by Gary Gibson
Da’ud’s present opponent had taken a different approach. Victor’s muscles could inflate in seconds, so that what at first appeared to be a human being of normal musculature could rapidly increase in size and – for a limited period only – physical strength. His sweat carried deadly neurotoxins. His jawbones had been replaced with titanium, and the flesh that covered them altered to enable him to stretch his jaws wide like a snake and crush an opponent’s head in their grasp.
As Da’ud glanced upwards and caught Moss’s eye, there was a certain admiration in their exchanged glance; something that might even be called love. Victor’s expression remained bright but blank, for he was little more than a walking automaton now, really, and Moss already had a good idea which of the two engineered warriors would win this battle. And yet this knowledge was coloured by the awareness that Da’ud, assuming he survived this contest, had every intention of confronting Moss himself at the earliest opportunity.
And that would never do.
Moss spared Da’ud a brief smile; he had faced similar challenges quite a few times before and survived all of them – and more. If Moss’s thinking was correct, Da’ud would win this fight, more by virtue of his intact intellect than anything else, and the relatively robotic Victor would most probably lose.
Or, if he was wrong, Victor would kill Da’ud and thereby solve a potential problem for Moss. Either way, Moss had carefully engineered and nurtured the two men’s rivalry in the hope that precisely such a face-off as this one would occur.
Victor’s body tensed in a way that signalled he was ready to attack. Moss then withdrew a dagger from the inside pocket of his long coat and tossed it down onto the floor of the pit. The blade struck the absorbent matting covering the floor fairly near Victor, its hilt wobbling slightly from the impact.
Two pairs of glittering eyes stared unwaveringly up at Moss with a mixture of respect, awe, terror and hatred.
‘Wait,’ Moss ordered quietly. A moment later, the Queen of Immortal Light’s proxy, along with a select group of the Queen’s own councillors and advisers, entered the chamber that contained the Killing Floor. The Queen’s proxy was young, fed just enough of the gene-morph secretion produced by the Queen herself to keep her stand-in both enormously fat and effectively immortal, but without achieving the gargantuan scale of the real thing.
This proxy – if she was lucky and proved herself sufficiently loyal – might get the chance to found her own Hive in some distant future millennium. For the meantime, however, she served the same Queen that had mothered her and all the other citizens of her Hive; and although not as large as the Queen herself, the proxy was still of sufficient girth to warrant a field suspension platform all to herself. She appeared to float into the room on a platter of coloured light, the field-generator itself hidden under the vast folds of fat that composed most of her bulk. The Royal Councillors walked on either side of her.
Shortly after the Queen of Immortal Light had granted Hugh Moss shelter within the Night’s End system, he had made a point of carrying out surgery on his body that would allow him to interpret the scent-speak on which the Bandati so regularly relied. He easily picked up the air of imperious aloofness his visitor evinced.
‘The proxy of her imperial ruler, the Queen of Immortal Light, gives you greetings,’ one of the Councillors spoke into a gently glowing interpreter hovering directly before his mouth parts. The Councillor then glanced towards the ringed pit, and continued: ‘She also wishes to know the nature of the entertainment you intend providing for us.’
Moss bowed slightly, and gestured down towards Da’ud and Victor, who still waited patiently. ‘This, my dear proxy, is the method by which I test the results of my continuing research,’ he explained, listening carefully to the tick-tack sound of a simultaneous translation into the Bandati dialect. ‘As you already know, my creations are much in demand.’
‘These are your newest assassins, then?’ the proxy asked him directly, clicking breathily into her own interpreter.
Moss knew that every word, every nuance, was being transmitted to the actual Queen of Immortal Light via instantaneous tach-net transmission. As the proxy spoke, the alien entourage moved forward until it encircled the railing above the pit.
‘Yes, my dear proxy,’ Moss replied, his ghoulishly thin lips drawing back over the brilliantly shining shards. ‘I and my creations represent a prime resource: the finest assassins and warriors that ever lived and breathed.’
‘Then what’s the point of wasting them by setting them to murder each other like this?’
‘If my assassins can’t defend themselves from each other, then they don’t deserve to leave this place alive. They would have proven themselves inferior. My purpose is to refine the flesh into something far superior to the apparent sum of its parts – which is why the very few who get to leave my gardens can demand such high prices from their prospective employers.’
The Queen’s proxy shifted to afford herself a better view of the two assassins waiting in the pit below, the movement causing her field platform to tilt slightly. ‘I think, Moss, I understand you after a fashion. You are the least humanlike human I have ever encountered. You don’t think like the rest of your brethren.’
‘I’ll guess that you’re alluding to my interest in bioengineering.’
‘I believe you know the history of our Grand Reformation in some detail?’
‘Of course. And your Queen’s interest in developing further alterations to your own species reflects my interests. Her approval of my . . . suggestions on how to re-engineer the weakest elements of your society has led directly to her esteemed patronage these past several years. I have much to thank her for.’
‘Be careful, Hugh Moss, that these words remain here, for our people retain a very strong taboo against further racial engineering.’
‘Of course. One moment, please.’
