The Prefect

CHAPTER 23

A portion of the Solid Orrery had been reassigned to emulate the three-dimensional form of a weevil-class war robot. The one-tenth-scale representation rotated slowly, the light of the room appearing to gleam off its angled black surfaces. In its space-travel/atmospheric-entry configuration, the machine’s multiple legs and manipulators were tucked hard against its shell, as if it had died and shrivelled up. Its binocular sensor packages were contained in two grilled domes that bore an uncanny resemblance to the compound eyes of an insect.

“They’re as nasty as they look,” Baudry commented to the assembled prefects.

“Banned under seven or eight conventions of war, last seen in action more than a hundred and twenty years ago. Most war robots are designed to kill other war robots. Weevils were engineered to do that and kill humans. They carry detailed files on human anatomy. They know our weak points, what makes us hurt, what makes us break.” As she spoke, reams of dense technical data scrolled down the walls.

“In and of themselves, weevils are containable. We have techniques and weapons that would be effective against them in both vacuum stand-off situations and in close-quarters combat in and around habitats. The problem is the number, not the machines themselves. According to the Democratic Circus, House Aubusson has already manufactured and launched two hundred and sixty thousand units, and the flow isn’t showing any signs of stopping. A weevil only weighs five hundred kilograms, and most of the materials required to make one would be commonplace inside a habitat like Aubusson. If the servitors inside the habitat work efficiently, they can easily supply all the feed materials necessary to build more just by dismantling and recycling existing structures inside the cylinder. We could be looking at an output of millions of weevils before the manufactories need to start eating into the structural fabric of the habitat. Then the numbers become unthinkable.”

“Do we know for a fact that we’re dealing with weevils?” Dreyfus asked.

Baudry nodded.

“The Circus hasn’t secured a sample yet, but the scans are all on the nose. These are weevils, just as Gaffney told us. There’s no reason to doubt that they’re carrying the Thalia code.”

“What about the rest of what Gaffney revealed?” asked the projected head of Jane Aumonier, imaged on a curving pane of glass supported above an empty chair.

“Do we believe that weevils are capable of hijacking a second habitat?”

Baudry faced her superior.

“If Aurora has embarked on this strategy, chances are she has a high expectation of success. She already has intimate knowledge of security holes in the polling apparatus. There’s every reason to think she has the ability to seize another habitat if she can get weevils into it.” All of a sudden Baudry looked shattered, as if the crisis had notched past some personal threshold of endurance.

“I think we must assume the worst.”

The wall displays froze abruptly. Bracelets chorused in unison. The Solid Orrery consumed the weevil and sprang up an enlarged representation of one of the two threatened habitats, a hubless wheel.

“That’s Carousel New Brazilia,” Baudry said.

“Anti-collision systems have begun to engage the incoming flow of weevils. We can expect House Flammarion to begin similar engagements within the next fifteen minutes.”

“How are our assets coping?” Aumonier asked.

“We only had time to place three corvette-class vehicles close enough to Brazilia to make a difference,”. Baudry said.

“Frankly, their pinpoint weapons are next to useless against the scale of the flow. Even if we dropped a nuke into the middle of it, it would only take out a few thousand units. It’s like trying to stop a tsunami with a spoon.”

Aumonier answered calmly: “Then we need an alternative strategy.”

“Our corvettes are standing by to concentrate their fire on the weevils once they make groundfall on the habitat. The war robots will need time to cut through or force their way in via docking apertures.”

“Let’s assume we don’t stop them all. What happens if we lose Brazilia and Flammarion?”

“Both habitats have manufacturies of their own,” Dreyfus said, looking up from his compad.

“If Aurora takes them, she’ll have two new sites of weevil production. From there she can start leapfrogging to new habitats.”

“I’ve prepared a simulation on the Orrery,” Baudry said.

“There’s a lot of guesswork fed into it, obviously, but I can show you how things might progress under some reasonable assumptions.”

“Go ahead,” Aumonier said.

Baudry shrank the image of Carousel New Brazilia back down to its former size, so that it became simply one gemlike point moving in the stately swirl of the Glitter Band. With another gesture she turned all the points of light to the same emerald green, save for four scattered points of ruby.

“These are the habitats Aurora now controls,” Baudry said, before two more red points lit up, each located close to one of the other four points.

