individual components. Some of them are currently digging their way through the Ingersoll’s skin.’
‘It’s coming apart?’
‘It’s not a single ship at all,’ she explained, ‘but composed of thousands of autonomous pieces – same as the Maker Swarms. It stayed all clumped together so you’d think there was only one of it. As long as any of those separate parts survive, it can reconstitute itself entirely. That means it can’t be killed, Gregor.’
‘Dear God.’ He looked as if he was experiencing severe difficulty breathing. ‘Do it, then. Blow the damn sun up. You can do it from that chair.’
She tried to comply, then found her way blocked. It took her a moment to work out what had gone wrong.
‘It’s been sabotaged,’ she said hopelessly. ‘Szymurski must have fixed it, under the Wanderer’s control.’
‘Come here,’ said Tarrant, fumbling inside his jacket. ‘That means you’re going to have to arm the mine manually from within the engineering bay.’
Just as Gabrielle disengaged from the chair, she noticed one of the Wanderer’s components disappear from sight as it worked its way deeper inside the hull.
It was already inside the ship, she realized. The thought of it in there alongside them made her skin crawl.
A vibration began humming through the deck underfoot, but instead of fading away after a moment, as it had done before, it grew stronger. Gabrielle could hear the sound of metal being stressed beyond its limit, a high-pitched shriek like the cries of damned souls.
She went over to kneel beside Tarrant, reaching inside his jacket pocket and pulling out the slim card he had been trying to extract.
‘Take it to engineering,’ he said, in a whisper that she had to strain to hear. ‘There’s a cradle there that the nova mine was transported in, prior to its launch. You need to find it.’
‘And then what?’
‘There’s a slot in the cradle. Use the card to activate the arming mechanism directly. After that, it’ll tell you what to do. There’s also a code . . .’ He coughed, then winced. ‘Zero-six-nine-six-zero. Got that?’
She repeated it back to him.
He nodded. ‘Nothing’ll happen unless you’ve entered that code. Once it’s in, the countdown starts.’
She slipped the card into a pocket and then pushed herself upright. Once she had armed the mine, she would have to go and find Bash. She knew there were escape pods that they could use to get to Megan.
‘Gaby, I should . . .’
She looked down at him, to see his grey eyes were staring sightlessly upwards, his lips slightly parted. Whatever he might have been about to say, she would never know.
‘I have to go,’ she murmured to his silent body, then she exited the command bridge.
THIRTY-NINE
Gabrielle
She pulled up an offline map of the Ingersoll even as she exited the command deck. It showed her the location of the nearest escape-pod bay, which was close to her own and Bash’s quarters. The fabricator and engineering bays were further away, located towards the stern.
The corridor beyond was lined with cupboards and storage spaces. She searched through them for a spacesuit or a breather mask, or anything else that might keep her and Bash alive while they traversed the depressurized sections of the ship.
As she searched, she became more frantic, able to feel the seconds ticking by. And yet there seemed to be nothing. But there had to be, surely, somewhere.
On hearing something clunk and scrape further around the curving corridor, followed by a kind of electronic chittering, she felt her panic grow greater.
Then she remembered those orange boxes mounted at various points around the ship, containing emergency breathers and other survival equipment.
She turned around, pushing herself away from the source of the chittering and heading towards the drop shaft. With relief, she could see two of the orange boxes mounted next to the opening.
The chittering grew closer and she looked behind her, back along the curve of the corridor, and heard the sound of metal scraping on metal.
At a yank of the cord attached to one of the boxes, it dropped open. She quickly pulled on the emergency breather found inside, then extracted another one from the second box. After that, she dropped down the shaft and passed through an emergency pressure field to get into one of the depressurized zones.
As she glanced back up, she saw something loom across the far end of the drop shaft. It possessed cutting implements that reminded her of mandibles, and a dozen eye-like sensors that rotated towards her. It began to drag its immense bulk inside the shaft, clearly intent on pursuit.
