Murgh screamed as she clamped her jaw shut, severing the tendons and striking bone. She wondered if she could bite clean through and then - as if the very thought made it happen - she severed Murgh’s thumb.
The screams became shrieks as Murgh released his grasp and rolled away, clasping his maimed hand with his whole one. Crimson blood welled up through the fingers trying to stanch the flow from his stump.
Standing up slowly, Machiko spat the thumb out onto the ground. The taste of blood was hot in her mouth. Adrenaline surged through her veins. All the fight had been taken out of her opponent; she could do anything she wanted to him now.
The man rolled back and forth on the floor, his hand clutched to his chest. He was moaning and sobbing, begging for mercy, pleading for help.
Machiko shook her head in disgust; Murgh had brought this on himself. It had started as a simple fistfight. The loser would have ended up with a black eye and some bruises, but nothing more. Then the older man had taken things to another level by trying to blind her, and she’d responded in kind. Machiko had learned long ago not to escalate a fight unless she was willing to pay the price of losing. Now Murgh had learned that lesson, too.
Machiko had a temper, but she wasn’t the kind to keep beating on a helpless opponent. Without looking back at her defeated foe, she left the cavern and headed back up the tunnel to tell one of the Sentinel guards what had happened so someone could come tend to Murgh’s injury. She wasn’t worried about the consequences. The Sentinels didn’t really care what the prisoners did, as long as they kept coming back to mine the Megacyte. Fights were common among the miners, though this particular fight had been more vicious than most - savage and short, with a brutal end.
Just like life on Daam K’Vosh.
The prisoner’s yard was a crude place, ringed by wooden huts. Lomax found it a bleak improvement from the conditions on the surface: sheltered from the bitter wind, but still freezing. Much to his disappointment, the leg irons he’d been brought here in were not removed, with Sentinel guards insisting he needed to be ‘processed’ first. Whatever that meant, he had no idea. At least he was allowed to wander freely in the courtyard while he waited, though after catching sight of the other inmates, Lomax wasn’t so sure that was a good thing. Every one of them seemed twice his size and ready to prove it.
He gazed surreptitiously at the guards above him on the scaffolding, then decided to find someplace where he could stay out of trouble. He glanced at the less than friendly crowd milling around the yard, then started walking toward the outer wall, his legs aching. He wasn’t looking forward to a lifetime of forced labour in a Megacyte mine. He really didn’t think he had the stomach for it.
He walked several paces, but stopped as a shadow fell across him. He glanced up. The creature blocking the light was gigantic and unlike anything he had ever seen: silverscaled, with horny growths extending from temple to chin. The left side of its face bore brilliant red welts that might have been a scar from a previous battle or a perfectly normal marking for his species. The alien loomed menacingly over Lomax and growled something in an obscure language he didn’t understand.
Lomax spread his hands in a “you-have-me-at-a-disadvantage” gesture. “I’m afraid I’m not familiar with that particular language, friend.”
The alien leaned closer and rumbled something totally incomprehensible. Lomax smiled. “I’m terribly sorry…”
His reaction infuriated the alien, who roared, and ranted some more. It lifted him into the air with one arm. “I don’t know what you want!” Lomax choked.
“He wants your coat,” a low, feminine voice said.
Lomax turned, startled. The speaker was human, female, white-skinned, with blonde hair and grey eyes, strikingly beautiful. “Afraid not,” he gasped, red-faced. Distracted by the woman, the alien eased his grip. Lomax gulped in air. “It wouldn’t fit him, anyway.”
The woman did not quite smile as she spoke to the alien in his guttural tongue. Somewhat reluctantly, the creature lowered Lomax to the ground. Lomax adjusted his wrappings against the cold. “Oh’nir Brufyma,” she told the alien, who made an affirmative gesture and wandered off.
Lomax faced his saviour and studied her appreciatively. “Thank you,” he said. “I’m Lomax, by the way. I just arrived here. And you are…?”
