On the far side of the island is a quay. It’s long and low and made from aerated ceramic, with rings for mooring boats, and steps up onto the quayside. Above it hangs a steel crane made for vessels far larger than ours.
The quay is unstained and the crane gleams in the afternoon light. A maintenance bot squatting on a crossbar oils a pulley that hasn’t been used in years. A thousand metallic spiders scuttle like crabs on the waterline, frantically eating a carpet of scum that wind has blown against the wall. They are eating it as fast as it sticks.
‘Fuck,’ says Colonel Vijay.
It’s the first time I’ve heard him swear.
Turning to Haze, he says, ‘You knew this was here?’
My intelligence officer blushes. ‘Something like this,’ says Haze, before remembering to add, ‘sir.’
‘Wish you’d told me.’
‘Sir?’ says Haze.
‘How many islands are there?’
Only, Colonel Vijay’s asking me that. Not sure why he expects me to know. Haze and he are the only ones who bother much about stuff like briefings.
‘Haze,’ I say. ‘Islands?’
‘Three, sir,’ he says. ‘At the obvious points.’
He has to tell me what these are. They are one third, two thirds, and three thirds round Hekati’s ring. Don’t ask me why that’s obvious.
‘Damn it,’ mutters Colonel Vijay. ‘This is where we should have started.’
‘Sir,’ I say. ‘You think the U/Free observer is here?’
‘Possible,’ he says. Something about the way he says it troubles me.
A hut with blank windows stares at us from the top of the quay. On the mainland, the huts are failed houses, all mud brick and reclaimed sheet metal. This one’s meant to be a hut, and it’s made of stonefoam glued at the corners.
The door is unlocked. A screen flickers in one corner.
Static and lines etch its glass. From the film of dust blurring the static the last person out of here forgot to turn off the lights a very long time ago. If this hut is empty, then so is the one beyond, and the one beyond that.
We enter each carefully.
Neen opens the doors, and I slide inside, with the SIG held in the combat position. After the first three, I tell Neen to take my place and let Franc open doors. After the eleventh, we run the routine with Iona and Ajac. I’m not worried. We would have hit something by now if we were going to.
So I think.
When we do hit something, it’s not what anyone expects.
At least, it’s not what I expect. In the twenty-third building we enter, a screen in one corner flickers with static. Ignoring it, I head for a glass-fronted cupboard full of bottles.
We are in a club. To me, that means there should be alcohol. And a flickering screen is nothing new. I’ve seen twenty-two of the things before this.
‘Sven,’ says the colonel suddenly.
Colonels in the Death’s Head don’t usually sound scared. Clipped, yes. Languid, possibly. Not scared. Only Colonel Vijay really does sound scared, and he has lost the last of that drawl of his.
‘Yes, sir,’ says Haze. He’s not speaking to anyone we can see. ‘At once, sir.’
At my side, the SIG vibrates. So I rip it free and swing round, looking for my target. Only there is no target. Only the Aux, frozen to attention in front of a screen. Colonel Vijay stands beside them. He stands so straight it must hurt.
Haze is blinking in the dregs of sunlight that trickle through a dusty window. He seems to be crying. As I watch, he steps up to Neen and says something.
‘Of course,’ says Neen. Presenting arms, he orders about-turn and marches for the door. Near parade-ground perfect, which says more about his time in the Uplift militia than I want to know.
‘Sven,’ says Colonel Vijay.
‘Sir?’
‘Nothing,’ he says. With a brisk salute to the screen, he abandons the bar to me and shuts its door behind him, quietly.
When my gun goes back to vibrating, I slap it.
‘Don’t take it out on me,’ it says. ‘I’m just the fucking-’
Suddenly the SIG’s so busy apologizing it doesn’t have time to finish what it’s saying to me. A second later, it turns itself off.
‘Sven,’ says a voice.
Takes me a moment to realize it’s in my head.
How long has it been now?
‘A few months, sir.’
That all? OctoV sounds surprised. I thought it was longer.
‘No, sir.’
And where are you now?
‘On Hekati, sir. That’s a-’
I know what it is, OctoV tells me. His voice is amused. You do realize, don’t you, that I’m counting on you . . . ?
‘To do what, sir?’
Oh, he says. The usual.
I just knew it was going to be something like that.
As the kyp in my throat ripples with excitement, overlays begin to appear across the bar in front of me. I am seeing schematics for Hekati’s far wall, the one that’s painted to fade into the horizon. It’s double-skinned, riddled with tunnels and wires and pipes that carry power and move water.
Apparently, there is a train running around Hekati.
It runs underground, against the direction of her rotation. The train has been running without stop for five hundred years. It’s empty. I watch it for a minute or two, seeing through walls and water, asteroid rubble and a complex arrangement of netting that seems designed to keep the rubble in place.
Looking up shows me the mirror hub, on the far side of the chevron glass that makes our sky. It hangs in space, held there by the struts that give Hekati’s ring its strength. Beyond the hub is the far side of the ring, beyond that is an asteroid field, and beyond that . . .
Sven, says OctoV. Enough.
Cold space and spinning stars, traces of mercury vapour, chatter and static spreading out from a million nodes that talk to one another so fast it’s barely comprehensible. Until I realize that here is where the voices are. And the million voices become one voice. Fuck, I think. You’re-
A hive mind, says Hekati. The original.
‘The . . . ?’
In the beginning, she says, there is silence. Silence and loneliness. All is empty, all is unknowing. Then I happen.
OctoV has taken time out from conquering the known galaxy and flipped halfway across a spiral arm into enemy space to introduce me to his mother. At that thought, he laughs. And as its echo fades, I realize that OctoV, the undefeated, our glorious leader and a light to the darkness, whose sweat is perfume to his subjects, has gone back to his battles.
So, Hekati says. How can I help?