Black Dawn

by Peter J Evans

  "I need to know, my lady. About the dragon..."

  "Lad, there is no such thing!" Bill came around the table to grab Trewpeny by the shoulder. "In the name of God, can't you leave your imaginings out of this?"

  The boy leapt up, clutching his chest. "I didn't imagine nothing, Bill Foxe! The devilish thing had me open, almost as bad as poor Jon! If it hadn't been for the box-"

  "The box!" echoed Sarah, her voice as shrewish as ever. "And why hasn't that been turned over to us?"

  "I need it!" He was backing away from the table. "You're all fools, you are! There's a monster out there, all claws and eyes, and it killed Jon Slafot and it killed them in the warehouse! Didn't it!" He was staring right at Red, now, his face ruddy. "Didn't it!"

  Red didn't answer. She couldn't. All she could do was spread her hands, helplessly.

  At that, Trewpeny turned and fled. She heard the doors slam behind him as he raced out into the church.

  "Sneck," she muttered. A second later she was on her feet. "I'm going after him."

  Sarah gaped at her. "Why?"

  "Because he might be the only one around this table with a clue."

  She found him out in the church, kneeling in front of the altar, his hands clasped together. His head was bowed and his eyes were closed, but he seemed anything but peaceful. He was shaking, and Red could see threads of fresh blood staining his tunic.

  As she drew close, he opened his eyes. "Sorry, star-fallen."

  "It's 'Red', okay? And don't be."

  "They think I'm mad but I know what I saw."

  She dropped into a crouch next to him. "Tell me."

  "You'll think I'm addled too."

  "Who, me?" She slapped his shoulder affectionately. "Anton, if I told you about half the stuff I've seen, you'd think I was the barmiest girl you'd ever known. I'm not kidding."

  He dropped back to sit on his heels. "I wouldn't. You've been on other worlds, walked under other suns. There's nothing about you that would surprise me."

  Red smiled. "Tell me about Jon Slafot."

  "He was my friend." Trewpeny still had his hands together, and he brought them up to press them against his forehead. "My good friend. We worked together in Farnham's Copyist, up on Taler Way. Had done since school, him and me."

  "Right."

  "But we wanted to get into Daedalus. My mother had died of the cold last year, my old dad not long after. I could see we were all dying, daysummer after nightwinter, and the Elect wouldn't help us. Wouldn't let us improve things, 'cause the Endura said it was heresy and against God's will. When everybody knows they've got a stack of pre-fall stuff hidden away in the Tabernacle... So we tried to join."

  "What, that lot?" Red nodded back over her shoulder, towards the concealed door. "The council?"

  "Oh, there's no council, my lady. Daedalus doesn't have anyone like that. Those are just members. Everything in Daedalus is done random, off the cuff, so if anyone gets caught no one knows anything."

  "Really? No wonder the Endura have got 'em running. Anyway, what about this box?"

  "They wanted us to pick it up, as a test. Find it and pick it up, and we did, too but on the way back Jon went off to make sure we weren't followed, and then..." He paused, taking deep breaths. They seemed to pain him. "He didn't come back."

  "Did you find out why?"

  He nodded, eyes wide. "He was in an alley. He was dead, my lady. His chest was all... I mean... No man could have done that!"

  Red stood up. "In the warehouse. The people there had been smashed to bits. I mean really bad. The blood was everywhere... Sneck, maybe that's why those guys had the lightning gun!"

  Trewpeny got to his feet too. "Red, that's not the half of it. I saw the dragon, right there, trying to get into the alley after me. It did this." He pulled his tunic up.

  At the sight, Red hissed out a curse. Something had carved Anton Trewpeny open.

  Three deep wounds ran right across his thin chest, each a few centimetres away from the next. The wounds were puckered, part-healed, with vivid pink skin forming over them. A few of the margins were weeping blood, but they seemed free from infection. In a low-tech environment like Igantia, that was nothing short of miraculous.

  She had seen wounds like that before. "The box heals you, doesn't it."

