“A shroud,” Doctor Grellet said.
“Someone else will get the pleasure of naming it,” I said. “Our concern is what it will do. I’ve ordered the launch of a small instrument package, aimed straight at the object. It’s nothing too scientific—we’re not equipped for that. Just a redundant spacesuit with some sensors. But it will give us an idea what to expect.”
“When will it arrive?”
“In a little under twenty-six hours.”
“You should have consulted with the revival party before taking this action, captain,” Doctor Grellet said.
“Why?”
“You’ve fired a missile at an object of unknown origin. You know it isn’t a missile, and so do we. But the object?”
“We don’t know that it has a mind,” I responded.
“Yet,” Doctor Grellet said.
I spent the next six hours with Struma, reviewing the condition of the ship at first-hand. We travelled up and down the length of the hull, inside and out, cataloguing the damage and making sure there were no additional surprises. Inside was bearable. But while we were outside, travelling in single-person inspection pods, I had that black wall at my back the whole time.
“Are you sure there weren’t easier ways of containing them, other than peppering the ship with blast holes?”
“Have you had a lot of experience with Conjoiner uprisings, Captain?”
“Not especially.”
“I studied the tactics they used on Mars, back at the start of the last century. They’re ruthless, unafraid of death, and totally uninterested in surrender.”
“Mars was ancient history, Struma.”
“Lessons can still be drawn. You can’t treat them as a rational adversary, willing to accept a negotiated settlement. They’re more like a nerve gas, trying to reach you by any means. Our objective was to push them back into an area of the ship that we could seal and vent if needed. We succeeded—but at a cost to the ship.” From the other inspection pod, cruising parallel to mine, his face regarded me with a stern and stoic resolve. “It had to be done. I didn’t like any part of it. But I also knew the ship was fully capable of repairing itself.”
“It’s a good job we have all the time in the world,” I said, cocking my own head at the black surface. At our present rate of drift it was three kilometres nearer for every minute that passed.
“What would you have had me do?” Struma asked. “Allow them to complete their takeover, and butcher the rest of us?”
“You don’t know that that was their intention.”
“I do,” Struma said. “Because Magadis told me.”
I let him enjoy his moment before replying.
“Who is Magadis?”
“The one we captured. I wouldn’t call her a leader. They don’t have leaders, as such. But they do have command echelons, figures trusted with a higher level of intelligence processing and decision-making. She’s one of them.”
“You didn’t mention this until now?”
“You asked for priorities, Captain. I gave you priorities. Anyway, Magadis got knocked around when she was captured. She’s been in and out of consciousness ever since, not always lucid. She has no value as a hostage, so her ultimate usefulness to us isn’t clear. Perhaps we should just kill her now and be done with it.”
“I want to see her.”
“I thought you might,” Struma said.
Our pods steered for the open aperture of a docking bay.
By the time I got to Magadis she was awake and responsive. Struma and the other officers had secured her in a room at the far end of the ship from the other Conjoiners, and then arranged an improvised cage of electrostatic baffles around the room’s walls, to screen out any possible neural traffic between Magadis and the other Conjoiners.
They had her strapped into a couch, taking no chances with that. She was shackled at the waist, the upper torso, the wrists, ankles and neck. Stepping into that room, I still felt unnerved by her close proximity. I had never distrusted Conjoiners before, but Struma’s mention of Mars had unlocked a head’s worth of rumour and memory. Bad things had been done to them, but they had not been shy in returning the favour. They were human, too, but only at the extreme edge of the definition. Human physiology, but boosted for a high tolerance of adverse environments. Human brain structure, but infiltrated with a cobweb of neural enhancements, far beyond anything carried by Demarchists. Their minds were cross-linked, their sense of identity blurred across the glassy boundaries of skulls and bodies.
That was why Magadis was useless as a hostage. Only part of her was present to begin with, and that part—the body, the portion of her mind within it—would be deemed expendable. Some other part of Magadis was still back with the other Conjoiners.
I approached her. She was thin, all angles and edges. Her limbs, what I could see of them beyond the shackles, were like folded blades, ready to flick out and wound. Her head was hairless, with a distinct cranial ridge. She was bruised and cut, one eye so badly swollen and slitted that I could not tell if it had been gouged out or still remained.
But the other eye fixed me well enough.
“Captain.” She formed the word carefully, but there was blood on her lips and when she opened them I saw she had lost several teeth and her tongue was badly swollen.
“Magadis. I’m told that’s your name. My officers tell me you attempted to take over my ship. Is that true?”
My question seemed to amuse and disappoint her in equal measure.
“Why ask?”
“I’d like to know before we all die.”
Behind me, one of the officers had an excimer rifle pointed straight at Magadis’s head.
“We distrusted your ability to conduct an efficient examination of the artefact,” she said.
“Then you knew of it in advance.”
“Of course.” She nodded demurely, despite the shackle around her throat. “But only the barest details. A stellar-size object, clearly artificial, clearly of alien origin. It demanded our interest. But the present arrangements limited our ability to conduct intelligence gathering under our preferred terms.”
“We have an arrangement. Had, I should say. More than a century of peaceful cooperation. Why have you endangered everything?”
“Because this changes everything.”
“You don’t even know what it is.”
“We have gathered and transmitted information back to our mother nests. They will analyse the findings accordingly, when the signals reach them. But let us not delude ourselves, Captain. This is an alien technology—a demonstration of physics beyond either of our present conceptual horizons. Whichever human faction understands even a fraction of this new science will leave the others in the dust of history. Our alliance with the Demarchists has served us well, as it has been of benefit to you. But all things must end.”
“You’d risk war, just for a strategic advantage?”
She squinted from her one good eye, looking puzzled. “What other sort of advantage is there?”
“I could—should—kill you now, Magadis. And the rest of your Conjoiners. You’ve done enough to give me the right.”
She lifted her head. “Then do so.”
“No. Not until I’m certain you’ve exhausted your usefulness to me. In five and half days we hit the object. If you want my clemency, start thinking of ways we might stop that happening.”
“I’ve considered the situation,” Magadis said. “There are no grounds for hope, Captain. You may as well execute me. But save a shot for yourself, won’t you? You may come to appreciate it.”
We spent the remainder of that first day confirming what we already knew. The ship was crippled, committed to its slow but deadly drift in the direction of the object.