The impact was massive. Tola went spinning off her feet with the force of it, heard the racks clattering and covered her head as merchandise came free, slamming down into the mesh. One of the canisters bounced off the floor next to her face, something else hit her painfully in the side of the knee.
For a few moments there was silence. Then gunfire.
Tola had heard that sound before --- any Harvester knew what it was to be shot at. Outside the chamber, in the corridor, frag-shells were exploding against the walls.
She hauled herself up, using the racks to support her weight. Her left knee was weak, and dull with pain. She felt a slight impact against her foot, and saw the light-drill rolling on the floor. She bent to scoop it up.
Sparks showered over her back as the lock controls blew out.
She dived to one side. A huge figure was shouldering the hatch aside - Tola looked up to see a gloved hand shoving at the door, a torso clad in multiple layers of slate-grey armour, a visor of green plax. She triggered the light-drill and sent a thread of searing light into the centre of the visor. There was a heavy sound, as of something bursting in an enclosed space. The figure convulsed and dropped to the floor.
The beam of a light-drill, Tola knew, would cause body-fluids to flash into steam. The man's head had probably exploded inside his helmet.
The hatch was still only partway open. Tola saw the barrel of a frag-rifle poke through and cringed back, but shouting sounded in the corridor, someone yelling about relics. The barrel disappeared.
Was there something in the chamber valuable to them?
Tola wasn't given enough time to figure it out. Another arm swung around the hatchway, flinging a dark shape among the racks. A scream sounded as Tola put another beam through the hand, but then the thing it had thrown exploded with a squealing hiss. Instantly the chamber was full of smoke.
She backed up as far as she could against the racks, started swinging the light-drill about wildly, but the cutter's charge was already dropping. There had never, she realised, ever been any real hope.
The last thing Tola Sineon saw was the butt of a frag-rifle, emerging from the smoke to slam into her face.
2. THE BLASPHEMY
She woke up on the cold floor of the chamber, her face sticky with blood.
It was a while before she could open her eyes. The smoke had been caustic, foul-smelling. Her eyelids were glued together with residue. When she raised her hands to rub them clear, she found that her wrists were chained.
After a time, and some tears, she regained her sight. Not that there was much to see: her attackers had thrown her into an empty chamber in the lock-store. She remembered that there had been two sections Ityus had ordered stripped, to accommodate some large items of merchandise from Broteus. They had never been re-fitted.
The Harvester captain must have died when the Venture blew, and Matthias in the corridor, riddled with frag-shells. Most of the other Harvesters when the fliers blasted the camp. Was anyone left alive but her?
The chains around her wrists had been welded to the deck through the rubber mesh. There were stinging welts where the heat had transferred up the links to burn her. Oddly, her face didn't hurt as much as her wrists, even through she was certain the rifle-butt must have broken some bones.
She managed to get around into a sitting position and put her back against a wall. The motion made her woozy, and for a time she just stayed there, letting the pain of her injuries wash through her, concentrating on that minor discomfort and not the despair or the fear. Either of those, if she allowed herself to give in to them, would finish her.
Tola Sineon was not a girl to be finished lightly. She hadn't lived the life of a Harvester for five years without becoming resilient.
There was no way of knowing how much time was passing, save the count of her own heartbeat. Tola had been in the chamber for many, many beats before anyone came. When the hatch did finally slide open she tensed up, ready for more armoured warriors. But the person who entered was not at all what she had been expecting.
It was a woman; tall and slender, strikingly beautiful in a pale, unworldly way. Her hair was a striped mix of bright crimson and jet black, her clothes a figure-hugging suit of leather and lace. She wore high-heeled boots, elbow-length gloves, two massive pistols on her belt. Tola, whose life allowed for little more than the most rugged and utilitarian of outfits, had never seen anything like her.
The woman was holding a finger to her lips.
She ducked her head briefly back into the corridor, as if to check she had not been followed, then came back in and closed the hatch. Only when it had slid back into place did she appear to relax, reaching down to her belt to unclip a small comm-linker. "Jude," she hissed into it, her face turned slightly away. "I'm in. Looks like you were right."
