Century Rain

THIRTY-FIVE

Floyd and Auger stepped on to the leaning floor of the third-stage observation deck. Above, the constant motion of the clouds created a dizzying sense that the entire structure had chosen that exact moment to topple over. Floyd had never been good with heights, and this predicament seemed to encapsulate every vertigo-tinged nightmare he’d ever had. They were walking on a slippery, sloping, rickety surface pocked with holes and weak spots, almost three hundred metres in the air… in a gale… in heavy suits that made vision limited, every gesture clumsy, every step perilous, and they were also carrying four heavy boxes between them loaded with paper, books and phonograph records.

“You all right, Floyd?” Auger asked. Her voice was shrill in the diving-helmet affair the Slasher had just bolted into place over his head.

“Put it this way, Auger: when I last got out of bed, staggering around on the mangled wreck of the Eiffel Tower wasn’t exactly on my list of things to achieve by sunset.”

“But look on the bright side, Floyd. Think of the great stories you’ll have to tell.”

“And think of the fun I’ll have finding someone prepared to believe me.”

With an appalling and very audible groan of stressed iron, the deck suddenly lurched, its angle of tilt increasing. Loose debris came skidding towards them, squealing across the metal surfaces. Floyd dived to one side, dropping one of the boxes in the process. Before he could reach for it, a girder slid by and snagged on the side of the box, dragging it along for the ride. While he fumbled for a solid purchase—something to prevent him from sliding the same way as the box—he watched it cruise all the way to the edge of the deck and out into empty space. The box tilted, spilling books, magazines, newspapers and records into the air above Paris.

“Floyd! Are you all right?” shouted Auger.

“I’m fine—but I just lost one of the boxes.”

He heard her swear, then bite down on her anger. “Can’t be helped. But this whole structure feels as if it’s about to give up the ghost. Must be the weight of the ships.”

Lightning strobed the horizon, brighter than before.

“That looks like a bad electrical storm,” Auger observed. “I’d really like to get out of here before it arrives.”

“Me, too,” Floyd said with feeling, standing up. “I’ve seen enough of the view for one lifetime. It gets old real quick.”

Caliskan’s ship had slid a little closer to them before its movement had been arrested by the obstruction of the ruined elevator shaft, its truncated iron cage pushing up through the floor. From this angle, Floyd made out a stepped ramp folded down from the silver barb of the ship. A suited figure leaned out at the top of the ramp, beckoning them closer with a gloved hand. Then the figure started down the steps, meeting Auger halfway. She handed him the first of her two boxes, then waited while he loaded it into the ship and took the second from her. Then she crossed back to Floyd and helped him with his one remaining box. He joined her on the laddered ramp, recognising the face of the man in the spacesuit as the one he’d seen on various Slasher screens. It was Caliskan.

He directed them aboard into a small double-doored room the size of a pantry. The outer door closed, silencing the storm like the needle being pulled from a record. The boxes were piled up in one corner, like so much junk waiting to be thrown out.

When they had passed through the inner door, Caliskan removed his helmet, indicating that they should do likewise. “You made it,” he said, palming his white hair back into some approximation of order. “That was a little touch and go, wasn’t it?”

“Can I speak to Cassandra?” Auger said. “I want to tell her to get out of here.”

“Of course.” Caliskan ushered them into the narrow forward section of his little ship. It was all exposed metal, pipes and spars, about as warm and snug as the inside of a midget submarine. “The link is still open. I’ll see her actions receive appropriate recognition once this mess is sorted out.”

“Cassandra, can you hear me?” Auger said.

“Loud and clear.”

“Save yourself. We can take care of ourselves from now.”

“Can Caliskan get you out of there?” she asked.

Caliskan leaned into the field of view of the camera. “I’ll take care of them, don’t worry.”

Now that he was seeing Caliskan in the flesh, Floyd felt more certain than ever that he had met him—or possibly his brother—before. Still wearing most of his spacesuit, Caliskan leaned down to peer through a circular porthole in the side of his ship. “Why isn’t she lifting off? Doesn’t she know how unstable this structure is?”

Lightning flashed again, painting Caliskan’s face with harsh highlights, like a retouched photograph.

“That storm’s getting closer,” Floyd observed.

“Cassandra,” Auger said, assuming that the link was still open, “is there a problem?”

There was not even a crackle of response. The screen was blank. With a worried look on his face, Caliskan settled into his flight position and started throwing controls, methodically at first but with increasing urgency. “Something’s wrong,” he said, after a minute of this.

