Revelation Space (53 page)

Khouri watched Sudjic and Volyova move off in their respective directions, walking with the deceptively plodding slowness of the suits in their default ambulatory modes. Deceptive, because the suits were capable of moving with gazelle-like speed if required, but there was no need to deploy such swiftness at the moment. She switched off the pale-green overlay, returning to normal vision. Sudjic and Volyova were not visible at all now, unsurprisingly. And while occasional pockets continued to open in the storm, Khouri was generally unable to see beyond the end of her own outstretched arm.

With a jolt, though, she realised she had seen something—someone—moving in the dust. It had only been there for a moment; not even something she could properly dignify by calling it a glimpse. Khouri was just beginning—without too much concern—to rationalise the apparition as a chance swirling of dust, momentarily assuming a vaguely human shape. But then she saw it again.

Now the figure was better defined. It lingered, teasingly. And stepped out of the maelstrom, into clear vision.

“It’s been a long time,” the Mademoiselle said. “I thought you’d be happier to see me.”

“Where the hell have you been?”

“Wearer,” the suit said. “I am not able to interpret your last subvocalised statement. Would you mind rephrasing what you had to say?”

“Tell it to ignore you,” the Mademoiselle’s dust-ghost said. “I don’t have very long.”

Khouri told the suit to ignore what she was subvocalising, until she gave a codeword. The suit acceded with a note of stuffy displeasure, as if it had never ever been asked to do something so irregular, and that it would have to seriously rethink the terms of their working relationship in future.

“All right,” she said. “It’s just you and me, Mad. Care to tell where you’ve been?”

“In a moment,” the woman’s projected image said. She had stabilised now, but was certainly not rendered with the fidelity Khouri had come to expect. She looked more like a crude sketch of herself, or a blurred photograph, subject to rippling waves of distortion. “Firstly I’d better do what I can for you, or else you’ll be forced into foolishness like trying to ram Sylveste. Now let’s see; accessing primary suit systems . . . bypassing Volyova’s restriction codes . . . remarkably simple, in fact—I’m rather disappointed she didn’t give me more of a challenge, especially as this is the last time I’m likely—”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about giving you firepower, dear girl.” As she was speaking, the status-readouts reconfigured, indicating that a number of previously locked-out suit weapons systems had just come online. Khouri appraised the sudden arsenal at her fingertips, only half believing what she had just witnessed. “There you are,” Mademoiselle said. “Anything else you’d like me to kiss better before I go?”

“I suppose I should say thanks . . . ”

“Don’t bother, Khouri. The last thing I’d expect from you would be gratitude.”

“Of course, now I actually have no choice but to kill the bastard. Am I supposed to thank you for that as well?”

“You’ve seen the—uh—evidence. The case for the prosecution, if you will.”

Khouri nodded, feeling her scalp squidging against the suit’s internal matrix. You were not meant to make gestures in a suit. “Yes, that stuff about the Inhibitors. ‘Course, I still don’t know if any of it’s true . . . ”

“Consider the alternative, in that case. You refrain from killing Sylveste, and yet what I’ve told you turns out to be the truth. Imagine how bad you’d feel after that, especially if Sylveste . . . ” the dust apparition attempted a grisly smile, “fulfils his ambition.”

“I’d still have a clear conscience, wouldn’t I?”

“Undoubtedly. And I hope that would be sufficient consolation while your entire species is being eradicated by Inhibitor systems. Of course, in all likelihood you wouldn’t even be around to regret your mistake. They’re rather efficient, the Inhibitors. But you’ll find that out in due course . . . ”

“Well, thanks for the advice.”

“That isn’t all, Khouri. Did it not occur to you that there might have been a very good reason for my absence until now?”

“Which is?”

“I’m dying.” The Mademoiselle let the word hover in the dust storm before continuing. “After the incident with the cache-weapon, Sun Stealer manged to inject another portion of himself into your skull—but of course, you’re aware of that. You felt him enter, didn’t you? I remember your screams. They were graphic. How odd it must have felt; how invasive.”

“Sun Stealer hasn’t exactly made an impression on me since.”

