The Monk’s eyes flicked open. She was instantly alert as the alarm was transmitted direct to her neunonics. She rolled off her futon and onto her feet. She grabbed weapons and something else on her way out of the room.
The two Church militia fired again, this time wildly as rounds from Mish’s tumbler pistols started impacting on their armour. A number of the bullets hit the carapaces. Not even the spinning armour-penetrating qualities of the tumbler pistol rounds could penetrate full combat armour, but Mish had aimed for the visors. Three rounds hit one visor; two hit the other. The rounds drilled into them, spiderwebbing them with cracks.
Mish dropped the tumbler pistols and drew the two spawn blades. Bullets thudded into him and he staggered back against the metal wall of the corridor. He came off the wall again and thrust the diamond-hard point of one blade forward into the visor of the first guard. The visor shattered like glass and the woman dropped her ACR. She reached up for the blade, grabbing Mish’s wrist. When the point of the spawn blade detected skin, the carbon reservoir inside the weapon’s hilt fed the assembler in the blade, making it grow. It pushed through hardening skin, took hold of armoured bone and started to push its way into the woman’s skull. She let go of Mish to grab the blade’s hilt and tried to pull it out.
Both guards’ P-sats popped out of their clips on the back of their combat armour. They would be the easiest things to deal with. Mish had been one of the techs who integrated their systems with the Templar’s C&C. The emergency shutdown codes dropped them to the floor like so much dead weight.
Mish was already spinning around, the other spawn blade still in his fist. The second guard, a lizard, re-aimed his ACR and fired a three-round burst. Mish felt burning on the side of his face for just a moment before the information was deadened. The blade’s diamond tip pierced the lizard’s visor and penetrated his eye, hooked on to bone and began pulling itself into his brain.
Mish staggered away from the flailing guards. The woman slumped against the bulkhead next to the airlock and slid to the ground. The lizard fought for a while longer, wasting his time trying to pull the blade out as the weapon split into roots and branched out through his head. Had he been strong enough, he would have pulled out part of his skull and a sizeable chunk of the meat of his brain along with the blade.
Mish ’faced the hack command he’d been working on ever since he first found out what they’d done. An anxious moment passed, and then the airlock door opened. He looked on the face of his god. How many people can say they’ve done that? he wondered. His body didn’t appear to be working correctly, but he managed to force it into action. Scab stared at him with Benedict’s eyes.
‘Well?’ Benedict/Scab asked.
‘I’m sorry,’ Mish said. He stepped forward and began attaching assemblers with portable carbon reservoirs and graft attachments to each of Benedict/Scab’s stumps. As well as rebuilding his limbs, they had been hacked to inject into Benedict/Scab’s body whatever soft-machine augments Mish had been able to get hold of. Next he took out a smart syringe and pressed it against his deity’s temple. The needle guided itself through the prisoner’s skull and into his brain before ejecting its payload. The nanites crawled through his mind, creating a neunonic network.
‘There may be time for me to orally pleasure you,’ Mish said.
‘I think that’s highly unlikely. Besides, I believe you’re dead.’
Mish looked down at himself. He was mostly red. His neunonics were telling him that it was mostly technology and chemicals keeping him alive. They weren’t going to do that for much longer.
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’ He opened his jacket to reveal more fastloaders for the tumbler pistols secured in various loops. ‘These are for you.’ Benedict/Scab nodded. Mish fell forward. He felt a thrill of excitement as his face touched his god’s torso on the way down. Finally I’ve done something with my life! His last thought was that he wished his parents could see him now.
The Templar’s AI manifested as Churchman dressed in the bloodied and battle-scarred armour of a pre-Loss knight. The knight was keeping pace with the Monk as she attached a piece of L-tech to her belt and neunonically ran a diagnostic on the fast-cycling double-barrelled laser carbine and its underslung grenade-launcher. Holsters had grown out of her gi, and she had an advanced combat pistol holstered at each hip, along with pouches for spare magazines and batteries.
‘This goes badly, space everything,’ the Monk said. ‘And I want to know who that little shit is.’
‘I have spoken to Bishop Hollis and he concurs. Do you want it done now?’
The Monk considered this. It would be the safest option, she thought.
And you couldn’t have undone the restraints first? Benedict/Scab thought. He felt the familiar, uncomfortable itching sensation within his head – he knew it was largely psychosomatic – and then the neunonics started feeding his mind information. His limbs and augmentations were coming online. They were nothing like as sophisticated as he was used to. He went through them quickly, integrating everything for the best performance.
It wouldn’t be enough. The Monk on her own was a match for him in this body, with these shoddy neunonics, never mind the ship’s automated security systems and the complement of Church militia. But Mish had provided him with systems access, which included various backdoors he’d installed over the years. That access, along with his own ability in electronic warfare, might just give him the edge he needed. If only his limbs would grow faster.
As his limbs regrew, he was quickly forming a dragon program in his neunonics to keep the Templar’s AI busy, just as he’d done on the Lazerene. He unleashed it and then hacked his restraints. They clicked open and he fell on his face. His limbs weren’t quite ready, apparently. He cursed himself for his stupidity and continued looking around the ship’s systems. He found something that was heavily protected. He looked for his dead ‘saviour’s’ backdoor, located it, occulted his presence and went in to have a look.
