The Encoded Heart

by Peter J Evans

  The screen came on. For a second it showed nothing but an empty control throne, and then Ketta slumped into it. Her armour was battered and torn, her dark skin sheened with sweat. She looked breathless, exhausted. "Heretic, if I had time I would love to stay and chat. But I have an appointment elsewhere."

  "Your only appointment is with death, agent, unless you hand over the Blasphemy now."

  Ketta made an amused sound. "My, aren't we getting protective! A pity I don't actually have her. It would have been fun to watch your reunion." Her dark eyes were fixed on the controls of her ship, below the pickup for the holo-feed. "I'm sure it would have been most passionate."

  "Your time as a renegade has affected your sanity, Ketta."

  "Godolkin, take care!" It was Harrow, still at the sensor board. "She's charging the light drive!"

  The holographic image of Ketta's ship was changing shape, the drive nacelles folding inward. Godolkin half rose from his throne, reaching over to the weapons control board. He tapped at the icons, fast and certain. A heartbeat later there was a third marker on the hologlobe.

  A single flayer missile lanced out from Hunter's starboard launch-tube, corrected its course once and accelerated. It hit Ketta's modified daggership in the port nacelle. Hunter was close enough for Godolkin to witness it: the engine flew apart, ripped open by the missile's warhead, spilling fire. The image of Ketta on his screen shook with the impact.

  She gave a wordless snarl of fury, pulling back hard on a control mechanism just out of sight. Godolkin saw the ruined engine disengage from its winglet, a burst of one-shot thrusters sending it spiralling away in an expanding cloud of metal fragments and fuel. "You'll pay for that, you tow-haired maniac!"

  Before Godolkin could reply, the ship was gone, leaping forward into the billowing lightstorm of a jump-point.

  He sat back down. "Harrow, do you have her course?"

  "There's an ion-wake from the damaged drive." The mutant frowned in puzzlement. "And something else. A return that keeps coming and going on my scopes, but I'm beginning to think it might just be a fault in Hunter's sensorium."

  "Given what this vessel has been through, that would not surprise me." Godolkin set the reactors to charge, throttling up the rate of power-feed. Indicators on the board began to crawl upwards. "Give me the coordinates Ketta is heading for. We still have things to talk about."

  "There is still much about this situation that puzzles me, Harrow." Godolkin had taken the opportunity for some much needed refreshment - a small cup of cold water and part of an Iconoclast mealstick. "Ketta had us outgunned fifty to one. She is sworn to destroy us both - why didn't she open fire?"

  "I think her weapons were offline." Harrow, as befitted a Tenebrae deviant, preferred the foul stuff Durham Red called "coffee". The mutant sipped at his steaming beaker, blinking at the taste. "Hmm. From what I could glean from the sense-engines, her ship was recovering from some kind of directed power-surge. She'll have recovered by now. If we go up against her again the results won't be so pretty."

  "We shall prevail," said Godolkin. "The Blasphemy wills it."

  Harrow put his beaker aside, and shrugged into a battlemesh jacket. "What I don't understand is why she would be heading for Ashkelon. The world is uncolonised and is close to the Vermin Stars: it makes no sense. Why would anyone go there?"

  "A rendezvous, perhaps. Somewhere to hand the Blasphemy over to bounty hunters, far from the gaze of high command."

  "Hand her over?" Harrow cocked his head to the side. "You've lost me."

  Godolkin finished his water, and stood up. "From what I have gathered, Ketta is no longer an Iconoclast. She disappeared after an operation to gather evidence against Lord Tactician Saulus. Since then, her whereabouts have been rumour, at best."

  "I can't think of anyone better at covering her tracks. But one doesn't just leave the Iconoclast special forces for a career change!"

  "After Lavannos, she fell into the hands of the Ordo Hereticus," Godolkin replied. "She must have been exonerated, or she would have ended her days as a component of a hunger-gun. But the Ordo's methods are... extreme."

  "So I've heard."

  "Trust me, mutant. What you have heard is not one tenth of the actual reality. I am not surprised Ketta deserted after they were done with her. I am surprised that she is still capable of speech."

