by Various
He cried out, shielding his face with his hands, and backed away. She heard him cry again, in pain, as a greasy lump of broken-off machinery hit him in the chest. He staggered, trying to fend the blizzard away. Then a piece of cinder block caromed off the side of his head, and he fell down on his knees, holding his head. Two more large rocks struck his face and forehead, and he slumped over entirely.
Patience sighed, and the rain of trash subsided, pieces bouncing off the ground as they landed. Silence.
She gave the body one last look, and started to run again. Behind her, in the manufactory, and all along the outer fence line, the invisible gangers started to whoop and holler again.
XVI
I had just seen off a second assault by the slum-gangers when I felt the telekinetic burst. Fierce, unfocused, not too far away.
‘Turn west,’ I voxed.
‘Understood,’ Kara responded.
‘I read that,’ came Nayl. ‘I just heard bolter fire from that direction too.’
I slid through the ruins, my mind wide open. There were psi-traces all around me, at least a dozen as close as fifty metres. Most were the feral impulses of the hidden Dolors. But there. One other. Harder.
Two las-rounds struck the front of my chair and fizzled off harmlessly. I found the hunter as he was about to fire again, and picked him up. He yelled in fear as he left the ground, dragged up into the air ten metres, twenty. Then I let him go.
I didn’t even bother to watch him land. The sharp light of his mind went out abruptly.
‘I heard shots,’ Kara voxed. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Fine,’ I replied. ‘Kara, it is a game. An obscene hunting game. We have to find this girl, whatever she is, before they do.’
‘Understood. Absolutely.’
Kara was about a third of a kilometre away to my right.
‘I’ve got a drone active in your vicinity,’ Carl told her over the link.
Kara acknowledged, and glanced around. That was when the two hunters, twins clad in silver-grey skin sleeves, pounced. One pinned her arms from behind, the other came at her with a chainfist. She rolled her body back, using the man pinning her as a back-brace, and bicycle-kicked the other in the face. He went over in the rubble, rolling.
But the man pinning Kara from behind rammed forward and head-butted her in the back of the skull.
Kara!+
Even at that distance, I felt her pain and sensed that she had blacked out. They’d have her gutted before she could come round.
I knew I had no choice. I had to ware her. It wasn’t something she – or anyone else I knew – enjoyed, but it was necessary. Besides, we had trained for this. Kara Swole was a particularly receptive candidate.
The wraithbone pendant around her neck lit up with psychic energy. Kara’s body suddenly animated again, but it was me moving her. I had taken her physical form over, put it on like a suit of clothes.
Blank-eyed, Kara’s body twisted hard and broke the pinning hold. She tore clear, landed well, and swept out the legs of the hunter with the chainfist so he went over on his backside.
Then she turned, raising a forearm block against the other’s attack, following the block with two rapid jabs to his face and a side-stamp that caught and dislocated his right knee.
He howled in pain. Kara/I grabbed his flailing arms and swung him bodily around right into his partner, who was returning to the fight for the second time.
The partner’s forward-thrust chainfist, which had been sweeping at Kara/me met the ribs of his fellow hunter instead. The whirring bite-blades of the gauntlet weapon punched clean through the man’s side in a shocking welter of blood and torn tissue. He screamed as he died, his whole body quivering in time to the rending vibrations of the glove’s cycling blades.
His partner and accidental killer screamed too: in outrage and horror at what he had just done. He wrenched the glove out, but it was too late. His twin, a huge and awful excavation yawning in the side of his torso, stopped quivering and dropped. A film of blood covered everything in a five metre radius.
Berserk, the remaining hunter hurled himself at Kara/me. We leapt, boosted by a touch of telekinesis, and executed a perfect somersault over his head.
He swung around. But by then Kara/I had grabbed up her fallen riot gun. Her puppet hand racked the slide. A single, booming shot blew the hunter backwards eight metres.
We heard a sound behind us, and turned, bringing the pumpgun up.
‘Steady!’ Nayl warned.