Face down on the deck of the airlock, Benedict/Scab started to smile. His arms and legs were raw but he was sure he could stand now. He looked down at his saviour.
‘Loser,’ he muttered. He just needed to slow down security.
The AI cried out and disappeared. That made sense. If Benedict/Scab were to have a chance of escaping, he’d need to tie up the AI. She came to a crossroads in the corridor and continued straight on. Two squads of militia fell in behind her.
Two heavily armed S-sats appeared in the corridor ahead. Instantly she realised they were going the wrong way. With a thought she triggered the L-tech device she’d brought from her room. The protective coherent-energy field surrounded her, obscuring her image behind a shimmering yellowish aurora. The S-sats began firing. The energy field absorbed the lasers and deadened the kinetic energy of the projectiles, but the AG-powered smart munitions hit with sufficient force to make her stagger.
She noticed that the S-sats weren’t targeting any of the militia, though those closest to her were catching stray beams and bolts, and were being knocked around by the multiple explosions. The barrage forced her to her knees, and her internal medical systems were constantly healing bruises, but that was the worst of it. She knew the S-sats would soon run out of smart munitions, and it would take their built-in assemblers a while to regrow the sophisticated weapons. Then all of the militia personnel’s P-sats popped their clasps, shot into the air and targeted the Monk with their on-board lasers. She became a prism.
He was through the defences and into the database the Templar had been trying to keep secure and hidden. Benedict/Scab could certainly see why. He went looking for the meat-hack that had allowed him to possess the body of his own son. He found it, and then there was another back door. It was almost as if his saviour had some insight into what he was going to do when he got free.
He checked on the progress of the various security teams on their way to him. Unusu
ally, he did not want to kill any of them unless he had to if his plan was to work. For that reason he’d left the various nano-screens inert rather than weaponising them into nano-swarms, and would avoid doing so unless he had no other choice.
He was less than pleased to see the Monk using an L-tech energy field. He’d gathered up the two tumbler pistols, the spawn blades and the ACRs, though he’d had to hack the ACR’s control systems before he could use them. He’d also taken his saviour’s trousers and top so he could use the material to grow holsters and pouches for the various weapons and ammunition. Ideally he’d have liked to put on one of the combat armour suits the two guards had been wearing, but he didn’t have time. His saviour had added some armour properties to his clothes, but clearly not enough.
He heard the sound of gunfire. That would be the militia squads destroying their own P-sats. He checked the security footage. He saw the Monk extruding blades from her protective energy field as she destroyed the two S-sats that had attacked her. The only good news about the energy field was that while it could stop bullets, beams and anything else from getting in, it also stopped them from getting out. If she wanted to kill him, she was going to have to do it up close and personal.
‘This might even work,’ he muttered. One thing was for sure – they weren’t going to be so quick to re-create him in the stinking meat of his son’s body again. He sent the command.
The last of the P-sats was taken out with sustained fire from the ACRs and thudded to the corridor floor like so much junk. The Monk continued heading towards the airlock.
Almost as one, the militia started screaming. She couldn’t hear it, but she could see their contorted features through the energy field. She assumed Scab had managed to weaponise the various protective nano-screens, but as she couldn’t ’face with the Templar she had no way to be sure. There was nothing she could do to help them. The priority was to deal with Benedict/Scab as expeditiously and violently as possible.
She marched around the corner into the corridor Scab was in. He was waiting for her, ACR at the ready. He started firing immediately, one short, controlled burst after another fired so quickly that it was almost a constant stream of fire. The solid-state magazine was eaten away as it provided the ingredients for each bullet. The Monk saw the impacts of the electromagnetically driven armour-piercing explosive rounds as sparks of light from inside the safety of the shield. She kept walking.
Scab started firing the underslung grenade-launcher. The thirty-millimetre high-explosive armour-piercing grenades knocked her back. Impact after impact sent her tumbling down the corridor. Then the explosions relented.
The Monk climbed to her feet. Benedict/Scab was discarding the first ACR and aiming the second. This time he didn’t start with the rifle, just fired the underslung grenade-launcher again and again. Inside the energy field, all the Monk could see was fire as she was battered off the corridor’s walls, floor and ceiling.
Finally the barrage relented. The Monk stood up slowly, her entire body one large, painful bruise. Sparks played all over the energy shield as Benedict/Scab fired burst after burst from the ACR. She started walking through the bullets towards him. He was backing away from her as he fired. She picked up the pace and started to run. She wanted to kill him more than she had ever wanted to kill anyone before. Scab tossed the second ACR and fast-drew the two tumbler pistols, firing them rapidly as he backed away from her. The slower, spinning bullets hit the energy field and were held there for a moment, rotating in the pale yellow aura before dropping to the ground. The pistols ran dry. Scab holstered them and drew the two spawn blades. That was when the Monk realised there was something wrong. Just as she was level with the airlock.
