"Nah." She shook her head. "Let 'em go."
"Are you sure? One should never let an enemy live."
"Like I said to Toni, I'm no one's enemy. I just took a wrong turn." She got up, and headed back towards the spinal corridor. "There's quite a lot of Mindfeeder left, and it might get a second wind. The Iconoclasts can frag it better than anyone. I'm going to bed." She yawned mightily. "Wake me in about twelve hundred years."
"Funny you should say that," said Harrow.
* * * *
He had picked up the cryo-tube on his way to smash through the roof of the drive chamber, snatching it from the ruined courtyard with a cargo grab. Once she had found out, Red had demanded Crimson Hunter make planetfall on the nearest habitable world.
So she stood, alone, on the surface of Kyriad. It was a small planet, quite barren, just on the boundaries of the Accord. A place that could support human or mutant life, if there had been anything much there to attract them.
It was cold and Red was very tired. She had retrieved her coat from Crimson Hunter's locker.
The tube looked oddly forlorn, lying there. Red had found a quiet place for it on high ground, sheltered near some solid-looking boulders. Safe, she hoped, for another millennia or two.
"This universe," she told it, "is just so crap. I mean really. I live here now, so I should know."
The tube just blinked its lights at her, mutely. A faint breeze was blowing up, rattling little stones across the ground, making scrubby plants dip and bob. A tiny lizard scurried up onto the tube's dome, blinked at her, and vanished.
"So okay, maybe I'm crazy. After all, I'm out here talking to myself, aren't I?" She glanced back to the Crimson Hunter, perched half a kilometre away on its slender, angled leg. "But trust me, you don't want to be here right now."
The breeze was getting colder. Red put her hands in her pockets and bounced on her toes, the flaps of the coat billowing around her. "You'll be okay. No one's here, and your power's good for a thousand years, maybe two. When it finishes, the lid will pop. There's a beacon. You'll be found.
"Or maybe someone will find you earlier, like they found me. I hope not. In a thousand more years, things might be better. I might make them better."
She nodded to herself. "Yeah. I'd like to do that."
And then she turned, without a goodbye, and started walking back to the ship.
Epilogue
The Levels of Dominance
The Osculum Cruentus had still not had their temple-asteroid entirely back under control. Sire Vaide Sorrilier, third Dominus of the Citadel of Cados, had been watching its slow tumble for the past two hours.
The ship had been on a slow approach for that time. Vaide had opted to spend the hours until docking in his private bedchamber, with only a few sylphs for company. The ship was not large, but Vaide liked his comforts. The chamber took up the greater part of the pressure cabin.
The temple rotated slowly on his holoscreen. Vaide, lounging on the edge of his bed, gestured at it. "You see, Lise?" he murmured. "The degree of stupidity I have to put up with?"
Lise was his favourite sylph, and was at that moment kneeling before him, lacing up his left boot. She didn't answer. He would have been very surprised if she had. Sylphs were mindless, their cognitive functions wrecked by subtle, yet powerful drugs administered at puberty. They remained functional in all other respects; their senses acute, their reactions speedy. Features such as loyalty, killer instinct, or sexual voraciousness could be added chemically at any time.
Naturally, sylphs were chosen from only the most attractive stock. Lise was no conversationalist, but she was certainly easy on the eye.
With his boots correctly fastened, Vaide stood up and let two more sylphs help him into his coat. He had decided to dress well for the occasion, affecting loose silk trousers, a shirt of golden fabric-metal and one of his very best coats, the one with the silver trim and the brocade. His long, dark hair was caught back with a gold diadem, and on his left hand, next to the signet ring of his citadel, he wore a platinum band set with a natural ruby as big as his thumbnail.
He was dressed to impress, it was as simple as that. He had ordered his navigator to leave jumpspace two hours from the asteroid for the very same reason—he had wanted to let the Osculum know he was coming, so the ship decelerated from superlight a good distance away. He hadn't called ahead, of course: two hours wasn't enough time for the occupants of the asteroid to put their house in order, but it was enough to make them scurry like rats.
The thought of that amused Vaide. He enjoyed making people scurry.
