Behind the irising door was another panel, one that looked as if it had been set in place with great haste. Sealed from within, Gavin now saw. Wedged shut, and there were dents and scratches--signs someone had tried to break through it without success.
Mallory turned, an eyebrow raised, and said singsong, 'Oh, familiar demon?'
Whatever the construction, Gavin's eyebeams illuminated all: the secondary decompression door, the obvious air seal, the bright marks of welding where the panel met the bulkhead. If you meant to conceal your presence from an aware and seeking enemy, it was worth nothing at all. But if your goal was isolation from a spreading contagion, this was exactly the thing.
'Here,' Gavin said, settling with flipped wings on the necromancer's shoulder. He breathed deep--a lungful of air he did not need and would not use, except to speak.
'Will it open?'
Mallory, trying remembered codes, made a dismissive gesture. 'The comm is smashed, the door is welded to the bulkhead, and the old codes I have are not bypassing the lock.'
They would have been changed. Which meant anything Gavin remembered, in that fragmentary manner that Gavin sometimes seemed to be remembering things, would be of very little use. But memories were not his only skill.
'So did they smash the comm before they entered, so they would not have to hear the plaints of the dying?' he asked. 'Or was it broken by the same desperate outsider who left the dents, in frustration or revenge when they would not open the door?'
'When we get in, we can talk to any survivors and find out.' Mallory thumped a fist on the door in irritation. Its mass was such that it muffled the sound dramatically.
'The new angel?' Gavin suggested. He hopped closer to the controls, tracing the wiring by feel. 'If whoever is in there is alive and aware--'
'The Captain says Nova cannot reach inside the door.' Another thump, this one sharper, as if Mallory hoped that pounding on the door would draw out any denizens. 'It's sealed against unincorporated colonies. There's an electrostatic boundary field.'
'I think breaking the comm was punitive,' Gavin confirmed, 'because the door has been shatterbolted as well as welded. Whoever is in there is sealed in. They can't come out. They can't change their minds. You would have to cut through.'
'Ariane.' Mallory shoved a fistful of hair out of narrowed eyes, voice dripping loathing. With one crooked thumb, the necromancer traced a bright scar on the door. 'Her hatchetwork, maybe. Then
'Lasers work,' Gavin corrected. 'Shall I?'
Recollecting dignity, the necromancer stepped nonchalantly aside. 'Go to it.'
There might be living people on the other side of the door. Gavin aimed his gaze high and unsealed his eyes. The light sprang forth, cutting-bright, and metal sizzled where it fell. It would be safest to burn through the shatterbolts and the welds; the door should swing on its hinges, then. And if it failed to swing, he could burn through the hinges, too.
It was a heavy door--and heavily armored--and the burning took time. By the scorch marks around the perimeter, Mallory and Gavin were not the first to try, but whoever had come before them had been devoid of the assistance of a basilisk.
The last shatterbolt failed with a crack like one of those tree limbs untwisting, and the door sagged. Gavin backwinged, hopping away from the area where it might fall if the hinges snapped. But other than an unnerving creak, there was nothing.
'Ready,' Mallory said. The necromancer had assumed a defensive, nonthreatening posture--relaxed but balanced, hands held low. Gavin extended one wing, hair-fine tendrils gliding from the feathertips, and from a distance of four meters hooked the edge of the door and levered it open. The hinges were not so damaged that it dragged against the floor, which was good, because while Gavin had the strength to support it, the mass was another question.
He had been half expecting the charge and so was ready for it when it came. Three running footsteps warned them before a stout green-coated person barreled through the door, waving a sizzling, quarter-meter mono-knife like a child slashing at stick-swords. That tool would sever even Gavin's wings, and as he stretched them into filamentous nets and flipped them around the released attacker, he was careful to avoid the edge. Fortunately, the lunging individual had been a Mean until recently, and sie had not yet made sense of hir new body. The nets enmeshed hir, tangled hir wrists and forearms, bound hir hands tight against the hilt of the knife, and slowly dragged them down, however sie might strain.
Muscle and bone were no match for Gavin's strength. Before Mallory stepped forward, he had the prisoner pressed against the wall, bracing himself with stiff filaments to prevent hir from simply dragging or shoving him. Sie outmassed him exponentially, but when he could wedge himself, leverage won.
Deftly, Mallory moved forward and relieved the prisoner of hir weapon. As the necromancer stroked the control in the blade's hilt, the sizzle of air against the blade abated. Mallory tucked it through a clothing loop and sighed, pressing fingers to forehead as if in pain.
Mallory said, 'Who are you?'
The servant, or former servant--by the cluster on hir collar, a chief of household--squared hir shoulders. Hir eventual words confirmed Gavin's deduction. 'I am Head.'
Hir jaw quivered when sie spoke, as if in naming hirself sie were struck by the weight of implications that the name no longer carried. 'You might kill me now, if that's your intending. I won't serve Lady Ariane. But spare the others. They only did as I ordered. I am responsible. The treason is mine.'
'Ariane is dead,' Mallory said.
Gavin watched the emotions contort Head's expression: relief, disbelief, apprehension. Fingers shaking, sie reached to hir collar, touched the cluster there, moved as if to uncatch it, then hesitated. 'Then who is Commodore?'
'There is no Commodore,' Mallory said. 'Perceval Conn is Captain.'
Head's eyes closed. 'She escaped.' Then opened, intent and worried. 'Rien?'
Gavin did not envy Mallory the moment of thought before the hesitant headshake that followed. Nor did he envy Head the moment of anticipation, the potential for hope.
'I'm sorry,' Mallory said. 'She saved the world. Not that that makes it better.' Head's body jerked sharply, as if with an arrested shudder, but sie made no sound. Someone's eyes appeared briefly around the rim of the broken door, fingers enfolding the edge. Whoever they belonged to, they vanished back into the kitchen behind Head's slashing gesture. Yes. Whoever sie had saved, sie had saved because they had obeyed hir without question.
Head said, 'A real Captain?'
'Sealed and confirmed.'
'If Perceval is Captain, who leads the house of Conn?' A businessy question.
Mallory seemed uncertain of how to answer, glancing at Gavin with a questioning head-tilt.
'Tristen is eldest,' Gavin said.
This time, Head put a hand flat against the bulkhead behind hir, as if hir knees felt too unsteady to take hir weight. 'Tristen lives.' So flatly that Gavin could not read pleasure or dismay in the tone. 'In truth?'
'Tristen lives,' Mallory confirmed. 'As does Benedick Conn, and Caitlin, who is the Chief Engineer. Tristen is on his way here now, and will be in Rule within a few hours. We come in advance of him.'
Head smiled, broad and certain, and shoved the cluster on hir collar hard against hir throat, as if to seat it there more firmly. 'Then we have work to be getting on with.'
7
back into rule
The darkest part of the kingdom of Satan is that which is without the Church of God.
