Prefect

by Alastair Reynolds

  Dreyfus' throat was very dry. "The nature of this object?"

  "Unknown, sir, but it doesn't resemble any orthodox space vehicle or weapons system. The cruiser's asking permission, sir."

  "Permission for what?"

  She blinked. "To fire, sir. To destroy the unknown object."

  "Over my dead fucking body," Dreyfus said.

  "We can't be too careful," Clearmountain replied. "This could be another part of Aurora's takeover strategy."

  "It's Thalia."

  "How can you be so sure? We don't know what Aurora might have planned."

  "She's been using weevils to spread her influence from habitat to habitat," Dreyfus answered. "Why would she change, put all her eggs in one basket, when her existing strategy's working just fine?"

  "We can't guess what she has in mind."

  "I can. She's going to keep using force of numbers, the way she already has. Whatever this is, it isn't part of her plan."

  "Which doesn't automatically mean it's anything to do with Thalia Ng," Baudry said. "I'm sorry to remind you of this, but we have no evidence that she survived the initial takeover phase."

  "If we think they're all dead, why haven't we nuked Aubusson already?"

  "Because there's a chance, however small, that the citizenry may still be alive. But that doesn't necessarily imply that Thalia is amongst the survivors." Baudry offered Dreyfus a sympathetic look. "I know this is tough on you, but we need to take the rational view. How likely is it that Thalia Ng is behind this development, whatever it represents? We don't even know what the object is, let alone how it came to smash through the habitat. Thalia was just a single deputy field, Tom. She knew a lot about polling cores, and I don't doubt that she'd have done her best to protect the citizens, but we have to be realistic about the chances of her succeeding. She had next to no experience in high-risk field situations. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it true that she'd only participated in a single lockdown before all this happened?"

  "I know Thalia," Dreyfus said. "She'd have done whatever it took."

  "Tom, I know you mean well, but we can't afford to let this foreign object — "

  "Put me through to the deep-system cruiser," Aumonier said, cutting over Baudry.

  The operative touched settings on her bracelet. "Connection should be open, Supreme Prefect."

  "This is Jane Aumonier," said the projected figure. "To whom am I speaking?"

  A woman's voice crackled across the room. "Captain Sarasota, Supreme Prefect. How may I be of assistance?"

  "I believe you're tracking something, Captain, something that emerged from House Aubusson?"

  "We have a weapons lock on it, Supreme Prefect. We can fire at your command."

  "I'd rather you didn't do that, Captain. Maintain your maximum defensive posture, but approach the unidentified object close enough to sweep for infrared hotspots. I want to know if there are survivors aboard that thing."

  "And if there are?"

  "Bring them in. As fast as you can."

  * * *

  CHAPTER 28

  * * *

  Dreyfus fastened the safe-distance tether with an unshakeable conviction that this would be the last time he performed the action. Either he would not be coming back from Yellowstone, or Jane Aumonier would not be waiting for him here, in this weightless room, upon his return. The significance of either outcome caused his hands to shake as he locked the catch into place.

  "How long before you leave?" Aumonier said as Dreyfus came to a halt.

  "Thyssen says there'll be a ship fuelled and prepped within thirty minutes."

  "A deep-system cruiser, I take it?"

  "No, I opted for a cutter. The amount of armament's immaterial. All that matters is that we sneak in unobserved."

  "We, Tom?"

  "Pell will fly me to the drop-off point. I'll walk the rest of the way."

  "Walk?" she asked, frowning. "No one said anything about walking."

  "There's no other way. Firebrand will have Ops Nine guarded against the approach of any unauthorised vehicle. But if Pell drops me over their sensor horizon, I should be able to walk in without triggering the perimeter defences."

  "How will you know where their sensor horizon ends?"

  "They want to stay hidden, so their coverage will be necessarily limited. They won't be floating drones up in the air to spy on someone approaching overland."

  "You hope."

  "I'll take my chances. If you could clear the paperwork for a Breitenbach rifle, that would help."

