Inhibitor Phase Page 8

  I had vetoed Cantor’s earlier suggestion of meeting the suits halfway but now there was no doubt in my mind as to their hostile nature. Short of the railguns, the portable Breitenbach cannons were our heaviest anti-personnel weapons. They had never been used.

  I had always thought that if we did have cause to use them, the fight was already lost.

  ‘Provided they have time to fall back to safety,’ I said.

  Chung had taken the initiative of having her team already assigned and prepared, waiting for the order to begin moving down the tunnel. A couple of electric carts would get them to the far lock in just under twenty minutes, leaving a small margin of error before we expected visual contact with the suits.

  I left Chung to coordinate that part of our response while Valois and I returned to the infirmary. Not much had changed since I was last there. Chung’s security detachment were in the revival area, forming a cordon around the bed, their pistols and rifles aimed at the passenger. She was sitting up, musing over the pegboard game, apparently oblivious to the armed presence.

  ‘Has she done or said anything?’ I asked Kyrgiou.

  ‘No, it’s as if she’s in a bubble.’ She reached for a surgical kit she had been keeping open until I arrived. ‘I will look at that hand of yours, whether you like it or not.’

  ‘Later.’

  ‘Administrator . . . is it possible that this is a bit of an overreaction?’ Ignoring me, she inspected my palm and dabbed the wounds with a strong-smelling salve.

  ‘Of course it’s not an overreaction. You saw what happened with her nails.’

  ‘We’ve examined the recordings we took during her extraction from the casket. The nails were black.’

  ‘How about you examine your memories, instead?’ I snatched my hand back. ‘She can alter our recording systems. That points to a cybernetic capability: something like a Conjoiner. You’ll say that we didn’t see implants in her skull. I think all that points to is an extremely developed ability to manipulate our scanning devices, altering their data to show us what she wants us to see. I think she can do that in real-time and alter retrospective records almost as quickly.’

  ‘I didn’t think we were at war with the Conjoiners,’ Kyrgiou said, reclaiming my hand and persisting in her examination.

  ‘A bit hard to be at war with a group who aren’t around any more,’ Valois said, not disputing her point. ‘And there wouldn’t be any cause for this even if they were back again. So we had a few fallings-out, a few wars. But we’re all on the same side against the wolves. Everything else is just ideological nit-picking.’

  ‘I’m not saying she is one,’ I said testily. ‘I’m saying she has similar capabilities, and we need to be ready for them. Damn it, Kyrgiou: that stings!’

  ‘Capabilities aside, what is it she wants?’ Valois continued mildly, indifferent to my suffering.

  ‘I think I need to know.’ I sighed, letting Kyrgiou get on with her work. ‘I’m going in there again. Give me something in a syringe, something that will act quickly.’

  ‘To kill her?’

  ‘No, just knock her out fast. But whatever dose you think you’ve calibrated, double it.’

  I went in with the syringe in my hand. It was loaded with a watery blue fluid whose identity and potency I knew better than to question. I gestured for the armed guards to move back from the bed slightly, allowing me to move closer to the passenger. She smiled as I approached, setting down the pegboard as if it were many hours since we had spoken, and my return a welcome development.

  ‘How long?’ she asked brightly.

  ‘How long until what?’

  ‘Until your railguns achieve line-of-sight acquisition? I think it must be in the region of twelve to thirteen minutes by now.’ She shook her head. ‘I wouldn’t bother. You’d be better off keeping those slugs for another day, and for use against a target you actually have a chance of slowing. Notice I said slowing, not stopping. Good to be realistic.’

  I was fast. Perhaps she had seen the syringe, perhaps she had not. But I had it tight against her neck before she could flinch. Kyrgiou had given me one of the thicker, blunter needles, so I could press it in without immediately puncturing the skin. ‘No more games.’

  ‘Not even chequers? I liked that game. I like most games.’

  With my other hand I slapped the pegboard to the floor. ‘Don’t test my patience, Brianna. Should I call you that, or should I accept it was never your name, just an identity you stole for the purposes of this infiltration?’

