Oh, yes… this was finesse.
“Now give me something a novice can use,” Khouri said, dithering in front of the warchive’s dispensary. “I’m not talking about a toy, though—it’s got to have real stopping power.”
“Beam or projectile, madame?”
“Make it a low-yield beam. We don’t want Pascale putting holes in the hull.”
“Oh, marvellous choice, madame. Would madame care to rest her feet while I search for something which matches madame’s discerning requirements?”
“Madame will stand, if you don’t mind.”
She was being served by the dispensary’s gamma-level persona, which consisted of a rather glum and simpering holographic head projected at chest height above the slot-topped counter. At first she had restricted her choices to those arms which were arrayed along the walls, stowed behind glass with little illuminated plaques detailing their operation, era-of-origin and history of usage. That was fine, in principle, and she had soon selected lightweight weapons for herself and Volyova, choosing a pair of electromagnetic needle-guns which were similar in design to Shadowplay equipment.
Volyova had, rather ominously, mentioned heavier ordnance, and Khouri had taken care of that as well, but only partially from the displayed wares. There had been a nice rapid-cycle plasma rifle, manufactured three centuries ago, but by no means outdated, and its neural-feed aiming system would make it very useful in close combat. It was light, as well, and when she hefted it, she felt that she knew the weapon immediately. There was also something obscenely alluring about the weapon’s protective jacket of black leather: mottled and oiled to a high sheen, with patches cut away to expose controls, readouts and attachment points. It would suit her, but what could she bring back for Volyova? She perused the shelves for as long as she dared (which could not have been more than five minutes), and while there was no shortage of intriguing and even bewildering hardware, there was nothing which exactly matched what she had in mind.
Instead, she had turned to the warchive’s memory. There were, Khouri was reliably informed, exemplars of in excess of four million hand weapons, spanning twelve centuries of gunsmithery, from the simplest spark-ignited projectile blunderbusses to the most gruesomely compact concentrations of death-directed technology imaginable.
But even that vast assortment was small compared to the warchive’s total potential, because the warchive could also be creative. Given specifications, the warchive could sift its blueprints and merge the optimum characteristics of pre-existing weapons until it had forged something new and highly customised. Which, in minutes, it could synthesise.
When it was done—as it was with the little pistol Khouri had imagined for Pascale—the slot in the tabletop would whir open and the finished weapon would rise on a little felt-topped platter, gleaming with ultrasterility, still warm with the residual heat of its manufacture.
She lifted Pascale’s pistol, sighting along the barrel, feeling the balance, running through the beam-yield settings, accessed by a stud recessed into the grip.
“Suits you, madame,” said the dispensary.
“It isn’t for me,” Khouri said, hiding the gun in a pocket.
Volyova’s six cache-weapons powered up their thrusters and vectored rapidly away from the ship, following a complex course which would position them to strike against the impact point, albeit obliquely. And the bridgehead, meanwhile, continued to reduce the distance between itself and the surface, always slowing. She was certain that the world had already decided that it was being approached by an artificial object, and a big one at that. The world might even recognise that the thing approaching it had once been the Lorean. Doubtless, somewhere down in that machine-permeated crust, a kind of debate was going on. Some components would be arguing that it was best to attack now; best to strike against the nearing thing before it became a real problem. Other components would be urging caution, pointing out that the object was still a long way from Cerberus, and that any attack against it now would have to be very large to ensure the object was annihilated before it could retaliate, and that such an open display of strength might attract more attention from elsewhere. And furthermore, the pacifist systems might say, so far this object had done nothing unambiguously hostile. It might not even suspect the artificiality of Cerberus. It might only want to sniff the world and leave it alone.
Volyova did not want the pacifists to win. She wanted the advocates of a massive pre-emptive strike to win, and she wanted it to happen now, before another minute passed. She wanted to observe Cerberus lash out and remove the bridgehead from existence. That would end their problems, and—because something similar had already happened to Sylveste’s probes—they would not be any worse off than they were now. Perhaps the mere incitement of a counterstrike from Cerberus would not constitute the interference which the Mademoiselle had sought to prevent. After all, no one would have entered the place. And then they could admit defeat and go home.
Except none of that was going to happen.
“These cache-weapons,” Sajaki said, nodding at the display. “Are you planning to arm and fire them from here, Ilia?”
“There’s no reason not to.”
“I would have expected Khouri to direct them from the gunnery. After all, that’s her role.” He turned to Hegazi and whispered, loud enough for everyone to hear, “I’m beginning to wonder why we recruited that one—or why I allowed Volyova to stop the trawling.”
“I presume she has her uses,” said the chimeric.
“Khouri is in the gunnery,” Volyova lied. “As a precaution, of course. But I won’t call on her unless absolutely necessary. That’s fair, isn’t it? These are my weapons as well—you can’t begrudge me the use of them when the situation is so controlled.”