“These are Brazilia and Flammarion, under the assumption that Aurora attains control. I now assume that both these new habitats become weevil-production centres with an output flow similar to what we’ve already seen. I assume also that each habitat concentrates its weevil output on one other habitat not yet in Aurora’s control, in accordance with what we’ve seen so far. I further assume that in twenty-six hours, a habitat can be attacked by weevils, brought under Aurora’s control and direct its own weevil flow against a designated target, crossing space until they make contact.”

“Continue,” Aumonier said.

“In one day, we’ll have already gone from two compromised habitats to four. Those four habitats will each infect another neighbouring state, giving us eight infection sites by the end of the second day.” As she spoke, the number of red lights increased in geometric fashion.

“At the end of the third day, sixteen habitats. Thirty-two by the end of the fourth day. Sixty-four by the fifth. One hundred and twenty-eight by the end of the sixth: that’s more than one per cent of the entire Glitter Band.”

There were now too many red lights to count. They were still overwhelmed by the green lights, but the inevitability of the process was now painfully apparent.

“How long… ?” Aumonier asked, voicing the question none of them wanted answering.

“Fewer than half the states in the Glitter Band retain any kind of manufacturing capacity,” Baudry said, “but that’s still over four thousand habitats. Aurora will have taken them all a few hours into the twelfth day. Even if we still hold the remainder by then, we’ll lose them very quickly. Aurora will have over four thousand weevil-production sites to turn against us. I doubt that we’d retain a single habitat by the end of the thirteenth day.” She swallowed heavily.

“That includes Panoply.”

“And that assumption of twenty-six hours—” Dreyfus began.

“It’s guesswork, a number I pulled out of the air. Perhaps it’ll take longer than that. But even if it takes four days to leapfrog from one habitat to the next, she’ll still have beaten us within two months. It’s anyone’s guess how long Chasm City will be able to hold out, but I wouldn’t put odds on it lasting much longer than the Glitter Band.”

“We can do something, though, surely,” Aumonier said.

Baudry’s expression was that of someone burdened with terrible news. She reminded Dreyfus of a doctor about to deliver the most devastating of verdicts.

“We can do something, yes. Now, while Aurora is still gaining a foothold, and before her efforts touch us. Let’s rewind the simulation back to day zero, today.”

Now there were just four habitats highlighted in red.

“The weevil flows have reached Brazilia, and will make contact with Flammarion any minute now.” Baudry glanced uneasily at her bracelet.

“But for the

next few hours—maybe even as long as a day—we’re only looking at four points of potential spread, if we assume the new habitats can be geared up to weevil production.” Baudry tightened her fingers against each other.

“Aurora is at her most vulnerable now. She has revealed herself, and therefore already played the element of surprise. But she has not yet consolidated enough territory to truly overwhelm us.”

“I thought you said we were already overwhelmed by the weevils,” said Senior Prefect Clearmountain.

“I’m not talking about dealing with the weevils,” Baudry answered.

“I’m talking about taking out the production centres.”

Clearmountain looked unimpressed.

“This isn’t surgery,” he said, looking around the table at the others.

“You can’t just take out a manufactory and somehow leave the rest of the habitat intact.”

“I’m aware of that,” Baudry said, with icy control.

He blinked.

“Then you’re talking about—”

“Mass euthanisation, yes. We nuke the infected habitats. If this was the easy option, do you honestly think I’d have waited until now before raising it?”

“It’s murder.”

“We’d be sacrificing a certain number of lives to ensure the survival of vastly more. You saw that simulation I just ran, Senior. Within two months we’ll have lost everything. She could be all over us in as little as thirteen days if my earlier assessment was correct. Maybe we don’t even have that long. That’s one hundred million lives. If we target both Brazilia and Flammarion now, we’ll only be losing six hundred and fifty thousand people. Include Szlumper Oneill and House Aubusson and we’re still talking about less than two per cent of the total number of citizens in our care.”

“You’re talking as if two per cent is a blip,” said Clearmountain incredulously.

“With all due respect,” Baudry answered, “this is war. There isn’t a general in history who wouldn’t snatch at the possibility of victory if it could be guaranteed with less than one casualty for every fifty combatants.”

“But they’re not combatants,” Dreyfus said testily.

“They’re citizens, and they didn’t sign up to be part of anyone’s war.”

“The balance of numbers still holds,” Baudry said.

“Strike now and we’ll be saving many tens of millions of lives. We have to consider this, ladies and gentlemen. We’re in dereliction of duty if we don’t.”

“It’s monstrous,” Clearmountain said.

