The Lesser Devil

by Christopher Ruocchio

  With a shout from outside, the heavy door fell inward, and two men stood there: one in black armor with a horned helmet, the other in shabby hunting leathers.

  Crispin swore to himself in that moment he would raise both men to the patrician class, for he could not contain his astonishment or his delight. “Lud!” he exclaimed, dropping the mace. “Jean-Louis? How did you get aboard?”

  “One of the skiffs we shot down still worked,” the peltast said, deactivating the sword. “Flew in slow.”

  “But …” Crispin’s mind tried to conjure an objection.

  “This was before your cavalry arrived,” Jean-Louis said. He was clutching one of the MAG rifles, though his cape gun was still slung over his shoulders. “Your man got us up here. I only shot their guns before they shot us.”

  Crispin’s brain was still catching up, and turning to his soldier said, “I thought I told you to give that sword to my sister? I thought I told you to guard her.”

  Lud quailed visibly, and took a step back at the imperious tone of Crispin’s voice. “I gave her the sword, only she gave it right back, see, and she said, ‘Go save my brother before he gets himself killed,’ sir. My lord. I didn’t have a choice.” Only then did Lud remember that he was still holding that same sword. He offered it to Crispin.

  “I’m sorry,” Crispin said. “You’ve done well. Both of you. I won’t forget this.” He accepted the sword, thought for a moment of putting it back on his belt, but he thought better of it. Better it stay in his hand. “I’ve lost my shield,” he said, almost to himself.

  The peltast stiffened, “Take mine, lordship.”

  “No, no,” Crispin clapped the man on the shoulder and pushed past him out into the hall, “you’re shield enough for me.”

  “We must get out of here,” Jean-Louis said darkly. “Your ships can take care of the rest, non?”

  “No,” Crispin said. “I have to finish this myself.”

  “Finish what?” the Frenchman asked.

  The hall outside the lavish library-cum-sitting-room was hardly worthy of the name. It was a more a vestibule, with a wash closet to one side and what appeared to be a small kitchenette where servants of Lady Orin-Natali prepared meals for their mistress as she repaired in the lounge. The convex arcs of elevator doors stood opposite, there were two lift carriages.

  “How did you make it all the way up here without being seen?” he asked. He could imagine that with the fighting going on outside, personnel must have been clambering up and down these lift tubes, swarming like ants.

  Lud answered, “We didn’t.”

  “But we did take the stairs,” Jean-Louis said. “There’s a service stair through there.” He pointed to a narrow hatch between the twin banks of elevator doors.

  “Good enough,” Crispin said, and keyed for the lift. “We’re going up.”

  • • •

  The doors hissed open on the topmost floor. Crispin did his best to stay behind Lud, ready for the enemy to open fire on them the moment the doors opened. No one did. They had a moment of distinct advantage, and Lud seized it. The peltast stepped forward, raised his phase disruptor, and fired. The bolt struck one of the ship techs in the shoulder, killing her instantly. Lud pivoted smoothly, fired again to slay a second technician. The soldier took a step into the room, allowing Jean-Louis the space he needed to fire as well, picking out one of the black-armored guards. The depleted-uranium round went clean through the man’s unshielded body and the metal bulkhead, and was only stopped from putting a hole in the ship by the long-chain carbon molecules in the vessel’s adamantine hull.

  Someone screamed, and disruptor fire peppered the walls and the suddenly gleaming curtain of Lud’s energy shield.

  “Lyra Orin-Natali!” Crispin said, speaking loud and clear as he was able, “Now you surrender!”

  “Hold your fire!” the familiar old voice croaked. “Hold your fire, I say!” Though whether she was ordering her own men or Crispin’s was anybody’s guess. And there she was, standing on a raised platform at the far end of the room beside a well-groomed, older-looking man in a neat gray uniform. Crispin guessed this must be Carlo, her captain.

  The bridge was about the same size as the library had been, though the ceiling was lower and arched, matching the trapezoidal shape of the ship, widest here by the lifts, narrowest ahead. Crispin had expected windows, a glassed roof, at least holograph plates in imitation of windows on the walls, but there was nothing. The place was dark and close and confining. Crispin was coming to realize he did not much care for starships.

