Manticore Reborn

by Peter J Evans

  "And if I don't?"

  "Then we'll open that can up with a fusion lance, and believe me, you really don't want to be inside if we start doing that."

  He was probably right. Red pondered for a few moments, then retied the veil around her face. "Okay," she muttered. "Give me a minute."

  "Thirty seconds."

  She unlocked her harness and then, after a certain amount of undignified struggling, managed to open the side hatch and climb out. With Sumuk Nine on its side the hatch was now vertical, so she had to make her way down the slick, sea stinking flank of the battered machine before she could reach the deck.

  By the time she got there, a squad of soldiers had already formed up to cover her. She looked into a small forest of gun muzzles and put her hands up, grinning weakly behind the scarf. "Hi," she said.

  One of the soldiers lowered his weapons and stepped towards her. She tensed, expecting a blow, but when his gloved hand came up it was only to grab the crypt disc around her neck and pull it free. The chain snapped as he tugged it, tiny gold links flicking away onto the wet deck.

  The soldier slotted the disc into a reader. "Well. You don't look like trademaster Oray Abd Durwan to me."

  "She's not."

  Red glanced about. The speaker was striding up the deck towards her, flanked by a pair of guards. He'd changed his trader's business suit for a set of flowing robes, and wore a tight fitting skullcap over his short hair, but there was still no mistaking the bearded man from the tender al-Qirmiza.

  He stopped in front of her and took the crypt disc from the soldier's hand. "Trademaster Durwan is still on Ulai, recovering from this woman's assault. As are two dock workers in the submarine pens. This, Hets, is the Lady Yalishanna Trier. And she's a spy."

  "Industrial espionage," said the bearded man, "is a crime, and we Dedani take it very seriously indeed. You're in a lot of trouble, Lady Yalishanna."

  Red scratched her forearm idly. "More than you know," she replied. Sure enough, right on schedule, her plan had become totally derailed.

  The man's name was Utan Bas Loman, and he was a sub-director of Ulai's corporate security division. Apparently he had been warned of Yalishanna Trier's objectives several weeks previously, back when she had made an application to visit Ulai. He'd been tracking her ever since then, even shipping out to Thaetia to keep an eye on her, making sure he was on the clipper to Dedanas, on the same tender down to the fin. The only thing he hadn't done, it seemed, was find out what she'd looked like.

  Red's hair was a mousey brown at the moment, and a layer of artfully applied bio-gel had subtly altered the planes of her face, but she still didn't look much like Yalishanna Trier. Loman had only done half a job.

  That was fine by her, but how long could the situation last? One decent bio-scan, or a blow in the wrong place, and her disguise would quite literally come to pieces. Her image wasn't as well known here in the Periphery as it was in the Accord, but it could only be a matter of time before someone worked out who she was.

  It could happen at any moment. Red couldn't afford to be around for any longer than she had to be.

  Loman had taken her to a small holding chamber in the Refinery's security station. She hadn't been bound, but the door was heavily armoured and solidly locked, impervious even to her strength. For the moment, too, she had kept her abilities hidden. It didn't hurt to have an ace or two up her sleeve, and the more of her mutant nature she kept hidden, the less it could be used to identify her.

  They'd seen her teeth, of course, while she was being searched. A fashion trend, she'd explained, back on Chios Secundus, and didn't anyone have them here? That seemed to have satisfied her captors, who had declared her devoid of weapons or communications devices, given her clothes back and led her into the chamber to dress. Minutes later, Loman had reappeared.

  He sat before her now, on the other side of a desk very much like that in the trading chamber, although there was no mint tea on offer here. Soldiers stood against the far wall, armed with weapons that looked a lot like shock cannon. The guns weren't pointing directly at her, but they were aimed close enough to be uncomfortable. If she tried anything, she'd be full of voltage before she could get over the desk.

  Shock cannons were usually non-lethal, unless you kept the trigger down too long.

  "So," she said, leaning back in her seat and folding her arms. "What happens now?"

