The Age of Scorpio

by Gavin Smith

  ‘That supposed to scare me?’ McGurk asked, sneering at the show people’s approach.

  ‘Go now while you still can,’ Ted managed, his voice shaky, that of a man barely controlling his temper.

  ‘I will fucking deal with you, you fat cunt,’ McGurk told him, and then he and his two muscle-bound minders turned and headed back towards Old Portsmouth.

  Ted turned to Beth. ‘You need to go home now.’

  At first Beth thought he was angry with her. Then she realised. ‘What, do you think he . . .?’

  ‘Go now!’

  She turned and ran, so intent on getting back to the flat that she didn’t hear what McGurk was shouting after her.

  Beth sprinted across the common, cursing herself for not getting to know the city better. Her lungs felt on fire by the time she crossed on to Osborne Road, making a car brake suddenly, heading for the centre of Southsea. She turned into Palmerston Road, the ugly concrete shopping precinct. She wasn’t sure how she was breathing. She just didn’t seem to be getting enough oxygen but she didn’t stop. Past the church, the cafes on Marmion Road and right into Victoria Road South, wishing she owned a mobile phone. She had passed a number of roads she was convinced would get her there quicker but couldn’t risk getting lost. People got out of the way of the powerfully built woman sprinting down the pavement. Beth’s chest was agony now. Nearly there. Crossing Albert Road, she ended up on the bonnet of a skidding car, providing the terrified occupants with a freeze-frame image before she slid off. On to Campbell Road. She was amazed her run hadn’t resulted in police interest.

  As ever, Campbell Road was lined with parked cars. She tried looking for ones that didn’t fit. A waste of time. Gasping down air as she fumbled with the lock. She was seeing stars in front of her eyes now. Into the hall. Up the stairs. Heart sinking as she saw the door to the flat was open.

  Beth looked into the lounge. Maude was curled up on the sofa looking terrified. Uday was next to her, arms around her. Even in the moment that Beth had to take it in, Uday’s look said it all. You brought this down on us.

  McGurk was in the armchair playing with his cane. One of his minders stood next to him; the other was towering over Uday and Maude.

  ‘Now where were we? Oh yes. Trevor, give this fucking mouthy bitch a bit of a slap, will you?’

  Trevor was the one standing next to McGurk. He was across the living room with surprising speed, although if she hadn’t just sprinted two miles he probably wouldn’t have connected. He caught Beth in the jaw and she hit the carpet.

  Beth reached under the sofa and grabbed the bayonet from its hiding place with her left hand. As she moved, she saw the look of surprise on Maude’s face. Trevor cried out, surprise first, then pain and fear. It was an awkward left-handed stab, but she left the blade in his leg as she pulled the brass knuckles out of the pocket of her leather and hit him hard in the chin and then again with less force on the nose. Trevor’s nose broke, blood spurting down his face, but he was already on his way down to the floor.

  Uday flung himself at the other piece of muscle. He might as well have thrown himself at a concrete wall. He was easily batted aside. To Beth’s amazement, Maude was trying to hit him as well. It didn’t look like much of a contact but he cried out and grabbed his eye as Uday picked himself up and grabbed the big man’s legs.

  ‘Come on then, you southern cunt!’ Beth screamed at McGurk. But he had a gun now. It was pointed at Uday’s head.

  ‘Now if we’re all through playing silly fucking buggers,’ McGurk said.

  Uday was looking furious. Glaring between Beth and McGurk. Maude seemed appalled by what she had done. The minder had blood pouring out from under his eye. As Beth watched, he pulled the nail file that Maude had stabbed him with out of the wound. Beth couldn’t believe that both of them had had the courage to fight.

  Trevor was moaning, one leg of his trousers dark with blood. Beth stood on his leg so he couldn’t move and tore the bayonet out. He screamed.

  ‘Here! Any more of your nonsense and you’ll get to see your two little friends make a very special film. Do you understand me? Now drop the shiv.’

  ‘What the fuck’s wrong with you?’ Beth asked as she dropped the bayonet.

  ‘Never you mind what’s wrong with me, you cheeky slag. You just do as you’re fucking told.’

