Gridlinked

by Neal Asher

  Shuriken hung in the air before him, flexing its chainglass blades.

  ‘Fuck you, Cormac!’

  Pelter fired the remainder of the clip from the Devcon. Shuriken blurred through the air and took out those five seeker bullets in a chain of explosions. Pulse-fire hit the trees, but Pelter was gone, the Devcon abandoned on the smoking ground. Cormac stood where he was for a moment, too stunned yet to take in what had happened. He stared at the ground and wondered how the hell a small rubber dog came to be lying there. Then he shook himself and looked round. Cento and Aiden stood over the dismembered android. Cormac turned back to shuriken and hit the recall on its holster. Shuriken continued to bristle its chipped blades in the air for a moment, before returning to its home with a fractured hum.

  ‘Thank you, Tenkian,’ Cormac said, and headed for the trees.

  * * *

  Ultraviolet. A huge burst of ultraviolet. There was only one sort of weapon that kicked out that much, and Jarvellis had last seen one in the hold of the Lyric. If John was still alive, he would be there. If John was dead, then Pelter would be there. She tilted the ion engines of the shuttle and put her foot down. It leapt from its recent approach vector and arced towards the distant lights.

  ‘Lunatic shuttle pilot. I suppose I would be wasting my breath in telling you that you’re heading for an area that has recently become restricted to all air traffic.’

  You don’t have breath, Jarvellis thought, then ignored everything else the runcible AI had to say. She flicked the side screen to infrared, and saw she was getting quite a picture from that as well. Had to be them.

  * * *

  In the foxhole, with its only other occupant a survival suit filled with crash foam, Mika wrapped her arms across her chest and waited with grim patience. When this was all over she would have to clear up the human wreckage. There was one she knew she would be doing nothing for. The two suited killers, who had opened up with laser carbines from a spread of low scrub just beyond her, had not reckoned on Thorn being on that slab. Mika closed her eyes on the vision of one of them crouched with his carbine at his shoulder, then silhouetted in the white flash, and flying apart. His companion had let out a horrible moaning scream. He must have found some sort of cover, because Thorn did not fire again. Soon, soon it would be over. A close hissing crackle made her open her eyes. The stuffed man was smoking, a hole burnt through his back. Someone dropped into the foxhole beside her.

  ‘Hello, pussy,’ said Mennecken, resting his carbine next to the edge of the hole.

  Mika did not pause for conversation. The study and saving of life was not all she had been taught on Circe. She pushed herself up with her elbows, turned, and kicked. Her foot slammed up under the mercenary’s chin. Mennecken staggered back, then reached up and rubbed at his jaw. He smiled.

  ‘Want to play?’

  When he came at her he came straight into the blow Mika hammered at his sternum. She gasped—body-armour. She chopped with her other hand at his neck, but he tilted his head and the blow caught him across the ear to seemingly no effect. His hand closed on her shirt and with casual contempt he threw her against the edge of the foxhole. She tried to come back at him, but the slap he delivered just knocked her to the ground. Next thing he was astride her and drawing a chainglass knife.

  ‘They killed my brother, and I’ll kill them,’ said the mercenary. ‘But there’s always time to play, little pussy.’

  ‘Playtime’s over, old chap,’ said another voice.

  Mennecken turned his head to look, and his head disappeared in a wet detonation. Making horrible bubbling sounds the corpse dropped to one side. Mika pushed at it almost in panic and struggled away. She looked up at Thorn as he holstered his pulse-gun. The front of the Sparkind’s uniform was soaked with blood.

  ‘You injured?’ he asked.

  Mika shook her head.

  ‘Very good. I’m . . . not so good,’ Thorn said.

  Mika climbed from the foxhole and supported him as he swayed. She looked back once at the headless corpse draining its blood into the stony earth, and then helped Thorn return to the camp.

  * * *

  Through the shattered window Stanton had been presented with a perfect view of the action, albeit an uncomfortable one. His wrists were still tied by the bunk—only the bunk was now above his head. He looked around inside the carrier for some way of freeing himself. Pelter was getting away! That just must not happen.

