by Jeremy Szal
But the Suns were poisoning stormtech. Surely no one in their right mind would subject themselves to that level of self-mutilation. Unless the House of Suns weren’t poisoning this batch. And if they weren’t, they were doing the opposite. Enhancing it.
They wouldn’t be the first. Stormdealers all had xenochemists and biologists trying to bolster their product to provide more of a kick. The Suns were clearly no strangers to tweaking the stormtech in their favour. If these nutjobs had rigged up an entire space station to house their experiments, they were successful, and had people to show for it.
Still, these guys were a cult, not a military operation. Why did they need an army?
It turned out, not everyone was here willingly. I crept further along the lab, past prison cells and operating rooms containing little worlds of horrors. A man floated in a tank filled with squirming black machinery, cables erupting out of his flesh as the stormtech was funnelled in through a drip feed. A woman with jet-black hair was screaming, her body literally being torn apart, the stormtech ripping out of her like wet, blue stuffing. Four scientists quickly restrained her to a cot as she jerked and howled. More victims thrashed against their restraints, unable to do anything as cables and tubes fused more and more stormtech to their bodies. Others were curled up into a ball, sobbing into the floor. Hundreds of people helpless, suffering as the stormtech tore, ripped, poisoned, mutilated, violated their bodies. Bulkava, Torven and Rhivik were among the prisoners, strapped to tables outfitted with species-specific restraints. To engineer stormtech that was deadly to aliens, they’d obviously needed alien test subjects. A Rhivik had been anchored to the floor with a series of thick chains, a glowing collar clamped around his neck and storms of blue shuddering up his muscle-bound arms. White-hot outrage burned in the alien’s eyes as he bashed his head against the chainglass with thudding echoes. A young Torven had been savagely beaten and sealed into a black immobilising suit that was welded to a restraining chair. It wasn’t until I saw the bandaged wounds across his arms that I’d realised he’d tried to kill himself, but the cultists weren’t letting a single prisoner slip away from them. He watched, glassy-eyed, as more stormtech streamed into his broken and battered body.
Others were simply long dead, stormtech twitching under lifeless flesh.
It was a stormtech farm. A nightmare factory.
Cold shock ignited from my nipples, carving down through my guts and into my toes. I was swimming in sweat inside my suit. Only the armour and its controlled environment kept me safe. They were running experiments to discover how far they could push the stormtech. How much damage they could stack on a body before the dosage made them collapse or go insane. All the better for them to infect as many Reapers and skinnies as possible. One look at the brutal tests they were running, the gamut of suffering on display, and I knew they were ramping up towards something bigger. Something for which they needed full manipulation of the stormtech. Whatever they were doing, this show of experimental horrors was exactly what the Kaiji had feared.
Lasky stood in front of the cells with a perverted curiosity sketched on his child-like face, making him appear both young and horribly old and rotten at the same time. A playful cruelty you’d see on kids that liked making routine trips to zoos, just so they could throw rocks at the animals and enjoy their confinement. He gleefully surveyed the tortured aliens, some tensing in fear as they noticed him. He rapped his fingers on the chainglass of the Rhivik’s cell. The alien, tormented to breaking point, peeled his lips back in a deep, furious growl that echoed hard in my chest. He slammed his head into the glass so hard the wallframe shuddered. Lasky just grinned and walked away.
I was breathing heavily through my nose. Harmony was going to hear about this. Everyone was.
From my cover, I watched a door dilate open, a man walking through. He was bursting with stormtech. The crawling mass should have torn his body apart, split his skin open, shrivelled his organs into husks. My eyes watered just looking at him. He was in the middle of a diagnostics check when his muscles abruptly locked up. I didn’t dare breathe as he scanned the room, as if he’d sensed me. After a while, he shrugged it off and departed.
I found myself moving with him, almost not of my own volition, hugging cover. Every step closer to him made my stormtech pulse harder. He went clattering down a flight of stairs to a raised circular walkway where there were more like him, the ravaging blue choking out their natural skin tones. They seemed to be trying to drown themselves with the stormtech – smothering their human biochemistry with the alien organism until they had more alien organic matter twitching inside their biology than human-based DNA. Trying so hard to become like the Shenoi there wasn’t a difference. Had to be the ultra-zealots. Probably also the soldiers.