‘What are you doing here?’ Kara/I demanded.
‘You were in trouble, Kara!’ he said. ‘I heard it over the vox. I came as fast as I could.’
‘What about the girl? What about the girl we’re looking for?’
Nayl shrugged. ‘Kara?’
‘No, it’s me, dammit!’ I said with Kara’s voice. ‘Catch her for Throne’s sake, I’m coming out.’
Nayl hurried forward and took Kara’s limp form into his arms as I ceased waring her. She was semiconscious, and the trauma of being a ware subject would leave her disorientated and sick for a good while.
Guard her, Harlon. In fact, get her back to the transport.+
‘Where are you going?’ he asked the empty air.
To find the girl.+
XVII
Closed back into the womb-like nowhere of my support chair, I impelled it forward again, trying to reacquire the raw psychic-pulse I’d felt before. I felt edgy. Having to ware someone was a curious thing to deal with, and the feelings always left me conflicted. I was aware that the subject loathed the sensation, and it was also most usually done in moments of extremis, involving violence and furious levels of adrenaline. But for me it was a brief delicious escape, a cruel reminder of what I had lost. I despised myself for deriving pleasure from such painful, demeaning moments.
Carl?+
‘Yes, sir?’
Do you have a fix on me?+
‘Yes, sir. I’ve got two more drone tracks about half a kilometre ahead, converging. Please hurry, sir.’
I’m hurrying.+
Back in the gig, Carl looked up from his scanner displays, fidgeting with his cuffs nervously. He looked at Wystan, who was reading his data-slate again.
‘Don’t you care?’ Carl asked.
The untouchable nodded at his book. ‘It’s just getting interesting.’
Outside, DaRolle scurried forward, keeping low behind a half-fallen wall. He checked the area, unshipped his laspistol, and deactivated his limiter.
Then he began to run, head down, towards the parked transport.
XVIII
Her breathing was coming in short, sharp bursts. Patience had run as hard and as fast as she could. There was at least one person very close to her now, but the psychic-trace was faint and hard to place. She was worn out, exhausted, and her gift was weak from over-use.
She clambered down into a cavity behind a ruined pumping station, crawling into a cave formed by the overhang of the fallen roof. She curled up against the back wall, her arms around her knees. Outside, the Dolors were still jeering and shouting, but it was more distant now.
She’d gone as far as she could. Now it was just a matter of waiting. Waiting for the end.
Patience.+
She started, and looked around, not daring to speak.
Patience. Stay calm. Stay where you are. I’m coming to help you. I want to help you.+
‘Where are you?’ she hissed in fear.
Don’t speak. They’ll hear you. Think your answers.+
‘What do you mean? Where the frig are you?’
Don’t be scared. Try not to speak aloud. They’ll hear you.+
‘This is another trick. You’re one of them! One of the frigging hunters!’
No. Patience, my name is Gideon. I swear by the God-Emperor himself I mean y
ou no harm. I’m trying to help you. You’re hearing me because I am speaking directly to your mind, psychically.+
‘You lie!’
Try me. Think of something I couldn’t know.+
Patience closed her eyes and moaned softly.
Prudence. And Providence.+
She gasped.
Your sisters. You’re worried about them. They were taken… wait… yes, they were taken from the scholam. Without your consent.+
‘Just kill me, you bastard, or leave me alone!’
Please, Patience, don’t speak. They’ll hear you.+
I was moving fast now. The jagged ruins of the slum-tracts slid by me on either side. Rocks and catapult bullets occasionally clattered off my chair’s armour. Where was she? Where was she?
Patience? Can you still hear me?+
‘Leave me alone!’ she sobbed, crawling deeper into the damp cavity. ‘I can’t do this! I can’t do this any more!’
Yes, you can! Just keep it together! Focus! Focus on something!+
Patience twisted in panic, clawing at the sides of her head. I was scaring her. My voice. Something about my voice. Not just the fact that it was coming, disembodied, into her mind. Something else.
What?