  The gunner would be no help. The turret had taken full weight as the carrier had come down and the man was now folded in a tangle of metal and seat padding. The sergeant was unconscious. Stanton looked outside again. The most badly damaged of the two Golem had taken something from what remained of Mr. Crane. It held that something up, before tossing it on the ground. Stanton recognized the long lozenge shape of a Golem’s mind. The other drew a pulse-gun and fired. The mind shattered and the two Golem moved off. Now, that had been something Stanton was glad not to miss. He focused his attention on the scattered brassy remains and couldn’t help but wonder where the suitcase was. It then occurred to him that amongst those remains lay the solution to his dilemma.

  Stanton flicked the ring on his finger and twisted his right hand round so it was out and open. What was left of Crane’s coat jerked into the air, and the Tenkian dagger through and away. It hit the shattered window and went straight through, turned in midair and slapped its handle into Stanton’s hand. Stanton turned it and began sawing through his bonds.

  * * *

  ‘Cormac.’

  Cormac turned and put his back against a tree. His comunit was still on.

  ‘What is it, Aiden?’

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I’m after Pelter.’

  ‘I will be with you shortly.’

  ‘No, you won’t. You’ll secure the camp and sort out the mess there. I can handle this.’ There was a moment of silence before Aiden replied.

  ‘Very well. As you order, Agent. You had best be aware then that the shuttle Viridian informed us about has landed a quarter of a kilometre in on the course you were following. It may be that this is how they intended to escape.’

  ‘Thank you. I’ll be back with you soon.’

  Cormac turned the unit off, then set out again. Within minutes he found the AGC transporter, with burns all across its hull, and what remained of Dusache clinging to the wrecked missile launcher. The ground was smoking and the air acrid. Cormac approached cautiously, then crouched when he saw movement beyond the platform. A shadow flitted through the trees and the smoke ahead of him. He fired once with his thin-gun. There was a yell, and pulse-gun fire returned with startling accuracy. Cormac hit the ground and tasted leaf-mould and lichen. His sleeve was smouldering. He rolled to the side, behind an oak, as the leaf-mould and lichen caught fire. Still rolling, he fired past the other side of the tree. There was a scream, the sound of someone stumbling, then falling. A smell similar to that of roast pork wafted on the smoky breeze.

  Cormac rose to his feet with his gun still pointed where he had last fired it. To one side there was a tree. From behind it he could hear someone gasping raggedly. He approached.

  The man lay with his back against another tree, his pulse-gun in his hand. His body was burned from neck to groin. Cormac had hit him once through the shoulder, but the wound from that was a neatly cauterized hole. These other burns were from the flare off high-energy turret-gun hits on the transport. Cormac moved in slowly and quietly. When he was less than a metre away, the man turned and attempted to bring his gun to bear. Cormac kicked it from his hand.

  ‘Svent,’ he said, ‘where’s Pelter?’

  ‘Stupid . . . stupid,’ said Svent.

  Cormac just watched him and waited. Svent looked up.

  ‘Should have got out. Could see that . . . when it was off.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Aug . . .’

  ‘What aug?’

  ‘Scaly . . .’

  ‘I’ll ask again. Where’s Pelt
er?’

  ‘Ain’t tellin’ you that . . . Why should I tell you that?’

  ‘Because if you don’t, I’ll kill you,’ Cormac suggested.

  Svent glared at him, then his glare turned into a nasty smile.

  ‘Don’t turn,’ said Pelter. ‘You don’t know where I am, and you won’t be able to turn faster than I can pull this trigger.’

  It had never been Cormac’s way to think too long about such situations, nor to throw himself on the mercy of any enemy. If Pelter had seen how it had been for Angelina, he would have known this and immediately shot him in the back when he had the chance. Cormac dropped to one side taking one snap shot from under his left armpit as he went. Something slammed his left biceps and he smelt burning as he rolled, then dived, snapshooting at a half-seen figure. He heard Svent scream as he reached cover behind the tree. Pelter had hit the little mercenary with his wild shooting at Cormac.

