He motioned for the helots to gather around; this day would be their first spent under a full gee in the spinning habitation modules. They would be cramped there, but it was essential to ready as many of them as possible for—
A sound that Harrod had only heard once before—during the Ark’s first systems test, seventy-five years ago—stunned him now: the emergency klaxon. Without a word to the helots, he turned to rush out of the big, boxy hab module—but the door to the coupler autosealed with a breathy hiss.
Stunned, Harrod stared at the closed hatchway for a moment, then paged the bridge—only to find that there was already a line paging him. Not recognizing the code, he answered, curious and cautious: “Hello?”
“Hello, Harrod.” The voice was Ackley’s. “Where are you?”
“In the zerogee hab modules. With the helots.”
“Excellent. Stay there. You’ll be safe.”
“What do you mean, ‘I’ll be safe?’ Safe from what?”
“It will be over very soon.”
“What will?”
Ackley paused as if startled at Harrod’s naiveté. “The destruction of House Mellis, of course.”
There was a muffled blast, a heavy impact that sent Harrod and the helots reeling aft, and the faint squeal of deforming metal near the module coupler hatch. “What—what in the name of the Death Fathers are you doing, Ackley?”
“Killing those who killed us—before they can finish the job. The jolt you felt was one of the cryogenic hive-modules being blown free of the Courser.”
“But—-how?”
“Simple, really. We doubled each coupler cube’s separator charges when Bikrut had us run a systems check. Put in radio-operated triggers. We guessed that would be enough to tear each module free of the main hull. Seems we were right.”
“How many—how many are you ‘jettisoning’?”
“Intendant: what a question. Why, all of them, of course. They killed almost four hundred of us. Now we’re killing twenty-eight hundred of them. Since one of us is worth ten of them, they’ve still got the better part of the deal. But not for long.” His voice lowered. “Harrod, give me the access codes for the bridge module.” In the background, Harrod now heard faint gunshots, two screams, the hissing rattle of a machine pistol.
“I don’t know the access codes,” Harrod lied.
“Of course you do.” Ackley didn’t even sound moderately annoyed.
And Harrod thought: am I so predictable, then? Well yes, I suppose I am. “No, I really don’t know the codes.”
“Harrod, we have already tortured one of these curs—and he insisted that you do know the codes. Insisted quite emphatically.”
“He must be mistaken, then.”
“Really? I wasn’t under the impression that Overlord Bikrut’s second son would be so terribly misinformed.” Ackley’s tone became more intimate. “Listen, Harrod: you don’t understand. You are being offered a signal honor: cooperate now, and the new Overlord Shaddock will Raise you up. A full integration of your seed in the House’s First Line. You are the only creature bearing the name Mellis who will survive this day—if you cooperate.”
Harrod felt the whip upon his back, tasted the broken promises of his Raising, but also saw the slaughter that would ensue if the vengeful survivors of House Shaddock entered the bridge module, which was probably where the women and children of House Mellis had taken shelter. “I—I cannot give you the codes. I cannot be the instrument of so much senseless killing.”
“Killing, yes; senseless, no.” Ackley’s tone was chillingly casual. “It makes quite a lot of sense to kill people who have already proven that they would cheerfully kill all of us in our cryocells—if they didn’t need some of our pilots to fly their away-craft. Speaking of which, this is your last chance—because if we don’t get the codes, we’re leaving.”
Harrod felt that, although he was motionless, the world around him was spinning furiously. “Leaving?”
“Of course. If we can’t seize the Courser, then we will take the away-craft. And I’m sorry, but we’ll have to harm your pretty ship a bit as we leave. Harrod, this is your last chance.” A moment of silent waiting; then another sputter of gunfire. “Very well, Harrod. Your death—and only yours—is a waste. Your skills will be missed.”
And the circuit went dead. At the same moment, explosions rocked the ship, first pushing strongly from aft—the engines, no doubt—and then light but irregular buffeting from the other three points of the compass.
“What was that?” asked the leader of the helots.
Harrod moved to inspect the coupler. “The first jolt was the engines being sabotaged. The next was our electromagnetic shielding pods being blasted free. Without them, the radiation levels in this hull will climb rapidly. And without our engines …” House Shaddock had crippled the Ark itself. At first it seemed madness, but then Harrod perceived—and conceded—the canny inspiration behind that madness. Since House Shaddock could not hold the ship—and therefore, the high ground—it was necessary that the enemy’s seat of power be rendered useless. And that is what they had done to Photrek Courser: damaged engines and an absence of radiation shielding made this once mighty Ark a death ship. Whether it spiraled in toward the seas of Senrefer Tertius Seven, or was sucked in years later by the gas giant itself was hardly worthy of debate: in the end, the great Ark, the enabler of any further Rites of Exile, was gone. In its place was only the unremitting contention and enmity of the rival Houses.
Harrod’s comm-link hummed; he activated it.
Bikrut’s voice growled out of it. “Intendant, where are you?”
“In zero-gee habmod three, my Overlord.”
“And you know what has happened?”
“I do. Are all the ships away?”
“Yes, all taken by the Shaddock devos—may the Dread Parents feast upon the entrails of the motherless spawn.” A long pause. “You refused to give them the access codes, didn’t you?”
“Yes, my Overlord.”
“This was well done. And yet stupid: if you had it in you to dominate, to prevail, you would have gambled all, boldly—and left behind your loyalty to my wounded House. But, since you can no longer breed, I recant my earlier decree: in appreciation of the exemplary service you have rendered us, I declare you Raised, Intendant Harrod sul-Mellis.”
That declaration, and its now-monstrously diminished significance, struck Harrod as particularly ironic. But he kept the smile out of his voice as he replied, “Harrod sul-Mellis thanks his Overlord for this signal honor.”
Bikrut made a muttering sound that might have been congratulations, complaining, or mild gastric distress.
Harrod asked, “I do not understand your remark regarding my inability to breed, Overlord Bikrut.”
“I did not say that you lacked the ability; I said that you cannot do so.”
“Meaning, you will not permit me?”
“Meaning you will not survive.”
At that moment, the ship gave yet another tortured wrench aftwards, tumbling Harrod and his helots against the bow-quarter bulkhead. “Overlord Bikrut, what do you mean—and what was that?”
“The answer is the same: the survivors of House Mellis have collected in the bridge module, which we have just detached from the command hull.”
“Uncoupled the bridge module? But it is incapable of reachieving orbit, once it is used as a planetary lifeboat. Besides, it was never refurbished—”
“That is where you are wrong, Harrod: we refurbished the bridge module’s maneuver system in the sixth year of our voyage, and left no record of the activity. With all of House Shaddock still in cold sleep, that was simple enough to achieve.”
“So you will land the bridge module—where?”
“Why, right atop the traitorous devos who were assassinating my family just a few minutes ago. They are headed to the primary landing site in the southern hemisphere. And we shall follow them.”