past them. They stepped into the resulting chamber. The door closed behind them and they listened to the air whistling out.
“We’ll be in vacuum again from this point on,” Anaplian told them, unhitching her CREW from the back of her suit and quickly checking it. Hippinse mirrored her actions. Ferbin and Holse looked at each other then did the same. Djan Seriy restowed the laser weapon where it had been; it moulded into the dorsal section of her suit while she reached over her shoulder and pulled on another of the long strakes on her back, producing yet another glossily black weapon. She let it unfold itself and checked that too. Ferbin caught his sister’s gaze and she nodded. “I shall lead with this particle buster; you use the kinetic rifle, Ferbin. Holse; you and Hippinse lead with the CREWs. Don’t want us all using the same stuff.” Her mask unmirrored long enough for her to smile briefly at them, and wink. “Just shoot at what we do.” Then the suit was fully mirrored again.
We are all mirrors, Ferbin thought. Reflecting each other. We are here and these strange suits of armour turn back all light but somehow, despite that, we are nearly invisible; the gaze is redirected from each contact with our surfaces, sliding away until we see something of whatever surrounds us, as though only that is real.
Turminder Xuss lowered to hover in front of Anaplian, level with her sternum. A couple of slim shapes like spike-daggers drifted up from Anaplian’s calves and also floated just ahead of her. “Also, we have a long way to drop.”
“This an open Tower, ma’am?” Holse asked.
“No,” Anaplian said. “We are one Tower away from an open Tower, the one that the ship will be using. If this thing’s left anything behind to ambush anybody coming after it, the opens are where they’ll likely wait. The ship has no choice but to use an open; we do, but we can keep close enough to where the ship will appear to offer support. Even then, we won’t be leaving by the main Tower shaft.” She glanced at the two Sarl men. “We are the infantry here, in case you hadn’t guessed, gentlemen. Expendable. Sacrificeable. The ship is the knight, the heavy artillery, however you wish to express it.” She looked at Hippinse as the door ahead of them twitched. “Anything?”
“Not yet,” Hippinse said. Two small mirrored things like tiny daggers floated up to station themselves level with his shoulders. Another pair of mercurially glinting shapes slid away from Ferbin and Holse’s suits too and floated up to cluster round Turminder Xuss.
“If you don’t mind, gents,” the drone said casually.
“Be my guest,” Ferbin told it.
“Didn’t even know they were there,” Holse said.
The door rolled silently to one side, revealing utter darkness. The drone turned soot black and darted ahead, disappearing along with the four other smaller missiles.
The humans floated across a tube Hippinse said was only thirty metres wide; a scendship shaft. Beyond, a circular hatch had just completed irising open. They floated through to the main Tower interior.
As they started to drop, they moved away from each other until they were nearly half a kilometre apart.
I really never thought to be doing this, Holse thought. He was frankly terrified, but elated too. To be dropping towards the WorldGod, with mad aliens, to meet up with a talking, eccentric spaceship that could stride between stars like a man strode between stepping stones, to go in search of an even more insane Iln that wanted to blow up or crumple down the whole world; that was the kind of thing he’d not even started to dream of when he’d been back on the farm, mucking out stables and following his dad around the frost-rimed gelding pen carrying the gently steaming ball bucket, ear still smarting from the latest slap.
He had the worrying feeling that he and Ferbin were along as little more than decoys, but in a way he didn’t care. He was starting to change his mind about the old Warrior Code stuff knights and princes invoked, usually when they were drunk and in need of spilling their words, or trying to justify their poor behaviour in some other field.
Behave honourably and wish for a good death. He’d always dismissed it as self-serving bullshit, frankly; most of the people he’d been told were his betters were quite venally dishonourable, and the more they got the more the greedy bastards wanted, while those that weren’t