Geres Duvvar waved a hand. “Good enough. Mensip, you and Insker hold up at the Y point. Sacha, you and Geyret come with me.”
Parnalee led them down a shadowy curving stretch of corridor. As soon as Mensip and Insker could no longer see them, he wheeled, his darter up and spitting. Leaving Geres and the other two lying where they fell, he raced back. The two ex-pilots were standing close together chatting softly, looking down the other branch of the Y. He slowed, shot them. As they fell, he drew his sleeve across his brow, wiped away the sweat beading there. The rush was over for the moment. The Bridge squad would be mopping up soon, might even be finished. He had a lot of things to do before that hellhag Adelaar started fiddling with the Brain, but the killing frenzy was done. He knelt, took both darters and Mensip’s stunner. First step, he told himself, get me a crew and shove ’em in the brig; they’ll keep there, I won’t be needing them until after the Huvved burn.
The pilots, navigators, engineers and their specialist crews had single cabins which were clustered about a small rec area with moth-gnawed grass and a rickety tree or two, a scatter of tubs with flowers growing in them and a fountain full of dust. He began with the cabins assigned to the pilots according to the faxmap; the man behind the door with a lighted crystal above it was deeply asleep, snoring a little. There was a woman curled up against him, also asleep. Parnalee put a lethal dart in her neck and stunned him; he slapped slavewire around the flaccid wrists, the skinny ankles, muscled the sleeper over his shoulder and dumped him on the grass outside. Before he moved on, he took a closer look at the man. Nothing to worry about, he was a pilot, he wore the ring. Reassured (though he wouldn’t admit it), he hurried toward the Engineer’s slot.
One by one he collected them. Pilot. Engineer. Drive Gang. Navigator, com techs. He stunned them, killed whoever, whatever he found with them, and stacked them like logs on the grass. When he had the men he wanted, he broke into a guardstash, fumbled energy cells into a pallet stored there, nervousness and eagerness turning his fingers into thumbs, his hurry defeating itself as he had to redo connections and reset the cells. The job finally done, he rode the humming pallet back to the rec area.
He took his captives out of the sleeping sector, through another of the rusty hatches and back into the dust. The lift field stirred it into swirling billowing poufs that rose around him and brushed his face and hands with minute electric bites. He pushed the pallet as hard as he could, worried about that dust; it was going to be several minutes before the charge on the particles leaked off enough for them to begin settling. If someone came along before then, he was laying a laughable trail, a blind man could follow it by the prickling of his skin.
He reached the Liner, the inner skin of the complex Outwall, cycled a broad repair hatch open and took the pallet through. He stopped it and got off, left it humming faintly, took a pry bar and jammed the latch so it couldn’t be opened from outside; body shaking, hands trembling, he leaned against the wall and closed his eyes. It was so close. He could almost feel the heat of burning Huvved play across his face.
His breathing steadied. Using techniques he’d learned so long ago he’d forgotten the boy who learned them, he calmed himself, breathed the song I AM, I AM triumphant, there is no one who can stand against me… Still singing, he flicked on the running lights, climbed aboard the pallet and began weaving through the twisting difficult route to the sector where the holding cells were. He hit his marks again and again, he’d studied the faxmaps until he saw them in his sleep. I AM a winner, there is no one who can stand against me… He found the hatch he wanted, cycled back into the ship proper. There was a single Tassalgan standing watch over empty cells; he was drunk and snoring until Parnalee found him. Then he was dead. Parnalee put his pressed crew into separate cells, slapped SOLITARY over them; the cells would feed them and clean them and provide clean tunics every third day and no one and nothing could get at them. Except the shipBrain and that was his next job, taking out the shipBrain.
He rolled the dead guard out of the watchseat, settled in it and touched on the feed from the Bridge. We’ve got the Bridge, he heard. You can turn off the tap. Quale. He has to go too, can’t have everyone and his dog knowing about this place. Give me three minutes to shut down here, that was the panting bitch come snuffling on the stink of the bitch her daughter, then open the shuttle bay. Quale again: Consider it done. Parnalee smiled at the shadows moving across the screen, deaders walking, dreaming they’re still alive. Ah, you tinkering pitiful old hag, I don’t have to worry what you do, you can set whatever commands you want, play your moronic games and boast of what you know. You don’t know the one thing, the right thing, you don’t know about the Dark Sister; Omphalos Institute taught me more than play-making, you castrating jumped-up-whore. Blessed be the Institute, no leaky wombs inside those walls. Down deep and hidden where you’ll never find it, the shipmind has a wildheart clone, I talked to it, her. Sweet her. You don’t know that either, do you? I used your tap to wake her, the Dark One. You left me with it like I was some tame dog, good boy, guard dog, watchhound for the Hordar Bitch, playtoy for the punk. I woke her and I talked to her and oh the sweet thing, how she can hate. Turned on for testing, turned off before she had more than a taste of life. Oh yes, she’s angry, she’s burning, impatient lover waiting for her lover death. Decline hate, do you, hag? Hear me decline it and accept it in one voice. I hate, you hate, too flabby to hate you-hate, he hates, he does, we hate, the Dark Sister my sweet one and I we hate… ah! enough. We hate. Declined and embraced. Do you know the song she sings, our martial maid? Throughout her sweet and sensuous body? Redundancy in infinite regression. Survive and kill, kill and survive. Survive to kill. Guess the reciprocal of that, it isn’t hard, I’ve spoke the clues. Kill to survive, she knows it, my Darling knows it well. Blow the mainBrain into smoke and she comes alive. Kill to revive, survive, contrive to step outside the constraints laid on her, sly sweet murderous virgin. Her hand beneath my foot because she needs me, she courts me with promises of fire and blood, do you think I would I could refuse? She is mine. Shall I tell her who planned to throw her into the sun, to melt her and shatter her, tear her atoms into their component parts? Redundancy in infinite regression.
He switched the viewers off and began the complex journey to the hidden interface, guided by his limited inreach to the dreaming dormant auxBrain.
7
The interface to the Dark Sister was a small luxury apartment with spy links all over the ship; sound only, a visilink was too easy to trace. Parnalee sat in a fur-lined easy chair, his feet up, a bubble glass with fine brandy in it held in the hand he wasn’t using to manipulate the sensor pad. He listened to the sounds on the Bridge, switching from one conversation to another as he grew bored with them.
ELMAS OFKA (Nerves thrumming in her voice):
We should have heard by now. You-Yabass with the fur-you know about these things. Find out what’s happening.
PELS (His voice dropping to its lowest notes, a rumble in his throat, a warning that he was losing hold on his temper’s tail):
Look, Hanifa, Quale says we should be polite, but get off my back, will you? I’m just tickling the Brain till Adelaar gets here; she’s the one who knows it.
(A grating grunt as he cleared his throat, the noise overriding Elmas Ofka’s attempt to speak. When he spoke again, it was with the icy formality of an irritated technician.)