The Beauty of Destruction

by Gavin G. Smith

  The Monk’s eyes narrowed but it was obvious that she had no answers. They were still hunted, there was still money on their heads, they appeared to have once again garnered the attention of the Elite, and any allies had either betrayed them, or been destroyed.

  ‘If I may make a suggestion,’ the Basilisk II’s newly integrated AI said. Scab’s face twitched. ‘I think Mr Scab should visit his mother.’

  Vic couldn’t have been more surprised if Steven the Dolphin had spontaneously reincarnated in the lounge/C&C and started fellating Scab, not least because he knew Scab had been gestated in a Cyst exo-womb.

  ‘I don’t have a mother,’ Scab said quietly. Vic could hear the tension in the human killer’s voice.

  Cyst was on the cusp of extinction in celestial terms, and it had been for a very long time. The cold gas giant’s magnetosphere, which should have been stripped away millions of years ago, had been kept in place artificially. Most of its volatiles had been vampirically consumed by the megastructure that caged it. The planet was a huge sphere of sparse clouds of hydrogen and helium, with mega weather systems creeping slowly across it. The reflected light of its fading star made the gas clouds look white against a pale blue. It was a husk, a corpse world, it looked like the ghost of a gas giant and it should have been torn apart by gravitic forces a long time ago.

  Initially thought to have been the site of the single greatest find of S-tech during the colonial era, Vic now knew that the hard-tech of Cyst’s Cage meant that it was actually an L-tech structure. He was still getting his head round it not having been created by the Seeders.

  The Cage was basically a massive network of broad walkways and ziggurat-style buildings at evenly spaced junctions, all of which were made of some kind of smart matter. The Cage moved counter to the spin of the planet in a way that seemed to contradict physics and meant that it should have been torn apart by centrifugal forces. Somehow this allowed the walkways to generate a gravity field of roughly 1 G.

  The Cage harvested energy from Cyst’s volatiles like a leech, and presumably had once done the same from the cooling of the planet causing compression, which in turn heated it up, allowing it to radiate more heat than it received from its star. It was theorised that Cyst had been some kind of fuelling station. Now there was just enough fuel left, apparently, for the Cage to continue functioning. Sooner or later that fuel would run out.

  Such a feat of engineering had, of course, required a great deal of matter. The initial xeno-archaeologist expedition had theorised that rings and a number of moons, mostly system-invading planetoids trapped by the gas giant’s gravity, had once surrounded Cyst, and that their matter had been used in the construction of the Cage.

  None of which meant very much to Vic. What he did know was that the existence of the mega engineering artefact had naturally led to war between the fledgling Monarchist systems, the fledgling Consortium, and of course the Church, all of whom wanted it. This was despite the Cage pretty much defying all attempts at scientific analysis.

  During the height of the hostilities, roughly a quarter of the planet’s volatiles had suddenly disappeared, and more than three quarters of the crossroad ziggurats had suddenly emitted beams of superheated plasma powerful enough to cut through star ships and make their hulls burn in space. Suddenly Cyst’s orbit had been full of wreckage.

  The hostilities ceased. The belligerents were less worried about the destruction of property and personnel, and more worried that the utilisation of the planet’s resources in such a way would significantly hasten its destruction. Without a way to use the tech for their own gain, the Consortium, the Monarchist systems, and (in theory) the Church, lost interest.

  It had proved cheaper to leave many of the combatants and other support personnel behind on the Cage after the conflict. It was assumed that they would die out when their supplies ran out, or that whatever had attacked the ships would deal with them. Instead the ziggurats started to assemble food and other supplies, though the Cage itself had seemed to be implicitly encouraging competition for the resources through scarcity.

  Things went feral quickly. Roaming gangs were formed. They fought for territory and resources high above the depleted gas clouds. Heretical cults sprang up. Many of them talked about the Dark Mother. Those that died were harvested for DNA, and new inhabitant/combatants were born from exo-wombs in the smart matter of the ziggurats.

