Seyfarth stabbed the dagger in, impaling Scorpio through the other shoulder in more or less the corresponding position. Scorpio yelped in pain: a high-pitched squeal that sounded nothing like a human scream.
“I can’t claim an exhaustive knowledge of pig anatomy,” Seyfarth said. “All being well, I haven’t severed anything I shouldn’t have. But if I were you, I’d play it safe and not wriggle about too much.”
Scorpio tried to move, but gave up before the tears of pain blocked his view. Behind Seyfarth, another pair of delegates test-fired their makeshift flame-thrower. Then the whole party split into two groups and moved away into the rest of the ship, leaving Scorpio alone.
FORTY-TWO
A rapture of black machines climbed from the surface of Hela. They were small shuttles for the most part: surface-to-orbit vehicles bought, stolen, impounded and purloined from Ultras. Most had only chemical drives; a very few had fusion motors. The majority carried only one or two members of the Cathedral Guard, packed into armoured bubbles within their stripped-down skeletal chassis. They lifted from orthodox landing stages along the Way, or from concealed bunkers in the ice itself, dislodging plaques of surface frost as they fled. Some even departed from the superstructures of the Adventist cathedrals, including the Lady Morwenna. What had appeared to be small subsidiary spires or elbowed out-jutting towers were suddenly revealed as long-concealed spacecraft. Shells of mock architecture fell away like dead grey foliage. Complex cantilevered gantries swung the ships away from delicate masonry and glass before their drives lit. Domes and cupolas opened along ridge-lines, revealing ships packed tightly within, now rising on hydraulic launch platforms. When the ships hauled themselves aloft, the glare of their motors etched bright highlights and pitch-dark shadows into the ornate frippery of the architecture. Gargoyles seemed to turn their heads, their jaws lolling in wonderment and surprise. Below, the cathedrals trembled at the violent departure of so much mass. But when the ships had gone, the cathedrals were still there, little changed.
In seconds, the ships of the Guard had reached orbit; in several more seconds they had identified and signalled their brethren who were already parked around Hela. From every direction, drives flicked on to engagement thrust. The ships grouped into formations, stacked themselves into assault waves and commenced their run towards the Nostalgia for Infinity.
Even as the ships of the Cathedral Guard were leaving Hela, another spacecraft settled on to the pad of the Lady Morwenna, parking alongside the larger shuttle that had brought the Ultra delegates down from their lighthugger.
Grelier sat inside the cockpit for several minutes, flicking ivory-tipped toggle switches and making sure that vital systems would continue to tick over even in his absence. The cathedral was alarmingly close to the bridge now, and he had no plans to stay aboard once it had commenced the crossing. He would find an excuse to leave: Clocktower duty, something to do with Bloodwork. There were dozens of likely reasons he could give. And if the dean decided that he would much rather have the surgeon-general’s company for the crossing, then Grelier would just have to do a runner and smooth things over later. If, of course, there turned out to be a later. But the one thing he did not want to have to wait for was for his ship to go through its pre-flight cycle.
He snapped his helmet on, gathered his belongings and cycled through the airlock. Outside, standing on the pad, he had to admit that the view was awesome. He could see the point where the land just ended, that vast cliff edge towards which they were sliding. Unstoppable now, he thought. Under any circumstances even slowing the progress of the Lady Morwenna was a matter of labyrinthine bureaucratic procedure. It could take many hours for the paperwork to filter down to the Motive Power technicians who actually had their hands on the motor controls. More often than not, conditioned to believe that the cathedral should never slow, they queried their orders, sending the paperwork echoing back up through the chain of command, resulting in more hours of delay. And what the cathedral needed now was not to slow down but to come to a complete standstill. Grelier shuddered: he didn’t want to think about how long it would take for that to happen.
Something caught his eye. He looked up, seeing countless sparks zip across the sky. Dozens—no, hundreds—of ships. What was going on?
Then he looked towards the horizon and saw the much larger bulk of the lighthugger, a small but visibly elongated sliver of twinkling iron-grey. The other ships were obviously heading towards it.
Something was up.
Grelier turned from the shuttle, anxious to make his way indoors and find out what was happening. Then he noticed the smudge of red on the end of his cane. He thought he had cleaned it thoroughly before leaving the settlement in the Vi-grid region, but evidently he had been remiss.
Tutting to himself, he wiped the end of the cane against the frost-covered surface of the landing pad, leaving smears of pink.
Then he set off to find the dean, for he had interesting news to deliver.
Orca Cruz saw the two Adventists before the rest of her party. They were at the end of a wide, low-ceilinged corridor, one against each wall, moving towards her with the measured pace of sleepwalkers.
Cruz turned to the three Security Arm officers behind her. “Minimum necessary force,” she said quietly. “Bayonets and stun-prods only. This lot don’t have a flame-gun, and I’d really like to do some questioning.”
The Arm unit nodded in unison. They all knew what Cruz meant by that.
She started towards the Adventists, pushing the sharp blade of her weapon before her. The Adventists had little armour now. Garbled reports from the other elements of the Security Arm—the same messages that had warned her about the flame-throwers—had suggested that they had removed their vacuum suits, but she had not been prepared to believe it until she saw it with her own eye. But they hadn’t discarded the armour entirely: they carried jagged bits, of it in their hands, and had lashed large curved parts to their chests. They still wore their metal glovesand pink-plumed helmets.
She admired the thinking behind their strategy. Once a boarding party had reached this far inside a lighthugger, armour was largely superfluous. Ultras would be very unwilling to deploy energy weapons against boarders even if they knew themselves to be safely distant from vacuum or ship-critical systems. The instinct not to harm their own ship was just too deeply ingrained, even when the ship was under threat of takeover. And aboard a ship like the Nostalgia for Infinity—with every inch of the ship’s fabric wired into the Captain’s nervous system—that instinct was all the stronger. They had all seen what happened when some accident inflicted a wound in the ship; they had all felt the Captain’s pain.
Cruz advanced down the corridor. “Put down your weapons,” she called. “You know you can’t succeed.”
“Put down your weapons,” one of the Adventists replied, chidingly. “We only want your ship. No one will be harmed, and the ship will be returned to you.”
“You could have asked nicely,” Cruz said.
“Would you have been likely to agree?”
“Not very,” she said, after a moment’s reflection.
“Then I think we have nothing else to say to each other.”
Cruz’s party moved forwards to within ten metres of the Adventists. She noticed that one of them was not in fact wearing a gauntlet at all; his hand was artificial. She remembered him: Scorpio had gone to extra pains to make sure the hand did not contain an anti-matter bomb.