Black Dawn

by Peter J Evans

  Godolkin was surrounded by Endura halberdiers. He had already felled three, from what Red could see, and he wielded one of their weapons in each hand, spinning them in lethal, humming arcs. As she watched, he decapitated one man and impaled another, the corpses sagging bonelessly away to join their fellows on the frozen ground.

  Out the corner of her eye she saw Makeblise, off his mount and raising the plasma derringer towards the Iconoclast.

  Red shouted, but the noise of the fire and the battle drowned her words. She was running forwards before she even knew what she was doing, backhanding an Endura soldier away so hard that she flattened his breastplate, but she could see it was going to be too late. She was alongside the helot's wagon when the derringer went off.

  Godolkin half-turned as the bolt shrieked past him. It struck the centre wheel of the wagon and blasted it into razored fragments.

  The explosion went off a metre from Red, sending her sprawling. Her own momentum carried her forward, and she rolled as she hit the ground, but the pain of the blast and of her broken arm slamming into the ground was awful. She howled.

  Above her, the wagon tilted, groaning. The front wheel split under the added weight, bursting out from its axle. Red saw the whole structure slew sideways, coming apart as it did so, the mass of the helot driving it to pieces. The wagon shattered and collapsed down onto the street, shedding wheels and sparks.

  Red forced herself up onto her knees. Her robe was gone, and there were burning splinters embedded in her skin.

  The helot was rocking on the cobbles. It had come down facing her, its lightless eyes blind and broken. She saw a sensor palp twitch fitfully at her.

  "You," it said, in her voice.

  "Yes, me. They're going to kill you."

  "Kill...me..." It had no voice of its own, she realised. It was using her words to form its own.

  "You have to protect yourself. The man, Makeblise, he's going to destroy you. I can't stop him..."

  The helot jetted steam from behind its eyes; a hot watery vapour that condensed grey on the cold cobbles. A moment later, the whole forward section of it snapped out several centimetres, and then hinged away.

  As the steam dissipated, Red looked into the true face of the dragon.

  There was a man inside the helot's body, or something that had been a man before Brite Red had altered it and jammed it into this machine-insect. There were a few scraps of humanity remaining behind the lenses; a ribcage that was just exposed bone, the space beneath packed with shivering pipework; part of an arm, the rough ball of its head lolling on a neck that was just vertebrae and wires. Twin pipes, thick and metallic, were driven into the eye-sockets and another into the mouth. Leads and tubes had been stapled into the tattered body in almost every scrap of exposed skin.

  The remnant squirmed pitifully. After hundreds of years of life, even the air was death to it.

  "You... destroy... me..." The voice, still her own, was coming from sounders somewhere on the helot's hull. There was no way the shreds of life within were capable of speech. "Stop... me... kill..."

  "I don't know how."

  "I... know... you... going. Protect yourself..."

  "Abomination!" snarled Makeblise. "What kind of nightmare is this?"

  Red looked around. Makeblise had the derringer aimed at her, but he was staring with utter horror into the dragon's open shell.

  "This is your dragon, Makeblise," she hissed. "This is what you've protecting your people against. Happy now?"

  "They cannot see this," he breathed. "They will not see this... It would-"

  "What? If they saw, what would they do? Hate it? Fear it? Or would they pity it, Makeblise?"

  "No." He was shaking his head jerkily. "They will never see this. I'll kill this nightmare, and then you, and when I am done none of this will ever have happened. Do you hear me?" He brought the gun up and centred it on her forehead. "Igantia has been alone in the universe for two hundred years, invader. After this, we shall remain alone, just as we should be! To think that the galaxy contains such nightmares..."

  Red staggered up, watching the gun follow her as she rose. "You know what, Makeblise? I see this poor bastard, and I see you. I'd take my chances with this thing any day."

  "More fool you," he spat and then screamed, at the sight of the helot's last remaining tentacle wrapping around his wrist.

