“Steady as a rock.” He flipped an armoured cover across the viewing window, secured it with a heavy latch, then followed the other three along the catwalk and down to the reactor floor. Saavedra’s whiphound was now clipped to her belt again, but Dreyfus was under no illusions that he had gained her unequivocal trust. She was accepting his story provisionally, until he slipped up or circumstances changed.
“It could be Gaffney,” he said as they ascended the sloping tunnel back to the main habitation and operations level.
“The last time I saw him he was lying on his back recovering from surgery. But he wasn’t dead. Maybe that was my big mistake.”
“Presumably he was under guard, though?” Saavedra said, looking back over her shoulder as they jogged up the slope.
“He was, but perhaps that wasn’t enough. Gaffney was already able to sabotage the Search Turbines and murder both Clepsydra and Trajanova. He was clever, and he had the entire security apparatus at his fingertips, but he’s not superhuman. I think Aurora may have been helping him, even inside Panoply.”
“And now she’s helped him escape?”
“Possibly, but regardless, this feels like Gaffney. Did I hear you mention guns?”
“Portable self-burrowing anti-ship emplacements,” Veitch said.
“We installed them in case anyone came snooping without an invitation. You’d have found out if you hadn’t come overland.”
“I’m glad we did. The walk did me good.”
Firebrand’s operations centre had been set up in what must once have been a conference room when the facility was under Amerikano control. The walls were covered in monochrome photographs of scenic panoramas with only shallow three-dimensionality. One wall showed a deep canyon, possibly taken on Mars. Another showed a horseshoe-shaped waterfall. A third showed a rock face carved with enormous stone likenesses: eight vast heads, the fifth and seventh of which were women.
A cluster of display panes rested on the table, arranged hexagonally so that they formed a makeshift holographic tank. Veitch sent a gestural command to the apparatus, causing it to fill with luminous green wireframe graphics. Dreyfus recognised the contoured landscape of Ops Nine and its surrounding terrain. Markers signified the placement of weapons and tracking devices. An arrowhead symbol high above the landscape indicated the incoming craft.
“Signature matches a light-enforcement vehicle,” Veitch said, peering at the numbers accompanying the symbol.
“Would Gaffney be able to fly one of those?”
“He’d have the necessary experience,” Dreyfus said.
“It’s not good news. It may be a cutter, but it could easily be carrying nukes.”
“Only if Jane had any left,” Dreyfus said.
“And if she did, they were probably already outside Panoply aboard deep-system cruisers, ready to be deployed as and when they were required. I don’t think Gaffney would have been able to get his hands on one. More than likely it was all he could do to escape from Panoply.”
“I hope you’re right,” Veitch said.
“I hope your guns are good. When will they open fire?”
“Not until he’s below about thirty klicks,” Saavedra replied.
“The guns know the kinds of evasive routines and countermeasures a cutter has up its sleeve. Unless the cutter shoots first, they won’t waste a shot until they have a chance of making a difference.”
Dreyfus saw that the cutter was still more than one hundred and twenty kilometres above them, but falling fast enough that it would pass below the weapon ceiling in only a couple of minutes.
“Gaffney wouldn’t come unless he thought he could do damage,” he said.
“He’ll be expecting to meet anti-ship fire.”
“I could take our cutter,” Saavedra said doubtfully.
“It still has enough fuel to get me airborne.”
“You wouldn’t last five seconds against Gaffney,” Dreyfus said.
“Even if you could get up in time.”
She stared at the display, mesmerised by the falling arrow.
“He can damage the complex if he has foam-phase weapons, but he won’t be able to touch the Clockmaker, inside the tokamak. He must know that.” A thought drained colour from her face.
“Voi, maybe he does have a nuke after all.”
“If he does, it’ll be clean and fast for all of us,” Dreyfus told her.
“But I don’t think he’s intending to take out the Clockmaker in one hit. He must be planning to flush it out, then pick it off on the surface. It can’t fly, can it?”
“If you gave it enough time,” Veitch said, “I don’t think there’s much it couldn’t do.” Then he studied the tank again.
“At present rate of descent, weapons will engage in… forty-five seconds.” He looked anxiously at the others.
“There isn’t much more we can do here. Maybe we should get below again?”
“Missile inbound,” Saavedra said, with dreamlike calm.
The display showed the missile streaking down from the cutter, leaping though the intervening atmosphere with ferocious acceleration. Any faster and friction would have incinerated the warhead before it reached its target.
“Guns retargeting,” Saavedra reported.
“Engaging.”
The room tremored. Dreyfus heard a low, rolling report, like distant thunder. He shuddered to think of the energy that had just been dissipated only a few hundred metres over his head. The weapons would have blasted their way out of concealed bunkers, just like the guns buried in the Nerval-Lermontov rock. But that had taken place in vacuum, not under a smothering methane-ammonia atmosphere. On the planet’s surface, it would have looked like a series of choreographed volcanic eruptions, as if fists of molten fire had punched through the very crust of the world.
“Missile intercepted,” Saavedra said, though they could all see the result for themselves.
“Second incoming. Third incoming. Guns responding.”
The room tremored again, the earthquake-like rumble longer than before. There was a moment of silence as the guns retargeted to intercept the third missile, then the noise recommenced.
“Second missile destroyed. Partial intercept on third,” Saavedra announced. The room shook again, but Dreyfus knew that the guns would struggle to shoot down the third missile on the second attempt. It had been damaged, but it was still arcing down towards the facility.
“Brace,” Veitch said.
The missile’s impact came a fraction of a second later. Dreyfus felt the shock-wave slam through his bones. There was a roar louder than the guns, loud enough that it felt as if he was out there, standing under Yellowstone’s poison sky with his eardrums naked to the air. He felt a violent shove, as if the room and all its contents had just lurched several centimetres to one side.
“One emplacement out,” Saavedra said as the appropriate icon pulsed red and faded to black.
“Fourth missile inbound. Guns acquiring.”
The roar of the anti-ship weapons sounded more distant now: Dreyfus guessed that the disabled emplacement had been the nearest one, taken out in a direct hit by the damaged missile.
“Tell me you have an intercept,” Dreyfus said.
“Partial,” Saavedra said.
“Attempting re-contact.”
The guns droned. The room shook. The sense of helplessness Dreyfus felt was suffocating. Machines were running his life now: machines and software. The system running the anti-ship emplacements was locking antlers with the system controlling the cutter’s onboard weapons. Like familiar adversaries, the systems had a thorough understanding of their mutual capabilities. In all likelihood, his survival could already be ascribed a fixed mathematical probability. One participant knew it would eventually lose, but was still going through the motions for the sake of formality.
The fourth missile had lost much of its effectiveness when it struck home, but still retained enough potency to do real damage. The noise was a continuous deafening avalanche of sound. The room shuddered, chunks of ceiling material crashing down. A deep crack jagged its way down one wall, dividing the eight carved heads. The room’s illumination failed, leaving only the pale-green glow from the holographic display, which was itself faltering.