Khouri, who had by now assimilated the situation, observed that the rain of blood—which had now ceased—had originated from Sajaki. He looked in a bad way, cradling one arm as if it was broken or as if he had taken a hit.
“Ilia,” Khouri said, “you started all the fun without me. I’m disappointed.”
“Events rather demanded it,” Volyova said.
Khouri looked at the display, trying to figure out what had happened beyond the ship. “Did the weps fire?”
“No; I never gave the order.”
“And now she can’t,” Sylveste said. “Because Hegazi just destroyed her bracelet.”
“Does that mean he’s on our side?”
“No,” Volyova said. “It just means he can’t stand the sight of blood. Especially when it’s Sajaki’s.”
“He needs help,” Pascale said. “For God’s sake, you can’t just let him bleed to death.”
“He won’t,” Volyova said. “He’s chimeric, like Hegazi—just not so obviously. Already the medichines in his blood will be initiating cellular repair at a vastly accelerated rate. Even if the bracelet had taken his hand off, he’d have grown another one. Isn’t that right, Sajaki?”
He looked at her with a face so drained of strength that it looked as if he’d have trouble growing a new fingernail, let alone a new hand. But eventually he nodded.
“Someone should still help me to the infirmary—there’s nothing magical about my medichines; they have their limitations. And my pain receptors are alive and well, trust me.”
“He’s right,” Hegazi said. “You shouldn’t overestimate the capabilities of his “chines. Do you want him dead or not? You’d better decide now. I can help him to the infirmary.”
“And stop off for a browse at the warchive on the way?” Volyova shook her head. “Thanks, but no thanks.”
“Then me,” Sylveste said. “I’ll take him. You trust me that far, don’t you?”
“I trust you about as far as I could piss you, svinoi,” Volyova said. “But on the other hand, you wouldn’t know what to do at the warchive even if you got there. And Sajaki isn’t in a fit state to give you any particularly cogent suggestions.”
“Is that a yes?”
“Be quick about it, Dan.” Volyova emphasised the point with a stab of the needler, her finger tense on the trigger. “If you aren’t back here in ten minutes I’m sending Khouri after you.”
In a minute the two men had left, Sajaki slumped on Sylveste, barely capable of walking without support from the other man. Khouri wondered if Sajaki would still be conscious by the time he was brought to the infirmary, and found that she did not particularly care.
“About the warchive,” she said. “I don’t think you have to worry too much about anyone else using it. I shot the fucking place to bits as soon as I had what I wanted.”
Volyova mulled on that and then nodded appreciatively.
“That was sound tactical thinking, Khouri.”
“Tactics didn’t come into it. It was that persona running the place. I just decided to open up and torch the bastard.”
Pascale said, “Does this mean we’ve won? I mean, have we actually achieved what we set out to do?”
“Guess so,” Khouri said. “Sajaki’s out of the picture, and I don’t think our friend Hegazi is going to make too much trouble for himself. And it doesn’t look like your husband is going to keep his word about killing us all if he doesn’t get what he wants.”
“How very disappointing,” Hegazi said.
“I told you,” Pascale said. “He was always bluffing. That’s it, then? We can still call off those weapons, can’t we?” She was looking at Volyova, who nodded instantly.
“Of course.” And then she reached in her jacket and snapped a new bracelet around her wrist, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. “You think I’d be so foolish as not to carry a spare with me?”
“Not you, Ilia,” Khouri said.
She raised the bracelet to her mouth and spoke into it; a mantralike sequence of commands designed to bypass various levels of security. Finally, when everyone’s attention was on the armillary, she said, “All cache-weapons return to ship; repeat, all cache-weapons return to ship.”
But nothing happened; not even when enough seconds had elapsed for the expected light-travel timelag. Nothing, that is, except that the icons representing the cache-weapons changed from black to red, and began to flash with evil regularity.
“Ilia,” Khouri said. “What does that actually mean?”
“It means they’re arming up and preparing to fire,” she said, very evenly, as if barely surprised. “It means that something very bad is about to happen.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
She had lost control again.
Volyova watched helplessly as the cache-weapons opened fire on Cerberus. The beam weapons found their mark first, of course, and the first indication that returned was a spark of blue-white light, winking open against the arid grey backdrop of the world, in the precise spot where, shortly, the bridgehead would reach the surface. The relativistic projectile weapons were only slightly tardier, and reports of their success followed a few seconds later; spectacular stuttering pulses as the projectiles rained home, slugs of neutronium and antimatter slamming into the world. All the while, she kept barking the disarming commands into the bracelet, but with steadily draining hope that she could have any influence over the weapons. For one foolish instant she had assumed that the replacement bracelet was faulty, but of course that could not be why the weapons were now behaving autonomously. They had fired for a purpose; just as they had disregarded her order to return to the bowels of the ship.
Because someone—or something—now had control.
“What’s happening?” Pascale asked, in the tones of someone who did not honestly expect a comprehensible answer.
“It must be Sun Stealer,” Volyova said, finally giving up on the bracelet, relinquishing all hope of the weapons returning to her steerage. “Because it can’t possibly be Khouri’s Mademoiselle. Even if she were still capable of influencing the cache, she’d be doing everything in her power to prevent this.”
“Part of him must have stayed behind in the gunnery,” Khouri said. She seemed to regret that, because she went quiet very abruptly, before adding, “I mean, we always knew he could control the gunnery—that was why he resisted the Mademoiselle when she wanted to kill Sylveste with the other weapon.”
“But with this precision?” Volyova shook her head. “Not all my commands to the cache-weapons are routed through the gunnery; I knew that was too big a risk to take.”
“And you’re saying even those aren’t working?”
“So it would appear.”
The display now showed that the weapons had ceased their attack, depleted of energy and munitions, drifting into useless orbits around Hades, where they would remain for millions of years, until swept by random gravitational perturbations into trajectories which would smash them into Cerberus or fling them out towards the Trojan points, where they would endure even the red-giant death of Delta Pavonis. Volyova extracted a residual grain of comfort in knowing that the weapons could not be used again; could not be turned against her. But it was far too late for such succour. The damage against Cerberus had already been done, and there would now be very little to hinder the bridgehead when it arrived. She could already see the evidence of their attack displayed on the display, plumes of pulverised regolith fanning into space around the impact point.