Zhe 02_Chains of Tartarus

by Drew Dale Daniel Bryenton

  Across the whole vast dome of the sensorium the screens fell out, one by one, popping and crackling with static and fading to black.

  The eyes of his severed head were wired open, pale milky orbs pierced by the most advanced optical upgrades money could buy. But he didn't need them to know what that thing was, and what it wanted from him. He remembered the beast he'd conjured up for himself in the bowels of the Black Palace, its skin of writhing blood and jaws of iron, a thing pieced together from the secret dark places of his mind.

  That was what Jaegenn had become. Something had turned him inside out, and whatever it was, it wanted Octavio Ascher to join it. It wanted him to be transformed into the beast, forever – rage and pain and hunger and shame made flesh.

  And Blaire – dear gods, he didn't know what was worse. If Simeon could face Lysander in his terrible new form and live, was there any hope for his plans to reach fruition? And if he failed, what kind of terrible spawn would emerge from him?

  He'd been prepared for years for this night, filled with hatred and self-loathing and blind aggression. And now something was loose in the city which could make such things real....

  In the darkness of the dead sensorium there was nothing that Octavio Ascher could do but wait. Even watching was impossible, now to open up a channel was to tempt that black-eyed stare again, and Octavio wasn't sure he could resist it a second time.

  Not with his doubts piling up, with actual fear slithering in his mind for the first time in years....

  No, all he could do was wait.

  Wait, and trust in the child...

  The servos of his preservative tank arm spun him slowly to face the great floor-toceiling windows of his mansion, and the whole vast mechanism rolled forward smoothly on its suspended rails, dragging loops of wire and plastic tubes across the embroidered carpets.

  From here he could see a thin slice of the city, over the baby-blue bulge of the beltway. It was burning.

  So different from the screens, with their tight focus, their intimate little three-second bites of loss and pain. From up here it seemed almost serene, the flames lazy in their smoky shroud, the milling crowds almost festive....

  What the Direktor couldn't see was the swarm of crystal-black nanobots which were rising with the smoke, pumped out from a handful of functional Assemblers sequestered by the Worm.

  Perhaps it was being overly dramatic – a terrible trait which had bled out of its prey over the centuries. Perhaps it was a waste of precious resources, this little diversion. But it would sow fear, and discord – especially among the credulous and the religious, who still numbered in their millions, even here.

  The swarm swirled up like ashes, piercing the clouds, splitting open to work their alchemy on the tons of toxic vapor suspended above Elysium...

  And Direktor Ascher watched as the first drops spattered against his windows, dripping down in streaks across the glass, slow and viscous and heavy.

  If he'd still had hands, he would have applauded.

  Because the sky had opened, a livid gash, and down came the deluge, down on the wounded and the dead, drenching the living as they fought, frantic. It sluiced down the rusted sheer faces of the habs and foamed from the mouths of innumerable gargoyles, sprayed from the pitched roofs of towers and boiled in the gutters.

  The end had come.

  And all over the Last City it was raining blood.

  A pair of masslifters settled through the treetops, vast red birds sinking into cover on pillars of fire and smoke. Their red livery was scarred and peeling, and their steel skin was patched with jagged welds and riveted plates, but they got the job done. Three thousand miles in one jump, carrying a cargo of treason and death.

  From edge to edge the great basin of jungle was more than ten miles wide, with a shallow lake at its center flashing in the sun. Even if the skeptics and bureaucrats of Elysium had been able to see this valley, they would never have placed it as the hidden city of Agartta, temple of the Invisibles.

  CeeAn watched it all as her transport sunk down through the trees, into a living cathedral which loomed up and over, thick with flowering vines. There was a pale circle of concrete down there, with clumps of grass and moss forcing their way through the cracks in its ancient surface.

  The whole underground city was in similar disrepair – its faltering systems were gleaned and scavenged and jury-rigged from whatever the survivors of Elysium's fall could find. Far from being the secret masters of the world, most of the people who lived in the green gloom of the forest were farmers, intent on survival.

  Hell, it took them almost all their resources just to make the jump across East Afrika today – more than half of their fuel, as well. But there was power here - power sufficient to stop the Forge, and enough to protect Agartta from a rain of nuclear bombs.

  Unfortunately, thought CeeAn as she stepped down from the lead masslifter, such power never came without a price.

  “Take them to the Sanctum.” Said CeeAn to the pair of Ashishim Dervashi who ran in under the 'lifter's wing to greet her. “Careful not to drop them, either – I have a feeling the aliens will want their rogue in one piece!”

  The black-hooded pair nodded, silent, manhandling the purple crystal statues of Blaire and Nyl out of the 'lifter's hold with the help of a gang of gunners and pilots. She was home.

  Well – home for the last seventeen years, anyhow. It couldn't really be home, or really be the stronghold of the Ashishim without him. CeeAn caught herself carefully omitting is name from her thoughts, and smiled ruefully. If that other thing – that Technician – had been lying...

