by Gavin Smith
The knife hit Vic in the throat. It didn’t penetrate his armour but stuck there, the smart-matter blade digging through the armour for flesh. Scab’s P-sat rose behind Vic and lit up his energy dissipation grid with laser fire.
Scab was on one knee, filling the air with flechettes from the spit gun in his right hand. The flechettes would do little but irritate and distract Vic. Scab emptied the reptile mini-disc launcher on his upper left arm. The hundreds of tiny discs were keyed to track Vic’s electromagnetic signature. Scab was a bright neon figure now, his energy dissipation grid glowing, about to succumb to Vic’s laser fire which would cook his flesh.
Dropping the empty shotgun pistol, Vic leaped into the air, extending the blades on his top two limbs, still firing the laser pistols with his lower limbs. The leap took him over the cocoon. Scab drew his tumbler pistol and had time to fire twice. The slow bullets would burrow through Vic’s armoured exoskeleton and then fragment, spinning inside him. Vic sent an incredibly illegal post-mortem kill instruction to his neunonics, which would in turn control his hard-tech systems that made up the majority of his body and keep his weapons firing.
Vic landed in front of Scab already dead. The metalforma blade had pushed through his neck armour and fanned out, killing him.
Vic’s blades scissored in on Scab, the ’sect’s lasers still firing. Scab stepped inside the reach of the blades. His right forearm glowed momentarily, and the spit gun he was holding exploded as the energy javelin shot through it and Scab drove it into Vic’s chest cavity. The S-tech coherent energy-field weapon cut through Vic’s armoured skeleton, Scab moving it around inside his partner’s chest until the post-mortem attack was beyond the corpse’s capability.
Vic’s body stopped moving. Scab, bloody and burned, stepped out of Vic’s bladed embrace and looked at him, shaking his head. Vic was probably the finest resource he’d had. If he had had to choose between Vic and the Scorpion, he was not sure which one he would have picked.
On the other hand, the cocoon was almost gone. What was in it was starting to take form. Still smoking, Scab wandered over to stand beside it. The last remaining bits of the cocoon seemed to dissipate. Scab was quite surprised to find himself looking down at a slender, pale, dark-haired, apparently natural human female. She opened her eyes and then immediately started to die.
‘That fucking bastard!’ the Monk shouted. Or would have if she hadn’t been in a nutrient tank having her body regrown. Instead she had ’faced it vigorously.
‘Is that any way for a woman of the cloth to talk?’ Churchman asked mildly. The Monk thrashed around in the tank to glare at him through the gel with natural eyes. ‘It’s not the first time you’ve died,’ he said.
‘It’s the first time I’ve had to be cloned, and I can’t say I’m enjoying the experience.’ Through the gel she could make out the general outline of Churchman, or rather the technological form that gave what was left of him a semblance of being alive.
‘I haven’t seen you this angry in a long time.’
‘I’m going to kill him.’
‘He’s been in touch.’
Epilogue
The Walker
One foot in front of the other. One foot in front of the other. Under a bloody sky the walker moved through a blackened living landscape of ghosts and remnants. The last city was just over the horizon.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to Dr David Luke for taking some time out to answer questions on DMT, altered states and the ‘Machine Elves of Hyperspace’.
And thanks to Jo Luke for typing those notes up.
To Kath Anderton who took the time to comment on early parts of the novel despite having a great deal going on in her own life at the time.
Thank you to Nicola and Simon Bates for their hospitality whilst researching Portsmouth and thanks to Fay Brown for her company and help in doing the same.
Thank you very much to everyone who took part in Other Great Uses for Gavin Smith Novels.
Thank you to Chloe Isherwood of Chloe Isherwood Photography, not only for organising the Other Great Uses for Gavin Smith Novels but also for the Age of Scorpio photo shoot, or Three Hysterical Days in Wales as I’ve come to think of it.
Also for the photo shoot, thank you to Rachel Nicholson (makeup), Matt Karma Bryant (editing), Yvonne Cunningham (location and AD), Stephanie Lindley (Tangwen), Kiera Gould (Cliodna) and Gabriella Howson (Britha).
And thanks to Evenlode Studio and Number 15 Leather and Costume for providing props and costumes for the shoot.
To my fellow authors for support and advice: Stephen and Michaela Deas, MD Lachlan, Chris Wooding and Anthony Jones.
Thanks again to the gaming community for their support, particularly to Namon, the Charioteers and the Lords of Barry.
Thank you to my agent Sam Copeland at RCW Ltd.
Thanks to my editor Simon Spanton and to Jon Weir, Charlie Panayiotou, Gillian Redfearn and Marcus Gipps at Gollancz. And to Hugh Davis for the copy edit.
To my family and friends for their patience, support and enthusiasm (and particularly my dad this time for an amusing afternoon of wondering around the Angus countryside failing miserably to find the ruins of a Broch).
And to Yvonne for her evil brand of patience.
Finally I’m thankful to everyone who buys a copy of anything I write and I would particularly like to thank those who take the time to comment on websites, Facebook, Twitter and/or write reviews, good or bad, your interest is greatly appreciated.
Gavin G. Smith, Leicester, 2012
www.gavingsmith.com
Also By Gavin G. Smith from Gollancz:
Veteran
War in Heaven
Crysis: Escalation
Copyright
A Gollancz eBook
Copyright © Gavin G. Smith 2013
All rights reserved.
The right of Gavin G. Smith to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in Great Britain in 2013 by
Gollancz
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Orion House
5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane
London, WC2H 9EA
An Hachette UK Company
This eBook first published in 2013 by Gollancz.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 0 575 09478 9
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
www.gavingsmith.com
www.orionbooks.co.uk