“So is the prospect of losing the ten thousand,” Baudry replied.

“But would we necessarily be losing one hundred million lives?” asked Aumonier.

“Gaffney told Dreyfus that Aurora was interested in a benign takeover. The life-support systems in Aubusson and the three other habitats are still running: we’d have seen the evidence otherwise. That suggests to me that Aurora has at least the intention of keeping her subjects alive and healthy.”

“Human shields aren’t much use unless they’re alive,” Baudry said.

“But we still have to consider the possibility that she intends to keep her subjects alive for ever. If her

stated goal is to ensure the long-term survival of the Glitter Band, she’s not going to start murdering people.” Aumonier’s eyes became glazed, as if she was looking at something far beyond the room.

“Oh, wait,” said her floating head.

“Something’s coming in from Flammarion. They’ve made contact.”

Bracelets started chiming. The prefects silenced them and studied the Solid Orrery as it enlarged a thimble-shaped representation of House Flammarion.

“Status on Brazilia?” Dreyfus asked.

Aumonier glanced away, then back at him.

“The anti-collision guns have been picking off one weevil in ten. The rest are getting through more or less undamaged. They’ve established six bridgeheads on the outer skin of the wheel. Our assets have been concentrating fire, but some weevils appear to be making it through into the underlying structure.”

“Pressure containment?”

“Still holding. It looks as if the machines are at least programmed to break inside without compromising biosphere integrity.”

It would go the same way with Flammarion, Dreyfus knew. The concentration of weevils might not be exactly the same, the anti-collision systems might prove more or less successful at intercepting the arriving forces, but it would make no practical difference in the long run. It would only take a handful of those war robots to storm their way through the citizenry, scything a bloody path to the polling core. And then they would open a door and Aurora, or some facet of Aurora, could pass through.

“How many did we get off Brazilia?”

“Eleven thousand on the commercial shuttles that were already docked. Three from Flammarion.”

“Aurora’s reliant on data networks to hop into those habitats,” Dreyfus said.

“Before we start nuking our own citizens, can we block her progress by taking down part of the network?”

Baudry grimaced.

“It’s all or nothing, Tom.”

“Then we take the whole damned thing down.”

“We don’t know for sure that that would stop Aurora, but it would definitely hurt us. We need the apparatus to track Aurora’s spread, to coordinate evacuation operations and the deployment of our own assets.”

“Nonetheless,” Aumonier said, “Tom is right. Taking down Bandwide abstraction is something we have to consider. In fact, I’ve been considering it ever since I became aware of the crisis. We shouldn’t underestimate the risks, though. We may slow Aurora, but we’ll more than likely blind ourselves in the process.”

“Use the nukes and we end this now,” Baudry said.

“Aurora may not be intending to kill people, but she definitely intends to take their freedom from them.”

Dreyfus clutched his stylus so tightly that the nib pushed into his palm and drew blood.

“There’s another option, while we still have the apparatus. A given habitat may not be able to fight off the weevils, but at the moment we still have the resources of the entire Glitter Band to call upon.”

“I’m not with you, Tom,” Baudry said.

“I say we table an emergency poll with the people. We request permission to draft and mobilise a temporary militia from across the entire Glitter Band.”

“Define ’militia’.”

“I mean millions of citizens, armed and equipped with whatever weapons their manufactories can produce in the next thirteen hours. They already have the ships, so moving them around won’t be a problem. If we can supply them with weapons blueprints, then place enough of them into the compromised habitats, and into the habitats we think Aurora will go for next, together with military-grade servitors under our control, we may be able to break her back without using nukes.”

Baudry looked regretful.

“You’re talking about citizens, Tom, not soldiers.”

“You were the one calling them combatants, not me.”

“They have no training, no equipment—”

“The manufactories’ll give them equipment. Eidetics will give them training. Prefects can lead small units of drafted citizens.”

“There are a hundred million citizens out there, Tom, ninety-eight per cent of whom face no immediate threat from Aurora. Do you honestly think many of them are going to race to throw themselves against those weevils?”

“I think we should at least give them the choice. We won’t be proposing to draft the entire citizenry. Ten million would give us an overwhelming advantage, especially if they’re backed up by servitors. That’s only one citizen in ten, Lillian. The majority can agree to our draft safe in the knowledge that they’re not likely to be called up.”

“Do you want to put some numbers on casualty estimates?” Baudry asked.

“One in ten, two in ten? Worse than that?”

Dreyfus tapped his stylus against the table.