  Behind the tree, Cormac inspected the burn on his arm. It was not serious, but that arm would soon be useless. Nevertheless he would wait. He stood up with his back against the tree, holding his thin-gun up beside his face. Any moment now . . .

  * * *

  Pelter could not believe it; you stood still when someone with a gun was demanding it. You did not run for cover in the hope they would miss. He backed up, firing single shots off at the tree while his mouth seemed to turn ceramic. The ache in his head, since Mr. Crane’s destruction, was growing in intensity, as if striving to fill the void left by the android’s absence.

  No Mr. Crane now. No one left at his back. Nothing now between him and that thin-gun.

  ‘Fucking die!’ he shouted and blasted at the tree again.

  Three times. Three times he’d had the agent in his sights, and three times he had failed to kill him. Maybe they had been right at the start . . . maybe Ian Cormac was some kind of android.

  Pelter stopped firing and continued to back away. He kept his weapon directed towards the side of the tree where Cormac had disappeared. When the agent stepped from its other side, he stepped straight into Pelter’s nightmare—straight into that vision ever imprinted on his missing eye.

  The barrel of the thin-gun seemed attached to Pelter’s forehead by some invisible rod, and he seemed to feel the searing extension of that rod through his forehead and out the back of his skull. He pressed down on the trigger of his weapon and tracked fire sideways. But the time it took him to redirect his aim was not time enough. Silver light flickered in the barrel of the weapon the agent held.

  Pelter saw only blackness.

  * * *

  With a puzzled frown, Cormac walked over and looked down to examine Pelter. Apart from the hole burnt cleanly through the Separatist’s forehead, the man was already a mess: not only was the link suppurating in his head, but his clothing was ragged and filthy, and he stank. This was not the Pelter Cormac had known; this was a man ravaged by some daemon. What else could account for such lack of self-regard? Cormac wondered just what had driven Pelter to become this thing that lay before him.

  He was also puzzled by the terror he had heard in the man’s voice. Death was always a distinct possibility for one of Pelter’s tendencies, and always something to fear. But terror? Cormac glanced down at his thin-gun, pocketed it and walked away. He guessed he would never know the answer.

  28

  Contra-terrene device (abbr. CTD) is one of those euphemistic labels Earth Security comes up with every now and again, normally to stick on something associated with terms like ‘megadeath’, ‘gigadeath’ and ‘Oh shit!’ A forty-megaton CTD could easily be mistaken for a simple thermos flask, and there are parallels. Only, if you open one, you will not find hot coffee inside; you will find antimatter, briefly.

  The antimatter is held in an s-con magnetic coil, which is also powered by a bleed-off from it. Theoretically a CTD will not explode without a complex code being keyed into its detonator. The canisters have reputedly been shock tested to a 10,000-kilometres-per-hour flat collision with case-hardened ceramal, and heat-tested to the melting point of the same. One has to wonder what the meaning of ‘test’ is here, because no one seems to know if the canisters survived said ‘tests’. Other questions that occur are: was there anything in the canisters when they were tested—and where are the people who tested them?

  From How It Is by Gordon

  In the morning Cormac counted the cost of his single-mindedness: three men dead, one man minus his feet and one man blinded, though new feet and new eyes were no problem, Cento scrapped for the second time, and Thorn now lying on the ground beside Mika’s AGC with the woman removing a lump of shrapnel from his guts. Should he let some other agent take over? He thought not.

  Pelter was dead, and Cormac did not know how to feel about that. The man had obviously slipped off the far side of weird some time ago, so perhaps death was an easier place for him. Just as the Separatist had once tried to share his sister’s looks, he now shared her executioner; an apposite ending, but one Cormac found uncomfortable to speculate on. He turned his thoughts away and towards the future. Now he had a mission to complete: a mission to which he was ideally suited. He must not let the death of one madman distract him. It was like being a runner in a marathon: he had just passed the pain barrier and now he must continue. With core of cold hardness, he banished what had already been done from his thoughts, and considered what must be done now.

  There were things he had learnt that another agent might have missed. Another agent might not have possessed his basic distrust of Dragon, might have been more credulous, taken the easier options. Pressing his hand to the dressing on his left biceps, he walked over to Aiden.

