Revelation Space

TWENTY-SEVEN

The black icons of the cache-weapons swarmed towards their firing points, their terrible potency waiting to be unleashed against Cerberus. In all that time there had been no response from the world; no hint that it was anything other than what it appeared to be. It just hung there, grey and sutured, like the cranium of a skull tipped in prayer.

When, finally, the moment came, there was only a soft chime from the projection sphere, and the numerals briefly cycled through zero, before commencing the long count upwards.

Sylveste was the first to speak. He turned to Volyova, who had made no visible movement in minutes. “Isn’t something supposed to have happened? Aren’t your damned weapons supposed to have gone off?”

Volyova looked up from the bracelet readout which was consuming her attention like someone snapping out of a trance.

“I never gave the order,” she said, so softly that it took conscious effort to hear her words. “I never told the weapons to fire.”

“Pardon?” Sajaki said.

“You heard what I said,” she answered, with mounting volume. “I didn’t do it.”

Once again Sajaki’s resolute calm managed to seem more threatening than any histrionics. “There are a number of minutes remaining in which the attack may yet be made,” he said. “Perhaps you had best consider utilising them, before the situation becomes irretrievable.”

“I think,” Sylveste said, “that the situation did so some time ago.”

“That’s a matter for the Triumvirate,” Hegazi said, his steel-clad knuckles glinting on the edge of his seat rests. “Ilia, if you give the order now, maybe we can—”

“I’m not about to,” she said. “Call it mutiny if you wish, or treason; I don’t care. But my involvement in this madness ends here.” She looked at Sylveste with unexpected bile. “You know my reasons, so don’t pretend otherwise.”

“She’s right, Dan.”

Now it was Pascale who had joined the conversation, and for a moment she had all their attention.

“You know what she’s been saying is true; how we just can’t take this risk, no matter how much you want it.”

“You’ve been listening to Khouri as well,” Sylveste said, although the news that his wife had gone over to Volyova’s side was hardly surprising, drawing less bitterness than he might have expected. Aware of the perversity of his feelings, he nonetheless rather admired her for doing it.

“She knows things that we don’t,” Pascale said.

“What the hell does Khouri have to do with any of this?” Hegazi asked, glancing peevishly towards Sajaki. “She’s just a grunt. Can we omit her from the discussion?”

“Unfortunately not,” Volyova said. “Everything that you’ve heard is true. And carrying on with this really would be the worst mistake any of us have ever made.”

Sajaki veered his seat away from Hegazi, approaching Volyova.

“If you aren’t going to give the attack order, at least surrender control of the cache to me.” And he reached out his hand, beckoning her to unclasp the bracelet and pass it to him.

“I think you should do what he says,” Hegazi said. “It could be very unpleasant for you otherwise.”

“I don’t doubt that for a moment,” Volyova said, and with one deft motion she snapped the bracelet from her hand. “It’s completely useless to you, Sajaki. The cache will only listen to me or Khouri.”

“Give me the bracelet.”

“You’ll regret it, I’m warning you.”

She passed it to him all the same. Sajaki grasped it as if it were a valuable gold amulet, toying with it briefly before locking it around his wrist. He watched as the little display reignited, filling with the same schematic data which had flashed from Volyova’s wrist a moment earlier.

“This is Triumvir Sajaki,” he said, licking his lips between each word, savouring the power. “I’m not sure of the precise protocol required at this point, so I ask for your co-operation. But I want the six deployed cache-weapons to commence—”

Sajaki stopped mid-sentence. He looked down at his wrist, at first in puzzlement, and then, moments later, in something much closer to fear.

“You sly old dog,” Hegazi said, wonderingly. “I imagined you might have a trick up your sleeve, but I never thought you’d have one literally.”

“I’m a very literal-minded person,” Volyova said.

Sajaki’s face was a rigid mask of pain now, and the constricting bracelet had visibly cut into his wrist. His hand was locked open, now as white and bloodless as wax. With his free hand he was making a valiant effort to claw the bracelet free, but it was futile; she had seen to that. The clasp would have sealed shut now, and what remained was only a painful and slow process of constrictive amputation, as the memory-plastic polymer chains in the bracelet slithered ever tighter. The bracelet had known from the instant he placed it around his wrist that his DNA was not correct; that it failed to match her own. But it had not begun to constrict until he had tried to issue an order, which, she supposed, was a kind of leniency on her behalf.

“Make it stop,” he managed to say. “Make it stop… you fucking bitch… please…”

Volyova estimated he had one to two minutes before the bracelet had his hand off; one to two minutes before the main sound in the room would be the cracking of bone, assuming it was audible above Sajaki’s whimpers.

“Your manners let you down,” she said. “What kind of a way to ask is that? You’d think now would be the one time when you had some courtesy to spare.”

“Stop it,” Pascale said. “I’m begging you, please—whatever’s happened, it isn’t worth this…”

Volyova shrugged, and addressed herself to Hegazi. “You may as well remove it, Triumvir, before it gets too messy. I’m sure you have the means.”

Hegazi held one of his own steel hands up for inspection, as if having to reassure himself that they were no longer flesh.

“Now!” Sajaki shrieked. “Get it off me!”

Hegazi positioned his seat next to the other Triumvir and set to work. It was a process which seemed to cause Sajaki fractionally more pain than the constriction itself.

Sylveste said nothing.

Hegazi worked the bracelet free; his metal hands were lathered with human blood by the time he was done. What remained of the bracelet fell from his fingers, dropping to the floor twenty metres below.