  Ashkelon was a globe of almost solid green. White caps dusted its poles, and there was a scattering of ocean beneath the cloud layer, but for the most part the planet was a seething ball of rampant vegetation. Without so much plant life the seas would have been three times their size, but the better part of the planet's water supply was permanently bound up in leaf and branch.

  It was a wonder, but Godolkin spared it little attention. He was watching the skies. "Any sign?"

  "I'm not sure. That anomaly again."

  "Ignore it. We are looking for jump-points, or their residue." He returned his attention back to Hunter's controls. "We have only one chance at this, Harrow. Ketta has the means to mask her warp-echoes. If she evades us again, it may take months to track her down."

  "I know, but... there!"

  Beyond the curve of the planet, flame was erupting from a point in high orbit. Even as Godolkin pushed the throttle control all the way up, Ketta's malformed ship had darted from the jump-point.

  Somehow, they had arrived before her. The modified daggership must have been more disabled than he had thought. "Harrow, ready and target the last missile. We can't waste this shot."

  The mutant switched seats again, and began bringing up the weapons board. As he did so, the comms screen lit.

  "You're persistent, heretic. Not to mention foolish beyond belief!"

  "One last time, agent. Give me the Blasphemy."

  Ketta made a sound of pure exasperation. "I don't have her! For God's sake, if I did, would you not know by now? The bastards that neutralised my weapons took her from me outside Biblos."

  "And you chased them here?"

  "I thought I had. But there's no sign."

  Godolkin raised his hand slightly off the controls, a gesture to Harrow, who was out of sight of the holo-pickup. If Ketta was telling the truth, and he was beginning to think she was, then it was imperative that he cripple her ship now before she could harm Hunter any more.

  He didn't have to worry about hitting the Blasphemy any more. "Fire," he said coldly, and watched as Ketta's ship was enveloped in novas of green light.

  "Sacred rubies," whispered Harrow next to him. "Godolkin, I've not fired."

  Godolkin grabbed the flight controls and hauled them to port as hard as he could. Hunter seemed to leap under him, almost sending him out of the nav seat. He caught a glimpse of Ketta's ship diving away, its remaining thrusters sending out a thousand-metre blowtorch of plasma as the agent poured on the power. The green glow from her battered forcewalls was still coruscating over the hull of her ship.

  If the defence shields hadn't been up, Ketta would have been atomised in that massive volley.

  "Harrow?"

  The mutant was hanging onto the nav throne with one hand, using the other to lock his safety harness before Godolkin manoeuvred again. "The anomaly," he gasped. "It's back, and it's gaining..."

  Godolkin locked his own harness, then brought up a rear-view holo. Ketta's ship appeared to one side of it, peeling away, but what really caught his attention was the shape in the very centre of his view, a massive silhouette carved from the blackness of space itself.

  The shape passed across the orbit of Ashkelon, and the planet showed through, distorted and rippling. "A shadow web."

  "What?" Harrow gaped at him. "That's impossible! No one's been able to do that since the Stealth Wars!"

  "It would appear that the technology has been rediscovered." He dragged on the controls again, feeling the dampers struggle to compensate, but this time he wasn't fast enough. Ragged bolts of yellow light were ripping towards the ship.

  "Hang on," he said. "This could be unpleasa
nt."

  As the words left his mouth, Hunter was struck so hard that it physically turned upside down.

  Godolkin roared in fury, hanging onto the controls like grim death and watching the planet's horizon whirl around in the viewports. The whole ship was shuddering, the throne hammering up into the base of his spine, the controls fighting to slide free of his grip. There was an awful noise from the aft sections, a metallic tearing. "Harrow, what have we lost?"

  "Most of the port wing," the mutant replied. "And the port drive is venting fuel." His fingers danced over the icons, shutting the drive down. Godolkin felt the shuddering die away, but the controls were suddenly heavy in his hands.

  "And the starboard drive?"

  "That's not looking so good either."

  Wisps of orange light began to speed past the viewscreens. The ship was skimming the planet's atmosphere.