The ship was within a few hundred metres of docking now, and the holoscreen had filled with nothing more interesting than a dark expanse of rock. The view wasn't even turning any more, as the pilot had matched the planetisimal's spin. Vaide turned the screen off with a wave.
"Lise, my dear, I'd like you to accompany me on this little venture." He reached out to brush her cheek. "I apologise in advance for putting you through such a trial, but it would be nice to show my dear friend Tholen one final vision of beauty."
Lise remained standing loosely at the end of the bed. She would stay there until he gave her a direct order. Some in the citadel thought Vaide odd for speaking to the sylphs as though they were people, but he couldn't have cared less. Let one of them voice such a thought out loud, then he'd make it his business to care.
There was a slight impact, far away, and a soft chime. The ship was docked. Vaide turned to Lise and smiled.
"Shall we?"
* * * *
The temple smelled very bad. It always had done, to Vaide's knowledge, which was one of the reasons he seldom set foot in the place.
Rather than docking with one of the asteroid's concealed airlocks, Vaide's ship had entered the primary hangar and landed there. It perched next to the Osculum's own ships: two battered phase-clippers, used mainly on harvesting missions. Vaide, strolling down the landing steps from his own gleaming vessel, gazed at the clippers with undisguised contempt. Those ships had cost him very dearly indeed.
As he and Lise reached the deck, a hatch opened on the far side of the hangar, and the Osculum's reception committee filed through. Tholen, one of the high priests, was there, along with a couple of the lower orders and a troop of servitors. Vaide only had Lise with him, but he knew with complete certainty that, should push come to shove, she alone was more than a match for Tholen and his sorry crew.
When the cultists got within a few metres of Vaide's ship they halted. Tholen stepped forwards, bowed slightly, and drew back his cowl. Vaide resisted the urge to cover his mouth, the man's scarred, twisted features were an affront to his sense of decency.
"Sire Vaide," Tholen growled, his voice sounding like gravel shaken in a drum. "We are honoured by your visit."
"I know." Vaide glanced around, feigning interest. "You seem to be having some difficulty with your attitude thrusters, old friend. My pilot had a merry time of things, matching your spin."
Tholen gave a light shrug. "A maintenance problem, sire. We have servitors working on it as we speak." He gestured back to the door. "If you will follow me, I'm sure we can make you and your, ah, companion comfortable."
"My thanks." Vaide let Lise go first, her long silken cloak rippling behind her. She was dressed entirely in midnight blue, the colour of his citadel. "There was also some damage to a service lock?"
Tholen nodded, a touch too vigorously. "Yes, yes, a minor malfunction. The lock was seldom, if ever used. We can easily work around it."
The door slid aside for them. Vaide followed Lise through, into one of the temple's maze of corridors. "I quite understand. Operating in such an ancient place must throw up all kinds of problems. I can imagine how frustrating it must be."
"The great work must continue, sire." Tholen led them around a corner and into a long, vaulted hall. Their footsteps echoed on the stone floor as they made their way between the pillars and arches. "Enlightenment requires certain sacrifices."
Tholen almost tripped over his cowl. "Excuse me?"
"You understand, old friend. Just like to see how my investment is doing."
The priest cleared his throat nervously. "She's bearing up."
"She must be extremely resilient." Vaide stopped suddenly, turning to fix Tholen with an imperious gaze. "None of your other priestesses lasted more than a month. Although…" He put a finger to his lips, as though in thought. "I must say that her last batch of produce wasn't nearly as sweet as the others. Is her health faltering, perhaps?"
Tholen closed his eyes, briefly. "Sire, I must confess…"
"Wouldn't a chapel be more appropriate for that?"
"She is gone. There is a new high-priestess, and she is not of the same… quality."
Vaide's eyebrows went up to his diadem. "Really, Tholen? And how did you manage to mislay my investment so carelessly?"
Tholen backed off a few steps. "Sire, we were attacked. The temple was boarded."
"Go on."
"There were several of them, humans, heavily armed. We fought, but they were too much for us. Father Lassad died trying to protect her."
"Good lord." Vaide turned to Lise. "You hear that, my dear? The temple has been desecrated while I've been away." He smiled back at the priest. "Thank goodness you were here unharmed, Het Tholen. Had we lost you I don't know what I would have done."