Benedict/Scab was a little surprised it had worked. The external airlock door was already open. All he’d had to do was open the internal one. This was not as easy as it sounded, as one of the key things about spaceships was the requirement that the inside never met the outside, due to the detrimental effect such a meeting would have on biological functions. This made the airlock systems among the most heavily protected on any ship. Getting the Templar’s systems to open the external airlock door had been easy enough. Getting it to open the internal door at the same time should have been almost impossible. Except his dead saviour, who apparently had extensive systems access, had already hacked the internal door. All Benedict/Scab needed to do was modify the original hack.
Benedict/Scab expelled all the air from his lungs and closed his eyes,
Too late, the Monk realised what was happening. She caught the red glow in her periphery. There was absolutely nothing she could grab on to as she was sucked out of the corridor. She reached for the lip of the airlock but the energy field surrounding her would not allow any purchase. She just bounced off the edge of the airlock and headed out into Red Space with the other three bodies.
Benedict/Scab was sucked off his feet. He left it as long as he could before ’facing the command to shut the airlock. He hit the floor of the corridor hard. He was next to the airlock. Had it been open another moment he would have joined the Monk in Red Space. The corridor was otherwise empty. He breathed in a lungful of thin air, gratefully. Then he allowed himself to enjoy the cries echoing through the Templar’s dark corridors.
When they purchased a copy of his personality, they had been forced to buy an entire Psycho Bank. A secure database containing the personalities of some of the most dangerous, criminally deranged and psychologically compromised individuals in whatever sector of Known Space the Bank had come from. This included, but was not limited to, recreational killers, spree murderers and career assassins. Psycho Banks were set up so that the personalities could be interrogated by governing AIs to provide insight into other cases.
Benedict/Scab found the meat-hack program that allowed him to possess Benedict’s body, and then used that to download the personalities from the Psycho Bank into the neunonics of the Templar’s entire crew. As the screams began to die out, he knew the possession process was almost complete. It was easier than it should have been because of his system access, and the fact that the ’face connections between ship and crew were so closely linked.
The energy field would keep her safe from the worst effects of space, and she would live as long as her internal oxygen supply held out. It was depressing watching the Templar receding as she spun away from it through the gases of Red Space, though she was still travelling at the same velocity as the ship. She ran through her options. None of them was good.
That little fucker’s done it again. She sent the destruction command to the energy field. She couldn’t risk Scab salvaging such potent L-tech. The re-engineered copy of an ancient code turned the piece of alien tech into expensive junk. The field came down, but she had already engaged her own suicide solution.
‘Listen to me,’ Scab said. His voice echoed through the ship as he took control of an antiquated PA system. ‘This is Woodbine Scab. Not the spayed weakling bounty killer, not the Legion slave, not the pathetic wannabe who bared his arse to the Consortium for Elitehood. This is the Woodbine Scab who carved out the Kingdom of Bone on Cyst. Do you understand?’ He paused to let that sink in. ‘The ship you are on is a Church light cruiser, one of the most sophisticated warships ever made, and I am in control of it. Now, some of you are bad people, nasty folk who will want to be Daddy on this ship. Well, you can step up or hide and bide your time – the end result will be the same. But if you follow me, I promise you every sick little thing your dark, twisted, shrunken hearts could desire. We have atrocities to commit! Who’s with me?’
He would have to make examples, he knew, but despite his contempt for nearly everyone else in Known Space, the answering cheers were strangely gratifying.
Every surface in the empty swimming pool area that had once been the Basilisk II’s lounge had been turned into a screen. Scab was standing among the various media feeds, bathed in the red flames from the various fires on the
habitat the Templar had raided. He was trembling with rage.
‘It’s very simple,’ Benedict/Scab said. ‘If the Templar appears, you will give us exactly what we want, or you and everyone you know will suffer until you’re all ultimately destroyed. There will be no coming back, I promise.’ Benedict/Scab had made the promise to Known Space against a backdrop of snuff/torture immersions and mutilated bodies bonded to the habitat’s smart-matter windows. In the wake of the attack there had been mass outcry against the Church for letting Benedict/Scab get hold of such a sophisticated warship. The Church had in turn promised to dispatch a significant part of its fleet to find and destroy the Templar.
Vic was keeping well back from Scab. He wanted to leave the pool area but was too frightened to move.
‘We can either go after him, or we can continue on the path we’ve already started on,’ Elodie told him.
Scab looked over at her. The feline actually took a step back.
‘This.’ It came out as a slow hiss. ‘Has to be answered.’
In the Cathedral, the Monk opened her eyes. He first thought was fury at Scab successfully murdering her again.
30
Ancient Britain
Britha wasn’t sure why she’d done it. Shaved off half her hair. She was sitting on one of the wooden platforms sticking out from the fort on the Mother Hill, looking down the valley. She’d been sitting there for so long that her presence had stopped bothering the crows and the ravens picking over the bones of the dead.
She felt dirty. As well I should, she admonished herself. After she’d sheared off the hair, she had collected it to burn so nobody else could use it to gain power over her.
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