“Oh.”
“Is it true?”
If I hadn’t been held in place, I would have shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Are you sure about that?” She sat back on her heels. “Only, two ships appear to have turned themselves off within a few days of each other. One was an Outward scout ship, and the other this liner we’re here to find.”
“You think the Conglomeration shot down an Outward liner?” I couldn’t keep the incredulity from my voice. “To what end? What could we possibly gain from such an action?”
“Maybe you’re looking to start another war? It doesn’t matter. The point is that if that weapon exists, I’ll need to know everything you can tell me about it.”
I blinked up at her. I might be disgraced, but did I really want to compound my transgressions by discussing the Conglomeration’s secrets with a foreign national?
Stalling for time, I asked, “Even if I knew, why would I tell you?”
Captain Konstanz huffed, as if frustrated by a wrong answer. “Because, genius, you’re literally stuck on this ship.” She pushed the shoulder of the exoskeleton with her fingers, demonstrating my immobility. “And we’re flying into this situation blind. If some unexpected super weapon attacks us and we go down, you’re going to be going down with us. And the only way to avoid that is for you to give me the information I need to keep all our butts intact.”
I looked around at the metal walls, and was forced to concede the logic of her argument. “Fair point.”
“So.” She leant forward. “Have you got anything for me?”
The logo on her hat caught the light. It was the stylised golden star of the House of Reclamation—the organisation to which this woman, her crew and her ship had dedicated themselves in the wake of the war. An organisation that had offered them a clean slate and an expunged record in return for their service. An organisation that didn’t much care who you had been or what you had done, as long as you were prepared to dedicate yourself to its ideals of selflessness and benevolence.
And just like that, I knew.
The realisation hit me with the force of a divine revelation. All my doubts and fears fell away in the reflected gleam from that cap badge, and I had to stifle a laugh. Of course there was a way out of my predicament, and a way I could atone for my mistakes. Of course there was a place where I would be taken in and welcomed, no matter the idiotic things I had done; a place where they could offer me the duties and sense of purpose I’d need to fill the hole left by the loss of my position in Conglomeration Intelligence. The answer had been sitting there in plain sight, and I hadn’t seen it until now. It had taken the glint of the logo on this woman’s hat to make me realise where my future lay, and what I would have to betray in order to get there.
In order to prove myself worthy of this new life, I would have to let go of the obligations and burdens of the past. Let it all go: the jungle, the ruins of my career, everything I had been since becoming a field agent.
Every secret I had sworn to protect.
Every ambition I had ever held.
I cleared my throat.
“I’ve heard things,” I said, trying to play it cool, knowing everything depended on the outcome of this conversation.
“What kind of things?”
“I’ll tell you all I know,” I promised, and felt the encumbrance of the past few years begin to rise like steam from my soul. “But there’s one condition.”
Captain Konstanz raised a dubious eyebrow. “You know, you’re not in a great bargaining position.” She stood up and stuffed her fists into the pockets of her baggy jumpsuit. “What is it you want?”
I cleared my throat and looked her in the eye. “I want to join the House of Reclamation.”
THIRTY-NINE
ONA SUDAK
I managed to get to my knees, but found I lacked the strength to stand. I had nothing left. For two days we’d been running, spurred on by the thought of nameless, faceless pursuers. But now Adam was dead. If the transparent door hadn’t been between us when the guns fired, I would have felt his warm blood spatter my face, and would have died with him. Even now, his bloody handprint—and the long smear of his final collapse—remained on the door of the moving room that had me trapped.
I let my chin drop to my chest. My arms went slack and my hands curled against the floor like wounded creatures. The room was so silent I could hear the air wheezing in and out of my lungs, the rustle of my clothes when I moved, and the pulse of the blood in my ears. Without visual cues, there wasn’t any sensation of movement, or any sound or vibration to indicate how the little room was powered. And anyhow, I didn’t have the mental energy to ponder such matters. I felt pummelled and wrung-out, like laundry that had been immersed in a river and then beaten against a rock. When my knees began to hurt, I lay on my side and exhaled until my lungs were empty. My bones weighed me down like bars of solid iron, and I found myself falling into the swamp-like embrace of an unthinking oblivion…
When I finally re-opened my eyes, several hours had passed and I felt calmer and more lucid. Old habits kicked in, and I found myself surveying the terrain and cataloguing my supplies. So far, I had been reacting to events and moving on instinct; now, I needed to start thinking strategically. Grief could wait.
The bright throat of the corridor had shrunk to the size of a star in the night sky, a tiny pinpoint of light far in my wake. As my eyes began to adjust to the darkness outside my box, I began to perceive other points of light, and from their relative positions, discern something of the shape of the void around me. As far as I could tell, I was suspended within a vast, dark cavern. Thousands of stars lay in an immense concentric shell, each perhaps representing the mouth of a new and unexplored corridor. Did any of them lead back to the surface? Although I had temporarily evaded those who wished to kill me, I couldn’t remain down here indefinitely. My survival suit would continue to recycle my sweat and urine into potable water for some time before it needed to be replenished, but the emergency rations it dispensed were far more limited, and I had already consumed about two-thirds of its stock of tablets. From my days in the military, I knew that as long as I had access to the water in my suit, I could survive without food for at least a fortnight—but it wouldn’t be a pleasant experience.