  The derringer went off, but the blast was high, screaming away into the air. The tentacle was still tightening. Red could hear Makeblise's wrist cracking, shattering as it was crushed, the blood hissing out from ruptured arteries as flesh and bones were pulped together by the helot's inexorable grip.

  When the dragon next spoke, its voice was a fusion of Red and Makeblise.

  "You... fool... I... alone in the... galaxy. A nightmare. I see you... Bastard..."

  "No," Makeblise shrieked. The helot shook him, yanking his pulverised arm this way and that.

  "Invader... Protect yourself!" it bellowed, the voice amplified to painful levels. "Protect yourself. GoGoGoGoGoGo..."

  "Oh sneck..." Red stumbled away. "Godolkin?"

  "Blasphemy?" He was running towards her, still clutching a halberd. He was soaked in blood, but it didn't look like any of it was his.

  "Get everyone out of here. Now!"

  "The helot-"

  "Is going to go nova! Now just bloody do what I tell you!"

  The dragon gave her two minutes. She would never be sure whether that was to allow her and the marshals to get clear, or simply to increase the suffering of Lord Makeblise. Whatever the reason, she heard the man's terrified screams up until the very last second.

  She was watching from behind the nearest wall. Godolkin was there, and Roder. She had seen Trewpeny running for safety earlier, and two marshals were carrying Giles Fysher, still tied to the stake.

  The Northway was largely deserted, save for corpses and Lord Willem Makeblise.

  The dragon still had him. He was sagging in its grip now, no longer possessed of the strength to fight. At the last, Red saw it pull him one more time, and draw him close, tugging him so that his face was pulled right into its own compartment.

  Then it spoke. Its scratchy fusion voice went on for twenty, maybe thirty seconds, but the volume was low, and Red couldn't make out what it was saying.

  Whatever the words were, they drew a howl from Makeblise: a rising, despairing wail that echoed from one end of the Northway to the other.

  That was obviously what the helot needed to hear, because in the midst of that scream it, the watchtowers, the centre section of Tabernacle wall and everything in a radius of a hundred metres vanished in a fireball that was as sudden and as brilliant as the birth of a new star.

  EPILOGUE

  It took forty hours for Godolkin to eviscerate the dragon's half-built ship, and another twenty to drag the power core out of the city and into the little valley where Omega Fury lay concealed. Harrow helped where he could, although neither his technical knowledge nor his physical strength were a match for Godolkin's. However, it would have taken the Iconoclast a lot longer to move the core if Harrow hadn't bartered away the dagger Makeblise had used on Elspeth Verney.

  It had been a fine knife, with a golden haft and a blade honed to razor sharpness. He'd given it to the physician who had tended Red's injuries, and in return he'd been loaned a wheeled cart, plus a hairy grey pony to pull it.

  Both men did well out of the deal. The physician would get a lot of use from that blade, Harrow was certain, although not the kind that its previous owner might have anticipated. The cart, once Godolkin had reinforced it with spare timber, was just about strong enough to support the power core on its trip down into the valley.

  Durham Red rode in the cart for some of the journey, but partway back to the ship she had started to get bored. Despite her injuries she climbed down, and spent the rest of the trip walking alongside the pony, ruffling its mane and whispering to it the whole time. If the pony took any pleasure from the attention it made no si
gn, but Harrow still found himself feeling almost jealous.

  He wondered, once or twice, whether he should speak to Red, to try and start up a conversation as they made their way through the fields. Each time, he decided against it. She still looked pale and withdrawn, shaken from the explosion and her final encounter with the helot. From what Harrow could tell, talking seemed the last thing on her mind.

  Besides, there was so much else to occupy his attentions.

  The surface of Purity was changing visibly. In the fields it was hard to spot, but once the Harrow got out into the wilds he realised that things were very different from when he had been here last. The valley was altered almost beyond recognition.

  Since dawn, the surface of Purity had become a riot of life.

  When Harrow had first left the ship, six diurns previously, the valley had been a frozen wasteland, nothing but bare black rock and frost. Now, with the sun halfway to its zenith, the frost was gone and the rock was thick with vegetation. Everywhere he looked, Purity was green.