“I don’t know.”

“Lose two million and you’ll have killed more people than if we go in now with nukes.”

“But it would be two million people who chose to put themselves on the line, for the greater good of the Glitter Band, rather than two million we press the button on just because some simulation says so.”

“Maybe we can come to some kind of compromise,” Aumonier said, her crystal-clear voice cutting through the tension between Dreyfus and Baudry.

“We all find the idea of nuking habitats abhorrent, even if we differ on the necessity of doing so.”

“Agreed,” Baudry said cautiously.

“Which criteria did you use to identify Aurora’s next targets?” Aumonier asked.

“Proximity and usefulness, with allowance for varying distances due to differential orbital velocities. I reasoned that Aurora would concentrate her efforts on the nearest habitats with manufacturing capability.”

“Sounds reasonable to me,” Aumonier said.

“The question is, can we get the people out of those habitats before the weevils arrive from those that are now under assault?”

“You mean evacuate and then nuke?” Dreyfus asked.

“If we can do it, we’ll be clearing a line in a forest. Aurora’s weevils may well be able to cross that line and leapfrog to even further habitats, but at least it’ll have bought us time, with no expenditure of human lives.”

“If we get them out in time,” Clearmountain said.

“We can’t be certain which habitats she’ll go for,” Baudry said, pointing at the Solid Orrery.

“I selected likely candidates, but I couldn’t be precise.”

“Then we’ll have to cover more bases.” Aumonier said.

“I’m going to initiate an emergency evacuation order for ten probable targets.”

Dreyfus said, “I suggest we concentrate any enforcement activities on one habitat, just to show we mean business. The others will hopefully assume we’re capable of dishing out the same treatment to them.”

“I agree,” Aumonier replied.

“The one thing the people mustn’t suspect is that we’re overstretched. As for assistance in the evacuation effort, I’ll go through CTC. They can requisition and re-route all spaceborne traffic without the need for a poll. We’ll be limited by ship capacity and docking hub throughput, but we’ll just have to do the best we can.” She looked directly at Baudry.

“I want the names of ten habitats, Lillian. Immediately.”

“I’d like to re-run the simulation, varying the parameters a little,” Baudry said.

“There isn’t time. Just give me those names.”

Baudry’s mouth fell open, as if she was about to say something but the words had suddenly escaped her. She reached for her stylus and compad and started compiling the list, her hand shaking with the momentous enormity of what she was doing.

“How long are you going to give them?” Dreyfus asked.

“Before you go in with the nukes, I mean.”

“We can’t wait a day,” Aumonier said.

“That would be too long, too risky. I think thirteen hours is a reasonable compromise, don’t you?”

She knew that it could not be done, Dreyfus thought. Save for the tiniest family-run microstates, there was no habitat in the Glitter Band that could be emptied of people that quickly. Even if evacuation vehicles were docked and ready, even if the citizens were briefed and prepared, ready to leave their world in an orderly and calm fashion, a world that many of them would have spent their entire lives in.

It just couldn’t be done. But at least those people would have a chance of getting out, rather than none at all. That was all Jane was counting on.

“I have those names,” Baudry said.

Aumonier floated rock-still, anchored in space at the epicentre of her own sensory universe. Most of her feeds were blanked out, leaving a bright equatorial strip focusing only on those twenty-five or thirty habitats at immediate or peripheral risk from Aurora’s takeover. The views kept shuffling, playing havoc with Dreyfus’ sense of his own orientation.

“We’re going to lose Brazilia and Flammarion,” she said, by way of acknowledging his presence.

“Weevils are deep inside both habitats and the local citizenry can’t hold them back. They’ve already taken appalling losses, and all they’ve done is slow their approach to the polling cores.”

Dreyfus said nothing, sensing that Aumonier was not finished. Eventually she asked: “Did they get

anything out of Gaffney?”

“Not much. I’ve just read the initial summary from the trawl squad.”

“And?”

“They’ve cleared up at least one mystery. We know how he moved Clepsydra from the bubble to my quarters. He used a nonvelope.”

“I’m not familiar with the term,” Aumonier said.

“It’s an invisibility device. A shell of quickmatter with a degree of autonomy and the ability to conceal itself from superficial observation. You put something in it you don’t want people to find.”

“Sounds like exactly the sort of thing that should be banned by any right-thinking society. How did he get hold of it?”

