Then everything went foggy and black.
“Well you’re not a soldier are you,” said the voice definitively. It sounded puzzled. “Who are you?” it asked again. “What were you doing attacking our troops in the town, and then trying to take on an entire transport?” Helena’s mouth felt parched. The skin on her hands had grown back. She rubbed them tenderly, flinching. They were okay even if her brain refused to hold still when she checked, as if her own body didn’t believe it.
“They’re dead by the way,” said the voice. Helena noticed the engines were quiet; they had probably set down somewhere.
“Who were these people?” she asked, in spite of herself. The bodies on the floor silently demanded that someone know who they were.
“Noenieput,” came the reply. “It’s taken us nearly an entire day to clean up the mess you caused and herd those sheep back together again. The passengers you’re sharing a cell with are those who had implants of one sort or another. They’re being resettled.”
The dryness of the last sentence left Helena empty. She hoped Schmerl did not know what he had been arguing for.
“My name is Lady Helena Woolf.”
“Good. What is on the datastore you had hidden upon your person?”
“I’ve no idea what you’re talking about,” said Helena.
“Stupid,” said the voice. Helena screamed out as the skin on the soles of her feet peeled itself back. The pain grew and then steadied out, it was being kept from pushing her back into oblivion. Helena writhed on the table, thrashing her feet into the air, banging her heels on the hard surface.
A sharp stabbing pain ran up the inside of her legs and into her groin.
“Stop,” she managed to whimper between gasps.
“What is the datastore Ms. Woolf?” asked the voice.
“It’s the boy,” she tried to say, but the pain rendered her words nothing more than babble. She’d bruised herself as she thrashed around, the nails on her hands drawing blood as they cut into her palms. The pain subsided, the cutting away of her skin paused around her ankles. The blood flowed a little, relieving the pressure on her body. The table underneath her slicked as she bled.
Helena sobbed and drew in a gulp of air.
“Try again.”
“It’s the boy,” she said, rolling over into a foetal position.
Nothing but her breathing broke the silence for a long time.
Eventually, “What boy?”
“That’s all I know,” said Helena, holding closely to her knees, with her eyes shut, breathing in ragged, shallow gasps.
“Tell me again.” The voice was more patient now it wanted something. Her captor did not know what she was talking about. It had stumbled across something much bigger than a single Oligarch alone in the wilds. She might not be alone. She might have friends, friends who would be asking where she was and what had happened to her.
Helena wondered if Indexiv might turn a blind eye to the torturing and murder of a lone Oligarch in the middle of a war zone. It didn’t matter, it could not, would not, ignore the death of someone with friends. Helena wondered if it was too late, if this bastard knew he had crossed the line. If he did she was as likely dead as saved.
She eagerly told it everything she knew. It didn’t take long. “The datastore has the coordinates for the boy. Indexiv want him, Euros need to move him.” Instead of swallowing her spit, she let it collect in her cheek then spat it out onto the table. It pooled in front of her, small bubbles trapped beneath the meniscus.
Her body was recovering, her nanotechnology was attempting to rebuild the skin across her legs, up to her labia where she had been peeled in a narrow strip. She felt hungry, knew she had lost a lot of weight as the nanomachines devoured her from the inside in order to keep her alive. Did he know she was killing herself to stay alive?
The questioning went away then, the static behind the voice fading as it left her alone.
She did not move. There was nothing for her to do.
The lights dimmed, leaving her to lie there in the shadows. Her blood dried around her prone body, forming an outline of her suffering. The dead around her whispered a prophecy of her death.
You haven’t died in vain, thought Helena. I will stand witness.
Eventually the voice came back. It could barely conceal its delight. Helena thought she heard gunfire, but whatever it was lay beyond her reach. “Thank you Ms. Woolf. Rest assured your family will be informed of your accidental death, at the hands of leak addicts in Noenieput before Indexiv could rescue you. If you hadn’t been so reckless as to travel through a war zone, alone, at such a time as this then we might have been able to save you.
“Unfortunately the American corporations who claim this zone delayed us, even though we received your distress call in time to act. Indexiv extends its sympathies, and regrets that those who opposed its actions within the Southern African States caused your death.”
Helena didn’t move; she did not really hear the words, only the meaning in the tone.
Out of nowhere, her primary AI came online. Helena, was all it said. That first word the gasp of a diver reaching the surface after running out of breath.
Its sudden presence in her mind was like the rush of an unexpected downpour. Helena’s head jerked back, as if trying to cushion the blow of her AI extending itself back into the distant shores of her person. As it went, its tendrils touching central nodes one by one, her Secondary and Tertiary AIs came online. They immediately started reconfiguring her nanotechnologies and implants to restore her without cannibalising her organs in the process.
Her hearing sharpened, as if she had at last found the correct frequency for a sought after radio station. She could hear gunfire.
