The Bosch: A Novella (Polity Universe)

by Neal Asher

  Petod showers and dresses, places his slammer back in the belt loop underneath is jacket then dons his city cape over that – shimmer mask in a pocket. In the main room of the apartment Yoon is dressed, now in an insulated body suit, the Cougar at her hip again. The place is well lit and no shadows lurk inside or out on the balcony.

  ‘Where is the Doctor?’ he asks.

  ‘With the Cowfish down by the Embassy

  ‘I thought they died when they found and killed their fathers. Why is the Cowfish still alive? Did you release that Batian in exchange for information?’

  ‘His genetics were not those in his seed, therefore the Cowfish could not reach completion. In exchange for information I promised not to kill him.’

  ‘I am surprised – I did not think you capable of . . . bargaining.’

  She stared at him. ‘The Plague Doctor, of its own volition, killed him.’

  He nods, uncomfortable now with this capability for half-truths.

  ‘The Embassy?’ he asks.

  ‘Where Ibruk and the albino woman are hiding,’ she replies.

  ‘The Embassy,’ he repeats dully. As a grant of land simply for habitation, the city comes under her jurisdiction. The Embassy, built on land passed in perpetuity to a conglomerate of off-world polities, is jurisdictionally as the name implies. Under her own agreements she has no legal power there for it is not her territory. ‘You can’t just go in there and do what you want.’

  She turns to him. ‘Most of the concerns there have free movement of citizens between and through their territories and that applies to the Embassy too. I am free to go into that place if I so wish. But yes, there are limitations on what I can do there.’

  He notes the emphasis, considers how the Plague Doctor killed that man of its own volition and sees her intent. By law a killers on Embassy territory must forfeit their own lives. He can see how the court will know precisely the motivator of the killing, but will conveniently ignore that. Not that it would even get to a court. He thinks it highly unlikely anyone there will try to arrest the ruler of a world who is also the world itself.

  She heads out onto the balcony. He hesitates, thinking about turning to the apartment door and heading away. Just the thought raises a deep anxiety at the prospect of separation, and he follows her out. She has bound him, and he knows she did it during sex the first time, for the feeling was not so strong before that. No doubt this last time she climbed on him to reinforce the bond. He feels bitter and struggles to hold onto that, but it is gone by the time they reach the street.

  ‘You lead the way,’ she says.

  Moving ahead he thinks about where they are. The quickest way to the Embassy is through the low tunnels. He gestures and leads the way to the nearest stair and they spiral down into gloom. He has chosen this quickest route because he wants resolution. Will she free him after she has achieved her goals? Even that thought makes him anxious. As much as he wants his freedom he does not, and cannot want freedom from her at the moment. Only his intellect recognizes the utterly chemical source of his feelings, but is all but swamped by them.

  Faintly luminescent tiles, whose sum output is enough to see by, line the low tunnels. He walks in the general direction of the Embassy until reaching an intersection and reading the sign there writ in an old runic script. Now knowing the way he takes a turning, stepping with care not to crush the side spiral snails, and crawling gnapper bugs. Glowing veins, like capillaries but bright blue, complement the light. It is deposited by the gnappers and so considered a faux pas to kill them. The snails he avoids because he hates the crunch of life extinguished and knows from experience their slipperiness can put him on his face.

  They take three turnings before reaching the upward stair, and climb ten spirals to a studded compressed fibre door. Glancing up he sees camera nodules above no doubt linked to the Embassy, and curses for not thinking to have them both don their shimmer masks. Perhaps a watcher will not recognize them, though he suspects an alert in that place for Yoon. He pushes up the palm lock and opens the door with an ornate handle fashioned in the shape of a snake. Daylight blinds him for a moment, but as Yoon steps out beside him his vision returns. They stand in a wide square with roads around it and others starring off into numerous streets. This part of the city remains open enough for cars. In the square’s centre is the statue garden with its flower borders, fountains and, of course, statues. One at the centre is a precise but enlarged depiction of the woman beside him.

  ‘I can feel them close.’ She points. ‘They are in the garden, waiting.’ She turns towards the Embassy.