“Fury infiltration?” Augur asked, alarm clear in her voice.

“No… the counts all looked low.”

“And now?”

“Everything’s dead, including the monitors. The ship’s switched to reserve power—basic functions only.” He nodded towards the porthole. “Given the age of that ship you arrived in, Cassandra may be experiencing the same difficulties.”

“But if it’s not furies…” Augur began.

There was another flicker of lightning, brighter and closer and more violent than before. A metallic rumble shook the observation deck, transmitting shockwaves through the parked ship. It felt like a passing freight train.

“I don’t know what’s happening out there,” Auger said, “but we have to get out of here before that storm hits, or this tower collapses, or both.”

“We’re not going anywhere for a while,” Caliskan said. “I don’t think those are lightning flashes.”

“If they’re not lightning flashes…” Auger began, her mouth suddenly drying up with fear.

When Floyd caught a glimpse of her face, her expression was enough to put the fear of God into him. “What is it?” he asked, reaching out to her.

“Scorched earth,” Auger said. “It’s begun. Missile bombardment from orbit.”

“I fear she’s right,” Caliskan said. “Those flashes look rather like nuclear strikes to me. Hundreds of kilometres away… but they seem to be coming closer. That may or may not be deliberate.”

Auger buried her face in her hands. “As if we haven’t screwed this planet up enough as it is.”

“Let’s worry about the planet later,” Floyd said. “Right now our necks have priority. How do we get off this thing?” Why aren’t the ships working?”

“Electromagnetic pulse damage,” Caliskan said. “These ships are Thresher designed, with a heavy reliance on electrical subsystems. They’re not built to tolerate that kind of thing.”

Floyd had no idea what Caliskan was talking about, but he assumed it was serious. “Will they fly again?”

“I don’t know,” Caliskan said, continuing to work the controls, as if they might come back to life at any moment. “Some of the systems are trying to revive themselves, but they keep falling over because the other systems aren’t awake. If I can juggle the reboot sequence…” His fingers danced with manic speed across a keyboard, while pale numbers and symbols marched in columns across a ceiling-suspended screen.

“Keep trying,” Auger said, jamming her helmet back on. “I’m going to see if Cassandra’s having any more luck.”

“No need,” Floyd said, looking back through the porthole at the other ship. “She’s on her way over.”

“Are you sure?”

“See for yourself. She must have decided it was too risky to stay aboard.”

Cassandra had donned one of the other standard-issue spacesuits from the shuttle’s emergency inventory. Either the angle of the deck had worsened or the gale had intensified, because she was almost unable to walk, leaning like a bent-backed old woman, placing each footstep with aching deliberation. Every now and then, some jagged piece of metallic debris slid across the deck or sliced through the air, narrowly missing her.

“Careful…” Floyd breathed. He looked around the tight confines of Caliskan’s ship, trying to imagine how they were all going to fit inside, in the unlikely event that the machine could be persuaded to fly.

“Looks as if the nuclear strikes have eased off a bit,” Auger said, watching proceedings from the other porthole. “Maybe there’s still somebody up there with an ounce of sense.”

“Don’t count on it,” Caliskan said.

The observation deck lurched again, its angle becoming even steeper. Floyd felt the horrible beginnings of a slide as Caliskan’s ship lost traction against the metal plating.

“We’re going over,” he said, a sick feeling churning in his stomach.

But then suddenly they were still again, and the angle of the deck seemed to level out. He looked at Auger, and then at Caliskan, but saw nothing in their faces to indicate that they understood what was happening, either.

“Cassandra’s nearly here,” Floyd said. “Lower that ramp again, will you?”

But then Cassandra slowed her approach. With obvious effort, she stood up straight against the roar of the gale and looked at something to her left. Floyd followed her gaze as far as the restricted angle of the porthole allowed, and saw what had brought her to a halt.

“You really need to see this,” he said.

“What?” Auger replied, from the other side of the cabin.

“Come here and see for yourself.”

He waited until her face was jammed next to his, looking through the same porthole.

Beyond the edge of the observation deck, something enormous was rising ponderously into view. It was huge and bulbous and aglow with mysterious lights, arranged in curves and coils and cryptic symbols that suggested the luminous markings of some titanic, tentacled sea monster, rising from the deeps to tower over some hapless little ship. Cassandra stood silhouetted against this moving mountain of light, her arms slightly outspread as if in welcome—or prayer.