“I’m Machiko,” she answered in a friendly tone. “Welcome to Hell. What did you do to earn yourself a one-way ticket here?”
Nervously, Lomax avoided her gaze. “Smuggling. I come from Proxima Centauri. Smuggling is a respected trade there. Then one day, I blew up a small industrial bioship. Accidentally. Well, on purpose, really. I escaped the last three maximum security prisons they put me in.” He shivered, though not from cold. “So this place was a last resort, apparently.”
Machiko showed no surprise. “Nobody escapes from Daam K’Vosh.”
“So they tell me,” he said, taking a deep breath. “What are you in for, if you don’t mind my asking?”
She showed a flash of white teeth; Lomax found himself mesmerised by her eyes - grey, flecked with black - and her figure was to die for.
“I don’t mind,” she said. “Nine years ago I discovered an artefact on Mars, during a rock climbing exercise at the Olympus Mons resort. An ancient artefact, a Stone… constructed of the same material as Heaven’s Gate…”
Lomax’s eyes widened. “Seriously? Heaven’s Gate? That’s… amazing! What happened?”
Her smile twisted grimly. “The Holy Church didn’t think so. They censored my discovery, and sent me here for life to silence me. I lost everything.”
Lomax frowned. His tone was beaten, hopeless. “That’s harsh. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Machiko said. “It’s in the past now. I stopped caring about that a long time ago. None of it matters anymore. Here… nothing matters.”
“Warmaster Ammold Paramo, this is Control Tower. You are now cleared for landing at Daam K’Vosh Penal Settlement, Landing Pad Three.”
Blinking his attention back to the present, Paramo reached for the communications toggle with no conscious decision to do so, directed by instinct and habit when fatigue wouldn’t allow him much else to go on. “Paramo to Control Tower, acknowledged. Landing approach at one-three-one-mark-seven.”
“Acknowledged,” the gruff voice on the other end of the channel replied. “Enjoy your stay.”
Paramo set about the business of guiding his slim shuttle past the asteroid’s rugged, icy mountains without dignifying the man’s sarcasm with a reply. Great barren peaks loomed up constantly against the west as the low, pale northern sun poured its hazy cerulean rays over the white snow, bluish ice and water lanes. Through the desolate summits swept ranging, intermittent gusts of freezing wind. Without the life support systems of his shuttle, Paramo would have died within hours of exposure to this hostile, alien environment.
The penal settlement accepted his clearance code without question, and he allowed the penitentiary’s flight computer to take the shuttle’s controls for the final approach and touchdown.
It felt good, actually, to sit back - even for a few minutes - and rest his brain from the endless onslaught of decisions it had been forced to make over the last few days. Coordinating military campaigns on a galactic scale was no easy task. And Lorelei Chen, bless her, as valuable an agent she had proved to be, demanded so much of his attention since the loss of her beloved Cris...
The Sentinel guard at the main gate was expecting him. Walking across the snow separating the landing pad to the actual mining facility, Paramo shivered, the dim cold increasing to a brutal intensity under a cloudless sky. He passed inside the gates on voiceprint and retinal scan only, and wasn’t even past the second barrier beyond the main entrance before the guard informed him, “Prisoner Machiko Famasika is in the equipment repair bay. Would you like a security transport to take you there?”
“No,” he told it. “I’d rather walk.”
For all that they couldn’t have many vi
sitors to the penal asteroid archipelago, the prisoners he passed within the dark, labyrinthine complex itself didn’t seem particularly interested in his arrival. He couldn’t imagine that they’d known he’d be coming. More likely, the arrival of a highly-decorated military officer meant nothing but trouble for somebody within this facility, and nobody particularly wanted to be that somebody.
Just as well. He wasn’t in the mood to talk right now, least of all to anyone who couldn’t figure out how to keep themselves out of serious trouble.