Moss turned and glanced down, signalling for the combat to begin. Da’ud let out an ear-rending howl, his bones audibly grinding as they and his muscles shifted into startling new alignments, his diamond teeth glittering brightly in the dim green light. Victor’s muscles meanwhile stretched and bulged, sinews rippling under his flesh like steel cables, his jaws opening inhumanly wide.
Moss smiled as his two latest protégés came together. The fight did not last long, because, with his diamond teeth, Da’ud had the clear edge. He had engineered his body for speed and agility rather than brute musculature, and Victor was learning his lesson the hard way. Bright scarlet soon stained the Killing Floor and Victor lay gasping and screaming as Da’ud stared up at his audience, eyes shining with murderous fever, as he waited for Moss’s signal to deliver the coup de grâce.
Moss nodded, and Da’ud bent down, almost delicately slicing Victor’s throat open with glittering razor-sharp incisors. Victor jerked and trembled for several seconds, then lay still for ever. The matting under his body was stained reddish black as Da’ud stood up, his face and shoulders daubed in scarlet. He let out an animal howl that was all the more disturbing for coming from an apparently human throat, before heading out of sight into the darkness of the doorway set into one side of the pit. The Queen’s proxy spoke as Moss turned his attention from the spectacle below.
‘You should know, Hugh Moss, that my primary reason for being here is because of the derelict. The Queen herself decided not to pursue the question of precisely how you came to know so much about it, in return for your help in gaining entry to its core systems. Yet your efforts so far have proven, frankly, negligible, and your claims of special knowledge didn’t prevent valuable Bandati technicians from vanishing utterly while attempting to penetrate its interior. I’m sure you’re aware there are means by which your “special knowledge” could be extracted directly from your skull?’
Moss’s feral smile was stained yellow. Neither the proxy nor the Queen she served suspected he was entirely aware of what else they had hidden just a few light-years away, in a neighbouring star-system.
&
nbsp; ‘The craft’s defences indeed proved extremely formidable,’ he replied. ‘It seems to be in sporadic communication with someone – or something – elsewhere in this system. I believe it’s being actively directed to resist any attempts at boarding it. And yet you’ve gone out of your way to keep back vital information that might have allowed me to achieve actual results. Perhaps you’re in a mood to enlighten me now?’
‘Yes,’ the proxy replied, somewhat to Moss’s surprise. Up till now, the Queen’s failure to be in the least forthcoming had proved a constant irritation. ‘Two humans arrived with the derelict and were taken to Ironbloom for extensive questioning. One of them proved cooperative, but the other, named Dakota Merrick, is unfortunately far from willing to cooperate. Yet both clearly have some means of controlling the derelict which we’ve so far been unable to ascertain.’
Dakota Merrick? How remarkable, thought Moss. Fate could be a subtle beast indeed. His hands tightened at his sides in anticipation.
‘Then if one of them is cooperative, you already have what you need,’ he replied, choosing his words carefully while his thoughts raced.
‘Not so.’
Moss regarded the proxy quizzically.
‘The other human – a certain Lucas Corso – has informed us of communications protocols designed specifically to communicate with the derelict. He claims to have had some success with these, and he also claims technology contained within the derelict is responsible for the recent, unexplained destruction of Nova Arctis. We have reason to believe he may be telling the truth. Further, he tells us that Merrick is somehow linked to the starship through cerebral implants. We’ve run some analytical scans on her, although so far we’ve avoided surgical intervention – at least until we have a clearer idea exactly what it is we’re dealing with.’
Moss fought hard to hide his sudden excitement. He was finally being allowed access to the high-level records he needed – and perhaps, if he burrowed a little further, he might find the confirmation for those rumours that had first brought him to the Night’s End system.
When Nova Arctis had been destroyed, he’d felt certain Trader in Faecal Matter of Animals had played a part in its death. So perhaps the Shoal’s carefully maintained peace was finally unravelling after so very long.
‘What else can you tell me?’ he asked, straining to keep his tone level.
‘Corso is apparently an expert in archaeo-cryptology, with a particular emphasis on Shoal communication languages. We’re assuming for the moment Merrick is the one responsible for some of our setbacks. That would certainly support your thesis of outside interference, and would explain some of her behaviour when she believes she’s unobserved. We can’t rule out the possibility that we won’t be able to make any more progress without her cooperation – willing or otherwise.’
Moss opened his lips wide in an apparent snarl, and then started to make the most remarkable barking sound. One of her attendants informed the startled proxy that he was ‘laughing’.
‘My, she does have you over a barrel, doesn’t she?’ he said, shaking his head. ‘So why come running to me now? You already sabotaged my own efforts by not telling me everything I needed to know. Perhaps if I’d been the one to interrogate the two of them in the first place—’
‘Merrick nearly killed you not so long ago, Hugh Moss. She told us that herself, while in a drug-induced trance. We . . . were concerned about your actions if we gave you direct access to either her or Corso.’
‘You thought I’d take my revenge on her, even at the risk of losing my Perfumed Gardens after all these years?’ He cast his gaze around the rusted and foliage-dense walls surrounding them. ‘I like to think I’m a little more pragmatic than that.’