The readouts on her bracelet—partially echoed on the display sphere in the middle of the bridge—-informed her that in thirty minutes the cache-weapons would arrive at their designated firing positions nearly a quarter of a million kilometres away from the ship. At that point there would be no plausible reason not to fire them.
“Good,” Sajaki said. “For a moment I worried that we didn’t have your complete commitment to the cause. But that sounds suspiciously like a flash of the old Volyova.”
“How very gratifying,” Sylveste said.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Cerberus/Hades, Delta Pavonis Heliopause, 2566
The black icons of the cache-weapons swarmed towards their firing points, their terrible potency waiting to be unleashed against Cerberus. In all that time there had been no response from the world; no hint that it was anything other than what it appeared to be. It just hung there, grey and sutured, like the cranium of a skull tipped in prayer.
When, finally, the moment came, there was only a soft chime from the projection sphere, and the numerals briefly cycled through zero, before commencing the long count upwards.
Sylveste was the first to speak. He turned to Volyova, who had made no visible movement in minutes. “Isn’t something supposed to have happened? Aren’t your damned weapons supposed to have gone off?”
Volyova looked up from the bracelet readout which was consuming her attention like someone snapping out of a trance.
“I never gave the order,” she said, so softly that it took conscious effort to hear her words. “I never told the weapons to fire.”
“Pardon?” Sajaki said.
“You heard what I said,” she answered, with mounting volume. “I didn’t do it.”
Once again Sajaki’s resolute calm managed to seem more threatening than any histrionics. “There are a number of minutes remaining in which the attack may yet be made,” he said. “Perhaps you had best consider utilising them, before the situation becomes irretrievable.”
“I think,” Sylveste said, “that the situation did so some time ago.”
“That’s a matter for the Triumvirate,” Hegazi said, his steel-clad knuckles glinting on the edge of his seat rests. “Ilia, if you give the order now, maybe w
e can—”
“I’m not about to,” she said. “Call it mutiny if you wish, or treason; I don’t care. But my involvement in this madness ends here.” She looked at Sylveste with unexpected bile. “You know my reasons, so don’t pretend otherwise.”
“She’s right, Dan.”
Now it was Pascale who had joined the conversation, and for a moment she had all their attention.
“You know what she’s been saying is true; how we just can’t take this risk, no matter how much you want it.”
“You’ve been listening to Khouri as well,” Sylveste said, although the news that his wife had gone over to Volyova’s side was hardly surprising, drawing less bitterness than he might have expected. Aware of the perversity of his feelings, he nonetheless rather admired her for doing it.
“She knows things that we don’t,” Pascale said.
“What the hell does Khouri have to do with any of this?” Hegazi asked, glancing peevishly towards Sajaki. “She’s just a grunt. Can we omit her from the discussion?”
“Unfortunately not,” Volyova said. “Everything that you’ve heard is true. And carrying on with this really would be the worst mistake any of us have ever made.”
Sajaki veered his seat away from Hegazi, approaching Volyova.
“If you aren’t going to give the attack order, at least surrender control of the cache to me.” And he reached out his hand, beckoning her to unclasp the bracelet and pass it to him.
“I think you should do what he says,” Hegazi said. “It could be very unpleasant for you otherwise.”
“I don’t doubt that for a moment,” Volyova said, and with one deft motion she snapped the bracelet from her hand. “It’s completely useless to you, Sajaki. The cache will only listen to me or Khouri.”
“Give me the bracelet.”
“You’ll regret it, I’m warning you.”
She passed it to him all the same. Sajaki grasped it as if it were a valuable gold amulet, toying with it briefly before locking it around his wrist. He watched as the little display reignited, filling with the same schematic data which had flashed from Volyova’s wrist a moment earlier.
“This is Triumvir Sajaki,” he said, licking his lips between each word, savouring the power. “I’m not sure of the precise protocol required at this point, so I ask for your co-operation. But I want the six deployed cache-weapons to commence—”
Sajaki stopped mid-sentence. He looked down at his wrist, at first in puzzlement, and then, moments later, in something much closer to fear.
* * *
“You sly old dog,” Hegazi said, wonderingly. “I imagined you might have a trick up your sleeve, but I never thought you’d have one literally.”
“I’m a very literal-minded person,” Volyova said.
Sajaki’s face was a rigid mask of pain now, and the constricting bracelet had visibly cut into his wrist. His hand was locked open, now as white and bloodless as wax. With his free hand he was making a valiant effort to claw the bracelet free, but it was futile; she had seen to that. The clasp would have sealed shut now, and what remained was only a painful and slow process of constrictive amputation, as the memory-plastic polymer chains in the bracelet slithered ever tighter. The bracelet had known from the instant he placed it around his wrist that his DNA was not correct; that it failed to match her own. But it had not begun to constrict until he had tried to issue an order, which, she supposed, was a kind of leniency on her behalf.
