The Peripheral

74

Has her now,” said Ossian.

The exoskeleton’s operator, in the stub, had just positioned it in the executive-hauler, in a rear seat facing the inert buggy, black manipulators drooping.

“Who does?”

“The hot-head brother. Commencing exfiltration. Ash says she’s overreacting.”

“Flynne?”

“Lowbeer. Seal the door.” This last, evidently, to the Bentley, its open door obediently shrinking to nothing at all, an unbroken expanse of silver-gray bodywork, Netherton finding the very last bit of closure peculiarly unpleasant, somehow octopoid. “Full hermetic. Vent one third captive atmosphere.”

Netherton heard a sharp outrush of air.

“Take it apart,” Ossian said, Netherton assumed to the operator. “If the tutorials aren’t adequate, ask us for help.”

“Overreacting?”

“She’s about to make a point. Quite a sharp one, irreversible.”

“She needs to get Flynne out first.”

“Shall I get her for you? Couldn’t possibly mind being interrupted just now, by our resident bullshit artist.”

Netherton ignored this. “What’s it doing in there?”

“Attempting to relieve a pram of two autonomously targeting, self-limiting swarm weapons. Shouldn’t be too terribly difficult, you might suppose, having just seen me shut the bastard down cold. Not that the sadistic shits who engineered it would let life be that simple. And now our technical is broaching the matter. .” Ossian was listening to something Netherton couldn’t hear. “And there you have it. I was right.”

“Have what?” Netherton asked.

Ossian seemed quite satisfied now. “It didn’t fancy that first gentle touch, did it? Projected assemblers. Ate the better part of Zubov’s father’s leather upholstery, and the biological elements of our left manipulator. They wouldn’t believe me, that the bugger never sleeps. Has no off switch. Waiting all this time to kill anyone who tried to get it out of the pram. We’ll have them both, though, now, in short order. And the one that triggered expended no more than a few thousand bugs. Millions yet to go. Can’t be reloaded, you know, not this side of Novosibirsk Oblast.”

The gilt coronet appeared.

“Is she safe?” Netherton asked.

“Told you I don’t know,” said Ossian.

Netherton moved away from the Bentley.

“Apparently, yes,” said Lowbeer.

“Ossian tells me that Ash thinks you’re overreacting. That was his word.”

“She’s bright, Ash, but unaccustomed to operating from strength. Pickett is entirely unlikely to find his place in our scheme of things. And someone did recently attempt to kill you, Mr. Netherton. Pickett, we can assume, already has some relationship, at whatever remove, with whoever ordered that. Would you like to go there?”

“Go where?”

“Lev’s stub.”

“That’s impossible. Isn’t it?”

“Physically, yes. Virtually, however crudely? Child’s play.”

“It is?”

“A bit too literally in this case,” she said, “but yes.”