My body tensed the longer I looked. Half of me wanted to hide. The other half was roping me closer, telling me I needed to be like them. Maybe I’d have kept closing in, had a familiar figure not clattered by on the walkway below.
Sokolav.
I tore away from the men glowing with stormtech, hugging the shadows and making sure we were unseen as I swept up behind my former Commander. He stiffened as I parked the business end of the Titan against the back of his neck. ‘Next room on your right,’ I whispered as I ripped the palmerlog out of his hand. ‘Not a word.’
I knew my former Commander too well to give him an opportunity to retaliate. I shoved him into the deserted server room and sealed us inside.
‘Vakov? Vakov Fukasawa? Is that really you, my boy?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘the real Vakov died back in the Reaper War. Memory of pre-death is a little fuzzy, but I seem to recall you being on the other side.’
The last four words came out as a snarl. Anyone else would have shrunk away. But Sokolav stood solid and firm as a mountain peak. He gave a great, pent-up sigh. ‘A great many things have happened since then, Vakov.’
‘Oh, I’m sure,’ I said. ‘Let me tell you what’s going to happen now. We’re going to march out of here and you’re going to explain all these great many things to Kindosh and the rest of Harmony.’ I tilted the Titan. ‘I’ll be there to make sure you don’t leave out any details.’
We waited until most of the cultists retired for the night before making our move. My heartbeat threatened to swallow my entire body as I marched Sokolav at gunpoint down the quiet hallways and past the cells packed full of rotting prisoners. I couldn’t help but picture myself strapped beside them, operated on until I went insane or Blued Out.
I pulled Sokolav behind a wall while a trio of cultists in scuffed spacesuits walked past. I shoved my weapon under Sokolav’s chin, not daring to breathe, not daring to believe Sokolav wouldn’t call out to them and sacrifice himself. But his manner was totally languid, and it was starting to gnaw at me.
The cultists disappeared around a corner and I hustled Sokolav through a series of barricades, each taking for ever to open for us, concealing ourselves whenever someone was in the vicinity.
‘If only you’d open your eyes, son,’ Sokolav said gently.
‘Shut it,’ I growled.
‘You’d see why we do what we do. Why all this is necessary.’
I shoved the handcannon harder against him. ‘Just give me an excuse.’
Sokolav fell silent. Sweat slithered down my ribs, my head throbbing so hard I felt the onset of a migraine as we strode into the docking bay with its ring of House of Suns symbols. The chainship I’d arrived in was still sitting in its berth. We were about to climb the disembarkation ramp when a word rang out behind me.
‘Vakov?’
I froze. Turned in what felt like slow motion to the lone figure positioned behind us in a spacesuit.
It was my brother.
I don’t know which of the two of us was more taken aback. The pounding in my head spilled out to the rest of my body. ‘Artyom.’
‘How did you find us?’ The conf
usion and dismay on his face melted back into anger, his eyes hardening, hands held tight behind his back. ‘I told you what would happen to you if you came here. What’s it going to take for you to listen to me?’
‘Artyom, there’s a way out of this.’ I kept my handcannon firmly glued to Sokolav’s neck. The old dog would try something the moment I let my guard down. ‘Come with me. We go back to Harmony and we make a deal.’
‘Are you insane?’ Artyom all but spluttered. I noticed that the House of Suns’ symbol had been stitched on the shoulder of his spacesuit. ‘What, you think they’re going to listen to me?’
‘No. But they’ll listen to me. I’ll make sure of it.’ I pushed out the words as fast as possible, while I still had the opportunity. ‘You give up this place and what they’re doing here, help me give up Sokolav, we hold the cards. We can get you out. I can get you out.’
Something unreadable rippled over Artyom’s face. ‘It won’t be enough,’ he whispered, but I sensed my words taking root in him, growing something past the stubbornness and past the fear.