  "Take whatever you want from the armoury," Aumonier said dismissively. "If I could spare a nuke, I'd give you one of those as well."

  "Not on my kit list, but would you really give me one if I asked?"

  "Probably, but with misgivings. The problem is we don't have an inexhaustible supply, and we need to make sure we curtail all weevil production when we take out a habitat."

  "How many nukes do you have left?"

  Aumonier glanced away: he could tell that she'd rather he hadn't asked that particular question. "We're down to our last fifty warheads. For some of the larger habitats on the evacuation front we'll have to use three or four to guarantee total destruction of all manufactory centres. It's bad enough that we're driven to this, Tom. But no one ever imagined Panoply would need more than a few dozen nukes, even in the worst crisis scenarios we ever imagined."

  Dreyfus smiled thinly. "Can we make more nukes?"

  "Not on a useful timescale. We've put in so many safeguards to stop people making these horrors that it's going to take days of frantic red-tape cutting before we can even begin to utilise civilian manufactories. They won't come through in time to help us, I'm afraid."

  "If we had another weapon to use against the evacuated habitats, would we consider it?"

  "You mean something with the destructive potential of nukes?" Aumonier shook her head sadly. "There just isn't anything in our arsenal, I'm afraid. If we deployed every foam-phase warhead we have, we might be able to destroy a single habitat. But it would take hours, and we'd always run the risk of missing a chunk of functioning manufactory, something with the capacity to keep churning out weevils."

  "I wasn't thinking about our armoury," Dreyfus said. "I was thinking about the people we blamed for starting this whole thing in the first place."

  "I'm not following you, Tom."

  "The Ultras," Dreyfus said. "We've already had a comprehensive demonstration that one of their ships can destroy one of our habitats, no problem. Granted, Ruskin-Sartorious was one of the smaller states, but I think the principle still applies. They can help us, Jane."

  "Will they go for it?"

  "We won't know unless we ask," Dreyfus said.

  She looked down, surveying her weightless form, the tips of her dangling feet. Dreyfus wondered if she had noticed the thin, red scratch of the laser that was now cutting across her body just below her neckline. If she had cause to raise a hand, she would notice it shining across her wrist. Demikhov's guillotine was in place, the laser's sub-millimetre accuracy good enough for surgical purposes, so Dreyfus had been informed. If the laser happened to transect her throat above the upper extremity of the scarab, and if all other physiological parameters were satisfactory, Demikhov would initiate the decapitation process. Demikhov had even argued against Dreyfus visiting Aumonier in person, for he would not trigger the blades while another prefect was in the same room. Dreyfus understood that, and that his presence was therefore not in Aumonier's best interests. But he'd had an overwhelming need to see her before he left.

  "I don't want to keep you, Tom," she said hesitantly. "But before you go — "

  He cut her off, more out of nerves than intention. "There's been no news from Captain Sarasota?" he asked.

  "I'm still waiting. Her last report said that there appeared to be thermal signatures consistent with survivors, but they won't know until they've docked with it and cut a boarding aperture. I've no idea what the hell that thing is, but I suppose
we'll find out soon enough."

  "It's not done anything hostile, has it?"

  "No. On that score your intuitions were correct."

  There was a silence. Dreyfus was conscious of the ship waiting for him down in the bay, almost ready for departure. As little desire as he had to be aboard it, he knew that he could not delay. It might take many hours to reach Ops Nine, but every minute was critical.

  "You were about to say something," he said. "Then I interrupted you."

  Aumonier could not meet his eyes. "This is difficult for me."

  "Then save it for later. I'm not planning on staying down there."

  "It can't wait until later, unfortunately. This whole business with the Clockmaker has precipitated something I had hoped to avoid for a very long while. Perhaps for ever. I've had to make a very difficult decision, Tom. Even now, I don't know if what I'm about to do, what I'm about to say to you, is the right thing."

  "Perhaps you should just say it and see how things go."

  "Before you board the ship, I'm going to make a document available you. I'll have it transferred onto your compad."

