Debris hammered the hull. Merlin curled fingers into sweat-sodden palms.
‘Merlin,’ Teal said. ‘It’s Struxer’s signal again. Only it’s not coming from inside Mundar.’
Merlin understood as soon as he shifted his attention to the navigational display. Struxer’s transmission was originating from a small moving object, coming toward them from within the debris field. The gamma-cannon was still aimed straight at Mundar. Merlin shifted the lock onto the object, ready to annihilate it in an instant. Then he waited for Tyrant’s sensors to give him their best estimate of the size and form of the approaching object. He was expecting something like a mine or a small autonomous missile, trying to camouflage its approach within the chaos of the debris. But then why was it transmitting in the first place?
He had his answer a moment later. The form was five-nubbed, a fat-limbed starfish. Or a human, wearing a spacesuit, drifting through the debris cloud like a rag doll in a storm.
‘Suicidal,’ Baskin said.
There was no face now, just a voice. The signal was too poor for anything else. Teal listened and said: ‘He’s asking for you to slow and stand down your weapons. He says we’ve reached a clear impasse. You’ll never make it out of this area without the Tactician’s cooperation, and you’ll never find the Tactician without his assistance.’
Merlin had manual fire control on the gamma-cannon. He had settled one hand around the trigger, ready to turn that human starfish into just another crowd of hot atoms.
‘I said I was past the point of negotiation.’
‘Struxer says dozens have already died in the attack. But there are thousands more of his people still alive in the deeper layers. He says you won’t be able to destroy the Tactician without killing them as well.’
‘They picked this fight, not me.’
‘Merlin, listen to me. Struxer seems reasonable. There’s a reason he’s put himself out there in that suit.’
‘I blew up his asteroid. That might have something to do with it.’
‘He wants to negotiate from a position of weakness, not strength. That’s what he says. Every moment where you don’t destroy him is another moment in which you might start listening.’
‘I think we already stated our positions, didn’t we?’
‘He said you wouldn’t be able to take the Tactician. And you can’t, that’s clear. You can destroy it, but you can’t take it. And now he’s asking to talk.’
‘About what?’
Teal looked at him with pleading eyes. ‘Just talk to him, Merlin. That woman you showed me – your mother, waiting by that window. The sons she lost – you and your brother. I saw the kindness in her. Don’t tell me you’d have made her proud by killing that man.’
‘My mother died on Plenitude. She wasn’t in that room. I showed you nothing, just ghosts, just memories stitched together by my brother.’
‘Merlin...’
He squeezed the fire control trigger. Instead of discharging, though, the gamma-cannon reported a malfunction. Merlin tried again, then pulled his shaking, sweat-sodden hand from the control. The weapons board was showing multiple failures and system errors, as if the ship had only just been holding itself together until that moment.
‘You cold-hearted ...’ Teal started.
‘Your sympathies run that deep,’ Merlin said. ‘You should have spoken up before we used the torps.’
Baskin levelled a hand on Merlin’s wrist, drawing him further from the gamma-cannon trigger. ‘Perhaps it was for the best, after all. Only Struxer really knows the fate of the Tactician now. Bring him in, Merlin. What more have we got to lose?’
Struxer removed his helmet, the visor pocked and crazed from his passage through the debris cloud. Merlin recognised the same drawn, weary face that had spoken to them from within Mundar. He made an acknowledgement of Prince Baskin, speaking in the Havergal tongue – Merlin swearing that he picked up the sarcasm and scorn despite the gulf of language.
‘He says it was nice of them to send royalty to do their dirty work,’ Teal said.
‘Tell him he’s very lucky not to be a cloud of atoms,’ Merlin said.
Teal passed on this remark, listened to the answer, then gave a half smile of her own. ‘Struxer says you’re very lucky that the Tactician gave you safe passage.’
‘That’s his idea of safe passage?’ Merlin asked.
But he moved to a compartment in the cabin wall and pulled out a tray of coiled black devices, each as small and neat as a stone talisman. He removed one of the translators and pressed it into his ear, then offered one of the other devices to Struxer.