“Caliskan,” Auger said, “I think help’s just arrived.”

Caliskan looked back over his shoulder, while his hands continued to work the controls. “What did you say?”

“There’s a significant chunk of Slasher hardware hovering off the side of the tower.”

Caliskan left the control panel and took Floyd’s place at the porthole.

“Damn thing must have followed us in,” Floyd said.

“Cassandra’s walking towards it,” Auger said.

Caliskan returned to his controls, letting Floyd resume his position next to Auger. “What’s she doing?” he wondered.

“I don’t know,” Auger replied. “I suppose it’s possible that she might be trying to communicate with—”

Multiple lines of light speared from a gunport in the swollen belly of the monstrous ship. They ripped through Cassandra like rays of sun through cloud, pinning her in place even as her tiny body danced like a flag. Then the beams of light were gone, and Cassandra was still there, but with ragged holes etched through her. She collapsed to the ground, and then the whipping force of the gale slid her crumpled form towards the edge of the deck. Her limp body tumbled limb over limb like a rag doll, then splayed itself across the remains of the railings, like washing hung out to dry.

Hard white flashes pocked the horizon.

The huge ship began to swivel, turning to bring some other part of its structure into line with the observation deck. It was as large as the Hindenberg, Floyd estimated, or an aircraft carrier. Larger, perhaps. A thing like that had no business just hanging in the sky.

Caliskan’s face was grave. “It looks as if they’ve come for one—or both—of you.”

“Did you bring them here?” Auger asked.

“No. I was trying to keep you from them. They must have the fury countermeasures. Or else they want something so badly that they’ll risk anything to get it.”

The Slasher ship now presented its long side to the tower. Floyd was reminded of a museum piece he had once seen: a deep-sea squid preserved in formaldehyde, with its tentacles coiled into a single corkscrewing blade. The ship had something of the same daggerlike functionality. The lights and symbols on its sides seemed to lie beneath a layer of translucent jelly. The ship was creeping closer, like a bank of luminous fog.

“This doesn’t make sense,” Auger said. “I don’t know anything about their plans that they don’t already know for themselves. And yet if killing us was what they wanted, they could have done that already.”

“Then perhaps I was wrong,” Caliskan said with sudden urgency. “Perhaps it isn’t you they’re interested in after all. Or Floyd, for that matter.”

“Then that only leaves one thing,” Floyd said. “If it isn’t us, and it isn’t you, then it must be something we brought with us.”

“The cargo,” Auger said.

Caliskan played the controls one last time, then abandoned them with a dismissive sweep. “Put your helmets back on and find somewhere to hide outside on the observation deck.”

“They’ll find us,” Auger said.

“They’ll certainly find you aboard this ship. Outside, with the storm and the electrical interference, you have a fighting chance of staying alive until reinforcements arrive.”

Auger weighed the options. “I think he’s right, Floyd,” she concluded, reluctantly.

“You don’t have time to cycle through the airlock,” Caliskan said. “I’ll have to blow the outer door as soon as you’re inside it.” He reached beneath his seat and produced a melted thing that looked like Salvador Dali’s idea of an automatic pistol. “Take this,” he said, handing it to Auger. “I’m sure you can work out how to use it.”

“What about you?” she asked.

“I have a spare. I’ll do my best to cover you until you can reach shelter.”

“Thanks.” Auger slipped the gun into the equipment belt of her spacesuit, then helped Floyd latch his helmet into place. Her voice came through to him again, rendered thin and buzzing by the helmet’s internal microphone. “There must be stairs down to the next level,” she said. “We’ll try to find them.”

“Go,” Caliskan said. “Now.”

Floyd was first through the blown door. He hit the metal decking hard, nearly landing on his face. He looked back in time to see Auger emerging, lightning freezing the expression behind her helmet glass.

“We’d better keep radio silence from now on,” she said. “Stick by me and we can shout if we need to make ourselves heard.”

The luminous wall of the Slasher ship nudged the observation deck, making it sway. It would have cost that behemoth nothing to plough through the tower, smashing it like a wooden jetty.

“Auger, have you any idea—”

“Floyd,” she hissed. “Not now. They’re almost certainly listening in for EM traffic.”

They walked in a crouched, crablike fashion, using the debris for cover as they scurried from shadow to shadow. When they had reached what appeared to be the upper entry point to a stairwell, Auger touched him on the shoulder and pointed through a mangled heap of girders and sheet metal to the enormous spectacle of the ship. She pressed a finger to the chin of her helmet, signalling him to silence.

