‘I don’t like talking to proxies, and I suspect your ratings would plummet if your own kind knew you were an arachnid.’
Churchman tried to ’face broadcast the ’sect Elite’s arachnid augment to the evacuating ships, a tiny act of spite. He was not surprised to find the ’face transmission jammed.
‘You toppled the god you believed in and replaced him with science. If your god had been real, how do you think he would have felt?’
‘These are not your words, puppet. My god is real enough to me, that is all I need. He would not judge me for idols. He would judge me for the killing and all the suffering I have caused.’
The black liquid glass on the Elite’s face transformed itself to take on Patron’s features. Churchman took a step back. It meant his ancient enemy was much more closely tied to the technology of the Consortium Elite than should be possible.
‘You know this will be the last generation of bridge-capable ships …’ Churchman told Patron’s visage.
‘It does not matter, not now.’ It was his voice. ‘You actually sent for the Monarchists. You know what they are? Who he was?’
‘You have to be stopped.’ Churchman’s modulated voice was quiet.
‘I don’t think you understand how many times I have done this. I cannot be stopped.’
Churchman wasn’t sure what Patron meant by ‘how many times’ he had done this. The visage in the black, liquid glass of the Elite’s armour actually looked sad for a moment. Churchman could not help himself, despite everything he had suffered at the hands of Patron, despite the suffering Patron had wrought on countless others. He still couldn’t help but feel sorry for him.
‘I wish things had been better for you,’ Churchman told Patron’s visage. The ’sect Elite nodded under her master’s control. The large golden exoskeleton started to fall. Churchman had killed himself and wiped his mind and systems of all information that wasn’t viral before the Elite even reached him. The clawed limbs penetrated the exoskeleton’s heavy armour as if it didn’t exist. The ’sect Elite lifted Churchman’s shell off the ground and held the limp exoskeleton there for a moment. Then she started to peel him, looking for secrets. The viruses gave her a few moments pause.
‘You abuse me, wound me, disobey me, and ask me to save you?’ Scab demanded.
‘Save yourself,’ the Monk said. She didn’t like the way Talia was rolling around on the floor close to the pool. Unaugmented, and if the ship’s systems wouldn’t help, there was a real danger of her drowning in the pool.
Behind the speeding Basilisk II, the Lazerene looked sick, its very matter warping to make it look like its leprous namesake. All of its weapons had stopped firing, though the capital ship was still taking a lot of incoming fire. Clothed in light, another one of the Church’s three capital ships was trying to get into position to help the Lazerene, trading fire with the Consortium fleet and aided by the Cathedral’s remaining local weapon systems. The Lazerene’s engines burned brightly. All of them, bar Talia, were aware of the ’face broadcast of the Lazerene’s ten-thousand-strong crew, screaming. They presumed it came from the Elite.
The Monk was trying every electronic warfare trick she knew to gain access to the Basilisk II’s systems, but nothing was working. Scab was too good at this kind of thing. She thought about trying to reason with him.
‘The AI can lead us to answers. He knows things.’ The Monk hated the pleading tone in her voice.
‘If this is enough then let’s end it here,’ Vic told his partner. The Monk was pretty sure it wasn’t a bluff.
‘Not by you,’ Scab said. ‘I won’t be killed by you.’
The Lazerene collided with the other capital ship, crushing some of the smaller screening ships between the two behemoths. Whether from the diseased matter that the Elite had infected it with, or from taking so many hits from the Consortium fleet, the Lazerene’s structural integrity finally failed. The capital ship’s back broke. Huge lumps of debris spun from it as it split, the two parts of the craft scissoring down on the other capital ship, still trying to rise through the wreckage of its sister craft.
A section of the Basilisk II’s transparent smart matter hull magnified part of the wreckage. The Innocent burst from it like a parasitic birth. The Elite was making straight for them.
