by Neal Asher
‘Where?’ said Marcus. ‘The nanite you … made.’
Bronodec struggled for a moment and slumped. ‘In my laboratory. Coded drawer B122 and inverting this is the code you put in.’
‘Distribution,’ Marcus slurred.
Bronodec looked up. ‘Air dispersion.’
Marcus dropped him and turned. Salander leapt up.
‘Let’s move,’ she said, slapping her hands together. ‘Molotor, get to the defences. Ankhor, get the non-combatants out to the rim and prep escape pods.’
Ankhor tilted his head. ‘Really?’
‘If this goes to shit, there’s no way Suzeal will stop this time. The old escape pods still have working cryonics and there’s room for thousands – it’s a chance of survival.’ She turned to Molotor again. ‘When it hits, I’ll ensure those who are freed of their thralls know to head our way, and will route them to Ankhor.’ She turned to Marcus. ‘I reckon the outlet of Atmos One will be the place. How many people do you need?’
Marcus gazed at her for a moment, then reached out, bringing his hand down on my shoulder.
‘You’re sure?’ she asked.
‘Easier to sneak … not attack,’ he said.
‘Okay … okay, let’s move like we have a purpose, people!’
She headed for the door with her two heavies in tow. Marcus held me back from following. The door swung shut. He turned back to Bronodec.
‘Prisoners,’ he said.
‘She keeps them in the old inspection pens. Uses the hooder grabs to collect them. It causes a lot of damage but she only does it when they’re ready.’
It took me a moment to realize he was talking about prisoners ready for coring and thralling. Only such virus-toughened people could survive a ‘hooder grab’, which didn’t take much thought to visualize.
‘She cannot win, you know,’ said Bronodec from behind us, pointing to the closed door. ‘Suzeal tolerated her while she didn’t affect business, but now—’ He gestured to himself.
Marcus looked round. ‘I know.’
He stepped out and I followed, the door lock engaging with a clonk behind us.
‘Come,’ he said, setting out at a swift jog.
* * *
We took a dropshaft down a few floors to enter another corridor. He pushed open the door into a sparsely furnished room with a drip feed set up by the single bed. The red liquid in the suspended bottle was surely a derivative of sprine. Marcus had been working on his condition.
‘Food.’ Marcus pointed to a pile of packages standing on a side table. I walked over and recognized supplies we’d obtained down on the planet, but other stuff too. I opened a container full of mixed fruit in syrup and practically inhaled it while he pulled out a long flat chest from under the bed.
‘What’s the point of us getting this nanite, supposing Bronodec didn’t lie about it, if Salander can’t win?’ I asked, next munching my way through a slab of protein I’d unwrapped, the thing veined with fat.
He glanced round at me. ‘She can save lives,’ he said. ‘And some will have a chance to save themselves.’
‘The escape pods,’ I said.
He nodded while punching a code into a small console on the lid of the chest. ‘They will disperse to the rim. Many will die. Many will escape.’
Picking up a cup, I headed over to his sanitary booth and filled the thing twice. Despite draining it both times, that didn’t seem enough, so I drank two more cups and returned to the food.
‘Why are you sure Salander will fail?’
Compressed figs, a packet of salty dried fish, packaged fruits I didn’t recognize, pastries and biscuits. I ate so fast I bit my tongue. Why so hungry? Yes, it’d been a while since I’d eaten, but this seemed over-compensation. The boosting and other changes in my body, perhaps?
‘Numbers,’ said Marcus. ‘And Suzeal is ruthless.’
He could talk a lot better now, I noticed. I peered into the chest as he opened it. Weapons and equipment were packed in neatly and he began taking them out. He picked up a heavy weapon with multiple barrels and a large pack from which he plugged an armoured power lead into the weapon, as well as armoured pipes and ammunition feeders and a hinged arm. He had a kind of multigun which would normally be mounted on the tripod he left in the chest. Next he strapped on a bandolier loaded with a variety of grenades and spare power packs, along with other instruments I had no idea about, but which I felt sure were lethal. He finally donned the pack, hinging the gun out in front of him on its arm. He’d told Salander we’d be sneaking to Bronodec’s lab. This didn’t look like sneaking at all.
