by the visage of a monster, a man who had once been human but who now faced the world through a mask of leathery, radiation-hardened skin and articulated metal plating embossed with florid bronze patterning. His eyes were two telescopic cameras, emerging from skull sockets like a pair of cannon. Glue-stiffened dreadlocks spiked back from his scalp.
“This is Captain Tengiz, of the lighthugger Wrath Ascending. We stand ready to assist you.”
“Thank you,” Aumonier said.
The image switched. Now she was looking at the vastly magnified head of a praying mantis, or something very like one, emerging from the ring-shaped neck of an ancient spacesuit. The mantis’ mouthparts opened, revealing teeth and tongue of human semblance.
“This is Captain Rethimnon, of the lighthugger Frost Wind. We stand ready to assist you.”
“Thank you.” The image changed again. Another face, more recognisably human this time, despite the absence of a nose.
“This is Captain Grong, of the lighthugger Stasis in Darkness. We stand ready to assist you.” She started to answer, but the image had already changed.
“This is Captain Katsuura of the lighthugger Pharaoh’s Daughter. We stand ready to assist you.”
“This is Captain Nkhata, of the lighthugger Black Narcissus. We stand ready to assist you.”
“This is Captain Vanderlin, of the lighthugger Dawnrazor. We stand ready to assist you.”
“This is Captain Teague…”.
“Captain Voightlander…”. The roll-call continued; a dozen ships, then a dozen more, until she had lost count.
“Thank you, Captains,” she said, when the last Ultra had spoken.
“I am grateful that you have responded to my request for help. You can, I think, provide a decisive contribution. I must warn you—though I am sure you already appreciate as much—that you will be placing your ships and crew in grave danger.” The face of Tengiz, the first Ultra to speak, reappeared on the pane.
“I have been tasked to speak for the other ships, Supreme Prefect Aumonier. Rest assured that we are fully aware of the risks. It is still our intention to help.”
“I’m grateful.”
“Tell us what you want us to do.”
“You can be of benefit to me in two ways,” Aumonier said.
“Your ships have a capacity exceeding anything in the Glitter Band, even the largest in-system liners. If you can start taking aboard evacuees, that will be incalculably helpful to us.”
“We will do what we can. How else may we help?”
“Doubtless you’ve witnessed our efforts to contain Aurora’s expansion by destroying those habitats contaminated by her war machines. Unfortunately, we’re running out of nuclear weapons. If there was any other way—”
“You wish us to intervene.”
“Yes.”
“In a military sense.”
“I don’t doubt that you have the means, Captain. At the risk of opening an old wound, we all saw what Captain Dravidian’s ship was capable of doing. And his vessel wasn’t even armed.”
“Tell us where and when,” Tengiz said.
“I’d dearly like to. Unfortunately—as you’re probably aware—I’m somewhat indisposed right now and need further surgery. I appreciate your insistence on speaking only to me, but it would simplify matters enormously if you would allow me to designate Prefect Clearmountain to speak for me.”
Tengiz looked at her with his blank telescopic eyes. She couldn’t read a single human emotion in the mongrel collision of machine and flesh that was his face.
“Do you have confidence in Clearmountain?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Absolute confidence. You have my word, Captain. Allow Clearmountain to speak for me.”
Tengiz paused, then nodded.
“So be it.”
“I’m going to sleep again now, if that’s all right with you. Good luck, Captain. To you and all the others.”
“We’ll do what we can. As for you…” Tengiz halted. For the first time she sensed indecision.
“We have long been aware of your predicament, Supreme Prefect Aumonier.”
“I never imagined I was of the slightest interest to Ultras.”
“You were wrong. We knew of you. We knew of you and… you’ve long had our respect. You would have made an excellent captain.”
Dreyfus and Sparver surmounted the last rise and found themselves looking out across a shallow depression in the terrain, like an old crater that had been gradually eroded and filled in by slow and mindless processes of weather and geochemistry. Yet there was something out of place at the base of the depression, even though Dreyfus nearly missed it on his first glancing survey. It was a ramp, sloping down into the ground, its walls and sides fashioned from some kind of fused construction material with the ebony lustre of burnt sugar. It had cracked and distorted in places, evidence of shifts in the underlying landscape, but it was still remarkably intact for something that had been out there for more than two hundred years. The ramp angled down into the ground and vanished into a flat-roofed tunnel, the lip of which had formed a portcullis of dagger-like ammonia-ice stalactites or icicles. Dreyfus pointed to the middle part of the opening, where a number of the spikes had been broken off at head height.
“Someone’s been here recently,” he said. But without knowing how long it had taken for the stalactites to form, he knew he could have been talking about a visitation that had happened days, years or even decades ago.
“Let’s take a look-see inside,” Sparver said.
“There’s nothing I like better than unwelcoming tunnels leading underground.”
If a surveillance system had detected their arrival, there was no sign of it. They crunched across the last few metres of surface ice until they were standing at the top of the ramp, and then began a cautious descent towards the portcullis. The ground was slippery under their feet. Dreyfus stooped to avoid dislodging any more stalactites; Sparver only needed to nod his head slightly. Beyond the opening, the ramp continued to slope down into unseen depths. The suit’s acoustic pick-up conveyed the sounds of trickling, dripping liquids to Dreyfus’ ears. As the gloom deepened, he angled his helmet lamp down, mindful of treacherous cracks in the flooring. He supposed that this must once have been an entry point for vehicles, though it was clear that nothing large had come down here in a long time.
After fifty or sixty metres, the ramp terminated in a black wall set with a single wide door. The door consisted of a set of hinged panels that would have rolled down from a mechanism in the ceiling. It had stopped half a metre short of the floor, above an airtight slot into which the lowest part of the door must have been intended to lock.
“Someone was careless,” Sparver said.
“Or in a hurry. You think we can squeeze under that?”
Sparver was already on his knees. He undid some of his equipment and weaponry and slid it through ahead of him. Then he lowered onto all fours and scraped through the gap.
“It’s clear,” he told Dreyfus, grunting as he stood up.
“Send me though what you can.”
Dreyfus unclipped the bulkier pieces of his kit and passed them to his deputy. Then he lowered himself to the cracked black floor and squeezed under the door, scraping his backpack in the process. Something jammed, and for a horrible instant he thought he was trapped, pinned in place with vicelike pressure. Then whatever it was worked loose and he was through, standing up next to Sparver. His suit reported no damage, but had the door been a couple more centimetres lower, he wouldn’t have been able to get through wearing it.
Dreyfus re-attached his equipment and hoped silently that he wouldn’t be sliding under any more doors. They had arrived in what was clearly a cargo airlock, designed to allow vehicles and heavy equipment to pass between Ops Nine and the outside world. A similar door to the one they’d just crawled under faced them on the opposite wall, but this one was sealed down tight.