“But did it ever occur to you to ask why?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, dear girl, that I’ve spent the last few weeks doing my damnedest to stop him spreading further into your head. That’s why you haven’t heard anything from me. I’ve been too preoccupied with containing him. It was bad enough dealing with the part of him that I inadvertently let return with the bloodhounds. But at least then we reached a kind of stalemate. This time, though, it’s been rather different. Sun Stealer has become stronger, while I have become successively weaker with each of his onslaughts.”

“You mean he’s still here?”

“Very much so. And the only reason you haven’t heard from him is that he’s been equally preoccupied in the war the two of us have been waging within your skull. The difference is, he’s been making progress all the time—corrupting me, co-opting my systems, exploiting my own defences against me. Oh, he’s a crafty one, take my word for it.”

“What’s going to happen?”

“What’s going to happen is that I’m going to lose. I can be quite certain about this; it’s a mathematical certainty based on his current rate of gains.” The Mademoiselle smiled again, as if she were perversely proud of this analytical detachment. “I can delay his onslaught for a few days more, and then it’s all over. It might even be shorter. I’ve significantly weakened myself just by the act of presenting myself to you now. But I had no choice. I had to sacrifice time in order to reinstate your weapons privilege.”

“But when he wins . . . ”

“I don’t know, Khouri. But be prepared for anything. He’s likely to be a rather less charming tenant than I’ve endeavoured to be. After all, you know what he did to your predecessor. Drove the poor man psychotic.” The Mademoiselle stepped back, seeming to partially cloak herself in the dust, as if she were stepping offstage via the curtains. “It’s doubtful that we’ll have the pleasure again, Khouri. I feel I should wish you well. But right now I ask only one thing of you. Do what you came here to do. And do it well.” She retreated further, her form breaking up, as if she were no more than a charcoal sketch of a woman, dispersed by wind. “You have the means now.”

The Mademoiselle was gone. Khouri waited a moment—not so much collecting her thoughts as kicking them into some vaguely cohesive mass which she hoped might stay bundled together for more than a few seconds. Then she issued the codeword which put the suit back online. The weapons, she observed with nothing remotely resembling relief, were all still functioning, just as the Mademoiselle had promised.

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” the suit said. “But if you’d care to reinstate full-spectrum vision you’ll observe that we have company.”

“Company?”

“I’ve just alerted the other suits. But you’re the closest.”

“Sure this isn’t Sajaki?”

“It isn’t Triumvir Sajaki, no.” It might have been Khouri’s imagination, but the suit sounded peeved that she had even doubted its judgement in this matter. “Even if it exceeds all safety limits, the Triumvir’s suit will not arrive here for another three minutes.”

“Then it must be Sylveste.”

Khouri had by then switched to the recommended sensory overlay. She could see the approaching figure—or more accurately, figures, since there were two of them, easily resolved. The other two occupied suits were converging on the location, at the same unhurried pace with which they had first departed. “Sylveste, I’m assuming you can hear us,” Volyova said. “Stop where you are. We’re zeroing in on you from three sides.”

His voice cut across the suit channel. “I assumed you’d left us here to die. Nice of you to say you were coming.”

“I’m not in the habit of breaking my word,” Volyova said. “As you undoubtedly know by now.”

Khouri began to make preparations for the kill she was still not sure she could commit herself to. She called up a target overlay, boxing Sylveste, then allocated one of her less ferocious suit-weapons: a medium-yield laser built into the head. It was puny by comparison with the other suit armaments; really just intended to warn prospective attackers to go away and pick another target. But against an unarmoured man, at virtually zero-range, it would more than suffice.

It would take only an eyeblink now, and Sylveste would die, in strict compliance with the Mademoiselle’s terms.

Sudjic was moving more rapidly now, moving more swiftly towards Volyova than Sylveste. It was then that Khouri noticed something odd about the suit Sudjic was wearing. There was something projecting from one end of her clawed arm, something small and metallic. It looked like a weapon, a light hand-held boser-pistol. She was raising her arm with unhurried calm, the way a professional would have done. For an instant Khouri experienced a shocking sense of dislocation. It was as if she were seeing herself from beyond her own body; watching herself raise a weapon in readiness to kill Sylveste.

