by Gavin Smith
‘I didn’t want to be a slave,’ he told them both. They both looked impassive. Maybe they believed him, maybe they didn’t, maybe he had inadvertently guessed the truth. It was the ultimate irony of the Elite. They were undoubtedly the most dangerous and physically powerful people in Known Space but their masters were not stupid. Their loyalty was conditioned and programmed to the nth degree, it was absolute. The killer gods were the ultimate servants.
‘What did you think you could do here?’ Horrible Angel asked.
‘He fought me,’ Fallen Angel said redundantly.
‘Did you think to use our arrogance against us?’ she asked. Scab couldn’t see the point in answering. ‘What if it’s not arrogance?’
‘I just want the cocoon?’ He felt the burning itch in his flesh, under his skin, coming from patches all over his body.
‘It is gone from here,’ Horrible Angel said. Her voice was little more than a sigh. ‘We know where and we know why but we will not tell you. As you pointed out, we are all the servants of contemptible gods.’
Scab’s chuckle sounded like dry paper being crumpled up.
‘Not me, not any more.’
‘You more than all,’ Horrible Angel said.
‘You are the most puppet of puppets,’ Fallen Angel said, almost brightly. ‘I can see your strings from all the way over here.’
He watched as the first lesion appeared. It looked like patches of skin were caving in. A fast-acting, flesh-eating nano-virus.
‘You’ve made his flesh necrotic,’ Horrible Angel said.
‘For you.’
‘It’s beautiful.’
All Scab could do was watch. A guest at his own consumption. Both of them turned back to him.
‘It was the connection,’ Horrible Angel said. Some feeling prickled Scab. He did not like this, did not want to hear her words.
‘At some base level we are attached to creation,’ Fallen Angel continued. It was true: the uplifted races understood very little about S-tech except how to use it, but the Seeders must have understood the universe at a fundamental level. The technology the Elite wore connected them to this somehow. Scab remembered Vic describing it as a gun being taught physics. He almost smiled at the memory.
‘It’s not slavery you fear. We are all slaves, even our shadowed undying masters, the Lords and Ladies of Monarchist and Consortium space,’ Horrible Angel said.
‘Even the Church. You are still a slave, you have always been a slave; everything else is just so much thrashing around signifying nothing. Little more than desperate cries for attention,’ Fallen Angel said.
‘You feared the truth,’ Horrible Angel said.
Scab wanted to tell her to be quiet. He opened his mouth to issue a pointless threat.
‘Don’t threaten her,’ Fallen Angel said. ‘If you threaten her I have to act.’
‘And you are more plaything than victim still.’ Filed teeth clamped together in Scab’s mouth. ‘Fear made you lose your wings, not the wish for false freedom,’ Horrible Angel continued. Then she stared at the necrotic patterns the virus was drawing in his flesh as if transfixed.
‘You cannot remember that destruction is your only birthright. You search endlessly not realising that the only freedom you have left is to come to terms with your slavery to grotesqueries. The freedom to realise that everything is meaningless. You don’t fear slavery, you’re a more sophisticated version of everyone else; you crave slavery. You were shown the truth and panicked. It is freedom you fear.’
Un-Scab-like retorts and denials filled his mind, but he just lay there and watched them. He could not know if what they were saying was true. That secret had long since been eaten from his mind. Connected though they were, with access to the highest levels of intelligence the Monarchist systems could gather, they could not have known the truth of his expulsion from the Elite. But there was something in their words that Scab did not like at an unconscious and possibly instinctual level. If this was what empathy felt like then he did not like it.
Again it was the sympathy on Horrible Angel’s face that got to him the most.
‘Throw him out,’ she told her brother. ‘Ludwig is killing his friend now.’ She turned and walked silently away, leaving Scab more than a little confused. He was about to die now but it wouldn’t be enough.
‘I don’t have any friends,’ he told Fallen Angel. It seemed very important that Fallen Angel understand this before he died.