  “You’ve lost!” Crispin said coldly. “You’re surrounded.”

  “Lost?” Lyra Orin-Natali sneered, taloned fingers wrapping about the railing that lined her platform by the pilots’ chairs. “Lost? We have not lost. I have you! And in moments we’ll be ready to make our escape, won’t we, Carlo?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the Durantine officer said, jaw barely moving beneath his great, gray beard.

  It was hard to say in the poor lighting, but Crispin was sure he saw the faint shield glimmer embracing the old woman and the captain. He could order Lud and Jean-Louis to fire on them, but it do no good, and if what she said was true, preparation to fire the great rocket’s fusion drive were already locked in to the vessel’s dumb computers. They would fly clear up and away, maybe faster than those Marlowe lighters could follow. But Crispin was sure they wouldn’t make it far. They couldn’t make the jump to warp until they had cleared the distorting influence of Delos’s gravity well, and by then the Orbital Defense Force would be in position to act.

  “You still won’t get away!” Crispin said. The old woman’s face had turned blue and bruise-black, and there was still blood smeared there and on the white robes she wore. It twisted into some expression without name. Past hatred, and mingled with self-loathing at the memory of the fact that she had not been able to kill him with her own hands and the knowledge that she would never have such a chance again.

  Without warning, Lud fired at another of the techs.

  “Hold your fire!” Crispin said, but a moment after saw the gun tumble from its hiding place beneath the technician’s bench. “This is it, Lady Orin,” he said, omitting half her name. “Your son’s rebellion ends today. You know you can’t win.”

  “I can kill you, though,” she managed to say.

  “Don’t bet on it,” Crispin said coldly, “you’ve been trying for three days. It hasn’t worked yet.” He wished then that he had taken Lud up on his offer of a shield. Shielded, he’d have sketched a crimson maze across the bridge. As it was, he could only sulk behind his shielded soldier. There was a place not far to his right where he might crouch in safety. But from there, he would be no use without a firearm.

  But that dead technician had dropped his gun.

  The ship rocked, and Crispin saw a wire-frame model of the black tower flash red above one of the holograph projection pits between him and the lady’s platform. Lud and Jean-Louis kept weapons trained on guardsmen who kept weapons trained on them. The overhead lights dimmed, and somewhere far below in the distant bowels of the vessel, the noise of some engine quieted.

  “Shields critical!” one of the techs cried out, drawing the attention of Captain Carlo and the Orin woman.

  The lights faded again, and this time Crispin was ready. He dove towards the shelter of the bank of consoles at his right. Surprised by his lord’s movement, Lud was a second firing, but Jean-Louis was ready. The noise of the MAG rifle’s shot pounding the far wall was like the beat of some titanic drumhead, and the fine spray of blood it pulled from the body of one of the soldiers spattered the wall. Crispin scooped up the fallen weapon and checked the safety with his thumb. From his new vantage, the techs along the port side of bridge were easy targets, and he dialed the disruptor to kill even as Lud fired up at the captain.

  None of the ship techs were shielded, and it almost felt unfair shooting them. When he had shot three, Crispin raised his voice, “How many of your peop
le can you afford to lose?” Flying an interstellar starship was no easy task, it wasn’t something the old woman could do alone. “For the last time, surrender! I’ll see my father shows you mercy!”

  “Fuck your mercy!” the old woman cried. “I know what a Marlowe’s mercy is worth!”

  Two of Orin-Natali’s guards advanced on Lud, who still covered Jean-Louis in the door to the elevator, which had started to chime its irritation that the door that could not be closed. Crispin shot at one, but the disruptor bolt splashed against the bastard’s shield. No good. Worse, the man had seen him and, rounding on Crispin, fired. Lord Marlowe barely pulled himself around the back side of the consoles before the man returned fire, abandoning his compatriot to pursue the unshielded lord.

