Redemption Ark

‘Yes. We’re near the bridge.’ Clavain pointed one way. ‘But the reefersleep chamber is down here. If she has Felka frozen, that’s where she might be. We’ll check it first.’

‘We’ve got twenty minutes, then we have to be out.’

Clavain knew that the time limit was, in a sense, artificially imposed. Zodiacal Light could backtrack and recover the shuttle even if they delayed their departure, but only at a wasteful expenditure of time, one that would instil a lethal seed of complacency into the rest of the crew. He had considered the risks and concluded that it would be better for all three of them to die — or at least be marooned here — rather than let that happen. Their deputies and sub-deputies could continue the operation even if Remontoire did not make it back alive, and they had to believe that every second really counted. As indeed it did. It was tough. But that was war, and it was a long way from the toughest decision Clavain had ever had to make.

They worked their way down to the reefersleep chamber.

‘Something ahead,’ Scorpio said, after they had crawled and clambered wordlessly for several minutes.

Clavain slowed his progress, peering into the same red gloom, envious of Scorpio’s augmented eyesight. ‘Looks like a body,’ he said.

They approached it carefully, pulling themselves along from one padded wall-staple to another. Clavain was mindful of every minute that elapsed; every half-minute of each minute; every cruel second.

They reached the body.

‘Do you recognise it?’ Scorpio asked, fascinated.

‘I’m not sure whether anyone would be able to recognise it for certain,’ Clavain said, ‘but it isn’t Felka. I don’t think it could have been Skade, either.’

Something dreadful had happened to the body. It had been sliced down the middle, exactly and neatly, in the fastidious fashion of an anatomical model. The interior organs were packed into tightly coiled or serpentine formations, glistening like glazed sweetmeats. Scorpio reached out a gloved trotter and pushed the half-figure; it drifted slackly away from the slick walling where it had come to rest.

‘Where do you think the rest of it is?’ he asked.

‘Somewhere else,’ Clavain replied. ‘This half must have drifted here.’

‘What did that to it? I’ve seen what beam-weapons can do and it isn’t nice, but there isn’t any sign of scorching on this body.’

‘It was a causal gradient,’ said a third voice.

‘Skade…’ Clavain breathed.

She was behind them. She had approached with inhuman silence, not even breathing. Her armoured bulk filled the corridor, black as night save for the pale oval of her face.

‘Hello, Clavain. And hello, Scorpio, too, I suppose.’ She looked at him with mild interest. ‘So you didn’t die then, pig?’

‘Actually, Clavain was just pointing out how lucky 1 am to have met the Conjoiners.’

‘Sensible Clavain.’

Clavain looked at her, horrified and awestruck at the same time. Remontoire had forewarned him about Skade’s accident, but that warning had been insufficient to prepare him for this meeting. Her mechanical armour was androform, even — in an exaggerated, faintly medieval way — feminine, swelling at the hips and with the suggestion of breasts moulded into the chest plate. But Clavain knew now that it was not armour at all but a life-support prosthesis; that the only organic part of her was her head. Skade’s crested skull was plugged stiffly into the neckpiece of the armour. The brutal conjunction of flesh and machinery screamed wrongness, a wrongness that became even more acute when Skade smiled.

‘You did this to me,’ she said, obviously speaking aloud for Scorpio’s benefit. ‘Aren’t you proud?’

‘I didn’t do it to you, Skade. 1 know exactly what happened. I hurt you, and I’m sorry it happened that way. But it wasn’t intentional and you know it.’

‘So your defection was involuntary? If only it were that easy.’

‘I didn’t cut your head off, Skade,’ Clavain said. ‘By now Delmar could have healed the injuries I gave you. You’d be whole again. But that didn’t fit with your plans.’

‘You dictated my plans, Clavain. You and my loyalty to the Mother Nest.’

‘I don’t question your loyalty, Skade. I just wonder exactly what it is you’re loyal to.’

Scorpio whispered, ‘Thirteen minutes, Clavain. Then we have to be out of here.’

Skade’s attention snapped on to the pig. ‘In a hurry, are you?’

‘Aren’t we all?’ Scorpio said.

‘You’ve come for something. I don’t doubt that your weapons could already have destroyed Nightshade were that your intention.’

‘Give me Felka,’ Clavain said. ‘Give me Felka, then we’ll leave you alone.’

‘Does she mean that much to you, Clavain, that you’d have held back from destroying me when you had the chance?’

‘She means a great deal to me, yes.’

Skade’s crest rippled with turquoise and orange. ‘I’ll give you Felka, if it makes you leave. But first I want to show you something.’