‘I do too, Beast. Guess we’ll know soon enough.’
‘I can depressurise, I think. Can you get Antoinette into a suit without the other two causing any trouble?’
‘Not going to be easy. I’m already worried about leaving them alone down there. I don’t know how long it will be before they decide to risk moving around. I suppose if I could get them into one compartment, and her into another…’
‘I might be able to selectively depressurise, yes. Never tried it before, though, so I don’t know if it’ll work first time.’
‘Maybe it won’t come to that, if the Convention’s goons get to us first.’
‘Whatever happens, there’s going to be trouble.’
Xavier read Beast’s tone of voice well enough. ‘Antoinette, you mean?’
‘She might have some difficult questions for you to answer, Xavier.’
Xavier nodded grimly. It was the last thing he needed to be reminded about now, but the point was inarguable. ‘Clavain had his doubts about you, but had the good sense not to ask Antoinette what was going on.’
‘Sooner or later she’s going to have to know. Jim never meant for this to be a secret her whole life.’
‘But not today,’ Xavier said. ‘Not here, not now. We’ve got enough to deal with for the moment.’
That was when something on the console caught his eye. It was on the three-dimensional radar plot: three icons daggering in from the direction of the carousel. They were moving quickly, on vectors that would bring them around Storm Bird in a pincer movement.
‘Well, you wanted a response, Xavier,’ Beast said. ‘Looks like you’ve got one.’
These days, the Convention’s cutters were never very far from Carousel New Copenhagen. If they were not harassing Antoinette — and usually they were — then it was someone else. Very likely the authorites had been alerted that something unusual was happening as soon as Storm Bird had left the repair bay. Xavier just hoped it was not the particular Convention officer who had taken such an interest in Antoinette’s affairs.
‘Do you think it’s true, that they’d kill us without even asking why we were on fusion thrust?’
‘I don’t know, Xavier. At the time I wasn’t exactly spoilt for other options.’
‘No… you did fine. It’s what I would have done. What Antoinette would have done, probably. And definitely what Jim Bax would have done.’
‘The ships will be within boarding range in three minutes.’
‘Make it easy for them. I’ll go back and see how the others are doing.’
‘Good luck, Xavier.’
He worked his way back to where Antoinette was waiting. To his relief, Clock and the pig were still in their seats. He felt his weight diminishing as Beast cut power to the nuclear rockets.
‘Well?’ Antoinette asked.
‘We’re OK,’ Xavier said, with more confidence than he felt. ‘The police will be here any moment.’
He was in his seat by the time they were weightless. A few seconds later he felt a series of bumps as the police craft grappled on to the hull. So far, so good, he thought: they were at least going to get a boarding, which was better than being shot out of the sky. He would be able to argue his case, and even if the bastards insisted that someone still had to die, he thought he could keep Antoinette out of too much trouble.
He felt a breeze. His ears popped. It felt like decompression, but it was over before he had started to feel real fear. The air was still again. Distantly, he heard clunks and squeals of buckling and shearing metal.
‘What just happened?’ asked Mr Pink.
‘Police must have cut their way through our airlock,’ Xavier said. ‘Slight pressure differential between their air and ours. There was nothing to stop them coming in normally, but I guess they weren’t prepared to wait for the lock to cycle.’
Now he heard approaching mechanical sounds.
‘They’ve sent a proxy,’ Antoinette said. ‘I hate proxies.’
It arrived less than a minute later. Antoinette flinched as the machine unfolded itself into the room, enlarging like a vile black origami puzzle. It swept rapier-edged limbs through the room in lethal arcs. Xavier flinched as one bladed arm passed inches from his eyes, parting air with a tiny whipcrack. Even the pig looked as if there were places he would rather be.
‘This wasn’t clever,’ Mr Pink said.
‘We weren’t going to hurt you,’ Clock added. ‘We just wanted information. Now you’re in a great deal more trouble.’
‘You had a trawl,’ Xavier said.
‘It wasn’t a trawl,’ Mr Pink said. ‘It was just an eidetic playback device. It wouldn’t have harmed you.’
The proxy said, ‘The registered owner of this vessel is Antoinette Bax.’ The machine moved to crouch over her, close enough that she could hear the constant low humming that it gave out and smell the tingle of ozone from the sparking taser. ‘You have contravened Ferrisville Convention regulations relating to the use of fusion propulsion within the Rust Belt, formerly known as the Glitter Band. This is a category-three civil offence that carries the penalty of irreversible neural death. Please submit for genetic identification.’
‘What?’ said Antoinette.
‘Open your mouth, Miss Bax. Do not move.’
‘It’s you, isn’t it?’
‘Me, Miss Bax?’ The machine whipped out a pair of rubber-tipped manipulators and braced her head. It hurt, and continued to hurt, as if her skull were being slowly compressed in a vice. Another manipulator whisked out of a previously concealed part of the machine. It ended in a tiny curved blade, like a scythe.
‘Open your mouth.’
‘No…’ She felt tears coming.
‘Open your mouth.’
The evil little blade — which was still large enough to nip off a finger — hovered an inch from her nose. She felt the pressure increase. The machine’s humming intensified, becoming a low orgasmic throb.
‘Open your mouth. This is your last warning.’
She opened her mouth, but it was as much to groan in pain as to give the proxy what it wanted. Metal blurred, much to quick for her to see. There was a moment of coldness in her mouth, and the feeling of metal brushing her tongue for an instant.
Then the machine withdrew the blade. The limb articulated, tucking the blade into a separate aperture in the proxy’s compact central chassis. Something hummed and clicked within: a rapid sequencer, no doubt, tallying her DNA against the Convention’s records. She heard the rising whine of a centrifuge. The proxy still had her head in a vicelike grip.
‘Let her go,’ Xavier said. ‘You’ve got what you want. Now let her go.’
The proxy released Antoinette. She gasped for breath, wiping tears from her face. Then the machine turned towards Xavier.
‘Interfering in the activities of an official or officially designated mechanism of the Ferrisville Convention is a category-one…’
It did not bother to complete the sentence. Contemptuously, it flicked the taser arm across Xavier so that the sparking electrodes skimmed his chest. Xavier made a barking noise and convulsed. Then he was very still, his eyes open and his mouth agape.
‘Xavier…’ Antoinette gasped.
‘It’s killed him,’ Clock said. He started unfastening his restraint webbing. ‘We must do something.’
Antoinette snapped, ‘What the fuck do you care? You brought this about.’
‘Difficult as it may be to believe, I do care.’ Then he was up from his seat, grappling for the nearest anchorage point. The machine gyred to face him. Clock stood his ground, the only one of them who had not flinched when the proxy had arrived. ‘Let me through. I want to examine him.’
The machine lurched towards Clock. Perhaps it expected him to feint out of the way at the last moment, or huddle protectively. But Clock did not move at all. He did not even blink. The proxy halted, humming and clicking furiously. Evidently it did not know quite what to make of him.