‘I know many things,’ said the dragon cryptically. ‘In the morning, your companion will release you.’
‘He already told me that,’ hissed Carver, squeezing his eyes closed and willing himself to sleep again. He didn’t want this, couldn’t fucking take this. . . He felt a pressure building inside his skull, as if somebody were squeezing it as hard as they could, one hand on each side of his head. It was the pressure he had felt that day, back on Aitama, that day when he’d first seen her at the spaceport bar, with one of those cherub-faced brats on the end of each arm. It hadn’t stopped that time until they were all dead, their perfect bodies lying in smashed and butchered pieces all around him. How would he stop it now? ‘No. . .’ he wheezed again, desperate for it to end, desperate for this fucking voice to stop.
‘I told him to wait until the morning,’ said the dragon insistently. ‘But I didn’t tell him why.’
The dragon paused, and Carver sensed that it required a response from him. In the vain hope that he could accelerate the end of this episode, he gave one: ‘Why?’ Ohhh. . . my head. . . stop talking to me. . .
‘Because I wanted to speak with you first,’ said the dragon. ‘About what comes next.’ It paused again, as if to make sure that he was listening. ‘My emissary has failed me,’ it continued.
‘Failed?’ asked Carver weakly.
‘That’s right,’ replied the dragon. ‘My old emissary,’ it added significantly. ‘He has shown that he is not as committed to me as he claimed. He has not carried out some of the more difficult tasks I have set him. He has, however, laid a fair foundation for our next phase. You, Prisoner Carver, are to be my new emissary.’
‘Me?’ breathed Carver, wishing he could close his ears against that pervasive, persuasive voice. There was something convincing about it, something beguiling. And worse than that, there was a hunger in it, too.
‘In the morning, as I have instructed, he will set you free. . .’
‘Yes?’
‘And you are to kill him.’
There was silence for a moment, a pregnant silence full of sinister potential. Carver’s aching, swelling brain began to churn furiously, rusty gears grinding and meshing, crunching and turning. ‘Yes. . .’ he breathed. He opened his eyes again, turning over on the chair so that he could see the slumbering form of the crazy dragon-man next to him. The crazy dragon-man wriggled in his sleep and started to snore softly. Carver began to smile — a slowly-spreading vulpine snarl of a grin. His head was fucking pulsing now. It felt like a fucking battery. It felt good.
‘I know you have been wanting to,’ explained the dragon. ‘And tomorrow I would like you to do so. Go to town, if you like. Fuck him up severely, as you might say yourself.’
‘Yes,’ whispered Carver, putting a hand to his mouth to stifle a giggle.
‘And then. . .’ said the dragon, ‘. . . then we can talk about what comes next. We have great works to do, you and I.’
‘Great works,’ said Carver, feeling darkly empowered yet somehow confused at the same time. He saw a twining, living darkness, a room of shattered flesh, the crazy dragon-man crying out and shielding his face, a hundred images of death and hell that bled together into one indiscernible whole.
‘Now sleep, my emissary,’ said the dragon soothingly. Carver felt his eyes close again at once. It was hard to resist that voice. Hell, he no longer wanted to resist that voice. It seemed to know what it was talking about. Dragon, he thought vaguely as he sank back towards sleep. My dragon. . .
Chapter Thirty-Three
Lina looked around at the assembled group. Halman’s Council of War, she thought without amusement. Collectively, they looked intent and tired, like scientists who’d worked through the night on some desperate weapons project. Only Hobbes had retained his usual well-groomed veneer. Si had once accused him of being an experimental robot on the run from Platini, and looking at him now, Lina could have actually believed it.
Disbelief aboard Macao had gone from height to height: the news of Eli’s attempted framing of Nik, his sabotage of the station, his murder of Jayce and Tamzin. . . Surreal was really too weak a word for it. Now here they were, planning some insane deep-space commando mission in the bunker-like darkness of Halman’s office.
Alphe, now technically the senior member of the maintenance division, unfurled the sheet of plastic across Halman’s desk, weighting the corners down with metal coasters. Everyone craned to see as best they could.
‘More light!’ demanded Halman, squinting into the schematic and beckoning to Amy Stone, who passed him her own torch. Halman placed it on its base in the centre of the plastic sheet like a lantern. ‘Right!’ he said, turning his attention back to the diagram.
‘It isn’t easy,’ said Alphe after a while. Lina mentally awarded him the most-obvious-statement-of-the-day trophy. His eyes were bleary and bloodshot in his honest farmer’s face and his pale brow was smudged with machine-oil, as was so often the case with Alphe.
‘No,’ agreed Halman, whom Lina suspected was only managing to extract the basest level of information from the technical drawing. She didn’t think she’d ever seen him concentrate so intently before. ‘Why can’t we just float through the personnel hatch in suits?’
Alphe shook his head. ‘Because it’ll be locked from the inside. And if we did manage to pop it, then the airlock might not be closed properly behind it. It’s too risky.’
‘Hmm. . .’ went Halman. ‘I thought that might be too simple.’ He continued to frown into the schematic, the lines in his brow deepening. ‘If the only docking point is full, as Lina says, then. . . what? Can we cut our way in somewhere?’
‘How?’ asked Alphe, running one hand through his dark hair, sending up a small puff of dust. One of his fingers was wrapped in an unhygienic-looking bandage. He looked tired and out of his depth. He hadn’t taken the news of Nik’s death well at all. It had been bad enough when people had believed that Nik had been sabotaging the station. Now that Nik had been proven innocent of any wrongdoing, Alphe was clearly devastated. Usually, he was one of the calmest and most gentle people Lina had ever known, but now he was full of anger. She could see it beneath the features of his face like a subcutaneous shadow. ‘What could we cut with?’ he asked, shaking his head. His hands rested on the table at either side of the schematic — two clenched fists, knuckles white.
Ilse Reno stepped up to the table, elbowing her way in. She looked at the schematic a little disdainfully, her eye implant red in the red light. ‘How about the Kays?’ she asked, looking around the assembled faces: Lina, Liu, Alphe, Amy, Halman, Hobbes, Ella. ‘Aren’t they made for cutting?’ She waited and let them think about this. Lina tried to envision the process of latching onto the hull of the shuttle, mentally configuring the tool arms to apply enough force. She was pretty sure she could make it work, as long as the shuttle’s hull wasn’t too thick.
‘Hmmm. . .’ mused Alphe, one finger playing thoughtfully with his lower lip. ‘It’s possible. I mean, we could cut a hole, probably, as long as we could anchor on, but. . . It’s getting people in there that’s the thing, and getting the shuttle away. We’d compromise the pressure if we cut into it, cause a blow-out. . .’ His face furrowed. ‘There has to be a way. . .’ he said, seemingly to himself.