  They see just one outer face of an octagonal building five floors tall. Barred windows face out, while a pillared portico leads to the public entrance. The security is inside and he wonders how it will react.

  Yoon leads the way along the pavement, pauses at a road to watch a hover tram slide past, then crosses. They pass many shops here selling expensive clothing, shoes and scents. Yoon pauses by one packed with planetary biologicals.

  ‘My people need to come here and look very carefully at these prices,’ she opines, then moves on.

  The comment is too prosaic to register with him, when he knows that murder is imminent. Finally they mount the steps to the portico and head towards open doors.

  Yoon pauses on the threshold to peer in at the carpeted foyer, the scanning arch and armed security guards Clad in Batian armour. Perhaps they are Batians – she does not know. Turning she gazes out at the park to send her summons. Shadow slips between statues, disrupts the spray of a fountain, but the Bosch cannot maintain their disguise in full daylight as they move to the kerb on the far side of the road. A woman screams, drops packages and runs. A hover transport mounts the pavement and ploughs into a lamp post. The two Bosch patiently watch a car slow as it passes them, then cross the road. Yoon nods, and steps into the Embassy.

  With Petod beside her she strides to the security arch, studies it for a moment, then unholsters her weapon. Security guards on the other side raise short stubby carbines and watch as she places the weapon on a tray beside the arch. A cover snaps over it, drawing it from sight, then extrudes empty again and opens its cover. Petod takes out his slammer, places it on the tray too, and it too is similarly taken. He walks through the arch first and it green-lights him. As Yoon steps through, multiple lights ignite all over the thing, skittering here and there. On the other side a guard approaches, holding out a scanner – two others at her back – meanwhile a plaintive alarm sounds inside the Embassy.

  ‘What other items do you have?’ asks the woman.

  ‘None,’ Yoon replies.

  ‘What enhancements?’

  ‘Only what I am.’

  ‘Sparic! Look at this!’ says another guard.

  The woman with the scanner turns towards the arch and her mouth drops open. The Plague Doctor comes through fast, the arch screeing strangely and its lights going crazy. Cowfish elicits a similar reaction. The woman holds up her hand scanner and looks askance at it.

  ‘Welcome! Welcome Yoon!’ cries a short but wide heavyworlder clad in businesswear – obviously one of the Embassy officials. Yoon eyes him. Yet again she has no time for this, because the Doctor now has the trail of Ibruk.

  ‘I am going inside to see someone,’ she says to the guards. ‘I suggest you don’t try to stop me.’ The Plague Doctor breaks into motion, sliding across the floor and now out of direct sunlight generates shadow and confusion. Yoon runs after it, the Cowfish and Petod pursuing. The Doctor hits a door, knocking it aside and, as she passes it, Yoon reads the polished metal plate there. They are entering the Krodor section of the Embassy. This makes sense because Ibruk is a Krodorman, but also confirms a connection to the arrival of the Krodor ambassador here.

  ‘Yoon!’ She glances round. Two guards have brought down Petod and pinned him to the floor. She can hear the despair in his voice – the separation anguish – but best to get this done before the reaction becomes more organized. The remaining guard – the
woman – raises her weapon, but the Cowfish barrels into her knocking her sprawling and comes on. The official just stands with his mouth open.

  She follows the Doctor into the corridor beyond, seeing it take a turn at the end. Rounding that, she sees the Doctor sliding into a reception area almost as large as the foyer behind. Lights strobe and the sound of weapons fire reaches her a moment later. Shrugging under the impacts and expanding, the Doctor surges forward, but then a beam sears across, hot and high energy and the doctor retreats, expanding the reach of its shadow, to confuse what lies beyond. Without instruction from her it emits chemical terror and, as she comes up behind it she sees it should not have.

  Guards in the blue uniform of the Krodor military, and wielding energy weapons, have spilled out into this area. Now they are terrified and it will not be possible to reason with them. She mentally berates the Doctor but it is rebellious – the free will she gave it yet to dissipate. It desperately wants to get to a double door over behind these soldiers.