"A survivor?" That was a man's voice; young and cultured.
"Yep. Give me five. I'll call back when I'm done."
She put the linker back on her belt and grinned at Tola. "Hey," she said.
Her teeth were very white, and her canines were long and sharply pointed.
Tola gasped out a cry of raw terror and tried to scramble away. The chains dug hard into her injured wrists, but she yanked at them anyway, over and over, mindlessly trying to tear herself free. At that moment, she would have ripped her own hands off her arms if it would just get her a centimetre further away from the monster standing before her.
The monster in question just stood there, her hands on her hips. "You might want to be a bit quieter," she said eventually. Her voice was deep and smooth, her accent very odd indeed.
Tola stopped struggling and froze, turned her head away and squeezed her eyes shut. Waiting for the bite.
After a time the woman spoke again. "Jude? Better make that ten. She's gone futsie on me."
She was talking into the linker again. Tola opened an eye. The monster was crouching on the floor near her, an expression something close to pity on her face.
"Go ahead, Blasphemy," Tola snarled. "Tear me and get it over with."
The woman made an exasperated sound. "Do you know what it feels like," she snapped, "to have a nickname you really hate, and people just won't stop calling you by it?"
"No," Tola replied, in spite of herself.
"Well then." The monster prodded the floor with one finger, as if testing the blood there for freshness. "Look kid, I really haven't got all that long. So either you can scratch about down there and insult me like an idiot, or we can talk like normal people and maybe get you out of here in one piece, all right?"
"But-"
"But I'm Saint Scarlet, monstrous Blasphemy, enemy of all humankind, yadda yadda. How many times do you think I've heard all that crap?"
Tola's wrists were staring to hurt, a lot. She edged closer to the monster, just to ease the pressure a bit. "Your people attacked us, killed the captain..."
The Blasphemy shook her head. "Not guilty. I only just got here."
That was a surprise. "So who...?"
"The Tenebrae. Who like to think they're my people, but we really don't have much in common."
Tola sagged, all the terror and despair she had been holding back hitting her in one, sweeping wave.
The Tenebrae were mutant extremists, militant anti-humanists. For decades their existence had been nothing more than rumour and legend, but during the brief mutant uprising the previous year they had erupted out of hiding, striking out at the Accord with sudden, unparalleled viciousness.
When they had, the planet Pyre, a human world of three billion souls, was right in their path.
During their time in the shadows the Tenebrae must have taken their hatred of the human race to savage new levels. The acts they had committed on Pyre went beyond atrocity, beyond genocide. They had turned the planet into a scorched graveyard where even Harvesters wouldn't go. Three billion men, women and children had burned; their flesh roasted in titanic ovens, their blood boiled in vats, their bones fused into awful, nightmarish citadel
s.
And all in the name of the creature that stood before her.
Tola whimpered. "I'm lost..."
"Hey, I already told you I'm going to get you out of here." The Blasphemy frowned slightly to herself. "Well, I'll give it a go, anyway. Getting in wasn't exactly easy..."
Tola dropped forwards and put her head in her hands. It was all too much. "What do you want of me, monster?"
"Your name would be a good start."
"No," moaned Tola. "My soul is already destroyed by your presence. You'll not have my name too."
The monster sniffed. "Suit yourself. I'll just call you battle-grubber, shall I?"
Tola raised her head and glared. "You know I said I didn't know what it felt like to have a poor nickname? I take it back."
"It's what you do, isn't it? Grub around battle sites after everyone's gone home, robbing corpses? Stealing any nice bits of debris and selling them on?"
"No, Blasphemy, it is not!" Tola rattled her chains angrily. "We're Harvesters. If it wasn't for us the Accord would be choked with scrap metal - and we honour the dead, not rob them. Do you know how many mass-burials I've attended?" She slumped back. "Sineon, then, if you must have it. My name's Tola Sineon."