“From Anthony Theobald Ruskin-Sartorious, apparently. Anthony Theobald must have procured it through his black-market arms contacts. He used the nonvelope to escape from his habitat just before it was torched by Dravidian’s ship.” Aumonier frowned slightly.

“But Anthony Theobald didn’t escape. All you had to interview was his beta-level copy.”

“Gaffney knew differently, apparently. He intercepted the nonvelope before it fell into the hands of Anthony Theobald’s allies.”

“And then what?”

“He cracked it open. Then he ran a trawl on Anthony Theobald to see if he could find out where the thing Ruskin-Sartorious was sheltering had got to.”

“Voi. Gaffney trawled him?” Reading her expression, Dreyfus could imagine what was going through her mind. It was one thing to be trawled inside Panoply, where strict rules were in force. It was another to receive the same treatment elsewhere, inflicted by a man acting outside the bounds of the law who cared nothing for the consequences of his actions.

“He didn’t get as much information as he was hoping for, unfortunately.”

“I presume he kept digging until he’d burnt away Anthony Theobald’s brain?”

“That’s the odd thing,” Dreyfus said.

“He appears to have held back at the last. He got something out of the man, enough for him to stop before he burnt him out completely.”

“Why didn’t he go all the way if he thought there was something more to gain?”

“Because Gaffney doesn’t see himself as a monster. He’s a prefect, still doing his job, still sticking to his principles while the rest of us betray the cause. He killed Clepsydra because he had no other option. He killed the people in Ruskin-Sartorious for the same reason. But he’s not an indiscriminate murderer. He’s still thinking about the tens of millions he’s going to save.”

“What else did he get?”

“That was where the trawl team hit resistance. Gaffney really didn’t want to give up whatever he had learned from Anthony Theobald. But they got a word.”

“Tell me.”

“Firebrand.”

Aumonier nodded very slowly. She said the word herself, as if testing how it sounded coming from her own lips.

“Did the summary team have anything to say about this word?”

“To them it was meaningless noise. Firebrand could be a weapon, a ship, an agent, anything. Or it could be the name of the puppy he owned when he was five.”

“Do you have any theories?”

“I’m inclined to think it’s just noise: either noise that came out of Anthony Theobald, which Gaffney assumed was significant, or noise that came out of Gaffney. I ran a search on the word. Lots of priors, but nothing that raised any flags.”

“There wouldn’t have been any,” Aumonier said.

Dreyfus heard something in her tone of voice that he hadn’t been expecting.

“Because it’s meaningless?”

“No. It’s anything but. Firebrand has a very specific meaning, especially in a Panoply context.”

Dreyfus shook his head emphatically.

“Nothing came up, Jane.”

“That’s because we’re talking about an operational secret so highly classified that even Gaffney wouldn’t have known about it. It’s superblack, screened from all possible scrutiny even within the organisation.”

“Are you going to enlighten me?”

“Firebrand was a cell within Panoply,” Aumonier said.

“It was created eleven years ago to study and exploit any remaining artefacts connected with the Clockmaker affair.”

“You mean the clocks, the musical boxes?”

She answered with superhuman calm, taking no pleasure in contradicting him.

“More than that. The Clockmaker created other things during its spree. The public record holds that none of these artefacts survived, but in reality a handful of them were recovered. They were small things, of unknown purpose, but because they had been made by the Clockmaker, they were considered too unique to destroy. At least not until we’d studied them, worked out what they were and how we could apply that data to the future security of the Glitter Band.” Before he could get a word in, she said: “Don’t hate us for doing that, Tom. We had a duty to learn everything we could. We didn’t know where the Clockmaker had come from. Because we didn’t understand it, we couldn’t rule out the possibility of another one arising. If that ever happened, we owed it to the citizenry to be prepared.”

“And?” he asked.

“Are we?”

“I instigated Firebrand. The cell was answerable only to me, and for a couple of years I permitted it to operate in absolute secrecy within Panoply.”

“How come Gaffney didn’t know about it?”

“Gaffney’s predecessor knew—we couldn’t have set it up without some cooperation from Security—but when he handed over the reins there was no need to inform Gaffney. By then the cell was self-sufficient, operating within Panoply but completely isolated from the usual mechanisms of oversight and surveillance. And that was how things continued for a couple of years.”

“What happened then?”

