The Prefect

CHAPTER 21

The assembled seniors, internals and supernumerary analysts looked away from the Solid Orrery as the heavy doors of the tactical room swung open. For a second their expressions were as one, conveying a shared sense of indignation that their secret session had been interrupted, and without even the courtesy of a knock. Then they saw that the man stepping through the door was Senior Prefect Sheridan Gaffney and their collective mood changed from one of annoyance to mild puzzlement. Gaffney was perfectly entitled to enter the tactical room, his presence at least as welcome as that of anyone else there. But even Gaffney would normally have had the good manners to announce his arrival before barging in. The head of Internal Security was nothing if not a stickler for observation of the niceties.

“Is there a problem, Senior?” Baudry asked, speaking for the assembled party.

But it was not Gaffney who answered the query. Gaffney himself appeared strangely dumbstruck, incapable of formulating a response. Ten centimetres of black cylinder jutted from his mouth, as if he had been trying to swallow a thick candle. His eyes bulged as if he was seeking to squeeze all meaning through them.

The honour of replying fell instead to Dreyfus, who was following only a couple of paces behind the other man. There was an understandable measure of consternation at this development. Everyone in the room was aware that Dreyfus was under detention, unavoidably implicated in the murder of the Conjoiner woman. A smaller number of those present knew that Gaffney had been tasked to interview Dreyfus, and an even smaller number knew which methods that interview was likely to employ. The thought must have occurred to at least some of the party that Dreyfus had overpowered Gaffney and must now be holding him at knife- or gunpoint. Further inspection, however, revealed the presence of no recognisable weapon about the person of the field prefect. He was not even wearing shoes.

“Actually,” Dreyfus said, “there is a bit of a problem.”

“Why are you not in your cell?” Baudry asked, her attention flicking from Dreyfus to Gaffney and back again.

“What’s happened? What’s wrong with Sheridan? What’s that thing in his mouth?”

Gaffney’s posture was almost rigidly upright, as if he was hanging from an invisible coat rack. When he had walked into the room, he had moved with tiny shuffling footsteps, like a man with his laces tied together. He kept his arms glued to his sides. The thing lodged in his mouth forced him to keep his head at an unusual angle—it was as if he had developed a crick in his neck while looking up at the ceiling. There was a bulge in the skin of his throat, distending the collar of his tunic, that was more than Adam’s apple. He appeared unwilling to make the slightest unnecessary bodily movement.

“The thing in his mouth is a whiphound,” Dreyfus said.

“He came to interrogate me with a Model C. We were getting on famously when it just turned on him.”

“That’s not possible. A whiphound isn’t meant to do that.” Baudry looked at Dreyfus with an appalled expression.

“You didn’t do this, did you, Tom? You didn’t push that thing into him?”

“If I’d have touched it, I wouldn’t have any fingers left. No, it did it all by itself. Actually, Gaffney helped a bit with the final insertion.”

“I don’t understand. Why on Earth would he help?”

“He didn’t have a lot of choice. It all happened very slowly, very precisely. Have you ever seen a snake swallowing an egg? It pushed the filament into his mouth, then reached down into his stomach. You know how the interrogation mode works on those things: it locates major organs then threatens to slice them in two from inside.”

“What do you mean: interrogation mode? There’s no such thing.”

“There is now. It’s one of the new features Gaffney had built into the Model Cs. Of course, it has some innocuous-sounding name: enhanced compliance facilitation, or something similar.”

“He could have called for help.”

Dreyfus shook his head.

“Not a hope. It would have sliced him into six or seven pieces before he could say his name into his bracelet.”

“But why did he help it finish what it was doing to him?”

“It was hurting him, letting him know that if he didn’t help by pushing the handle into his mouth, it was going to do something really unpleasant.”

Baudry stared at Gaffney with renewed comprehension. The handle of a model A or B whiphound would have been too thick to enter the human throat. But a Model C was thinner, sleeker, altogether nastier. A whiphound handle jammed partway down Gaffney’s gullet would certainly explain his stiff-necked posture, his unwillingness to compromise what must have already been a very congested windpipe.

“We have to get it out of him,” she said.

“I don’t think it wants you to do that,” Dreyfus said.