Scab liked vacuum – he had been exposed before and felt a kinship with it. He was still alive. The virus had been trying to eat his flesh back to his skeleton when they flung him into space. Somehow the Basilisk had found him. The ship’s medical systems were able to counteract the virus but only because the virus allowed it. They had tested him but let him live. Scab could only imagine it was because they thought it crueller this way, but he couldn’t forget the look of sympathy on Horrible Angel’s face.
Vic opened his eyes to the inside of a clone tank in some faceless insurance company laboratory. He had never expected to see this again. Vic had used up the last of his insurance money when Scab had last killed him. More than anything, it annoyed Vic that Scab would not tell him why he had killed him the last time. He said that if Vic knew he would just have to kill him again. So someone else had paid for him to be cloned.
Vic felt the itch of the nano-sculpting of raw flesh as they rebuilt him. This was the cheap part, the flesh. The expensive part would be putting his hard-tech augments back in. The gear fetishist part of his custom-designed humanesque personality hoped that whoever was footing the bill would opt for upgrades. He felt the crawling beneath his vat-grown chitinous skull as neunonic-filled liquid software and hardware was implanted. This comforted him. Soon he would be able to communicate.
He had almost been free, he thought, free of Scab, but someone had brought him back again.
The memory upload of his last minutes hit him. Terror had overwhelmed him. He had been sat in the C and C/lounge of the Basilisk, feeling enough tension to make an augmented heart explode. The walls of the ship had been transparent but space was a blank canvas. There had been something behind him. It had ghosted through the hull of the ship. He had done the pheromonic equivalent of shitting himself. He did not want to turn around. He knew the machine was waiting for him.
They had taken everything from his mind, where he had been, what he had been doing. All they had left him with was the memory of the machine’s ability to kill him in a moment and make it feel like eternity. A lifetime of agony. That was their message for him.
What he couldn’t understand was why he still lived. Ludwig would have sensed the memory download application in his neunonics. Neunonic viruses that could be carried through the download process to wipe the victim’s mind utterly were among the most difficult and expensive to create, but an Elite, particularly a machine Elite, would certainly have access to them.
Through the gel he could make out unfocused grey eyes staring at him. Vic ignored his partner and as soon as the neunonics were installed set up a secure interface to the Basilisk. Even lobotomised (the ship had lost a disagreement with Scab), trying to talk to the ship’s AI felt like trying to coax a frightened animal out of hiding. Ludwig had hurt the ship as well and removed the relevant part of its memory.
Scab’s polite request to ’face sounded like someone knocking on his skull. Vic took the mental equivalent of a deep breath and then opened the link.
‘You got me fucking killed by an Elite! You don’t think this in-over-our-heads overkill bullshit has gone too far now?!’
‘It didn’t go well,’ Scab agreed. He was sitting on a chair outside the tank, hat in his hands, watching Vic in the tank as if looking for a clue or some sign of irredeemable weakness. Vic assumed he was engaging in the retro-vice of smoking just to annoy any of the insurance technicians who had olfactory glands.
‘I notice they didn’t kill you.’ Vic tried to put as much venom into the comment as he could manage. Scab was we
ll known as one of the few bounty killers who never took out clone insurance. Vic was sure Scab wanted to die but on his own very specific terms. The ’sect was unsure what those terms were.
‘I had you cloned,’ Scab ’faced, the words soft and quiet in Vic’s mind.
‘Yes, thanks for that,’ Vic spat back. ‘You couldn’t leave me in peace then? Actually finally let me go?’ Vic had often thought that human tears looked very cathartic but were beyond him, and his pheromone-producing glands were not quite rebuilt yet. Scab seemed to be giving Vic’s words some thought.
‘You like life,’ he finally ’faced.
Vic gave this some thought. Scab was right. He like immersions, drink and drugs, partying, sex with experimental female-identifying humans, violence when he was in control; he sort of liked travel but was becoming more and more convinced that everywhere the uplifted races went was a shithole. Maybe it was all shallow stuff but Vic was happy with that. What he couldn’t cope with was the abusive, albeit well-paid, borderline slavery that was being Scab’s partner.
