There was an impact, but not the missile; not yet. They had ploughed into some asteroid debris, and momentarily went reeling until Thahl righted them. The missile reeled and righted itself with them. More impacts. Thahl’s control of the ship was collapsing; he was fighting the collapse carefully and intelligently, but losing.
The Belt closed in on them. Asteroids and asteroid fragments came at them from ahead and above and below, looming and roaring and whipping past and leaving afterimages through which new ones loomed and roared. The Bridge screen listed them coldly and without comment as they passed, some of them the remains of those destroyed earlier. AN-4044, AL-4091, AD-2025. A series of minor impacts, and then something more serious, a sickening impact to port as they hit and glanced off a fragment from a smallish asteroid, AC-1954. Foord remembered that one. The alarms sounded: real damage.
“Port manoeuvre drives impaired, at least twenty percent,” Smithson said.
Foord shrugged. They didn’t, at that time, have any pressing need for manoeuvre drives. “And the wavefront?”
“Fifty seconds, Commander. But it’s dwindling.”
Joser tried again. He had something to tell Foord but not the words he’d been repeating. His mouth his mouth wouldn’t make any other words.
“This is the one She intended for us.”
He screamed, and it came out as those words. Shouted, and it came out as those words. Then he drew a last breath, dredged up all his willpower, dragged himself back to sanity, and spoke in clear ringing tones; but it came out as those words.
“This is the one She intended for us. This is the one She intended for us. This is the one She intended for us.”
This the way the world ends, thought Foord, picking up the rhythm with a line of old poetry, This is the way the world ends, This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a
BANG.
It was, amazingly, the report of a pistol. A big, blue-black, old-fashioned pistol which Joser was holding. He had just shot himself in the temple, and seemed to be staring down at the pistol through his nostrils, since the half of his face which still remained began from the nostrils downwards. He slumped, and the seat took him.
His blood and brains, like Kaang’s faeces, went everywhere. As with Kaang, they turned away.
“She’s actually killed one of us,” Cyr said.
“She did that long ago,” Foord said, as the wavefront caught and hit them.
“And,” he added, “none of us is One Of Us.”
•
The wavefront was already dying. The further it reached the more insubstantial it became, until finally when it caught them it passed over them like sand. Their desperate flight from it had been just enough. The ship still spasmed as it hit, but the flickerfields held; and then it was gone, roaring past them and dwindling, in the forward screen, to nothing.
But the missile was still there.
“Smithson: damage reports, please.”
“Hull, rear dorsal section, and manoeuvre drives, port and rear dorsal. Nothing we couldn’t repair, if we had time.”
The Bridge was suddenly quieter. Foord watched the asteroids looming and whipping past. Despite what had happened, they seemed almost peaceful.
“Missile’s gaining. She’s decided it should hit now, I think.”
“Commander…” began Thahl.
“It’s OK. There’s no need.”
The grey ovoid swelled slowly in the rear screen, since its speed exceeded theirs by only one or two percent. Naturally they deployed their flickerfields, but were past surprise when it somehow slipped inside them; this was a missile like none they had ever encountered. They watched it grow larger, then blur prior to impact as it passed inside the screen’s final focus. But there was no explosion, just a soft thump; and something obscuring the rear screen.
“No. I don’t believe it.”
“What?” Foord said. “Who’s that speaking?”
“Slesar, Commander. Officer Joser’s deputy. I’m sorry, my call should have gone through to him.”
“Never mind that, what’s happened?”
“It’s on the screen, Commander.”
The rear Bridge screen refocussed, and became a stained-glass window of dark red and terracotta, of burnt umber and sienna streaked with ochre. Headup displays provided a spectrographic analysis, but it wasn’t necessary. As soon as Smithson started laughing, they knew.
The third missile had been packed full of shit, probably the last of Her stock from Isis. It was as though Kaang had returned to them, on a grand scale.
8
Two hours later, Kaang did return to the Bridge. She found that it and its occupants had changed; perhaps for better or worse, but certainly for good.
“Welcome back, Kaang.”
“Thank you, Commander.”
She stood in the main doorway, swaying slightly, and blinking at what she saw.
“Yes, I know,” Foord said, waving an arm around, “A mess.” His voice was still quiet, but he spoke more quickly, and with more emphasis, than she was used to. “One small repair, to one small gravity compensator, and all this debris would disappear. But I wanted it left like this. I ordered it left like this. I had my reasons. You’ll see.”
Joser’s body was gone—she knew about Joser—and the Bridge consoles were impeccably tidy as usual, but everything else seemed chaotic. Kaang was bewildered. She had never seen it like this.
“Thahl has rerouted the pilot’s functions back to your console, Kaang.”
She nodded and began to pick her way, slightly unsteadily, through the mess and wreckage. Foord took her arm—he had never touched her before—and walked alongside her. His movements were different, somehow more abrupt and jagged; she was used to him moving about his ship silently and carefully. He kicked pieces of debris out of the way, and led her (not directly, but following the walls) to her console.
The others nodded as she passed—she mouthed Thank You to Thahl—but said nothing. Their expressions were hard to read.
She looked diminished. Her hair was lank and greasy, the scars on her face and forehead from the neural implants had not yet healed, and her eyes were larger and duller.
“Smithson,” Foord called over his shoulder, “damage reports?”
“Moderate structural damage to rear ventral hull. Manoeuvre drives severely impaired to port, moderately impaired to starboard. MT Drive shut down and inoperable. And we’re covered in shit.”
“How long?”
“Another five hours. But we can’t completely restore the port manoeuvre drives; they’ll still be ten percent impaired.”
“And Faith?”
“No change, Commander. She’s stationary at the inner edge of the Belt, and out of beam range. At asteroid CQ-504.”
“What’s She doing there?”
“It’s strange, Commander, She’s—”
“No, leave it. I remember, you told me before…” He turned to Kaang. “You see?”
She blinked up at him. “What, Commander?”
He pointed to the Bridge screen. “What She’s done to us.”
She saw, though it took her a moment to adjust. The screen was subdivided into a mosaic of smaller screens. Each one showed views of the ship from outside, transmitted to the Bridge from remotes floating under, over and around the hull. The hull itself was swarming with figures, human and nonhuman, living and mechanical and synthetic. Apart from the six (now five) on the Bridge, the Charles Manson had a crew of fifty-seven. About thirty, Kaang estimated, were on the hull, outnumbered by mechanicals and synthetics.