‘Your point is taken,’ the proxy replied, with maybe a hint of brittleness beyond the normal artificial tones of the interpreter. ‘However, certain circumstances dictate—’
‘What circumstances?’ Moss barked.
‘Certain circumstances dictate the need for haste. My Queen has therefore ordered that a new strategy, suggested by Corso, should be pursued. In the meantime, you will return with us once more to Ironbloom, and yourself interrogate Merrick. If you can’t find some way to force her to cooperate with us, then she’ll die . . . but not by your hands. And my Queen has also decreed that your failure would result in the immediate loss of her patronage and the confiscation of this facility, along with all your research materials.’
Moss smiled grimly. He glanced down at his clawlike hands, the sight of them hateful and disturbing in the way the skin stretched over the bones beneath. For a moment, his sense of self-loathing gave way to a sense of wonder; for the one thing he’d sought all these years was about to fall into his murderous grasp.
The Bandati Queen and all her kind could rot in hell for all he cared; what mattered more than anything was the derelict. If he could gain control of it, his greatest desire – the destruction of the entire Shoal species – might actually, finally, be within his grasp.
One Shoal-member in particular had featured in many of his revenge fantasies over the years. He’d got so close to him that time on Bourdain’s Rock, so close . . . and then that bitch Merrick had stolen his chance to finally confront and kill Trader in Faecal Matter of Animals.
‘Very well.’ A smile of genuine pleasure twisted the corners of Hugh’s lips. He enjoyed a frisson of pleasure in the knowledge that neither the proxy nor the Queen she served had any idea just how well they were serving his own aims. ‘I can certainly give you results, but are there any limitations on my methods of interrogation?’
The proxy’s reply was blunt. ‘She’s of no use to us unless you can find a way to extract the information we need.’
‘Pick her brain apart, then. It’ll kill her, but you’ll have what you need.’
‘But then it might also kill her before we get what we need. You well know such invasive measures are far from certain. Therefore see that you do not fail us, Hugh Moss.’
‘I won’t,’ Moss replied, his smile still feral.
An exquisite plan of action was already forming in his mind.
Seven
By the next day, Corso had vanished from Dakota’s cell.
Dakota sat up, coughing to clear her throat, and moaning softly as a fresh migraine headache committed assault and battery on the inside of her skull. And yet, for all that, it was once again quantitatively less debilitating than the last one.
She shook her head, feeling unusually drowsy as she glanced around the cell several more times. She was alone, and found she couldn’t make up her mind exactly how she felt about that. She’d been angry with him earlier – more angry than she’d thought she could ever feel about another human being.
But at least there had been someone else there with her.
Her head felt so muzzy she was sure they must have drugged her into unconsciousness before removing Corso. Or, perhaps, Corso being snatched away after she herself had failed to behave like a good lab-rat was the most obvious explanation.
She crawled over to the lip just beyond the door-opening. Lying on her stomach with both hands gripping the edge, she stared down, wondering if maybe, just maybe, he’d taken the easy way out of incarceration and merely jumped.
She saw only the river, like a twisting silver mirror under the creeping light of dawn, winding its way between buildings huddled up against each other. Maybe he was down there, but she couldn’t bring herself to believe he was even distantly capable of committing such an act of self-destruction.
What now? she wondered, pulling herself back inside and peering into the relative gloom of her cell, which seemed so much more austere and grim now Corso was gone.
She stared at the ambrosia pipe protruding from the rear wall and felt an overwhelming conviction that, with Corso gone, they’d have reintroduced whatever vile substance had previously kept her docile.
Back on the diet, then.
She suddenly felt the orbital facility above Blackflower come b
ack into direct line-of-sight. In that moment she opened herself up to the derelict Magi starship trapped inside it, its presence settling once again into the circuitry of her implants like a weary traveller collapsing into the embrace of a familiar armchair.
Dakota closed her eyes and grinned like a cat. And to think the Bandati thought she was their prisoner! She was freer than her gaolers could ever imagine, for, even with her physical body trapped here for the moment, her mind could walk through the walls confining her at any time.
She rapidly fell into a half-trance as her mind joined more fully with the derelict. She could sense the shift and flow of information throughout the facility that contained it like a storm of fireflies circling a sleeping animal, while the gentler presence of the Piri Reis was still on board a Bandati ship docked within the Blackflower facility.
She became gradually aware that more machinery was being unloaded and carried inside the derelict. Dozens of Bandati were working at moving heavy equipment through fresh breaches in the hull, lifting chunks of metal and plastic off pallets and then assembling them in those few interior spaces to which they’d already gained entry.
The Bandati were further inside the derelict than they had managed before – far deeper than was acceptable.
Corso, damn him, had to be responsible.
She reached out to the derelict. It began to cut off the passageways the Bandati had already penetrated, isolating their exploratory teams, tearing both them and their equipment apart.
The last of them would be dead within minutes. But, even more than before, the need to escape – to find some way off Ironbloom before Corso could do any more harm – had become paramount to her.