by Kim Newman
Lady Syrie paid for the toys. She had her say about WOtW policy.
She was one of perhaps six people in the world with the authority to call a Code Magenta.
So far as Metcalf was concerned, he was the walking dead.
He wasn’t even Paul Metcalf, not physically anyway. He was a brain pattern in a renewed body. Kept alive by regular transfusions. Wingmen didn’t drink in the conventional manner. It was all done in Devilers’s clinic. The vees of Platform One fed without a drop of blood touching fangs. Except Drusilla Zark, who licked clot lollies she made in moulds in her personal freezer cabinet.
Metcalf met Hayata in the corridor as they scrambled.
The Wing Navigator wriggled into his silver flight-suit on the run. His bulky, finned helmet under his arm. Metcalf helped him get his gear together.
Hayata didn’t joke now.
They rounded the curve of the corridor.
Support Seraphs were ready at the chutes to help them into the control module of the Black Manta. They were more ashen-faced than usual. Harmony wore a party hat and had a dribble of blood at the corner of her mouth. She’d be rebuked when team leader Fatality’s report crossed Wing Commander Baxter’s desk.
Metcalf crossed his arms over his chest as he slid down into his seat, and lifted them to allow the belts to auto-fasten. His screen was live and special equipment was stowed and ready for use. The control module had that new car smell. A perpetual motion bird by his console dipped to drink.
The Manta wasn’t a firefighting vehicle. The skycraft’s designated function was ‘brush-clearing’. Stopping armies in their tracks. Scaring off predators, vampire or otherwise. And exfil before photojournos could get snaps. Then the Silver Sentinel, the EvangeLions and Rocket Rescue could get busy shoring up dams, securing safe water sources and saving refugees.
Wings Over the World was a reassuring organisation.
The Manta was not designed to reassure.
Metcalf fit in his earpiece. Eulogy Seraph ran through the list.
Wing Captain Gardner was already in the module, responding to the readiness checks. He’d been with WOtW since it started. A WWII retread, graduate of the US Bat Soldier Programme. A clean-cut vee.
Drusilla had her gloomy corner, decorated with postcards of Victorian music hall artistes. The seeress showed up one day and was put on the crew. No one asked what use she was supposed to be. She missed every ORI but earned full marks while Metcalf and Hayata were penalised for misaligned buttons and quarter-second delays. Now it wasn’t an exercise, she was in post before they were. She hum-sung something about a mer-my-id.
‘You’re going home, Hayata,’ said Gardner.
‘So I see. Course plotted for Tokyo – no, not Tokyo, the Bund.’
Hayata looked around. His helmet covered the top half of his face and gave him huge multi-faceted eyes.
Metcalf checked his screen. A TV news feed. The camera struggled to keep focus as it angled up and up over craggy hide, then zoomed on a stone-and-metal mask of a face, with burning red and white spotlight eyes. An excited commentary in Japanese chattered. Metcalf caught a few words:
‘… doragon… mecha-monstrum… Daikaiju.’
‘What is that?’ Hayata said.
‘Not a natural thing,’ said Metcalf.
‘The Princess’s new clothes,’ breathed Drusilla. ‘I said it would come to this. The School Mouse had better have brought her Girl Guide knife.’
A way to stay sane was to tune out everything the seeress said.
Stats came through – height, weight, location.
‘It was a building,’ he reported. ‘It is a vehicle.’
‘Autonomous?’ asked Gardner.
‘Piloted.’
‘So are we,’ deadpanned the Wing Captain. ‘Team ready? Run the check, Eulogy.’
‘Scarlet,’ said the Seraph.
‘Check,’ responded Metcalf.
‘Ultra.’
‘Check,’ said Hayata.
‘Zark.’
‘Red rabbits, yellow rabbits,’ said Drusilla.
‘America.’
‘Check,’ said Gardner. ‘Module engaged. Black Manta ready.’
‘Godspeed,’ said Eulogy, diverging from her script.
The Seraphs had emotions. Devilers never quite eliminated them.
‘This is Wing Commander Baxter,’ came a mild, amplified voice. ‘Fly with the wings of a hawk, strike with the talons of an eagle.’