As I steered my chair out across a long sea of trash and debris, I gently peered into her mind, into the panic and turmoil. Into the fear.
I saw it. It was my voice itself. I sounded like a middle-aged, well-educated male. Reasonable, polite, refined. Exactly the sort of man who had betrayed her entire life, her fellow pupils, her sisters. I saw she had formed a picture of me already. It was part Cyrus, part Ide, part Loketter, part some ginger-haired man. It was all of these, blended into one monster.
Immediately, I switched the focus of my telepathy.
Kara?+
I found her at once, bleary and sick. Nayl was helping her along a rubble ledge back towards the gig.
‘What?’ she asked.
I’m sorry, Kara, but I need to ware you again.+
‘Throne, no!’ she whimpered.
‘She’s had enough, boss,’ Nayl said.
It’s important. Really important. I need her voice.+
Kara looked at Nayl and nodded wearily. He caught her as her wraithbone pendant flashed and she fell.
I left her body limp in Nayl’s arms, and put on her personality like a skin-suit. My psychic-voice became Kara Swole’s soft, reassuring tones.
Patience?+
‘What? What?’
Patience, my name is Kara. My good friend Gideon has asked me to talk to you. Time is very short, Patience, and you need to listen to me if you want to stay alive. Trust Gideon. Do exactly as I say.+
I could feel the girl giving way to panic.
Patience, focus! Hold on! There must be something you can hold onto! Something you can hold onto so you can keep going! Your sisters, maybe? Your mother? Patience?+
She had found it at last. It was something so small and dark and hard in her mind that even my telepathy could not unlock it. She held onto it, tight, tight, as the dark closed in.
Her panic waned. Her breathing slowed. I was close now. I could reach her.
Patience opened her eyes. A skull, eyes bright, hovered at arm’s reach in front of her, gazing at her. A drone.
I was too late. She had made too much noise.
The hunters had found her.
XIX
‘Throne!’ cried Carl, leaning back from his auspex station in alarm. ‘What the hell did you do?’
‘I might have broken wind,’ admitted Wystan Frauka. ‘Sorry.’ He turned back to his book.
‘Check your limiter, dear boy,’ Thonius demanded.
‘Why?’
‘Why? I was just listening in, and Ravenor suddenly went off-line!’
‘The vox?’
‘The vox is still live! I mean his telepathic link just scrambled! Was that you?’
Wystan Frauka frowned and put down his data-slate. He checked his device. ‘No, it’s on. I’m blocked.’
‘Then what?’
‘Relax, Carly. I’ll take a look.’
‘Please–’ Carl began
Frauka patted the handgun in his belt again. ‘I told you, I’ve got your back.’
‘No, it’s just… could you not call me “Carly”?’
Frauka frowned. ‘Okay. What about “Thony” then?’
‘No!’
Frauka held up his hands. ‘All right. Throne! I was just being pally. The boss said I was too aloof. Too aloof, can you believe it? He suggested I should try being more friendly. He said it would help with team building, and–’
‘Frigging hell, Frauka!’
‘What? Emperor’s tits, you guys are so uptight! I’ll go look! I’ll go look! I got your back, remember?’
Frauka turned. DaRolle’s laspistol was aimed directly at his face. The ginger-haired killer grinned.
‘On a side note,’ Frauka said, ‘it would have been nice if you’d got my back too, Carly.’
XX
‘Out!’ said the hunter in grey-scale armour. He gestured with his double-bladed harn knife. Patience got up, and slowly came out of the pumping station cavity. The hunter’s drone circled her, purring softly.
‘Gonna fight?’ he asked.
She shook her head.
‘Good girl. Step out here.’
She came out.
The hunter keyed his vox-link. ‘This is Greyde. I’ve got her. Game’s done. Tell Loketter that my master Vevian will want his winnings in small bills, so he can pay me off nice and handsome.’
The hunter looked at Patience. ‘Why are you smiling?’
‘No reason.’