“It doesn’t want anything. It’s malfunctioning, obviously.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” Dreyfus said, looking around the party, at the documents and compads on the table.

“But perhaps Gaffney has an opinion on the matter. He can’t speak right now, obviously, but he can still use his hands. Can’t you?” Gaffney shuffled around. His eyes were two bulging eggs, ready to pop out of their sockets. His cheeks were the colour of beetroot. He didn’t so much nod as make a microscopic twitching suggestion of one.

“I think he needs something to write with,” Dreyfus said.

“Can anyone spare a compad and a stylus?”

“Take mine,” Baudry said, skidding the item across the table. One of the analysts took the compad, unclipped the stylus and passed them both to Gaffney. His arms unlocked from the sides of his body, articulating with painful slowness as if the bones themselves had fused. His hands were shaking. He took the compad in his left hand and fumbled for the stylus with his right. It fell to the floor. The analyst knelt down and gently placed it in his palm.

“I don’t see—” Baudry began.

“Tell them what happened to Clepsydra,” Dreyfus said. Gaffney scratched the stylus across the writing surface of the compad. His movements were pained and childlike, as if he had seldom held a stylus before, let alone written with one. But laboriously he formed recognisable letters, scratching them out in agonised strokes.

He shuffled forward to the edge of the table and dropped the compad. Baudry picked it up. She studied the scrawl upon it.

“‘I killed her’,” she mouthed.

“That’s what it says: ‘I killed her’.” She looked up at Gaffney.

“Is this true, Sheridan? Did you really kill the prisoner?”

Again that twitch of a nod, a movement so subtle that the assembled seniors would never have seen it had they not been watching for it. She handed him back the compad.

“Why?” He scratched out another answer.

“‘Knew too much’,” Baudry read.

“Knew too much about what, Sheridan? What secret did she have to die to protect?”

Gaffney scribbled again. His trembling was growing worse, and it took longer to spell out one word than it had taken him to spell out three the last time.

“‘Aurora’,” Baudry read.

“That name again. Is it true, Sheridan? Is she really one of the Eighty?”

But when she handed him the compad, all he wrote on it this time was: “Help me.”

“I think it might be best to save further questioning for later,” Dreyfus said.

“Why is it doing this to him?” Baudry asked.

“I’ve heard about the difficulties with the Model Cs, but nothing like this has ever happened.”

“He must have switched on the whiphound in Clepsydra’s presence,” Dreyfus said.

“Very silly thing to do around a Conjoiner, but I guess he couldn’t resist tormenting her. She couldn’t stop him killing her—he used a gun for that—but she was still able to tamper with the whiphound.”

“She wouldn’t have had time.”

“I doubt it took her more than a second. For a Conjoiner, it would have been about as difficult as blinking.”

“But the programming is hard-coded.”

“Nothing’s hard-coded to a Conjoiner. There’s always a way in, always a back door. She’d have found it if she knew she was about to die and this was her only way of getting a message through. Right, Sheridan?”

Gaffney twitched another affirmative. Some kind of whitish foam or drool was beginning to erupt around the black plug filling his mouth. The quickening tempo of his breathing was now audible to everyone in the room.

“We still have to get it out of him,” Baudry said.

“Sheridan: I want you to stay very, very calm. No matter what you’ve done, no matter what’s happened, we’re going to help you.” She lifted her arm and spoke into her bracelet with a voice on the trembling edge of panic.

“Doctor Demikhov? Oh good, you’re awake. Yes, very well, thank you. I know this is unorthodox and that you’re mandated to focus only on the Aumonier case but… something’s come up. Something that requires your expertise very, very urgently.”

Dr Demikhov conjured a quickmatter partition, closing off one end of the tactical room to allow him and the other medical technicians to work on Gaffney in privacy. The last clear view Dreyfus had of the senior prefect was of him being gently lowered onto a couch tipped at forty-five degrees to the floor, handled as if he was a bomb that might detonate at any instant. Through the partition’s smoky opacity, the team became vaguely outlined pale ghosts, huddled around an indistinct black form. Then the indistinct black form started thrashing, blurred limbs flailing the air.

“Do you think they’ll get it out of him?” Baudry asked, breaking the uncanny silence.