  "You want me to read a document?"

  "It isn't that simple. You have Pangolin clearance now, but this is a matter above Pangolin. You'll need Manticore."

  "I don't have Manticore."

  "But I can grant it to you. The choice will be yours as to whether you use it or not."

  "Why should I hesitate?"

  "Because of what's in that document, Tom. It probably won't come as a great surprise if I tell you that it concerns the last Clockmaker crisis, and what happened to the Sylveste Institute for Artificial Mentation. By implication, it concerns Valery."

  "I understand."

  She answered very gently. "No, you don't. Not yet. Not until you've read the contents. Something happened back then, Tom, that was personally very difficult for you."

  "I lost my wife. It doesn't get any more difficult than that."

  Aumonier closed her eyes. He could sense the distress this was causing her. "What happened in SIAM was ... not what was entered in the public record. There were good reasons for this. But you chose not to live with the facts as they were."

  "I don't understand."

  "You were more closely involved in the Clockmaker affair than you have led yourself to believe these last eleven years. After the crisis, you were ... troubled. You could no longer function as an effective prefect. You recognised this yourself and requested the appropriate remedial action."

  Though he was floating weightless, Dreyfus had the impression that he was falling down a deep, dark shaft, into invisible depths.

  "What do you mean?"

  "Selective amnesia was applied, Tom, at your request. Your memories of the Clockmaker crisis were forcibly suppressed."

  "But the records say I was nowhere near SIAM," Dreyfus protested.

  "The records were incorrect. Since so much of what happened that day was destined to remain secret anyway, it was an easy matter to place you elsewhere. It was done with my full authorisation."

  Dreyfus knew she wasn't lying. She had no reason to, not now. The stress of speaking the truth was almost ripping her in two.

  "And the missing six hours? What happened with the Atalanta?"

  "It's all in the document. Take Manticore and you'll understand why we had to lie. But understand that it was the truth that nearly broke you. I've spent eleven years protecting you from the memories you wanted suppressed. In return, I've got back the best field prefect I could ever have asked for. But now I have to give you the key, so you can unlock them again."

  "Will digging up the past really help?" Dreyfus asked, his own voice sounding small and childlike.

  "I don't know. But I can't let you go down there without knowing everything there is to know about the Clockmaker. Ultimately, though, the choice has to be yours."

  "I understand."

  "I'm sorry I have to do this to you, Tom. If there was any other way in the world ... "

  He looked at the thin red line etched across her throat like a premonitory scar. "You don't have anything to apologise for."

  * * *

  Captain Pell was talking to Thyssen when Dreyfus arrived in the pressurised observation platform overlooking the nose bay. Pell had already been briefed on the general nature of the mission, though not its precise objective.

  "We'll make our approach into the atmosphere just like any other ship on its way to Chasm City," Dreyfus said. "But once we're under cover of the clouds, you fly me to the other hemisphere. Can you do that without Aurora picking up our movement?"

  "Nothing's guaranteed," Pell said. "If we go supersonic, and she happens to have sensors pointed down at the right part of the sky, she may see the disturbance in the atmosphere caused by our Mach cone."

  Dreyfus didn't welcome the news, but he'd been expecting it. "Then we'll have to hold subsonic. How long will that take?"

  "Eight, nine hours, depending on the trajectory. Too long for you?"

  "It's still faster than using surface transportation, even if I could get closer than Loreanville."

  Pell tapped a stylus at the compad he held in the crook of his arm. "There are some deep canyon systems we can use for cover. I may be able to take us supersonic for brief periods, using the canyon walls to soak up most of our Shockwave."

  "Just give me the fastest approach you can consistent with our staying hidden from orbital surveillance."

  "You want me to drop you right on the doorstep of that place?"

  Dreyfus shook his head. "I'm not expecting a warm welcome when I get there. You'll have to assess the terrain and put me down as close as you can without risking detection by anti-ship systems. If that means I have to walk twenty or thirty klicks overland, so be it."

