by Gavin Smith
Left twin got off a wild shot from the disc gun. A few of the discs hit Vic’s arm – he felt them beat armour and damage flesh and internal components. The force spun him round.
The micro-missiles from Vic’s shotgun caught left twin in the chest. Their armour-piercing heads penetrated the man-plus’s armour. The glow of their jet engines momentarily illuminated his chest cavity before exploding. It was little more than wet meat and muscle enhancement that fell to the cold hard marble.
Scab’s metalforma blade had widened enough to sever the Rakshasa’s neck and Jide’s head fell off. Scab reached behind him and caught the falling metalforma blade as it was retracting back to its normal size. The feline’s head bounced off the marble as the body toppled forward.
Scab backed away, trying to keep the wounded and angry berserker between him and the half-and-half. The berserker’s smart sickles flew out at him, the black blades moving like liquid as they reached for his flesh to cut him open. The lizard’s attacks were half overwhelming ferocity and half hard-wired randomised routines designed to make it difficult for opponents to predict them. The lizard was shredding Scab’s coat; blood had been drawn and dripped, smoking, to the cold marble. Scab drove the metalforma blade up into one of the lizard’s arms and then the other. Each time he neunonically instructed the blade to branch out to cause the maximum amount of damage, to render the limb useless. The berserker didn’t feel it. The half-and-half continued trying to circle around behind Scab.
While fighting for his life, Scab reviewed the sensor data from his P-sat. Through the fog of electronic warfare and the red glow of a rapidly overheating energy dissipation grid, it provided him with the wider picture he needed.
There was an explosion in the laser red light show above them. Vic swore as his P-sat exploded. He was firing up into the air at two of the remaining P-sats. Both were returning fire, making the ’sect’s energy dissipation grid glow bright red. Right twin was sitting up again, but Vic was pretty sure his power disc would take care of him. Then his disc changed direction.
Scab hacked the disc and gave it a new target. The flowing black blades of the berserker’s smart sickles opened him up, biting deep. Pain was just another sensation, Scab thought, one that he would have liked to be able to embrace. Getting badly cut doing it, Scab stabbed the metalforma blades up through the berserker’s reptilian maw, the blade branched out, growing inside the berserker’s flesh, hooking into it. Then Scab yanked the blade out, tearing a hole in the flesh of its maw. The berserker didn’t even feel it.
Scab screamed out as twin thermal oscillating blades cut through his armoured clothes, hardened skin and into real flesh and soft-machine augments. The half-and-half had got behind him. Scab’s altered neuro-chemistry and internal narcotics deadened pain, leaving only the strange sensation of the knives moving through his flesh like it was water, and the smell of burning flesh.
Vic’s power disc, which Scab had hacked, cut through both the berserker’s legs. As the lizard tumbled to the floor, Scab jammed the metalforma blade into his neck and then spun, trying to elbow the half-and-half. S/he ducked the elbow, but at least the blades had come out of his flesh now. Scab’s nanite and biotech medical applications tried to cope with the massive internal damage: biological systems shut down as redundant tech ones came online. Scab turned the elbow into a spin, bringing his leg up into a rear turning kick. The half-and-half flipped back out of the way.
Scab threw himself forward into a roll to get out of the way of the crippled berserker’s floor-bound attacks. The berserker continued pulling himself after Scab even as the metalforma knife grew to shovel-head size in his neck.
Another P-sat exploded in the air above them. Scab turned into a strobing neon-red grid as the half-and-half fired burst after burst from a folding laser carbine. Scab rapidly reloaded the spit gun and covered his face with his arm to protect it.
