I had no doubt that they would all suffocate in minutes.
My mind scrolled back through the details my savant had prepared for me. There was a central control room, where I could disengage the ice-berth locks and at least free them all. But to what good? Without the resuscitation teams, they would fail and perish.
And if I hunted out the control room, Eyclone would have time to escape.
In Glossia code, I communicated this quandary to Betancore, and told him to alert the custodians. He informed me, after a pause, that crash-teams and relief crews were on their way.
But why? The question was still there. Why was Eyclone doing this?
A massed killing was nothing unusual for a follower of Chaos. But there had to be a point, above and beyond the deaths themselves.
I was pondering this as I crossed a hallway deep in the west wing of the Processional. Frantic beating sounds came from the berths all around, and a pungent mix of ice-water and bio-fluid spurted from the drain-taps and cascaded over the floor.
A shot rang out. A las-shot. It missed me by less than a hand's breadth and exploded through the headboard of an ice berth behind me. Immediately, the frantic hammering in that berth stopped, and the waters running out of its ducts were stained pink.
I fired the Scipio down the vault, startled by the noise it made.
Two more las-shots flicked down at me.
Taking cover behind a stone bulkhead, I emptied a clip down the length of the gallery, the spent shell cases smoking in the air as the pumping slide ejected them. A hot vapour of cordite blew back at me.
I swung back into cover, exchanging clips.
A few more spits of laser drizzled past me, then a voice.
'Eisenhorn? Gregor, is that you?'
Eyclone. I knew his thin voice at once. I didn't answer.
'You're dead, you know, Gregor. Dead like mey all are. Dead, dead, dead. Step out and make it quick.'
He was good, I'll give him that. My legs actually twitched, actually started to walk me clear of cover into the open. Eyclone was infamous across a dozen settled systems for his mind powers and mesmeric tone. How else had he managed to get these dark-eyed fools to do his bidding?
But I have similar skills. And I have honed them well.
There is a time to use mind or voice tricks gendy to draw out your target. And there are times to use them like a stub-gun at point blank range.
It was time for the latter.
I pitched my voice, balanced my mind and yelled: 'Show yourself first!'
Eyclone didn't succumb. I didn't expect him to. Like me, he had years of resilience training. But his two gunmen were easy meat.