Bad Cow

by Andrew Hindle

  The Angel was shaking her head. “Something we do not speak of,” she said. “Something even the Infinites treat with care – not for the risk posed to Them, but to the damage that might be inflicted upon the urverse.”

  “That’s … extremely dramatic,” Moskin said.

  “I am aware,” the Angel said wearily.

  “I’m not sure what else you’re aware of,” Moskin said, “but the Lost Realms are dying in there.”

  “This is the domain of the Infinites,” the Angel replied. “It doesn’t matter to Limbo if the realms are entirely depopulated. It is a small price to pay–”

  “This is the domain of the Pinians,” Moskin said, his equilibrium and certainty returning with dangerous abruptness. “We do not serve Limbo. The Vultures serve Limbo,” he turned from the Angel to the stiff Vorontessæ, accusing. “You don’t look like Relth.”

  “This is beyond the Vultures,” the Angel said. “And even loyal servants of the Firstmades must serve the Infinites.”

  “I should warn you, I make it a point of pride not to listen to lectures about loyalty to the revered Firstmades,” Moskin said, “from anyone who hasn’t dissected a Grób with a bifurcated blasglag.”

  “We are familiar with your … work…” the Angel started.

  “We owe allegiance to Ith, alone among the Ghååla,” Moskin said sharply, “and Ith has not called upon us. We do not serve Limbo. Not if it means the death of three of God’s realms.”

  “This does not change the situation,” the Angel said, baring her tiny square teeth. “This debate is so far above you…”

  “And yet, here we are,” Moskin said. Something, something vast, had just fallen into place and he had never felt more certain. And this time, the Vorontessæ definitely shifted. “You’re not actually here to serve Limbo at all, are you?” he said. “Limbo doesn’t need your help. He set everything up exactly as He wanted it, right from the start. Which means any agenda you have in stopping our work is yours – yours alone, or the will of the Archangelic court, which still doesn’t speak with a voice louder than God’s.”

  The Vorontessi closest to them – a female, Moskin judged, and one of clear rank and seniority – abruptly turned her great gleaming head in their direction. “He’s insane,” she said, her modern diction and disgusted tone a shock after the flowery and archaic speech of the last Vorontessi Moskin had exchanged words with. “This is pointless. Why are we having a dialogue?”

  “Good question,” Moskin said, looking between the Angel’s flared wings and directly addressing the towering Vorontessi. “Why are you having a dialogue?”

  “We need–” the Vorontessi began, but the Angel silenced her with a glare.

  Hm, Moskin thought.

  “We have our orders,” the Angel said with regret, “and you have been given yours. If you have a problem with the natural order of things I suggest you take it up with God.”

  And Moskin’s anger reached an abrupt and blazing crescendo.

  “After you,” he said.

  His blades were in his hands before he knew it, comfortable and familiar, well cared-for even if he’d lost track of the months and years. He swept his arms across his body, slashing the Angel’s throat with one knife and her eyes with the other.

  It had little effect, of course. The metal parted the immortal’s flesh and pierced her brilliant little eyes, but only for an instant. The wounds closed and the Angel slid back with a sound of annoyance. Moving faster than he ever could have imagined, she batted her wings together and hurled him bodily against the wall. Moskin kept hold of his blades, but only barely. He felt his bones flex under the blow, but he landed on his feet and pushed off, bowling forward into the Vorontessæ.

  The six closest to him had raised their guns and were tracking him. Six perfectly-timed beams lanced from barrels and intersected, three on his chest and three on his head. He snarled, ducked to take the higher beams on the top of his skull and the spines of his hair, and slashed at two of the Heaven-folk.

  The beams, to his mild surprise and the soldiers’ considerable surprise, scorched him fiercely – he felt spines rattle and fall free as they were severed from his head – but did no deeper damage. For his part, mingled feelings of fellowship and a helpless protectiveness of weaker species pulled his blows, making him aim to wound rather than kill. Even so, his knives went through the leather and flesh more fiercely than he’d expected.

