Turning his head as much as the Jain structure allowed, Skellor viewed the other chairs in this bridge pod, and understood what he must do — there was a rightness to it, almost as if preordained. Seven chairs — and through Aphran and Danny's augs he sensed that — including themselves — seven of the Separatists remained alive.
With an effort that momentarily blinded him to the continuous input of information from that part of the ship he did control, he grew spurs from those roots of Jain structure below the floor. He felt them rapidly growing, feeding on and converting the surrounding material as they did so — insulation, plastics, metals, chainglass. From the skein of optics he was already tracking out to the navigational instruments scattered about the surface of the ship, he sent a spur to one of those chairs. From the monitoring systems for the engines, another. From weapons control, life-support, internal security, ship's maintenance, and shield control. Other smaller systems he attached where appropriate — structural integrity to ship's maintenance, a split spur for control of the ship's reactors to all of them… Command was totally his own, but each of the others would possess what autonomy he allowed them. Glancing down he watched these growths breaking through the floor below the seven seats and spreading underneath them. Then he stared at the doors and waited for his command crew to appear.
The utter stillness was familiar and Thorn immediately became aware that he was waking from cold-sleep. Running through mental routines inculcated into him over the many years of his training, he tried to remember just what his and Gant's assignment was this time and, as had happened before, he remembered that Gant was dead. Confusion reigned for a moment as he tried to place himself — to remember where he was and what he was doing. Moving forward from the moment of Gant's death, he remembered his return to Earth and the attempts by a Sparkind general to dissuade him from transferring out, next the retraining in both VR and the field for undercover duties in ECS, and a couple of infiltration missions in the Sol system before shipping out to Cheyne III. Then he remembered what had happened there.
There came a buzzing click, then a crack, and a pale line of light cut down to the left of him. Knowing what came next in no way ameliorated the sudden feeling of pins and needles as the nerve-blocker detached from his neck — it felt as if someone had been rolling him in cactus spines. The lid of the cold-coffin swung away from him — a man-shaped impression in hoared metal. This being a coffin that was upright in relation to ship's gravity, handles extruded from the metal on either side of him and he grabbed them as soon as he was able to move his arms. The needles retracted, to be replaced by the sensation of his skin having been rubbed raw — burnt even. He gasped his first breath, fluid bubbled in his lungs, and he coughed and swallowed. Looking to his left, he saw John Stanton step out of his own coffin and begin isometric exercises — obviously the man was a veteran of travelling this way. It took Thorn a while longer, as he lifted each leg alternately and flexed it, stretched his back and neck, then stepped out as if onto ice, with one hand still gripping a handle for support.
"It never gets any better," he commented.
After touching his toes a couple of times, then running on the spot for a moment with his breath gouting in the cold air of the hold, Stanton replied, "Never really bothered me. Sometimes you welcome the oblivion on long hauls." Stanton moved down past Thorn and headed towards the entry to the ship's living quarters. Over his shoulder he said, "Only one shower here, so you'll have to wait."
Thorn now tried a few exercises himself. Even though normal sensation had mostly returned, the ends of his fingers were still numb from the nerve damage done by the toxin Brom had used on him. Another session with this ship's autodoc seemed likely, he realized, as he went to a locker beside the coffins to find himself disposable overalls to wear while he awaited his turn in the shower. Donning the compressed paper fabric, he glanced round as Jarvellis stepped out of the flight cabin, heading for the living quarters.
"Where are we?" he asked her.
She halted and studied him. "Just coming insystem. The gas giant Calypse sits between Masada and us at the moment. It'll take about six days." She gestured towards the flight cabin. "By all means go and take a look. John and I need a little privacy for a while."
Closing the stick-strip of his coverall. Thorn nodded and, after slipping on the deck shoes that came in the same packet, headed towards the flight cabin. He understood her perfectly: obviously she had come out of cold-sleep some time before himself and Stanton, and he well knew how the body's normal function kicked in over a very short period of time — he himself had often felt unbearably horny in the hour after thaw-up. What he did not understand was why the two of them hadn't left him on ice for a while longer. Looking around, he was suddenly aware of how cramped the cargo area now was. With only small chagrin, he realized that Stanton and Jarvellis had been out of cold-sleep at least once since he himself had gone into it.
In the flight cabin, Thorn dropped into one of the command chairs and gazed at the main screen. Displayed there was the gas giant Calypse, with the corona of the sun glaring to the right of it — its main light muted by a black reactant disc. As Stanton had explained before they had gone into cold-sleep, Masada was surrounded by the laser arrays and cylinder worlds of the Theocracy, with the planetary population held in constant thrall by the ruling caste's technological advantage. This being the case he wondered how his colleagues intended to get Lyric II down to the surface. Admittedly, there were often holes through which a small ship could slip, since in any space-borne civilization there had to be a lot of traffic. But this ship, though it could be mistaken for an insystem hauler, was not exactly small. He thought he might as well experiment.
"Lyric, are you able to respond to me?" he asked.
"I can respond, though you might not like the response," the ship AI replied.
"I'm a little puzzled about how Stanton intends to get this ship down to the planet's surface undetected. He told me that there's just one spaceport and that's only for Theocracy military or cargo traffic, and I've every reason to suspect that the cargo on board here is not for them."
"And what was your question?" Lyric asked him.
"How does he intend to get this ship down to the surface of Masada undetected?"
"Sorry, can't tell you that."
"Do you have Theocracy security codes?"
"Didn't last time I looked."
Sitting back Thorn grimaced to himself: only the terminally naïve believed that AIs did not lie. In fact, in his own experience AIs made better liars than human beings.