Her primary AI encouraged her to sit up. Her nanomachines spread out onto the table to reclaim her spilt fluids then parts of the table itself. As they spread, the bodies closest to the legs of the operating stand decayed in fast motion, as if someone had sped up the camera. She breathed out long and hard, mastering an initial repulsion that bulged in her throat. Watching her machines at work, she felt a grim satisfaction at taking these people into herself. They were saving her and in return she would carry them with her back to London.
Your deaths will not go unanswered, promised Helena.
Whatever was happening outside had distracted her captors, she should have been dead. Her Primary AI growled. It caught her short, reminded her she wasn’t exactly home or free.
What? She asked.
An image played through just behind her eyes. The Secondary AI was hard at work co-opting the alien nanomachines on the surface of her skin, taking them over silently and efficiently. The technology being used to torture her was of an equivalent level to her own.
The lights went out, a few moments later slight red bulbs illuminated the room.
We were suppressed, said her Primary AI, without being asked. Helena knew what it meant, but something was still not quite right with her AIs, even though they were back online.
She’d noticed it after her concussion; her AIs were taking the initiative.
It occurred to her that she didn’t know just how plain her thoughts were to her AI. She knew that AI were never permitted full sentience, although she didn’t understand the specifics of why. Except that, with her own AI acting as if it were a whole being all by itself, she saw how there might not be room for two of them in her head. That her own AI had deteriorated from the minor, but fixable, issue of expressing emotions, to acting independently was a big problem and not one medics would let slide when she got home.
I’ll add it to the list, she thought.
She approached the door. It was no longer electrified, although it was still sealed tight.
Helena felt the wall vibrate with the impact of small arms fire as she steadied herself against it.
Two to one the Hound is standing on the other side of the door, said her Primary AI.
She shook her head, Impossible.
Fine
.
Leaving her hands there, her Secondary AI interpreted the shockwaves coming through the biometallic membrane, she could almost see the footsteps of an adult male walking towards the door in front of her. A faint and receding drumming could be heard. The slowing heartbeat of a dying man slumped up against the wall, barely centimetres from Helena’s hands.
The door opened.
“Come on,” came the clipped command.
Thank you for your time, said her AI. She tentatively stepped forward, the light in the corridor not much better than in her cell. She put one foot down onto the solid floor. It felt good; there would be no more dead bodies beneath her feet. The smile was short-lived. Her arms were grabbed tightly, and she was yanked out through the door the down along the corridor.
“I can’t wait for you,” said the Hound. She watched the back of his head as he stormed back along the corridor, pulling her by one arm. Her AI noted the number of dead they passed, every one of them an Indexiv soldier, each despatched with one shot or a stab wound to the head. It told her which bodies were missing parts and, if they could be seen, how far away from the body they lay.
In all, the Hound had killed seventeen men to get to her – in less than four minutes. The transport was fifty metres in length.
Coming back to herself, she tried shaking off his grip.
He stopped, turned to face her, still gripping her tight in his left hand. He snorted. “Don’t mess about. If you can walk, come with me. Don’t run off, don’t get any ideas, and don’t think you’re a match for me.” He waited, not letting go.
She was not in a state to disagree so nodded her head.
“Good,” said the Hound, letting her arm go free and heading into the hangar.
The stench of death sank into her skin. The bay was packed shoulder high with dead bodies. Young, old, male and female, they were jammed together, arms and legs bent awkwardly if it meant they packed together better. A path had been kept clear of bodies to allow access to the bay doors from the rest of the ship. It was a river of blood and shit. The stink festered with a substance that the dozens of dead in her cell had not had time to create.
Those nearest the bay doors were packed in upright.
It seems probable these people were crushed into the transport alive and then shot where they stood, said her AI.
They were all naked. More recently, two soldiers had attempted to bar the Hound’s entry into the transport. They had not been successful.
“Wait,” said Helena urgently, remembering she had left the datastore behind.
“I have the datastore,” said the Hound without turning around. He waggled the datastore in his left hand.
She pointlessly looked around for clothes. The soldiers hadn’t stored the clothes of their victims anywhere she could see.
They reached the exit to the transport; the ramp was still down. There was little noise coming from outside the ship.
The Hound stepped down and out. Helena placed one foot forward and paused. With a final glance back into the darkness of the ship, she pursed her lips, then turned and walked after him.
IT WAS DARK, although the moon had risen high into the night and provided a little light to see by. The Milky Way was faint, filtered out by the lights of a large city. The nearest buildings, thousands of abandoned shanty huts, started about a mile north of them.
More dead men lay around the transport; none had even unshouldered their weapons. The Hound stopped and turned to face Helena, his eyes reflecting the moonlight, bright green shards in the night. Helena did not know where to begin. She wanted to flee, to collapse and hide somewhere dark until her memories stopped coming back. Yet the Hound stood in front of her while about her lay the remains of those who had captured her.
“Woolf. Take the clothes from one of these soldiers and adopt a more suitable skin tone. Anaemic will not pass for Southern African.” He sat cross legged where he had been stood as he waited for her to get dressed.
It did not take her long to strip one of the soldiers. She forewent his underwear, managing to keep the blood from the wound to the back of his skull from staining his gear. She’d stopped noticing her own blood. She saw from his tags that in life he’d been Lt. G. Freeman.