“Make it stop,” he managed to say. “Make it stop… you fucking bitch… please…”
Volyova estimated he had one to two minutes before the bracelet had his hand off; one to two minutes before the main sound in the room would be the cracking of bone, assuming it was audible above Sajaki’s whimpers.
“Your manners let you down,” she said. “What kind of a way to ask is that? You’d think now would be the one time when you had some courtesy to spare.”
“Stop it,” Pascale said. “I’m begging you, please—whatever’s happened, it isn’t worth this…”
Volyova shrugged, and addressed herself to Hegazi. “You may as well remove it, Triumvir, before it gets too messy. I’m sure you have the means.”
Hegazi held one of his own steel hands up for inspection, as if having to reassure himself that they were no longer flesh.
“Now!” Sajaki shrieked. “Get it off me!”
Hegazi positioned his seat next to the other Triumvir and set to work. It was a process which seemed to cause Sajaki fractionally more pain than the constriction itself.
Sylveste said nothing.
Hegazi worked the bracelet free; his metal hands were lathered with human blood by the time he was done. What remained of the bracelet fell from his fingers, dropping to the floor twenty metres below.
Sajaki, who had not stopped moaning, looked with revulsion at the damage that had been wrought to his wrist. His hand was still attached, but the bones and tendons were hideously exposed, blood pulsing out in red gouts, cascading in a thin scarlet rope to the distant floor. Trying to stifle the loss, he pressed the agonised limb against his belly. Finally he ceased to make any sound, and after long moments, his blanched face turned to Volyova and spoke.
“You’ll pay for this,” he said. “I swear it.”
Which was when Khouri entered the bridge and began shooting.
Of course, she had always had a plan in mind, even if it was not a very detailed one. And when Khouri had taken her first step into the chamber, and seen the cataract of what was obviously blood, she had not taken the time to run her plan through a set of elaborate last-minute revisions. Instead, she had decided to start shooting the ceiling, until she had everyone’s attention.
It had not taken very long.
Her weapon of choice was the plasma rifle, set to its lowest possible yield, with the rapid-fire mode disengaged so that she had to squeeze the trigger for each pulse. The first one bit a metre-wide crater into the ceiling, causing the cladding to rain down in jagged, heat-scorched shards. Wary of blasting right through, she directed her next pulse a little to the left, and then a little to the right. One of the shards crashed onto the glowing sphere of the holo-display, and for an eyeblink the sphere flickered and warped, before resuming stability. Then—because she had rather comprehensively announced her presence—she powered down the gun and slung it back over her shoulder. Volyova, who had obviously anticipated her next move, jetted her seat down towards Khouri, and when they were barely five metres apart, Khouri threw her one of the lightweight guns; the needle-projectors she had found on the warchive’s wall. “Take this for Pascale,” she said, throwing the low-yield beamer after it. Volyova caught both weapons expertly and quickly passed Pascale her own.
Khouri, who had by now assimilated the situation, observed that the rain of blood—which had now ceased—had originated from Sajaki. He looked in a bad way, cradling one arm as if it was broken or as if he had taken a hit.
“Ilia,” Khouri said, “you started all the fun without me. I’m disappointed.”
“Events rather demanded it,” Volyova said.
Khouri looked at the display, trying to figure out what had happened beyond the ship. “Did the weps fire?”
“No; I never gave the order.”
“And now she can’t,” Sylveste said. “Because Hegazi just destroyed her bracelet.”
“Does that mean he’s on our side?”
“No,” Volyova said. “It just means he can’t stand the sight of blood. Especially when it’s Sajaki’s.”
“He needs help,” Pascale said. “For God’s sake, you can’t just let him bleed to death.”
“He won’t,” Volyova said. “He’s chimeric, like Hegazi—just not so obviously. Already the medichines in his blood will be initiating cellular repair at a vastly accelerated rate. Even if the bracelet had taken his hand off, he’d have grown another one. Isn’t that right, Sajaki?”
He looked at her with a face so drained of strength that it looked as if he’d hav
e trouble growing a new fingernail, let alone a new hand. But eventually he nodded.
“Someone should still help me to the infirmary—there’s nothing magical about my medichines; they have their limitations. And my pain receptors are alive and well, trust me.”
“He’s right,” Hegazi said. “You shouldn’t overestimate the capabilities of his “chines. Do you want him dead or not? You’d better decide now. I can help him to the infirmary.”
“And stop off for a browse at the warchive on the way?” Volyova shook her head. “Thanks, but no thanks.”
“Then me,” Sylveste said. “I’ll take him. You trust me that far, don’t you?”
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