Alastair Reynolds - Absolution Gap

“It’s inert,” Clavain said. “Has to be. Galiana met this stuff as well, in deep space. It ripped through her ship, assembling itself into attack machinery. Took out her entire crew, section by section, until only Galiana was left. Then it got to her as well. Trust me: if it was functional, we’d be dead by now.”

“Or we’d be having our skulls sucked dry of data,” Khouri said. “And trust me as well, that’s not the preferred option.”

“We’re all agreed on that,” Clavain said.

Scorpio approached the gash after the others, making sure that they were not leaving themselves unprotected from the rear. The black crust of Inhibitor machinery had clearly erupted through the hull from the inside, haemorrhaging out under pressure. Perhaps it had happened before Skade’s ship had hit the surface, after the corvette was attacked in space.

Khouri began to squeeze through into the deeper blackness of the hull. Clavain reached out and touched her sleeve. “I wouldn’t rush this,” he said. “For all we know, there’s active wolf machinery just inside.”

“What other options have we got, guy? From where I’m standing they look a bit thin on the ground.”

“None of the weapons we brought with us will be worth a damn against active Inhibitor machinery,” Clavain insisted. “If that stuff wakes, it’d be like trying to put out a forest fire with a water pistol.”

“At least it’ll be quick,” Jaccottet said.

“Actually, the one thing it won’t be is quick,” Khouri said, with what sounded like malicious pleasure. “Because you probably won’t be allowed to die. It suits the machinery to keep you alive while it drinks your skull dry. So if you have any doubts about whether you want to put yourself through that, I suggest you keep back one round for yourself. If you’re lucky, you can beat the black stuff before it hits your brain and hijacks motor control. After that, you’re fucked.”

“If it’s so bad,” Jaccottet said, “how did you get away from it?”

“Divine intervention,” Khouri replied. “But if I were you, it’s not something I’d put a lot of faith in.”

“Thanks for the tip.” Jaccottet’s hand moved involuntarily to a small weapon on his belt.

Scorpio knew what he was thinking: would he be fast enough, if the moment came? Or would he wait that fatal instant too long?

Clavain moved, his knife humming in his hand. “We’ll have to trust that the stuff remains dormant,” he said.

“It’s stayed dormant this long,” Jaccottet said. “Why would it wake up now?”

“We’re heat sources,” Clavain said. “That might make a tiny bit of difference.”

Khouri pushed through into the belly of the ruined ship. Her torchlight bounced back through the gash, picking out the stepped edges of the froth. Under a fine patina of ice the machinery gleamed like freshly hewn coal. Where Jaccottet had rubbed his fingers across it, however, the stuff was pure black, lacking any highlights or lustre.

“There’s more of the shit in here,” she said. “It’s spread over everything, like black vomit.” The torchlight played around again, their shadows wheeling over the walls like stalking ogres. “But it doesn’t seem to be any more active than the stuff outside.”

“All the same,” Clavain said, “don’t touch it, just to be on the safe side.”

“It wasn’t on my to-do list,” Khouri replied.

“Good. Anything else?”

“The music’s louder. It comes in blasts, speeded up. It’s as if I almost recognise it.”

“I do recognise it,” Clavain said. “It’s Bach—Passacaglia and Fugue in C Minor, if I’m not mistaken.”

Scorpio turned to his Security Arm man. “I want you to stay out here. I can’t afford to leave this exit uncovered.”

Jaccottet knew better than to argue.

Scorpio and Clavain climbed in after Khouri. Clavain played his torch around the mangled interior of this part of the corvette, pausing now and then as the beam alighted on some recognisable but damaged structure. The black invasion resembled a prolific fungal growth that had all but consumed the fabric of the spacecraft.

The hull, Scorpio realised, was a shattered ruin, barely holding itself together. He watched where he put his feet.

“It subsumes,” Clavain said quietly, as if wary—despite the intermittent pulses of music—of alerting the machinery. “It only takes one element to invade a whole ship. Then it eats its way through the entire thing, converting as it goes.”

“What are those little black cubes made of?” asked Scorpio.

“Almost nothing,” Clavain told him. “Just pure force maintained by a tiny mechanism deep inside, like the nucleus of an atom. Except we never got a look at the mechanism.”

“I take it you had a go?”

“We removed some cubic elements from Galiana’s crew by mechanical force, breaking the inter-cube bonds. They just shrank away to nothing, leaving a tiny pile of grey dust. We presumed that was the machinery, but by then there wasn’t a lot it could tell us. Reverse engineering wasn’t really an option.”

“We’re in a lot of trouble, aren’t we?” Scorpio said.

“Yes, we’re in trouble,” Khouri said. “You’re right about that part. Matter of fact, we probably don’t know how much trouble we really are in. But understand one thing: we’re not dead, not yet, and not while we have Aura.”

“You think she’ll make that much of a difference?” Clavain asked.

“She made a difference already, guy. We wouldn’t have made it to this system if she hadn’t.”

“Do you still think she’s here?” Scorpio asked her.

“She’s here. Just can’t say where.”

“I’m picking up signals as well,” Clavain said, “but they’re fractured and confused. Too many echoes from all the half-functioning systems in this ship. I can’t say if it’s one source or several.”

“So what do we do?” Scorpio asked.

Clavain angled his torch into the gloom. The beam knifed against fabulous crenellations and castellations of frozen black cubes. “Back there should be the propulsion systems compartment,” he said. “Not a very likely place to look for survivors.” He swung around, hunting with the beam, squinting at the un-familiarity of it all. ‘Through here, I think. It seems to be the source of the music, as well. Careful, it’ll be a tight squeeze.“

“Where will that take us?” Scorpio said.

“Habitat and flight deck. Assuming we recognise any of it when we get there.”

“It’s colder that way,” Khouri observed.

They stepped towards the part of the ship Clavain had indicated. There was a gap ahead, the remains of a bulkhead. The air felt as if it was only a breath away from freezing solid altogether. Scorpio glanced back, his mind playing tricks on him, conjuring languid ripples and waves of motion in the black tar of the wolf machinery.

Instead, something moved ahead. A section of shadow detached itself from the wall, black against black.

Khouri’s gun tipped towards it.

“No!” Clavain shouted.

Scorpio heard the click of the Breitenbach cannon’s trigger. He flinched, steeling himself for the energy discharge. It was not really the weapon of choice for close-quarters combat.

Nothing happened. Khouri lowered the weapon’s muzzle an inch. She had pulled back on the trigger, but not enough to fire.

Clavain’s knife trembled in his hand like an elver.

The black presence became a person in black vacuum armour. The armour moved stiffly, as if rusted into seizure. It clutched a dark shape in one hand. The figure took another step and then keeled towards them. It hit the ground with a crack of metal against ice. Black cubes splintered away in all directions, frosted with ice. The weapon—or whatever it was—skidded away and knocked against the wall.