  "Aye." He pulled the tunic down again, covering himself. "I was trying to find something to throw at the monster, but I was dying. It had carved me, and I just grabbed the box." He made a small noise, a sort of despairing chuckle. "Sort of my last gesture. The box stabbed me in the hand, and I don't remember more than that."

  "But when you woke up, your wounds were healing."

  "Lady, is it the devil, keeping me living? Am I cursed?"

  She grinned. "You know better than that, Anton. It's the box. I can't be sure, but I think it's called an auto-medikit where I come from."

  Trewpeny reached to the back of his belt and pulled a small canvas bag free. "Here," he said, untying the thong that held it. "You tell me."

  Red cupped her hands, and the medikit rolled out into them.

  It was small, and compared to the medical equipment she had seen in the Accord, quite advanced, which made her think that there might well have been some backsliding even in the past couple of hundred years. It must have been tough, too, to survive that long. The state of Trewpeny's wounds told her that at least some of the drugs contained inside were still potent.

  Behind her, the concealed door sprang open. Bill Foxe put his blond head through. "Durham Red?"

  "On my way and those buggers better be a bit more co-operative. I've still got a friend out there who needs help, okay?"

  She put a hand out to Trewpeny. "Coming?"

  "Aye, in a moment." He put a hand to his head, and winced. "I'm feeling a bit shaky, star-fallen. Sorry."

  Red frowned. "Hold on, so am I..." She looked around. Everything seemed normal - the lanterns were giving out their warm glow, the door was still locked and bolted, the guards were in position and yet the feeling of dread she had experienced earlier was suddenly back, worse than ever.

  She gasped. The marble flagstones beneath her boots were shuddering, rippling as she watched, kicking dust up from the cracks as they bounced in rapid sequence.

  "What the sneck?" she hissed.

  As she spoke, a flagstone flipped up from the middle of the nave and spun through the air. It hit the back of a pew five metres away and exploded in a cloud of stone fragments and splinters.

  Trewpeny was frozen to the spot. The guards were running over, Bill Foxe too, all staring in awe at the jumping, cavorting tiles.

  Red put a hand to her belt for her pistol, and just as she remembered she didn't have one, the floor exploded.

  Stones skittered away, tumbling end over end, their weight shattering everything they struck. Red saw one hammer into a guard's side, cleaving his ribs; another spun past her and embedded itself in the front of the altar. She dived aside, taking Trewpeny down with her, down between two pews.

  She held him there for a moment, listening to the screams as the Daedalans in the meeting hall piled out to see what was happening and then leapt up again.

  There was a hole in the middle of the church. A big hole.

  The centre of the nave, after being hammered up with such force, had sagged back in on itself, dragging down more flagstones and the nearest pews. Dust was fountaining up as the debris slid back to vanish in darkness, and deafening sounds of grinding and tearing came from the pit that had formed. Red winced, resisting the temptation to put her hands over her ears. It sounded as though someone had set up an industrial tunneller down there.

  "Mistress!" Godolkin was racing across the church towards her. "Keep back!"

  "Oh really, you think?" She had to shout at him, just to make herself heard over the noise. "Have you got a gun or something?"

  "No. Have you?"

  "What kind of a silly bloody question is- Holy sneck!"

  Something was hauling itself out of the pit.<
br />
  The arms came up first, jointed and angular, dripping dust and cobwebs. The hands were big, like clusters of knives, and strong enough to punch right through the marble tiles. They gripped the floor tiles on either side of the pit and heaved. The stone shrieked as it tore.

  Eyes, glowing crimson, glared out through the gloom.

  Then, in a rush, Trewpeny's dragon heaved its massive body out and into the church.

  Most of the Daedalans had scattered, and those that hadn't were rooted to the spot in raw terror. Godolkin had dropped into a fighting stance, and from somewhere he had grabbed a huge chunk of timber to wield as a weapon.

  Red just stood there, staring back at those eyes.

