Luc stepped onto the walkway and felt even Aeschere’s minimal gravity drop away once he was halfway across, meaning the far end of the gate was almost certainly on board a spacecraft of some kind. He stepped off the walkway at the far end, drifting through the air until he came to a stop against the wall opposite.
This, then, was Antonov’s exit strategy. Luc couldn’t help but feel a little awed at the scale of the man’s planning.
He heard laboured breathing from behind, and turned to find Winchell Antonov propped against a bulkhead to one side of the gate entrance, one of his hands pressed over a dreadful chest-wound, his skin pale and waxy. His breath came in long, drawn-out gasps, and his thick, dark beard glistened with sweat.
‘I’m impressed,’ he grunted, fixing his gaze on Luc. ‘Really, I am.’
Winchell Antonov: once the Governor of Benares, later the leader of Black Lotus, the single greatest threat the Temur Council had ever faced. In that moment he looked small, despite his nearly six and a half foot frame.
‘It’s over, Antonov,’ Luc heard himself say, his voice ragged. ‘It’s time to give up.’
Antonov chuckled, then drew his breath in sharply, squeezing his eyes shut and clutching at his wound.
Something click-clacked from nearby. Luc turned to see that several mosquitoes had hopped onto the walkway bridging the wormhole, their tiny needle-like weapons aimed towards him.
‘I fear,’ grunted Antonov, ‘that we find ourselves at a mutual impasse.’
‘There’s nothing left to fight for,’ said Luc. ‘Even if you kill me, the Sandoz are going to tear this place apart until they find you.’
Antonov squinted up at him, one corner of his mouth twitching upwards in a grin. ‘Aren’t you the least bit curious why you’re still alive?’
‘You want to know what I care about?’ asked Luc. ‘I’m from Benares. Black Lotus carried out an orbital assault on Tian Di forces stationed there on your orders.’
‘Ah.’ Antonov nodded. ‘The Battle of Sunderland, you mean.’
‘That decision wiped out half a continent. My parents, my brother and sister – they all died in that attack, along with almost everything I’d ever known. Since then, the only thing I ever really gave a damn about was finding you. You took my life away.’
‘Then you might be interested to know that Black Lotus never carried out that assault,’ said Antonov, his voice growing weak. ‘Father Cheng ordered that attack, and blamed it on us.’
Luc wanted to tear that deathless smirk off Antonov’s face with his bare hands. He was the devil made flesh, the Prince of Lies embodied in a man who’d been on the run for longer than Luc had even been alive.
Again, the metallic click of a mosquito manoeuvring on some surface.
He glanced up to see his own face staring back at him from the mirrored carapace of a mosquito clinging to the ceiling overhead with needle-like limbs.
Something stung his neck and he reached up to slap it. A moment later he felt a sudden, numbing coolness spread across his chest, quickly penetrating his skull.
The room reeled about him, his legs giving way beneath him as he collapsed.
Luc opened his eyes to the harsh actinic glare of overhead lights and found himself bound by a length of cord into a chair on the spacecraft’s bridge. He had been stripped of his powered suit, and wore only the thin cloth one-piece overall given him by Sandoz technicians prior to boarding the lander. Projections hovered in the air all around him, and when he tried to move, his body obeyed only with extreme sluggishness. Whatever drug he’d been shot full of was clearly still working its magic on him.
Antonov stood by the chair, one hand still clutched to his injured chest as he gazed down at Luc. Even so, Antonov didn’t look nearly as weak as he had in the moments before Luc had lost consciousness.
Behind Antonov, Luc could see a single mosquito, balanced on a railing on the opposite side of the bridge, peering back at him with mindless intent.
‘What are you doing?’ he demanded through lips that were half-numb.
‘Quiet now,’ Antonov muttered, leaning in towards him. Luc saw for the first time that the Black Lotus leader was clutching something in his free hand that squirmed as if alive. ‘This is going to be tricky.’
Antonov lifted his other hand away from his chest wound and winced, then used it to tug Luc’s head back against the chair’s headrest, holding it there. Luc found himself staring almost straight up at the ceiling of the bridge.
Breathing hard, afraid of whatever it was Antonov was about to do to him, Luc twisted his hands and feet in their restraints to no avail. However, he had the sense that whatever paralytic Antonov had hit him with was slowly starting to wear off.
‘Careful now,’ Antonov warned, giving him a reproachful glare. ‘I can knock you out again if you keep struggling, but you really need to be conscious during this. Otherwise there’s a serious risk of brain damage.’
Brain damage? Panic tightened Luc’s chest. He could just about see the squirming thing in Antonov’s hand from out of the corner of one eye, struggling to escape. It was clearly a mechant of some kind, not unlike a segmented worm in appearance but barely the length of a finger. Its body glittered in the light.
‘What the fuck is that?’ Luc managed to gasp.
‘This,’ said Antonov, with apparent pride, ‘is a delivery system for the greatest gift I could possibly give you.’
Luc had a sudden intuition of what Antonov might be about to do to him, and tried to twist free. The heavy cord binding him to the chair creaked loudly, but did not give.
Antonov slapped him hard across the face, and Luc grunted with shock.
‘I told you,’ said Antonov, ‘keep still. For your own sake, do not struggle.’
Antonov next stepped behind Luc, wrapping one meaty forearm around his head and rendering him more thoroughly immobile. Luc’s nostrils filled with the scent of the other man’s unwashed skin, and he wondered how a man so badly injured could still have so much strength.
Something cold squirmed against Luc’s upper lip, then jammed itself hard inside his right nostril.
The pain that followed was indescribable. He could hear a sound like chewing, as if something were forcing its way through the gristle and bone of his skull. He screamed, jerking and twisting in his restraints, jaw locked in a rictus grin of terror.
As terrible as it was, the pain faded to a numb ache after another minute. His body spasmed a few times, then became still. Sweat cascaded across Luc’s skin, his chest rising and falling with the nervous energy of a hummingbird.
Antonov stepped back in front of him, looking noticeably paler than he had a few moments before. ‘I suppose you’re wondering just what a transfer gate’s doing here,’ he said, and let out a weak chuckle. ‘That’s the understatement of the year, right? Well, now that we’re the only ones left alive down here, I don’t see any reason not to tell you why.’
Antonov moved to lean against a nearby console, his face very nearly bone-white. ‘We’re on board a spaceship, as I’m sure you’ve guessed by now. We kept it in close orbit around 55 Cancri, since the photosphere of a star often proves to be a good hiding place. Once we knew the Sandoz were on their way here, we plotted a course to slingshot this ship towards the outer system, but even that wasn’t enough to give us the velocity we needed to get out of range of your intercept missiles. They’re chasing us right now, and they’ll catch us sooner or later.’
‘Where’ – Luc swallowed, feeling like he hadn’t uttered a word in a thousand years – ‘where are you taking this ship?’
‘We have other redoubts,’ Antonov replied, ‘scattered throughout this system and in others. We would have severed the wormhole link once we were all on board except now, it appears, I’m the only one left alive.’