But something was wrong.

Sudjic was pointing the weapon at Volyova.

“I take it you have a plan here—Sylveste said.

“Ilia!” Khouri shouted. “Get down, she’s going to—”

Sudjic’s weapon was more powerful than it looked. There was a flash of horizontal light—the containment laser for the coherent matter-beam—streaking laterally across Khouri’s field of view, knifing into Volyova’s suit. Various warning alarms went haywire, signifying an excessive energy-discharge in the vicinity. Khouri’s suit automatically jumped to a higher, more hair-trigger level of battle readiness, indices on the display changing to indicate that their respective subordinated weapons systems were set to go off without her conscious say-so if her suit were similarly threatened.

Volyova’s suit was badly hit; a significant acreage of the chest was gone, revealing densely laminated hypodermal armour layers and outspilling cabling and power lines.

Sudjic took aim again, fired.

This time the blast went deeper, cutting into the wound it had already opened. Volyova’s voice cut across the channel, but it sounded weak and distant. All Khouri could make out was a kind of questioning groan; more of shock than pain.

“That was for Boris,” Sudjic said, her own voice obscenely clear. “That was for what you did to him in your experiments.” She levelled the gun again, no less calmly than if she were an artist about to put the finishing dab of paint on a masterpiece. “And this is for killing him.”

“Sudjic,” Khouri said, “stop it.”

The woman’s suit did not turn to look at her. “Why stop, Khouri? Didn’t I make it clear I had a grudge against her?”

“Sajaki’ll be here in minute or so.”

“By which time I’ll have made it look like Sylveste fired at her.” Sudjic snorted derisively. “Shit; didn’t it occur to you I’d have thought of that? I wasn’t going to let myself get stuffed just to get revenge on the old hag. She isn’t worth the expense.”

“I can’t let you kill her.”

“Can’t let me? Oh, that’s funny, Khouri. What are you going to stop me with? I don’t recall her reinstating your weapons privilege, and right now I don’t think she’s in much of a state to do it.”

Sudjic was right.

Volyova was slumped over now, her suit having lost integrity. Maybe the wound reached into her by now. If she were making any sound, her suit was too damaged to amplify it.

Sudjic relevelled the boser, aiming low now. “One shot to finish you off, Volyova—then I plant the gun on Sylveste. He’ll deny everything, of course—but there’ll only be Khouri as a witness, and I don’t think she’s going to go out of her way to back up his story. I’m right, aren’t I? Admit it, Khouri, I’m about to do you a favour. You’d kill the bitch if you had the means.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Khouri said. “On two counts.”

“What?”

“I wouldn’t kill her, despite everything she’s done. And I do have the means.” She took a moment—not even a fraction of second—to target the laser. “Goodbye, Sudjic. Can’t say it’s been a pleasure.”

And fired.

 

 

By the time Sajaki arrived, not much more than a minute later, what was left of Sudjic was not worth burying.

Her suit had retaliated, of course, escalating to a higher level of response, directed plasma bolts emitting from projectors which had popped up on either side of her head. But Khouri’s suit had been expecting something like that. In addition to changing the exterior state of its armour to maximally avert the plasma (retexturing itself and applying massive plasma-deflective electric currents to its own hide), it was already returning fire at a yet-higher level of aggression, dispensing with childish weapons like plasma and particle-beams and opting for the more decisive deployment of ack-am pulses, releasing tiny nano-pellets from its own antilithium reservoir; each pellet caulked in a shield of ablative normal-matter, and the whole thing accelerated up to a significant fraction of the speed of light.

Khouri had not even had time to gasp. After issuing the initial fire-order, her suit had done all the rest on its own.

“There’s been . . . trouble,” she said, as the Triumvir descended and made touch-down.

“You don’t say,” he said, surveying the carnage: the wounded husk of a suit containing Volyova; the liberally strewn and now radioactive residual pieces of what had once been Sudjic, and—in the middle of it—unharmed by the blast, but seemingly too stunned to speak or try to evade capture, Sylveste and his wife.