‘Crash with the grace of a hippo,’ muttered Hayata.
‘A-OK, Sky High,’ said Gardner. ‘Wings Away!’
The clamps released and the Manta was free of Platform One. Triangular wings slid out of the teardrop fuselage as it fell for long seconds. Wind shrilled over knife-edge planes. Struts stiffened and locked.
Metcalf counted off the altitude in hundreds.
The wings were deployed when they left the troposphere for the stratosphere.
‘Firing,’ said Metcalf, throwing switches.
The rocket engines blasted.
… and the Black Manta flew.
RICHARD JEPERSON
‘You’ve what?’ Richard said.
‘Called in an air strike,’ Syrie admitted.
Even Radu was affronted. His baggy jacket and trousers were in shreds, showing burnished armour underneath. He wore stack heels too. Mediaeval princes were seldom known for their height.
‘Is this some Aum Draht thing?’ Richard asked Syrie. ‘Like the fungus attack?’
‘I am not Aum Draht. I was undercover. I’m a secret agent, remember? Like you.’
‘Bloody conspicuous for covert work.’
‘Pot kettle… black velvet pantaloons. Everybody knows you’re the Man From the Diogenes Club. Even Hamish Bond is more discreet about being a spy than you are. And he leaves burned-out bases, drained bodies and pissed-off women everywhere he goes.’
‘What did you learn in your computer game cult? How to crack the top level of Donkey Kong? That didn’t stop them throwing in with Dracula Minor here.’
Radu spat at the reference.
‘The Wire was paid to raise an alarm to get Golgotha through the Gate,’ he said. ‘I have no interest in what the fools believe. It’s all pernicious nonsense. Jun Zero turns adepts into suicide bombers and auctions them off to anyone with cash. It’s never about a cause.’
‘Jun Zero?’ said Richard.
Hal – the warm man Nezumi brought through the Peak portal – looked sick. He wiped his mouth with his flesh hand.
‘Yes, Jun Zero,’ said Syrie. ‘He’s the Wire. Didn’t British Intelligence know that?’
‘Did you hire him or did he hire you?’ Hal asked Radu.
Richard, Syrie and Radu looked at the warm man.
‘It speaks,’ said Syrie, through fangs.
Nezumi shifted her sword-grip. Protective of her new pet.
Hal stammered ‘Ah, I… it seems to me that if you don’t know whether your, eh, brother put you up to this, it could as easily have been this, ah, Jun Zero.’
The Bey shut up. He didn’t want to say that his brother – or the message purporting to be from his brother – also put him in contact with Jun Zero. Which obviously it had. One hand batting him to the other.
It would make sense.
If Jun Zero was the Wire – which needed serious confirmation before it could be sent up to Whitehall – Aum Draht wasn’t a diversion for Radu. It was the other way round. This whole mess was to stop anyone looking for Zeroids in the room.
Jun Zero wasn’t even their top problem. That would still be Christina Light.
The Dragon’s Mouth wasn’t lurching any more. The Princess had more control of the building she was wearing.
Once she’d melded with the Tower of London. That couldn’t get up and walk.
Now it was her own gaff and she’d prepared. She wasn’t going to be caught twice.
This was so much more impressive than turning into a man-eating lift.
‘There
has to be a way to get through to the woman,’ he said.
‘And what?’ said Syrie. ‘Ask her nicely. Stamp your foot? Radu tried that. You saw what happened.’
Everyone kept well away from the hologram.
What Christina had done was astonishing and she’d hardly started. At the moment, she was only in every fibre-optic cable and circuit board of the Daikaiju Building. Come the Ascension – in ten minutes’ time – she’d permeate the world. The human race – vampire and warm and whatever other variety evolved – would be ticks on her hide. Ticks were vampires too. Bloodsuckers.
‘Do you want to stop her?’ Richard asked.
‘Of course,’ Syrie responded, hotly.
‘Only you’re one for secret masters and guiding history from the shadows. Hence your “charity work” with Wings Over the World. Isn’t she cutting through all the red tape and sorting everything out?’
‘You forget – she’s mad!’