He found Machiko Famasika on the rocky pavement outside the repair bay, the only prisoner in sight - and even then, only half so. Her upper torso was hidden beneath some long, squat piece of equipment with a huge power coil, a plasma welder flashing rhythmically from somewhere out of sight beside her. Paramo noted the level of equipment she was allowed to use without supervision, the apparent mobility of the machine she worked to repair - but realised she had no hope of fleeing the asteroid if she chose to at this moment. She would never survive on the surface, and the bioships on the landing pad could only be operated by the Sentinel guards. Not to mention the array of automated particle cannons that littered the upper compound… The fact that she was still here said something about either her commitment to her own work, or her intelligence. He didn’t know her well enough yet to determine which it was.
Taking a breath to clear his thoughts, he clasped his hands loosely behind his back. “Machiko Famasika?” he said.
The flailing light under the machinery’s belly died abruptly, leaving a smear of darkness across his vision as an echo of its brightness.
Machiko pushed herself out from under the machine and flicked up the visor that hid her eyes. Her appearance was very like the description Paramo had been given before flying to Daam K’Vosh, and not at all like her father.
“Ammold Paramo,” he identified himself. He didn’t offer his hand, and he gave no sign that he expected it. “I served with your father during the Battle of Ipsum Alet. I wonder if we could go somewhere and talk.”
An odd little smile that seemed to go deeper than it should ghosted onto her face at the mention of her father. Paramo wondered what sort of thoughts moved behind an expression like that.
“About what?” Machiko asked him, still stretched full-length on the ground.
“About a job I’d like you to do for me.”
She laughed - a laugh as odd and light as her smile - and tossed a hand toward the machine above him. “I’m already doing a job,” she explained with mock sincerity. “For the Terran Alliance.”
“I’ve been told the Rehab Committee is very pleased with the work you do here,” he told her. “They’ve given me their approval to discuss this matter with you.”
Machiko studied him with eyes that held a hint of an intellect far keener than her history implied. Then something seemed to twig inside her mind. Her expression changed. “Wait… Ammold Paramo?” Then she frowned, as though dismissing everything she’d just allowed himself to think, and bounced to her feet with an easy grace that spoke volumes about the training and life she’d known before her nine years of incarceration here. She faced him with arms spread. “The Ammold Paramo? Of the Neodisestablishmentarianists?”
He nodded. “The same. Though, I am known as the Warmaster of the Terran Alliance, nowadays.”
She grinned. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, sir. I guess I’m all yours.”
Paramo walked with Machiko through the upper hallways of the facility, away from the other prisoners.
“Despite his youth, your father taught me a great deal,” Paramo said, “during my time as a Holy Guard at the Sacred Palace. He was a war hero, and remains so to this day. His service record to the Einekian military is legendary.”
Machiko nodded, thoughtfully. “He retired soon after I was born. He wanted me to follow in his footsteps. I joined the military at his urging. I would still be there, if not for… well, if not for what happened.”
Paramo followed on the heels of her reasonability before it could crumble away. “I’m putting together a team to investigate a terrorist attack that happened at Oruze Osobnyk a week ago.”
“Really?” she prompted dryly. “A little strange to be seeking my help, isn’t it?”
He nodded again, more seriously, and even dared stealing a direct look at her face, as if to make sure she was listening. “Since the fall of Damarus, your father has petitioned tirelessly for your release. I’m doing this for him. You come with me, and I’ll help you at your next prisoner review.”
She rolled her eyes as though it made no difference to her, and squinted up toward the balconies over their heads, and the motionless Sentinels stationed there.
“Officially, you’d be an observer during the mission.”
“Observer?” True insult etched a frown into her young face.
“Yes, an observer,” Paramo said, more firmly. “When it’s over, you’re cut loose.”
Machiko attempted a wounded sigh. “The story of my life.”
Stepping up to her - so close she jerked a startled look at him and tried to back herself away - he took her chin in one hand and held her in place the way he might a disobedient twelve-year-old. The very childlike terror in her eyes only served to make her look even younger, even less deserving of this sacrifice or his trust.
“If anyone gets hurt because you make a mistake,” he told her, very softly, “I’ll make sure you don’t see daylight again.”
