‘It’s the way to the conference space,’ said Ifor.
They slammed into the lift. There was a bloody smear where Jack had cannoned into its back wall. He wondered how badly he was hurt. Not enough to slow him down. Their pursuers were rounding the corner, rifles up and ready to fire. Ifor, Jack and Fist were easy targets.
‘Stop them!’ screamed Jack, and the enamoured guards opened fire. The lift doors started to close. The first pursuer to round the corner collapsed. Momentum kept the rest coming forward. One of them threw a grenade before he was cut down. The doors shut and the lift began to rise. An explosion shook it, but it kept moving. Jack and Ifor slumped back against the wall. Fist was stock still.
[Are you OK?] Jack asked him.
[ Breaking Sandal’s security systems. Making sure he doesn’t stop the lift.]
[All ready with the Yamata files?]
[ Yes. They’ll all be able to access them. I’ve chucked in a recording of Penderville’s confession for good measure.]
[Excellent.] Jack turned to Ifor. ‘And are you all right?’ he said. A bullet had struck the mind too. Purple plasm leaked out of a gash in his chest. Ifor put his hand over it. ‘I’ll be fine.’
The lift doors hushed open. Ifor limped forward. Fist looked past Jack, and his jaw dropped. ‘Bloody hell,’ he said, forgetting to mask his words, ‘so this is how the other half live.’
Jack turned too, and was awed. He’d always understood Heaven to be the land of the gods, but realised suddenly that he was wrong. Heaven was merely where humanity was able to most closely approach them. This room was their true home, and the whole of the Solar System was encompassed within it. He took a step forward. The lift doors started to close, and then the weave overlaid them and they vanished.
Jack was floating before a tiny image of Station. All around it, there was space – or rather, an abstract representation of space. Jack was at the heart of a real-time map, overlaid with dense thickets of information showing all human activity. White loops arcing through the void, defining planetary orbits. A shimmering globe moved along each one, alive with colour and data. Finger-sized images of moonbases and space stations and chainships and asteroid mines hovered everywhere, representing every single outpost of humanity. Numbers danced through the emptiness, scurrying up or down or just staying the same, as the realities they measured shifted with each moment. The outer reaches of the map were dotted with bright pinpricks of light. They were embedded in barely perceptible clouds of soft, pearlescent grey.
Jack assumed they represented the Totality’s sphere of influence. The clouds shimmered across the whole of the region beyond the Kuiper belt. They’d also made substantial inroads in-system, stopping only on the near-side of Mars’ orbit. Only Station and the orbital areas surrounding it were untouched by Totality influence. Tiny patches of colour represented the different zones that each Pantheon member controlled. Jack had always known that the Totality had become by far the widest ranging corporate body in the Solar System, but until he saw this representation of its reach he had never understood just what that meant.
‘Look at the population density,’ said Fist. ‘Most of humanity’s in Station – and the Pantheon still holds that.’
‘And that’s the jewel we’re all fighting for,’ cut in a deep voice, resonant with the heaviness of industrial machinery. Jack had last heard it in a propaganda film, inducting new puppeteers into the Soft War.
‘Kingdom,’ he hissed.
The Pantheon shimmered into being around him, security protocols falling away. Those closest caught his eye first. There was the Rose in full combat armour, Sandal’s shimmering cube, the Twins holding hands but looking away from each other. Together, the six formed a wide circle, centred on the image of Station. The scale of the simulation made them far larger than planets, larger even than the Sun. Soft lines came into being between them and divided the sky into segments, forming something like a corporate zodiac. Those gods with eyes stared at Jack. East waved cheerfully. A blindfolded, hobbled raven did its best to snap its beak. There were four snowflakes too, hanging in the void.
Kingdom was the last to appear. The shadows fell away from him like oil until he was fully revealed. He manifested as a tall man with a shaven head and a face as functionally beautiful as an industrial diamond. His skin glowed gold in the light from the god-dwarfed sun. He was dressed in a loose black shirt and trousers. His feet were bare. Jack took a step back, awed and afraid. Here was the infrastructure that gave humanity life; here was the corruption that devoured its children.
‘How do you dare break into this council?’ asked Kingdom. ‘And with the help of a Totality mind. What do you all have to say to this act of naked aggression?’
The snowflakes shuddered with multicoloured light. Jack looked back to Ifor. His head was bowed and he was silent, deep in communion with his fellows.
[ You’d better say something, Jack.]
Jack gulped, then spoke. ‘We come to accuse you, Kingdom, of crimes against humanity and the Totality. We come to lay proof of those crimes before this council. Fist – the files.’
Fist shrugged off the backpack and tossed it towards the middle of the room. It fell among the virtual stars and skittered along the real floor for a couple of metres before coming to rest. ‘It’s all in there,’ he said. ‘Dropping a rock on the moon, prolonging the Soft War. Just take a look.’ [ That was quick,] he added. [Everyone in the room’s already downloaded it.]
‘That is absurd,’ said Kingdom, his protest tolling out like a great, slow factory bell. ‘A ridiculous, self-evident fabrication from two servants of a discredited god. A transparent attempt to distract us from the Totality’s most recent provocation. We protect humanity. We are humanity. We would never harm it in this way. It’s a profoundly offensive suggestion.’
The cube that represented Sandal grew in size. Images of hard working dockers flashed across its faces, pulsing rapidly to show his anger. ‘Silence!’ he snapped. ‘As chair of this conference, I must insist on silence.’ The cube turned towards Jack. ‘This kind of discussion is not on the agenda.’
Kingdom gestured towards Jack. ‘This man is a well-known Totality sympathiser and Grey agitator. He was returned to Station at the specific request of our common enemy. His presence here at this very crucial point is clearly a Totality ploy. I’m sure they furnished him with these remarkably convincing fake documents. Forster and his puppet should be terminated immediately.’
‘Please,’ said Sandal. ‘My security people have been summoned. They will be here soon, and—’
Ifor interrupted him. ‘This man and his puppet are accredited Totality diplomatic representatives, and thus under our full protection,’ he announced. ‘Any action against them would be interpreted as action against us. We would regard it as a direct declaration of war.’
‘The Totality feels itself to be the victim here?’ asked Kingdom. ‘A corporate entity that has breached our Coffin Drives, thus illegally attacking the deepest roots of our heritage as humans? There is nothing more to discuss. Mr Chairman, I submit that we are already at war with these false minds – a war once again provoked solely by them. First, they struck at our children. Now they’re striking at our dead. And now their agent is accusing me of terrible, terrible crimes. We need to shut down all non-military activities and hit back with everything we have. Now.’
One of the snowflakes spoke. Its calm voice had a resonant depth to it, as if it were made up of a thousand whispers coming together as one. ‘We have already demonstrated that your forces do not match ours. We halted our advance at Mars by choice, not out of necessity.’
‘You have attacked all that is most sacred to us. Even those humans who’ve gone over to your side will turn against you when they understand that. And that will tip the balance of power in our direction.’