Scab gave them access to the ship. The Monk split her intellect again. Scab’s viral attack on the AI and the construct that contained Maude and Uday’s psyches was represented as a hydra. She clothed herself in armour like she’d seen an actress wearing in a film about Joan of Arc, and laid into the virus with her own attack programs, symbolised by her sword. Vic appeared looking like a character played by his immersion star namesake in one of the colonial immersions Matto had been famed for. Though the real Matto had only two arms. Vic’s attack programs looked like a colonial era disc gun and twin tumbler pistols.
The Monk wondered if Vic found shooting at the Scab-faced hydra therapeutic. The beleaguered AI, badly bleeding, was attacking the hydra as well.
In the real world the Monk and Vic remained covering Scab as he flew the Basilisk II with his mind. The Innocent had gone. Then the Basilisk II ’faced her all the warnings. The Elite was standing on the other side of the pool, black, liquid glass peeling from him and sinking into his flesh, revealing a beautiful Scab as a beatific young man. His transforming weapon was an oversized sword burning with black fire. The Innocent was very much awake. He reached for his uglier clone twin and started to walk across the pool’s water towards him.
The Monk ’faced another timed command to her coherent energy field generator. Talia was surrounded with amber light again. She would live, at least until the timer ran down. Then the Monk tried hard not to soil herself. The air felt electric. She dumped drugs from her internal supplies into her system, all but tranquilising herself as she attempted to cope with fear and awe enough to function. Vic was backing away from the Innocent, the air thick with his pheromone musk. With a snarl, Scab extended the energy javelin from its housing in his right arm and moved towards the Innocent like a stalking animal. The Monk suddenly found herself in control of the Basilisk II.
The hydra was dead. All its heads cut off. The now pharmaceutically-calm Monk checked the AI to see how much damage had been done, how much memory had been lost. The other half of her mind accelerated the Basilisk II, seeking the path of least resistance towards the closest beacon corridor. She manoeuvred away from the larger ships, only picking fights with the smaller, faster craft that could keep up with the modified yacht. A frigate came apart in a hail of transferred kinetic energy, exploding fusion and hard light. All the while she was staring, transfixed, at the Innocent walking across the surface of the pool.
A howl of anguish and pain. An open ’face broadcast as a carrier wave for a sonic attack and electronic warfare. Ships with damaged systems suddenly found themselves dead in space. The Basilisk II was thrown into shade by huge projected black wings.
Fallen Angel had come to avenge the death of Horrible Angel, his lover, and/or possibly sister. The Monarchist Elite had died at the hands of another Consortium Elite Scab clone when the planet Game had been destroyed. Behind the Fallen Angel, the Monarchist fleet was emerging from the red clouds, engaging the Consortium fleet. The Innocent paused and then continued. Scab crouched, ready to pounce. The Monk saw something moving under the carpet, like a burrowing animal. The brass scorpion burst from the smart matter floor, its stinger curving over its body. The Monk didn’t even see the sword move and bits of the scorpion were dropping into the pool.
‘I’m frightened,’ the Innocent said, as if confiding in them. There were more warning messages from the Basilisk II, strange information about the yacht’s structural integrity.
‘No, no, no, no, no …’ Vic said, backing away from something. The Monk knew he should have been able to control his terror with his internal drug supply. Then the Monk was aware of something else in the ship with them.
It floated in the air, a squat, roughly cy
lindrical automaton with various strange technological components protruding from it that the Monk knew to be L-tech. It too was clothed in black liquid glass. Ludwig, the Monarchist’s machine Elite.
The Innocent stared at the other Elite, his face twitching as if in the grips of some horrible waking nightmare. Then black liquid glass seeped from his pores, clothing him again.
Sensor information from the ship told the Monk that there was some kind of transmitted exchange going on between the two Elite. The air shimmered with ghost ordnance. Both Elite seemed to be taking care not to harm the other occupants of the ship.
Scab was crouched like an animal, staring at the Innocent, looking for a weakness and opportunity. Then the Innocent was gone through the pool room’s ceiling. Ludwig sank through the floor. Out in Red Space the two Elite cut loose at each other. Red clouds enveloped the Basilisk II. The last glimpse the Monk caught of the Cathedral was of it collapsing in on itself.