  The population had remained reasonably stable, in part because of the constant warring. Newborns very quickly gained physical maturity and were often ‘rewarded’ with grafted weapons and used as hunting/fighting animals until they had proven themselves enough to become something that looked more like an uplift.

  Scab had been born into this. Apparently he had been part of an already-existing bloodline. He had started his own street sect, dedicated to himself. His mixture of cunning, psychosis, grasp of strategy, and his fervent followers who offered a choice of convert or be tortured to death in a society that had been conditioned to respect strength, soon had him close to dominating the world. A situation that the Consortium, backed by the Church, could not allow.

  The war was fought on the walkways, in the ziggurats, and among the still-dripping structures of fused and hardened bone and skin Scab had made from his victims. Church militia and Consortium military contractors had fought side by side, but it had been the Legions, the Consortium’s penal forces, who had borne the brunt of the fighting. Poorly armed and equipped, they had been thrown at the hordes of cultists.

  Eventually a Legion special ops team, aided by one of the Church’s monks, had captured Scab. Vic was pretty sure it hadn’t been Talia’s older sister. What he didn’t understand was why the Consortium didn’t have one of the Elite deal with Scab, and why capture him? After his capture he’d had brain surgery, apparently to curb his excesses, and had been placed into one of the Legions. There he had worked his way up until he had been offered Elitehood.

  Both the Consortium and the Church had maintained a presence above Cyst. A number of the Legions’ special operations units were made up entirely of recruits from Cyst. The Church’s presence was to monitor the L-tech artefact, in theory.

  But this was where it all started, Vic had thought as he looked at the planet through the Basilisk II’s sensor feed, which was ’face linked direct to his neunonics. From this distance it looked like wisps of gas encased in a glass sphere, which was in turn in bondage. They were relying on the Church-upgraded stealth systems to keep them hidden from the Consortium military contractor fleets now stationed above the planet.

  Part of the lounge’s wall became transparent and the Monk got up from the sofa she’d been sitting on, concentrating, since they’d emerged from Red Space. Talia had been pacing and fidgeting. It seemed obvious to Vic, since he had cross-referenced her behaviour with the information he had on human psychology, that the pre-Loss girl was struggling to deal with what had happened at the Cathedral, and the amount of violence she had to face in general. Currently she was trying to cope by self-medicating with vodka and THC. Vic had already sent a request to the Basilisk II’s AI for virtual counselling for the girl, as she couldn’t control her psyche in a healthy way with drugs and machinery like the rest of them could.

  Part of the Basilisk II’s hull also became transparent and magnified the view of distant Cyst. The Monk, hands clasped behind her back, stood just in front of the image. Scab extruded himself through the ceiling, making Talia squeal with fright, and dropped into the lounge in a way that reminded Vic of the humans’ simian ancestry.

  ‘I’ve sent a heavily occulted tight-beam signal to Church assets in the system,’ the Monk said. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘They’re dead,’ Scab said. They had picked up the information from news transmitted between the beacons in Red Space. The Consortium had moved unilaterally on the Church, a board-level decree, no exceptions. Military contractors, company security forces, and the Legions had attacked every ship, Church and facility they could find. Any Church membe
rs who resisted were killed outright, many others had killed themselves for one reason or another, those that could had run, the rest were being held in the ship or facility they had been captured in.

  The Monarchists had, of course, offered sanctuary to all Church personnel, and were on the cusp of war with the Consortium for the first time in centuries, and were one Elite down.

  ‘She spoke to me once,’ Scab said. Everyone turned to look at him.

  ‘Who?’ the Monk asked.

  Vic found that he had no patience for Scab’s strange little utterings, regardless of how calm his erstwhile partner seemed.

  ‘The Dark Mother.’

  The Monk started laughing. ‘Bullshit,’ she told him.

  Vic sighed and slumped as Scab’s face tightened and he turned to stare at her. ‘Leave him with something,’ Vic ’faced privately to the Monk. ‘Or all we’ll end up doing is fighting until he kills us, or we kill him.’

  Scab clearly saw something in the Monk’s face, however, and he turned to look at Vic.