  Crispin only had one chance. Rather than retreat up the way, he waited right at the corner, his father’s highmatter sword unkindled in his hands. He waited, listening for the sound of the man’s feet coming closer, and pulled the trigger. Liquid metal the color of Earth’s moonlight and the sea sprang out without warning. The man walked right into it. For a terrible second, Crispin guessed the man did not know what had happened to him. He had, in fact, taken another step, not realizing he’d left his feet behind. Blood poured forth from his amputated legs, and he fell headlong into the bulkhead not a yard away. Crispin slashed out from his hiding place, shearing through armor to slay the man where he had fallen. He tried not to think about the blood, about what he’d just done, about the way the man’s feet were still sitting on the floor where he had left them like a pair of old shoes. Crispin didn’t have much time, and unclipped the man’s shield generator from his belt.

  “Shields compromised!” some iron-blooded technician announced, and distantly Crispin was impressed that the woman had not left her chair. Not a moment later a distant, metallic clangor like the fall of some mighty hammer resonated through the ship from far below, and Crispin guessed that cutter craft had latched themselves to the tower’s outer hull, which meant that in a matter of moments there would be Marlowe soldiers aboard the vessel.

  Perfect.

  His pilfered shield now firmly attached to his belt, Crispin stood, jerked back as disruptor fire slammed into him. With a snarl he vaulted over the console, paying no mind to the surviving ship techs. Lud was still fighting the surviving guardsman—Jean-Louis crouched behind, trying for a clean shot that never came. Crispin thrust the point of his sword down through the man’s shoulder, and grabbing the man by the jaw from behind, he pushed the blade out through his breastplate, leaving a long, ragged wound. The man fell over dead, and Lud and Crispin exchanged nods as disruptor fire from the far platform peppered them. “Jean!” Crispin threw his arms wide to stretch the ambit of his shield, “Move!”

  The adorator nodded, kissed the golden crucifix he wore. Then he stood and—following Crispin’s earlier path—dove towards the consoles.

  He’d made it about three-quarters of the way there when one of the disruptor bolts found him. It wasn’t a clean shot—only grazed his left side—but even a graze from disruptor fire could be foul, could deaden nerves and kill muscle, could cause permanent spasms and pain. The Frenchman gasped and half-dropped his rifle, but he made the safety of the consoles all the same, and there remained. Furious now, Crispin rounded on the small knot of men around Lyra Orin-Natali.

  “You heard that noise, ladyship?” he said harshly, and turning to face her once more stood square and shielded in the center of the hall. “My men are aboard—or will be any moment!”

  “Carlo!” she said, ignoring Crispin, “Carlo! Take us out of here!” Crispin did not have time for this. He turned his disruptor down to stun, its indicators cycling from red to blue. He stunned each and every one of the remaining technicians where they sat. If it came to it, his people would be up to take over soon. Deactivating the highmatter blade, he continued his walk up the hall, keeping the sword in his hand, the stunner in the other. At last he mounted the steps to the captain’s platform, taking them one at a time.

  “I said it’s over, ladyship,” Crispin said. “Carlo!”

  The Durantine captain stepped between Crispin and the old woman. Crispin had to admire the man: though he was shielded, he had no defense against highmatter and must have known it. Where had Lyra Orin-Natali found so dedicated a mercenary? Crispin couldn’t imagine any mercenary so eager to throw away his life for a client. Was he family, perhaps? One of the Natali side of things? Carlo Natali sounded appropriately Durantine—even a little Jaddian.

  “Get out of my way, Carlo,” Crispin said. “If your mistress won’t surrender, I will accept yours for your sake and the sake of your men. Get on internal comms and tell your people to stand down.” For emphasis, Crispin grew quiet a moment, and from below could clearly be heard the grind and metallic scream of the boarding craft cutting through the hull of the ship. “Everyone below will die.”

  Still, Carlo did not move. “I can’t do that,” he said, voice flat.

  “Kill him, Carlo!” the Orin woman shrieked.

  Crispin raised his sword, gleaming blade spiking out to cleave the older man in two.

  But Carlo was faster.

  The man’s punch took Crispin in the solar plexus so hard it knocked the wind out of him. The force of the blow lifted Crispin from his feet and tumbled him down the stairs. Black planet! The strength of him! Crispin forced himself to slow his breathing, to quiet the blood drumming in his head.

  Carlo was coming.

