Rashmika turned from them, and then began to make her way back towards the bridge.
SIXTEEN
The shuttle came to a halt, hovering a few metres above the water. The rescue team assembled in the rear bay, waiting as the first boat—still tethered to the shuttle—was lowered gently on to the surface of the water. The sea was vast and dark in all directions, but also calm, apart from the area immediately within the thermal footprint of the shuttle. There was no wind, nor any indication of unusual Juggler activity, and the sea currents in this region were at their usual seasonal ebb. The iceberg would barely have moved between updates from the mapping network.
Once the boat had stabilised, the first three members of the team were lowered individually on to its decking. Scorpio went down first, followed by a male Security Arm officer called Jac-cottet, with Khouri completing the trio. Rations, weapons and equipment were lowered down in scuffed metal boxes, then quickly stowed in waterproof hatches along the sides of the boat. The last thing to go in was the portable incubator, a transparent box with an opaque base and carrying handle. This was secured with particular care, almost as if it already held a child.
The first boat was then unhitched, allowing Scorpio to steer it clear of the shuttle. The whine of its battery-driven motor cut across the loud simmer of the hovering shuttle. The second boat was then lowered down and allowed to settle. Vasko watched as another Security Arm officer—a woman named Urton—was lowered down into it, followed by Clavain. The old man teetered at first, but quickly found his sea legs. Then it was Vasko’s turn to be lowered down, helped by Blood. Vasko had expected that the other pig would be joining them on the operation, but Scorpio had ordered him to return to First Camp, to take care of things there. Scorpio’s only concession had been to let Blood come this far, to help with the loading of the boats.
The final boxes of equipment were lowered down, causing the boat to sink even more worryingly low in the water. The instant it was unhitched, the Security Arm woman had it speeding over to join Scorpio’s craft. The hulls chafed and squealed together. Minutes of whispered activity followed while items were transferred from craft to craft, until they were evenly trimmed.
“You ready for this?” Urton asked Vasko. “It’s not too late to back out, you know.”
She had been on his case from the moment they had met, during mission-planning sessions back on the Nostalgia for Infinity. Before that, their paths had barely crossed: like Jaccottet, she had only ever been another Arm operative to Vasko, with a few years of seniority on him.
“You seem to have a particular problem with me being on this mission,” he said, as calmly as he could. “Is it something personal?”
“Some of us have earned the right to be here,” she said. “That’s all.”
“And you think I haven’t?”
“You did a small favour for the pig,” she said, keeping her voice low. “Because of that you ended up embroiled in something bigger than you. That doesn’t mean you automatically earn my undying respect.”
“I’m not really interested in your respect,” Vasko said. “What I’m interested in is your professional co-operation.”
“You needn’t worry about that,” she said.
He started to say something, but she had already turned away, levering a heavy Breitenbach cannon into locking stanchions set along one side of the boat.
Vasko did not know what he had done to earn her hostility. Was it simply the fact that he was younger and less experienced? Sighing, he busied himself by helping to check and stow the equipment. It was not pleasant work: all the delicate tackle—the weapons, navigation and communication devices—had been lathered in a revolting opaque grey mucous layer of protective unguent. It kept getting all over his hands, breaking free in sticky ropes.
Swearing under his breath, wiping the muck off on to his knees, he barely noticed as the shuttle yawed away, leaving them alone at sea.
They slid across kilometres of mirror-flat water. The cloud layer had broken up in patches, opening ragged windows in the deep black sky. There were stars visible now, but it was one of those comparatively rare nights when none of Ararat’s moons were above the horizon. Lamps provided their only illumination. The boats kept within metres of each other, scudding side by side, the whine of their motors not quite loud enough to hinder conversation. Vasko had decided early in the expedition that his best course of action—having apparently won the grudging approval, of Clavain—would be to say as little as possible. Besides, he had plenty to think about. He sat near the back of the second boat, squatting on the gunwale, loading and unloading a weapon in a kind of mindless loop, burning the action into the muscle memory of his hands so that it would happen without thought when he needed it to. For the hundredth time since they had set out, he wondered if it would actually come to violence. Perhaps the whole thing would be revealed to be a colossal misunderstanding, nothing more.
In Vasko’s opinion, however, that was rather unlikely.
They had all read Khouri’s testimony; had all sat in on the session while she was cross-examined. Much of what had been discussed had meant little to Vasko, but as the argument and interrogation had continued, a picture had begun to form in his mind.
What was clear was this: Ana Khouri had returned from the computational matrix of the Hades neutron star with Thorn dead and his unborn child in her belly. Even then, she had known what Aura signified: that the unborn girl was not merely her child, but an agent of the ancient minds—human and alien—trapped within the sanctuary of the Hades matrix. Aura was a gift to humanity, her mind loaded with information capable of making a difference in the war against the Inhibitors. In Sylveste’s case—and it seemed likely that she carried some of his memories in addition to the reserves of knowledge—she was an act of atonement.
Khouri knew also that Aura’s information had to be accessed as quickly as possible if it was going to mean anything. They did not have time to wait for her to be born, let alone for her to grow up and begin talking.
With Khouri’s permission, therefore, Remontoire had sent droves of surgical remotes into the heads of mother and child while Aura was still inside Khouri’s womb. The drones had established Conjoiner-type implants in both Aura and Khouri, enabling them to share thoughts and experiences. Khouri had become Aura’s mouthpiece and eyes: she had found herself dreaming Aura’s dreams, unwilling or unable to define precisely where Aura ended and she began. Her child’s thoughts were leaking into her own, permeating them to the point where no concrete division existed.
But the thoughts and experiences had remained difficult to interpret. Khouri’s daughter was still an unborn child; the structures of her mind were tentative and half-formed, her mental model of the external universe necessarily vague. Khouri had done her best to interpret the signals, but despite her efforts only a fraction of the things she was picking up were intelligible. But even that fraction had turned out to be of vital importance. Following clues from Aura—sifting jewellike nuggets from a slurry of confusing signals—Remontoire had made drastic improvements to his arsenal of weapons and instruments. If nothing else, Aura’s potential significance was becoming obvious.
But that was when Skade had entered the affair.
She had arrived in the Delta Pavonis system long after the Inhibitors had completed their torching of Resurgam and the other planets. Quickly she had established lines of negotiation with the human elements still present after the departure of the Nostalgia for Infinity. Her ultimate objective remained the recovery of as many of the old Conjoiner-built cache weapons as possible. But with her own fleet damaged, and with the Inhibitors themselves gathering en masse, Skade was in no position to take what she wanted by brute force.