The monster gave her a small nod, a smile. "Pleased to meet you, Tola. I'm Durham Red. I'd shake your hand, but I think that would hurt quite a lot right now."
Tola closed her eyes again, this time in exhaustion, not fear. She was beyond that now. She heard the monster straightening up.
"Hey, don't go to sleep on me. A couple of questions, then we make a break for it. Deal?"
"I'll not make deals with the devil," Tola spat. It was a pure reflex.
Suddenly, the monster's hand was clamped around her throat. The grip was horribly strong, completely without flexibility. It was like being held by the claws of a machine, not a living creature - if the Blasphemy chose she could just move her wrist and shear Tola's spine without any effort at all.
Eyes snapping open, Tola found herself looking straight into the enraged face of Durham Red. The monster's pupils were dilated, reflecting the chamber's meagre light in twin spots of glowing crimson.
The Blasphemy shook her. "Listen to me, you little shit. Do you know why you're alive? Any idea why they just beat you down and didn't fill you full of frag-shells? Well, it wasn't because they liked your attitude."
Her grip tightened, just a fraction. Tola couldn't even gasp for breath, let alone draw one.
"The Tenebrae like to pretend they're vampires," the monster was telling her. "They even have these little sets of comedy fangs made out of surgical steel that they put in. And what they are going to do is cut those chains off you, drag you out into the desert and use those steel teeth to rip your throat open so they can drink your blood, fresh from the source.
"You're going to die, and it's going to really, really hurt. Trust me, girl, if you think you're in pain now, you have no snecking clue." She threw Tola's head back as she opened her hand.
"They usually do that kind of thing at around midnight, local time. Which gives us about fifteen minutes before they start polishing their dentures. So it's make-your-mind-up time, Tola Sineon - whose way do you want to play this? Mine, or theirs?"
Tola opened her mouth to speak, but her throat wouldn't open properly. All she could do was nod.
"This is good," said Durham Red, moving away. "Silence is good. From now on, you keep it zipped and we'll get along really well. Okay?"
Tola blinked back tears. She never wanted to feel that grip again, ever.
"Cool." The Blasphemy took a deep breath, as if to calm herself. "You were in the Shantima system recently, yes?"
Nod.
"There'd been a battle of some kind. You picked up some stuff from around Mandus, the gas-giant."
Tola nodded again, feeling pieces of a particularly dark puzzle falling into place. No surprise that those cursed objects were the cause of all this. It was no storm Matthias had been feeling.
The monster leaned close. "Think very carefully about this, kid. Did any of the stuff you picked up have molten glass on it?"
"Yes. All of it."
Very quietly, Durham Red asked, "What colour?"
"Black."
"Shit." The monster flung herself upright. "Aw, Christ! No wonder, no bloody wonder. And you poor bastards tried to sell it on..."
"If we had-"
"Nah, they'd have come after you anyway." The monster dropped to one knee, unclipping a light-drill from her belt. "Looks like you picked up a really hot potato back there..."
There was a brief shower of sparks and Tola's chains came free of the deck. She fell away.
Durham Red let her lie for a moment or two while she was putting the drill away, then Tola felt those gloved fingers close around her upper arm. The grip was gentle, this time, but insistent. "Come on. There's not much time."
Tola got up. Her left knee flared with pain when she put her weight on it, but she would have gotten up with two broken legs if she'd needed to. There was no way she was going to lie on the lock-store deck a second longer.
The Blasphemy made sure Tola wasn't going to fall again, then opened a small canister at her belt. She pulled two odd little cubes from it, and handed one to Tola. "Like this," she said.
With a shake, the cube unfurled into a long, slightly wrinkled sheet of pale fabric. Tola watched Durham Red pull it open and shrug her way into it, pulling the integral hood up over her head. As she did, the fabric began to darken, to take on the shadowy look of the chamber around them. "Stealth cape. Put it on, keep your gob shut, and we might just do this."
"Gob?"
Durham Red gave her a sideways look and mimed drawing a seal closed over her lips.