  Fibrous, grassy stuff had emerged from cracks and fissures in the ground, spreading in shaggy mats over every surface that faced the sun. Creepers had spilled out of the ground, fat with melted snow and turning glossy flowers to the sky. On either side of him rose great mounds of puffballs, head-sized or bigger, jetting out clouds of spores whenever the breeze rose strong enough to carry them. Tall, slender stems pierced the fibre mats to aim translucent discs at the sun. Everywhere Harrow looked, plants that had hidden themselves in frozen dormancy during the long darkness were erupting outwards into the light.

  "Amazing," he breathed. "I've never seen the like."

  "If this planet had been as lifeless as it first appeared, it would never have been settled," Godolkin replied. "Perhaps we were mistaken in thinking of Purity as a world with long days and nights. In truth, it merely has extremely short seasons."

  "Daysummer and nightwinter," nodded Harrow. The terms were more accurate than he could have imagined - this wasn't just day, it was high summer, and life was boiling out from its hiding places to take advantage; and not just plants - he could hear the droning of insects and the distant cries of something that swooped and darted over the hills.

  Within a few minutes they had reached the ship. Omega Fury was much as they had left it, although the mound of soil and stone it had thrown up in the crash was now covered in plants, and tangles of fat creepers knotted over the ship's flanks. Godolkin led the pony close to Fury and then freed it from the cart: the animal wandered a few paces away and then stopped, dipping its head to chew contentedly at the nearest patch of fibres.

  Red, like the pony, had moved away from the ship. Harrow turned to her, concerned, but she just shook her head. "I'm okay, Jude."

  "Are you sure? Perhaps you should go and lie down for a while."

  She smiled. "Now you mention it, that's not a bad idea." She turned and began heading away from the ship and up the slope.

  Harrow started forwards. "Holy one?"

  "I'm okay, Jude." She glanced back over her shoulder. "Really."

  She climbed away from him, keeping her broken arm close to her body, moving slowly so as not to lose her balance. Harrow watched her go, his eyes on her back until she was lost among the seething greenery.

  "When you are finished feasting your eyes, Harrow, there is work to be done."

  Harrow turned to raise an eyebrow at Godolkin. "Feasting?"

  "Forgive me. I'm sure you were just gazing in chaste adoration at your saint." The Iconoclast had opened up several of the power core's external panels, and was freeing some of the cabling inside. Glittering pipes and tubes already lay slickly over the cart's sides. "A form of prayer, no doubt."

  "I'm worried about her."

  "She will survive, Harrow. This, and whatever else the universe sees fit to throw at her."

  "You seem very certain."

  Godolkin stopped what he was doing. For a long second he stayed frozen, leaning into the cart, hands embedded in the power core's innards, eyes focused on something only he could see. A private horror, from the set of his jaw. "Yes," he said finally. "I am certain."

  With that, he straightened up, and continued teasing out the gleaming coils. "Enough. Harrow, we should begin soon. I would rather have this task done before the real heat is upon us."

  "You think it will get warmer?" Harrow looked up at the sky, shielding his eyes with his cupped hand.

  "I know it will and we have much to do."

  For the next few hours Harrow rather lost track of time. There was no way to judge how long he and Godolkin had been working, not from the look of the sky or the length of the shadows. The long day of Purity seemed unending, the sun and the staring Eye crawling across the sky so slowly that they appeared to have stopped in their flight. Dawn was six diurns past by the time Godolkin started connecting feed cables from the dragon's power plant to Fury, and even then the sun wasn't straight overhead.

  There was one thing that did alter though, and Godolkin had predicted it: the heat.

  Just as ten standard days without sunlight had turned this part of Purity into a frozen wasteland, so would the same length of day set it cooking. As the last cables went in, and the final systems checks started their cycles, Harrow found himself really starting to sweat.