A doorway had opened in the side, forming a drawbridge across the gap between the hovering ship and the edge of the observation deck. Figures were emerging from the bright aperture of the doorway, six of them in total. They walked slowly across the makeshift bridge. They wore suits of their own—seamless blobs of highly reflective armour that shifted constantly as if made of mercury. The squad reached the observation deck and stepped gingerly on to the tilted platform. They walked upright, the only sign of hesitation being the deliberate way in which they planted each footstep before proceeding with the next.

Auger pushed Floyd lower. He shifted his footing until he found one of the embossed metal steps that led below. He didn’t want to think how far down those stairs went—or not, for that matter.

She touched her helmet against his. Her voice came through the glass: she had turned the radio off. “We have to go lower.”

“I want to see what those guys want with Caliskan.”

“Leave it, Floyd. Can’t you see that he didn’t set us up?”

“Kid: someone set us up, and I’ve had doubts about Caliskan since the moment I saw him.”

“Well, maybe someone set Caliskan up,” Auger said. “Is that such a leap?”

The silver-suited men fanned out, picking their way through the labyrinth of traps and pitfalls on the surface of the platform. They were linked together, bound by a network of very thin silver strands extruded from their armour. It formed a shifting cat’s cradle, floating above the deck at head height, connected to each man by the crown of his helmet.

Caliskan appeared at the entrance to his ship, gun in hand. Using the rim of the door for cover, he took aim at the nearest trio of advancing men and zapped them with the gun. A line of bright light stabbed from the muzzle, connecting with the middle man. His silver armour evaporated in a flash, revealing a stooping human core. Caliskan ducked back, adjusted something on his gun and then fired off another shot, aiming at the unprotected man. The man’s right arm puffed away at the elbow and he bent double in pain. But before Caliskan could fire again, the silver armour of the two uninjured men on either side of him became diffuse, expanding in size until it formed a protective cloak around their comrade.

Caliskan readied the gun again and delivered another lancing beam to the merged form of the silver figures. But now their armour resisted his attack: swelling in size, shimmering brightly, but not dissipating. Floyd wondered when they were going to retaliate, instead of just lapping it up. He had no sooner thought this than light scythed from the hovering ship, piercing Caliskan’s head.

He slumped to the ground next to his ship, the gun slipping from his fingers.

Floyd guessed that answered his doubts about the man.

The six men had only sustained one injury. While the first party stepped over Caliskan’s body and examined his ship, the other three worked their way along the side of the platform until they reached Cassandra, her body still draped limply over the railings.

Auger tapped Floyd’s elbow and gestured “down.” Floyd motioned for her to wait, torn between fear and an urgent need to know what the men were interested in. They knew Cassandra was dead. Why did her corpse concern them so much?

The brightest explosion yet tore the horizon open. Floyd jammed his eyes shut, but still saw everything in negative as the glare tore through the metalwork. A few seconds later, he felt that same freight-train shudder as the entire tower rattled.

“Getting closer,” Auger said. Her hand was on the melted form of the weapon Caliskan had given her, but she had not yet removed it from her belt.

He risked another glance across the observation deck. The three figures had convened around Cassandra’s splayed form. Their silver armour had merged and was now pushing from its chest region a thick, splayed tentacle, as wide across as a thigh. With a vile questing motion, the tentacle touched Cassandra in different places, gently, methodically, as if trying to elicit some last twitch of life.

“What are they looking for?” he asked queasily.

“I don’t know,” Auger replied.

The three figures stepped back as one. The silver tentacle suddenly gathered strength, whipping back before plunging into Cassandra’s chest. The ensemble took a further step back, and as they did so they peeled the impaled body from the railings. Then the tentacle made a flicking motion too fast to follow and the speared body flew apart in five or six pieces.

The bloody tentacle crept back into the linked body. The three men remained merged together for a moment or two longer, and then the armour began to divide, separating them into individual entities once more. They looked around, stepped away from each other and once again began to search the deck.

“Whatever they’re about, they’re not done yet,” Auger said. She drew the melted gun and pressed it to her chest, ready for use.

Floyd looked down. She must have already realised that the stairwell offered no escape. It ended less than a dozen steps below them, hanging uselessly above empty space. It was at least thirty metres down to the second-stage observation deck, and the only possible routes to it were via the elevator shaft (assuming that wasn’t severed as well) or the girders forming the legs of the tower itself.