  ‘What are you going to do when we get down there?’ Vic asked.

  ‘If we get down there,’ the Monk mused.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Scab said. He seemed strangely thoughtful. He turned to look at the magnified image of the hell he had grown up on.

  ‘We can bridge into planetary space,’ Vic said.

  ‘The contractors will be scanning the planet, they’ll target us from orbit,’ the Monk pointed out.

  ‘You think they’ll risk it?’ Vic asked.

  ‘Kind of solipsistic to assume that the only other time that Cyst comes to life is for us,’ the Monk said.

  ‘Okay, “solipsistic”?’ a more than a little drunk Talia said from the sofa. The Monk ignored her.

  ‘What are we going to do when we get down there?’ Vic asked. He was aware there was a whiny tone in his voice. ‘Go sightseeing?’

  The Monk concentrated, frowned and then turned on Scab. ‘What did you just do?’

  ‘Sent a transmission,’ Scab told her.

  ‘It’s his ship,’ Talia pointed out, earning herself a glare from her big sister. ‘Oops.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, we’re trying to hide!’ the Monk shouted at him. He turned to look at her.

  ‘I know what I’m doing,’ he said quietly.

  ‘But we—’

  ‘Please, send a tight-beam signal to these coordinates,’ the Basilisk II’s AI said as his hologram sprang into life.

  ‘What do you want the message to say?’ the Monk asked.

  ‘So it’s alright for us to send a transmission?’ Talia asked.

  ‘Maybe you should stop drinking,’ the Monk suggested.

  ‘Not a chance!’

  ‘A simple hail, but use a Church encryption,’ the AI said.

  Scab was suddenly more interested in the hologram.

  ‘Which one?’ the Monk asked, anger creeping into her tone.

  ‘Any,’ the AI said.

  ‘Any!’ the Monk snapped. Vic wasn’t sure why but suddenly the Monk seemed very angry. The ’sect knew that she had worked black ops for the Church. It was starting to sound like she hadn’t been let in on all of Churchman’s secrets.

  ‘If being angry with me helps then by all means please go ahead but I am not him,’ the AI told her. ‘I just look like him.’

  ‘In which case I am going to call you Basil,’ Talia said. Even Vic thought she was being a little insensitive.

  In Red Space the most real thing about Cyst was the Cage, though the network of walkways and ziggurats looked, well, spikier, Vic thought. Against the red, gaseous background they looked like something from one of the highly stylised, more artistic immersions that he hated. Talia had described it as looking like a dark fairy tale. He’d heard the Monk use the word expressionist. He’d had to search his neunonics for the definition.

  Beneath them the gas clouds were black, serpentine forms roiling around each other.

  ‘I’m sure there’s something down there,’ Talia said again. The Monk just glanced at her irritably.

  The return transmission had the same encryption as the initial hail and had simply contained a set of coordinates in Cyst’s planetary space. It was obvious that the Monk was not overjoyed by any of this. Vic wasn’t entirely pleased himself.

  ‘I believe this is what Churchman wished us to do,’ the ’sect had told the sceptical Monk.

  The Monk was flying the Basilisk II at the moment. For some reason Scab had become passive and less of a control freak than normal. This was making Vic very suspicious. Very slowly the ship sank past the walkways and moved under one of the ‘expressionist’ ziggurats. The Monk was making more and more of the hull transparent at the same time. Red light, the colour of blood, flooded the large, open space lounge/C&C.

  ‘Well, this could be over quickly,’ the Monk muttered. Blue light cut a jagged gash in Red Space, and the Basilisk juddered as red vacuum and a weak helium/hydrogen atmosphere briefly interacted. With a thought, the Monk brought the extensively modified yacht up through the bridge and into Cyst’s atmosphere just underneath one of the ziggurats. Vic was pleasantly surprised that the blockading military contractors didn’t immediately destroy them with an orbital bombardment.

  ‘I was born here,’ Scab said quietly.

  ‘They’re all identical,’ the Monk said scornfully. ‘At an atomic level.’

