The deep-system cruiser Universal Suffrage sat in its berthing cradle, ready to be pushed out of the hangar into space. Final preparations were under way, with just the latter phases of fuelling and armament still to be completed. The midnight-black wedge of the ninety-metre-long vehicle was offset by the luminous markings delineating general instructions and warnings, power and fuel umbilical sockets, sensor panels, airlocks and weapons and thruster vents. Only when the cruiser was under way would these lines and inscriptions fade back into the absolute blackness of the rest of the hull. Conferring with the pilot, Dreyfus had already worked out an approach strategy. They would come in fast, tail-first, and execute a last-minute high-burn deceleration. It would be bone-crushingly hard, but the cruiser was built to tolerate it and the prefects would be protected by quickmatter cocoons. A slower approach would give Aubusson’s anti-collision weapons too great a chance of achieving a target lock.
Satisfied with the status of the ship, Dreyfus pushed his way out of the observation gallery into the armoury, where the other prefects were being issued with Model B whiphounds. He checked the time. Any minute now, the polling results should be in. He’d listened to Baudry’s speech and didn’t think anyone could have made a better case without galvanising the entire Glitter Band into mass panic. She’d walked a delicate line with commendable skill.
But sometimes the best case wasn’t good enough.
Set into one wall was a wide glass panel, oval in shape, with burnished silver pads on either side of it. Behind the panel, set into padded recesses and arranged like museum pieces, was a small selection of the weapons Panoply agents were no longer permitted to carry. There were vastly more weapons hidden from view, waiting to be rolled into place. All were matt-black and angular, devoid of ornamentation or aesthetic fripperies. Some of them were handguns scarcely more lethal than whiphounds. The heaviest weapons, Dreyfus knew, were fully capable of cutting through the skin of a typical habitat.
Baudry and Crissel had just arrived, stationing themselves at either side of the oval window. They each carried one of a pair of heavy keys that needed to be inserted into the pads on either side of the window and then turned simultaneously. Only seniors carried the keys, and it took two seniors to unlock the extreme-contingencies weapons.
‘The vote’s in?’ Dreyfus asked.
‘Just a few seconds,’ Baudry told him. Most of the field prefects had filed out of the room now, to take their positions aboard the Universal Suffrage. Only a handful were still dealing with their armour, or waiting to receive weapons. ‘Here it comes,’ she said, the set of her jaw tensing in anticipation.
Dreyfus glanced down at the summary data spilling across his bracelet read-out, but it wasn’t necessary to see the result for himself. Baudry’s expression told him all he needed to know.
‘Voi,’ Crissel said, shaking his head in dismay. ‘I can’t believe this!’
‘There’s got to be a mistake,’ Baudry said, mumbling the words as if in a trance.
‘There isn’t. Forty-one per cent against, forty per cent for, nineteen per cent abstentions. We lost by one per cent!’
Dreyfus checked the numbers on his bracelet. There had been no error. Panoply had been refused the right to bear arms. ‘There was always a chance,’ he said. ‘If House Aubusson hadn’t dropped off the network, they might even have swung it for us.’
‘I’ll go back to the people,’ Baudry said. ‘The statutes say I can table another poll.’
‘It won’t make any difference. You made your point excellently the first time. No one could have argued our case more effectively without inciting system-wide panic.’
‘I say we just dispense them,’ Crissel said. ‘There’s no technical reason why we need a majority vote. The keys will still work.’
Dreyfus saw the tendons on the back of Crissel’s hand standing proud as he readied himself to twist the key.
‘Maybe you’re right,’ Baudry said. There was a kind of awestruck horror in her voice, as if she was contemplating the execution of a glamorous crime. ‘These are exceptional circumstances, after all. We’ve lost four habitats. We can’t rule out wider polling anomalies, either. We’d be within our rights to disregard that poll.’
‘Then why did you bother tabling it?’ Dreyfus asked.
‘Because I had to,’ Baudry said.
‘Then you have to do what the people say, too. And the people say no guns.’
Crissel was almost pleading now. ‘But these are exceptional times. Rules can be waived.’
Dreyfus shook his head at the senior. ‘No, they can’t. The reason this organisation exists in the first place is to make sure the democratic apparatus functions smoothly, without error, bias or fraud. Those are the rules we hold everyone else accountable to. We’d better make damn sure we hold ourselves to the same standards.’
Baudry tilted her head in the direction of the Universal Suffrage. ‘Even if it means going out there with nothing but whiphounds?’
Dreyfus nodded solemnly. ‘Even that.’
‘Now I understand why Jane never promoted you above field,’ Baudry said, before shooting a conspiratorial glance at Crissel. ‘But you’re outranked here, Tom. Michael and I have the keys, not you. On three.’
‘On three,’ Crissel said. ‘One… two… and turn.’
Their hands twisted in unison. A mechanism clunked behind the wall and the oval window slid ponderously aside. The visible weapons emerged from their recessed partitions, pushed out on chromed metal rods. Crissel retrieved a medium-size rifle, sighted along its slab-sided, vent-perforated flanks and then propelled it through the air to Dreyfus.
Dreyfus caught it easily. The weapon felt both reassuring and totally wrong. ‘I can’t do this,’ he said.
‘It isn’t your call. Senior prefects have just issued you with appropriate ordnance.’
‘But the vote—’
‘The vote went our way,’ Crissel said. ‘That’s what I’m telling you now. I’m expressly instructing you to disregard any information you might have received to the contrary.’
‘This is wrong.’
‘And you’ve said your piece,’ Baudry said, ‘stated your fine and noble principles. Now take the damned weapons. Even if you won’t carry one, Tom, you can at least equip those other prefects. We’ll take the fall for this when the dust settles. Not you.’
The weapon felt snug in his hands, solid and trustworthy. Take it, a small voice implored. For the sake of the other prefects, and the hostages in House Aubusson. How likely is it that the eight hundred thousand people in House Aubusson give a damn about democratic principles now?
‘I’ll—’ Dreyfus began.
But he was cut off by the arrival of a new voice. ‘Let go of the weapon, please. Let it float away from you.’
It was Gaffney, accompanied by a phalanx of Internal Security prefects, all of whom were wearing an unusual amount of body armour, with whiphounds unclipped and partially deployed.