  Yoon realizes she is now in the midst of a ‘diplomatic incident’. It is not of great concern to her, but it will be to others and to the balance here between her people and the off-worlders. It occurs to her that perhaps this was Ibruk’s aim? She cannot yet parse the reasoning but, nevertheless, the man lies beyond that door and she will have her accounting. With a gesture she brings up the Cowfish and with a thought propels it forward. It hurtles across the polished floor, expanding to spread its substance over a greater volume, and the soldiers open fire with guns that can harm it.

  The Cowfish takes many severe hits before it reaches the soldiers. Yoon’s Bosch are rugged, tough and dangerous and can survive injuries that would kill most humans, but they are not immortal. Flesh peels and breaks over the Fish’s body, bones show through like the frame in an old sofa, and it leaks a trail of yellow fluids across the floor. Thrashing its wings, it sends soldiers tumbling. The attack, the shadows and the terror permeating the air are enough to test their discipline and resolve, and the Plague Doctor’s subsequent attack is enough to break it. Most run, though one or two go through that door. Some drop to the floor curled up foetal, overloaded. A man and woman, weapons abandoned, hurtle screaming past Yoon. She tracks their course to other soldiers behind, being urged forwards by the official, but not yet able to overcome their fear, and walks to the door as the Plague Doctor tears it off its hinges. Glancing over at the Cowfish, she sees it down and unable to pull itself back together, smoke and steam boiling from its flesh. It looks appeal at her and she pauses to lay a hand on pallid skin. Assimilating the correct toxins, she stabs in her claws and injects. Completion is not possible but she can at least give it peace. The toxins spread quickly and it slumps and, even as she steps towards the doorway, begins to come apart.

  Within, a large stone slab table sits near the far wall, covered in soft screens Luxurious furnishings strew the area. A Krodor fig tree has grown around the walls. By the table stands a bulky Krodorman with soldiers either side of him. The Plague Doctor is on Yoon’s side of the room, separated from the three now by monomesh screen that must have dropped from the ceiling moment’s ago. The Doctor readies itself. The mesh will cause it damage but will not stop it from reaching its prey. She sends her thought, but the Doctor rebels because completion is so near. She pauses, strengthens that thought into command, stilling the Doctor, freezing it to the spot, then walks over to stand next to the screen, peering in at the Krodorman. He is clad in a suit resembling that of the ancient samurai of Earth, but completely grey and its sections of a softer material. He does not look as heavy as the Ibruk she last saw, perhaps because of the armour he wore then. His face looks thinner too, and there is not so much arrogance in his stance which, in the circumstances, is perhaps understandable. He wipes a hand over his polished opal skull and paces forwards to stand on the other side of the screen from her.

  ‘Why do you do this?’ he asks, concern and bafflement writ across his whorled features. In memory she sees him looming over her unclipping an armoured codpiece. She feels his weight crushing her and the pain, the fear and humiliation. But the weight of her mind entire pushes these aside.

  ‘Why are you here?’ she asks.

  He grimaces. ‘Politics. The old grew weak and ineffectual. We have fought a war and now the new replaces the old. Here where it has given too much ground to others I am properly establishing a Krodor presence.’

  Yoon reaches out and touches one of the mesh filaments. It cuts into her fingertip. But for this everything would have been as intended. The Doctor would have reached this ‘Ibruk’ and he would have died.

  ‘Your name?’ she asks.

  ‘Ibruk,’ he replies.

  ‘So it will be this “old” that wanted you dead?’ she enquires. ‘One with your appearance attacked me and left your seed.’

  He is appalled, but rallies. ‘A golem, a mechanism – they were used on Krodor during the war. Very dangerous. It will have a handler somewhere.’

  ‘I apologise for my action here. My world will make restitution,’ she says.

  It is good that the last Batian did what he did and so alerted her to the possibility of this subterfuge. She looks round at those now gathered behind – Krodor soldiers, Embassy security, that official and others, Petod too – and nods. She heads away from the screen and takes a firm grip on the Plague Doctor’s rebellious mind. As she walks towards the new arrivals it drags itself after her.