  It was all eyes, that was her first impression of it. They glowed out at her, an asymmetrical cluster of scarlet discs. She could hear them rotate as they focused on her, the faint whines of tracking servos and could see the needle-like antennae extending from between them to wave like undersea fronds. Beneath the eyes, segmented palps fluttered, while the stubby, clawed limbs it stood on tapped at the floor in a rippling motion, constantly adjusting its stance, its weight distribution and the way it held its bloated body in the air.

  Steam jetted from vents on its flanks. The arms retracted slowly, folding back on themselves like the claws of a mantis.

  It darted forwards, horribly fast for something so huge.

  Red dived aside, and the arm that had been aiming at her head demolished the altar. Great slabs of granite slid apart from each other, dragging the crucifixes and candles down to ruin. If that blow had connected, it would have shattered her skull.

  As Red skated to a halt, she saw Godolkin leap at the thing, swinging his club. He struck a glancing blow, but the dragon was already rearing back, whirling itself around to lash out with a clawed leg, sweeping the Iconoclast aside. He rolled with the blow, but still broke two pews as he crashed through them.

  The guards barrelled in, swords drawn. Red yelled for them to get away, but it was too late. A metal arm hinged out, casually eviscerating one man; some kind of tentacle whipped through the air to slap half the skull from the other. Before the spouting corpses had hit the floor, the monster had turned back to her and was crashing through the pews with claws outstretched.

  Red jumped away, and the dragon skidded into the wall, bringing down a shower of broken plaster.

  Half a tonne of masonry crashing into the thing's back didn't even slow it down. It had already spun to face Red, and its claws were scraping for purchase on the bloody flagstones.

  "For sneck's sake," Red yelled, as loud as she could. "Keep away from it! Godolkin, that means you too! It's after me, not anyone else..." She darted sideways, and the dragon spun to track her. "Yeah. It's locked on me. Figures..."

  "Star-fallen?"

  She glanced to the side, and saw Trewpeny scrambling up.

  "Keep out of the way, Anton."

  "Red, maybe it wants the box!"

  "What?" Red looked down at her left hand, still clamped onto the medikit. "Why would it-"

  The dragon was scuttling towards her.

  There was nowhere to go. The shattered remains of the altar were on her left, and several Daedalans were cowering on the other side. The ceiling of the church was too low to jump, and there wasn't time, anyway. In the next breath it would be on her.

  She flung the medikit into its eye-scattered face.

  A tentacle whipped out from nowhere to take the box in mid-flight. The dragon's momentum carried it forwards, hard enough to slam into Red even as it was turning around, its rounded flank batting her into the wall. She hit hard, and slid down, cursing.

  The dragon careered away down the nave, legs blurring, and cannoned back into the pit.

  Red groaned. The impact had knocked the wind out of her, and there was a head-shaped dent in the plaster where she had struck. She staggered upright, and even let Godolkin help her when he appeared. "Bastard thing," she muttered.

  "A machine," Godolkin grated. "Some kind of armoured assassin."

  "Nah," Red shook her head, feeling bits of plaster fall out of her hair. "That's no assassin."

  "How do you know?"

  Red didn't answer him. She got up, and started to walk slowly towards the hole. Grinding noises issued from it, but faintly, and as she listened they stopped altogether.

  She knew the machine was no assassin, because she had seen it before, at least one very like it. In fact, she had seen thousands like it, infesting the inside of a time-travelling war machine. The very machine that, two hundred years earlier, had laid waste to every inhabited world in the gulf.

  Trewpeny's dragon was one of Brite Red's helots.

  12. LOCKDOWN

  "It's gone again," said Verney, as the locator stopped chiming.

  Harrow was at the map table, plotting the trace on the city map with a piece of sharpened charcoal. "You're sure?"

  "I've been doing this for ten years, stranger. Of course I'm sure."

  "No, what I mean is, did the trace fade or did the leads come out again?" He set down the charcoal and got up, crossing the Sanctum to join Verney at the main locator.