“There was an accident: one of the seemingly dead artefacts reactivated itself. It killed half the cell before the rest brought it under control. When the news reached me, I took the decision to shut down Firebrand. I realised then that no benefits could outweigh the risks of allowing those artefacts to remain in existence. I ordered all the remains to be destroyed, all the records to be deleted and the cell itself to be disbanded. Those involved were dispersed back to normal duties, resuming the jobs they’d never officially left.”

“And?” Dreyfus asked.

“Shortly after, I received confirmation that my orders had been implemented. The cell was no more. The artefacts had been destroyed.”

“But that was nine years ago. Why would Firebrand come up again now?”

“I don’t know.”

“Someone’s stirring up old ghosts, Jane. If Firebrand is really connected with Panoply, how did Anthony Theobald know about it?”

“We don’t know for sure that he did. That could be a rogue inference from the trawl.”

“Or it could explain why Gaffney was so interested in the Ruskin-Sartorious family,” Dreyfus said.

“You shut down that cell, Jane. But what if the cell had other ideas?” Her eyes flashed nervously.

“I’m not with you.”

“Try this on for size. The people running that cell decided their work was too important to be closed down, no matter what you thought. They told you it was all over for Firebrand. But what if they just relocated their efforts?”

“I’d have known.”

“You already told me this cell was damn near untraceable,” Dreyfus said.

“Can you really be sure they couldn’t have kept it running without your knowledge?”

“They’d never have done such a thing.”

“But what if they believed they were acting in the right? You clearly thought there was a justification for Firebrand when you started it. What if the people inside thought those reasons were still valid, even after you tried to kill it?”

“They were loyal to me,” Aumonier said.

“I don’t doubt it. But you’d already set a bad example, Jane. You’d shown them that deception was acceptable, in the interests of the common good. What if they decided that they had to deceive you, to keep the cell operational?” For a long moment Aumonier said nothing, as if Dreyfus’ words had not just stunned her, but undermined her every certainty.

“I told them to put a stop to it,” she said, so quietly that Dreyfus would not have caught the words had he not already attuned himself to her voice.

“I ordered them to end Firebrand.”

“It appears they thought differently.”

“But why would all this surface now, Tom? What does any of this have to do with Anthony Theobald, or Gaffney, or Aurora?”

“There was something in the Ruskin-Sartorious Bubble that had to be destroyed,” Dreyfus said.

“Something that even we didn’t realise was there, but which Aurora considered an impediment to her plans, something that had to be removed before she could begin the takeover.”

“You think Firebrand relocated to the Ruskin-Sartorious Bubble nine years ago.”

“If you’d pulled the plug on the cell, it would have been too difficult for them to remain operational inside Panoply, especially if something went wrong again. Too risky to relocate elsewhere in the system, either, since that would have involved travel they couldn’t easily explain away as routine Panoply business. So why not another habitat? Somewhere close enough to be easily reachable, but still discreet enough to contain something so secret even we didn’t know about it?”

“What would Anthony Theobald’s involvement have been?”

“I don’t know,” Dreyfus said, still getting things straight in his head.

“Did he have any prior connection with Firebrand?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

“Then he was probably just told to keep his mouth shut in return for certain favours. Whatever those favours were, it looks as if he was prepared to screw his own family to safeguard them. He was the only one who bailed out, just before the Bubble was destroyed. I’m assuming your cell had ready access to funds, without going through the usual channels?”

“Like I said, it was superblack. If they needed something—resources, equipment, expertise—they got it, no questions asked.”

“Then I imagine they could have made someone like Anthony Theobald very comfortable indeed.”

“He must have had advance warning that the Bubble was going to be hit,” Aumonier said.

“Or he was good at putting two and two together. According to Gaffney’s trawl, Firebrand moved out of the Bubble at the last minute. They must have received intelligence that someone was closing in on them, trying to hunt down the Clockmaker artefacts.”

“Aurora,” Aumonier said.

“Almost certainly. Whatever it was was enough to scare them out of hiding. Maybe they tipped off Anthony Theobald: get your family out of here now, while you can, that kind of thing. Then change your identities and lie low for a couple of centuries, until the trail goes cold. But Anthony Theobald obviously decided to prioritise the saving of his own neck instead.”

“Except Gaffney was cleverer.”

“We need to find out who’s still running Firebrand, Jane. Something they were holding in that Bubble scared Aurora really badly. For obvious reasons I’m interested in finding out what it was.”

“If it still exists.”

“They didn’t destroy it nine years ago. Chances are they didn’t destroy it this time, either. They moved it somewhere. Find someone with ties to Firebrand and we’ll have a shot at getting hold of the artefacts.”