  Godolkin engaged the lateral thrusters, bringing Hunter level again, but the prow wouldn't come up. Fragments and trails of vapour were still spitting away from his rear-view holo, a trail of catastrophe through Ashkelon's cloudy sky. The yacht's main drives were tearing themselves to pieces.

  Hunter could make a good landing with only the manoeuvring thrusters, as long as the wings were fully extended for atmospheric flight. But with only one wing, Godolkin was running out of options.

  And sky.

  Sea skimmed below him, grey-blue, a billion infinitesimal ripples catching the edges of dawn light. Hunter was heading for destruction, shedding speed and altitude at roughly comparable rates.

  "We're going to crash, aren't we?" said Harrow dully.

  "We are going to land, mutant. However, we may do so rather quickly." Godolkin touched an icon, readying the last flayer missile. "Brace yourself, Harrow."

  There was no answer, save a whispered prayer to Saint Scarlet. Godolkin snorted derisively, and fired the missile, watching as it streaked away, a vanishing spot of searing light that cut a slender track of smoke through the air.

  The upper layers of the forest were light, the branches delicate, the leaves sparse. The flayer missile carved its way through kilometres of such foliage before it struck something substantial enough to detonate its warhead.

  Godolkin saw the explosion through the viewports, far ahead of them; a circular shockwave slammed out from the point of impact, expanding through the forest at a rate too fast to track. At its heart, raw light became flame, a growing billow of greasy fire, the outer skin of it peppered with tree trunks.

  The inferno raced towards him. Godolkin dragged hard on the controls, hard enough to bend the collectives, and triggered every thruster he had.

  Hunter's deck came up like a sledgehammer and hit him.

  The deceleration was dramatic, far too much for the dampers to handle. Godolkin's head pounded as much of the blood in his body was shoved upwards into his brain, and his spine felt as though it was being squeezed to half its length.

  There was a crater in the forest, a gaping, blazing wound the size of a sports stadium. It was the last thing Godolkin saw before Hunter crashed, with shattering force, into its heart.

  6. THE LADDER

  Durham Red almost died on the way back to Magadan.

  It was a bad time for Sire Saleph Losen. As the man tasked with rescuing her, it was up to him get her back to the citadel of Trawden safe and alive. Had she died, he would have lost, at best, several levels of dominance. At worst, his head.

  If there was one single factor that contributed to Red's survival on that long phase-jump home, it was Losen's almost complete ignorance of what he had walked into. His orders, in as much as a dominus of the citadel of Trawden was ordered by anyone, were simply to find the mutant and bring her back to Magadan before anyone else got to her. He had been warned that there were other players in this particular game, all of which were converging on the vampire's last known position, but what their intentions towards her might be was left very much to his imagination. Losen wasn't even sure if Red would accompany him willingly, or whether she would have to be subdued. Or indeed, given what he had been told about her, if she could be subdued.

  And so, not knowing whether he would be entering a library or a war zone, or if he was undertaking a rescue or a kidnapping, Saleph Losen had done his best to prepare for any situation he might encounter. He had double the usual compliment of guard-sylphs aboard his ship when he left Magadan, along with a troupe of assassins, a fully fitted mobile infirmary, more weapons than he had space for and a small prison.

  As it transpired, the guard-sylphs were a waste of space, and the extra weapons were not needed at all. The prison had its uses - Losen had so overloaded the ship with personnel and equipment that he ended up using it as a stateroom. But not everything he had brought along was superfluous. The assassins proved their worth in boarding the renegade human's starship and removing Durham Red from her clutches, and it was the infirmary, run by a senior physician called Compasso and staffed by mind-linked servilants, that saved her life.

  When the troupe brought Durham Red aboard she was in an awful state, covered in bruises and contusions from the brutal fight she had been involved in, bleeding heavily from a gaping wound in her left shoulder. Something viciously sharp and as thick as two fingers had punched clear through her, tearing through skin and muscle before putting a ragged, splintered hole through her shoulder blade.

  Worse still was the damage done by the blood she had ingested. Even though she had brought most of the stuff back up immediately, it was so violently acidic that it had burned her from lips to stomach, causing the scorched tissues to swell dangerously. Before Losen's troupe had managed to get her into the ship's infirmary she was having trouble breathing, her ruined throat closing in on itself. She blacked out as the servilants were sliding a breathing tube down into her lungs.