  The Golem, though not quite so damaged as Cento, had still taken a pounding. He had lost skin from the side of his face and all down one side of his body. His eye on that side was missing, his exposed metal arm-bones were bent, and his metal ribs staved in, one of them broken. Aiden moved slowly as he turned the handle on a mechanical winch. He glanced over at Cormac, and perhaps noted how he was being assessed. Small plates shifted on the exposed side of his face, while the other side grinned.

  ‘You should see the other fella,’ said the Golem with an unexpected flash of humour.

  Cormac could not find it in himself to react. He looked along the winch cables to where they were attached to the carrier. ‘Will it work?’ he asked.

  Aiden’s grin switched off. ‘It will have about fifty per cent AG, and one turbine is still functional,’ he said, and then continued winding the winch. After a moment the carrier crashed down on its side. As Aiden went off to reattach the cables, the sergeant approached. Cormac registered his stiff expression; he was well aware that the sergeant blamed him for the deaths of his men, and was in complete agreement with that assessment. Had the men been policemen, he might have had some sympathy, but they were soldiers, and death was just part of their job.

  ‘Any sign of Stanton?’ Cormac asked.

  ‘No sign, sir. We found the shuttle, though. Whoever brought it in must have been a lunatic. It looks like it only just made it to the surface in one piece.’

  ‘Can’t be coincidence that it landed here,’ said Cormac.

  ‘Probably zeroed in on the proton gunfire, sir. I would think that most of the planet knows something happened out here by now.’

  ‘Yes, quite probably.’

  There was a short, tense silence.

  ‘What now?’ the sergeant finally asked.

  Cormac saw that Aiden had finished reattaching the cables and was coming back. He nodded towards the carrier. ‘Now . . . now you take your own men, and Thorn, Cento and Mika, back to civilization in the carrier. Aiden and I continue on.’

  The sergeant could not hide his relief.

  ‘Not a chance,’ came a voice from behind.

  Cormac turned to see Thorn walking unsteadily towards him. Mika came out behind him.

  ‘Should he be walking?’ Cormac asked her.

  ‘I wouldn’t recommend vigorous movement,
but he’s all right to walk. The other two won’t be walking, though. One for obvious reasons, the other because his optic nerves are burnt out. That said, they’re easily enough replaced.’

  Thorn was staring hard at Cormac. ‘You promised me,’ he said.

  Cormac shook his head. ‘You asked—but I promised nothing. I remember it precisely. Carn found that hole in the artefact before I could give you a reply.’

  ‘Please,’ said Thorn levelly, too proud to beg.

  ‘You can come if you wish. But if we have to run, I won’t wait for you.’ Cormac turned away. Mika watched this exchange, then suddenly spoke up.

  ‘I’m coming as well,’ she said.

  ‘If you like,’ said Cormac, then turned at the sound of Aiden winding the cable in at high speed. The cable drew taut and Aiden’s winding slowed. The winch, Cormac knew, had been attached to an electric motor on the front of the carrier. Strapped to the tree there was no motor to run it, and there was not a man here capable of turning the hastily fabricated handle. They all watched in silence as Aiden got the carrier up and teetering on its corner. When it crashed down level, Cormac immediately headed over to it. Shortly he returned, carrying a bulky rucksack.

  ‘We’re going now,’ he said, and nodded towards Mika’s AGC. The three fell in with him as he strode towards it.

  In a moment they were airborne and gone.

  ‘Goodbye,’ said the sergeant, with a complete lack of sincerity. A few days before he had been eager for the chance of action. Now he just wanted to reach a safe retirement.

  Cormac checked his watch after he had set the cruise-control on the AGC. ‘Should be there in under an hour. Aiden, what are the precise co-ordinates of where the Maker went to ground?’ Aiden told him, and Cormac flipped a map-screen from the console and checked them. ‘Seems there is a cave mouth there. I’ll be going in to set the CTDs. I am going alone. You, Thorn, are not capable at present, and I do not see why Mika should be exposed to the danger.’