CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE.

MEGATONNE.

For a long time, Kat said nothing. The images from the Quay held her frozen, unable to think or act or do anything save bear witness to the unfolding devastation.

"Open a channel to the Quay," she said at last.

> To the Port Authority?

"No. Find my father."

> I'll try.

"Just find him."

She sat back in her pilot's couch and rubbed her eyes with the knuckles of her fists, hoping against hope that Feliks Abdulov had been down on the planet's surface when the attack hit, in the family compound enjoying the autumn sunshine instead of up on the Quay taking care of business.

> Receiving signal.

Kat's stomach seemed to flip over. She swallowed nervously.

"Put it through."

> But it- "Katherine Abdulov!" The voice boomed from the speakers on the bridge.

"Cut it off!"

> I can't. It's hacked the primary comms array.

"Surrender yourself, Katherine."

The words sent a tingle through her. She felt an unfamiliar stirring in her head and remembered what the ship had said about the nanomachines on Djatt rewiring parts of her pre-frontal cortex.

"Never."

"But I have so many of your friends already. Don't you want to be with your friends?"

Something tugged at her: an urge to respond, to throw herself into the red storm consuming the Quay. Sweat broke out on her forehead, and her nose started to bleed. She wiped it on the back of her hand.

"Disconnect and isolate the primary array, switch to secondary."

> Working...

"Come to me, Katherine. Bring me your ship."

She wasn't hearing the voice with her ears anymore. It seemed to resonate in her skull, persuasive and commanding, compelling her to obey. Behind it, she could hear the anguished cries of those the monster had already consumed. How many of those voices belonged to people she had known and loved?

"Go to hell," she thought, summoning up the last of her strength. She couldn't hold out. She couldn't even speak to warn Victor. Whatever was in her head quashed all resistance. The last scraps of her former resolve were crumbling. The Recollection had her.

And then the connection broke.

She fell back against her couch as if slapped, chest heaving for air.

> Primary array offline.

"Kat!" Victor struggled with his straps. "Kat, what's wrong?"

She lay still, dazed, looking up at the overhead screens. Her breathing roared in her ears. Her heart thumped painfully. She could feel blood oozing from her nose.

"Kat, talk to me. Are you okay?"

For a few seconds, she watched the screens, still displaying pictures of the carnage taking place in the rooms and corridors of Strauli Quay. Then, without being consciously aware of having made a decision, her hands started to move. She wiped the blood and tears from her face. Still keeping most of her attention on the video screens, she reached forward and tapped on the pilot's instrument console, accessing the onboard flight computers controlling the nuclear-tipped atmospheric probes stacked in the Ameline's cargo bay.

Victor looked from her to the controls, then back again.

"What are you doing?"

She hawked up blood and spat onto the deck. "What I have to."

He leaned across to get a better look at the console, and when he saw the menu options she's accessed, his eyes widened in alarm.

"You're going to fire on the Quay?"

Using her metal hand, Kat shoved him firmly back into his own seat.

"Yes."

"But there are a million people over there!"

With her other hand, she opened a sub menu and ran a query.

"One million, three hundred and eighty-seven," she read aloud. Even to her own ears, her voice sounded hard and flat.

"And you're going to kill them?"

"They're already dying."

She tapped in additional commands. The Quay had its defences, and the probes would have to be quick and agile to get close enough to do real damage.

"I can't let you do it."

"You don't have any choice!"

She added her final instructions to the probes' flight computers.

"Open the bay doors," she told the ship.

> Opening.

The bridge quivered as the Ameline depressurized its cargo hold and cracked open the main loading hatch in the floor, opening the interior to vacuum.

Victor put his hand on Kat's arm.

"Kat-"

She shook him off. Her chest burned as if filled with hot coals, hard and bright. Her mouth was dry, her tongue numb.

"There are over a dozen ships in dock," she said. "Over a dozen. Can you imagine what'll happen if that red muck infects a dozen more ships? How fast it will spread?"

"But the Quay-"

"Better the Quay than the surface. If it gets down onto the planet, that's it: game over."

"But the people-"

Kat snarled. "Better a quick, clean death than an eternity of torment."

