Did the harshness lessen? “We would be … But I have other weapons now.”
The Cockatoo’s commons was small and stark. Two cyborg studs sat on the benches. Another stood on the steps beside the door to his projection chamber.
Sharp-featured men in white uniforms, they reminded Lorq of another crew he had worked. On their shoulders they wore the scarlet emblem of Red-shift, Ltd. They glanced at Lorq and Ruby. The one standing stepped back into his chamber and the plate door clanged in the high room. The other two got up to go.
“Will Prince come down?”
Ruby nodded toward the iron stair. “He’ll see you in the captain’s cabin.”
Lorq began to climb. His sandals clacked on the perforated steps. Ruby followed him.
He knocked on the studded door.
It swung in, Lorq stepped inside, and a metal and plastic gauntlet on a jointed arm telescoped from the ceiling and struck him across the face, twice.
Lorq reeled against the door—it was covered in leather on the inside and set with brass heads—so that it slammed.
“That,” the corpse announced, “is for manhandling my sister.”
Lorq rubbed his cheek and looked at Ruby. She stood by the jade wall. The draping valences were the same deep wine as her cloak.
“Do you think I don’t watch everything that goes on the ship?” asked the corpse. “You Pleiades barbarians are as uncouth as Aaron always said you were.”
Bubbles rose in the tank, caressed the stripped and naked foot, caught and clustered on the shriveled groin, rolled up the chest-ribs scored between blackened flaps of skin—and fanned about the burned, bald head. The lipless mouth gaped on broken teeth. No nose. Tubes and wires snaked the rotten sockets. Tubes pierced at belly, hip, and shoulder. Fluids swirled in the tank and the single arm drifted back and forth, charred fingers locked with rigor mortis in a claw.
“Weren’t you ever told it was impolite to stare? You are staring, you know.”
The voice came from a speaker in the glass wall.
“I’m afraid I sustained a bit more damage than Ruby back on the other world.”
Above the tank two mobile cameras shifted as Lorq stepped from the door.
“For someone who owns Red-shift Limited, your turn to match orbits wasn’t very …” The banality did not mask Lorq’s astonishment.
Cables for running the ship were plugged into sockets set on the tank’s glass face. The glass itself was part of the wall. The cables coiled over black and gold tiles to disappear into the coppery grill covering the computer face.
On walls, floor, and ceiling, in opulent frames, ethric disturbance screens all showed the same face of night: At the edge of each was the gray shape of the Roc.
Centered on each was the star.
“Alas,” the corpse said, “I was never the sportsman you were. Still, you wanted to speak to me. What do you have to say?”
Again Lorq looked at Ruby. “I’ve said most of it to Ruby, Prince. You heard it.”
“Somehow I doubt you’d drag us both out here to the brink of a stellar catastrophe just to tell us that. Illyrion, Lorq Von Ray. Neither you nor I have forgotten your major purpose for coming here. You will not leave without telling where you intend to get—“
The star went nova.
The inevitable is that unprepared for.
In the first second the images about them changed from points to floodlights. And the floodlights got brighter.
Ruby backed against the wall, arm across her eyes.
“It’s early!” the corpse shouted. “It’s days early …”
Lorq took three steps across the room, yanked two plugs from the tank, and fixed them in his wrists. The third plug he twisted into his spinal socket. The play of the ship surged through him. Sensory input came in. His vision of the room was overlaid with the night. And night was catching fire.
Wresting control from the studs, he swung the Cockatoo around to point her toward the node of light. The ship plunged forward.
Twin cameras swiveled to focus him.
“Lorq, what are you doing?” Ruby cried.
“Stop him!” from the corpse. “He’s flying us into the sun!” Ruby leaped at Lorq, caught him. They turned together, staggered. The chamber and the sun outside fixed on his eyes like a double exposure. She caught up a loop of cable, flung it around his neck, twisted it, and began to strangle him. The cable housing chewed his neck. He locked his arm behind her, and pushed his other hand against her face. She grunted, and her head went back (his hand pushed at the center of the light). Her hair slipped, came loose; the wig fell from her burned scalp. She had only used the medico to return health. The cosmetic plasti-skin with which she had restored her face tore between his fingers. Rubbery film pulled from her blotched and hollowed cheek. Lorq suddenly jerked his hand away. As her ruined face screamed toward him through fire, he ripped her hands from his neck and pushed her away. Ruby went backwards, tripped on her cloak, fell. He turned just as the mechanical hand swung down at him from the ceiling.
He caught it.
And it had less than human strength.
Easily he held it at arm’s length as the fingers grasped from the raging star. “Stop!” he bellowed. At the same time he willed the sensory input off all over the ship.
The screens went gray.
The sensory input had always been clamped off on all six of the ship’s cyborg studs.
The fires went out in his eyes.
“What in heaven are you trying to do, Lorq?”
“Dive into hell and fish Illyrion out with my bare hands!”
“He’s insane!” the corpse shrieked. “Ruby, he’s insane! He’s killing us, Ruby! That’s all he wants to do, kill us!”
“Yes! I’m killing you!” Lorq tossed the hand away. It grasped at the cable hanging from his wrist to jerk the plug. Lorq caught the arm again; the ship lurched.
“For God’s sake, pull us out, Lorq!” the corpse cried. “Pull us out of here!”
The ship jerked again. The artificial gravity slipped long enough for liquid to streak on the tank face, then bead the glass as gravity righted.
“It’s too late,” Lorq whispered. “We’re caught in gravity spin!”
“Why are you doing this?”
“Just to kill you, Prince.” Lorq’s face raged till laughter spilled it. “That’s all, Prince! That’s all I want to do now.”
“I don’t want to die again!” the corpse shrieked. “I don’t want to flash out like an insect burning!”
“Flash?” Lorq’s face twisted about the scar. “Oh no! It’ll be slow, slower than before. Ten, twenty minutes at least. It’s already getting warm, isn’t it? But it won’t be unbearable for another five.” Below the gold blaze Lorq’s face darkened. Spittle flecked his lips with each consonant. “You’ll boil in your jar like a fish—“ He stopped to rub his stomach beneath his vest. He looked around the chamber. “What can burn in here? The drapes? Is your desk real wood? And all those papers?”
The mechanical hand yanked from Lorq’s. The arm swung across the room. The fingers seized Ruby’s hand. “No, Ruby! Stop him! Don’t let him kill us!”
“You’re in liquid, Prince, so you’ll see them afire before you go. Ruby, the places where you’re already burned won’t be able to sweat. So you’ll die first. He’ll be able to watch you a few moments before his own fluids begin to boil, the rubber runs, the plastic melts—“
“No!” The hand jerked from Ruby’s, swung across the room, and smashed into the tank face. “Criminal! Thief! Pirate! Murderer! Murderer! No – !”
The hand was weaker than it had been at Taafite.
So was the glass.
The glass broke.