“I don’t think Clepsydra was interested in killing him,” Dreyfus said.

“She could have achieved that already by embedding a different set of instructions into the whiphound. I think she wanted him to talk instead.”

“He was in no state to tell us anything reliable.”

“He told us enough,” Dreyfus said.

“We can get more out of him when Demikhov’s finished.” He eased himself into one of the seats around the table, opposite Baudry.

“I’m taking something of a liberty here, but is it safe to assume that I’m no longer the prime suspect in Clepsydra’s murder?”

Baudry swallowed hard.

“I was prepared to believe that you’d been framed, Tom, but I couldn’t accept your accusations about Gaffney. He was one of us, for Voi’s sake. I had to believe that you were wrong: that you were either striking out against him for personal reasons, or someone was framing Gaffney as well.”

“And now?”

“Following that little spectacle, I think we can safely assume that we know who murdered Clepsydra, and that he was probably acting alone.” Baudry cast a wary glance at the smoky partition, but the huddle of shapes beyond the quickmatter was now too concentrated to separate into individuals.

“Which means you were right, and I was wrong, and I ignored you when I should have trusted you. I’m sorry about that.”

“Don’t apologise,” Dreyfus said.

“You had a crisis to contain and you took the best decision you could given the evidence available to you.”

“There’s more,” Baudry said. She played with her fingers nervously, as if she was trying to dismantle her hands.

“I see now that Gaffney wanted Jane removed from command. Not because he was concerned for her, or even for Panoply, but because he feared she’d put two and two together before very long.”

“So she had to go,” Dreyfus said.

Baudry’s attention flicked to the partition.

“When Demikhov’s finished… I need to talk to him about Jane. Do you think she’s strong enough to resume command?”

“Whether she is or not, we need her.”

“Like a circuit needs a fuse, even though it might blow at any time.” Baudry shuddered at the thought.

“Can we do this? Can we subject Jane to something that might kill her?”

“Let Jane decide.”

“Crissel and I didn’t want her removed for the same reasons as Gaffney,” she said, apparently oblivious to the other people in the tactical room.

“But that doesn’t make what we did any more excusable.”

“Whatever Crissel did wrong, he made it right when he got on that deep-system cruiser.”

“And me?”

“Reinstate Jane, clear me of any suspicion of wrongdoing and I think you’ll have made a decent start.”

It was as if she hadn’t heard him.

“Perhaps I should resign. I’ve let down the supreme prefect, allowed myself to be hoodwinked and manipulated by another senior… failed to trust the one man I should have placed my faith in. In most organisations, what I’ve done would be punished by instant dismissal.”

“Sorry, Lillian, but you don’t get out of it that easily,” Dreyfus said.

“It takes more than a few bad judgement calls to erase a lifetime’s loyal service to Panoply. You were an outstanding senior a week ago. From where I’m sitting, not much has changed.”

“That’s… generous of you,” she allowed.

“I’m only thinking of the organisation. We lost a good man in Crissel. That’s why we need Jane Aumonier. That’s why we need Lillian Baudry.”

“And Tom Dreyfus,” she added.

“And yes, you can consider yourself free of suspicion.”

“I hope that goes for Sparver as well.”

“Of course. He did nothing wrong except support a fellow prefect, and he deserves my personal apology.”

“I want him to start digging into the archives, to find everything he can on Aurora Nerval-Lermontov and the other alpha-levels.”

“I’ll make sure he has all the resources, all the clearance he needs. You honestly think this is the same woman?” Dreyfus nodded at the partition.

“We heard it from the horse’s mouth. In a manner of speaking, at least. We’re dealing with a ghost in the machine. Now all we need is a ghost-killer.” The world came back to Jane Aumonier without warning, without ceremony. She had decided, after much deliberation, that she preferred darkness and silence to the limited range of entertainments Gaffney and the others had left her with when they removed her executive authority. That left her alone with only the scarab for company, but in the eleven years since it had attached itself to her neck she had found that she could, when circumstances required it, retreat to a private corner of her own mind, a fortified place where even the scarab could not intrude. She had never been able to stay within that mental bastion for very long, but it had always been there when she needed it. In her place of sanctuary she played glacially cold, achingly melancholy piano pieces. She had often played the piano before the scarab came. Now it would not even allow the small bulk of a holoclavier in her presence, let alone a full-bodied keyboard. Yet she still remembered how to play, and when she was in full retreat her fingers moved in silent echo of the composition she was reciting in her head, ten million parsecs from the chamber in which she floated. The hidden music was the one thing the scarab had never been able to steal from her. She had her eyes closed when the chamber began to light up of its own volition. It was hazardous to close her eyes for too long, for that invited the spectre of sleep to take a step nearer. But there was a more profound, calmer darkness when her eyes were closed, even in the absolute blackness of the unlit chamber.