  His left blade swept through one Vorontessi’s arm, his right cut deeply into another’s slender torso. He continued through to the second row, unable to see where the Angel was, unable to see anything much with the fury of gunfire obscuring his vision. He slashed and stabbed, hit two more and hammered a fifth aside with his shoulder before he reached the opposite wall and performed a headlong dive against the hard white surface.

  Bayn, perfectly in tune with his needs and movements, opened a tunnel for him and he rolled, gasping and patting at the smouldering tatters of his clothes with fists still tight around his blades.

  “Your diplomatic efforts broke down quickly,” Bayn noted.

  “I feel I gave them every opportunity,” Moskin replied. “What’s happening in there?”

  “The Vorontessæ are tending to their wounded,” Bayn reported. “The Angel is breaking through my inner hull in an attempt to catch you. I have already moved your pocket out of reach and provided a second tunnel for them to follow,” she added as Moskin stiffened painfully. “They don’t seem familiar with my schematics and capabilities.”

  “Nor mine, apparently,” Moskin said. “What were those guns? They were like the training batons we use on Gyrlei sometimes.”

  “Heavy-bore anti-personnel plasma rifles,” Bayn told him. “I don’t know if Heaven-folk have ever gone into battle against Áea-folk before, but your physiology is considerably more durable than the Vorontessi or Molran standard.”

  “Could they have intended the attack to be non-lethal?” he asked.

  “Oh no, they definitely came here with lethal intent,” Bayn gloated. “They’re very agitated about how ineffectual their guns seemed to be.”

  “I’m sorry if it upset you to see me attack them, Bayn,” Moskin said, “but whatever has happened up in Heaven with this new faction of the Archangelic court, and this new information about the veil … they’ve set themselves in opposition to us and offered no justification for disrupting our mission.”

  “Or even trying to understand our mission,” Bayn agreed. “I fully concur. And you didn’t kill any yet … if you can encourage the rest of them back into their ship…”

  “I imagine they’ll change their tactics,” he said, rubbing at his burned skin. “Even a training baton in the right place is enough to kill,” he stood, sheathed his blades, and grimaced as he ran a hand over his ruined scalp. More burns, and the seared stumps of spines met his fingertips. “The main problem is the Angel,” he went on. “I can’t touch her. She heals instantly, and her strength and speed … I caught her off-guard once, but that’s it. And if she’d thrown me across the room any harder it would have crushed me.”

  “Yes,” Bayn said. “And Angels have other weapons at their disposal. Now,” she went on rather than elaborate on this, “they have left their wounded near the ship and are moving into the tunnel.”

  Moskin realised he’d have to change his tactics as well. “Is there any situation in which you can take arms against Vorontessæ?” he asked. Venting the Angel into the gulf might also do the trick, he thought – depending on how much air resistance, if any, their wings required…

  “No,” Bayn replied. “Well … yes, perhaps technically. But only in the event of a long-term cultural recovery to pre-Worm levels that … suffice it to say it is unlikely to occur in the course of this engagement.”

  “The Angel was worried about you when you came to Fade.”

  “That was because she suspected I was working with Blacknettle,” Bayn said, “to a degree where I could let her loose to fight for me. Ev
en as she was legally obliged to accuse me of holding Blacknettle against her will.”

  That’s what I thought, Moskin frowned and started towards the end of the pocket Bayn had made for him. She obligingly opened it out into a gently-curving tunnel, a faint hissing sound and a feeling of equalising pressure the only sign that she was rapidly adjusting the internal environment. “You have to let her out,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Blacknettle,” he clarified unnecessarily. “It’s the only way this is remotely likely to end peacefully. If you really believe she’s on our side…”

  “She won’t raise a hand against the Vorontessæ,” Bayn reminded him. “That’s why they’re on the crew.”

  “Then I guess they’re my job,” Moskin said. “Yours is to decide whether Blacknettle will help us or join the servants of Limbo.”

  “I guess we’ll see,” Bayn said.

  “In the meantime, can you open this tunnel onto the rearguard of their unit?” Moskin asked.

  Bayn rattled a laugh. “I was about to do just that.”

