The last few steps were more difficult; he couldn’t suppress the idea that the opening pointed dawn, that another few steps would cast him, screaming and helpless, into the infinity of space. Rubbish, of course; his boot grapples would simply swing him around, pulling in whatever direction they happened to be facing, until finally he stood on the outside of the hull looking “down” into the inside. But still, the bottoms of his feet tingled, and he wished he could wipe away the mist of sweat that sprang nervously from his forehead.
As promised, the eyes of the news cameras glittered at him like a wall, hundreds or possibly thousands of them hovering right at the limit of their invisible, three hundred-meter cordon around Her Majesty’s person.
He switched the control on his forearm to the PRESS/ PUBLIC ACCESS setting. “Hello?” he uttered tentatively.
Questions besieged him instantly, a hundred voices all yammering at once, with a sound like amplified static. He thought he heard the words “queen” and “house” and “collapsiter” in there a few times, but perhaps those were just his expectations, overlaid against the noise.
He held up a hand and shouted. “Please!” The noise quieted somewhat. “Oh, for goodness’ sake. Be silent! Silent!” Within a few seconds, the hubbub stilled. He lowered his hand. “Thank you. Good afternoon. I am de Towaji, summoned here as part of the Royal Committee for Investigation of, uh. Ring Collapsiter Anomalies. There is reason to believe this structure was damaged by a coherent energy burst called a ‘nasen beam,’ fired by a spaceship the police are still trying to locate. This ship may also have been involved in the most recent disruption of the Ring Collapsiter’s suspension mechanisms, although we have no direct proof at this time. Investigation is of course ongoing. I have no predictions as to when, uh, any resolution may come about. And now, if you require more specific information, I’m willing to answer a few questions.”
To avoid a tsunami of replies, he thought to point toward a specific region of the flattened swarm, a cluster of four or five cameras, and to say, “You, yes.”
The response was immediate. “Sir, have you resumed sexual relations with Her Majesty?”
Bruno sighed. “Is that all you people ever think about? The Queendom is in peril, you know. Are there any serious or technical questions?”
There almost certainly were, but something in his tone put them off, made the cameras worried or confused. Sykes Manor sat halfway between the orbits of Earth and Venus and was not, at this time of year, actually close to either of them. So the cameras were almost certainly autonomous, loaded with their owners’ instruction sets and stripped-down personality images and fired off on absurdly hasty trajectories to gather up what news they could. Given a few seconds to collect their miniature wits, or a few tens of seconds to confer with their distant owners, the cameras’ processors might well have come up with an intelligent question or two; surely some of them were from research or educational outfits, or other nontabloid press.
But Bruno, already bored with his role as spokesman, didn’t give them a few seconds. Instead, he waved a dismissive hand and said, “Bah, you have the gist of it already. The details, when we know them, will be released in some sort of interactive document. Meanwhile, Marlon Sykes and Deliah van Skeltering are coping with their misfortune, while their murderer is sought.”
“Declarant,” one brave camera finally asked, “will this report include your solution to the Ring Collapsiter’s fall?”
“I have no solution to that,” Bruno said grumpily. “At the moment, I’m not certain there is one.”
The cameras met that remark with stunned silence. Oh. So much for his being reassuring.
“Er, that is, I’ve only been here a few hours. And as such things go, they’ve been rather busy hours. When I’ve had time to study the problem more completely, I’ll… Well, it’s just premature right now.”
Bother it, he was bad at this. Annoyed, he cut the channel and walked away. Tamra should have had better judgment than to send him out here like this, unsupervised.
On his way, he nearly walked into one of the many Cheng Shiaos that filled Sykes Manor; the Shiao was standing there in the gloom, his back turned, his lights pointing up at distant rubble, and Bruno half mistook him for a pillar until the lights turned suddenly toward him.
“Goodness, Shiao, you startled me.”
Shiao gave a ritual nod. “Excuse me, Declarant. The fault is mine. To update you on what’s happening: the suspect vessel has been pinpointed, and has refused radio contact or else been unable to establish it. Its registration number, which we’ve been able to read optically from the exterior hull, shows ownership by something called the Titania Mineralogical Concern. This registry may be forged or stolen, though; the application was filed eighty years ago, for an eight-berth personnel ferry much smaller than this vessel, by the name of Lupin II.”
“Ah,” Bruno said. “I see, yes. And this other ship, the one you’ve actually spotted, does it have a name?”
Shiao looked troubled. “It does, sir. HMS De Towaji’s Bane. You’ll, ah, be pleased to know that the nearest Constabulary cruiser is already en route toward it, with a SWAT boarding party and a full suite of armaments. ETA five hours, twenty-two minutes.”
“Ah,” Bruno said, taken aback. “My own bane, is it? I should be flattered, I suppose. And a boarding party, you say? You’ll certainly want to identify the nasen beam projector—it should be outside the hull, possibly in a pod of some sort, with its heat sink located opposite the projection aperture. The device also needs to be completely free of mechanical vibrations for several minutes before it’s fired, so if anyone aims it at your cruiser there should be ample warning to move out of the way. You needn’t move far—even a few meters would suffice. Just enough that the beam will miss if it isn’t realigned.”
“Thank you, Declarant,” Shiao said, sounding impressed and concerned and genuinely grateful. “That advice could well save lives today.”
“Think nothing of it,” Bruno returned, waving a hand. “My own life may well be among them, as this bears directly on the Ring Collapsiter investigation. You’re prepared to fax the Royal Committee aboard for the encounter?”
Shiao’s jaw tightened visibly, but all he said was, “Absolutely, sir. Arrangements are already underway.”
A Constabulary boarding action turned out to be a remarkably dull affair. This one did, anyway, since the “suspect vessel,” Bruno’s very own personal bane, his hashashin, his self-styled mortal enemy, never once engaged its engines or aimed its nasen projector or reoriented its hull in any way. It might almost have been a derelict, a ghost ship drifting empty through space, if not for the winking of running lights, clearly visible through the new cruiser’s telescopes. Too, the cruiser’s captain reported that the suspect vessel did occasionally fire a puff of gas from its maneuvering thrusters. “Momentum wheel desaturation,” he explained cryptically. “For control of their altitude, which appears to be fixed in inertial space.”