“That might not be easy.”

“It’s all we have. I need names, Jane. Everyone who was part of the original Firebrand cell, when you closed it down. You remember, don’t you?”

“Of course,” she said, apparently dismayed that he even had to ask.

“I committed them to memory. What are you going to do with them?”

“Ask hard questions,” Dreyfus said.

Thalia and Parnasse were alone beneath the lowest public level of the polling core sphere. They’d been down to these corridors and rooms once before, scouting for barricade material, but the expedition had been largely fruitless. Thalia had not expected to be making a return trip into the unwelcoming space, and certainly not with the destructive intention that was now occupying her thoughts. She was grateful that Parnasse knew his way around. Although it was now full daylight outside, very little of that light reached these gloomily lit sub-levels.

“Now we go deeper,” he said, pausing to lever up a floor hatch that Thalia would never have noticed.

“Gonna be a bit dusty and dark down here, but you’ll cope. Just try not to make too much noise. The elevator, polling core conduit and stairwell rise right through this part of the sphere, and there’s only a few centimetres of material between us and them. I don’t think the machines have got this high yet, but we don’t want to take chances, do we, girl?”

“If they get this high,” Thalia said, “what’s to stop them breaking through the walls and bypassing our barricade completely?”

“Nothing, if they get the idea into their thick metal heads. That’s why it might be an idea for us not to make too much noise.” He lowered himself into the underfloor space, then extended a hand to help Thalia down.

“How did Meriel Redon take it, by the way?” she asked as she pushed her legs into the darkness.

“She thought I was taking the piss.”

Thalia’s feet touched metal flooring.

“And afterwards, when you explained it was my idea?”

“She changed her mind. She thought you were taking the piss. But I think I brought her round in the end. Like you say, it’s not as if we really want to take our chances with those servitors.”

“No,” Thalia said, grimly resigned.

“That we don’t. Did you see any sign that anyone else has noticed the military-grade machines?”

He kept his voice low.

“I don’t think so. Cuthbertson started nosing around the windows, but I managed to steer him away before he saw anything.”

“That’s good. The citizens are spooked enough as it is, without having to deal with the thought of war robots. I don’t expect I have to tell you what those machines would be capable of doing to unarmed civilians.”

“No, got enough of an imagination on me for that,” Parnasse said, taking a kind of grim pleasure in the remark.

“What do you think they’re going to do—try coming up the inside, like the others?”

“No need. These machines are designed for assault and infiltration. They wouldn’t need to climb the stairs to reach the polling core. They can come up the outside, even if they have to form a siege tower with their own bodies.”

“They don’t seem to have started climbing yet.”

“Must be evaluating the situation, working out how to take us down as quickly as possible. But we can’t count on them dithering for ever. You’d better show me where to cut.”

“This way,” Parnasse whispered, pushing Thalia’s head down so that she did not knock it against a ceiling strut.

“You might want to put those glasses of yours on,” he added.

“What about you?”

“I know my way. You just take care of yourself.”

Thalia slipped the glasses on. The image amplifier threw grainy shapes against her eyes. She clicked in the infrared overlay and locked on to Parnasse’s blob-like form, following his every move as if they were passing through a minefield. As silently as they could, they negotiated a forest of crisscrossing struts and utility ducts, descending slowly until they reached the trunk-like intrusion of the three service shafts Parnasse had already described. Thalia had a clear sense that they’d reached the base of the sphere, for she could see where the curve of the outer skin met the top of the stalk. Surrounding the cluster of service shafts was a series of heavy-looking buttresses, arcing back over Thalia’s head into the depths of the chamber. Wordlessly, Parnasse touched a finger against one of the spoke-like buttresses. It was as thick as her thigh.

“That’s what I have to cut?” she asked.

“Not just this one,” he whispered back.

“There are eighteen of these, and you’re going to have to take care of at least nine if we’re to have a hope of toppling.”

“Nine!” she hissed back.

He raised a shushing finger to his lips.

“I didn’t say you had to cut through ’em all. You cut through four or five, say two on either side of this fellow, and you cut partway through another two on either side, and that should be enough. We want to make damned sure the sphere topples in the right direction.”

“I know,” Thalia said, resenting the fact that he felt she needed reminding.

“You want that magic sword of yours?”

“No time like the present.”