  But the Vision was strong in her. It had been ever since that awful moment in the Valley View, when she's reached out into the cold heart of the Worm and felt something through the other side.

  “Cee, the acolytes are waiting for you down there!” shouted one of the Ashishi soldiers, cupping an earpiece in one hand. “They say it's urgent!”

  She sighed, wrapping her robe up tight and cinching it with a loop of leather. Best not to keep Devine and his boys waiting – even if she was the nominal leader here. Nobody would admit it – not after the treachery of the Illuminatus, still so fresh in everyone's memory. But whenever there were hard calls to make, she felt all those eyes on her...

  CeeAn stepped down from the masslifter, hurrying across the cracked concrete to the nearest downpipe. This one was wedged in between the buttress roots of a baobab, airbrushed up in grey-brown camo.

  As usual the compressed air in the downpipe made her ears pop and ring, and she faltered a little as she stepped out into the corrugated-steel warren of Aggarta, the hidden city.

  It was hardly as mystical or romantic as the name suggested. But it was home – of sorts – and the only refuge for the thousands of Ashishim who had followed her out of Elysium. Others, too – an embarrassing number had believed in her in that place, at that moment. But all were united under the banner of the Ashishi now, whether they'd been Confed or Celestial, Vatican or Sub or Noble back in the old days.

  The deep, soft hood of the red robe afforded her a little privacy as she hurried through the tunnels – in a way she was glad that Devine had made the woolen garments a uniform of sorts for the sect. It was tedious and excruciatingly awkward to

  have children following her for tales of the Exodus, and everybody deferring to her as if she was some kind of goddess. More importantly the thick fleece was warm, taking the chill out of the processed air of the tunnels.

  She followed loops of cable bolted to the walls, traced a path of naked electric bulbs down the spiral and into the heart of Aggarta, the Sanctum.

  This was once a military base, sunk deep beneath the soil of the Congolese jungle to conceal a hoard of illegal weapons. Long, long ago the Terminus Separatist Army had made plans for this place, plans, indeed for the whole continent of Afrika. But the crater above them had been scooped out by horrific weapons, and the radiation had burned through...

  Time had taken care of th
at, and the jungle had spilled back in, defying the deserts which crowded in on each side.

  Then, seventeen years ago had come the night of the Saprophytes, the night of the exodus, and something had shown CeeAn the way to this place. Somehow she's led these people - the farmers and the techs, the Dervashi and the children, Devine and his zealots, all of them – out of the last city to Agartta.

  The very first thing they'd done (and this, she assumed, was down to Devine again, him and his siblings in Faith) was to convert the deepest, most cavernous chamber into the Sanctum.

  Every time she came here she told herself she was over it – that this was real, not some kind of screwed-up dreamscape. But every time it still brought her heart to her throat, and stopped her breath for an instant. It was the statues, she guessed. A fifty-foot representation of yourself can do that, especially when it's flanked by similar colossi with faces you'd be better to forget.

  It opened up in front of her now, as she stepped over the threshold. A vacuum, sucking in focus, tugging at her with winking candles and swaying shadows. Through a henge of rusting missiles, arranged in concentric circles around the altar...

  Her eyes played over the titanic granite features of the other three – she was always too embarrassed to linger on the idealized version of her own carven face.

  Hassan. Kayzi. And hi....and Abdulafia 330, haloed with wire-tipped dreadlocks. They'd run a pair of mining lasers to pieces slicing these things out of the living rock, and now there were kids in Agartta who thought it was all just a legend.

  Devine was there by the altar, as usual, the very image of the wizened, pious monk. Too bad that his religion was based on something utterly inexplicable, but then, she supposed, most of them were.

  Some people had seen things on Exodus Night which drove them screaming to insanity. Others (and she included Devine in this second category, for all his lucidity) had slipped quietly into a gentler madness.

  He rose from his knees as she pulled back her hood, his trembling hands flitting to and fro like tethered birds. Gone was the foul-mouthed, cynical 'tech who'd lorded it over the Cryo levels. This new iteration of SubMagus Devine was almost painfully meek and mild, broken both physically and mentally by the touch of the Saprophytes, his lip twisted down into a scowl at one corner by a jagged scar.

  “Most ReCeeAn. I'm glad you're back so soon – the Circle must be closed before

  any more, umm... succumb.”

  His eyes were huge and watery, filled with pleading. There was a very good reason why he carefully avoided saying 'die' there, and CeeAn respected it. But good Gods, would he ever stop trying to call her 'Most Reverend”?

  “Of course – we can't have them sacrificing themselves for my sake. I really hope you don't encourage them...” she said, clasping the priest's stick-thin hands in her own. “But we have the means to use the Forge now. The Circle can be closed for the last time.”

  Devine pulled away, leading her past the blank, scrubbed stone of the Altar and between the immense statues, to a door guarded by faceless red-robed acolytes armed with naked blades.

  “I'm glad you taught us how to do this thing, CeeAn. But so many have been lost... and we both know their fate. Was it worth it, just to master that foolish old machine?”

