The flasks travelled back — returning to what I presumed to have been their former positions — and then halted again. Save for the missing limb, the chamber was exactly as when we had entered it.
‘I don’t like this,’ Sollis said. ‘The ship is supposed to be dead.’
‘Dormant,’ Martinez corrected.
‘You don’t think the shit that just happened is in any way related to us being aboard? You don’t think Jax just got a wake-up call?’
‘If Jax were aware of our presence, we’d know it by now.’
‘I don’t know how you can sound so calm.’
‘All that has happened, Ingrid, is that Nightingale has performed some trivial housekeeping duty. We have already seen that it maintains some organs in pre-surgical condition, and this is just one of its tissue libraries. It should hardly surprise us that the ship occasionally decides to move some of its stock from A to B.’
She made a small, catlike snarl of frustration — I could tell she hadn’t bought any of his explanations — and pulled herself hand over hand to the door.
‘Any more shit like that happens, I’m out,’ she said.
‘I’d think twice if I were you,’ Martinez said. ‘It’s a hell of a long walk home.’
I caught up with Sollis and touched her on the forearm. ‘I don’t like it either, Ingrid, but the man’s right. Jax doesn’t know we’re here. If he did, I think he’d do more than just move some flasks around.’
‘I hope you’re right, Scarrow.’
‘So do I,’ I said under my breath.
We continued along the main axis of the ship, following a corridor much like the one we’d been following before the organ library. It swerved and jagged, then straightened out again. According to the inertial compasses, we were still headed towards Jax, or at least the part of the ship where it appeared most likely we’d find him, alive or dead.
‘What we were talking about earlier,’ Sollis said, ‘I mean, much earlier — about how this ship never got destroyed at the end of the war after all—’
‘I think I have stated my case, Ingrid. Dwelling on myths won’t bring a wanted man to justice.’
‘We’re looking at about a million tonnes of salvageable spacecraft here. Gotta be worth something to someone. So why didn’t anyone get their hands on it after the war?’
‘Because something bad happened,’ Nicolosi said. ‘Maybe there was some truth in the story about that boarding party coming here and not leaving.’
‘Oh, please,’ Martinez said.
‘So who was fighting back?’ I asked. ‘Who stopped them taking Nightingale?’
Nicolosi answered me. ‘The skeleton staff… security agents of the postmortals who financed this thing… maybe even the protective systems of the ship itself. If it thought it was under attack—’
‘If there was some kind of firefight aboard this thing,’ I asked, ‘where’s the damage?’
‘I don’t care about the damage,’ Sollis cut in. ‘I want to know what happened to all the bodies.’
We came to another blocked double-door airlock. Sollis got to work on it immediately, but my expectation that she would work faster now that she had already opened several doors without trouble was wrong. She kept plugging things in, checking read-outs, murmuring to herself just loud enough to carry over the voice link. Nightingale’s face watched us disapprovingly, looking on like the portrait of a disappointed ancestor.
‘This one could be trickier,’ she said. ‘I’m picking up active data links, running away from the frame.’
‘Meaning it could still be hooked into the nervous system?’ Nicolosi asked.
‘I can’t rule it out.’
Nicolosi ran a hand along the smooth black barrel of his plasma weapon. ‘We could double back, try a different route.’
‘We’re not going back,’ Martinez said. ‘Not now. Open the door, Ingrid: we’ll take our chances and move as quickly as we can from now on.’
‘You sure about this?’ She had a cable pinched between her fingers. ‘No going back once I plug this in.’
‘Do it.’
She pushed the line in. At the same moment a shiver of animation passed across Nightingale’s face, the mask waking to life. The door spoke to us. Its tone was strident and metallic, but also possessed of an authoritative femininity.
‘This is the Voice of Nightingale. You are attempting to access a secure area. Report to central administration to obtain proper clearance.’
‘Shit,’ Sollis said.
‘You weren’t expecting that?’ I asked.
‘I wasn’t expecting an active facet. Maybe the sentience engine isn’t powered down quite as far as I thought.’
‘This is the Voice of Nightingale,’ the door said again. ‘You are attempting to access a secure area. Report to central administration to obtain proper clearance.’
‘Can you still force it?’ Nicolosi asked.
‘Yeah… think so.’ Sollis fumbled in another line, made some adjustments and stood back as the door slid open. ‘Voilà.’
The face had turned silent and masklike again, but now I really felt as if we were being watched; as if the woman’s eyes seemed to be looking in all directions at once.
‘You think Jax knows about us now?’ I asked, as Sollis propelled herself into the holding chamber between the two sets of doors.
‘I don’t know. Maybe I bypassed the door in time, before it sent an alert.’
‘But you can’t be sure.’
‘No.’ She sounded wounded.
Sollis got to work on the second door, faster now, urgency overruling caution. I checked that my gun was still where I’d left it, and then made sure that the safety catch was still off. Around me, the others went through similar preparatory rituals.
Gradually it dawned on me that Sollis was taking longer than expected. She turned from the door, her equipment still hooked into its open service panel.
‘Something’s screwed up,’ she said, before swallowing hard. ‘These suits we’re wearing, Tomas… how good are they, exactly?’
‘Full-spectrum battle-hardened. Why do you ask?’
‘Because the door says that the ship’s flooded behind this point. It says we’ll be swimming through something.’
‘I see,’ Martinez said.
‘Oh, no,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘We’re not doing this. We’re not going underwater.’
‘I can’t be sure it’s water, Dexia.’ She tapped the read-out panel, as if I should have been able to make sense of the numbers and symbols. ‘Could be anything warm and wet, really.’
Martinez shrugged within his suit. ‘Could have been a containment leak… spillage into this part of the ship. It’s nothing to worry about. Our suits will cope easily, provided we do not delay.’
I looked him hard in the faceplate, meeting his eyes, making certain he couldn’t look away. ‘You’re sure about this? These suits aren’t going to stiff on us as soon as they get wet?’
‘The suits will continue to function. I am so certain that I will go first. When you hear that I am safe on the other side, you can all follow.’
‘I don’t like this. What if Ingrid’s tools don’t work under water?’
‘We have no choice but to keep moving forward,’ Martinez said. ‘If this section of the ship is flooded, we’ll run into it no matter which route we take. This is the only way.’
‘Then let’s do it,’ I said. ‘If these suits made it through the war, surely they’ll get us through the next chamber.’
‘It’s not the suits I’m worried about,’ Nicolosi said, examining his weapon again. ‘No one mentioned immersion when we were in the armoury.’
I cupped a hand to my crude little slug-gun. ‘I’ll swap you, we make it to the other side.’