Vic sprinted towards right twin, firing one laser pistol at the man-plus, the other at one of the remaining P-sats. Right twin sat up glowing red as he fired the cut-down disc gun. Discs impacted Vic’s hard-tech armour, some making their way through. The ’sect felt no pain. He was too much machine. He just had the odd sensation of things moving inside him. Each shot sent him staggering, but he continued running forward, firing. The P-sat Vic was firing at exploded. Vic brought both pistols to bear on right twin. At the same time he finished reloading the shotgun pistol with his lower limbs and aimed the triple-barrelled weapon to the left under his outstretched upper arms and fired all three barrels. The sabots fell away as their mini-missile payloads locked on to one of the P-sats. The P-sat tried to flee, using the bridges and stanchions as cover. The micro-missiles’ miniature ram jets ignited. The electronic warfare transmissions from Scab’s P-sat prevented the targeted and locked P-sat from jamming the incoming micro-missile’s guidance systems.
Scab stalked towards the half-and-half, emptying the clip from the spit gun into him/her. The berserker crawled rapidly after him. Penetrator flechettes from the spit gun pierced the half-and-half’s armour and exploded. Those that hit flesh fragmented in the wound. Each fragment was coated in neurotoxin. Not enough to overwhelm the hermaphrodite’s internal systems but enough to keep them busy and slow him/her down.
The battery on the half-and-half’s folding laser carbine ran down as Scab tossed the empty spit gun away with a flourish. The hermaphrodite staggered as s/he tried to cope with the toxins. Scab, still glowing and smoking from the laser fire, leaped high into the air. He hit him/her in the chest with both knees, riding him/her to the ground as he repeatedly struck him/her in the face with sharpened envenomed fingernails. Fingers pierced armour and a combination of trauma and venom killed the half-and-half before s/he hit the ground. The berserker was still crawling towards Scab, reaching for him as the metalforma blade finished growing in the lizard’s neck and its head fell off. The headless corpse slumped to the cold marble.
With bloody fingers, Scab reached into his suit jacket and took out his cigarette case. He removed a cigarette and lit it.
Vic reached right twin and kicked him hard. His power-assisted leg shattered the disc gun, and his clawed foot tore off half of right twin’s face.
The micro-missiles caught the P-sat just below the transparent ceiling. The P-sat exploded.
Mandibles wide open and making a hissing clicking noise, Vic fired both pistols point-blank. Right twin’s face became red steam.
Vic looked around. He was sure there were more P-sats, but he guessed they were following dead-owner protocols. The collateral damage wasn’t too bad. Some stray beams, flechettes and discs had caught passers-by, but anyone who was dead probably had clone insurance.
Scab stood up. His coat had stopped glowing but was still smoking. He kicked the lizard berserker’s corpse. The headless body had still been trying to crawl. He found the metalforma knife and picked it up. He jammed the blade into the half-and-half’s neck, neunonically ‘facing instructions to sever the hermaphrodite’s head.
‘Take their heads,’ Scab said. Vic ignored him. He was running cooling cycles on his pistols, recharging them from his internal energy supplies through the matrices in his palms. He reloaded the shotgun, though he’d used the last of his saboted micro-missile loads. At the same time he was using his neunonics to buy, and have upgraded to his spec, a new P-sat.
Scab retrieved his spit gun and the tumbler pistol. Then once the metalforma knife had finished doing its job, he picked that up and collected the three severed heads, holding them by hair, fur and crest in one hand while he licked the blood off the fingers of the other.
Some bounty killers, particularly high-profile ones, made immersions of their jobs to augment their income. Vic wondered if Jide and his crew’s experience of being killed at their hands was currently being auctioned to help cover their resurrection expenses. Neither Scab nor Vic, however, sold their experiences as immersions. The only recordings of them were audiovisual or other people’s, normally fatal, immersion
experiences of them.
Scab used the metalforma knife on both the twins, decapitating them. He held all five severed heads up to show the remote cameras. The message to other bounty crews was clear. Come looking for them, you’ll end up having to get cloned.
Vic stared at Scab. Something wasn’t sitting right with him. Scab was ignoring him.
‘They’ll come after us properly prepared,’ Vic finally said, making his tone neutral, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that his suspicions were written all over his insectile face and in his pheromone secretions.
Scab shook his head.
‘Why not? The bounty from the cartel’s got to be pretty big.’