“I didn’t—” Aumonier began, squinting against the sudden intrusion of brightness, colour and movement. The music shattered into irrecoverable pieces.

“It’s all right,” said a voice, coming from somewhere to her right.

“You’re getting back everything they took away, Jane.” She twisted her head towards the voice. The figure was dark on dark, standing in the black aperture of the passwall.

“Tom?”

“In the flesh. Minus shoes, unfortunately.” The feeds were popping on all around her, gradually filling the interior surface of the sphere. The configuration, the preference given to views of certain habitats over others, was recognisable as one of her usual settings. The Glitter Band, she realised, was still out there. She felt an odd flicker of resentment that her empire had continued running itself while she had been ousted from her throne. “Where have you been?” she asked as the dark figure fastened on a safe-distance tether and crossed the airspace towards her.

“How much did anyone tell you?” Dreyfus asked as the mounting illumination cast shifting blue highlights on his face. He looked puffy and somehow dishevelled.

“They told me nothing.”

“You’re back in command,” Dreyfus said.

“If you want it, of course.” In the absence of visitors, she’d had little recent practice speaking. The words came out with mushy edges, as if she had just woken.

“What about Crissel, Gaffney, Clearmountain? What about Baudry?

They can’t have agreed to this.”

“Let’s just say the command landscape has changed. The chances are very good that Michael Crissel is dead. Gaffney—who turned out to be a traitor—is being operated on as we speak. I’ve just had to talk Baudry out of handing in her resignation. I think she’s realised the serious mistake she made in ousting you.”

“Wait,” Aumonier said.

“What happened to Crissel?”

“We lost contact with him as he was attempting to enter House Aubusson along with a squad of field prefects. We’ve also lost contact with that entire habitat, along with three others.”

“No one told me,” she said.

“We’re talking about the same four habitats that Thalia was visiting to upgrade their polling cores. Looks as if we were set up, Jane. Thalia’s installation may have closed one security hole, but it blew open a much wider one. Wide enough to let a militant faction seize control of those habitats.”

“Do you think Thalia was part of this conspiracy?”

“No, she was set up like the rest of us. I wanted to be on the ship that Crissel took to Aubusson but Gaffney had other ideas.” Dreyfus’ expression was one of gloomy resignation.

“Not that it would have made much difference.”

“What about Gaffney?”

“He was working for the enemy faction, from within Panoply. Chances are it was Gaffney who manipulated Thalia’s upgrade to make it work the way it did.” Aumonier shook her head in amazement.

“I never had Sheridan down as a traitor.”

“My guess is he feels he was doing the right and necessary thing, even if that meant going against his own organisation. From his point of view we’re the traitors, letting down the Glitter Band by not taking our duties as seriously as he deems necessary.”

“If you’re right then we’re at least partially culpable.”

“How so?”

“The organisation moulds men like Gaffney. An effective prefect is only one degree from being a monster in the first place. Most of us stay the right side of the line. But we can hardly blame one of us when he strays across it.”

“He’s still got some explaining to do,” Dreyfus said.

“I’m sure you’re right.” Aumonier breathed in, composing herself.

“Now tell me who we’re up against. Do you have a name?”

“The figure behind the takeovers is Aurora Nerval-Lermontov. She was one of the Eighty, Jane. That means she’s dead; that she doesn’t exist any more except as a set of disembodied patterns stored in the memory of a machine. Patterns that are supposedly frozen, as if they were written down in ink.” Aumonier digested that, sifting her memories to verify that the Nerval-Lermontovs had indeed been one of the families sponsoring Calvin Sylveste’s experiments in mind-uploading. Fifty-five years ago, she thought. But the horror of the Eighty still burnt as brightly in the public imagination as at any time in the last half-century.

