by Neal Asher
In long low-grav bounds I headed between two belts and out onto the massive factory floor space. A long aisle stretched ahead of me. Many of the lights were out and the air tainted with smoke, so I couldn’t see where it led. Nevertheless, picking up my pace, I all but flew when the far wall came into sight. Lying amidst a waterfall of feed pipes leading into the factory stood a single riveted door. I slowed a little, but still hit it feet first with suit assist kicking in. The door sprang open in a shower of corrosion and I shouldered into the far side of a corridor. I turned right, now about on the level of the pens where Suzeal had incarcerated Marcus, and headed towards them.
Even as I ran, a few floors down from the park, the effects of that combat continued to reach me. A crash ahead blew out a cloud of smoke, which cleared to reveal the corridor peppered with holes, actinic light glaring through them from above. Further on, an energy beam stabbed down like none I’d ever seen before, and of which my previous self had no knowledge. Bright green and about an arm’s width, spirals and shifting patterns traversing its length, it bore some resemblance to a BIC laser informational warfare beam. But it had cut through metal and composite, leaving no debris and generating no heat. It then changed, its surface scaled with black diamonds, like a rolled-up sheet of animal mesh, and tracked across the corridor, then through the wall. The section I stood on slowly dropped a couple of feet, exposing a perfectly clean and shiny cut. I leapt up over that and moved on. Just how much of the space station would remain before Vrasan subdued the opposition?
The corridor next spiralled up and ended against a deactivated dropshaft. I climbed this, pausing partway to check the map, and then to activate chameleonware. Three floors brought me out in a stairwell, for there seemed no lower access to the pens. Eventually I entered the corridor Marcus and I had walked before, with its accesses to suspended walkways over the pens. I passed a couple and finally came to the one where the walkway had fallen. I presumed Marcus would be in this pen, where the prisoners had been held.
‘You know,’ said a voice I unhappily recognized, ‘those who use chameleonware become arrogant and forget simple tricks like floor pressure plates and air disturbance monitors. I’ve killed many like that, who thought they were undetectable.’
At the far end of the corridor, the wall exploded and the air filled with fast-moving metal. The weapon was noisy, so in that respect inefficient, but heavy slugs slammed into me at a rate, if my brief realization was correct, of two thousand rounds a minute. The fusillade picked me up and flung me backwards, shedding hot metal as I flew through the air. I hit the edge of a doorway into the pens, spun down onto the ground and tried to bring my weapon to bear. It was gone – just the broken arm protruding from its pack. I reached up for the carbine but saw only its remains in the shattered ruin of the front of my suit. Warnings and damage reports scrolled down the side of my HUD, then blinked out when the stream of projectiles picked me up and sent me tumbling down the corridor again. I didn’t need them to tell me my chameleonware had failed, suit damage at critical, and that I was probably about to die.
As the shots blew me into the stairwell and took my visor away, I glimpsed, through the eaten-away wall at the end of the corridor, Suzeal sitting behind that old tripod-mounted machine gun from her apartment. The firing ceased as I slid backwards down the stairs and out of sight. I tried to get up and run, but nothing seemed to be working right – I felt as heavy as lead. Percussions followed and a number of metallic balls, each a couple of inches across, bounced into the stairwell. I had time to see lights revolving under their metallic sheen just before they all detonated. The flashes blinded me and waves of heat passed through my body. The leaden feeling increased as the suit now lay dead on me after the series of EMR bombs. I’d be going nowhere until out of the thing, but I had some reluctance to remove it, since it might be all that was keeping me alive.
18
‘Okay, we’ve got him,’ said a voice. ‘Now let’s get the fuck out of here.’
Brack stepped into the stairwell to peer down at me. Others crowded in too, weapons pointed at my face, then came Suzeal.
‘Strip him,’ she said.
‘We haven’t got time for this!’ protested Brack.
She whirled towards him and delivered a gauntleted blow hard to the side of his helmet. He staggered back.