  He was turned away from her, fumbling among a rusted handful of keys, but she knew exactly the look of weary pain which would be written across his face. Not for the first time she felt like she had to scream.

  “Devine, this isn't for me. And I never wanted it to be this way. But do we really have a choice? Ever since the Betrayal our course has been set. Those bastards aren't going to just take what they want and leave us alone, you know.”

  “I'm sorry.” he said, turning the key in the lock. “I know how hard it is, believe me. I'm just glad it's almost over.”

  He pushed the doors open then, leaning into the task with all his meager weight, letting them swing wide with a creak of iron-bound hinges.

  As usual the room beyond was filled with pressure and light and incense smoke – a tiered bowl stepping down layer by layer to a sunken pit of smooth black granite. The whole room was a sphere, lined on every surface with polished metal, burnished to a mirror sheen, reflecting the rapt faces of a thousand men and women who sat cross- legged on the stone tiers.

  Silence crashed down over CeeAn and Devine like a wave as they picked their way down to the centre of the room, the pressure building up, oily sparks crackling across their skin as they neared the Focus.

  This was the gift she'd been given. At that moment when she touched the Heart of the Dead, In the instant when it had bridged the gap from beneath the waters of its impossible ocean to this reality it had left the door open just a crack. It was as if a sliver of that impossible thing's being had been pushed into CeeAn's brain, a shard of mirror-glass seething with the memories of whole dead generations...

  It had shown her that she didn't need the 'chrome. That you didn't need to pull the soul out of its fleshy shell and cage it up, like Kronos or the Illuminatus with his Ark.

  This was the power that Devine had built his faith around, to bandage up his shattered mind. This was what the Ashishim believed in now, now that the charlatan philosophy of the Illuminatus had been stripped away. They came here gladly, willing to make the sacrifice just to be part of something they thought was wonderful...

  CeeAn knew it for what it really was. This was how you exerted just the right pressure on a universe as thin and bright as a bubble of oil. This was how you stopped nuclear fire falling from the sky, and how you held off the Forge, even if you couldn't use it yourself. Oh, it was crude, and costly, and it would be no match for the fleets of the Unity and the Multiplicity. But it was still magic in their eyes, sacred bloody magic.

  CeeAn reached the Focus, a pentacle scrawled across the stone in indelible spraypaint. From the tiers above her the power came down, a hammer of light, drumming on her brittle skull like rain.

  She hated it, but Technician Zhe was right. Kronos had stretched the world thin in creating the Forge. The events of Exodus Night had torn reality, cracked the wall between the worlds. And now that damned fool Nyl, the Betrayer, had almost punched a hole right through to the dark on the other side...

  If they used the Forge, it could only be once. And it would have to be used right – used to undo all that damage, and remake the world in far more than just the physical sense.

  If they called her bluff she could never use it. Hells, even this ritual was tempting fate, sending hairline cracks skittering across the surface of the universe...

  CeeAn let herself go, felt her mind orient itself like a compass, drawn around into the howling flux by the sliver of silver which pierced its core. Devine was the anchor, his soul a fitful flicker as she closed her eyes and let the Vision spill in.

  The room was a sphere of light in there, the mirrors focusing and refining it, ramping up its power to a beam of hot incandescence which blazed up from the Focus to pierce the ceiling, arcing away toward Elysium over the horizon.

  And the dead looked down on her in their serried ranks, the dead and the dying, the drained and sere and withered souls of a thousand willing sacrificial victims pouring themselves into the fire.

  All for her. All for a promise she couldn't even remember making...

  CeeAn stepped between the power and its grim source, turning it inside out with a gesture, the flame devouring itself like a serpent eating its own tail...

  And the Circle broke. The Vision flared raving white, and blew away in a sickening rush.

  She sank to her knees as the pain throbbed in her head, as Devine rushed to her side, his twitching hands fluttering like dying birds...

  And through her tears she saw them fall apart; those who had given everything collapsing into bones and dust while the mirrored fire faded, and the incense smoke swirled up like a shroud, smothering her consciousness.

  DOCUMENT INSERT: MULTIPLICITY ARCHIVES DEPARTMENT

  (INTERCE
PTED FROM THE CONFEDERATE MILITARY NETWORK, 11:21 PM)

  "They're coming through the walls! Jefferson, get those flamethrowers back here!"

  "Sir, the docks are off limits! The Grand Teutonia got away fine, but we've lost contact with the Sliepnir and the Northern Son isn't responding..."

  "No time for that now - they're right on top of us! That Pureblood squad we sent up to subcity level haven't called in yet either, dammit..."

  (extended gunfire, cursing - three minutes twenty nine seconds)

  "Sweet Odin's blood, what are these things? Jefferson, we have to fall back to the next strongpoint...Jefferson? Oh, shit! It's got Jeffer"

  (screams, tearing noises, dripping - two minutes nineteen seconds) (TRANSMISSION ENDS)

  (INTERCEPTED FROM THE CELESTIAL KINGDOM PUBLIC ADDRESS BAND, 11:27 PM)