‘Prisoners first,’ he stated.
‘Why?’ At last I seemed to have reached repletion, in fact felt a little bit sick. I stepped away from the table. ‘Disruption.’
‘What’re we doing, Marcus?’
‘Suzeal,’ he said, cutting the flat of his hand across before him, ‘must end.’
I couldn’t see how releasing prisoners undergoing mutation, and those under the thrall, would end her operation. It would disrupt things for her for a while, but she could survive it and carry on. It seemed to me this could only result in death and destruction.
‘The prisoners will attack everyone,’ I said.
He shook his head. ‘They not like me. Infection only to level for coring, not beyond.’
‘Okay, so they’ll still have their minds, but I don’t see how this can end her operation.’
He gestured to the chest. ‘You.’
I stared at him for a long moment, then said, ‘One moment.’
I stepped inside the sanitary booth, opaqued the walls and just managed to get my trousers down. It felt as if my insides were coming out, and kept on coming out. Finally, when done, I cleaned myself and headed out. Marcus stood by the table, feeding himself almost as fast as I had. His expression showed a hint of amusement as he pointed towards the chest again.
‘I’m only human,’ I said, walking over and stooping down.
Despite all my questions about intentions, I trusted him and would go with him. Whether or not he could stop Suzeal, the release of prisoners either incarcerated or under the thrall was only a good thing – now I also understood the virus-infected ones weren’t monsters. I looked at the weapons. I had a pulse rifle on its strap across my back and two pulse gun sidearms – one in its holster and one tucked into my belt. The chest contained all sorts of other delights. I assumed it to be his, which raised some interesting questions too. It seemed he’d been here before, for how else had he contacted the rebels so quickly and become embroiled with them?
I took out one large package, studied it briefly, then stripped off my weapons and my outer clothing. The combat armour suit pulled on like heavy garments and fitted perfectly. It was likely his, but could no longer fit him, hence his motley armour and combat clothing. As soon as I had it on, it powered up, and those areas where movement wasn’t required stiffened as its metamaterials meshed or filled with shock foam. I checked its action. The concertinaed hood snapped up quickly from the back collar, the visor extruding at the front and clicking into place against it, a head-up display coming on. Though similar to the envirosuit I’d worn, this thing had many more functions. Judging by Marcus’s pacing, I didn’t have time to test them all right then. However, the suit felt utterly familiar and I knew my earlier self would provide answers. I pulled on a bandolier, equally as loaded with lethality as the one Marcus wore. I hung the pulse rifle on my back, put on my uniform belt and reinserted the sidearms, then picked up another weapon and stared at the thing. Pulsed laser carbine with underslung grenade launcher – short and compact. Almost without thinking, I picked up its spare grenade clips and attached them to my belt, plugged its power and data lead into the suit belt port and got targeting on the HUD. This was a massive upgrade from a pulse rifle. I was ready.
Marcus stooped down and picked up the colour-change jacket and handed it to me. Annoyed with myself, I detached the carbine cable, shed my rifle and the bandolier
, and put the jacket on before returning them. He nodded once, briefly, and headed for the door. As we jogged through the corridors of the rebels’ building, we got some strange looks. But the people moved on urgently, for now the floor was shaking, and I could hear the rumble of explosions and the distant crackling of weapons fire. As we took the lift down, I wondered why Marcus had chosen me to come with him. Others here surely would’ve been more adept with the equipment he’d provided. I felt sure, though, that somehow he’d known I would understand and quickly familiarize myself with it. Even as we descended, I checked out the suit’s systems, its weapons connections, its tactical data, logistics and numerous other readouts. I did know how to operate all of it. Only one doubt remained in my mind: could I? Yes, I had killed, but only mindless clones and maybe one or two distant prador. I didn’t believe I had the casual facility with it that he had.