He settled his grip on the alien blade. ‘Sure you’re not thinking of trying something dumb? I’d hate that. It’d make me take a lot longer with you.’
‘I won’t fight,’ Patience said.
‘Good.’
‘Because Kara told me I didn’t have to any more.’
‘Who? Who’s Kara?’
‘The girl who told me her friend was coming. She told me to have patience, because patience is a virtue.’
The hunter, Greyde, looked around edgily. ‘No one here but us, girl. No sign of any friend of yours.’
Patience shrugged. ‘He’s coming.’
A wind picked up, stirring the dust and the grit around them, billowing the filth up in swirling clouds. Like an exhalation from the sumps of the towering city.
Except it wasn’t.
Larger pieces of trash lifted and fluttered through the air. Pebbles rolled on the ground. It was like a hurricane was gathering over the slums.
No hurricane.
Alarmed, Greyde grabbed the girl, viced her neck with one powerful arm, and raised the harn blade to deliver the kill-stab.
Kuming Greyde. I know you. I know everything about you. I know the nine counts of murder that you are wanted for, and the fifty-seven other killings you have on your clammy soul. I know you killed your own father. I know you understand only hard cash and killing.+
‘What? What?’ the hunter wailed in terror as the tempest of wind engulfed him and his prey.
I don’t carry cash. No pockets. I guess it’s going to be killing then.+
I turned on my chairs stablights, so I became visible as I ploughed in through the tumult of dirt and dust. The hunter screamed, but the dust choked him. Gagging, he threw Patience aside, and drew his Etva c.II plasma cannon, a pistol-sized weapon more than capable of burning clean through my armoured chair.
Staggering, half-blinded, he aimed it at me.
With a simple tap of my mind, I fired my chair’s psy-cannon. The hunter’s corpse slammed back through the wall of the pumping station. Even before it had hit the wall, every bone in that bod
y had been pulped by concussive force, every organ exploded.
The wind dropped. Grit pattered off the sealed body of my chair.
Patience?+
She got up. I wasn’t using Kara Swole’s voice any more.
Are you all right?+
She nodded. She was singularly beautiful, despite the dirt caking her and the tears in her clothing. Tall, slender, black-haired, her eyes a piercing green.
‘Are you Kara’s friend?’ she asked.
Yes.+
‘Are you Gideon?’
Yes.+
She stepped forward, and placed her right hand flat on the warm canopy of my support chair. ‘Good. You don’t look anything like I imagined.’
XXI
‘So, we’re dead? Yeah, of course we are,’ Frauka said softly.
‘You’d be dead already,’ replied DaRolle. ‘I just wanted to find out which bastard was running you. Who is it? Finxster? Rotash? That’d be right. Rotash always wants a slice of the boss’s game-play.’
‘Neither, actually,’ Frauka smiled.
‘Frauka…’ Carl began, terrified. He’d backed away as far as the gig’s scan-console would allow, and even then knew there was no hope. This killer had them both cold. Carl wondered where he’d left his weapon. The answer – ‘in the cabin lockers’ – did not cheer him up.
‘Who, then?’
‘You won’t know him. His name’s Ravenor.’
DaRolle sniffed. ‘Never heard of the frig.’
‘Untouchable?’ Frauka asked, casually indicating the limiter around DaRolle’s throat.
‘Uh huh. You too?’
Frauka smiled. ‘Made that way, so help me. Still, the pay’s decent. Always someone who needs a good blunter, right?’
‘I hear that,’ DaRolle grinned.
‘Oh well,’ Frauka sighed. ‘Do me a favour, okay? Make it clean and quick. Back of the head, no warning.’
‘Sure.’
‘I mean, one blunter doing a favour for another? We gotta stick together, right, even if we are working for rival crews?’
‘No problem,’ said DaRolle.
‘Okay,’ Frauka said, and turned his back. ‘Any time you like.’
DaRolle aimed his pistol again.
‘I don’t suppose…’ Frauka began. Then he shook his head. ‘No, I’m taking the piss now.’