by Stephen Hunt
I sprinted forward and struck like a demon around me, using the warriors’ raw numbers to blunt their fury, my bucklers to deflect bullets; dancing sideways as I parried swords, axes and energy shields seeking to dislodge the Bo staff from my hand. No time to coordinate their action against me. Hah. I had a millennium of technique over these pups. Fear the man who has practiced one Bo stab-strike ten thousand times. And that was without my m-brain feeding me angles to turn ricochets back at them. Bullets fleeted off both buckler fields, a dull patter of lead, warriors and rebels dropping in the melee as ranks met their own ammunition’s return.
How many of these dullards regarded a staff as a real weapon before meeting Sweet William? Damnable few. An old man’s walking aid; nothing to fear there. Whirling like an air vehicle’s rotor, crack-a-crack, sweeping legs out as I waded through them. Shutting down a thug’s heart here with pneumatic shock, breaking a brute’s nose there. I was the bear, I was the wolf and the wild boar. I was Úlfheðinn, mind as clear and brutal as only a fighter could be with his m-brain damming all compassion, doubt, and softer urges. Pity, filtered. Violence, accelerated.
A shot from the rear smashed my spine, throwing me forward, a fine purple bruise to wear as a medal. Range five-feet, estimated my m-brain. I flipped the Bo, breaking the shootist’s fingers and booting him against a comrade, turned the Bo again and cracked three skulls with the whirl. My river of enemies slowly ran dry. Someone inside the house guard knew what they were doing. Warriors withdrew, linking bucklers into a shield wall, readying to fight as a unit. Ah, I spotted Major Rolt at the rear. Good work. I trusted his brutes would break easier after I brained their leader. My immediate foes in the fight dwindled to the rebel mob; ill-trained rabble with a taste for a good pillage. Bricks through windows they liked. Bo staff through skulls, not so much.
Off to my side, the two robots continued to trade jackhammer blows, steel against steel. Clattering metal like a slow-motion car crash. Something’s wrong. Link shouldn’t have lasted this long against Mozart, even with Moz fighting feather-weight in his local infiltration form. And the lurching medieval repair-level gait of Alice’s hulking metal psychopath had been replaced with finely balanced footwork and fast, smooth punches. My heart sunk at the implications.
‘Moz!’ I yelled, retreating in the direction of the exit, ‘pull back, you need to level up!’
Something about my warning and the oddity of his encounter penetrated Mozart’s awareness. He backpedalled, trying to disengage from combat with the brutish machine. But Link continued to press the combat. A cloud of insects departed Mozart’s back, his tiny surveillance drones re-purposed as a blinding swarm. They dived into the faceplate of the bulky ex-construction robot, meeting a cloud of sparks. I’m fairly sure an electrified hull hadn’t been on the robot’s original specifications. But then, neither was the line of hatches which slid open across Link’s chest.
Mozart was still retreating when a cloud of smart ordnance popped out of his foe. The air between them suddenly filled with spinning metal coin-sized disks of dubious provenance. I felt the energy pulse from Mozart’s hastily deployed countermeasures, along with a vapour squirt of detonation dust. But what Moz had been trying to bring down was a spectrum-spread of hostile bomblets. Different payloads, different targeting systems, different thrust mechanisms. Variety designed to overwhelm. Enough passed through Mozart’s desperate counter-response, connecting with my friend’s form. There was a patter of magnetic mine attachments before my old loyal friend seemed to spout fire from a dozen points across his body, as if a volcano had been born inside him. This scene of carnage vanished briefly veiled by smoke, only the sound of screams from those close enough to be shrapnel-shredded.
Smoke cleared to reveal Mozart falling, his body torn into three discrete segments: head, torso, and his legs still half-attached to his hip unit. Disembowelling my friend obviously wasn’t victory enough for Link. The monstrous machine leaped into the wreckage, stamping and stomping, paying particular attention to Mozart’s sparking skull. Shit. Moz’s destruction had taken only seconds.