We came out in the crop areas and quickly crossed them to the nearest wall. Here people – non-combatants loaded with belongings – crowded through bulkhead doors. These I guessed were heading for the rim and for safety – a temporary safety if Bronodec and Marcus were to be believed. I folded down the helmet and visor.
‘Do you intend to kill her?’ I asked.
He tapped his ear. I knew what he meant at once and took the coms units from my suit collar and pressed them into my ears. The visor came up, offering connections in its HUD. Clearly marked at the top was ‘Marcus’. I stared at it for a moment to acquire, then blinked, enabling the connection.
‘If necessary,’ he replied, his voice close and clear.
We circumvented the crowds and headed for a ladder running high up the wall. I pressed my weapon against a bond patch on the front of the suit before climbing up after him. I found the climb easy in the low grav, while the suit didn’t hinder me at all, and it got easier still as grav dropped and then the plane of it began to turn. A short while later, Marcus stood and walked on the wall. I followed until we came to what had looked like a tube access from below, and now became the mouth of a dropshaft. It was non-functional so we climbed down the side, entering a short corridor that transformed into a walkway over a complex of factories. I felt the familiar loss to my sense of direction that I’d experienced aboard the King’s Ship.
The walkway took us into a series of corridors. As we approached a junction, Marcus held up his hand and made a signal I recognized: be ready. I hit a pad below my throat and my visor and hood closed up with a snap. Then we stepped around the corner.
Three of Suzeal’s mercenary types stood in the wide corridor ahead. The fighting was about to start before I’d resolved whether I was ready for it. They were poring over a tablet, heads bowed, and then one spotted us. I just stood there gaping, not sure what to do. She yelled, swinging a pulse rifle towards us, opening fire before lining up on us and spraying shots along one wall. Suit linkage hardened and target frames dropped over them, the shooter negated because she was Marcus’s first target. Without thinking, I aimed at the one to the right, while the one on the left struggled to bring a heavy laser carbine to bear. Marcus’s single shot picked up the shooter and flung her back through the air, but not before a shot ricocheted off my shoulder and another hit me in the chest. The shooter’s chest exploded mid-flight, spreading open her armour and her ribs, and she hit the floor bonelessly. I went down on my arse, losing targeting, then reacquired and fired. I hit the one on the right in the legs and he went down yelling, with my next hit on his visor just as the other one staggered back, armour debris, blood and flesh exploding out of his back. Another function of the multigun: rail beads. Only someone as strong as Marcus was able to handle the recoil. He reached down, grabbed my arm and hauled me up.
I inspected the damage and saw small smoking craters in my armour already closing, healing up as if the suit was a living thing, but it was a limited repairs system. Shots had traversed Marcus’s chest too and burned through armour at one point. The flesh underneath steamed but he hardly seemed to notice. We moved forwards. The two he’d shot were plainly dead, while the one I’d hit lay making horrible snorting sounds. His visor was gone – the chain-glass turned to a white powder. I stood over him and saw a face of charred ruin, his nose and top teeth gone and the burn hole right down into his sinuses. With the medical technology here he could be saved and go on to lead a practically limitless life. But he would never have thought the same for me and would probably have left me bubbling out my life on the floor, not wasting another shot. As one of Suzeal’s people, he thought little of turning other people into slaves or, after tearing out their brains and part of their spines, into organic robots. He was also probably one who sat making bets on how long the next victim would last against the siluroyne.
I drew a sidearm and shot him twice through the forehead. He jerked, raised a hand then dropped it and lay still. This was the first time I’d killed a thinking human being. Right then I felt very little about it at all; only as I hurried after Marcus, who’d not stopped, did it hit me. I halted, my legs losing strength, and dropped to my knees, knocked down the visor and puked against the wall. After a moment I stood up shakily, but something began to harden inside me. I caught up with Marcus. ‘Quicker, next time,’ he said.
