The ship, Dreyfus realised, was burning from inside.
"I guess we're seeing what passes for justice in Ultra circles," Sparver said.
"They can call it what they like," Dreyfus snapped back. "I asked for witnesses, not a shipload of charred corpses." He turned to Pell. "How long until it hits the edge of the Glitter Band?"
"Four hours and twenty-eight minutes."
"I told Jane we'd destroy it three hours before it reaches the outer habitat orbit. That gives us ninety minutes' grace. How are the nukes coming along?"
"Dialled and ready to go. We've identified impact sites, but we'll be happier if we stabilise the tumble before we blow. We're looking at options for tug attachment now."
"Quick as you can, please."
The tug specialists were good at their job, and by the time Dreyfus had finished his coffee they had already anchored the three units in position at various stress-tolerant nodes along the wreck's ruined hull.
"We're applying corrective thrust now, sir," one of the tug specialists informed him. "Going to take a while, though. There's a million tonnes of ship to stop tumbling, and we don't want her snapping like a twig."
"Any sign of movement or activity aboard?" Dreyfus asked.
"Fires are out," Captain Pell said. "All available air appears to have vented to space by now. Too much residual heat to start looking for thermal hotspots from survivors inside the thing, but we're still sweeping her for electromagnetic signatures. Anyone human still alive in that thing has to be wearing a suit, and we may pick up some EM noise from life-support systems. It's really not likely that we'll find anyone, though."
"I didn't ask for a likelihood estimate," Dreyfus said, nerves beginning to get the better of him.
It took another thirty minutes to bring the tumbling ship under control. The specialists rotated the hull so that its long axis was pointed at the Glitter Band, minimising its collision cross section should something go amiss with the nukes. There was no possibility of using the tugs to shove the lighthugger onto a safe trajectory; at best, all that could be done would be to aim her at one of the less densely populated orbits and hope that she slipped through the empty space between habitats. From this far out, the Glitter Band appeared to be a smooth, flat ring of tarnished silver: the individual glints from ten thousand habitats blurring into a solid bow of light.
Dreyfus kept reminding himself that it was still mostly empty space, but his eyes couldn't accept it.
"How long?" he asked.
"You have just under an hour, sir," Pell informed him.
"Give me an airlock as close to the front kilometre of the ship as you can manage. If anyone's survived, that's where they'll be."
Pell seemed reticent. "Sir, I think you need to look at this first, before you go aboard that thing. We just picked up a burst of radio, stronger than anything we've heard since we began our approach."
"What kind of burst?"
"Voice-only comms. It was faint, but we still managed to localise it pretty well. As it happens, it matched one of the hotspots we're already monitoring."
"I thought you said you couldn't see any hotspots because of all the thermal noise."
"I was talking about hotspots inside the ship, sir. This one's coming from outside."
"Someone's escaped?"
"Not exactly, sir. It's as if they're on the outside of the hull. We should have an image for you once we're a bit closer."
Pell started bringing the deep-system cruiser closer to the Accompaniment of Shadows. It was a fraught operation. Even though the lighthugger had been stabilised and was most likely completely drained of air, it was still giving off vapour at a prodigious rate as the ship's water reserves boiled away into space. With the outgassing vapour came a steady eruption of debris, ranging from thumb-sized twinkling shards to chunks of warped metal the size of houses. The cruiser's hull pinged and clanged with each nerve-jarring impact. Occasionally Dreyfus felt the subsonic burp as one of the Democratic Circus's automatic guns intercepted one of the larger pieces of junk.
Forty-five minutes now remained.
"I've isolated the sound burst, sir," Pell told Dreyfus. "Do you want me to replay it?"
"Go ahead," Dreyfus said, frowning.
But when the fragment burst over the cruiser's intercom, he understood Pell's unwillingness to transmit it without warning. It was just a momentary thing, like a squall of random sound picked up when scanning across radio frequencies.
But in that squall was something unspeakable, an implicit horror that pierced Dreyfus to the marrow. It was a voice calling out in pain or terror or both; a voice that encapsulated some primal state of human distress. There was a universe of misery in that fragment of sound; enough to open a door into a part of the mind that was usually kept locked and bolted.
It was not a sound Dreyfus ever wanted to hear again.
"Do you have that image ready for me?"
"Zeroing in now, sir. I'll put it on the wall."
Part of the transparent hull revealed an enlargement of the prow of the lighthugger. It zoomed in dizzyingly. For a moment Dreyfus was overwhelmed by the intricate, gothic detail of the ship's spire-like hull. Then he made out the one thing that didn't belong.
There was a figure on the hull. The spacesuited form was spread out, limbs splayed as if it had been nailed in place. Dreyfus knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he was looking at Captain Dravidian.
And that Captain Dravidian was still alive.
