The Encoded Heart

by Peter J Evans

  Not wanting to, but unable to stop herself, Red reached over the desk and took Zimri's bloodied head, lifting it. Immediately she let it fall again, jerking backwards in horror and disgust. "Bastards." she said.

  Someone had taken time over the old man. A long, long time. When the end finally came, he must have welcomed the pin's cold kiss like that of a brother.

  "There is nothing for us here." Godolkin's voice was low, almost tender. "We should be away."

  She shook her head. "No. Not yet."

  "Mistress, the Librarian's death is clearly Iconoclast work. The fact that he endured torture makes it unlikely the data crystals are still on Biblos."

  "I know." She'd known as soon as she saw the staking pin. The Archaeotechs might have been scientists and historians at heart, but they were still Iconoclasts. They had been stung by both Red and Zimri, stung hard. Their cash was gone, their plan to obtain the crystals completely derailed. They wouldn't even have been able to report the loss.

  How naïve had she been to think they would just give up?

  "It's over," she said. "By the time we get Hunter fixed for another jump they'll be back at Nicopolis-"

  "We can speculate on that once we are off this station," Godolkin snapped. He was already heading for the doorway. "We have to leave. Now."

  "I said not yet! Christ, show a bit of snecking respect!"

  Godolkin had stopped near the door. He looked back over his shoulder, his expression partly anger, but mostly exasperation. "Blasphemy, for once, use the brain God gave you. If the Librarian has been dead that long, who let us into the landing bay?"

  4. NEW FRIENDS

  Red barrelled along the curving hall, heading for the hatchway back onto the bridge, but Godolkin, restricted by the bulk of his holy weapon, was reduced to a more measured pace. Red was out of the cylinder and onto the walkway while he was still inside. "Get a bloody move on!" she said.

  "I see no reason to scramble, Blasphemy. In probability the crystals are already gone."

  "Did you see another ship in the bay?"

  "There is more than one bay."

  "So we check the others first. Ice anyone aboard, then come back for the cash." She licked her lips. If anyone were stupid enough to be waiting around for her, she'd take great pleasure in demonstrating just how bad a decision that was.

  What the Archaeotechs had done to Zimri had wiped any thoughts of mercy from her mind. Putting a staking pin through someone's chest was one thing - to most Iconoclasts, that counted as a friendly greeting. But blinding a man whose whole life was reading, carving away his face and his eyes, while he screamed and twisted and clawed his fingers to the bone, was beyond reason.

  There was no way she'd let that stand.

  Godolkin still hadn't reached the walkway. Red was about to shout at him again when she heard a scraping behind her, a dull slamming of metal on metal. "Great," she snapped. "About bloody time."

  There was no answer. Impatiently, Red glanced back, and the insult she had been readying died on her lips.

  The sound was not Godolkin's boots on the bridge. It was the hatch slamming shut.

  "Shit!" She ran back, slapping at the keypad. That did nothing except emit a defiant "locked" tone, so Red put her hands to the hatch and shoved as hard as she could. She was a lot stronger than she looked, but the hatch didn't budge. Considering its thickness, and the way it was seated deeply in the runners of its frame, she hadn't really expected it to. She couldn't even get a proper grip on its damp, corroded surface.

  She gave it one final punch, more to punish herself for being so stupid than in any hope of damaging the door, then took a step back. "Godolkin!" she yelled, up at the dome. "Can you hear me?"

  Behind her, something split the air.

  She snapped sideways, felt the heat of the staking pin as it seared past her and buried itself in the hatch. Another was already whining towards her: she ducked and whipped out a fist, punching the heavy bolt aside. It struck the cylinder wall behind her and clattered away.

  A dark figure was crouching on the bridge, halfway across. An Iconoclast.

  Or was it? For a moment, Red wondered if her sense of scale was deceiving her. The figure was small, much more than Godolkin, or even herself. The armour it wore was very much like that of a shocktrooper, a black rubberised carapace with an integral breath mask, but it was also smooth and figure-hugging, free of the usual feed-pipes and support cables. And the bolter it held was compact, more like a stubby rifle than the metre-long metal egg that constituted a holy weapon.