  Loman tilted his head. "We have two choices. One, you could tell us exactly why you are here, and who in your corporation is part of this conspiracy. I want to know the names and ident-codes of your conspirators, and I want a full rundown of the operations you've run on other worlds. I know all about Fallaway and Topheth, but I'm sure there are more." He thoughtfully tapped his fingers on the desktop. "If you do that, you'll be detained in one of our security facilities until we see fit to have you deported offworld, and that will be the end of the matter."

  "And behind door number two?"

  "Excuse me? Oh, I see. Well, option two is that you refuse to tell us anything. In that case, we would have no choice but to inform the nearest Iconoclast garrison of a threat to their production, and let them deal with you. High Command has exclusive contracts with us, you know."

  "Do they? Lucky you." Red closed her eyes for a second, thinking hard. She'd screwed up here, and done it badly.

  Lady Yalishanna had looked like a sweet bet for getting into Ulai. Her ticket already booked, idents logged, and her sexual proclivities so well documented that Red had only needed to turn up at the same tavern and the woman had been drooling over her like a schoolboy with a crush on his teacher. She'd never seen someone walk into a honey-trap so easily.

  How was Red to know that the woman was an industrial spy?

  Her options were narrowing quickly. "Okay," she said quietly, opening her eyes to see Loman's reaction. "Here's the prize behind door number three. I say the name 'Trogyllium', and you let me walk out of here and catch the next tender to Chios Secundus."

  Lomas, she noticed, had gone ever so slightly pale. To his credit, though, he didn't cave immediately. "Go on."

  "In front of the help?" Red gestured at the guards. Loman glanced back over his shoulder, as if noticing they were there for the first time.

  "Go," he told them.

  "Sir?"

  "You heard me. This is a matter of planetary security. So stand down until I tell you to do otherwise."

  He waited until they had filed out and locked the door behind them. "Speak."

  "Okay, if you want me to spell it out. Lady Yalishanna Trier is locked in a tavern room on Thaetia with no clothes on, unless she's found her way out by now." She fixed him with a glare. "If you'd done any research at all, you'd know I'm not her. My name's Alissa Carmine, and I'm with the Alpha-Wulf sector security agency."

  "Never heard of it."

  "That's the point, dipstick. But you've heard of Trogyllium, haven't you? That's where the slavers operate out of, the ones you've been buying your mine workers from."

  Loman narrowed his eyes. When he next spoke, there was something sly and cold in his voice. "We run a legitimate business here, Het Carmine-"

  "Do you bollocks," Red hissed. "You've been running this place on slave labour for a decade, ever since the Grand Council shifted the Accord's border fifty light years in your direction. The Ulai government panicked and decided to cut their labour costs down to nothing. Revolutionary mining techniques? Yeah, if you were putting up the snecking pyramids."

  Loman leapt up. "Enough."

  She shook her head. "My report's still pending back on Chios Secundus. It'll go public if I don't report back pretty damn soon, so you'd better start powering up a sub to get me back. If I return to Alpha-Wulf in one piece, then maybe, and I mean bloody maybe, you'll get enough time to put your house in order before the killships turn up. Say what you like about the Grand Council, but they really don't like slavers."

  Loman turned and stalked away from the desk. He was getting his temper back under c
ontrol; she could see that from the set of his back. She'd touched a nerve or two there, all right.

  "Very well," he said finally, his back still to her. "It seems I'm in something of a corner."

  "You and me both."

  "You know that one report from a security agency won't change anything. And given enough time, we could cover the evidence so well that no one, Iconoclast or not, would ever find it."

  "If time's what you need, you can only get it from me." Red grinned at him. "Tick-tock, snecker."

  He looked back at her over his shoulder. "Give me a few minutes," he said, "and I'll see what I can do."

  "Hey-"

  "Don't worry. You'll not be harmed." The door opened for him as he reached it, and closed behind him as he went through.

  Red was expecting to hear the locks engage, but they didn't. She knew the sound of them because she'd heard it on the way in - the distinctive thumping of magnetic bolts.

  This time, nothing. Loman hadn't keyed them yet.