* * *
The Ultras had done a thorough job with their victim. They'd nailed his extremities to the hull, with his head nearest to the prow. Some form of piton had been rammed or shot into his forearms and lower legs, puncturing suit armour and penetrating the hull's fabric. Dreyfus judged that it was the same kind of piton that ships used to guy themselves to asteroids or comets: hyperdiamond-tipped, viciously barbed against accidental retraction. The entry wounds had been sealed over with rapid-setting caulk, preventing pressure loss. Thus immobilised, Dravidian had been welded to the hull along the edges of his limbs and the midpoint of his torso. A thick silvery line of fillet-weld connected him to the plating of the ship, creating a seamless bond between the armour of his suit and the material of the hull. Dreyfus — standing weightless next to Dravidian, anchored to the hull by the soles of his boots — stared at the spectacle and realised that no expertise with cutters would suffice to free his witness in the time remaining.
He was going to ride his ship all the way to its doom, whether that meant a collision in the Glitter Band or an instant of nuclear annihilation. Through Dravidian's faceplate, eyes tracked Dreyfus and Sparver. They were wide and alert, but utterly without hope.
Dravidian knew exactly how good his chances were.
Dreyfus used his left hand to unreel the froptic line from his right wrist. The design of Dravidian's suit was unfamiliar to him: it was probably a jerry-built lash-up of home-made parts and ancient pieces, some of them dating back to the era of chemical rocketry. But almost all suits were engineered for a degree of intercompatibility. Air- and power-line jacks conformed to a handful of standard interfaces, and had done for centuries. It was the same for comms inputs.
Dreyfus found the corresponding jack in Dravidian's sleeve and slid the froptic in. He felt the minute click as the contacts docked, followed an instant later by a hiss of foreign air-circulator noise in his helmet. He was hearing Dravidian's life-support system.
"Captain Dravidian? I hope you can hear me. I'm Field Prefect Tom Dreyfus, of Panoply."
There was a pause longer than Dreyfus had been expecting. He was almost ready to give up on the attempt to talk when he heard Dravidian take in a laboured breath.
"I can hear you, Prefect Dreyfus. And yes, I'm Dravidian. It was very astute of you to guess."
"I wish we could have reached you sooner. I heard your transmission. You sounded in pain."
There came something like a chuckle. "I was."
"And now?"
&nbs
p; "That at least has passed. Tell me: what have they done? I felt great pain in my extremities ... but I couldn't see. They were holding me down. Did they cut me into pieces?"
Dreyfus surveyed the welded form, as if he needed to reassure himself that all of Dravidian was there. "No," he said. "They didn't cut you into pieces."
"That's good. It means I go with some dignity."
"I'm afraid I don't understand."
"There is a scale of punishment amongst Ultras, when a crime is said to have been committed. As it is, my guilt has been deemed highly probable. But not certain. If they thought all possibility of innocence had been eliminated, then they would have cut me into pieces."
"They've nailed you to the ship," Dreyfus said. "Nailed you and then welded you."
"Yes, I saw the light."
"I can't get you out of that suit, or cut the suit away from the hull. I can't cut away a section of the hull, either. Not in thirty minutes."
"Thirty minutes?"
"I'm afraid I have orders to destroy this ship. I am sorry that you have been made to suffer, Captain. I can promise you that my justice will be swift and clean, when it comes."
"Nukes?"
"It'll be fast. You have my word on that."
"That is kind of you, Prefect. And no, I didn't seriously think there was any possibility of rescue. When Ultras do something ... " He left the remark hanging, unfinished.
Dreyfus nodded, for there was no need to complete the sentence.
"But you talk of justice," Dravidian continued, when he had recovered either breath or clarity of mind. "I assume that means you have a fixed opinion as to my guilt?"
"A terrible crime took place, Captain. The evidence in my possession leaves little room for doubt that your ship was involved."
"I ran," Dravidian said. "I ran for the shelter of the Parking Swarm, thinking I would be safe there, that my argument would fall on sympathetic ears. I should never have run. I should have trusted your justice over that of my people."
"I'd have listened to whatever you had to say," replied Dreyfus.
"What happened ... was not what it appeared."
"Your drive did destroy that habitat."
"Yes, I concede that much."
"You left it in a state of anger, having been cheated out of a lucrative deal."
"I was sorry that the family did not choose to close negotiations. But that doesn't mean I planned to kill them all."
"It wasn't an accident, Dravidian. No one's going to buy that."
"I never said it was. It was a deliberate act of murder against an innocent habitat. But I had no hand in it." With sudden intensity, he added: "Nor did my crew."
"Either it happened or it didn't."
"Someone made it happen, Prefect. Someone infiltrated the Accompaniment of Shadows and used her against the Ruskin-Sartorious Bubble. We were a weapon, not the murderer."
"You mean someone got aboard the ship and worked out how to turn the engines on and off at just the right moment to kill the Bubble?"
"Yes," Dravidian said resignedly, as if all his hopes of being believed had just evaporated. "Exactly that."
"I wish I could take you at your word."
"Prefect, ask yourself this: what could I possibly stand to gain from lying now? My crew has been slaughtered, burnt alive aboard their own ship. They let me hear their screams, their pleas for mercy. My vessel has been ripped apart like a rabid animal tossed to the wolves. I have been tortured and welded to the hull. Very shortly I am going to die."
"I still — " Dreyfus began.
"I don't know why anyone wanted this to happen, Prefect. It's not my job to answer that question, it's yours. But I swear no crime was committed by my crew."