  By noon, maybe another thirty hours from now, Purity's sunward face would be desert-hot. Harrow could feel the leading edges of that heat already. The sudden influx of water into the landscape had created a sauna-like humidity, but that wouldn't last. Any moisture not already trapped by the plant-life and hidden away below ground would boil back into the atmosphere before evening.

  In the distance, thunder growled. The inexorable rise in temperature would give rise to storms, soon.

  Harrow watched Godolkin tapping out a final series of command chains on a portable control board. The power core, once a glossy sphere of dark metal, was now opened like the subject of some brutal and vaguely obscene surgical procedure. Heavy cables hung out of its openings, linked by surge-protected bridges to more wiring from Omega Fury; the two men had adapted the ship's normal recharging ports to take power from the core.

  With care, and more than a little luck, the energy that would have taken the dragon back to the stars would be enough to reactivate Fury's own fusion core.

  Godolkin finished what he was doing, and shut down the board. "Harrow, it would be wise not to remain close to the core while I initiate recharge."

  "I'd been meaning to ask about that." To have done so outright would have been to cast doubt on Godolkin's abilities, and Harrow hadn't wanted to do that. "How far away would we need to be if the containment failed?"

  The Iconoclast looked at him oddly. "Several kilometres."

  "Ah."

  "Containment is not the issue. Should either core fail, none of us would know anything about it. However, there may be some electrical arcing in the short range."

  Harrow glanced over at the pony. The beast was still nibbling at the fibres, and didn't appear to have moved very far from where they had originally left it.

  "I'll take our new friend away, then. If I tether him to those tree-things over there, he'll be out of danger."

  "When you are done, perhaps you should check on the Blasphemy. Make sure she does not wander into an electrical discharge by mistake."

  "Sacred rubies, she's not come back!" Immersed in the core's workings for the past several hours, Harrow had almost forgotten that Red was still somewhere out among the foliage. "I'd better find her."

  "Indeed but try not to worship too hard, Harrow. If this process does not go as planned, I might need you here in a hurry."

  Red hadn't gone far. Harrow found her on the brow of the hill, a few hundred metres away from the ship. He climbed up to meet her, trudging carefully through the swarming plant-life.

  The valley's new growth was still in flux, he noticed. The grassy stuff covering the hillside was already changing colour, the most open swathes starting to cr
isp and pale. If he looked carefully at the dry patches he could see a faint haze above them - spores, he guessed, or seeds. The plants had made the most of the light and warmth, and were already preparing for the next generation.

  Durham Red was lying on her back among the drying fibres, half-concealed by their length. Her arms were out to the sides, feet together, her head rolled back. Harrow, seeing her in such a pose, had a sudden vision of his saint crucified, and shuddered despite the heat. "Holy one?"

  "Hello Jude." She didn't move or open her eyes, but she smiled. "How's it going?"

  "Godolkin is ready to initiate the recharge. He told me to make sure you were out of danger."

  She chuckled. "Bless him."

  Harrow dropped to his haunches, close to her. "What have you been doing?"

  "Sleeping. Healing." She opened her eyes, and turned her head to him, squinting in the hot sunlight. "I can feel my bones knitting together, Jude. It's not nice."

  "I can get you some pain-killers-"

  "Nah. I'm dozy enough as it is." She eased herself up, into a sitting position. "Do you think they'll be okay?"

  He shrugged. "They may be. There are people of quality there: Roder and Sarah... Trewpeny, and many others but there are also the surviving Endura, and the Eye of God to look down on them all. One can only hope they achieve some kind of balance."

  "I've heard happier predictions."

  "Oh, don't get me wrong, I think they have a chance, unless a violent split occurs between those who want to embrace progress and those who still fear it. I've seen lesser schisms rip societies in two before."

  "What a ray of sunshine you are."

  "Not to mention the dangers posed by whatever technologies they might get their hands on." Harrow gestured back down the slope. "I think we should cripple the power core before we leave, or even take it with us and dump it in space. I'd hate to see Trewpeny tinker with it in the wrong way and vaporise the city."

  Red scratched her head. "I'd not thought of that but sneck, yeah. We'd better take it away."