They were in the private medical facility on their own habitat. The habitat had stepped up their security in light of what had happened. Scab had done his own medical work and was in the process of purging the local systems of all medical information on himself. Vic was lying on one of the couches as his damaged internal organs and components were speedily being regrown, and his armour and hardened skin were knitted back together. The featureless white room that was the medical facility transmitted progress straight to his neunonics.
‘They won’t be cloned,’ Scab said. He made it sound like an afterthought.
‘You transmitted a scramble code for the personality and memory uplink?’ Vic asked, trying to keep his voice even. Scab just nodded. It was an expensive viral program. The uplinks were very heavily protected and had multiple redundant systems to prevent this sort of thing. ‘That’s pretty illegal stuff for Pythia.’ Personality/memory-uplink scrambling software had been on the list of proscribed ware.
‘Nothing’s illegal with enough debt relief,’ Scab said, still distracted. Then he turned to look directly at Vic with his dead eyes. ‘They had to know.’ Vic tried to meet the look but turned away. ‘It’s time for an answer.’
Scab headed towards one of the white walls. The smears of blood they had left when they first entered had long ago been eaten by nano-cleaners. Part of the wall opened for them.
The transparent piece of hull was shaped like an eye and lined with actual wood panelling. In front of it was a circular sofa upholstered in something that had once been alive and it was in no way smart. Vic was struggling to find a comfortable way to sit on it. Scab was slumped in it, smoking a cigarette, dried blood all the way up the arm of his suit jacket and raincoat.
The eye looked down on the planet. The view was either just wide enough, or had been compressed, to show the curvature of the planet against the golden light of the orange giant refracting on the particulate clouds. As Vic and Scab sat there waiting for the business acolyte to be possessed, they watched asteroids being dropped into the atmosphere. The fire of their atmospheric entry lit up part of their view.
The business acolyte was standing in the centre of the circle made by the leather sofa. He wore a collarless suit that buttoned up to the neck. His physiology suggested human, and the little skin that they could see looked human, or perhaps an oddly fashion-augmented feline. It was difficult to be sure because of the hood on the suit jacket and the featureless convex-mirrored, full-face mask.
Holography of the nano-swarm clouds in Pythia’s atmosphere appeared in the centre of the room. The acolyte was stood in the apparent storm front as lightning played across it. It was difficult to gauge the scale of it, but Vic had the feeling that the storm front was anything up to hundreds of miles across. He pursed his mandibles, not sure what he was watching.
‘I think that’s the think tank they’ve had working on our problem,’ Scab said.
The business acolyte collapsed onto all fours, shaking and gyrating in front of them. Vic couldn’t shake the feeling that he was about to experience Known Space’s oddest lap dance.
‘That is correct.’ The voice sounded like it was being agonisingly pulled from the acolyte’s larynx. Pythia had overrun the willing acolyte’s neunonic systems and was in control. ‘Trillions of tiny bits of information, the fall of entire markets to the movement of a single molecule, the—’
‘I don’t care,’ Scab said. ‘Where is it?’
The acolyte moved his head, apparently to stare at Scab. Scab’s reflection on the convex mask somehow didn’t seem all that distorted to Vic.
‘The end of the Art Wars left the Absolute in control of the Monarchist Elite,’ came the strained reply.
‘Weird fucking war,’ Scab said, frowning. Vic looked up at him sharply. He was surprised that Scab had offered an opinion, let alone seemed to have mild emotion connected to the conflict. ‘But we know this.’
‘The safest place to hold the cocoon would be at the Citadel. If Fallen Angel told you the truth, then the cocoon is on Game, probably deep below the Black Leaves as the Absolute’s sanctum is the second most secure place in the Monarchist sector. Also, according to our psych evaluation of the Absolute, he will wish to keep the cocoon close enough to play with.’
‘So it can’t be done. Only pieces are allowed on Game, and they have to have experiential augments. They’d know who and what we are the moment we left orbit,’ Vic said. ‘Can we leave it now?’ Scab just looked thoughtful. Vic shook his head. He could see what was coming.
There was a kind of quiet screeching from the acolyte. Vic stared at him. Blood ran out from under the mask. The acolyte’s body twisted and contorted further. Vic gave Scab a questioning look.