Parnasse passed her the thick bundle he’d made of the whiphound. Between them, they unwrapped the insulating layers, then re-wrapped the cool outer part around the scorching-hot shaft of the handle. Her hands trembling as they had done before, Thalia took the damaged weapon and prayed that the filament would extend for her one more time.

Then she started cutting.

Not for the first time, Jane Aumonier found herself both awed and frightened by the submarine processes of her own mind. She had scarcely given the names of the Firebrand operatives more than a second’s thought in nine years, but the process of recall was as automatic and swift as some well-engineered dispensing machine. She dictated the names to Dreyfus while he scratched them into a compad, floating at the end of the safe-distance tether. He always looked awkward when writing, as if it was a skill his hands had not quite evolved for.

When he was done he left her alone, the past amok in her head, while the weevil-class war robots rampaged through the gilded plazas of Carousel New Brazilia.

Many public data feeds had been severed, but the habitat would not be completely isolated until the weevils reached the polling core. The cams would maintain their dispassionate vigilance until that final moment of transmission, even as the streets turned slippery with citizens’ blood, congealing too thickly to be absorbed by the municipal quickmatter. The war robots moved very fast once they were inside the airtight environment of the wheel-shaped structure. They tumbled out of doorways and ramps in a slurry of dark armour, their traction legs a furious grey-black blur. They whisked through plazas and atria in a rampaging column of thrashing metal, as if lumpy black tar was being poured along the alleys and boulevards of the habitat’s great public spaces, a tar that ate and dissolved people as it swept over them. It looked disorganised, almost random, until Aumonier slowed down the time rate and studied the invasion in the accelerated frame of machine perception. Then she saw how fiercely systematic the invaders were, how efficient and regimented. They cut down the citizens with brutal precision, but only when they were directly opposed. Bystanders, or those running in panic, were left quite alone provided they offered no immediate obstruction to the weevils. Local constables, recognisable by their armbands and activated from amongst the citizenry under the usual emergency measures, were taking the brunt of the casualties. The constables’ non-lethal weapons were hopelessly ineffective against the war machines, but still they tried to slow down the invading force, spraying the weevils with immobilising foam or sticky netting. Using their special constabulory authority, they tried to conjure barricades out of the ambient quickmatter, but their efforts were panicked and ineffective. The weevils barged through the obstacles as if they were no more substantial than cobwebs. Most of the constables ran for cover as soon as they’d used their weapons or conjured obstacles, but a few stood their ground and paid a predictable price. Death, when it came, was always mercifully quick—Aumonier remembered what Baudry had told them about the weevils carrying anatomical knowledge—but while there appeared to be no specific cruelty in the machines’ actions, that did not make the process of invasion any less horrific.

The polling core in Carousel New Brazilia lay at the heart of a dizzying multi-tiered atrium crisscrossed by railingless pedestrian bridges. Here the constables had converged from all over the wheel, ready for a courageous last stand. They’d taken up defensive positions around the core, covering the endpoints of all the bridges. In addition to their usual non-lethal weapons, some of them now carried heavier armaments dispensed under the emergency provisions. Aumonier watched as a trio of constables tried to assemble some kind of tripod-mounted cannon, two of them arguing over the right way to attach the angled blast screen. By the time they had the cannon operational, the weevils were already crossing the bridges from the surrounding galleries. The constables opened fire, their gun chugging silently as it spewed out low-velocity munitions, trailing banners of pink smoke. It made no practical difference. Weevils were constructed for the rigours of vacuum warfare, hardened to withstand direct hits from high-energy pulses or penetrating slugs. The constables managed to dislodge a couple of the robots, sending them plummeting from the bridges, but it was as nothing compared to the numbers still crossing. Belatedly, some of the constables realised that they had the authority to conjure gaps in the bridges, and a couple of them ran bravely out into the middle to issue the necessary close-proximity commands. The bridges puckered apart, like strands of toffee being pulled too hard.

But by then it was much too late. The weevils bridged the openings with their own bodies, locking together while other machines flowed over them. They flung the retreating constables aside, into the open space of the atrium. The constables fell with silent screams.

Then the weevils were at the polling core. Aumonier watched until the last bitter instant, until the cam feeds greyed out, filling with static and cascading error messages.

Panoply had just lost Carousel New Brazilia. Aurora now held five habitats.

Aumonier switched her attention to House Flammarion, where the weevils were only just beginning to reach the interior. Something compelled her to watch, as if the futile but dignified resistance of the constables demanded a witness, even though she could do nothing to affect the outcome. Before very long Aurora held her sixth prize.