  ‘Oh, please,’ she said, rolling those dark eyes. ‘No crocodile tears, Miguel de Ruyter. You were on the verge of killing thousands of people: every single sleeper on that ship. So I took one name, just to grease my way into your trust. That’s not even a crime. She was already dead.’

  ‘My missile didn’t kill that ship. I didn’t kill it. And I’m increasingly doubtful that a sudden engine failure had anything to do with it either.’

  ‘Mm.’ She frowned, making a deliberately exaggerated display of incomprehension. ‘But then . . . what did destroy it?’

  ‘There’s another ship in this system. One we haven’t seen.’

  ‘Right answer!’ she declared excitedly.

  ‘It’s probably the same ship that dropped those suits into Michaelmas. Probably the same one that put you within reach of my shuttle.’ In case she had forgotten it was there, I increased pressure on the syringe. ‘You arrived independently of the incomer, didn’t you? Your ship used the noise and fury of the Silence in Heaven as cover. If that was even the real name of the incomer.’

  ‘I was coming anyway,’ she said. ‘That other ship happened to arrive at the same time. Very bad form. I won’t deny that they were slightly useful in providing a limited distraction. But the direct threat that they posed to you – to Sun Hollow – was far more than I could allow to pass.’

  ‘You admit it, then. You murdered those people.’

  ‘There’s no moral distinction between us, Miguel. You were prepared to murder those people. I just happen to be the one who actually did it. History doesn’t care about thwarted intentions, only what we mean to do. Would we say that the Butcher of Tharsis was a good man, if only he hadn’t followed through on his war crimes?’

  I ignored her question. ‘When we spoke before, you seemed to have an interest in me.’

  ‘Did I?’

  ‘Any one of us could have volunteered for that operation. Even if I mean something to you, you couldn’t have known who would be in that shuttle.’

  ‘No. But I wasn’t going to take the chance of letting any of you die,’ she said. ‘Not when I knew that there were unlikely to be more than a few thousand of you in these caverns. Besides, you settled the matter for me ahead of time: Cydonia.’

  Now it was my turn to frown, and it was genuine. ‘What?’

  ‘The verification password for your suicide protocol. I read your on-board telemetry. Your shielding measures are nowhere near as foolproof as you think.’

  ‘Cydonia was a random codeword. It doesn’t mean anything.’

  ‘Oh, it means infinitely more than you realise, dear Miguel de Ruyter.’

  ‘Who are you, and what do you want?’

  ‘I’m . . .’ The name seemed to stall on her lips. Even with the syringe pressed against her, she swivelled her eyes around the room, moving her head minutely as her gaze scanned. ‘Let’s see. It’s on the tip of my tongue. Ceiling? No, that’s not it. Floor? Wall? Not quite.’ Then her attention locked onto the partition, the transparent screen beyond which Kyrgiou and Valois were still watching. ‘Ah, yes. Of course. How could I have forgotten?’ She smiled with a fierce, avaricious delight. ‘Glass. My name is Glass. And I’ve come for you, Miguel. You’re the only thing I want from Sun Hollow.’

  ‘Then you’ve made a mistake.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘You’re alone and unarmed. Maybe there’s something inside you that can hurt us, but if it’s a bomb you’ll be taking yourself w
ith it. Your suits are about to be destroyed.’

  ‘Certain of that?’

  ‘Totally.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be. Let me help you with that syringe.’ Her hand was on mine before I could react. She had moved so quickly it was as if she had jumped between frames. I made to maintain pressure on her neck, expecting my hand to be forced away. But I had misunderstood her intention. She closed her fingers around the syringe’s plunger and injected herself.

  ‘Good. You’ve saved me the trouble.’

  ‘Was it meant to kill me?’

  ‘You’ll find out in a few seconds.’ I eased back from the bed, content to let the drug take its toll. Whether the dose knocked her unconscious immediately, or took a few seconds, I was in no doubt as to the outcome. But as she regarded me, her composure unruffled, my skin began to tingle.

  ‘I’m analysing it. Interesting blend of chemicals. They break down into harmless metabolic products very readily.’

  I made an executive decision. I snatched the boser pistol from the hand of the nearest guard, checked that it was set to maximum yield, and levelled the fat muzzle in the direction of her head. My hand shook slightly, as it always did. But at such close range there was little danger of missing.