  Red stood up. Had the damned fool left the door unlocked deliberately, expecting her to make a break for it? She took a step towards it, slow and careful.

  As she did, it swung open again. Loman stood in the doorway, levelling a shock cannon at her. "I changed my mind," he said simply. "You will be harmed after all."

  And he pulled the trigger.

  The wall behind Red was cold and wet, the air heavy with the stink of sea water. She lifted her head and saw that she was chained to it by her wrists and ankles. She needed to see that, because she couldn't feel her own body at all.

  She blinked, shaking her head as gently as she could. There was a pulsing, pounding ache inside her, sloshing around her nervous system like waves hitting a beach. Loman must have given her a full charge, and kept the trigger down almost long enough to fry her. "Bastard," she mumbled.

  Her lips were numb, and her tongue felt like a balloon in her mouth.

  The floor beneath her was odd, made of tiles of cracked green ceramic. She could see her bare feet on it as she hung with her head forwards. They had taken her boots away. The rest of her clothes hadn't been touched, which was a bonus, but the floor was very cold, and the water swimming around on it was grimy and tainted.

  The next thing she saw was the knife blade.

  It was long, and curved, and it glittered. It was being held out for her, so she could see it, and then it rose to meet her face, the point of it pressing into her chin. She had to lift her head again to avoid being sliced by it, all the way level and then higher than that. Her neck muscles protested - a return of sensation that was only partly welcome.

  With her head up, she could see the knife's wielder and the smile on his face. "Hello," he breathed.

  "Grota?" As soon as she'd said it, Red cursed herself mentally. Idiot.

  The man shook his head. He was short and narrow shouldered, his thin frame draped in a coat of glossy plastic as green as the tile. His round head was quite bald, save for a bizarre crop of curly hair on the top of his skull, but any humour Red might have found in that was wiped away by the hunger in the man's eyes.

  At the mention of the name his smile dipped a little. "Where did you hear that?"

  "Around."

  "Ah, I see. On the way in, perhaps." He stepped back from her, taking the knife away. "His reputation grows."

  Red kept her head up, looking the man up and down. He was a mutant, she realised, although the hairstyle was an affectation. She could see little cuts and nicks in the shaved parts, where his hands had slipped with the blade.

  "No," the fellow went on, "I'm Remuel. Grota will be along later."

  "After you're done with me?"

  He gave a little shrug. "Sadly, no. He wouldn't like that. He prefers his meat fresh. And believe me, he has quite an appetite." He lifted the knife to his mouth, touching the very point of it with the tip of his tongue, licking until a bead of blood formed there. "But when he's done, he usually lets me have his leavings."

  "Big of him."

  "Big? Oh, you have no idea..." The man gave a lilting chuckle, then paused. His strange head cocked over. "Ah, he's here. Punctual as ever. He always likes to greet his new arrivals."

  Red listened too, and past the thumping of her own heartbeat began to hear what the coated mutant heard. Footfalls, heavy and slow, coming closer.

  The little man giggled. "Get ready," he said happily. "Daddy's home."

  4. MEAT

  Grota wasn't alone when he came in. Utan Bas Loman was with him.

  It was Loman that came in first, through an opening in the wall to Red's right. There was no door there, just the start of what could have been a tunnel leading away, square in section and clad in the same green tile as the rest of the room. The floor was wet there, too; Red heard his footsteps sloshing through greasy brine.

  There were drains in the floor, rusted and filthy, but sea water dripped continuously from the ceiling and down the walls. This place, whatever it was, leaked badly.

  She wasn't the only one who thought so. When Loman strode in, his face was set with disgust. "This place is more repellent then ever, Grota," he muttered.

  There was a chuckle behind him. "And whose fault is that? The repair budget seldom reaches this far down."

  "That's as may be. Still, I'd prefer it if this didn't take long." He gave Red a cursory glance. "Do what you do, then have Remuel get rid of her. She's not for keeping."

  "Pity." Grota put his head around the corner of the opening, saw Red hanging there, and smiled. "I'm a little short of playthings right now."