  It was the work of a few moments to sweep into the tunnel Bayn had made for the intruders, grab the rearmost of the Vorontessæ and jump back into his own passageway. It was not turning out to be a good day for the unit, which Moskin was sure was well-trained and very effective under normal circumstances. He disarmed the soldier deftly while Bayn moved them and created a new empty tunnel for the Angel to tear into if she so chose.

  He was almost certain the Vorontessi he’d grabbed was the one who had started to talk earlier, before things had escalated.

  “I don’t intend to kill you and your team,” he said, pinning her easily. “I just–”

  “You’ve already injured four of us severely,” she hissed. “The only way this ends with you in custody. You became an enemy of the Brotherhood when you took arms against their representatives.”

  “I guess our interpretations of what an enemy of the Brotherhood looks like are going to differ,” he said, and grinned his widest grin. Non-Áea almost universally seemed to be unsettled by the sight of a Lowland Elf’s teeth. To her credit, the Vorontessi flinched but then faced his grin stoically.

  “Athé – our Angelic officer – was friends with Blacknettle,” she said. “She’s been trying to get her back for centuries.”

  “I know,” he said. “And now your team has been dragged into it.”

  “It’s our job.”

  “I can respect that. Sincerely,” he told her. “For what it’s worth, and I know you have no reason to believe me, I’ve told the Flesh-Eater to let Blacknettle face your Angel directly. It’s not likely to de-escalate things,” he warned. “Call that a hunch on my part.”

  The Vorontessi grunted. “Sounds about typical,” she said.

  “Is it really true, what … Athé … is saying about the exile?” Moskin asked. “This thing that’s meant to be trapped in there? You were about to say something else, before she stopped you. Would you care to continue, or is there really no point in dialogue?”

  For a moment the Vorontessi looked as though she was going to keep arguing, but then she gave a low, dry rattle that could have been a laugh or a growl or a Vorontessi-specific emotional indicator with no Áea equivalent. “We came down here to retrieve Blacknettle,” she said, “and ascertain how close you were to accessing the conduit, how accurately you could locate the conduit, and to stop you from playing with the damn thing. Because whatever’s in there, whatever its connection to the Lost Disciples, it’s better for them to drift bodiless across an empty flatworld for a few thousand years than to risk any sort of premature … confrontation.”

  They were still operating on the assumption that the Lost Realms were intact but hidden, he realised. That was reasonable enough, but still an interesting revelation. “And whose opinion is that?” he asked. “The Archangelic court’s? God’s? Or Limbo’s?”

  “I have no idea,” the Vorontessi twisted weakly in his grasp. “Purposes within purposes within purposes. Who knows why Limbo and the Vultures do the things they do? We don’t question the Infinites,” she laughed abruptly, bitterly. “Maybe it doesn’t matter. We blockade the conduit. You stop us and begin feeding the vanished worlds. Either way, what’s in there will stay in there. Perhaps it is enough that for the past two thousand years, near enough, the Pinians and their passenger have been kept at arm’s length,” she frowned. “Are the Lost Realms really…?”

  “Dying? Absolutely,” Moskin said bleakly.

  The Vorontessi shook her head. “No,” she said, “according to the overwhelming majority of our projections, without Power Plant input and aid they should already be dead. The humans should have consumed every available resource and wiped themselves out. I was going to ask if the Lost Realms are really still alive.”

  “There’s several billion humans alive in there,” Moskin confirmed. “And a half-dozen Angels, and the Lost Pinians.”

  “It seems impossible,” the Vorontessi murmured.

  “Humans are apparently more resilient than their frail flesh would lead you to believe,” Moskin noted, “although in this case I don’t believe they can take all the credit. I think the collapse and reset of their civilisation, along with the attendant population drop, moved the timetable a bit,” he touched his head gingerly again. “But the failure of the Lost Realms is still very much on the horizon.”

  “Did you … our information was unclear how much interaction you had with the Pinians,” she said. “Did you…?”

  “We didn’t interact,” Moskin said, and released the soldier. She folded herself easily into a wary sitting position. “I’d be interested to know how you’ve been following our mission.”