Machiko didn’t say anything as Paramo glared at her to drive his point home, didn’t say anything when he released her, didn’t say anything when he turned to walk away.
Who knows? Paramo thought. Maybe she is the ideal candidate, after all.
12
202 ND
MINTAKA IV, ORION’S BELT
A hot sun scorched the sand, burning on the wasteland that stretched from one horizon to the other. This place, Xam Bahr thought, was a whole world scalded, a planet without vegetation, without buildings, without people. Without people. Something in this thought pleased him. He had always found treachery the most common currency among human beings, indeed, among all sentient creatures - consequently, he had trafficked in that currency himself many times over the years. And if it wasn’t treachery people understood best, then its alternative was violence. He shaded his eyes against the sun and moved forward, watching the archaeological dig that was taking place. An elaborate dig - but then, that was how he liked things. Elaborate, with needless circumstance and pomp. He watched the industrial bioships and the colossal tractor machines, the soldiers excavating, the supervisors. And the silly Sai’bot, who seemed to fancy himself overlord of all, barking orders, rushing around as if pursued by a whirlwind.
He paused, watching but not watching now, an absent look in his catlike eyes.
He was remembering his many meetings with Kelan Hesas, the Caretaker of Reria, recalling how embarrassingly fulsome the little man had been. You are the Patriarch of the Holy Orthodoxy. Lord Damarus has chosen you for this Most Holiest of tasks… At first he had considered the Caretaker’s words as false compliments yielding to some deranged rhetoric about the resurrection and immortality of Damarus himself, a thousand-year Golden Age of His rule, a grandiose historic scheme that could only have been dreamed up by a lunatic. Bahr had simply stopped listening, staring at the Caretaker in wonderment, amazed that the destiny of the Terran Alliance should fall into such hands. But he soon learned, through his own experiences, of the ultimate Truth in the Caretaker’s words. The Ark. The Xeilig Ark had to be remade. Then, only then, could the Master be reborn…
Xam Bahr closed his eyes against the harsh sun. He tuned out the noises of the excavations, the shouts of the soldiers, and thought about the future, and his role in the Master’s plan. He opened his eyes again and stared at the dig, the huge craters hacked out of the sand, and he felt a certain vibration, a positive intuition, that the artefact they searched for, the Opr’ana Stone, was somewhere nearby. He could feel it, s
ense its power, he could hear the whisper of the thing that would soon become a roar. They had three of the five artefacts - and once the Opr’ana Stone was in their possession, only one more would remain.
One more. One step away from realising the dream, which had taken over ten years of their lives to make a reality.
Maybe it was madness. Maybe they were all zealots.
A vision so awesome that all reality simply faded. An awareness of an eventuality, of a power so inexpressible, that the thin fabric of what you assumed to be the real world parted, disintegrated, and you were left with an understanding that, like God’s, surpassed all things.
Perhaps. He smiled to himself.
He moved around the edge of the excavations, skirting past the gigantic machines, and walked over to where Sai’bot was standing. For a long time he said nothing, pleased by the feeling that his presence gave the disfigured Sirkharin some discomfort. Eventually Sai’bot said, “It’s going well, don’t you think?”
Xam Bahr nodded, shielding his eyes again. He was thinking of something else now, something that disturbed him. It was the piece of information that had been brought to his attention, by one of Sai’bot’s lackeys, from one of their spies in the Terran Alliance. Ammold Paramo has the Easesash Stone.
Of course, he should have known that this so-called ‘Warmaster’ would have appeared on the scene sooner or later. Paramo had always been troublesome.
Sai’bot turned to him and said, “Have you come to a decision about the other matter we discussed?”
“I think so,” Bahr said.
“I assume it is the decision I imagined you would reach?”
“Assumptions are often arrogant, my friend.”
Sai’bot looked at him silently.
Xam Bahr smiled. “In this case, though, you are probably correct.”
The Complete New Dominion Trilogy Page 37