Sajaki, who had not stopped moaning, looked with revulsion at the damage that had been wrought to his wrist. His hand was still attached, but the bones and tendons were hideously exposed, blood pulsing out in red gouts, cascading in a thin scarlet rope to the distant floor. Trying to stifle the loss, he pressed the agonised limb against his belly. Finally he ceased to make any sound, and after long moments, his blanched face turned to Volyova and spoke.

“You’ll pay for this,” he said. “I swear it.”

Which was when Khouri entered the bridge and began shooting.

Of course, she had always had a plan in mind, even if it was not a very detailed one. And when Khouri had taken her first step into the chamber, and seen the cataract of what was obviously blood, she had not taken the time to run her plan through a set of elaborate last-minute revisions. Instead, she had decided to start shooting the ceiling, until she had everyone’s attention.

It had not taken very long.

Her weapon of choice was the plasma rifle, set to its lowest possible yield, with the rapid-fire mode disengaged so that she had to squeeze the trigger for each pulse. The first one bit a metre-wide crater into the ceiling, causing the cladding to rain down in jagged, heat-scorched shards. Wary of blasting right through, she directed her next pulse a little to the left, and then a little to the right. One of the shards crashed onto the glowing sphere of the holo-display, and for an eyeblink the sphere flickered and warped, before resuming stability. Then—because she had rather comprehensively announced her presence—she powered down the gun and slung it back over her shoulder. Volyova, who had obviously anticipated her next move, jetted her seat down towards Khouri, and when they were barely five metres apart, Khouri threw her one of the lightweight guns; the needle-projectors she had found on the warchive’s wall. “Take this for Pascale,” she said, throwing the low-yield beamer after it. Volyova caught both weapons expertly and quickly passed Pascale her own.

Khouri, who had by now assimilated the situation, observed that the rain of blood—which had now ceased—had originated from Sajaki. He looked in a bad way, cradling one arm as if it was broken or as if he had taken a hit.

“Ilia,” Khouri said, “you started all the fun without me. I’m disappointed.”

“Events rather demanded it,” Volyova said.

Khouri looked at the display, trying to figure out what had happened beyond the ship. “Did the weps fire?”

“No; I never gave the order.”

“And now she can’t,” Sylveste said. “Because Hegazi just destroyed her bracelet.”

“Does that mean he’s on our side?”

“No,” Volyova said. “It just means he can’t stand the sight of blood. Especially when it’s Sajaki’s.”

“He needs help,” Pascale said. “For God’s sake, you can’t just let him bleed to death.”

“He won’t,” Volyova said. “He’s chimeric, like Hegazi—just not so obviously. Already the medichines in his blood will be initiating cellular repair at a vastly accelerated rate. Even if the bracelet had taken his hand off, he’d have grown another one. Isn’t that right, Sajaki?”

He looked at her with a face so drained of strength that it looked as if he’d have trouble growing a new fingernail, let alone a new hand. But eventually he nodded.

“Someone should still help me to the infirmary—there’s nothing magical about my medichines; they have their limitations. And my pain receptors are alive and well, trust me.”

“He’s right,” Hegazi said. “You shouldn’t overestimate the capabilities of his “chines. Do you want him dead or not? You’d better decide now. I can help him to the infirmary.”

“And stop off for a browse at the warchive on the way?” Volyova shook her head. “Thanks, but no thanks.”

“Then me,” Sylveste said. “I’ll take him. You trust me that far, don’t you?”

“I trust you about as far as I could piss you, svinoi,” Volyova said. “But on the other hand, you wouldn’t know what to do at the warchive even if you got there. And Sajaki isn’t in a fit state to give you any particularly cogent suggestions.”

“Is that a yes?”

“Be quick about it, Dan.” Volyova emphasised the point with a stab of the needler, her finger tense on the trigger. “If you aren’t back here in ten minutes I’m sending Khouri after you.”

In a minute the two men had left, Sajaki slumped on Sylveste, barely capable of walking without support from the other man. Khouri wondered if Sajaki would still be conscious by the time he was brought to the infirmary, and found that she did not particularly care.

“About the warchive,” she said. “I don’t think you have to worry too much about anyone else using it. I shot the fucking place to bits as soon as I had what I wanted.”

Volyova mulled on that and then nodded appreciatively.

“That was sound tactical thinking, Khouri.”

“Tactics didn’t come into it. It was that persona running the place. I just decided to open up and torch the bastard.”

Pascale said, “Does this mean we’ve won? I mean, have we actually achieved what we set out to do?”

“Guess so,” Khouri said. “Sajaki’s out of the picture, and I don’t think our friend Hegazi is going to make too much trouble for himself. And it doesn’t look like your husband is going to keep his word about killing us all if he doesn’t get what he wants.”

“How very disappointing,” Hegazi said.

“I told you,” Pascale said. “He was always bluffing. That’s it, then? We can still call off those weapons, can’t we?” She was looking at Volyova, who nodded instantly.

“Of course.” And then she reached in her jacket and snapped a new bracelet around her wrist, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. “You think I’d be so foolish as not to carry a spare with me?”

“Not you, Ilia,” Khouri said.

She raised the bracelet to her mouth and spoke into it; a mantralike sequence of commands designed to bypass various levels of security. Finally, when everyone’s attention was on the armillary, she said, “All cache-weapons return to ship; repeat, all cache-weapons return to ship.”

But nothing happened; not even when enough seconds had elapsed for the expected light-travel timelag. Nothing, that is, except that the icons representing the cache-weapons changed from black to red, and began to flash with evil regularity.

“Ilia,” Khouri said. “What does that actually mean?”

“It means they’re arming up and preparing to fire,” she said, very evenly, as if barely surprised. “It means that something very bad is about to happen.”