A sense of disgust rolled around her head, but it wasn’t her own emotion. It had the sense of being touched by someone else. The rawness of the emotion was like a change in the weather. Her Primary AI was angry, upset. She did not need to ask it why, but she didn’t want to feel its moods.
“Don’t think I won’t kill you,” said the Hound as Helena tightened the last buckle around her waist. “The reasons you are stood here now are…” the Hound paused, searching for the right word. He continued, a look of frustration on his face “…confusing. But don’t fuck with me. I will kill you.” As if to make his point he took a long thin blade from its scabbard, cutting smoothly through the air.
“What do you want?” asked Helena as he showed off his skill with a sword. She wondered if he was trying to intimidate her.
I’m so past that, she thought. She knew he didn’t have the social skills to handle complex situations. His creators had favoured physical excellence over mental acuity.
He stopped moving, held his blade with precise balance, and then brought it down to rest awkwardly at his side. He seemed lost.
“I don’t know.” Looking around him, his eyes hovered over each of the bodies lying nearby. “I could have walked in and retrieved the datastore; these would have obeyed my authority.”
Helena doubted it. “You’re a Euros Hound; we’re at war with their masters,” she said as scornfully as she felt safe to do so.
“They were torturing you,” said the Hound, as if she should learn some great lesson from that event. She stayed silent, others had suffered worse.
“I have a legal right to my prey, even in war.” He shrugged. “They would not have stopped me either way. The datastore was mine.” He shook his head as if trying to clear his mind. “I don’t understand why you were retrieved.”
Helena frowned; whatever was driving him was something out of reach for now.
“I can’t activate the datastore. You will take me to the boy,” said the Hound.
“What?” said Helena.
Of course, she thought, everyone wants the boy. All the suspects were still in the game. This move eliminated no one from her growing cast of villainous bastards.
The Hound looked at her.
“Give me the store then,” she said, trying to sound normal, authoritative, calm. He looked down into his palm and flashed the store up to his fingertips. With a quick flick the item sailed through the air in her direction. Helena picked it out of its arc and held it up to her face.
The coordinates did not show. She knew they’d not show ever again. Whether they did or not was irrelevant’ she had them lodged in her mind, highlighted on a map under lock and key. It would take her some minutes to undo the security she had put in place, but the general whereabouts of their quarry was still Swakupmund.
He was only a Hound, there was no way he could consider how she’d use her abilities to solve her problems. Even if he could, he did not have the mental capacity to outwit her. It was their low level of self-awareness that had led a jaded Oligarch to remark on their similarities to domesticated hunting dogs.
“Where are we going?” asked the Hound, after a minute or so.
“The west coast, Swakupmund.” Helena said. She looked up at the transport sitting over them. “Will this get us there?” she asked him.
“No,” said the Hound. “I have alternative means of transportation in the city. For now, we must avoid observation. Indexiv was expecting this transport in Gaborone an hour ago. Your route said ‘west coast’. You were not hard to track and find.” He shrugged again as if she had failed some sort of test, and got to his feet.
“Follow me.”
Helena had let her skin drift towards sun-darkened, but it would need more than a couple of hours of sunlight be
fore the full effect would be in place. She also needed food, lots of food. Her Secondary AI was busy trying to describe a worst-case scenario, where her kidneys would be the first to be devoured by a body desperately in need of sustenance. She tried to ignore it, but the graphic clinical details of trying to function without her organs were difficult to set aside.
The Hound’s legs made a clicking sound as he locked hydraulic motors into position.
“Wait,” called Helena.
“You’ll get food in Windhoek,” said the Hound, without looking at her.
“No,” she said. He glanced at her, enough permission to carry on.
“What do I call you?” she asked. He laughed in a short, gruff explosion.
“Rex,” said the Hound, and took his first stride towards the city.
THEY SLOWED as they came to the outskirts proper. No normal person ran like the Oligarchs, so the Hound insisted that they walk the last half mile. Unlike the towns she had seen in the Southern province, Windhoek still bustled. It was much reduced since its greatest days, some three hundred years previously, but it remained a living city in every respect.
The cultures of those living in the land permeated the structures and designs of the city. Old, pre-Oligarchy German architecture mixed exotically with Dutch and indigenous designs. The influx of self-ordering buildings had been minimal, kept mainly to those places requiring high technology and modern access to the Cloud. Helena could have stopped and spent days exploring the ancient streets.
Advertising filled the streets, covering the sides of houses, floating through the air, defining the design of the roads and pavements. The billboards were packed closer together as they approached the centre of town. The outlying marketing was sometimes more than a week out of date, leaving tens of square metres unused as sponsors were unwilling to pay for updates or real time identification of their potential consumers.
The wide sky narrowed as they penetrated deeper into Windhoek; when they came at last to the point that divided the outskirts of the city from the city proper, the sky was completely blocked from view at ground level.
A Family War: The Oligarchy - Book 1 Page 14