It gave Patron no pleasure to look down on Churchman’s inert exoskeleton, but then nothing could give him pleasure.
Churchman’s exoskeleton had been found by one of the Thunder Squads. Hedetet, the arachnid Elite, had been too busy fighting Fallen Angel during their retreat. The Monarchist Elite had fought like a fury, still seemingly inconsolable at the death of his sister and/or lover.
Parker was standing to his right on the bridge of Semektet, Patron’s pleasure yacht. The fighting fish moved through the liquid software of the sculpted, transparent smart matter head that Parker had replaced his real head with. Patron had decided a long time ago that he would never understand fashion. On his left stood the most covert of the three Elite at his command. The serpent-headed woman clothed in black liquid glass was one of his oldest and most faithful servants.
‘I would be interested to know why Ludwig helped them,’ he said. Her serpent head nodded once and she sank through the deck of the yacht.
Patron turned to Parker, his personal secretary. ‘It seems we may still have a use for Mr Hat after all.’ He could not understand pleasure but he still felt these small disappointments.
13
Ancient Britain
They had been travelling for the better part of a week. They had crossed over into a mountainous country, the landscape completely white from heavy snowfall. Britha had seen hill forts, and fortified villages, but other than exchanging a few words in Pretani with the odd wool- and fur-clad shepherd they had pretty much been left unmolested.
When they could they had sought hospitality among common folk and the warrior classes. It was always given, though often begrudgingly. People were nervous. They had heard stories of the fair folk raiding and a warband of monsters from the sea. Britha’s appearance, her red metallic tattoos, did little to ease their minds. Bladud, to his credit, tried to leave any landsfolk they stayed with richer than when they had arrived.
In the roundhouses and longhalls of the wealthier warriors the Witch King proved to be a fair storyteller. He was known to many of them and had travelled this way before. He was often greeted warily, though more often than not as a friend. He regaled them with the stories of the Muileartach’s Brood, who he called the spawn of Andraste, and their current fight with the Lochlannach. He spun stories of mortal heroes facing the gods themselves. Stories that Britha knew could kill the young and the foolish.
They were in the territory of a people called the Deceangli. To Britha they seemed a timid people. She suspected that the majesty of their mountains, the starkness of their land offered so little worth the taking for other tribes that they were rarely raided.
Some nights they had hospitality, and others, like this one, they had found no hall. Instead they had found a shepherd’s bwthyn in the high country of one of the snow-filled narrow mountain passes they were trying to negotiate. The bwthyn was little more than a wood-framed hut with a thatch roof, the walls reinforced with mud and dung, but it kept the wind off and there was a small pit for a fire. Even so it was a tight squeeze for Bladud, two of his bear-skinned Brigante warriors, Guidgen and two of the gwyllion, Moren, herself and Madawg. She had been somewhat surprised to see Madawg accompanying them. She had assumed that he would be left behind to try and steal the Red Chalice. The narrow-faced Corpse People warrior spent most of the time riding at the front of their little column in the company of Bladud and Moren, who were trailed by the two Brigante warriors.
Britha had come to the conclusion that she didn’t like Moren very much. A dryw had to be knowledgeable, and at their best, wise. Often they had to be cunning and ruthless as well, but all of that was in the service of the people. She had met dryw like Moren before. He cared more for his own ambition than he did the people he served. What was more, he seemed to be firmly in Bladud’s counsel.
She had spent most of her time on the trip so far in the company of Guidgen. She had drunk from the chalice, and he of her blood, so both of them were capable of dealing with the discomforts and the cold, as was Madawg. Certainly more so than Bladud. Britha could see the Witch King getting more fatigued with every day. Yet he had pushed for this journey.