‘I will say when we leave!’ she spat. ‘It may all be over here but don’t forget only I can get us into the shuttle and only I control the defences around it, in it and on it. And only I choose who comes aboard.’
He raised a hand. ‘Okay.’ He waved two of the others ahead.
They grabbed my arms and dragged me up into the corridor. Pain shuddered through my body, in between the patches of familiar numbness. After dumping me on the floor, they proceeded to take off my armour, having to use an atomic shear at one point to get past the damage. Soon I lay naked and, seeing these armoured figures looking down on me, and feeling my complete vulnerability, I realized her comments about arrogance had some truth. A lot of truth, in fact. I tentatively tried to move. I ached from head to foot and could see blood and burns all over my body, but my arms seemed to operate without any bones grating inside. Putting my hands against the floor, I heaved upright.
‘That was some suit,’ said one of the soldiers.
‘Polity manufacture,’ Suzeal replied. ‘Higher spec than anything you’ll find in the Graveyard.’ She stared at me with utter hatred. ‘And it’s good it’s gone, isn’t it, Jack, because now you’ll be able to entertain us.’
I didn’t comment, just continued testing my body. My ribs ached but none of them seemed broken. Nothing was moving in my legs in any way it shouldn’t. Burns, contusions and cuts seemed to be all of it. Yes, it had been a hell of a suit. I looked up and listened to the sounds of battle. I reckoned the fighting was now down in the entrance to the zoo – some of those explosions sounded very close.
‘Pick him up.’
The two stepped forwards again, but I held up a hand and stood by myself, swaying with momentary dizziness, then steadying. One of them shoved me from behind and I continued walking in the direction of the shove. No need to say anything to Suzeal. I knew where this was going and felt no inclination to give her the satisfaction of some verbal exchange. Her gauntleted hand came down on my shoulder, halting me at the entrance to the pen with the fallen walkway.
‘I would have liked to have fed you to a hooder,’ she said, ‘but this will have to do.’ She paused in thought for a moment.
I just turned and looked at her.
‘Yeah,’ interrupted Brack, his fingers up against his aug. ‘You might get your wish with the hooders. The fuckers are right down there.’ He stabbed a thumb towards the stairwell.
She turned, drew a sidearm and poked it straight in his face. He staggered back with a yell. ‘One more word,’ she warned.
He nodded then looked towards the end of the corridor as a blast blew smoke and debris up the stairwell. The other soldiers here were getting nervous, shooting glances down that way too. She turned back to me.
‘Nothing to say? No questions to ask?’
I shrugged and turned to the doorway, moved to the edge and peered down. I could see that Marcus already lay down there on the ground, unmoving.
‘Climb down,’ she instructed.
The walkway the prisoners had climbed up still hung to the floor. I reached out and took a hold of a rail and began to work my way down. I took my time about it since they were in such a hurry. The sounds of battle grew in volume so I couldn’t hear what they were saying up there, but voices were being raised in anger. Finally reaching the muddy ground, I headed over to Marcus. He lay flat on his back, breathing raggedly. He turned his head and looked at me, moved his mouth but only wheezing sounds came out.
‘Here!’ Suzeal called. ‘You get the same chance as Hunstan!’
A knife with a chain-glass blade thudded into the ground beside me. I stooped and picked it up, then looked up just in tim
e to see a blast blow a hole in the ceiling, raining down molten metal that thankfully fell nowhere near me.
‘Go!’ Suzeal commanded, and the others moved out of sight. She peered down at me for a moment, then fired a laser carbine at where the walkway was attached. Metal flared and showered sparks, then the thing crashed down into a pile on the floor.
‘It’s not very hungry today!’ she shouted at me. ‘That means it will play with you for longer.’ She headed away.
Marcus wheezed again, managing to lift a hand and point. A doorway, ten feet square, stood open in the far wall. Through it lay a brightly lit area, as if the door opened onto a planetary surface, in this case being the surface of Masada, since flute grasses grew in there. The knife and the mention of Hunstan confirmed what Suzeal had intimated above: a nasty death. For that doorway opened into the place where she kept her siluroyne.
