exactly the way it had been when it was last powered down.’
‘What was so special about this ship?’
‘It was a ramscoop,’ Dreyfus said. ‘A starship built around a single massive engine designed to suck in interstellar hydrogen and use it for reaction mass. Because it didn’t have to carry its own fuel around, it could go almost as fast as it liked, right up to the edge of light-speed. That was the idea, anyway. But the drive system was cumbersome, and the intake field generated so much friction that the ship was never as fast as its designers had hoped. But that didn’t matter to me. I didn’t want the ship to move. I just wanted its intake. The scoop generator was fifteen kilometres across, Sparv: a swallowing mouth wide enough to encompass SIAM in its entirety.’
‘A magnetic field,’ Sparver said.
‘I sent a Heavy Technical Squad aboard the
‘It was better than just nuking. At least you gave them a chance.’
‘Yes,’ Dreyfus said.
‘You said they survived. When you told me about it earlier.’
‘They did. But the effects of the field had been… worse than we feared. We froze the Clockmaker, recovered its relics, studied it as best we could and then retreated with the survivors. That took the rest of the six hours. Then we nuked. We thought we’d destroyed the Clockmaker, of course. In truth, it’d had packed itself down into one of the relics, waiting to be reopened like a jack-in-the-box. ’
‘And the survivors?’ Sparver asked eventually.
It took Dreyfus an equally long time to answer. ‘They were all taken care of. Including Valery.’
‘They’re still alive?’
‘All of them. In Hospice Idlewild. The Mendicants were asked to look after a consignment of brain-damaged sleepers. They were never told where those people really came from.’
‘Valery’s with them, isn’t she?’
Dreyfus’s eyes were beginning to sting. ‘I visited her once, Sparv. Just after the crisis, when it had all blown over. I thought I could live with what she’d become. But when I saw her, when I saw how little of my wife was left, I knew I couldn’t. She was tending the gardens, kneeling in soil. She had flowers in her hand. When she looked at me, she smiled. But she didn’t really know who I was.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘That was when I went back to Jane. I told her I couldn’t live with what I’d done to them. So she authorised the memory block.’
‘And Valery?’
‘I never went back to see her. Not in eleven years.’
Presently Dreyfus became aware of a rising sound, louder than the wind. He looked up in time to see a large ship come slamming through the clouds, its hull still glowing from a high-speed re-entry. He recognised it immediately as a deep-system cruiser, although he could not identify the ship itself. It circled overhead, landing gear clawing down from its reptile-smooth belly, weapons erupting through the hull as if they were the retractile spines of some poisonous fish. The pilot selected a patch of level ground large enough to accommodate the ninety-metre-long vehicle and descended slowly, using brief coughs of steering thrust to manage the descent.
Dreyfus and Sparver raised their hands in salute and started walking towards the parked ship, Dreyfus’s stiff right leg dragging in the ice. A ramp lowered from the belly. Almost immediately, a suited figure began walking down it, picking its way cautiously down the cleated surface. The figure’s small stature, the way she walked, told Dreyfus exactly who she was.
‘Thalia,’ he called out, delighted. ‘It is you, isn’t it?’
She answered on the suit-to-suit channel. ‘Are you okay, sir?’
‘I’ll mend, thanks to Sparver. What are you doing here?’
‘As soon as Prefect Gaffney got to you, we knew there was no point in concealing this location from Aurora. We would have come sooner, but we’ve been tied up with evacuees.’
‘I understand completely. You came quickly enough as it is.’
Thalia walked across the rough ground until they were only a few metres from each other. ‘I’m sorry about what happened, sir.’
‘Sorry about what?’
‘I screwed up, sir. The upgrades… I was unprepared.’
‘It wasn’t your fault.’
‘But maybe if I hadn’t gone in alone, if I’d had a back-up squad with me… things might have been different.’
‘I very much doubt it. Aurora had already considered every possible eventuality. She’d have found a way through no matter what precautions you took. It might have taken longer, but it would still have happened. Don’t cut yourself up about it, Deputy.’ Dreyfus extended a hand, inviting her closer. She crossed the remaining ground and let her suit touch his. Dreyfus held one of her arms, Sparver the other. ‘I’m glad I got you back in one piece,’ he said.
‘I wish I could have done something for all the other people.’
‘You saved some. And you got word back to us that Aurora had no intention of keeping anyone alive once she was in control. You did good, Thalia. I’m not displeased.’
‘That’s praise,’ Sparver said. ‘I’d take it if I were you.’
‘What about Gaffney, sir?’
‘Gaffney’s gone,’ Dreyfus answered.
‘And the rest of Firebrand? The Clockmaker?’
‘You’ve been well briefed, I see. I thought you’d have wanted to rest.’
‘Well, sir?’
‘Veitch and Saavedra are dead. The Clockmaker escaped.’
Behind her faceplate, Thalia nodded. ‘We did wonder, sir.’
‘Why?’
‘Something’s happening. We could only assume it had some connection with the Clockmaker, that you’d managed to persuade it to act against Aurora.’
‘I wouldn’t exactly say I persuaded it.’ But Dreyfus was encouraged by this information. ‘What’s been happening, Thalia?’
‘We’re not really sure. The good news is that the Ultras have been contributing to the evacuation effort and helping with the destruction of contaminated habitats. Overnight we’ve cleared and evacuated another six along Aurora’s expansion front.’
‘Total evacuations?’ Dreyfus probed.
‘No, sir,’ she said, hesitantly. ‘Some people were still left aboard at the end. But a lot less than before.’
‘I guess we can’t expect miracles.’
‘Sir, there’s something else. A couple of hours ago, weevil flows reached two habitats before we were in place with nukes or lighthuggers. We’d got most of the citizenry out, but local constables were still assisting with the evacuation when the weevils broke through.’
‘Go on,’ he pushed.
‘The constables started encountering the expected weevil resistance. They were doing their best to slow the weevils as they worked their way to the polling core, but they were taking heavy casualties. Then the weevils started behaving strangely. They became uncoordinated, erratic. They stopped their advance. The surviving constables managed to deploy heavy guns and started inflicting losses on the weevils.’
‘But there’d still have been millions more in the flow, even if there was a local malfunction at the head of the
