Mack saw the four techs reflected in a console panel. They ducked behind the next row of machines and were tracked by the muzzle of Four's lasgun. Mack hoped it wouldn't come to that. The men inside the foam cocoons might survive if they were cut free soon, but a lasgun firefight - messy, depressing.
Brood tapped the intercom on Mack's console.
"I left my man Ears back there to look after the OMC. You might've noticed how young he is. Nervous, too. That's been a problem in the past. You can ask your holo star what happens when Ears gets nervous. You OK back there, Ears?"
The voice on the intercom cleared its throat a couple of times before answering.
"Y-y-yeah, Boss, they're talking to me out there. But I ain't listening."
"Making progress on the hookup?"
"Yeah." The voice was young and reedy. "Tech says two more hours, tops."
"You're hooking up the OMC?" Mack's voice sounded as incredulous to him as he felt. "What the hell for?"
"We might want to take this thing out for a little spin, Doctor," Brood said. "Now, about those two lumps of shit, here. I told you to get rid of them."
"I won't do that, Captain," Mack said.
He unsealed his headpiece and set it aside. He sat in Spud's control couch and affected the same casual sprawl as Brood's.
"If you think I'm bluffin..."
"No, you're not bluffing. You'll do something. But the Gridmaster is one of your aces. You're not going to throw it away on something as trivial as my two men."
"They can leave."
Mack nodded to his men, and spoke into his headset.
"It's OK," he said. "Secure the hatch. Take these two and those four with you."
"They stay!"
"Everybody goes but you and me," Mack said. "You knew it would be that way, anyway. Your two guards may have a chance, this way. And the others, they wouldn't get anything done here until this i... settled. Am I right?"
Brood snorted his annoyance and waved them away. They backed out, pulling the wounded behind them, and Brood never wasted a glance. His attention remained on the Gridmaster's many screens that charted the world. A faint glow leaked out from behind the viewscreens, and Mack noticed a fine mist spreading from his holo stage near the turret.
The mysterious spill of a distinct white glow leaked under the console and licked at the heels of Brood's canvas boots. A similar glow lighted the base of their holo stage like a small moon on the deck. A reflection of light on the plasteel bulkhead meant that the turret, too, was suffused with this glow.
The kelp, he thought. What could it be up to?
Brood's lasgun still pointed at the Gridmaster, and by its displays Mack saw that the grids had reformed, but into neat rows of convoluted waves. Either Brood didn't notice the glow, or he didn't know it was unusual.
Something's overriding the whole system!
That, whatever it was, meant that the Gridmaster didn't matter. It was merely a recording instrument, no longer a tool of manipulation.
"Did Flattery send you?" Mack asked.
Brood's face, not an unhandsome one, turned up a lopsided smirk.
"Yes," he said, "he sent me."
"And are you following his orders, blasting in like this?"
"I am following th... the intent of his orders."
"Why wasn'... . ?"
"Because you're part of the problem, Doctor."
Brood swung around to face him fully and Mack saw an age in his eyes that was much older than the boyish face that held them. Now Brood's lasgun pointed at his chest. The light continued its ooze from all of the kelp linkups. A similar glow shimmered on each viewscreen behind the pale-faced captain.
The whole planet's lighting up, Mack thought. It must be the kelp, but what could it be up to?
"My orders were to secure Current Control and keep the lid on the Tatoosh woman," Brood told him.
The man's voice was quiet, almost wistful. "We were to keep Ozette out of the news, replace any of her crew as needed, accompany her up here. The Director thought she might try to - influence you, thereby endangering the security of Current Control as well as the Voidship project."
"So, you terrorized her, executed her crew, murdered my security squad and are now prepared to destroy Current Control and steal the Voidship - even Flattery won't buy this one, Captain."
Brood smiled, showing his fine, sharpened teeth, but his eyes remained hard as plasteel.
"Perhaps it is a family trait, this madness," he said, his voice rising with an edge to it. "You haven't heard the scuttlebutt, then. They say Flattery's my fathe... whoever my mother was, she was one of his diversions back at the beginning. I was the 'poor fruit' of that diversion, as some might say."
Mack was not as surprised at Brood's ancestry as he was by the cold anger with which Brood related it.
Hot anger stings, he thought, but it's cold anger that kills.
Mack started to speak but Brood's upturned hand stopped him.
"Spare me your sympathies, Doctor. It's not sympathy that I require. I am not the only one so privileged, there are others. If he knows, he finds favor in me because I do not challenge him. If he doesn'..."
A shrug, a pull at the lip. The ghost-light pooled his ankles.
"Others have not been so fortunate. My mother, whoever she was, for example. The Director requires power and I require power, that is clear. One way or another, I will have it."
"They've called a 'Code Brutus' down there. Are you a part of that?"
Brood snapped out a laugh. Those sharpened teeth sent a shudder down Mack's spine.
"I'm a winner, Doctor," he said. "I side with winners. I can't lose. If Flattery wins, then I've saved his Voidship for him, saved his precious kelpways, and I win. If Flattery loses, then I've captured the Voidship and the precious kelpways to hold for the winner."
"What happens if one of the others asks your help?"
"Then we'll suffer a communication breakdown," Brood said. "That's nothing new up here, is it, Doctor?"
Mack smiled.
"No, no it's not. We've been having that problem all day."
"So I noticed. My men, they are new to these airwaves, but thorough. We have monitored you here for quite some time - for practice, you understand. I know you quite well, Dr. MacIntosh. How well do you know me?"
"I don't know you at all."
"I wouldn't say that," Brood said. "You knew that I wouldn't blow the Gridmaster - not yet. You knew if I really wanted your men dead they'd be dead, and yourself along with them. Tell me what else you know about me, Doctor."
Mack stroked his chin. Leakage from the body of the number-two man drifted close, globs of blood floating with it like party decorations. Mack kept trying to remember which of his men it was, but it wouldn't come to him. But Brood was in a talkative mood, and Mack tried to keep him at it.
"You've covered all bases," Mack said. "If you take the wrong side, you can always run off with the Voidship - provided you can muster a crew."
"I have you, Doctor," Brood smiled. "An original crew member. I have the OMC, too. And I'll bet that you, a smart man and commander, would have a backup system - probably something handy, like the Gridmaster? Yes, a backup for a backu..."
Brood laughed again, more to himself this time. He reached out his lasgun barrel and nudged the blood globules enough to clump them together and push the glob out of reach toward the turret. A smear of dark blood glistened on the muzzle.
From somewhere deep inside his training-memory, Mack recalled one of his instructors telling him how clean a lasgun kill was, how the charge neatly sealed off blood vessels in its quick cone of burn through the body. In practice, as usual, this wasn't always the case.
Suddenly, the entire Current Control suite filled with overwhelming, blinding light. A stab of pain punched at both of Mack's eyes and he covered them reflexively. He heard Brood struggling nearby, bumping a bank of consoles toward the hatch.