I studied the knife, having a more urgent use for it now than self-defence. Ignoring the open doorway, I moved closer to Marcus and inspected the bullet holes all over his body. He shifted, rolling one shoulder, and a bright nub of metal squeezed close to the surface. I dug the tip of the knife in and flicked the bullet out, then moved to another hole and probed down into it, finding the bullet a couple of inches down and easing it to the surface and out. Marcus, being infected with the Spatterjay virus, would have healed by now if these had been normal bullets. His body would either have ejected them and healed, or just healed over them. But the sprine in them killed the virus, weakening his ability to recover. Luckily the consistency of his flesh remained the same – woody and tough. This made it easier, once I’d loosened a bullet, to then lever it out of the hole. I’d removed five of them by the time the hole left by the first one had closed up. After another five, I began shooting panicked glances towards the door. This seemed endless, his body a pepper pot, with apparently hundreds in just the one side of it. Then he reached up and took the knife from my hand.
‘Find … something,’ he gestured with the knife towards the debris of the walkway then, grunting and wheezing, heaved up into a sitting position.
I ran over to the mound of debris and began scrabbling at it, feeling horribly vulnerable in my nakedness. Sharp edges and still-smoking metal threatened. Everything still seemed connected together until I turned my attention to one of the harpoon guns. Where its pedestal had torn free from the walkway, it had freed up a series of strengthening struts. These were two-inch I-beams, mostly as long as the width of the walkway – six feet in one case with brackets at each end, four feet in another with the bracket only at one end. They were both light, though the brackets were of a heavier metal. I dragged them out and inspected the weapon itself. No. Severed power leads had rendered it unusable. Maybe the monofilament? No again, since I had no way of handling it. I didn’t fancy making the effort and leaving my fingers on the ground.
Marcus had by now opened a flap of skin and muscle down his torso and was flipping out bullet after bullet impacted on his ribcage. Hoopers were more resistant to pain than most but he grimaced as he did it, so I guessed it wasn’t pleasant. I squatted beside him, watching the door. He eventually closed up the flap and held it in place, then, when it had sealed itself there, set to work on his right leg. Something shifted in the pile of debris. Surely metal that’d been disturbed during my search? My gaze strayed to what I had earlier thought to be heat haze rising from the metal Suzeal had cut through. But it wasn’t heat haze.
I gaped in horror as patches of flute grass colour began to etch themselves out of the air. The thing had been there all the time I’d been searching through the debris, just ten feet away from me. The patches of beige and green, striated like the fronds of the grasses, spread and began to take on different hues: bone white, and red shading from that of fresh blood to the black of old. In a moment, the siluroyne squatted in full view, its nightmare head like a bovine skull poised six feet above the ground. Why had it revealed itself? The thing was an ambush predator that used its camouflage to come unexpectedly on its prey. But, according to Suzeal, it also liked to play. In revealing itself, I felt sure it was doing so, but this also suggested it understood the fear its prey would feel, which bespoke some degree of intelligence. All this went through my mind as I kicked the larger strut over to Marcus and held the smaller one in readiness. Meanwhile, the siluroyne began shrugging itself and squirming as if excited, like a cat watching a pair of mice.
‘Unpleasant-looking creature, isn’t it?’ he said.
I didn’t look round at him, but his coherence was reassuring.
‘How strong do you feel?’ I asked.
‘Stronger than you,’ he said, ‘but much weaker than I was.’
‘Suggestions?’
‘Stay alive?’
He moved up beside me, leaning on his makeshift weapon as he continued to dig bullets out of his leg. The more he managed to remove, the stronger he would get. He, I knew, was our biggest chance of survival, so I needed to give him as much time as possible. I don’t quite know what came over me then because the injustice of it all came crashing down on me and I suddenly grew very angry.
‘Right, you fucker,’ I said, raising my weapon, and charged.