  ‘Where’s my sister?’ Beth demanded. Maude looked up at her, shock all over her face.

  ‘You see the gun, yes?’ He turned to the muscle that Maude had stabbed. ‘Are you all right, Markus?’

  ‘Yes, Mr McGurk.’

  ‘Right. Well why don’t you cuff her, take her downstairs and put her in the boot of the Beamer.’

  ‘Yes, Mr McGurk.’

  ‘I can’t see that happening,’ Beth said.

  ‘Then I break both your arms and legs and you get to watch me rape your friends to death.’

  It was too much for Maude. She broke down. Uday looked angry enough to charge a gun.

  As subtly as she could, Beth dropped her knuckles back into the pocket of her leather. Markus cuffed her and then put his overcoat over the cuffs to hide them.

  McGurk stood up. He looked down at Trevor with disgust and delivered a vicious kick to his wound. Trevor screamed. Then he turned to the furious Uday and sobbing Maude.

  ‘I can find you any time I want. You understand me.’

  Beth saw Uday swallow hard, bite back what he was going to say and nod. Then the three of them left, leaving the bleeding Trevor on the carpet.

  19

  A Long Time After the Loss

  Scab had described it as an anal tract but Vic had put that down to his partner’s natural unpleasantness. Vic preferred to think of it as walking down a massive bioluminescent artery. The translucent nature of the flesh of the floating city allowed him to see its internal workings, which looked like muscle, tissue and organs on a massive scale. He understood that felines, hairless monkeys and to a lesser extent some lizards could find this sort of thing uncomfortable, but he’d grown up in the chitinous environments of star hives which prepared him for this sort of biomechanics writ large.

  They were moving along the artery/sphincter on the edge of one of the Living Cities. They did not know which one. They did not know how to differentiate or indeed if they could be differentiated.

  The Living Cities were one of the most celebrated sights of the Monarchist systems and indeed Known Space, considered a triumph of bioengineering, though it was suspected that they had been built using illegal – under Church law – applications of Seeder tech.

  Vic reached out to touch the flesh-like wall of the artery, running one of his upper hands down it, enjoying the sensation fed back from the tactile sensor on the mechanical appendage. Through the glowing translucent wall he could look down through the cloudless sky to the scarred grey rock of Pangea’s surface.

  Tendrils hung out of the bottom of the city as it floated on massive gasbags supported by redundant AG systems. The tendrils burrowed into the surface of the ruined planet like parasitical insects. Vic knew that the tendrils would be breaking down and sucking up the very surface of the planet itself for conversion and processing as raw material. Deeper burrowing tendrils would be harnessing geothermal energy from the planet’s core. Frequent tectonic events would sever tendrils, spraying rock, heat or even lava into the sky, but the living city could always call on its massive carbon reservoirs harvested from the very matter of the planet and grow more.

  Eventually Pangea would be exhausted and the Living Cities would either somehow have to move to another world or die. Other worlds were in short supply due to the limited number of systems that the Church allowed access to with their bridge technology, and the rapacious, exponential, almost viral level of expansion and colonisation of the sentient races. In other words, space was crowded, and almost every bit of it was claimed. On the other hand, even with Vic’s limited knowledge of geospatial politics, and allowing for his near-total lack of interest in the subje
ct, he realised that breaking the Church’s monopoly could lead to the opening-up of more space to colonise.

  The artery rose in a helix towards the living dome-like roof of this particular city, where massive cells photosynthesised the weak light of Pangea’s main-sequence G-type star. Some effect of the planet’s wrecked atmosphere made the star look white.

  Much of the trip from Pythia to Pangea had been taken up with Scab trying to work out what the Church frigate had done to the Basilisk and upgrading the ship’s security. Elements of Pangea’s not inconsiderable navy were on the Basilisk the moment they opened the bridge from Red Space into Real Space. Security for Pangea was run by one of the largest private military contractors. Basilisk had been told to power down all weapon systems or be destroyed. Scab had done it without too much attitude – to Vic’s surprise. They had then been escorted through orbital defences comparable to Pythia’s. All of this was paid for through the export of biotech developed in the cities. Many of Scab’s soft-machine augments were derived from Living City technology. There were rumours that the Living Cities’ wealth came, in part, from illegal technology derived from their use of banned Seeder tech.