They weren’t going anywhere.

Floyd looked back to Caliskan’s ship. Two of the figures had gone aboard while one waited outside. Floyd tapped Auger’s shoulder, alerting her to what was happening just as one of the men emerged with a box. A moment later, the second man brought out the other two boxes of artefacts.

Floyd glanced back to the other three. They had left Cassandra’s remains where they had fallen: whatever they were looking for, they had obviously not found it on or inside her body.

He returned his attention to the others, feeling Auger resettling herself, raising the silver gun a little higher. Two men stood outside with the three boxes, while the third had gone back in again.

“Careful,” he hissed to Auger.

Then he noticed something new nearby: a metallic smudge in the air, like a thousand twinkling bees, which somehow moved towards the tower against the force of the wind. He flinched, thinking it had to be something to do with the men who had killed Cassandra and Caliskan. But the smudge was approaching them in a series of furtive darts and feints, suggesting that it was just as eager as they were to avoid the attention of the search party. Close to Floyd and Auger now, it settled over them, concealing itself in the same hiding place. The twinkling mass flexed and flowed, forming brief patterns and shapes.

Floyd touched Auger gently on the shoulder and directed her attention to the dancing form. She flinched as well—she hadn’t seen it until then—and snapped the gun towards it. The smudge pulled away nervously, but didn’t retreat beyond the sanctuary of the stairwell. The gun trembled in Auger’s hand, but she held back from firing. Then, very slowly, she let the barrel fall until it was no longer aimed at the smudge.

For four or five seconds, nothing happened.

Then the smudge darted for her, wrapping itself around her helmet. Auger thrashed at the halo of twinkling stars, trying to swat them away. She cried out in terror or pain, and was abruptly silenced. Horrified, Floyd watched the cloud of twinkling things shrink in size as one by one they found a way into her helmet.

Then Auger was suddenly very still.

The stairwell shook, loosening rusted bolts free into the endless space below them. Tons of metal went crashing down through rusted spots in the observation deck, tumbling down to dash against the lower limits of the tower. Squeals and groans of agonised metal bellowed through the night.

Something snapped inside Floyd. Before Auger could react, he pried open the stiff fingers of her hand and removed the gun. The gun seemed eager to oblige, squirming from her grip to his almost as if alive. In his own gloved hand, it felt as fragile as something made from aluminium foil.

Auger showed no reaction. She was perfectly still now, a constellation of twinkling lights swarming behind the glass of her helmet.

So they’d got her, after all. Soon, he presumed, they would do the same thing to him. There was no way off this tower, and the three searchers would soon be upon them. If he waited, there might be no time for even a gesture of defiance, however futile it might be.

Sometimes, a gesture was all you were allowed.

He pointed the gun at the nearest silver figure and squeezed the teatlike nub that he hoped was its trigger.

The gun quickened in his hand, writhing like an eel and spitting out a blast of something. The figure’s strange armour came apart like ash on the wind. Floyd fired again, blowing a chunk out of the exposed Slasher. He fell to the deck, lost amidst the tangle of broken and buckled metal.

Now the other five were joining forces. The three near Caliskan’s ship walked close enough to each other for their armour to merge, while the other pair combined their own armour and began to approach the trio. Floyd levelled the gun again, aiming it at the larger group. Again it shifted in his hands, and again the silver armour dissipated, blowing away in twinkling flurries. But this time the damage was much less significant, the combined armour having formed some kind of reinforcing shield.

Beside him, Auger finally moved. “Give me the gun,” she said.

She took it from him before waiting for his answer. She made quick adjustments to the settings, then sprang out of their hiding place and fired the gun with inhuman speed and accuracy, squeezing off burst after burst until the barrel was as bright as molten iron. Her shots were only intermittently aimed at the advancing party. She had gone mostly for the ship itself, shooting at its gunports.

She fell back into shelter. “I’ve bought us a little time. I hope it’s enough.”

“Is is safe to talk?”

“For now. My reinforcements are jamming their communications and sensor activities.”

“Your reinforcements?”

“This will take a little explaining.”

Floyd looked down just in time to see a blur of light streak through the spread legs of the tower, between the second and third stages. He followed the motion as best he could, peering through a dark complexity of girderwork, and made out another moving clump of lights shadowing the first. Floyd tracked the sleek, flexing shapes as they arced higher, reaching an apex before hairpinning and diving back towards the base of the tower. They moved so fast that they cleaved rippling lines in the air, suction vortexes that pulled loose debris into them.