Molinar, a Casamassima loyalist, gasped at the blasphemy but didn’t argue the point. Even folk who’d stuck by Christina Light for a hundred years must be given pause by this evening’s entertainment. The Light Channel didn’t seem so soothing any more.
Nezumi spoke up, ‘Downstairs, she has all the rooms she’s ever lived in – or had things happen to her in. There’s enough in that corridor to send anyone crackers.’
‘Two votes against,’ said Richard. ‘You, New Boy, raise a flipper if you prefer dying in a friendly fire incident than living into the Age of Light.’
Hal was completely out of his depth, but his arm jerked up.
‘I didn’t do that,’ he said, struggling to hold his arm down – then pulling his fingers away as if he’d got a static electric shock.
‘Options to shut down the Ascension exist,’ said the machine.
‘Your arm talks,’ said Richard, fascinated. ‘I’m sorry, that was a dreadfully silly thing to say. You must know that already.’
‘Tell me about it,’ said Hal.
‘You’d have to be in a room with her, not a hologram,’ said Syrie. ‘This is just a big version of that welcome-to-my-party feature in the lift.’
She was perfectly happy to talk with a robot prosthesis. Admirable, really.
‘Affirmative.’
‘Do you know how to get there, Lefty?’ asked Hal.
‘A portal is open.’
Anthony Peak was curled in a foetal ball, fangs chattering, black coat furred with white rime.
‘Peak’s spent,’ said Richard.
‘He is not the portal. Christina Light is the portal.’
The hologram still stood in its column of light.
‘Princess Portal,’ said Nezumi.
‘Affirmative. Enter the image and be drawn up.’
‘After what happened to the fellow with the tattoos?’ exclaimed Richard. ‘I should cocoa.’
‘Destruction is not assured,’ said Lefty. ‘The portal is open, with certain restrictions.’
‘She’s somewhere near?’ asked Radu. ‘Her body.’
‘Affirmative.’
‘Wired into the building?’
‘Affirmative.’
The elder unclipped a short silver scimitar from his armour. A hold-out blade.
‘I’ll kill her,’ he said. ‘And seize this castle for my own.’
He’d gone from ’80s action movie to Black Shield of Falworth. Many vampires were like that. Especially of the Dracula bloodline. Just playing roles. If they stopped and thought about it, they froze up like Anthony Peak. Van Helsing diagnosed the Count with a case of ‘child-brain’ syndrome.
Richard didn’t think the Bey’s sudden daring sounded like a healthy development, but Syrie held him back. He was a warm man and Radu a vampire. He looked to Nezumi, but didn’t want to waste her effort. She had a child-brain too, but it gave her clarity. She didn’t cling to toys or want to be listened to or feel she was overlooked.
She was brave and good.
Murdleigh the minion got between Nezumi and the Bey.
‘Dracula… am I…’ said Radu, trying to convince himself.
He strode over to the hologram. The transparent head turned and the Princess smiled down as Dracula’s Brother stepped into her light.
Richard was temporarily blinded by ball lightning.
Everyone yelped or screeched. Several languages were sworn in.
When the flares stopped dancing in his vision, Richard looked again.
Radu was a pillar of white salt. He held his shape well enough for the surprise on his face to be readable. Then he crumbled, and spilled out of the light.
Murdleigh snickered behind his mask. He, at least, had got his secret wish.
Syrie kicked the dog-like renfield, who scurried away.
‘L-Lefty, you wanted that to happen to us?’ accused Hal.
Richard saw no reason to trust a talking arm.
‘The suggested course of action was not appropriate for non-user Radu cel Frumos,’ said the machine. ‘His profile was not a match. He was… self-interested, cruel, petty, manipulative, dishonest, negative, trivial, lax, immoral, evil.’
That adjective string sounded like a glitch.
‘Machines aren’t supposed to make value judgements,’ said Richard.
‘You can tell Lefty isn’t happy about it,’ said Hal. ‘He’s trying to be exact about something inexact.’
‘I’ll go,’ said Syrie, walking towards the light.
Now Richard held her back.
‘Uh uh,’ he said. ‘That’s suicide.’