"We need to start thinking about getting off this thing," Sparver said quietly.
Dreyfus held up a silencing hand. To Dravidian he said: "But surely someone in your crew had to have been responsible."
"No one that I trusted. No one that I really considered crew. But someone else ... maybe."
"Who?"
"We took on new recruits after we arrived around Yellowstone. Some crew left to join other ships; others came aboard. It's possible that one of those recruits ... "
"Captain?"
Dravidian's tone changed, as if something new had just occurred to him. "Something odd happened. Our shuttle developed a fault. That was why we had to move the entire ship close to Ruskin-Sartorious, rather than just shuttle over to it from the Swarm. There wasn't time to worry about the cause of the fault, not when we had a deal to close. But now that I look back on it ... now that I don't have any other distractions ... the more I'm convinced that the shuttle's malfunction could only have been sabotage."
"I don't understand."
"Someone put the shuttle out of action, Prefect. Someone wanted an excuse to bring the Accompaniment of Shadows within kill-range of the Bubble. Until now I've been thinking that whatever happened, whatever was done in our name, was done in anger, because of the way that deal collapsed. That maybe someone on the ship thought Ruskin-Sartorious needed to be punished for that. Now I'm not so sure." He fell silent, the face behind the glass completely still. Just when Dreyfus was starting to think that the captain had died or lost consciousness, his lips moved again: "Now I'm wondering if it wasn't premeditated."
"Not just murder, but murder in cold blood?"
"I can only tell you what happened."
"These recruits ... can you tell me anything about them?"
"Six or seven of them. The usual mix. Hardcore types who've already crewed on other ships. Green-behind-the-ears newcomers who don't know one end of a hull from the other. I didn't meet any of them in person, just delivered the usual blood-and-thunder speech when they came aboard."
"No names, nothing?"
"I'm sorry, Prefect. If I had more to give you, you'd be hearing it."
Dreyfus nodded. There was no earthly reason for Dravidian to withhold evidence now, if he truly believed in his own innocence. "What I don't understand is why anyone would want to destroy the Bubble, if it wasn't revenge for a deal that went sour?"
"You're the investigator, Prefect. You tell me."
"You're going to die," Dreyfus said softly. "Nothing I say or do can change that now."
"But you believe I may be telling the truth."
"I believe that the investigation has yet to run its course. If the facts confirm your innocence, I'll make sure that they're heard."
"I hope you're good at your job."
"That's not for me to say."
"Whoever did this was prepared to kill nearly a thousand people. More now that my crew have paid with their lives. They won't take kindly to a prefect snooping around trying to undermine their good work."
"They don't pay us to be popular."
"You strike me as a decent man, Prefect Dreyfus. I can hear it in your voice. We Ultras aren't such bad judges of character. My crew were decent people, too. Even if you can't exonerate me, I beg of you this much: do what you can to lift this shame from their heads. They didn't deserve to die like this. The Accompaniment was a good ship, right to the end. She didn't deserve to die like this either." He hesitated, then added: "How are those nukes coming along?"
Dreyfus glanced at Sparver. Sparver tapped his sleeve, as if there was a wrist-watch there.
"Twenty minutes, Boss."
Dreyfus looked along the prow, in the direction of the dead ship's flight. He was also looking straight at Yellowstone and the Glitter Band. The planet was still lit up on its dayside. It was not his imagination that the arc of the Band appeared wider than when he had last seen it. He felt as if he could make out the twinkling granularity of individual habitats. With time and patience, and his ingrained knowledge of their orbits, he was sure he could even have begun to pick out the largest structures by eye. There, for instance: wasn't that silvery glint near the planet's westward limb Carousel New Venice, moving in the congested real estate of the central orbits? And a little to the ri
ght: wasn't that string of ruby-red sparks the signature of the eight habitats of the Remortal Concatenation? If so, then that blue-tinged glint to the east had to be House Sammartini, or perhaps the Sylveste Institute for Shrouder Studies.
"I think I'm about done here, Captain."
"Just one thing, Prefect. Maybe it's nothing, or maybe it'll help you. You'll have to decide for yourself."
"Go on."
"Our negotiations with Ruskin-Sartorious were conducted with the usual degree of secrecy. It's how we do things. Yet someone from outside the Bubble was still able to contact Delphine and promise her a better offer than the one already on the table. That means someone knew what was going on."
"Could have been a lucky break. They saw your ship parked near the Bubble; they knew Delphine's art was on the market, put two and two together."
"And outbid us by a calculatedly effective margin? I don't think so, Prefect. Someone had already gone to great lengths to position the Accompaniment as a murder weapon. All they needed then was to make it look as if we struck back in anger. For that they needed a plausible motive."
"So what you're saying is ... the whole thing about the deal collapsing was just a ruse, to provide a justification for you hitting back?"
"Exactly so."
In his head Dreyfus felt the ominous sliding of mental chess pieces moving into a new and threatening configuration. "Then there must have been another reason why someone wanted to destroy the Ruskin-Sartorious Bubble."
"Now all you have to do is find out why," Dravidian answered.
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