  ‘I’ll do it, Glass. I’ll blow your head off.’

  ‘Will you manage that as well as you handled the execution of Rurik Taine?’ She nodded earnestly. ‘Yes, I’ve read the political reports. I found my way into your sealed archives very easily. Really, though, it wasn’t your fault. Your hands were tied when it came to his sentencing: it was a capital offence, to attempt to organise a coup within Sun Hollow. The best you could do was arrange some leniency for his allies, that political amnesty for his family. As always, you were trying to be a good man in a difficult office. It was his insistence that his execution be a public affair; his request that you be the one to carry out the sentence.’

  ‘Stop.’

  She carried on. ‘You could have refused that request, of course – deputised it to another functionary. There was nothing in your legislation that said you had to bow to his craven, attention-seeking demands. But you felt you had to rise to the occasion. He’d been your friend, once; a valued ally in those difficult early days. So you agreed to put a boser pulse through his skull. Which might have gone well, had he not also refused to wear a hood, so that you had no choice but to look into his face.’ Her lips creased in false sympathy. ‘Oh dear, that didn’t help, did it?’

  My finger tightened on the trigger. ‘Shut up.’

  ‘Your hands shake. Peripheral nerve damage, from the years you spent working with pneumatic drills on the excavation teams, opening up new living space. Even as you led these people, you were one of them, always ready to get dirt under your nails. But that civic-mindedness failed you when you most needed it. Rurik’s face, the pressure of the moment, all those eyes on you. Your hand shook when you shot him. Your pulse went wide: ripped the side of his face off, but didn’t kill him. Valois had to do that. You were too busy crumpling up into a ball, unable to process what had happened. Everything collapsed in on you at that moment. The mistake you’d never recover from. The mistake you had to atone for, by offering your life, to protect your people.’

  I squeezed the trigger. The boser pistol clicked in my hand, flashed an error status.

  Glass said: ‘There’s nothing I can’t reach, nothing I can’t control. I’ve already pushed my influence into every part of Sun Hollow. Do you know the disappointing part? It wasn’t even difficult. Your defences are like . . . paper walls.’

  I lowered the pistol, certain it was useless. Certain that every other powered weapon was equally compromised.

  ‘That’s very good, Glass,’ I said, reaching for one of the axes. I raised it, making ready to swing down.

  ‘I wouldn’t,’ she said calmly. ‘Not if you want Nicola and Victorine to live. Not if you want any of your friends to live.’

  The lights faded, leaving us in a darkness far deeper than the power dips that attended the activation of the railguns. With that darkness came a jarring silence – the background sibilance of air-circulation suddenly absent. A second passed, then the lights and life-support sounds returned, but the light was somehow sickly, the sounds maliciously off-key.

  ‘I can do that,’ Glass said. ‘I can do it throughout Sun Hollow. Kill me, and you’ll never get your systems restarted again in time. You’ll freeze and suffocate. Put the axe down, before you do something stupid.’

  ‘The stupid thing was rescuing you.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ she allowed. ‘But out of it, some good may come.’ She sighed, modulating her tone to one of companionable reassurance. ‘I only want you, Miguel. I’ve no interest in hurting any part of Sun Hollow. Quite the contrary: I very much hope this little pocket of humanity makes it through the night. There aren’t many others.’

  ‘You’d know?’

  ‘Yes, I’d know. I’ve been to places, seen places. And so shall you. We’re going to go on a journey, you and I. To a place called Charybdis. But just the two of us. No one else. We shall have each other all to ourselves.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because we have wolves to kill.’ She smiled at my bafflement. ‘Now, shall I tell you what’s going to happen? Nothing you do is going to stop those suits. They’ll make their way here, and you and I shall leave in them. Before they arrive, though, you have a little time. Use it wisely. Make your fond farewells.’

  ‘What happens if I resist?’

  ‘The more trouble you make for me, the more likelihood that lives will be lost. Now, I don’t want that to happen. But I do want you, and if there is a cost to be paid . . .’ She looked at me sharply. ‘What are you waiting for? Use the time left to you. You won’t get it again.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  While Chung and I waited in the Red Room for the railguns to start, Valois went back to my home to bring Nicola and Victorine to Sanctum.

