The Encoded Heart

by Peter J Evans

  "A personal interest," he replied. "One that outweighs the professional." He stepped forward, and lowered his voice. "I'm tired of playing this game, girl. Nemesine the assassin is a myth. You know it and I know it. A remarkably recent myth, in fact."

  A weapon had appeared in Nemesine's gloved hands, a slab-sided pistol with a barrel Sorrelier could have fitted two fingers into. "Meaning?"

  "Not so very long ago, I would have been referring to you as 'major', would I not?"

  Her dark eyes narrowed. "You're talking about a dead woman."

  "And what, pray tell, led to her demise?"

  Her gaze dropped for a moment, betraying her uncertainty.

  "I know about the other hunters," he said. "I've had my own agents chasing her too. Trust me, no one has even come close to bringing her in. As far as my research has shown, the only person that even slowed her down was you."

  "That..." Her voice faltered, and she swallowed. "That was a long time ago."

  "Not so long. Less than a standard year."

  "It seems longer."

  "A lot has happened to you since." His voice remained low but its tones were gentler, comforting rather than conspiratorial. Despite everything he had heard, it seemed this ex-major would be no harder to manipulate than anyone else.

  She looked away, out towards the cliffs. "I'd never find her."

  "With my help, you will. I'm not just offering the commission. I can put you on her tail, too."

  "Tempting..." Her eyes stayed on the cliffs. "She'd probably kill me, which maybe isn't so bad. And if I succeeded..."

  The wind rose in a sudden gust, buffeting Sorrelier. He had to take a step sideways to avoid overbalancing, and heard the weapons turrets on Nemesine's ship whine as they moved to keep him targeted. When he had steadied himself he found both her gaze and her gun in his face.

  "Tell me something, Sorrelier," she said. "What would stop me taking your commission, using your data to find the monster, then simply bringing her severed head back to High Command? Clear my name and take a bounty ten times what you would give me?"

  Sorrelier smiled. "Because her pain would end when your blade found her neck. Give her to me, and I guarantee she'll suffer the agonies of the damned every second of every day for the rest of her life." He reached out, and gently pushed the barrel of her gun down. "Besides, you don't really think they'd take you back, do you?"

  Tarsus was no prettier when Sorrelier saw it from orbit, but he observed with interest as Nemesine's ship engaged its light drive.

  The converted daggership seemed to change shape just before it went superlight. The nacelle clusters that Rimail had spotted hinged downwards, and the wings swivelled back to a more rakish angle. It was as if the ship tensed, readying itself for exertion, before the light-drive flared and the little vessel leapt away into the void.

  A pleasing fancy, Sorrelier acknowledged. But the ship was simply saving energy by narrowing its profile before opening a jump-point, that was all. Still, it was satisfying to see the assassin set out on her mission.

  Sorrelier harboured no illusions about Nemesine's chances against Durham Red. The two had fought each other to a standstill on Lavannos, but the vampire had been weak, still recovering from her time with the Osculem Cruentus, and Major Ketta was at the height of her powers. Now the positions were almost exactly reversed. Ketta was a wanderer, tortured and alone, reduced to freelance murders under a false name, while Durham Red was as strong and as deadly as she had ever been. If the two fought, the results would be very different.

  But that, of course, was not the point.

  Sorrelier settled back on his bed, and sipped a cool drink while Lise undressed. It was a long way back to Magadan. There was still time for a dream or two.

  2. DANGEROUS KNOWLEDGE

  One month later, Durham Red sat in Crimson Hunter's engineering cell, frantically waving her left hand about to cool her fingers. "Bastard," she said.

  She'd touched the wrong part of the soldering iron again. Red stopped waving and brought her scorched fingertips close to examine them, wincing in pain and wondering, rather guiltily, how much time she had before the ship reached Biblos.