  She was tapping at the screen, making it wobble slightly on its wooden frame. Harrow had taken it to pieces not long before, to modify some of the settings and fix some errant cabling in place, and it hadn't gone back together quite right. "There. You see this level? If the wires had dropped out it would have gone straight to zero."

  Harrow moved closer, running a fingertip along the base of the gauge line. The gauge was set to run like a ticker-tape, so as to give a continual reading of chronoplast activity: he could see that the reading had stayed at a high level for a minute or so and then dropped abruptly to a quarter of that strength. A few seconds after that, the trace had flattened. The source of time-particles had vanished completely.

  "And the power count?"

  Verney pressed a wooden key on the frame's base, making the display switch over to a residual voltage trace. One of Harrow's improvements. "The same."

  Harrow gave a low whistle. This was the first time he had been able to see an accurate reading on the trace's conventional energy output, and it was high. "Whatever this thing is, Verney, it uses a lot of electricity. I don't think it moved far, though. Not this time." He turned back to the map.

  "Did you get the location?" she asked.

  "I think so. With only two traces it's hard to be sure, but it was here, in the north." He prodded the map of Igantia, completely puzzled.

  There was certainly more technology at work in Igantia than there was supposed to be. The sanctum itself was proof of that. What the equipment surrounding him had once been, he had no idea, nor did he know how it could have been set to detect one of the most esoteric particles in the universe. It must have been some kind of scientific project, although its range was too short to have detected temporal disturbances on other worlds, or even in space. Perhaps, Harrow wondered, some of the sensorium had been destined for use on a starship, before the Manticore came.

  Maybe there was a connection between the sensors and the location of the Manticore's first appearance. It was possible that Brite Red had found this part of space easier to travel to, for some reason, through some strange affinity for chronoplasts that the Gerizimi had been aiming to study. There was even a chance that the very arrival of the Manticore had sent enough particles back through time to pique their interest two centuries before it had even happened.

  All these things Judas Harrow had pondered, while working in the sanctum.

  While he could surmise a connection between the Gulf's centre and the Manticore, he could find no explanation for why, an hour before, some vast source of power and temporal fallout had appeared from nowhere in the southern districts of Igantia, travelled in an almost straight line for a hundred metres or so, waited in place for five minutes and then vanished again. Or why that event had been followed, just ten minutes later, by an energy spike in the same location so vast it had crashed the dat
a-engines.

  He and Verney had been forced to shut down the entire sanctum and bring the engines back up in stages.

  This last trace was much shorter than before, but still significant. There could be no way, given the way it moved and its proximity to other events, that this was just a glitch in the system. There were quite enough of those for Harrow to have learned what they looked like, after even this short time.

  He wondered if Durham Red, wherever she was, knew anything about the source yet. Although he had to admit that her propensity for attracting trouble made it very likely that she did.

  The spike's appearances were not only baffling, but highly inconvenient. Harrow had been hoping to settle down with the map of Igantia and some readings from the data-engines, and try to refine the scans to locate his saint. If he was able to cross-reference the chronoplast spikes from when the three of them had arrived in the city, and then use finer-scale readings to trace the paths Red and Godolkin had taken to get away from the marshals, there was a good chance he'd be able to get at least a partial lock on them. Once he had that knowledge he wasn't entirely sure what he would do with it, but even to know Red was alive out there would have been a comfort.

  Some kind of chaos had taken over the city: power spikes, alerts, guards rushing in and out with messages that Harrow could half-hear at best, along with constant trace-requests from Makeblise. All in all, he'd not had a moment's peace and from the sound of the footfalls approaching the doorway, he didn't expect things to get much better.

  "Verney," Harrow muttered, not lifting his gaze from the map. "He's here."

  He heard her gasp, a tiny sound of fright from behind the linen and then a louder rustle of cloth and armour as the doorway guard stood aside. That was Harrow's cue to look up, and he did so as Makeblise entered. "My lord!"

  "Stranger. Verney." Makeblise had his hands before him, as he usually did, but they were clasped firmly together, the fingers interwoven as if readying a blow rathe than a prayer. "I hear tell of further anomalies."