‘Are you telling me I’m evil?’ she smiled.
‘I’m not sure there is such a thing, but Christina is – and she gets to define what she means when she zaps you for not passing her test. This is her, remember? It’s a given she thinks of herself as good, moral, above it all. She even thinks she’s selfless. She’d define you as none of those things, not because you are but because you’re anti-her. She may well be monumentally deluded, but that doesn’t mean she’s not unimaginably powerful. Her portal – another Light Channel – is guarded the way the Gate is by Hyakume. She looks into brains – and, probably, hearts, and makes a decision whether you can join her in the pool or not.’
‘The Black Manta will be here soon,’ said Syrie. ‘Then this will all be academic.’
‘And we’ll be dead, thank you very much,’ he told her.
Without Radu to strut and give orders, Colonel Golgotha was off the clock. The EarthGuard turncloak wasn’t among the company remaining in the Dragon’s Mouth. Many guests had risked the exits. Radu’s remaining mercs among them. Tsunako Shiki was still here, playing with a golden lad who was shackled and glumly unable to scarper. Against stiff competition, she’d take the Maddest Person in the Room award.
The EarthGit Panty-Mask was backing towards the lifts. He raised his gun, intending to cover his retreat by spraying the room with gunfire. A complication no one needed.
Madame Omochi’s jūnihitoe floated towards Panty-Mask. He turned and shot at its chest. Unseen jaws clamped his neck and four fang-holes were torn open. That ridiculous mask was torn away and Richard saw why he’d worn it. The man had a face like a slapped arse. Panty-Mask dropped his gun. A mouth cavity and throat were outlined in the air, drawn in blood. Scarlet tonsils bobbled. Veins and capillaries appeared, then a diagram of a whole woman. The formal clothes, puppeteered not worn, collapsed.
Another of the building’s security staff hard at work ten minutes to midnight.
HAROLD TAKAHAMA
He only now wondered whether Lefty was carrying him rather than the other way round. All of a sudden, it knew much more than he did.
So far as he could tell:
The building was a Gargantuabot.
At the controls was a Princess with the long sad story – as told in many rooms of misery. She needed to be talked to. If not stabbed through the heart.
But only the worthy – as she defined them – could pass up the shining spiral stairs.
&nb
sp; Dracula’s late brother was unworthy. In their brief acquaintance, Hal could tell as much.
Though he didn’t want to mention that this Radu the Handsome had hired him. In his former person – future person? – as Jun Zero.
The grown-ups were too busy to ask who he was. As a stray, he was protected by Nezumi. That said a lot for her.
So she was worthy. Who else?
The Chic Vampire Lady was not a strong candidate. Even the dandy British dude, disposed to be charitable (or romantic), thought she’d be dusted if she stepped into the flame.
‘Don’t look at me,’ said Molinar. ‘I was a conquistador. I have done heinous shit. Our Fairy Princess can only be good because bad people back her up. We’re them. At least, we were.’
Verlaine was tired and relieved. The smilers went around telling hostages they were saved. They weren’t quelling panic. With their faces, they couldn’t help but alarm people.
Tsunako Shiki was still around. Hard to believe she’d dropped out of his Top Ten Things That Might Kill Harold list.
The projected 3D image of the Princess had become a column of radiant light, with the faintest trace of a face and the lines of a robe. It hurt to look at. Blue and red threads wound inside like a DNA helix.
‘She’s not in my head any more,’ said Molinar. ‘It’s been years.’
A phantom nude – formed by blood-drops – walked away from her meal, vanishing with each step as she digested blood. She picked up the kimono she’d played with and put it on. She didn’t mind bullet holes.
‘I like clothes,’ said Suzan Arashi. ‘Why wouldn’t I wear them?’
Screens still showed a countdown.
… 23.51 … Nine minutes.
The CVL had sounded an alarm.
Someone’s air force was on the way with G-buster weaponry out the wazoo.
They were all doomed, with an extra slice of getting fucked on top.
Lefty still offered options.
Radu proved stepping into the light with murderous intent was a sure way to go kaboom. So it was a question of trying to reason with the Ascending Woman.