  ‘We are going?’ Petod asks, as a guard releases his arm.

  Others mill about, but she can sense the orders being given and now they part ahead of her.

  ‘We are going,’ she affirms.

  City police and Krodor soldiers. . . Petod watches the police move out across the churned terrain to head for the elevators and stairways leading up onto the spaceport platform. The cargo and passenger ramp leading into the city, forty feet up to his left, has been blocked by the soldiers. They even brought an armoured vehicle from somewhere in the city – a thing with twinned Gatling cannons apparently purchased from an alien race humans once fought.

  ‘I thank you for your assistance,’ says Yoon.

  The police sergeant, recently departed from an armoured gravcar now resting on the ground behind her, is a big gruff woman. She rests a shock stick across her shoulder and tries to show confidence, but Petod sees she is in awe. It is notable too, he feels, that she is in command here, while the mayor and police commissioner are back in the city. Yoon’s arrival here, the mayoral reaction and subsequent events at the Embassy have stirred up some big interests. The mayor, he understands, is now fighting for his political life, while all his hangers on are distancing themselves. Yoon’s reminder has wrought change, which will, he thinks, be good, though he is in no way confident.

  ‘Good to be doing something . . . positive,’ says the woman.

  ‘Catching criminals?’ Yoon suggests.

  The woman grunts an acknowledgement. As Petod reads it she was demoted because of her objections to the mayor’s use of the police force as his personal army. Embassy interests put her in charge here, not least the Krodor ambassador now very definitely making his presence felt.

  ‘So the subterfuge was to get you to attack and kill the ambassador,’ she says. ‘That does make sense because the security in the Embassy is strong and any other attack likely to fail. The Ibruk – the version of the ambassador that attacked you – is a golem?’

  When they got back to the apartment – escorted by Embassy security and Krodor soldiers, shortly joined by city police – Petod viewed the file, dispatched by the Krodor ambassador, of one of these machines. The ancient design had once been the shell for an artificial intelligence. The Krodor used a control mechanism run by a handler. He, and Yoon, also looked at other files on albino ophidapts, all assassins.

  ‘She could be any of them,’ Yoon had said, on viewing the last. ‘It does not matter for our purposes.’

  ‘Where do we look now?’ he had asked.

  ‘There
is one place left. I want you to check spaceship itineraries.’

  And now they are here.

  ‘All this is true,’ Yoon replies to the sergeant.

  ‘And our job is search and containment?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Yoon now points to the stair ahead and the platform undershadows. Out of that darkness the Plague Doctor looms, and then flows up the stairs. She begins walking.

  ‘You know the ships to search and, when you find them, you leave the rest to me,’ she says, and leaves the woman behind her.

  ‘Are you sure we will find them here?’ Petod asks, moving up beside Yoon.

  ‘The assassin’s expectation was that I would kill the ambassador,’ she replies, ‘whereupon my involvement would be at an end and she could leave in the resultant chaos. Now she cannot. And now she knows I am coming for her.’

  As they reach the stair, Petod glances back. The sergeant’s car is now in the air and heading to the platform to direct operations up there. They climb, finally stepping out onto metal gratings. Though he has spent many years in the city, Petod has never been here and only seen it this close in images. To his right he can see the mountains of the nearest Spineland, to his left run the lower slopes to one of the chains of lakes. The view is little different to that from the city wall, so he concentrates on his immediate surroundings.

  Many ships rest here surrounded by refuelling and maintenance paraphernalia. He watches policemen entering via the cargo ramp of one vessel and others moving elsewhere to search the area. The Plague Doctor crouches in shadow at the base of a crane, having no scent trail to follow. Yoon moves on, inspecting each ship in turn and, intermittently, the Doctor catches up, sliding to the next patch of shadow. They come to a ship on the list – a thing like the block of some ancient piston engine – no police here yet. The Doctor moves in closer to a point between them and the vessel, looming by a stack of plasmel barrels.

  He gestures towards the ship. ‘Do we search or do we wait?’