‘Oh, her orders were very simple. If control of the gunnery placed at her disposal any systems which could quicken the completion of the mission, she was to make whatever arrangements were necessary to hasten that end.’
Khouri shook her head in abject disbelief.
‘I thought you wanted me to kill Sylveste.’
‘The weapon may now make that end achievable rather sooner than I anticipated.’
‘No,’ Khouri said, after the Mademoiselle’s remark had had time to settle in. ‘You wouldn’t wipe out a planet just to kill one man.’
‘Discovered a conscience all of a sudden, have we?’ The Mademoiselle shook her head, lips pursed. ‘You exhibited no qualms over Sylveste. Why should the deaths of others trouble you so much? Or is it simply a question of scale?’
‘It’s just…’ Khouri hesitated, knowing what she was about to say would not trouble the Mademoiselle. ‘Inhuman. But I don’t expect you to understand that.’
The elevator halted, door opening to reveal the semi-flooded access way which led to the gunnery. Khouri took a moment to get her bearings. Ever since the descent had begun, she had been suffering the worst headache imaginable. It seemed to be lessening now, but she had no wish to dwell on what might have caused it.
‘Quickly,’ Volyova said, traipsing out.
‘What you don’t understand,’ the Mademoiselle said, ‘is why I would go to the trouble of destroying an entire colony just to ensure one man’s death.’
Khouri followed Volyova, boots disappearing to the knees in the flood.
‘Damn right I don’t. And I’d try and stop you whether I did or not.’
‘Not if you grasped the facts, Khouri. You’d actually be urging me on.’
‘Then it’s your fault for not telling me.’
They pushed through bulkhead seals, dead janitor-rats bobbing by as the water levels equalised, loosened from the little crannies where they had curled up to expire.
‘Where’s the shuttle?’ Khouri called.
‘Parked over the space-door,’ Volyova said, turning back to look Khouri in the eye. ‘And the weapon hasn’t emerged yet.’
‘Does that mean we won?’
‘Means we haven’t lost yet. But I still want you in the gunnery.’
The Mademoiselle had gone now, but her disembodied voice lingered, wrongly echoless in the cramped corridor.
‘It won’t do you any good. There’s no system in the gunnery that I can’t override, so your presence would be futile.’
‘So why are you obviously so keen to talk me out of going in there?’
The Mademoiselle did not answer.
Two bulkheads further, they reached the ceiling access point which led to the chamber. They were running by that point, and it took a few moments for the water to stop sloshing up and down the angled sides of the corridor. When it did, Volyova frowned.
‘Something’s up,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘Can’t you hear it? There’s a noise.’ She angled her head. ‘Seems to be coming from the gunnery itself.’
Khouri could hear it for herself now. It was a high-pitched mechanical sound, like ancient industrial machinery going haywire.
‘What is it?’
‘I don’t know.’ Volyova paused. ‘At least, I hope I don’t. Let’s get inside.’
Volyova reached up and tugged at the overhead access door, budging it open, a small shower of ship-sludge loosening from its seals, spattering their shoulders. The alloy ladder descended, the industrial noise intensifying. It was clearly coming from the gunnery itself. The gunnery’s bright internal lights were on, but they appeared to be unsteady, as if something were moving around up there interrupting the light-beams. Whatever it was was moving quickly as well.
‘Ilia,’ she said. ‘I’m not sure I like this.’
‘Join the club.’
Her bracelet chimed. Volyova was bending to examine it when an almighty shudder rammed through the entire fabric of the ship. The two of them slipped into the floodwater, falling against the slippery corridor-sides. Khouri was struggling to her feet when a tiny tidal wave of viscous sludge upended her. She hit the deck. For a moment she was swallowing the stuff, the closest to eating shit since her army days. Volyova hooked her by the elbows, hauling her to her feet. Khouri gagged and spat out the sludge, though the awful taste lingered.
Volyova’s bracelet was in scream-mode again.
‘What the hell…’
‘The shuttle,’ Volyova said. ‘We just lost it.’
‘What?’
‘I mean it just got blown up.’ Volyova coughed. Her face was wet; she must have taken a good mouthful of the stuff herself. ‘Far as I can tell, the cache-weapon didn’t even have to push its way out. Secondary weapons did the job — turned on the shuttle.’
Above, the gunnery was still making frightening noises.
‘You want me to go up there, don’t you?’
Volyova nodded. ‘Right now, getting you in the chair is the only option we have left. But don’t worry. I’m right behind you.’
‘Listen to her,’ the Mademoiselle said, quite suddenly. ‘All ready to have you do what she hasn’t the guts to do herself.’
‘Or the implants,’ Khouri shouted, aloud.
‘What?’ Volyova said.
‘Nothing.’ Khouri planted one foot on the lowest rung. ‘Just telling an old friend to go stuff herself.’ Her foot slid off the slime-encrusted rung. Next attempt, she found something approximating a grip and planted her second foot on the same rung. Her head was poking into the little access tunnel which fed into the gunnery, no more than two metres above.
‘You won’t get in,’ the Mademoiselle said. ‘I’m controlling the chair. As soon as you put your head into the chamber, you lose it.’
‘I’d love to see the look on your face, in that case.’
‘Khouri, haven’t you grasped things yet? The loss of your head would be no more than a minor inconvenience.’
Her head was just below the chamber entrance now. She could see the gimballed chair, moving in whiplash arcs through the chamber’s volume. It had never been designed for such acrobatics; Khouri could smell the ozone of fried power-systems greasing the air. ‘Volyova,’ she called, shouting above the din. ‘You built this set-up. Can you cut the power to the chair from below?’
‘Cut power to the chair? Certainly — but what good would it do us? I need you linking in to the gunnery.’
‘Not everything — just enough to stop the bastard moving around.’
There was a brief pause, during which Khouri imagined Volyova summoning ancient wiring diagrams to mind. The woman had constructed the gunnery herself — but it might have been decades and decades of subjective time ago, and something as vulgarly functional as the main power trunk had probably never needed to be upgraded since.
‘Well,’ Volyova said, eventually. ‘There’s a main feed line here — suppose I could sever it…’
Volyova left, trudging quickly out of sight below. It sounded simple; severing the power feed. Maybe, Khouri thought, Volyova would have to fetch a specialised cutter from elsewhere. Surely there was not that much time. But no; Volyova had something. There was that little laser, the one she used to flense away samples from Captain Brannigan. She always carried it. Agonising seconds passed, Khouri thinking of the cache-weapon, easing slowly