  He ducked in through the entrance and clambered into the tiled room.

  Red stared. The men in front of her would expect a reaction of terror, and in all honesty such an expression wasn't hard to feign. Grota was huge.

  The man was obviously a mutant. No human, even with the most extreme of Iconoclast modifications, could achieve such a size. He was a full metre taller than Loman. His dark, shaven head dipped forward to avoid touching the ceiling. His fists were the size of a man's skull, his shoulders impossibly broad, his neck corded with tendons as thick as industrial cable. He was naked to the waist, and the muscles of his torso were vast, hard and defined.

  Durham Red was quite the connoisseur of a well-developed male musculature, but there was nothing to admire here. The man was an aberration, even in the eyes of another mutant. He was a monster.

  The look on his face, too, was monstrous. He gazed down at Red with a raw, vile hunger that made Remuel's sweaty need look almost gentle.

  His hands clenched and unclenched. "Very nice," he said, his voice a liquid growl. "My thanks."

  "It's not a gift." Loman stood to one side, regarding Red steadily, his arms folded over his chest. "She's made certain threats, and I want to know how valid they are. You're going to make her tell me."

  "While you stand there and watch, eh, Loman?" Red rattled her chains. "Get your rocks off while he takes me apart?"

  He shrugged very slightly. "It's been a dull week. I could do with a good laugh."

  Grota chuckled under his breath and stepped closer.

  Red found herself backing up, squashing herself against the wall. "Loman, call this thing off."

  "And why would I want to do that?"

  "Look, I was hasty, okay? I don't give a sneck whether you've got slaves down here or not." Grota's hand was at her face, now, his thumb sliding down the side of her cheek and along her jaw line. "I can be reasonable."

  "Hush," Grota whispered. He brought his thumb up to his mouth and licked it clean. "Don't babble so. It's distracting. And maybe, if you don't struggle too much, you might even enjoy it."

  Behind him, Remuel snickered horribly.

  "You don't have to do this," Red hissed, twisting away from Grota as his hand came up again. In reply the mutant smiled, his lips full, almost feminine.

  "I know," he breathed. "If I had to do it, it wouldn't be fun."

  "You could keep me. He said something about keeping me."r />
  His great head shook, slowly, side to side. "Not this time. Het Loman was very specific about that, when he called me in. Personally, I think it's a shame. You look strong. You might have even survived this, if I was especially gentle." He stroked the side of her face again, his massive fingertips tracing the planes of her skull. "But it's not to be. I'm sorry."

  "So am I," Red snarled, and snapped her head towards his hand. Before he could jerk it back, her teeth were sinking into the flesh of his thumb.

  He roared, a high howl of pain, and dragged his hand back. Red opened her mouth at the last moment, letting the thumb out from between her fangs before he pulled her jaw from its moorings, but she'd bitten him down to the bone. His blood was in her mouth, sour and hot. She spat it away.

  Grota had balled his other fist. On the far side of the room Loman shouted at him to stop, not to harm her yet, but the big mutant was past caring. He struck.

  Red snapped her head to one side, and the fist caved in the wall behind her.

  Tile and wet concrete splintered away. Red yanked her right leg up, feeling the soft iron cuff around her ankle dig in for a second before the links parted and spun away. She heard Remuel shout in disbelief - he must have been the one who had strung her up - but she ignored him. Her attention was all on Grota, and the sound he made when her knee came up with blurring speed and hammered into his groin.

  He shrieked satisfyingly, and stumbled backwards.

  Loman was trying to haul something out of his robes. Red yanked her right arm loose, her foot groping on the floor as she did so. She felt a slab of broken tile, got her toes under it and kicked it into the air, catching it with her free hand and lobbing it at Loman's head. It caught him in the left temple, scoring a track through his scalp, and he fell.

  Two more hard pulls, and she was free. Remuel came at her with the knife, but she just punched him in the face, considerably harder than she had hit trademaster Durwan. He slid across the wet floor and slammed into the far wall, blood spouting from nose and lips.