  Red had hoped to be mentally prepared for the negotiations to come. She'd allowed herself much longer than normal to get ready, setting her stateroom's alarm chime to wake her at mid-morning rather than her usual noon start. This, she had calculated, would give her enough time for a hot bath, a careful consideration of which outfit to wear, maybe a little research on the library station and the man who commanded it. She might even try to meditate for a few minutes - Godolkin had once taught her some mental calming routines, Iconoclast mantras to still the mind and accelerate the senses. Normally Red's attempts at meditation resulted in her either falling asleep or suffering a fit of the giggles, but the rendezvous at Biblos was, to her, desperately important. As she had told her companions before turning in the previous night, she would do anything to make sure it ran smoothly.

  It was a good plan, and a worthy intent. But by the time the star-yacht dropped out of jumpspace and started the final approach to Biblos, Durham Red hadn't done any meditating. She'd not had her bath, or read any of the ship's database entries, or picked out suitable clothes. She hadn't even slept.

  As far as mental preparation went, Red wasn't prepared for anything except taking the collection of machine-parts in front of her and hurling them out of the nearest airlock. She was angry, frustrated, and had gun-oil in her hair.

  She picked up the trigger assembly to glare at it. "Work," she snarled, not for the first time that morning. "You stupid piece of rusty junk. Bloody work!"

  It was entirely her own fault. Just after leaving the command deck the previous night she had decided to drop into the engineering cell for a few minutes before bed, and have another try at repairing her favourite gun. But while the Borstin Auto-Chetter was a wonderful, lethal piece of hardware, it was also irreparably broken.

  She was just checking the chrono display on the cell wall when an alert gong began yammering at her. Red recognised its sound: Hunter was decelerating from superlight, leaving the compressed dimensions of jumpspace behind and ripping a hole back into the real universe.

  She leapt up, sending tools flying. "Sneck!" she yelled.

  The engineering cell was near the yacht's stern, an oddly shaped chamber formed by the space between the main drives. Red keyed the door open, sprinted all the way along the spinal corridor, and skated to a halt just inside the command deck's rear hatch.

  Behind her, beyond the engineering cell, she heard the light-drive throttle down with a rattling whine.

  Harrow and Godolkin were already on the command deck, occupying the two forward thrones. Harrow turned to greet her as she came in. "We're here," he said simply.

  Godolkin had manual control of the ship, his hands on the control collectives, tilting the vessel around to home in on Biblos. Red looked past him and through the forward viewports as the stars slid aside and a pallid disc swung into view.

  She blinked at it in surprise. "Sneck," she muttered under her breath. "It's Pierrot."

  It was a strange first impression. She was looking at a featureless white surface, marred only by a single black tear. It could, in another life, quite easily have been the face of a sorrowful, monochrome clown with closed eyes.

  Her perception changed as Godolkin engaged the main drives and the ship moved forward. The face was a planet, a minor gas giant, its atmosphere a pale cloudscape of crystalline methane. And the tear, if the sense-engine returns were anything to go by, was a cone of black metal nearly two kilometres high.

  "Is that Biblos?" she asked.

  "Good morning, Blasphemy." Godolkin didn't turn as he spoke. "Can I assume that your planned research didn't go as far as you'd hoped?"

  "Not as such, no." Red stepped forwards to put a hand on the back of each throne, standing behind the two men. "As you know full well, you sarcastic berk. I got distracted."

  "Hmph," Go
dolkin replied. "The gun again."

  "Look, forget about that. How long have I got?"

  "Our meeting with Seebo Zimri is due in twenty minutes," said the Iconoclast. He was working the thruster controls; Hunter turned over in space, and suddenly Red was no longer looking at a teardrop, but at a titanic ice-cream cone.

  She shook her head. "There's no way I can get ready in twenty minutes. Give me an hour, okay?"

  "An hour?"

  "Yeah." She made circles in the air with one finger. "Drive around the block a couple of times."

  "That would be unwise. The Librarian is a difficult man, and insists on punctuality. To arrive late could prejudice him against you."

  "Oh, come on, Godolkin! Who turns up on time to a library?"

  Godolkin made a sound in the back of his throat, a barely-suppressed growl of frustration. "Blasphemy, I urge caution. Your communications with Zimri have been successful so far, but that is only due to curiosity on his part. Do not imagine him a harmless old man, interested only in his collection of books. He is at best an unstable eccentric. At worst, dangerously obsessive."