  ‘The heads have emerged over the horizon line,’ Cantor reported. ‘In about thirty seconds we should have a clear view of the upper half of both suits.’

  ‘Open fire at your discretion,’ Chung said. ‘But single shots only, unless I say otherwise.’ Then to me: ‘My units are in position, Breitenbachs ready and demolition fuses laid along the last hundred metres of the tunnel. Be a nuisance having to dig it out again, but if that’s what it takes . . . are we convinced that the power drop was orchestrated by Glass? I still think it might be worth rushing her with axes; seeing how much of this is a bluff.’

  I shook my head, resigned to our powerlessness. ‘None of it’s a bluff. She deactivated my weapon, interfered with power and life-support throughout an entire section of Sanctum, and she’s been accessing data records – all from that bed. I think if we could see what’s inside that skull, instead of what she wants us to see, it would freeze us cold. And I believe every one of her threats.’

  ‘What does she want with you?’

  ‘I don’t know. Some nonsense about killing wolves. Listen, Alma. I’m prepared to believe her threats; that doesn’t necessarily mean I think she’s sane.’

  ‘Powering up both railguns,’ Cantor called.

  The lights dimmed: the usual drain on our resources. Around the Red Room’s walls power dials fluctuated, then climbed back to normal levels.

  ‘Slugs away,’ Cantor said.

  At one hundred kilometres per second, the impact was nearly instantaneous. Screens, relaying remote feeds from surveillance eyes, registered an immense white flash lifting off the ridge. In the airless environment, the flash dispersed very rapidly.

  ‘Confirm the kill,’ I said, as if every analyst gathered in the Red Room was not already focused on that task.

  ‘Negative kill,’ Cantor said. ‘Both suits . . .’ Cantor stumbled over their words, as if not quite believing them. ‘Both suits intact, still proceeding.’

  ‘Impossible,’ Chung said, as if a firm refutation was all that was needed.

  ‘
Did the guns misfire, or did something neutralise the slugs?’ I asked.

  ‘Negative misfire. Targeting solutions validated,’ Cantor said.

  ‘Fire two more slugs,’ Chung ordered.

  The power dipped; the guns discharged. Another white flash.

  We waited.

  ‘Negative kill. Suits intact.’

  ‘She’s got a countermeasure . . . something,’ Chung said, a crack of desperation opening in her voice.

  ‘Or she has control of the guns,’ I replied. ‘I can believe it, given what else I’ve seen her do.’

  Chung leaned into the table. ‘Advance teams, move into outer lock and report visual acquisition.’

  ‘Order countermanded,’ I called out. ‘Fall back to the pressure door at the eighteen-kilometre marker. And get there fast!’

  ‘Four slugs remaining in each railgun,’ Cantor said. ‘Shall we fire two more?’

  I nodded. ‘Try it.’

  We waited again, Chung confirming that her teams were in the process of retreating two kilometres back down the tunnel, to the point where they would be protected in the event of an immediate decompression.

  ‘Negative kill. And . . .’ Cantor was staring down at a pattern of numbers on the edge of the table ‘ . . . guns are retargeting. Both railguns, slewing.’

  ‘Lock them out,’ I snapped.

  ‘Overrides not accepted. Guns are acting autonomously.’

  I shook my head. ‘I wish they were.’

  ‘Continuing to slew,’ Cantor said. ‘Passing one hundred and eighty degrees.’

  ‘The safeties will prevent them aiming directly at any part of Sun Hollow,’ Chung said, with a fracturing confidence.

  ‘Two hundred and seventy degrees,’ Cantor intoned. ‘Aiming points are converging on the outer lock.’

  I looked to the lights. They were growing dimmer.

  ‘Where are your teams, Alma?’

  ‘I don’t know. On their way.’

  The room shook: dust shaking off the ceiling, prisms toppling over on the table. Twenty kilometres away, a pair of fists had just struck the crust of Michaelmas. The monitors covering the surface went blind in the same instant.