‘I need to speak to this Clepsydra,’ Aumonier said. ‘The scarab may not like her being in this room, but she doesn’t have to be physically present — I only need a voice and a face.’
‘I wish you could speak to her,’ Dreyfus answered heavily. ‘Gaffney killed her, then tried to pin it on me. Given the knowledge she’d already sucked out of our records, there was a very real threat of her being able to pin down Aurora’s location, maybe even isolate some weakness we could use against her. That’s why she had to go. But it turns out Clepsydra had the last laugh after all.’
‘Then what about Gaffney? If he’s working for Aurora, we must be able to get something useful out of him?’
‘I sincerely hope so. I’m going to find out everything he knows. Then we can start formulating a response. I want those habitats back. I particularly want my deputy field back.’
‘You realise Thalia may already be dead, Tom? I’m sorry, but someone has to say it. Better that you start dealing with the possibility now rather than later.’
‘She’s dead when we recover her body,’ Dreyfus said. ‘Until then she’s behind enemy lines.’
‘I fully approve of that sentiment, but don’t raise your hopes, that’s all I’m saying.’ Aumonier closed her eyes and took a deep, cleansing breath before reopening them. ‘Now let’s talk about me, shall we? You said I am being reinstated to full status.’
‘If you want it.’
‘Of course I damned well want it. This is what keeps me alive.’
‘It could be what kills you. Things aren’t going to get any less tense around here any time soon. Are you sure you’re ready for that? There isn’t anyone I’d sooner see running the organisation in a time of crisis, but you’ve given Panoply more than enough in the last eleven years. No one would hold it against you if you decided to sit this one out.’
‘I’m in command.’
‘Good,’ called another voice from the still-open passwall. Aumonier recognised the hovering form of Baudry.
‘Hello, Lillian,’ Aumonier said guardedly.
Baudry attached her own safe-distance tether and drifted out until she flanked Dreyfus, stabilising herself to the same local vertical. ‘There’s something I need to say, Supreme Prefect. I let you down. I can’t speak for Michael Crissel, but I should never have been party to what happened in this room.’
‘Prefect Dreyfus tells me you’ve considered resignation.’
‘That’s correct. And I will resign, too, if you wish it.’
Aumonier let the other woman wait, until the silence had become as electrically potent as the air before a thunderstorm. ‘I don’t approve of what you did, Lillian. Gaffney may have played a part in the decision to remove me from power, but you should still have resisted him. It’s to your discredit that you failed to do so.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Baudry mouthed.
‘You should be. Crissel as well, were he still with us.’
‘We thought we were doing the right thing.’
‘And the fact that I expressly requested to be allowed to stay in power — that didn’t mean anything to you?’
‘Gaffney said we should ignore your pleas, that secretly you would be craving permission to step down.’ A little defiance returned to Baudry now. ‘We were doing our best. I’ve told you already that I’m ashamed of what happened. But at the time I did not have the luxury of hindsight, of knowing what we now do about Sheridan.’
‘Enough,’ Aumonier said, raising a calming hand. She thought about all the testing years that Lillian Baudry, a good, loyal senior prefect, had spent in her shadow. Never once being able to demonstrate true effectiveness, true leadership, never once having the temerity to question or undermine a single one of Aumonier’s decisions. ‘What’s done is done. At least now we both know where we stand. Don’t we?’
‘I have apologised. I am ready and waiting for either a resignation order or new commands.’
‘Both of you might want to take a look at that feed,’ Dreyfus said. ‘Before you make any rash decisions, that is.’
‘What feed?’ Baudry asked.
‘He means the long-range surveillance of House Aubusson, I think,’ Aumonier said. ‘Something’s happening there, isn’t it?’
Dreyfus nodded. ‘It started while we were speaking.’
‘We’ve been monitoring the thermal output from the four habitats for a number of hours,’ Baudry said, shifting effortlessly back into the detached tones of neutral professionalism. ‘Two of them, Aubusson and Szlumper Oneill, show evidence of activity in their manufactories. It’s as if the assembler plants have been cranked back up to full operating strength since Aurora’s takeover. So far, we’ve only been able to speculate as to what that means. What we do know is that Crissel’s ship was hit by more weapons than we can account for based on the Aubusson blueprints filed with Panoply. One theory, therefore, is that the factories are producing new defence systems, to further consolidate Aurora’s hold on the habitats.’
‘How long would it take to create and install new weapons if those manufactories were running at standard capacity?’ Aumonier asked.
‘Allowing for ready provision of raw materials and blueprints, no more than six to eight hours,’ Baudry answered. ‘It’s entirely feasible, given the timescales we’re looking at.’
‘But now it looks as if they’re not just making weapons,’ Dreyfus said.
The image of House Aubusson was a three-quarters view captured at long-range by a surveillance cam well outside the attack volume of the habitat’s anti-collision weapons. It showed the factory end of the cylinder, not the docking hub where Crissel had presumably met his demise. Vast petal-like structures, curved doors many kilometres long, were opening in the domed endcap, revealing through a star-shaped aperture the blue-gold luminance of intense, frenzied industry.
‘Those doors… are they part of the habitat’s original design?’ Aumonier asked.
Baudry nodded. ‘Back when the habitat had the capacity and the client base to grow entire ships, they needed those doors to launch them into space. But our records say they haven’t opened in over a century.’
‘Then why are they opening now?’
‘That’s why,’ Dreyfus said.
Something was spilling through the gaps between the fingerlike doors, billowing out in a gauzy black mass, like an eruption of wasps. It was a cloud composed of thousands of individual elements.
Simultaneously, Dreyfus and Baudry’s bracelets started chiming.
‘Someone else has noticed,’ Baudry said.
‘What are we looking at?’ asked Aumonier, a queasy feeling in her stomach. Up to this point, her crisis parameters had consisted of a hostage scenario in which Panoply might lose control of four habitats. Four was inexcusable, the worst disaster in eleven years, but it was still negligible compared to the mind-numbing immensity of the ten thousand. Containable, she thought. And yet that emerging black cloud said otherwise. She did not yet know what it was, but she knew with piercing certainty that it was not good news, and that the crisis she had imagined Panoply to be facing was as nothing compared to the one that was now blossoming.
‘We need to know what that… froth is,’ she said, fighting to keep her voice from faltering. ‘We need numbers and tech assessments. We need to know what it’s for and where it’s headed.’
‘Doors are opening in Szlumper Oneill,’ Baudry said, reading a text summary on her bracelet. As she spoke, a window enlarged itself, squeezing others aside as it filled with a long-range view of the other habitat. A black cloud was boiling out of elongated slots near one of the polar docking complexes, smothering detail as it expanded.
‘I think it’s the same stuff,’ Aumonier said.
‘Has to be,’ Dreyfus said. ‘Question is, what about the other two habitats?’