‘Tell him it won’t bite,’ he said. ‘My ship’s very good with languages, but it needs a solid baseline of data to work with. Those transmissions helped, but the more we talk, the better we’ll get.’
Struxer fingered the translator in the battered glove of his spacesuit, curling his lips in distrust. ‘Cohort man,’ he said, in clear enough Main. ‘I speak a little your language. The Prince made us take school. In case Cohort come back.’
‘So you’d have a negotiating advantage over the enemy?’ Merlin asked.
‘It seemed prudent,’ Baskin said. ‘But most of my staff didn’t see it that way. Struxer was one of the exceptions.’
‘Be careful who you educate,’ Merlin told him. ‘They have a tendency to start thinking for themselves. Start doing awkward things like defecting, and holding military computers to ransom.’
Struxer had pushed the earpiece into position. He shifted back to his native tongue, and his translated words buzzed into Merlin’s skull. ‘Ransom – is that what you were told, Cohort man?’
‘My name’s Merlin. And yes – that seems to be the game here. Or did you steal the Tactician because you’d run out of games to play on a rainy afternoon?’
‘You have no idea what you’ve been drawn into. What were you promised, to do his dirty work?’
Teal said: ‘Merlin doesn’t need you. He just wants the Tactician.’
‘A thing he neither understands nor needs, and which will never be his.’
‘I’d still like it,’ Merlin said.
‘You’re too late,’ Struxer said. ‘The Tactician has decided its own fate now. You’ve brought those patrol groups closer, with that crude display of strength. They’ll close on Mundar soon enough. But the Tactician will be long gone by then.’
‘Gone?’ Baskin asked.
‘It has accepted that it must end itself. Mundar’s remaining defences are now being turned inward, against the asteroid itself. It would rather destroy itself than become of further use to Havergal, or indeed Gaffurius.’
‘Ship,’ Merlin said. ‘Tell me this isn’t true.’
‘I would like to,’ Tyrant said. ‘But it seems to be the case. I am recording an increasing rate of kinetic bombardments against Mundar’s surface. Our own position is not without hazard, given my damaged condition.’
Merlin moved to the nearest console, confirming for himself what the ship already knew. The opposed fleets were altering course, pincering in around Mundar. Anti-ship weapons were already sparking between the two groups of ships, drawing both into closer and closer engagement.
‘The Tactician will play the patrol groups off each other, drawing them into an exchange of fire,’ Struxer said, with an icy sort of calm. ‘Then it will parry some of that fire against Mundar, completing the work you have begun.’
‘It’s a machine,’ Baskin said. ‘It can’t decide to end itself.’
‘Oh, come now,’ Struxer said, regarding Baskin with a shrewd, skeptical scrutiny. ‘We’re beyond those sorts of secrets, aren’t we? Or are you going to plead genuine ignorance?’
‘Whatever you think he knows,’ Merlin said, ‘I’ve a feeling he doesn’t.’
Struxer shifted his attention onto Merlin. ‘Then you know?’
‘I’ve an inkling or two. No more than that.’
‘About what?’ Teal asked.
Merlin raised his voice. �
�Ship, start computing an escape route for us. If the kinetics are being directed at Mundar, then the defence screen ought to be a little easier to get through, provided we’re quick.’
‘You’re running?’ Baskin asked. ‘With the prize so near?’
‘In case you missed it,’ Merlin said, ‘the prize just got a death-wish. I’m cutting my losses before they cut me. Buckle in, all of you.’
‘What about your syrinx?’ Teal demanded.
‘I’ll find me another. It’s a big old galaxy – bound to be a few more knocking around. Ship, are you ready with that solution?’
‘I am compromised, Merlin. I have hull damage, weapons impairment and a grievous loss of thruster authority. There can be no guarantee of reaching clear space, especially with the build-up of hostile assets.’
‘I’ll take that chance, thanks. Struxer: you’re free to step back out of the airlock any time you like. Or did you think all your problems were over just because I didn’t shoot you with the gamma-cannon?’
Tyrant began to move. Merlin steadied a hand against a wall, ready to tense if the gee-loads climbed sharply.