"Thank you, sire." Tholen bobbed his head. "They were trying times."
"Hmm. Of course, one thing does trouble me." Vaide affected a troubled frown. "You see, when we took the Osculum Cruentus under our wing, Het Tholen, we took the precaution of seeding this place with surveillance cameras. And what they showed me was that you were boarded by one mutant with a light-drill and a silly little derringer."
Tholen's rheumy eyes widened. He opened his mouth to speak, but Vaide silenced him with a gesture.
"His name was Judas Harrow. He used to be a member of the Tenebrae, but now he is the loyal companion of Saint Scarlet of Durham. He'd been tracking you down ever since Gomorrah, Tholen. Ever since your operatives left there in the exact same crumbling starcraft you have used for the last twenty years!"
Vaide's anger had gotten the better of him. For a second he had almost shown the old priest his true face, but that would never do. He willed himself to calm down. A pinch of Dream, sniffed from a compartment in his signet ring, helped enormously.
He sighed, snapping the compartment closed. "Tholen, my old friend. Did I not implore you to update your fleet? When I gave you Durham Red's location, did I not beg you to use a different ship?" He shook his head sadly. "I believe I even gave you an extra kilogramme of Glow in order to pay for new vessels. I shan't ask what happened to that."
Tholen bowed low. "Sire, forgive me. The responsibility is mine, and mine alone. Whatever you require me to do to make this right again, I shall." He looked up at Vaide from under his heavy brows. "The great work must continue, sire."
"So it shall, Tholen, so it shall." Vaide smiled. "We'll have some people come over to beef up your security, fix those pesky thrusters, yes?" He steepled his fingers, tapping them together rapidly; a slightly nervous habit he was not entirely proud of. "In return, it's been decided at the citadel that your production must increase threefold."
"What?" Tholen gaped. "Sire, the priestess will not survive!"
"I'd suggest getting some more priestesses, old friend." He put his hand on the priest's shoulder. "Perhaps you could keep three on the go at once. They could keep each other company!"
* * * *
After he had touched the priest, Vaide was careful to keep his hand at his side and slightly crooked, all the way back to his ship. Only when he was safely aboard did he swivel the ruby ring around his finger to face the correct way.
He sat on the bed, and carefully twisted the ruby itself ninety degrees in its mount, watching as the tiny needle slid back into the centre of the jewel. The needle was quite long, but slender: it was unlikely the priest had even felt it go through his skin.
The drug was already in his bloodstream, however. Within two hours he would suffer a violent fever, during the throes of which his psyche would come apart at the seams. He would be a drooling lunatic long before Vaide had returned to Magadan and the Citadel.
Vaide shrugged slightly to himself. Enlightenment, Tholen himself had said, required certain sacrifices.
It was a pity the priest had been such a fool. Durham Red's produce had been so very sweet, Vaide had tasted it himself. He had also gained two levels of advancement just from the sale of it.
And as for its more unexpected qualities, well…
He had to have her back. The saint's retrieval was more important than most in the citadel—in any of the citadels —could possibly understand.
Still, Vaide could wait. Patience was one of his primary virtues, and one that had served him well during his long rise though the levels of dominance. His agents were already scouring the galaxy for Durham Red. She would be found soon enough.
In the meantime, he had plenty to amuse him. Magadan itself was gearing up for some intriguing changes in the next few months, and what the Iconoclasts were planning for the universe would be an amusing diversion too.
Vaide put his hands behind his head and settled back among the pillows. He licked his lips, running the tip of his tongue over the sharp points of his fangs, then turned and signalled for Lise to join him.
It was going to be a very interesting year.
About the Author
Peter J Evans has over four hundred pieces of published work to his name, ranging from the back covers of videos to big articles about Serious Stuff. He has produced regular columns for gaming magazines, short fiction, long fiction, reviews, interviews and a sticker book. His first novel, Mnemosyne's Kiss, was published in 1999 by Virgin Publishing, under their worryingly short lived Virgin Worlds imprint. Evans and Simon Jowett previously contributed towards Black Flame with Judge Dredd Black Atlantic.
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