  Red bared her fangs. Iconoclast or not, it really didn't matter. The staking pins that had sizzled down the walkway a moment before were twins to that which transfixed the Librarian. Whoever this undersized trooper was, the bastard was as good as dead.

  "Not so good against a moving target, are you?" she snarled.

  "Actually, I prefer them that way." It was a young woman's voice, filtered through a breath mask. Red saw the warrior straighten slightly, shaking back her dark hair. "Where's the heretic?"

  "Out of the picture. I'll go and get him when I've finished with you."

  "Pity. He and I have a score to settle." The Iconoclast patted the cut-down bolter with her free hand. "I owe him one of these."

  "Yeah?" Red said. "Is that what you said to the old man, just before you pinned him?" She was pacing forward, her stride easy and confident, her hips swinging. It was a tried and tested bluff, a display to throw her opponent off guard. But behind the lazy swagger, she was frantically trying to work out why this woman sounded so familiar.

  And why the whole situation felt so totally, sickeningly wrong.

  The woman frowned, the brown skin of her forehead creasing over her dark eyes. "The Librarian, you mean?"

  "Who do you think?" Red stopped. "And the others, the staff. What did you do with them? Throw them over?"

  She nodded to the side as she said it, gesturing over the handrail. In spite of herself, the Iconoclast followed the gesture. Her eyes moved, just a fraction, but it was enough. Red launched herself forward, ducking under the bolter and striking the woman a massive, backhanded blow.

  The Iconoclast didn't even get a chance to fire. The swipe flipped her clear over the handrail.

  Red skidded to a halt, cursing herself. She'd acted purely on impulse again. For the crime the Iconoclast had committed up in the dome, she should have made the fight last longer. Made it hurt more.

  "Sneck it!" she exclaimed. "And I was getting thirsty, too."

  There was a dark blur to her left, moving too fast for her to see properly. She turned on reflex.

  The blur smashed into the side of her face.

  The force of it hurled her across the walkway. The handrail hit her in the side, under the ribs, ripping the breath from her. She bounced off it, pain detonating inside her from head to hip, and slammed into the bridge floor. Rust and oil spattered into her mouth.

  The walkway jolted from end to end.

  The Iconoclast had come up on the other side and kicked her in the head. Red rolled over to see the woman drop down onto the bridge. Even to have survived Red's blow she must have been immensely strong, and her reactions were incredible.

  Suddenly, it all fell into place. She had heard the voice before, and only once encountered an Iconoclast who could move that fast. "Ketta?"

  "Good guess." The bolter flared. Red whipped aside, and the staking pin scythed past her right hip. It took the particle magnum off her belt, punching a hole clean through the charge-core. The pistol vomited a sheet of sparks and died, the silver pin joining it to rusted steel.

  Red leapt up, kicked the bolter aside and put a fist into Ketta's breath mask. Weapon and mask whirled away in opposite directions; Ketta flailed, trying to grab the bolter as it span away. She took Red's next kick right in her belly.

  She staggered into the handrail, recovering almost instantly to catch Red's boot in both hands and turn it hard. Red had to spin with it to avoid having her leg twisted out
of her hip joint, and took two vicious blows in the back before she managed to wrench herself out of the Iconoclast's grip and flip away.

  Ketta darted after her, blurring with speed, giving her a sideways chop to the neck that put her into the handrail again. Red dipped under the next blow and then came up hard, the back of her head connecting with Ketta's chin in a shattering reverse butt. She heard the Iconoclast stifle a cry as she went skidding back along the walkway.

  She jumped after her, eager to advance her attack, but Ketta was already up in a fighting crouch. Red paused, knowing from bitter experience how deadly that stance could be.

  The woman looked very much as she had done when they had last met, back on Lavannos. Her hair was longer, more ragged, and there was a scar along her jawline that hadn't been there before. She still looked improbably young, though.

  Red spat bloody rust over the rail. "Long time, no see."

