‘I,’ Norbert said.
I glanced at Sollis, then back at the big man. ‘Don’t be silly,’ I said gently, wondering what must have happened to him in the flooded chamber.
‘I am Quinlan,’ the old man said, between racking coughs. ‘He was always the master. I was just the servant, the decoy.’
‘You’re both insane,’ Sollis said.
‘This is the truth. I acted the role of Martinez… deflected attention from him.’
‘He can’t be Martinez,’ Sollis said. ‘Sorry, Norbert, but you can barely put a sentence together, let alone a prosecution dossier.’
Norbert tapped a huge finger against the side of his helmet. ‘Damage to speech centre, in war. Comprehension… memory… analytic faculties… intact.’
‘He’s telling the truth,’ the old man said. ‘He’s the one who needs to survive, not me. He’s the one who can nail Jax.’ Then he tapped the gun against the big man’s leg, urging him to leave. ‘Go,’ he said, barking out that one word as if it was the last thing he expected to say. And at almost the same moment, I saw one of the tentacled robots begin to poke its limbs through the curtain of water, tick-ticking the tips of its arms against the blasted metal, searching for a way into the corridor.
‘Think the man has a point,’ Sollis said.
It didn’t get any easier after that.
We left the old man — I still couldn’t think of him as ‘Quinlan’ — slumped against the corridor wall, the barrel of his gun wavering in the rough direction of the ruined airlock. I looked back all the while, willing him to make the best use of the limited number of shots he had left. We were halfway to the next airlock when he squeezed off three rapid rounds, blasting the robot into twitching pieces. It wasn’t long before another set of tentacles began to probe the gap. I wondered how many of the damned things the ship was going to keep throwing at us, and how that number stacked up against the slugs the old man had left.
The flashing red lights ran all the way to the end of the corridor. I was just looking at the door, wondering how easy it was going to be for Sollis to crack, when Norbert/Martinez brought the three of us to a halt, braking my forward momentum with one tree-like forearm.
‘Blast visor down, Scarrow.’
I understood what he had in mind. No more sweet-talking the doors until they opened for us. From now on we’d be shooting our way through
Norbert/Martinez aimed the Demarchist weapon at the airlock. I cuffed down my blast visor. Three discharges took out the first airlock door, crumpling it inward as if punched by a giant fist.
‘Air on other side,’ Norbert/Martinez said.
The Demarchist gun was soon ready again. Through the visor’s near-opaque screen I saw three more flashes. When I flipped it back up, the weapon was packing itself back into its stowed configuration. Sollis patted aside smoke and airborne debris. The emergency lights were still flashing in our section of corridor, but the space beyond the airlock was as pitch dark as any part of the ship we’d already traversed. Yet we’d barely taken a step into that darkness when wall facets lit up in swift sequence, with the face of Nightingale looking at us from all directions.
Something was definitely wrong now. The faces really were looking at us, even though the facets were flat. The images turned slowly as we advanced along the corridor.
‘This is the Voice of Nightingale,’ the faces said simultaneously, as if we were being serenaded by a perfectly synchronised choir. ‘I am now addressing a moving party of three individuals. My systems have determined with a high statistical likelihood that this party is responsible for the damage I have recently sustained. The damage is containable, but I cannot tolerate any deeper intrusion. Please remain stationary and await escort to a safe holding area.’
Sollis slowed, but she didn’t stop. ‘Who’s speaking? Are we being addressed by the sentience engine, or just a delta-level subsidiary?’
‘This is the Voice of Nightingale. I am a Turing-compliant gamma-level intelligence of the Vaaler-Lako series. Please stop and await escort to a safe holding area.’
‘That’s the sentience engine,’ Sollis said quietly. ‘It means we’re getting the ship’s full attention now.’
‘Maybe we can talk it into handing over Jax.’
‘I don’t know. Negotiating with this thing might be tricky. Vaaler-Lakos were supposed to be the hot new thing around the time
‘What happened?’
‘There was a flaw in their architecture. Within a few years of start-up, most of them had gone bugfuck insane. I don’t even want to think about what being stuck out here’s done to this one.’
‘Please stop,’ the voice said again, ‘and await escort to a safe holding area. This is your final warning.’
‘Ask it…’ Norbert/Martinez said. ‘Speak for me.’
‘Can you hear me, ship?’ Sollis asked. ‘We’re not here to do any harm. We’re sorry about the damage we’ve already caused. We’ve come for someone… there’s a man here, a man aboard you, that we’d really like to meet.’
The ship said nothing for several moments. Just when I’d concluded that it didn’t understand us, it said, ‘This facility is no longer operational. There is no one here for you to see. Please await escort to a safe holding area, from where you can be referred to a functioning facility.’
‘We’ve come for Colonel Jax,’ I said. ‘Check your patient records.’
‘Admission code Tango Tango six one three, hyphen five,’ said Norbert/Martinez, forcing each word out like an expression of pain. ‘Colonel Brandon Jax, Northern Coalition.’
‘Do you have a record of that admission?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ the Voice of
‘Do you have a discharge record?’
‘No such record is on file.’
‘Then Jax either died in your care, or he’s still aboard. Either way there’ll be a body. We’d really like to see it.’
‘That is not possible. You will stop now. An escort is on its way to escort you to a safe holding area.’
‘Why can’t we see Jax?’ Sollis demanded. ‘Is he telling you we can’t see him? If so, he’s not the man you should be listening to. He’s a war criminal, a murderous bastard who deserves to die.’
‘Colonel Jax is under the care of this facility. He is still receiving treatment. It is not possible to visit him at this time.’
‘Damn thing’s changing its story,’ I said. ‘A minute ago it said the facility was closed.’
‘We just want to talk to him,’ Sollis said, ‘that’s all. Just to tell him that the world knows where he is, even if you don’t let us take him with us now.’
‘Please remain calm. The escort is about to arrive.’
The facets turned to look away from us, peering into the dark limits of the corridor. There was a sudden bustle of approaching movement, and then a wall of machines came squirming towards us. Dozens of squid-robots were nearing, packed so tightly together that their tentacles formed a flailing mass of silver-blue metal. I looked back the other way, back the way we’d come, and saw another wave of robots coming from that direction. There were far more machines than we’d seen before, and their movements in dry air were at least as fast and fluid as they’d been underwater.
‘Ship,’ Sollis said, ‘all we want is Jax. We’re prepared to fight for him. That’ll mean more damage being inflicted on you. But if you give us Jax, we’ll leave nicely.’
‘I don’t think it wants to bargain,’ I said, raising my slug-gun at the advancing wall just as it reached the ruined airlock. I squeezed off rounds, taking out at least one robot with each slug. Sollis started pitching in to my left, while Norbert/Martinez took care of the other direction with the Demarchist weapon. He could do a lot more damage with each discharge, taking out three or four machines every time he squeezed the trigger. But he kept having to wait for the weapon to re-arm itself, and the delay was allowing the wall of hostiles to creep slowly forwards. Sollis and I were firing almost constantly, taking turns to cover each other while we slipped in new slug