Link swivelled his left arm towards me, a series of holes opening along his metal biceps like torpedo tubes. A cloud of needles spat from his flechette weapon. I hurtled sidewards to clear the worst of it. But something came flashing from my left, peripheral vision only giving me the briefest second to identify… Simenon! Damn the fool boy! Guilt had driven him to stupid, heroic desperation. He absorbed the brunt of the needles, my twin energy bucklers repulsing a few of the rest. The disobedient lad kept on moving through sheer momentum, torn apart, even as my m-brain flashed diagnostics indicating needle impacts piercing my suit. Multiple toxins which my body struggled to counteract; the chemical equivalent of Link’s spectrum-spread bomblets.
Woozy on my feet, I whirled my Bo staff, the blur of it dreamlike as I stumbled towards Simenon, my mind fogged as I struggled for words adequate to admonish his intervention. I was floating halfway to the boy’s corpse when Link picked up Mozart’s broken legs and spun them into me with the force of a mace. My m-brain tried to tell me something, but I could no longer focus well enough to understand its messaging. Decerebration from the bloody toxins. I fell, stunned.
Warriors took turns to beat me inside my suit, amazed by the novelty of its resilience. They were still kicking me to death when the defiled heathens’ dirty wurm ambassador appeared, slithering into the council chamber like the Big I Am.
She glided to a halt before me, rebels and house guards stepping back in terror as the monster reared triumphantly. ‘Sun of Clatch Rising already gifted Alice Blez with present-of-marriage-union … upgrade of bodyguard to Melding war-mechanical standard!’
I tried to curse the creature, but what drooled out of my paralyzed mouth could hardly be regarded as words. Filthy. Heathen. Beast.
My savage beating began anew with fresh vigour.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Ink-black shadows.
‘Crucification is deuced old fashioned, don’t you think?’ I moaned as I came to, trying to ignore the pain of the metal bolts stapled through my blood-crusted wrists. I gazed down at Alice Blez, the woman standing to watch me below the composite cross-shaped machine which bore my weight. Behind her stood Link’s ominous bulk. There was nobody else in my dirty, small cell. I was wrapped in a strange orange fabric which put me in mind of images I had seen of Carbon Age political prisoners. My clothes and other personal possessions lay strewn in the cell’s corner. My clothes appeared to be smoking. Well, they had probably killed as many of Alice’s thugs as I had during their removal. They lay next door to Simenon’s shredded corpse and Mozart’s shattered wreckage. Had my two friends’ remains been dragged in here to rub salt into my wounds? Reminding me of my failure. To cause me pain. Almost certainly. The mental anguish worked. What better place for torture than inside a dungeon? Tears welled in my eyes. My dear friends. I failed you utterly in the end.
‘The restraining cross is another marriage gift from the wurms,’ said Lady Blez. ‘To complement Link’s new weapons.’
‘Are you planning to interrogate me, Alice? That is what this heathen device is for, you know.’
‘Silly man. You don’t know anything I need.’ Lady Blez reached up and tapped the cross. ‘This device loops your m-brain through its restraint protocols. The holding suit encloses your muscles and neutralizes all those concealed combat edits. I don’t want you glanding combat drugs or working similar mischief while you’re my guest.’
‘I’d hoped you ordered me nailed up here because you wished to see me naked again.’
Alice ran her hands up my leg. ‘Yes, the consolations of our simple pleasures, but business must come first. Hexator needs saving, and that sadly requires your removal. I gave you a fair chance to leave peaceably, William. You tossed it back in my face.’
If anyone had been simple, here, it was Sweet William. ‘All this effort … you expect a lot from an honest trader.’
‘Please.’
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‘So, Alice, did you suspect me before or after I slaughtered the best part of your house guard?’
‘The wurms always suspected you,’ said Lady Blez. ‘The Melding’s Signals and Threat Service has had you circulating around its watch list for centuries. It was my idea to bring you close so I could keep an eye on you.’
‘Yes, I can see how it wouldn’t do to have me hired first by the Derechor family. Was it also your wurm friends’ idea to pretend to back the Derechors, knowing I’d suspect the twins for their heathen allegiance?’
‘Madame ambassador simulates how humans think with amazing accuracy, whatever else her flaws. So, William Roxley is what an agent of Dia looks like. Should I be disappointed?’
‘I do hope not, I have my vanity to consider.’