All six of the probes were now under her control. Using her implant, she instructed the ship's cargo boom to move them from their secure mounts to the lip of the open doors.

> Done.

"Okay, then. Prepare to fire on my mark."

"Kat, I can't let you do this."

"Shut up, Victor."

Kat ran her tongue over her dry bottom lip. She seemed to be sitting somewhere else, watching herself from a distance.

"But Kat-"

"Fire!"

The Ameline rocked.

> Probes away.

Kat jacked into the ship's sensors. All six of the missiles had fired. She watched them flare away on divergent courses, rolling and weaving. In the lower corner of her vision, countdowns were running, numbers almost blurring as they ticked off the distance and time remaining until impact.

Still pinned to his seat by the shuttle's acceleration, Ed Rico saw Francis Hind mutter something to Toby Drake. He heard the words 'Ameline' and 'missiles.'

"What's going on?" he asked.

Drake looked him in the eye.

"You'd better hold on," he said.

Clad in the cumbersome pressure suit, Feliks Abdulov staggered into the cryogenic cargo facility. His thighs and calves were burning with effort, and his panting breath kept misting his faceplate.

"I'm getting way too old for this," he wheezed, admitting it to himself for the first time.

The cargo facility was a large room on the outer edge of one of the Quay's rings, holding rank upon rank of stacked shipping containers. The containers were insulated, designed for shipping frozen foodstuffs, and livestock in cryogenic hibernation. When full, they were dropped through doors in the floor, out into the arms of tugs, which then ferried them through the vacuum to the holds of waiting starships. On a normal day, four or five staff would have been on duty, checking manifests and supervising the automated forklifts. Now, the facility was empty, although the forklifts were still hard at work preparing the next scheduled shipment.

Using his implant, Feliks accessed the facility records and identified the next container to be shipped. Then, hampered by the suit, he shuffled over to it and heaved open the squeaky metal doors. Cold air blew out around him. Inside, crates of fresh fish filled the container from floor to ceiling, on their way from Strauli's warm oceans to the desert world of Catriona. Grunting with the effort, he toppled two of the nearest stacks out of the container, scattering fish and ice over the metal floor of the facility. This left a space just about large enough for him to wedge himself into. One of the automated forklifts was coming his way. He pulled the door shut and heard the lock engage.

The container lurched, seconds later, as it was lifted and borne towards the outside doors. Feliks braced himself against the stacked boxes of fish, glad his suit prevented him from smelling them. In moments, he'd be outside the Quay, the container flung outward by the centripetal force of the ring's rotation. With luck, the automated tugs would still be working, in which case he'd be taken to a waiting starship, where he could signal the crew via his implant. If either the tugs or the ship were absent, he'd be in trouble. The heating elements sewn into the fabric of his suit would keep him from freezing until the suit's batteries ran out, and the filters in the helmet would keep recycling oxygen for the next thirty hours. Whatever was happening on the Quay, he hoped someone would intercept and rescue him before then.

Plugged into the Ameline, Kat watched the six missiles close on the Quay. They showed as angry little sparks on her tactical display, each attacking on a slightly different trajectory, hoping to confuse the Quay's computerized meteor defense.

> Sixty seconds, said the ship.

Kat bit her lip. Her hands were squeezed so tightly she could feel her fingernails digging into her palms.

> Fifty.

Gun turrets fired from their mounts on the Quay. Brightly-lit tracer rounds streaked the sky. One missile flared and died. Another was clipped, lost attitude control and tumbled out of control, corkscrewing off into the void.

> Forty.

Four missiles remained on course, each one packing a single-megatonne mining charge. The guns fired again. Another missile vanished from her display.

"Come on," she urged.

> Thirty.

> Twenty.

An alert popped up: The Recollection was attempting to hack her secondary communications array. She told the ship to keep it offline.

> Ten.

Defensive tracer fire erupted again, but it was sporadic and unfocussed. Nothing could stop the missiles now. They were programmed to detonate as soon as they got within ten metres of the Quay.

Kat bit back the shout building within her, the urge to cry out, to warn the people on the Quay of the approaching danger.

> Five.

> Four.

Unbidden, a tear ran down her face.

> Three.