‘I’m seeking an end,’ Scab said.
Vic wasn’t sure what he meant. ‘And you have to take me along with you?’ Scab said nothing. ‘I take it we didn’t get the cocoon thing back?’ Vic just about made out Scab shaking his head through the thick opaque gel. ‘So we’re finished with this now? This is just so beyond us, even for you it’s just banging your head on a hull. There’s nothing we can do here.’
‘I got into the Citadel,’ Scab ’faced.
Oh shit, Vic thought. The insect knew this wasn’t over. He thought back to human tears. There was enough of Vic to push his way through the gel and press his chitinous features up against the tank’s transparent material.
‘So all that effort, the expense, the S-tech, the blanks, the viral attack on Arclight, the dead Church Militiaman . . . NOT TO MENTION MY FUCKING MURDER AT THE HANDS OF A SICK MACHINE MADE EONS BEFORE MY PEOPLE EVEN FUCKING EXISTED was for nothing?!’ He was absurdly pleased that he had managed to convey angry/shouty human across the interface.
Scab considered the outburst as a reasonably asked question.
‘I don’t know.’ He shrugged. He was still both worried and trying to make sense of the Elite’s words.
‘Look, this is about bridge technology. The Monarchists want it; the Consortium wants it so they can break the Church’s monopoly. It’s the key to Red Space. This is way out of our league.’
‘Fun though,’ Scab said. He almost meant it. He was healed, his hand regrown, but he still missed the graft. The eyes. What he had seen with them. ‘And you’ve said that before.’
‘We’re working for Consortium interests?’ Vic asked.
Scab said nothing, which to Vic meant he knew but was not going to say. Scab tried to avoid lying where possible.
‘What I don’t understand is why they haven’t sent their own Elite.’
‘Maybe they have. They are capable of acting with subtlety. Or maybe it’s a case of mutually assured destruction. The Monarchists are mad, the Consortium greedy. The Consortium know that sending their Elite will lead to a confrontation. A very expensive one.’
‘They must have better options than us.’
‘And they are probably using them in ways we don’t see. The nobody who gave us the S-tech graft for ex—’
‘He seemed more like a street heretic,’ Vic said. Scab just stared at the ’sect. He hated interruptions. ‘Sorry.’
‘Despite your whining, self-pity and lack of self-belief, we are two very capable operators.’
‘But it’s over now, right?’ Scab shook his hand. ‘You once told me that you were a killer, not a detective. They have the resources of the entire Monarchist systems at—’
‘They are fragmented.’
Though apparently it was okay for Scab to interrupt, Vic mused. ‘Even if it’s just one of the kingdoms. We’re two people and a ship you’ve bullied so badly the AI committed suicide.’
‘I killed it, well, lobotomised it.’
‘Whatever.’
‘We’re going to Pythia.’
Vic gave this some thought, feeling himself getting angrier as he did.
‘Why the fuck didn’t we just go there in the first place?’ he demanded.
‘Intelligence pointed to the Citadel. It would have made sense to hide it there.’
14
Northern Britain, a Long Time Ago
Ysgawyn awoke to the smells of earth, rot, decay and horse. It was a comfort. Once you were dead then nobody could kill you. All his people were warriors and all had chosen to live in Annwn. The living were their victims.
Ysgawyn climbed off his shelf in the barrow that he shared with the bones of many generations of his family. He also shared it with his horse. His horse, like him, was covered in lime, both their eyes ringed with black. Rider and mount had disturbing unnatural-looking symbols painted on the lime.
Ysgawyn took a deep breath and then turned to look at the shelf where his father’s decayed remains lay.
‘Soon,’ he said. He would often speak to his father, his grandfather and ancestors from further back. He heard their replies in his head and often took their counsel, but tonight there was little time. Armour had to be oiled and then limed, weapons honed, his mount prepared. Then he would eat the fungus and ride.