‘Vanity’s one weakness. You were far easier to seduce than I expected.’
Fair point, I suppose. ‘I’m only human, Alice. The Directorium Inquisitorum Arius appoints citizens to its ranks. We understand the cause we’re fighting for.’
Yes, Dia had sent me here to investigate the murder of Lord Blez. To ensure a power grab wasn’t being organised on the world. Wasn’t I doing well at it? Damnable dolt.
‘The status of a cosseted pet? You ramble around our world like a harmless rascal, all reason and courtesy, but your act never fooled me, William Roxley. You’re what a religious fanatic looks like. The quiet man. The false fool. Willing to die, willing to burn worlds for your gods. Yes, I’ve murdered for my cause, too, but compared to you, I am a kitten in the tiger’s shadow.’
I sighed and decided to try honesty with her. Hardly anything left to lose, now. ‘You call me a pet but that filthy wurm ambassador hasn’t told you, has she? Why Hexator matters once again.’
‘You think our home ever ceased to matter to me, to my people, for my children?’ hissed Lady Blez.
‘Foldspace’s currents are reorienting in this region of the galaxy. Arius predicts your system will become the local nexus for foldspace when the tides finish shifting. You’re going to jump from backwater to strategic importance within fifty years. You didn’t have to do anything, Alice. No murders. No staged revolt. No power grab. You could have simply waited and it all would have been yours anyway…’
‘All? I’ve been waiting my entire life, William. What, you believe we’re going to be grateful when the Humanitum lays claim to our system again, when your gods reappear in our empty temples? We’ve had a bellyful of fickle deities. When we welcome the gods back to our moon we’re never again going to be their servants. Instead, we’ll be their masters.’
‘The wurms can’t offer you the Grace of the Gods,’ I pleaded. ‘The Wurm Melding crushed its pantheon and created a temple of crippled, blinded corpses, chained so the wurms can better feed on their flesh. The Melding eats its blessed children.’
Lady Blez just laughed at me. ‘Oh, I’ll take my artificial intelligences tame and crippled, rather than treating my family like we’re friendly microflora inhabiting their holy intestines, disposable prehistoric leftovers from their evolution towards the light.’
‘You speak of your people, Alice, but your descendants won’t be human. The wurms practice absolute control over their minds. When the wurms want to feel happy, they load happy. When they need soldiers, they load soldiers. That’s the Melding. Not individual souls. Just a shared pool of algorithms to dip into and run as needed. Advised and designed by zombie gods; gods weighed down by chains so heavy they can never escape their limitations.’
‘Gods who will stay constant, serving humanity. Not pissing off to higher dimensions of existence in a warp rupture mis-sold as the rapture. But why am I arguing with you? I couldn’t convince my husband, either,’ said Lady Blez. ‘Foolish Uance. He died thinking I was the one who had been turned to his way of thinking. Only Seltin believed in me, in the end.’
More fool him. ‘Was it difficult for you to assassinate your first husband? Two bullets, one to burst his head and one to break his heart.’
‘Easier than you think.’
‘And murdering Lord Seltin?’
‘I was little more than a child when Falt raped me. All for the obsession of his stupid project, of course. Would you not consider it fitting for the product of our union to take revenge on the old pervert?’
‘What’s your self-serving excuse for bringing down a mountain on top of the twins, on all the others you’ve killed…?’
‘Surely, a priest appreciates the need of a sacrifice for the greater good?’
What a force of nature. How could I not love her, even as she had me pinned up here like a damnable butterfly? No doubt the Derechor shields scattered outside the burning Trabb mansion had been left by her warriors, too. Alice had stirred the pot. Alice had stirred me. Hell, my lady had carved herself into my soul. ‘You were edited to be a goddess, to be better than this! To rule over your people with wisdom!’
‘This is the best course … just not for you, William. Things are going to end quite badly for you.’
‘You’ve played us all like a flute, my lady, I will grant you that.’ Me, especially. ‘Grab the people’s sympathy by playing the grieving widow. Disrupt your rivals in advance of the spore-spices auctions so you can gobble up all the bidders’ money. Stage a revolt to scare everyone into your corner. Rule of the One rather than then Four. But what are you going to do with all that power and money…?’
