“Then you failed,” Veitch said.
“No, I succeeded. I saved most of them.” Dreyfus paused. He found the words difficult to say out loud.
It had been one thing to read the account of what he had done that day. But it was only now that he was speaking of his deeds that he felt he was really internalising what had happened.
“They survived. They’re still alive.”
“No one survived,” Saavedra said.
“We nuked SIAM.”
“Yes, but not until six hours after Jane was pulled out, with the scarab on her neck. What happened in that gap? Why was it expunged from the public record? I’ve always wondered.” Dreyfus smiled weakly.
“Now I know.”
“Just come back to you, has it?” Saavedra asked snidely.
“Jane felt it might be tactically useful for me to recover the memories of my previous encounter with the Clockmaker. She knew it would be painful for me, given everything else that came with that baggage. But she was right to do it.”
“I agree with Veitch—you’re losing it,” Saavedra replied.
“There was a ship orbiting nearby,” Dreyfus said quietly, “a type of starship built by the Demarchists in an effort to lessen their dependence on the Conjoiners. It was a prototype, built around Fand. It used a different drive system, one that owed nothing to Conjoiner science. It had made one flight to our system and then been mothballed because it was too expensive, too slow, too clumsy. It was being stored against the day when even a ship like that became economical.”
“What was the name of this ship?” Saavedra asked.
“Atalanta,” Dreyfus replied.
“There was a ship with that name,” Veitch said, frowning.
“I remember that they wanted to rip it apart for scrap.”
“They did. It doesn’t exist any more.”
“Tell us what happened,” Saavedra said.
“Yeah, you do that,” Sparver said. Dreyfus was about to speak when two bracelets began to chime in unison. Saavedra and Veitch stared down in what was at first irritation and then alarm.
“Are the surface guns online?” Saavedra asked Veitch. He nodded.
“They’ve acquired, but they won’t open fire until it’s closer.”
“Until what’s closer?” Dreyfus asked. Saavedra’s eyes snapped to him.
“There’s a ship coming in from space. It’s making a direct insertion from orbit, at high-burn. It’s not even attempting to conceal itself. Do you know anything about this, Dreyfus?”
“I went out of my way not to draw attention to your location. I didn’t want Aurora following me to you.”
“But only Panoply knows we’re here.”
“Then something must have happened,” Dreyfus said.
“It’s a fair bet that whoever’s flying that ship wants to put the Clockmaker out of action.”
“Let’s get to operations,” Saavedra said. She fixed Dreyfus with a warning look.
“I’m calling off the whiphound now, but you know how quick these things are. I can put it back on you before you can blink.” She turned to Veitch.
“Is the containment stable?”
“Steady as a rock.” He flipped an armoured cover across the viewing window, secured it with a heavy latch, then followed the other three along the catwalk and down to the reactor floor. Saavedra’s whiphound was now clipped to her belt again, but Dreyfus was under no illusions that he had gained her unequivocal trust. She was accepting his story provisionally, until he slipped up or circumstances changed.
“It could be Gaffney,” he said as they ascended the sloping tunnel back to the main habitation and operations level.
“The last time I saw him he was lying on his back recovering from surgery. But he wasn’t dead. Maybe that was my big mistake.”
“Presumably he was under guard, though?” Saavedra said, looking back over her shoulder as they jogged up the slope.
“He was, but perhaps that wasn’t enough. Gaffney was already able to sabotage the Search Turbines and murder both Clepsydra and Trajanova. He was clever, and he had the entire security apparatus at his fingertips, but he’s not superhuman. I think Aurora may have been helping him, even inside Panoply.”
“And now she’s helped him escape?”
“Possibly, but regardless, this feels like Gaffney. Did I hear you mention guns?”
“Portable self-burrowing anti-ship emplacements,” Veitch said.
“We installed them in case anyone came snooping without an invitation. You’d have found out if you hadn’t come overland.”
“I’m glad we did. The walk did me good.”
Firebrand’s operations centre had been set up in what must once have been a conference room when the facility was under Amerikano control. The walls were covered in monochrome photographs of scenic panoramas with only shallow three-dimensionality. One wall showed a deep canyon, possibly taken on Mars. Another showed a horseshoe-shaped waterfall. A third showed a rock face carved with enormous stone likenesses: eight vast heads, the fifth and seventh of which were women.
A cluster of display panes rested on the table, arranged hexagonally so that they formed a makeshift holographic tank. Veitch sent a gestural command to the apparatus, causing it to fill with luminous green wireframe graphics. Dreyfus recognised the contoured landscape of Ops Nine and its surrounding terrain. Markers signified the placement of weapons and tracking devices. An arrowhead symbol high above the landscape indicated the incoming craft.
“Signature matches a light-enforcement vehicle,” Veitch said, peering at the numbers accompanying the symbol.
“Would Gaffney be able to fly one of those?”
“He’d have the necessary experience,” Dreyfus said.
“It’s not good news. It may be a cutter, but it could easily be carrying nukes.”
“Only if Jane had any left,” Dreyfus said.
“And if she did, they were probably already outside Panoply aboard deep-system cruisers, ready to be deployed as and when they were required. I don’t think Gaffney would have been able to get his hands on one. More than likely it was all he could do to escape from Panoply.”
“I hope you’re right,” Veitch said.
“I hope your guns are good. When will they open fire?”
“Not until he’s below about thirty klicks,” Saavedra replied.
“The guns know the kinds of evasive routines and countermeasures a cutter has up its sleeve. Unless the cutter shoots first, they won’t waste a shot until they have a chance of making a difference.”
Dreyfus saw that the cutter was still more than one hundred and twenty kilometres above them, but falling fast enough that it would pass below the weapon ceiling in only a couple of minutes.
“Gaffney wouldn’t come unless he thought he could do damage,” he said.
“He’ll be expecting to meet anti-ship fire.”
“I could take our cutter,” Saavedra said doubtfully.
“It still has enough fuel to get me airborne.”
“You wouldn’t last five seconds against Gaffney,” Dreyfus said.
“Even if you could get up in time.”
She stared at the display, mesmerised by the falling arrow.
“He can damage the complex if he has foam-phase weapons, but he won’t be able to touch the Clockmaker, inside the tokamak. He must know that.” A thought drained colour from her face.
“Voi, maybe he does have a nuke after all.”
“If he does, it’ll be clean and fast for all of us,” Dreyfus told her.
“But I don’t think he’s intending to take out the Clockmaker in one hit. He must be planning to flush it out, then pick it off on the surface. It can’t fly, can it?”