“Even if I accept this… how do we know Aurora’s behind it all?”

“A witness told me. She was being held hostage inside a rock owned by Aurora’s family. My witness reported coming into contact with an entity called Aurora.”

“This witness—”.

“Was a Conjoiner woman named Clepsydra. This is where it gets complicated.”

“Go for it.”

“Clepsydra was one of the survivors aboard an entire ship that was being held captive inside that rock, deep enough underground that there was no chance of them contacting other Conjoiners.”

“With you so far.” Dreyfus smiled.

“There was advanced technology aboard that ship—a Conjoiner device called Exordium that lets them see into the future.”

“If I was hearing this from anyone other than Tom Dreyfus, I’d get Mercier up here with a full psychiatric renormalisation kit.”

“The Conjoiners have to be in a kind of dream-state just to interpret what it shows them. It’s imprecise, but a hell of an improvement on not being able to see into the future at all.”

“I’d buy one like a shot.”

“Not for sale, apparently. Which is why Aurora needed to kidnap the Conjoiners and get them to run Exordium for her. That’s what they’ve been doing in that rock all the while: looking into the future on Aurora’s behalf. Seeing things she can’t see.”

“And what did they see, Tom?”

“The end of the world. A time of plagues, Clepsydra said. Beyond that, the dreamers couldn’t see anything. Aurora kept trying to persuade them to interpret the dreams differently. When they didn’t show her what she wanted, she turned the screws on them.”

“I need to speak to this Clepsydra,” Aumonier said.

“The scarab may not like her being in this room, but she doesn’t have to be physically present—I only need a voice and a face.”

“I wish you could speak to her,” Dreyfus answered heavily.

“Gaffney killed her, then tried to pin it on me.

Given the knowledge she’d already sucked out of our records, there was a very real threat of her being able to pin down Aurora’s location, maybe even isolate some weakness we could use against her. That’s why she had to go. But it turns out Clepsydra had the last laugh after all.”

“Then what about Gaffney? If he’s working for Aurora, we must be able to get something useful out of him?”

“I sincerely hope so. I’m going to find out everything he knows. Then we can start formulating a response. I want those habitats back. I particularly want my deputy field back.”

“You realise Thalia may already be dead, Tom? I’m sorry, but someone has to say it. Better that you start dealing with the possibility now rather than later.”

“She’s dead when we recover her body,” Dreyfus said.

“Until then she’s behind enemy lines.”

“I fully approve of that sentiment, but don’t raise your hopes, that’s all I’m saying.” Aumonier closed her eyes and took a deep, cleansing breath before reopening them.

“Now let’s talk about me, shall we? You said I am being reinstated to full status.”

“If you want it.”

“Of course I damned well want it. This is what keeps me alive.”

“It could be what kills you. Things aren’t going to get any less tense around here any time soon. Are you sure you’re ready for that? There isn’t anyone I’d sooner see running the organisation in a time of crisis, but you’ve given Panoply more than enough in the last eleven years. No one would hold it against you if you decided to sit this one out.”

“I’m in command.”

“Good,” called another voice from the still-open passwall. Aumonier recognised the hovering form of Baudry.

“Hello, Lillian,” Aumonier said guardedly. Baudry attached her own safe-distance tether and drifted out until she flanked Dreyfus, stabilising herself to the same local vertical.

“There’s something I need to say, Supreme Prefect. I let you down. I can’t speak for Michael Crissel, but I should never have been party to what happened in this room.”

“Prefect Dreyfus tells me you’ve considered resignation.”

“That’s correct. And I will resign, too, if you wish it.” Aumonier let the other woman wait, until the silence had become as electrically potent as the air before a thunderstorm.

“I don’t approve of what you did, Lillian. Gaffney may have played a part in the decision to remove me from power, but you should still have resisted him. It’s to your discredit that you failed to do so.”

“I’m sorry,” Baudry mouthed.

“You should be. Crissel as well, were he still with us.”

“We thought we were doing the right thing.”

“And the fact that I expressly requested to be allowed to stay in power—that didn’t mean anything to you?”