  They had been extensively disarmed, much to Scab’s disapproval. There had been no chance to bid for weapons, just a blanket refusal, and it was made clear that any attempt to bring virals into the city would result in immediate death. Scab had undergone a complete blood transfusion with less than good grace. He had even cleaned under his fingernails, removing all the neurotoxins. During the docking and decontamination procedures, Scab had his cigarettes and old-school syringes of opiates removed.

  They had also had to shut down their external ’face links. Any communication was going to have to be done the old-fashioned way. Their nano-screens had to be extensively reprogrammed and internalised. In short, they both felt naked, though Vic was just enjoying being in the city. The warm wind blowing through the artery somehow reminded him of a human womb immersion he had once done. It had left him wondering why the little hairless monkeys ever left.

  P-sats had obviously not been allowed. Instead they were being guided to a meeting place by one of the inhabitants of the city. They all looked the same. Neutral-gendered, Vic believed they were actually grown from the city. It was nominally human, as most of the inhabitants of the Monarchist systems were, and naked, which made sense. Vic was starting to find something artistic and aesthetically pleasing about the translucent skin, the internal organs on display and the glowing violet-coloured blood that provided them with their own bioluminescence. Looking around through the arteries and the flesh of the massive city, he could see them moving around doing various tasks. It made Vic think of the nanites that suffused his own body. Scab, presumably still grumpy at being disarmed, had wondered out loud why people would want to turn themselves into glowing bowel parasites.

  The helical artery brought them to the highest level of the city. Vic looked down on it. From the top the city looked like a roughly circular plain. It was constantly moving, constantly rippling. The chamber they had arrived at was the first bit of opaque flesh they had come across. The sphincter-like door opened with a distinctly organic sucking noise. Vic and Scab followed their guide through.

  The boardroom table looked as if it was made from sculpted tooth enamel. The chairs had been grown from the floor and were covered in a moss-like substance.

  There were two other people in the room. One of them seemed to be clothed in black glass, and was leaning against the transparent flesh of what passed for a window in the outer wall. The other was the hairless tattooed Monk from the St Brendan’s Fire. She was lounging on one of the chairs, feet up on the bone-white table.

  The guide moved to one side, pushing himself against the flesh wall of the room. Scab was already moving towards the Monk. It looked like she was trying to say something.

  Scab was in the air over the table. The Monk just leaned back and used one hand to flip off the chair and onto her feet. Vic sighed internally. He couldn’t be bothered.

  A series of short fast strikes with clawed hands opened up a cut on her porcelain skin. Normally, neurotoxins on his filed and hardened nails would be enough to slow the Monk down and give Scab the edge, but they had been removed.

  Scab stepped to the side to avoid a powerful front kick. He turned the sidestep into a sweep, which the Monk leaped over. In mid-air she straightened her leg and caught Scab a solid blow in the face, sending him staggering back across the living boardroom.

  She’s good, Vic thought. Then he decided to look at the figure in black glass again.

  ‘Oh shit,’ Vic muttered as Scab and the Monk danced their violent dance. The figure in black glass was an Elite. Vic didn’t think it was Fallen Angel but he couldn’t be sure; with the exception of Ludwig they all kind of looked the same to him.

  The Monk had closed with Scab, swinging at him with a series of vicious hooks. Scab threw himself back towards the floor. Landing with his weight on one hand, he kicked from the ground, catching the Monk on the side of the head with the toe of his spats. She staggered back but recovered quickly. Scab tried to hook his leg around her neck, but she moved with it and did a one-handed cartwheel out of the lock, landing crouched to face him.