  The library filled Hunter's viewports. Red could see a narrowing between the upper hemisphere and the cone. That was where the landing bays would be. "I seem to remember you saying exactly the same thing about me."

  "I hate to interrupt," said Harrow from the systems throne. "But we have been targeted. Biblos has multiple phalanx turrets locked onto us."

  "I rest my case."

  "Shut up, Godolkin. He's just being careful. Bad memories from Wodan." She sighed. "Okay, take us in. But can you do it slowly, please? At least give me time for a shower."

  "Thy will be done, mistress."

  "Good boy." She leaned playfully on the back of Godolkin's control seat and ruffled his hair. He hated that. "Hey, stop worrying. There's a quarter-tonne of Iconoclast platinum back in the hold. That should cheer the old guy up."

  Godolkin inclined his head, just a fraction. "I admit the possibility. Nevertheless, I shall accompany you aboard the library, and I will remain armed."

  "Good. You can carry the cash." Doors were opening ahead of the ship, saw-edged lakes of metal as big as playing fields. She headed back towards the rear hatch. "And if Zimri calls, tell him I'm trying to find my library card."

  Red went straight back to her cabin, undressing as she ran, flinging her clothes all over the gel-bed and jumping into the shower, desperately hoping it would wake her up. Once she was done she grabbed a towel, but she wasn't even halfway dry before the door to her stateroom chimed. It was probably Godolkin, come to complain that she was taking too long. "Piss off!" she yelled.

  "Holy one?"

  The voice was Harrow's, relayed into the room by the internal sounders. Red sighed and shut the dryer off. "Sorry, Jude. Tell him I'll be out in five minutes, okay?"

  "Forgive me, holy one, but Godolkin didn't send me. He's busy scanning the landing bay."

  Red opened the shower and padded out over to the wardrobe. The concealed drawers began to slide open as she touched them, one by one. "So what is it you're after?"

  There was a pause, then, "I need to speak with you. Can I come in?"

  She blinked in surprise. "No you bloody can't. Not yet, anyway." She scanned the open drawers quickly, then reached into the nearest one and pulled out a bodysuit in burgundy leather. It wasn't her first choice, but time was short. "You can talk to me from out there."

  "Very well. It's about the data crystals."

  "It always is."

  She heard him clear his throat. "I've been monitoring the Iconoclast data channels. High Command has just issued new edicts concerning the Lavannos debris. They say that possession of any artefact from the Shantima system is now a capital crime."

  "Any?" Red gave a low whistle. "Sneck, that's going to piss off the Archaeotechs."

  "Archaeotech division has always been something of a law unto itself, holy one."

  "I suppose." Red dropped onto the bed, putting her feet into the legs of the bodysuit and pulling it up. It was well known that Iconoclast High Command had already outlawed the transcription of data from the translation drive project, days after the destruction of Lavannos, declaring the knowledge heretical, unholy, too dangerous to learn. But to extend that prohibition to artefacts or wreckage spoke of a greater fear. They must have realised that the data was still out there somewhere, in a form they might not recognise. Crystals of active silicon, for example.

  "How much do you think they know?"

  "To be honest, I'm not sure." The sound of Harrow's voice changed imperceptibly. Red imagined him turning around out in the spinal corridor, leaning back against the wall. "They must have deduced the history of the project by now. Detailed sense-scans would confirm that Lavannos itself was once Earth's moon, and that it was moved across space by the translation drives. But if that's all they knew, they would have tried to recreate the experiment. Being able to move planets would be a formidable weapon."

  Red had the bodysuit half on and was squeezing into the rest. "It would be if it worked," she replied grimly.

  In part, of course, the experiment had gone exactly as its originators had planned. The Moon, home to millions of people in Red's day, had been cleared of its cities and projected hundreds of light-years across space, a trial run for the technology that would, one day, send the entire planet Earth off on a similar journey. Four huge hyperspace engines - translation drives - had been buried in the Moon's crust, along with bases containing the scientists who would manage the project. Two hundred years after Red had climbed into her cryo-tube, the drives were activated, and the Moon vanished.