‘There is no love lost between the Absolute and the masters of the Living Cities on Pangea. They were the biggest losers of the Art Wars. They wanted to see their model of society permeate the entire Monarchist sector. If the Elder will consent to speak to you, they may aid you.’
Scab nodded. ‘How long?’
‘If you exhaust the slush fund you have access to, then that will buy you a one-week info lock. After that the information will be available at an exorbitant price to everyone.’
Scab nodded. Vic assumed he was spending the rest of whatever slush fund he had access to.
The acolyte collapsed to the floor. There was bloody froth bubbling out from under the mask.
‘Is that it?’ Vic asked.
The smart-matter floor engulfed the acolyte, presumably taking him to somewhere nearby for medical attention. Scab got up and left. Vic watched him go, irritation and a feeling of helplessness combining into impotent anger. He realised it was completely psychosomatic, but he struggled to control his breathing for a moment until his augmented systems took over and administered a mild sedative. He stood up and followed Scab. There was nothing else he could really do except ’face his own bid to Pythia for information. It wiped out three quarters of his debt relief in an instant.
Vic was immersed. He had no control so he decided to lose himself in narcotic-enhanced fantasy. His only-’sect-at-a-human-orgy fantasy dissolved around him as the Basilisk managed to send him a warning signal before powering down.
Vic sat up on his unmoving bed. The door to his room was open but the ship was dark. The walls were solid. There were no areas of transparency.
He stood up and walked out into the lounge. His optical enhancements ignored the darkness. Scab was standing in the centre of the lounge, still. Vic could feel the anger. It seemed to be coming off Scab in waves. He actually took a step back. Blood dripped from Scab’s clenched fists. He had pierced the hardened skin of his palms with his fingernails.
Vic checked back over the last information from the Basilisk. They had been approaching the Pythia bridge point. It looked like someone had hacked the ship. Shut it down completely. Vic knew that wasn’t supposed to be easy. The Basilisk had the best system security they could afford and it had been extensively and often illegally augmented by the privacy-obsessed control freak that was Scab.
‘Elite . . .?’ Vic ventured.
The transmission had to be pretty powerful to reach their internal comms through the thick skin of the dead Basilisk. Vic actually screamed, then staggered, holding his head. Scab didn’t move, but a drop of blood leaked from his nostr
il and made a smoking trail through his white make-up.
‘To Woodbine Scab and Vic Matto, this is the St Brendan’s Fire. We only wish to talk. Prepare for boarding.’ The woman whose flickering image appeared in their minds was the same shaven-headed and tattooed Church monk they had seen on Arclight.
Vic felt the fear building. Scab couldn’t allow this to happen. It wasn’t in his nature. He would do something suicidal and make sure that he took Vic with him. He couldn’t abrogate control of the situation like that.
‘Scab . . .’ Vic started, searching for a way to talk his partner into being reasonable, but he knew that there was nothing he could say that would help.
‘Basilisk to St Brendan’s Fire.’ Scab sounded calm. He was talking out loud; only someone who knew him as well as Vic could hear the barely controlled rage in his voice. ‘Immediately return control of the Basilisk to us. If you do not, then you will find that information on the whereabouts of the bridge technology you are trying to suppress will be transmitted throughout Known Space.’
There was silence. Was it a bluff? Vic had no idea. Scab did bluff, but he also made sure that he did enough extreme shit that all his bluffs were believable.
‘St Brendan’s Fire to Basilisk. You’re bluffing. That would screw up your own agenda,’ the Monk said.
No, Vic silently screamed at her. Look at your psych profile! He will destroy it for you even it means he fails.
‘Besides,’ the Monk continued, ‘how would you transmit the information? You’re dead in the water.’
‘We made a contingency arrangement with Pythia,’ Scab transmitted.
It was the sort of thing that Scab would do, Vic decided. He planned ahead in that way.
‘We just want to talk,’ the Monk said after what seemed like a very long time. She had either bought the story or she just wasn’t prepared to risk even the slightest chance of proliferation. Scab ignored her.