‘I think our problems are far from over,’ Struxer answered him levelly. ‘But I do not wish to die just yet. Equally, I would ask one thing.’
‘You’re not exactly in a position to be asking for anything.’
‘You had a communications channel open to me. Give me access to that same channel and allow me to make my peace with the Tactician, before it’s too late. A farewell, if you wish. I can’t talk it out of this course of action, but at least I can ease its conscience.’
‘It has no conscience,’ Baskin said, grimacing as the acceleration mounted and Tyrant began to swerve its away around obstacles and in-coming fire.
‘Oh, it most definitely does,’ Struxer said.
Merlin closed his eyes. He was standing at the door to his mother’s parlour, watching her watching the window. She had become aware of his silent presence and bent around in her stern black chair, her arms straining with the effort. The golden sun shifted across the changing angles of her face. Her eyes met his for an instant, liquid grey with sadness, the eyes of a woman who had known much and seen the end of everything. She made to speak, but no words came.
Her expression was sufficient, though. Disappointed, expectant, encouraging, a loving mother well used to her sons’ failings, and always hopeful that the better aspects of their nature might rise to the surface. Merlin and Gallinule, last sons of Plenitude.
‘Damn it all,’ Merlin said under his breath. ‘Damn it all.’
‘What?’ Teal asked.
‘Turn us around, ship,’ he said. ‘Turn us around and take us back to Mundar. As deep as we can go.’
They fought their way into the thick broil of the dust cloud, relying on sensors alone, a thousand fists hammering their displeasure against the hull, until at last Tyrant found the docking bay. The configuration was similar to the Renouncer, easily within the scope of adjustments that Tyrant could make, and they were soon clamped on. Baskin was making ready to secure his vacuum suit when Merlin tossed him a dun-coloured outfit.
‘Cohort immersion suit. Put it on. You as well, Struxer. And be quick about it.’
‘What are these suits?’ Baskin asked, fingering the ever-so-ragged, grubby-looking garment.
‘You’ll find out soon enough.’ Merlin nodded at Teal. ‘You too, soldier. As soon as Tyrant has an electronic lock on the Tactician it can start figuring out the immersion protocols. Won’t take too long.’
‘Immersion protocols for what?’ Baskin asked, with sharpening impatience.
‘We’re going inside,’ Merlin said. ‘All of us. There’s been enough death today, and most of it’s on my hands. I’m not settling for any more.’
It waited beyond the lock, the only large thing in a dimly-lit chamber walled in rock. The air was cold and did not appear to be recirculating. From the low illumination of the chamber, Merlin judged that Mundar was down to its last reserves of emergency power. He shivered in the immersion suit. It was like wearing paper.
‘Did I really kill hundreds, Struxer?’
‘Remorse, Merlin?’
Something was tight in his throat. ‘I never set out of kill. But I know that there’s a danger out there beyond almost any human cost. They took my world, my people. Left Teal without a ship or a crew. They’ll do the same to every human world in the galaxy, given time. I felt that if I could bring peace to this one system, I’d be doing something. One small act against a vaster darkness.’
‘And that excuses any act?’
‘I was only trying to do the right thing.’
Struxer gave a sad sniff of a laugh, as if he had lost count of the number of times he had heard such a justification. ‘The only right action is not to kill, Merlin. Not on some distant day when it suits you, but here and now, from the next moment on. The Tactician understands that.’ Struxer reached up suddenly as if to swat an insect that had settled on the back of his neck. ‘What’s happening?’
‘The immersion suit’s connecting into your nervous system,’ Merlin said. ‘It’s fast and painless and there won’t be any lasting damage. Do you feel it too, Prince?’
‘It might not be painful,’ Baskin said. ‘But I wouldn’t exactly call it pleasant.’
‘Trust us,’ Merlin said. ‘We’re good at this sort of thing.’
At last he felt ready to give the Iron Tactician his full attention.
Its spherical form rested on a pedestal in the middle of the chamber, the low light turning its metallic plating to a kind of coppery brown. It was about as large as an escape capsule, with a strange brooding presence about it. There were no eyes or cameras anywhere on it, at least none that Merlin recognised. But he had the skin-crawling sensation of being watched, noticed, contemplated, by an intellect not at all like his own.