  And he had lost his sword: dropped it in the fall. That was just as well: he might have cut himself with it on his way down if he hadn’t let it go. Shots flew over Crispin’s head. Lud had joined the fray, firing against the captain’s shield. Crispin thought it a pity the man hadn’t brought his lance along with him when he’d flown to Crispin’s rescue. If the shots slowed Carlo’s forward progress at all, Crispin missed it. The man came on like the tide, jogging down the steps. Crispin saw that he was not going to regain his footing in time, and launched himself at Carlo’s knees, knocking the man to the ground.

  Lud was at his side then, and pulled Crispin to his feet. “Find my sword,” the Devil of Meidua said.

  But Carlo was on his feet again, recovered fast as any man Crispin had ever seen. He swung for Crispin’s head, and Crispin raised his elbow to block just in time. Even so, the force of the blow slammed his teeth together. Clearly, Carlo had been raised on some high-gravity world. The strength in him was astonishing. But Crispin was an able fighter, even without his sword. He shoveled Carlo just below the ribs and redoubled, throwing an elbow across the bearded Durantine’s face, snapping the fellow’s head to one side. An ordinary man might have reeled, staggered back, or fallen. Carlo only turned back to face Crispin with anger and an eerie slowness. Then he struck, and it was all Crispin could do to get his hands up in time to block a straight punch and follow it with a blow to Carlo’s jaw.

  The man did not even seem to feel it.

  So stunned was Crispin that he just stood there a moment, slack-jawed. Then two hands like irons pincers seized the front of his sweat- and blood-stained clothing. Crispin tried to prize his hands loose, but it was like trying to make a statue unclench its fists. Crispin punched the man instead, hitting his jaw, his chin, his ribs. Carlo hardly flinched. That wasn’t possible. It was like striking a mass of wet clay.

  Then Carlo slammed his forehead into Crispin’s, and it was all Lord Marlowe could do to tuck his chin and save his face. Where was Lud with that sword? He’d been gone for half a century at least. Crispin’s head was ringing, and he feared he might have a concussion. Even still, he had enough of his wits left to wrap his arms around Carlo and hold him close, pressing his pounding head close enough to Carlo’s to keep the man from headbutting him. Close as dancers they were, and Crispin kept one hand on the far side of Carlo’s head, trapping it between that and his own skull.

  And then he remembered the young peasant boy fighting in the village that morning. The way he had pulled the shield ge
nerator off one of the mercenaries so his compatriots could shoot at him. Pressing his aching head tight against Carlo’s ear, Crispin found the shield generator pack and switched it off, tugged it free of its holster. Now, if only he hadn’t dropped his stunner, too. It didn’t matter that referred energy from the stunner bolt would have impacted him, too. He only wanted to be free.

  Then Carlo made a mistake.

  Frustrated by Crispin’s still-free hands, he let go with one of his own and pulled back to strike Crispin a blow that would have knocked the teeth from his head. Crispin tried to get his hands up to block it, shut his eyes despite decades of fighter’s instinct. The blow never came. Warm blood splashed Crispin’s face, and opening his eyes he saw that Lud had stepped in and interposed the highmatter blade between between Carlo’s arm and Crispin’s face, severing the Durantine’s appendage at the elbow.

  And the blood … it wasn’t blood at all.

  Whatever it was draining from the stump of Carlo’s arm, it had the texture of oil and the color of milk. The tissues visible beneath Carlo’s skin were egg-yolk yellow, the bones black and fibrous.

  He wasn’t a man at all. Too late Crispin remembered that the Durantines did not share his Imperial hatred of machines. Carlo was one of their strojeva, a golem. What was the old English word?

  An android.

  Horror and a superstition old as Old Earth moved in Crispin, and even Lud quailed, the sword falling loose at his side.

  The golem released Crispin with its one remaining hand, only to seize him by the face and force him to the ground. Fingers hard as iron clamped over his jaw, and slowly—oh, so slowly—the thumb worked its way towards Crispin’s eye. And nothing Crispin could do could move the machine away. His desperate blows, his flailing! None of it prevailed. He was going to die after all. He was going to die while stood there stunned by holy fear—and Crispin couldn’t even blame him. Such thinking machines were demons, the scriptures said.