  But it didn't come back.

  Instead of reappearing instantly in the Shantima system, the Moon had taken a catastrophic detour. As to exactly where it had gone, Red didn't know and preferred not to think about. Wherever it was, it was hot enough to melt its crust into black glass, such an extreme environment that it had driven the scientists trapped inside their bases murderously insane.

  Five hundred years later the Moon had returned, glowing hot, to its target system, settling into orbit around the gas giant Mandus. And it was not alone. On its trip to hell it had picked up a parasite, a creature Red could only conceive of as a carnivorous, intelligent cancer, a nightmare thing that had burrowed its way down to the core of the Moon and started to grow. As it grew, it ate out a space for itself.

  The Moon had been colonised by a monastic order who called it Lavannos. And while almost none of the monks realised their icy little world was once the satellite of the fabled lost planet called Earth, all of them were aware that the ground beneath their feet was only a thin crust, an eggshell around a gigantic telepathic carcinoma with a taste for human brains. It was their new god, and they served it well.

  It was no wonder that High Command had outlawed anything that might come from Lavannos. When Red had encountered the creature it had been comatose for centuries, but its merest sleep-stirrings had cost thousands of lives. Together with an Iconoclast admiral called Huldah Antonia, Red had managed to reactivate one of the ancient drives and fatally wound the sleeping monster. But if it had ever fully awoken, it would have ravaged the galaxy.

  Red shivered at the thought, pulling the suit's front seal closed. "So what's your point? Oh, and you can come in now, by the way."

  "Thank you." The hatch slid aside and Harrow's face poked nervously around its edge. Seeing Red at least half-decent he relaxed visibly. "My point is that I'm beginning to agree with Godolkin."

  Red's eyebrows went up. "That's a first."

  "Holy one, please be serious. Your pursuit of the crystals is growing more dangerous with every day."

  She got to her feet. "If High Command knew they were here, we'd be surrounded by killships."

  "That's not what I meant." Jude walked further into the room, folding his arms across his chest. "Red, I know what these artefacts must mean to you-"

  "Do you? Really?" Red rounded on him. "I've got nothing
in this universe, Jude! Not a snecking thing! Apart from one busted gun the only connection I've got with my own time is the planet where I was born, and somebody stole that while I was frozen!" She stomped back to the drawer and began rooting around inside it. "Nobody in this time knows where Earth is. Christ, most of you don't even know it ever existed. So those crystals are my only clue."

  "And what are you prepared to do to get them?"

  She found what she was looking for in the drawer - a short leather jacket - and hauled it out, then kicked the drawer closed. "Anything," she said quietly.

  "That's what worries me. Holy one, these crystals are a plague. So many people have died because of them: the Harvesters that found them in the Shantima system, the Tenebrae that tried to take them. Death surrounds them like a miasma." He sighed, looking at the carpet. "And I'm afraid for you."

  Red glared at him for a moment, but then her gaze softened, and she found herself smiling. "That's sweet," she said. "But you don't have to worry about me."

  "In these times, I worry about everything. Especially you."

  "You'll end up bald." She crossed the stateroom to open another drawer and began to rummage. "Look, I know that the crystals are trouble. But if there's any chance of finding out where those scientists sent the Earth, I've got to make a play for them. If only to make sure the silly buggers didn't make the same mistake twice." She found what she was looking for and straightened, holding it aloft: a particle magnum, custom-built with an extended power core and double-length barrel. "Besides, you know I'll be careful."

  Harrow eyed the weapon dubiously. "That's one way of putting it."

  There was no one on the landing bay to meet them. Red knew that Seebo Zimri's dislike of visitors was legendary, but she would have expected a servant, at least - even some kind of robot would have been comforting. As it was, all she could see moving as she left Hunter's landing spine were phalanx turrets, mounted on the bay's ceiling, attached to armoured gimbals. As she stepped out of the lock they snapped smoothly around her to cover her from every angle.