He raised his hands.
‘I’m Merlin. I know what you are, I think. You should know what I am, as well. I tried to take you, and I tried to hurt your world. I’m sorry for the people I killed. But I stand before you now unarmed. I have no weapons, no armour, and I doubt very much that there’s anything I could do to hurt you.’
‘You’re wasting your words,’ Baskin said behind him, rubbing at the back of his neck.
‘No,’ Struxer said. ‘He isn’t. The Tactician hears him. It’s fully aware of what happens around it.’
Merlin touched the metal integument of the Iron Tactician, feeling the warmth and throb of hidden mechanisms. It hummed and churned in his presence, and gave off soft liquid sounds, like some huge boiler or laundry machine. He stroked his hand across the battered curve of one of the thick armoured plates, over the groove between one plate and the next. The plates had been unbolted or hinged back in places, revealing gold-plated connections, power and chemical sockets, or even rugged banks of dials and controls. Needles twitched and lights flashed, hinting at mysterious processes going on deep within the armour. Here and there a green glow shone through little windows of dark glass.
Tyrant whispered into Merlin’s ear, via the translator earpiece. He nodded, mouthed back his answer, then returned his attention to the sphere.
‘You sense my ship,’ Merlin said. ‘It tells me that it understands your support apparatus – that it can map me into your electronic sensorium using this immersion suit. I’d like to step inside, if that’s all right?’
No answer was forthcoming – none that Merlin or his ship recognised. But he had made his decision by then, and he felt fully and irrevocably committed to it.. ‘Put us through, ship – all of us. We’ll take our chances.’
‘And if things take a turn for the worse?’ Tyrant asked.
‘Save yourself, however you’re able. Scuttle away and find someone else that can make good use of you.’
‘It just wouldn’t be the same,’ Tyrant said.
The immersion suits snatched them from the chamber. The dislocation lasted an instant and then Merlin found himself sta
nding next to his companions, in a high-ceilinged room that might well have been an annex of the Palace of Eternal Dusk. But the architectural notes were subtly unfamiliar, the play of light through the windows not that of his home, and the distant line of hills remained resolutely fixed. Marbled floor lay under their feet. White stone walls framed the elegant archwork of the windows.
‘I know this place,’ Baskin said, looking around. ‘I spent a large part of my youth in these rooms. This was the imperial palace in Lurga, as it was before the abandonment.’ Even in the sensorium he wore a facsimile of the immersion suit, and he stroked the thin fabric of its sleeve with unconcealed wonder. ‘This is a remarkable technology, Merlin. I feel as if I’ve stepped back into my childhood. But why these rooms – why recreate the palace?’
Only one doorway led out of the room in which they stood. It faced a short corridor, with high windows on one side and doors on the other. Merlin beckoned them forward. ‘You should tell him, Struxer. Then I can see how close I’ve come to figuring it out for myself.’
‘Figured what out?’ Baskin asked.
‘What really happened when they attacked this place,’ Merlin said.
They walked into the corridor. Struxer seemed at first loss for how to start. His jaw moved, but no sounds came. Then he glanced down, swallowed, and found the words he needed.
‘The attack’s a matter of record,’ he said. ‘The young Prince Baskin was the target, and he was gravely injured. Spent days and days half-buried, in darkness and cold, until the teams found him. Then the prince was nurtured back to strength, and finally allowed back into the world. But that’s not really what happened.’
They were walking along the line of windows. The view beyond was vastly more idyllic than any part of the real Havergal. White towers lay amongst woods and lakes, with purple-tinged hills rising in the distance, the sky beyond them an infinite storybook blue.
‘I assure you it did,’ Baskin said. ‘I’d remember otherwise, wouldn’t I?’
‘Not if they didn’t want you to,’ Merlin said. He walked on for a few paces. ‘There was an assassination strike. But it didn’t play out the way you think it did. The real prince was terribly injured – much worse than your memories have it.’
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