“Please, explain away,” he said.

“I’ll try. You saw what just happened?”

“You dying, you mean?”

“No one died. Especially not Auger. But it’s not Auger speaking right now.”

“You feeling all right, kid?”

“You’re talking to Cassandra,” she said. “The tiny machines you saw belong to me.”

“But we saw you die.”

“You saw my body die. But the machines got out in time. They fled my body at the moment of death, before Niagara’s aggressors were able to subsume and interrogate them. Now they’re using Auger as an emergency host.”

“You just… did that?”

“There’s nothing trivial about it,” she said, with a touch of defensiveness. “These machines can encode and transfer no more than a shadow of my personality and memories. Believe me, dying isn’t something I take lightly, especially here.”

Floyd looked up again, certain that the silver men could have killed him by now if that was their intention. But they had stopped their slow advance. They were hesitating, pinned between their ship and the quarry they sought.

“Maybe we should talk about this later,” he said.

“I wanted you to know what was going on, Floyd. I’ll continue to control Auger until we’re out of this mess. Then she can decide what she wants to do with me.”

“What will her options be?”

“She can continue to harbour me until we find a suitable Polity host, or she can order me to leave and I’ll die. Whatever happens, I assure you she will come to no harm.”

“Did she give her permission for this?”

“There wasn’t time to ask. Matters, as you’ve doubtless noticed, are at something of a head.”

The huge Slasher ship was under attack. Smaller ships—two of them, at least—were strafing it with lines of slicing light. The light gouged painful hyphens into Floyd’s eyes, as if someone was slicing them with razors. He forced himself to look away.

“Is this your cavalry?” he asked.

“Yes. I requested assistance as soon as we left Mars, but I didn’t know how many ships would be able to respond.”

“Are we going to win this one?”

“It’s going to be close.”

The larger vessel was fighting back. Through narrowed eyes, Floyd risked a glimpse, watching parallel lines of light surge from undamaged gunports along its flanks, connecting with the aerial attackers. All three ships in the engagement were protecting themselves with movable shields: curved sheets of translucent material that sped from one part of the hull to another, flexing and flowing to adjust to the changing shape beneath them. Wherever a beam touched, one of the shields would dart into place, absorbing the damage, glowing along its edges like paper about to burst into flame. After a few seconds of this, the shield would erupt with light and shatter into a million little sparks that rained down towards the Champ de Mars.

Gradually, though, it became clear that the big ship was taking the worst of the damage. Its shield movements were becoming increasingly frantic, yet still too sluggish to parry the darting assaults from the smaller craft. A third of the way along its length, an explosion ripped through the translucent blubber of its hull, puckering it out in petalled folds like an exit wound from a bullet. Bright grids of machinery shone through the gash. A smaller chain of explosions chased each other to the tail of the ship. The luminous symbols under the translucent layer began to warp and flow, losing sharpness.

“She’s dying,” said Cassandra, speaking through Auger.

The quintet of silver men broke up into individuals, severing the connections between their armour. Three of them rushed to the cargo boxes, gathered them up and headed for the ramp leading back into the wounded ship. The other two resumed their unhurried stroll towards Floyd and Auger, unconcerned—it seemed—by whatever was happening to their compatriots or their one means of escape.

The access ramp was sliding back and forth as the ailing ship struggled to hold station next to the tower. For one moment, it looked as if the three silver men would miss their step and fall into the abyss, taking the cargo with them. Somehow they made it, dashing inside as the access ramp slowly hinged back into the ship, like the closing jaw of a sated whale.

More explosions peppered the length of the ship. The tail was now hanging lower than the nose, as if—absurdly—she was taking on water. One of the attacking ships had sustained a fatal strike and was slowly losing altitude, with ink-black smoke—or something that looked very like smoke, at least—billowing from a gash in its flank. Floyd followed its progress down as it gradually lost height in a gyring death-spiral, until it finally exploded somewhere near Montparnasse.

The two silver men had nearly reached the top of the stairwell. In a few seconds they would be within easy sight of Floyd and Auger.

“Listen to me now, Floyd.”

“I’m listening.”

“We need to leave. I’ve sent small clusters of machines into both shuttles, in an effort to regain some degree of control.”

“And?”

“Both ships are beginning to wake up from the EM pulse. Our best hope is Caliskan’s shuttle: it’s smaller, faster and less likely to be picked up by interdiction weapons.”