“Gaffney said we should ignore your pleas, that secretly you would be craving permission to step down.” A little defiance returned to Baudry now.

“We were doing our best. I’ve told you already that I’m ashamed of what happened. But at the time I did not have the luxury of hindsight, of knowing what we now do about Sheridan.”

“Enough,” Aumonier said, raising a calming hand. She thought about all the testing years that Lillian Baudry, a good, loyal senior prefect, had spent in her shadow. Never once being able to demonstrate true effectiveness, true leadership, never once having the temerity to question or undermine a single one of Aumonier’s decisions.

“What’s done is done. At least now we both know where we stand. Don’t we?”

“I have apologised. I am ready and waiting for either a resignation order or new commands.”

“Both of you might want to take a look at that feed,” Dreyfus said.

“Before you make any rash decisions, that is.”

“What feed?” Baudry asked.

“He means the long-range surveillance of House Aubusson, I think,” Aumonier said.

“Something’s happening there, isn’t it?”

Dreyfus nodded.

“It started while we were speaking.”

“We’ve been monitoring the thermal output from the four habitats for a number of hours,” Baudry said, shifting effortlessly back into the detached tones of neutral professionalism.

“Two of them, Aubusson and Szlumper Oneill, show evidence of activity in their manufactories. It’s as if the assembler plants have been cranked back up to full operating strength since Aurora’s takeover. So far, we’ve only been able to speculate as to what that means. What we do know is that Crissel’s ship was hit by more weapons than we can account for based on the Aubusson blueprints filed with Panoply. One theory, therefore, is that the factories are producing new defence systems, to further consolidate Aurora’s hold on the habitats.”

“How long would it take to create and install new weapons if those manufactories were running at standard capacity?” Aumonier asked.

“Allowing for ready provision of raw materials and blueprints, no more than six to eight hours,” Baudry answered.

“It’s entirely feasible, given the timescales we’re looking at.”

“But now it looks as if they’re not just making weapons,” Dreyfus said.

The image of House Aubusson was a three-quarters view captured at long-range by a surveillance cam well outside the attack volume of the habitat’s anti-collision weapons. It showed the factory end of the cylinder, not the docking hub where Crissel had presumably met his demise. Vast petal-like structures, curved doors many kilometres long, were opening in the domed endcap, revealing through a star-shaped aperture the blue-gold luminance of intense, frenzied industry.

“Those doors… are they part of the habitat’s original design?” Aumonier asked.

Baudry nodded.

“Back when the habitat had the capacity and the client base to grow entire ships, they needed those doors to launch them into space. But our records say they haven’t opened in over a century.”

“Then why are they opening now?”

“That’s why,” Dreyfus said.

Something was spilling through the gaps between the fingerlike doors, billowing out in a gauzy black mass, like an eruption of wasps. It was a cloud composed of thousands of individual elements.

Simultaneously, Dreyfus and Baudry’s bracelets started chiming.

“Someone else has noticed,” Baudry said.

“What are we looking at?” asked Aumonier, a queasy feeling in her stomach. Up to this point, her crisis parameters had consisted of a hostage scenario in which Panoply might lose control of four habitats. Four was inexcusable, the worst disaster in eleven years, but it was still negligible compared to the mind-numbing immensity of the ten thousand. Containable, she thought. And yet that emerging black cloud said otherwise. She did not yet know what it was, but she knew with piercing certainty that it was not good news, and that the crisis she had imagined Panoply to be facing was as nothing compared to the one that was now blossoming.

“We need to know what that… froth is,” she said, fighting to keep her voice from faltering.

“We need numbers and tech assessments. We need to know what it’s for and where it’s headed.”

“Doors are opening in Szlumper Oneill,” Baudry said, reading a text summary on her bracelet. As she spoke, a window enlarged itself, squeezing others aside as it filled with a long-range view of the other habitat. A black cloud was boiling out of elongated slots near one of the polar docking complexes, smothering detail as it expanded.

“I think it’s the same stuff,” Aumonier said.

“Has to be,” Dreyfus said.

“Question is, what about the other two habitats?”

“No excess thermal activity in either Carousel New Seattle-Tacoma or the Chevelure-Sambuke Hourglass,” Baudry said.