  Scab just shook his head.

  ‘Is that supposed to be happening?’ Talia asked. They looked up. A covered stairwell was growing out of the bottom of the ziggurat towards the top of their ship. The Monk was staring at it, eyes wide. Vic was aware of Scab moving the top airlock through the smart matter to meet the stairwell. Vic had to step to one side as an extruded stairwell grew out of the carpet to reach the airlock that the ceiling was peeling back to reveal.

  He gestured for Talia and the Monk to go ahead of him.

  ‘Maybe Talia—’ Vic started, but shut up when she turned and glared at him. He followed Scab and the others up the stairs. He was surprised and a little uncomfortable that they weren’t taking heavier armour and weapons.

  The stairs led them into a large, sealed, black, inverted-step chamber, illuminated by subdued lighting emanating from parts of the ancient smart matter itself. Vic, still more than a little nervous, half expected the chamber of the stairwell to close behind them.

  His nano-screen made him aware of it first, the sensitive sensors on his antennae a moment later. He turned as Scab and the Monk did. Talia was the slowest to react. Her hand came up to her mouth and she took several steps back.

  The figure was formed of the same material as the smart matter itself, black, like oil. She looked like a tall, statuesque human woman: long hair, angular features, wearing a black leather corset, an ankle-length skirt, slashed at both sides for her long legs, which were clad in thigh-high, spike-heeled boots. Even made from the black, oil-like material, the woman’s beauty was apparent. Her arms were held out towards them, a slight smile on her features.

  ‘She looks like Kali,’ Talia said in a voice full of awe.

  ‘Mother,’ Scab said.

  ‘Alexia?’ the Monk asked.

  16

  Ancient Britain

  Of course nobody wished to leave the camp. They might have had ample food, ample firewood, but it was difficult to get past how cold it was, and they were living in shelters of branch and hide that the wisest among them had added mud to, to keep in the warmth. They daren’t use the village because it was too close to the entrance to Annwn and the fort on the Mother Hill.

  With Bladud gone the divisions between the tribes, and even within some of the tribes, was becoming more apparent. Anharad was capable, and doing the best she could, aided by the warriors of the Trinovantes and some of the less truculent Brigante, but the other warriors, the newcomers, had not heard stories of her in the way they had Bladud. In part this was because she had not been as generous to wandering bards as her husband had.

  Challe
nges were a daily occurrence now. A number of them had resulted in either crippling or death. Members of the Cait teulu had fought more than their fair share of the challenges. Partly due to their belligerence and partly due to them being the most prominent outsiders.

  It seemed moon-touched to Tangwen. Too long had warrior society clung to the idea that the challenges weeded out the weak and made the tribe stronger. All she saw were dead and crippled warriors that they would sorely need when they attacked the Lochlannach. She could have enforced discipline herself, she supposed, but she had no stomach for it, particularly after her humiliation at the hands of Madawg, which of course meant she was respected less among the other warriors. Instead she tried to avoid arguments, particularly discussions about the Red Chalice, and in general avoid Anharad and others of rank who might try and get her involved in these things.

  Part of the problem was that the newcomers had no real idea what they were facing. Too many of them were here for glory rather than revenge. All they had were stories from those who had fought the Lochlannach or, more accurately, had been raided by them. Proud warriors scoffed at the stories, assuming they were exaggerations to justify defeat. Then a challenge was made, and ever on. She had considered the idea of taking some of the newcomers out to look for Lochlannach, but they didn’t even have weapons that could harm them at the moment, and she was loath to start using the Red Chalice unless she had to. She might have been its guardian but Germelqart carried it most of the time. The chalice had saved them but it also caused a lot of trouble.

  Among the warband there were still those who carried the cursed weapons they had used to fight Andraste’s Brood. The smartest of them wrapped the weapons up and put them away until they were needed. Others carried them. They looked half moonstruck, and were quick to feed their weapons blood and bone. So more challenges were fought, and occasionally the sword or spear had a new owner that it whispered to.