‘It will if we hand Sokolav over,’ I urged, feeling a nugget of hope and willing my words to reach him. ‘One life for another. You never betrayed Harmony. You’re a civilian. You never enlisted. He did. They’ll take him over you.’
‘Don’t listen to him, Artyom.’ Sokolav’s grey eyes glinted under his mop of hair.
‘Shut up,’ I growled, aware of the minutes burning away, aware of the many entrances cultists could be rushing through any second.
‘Your brother left you behind, dumped you when it suited him.’ Sokolav talked over me, as if I’d never spoken. ‘But we’ve taken you in. We adopted you into our family and tore down the lies.’
‘I’m your family, Artyom,’ I said. ‘The only one you’ve got left.’
‘And yet he abandoned you!’ Sokolav countered.
‘Yes! I did.’ Artyom’s head snapped up at my confession. ‘I abandoned my brother. My own brother. I left you behind like a burden. That’s on me. It always will be.’ I spoke past the sudden lump of concrete in my throat. My brother stood there quietly, eyes darting back and forth. I slipped my helmet off with a hiss of air and let my brother see me. ‘The way out is right behind us, Artyom. Once we’re onboard, it’ll be over. It won’t fix everything, but it’ll be a start. We owe it to each other to try. We just have to walk away.’
The words echoed between us. The shadows of distant passing asteroids swept across the spacedecking. The stormtech itched like tongues of wildfire under my ribs, but I refused to unlock sights with my brother.
Artyom’s eyes pinned me beneath his matted black hair. ‘And you can get me a deal? Let them do a swap?’
Kindosh would, if that’s what it took to regain custody of Sokolav. ‘I swear it. I’ll negotiate it myself, and I won’t let them touch you until I’m happy.’
Sokolav’s breathing turned shallow. ‘Artyom. Think, my boy. Think.’ For the first time, I heard genuine apprehension in my former Commander’s voice. ‘Think very carefully.’
Arytom didn’t seem to hear him. The defiance slumped from his shoulders, like an old building finally collapsing. I felt Sokolav tense beside me.
I let go of a breath it felt like I’d been holding for years.
I did it.
I found my brother again.
Together, we could finally put this right.
Artyom unzipped the front of his spacesuit, revealing an underskin beneath as he hiked up the chainship’s disembarkation ramp towards me. His face was world-weary and crisscrossed with scars and painful memories. But among them were also the nights we’d shared on the mountain peaks together, the brief fragments of peace we’d shared in a childhood filled with pain. And between all those was the possibility of a future, a chance to put things right.
He reached to push Sokolav into the chainship and I turned to follow.
And that’s when I saw the alert transponder in Artyom’s hand, blinking the colour of blood.
He darted forward, scything my legs out from under me and slamming my face into the hard metal ramp. Sokolav stomped on my hand until my grip weakened and he could tear the handcannon away. I kicked out at them, furiously twisting out of their grip and scrambling up the ramp. I’d reached the entrance, my fingers inches from the switch that would lock-down the hatch when Artyom tugged me backwards with a grunt, holding me down against the cold metal. The pounding of angry footsteps echoed through the dock as cultists arrived to Artyom’s alert. Their smiles were wide and eyes bright as they saw me. Unable to believe their luck, giddy with excitement. Artyom grabbed a fistful of my hair, yanking my head upwards as they came running.
He’d played me.
The cultists swarmed over me like a human net. Grabbing an arm and a leg each and dragging me away. I caught a glimpse of Artyom’s face between the seething crowd. Twisted in anger and loathing. Empty of anything resembling the person I’d known. He met my eyes with a disbelieving scoff, like he was disgusted I’d been so gullible, and vanished into the crowd.
And something already cracked inside me completely broke.
41
The Captive
‘Put that on.’
I glanced down at the one-piece, dark-blue prisoner’s suit dumped at my feet. A ring of cultists surrounded me, the Jackal at their head. His dark eyes watched my every move, the expression unchanged between the time they’d cut me out of my armour and underskin and when they’d dragged me to this metal box of a prisoner’s bay. Hideous yellow lighting sleeted down like tendrils of radiation. A dark brown stain had coagulated around a drain grate at my bare feet. Claw and nail scratches on the metal walls. Nothing but madness and misery here. My skin shivered as I looked again at the prisoner’s suit, remembering how I’d been forced to wear something similar for over a year when I was a Harvest prisoner. The cult’s symbol was stitched on the back and shoulders, underscored with the words High Risk Prisoner.