“But according to our data, neither of those habitats has any kind of manufacturing capacity.”

Dreyfus scratched at the back of his collar.

“Thalia’s upgrade may have been contaminated, but I’m pretty sure she chose those four habitats herself, based on her own selection criteria.”

“Meaning what?” Aumonier asked.

“Meaning Aurora may not have had any influence over which habitats she got control of. Given four, the chances were good that at least one of them was going to have some kind of manufacturing capability. But it wasn’t guaranteed. Looks like two of the four were duds, in any case. She’s captured them, but right now she can’t make them work for her.”

“I’m not taking my eye off any of these habitats.”

“I agree. But it shows us that Aurora isn’t pulling all the strings here. She had to work with the hand Thalia dealt her.” Dreyfus flashed a bleak smile.

“I won’t say it gladdens my heart, but—”

“Problem is we may already have done the work she needs.”

“I’m hoping that isn’t the case.” But Dreyfus still nodded, letting Aumonier know that he shared her fears.

“You’re right, though. We need a closer look at whatever those factories are spewing out. How fast would you say that stuff is emerging?”

“I don’t know. Judging by the scale… hundreds of metres a second, maybe faster.”

“I concur,” Baudry said.

“That’s what I was thinking,” Dreyfus said.

“Pretty damned fast, anyway. I’ll need to look at the Solid Orrery, but given the mean spacing between habitats, it isn’t going to take very long before the swarm reaches another one. Let’s assume the closest neighbour to Aubusson is sixty or seventy kilometres away, in the same orbit. Even if that stuff is only moving at ten metres a second, we’re not looking at much more than two hours. Of course, I hope I’m wrong.”

“You’re hardly ever wrong,” Aumonier said.

“That’s what worries me.”

Dreyfus glanced at Baudry.

“We need to task ships for a close fly-by of one of those clouds. Automated, if possible, but manned if that’s all we can manage in the time available.”

“I’ll get on it. We have a deep-system cruiser—the Democratic Circus—inbound from the Parking Swarm. I’ve already asked Captain Pell to swing by Aubusson, to see if he can image the remains of the Universal Suffrage, sweep for survivors and get a better look at those weapons emplacements.”

“Tell them to take care,” Dreyfus said.

Baudry said, “I already did. Now I’ll tell them to take even more.”

“The scope of this crisis is now greater than the four lost habitats,” Dreyfus said, directing his words back at Aumonier.

“I’ll run the Orrery immediately, but in the meantime I think we should consider an appropriate statement. We’ve buffered the citizenry so far, but now it may be time to start alerting the wider Glitter Band to the real nature of the crisis.”

Aumonier swallowed hard.

“I don’t want mass panic. What should we tell them?”

Dreyfus looked pragmatic.

“Frankly, mass panic may be the least of our worries.”

“Even so… we still don’t know what we’re dealing with, what Aurora wants, what she’s doing with those habitats when she gains control of them.”

“Tell them something’s trying to take over,” Dreyfus said.

“Tell them that it has nothing to do with the Ultras, and that we’ll phase in mass euthanisation if we even suspect that someone’s trying to settle an old score with the Swarm. Tell them that Panoply is declaring a Bandwide state of emergency, and that this time we really need a vote in favour of utilizing heavy weapons.”

“We don’t have it already?” Aumonier asked.

“I dropped the ball,” Baudry said.

“I went to the polls, stressed that we had a crisis on our hands, but didn’t spell out the true severity of the situation. I didn’t lie, but I let them think I was just talking about the crisis with the Ultras.”

“Because you didn’t want panic?”

“Exactly so,” she said.

“Then you probably did exactly what I’d have done.” Aumonier held Lillian Baudry’s gaze for a long moment, signalling to her that, whatever the other woman had done, her professional conduct in Aumonier’s absence was not in doubt. She needed allies around her now, people who knew they had her confidence and trust.

“But Tom’s right,” she added.

“We need that vote. As a matter of fact, I’ll table a request for every emergency privilege in the book. Up to and including mass lockdowns and the curtailing of Bandwide abstraction and polling services.”

“We haven’t had to do that in—” Baudry began.

Aumonier nodded.

“I know. Eleven years. And doesn’t it feel like yesterday?”