“Then what are we waiting for?”

Across the ruin of the observation deck, something pulled Floyd’s attention to the embattled ship. A slot opened in its back and something jetted out, emerging quickly and gaining speed with every second. At first he assumed it was some new, last-ditch weapon. But the pip-shaped object continued to rise, squirting fire from one tapered end.

“What was that?”

“An emergency escape vehicle. But whoever’s in it won’t get far.”

The one small ship that remained peeled abruptly away from the larger vessel, making an obvious effort to intercept the other vehicle. There was a brief exchange of fire between the two vessels before the escape craft punched through the geometrically textured quilt of the clouds. The clouds lit up with a hard-edged flash, chased by a drawn-out peel of thunder. Through a crack in the clouds, Floyd caught a momentary glimpse of the pip clawing its way back towards orbit, cutting across the night like a shooting star.

“You want to rethink that?”

“They won’t get much further. The interceptors in near-Earth space will take care of them.”

The main ship could no longer maintain station or attitude. It had tilted to forty-five degrees, spewing smoke and fire, its hull feverish with a dance of scrambled symbols. It began to rotate, bringing its lower extremities into contact with one of the four main supports holding up the observation deck. The entire structure slid sideways a few metres, accompanied by a terrible metallic rending noise. Through the gap where the stairs ended, Floyd saw tons of metalwork hurtling down towards Paris. But the dying ship wasn’t dead yet. It was still rotating, pushing against what remained of the tower’s uprights. Another lurch ensued—almost enough to throw them from the narrow sanctuary of the stairwell.

“Look,” Floyd said, aghast.

Calsikan’s little barbed vessel slid over the edge of the landing stage, dashing itself against the tower as it fell. It dwindled, tiny as an egg, tumbling end over end and occasionally bouncing against the latticed metal legs of the tower. Somewhere near the bottom it blew apart in a veined, brain-like fireball. Floyd felt the tower rock with greater force than ever before. The other parked ship—the one they had arrived in—had slid towards the middle of the deck as the angle of tilt altered, but it would only take another resettlement to send it toppling over the edge.

“Bang goes our preferred escape route,” Floyd said.

“Then we’ll have to take the other ship. We’ll only know if it’s capable of flight when we get there. By then we won’t have the option of returning to this hiding place.”

“I’m ready to take my chances.”

“Then let’s go.”

Auger left the cover of the stairwell with Floyd hard on her heels. They crab-walked against the shifting force of the wind, ducking behind obstacles as often as they could. Auger used the gun again, firing it with the same inhuman precision she had shown before. Sometimes she didn’t even look in the direction she was shooting, but she still managed to hit her targets unerringly. The weapon was inflicting only superficial damage on the two remaining members of the search party—either the gun was running out of juice, or the men had beefed up their armour—but at least they no longer had the hovering ship to assist them. Instead they were advancing on the Twentieth’s shuttle and extending a tentacle of silvery light from their merged armour to block access to the door. The tentacle flexed and undulated in the air, its tip widening to form a more efficient obstruction. At the same time, another pair of thinner tentacles was creeping through the air towards Auger and Floyd, lashing above them like two loose hawsers. Auger kept on shooting, targeting both the tentacles and the main body from which they’d emerged. Her accuracy was still spot-on, but even Floyd could tell that she was being more sparing with the shots. It was all she could do to ward off the two tentacles above them.

“They’re definitely weakened,” she said, between breaths. “They can’t keep extending their armour indefinitely. Unfortunately, I’m running out of power.”

They were only a dozen paces from the shuttle, taking temporary shelter behind a mass of collapsed metal. The door was still blocked by the flexing form of the main tentacle. There was no way they’d get through that alive, not after what the armour had done to Cassandra.

“We can’t give up,” Floyd said.

“We’re not going to. But these controlled bursts aren’t doing enough. I’ve got enough charge left in the weapon for six shots at normal discharge strength. I’m going to blow the whole lot in one go. It’ll fuse the weapon, but that doesn’t matter now.”

“Do whatever you must.”

“It won’t kill them,” she said. “It’ll only take the wind out of their sails.”

She made the necessary adjustments to the weapon. “No matter what happens,” she said, “I want you to run like hell for that airlock. Get inside the ship and don’t hang around if I’m not behind you.”

“I’m not going anywhere without you.”

“The machines will take care of you. Let’s just hope it doesn’t come to that.”