  Vic was caught between watching the Elite, who Scab would have also noticed but was ignoring in favour of violence that had a better chance of success, and the ongoing fight. The Monk was genuinely skilled rather than having augmented fighting abilities. She was experienced as well. Vic assumed she had the best soft-machine augments that debt, or in the Church’s case actual credit, could possibly buy. He was able to read where and what she was going to do because she was a very efficient and skilled fighter. Scab, on the other hand, fought chaotically. The Monk had to deal with Scab moving to where he shouldn’t, doing moves he shouldn’t and fighting with a ferocity she couldn’t match. He had a genuine desire to hurt his opponent.

  Scab closed in and locked the Monk’s arm. Grinning with savage joy, Scab kneed the Monk in the head and then repeatedly struck her in the face with his fingers. He was trying to push his filed-down fingernails through her armoured skull.

  It was all over now. Scab’s fingers had found her eyes. Any moment now membranes would pop and he would force the fingers into her brain, and his reputation would increase as he added a dead monk to his list of kills.

  Then the Monk lost her temper. It was like a berserk rage without the augments, Vic thought. She lost an eye tearing his finger out. She headbutted Scab hard enough to break the reinforced cartilage of his nose. Then she somersaulted out of the lock. The sound of her arm spiral fracturing and dislocating simultaneously was loud enough to make Vic flinch. She screamed in pain, landed and kicked Scab in the chest.

  Scab flew back across the room. The Monk leaped after him. Scab hit the wall. The Monk kicked him in the head. His skull cracked under the force of the blow. A look of fury on her face, the Monk repeatedly kicked him in the head, pulping his face and skull as he slid down the wall.

  Vic was hoping this was freedom at last, but somehow Scab managed to leg-sweep her from the ground while she was too intent on turning his head to pulped meat. The Monk hit the floor and Scab axe-kicked her in the head.

  ‘Stop this or I will destroy them both,’ the guide said quietly to Vic. He only picked it up because his aural augments were able to filter out the sound of the fight.

  ‘What? If you’ve got some skills as well, then jump in, have some fun,’ Vic told the guide.

  ‘I will simply ask the city to flex. Everyone in the room will be crushed.’

  Vic sighed. A power-assisted leap carried him easily over the table. The tall ’sect landed softly behind his partner. Scab currently had the upper hand and was standing on one of the Monk’s legs, fending off kicks from the other while trying to break her knee by punching it. He was aware of Vic behind him but had assumed that his partner had come to help.

  There were a number of ways Vic could have handled trying to
break up the fight, but he was feeling reckless. He grabbed Scab by the shoulders of his raincoat with his upper two arms and then flung Scab backwards.

  Scab flew across the boardroom again and hit the wall. Behind Vic the Monk skipped to her feet. One of her arms hung limp at her side but she assumed a defensive stance. Scab was straight back onto his feet. Even through the pulped meat of his face, Scab’s rage was plain to see. Vic actually staggered back a few steps. This is it, he thought, but he made himself big, stretching to his full height, all four arms outstretched.

  ‘Are you out of your fucking mind!’ Scab screamed. Vic had never seen him lose control like this.

  ‘They’ll kill us all if you don’t stop,’ Vic said. He couldn’t quite keep the tremor out of his voice. His pheromone excretions told the rest of the story about how frightened he was.

  Scab’s face was contorting and he was gasping for air as he tried to control himself. The humourless and very familiar laughter wasn’t helping matters, Vic decided. Both he and Scab turned to look at the Elite. What they saw were warped reflections of themselves in the glass armour.

  ‘Something funny?’ Scab asked in a tone that suggested to Vic more impending violence. Good. You just kill yourself attacking an Elite, then Known Space will be fucking rid of you and I can enjoy the sights of the Living Cities while waiting for a bounty crew to catch up with me.

  ‘It’s like watching a bad actor try to play you in a low-budget immersion.’

  The black armour became liquid and was sucked into the Elite’s skin. He was an Elite version of Scab. He looked healthier, less gaunt. He was wearing a skin-tight, long-sleeved black top and black trousers, and his lips were stained black. The thing that unnerved Vic most about Elite Scab was that his eyes looked alive, but there was a malignancy in their life, a hatred and a madness. Vic wondered if Elite Scab had had the same neurosurgery to remove some of his more unpleasant predilections as his partner. He wasn’t optimistic about the chances of that.