  “I don’t know that,” she said, “and wouldn’t be permitted to tell you if I did, of course,” Moskin nodded. “I can reveal that the Angels monitor the region of the gulf that corresponds to the conduit. That’s how Athé directed us here. What we don’t have – as far as I know – is any knowledge of how you found the spot, or how you performed your interference.”

  Moskin shook his head. “I wasn’t aware that we’d done anything to find the conduit,” he said. “I don’t track Bayn’s – the Flesh-Eater’s – movements particularly closely, but as far as I know we were just drifting in her usual region.”

  “I don’t know much about the conduit,” the Vorontessi said, “all I know is its location isn’t fixed. For all I know, you inadvertently redirected it here, or you just happened to be sitting in its path which is a staggering coincidence.”

  “Bayn, Blacknettle and the Archangel Gabriel are the ones who do most of the coordination work on any sort of communication,” Moskin said, “if you can even call it comm–”

  “Gabriel?” the Vorontessi soldier exclaimed.

  Before Moskin had a chance to open his mouth there was a great hollow boom, a blaze of heat and light from one side and a deathly-cold Grób-hug of darkness from the other, and Moskin was hammered into unconsciousness between them. The last thing he felt as he blacked out was a sharp and familiar pressure above his eyes – Bayn’s crude telepathic link.

  Mosk–

  GOING NATIVE

  He drifted slowly back into awareness to the sound of Bayn’s voice.

  “I fell, for a brief time. There were objects all around me, and they fell too … but I was able to arrest my descent and hold position.

  “Blacknettle was able to do so as well, of course. That’s when we met.

  “There were other Flesh-Eaters outside the Destarion when Earth, Hell and Cursèd were lost. A few of us wandered free, but I don’t know if there were any others in the gulf. I think most must have been exiled with the Elevator.

  “There was Balro, of course … the second of the ten sub-units of which I am fifth. She went into the Playground – a long time ago, this was. Long before the exile. Some say she jury-rigged a relative drive, since we don’t have that capacity built-in. Some say she travelled there at subliminal speed. Some say she
was buried in the shell of a Riddle Tower. It’s possible, I suppose. Everything was so confusing, after the Worm came. That was when the Category 9s were commissioned, you know. That was their purpose. And after that…”

  “Bayn?” he said, or tried to. His mouth and lungs operated, but slowly and thickly. His voice was inaudible, a gluey internalised murmur. He tried to open his eyes.

  “Moskin? Your indicators showed that you were waking up but this is the first time you’ve tried to move. Don’t put too much stress on yourself. You’re currently immersed.”

  “Immersed?” he attempted again. This time he picked up a sound – urr? – but it was almost entirely internal reverberation, from his throat to his ears. Not coming from the soupy atmosphere outside his warm, heavily-padded head.

  “You’ll be fine, soon. I don’t want you to overreact, so I’m feeding you sedative. You’re inside the interface chamber, Moskin. The capsule that Blacknettle was in. You’re not integrated, even as little as she was,” the Flesh-Eater went on quickly as Moskin flexed his body. His movement was feeble, and there was something wrong with his limbs, but he thought he brushed against something smooth and hard in the darkness. He wasn’t distressed, but he felt an urgent need to stand on his feet and breathe air.

  “What…?” he said, shifting his mode of speech to the almost-unspoken series of subvocalisations he’d gotten into the habit of performing when he was theorising with Bayn throughout the course of their work together. “What happened?”

  “Blacknettle and her friend got in a fight,” Bayn said lightly, “just like you did with the Vorontessæ. It was almost certainly an automatic ship function, but the Gorgoña went into crisis response mode and detonated a compact-yield transpersion warhead in close proximity to my main power impellers. The ship was destroyed, and I suffered severe damage. I reconfigured to minimise it, while also protecting you and the Vorontessæ. Unfortunately, the thermobaric impact of the explosion was beyond my ability to entirely contain. The Vorontessæ were … obliterated.”

  “I’m sorry,” Moskin said. “They weren’t constructed as densely or resiliently as a Lowland Elf.”