The tentacles lashed above them, and then began to extend themselves downwards, narrowing to sharp, rapierlike blades as they descended.

“Whatever you’re going to do,” Floyd said, “now would be a good time to do it.”

She levelled the gun, holding it at arm’s length, and aimed at the merged body of the Slashers. The gun fired just as it had before, but with much greater intensity. The beam of light daggered into the conjoined figures, boiling off layers of armour in a flash of hot silver. Then the gun itself erupted with light, flaring in Auger’s hand. She held on until the discharge ended and then flung the molten, spitting thing away with a howl of anger or pain.

“Run!” she shouted.

Before it died, the weapon had clearly inflicted grave harm on the two Slashers. Their armour was wobbling, oscillating around them like jelly. The sharp-edged tentacles had pulled back into the main mass, while the tentacle guarding the door had been severed and was thrashing around like a decapitated snake. The shuttle door was now unguarded. Floyd dashed over to it and pulled down the chunky striped handle that was obviously meant to be used for opening the door from the outside. To his relief, the door slid up, recessing into the hull and admitting him into the small compartment where the air was exchanged. He looked over his shoulder, expecting Auger to press against him at any moment.

But she wasn’t there. She had barely moved from the position where she had fired the gun. She lay on her side, one gloved hand a scorched black ruin where the gun had destroyed itself. She was crawling across the iron decking, one pained centimetre at a time.

“Floyd,” she said, with obvious difficulty. “Leave now.”

“I’m not leaving you here.”

“I’ll take care of Auger. Just get yourself out of here.”

He looked back at the remnants of the search party. One of them—the man Caliskan had injured earlier—now lay on the ground, devoid of armour. The remaining volume of armour had huddled around the other Slasher, but there was something nervous and imperfectly co-ordinated about the way it flowed and shaped itself, as if the armour, too, was hurt. But the severed piece was still writhing and whiplashing its way back towards the main mass. When it got there, the armour would probably become stronger again…

Floyd left the shuttle and ran across the observation deck to Auger.

“Get out of here,” she said.

He knelt down and picked her up. The effort was nearly too much for him—they were both wearing heavy suits and Floyd hadn’t exactly been training for this kind of thing.

“No one’s leaving anyone behind,” he said, trying to shift her weight in his arms so that they wouldn’t both topple over when he stood. “I noticed you weren’t in a hurry to abandon Auger the way you did your own body.”

“My body was mine to throw away,” she said. “You just don’t do that with someone else’s.”

Staggering as he stood, Floyd found his footing and started back towards the waiting ship. “Even if it kills you?” he gasped, the exertion making his breathing ragged.

“Don’t talk, Floyd. Just walk.”

He reached the door of the shuttle and lowered Auger into the internal chamber. He forced himself into the same tight space and found the counterpart to the striped handle he’d pulled on the outside. He yanked it down and waited for the door to lower itself.

Down below, at the base of the tower, the stricken Slasher ship had finally reached the ground. As the door slid down, Floyd watched it die, burying its nose in ice and fire. The carcass collapsed in on itself, blossoming with a thousand miniature explosions. Next to it, the tower rattled in sympathy, dislodging even more of its rickety superstructure.

“I think Guy de Maupassant’s about to get his dying wish,” Floyd said.

He had one last view of the tower and the Champ de Mars as the shuttle hauled itself into the clouds. Enormous explosions ripped open what remained of the body of the crashed Polity ship. Perfectly circular shockwaves raced away from the scene, out towards the perimeter shield. Paris quivered. Slowly, like some great wounded giraffe, the tower began its terminal collapse. One of the legs supporting the third-stage deck buckled, splintering into a million iron shards. The other three legs could not support what remained of the structure, although for a few seconds it looked as if they might. But a process had now begun that could have only one outcome. After centuries of stalemate, gravity was winning over twisted iron girders and rusted iron bolts. The tower began to lean more acutely, and the remaining legs slowly began to bow under the conflicting stresses. Hundred-ton girders popped free, twanging into empty space like flicked playing cards. As thousands of tons of metal slammed into the ground, a veil of powdered ice rose hundreds of metres into the air. It served as a kind of screen, camouflaging the tower’s final moments. Floyd saw the third observation deck tilting into that whiteness, caught in a stutter of jagged lightning, and then he looked away, some part of him unable to watch until the end.

He decided, for all its faults, that he preferred his own Paris.

It was such a shame that he would never see it again.