As soon as they left the chamber, Tola could see why the lock-store had bounced on its moorings, all those heartbeats ago. The main hatch was gone, the end of the corridor a gaping hole, edged with raw spikes of metal. The Tenebrae must have blasted their way in.
And yet they'd held off emptying a frag-rifle into her to protect their "relics". Stupid, she decided, as well as vicious.
The chamber they'd chained her in had been at the far end of the store. By the time Tola had reached the opening she was almost invisible to herself. The stealth-cape was mimetic, changing its colour to ape that of the surrounding walls. It wasn't perfect - the colour change was far from instant - but she could see how it made her outline fluid, shifting, hard to see in among the store's shadows. Wearing it, she felt slightly safer.
The feeling evaporated as the Blasphemy held out an arm to stop her at the opening. "You might," she said very quietly, "want to not look at this bit."
"No," Tola replied, her voice still cracked and hoarse from the monster's choke-hold. "Let me see."
"Your funeral."
Durham Red moved aside, and Tola finally saw for herself what the Tenebrae were capable of.
They had been busy while she lay unconscious. As the harsh desert day had given way to night, the Tenebrae had demolished the camp, tearing apart the hinged panels and folding walls until nothing but the plastic support girders remained. Then they had taken those girders and made crosses from them.
For a moment, Tola's sense of scale almost saved her from the horror. They're memorials, she thought wildly. The Tenebrae had buried the dead Harvesters, and planted a crucifix at the head of each grave. But then the clouds and the smoke shifted, high above her, letting a fitful light from Gadara's twin moons sweep the scene. And she saw that the crosses were not memorials.
Every crucifix was three metres high. And on each, nailed through the wrists and ankles, sagged the corpse of a Harvester.
Forty-seven men and women, humans and mutants, had been dragged up off the ground and fixed in place to mark the Tenebrae's latest slaughter. Many bore terrible injuries; some hung partly free of their spars because they lacked enough limbs to keep them in place. They all, however, bore one feature in common.
Not a single Harvester had
a head.
Tola choked out a sob, squeezing her eyes shut against the sight. The strength went out of her, the fear and the anger, everything washed away in a single flood of sick, mad revulsion. Her stomach rebelled, and she pitched forwards, vomiting weakly onto the sand.
Distantly, she heard the Blasphemy cursing. Tola felt herself dragged forwards, away from the store, through the serried ranks of crosses and their awful fruit. Utterly without will, beyond strength and intention, she let herself be led out of the light and into the blessed darkness.
Judas Harrow was waiting for them, out in the dunes, little more than a blurred outline in his own stealth-cape. Red passed the Harvester girl to him. "Get her back to the ship. I'll meet you later."
"Is it as you feared?"
"Yeah, and worse." She glanced back. "They've already stripped the store, so anything they want will be on the cutter."
Harrow sighed. "I suppose it's no use at all asking you to be sensible and not go in there?"
"Nope."
"Or to be careful?"
"Am I ever?"
"In which case," said the mutant levelly, holding out a long, brutally curved killing-knife, "be quiet."
Red grinned at him. "Oh, I intend to..."
And with that she was off, sprinting away into the dunes.
The Tenebrae's orbital cutter squatted in the sand like a great, rust-coloured beetle, a few hundred metres from the field of crosses. Three Vampyr assault craft perched nearby. Even from this distance, Red could see figures moving between them, pilots and guards and cult-priests. Completely unaware of what was coming.
Red tightened her grip on the knife. They'd know soon enough.
The Harvesters hadn't deserved this. Whether they were scrap-metal dealers or grave-robbers, they'd been unlucky enough to pick up the wrong debris from the wrong system, that was all.
Would the Iconoclasts have treated the grubbers differently? Almost certainly not, she decided. The Shantima debris notwithstanding, Harvester communities were one of the few areas of the Accord where humans and mutants worked together. Neither Tenebrae nor Iconoclast would tolerate that for long. They were doomed from day one.
The Omega Solution Page 2