More corridors, more walkways, and then we came to a dropshaft. The arrow beside it was blinking red and, even as we faced it, someone sped down past the entrance. I closed up my helmet again as we moved forwards. The arrow went out, just for a second, before coming back on again. Marcus snapped a grenade off his bandolier and we waited. More troops swept past the entrance, heading down, and as the last went past he tossed in the grenade then waved me to one side of the entrance. A moment later, fire and debris gouted out and I heard the screams from below. The red arrow went out and he hit the up arrow, which came on green. Next he ripped off the panel beside that arrow, reached inside and pulled something out, discarding it on the floor. The arrow stayed on green as he tossed in four more grenades. We moved off to the right to find another way.
A steady climb up an inactive dropshaft brought us out into a park. This one was little like the one I’d walked across with Suzeal. Dead trees stood peeled of bark and shedding branches, while other plant life lay brown or black, damp and decaying. I had my visor down but the smell of rot wafted in. Life hadn’t completely failed here, though, and the place avoided being monochrome. Toadstools scattered the ground – mostly white but some blue and some yellow. Bracket fungi clung to the dead trees – multiple shelves of them with either the pink of new skin or like great yellow and brown agates. Most of the lights set in the ceiling above were out and it would have been dark, but for the gunfire and explosions.
Salander’s soldiers advanced behind a barricade of armoured shields that ran across the ground on treads. Their jackets were all now a pale green and only then did I notice that Marcus’s and mine matched the colour. Even as we moved into the park, a missile streaked down from high up and blasted two of the barricades, scattering smoking bodies all around. Other barricades had begun to fail under a constant heavy onslaught, whittling them away until some parts of them looked like metallic lace.
‘Run!’ Marcus instructed, accelerating past me.
As I followed, another missile streaked down and hit the dropshaft we’d just exited. The blast threw me forwards and I rolled, coming up behind a barricade where four soldiers crouched. They glanced at me and I could see their desperation. Doubtless they thought they should be retreating, while the barricades were advancing. Marcus came down on one knee, shouldered his weapon and fired a missile, the shot jerking his shoulder back. High up on the far wall it hit below a balcony. The intense hot blast burrowed into the wall and the balcony tilted, spilling a launcher and three bodies.
‘Stupid tactics,’ I heard him say over com. ‘Salander. My location. Fast advance.’ He waited a moment, then looked around. The soldiers behind the barricades began to look in his direction and he switched his attention to me. ‘We go.’
He stood, bounded for
wards and leapt the barricade. Just for a second I froze and saw other soldiers were undecided. I stood and rounded the barricade to run after him, glancing back to see others joining the charge. A group of Suzeal’s SGZ were behind a tree, so I threw three grenades there. Two blasts flung them through the air while a third had the tree toppling over.
Movement right. Target and fire. A man pirouetting through flame. A grav-car tipped on its side ahead. Shots from there hit my leg, but I only stumbled and the suit clicked into assist, righting me quickly. Marcus railed the vehicle, the shots going in with a horrible metallic sound and seeming to have little effect on the side I saw. Debris exploded out from the other side and the firing ceased, a pulse rifle thudding to the ground. A missile struck just behind me, blasting up the earth, and I tumbled through the air. Suit assist again as I went down, rolled and came upright. Grenade off the bandolier. Three seconds with one press, and into a tangled mass of dead briar. It blew with a sharp crack, filament shrapnel going through the briar like a hedge cutter, and revealed someone screaming with both hands severed away. I spun to further shots from behind another tree, then saw the shooter staggering back under the convergence of two streams of pulse rifle fire. A glance back showed me that the others had all followed. We were really in it now.
Marcus held someone above his head while strafing others flat on the ground. He then tossed that person and shredded him in mid-air. People leapt up before me. It was close shooting now, and hand to hand. I stuck the carbine to the front of my suit and drew both sidearms. Shot to one head and the knee of someone heavily armoured, stamping on the back of a rising figure and spinning to kick the one in the armour. One grabbed my arm and tried to swing in a slammer but he fell away with most of his face stuck to his visor. I saluted a thanks to one of Salander’s soldiers, but then saw her spun round, with pieces of flesh and armour shredding away.