“Our ship isn’t mated with the exterior airlock. You’ll have to pass through a suitwall as well.”
“I’d survive vacuum even if I didn’t have a suit. Worry about yourself before you worry about me.”
“Just asking,” Dreyfus said. They were back aboard the corvette in less than five minutes. Sparver was waiting for them on the other side of the suitwall, his arms crossed in anticipation. Clepsydra’s suit stayed intact during its passage through the wall, but once she was inside the corvette she made a point of removing her helmet rather than simply folding it back into her suit, and pressed it against an adhesive area on the wall with a natural fluency that suggested she’d been on similar ships a thousand times before. Dreyfus could not help but interpret the gesture as indicative of Clepsydra’s provisional trust in her new hosts.
“This is my partner, Deputy Field Prefect Bancal,” Dreyfus told Clepsydra, introducing Sparver.
“I don’t know what you’ve heard about hyperpigs, but there’s nothing you need fear from him.”
“Nor does he have anything to fear from me,” Clepsydra answered, her voice low and level.
“Is she a guest or a prisoner?” Sparver asked.
“She’s a protected witness. She’s been through hell and now we have to safeguard both Clepsydra and her colleagues.”
“How many more of them are there down there?”
“A lot. But we can’t do anything for them right now, not until help arrives. I hope you impressed the seriousness of our situation on Muang.”
“He got the message.”
“There are nearly a hundred Conjoiners aboard that ship. When help arrives I’ll call Jane and get her to task some more assets. We’re going to need a Heavy Medical Squad as well. ETA, roughly?”
Sparver glanced through the flight deck passwall just as the console chimed.
“Proximity alert,” he said.
“Guess that’s the help arriving. That was quick.”
“Too bloody quick,” Dreyfus said, a bad feeling brewing low in his gut. Without seeking permission from either of her hosts, Clepsydra hauled herself across the cabin and through into the vacant flight deck.
“This is the other vehicle from Panoply?” she asked.
“Hopefully,” Sparver said.
“Then why is it coming in on such a fast approach?”
“Guess they’re in a bit of a hurry to get to us,” Sparver said.
“They’re in more than a hurry. Not even a Conjoiner vehicle could slow down from that kind of speed without pulping everyone aboard.”
“Then maybe they’re planning to overshoot the rock and come back around on a second pass,” Sparver answered.
“They’re not overshooting,” Clepsydra said.
“If your tracking system is correct, the incoming ship is on a collision vector.”
Quickly Dreyfus pulled himself into the flight deck and checked the proximity display. He saw the icon of the approaching vehicle and recognised its identifier tag.
“It’s not the deep-system vehicle we were hoping for,” he said.
“It’s the freighter from Marco’s Eye that we saw earlier.”
“Aurora must have tapped into its navigation system, deviating it from its usual flight-path,” Clepsydra said.
“She is going to use it to ram you out of existence, and destroy the evidence of this rock.”
“She’s that powerful?” Dreyfus asked.
“It would not take great power, merely great cunning and stealth.”
Sparver joined them.
“How long have we got?”
“Eighty-five seconds,” Clepsydra said.
“Then we’re in trouble,” Sparver replied.
“We can’t get this thing moving inside of a minute, and even then we wouldn’t get far enough away from the surface to make a difference.”
“Seventy-five seconds.”
“We can suit up, return to the rock. If we can get far enough underground—”.
“The rock will be destroyed,” Clepsydra said, with stony detachment.
“There isn’t time in any case,” Dreyfus said.
“It’d take too long to cycle through the airlock.”
“We have less than a minute,” said Clepsydra.
“The countdown isn’t helping,” Sparver replied.
“Maybe we should start thinking about the pods. We’ve got enough for all three of us. We don’t have much time, but—”.
“Will they eject us away from the rock, or towards it?” Clepsydra asked.
“They’re dorsal pods. We’re belly-down now, so—”.
“They’ll eject us into space,” Dreyfus finished.
“We have thirty-eight seconds,” Clepsydra said.
“I suggest we adjourn to the pods.” They were designed to be used in dire emergency, when every second counted, so there was little in the way of preliminaries to attend to. Even so, Dreyfus sensed that they were down to the last ten seconds before all three of them were safely ensconced in their own single-person pods.
“The pods have transponders,” he told Clepsydra, just before they sealed the door on her.
“The deep-system vehicle will pick all of them up, but it may take some time.” Five seconds later he was webbed into his own unit. He reached up over his forehead and tugged down the heavy red handle that triggered the pod’s escape system. Quickmatter erupted into the empty spaces to cocoon him against the coming acceleration. When it arrived, it still felt as if the bones of his spine were being compressed to the thickness of parchment. Then he lost consciousness. Thalia snapped on her glasses and peered into the gloom of the windowless chamber, while Cyrus Parnasse stood back with his veined, muscular hands planted on his hips, for all the world like a farmer surveying his crops. They were alone in a section of the polling core sphere located well below the viewing gallery where the other citizens were holed up. Boxy grey structures loomed out of the darkness, stretching away into the distance. She tapped a finger against the side of the glasses, keying in additional amplification.
“What am I looking at here, Citizen Parnasse? It just looks like a load of boxes and junk.”
“Exactly what it is, girl. This is a storage room for the Museum of Cybernetics, full of stuff they haven’t got room for in the main exhibit areas. There’re hundreds of rooms like this, right across the campus. But this is the only one we can reach without going back down to the lobby.”
“Oh.”
“I reckoned we could use some of this stuff to barricade those stairs. What d’ya think?”
“I didn’t think any of those machines would be able to get up the stairs.”
“They won’t: too big, most of ’em, or with the wrong kind of design. But there are plenty of machines out there that’ll fit the bill. Now that they know we’re up here, how long do you think it’ll be before they arrive and start climbing?”
“Not long,” she said.
“You’re right. I should have thought of that sooner.”
“Don’t be too hard on yerself. Had a lot to think out in the last few hours, I dare say.”
True, Thalia thought. True but still entirely inexcusable.
“You don’t think we’re too late, do you?”
“Not if we get a shift on. There’s enough junk here to block the stairs, provided we get a chain movin’ it. We’ll need to take care of the elevator shaft as well.”
“I hadn’t forgotten that, just didn’t think there was much we could do about it.” The elevator was still at the bottom of the shaft, waiting in the lobby where they had abandoned it.
“If that whip-thing of yours still works, we can cut a hole into the shaft and drop as much of this stuff down it as we can manage. That’s five hundred metres straight down. It won’t stop the machines for ever, if they’re really determined to get the elevator moving, but it’ll definitely put a dent in their plans.”
