[We’ll leave you alone for exactly five minutes, Remontoire. Will that be sufficient?]
[It’ll have to do, won’t it?] Remontoire nodded and smiled as the man ushered his machines from the room, their swan-necks lowering elegantly to pass through the doorway. [Sorry . . . ]
[Five minutes, Remontoire.]
Skade tried moving her head again, but still without success. Come closer, Remontoire. I can’t see you very easily. They won’t show me what happened.
[Do you remember the comet? Clavain was with us. You were showing him the buried ships.]
I remember.
[Clavain stole the corvette before you or I could get aboard. It was still tethered to the surface of the comet.]
She remembered taking Clavain to the comet but not the rest of it. And did he get away?
[Yes, but we’ll come to that. The problem is what happened during his escape. Clavain applied thrust until the tethers gave way under the strain. They whiplashed back towards the comet. I’m afraid one of them caught you.]
It was difficult to respond, though she had known from the moment of waking that something bad had happened to her. Caught me?
[You were injured, Skade. Badly. If you hadn’t been Conjoiner, hadn’t had the machines in your head to help your body cope with the shock, you would very probably not have survived, even with the assistance that your suit was able to give you.]
Show me, damn you.
[I would if there was a mirror in this room. But there isn’t, and I can’t bypass the neural blockades that Delmar has installed.]
Describe it, then. Describe it, Remontoire!
[This isn’t why I came, Skade . . . Delmar will put you back into a recuperative coma very shortly, and when you next wake you’ll be healed again. I came to ask you about Clavain.]
For a moment she pushed aside her own morbid curiosity. I take it he’s dead?
[Actually, they haven’t managed to stop him yet.]
As angry as she was, and despite her morbid curiosity, she had to admit that the matter of Clavain was at least as fascinating to her as her own predicament. And the two things were not unconnected, were they? She did not yet fully understand what had happened to her, but it was enough to know that it had been Clavain’s doing. It did not matter that it might not have been intentional.
There were no accidents in treason.
Where is he?
[That’s the funny thing. No one seems to know. They had a fix on his exhaust. He was heading towards Eridani—towards what we assumed would be Yellowstone or the Rust Belt.]
The Demarchists would crucify him.
Remontoire nodded. [Clavain especially. But now it doesn’t look as if he was going there at all—not directly, anyway. He turned away from the sunward vector. We don’t know how far into his journey, since we lost his drive flame.]
We have optical monitors strewn through the halo. Surely he’ll have fallen into the line of sight of another one by now.
[The problem is that Clavain knows the positions of those monitors. He can make sure his beam doesn’t sweep across them. We have to keep reminding ourselves that he’s one of ours, Skade.]
Were missiles launched?
[Yes, but they never got close enough to establish their own fixes. They didn’t have enough fuel to make it back to the Nest, so we had to detonate them.]
She felt drool loosen itself and trail down her chin. We have to stop him, Remontoire. Grasp that.
[Even if we pick up Clavain’s signal again, he’d be out of effective missile range. And no other ships can catch a corvette.]
She bit down on her fury. We have the prototype.
[Even Nightshade isn’t that fast, not over solar-system-type distances.]
Skade said nothing for several seconds, calculating how much she could prudently reveal. This was Inner Sanctum business, after all, sensitive even by the clandestine standards of Closed Council. It is, Remontoire.
The door opened. One of the servitors ducked under and in, followed by Delmar. Remontoire stood and extended his hands, palms facing forwards.
[We just need another moment . . . ]
Delmar stood by the door, arms folded. [I’m staying here, I’m afraid.]
Skade hissed at Remontoire. He moved closer, bending down so that their heads were only centimetres apart, permitting mind-to-mind contact without amplification by the room’s systems. It can be done. The prototype has a higher acceleration ceiling than you have assumed.
[How much higher?]
A lot. You’ll see. But all you need to know is that the prototype can get close enough to Clavain’s approximate position to pick up his trail again, and then close within weapons range. I’ll need you on the crew, of course. You’re a soldier, Remontoire. You know the weapons better than I do.
[Shouldn’t we be thinking of ways to bring him back alive?]
It’s a little bit late for that, wouldn’t you say?
Remontoire said nothing, but she knew she had made her point. And he would come around to her viewpoint soon enough. He was a Conjoiner to the core, and would therefore accept any course of action, no matter how ruthless, that benefited the Mother Nest. That was the difference between Remontoire and Clavain.
[Skade . . . ]
Yes, Remontoire?
[If I should consent to your proposal . . . ]
You’d have a demand of your own?
[Not a demand. A request. That Felka be allowed to join us.]
Skade narrowed her eyes. She was about to refuse when she realised that her grounds for doing so—that the operation had to be remain entirely within the purview of the Closed Council—made no difference where Felka was concerned.
What possible good would Felka’s presence serve?
[That depends. If you intend to make this an execution squad she will be of no use to us at all. But if you have any intention of bringing Clavain back alive—and I think you must—then Felka’s usefulness cannot be underestimated.]