  Losen, whose exposure to violent death had been restricted to poisons of exquisite subtlety, found the whole business very distressing.

  He had gone into the infirmary with her, and watched as Compasso directed his servilants to remove the mutant woman's torn clothing and dress her wounds. The servilants were mindless, their brains even more altered than those of sylphs, but the command chips grafted to their frontal lobes made them extensions of Compasso's will. They worked with such precision, such unity, that at times Losen thought he was watching one single creature at work, a many-armed being, quick and sure.

  After several minutes work, Compasso turned away from the contour-bed on which the mutant lay. Behind him, the servilants were busy connecting diagnostic engines to her skin. "I believe our guest is stable, sire."

  "Thank the Prime." Losen went to wipe beads of sweat from his forehead, and realised that he still had his mask on. He pulled it away and dabbed at his face with a silk kerchief. "I had no idea she'd be in such a state."

  "The injuries seem severe, sire, but I don't think it's anything her body can't handle." Compasso pulled his own mask away, although his was far less ornate and more functional than Losen's. Behind it, though, he was elaborately moustached. "Her powers of recuperation are startling. Some of the smaller bruises are already starting to heal."

  Losen saw the look in Compasso's eyes, and grinned. "Don't get any ideas, my friend. She has to stay in one piece, by order of the Magister. No trying to dissect her while no one's looking!"

  "Sire, I'd not even-" He paused, looking back over his shoulder. One of the diagnostic engines had begun to emit a mournful gonging sound.

  The servilants froze, and then stepped back from the couch as Compasso darted towards it. "By the Father!" he snarled. "Poison!"

  "What?" Losen ran to join him. "How?"

  "The blood she drank. It wasn't just corrosive." Compasso was tapping at the engine's controls with one hand. On the other side of the couch his servilants were already responding to his mental commands, readying syringes and ampoules. "It's reacting with her body chemistry."

  Without warning, the engine began to howl. Losen stepped back from it, startl
ed by its volume, but as he did so the mutant suddenly arched up from the couch, teeth bared in a rictus of unconscious agony, hands clawing at the air. A second later, she collapsed, limp.

  Another engine began its own cacophony, and another.

  "Cardiac arrest," snapped Compasso, before Losen could even ask. "The poison's reached her heart. Sire, I must ask you to leave."

  Losen gasped, hardly hearing him. "I was supposed to keep her safe."

  "I know, but that is my task now. Sire, please! I need the space!"

  The hours that followed were difficult for Losen. Unable to help either Compasso or Durham Red, he was reduced to pacing the decks, trying not to trip over any guard-sylphs or weapons. And the facilities in the prison were so uncomfortable that he didn't even feel like taking one or two of his own sylphs in there to help pass the time.

  Luckily for him, Compasso's skills proved a match for whatever toxins the mutant had ingested. Red's vital signs had stabilised before the ship was even through the Logic Gate.

  Since then, Losen had kept the most careful eye on his new guest. He had prepared a minor villa for her use on the eighth stratum of Trawden, in the heart of his domain. In accordance with the Magister's instructions the very structure of the rooms had been reinforced, the doors and windows sealed and guarded, and extra surveillance devices had been installed. This, he guessed, was to ensure that Red didn't escape and cause havoc on the stratum, having been brought to Magadan against her will. However, the villa certainly wasn't equipped to house a critically ill young woman, no matter what her powers of self-healing. Losen and Compasso had to work very fast upon their arrival, to transform the villa into a makeshift medical centre without drawing too much attention.

  And so, for the first few days of Red's stay, the villa seemed more like a hospital than a home. She healed fast, though, and within two days was able to breathe again unaided. In three she had come out of her coma, and was trying to wake up. On the fourth day she rolled out of the contour couch, and Compasso decided that it was time to put her into a proper bed and start removing the diagnostic engines. They were expensive, he informed Losen, and there was every chance that the mutant would wreck them in some kind of barbarous rage.