The screen showed violet flickerings around Her hull as She powered up Her closeup weapons. That was almost reassuring; it was how they must look to Her, as they powered up theirs. Time to lay another card. Foord glanced at Cyr.
“Fire particle beams again, please.”
The beams lanced out. Again, She held them easily. As She did so, She came within visual range of the two missiles. They saw Her, and began and ended their lives.
From the two points where they floated, they erupted towards Her. Amazingly, as though She had the reflexes of a single living thing, She whirled in Her own length to face them, a move the Charles Manson could never have made; but they were nearly point-blank, and they both slammed into Her, the silent explosions of their impacts following as, nanoseconds too late, Her flickerfields came on.
Both missiles hit Her port side, the first amidships and the second, while She was still rolling from the first, near Her main drives at the stern. She continued to roll, bringing Her port side fully into their view, and they saw it, as if lit by a naked bulb swinging in a cellar: the enormity of what they had done to Her.
Two great craters had been hammered into Her hull, glowing in a colour they couldn’t name. Inside the craters they glimpsed for the first time what lay underneath Her surface, spidery substructures like their own. Bits of Her fountained out of the craters, turning end over end. They came in all shapes and sizes, and some were almost recognisable, like ordinary bits of wreckage from an ordinary ship; but
(Thahl got the Bridge screen to focus on them, and gestured wordlessly at Foord to look)
each piece of wreckage, whether it was a girder or a nut or a bolt—yes, She was made of things like that, as well as other unimaginable things—as soon as it left Her, reproduced in miniature the main damage to Her hull. Each piece, as it was thrown out, developed two craters in its side, and burnt away to nothing in the same unnameable colour as the craters they had hammered into Her.
Each piece, as it burnt away, was replaced by others which did the same, and others after that. The Bridge screen only focussed on the larger ones, but they were all burning away; and they were continuing to pour out of the craters, long after the missiles’ explosions died. Later the Bridge screen would analyse and calibrate every piece of wreckage, individually and exhaustively. It would report its findings upwards to its sentience core, which would report them upwards to the ship’s Codex, which after adding its own comments would report them further upwards to Foord and the others; and they would be no wiser then than they were now, watching it happen.
Thahl switched the Bridge screen back to the main view, where She was still rolling from the two impacts. The edges of the two craters in Her hull were still peeling back, pulsing like cell walls, as She completed the roll and Her port side passed out of their view.
She turned and ran. What was left of Her main drives flared, and She swung away, heading into Horus system and towards Sakhra. There was an oddness about how She moved, an asymmetric rolling produced by the way Her drives flared over the jagged wreckage at Her stern; asymmetric but repeated, the limping of something injured. They wouldn’t be able to follow Her until they reached the high point where they could break free of their orbit, but that hardly mattered. She was hurt, intimately and massively; and She was going into the Gulf between Horus system’s inner and outer planets, where She would have no cover.
Her screen image slowly receded, but She had left them something on the Bridge: a silence. It settled among them like another crew member.
It was one of the Charles Manson’s old silences, teeming with things unsaid. The reason for it, they all tried to persuade themselves, was Foord’s injunction: Kill your reactions. Kill them all. It fitted well, and each of them—including Foord himself—tried to take refuge in it, in the enormity of what they’d done. But it wasn’t real. There was no enormity. That was, literally, too large a word. What they had done felt smaller and dirtier.
It felt like it should never have happened. As if they were a gang of rapists, standing around after their victim had crawled away.
Later, the silence She left with them began to die.
“What have we done?” Kaang said.
“What we intended,” Cyr said.
“It felt wrong. Like it shouldn’t have happened.”
“Because nobody’s done it before.”
“And it’s trapped us,” Thahl said. “After this, we have to go on and destroy Her.”
“Or kill Her,” Smithson said. “It’s like She really is a living thing.”
“No,” Cyr said. “A ship, like us.”
“You saw those bits of wreckage.”
“Like us.”
“But what they did—”
“No!” Cyr snapped. “A ship. Like us.”
“Whatever She is,” Foord said, “I don’t want to know. I never have. I’m afraid of what we’d find.”
“Is that why the Department said don’t communicate with Her? Do they know what She is?”
“I don’t know, Cyr.” Foord glanced at Thahl, who for once would not meet his gaze. “But I’m afraid not to destroy Her.”
There was a pause. A piece of the silence broke off, like one of the pieces of Her wreckage, and began to die in the same way as the main silence.
PART EIGHT
1
They reached the high point of their orbit around Horus 4, broke free without difficulty, and entered the Gulf. Later they got the first images of Her on the Bridge screen, crawling brokenly ahead of them. The two great craters on Her port side, midsection and stern, were still pulsing in the same unnameable colour, like chemical fires in a derelict building. Radiating out from them, and spreading over Her hull, were dark lines in swirling watered-silk patterns.
The Bridge screen patched in closeups. Her hull plates, the size of thumbnails, were diamond-shaped and bounded by submicroscopic hairlines which both joined and separated them. The dark swirling lines cut across these boundaries, and (from earlier time-lapse closeups) were spreading like a skin infection. Further from the craters they grew paler, their colour finally merging into the silver of Her hull.
Apart from the craters and the spreading dark lines, She showed nothing. No light or movement behind the windows and ports and apertures which punctuated Her hull, and no emissions other than the damaged main drive.
“A ship, like us,” Cyr said.
“Not like us,” Smithson said.
“Substructures,” Cyr said. “Windows. Ports. Drives. Even hull plates.”
“Not like us,” Smithson repeated.
“Something was in there once,” Kaang said. “I don’t think it’s there any more.”
Foord looked at her curiously.
“Body language, Commander. You can usually tell.”
“Cyr: particle beams, please.”
“I thought you wanted it closeup, Commander.”
“That’s all finished. Just destroy Her.”
The beams stabbed out. Her flickerfields deployed, and held them.
“It seems…” Cyr began.
“Again,” said Foord. And “Again.”
Again the flickerfields held. Other than that, She did not respond.
“You were right,” he told Cyr. “It does seem.”
“So we go closeup?”
“Yes…Kaang, slow approach, please. On Her port side.”
The Charles Manson’s manoeuvre drives fountained, and they shifted to port; theirs, and Hers. They were still at long range, behind and above Her. They had chosen Her port side because of the craters.