As the room was travelling backwards, I couldn’t see where we were heading, but I had to assume I was being taken to a specific destination. As soon as we arrived, my first priority would be to scout out a safe route back up to the surface. Then I could find somewhere to hole up until my supplies grew low, by which time I hoped those bastards in the armour might have given up and fucked off back to whatever hellhole had spawned them. Then I could work my way back to the wreck of the ’dam and find a transmitter. With luck, help might arrive before I died of hunger.
I let the sudden anger subside. I leant my cheek against the cool glass of the transparent door and looked down at the twinkling pattern of other doorways far below, arrayed in grids across the curving base of the spherical void.
Where had those soldiers come from? Until now, I had been too shaken and upset to consider the question. The armour they had been wearing had been scuffed and ill matched, as if various parts had been replaced over time and scavenged from a variety of sources. None of it had been standard issue, and that suggested the men wearing it hadn’t been regular troops, leaving pirates or mercenaries as the most likely explanation.
Pirates would never have had the balls or the firepower to take down anything as large and well defended as the Geest van Amsterdam. And even if they’d somehow managed it, they wouldn’t have hung around to pick off a couple of wayward survivors. They would have plundered the wreck and been long gone, running for all they were worth. So, these guys must be mercenaries. But who had hired them, and to what end? Certainly, the fact they had stuck around so long, and followed us into these depths, suggested they were determined to wipe out all survivors from the crash.
Even if I assumed they were try
ing to kill me in particular, that didn’t narrow the list of suspects, as there were countless groups and individuals from all sides of the Archipelago conflict who would be more than happy to see the sentient forests of Pelapatarn avenged, and Annelida Deal’s head impaled on a pike. In my absence, I had even been condemned by my own government—by those I had been serving and protecting when I took the decision to end the war.
I straightened up and considered the three blank walls of my enclosure. Until I knew where I was being taken, and why, my plans would have to remain necessarily vague. But that imprecision also lent them an attractive simplicity. I needed to improvise some sort of weapon, and then outwait my opponents. A liner had been destroyed in a disputed star system; somebody would send a ship to investigate. All I had to do was be on the surface when it arrived.
I hurried through some quick mental calculations. The nearest port of any appreciable size was Camrose. At full speed, it would take a ship at least four days to get here, which meant I had to stay hidden for at least another forty-eight hours, maybe longer.
Would my pursuers find a way to follow me across this huge darkened sphere? Maybe they were trailing me even now, in a similar flying room? I turned to look back, to see if I could perceive any hint of another craft in my wake, only to find that the room I was in was turning. Slowly and gracefully, it revolved until the glass door faced forwards, in the direction of travel, and I finally caught sight of what I was heading into.
Ahead, a circular opening revealed an even larger chamber beyond—a chamber so mind-numbingly gigantic that it should not have been able to fit within the confines of this planet. I couldn’t even begin to guess at its dimensions.
Something that looked like a tiny white sun burned at the centre of this colossal vault. I couldn’t look directly at it, so it was hard to guess its exact size. Nevertheless, I guessed it was far too small for its gravity to spark a fusion reaction, and therefore far too small to be a natural object. No race in the Multiplicity could have constructed such a thing; it was beyond all known technology, and probably beyond our understanding of the way stars behaved and worked. But it wasn’t that shining bauble that filled me with a dread so profound I felt the blood turn to sand in my veins. The thing that struck terror into my very soul was the cloud of objects that surrounded that impossible miniature sun in uncountable ranks, their dagger-like hulls throwing long shadows onto the walls of the chamber. For in the space between the star and the surrounding walls had been arranged thousands upon thousands of gleaming white starships, each with a hull like polished marble and a prow as sharp as a knife.
* * *
I remained in the cramped, flying room for a day and a night. Exhausted from the pursuit through the canyon maze, I spent much of the time asleep, curled uncomfortably on the hard white floor. When I awoke, I watched the approach of the little sun and its attendant ranks of lustrous vessels; when I slept again, I dreamt of Adam standing among the blackened, smoking stumps of a firebombed jungle.
Time passed slowly.
I began to catch myself humming tunes and talking to myself. I had never been very good at being alone, and the utter silence of the lift’s passage—I had begun to think of it as a kind of flying elevator—was so relentlessly oppressive to me that the sound of a voice, even my own, could bestow comfort and the illusion of company.
At first, I recited snatches of my own poems, but their subject matter proved to be so relentlessly grief-stricken that I started muttering the lyrics from popular songs instead. They might have been artistically inane, but they were catchier and more uplifting than anything that had fallen from my pen.
Towards the end of the second day, I began to worry. My food was gone and we did not appear to be appreciably closer to the distant sun. If my destination lay with the white ships, I didn’t think I’d last long enough to reach it. The distances involved were huge, and the lift simply wasn’t moving quickly enough.
