Scorpio had already seen the weapon in action. He didn’t have to understand how it worked, only what it did. He had heard the sonic booms as spherical volumes of Ararat’s atmosphere were deleted from existence (or, conceivably, shifted or redistributed somewhere else). He had seen a hemispherical chunk of water removed from the sea, the memory of those inrushing walls of water — even now — making him shiver at the sheer wrongness of what he had witnessed.
The technology, Remontoire had told him, was spectacularly dangerous and unpredictable. Even when it was properly constructed and calibrated, a hypometric weapon could still turn against its maker. It was a little like grasping a cobra by the tail and using it to lash out against enemies while hoping that the snake didn’t coil around and bite the hand that held it.
The trouble was, they needed that snake.
Thankfully, not all aspects of the h-weapon’s function were totally unpredictable. The range was limited to within light-hours of the weapon itself, and there was a tolerably well-defined relationship between weapon spin- rate (as measured by some parameter Scorpio didn’t even want to think about) and radial reach in a given direction. What was more difficult to predict was the direction in which the extinction bubble would be launched, and the resulting physical size of the bubble’s effect.
The testing procedure required the detection of an effect caused by the weapon’s discharge. On a planet, this would have presented no real difficulties: the weapon’s builders would simply tune the spin-rate to allow the effect to show itself at a safe distance, and then make some guess as to the size of the effect and the direction in which it would occur. After the weapon had been fired, they would examine the predicted zone of effect for any indication that a spherical bubble of space-time — including all the matter within it — had simply winked out of existence.
But in space it was much more difficult to calibrate a hypometric weapon. No sensors in existence could detect the disappearance of a few atoms of interstellar gas from a few cubic metres of vacuum. The only practical solution, therefore, was to try to calibrate the weapon within the ship itself. Of course, this was scarily dangerous: had the bubble appeared within the core of one of the Conjoiner drives, the ship would have been destroyed instantly. But the mid-flight calibration procedure had been done before, Remontoire had said, and none of his ships had been destroyed in the process.
The one thing they didn’t do was immediately select a target within the ship. They were aiming for an effect on the skin of the vessel, safely distant from any critical systems. The procedure, therefore, was to set the weapon’s initial coordinates to generate a small, unobserved extinction bubble beyond the hull. The weapon would then be fired repeatedly, with the spin-rate adjusted by a tiny amount each time, decreasing the radial distance and therefore drawing the bubble closer and closer to the hull. They couldn’t see it out there; they could only imagine it approaching, and could never be sure whether it was about to nibble the ship’s hull or was still hundreds of metres distant. It was like summoning a malevolent spirit to a seance: the moment of arrival was a thing of both dread and anticipation.
The test area around the weapon had been sealed off right out to the skin of the ship, save for automated control systems. Everyone not already frozen had been moved as far away from the weapon as possible. After each firing — each squirming, rebounding collapse of the threshing mechanisms — Scorpio’s technicians pored over their data to see if the weapon had generated an effect, scanning the network of microphones and barometers to see if there was any hint that a spherical chunk of the ship a metre in diameter had just ceased to exist. And so the calibration process continued, the technicians tuning the weapon time and again and listening for results.
The lights dimmed again.
‘Getting something,’ the technician said, after a moment. Scorpio saw a cluster of red indicators appear on his read-out. ‘Signals coming in from…’
But the technician did not complete his sentence. His words were drowned out by a rising howl, a noise unlike anything Scorpio had ever heard aboard the
The moan began to subside, like the dying after-rumble of a thunder-clap.
‘I think you have your effect,’ Scorpio said.
He went down to see it for himself. It was much worse than he had feared: not a one-metre-wide nibble taken out of the ship, but a gaping fifteen-metre-wide wound, the edges where bulkheads and floors had been sheared gleaming a bright, untarnished silver. Greenish fluids were raining down through the cavity from severed feed-lines; an electrical cable was thrashing back and forth in the void, gushing sparks each time it contacted a metallic surface.
It could have been worse, he told himself. The volume of the ship nipped out of existence by the weapon had not coincided with any of the inhabited parts, nor had it intersected critical ship systems or the outer hull. There had been a slight local pressure loss as the air inside the volume ceased to exist, but, all told, the weapon had had a negligible effect on the ship. But it had unquestionably had an effect on the Captain. Some part of his vaguely mapped nervous system must have passed through this volume, and the weapon had evidently caused him pain. It was difficult to judge how severe that pain must have been, whether it had been transitory or was even now continuing. Perhaps there was no exact analogue for it in human terms. If there was, Scorpio was not certain that he really wished to know, because for the first time a disturbing thought had occurred to him: if this was the pain the Captain felt when a tiny part of the ship was harmed, what would it be like if something much worse happened?
Yes, it could have been worse.
He visited the technicians who were calibrating the weapon, taking in their nervous expressions and gestures. They were expecting a reprimand, at the very least.
‘Looks like it was a bit larger than one metre,’ he said.
‘It was always going to be uncertain,’ their leader flustered. ‘All we could do was take a lucky guess and hope—’
Scorpio cut her off. ‘I know. No one ever said this was going to be easy. But knowing what you know now, can you adjust the volume down to something more practical?’
The technician looked relieved and doubtful at the same time, as if she could not really believe that Scorpio had no intention of punishing her.
‘I think so… given the effect we’ve just observed… of course, there’s still no guarantee…’
‘I’m not expecting one. I’m just expecting the best you can do.’
She nodded quickly. ‘Of course. And the testing?’
‘Keep it up. We’re still going to need that weapon, no matter how much of a bastard it is to use.’
THIRTY-FIVE
The dean had called Rashmika to his garret. When she arrived, she was relieved to find him alone in the room, with no sign of the surgeon-general. She had no great affection for the dean’s company, but even less for the skulking attentions of his personal physician. She imagined him lurking somewhere else in the Lady Morwenna, busy with his Bloodwork or one of the unspeakable practices he was rumoured to favour.
‘Settling in nicely?’ the dean asked her as she took her appointed seat in the middle of the forest of mirrors. ‘I do hope so. I’ve been very impressed with your acumen, Miss Els. It was an inspired suggestion of Grelier’s to have you brought here.’
‘I’m glad to have been of service,’ Rashmika said. She prepared herself a small measure of tea, her hands shaking as she held the china. She had no appetite — the mere thought of being in the same room as the iron suit was enough to unsettle her nerves — but it was necessary to maintain the illusion of calm.
‘Yes, a bold stroke of luck,’ Quaiche said. He was nearly immobile, only his lips moving. The air in the garret was colder than usual, and with each word she saw a jet of exhalation issue from his mouth. ‘Almost too lucky, one might say.’