The siluroyne tilted its head to one side and froze in position, obviously intrigued by this strange behaviour. I just kept going, right up to the damned thing, and swung the length of metal as hard as possible. The bracket at the end went straight into what looked like one of its nostrils with a crunching sound and jammed there, transmitting a brutal shock down through my hands. It roared and hissed nasally, spraying me with mucus coloured by its purple blood and jerked its head back. I hung onto the bar as it lifted me ten feet from the ground. It raised a claw to its face, scrabbling at the bracket jammed into its nostril, and it whipped me from side to side. A moment later, I ended up sailing through the air to land hard on my back.
I got up quickly, in time to see the thing fade out, and to trace the shimmer of its movement as it ran off to my left, circling round. I lost track of it over by the door into its own area. Had I driven it away? The prey can sufficiently put off a predator if the latter is well fed, but I doubted this creature would be deterred for long. It had become accustomed to feeding on people and, as I had seen with Hunstan, people who fought back.
‘Well that probably annoyed it,’ said Marcus, ‘not that whether or not it’s annoyed is germane.’ Much better. I glanced back at him, still digging out the bullets. He waved me over and held up the knife. ‘I need you to dig them out of my back. I’ll keep watch.’
‘Over there.’ I pointed to an area where terran grass hadn’t been trampled down around a patch of briar.
‘Good idea.’
I didn’t need to explain to him that, though we couldn’t see the thing, we had a better chance watching out for it in a place where we might see movement. We headed over, warily checking our surroundings, and waded into the grass and up beside the briar. With that at my back, I set to work with the knife, careless of inflicting damage as I levered out bullets. One patch over his shoulder blade was full of them. I sliced down the side of it and levered up a big flap of tissue to get to the slugs, all imbedded in bone as tough as combat armour. As I pressed it all back, bullet free, and held it in place, the grasses shifted ahead of us. The siluroyne appeared with squid-like waves of visibility traversing its body, then began to pace around our refuge.
‘Just keep digging,’ Marcus instructed when I paused.
He turned to track it and I kept working, as quickly as possible. The two bullets in the back of his skull came out easily, while the ones in his thighs required deeper work, with some I simply couldn’t get to. However, when I completed one leg and looked at them again, they’d come closer to the surface and I was able to lever out a few.
‘Don’t stop,’ said Marcus.
‘I understood you the first time,’ I snapped back.
The siluroyne made one complete circuit and we turned with it until we were back in our original posit
ion. It grew utterly still and disappeared. It next issued a low rumbling growl and the ground kicked up as the grass parted. Marcus shoved me away, swung back the strut and, timing to the movement of the grass, swung it back so hard and fast that it made the kind of sound one would expect from a whip. It seemed to stop in mid-air, impacting with a soggy crunch, and Marcus’s feet left the ground, the force telegraphing through him and flinging him aside. The monster reappeared briefly with a dent in the top of its head, leaking fluid, and pieces of bone or carapace sticking out. It rounded on him, tearing up grass as it shot back in. He stooped into its charge, wedging one end of his strut against the ground, the other end directed at its chest. They slammed together, then the siluroyne went over him, flipped by the length of metal and crashing down on its back. By now, I was close enough to bring my weapon down hard on its translucent body. The bracket sank in then bounced out. It was like hitting rubber, but it obviously hurt, for the thing rolled away from me hissing. It faded to near invisibility again as it beat a retreat through the grass.
‘Bullets,’ Marcus snapped, picking up one half of his strut and tugging the other half from the ground. The two halves now had vicious jagged ends and he held them like swords.
I grabbed up the knife and set to work again as the siluroyne reappeared. Its purple blood dripped from its face and, where Marcus had struck it, a bulbous swelling had risen. I noted it probing its lower body with one claw. I continued to dig out bullets as Marcus noticed this too.
‘The head is least vulnerable, but for those eyes,’ he said. ‘Heavy bone or whatever.’ I worked down his other leg just as fast as I could. He glanced over his shoulder. ‘That’s a chain-glass knife. It won’t break and it won’t lose its edge. You go for its belly.’