  "Don't try to distract me with your idiocies, monster. I know why you came here, chasing your trinkets all over the Accord. Tell me, how long did the Librarian resist before you had Godolkin kill him?"

  Red blinked. Ketta was an Iconoclast special agent, a warrior and an assassin of incredible strength and skill. She was an enemy, of that there was no doubt. But she had never struck Red as one to hide behind lies. If she had taken Zimri apart, she'd be bragging about it.

  There was a sharp cracking sound behind her. Fragments of black glass whipped past Red's head, pattering down like rain onto the walkway. She realised what was going on, and grinned.

  Godolkin was trying to shoot his way out of the dome.

  "Time's almost up, Ketta. Want to give up now, so he doesn't hear you beg for mercy?"

  For a moment, an expression almost akin to longing crossed Ketta's face. "Mercy is something I gave up on a long time ago, Durham Red."

  Red paused. There had been no humour in those words, not even the desperate jibes she and Ketta had been exchanging a few moments before. It was as if the Iconoclast had let her guard down, just for a moment, and revealed a glimpse of what truly lay behind the armour and the smart comments.

  This was not, Red realised, the same Major Ketta she had fought on Lavannos.

  Something had happened to the woman since then, something awful. The vicious certainty Red had witnessed at the Church of the Arch was gone, replaced in Ketta's eyes by something quite different. Loss, and hunger. And a dreadful, soul-deep loneliness.

  Durham Red had seen all those things in a woman's eyes. Almost every time she looked in the mirror, in fact.

  "Walk away," she whispered.

  "What?"

  "You heard me. You didn't kill the old man, and neither did I."

  Ketta straightened up from her crouching position, shaking her head. "When I saw him, I thought..."

  "Come on. You really think that's my style?"

  The Iconoclast opened her mouth to answer, but Red never got a chance to hear what she would say. For, at that very moment, the entire walkway squealed like a thing in pain and shook hard.

  Red grabbed at the handrail to steady herself, and saw Ketta do the same. For a moment she thought that the library station must have been under attack, bombed from space and suffering a massive structural failure. But then she saw the endless walls of books begin to turn slowly around her, and remembered what Godolkin had said about the sections of the cylinder: how they could rotate to move the bridges about.

  The top section was doing just that. Someone had disengaged the walkway from the wall at the far end, and activated the motors. In the distance she could see that the bridge had left the hatch she had come in by and was shuddering in empty space.

  She was trapped. The door behind her was locked, and the walkway ended in nothing but a thousand-metre drop. The entire structure was bouncing as it crunched around on its tracks; Red could see rust falling from its sides as it vibrated. "Oh, nice one. Now we're really snecked."

  "It's them..." A few metres ahead of her, Ketta was throwing frantic looks around the shaft. "They've been waiting for us, to trap us both at the same time. You've walked right into the spider's web, and like a damned fool I've followed you all the way in!"

  Suddenly, Ketta stopped where she was. She stiffened slightly, lifting her head as though she heard something over the rattling din of the walkway. "Too late," she whispered. "Monster?"

  "Stop calling me that."

  "It doesn't matter what I call you. Listen to me. You're no use to me dead, not any more. So if you get a chance to run, don't hesitate. Take it."

  "Run?" Red stared at her. "What from?"

  "That," said Ketta, pointing up the walkway.

  It was another Iconoclast. Even at first glance there could be no mistake. The man was big, two metres tall or more, and powerfully muscled. He was naked to the waist, apart from a battle harness that crossed his chest, and his only other clothing was a pair of black leather trousers and military-issue boots. His skin was corpse-white, his head shaven, and heavy goggles covered his eyes.

  He was pacing confidently up the bridge towards them. He had a bolter in his right hand, much like Ketta's, but it wasn't pointed at her.

  "The monster and the renegade." He smiled. "Together at last. Truly a gift worth waiting for."

  "Hermas," snarled Ketta.

  Red moved past her, to square up to the new arrival. She'd taken shocktroopers like this down without even trying. "Do you know this guy?"

