Mammoth Books presents Merlin's Gun (6 page)

“But you said they were only a few thousand years from collision . . .”

Merlin had not stopped working the controls in all this time. The gun had come closer, seemingly oblivious to the ordinary laws of celestial mechanics. Down below, the planetary surface had returned to normality, except for a ruddier hue to the storm.

“Maybe now,” Merlin said, “you're beginning to understand why I want the gun so badly.”

“You want to return it, don't you. You never really wanted to find a weapon.”

“I did, once.” Merlin seemed to tap some final reserve of energy, his voice growing momentarily stronger. “But now I'm older and wiser. In less than four thousand years the stars meet, and it suddenly won't matter who wins this war. We're like ignorant armies fighting over a patch of land beneath a rumbling volcano!”

Four thousand years, Sora thought. More time had passed since she had been born.

“If we don't have the gun,” she said, “we die anyway – wiped out by the Huskers. Not much of a choice, is it?”

“At least
something
would survive. Something that might even still think of itself as human.”

“You're saying that we should capitulate? That we get our hands on the ultimate weapon, and then not
use
it?”

“I never said it was going to be easy, Sora.” Merlin pitched forward, slowly enough that she was able to reach him before he slumped into the exposed circuitry of the console. His coughs were loud in her helmet. “Actually, I think I'm more than winded,” he said, when he was able to speak at all.

“We'll get you back to the ship; the proctors can help . . .”

“It's too late, Sora.”

“What about the gun?”

“I'm . . . doing something rather rash, in the circumstances. Trusting it to you. Does that sound utterly insane?”

“I'll betray you. I'll give the gun to the Cohort. You know that, don't you?”

Merlin's voice was soft. “I don't think you will. I think you'll do the right thing and return it to the Brittlestar.”

“Don't make me betray you!”

He shook his head. “I've just issued a command that reassigns control of my ship to you. The proctors are now under your command – they'll show you everything you need.”

“Merlin, I'm begging you . . .”

His voice was weak now, hard to distinguish from the scratchy irregularity of his breathing. She leant down to him and touched helmets, hoping the old trick would make him easier to hear. “No good, Sora. Much too late. I've signed it all over.”

“No!” She shook him, almost in anger. Then she began to cry, loud enough so that she was in no doubt he would hear it. “I don't even know what you want me to do with it!”

“Take the ring, then the rest will be abundantly clear.”

“What?” She could hardly understand herself now.

“Put the ring on. Do it now, Sora. Before I die. So that I at least know it's done.”

“When I take your glove off, I'll kill you, Merlin. You know that, don't you? And I won't be able to put the ring on until I'm back in the ship.”

“I . . . just want to see you take it. That's enough, Sora. And you'd better be quick . . .”

“I love you, you bastard!”

“Then do this.”

She placed her hands around the cuff seal of his gauntlet, feeling the alloy locking mechanism, knowing that it would only take a careful depression of the sealing latches, and then a quick twisting movement, and the glove would slide free, releasing the air in his suit. She wondered how long he would last before consciousness left him – no more than tens of seconds, she thought, unless he drew breath first. And by the state of his breathing, that would not be easy for him.

She removed the gauntlet, and took his ring.

Tyrant
lifted from the moon.

“Husker forces grouping in attack configuration,” the familiar said, tapping directly into the ship's avionics. “Hull sensors read sweeps by targeting lidar . . . an attack is imminent, Sora.”

Tyrant
's light armor would not save them, Sora knew. The attack would be blinding and brief, and she would probably never know it had happened. But that didn't mean that she was going to
let
it happen.

She felt the gun move to her will.

It would not always be like this, she knew: the gun was only hers until she returned it to the Waymakers. But for now it felt like an inseparable part of her, like a twin she had never known, but whose every move was familiar to her fractionally in advance of it being made. She felt the gun energize itself, reaching deep into the bedrock of spacetime, plundering mass-energy from quantum foam, forging singularities in its heart.

She felt readiness.

“First element of swarm has deployed charm-torps,” the familiar reported, an odd slurred quality entering her voice. “Activating
Tyrant
's countermeasures . . .”

The hull rang like a bell.

“Countermeasures engaging charm-torps . . . neutralized . . . second wave deployed by the swarm . . . closing . . .”

“How long can we last?”

“Countermeasures exhausted . . . we can't parry a third wave; not at this range.”

Sora closed her eyes and made the weapon spit death.

She had targeted two of the three elements of the Husker swarm; leaving the third – the furthest ship from her – unharmed.

She watched the relativistic black holes fold space around the two targeted ships, crushing each instantly, as if in a vice.

“Third ship dropping to max . . . maximum attack range; retracting charm-torp launchers . . .”

“This is Sora for the Cohort,” she said in Main, addressing the survivor on the general ship-to-ship channel. “Or what remains of the Cohort. Perhaps you can understand what I have to say. I could kill you, now, instantly, if I chose.” She felt the weapon speak to her through her blood, reporting its status, its eagerness to do her bidding. “Instead, I'm about to give you a demonstration. Are you ready?”

“Sora . . .” said the familiar. “Something's wrong . . .”

“What?”

“I'm not . . . well.” The familiar's voice did not sound at all right now; drained of any semblance to Sora's own. “The ring must be constructing something in your brain; part of the interface between you and the gun . . . something stronger than me . . . It's weeding me out, to make room for itself . . .”

She remembered what Merlin had said about the structures the ring would make.

“You saved a part of yourself in the ship.”

“Only a part,” the familiar said. “Not all of me . . . not all of me at all. I'm sorry, Sora. I think I'm dying.”

She dismantled the system.

Sora did it with artistry and flair, saving the best for last. She began with moons, pulverizing them, so that they began to flow into nascent rings around their parent worlds. Then she smashed the worlds themselves to pieces, turning them into cauls of hot ash and plasma. Finally – when it was the only thing left to destroy – she turned the gun on the system's star, impaling its heart with a salvo of relativistic black holes, throwing a killing spanner into the nuclear processes that turned mass into sunlight. In doing so, she interfered – catastrophically – with the delicate hydrostatic balance between pressure and gravity that held the star in shape. She watched it unpeel, shedding layers of outer atmosphere in a premature display of the death that awaited suns like it, four billion years in the future. And then she watched the last Husker ship, which had witnessed what she had wrought, turn and head out of the system.

She could have killed them all.

But she had let them live. Instead, she had shown the power that was – albeit temporarily – hers to command.

She wondered if there was enough humanity left in them to appreciate the clemency she had shown.

Later, she took
Tyrant
into the Waynet again, the vast luminous bulk of the gun following her like an obedient dragon. Sora's heart almost stopped at the fearful moment of entry, convinced that the syrinx would choose not to sing for its new master.

But it did sing, just as it had sung for Merlin.

And then, alone this time – more alone than she had been in her life – she climbed into the observation blister, and turned the metasapphire walls transparent, making the ship itself disappear, until there was only herself and the rushing, twinkling brilliance of the Way.

It was time to finish what Merlin had begun.

 

 

 

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