What a cruel irony it would be, I thought, to have been spared a quick death only to expire slowly of hunger and thirst, trapped in a cage the size of a large wardrobe.
In my head, the part of me that was Ona Sudak quailed at the thought. She wanted to pound her fists against the glass door and weep for release. Captain Annelida Deal, on the other hand, decided to bide her time. At some point, this stupid contraption would arrive at its destination. If I happened to still be alive when it did, I would need all my training, cunning and strength to survive. So, right now, the best and most sensible thing I could possibly do was to rest and conserve my energy. I was a soldier and, by god, I was determined to face the unknown with pragmatism and military discipline. If my fate was to become a desiccated bag of skin and bone on the floor of this floating prison, I would accept it with dignity. I would be patient, and hope for the best possible outcome, while simultaneously preparing myself for the worst.
FORTY
TROUBLE DOG
As we neared the outskirts of the Gallery system, I received a second transmission from Adalwolf. This time, he had given his hollow-cheeked avatar the aspect of an emaciated warrior god, clad in mirror-bright armour with a mane of fiery hair billowing out behind him, the flames seemingly streaming like windblown tears from the corners of his eyes.
“Sister,” he said, “I cannot help but notice your failure to heed my advice.”
I bridled at the portentousness of his tone. “You’re very observant.” I decided to keep my avatar on its default setting. Its face had been based on the countenance of the woman whose harvested cells had provided the seed for the biological segments of my processing substrate, but had been subtly altered by my designers to render it ethnically and sexually neutral—a symbolic representation of humanity in all its infinite diversity. “But, as you so kindly reminded me the last time we spoke, I am no longer part of the pack, and therefore no longer obliged to follow your recommendations.” The sweetness of my tone only emphasised the bitter taste of my words. I thrust my chin forward in a defiant gesture I had picked up from Alva Clay. “I am here as a representative of the House of Reclamation, and I have a job to do.”
“You will not listen to reason?”
“What reason?” I laughed. “You have yet to give me one.”
Adalwolf scowled. “The transmission you received.”
“The anonymous warning?” I let my smile grow wider. If he wanted to keep up the pretence that he knew nothing of its origins, I would see how far I could goad him. “What made you think that would discourage me?”
“I believe it was for your own good.”
I cocked my head to one side. “And how would you know that?” I asked, my face the picture of girlish innocence.
The light from his flaming hair flickered on the polished metal of his armoured shoulders.
“Why else would it have been sent to you alone?”
“Because Fenrir sent it.”
His eyes narrowed. He had been waiting for me to reveal my suspicions, and now I had. “She does not want to fight you.”
“Why would she fight me?”
“Because you are about to blunder into the middle of a covert operation. And if you do, Captain Parris will order her to attack you.”
I feigned indignation. “I’m here to recover the passengers and crew of the Geest van Amsterdam.”
“Neither Parris nor Fenrir will allow it.”
“Why not?” I was trying to provoke him, and we both knew it; but I wanted to hear him say the words.
He sighed. “Because Fenrir’s the one that shot it down.”
I had assumed as much, and had already informed Captain Konstanz of my suspicions, but hearing them confirmed brought no satisfaction, only a kind of sick, nervous feeling.
“Why?”
“That’s classified.”
“And the Hobo? She shot that down too, didn’t she? Or is that information also classified?”
“The scout ship was collateral damage.” Adalwolf looked down his long, bony nose. “It was
the Hobo’s misfortune to have performed a deep scan of the Objects in the Gallery. It could not be allowed to report its findings.”
“So she killed it, just like that?”
“Let’s just say she convinced it to kill itself.”
“In order to keep the secret?”
“Just so.”
I held up an index finger. “But now you’ve told me.”
“I have.”
No more pretending now, no more fake innocence. This was the moment I had been dreading. I kept my tone as dispassionate as possible as I asked, “Does this mean you’re going to kill me too?”
He didn’t even blink. “I am afraid so,” he said.
“Two against one?”
The smile he gave was as insincere as it was tight. “We will try to be as… merciful as we can.”
“And my crew?”
“Collateral damage.”
I frowned. I could feel the caress of the higher dimensional vacuum on my outer hull, the steady power of my drives, and, deep in the engineering sections of the ship, I could feel the machinery churning out the torpedoes and ammunition needed to replace those I had renounced upon joining the House. However, I wouldn’t be able to manufacture the antimatter warheads that had once been my primary weapon. My fangs had been drawn, but I would not be entirely toothless. I would have my secondary systems, which alone would be more than a match for almost any other class of ship. When we met, I wouldn’t have to face my brother and sister as an unarmed ambulance. I would be a warship again, armed with orthodox nuclear torpedoes. My teeth would be sharp, my senses keen.
“Okay,” I said. It wasn’t an agreement, simply an acknowledgement of information received. I knew I wouldn’t last long without my primary weapons, but I knew Captain Konstanz had sent a message back to Camrose Station, requesting reinforcements, and felt confident I could survive long enough to at least score a few good hits against my former pack-mates—hopefully ensuring the next rescue ship to arrive would be able to do so without fear of attack.
Embers of War Page 17