It was a different fatigue telling on Guidgen, however. Britha wasn’t sure when it had happened. Perhaps it was the confrontation with forces that previously he had only known abstractly through signs and omens. Perhaps it was the strain of constantly trying to counter Bladud’s machinations, but despite the ‘gifts’ of her blood flowing through him, he seemed tired as well. He had taken to grumbling, and his exchanges with Bladud were starting to take the form of two bickering, crotchety old men. Most nights Britha felt like banging their heads together. She could see Guidgen’s point, however.
Britha had also struggled to rest each night. She was filled with thoughts of the Lochlannach attacking the warband; fears that any chance of getting her unseen daughter back was slipping further and further away.
‘I wonder if they are all dead yet?’ Guidgen mused. It was a question he had asked most nights. Britha may have agreed with the sentiment but she was tiring of the divisiveness of his words. They were, after all, huddled round the same fire, they all had the same frozen earth under their bony arses. Instead of rising to the gibe Bladud muttered something about going to make water.
‘More like making yellow icicles,’ one of his warriors muttered.
Bladud’s departure from the cramped hut brought a blast of icy air with it. A moment later Britha made her own excuse and got up to follow. The Brigante who had spoken nudged his friend and, grinning, gave him a knowing look. The grin disappeared from the warrior’s face when he saw Britha glaring at him. He looked back down into the fire and she left the hut.
It was snowing hard outside. Bladud was little more than a black smudge through the flurries. The wind carried distant howls. She was surprised there were wolves out in this, let alone hunting, but the winter had come early and all were hungry. Steam rose as urine hit the snow and Britha came to stand next to the Witch King.
‘How is the child?’ Bladud asked, his tone neutral.
She had to think about the question. She was aware that she was pregnant, she was being careful with her activities, though she would not have recommended this trip to anyone else in her state, even this early on. She had wondered briefly if she was trying to rid herself of the child, but when the Lochlannach killers had come for it she had known the answer to that question. She knew the magics imbued in her by the Red Chalice would safeguard the child. There was little difference now to how she had been before. She was not even sick in the morning. She did not wish to risk fighting, however.
‘Fine,’ she told the Witch King. He nodded, put himself away and turned back to the bwthyn.
‘Who are you now?’ Britha asked.
Bladud stopped and visibly sagged. ‘I tire of these constant gibes. You tear at me like rats gnawing on the near-dead. All of this will be decided at Ynys Dywyll. This is no way to behave. Is it too much to ask to be left in peace during this journey?’
By the hut the horses wh
innied nervously, their ears pricked back. Britha glanced at them for a moment. Perhaps they should post someone out here with a brand to watch the horses, though tightly packed together as they were they would be difficult for wolves to break, and their hooves would see off a pack until their riders could come to their aid.
‘I’m not biting at you,’ Britha tried to assure him. ‘I understand that you are ambitious, though I see little point in trying to rule anywhere you cannot travel across in more than a day or two. But against the Muileartach’s Brood you led, now you scheme, and this, this journey is a foolish risk. I may not like the way he is reminding you, but Guidgen is right. So I ask again, who are you?’
‘We left capable warriors behind us—’ Bladud started.
Britha touched his chest. ‘But we took their leader away, and we left them divided, and we did not utilise the magics we have, and all this for the ambition of one man, it would seem. All would follow you in this, but few would wish to live in tyranny for their efforts afterwards.’
‘So I am a tyrant now, am I? I have travelled over the seas. You would not call me such if you had seen true tyranny. Ask your Carthaginian friend.’
‘Perhaps, but that is no reason to take the first steps down this path. To ally with low men like the Corpse People.’
‘They are tools to be used, as they were for you, as by all accounts were the Lochlannach,’ and he glanced down at her belly. Britha suppressed her anger. He was, after all, not wrong. This time he touched her chest. ‘Both of us have served our own ends in this. Both of us have risked ruin. You for your child …’ He turned away from her and looked out into the flurry. There was more distant howling. He wrapped his furs tighter around himself.
‘And you?’
‘It’s the training in the groves. We need to be so sure of ourselves because others need to listen.’
The Beauty of Destruction Page 19