They emerged from barrows all across the plain, white like corpses, some leading their horses, others already astride them. The Dark Man had spoken to them. They would ride for the god of death and they would not stop. It would be an end to the living.
There were no war cries, no carnyx sounded, no orders were shouted; there was just the thunder of hoof beats echoing across the flat desolate plain.
Britha felt fire crawl through her, under her skin. Felt the demon in the consumed flesh try and consume her in turn. It burned. Not like a fever but like putting your hand in a fire and holding it there. The burning was pain but the agony was still to come. Her back was arched, her hands claws as she convulsed on the ground. The smell of the river, the feeling of pebbles beneath her, all of it went away as the stars in the night sky went out one by one, leaving nothing but darkness.
She saw a tribe painted white like corpses around a hearth pit, wriggling on their stomachs, so many, so close together, like white worms crawling over each other, in supplication that made Britha sick to see. How could they even call themselves people after such a display? The fire burned cold in the hearth and there was a tall man made of darkness. It hurt to look at him; his shape did not entirely make sense and there was something behind or through him, something she could feel, seething hatred and anger made of nothing. Then the screaming. Eventually, when she felt the blood in her raw throat, Britha would realise that she was the one screaming.
A cage, for people, her people, in the sea. Something inside them, a little crystalline egg waiting to hatch. She sank under the water, still burning, the water bubbling around her. Something came at her, darting through the water, a bestial fury on an alien face.
Then the agony started. It seemed like all the agony, pain and fear. Then she recognised the voice. Her people. Others. Thousands. A sacrifice.
There was too much pain. Britha went away into darkness, her flesh still burning, a cool whisper in her mind promising respite, promising relief, promising freedom from it all. All she had to do was serve the seductive voice. Listen to the blood in her veins. It was the tiniest fragments of a god.
It was all too much. She had failed. Her people would die in agony. If she would serve, what was her could recede into darkness and the pain would end. So easy . . .
Almost.
Britha’s back arched so violently it almost threw her upright. Violent contortions racked her body, making her writhe across the pebble beach. Her bloodstained face became a rictus mask of twisted facial expressions. The warrior glanced over at his misshapen friend.
‘Do we help?’ he asked.
The warrior’s misshapen friend gave this some thought.
It was clear that he wanted to move on. The pair of them had a purpose after all. ‘Do we help?’ the warrior asked again. His misshapen companion said nothing; instead he knelt next to her, his eyes narrowing as he studied her more closely.
Britha’s eyes flicked open. The crystalline skull looked down on her, smiling its rictus grin. Roots grew off the skull, blowing in an invisible and disconcerting wind and ending somewhere that Britha couldn’t see and was sure did not exist. The face of the skull that wasn’t a skull had too many angles. Somehow she knew it existed beyond what she could perceive. The many faceted crystals caught and reflected a strange red light, the source of which was also beyond her sight. Then the crystals seemed to consume the light. Each separate crystal was moving, changing shape as if crawling back into the skull and from there to some impossible place.
Britha started to scream again.
Teardrop held her as she convulsed on the pebble beach. The flesh she had just eaten made her froth bloody. She tried clawing at Teardrop’s face. He just moved his head back to avoid it.
‘I think she can see me,’ Teardrop said. Fachtna glanced over at his oddly dressed, swollen-headed compatriot, then he turned back to look past the distant crannogs at the mouth of the river under the overcast sky and out to sea.
‘We are so far behind,’ he said quietly and then inhaled deeply. ‘I don’t like where the sky is, or the sun.’
‘You’ll get used to it. She’s eaten one of the possessed’s flesh.’
Fachtna did not grimace. Such practices had long since been abandoned by his people but he knew of them. It was a primitive response to what had happened, but he could understand it.
On his back he felt the spear shake and moan. It would need to be drugged and bathed in blood soon.
‘Will she live?’ the warrior asked.
‘She should, but she could also be possessed. The strange thing is that she is fighting it. He nodded towards the body of the huge tattooed warrior. ‘It looks like she killed one of them with their own weapon. I don’t understand how she could do that.’