  "It's your call, Prefect. I'll try to pick a spot where you'll have an easy approach."

  "I know you'll do your best, Captain, but I'm not expecting miracles." Dreyfus glanced through the nearest window at the waiting form of the cutter, a flint-like wedge of black poised on the end of its launch rack. "Are we good to go?"

  Pell nodded. "We can move out as soon as we're aboard and lashed down."

  "There's a surface suit aboard?"

  "Everything you asked for on the checklist, and as many weapons as Thyssen's people could cram into the remaining space."

  "I'm hoping it won't come to a gunfight," Dreyfus said, "but I'll take what I can get."

  He was about to board the ship when an internal prefect came rushing into the observation area, braking himself to a halt against a restraining strap.

  "Prefect Dreyfus!" the man called. "I'm glad I caught you, sir. We were told you're shipping out and that you'll be out of comms range. But you need to hear this before you go."

  "Is it about Thalia?"

  The man smiled. "She's alive, sir. She's alive and well and she's managed to get a whole party of Aubusson citizens out of that place."

  "Thank God." Despite his nerves, Dreyfus couldn't help smiling as well. "I want to speak to her. Is she back yet?"

  "Sorry, sir. We need that deep-system cruiser out there for the time being."

  "But she's okay?"

  "We have reports of minor injuries, sir, nothing worse than that. But Thalia had some bad news for us. It looks like there are no other survivors from Aubusson."

  "None?"

  "It wasn't the decompression, sir. According to Thalia the servitors inside the habitat have been rounding people up and killing them for hours. She doesn't think anyone else made it through the night."

  "Thank you," Dreyfus said. "You'll make sure the supreme prefect is informed, won't you? If Aubusson is depopulated, she needs to know. It could make all the difference."

  "She already has the intelligence, sir. Is there anything else?"

  "Just this: I want you to pass on a message to Thalia Ng when she gets back to Panoply. Tell her I was very pleased to hear that she made it out in one piece. Tell her that I'm very proud of her a
ctions. Tell her that she's a credit to the organisation, and that I look forward to telling her that in person."

  "I'll see the message gets through, sir."

  Dreyfus nodded. "You do that for me."

  * * *

  Pell boarded the cutter first, sealing the flight-deck passwall while Dreyfus attended to the organisation of his suit, weapons and equipment, satisfying himself that everything he had requested was present. It was a more complicated ensemble than could be created by a standard suitwall. There had been no oversights, he was glad to see. If anything, the technicians had stocked more armour and weapons than he could ever have hoped to carry. It was all lashed down or fixed into place via conjured restraints. He resisted the urge to suit-up now; there would be time enough for that during the long subsonic flight to the drop-off point, once they were safely inside Yellowstone's atmosphere.

  Dreyfus felt a tightness in his stomach. It was fear, moving back in like an old lodger.

  He felt the cutter move on the rack. He buckled in for launch, wishing he had remembered to shave. His neck hairs rasped against his collar and he could smell his own sweat seeping out of his pores.

  His bracelet chimed. It was Jane Aumonier, as he had anticipated.

  "They say we should remain out of contact once you've cleared Panoply," she said, "just in case Aurora can eavesdrop on our long-range comms."

  "It's a sensible precaution."

  "Concerning the matter we discussed, Tom — the document is now available on your compad. There's also a package under your seat. I had it loaded aboard before you arrived. You'll know exactly what it is when you open it."

  "I've made my decision," Dreyfus said. He was on the verge of adding something, feeling that he ought to wish Aumonier well, but he did not want to risk her guessing Demikhov's intentions. "I'll see you back in Panoply," he said.

  The cutter surged forward. He waited until the vehicle had ramped up to full thrust and then carefully loosened his webbing. He reached under the seat and found the package Aumonier had mentioned. It came loose with a gentle tug. He settled the black box onto his lap, allowing the cutter's thrust to hold it in place. The box was unfamiliar, but his fingers located a catch and the lid sprang open easily.