‘Put that on,’ the Jackal repeated.
I drew my head back and spat in his eye.
The Suns behind him gasped. The Jackal smiled mirthlessly and wiped away the offending blue saliva. Then he drove his knee between my legs with earth-shattering force. The agony swelled up my groin and exploded in my stomach like shrapnel. I folded to the concrete, gasping and half-blind.
‘And the Harmony hound barks at last,’ he sneered from the other end of a pain-mottled universe. ‘He wants to be a dog, we treat him like one. Boys, you know what to do.’
Animal fear and dread eclipsed all rational thought. Clammy hands seized me. Slapping me and stamping on my toes. The light stabbing me in the eyes as they shoved my arms and legs into the prisoner’s suit. I tried to bite one, and got backhanded across the face, my head thunking against concrete. Once I was suited up, they activated the suit’s neck seal, the fabric leeching tight to my skin. I was hauled to my feet, helpless as they strapped me into a harness with meticulous ease, as if they’d done this countless times to countless prisoners of multiple species. The thick, broad straps crisscrossed my back in an X, clamping tight over my shoulders, across my chest, securing firmly around my waist like a belt, around my thighs and between my legs before locking to a wide buckle in the centre of my back. They sealed my hands in magnetic cuffs and locked them to my chest. A metallic tinkle as they wrapped a steel mesh muzzle around my face, tightening it until it sliced into my cheeks and drew blood. A sturdy chain was tethered from my belt to my muzzle, forcing me to hunch in perpetual supplication. Behind me, the straps were tightened until they were biting into my flesh, a thick cable attached from the back of my harness to a track running along the ceiling. I figured they dragged prisoners through their laboratory like this, to whatever torture awaited them. As a final humiliation, the Jackal produced a spiked dog’s collar and lashed it tight around my neck until I could barely breathe.
He made sure I was hunched over and watching as he clapped Artyom on the shoulder. ‘You’ve done well, Artyom. You’ve truly proven yourself.’
Artyom’s face was a dead, blank mask. ‘I did what I had to.’
‘Oh, no. No, no, no. You didn’t. You could easily have let your big brother go. Pretended not to see him. Given him a head start. Maybe even departed alongside him. You didn’t. You stood by us. Your loyalty to the cause, to us, made you hand him in.’ He leaned in close to me, so only the two of us could hear. ‘You see, Vakov? We’ve been a better family than you ever were.’
I lunged forward, startling the audience, a savage growl tearing out of my throat as I tried to smash my head into his. The cable snapped taut, jerking me backwards with spine-snapping force. I seethed in my restraints, my snarling face inches from his. The Jackal smiled as the onlookers of cultists cackled. My body shivered with hatred, the words coming out garbled and furious. ‘I’m going to tear your face off and bury you alive.’
The Jackal ignored me and turned back to his audience as he gripped the back of my harness. ‘What shall we do with him? Your call, boys. Get creative.’
Half the audience were inching towards me, giving furtive sniffs, hands clenching and unclenching, stormtech-induced mania writhing behind their eyes. I swallowed as a gaunt-faced girl spoke up. ‘Dump him in the cell with that Rhivik, the one we’ve been starving. Let them fight for dinner. That’ll be fun.’
‘Let’s keep him tied up and string him upside-down,’ a man with dirty blonde hair down to his elbows and dimpled cheeks suggested. He thrust a slingshiv towards my groin. ‘See what parts the stormtech does and doesn’t grow back.’
‘Why not both?’ the Jackal suggested and clapped me on the back. Icy horror grew inside me as they advanced on me from all directions. I jerked back instinctively. They grabbed me and dragged me forward like a bag of trash, my feet scraping concrete, my chains and buckles rattling. ‘Hoist him up to this wall,’ the Jackal continued.