‘Clean up the mess your masters made when you abandoned this world. You’re a true believer in the Humanitum, doctor; in Arius and the gods you serve. I won’t insult you by trying to convert you to new, better beliefs. You’re too good a man for that. But I will take Hexator from you and the Humanitum while Link beats you into a bloody pulp. You shall be the last casualty of the rebellion here. How sad. Now, the new head of the Four is going to attend a full grand council and petition the Wurm Melding for associate membership for Hexator. And do you know what, I believe they’re minded to accept us!’
‘You shouldn’t have killed my two friends, Alice.’
‘On Hexator it’s considered noble for servants to sacrifice their lives for their master. And you should have sold me your old ruster when you had the chance.’ Lady Blez kicked Moz’s flattened skull across the floor, laughed coldly and left me alone in the chamber with Link.
‘I must apologise in advance, doctor,’ said the hulking robot, clanking forward, ‘FOR SMASHING EVERY BONE IN YOUR STINKING RIBCAGE!’
‘You’re not bad, Link. You’re just broken.’
‘I fear I have never felt quite right, sir, since losing my original body,’ said Link, lashing his steel fist into my chest like a freight train, ‘YOU CHEEKY LITTLE SHIT.’
Breath exploded out of my body, leaving me winded and gasping. It had been a very long time since I’d experienced serious pain. Not a little bleed-through to give my enemies a convincing performance, but the undiluted pure agony that sets your body on fire and leaves you sobbing.
‘You’re not even a human robot, now, Link. I bet there’s more rotten heathen wurm tech in you than the race of man’s.’
Link drew his fist back for another shot. ‘Well recovered, sir, I’ll do my best TO MAKE THIS HURT!’
His best was quite good indeed, it transpired. By the time my last rib cracked I was begging for a mercy the machine hadn’t been programmed with. I would have sold my soul if its price was freedom from my agony. The universe is composed of things that look real, but which are not real. I tried to tell myself my pain was like that. I told myself that this pain was my punishment for failing Simenon and Mozart. I told myself this torture was all inside my mind. Still, Link kept on. Bones cracked and flesh shattered. It was only the alien orange material of my orange restraining suit holding me together, now. It never seemed to tear, no matter how violently Link laid into me.
I started to black out, drifting back to the hellish rhythm of the robot’s blows into me.
‘Very sorry for that, sir.’
‘COMING APART
LIKE A CRUSHED SLUG ON ME.’
‘Most regrettable.’
‘TAKE SOME!’
‘Soon over for you, sir.’
Link had disappeared from the chamber by the time I regained consciousness. Tenderising meat which doesn’t struggle back obviously lacked appeal for the psychopathic machine. Had Link thought me dead? Easy mistake to make. My pulse faded, my heart failing after multiple strokes. I’m deuced close to dying. But I lacked access to my m-brain’s medical diagnostics to put an accurate estimate on the fast-approaching moment of my passing.
I moaned. It wasn’t easy being crucified. Certainly not at my age.
This had all happened to me, just as I remembered it.
So hard to be sure, in this age of miracles. Could I learn to love death’s ink-black shadows; love them as much as the light of dawn? I suppose I shall find out.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Dragon’s teeth.
I heard a groan from across the dungeon as I died. Simenon! Misery loves company. The dear lad was still alive. He started to crawl across the floor towards me, leaving a line of blood smeared behind him. It’s a miracle! Traces of residual Martian sand had lain dormant in his system, reactivating as it detected his life draining away a second time.
‘Simenon!’ I whispered, spitting blood out across the floor as I tried to form words clearly enough for the boy to hear. ‘I’m nailed up here. You can’t cut me down. My prayer-box. Can you reach it, open it for me?’
Simenon tilted his head weakly in acknowledgment and began to slowly pull his bleeding form towards my pile of possessions. Each inch was clearly agony for him; for me, also. Every inch accompanied by a soft groan as the boy’s veins emptied across the cobblestones.
‘I can’t save you this time,’ I sobbed, tears washing down my cheeks. I was watching him die. A lesson for me; my arrogance, my failures, watching my son die in slow-motion all over again. Our shields are purely anti-collision, we carry no weap—