  "Guard yourself, monster. You've not fought his kind before."

  "We'll see." She took a step towards Hermas, feeling the bridge vibrate under each of his heavy footfalls. He was almost close enough to take...

  Another warrior landed on the walkway right in front of her.

  He came out of nowhere. Red barely had time to react before the man lashed out, his fist catching her in the jaw and spinning her around, his boot crashing into the back of her left knee.

  He was insanely strong, far stronger than any shocktrooper Red had fought before. Fast, too. The blow to her face set her head singing and she only just managed to keep upright when he kicked her.

  She whirled, blocking the next blow as it came, slapping the fist aside and following through with a punch of her own, square into his nose. It should have killed him instantly, driving bone and gristle right back into his brainpan, but it barely rocked his head back. He grinned, showing teeth that were filed into needlepoints.

  Ketta had been right. These weren't normal Iconoclasts. "Who the hell are they?"

  "I'll explain if we survive." Ketta was moving away, back towards the cylinder, giving Red more space to fight. "Another one, monster!"

  A third warrior dropped out of the sky, the weight of him bouncing the whole bridge as he slammed into it. Reflexively, Red threw a glance up and saw where the warriors were coming from.

  They were on the ceiling, dozens of metres above her head, clinging there like bugs.

  "Christ!" She leapt to one side and a blow hissed past. She grabbed the arm, wrenched it around until she felt the tendons shearing under the skin, then put an elbow back into the warrior's ribs as hard as she could. Bones broke, she was sure of it, but it didn't even slow the man down. He lashed out again, striking a glancing blow across her head that made sparks fly into her vision.

  This was bad. In a straight fight she could probably have taken any one of these guys, but the walkway was narrow and there were too many people on it already. It was severely cramping her style.

  "Here!" she said to Ketta. "You have one." She dived under the next blow that came in her direction, grabbed the battle harness of the warrior whose ribs she had cracked, and yanked him over her head. He was heavy, but off-balance. She threw him off his feet and straight into Ketta.

  Then the first one was on her again, aiming a horrifying series of punches at her head. She had to use all her strength and speed to shove the blows aside. If any of them connected it could stun her long enough for the Iconoclast to press his advantage.

  From be
hind her came the sounds of Ketta battling the warrior Red had thrown. The bridge, fixed only at one end and not in the best state of repair, was shuddering like a living beast.

  The Iconoclast she was fighting threw one punch too many. Red got past his fists, punched him in the throat, then the centre of his chest. He staggered back, coughing blood, and she whirled her right foot up and around in a soaring roundhouse kick that connected perfectly with the side of his head. He sagged back, into the handrail, and Red simply shoved him through. He tumbled away without a sound, spinning down a couple of hundred metres before he met another bridge. Red saw him strike the handrail and ricochet bonelessly away, trailing pale blood as he fell. "One down."

  "You'll pay for that, witch!" Hermas was bringing the bolter up. He had a clear shot at her.

  The gun flared, but Red had already jumped out of the way. There was nowhere to go on either side, so the only path was upwards, a massive leap that sent her somersaulting above the stream of staking pins and down onto the bridge a metre behind him. She calculated the jump perfectly, even gauging how far the walkway would move while she was in the air.

  There was a hoarse scream from further up the walkway. The stakes had found another target, hammering through Ketta's opponent. Red hadn't anticipated that, but she was never one to pass up an opportunity.

  Hermas swung around, trying to bring the gun to bear again, but she was too close. She dived at him, slammed a knee into his groin with shattering force, and sank her teeth into his throat.

  Distantly, through the bloodlust, she heard Ketta shout a warning. But it was too late. The Iconoclast's blood was already in her mouth, her throat, spilling down her chin.

  Burning her apart.

  A scream tore its way out of her, past the bubbling agony that was ripping its way up from her stomach. The Iconoclast's blood was like battery acid. She tore herself away from Hermas, saw him slump with both hands against the spouting wound in his neck, and then she was down on her hands and knees, vomiting pale fluid onto the walkway floor.