Manticore Reborn

by Peter J Evans

It was Godolkin who normally took piloting duties now that Crimson Hunter was gone. It made sense for him to do so. For one thing, although it was heavily modified by its previous owners, Omega Fury was technically an Iconoclast ship. Despite Red's innate skill with space vehicles of any kind, it was Godolkin who was most qualified to fly this particular vessel, and Red was usually happy to let him get on with it. Besides, the pilot station was bigger than those on either side of it, and probably the only one which could accommodate Godolkin's massive frame with ease.

  After the spacious, open plan bridge of Crimson Hunter, Red found Fury's command area quite claustrophobic. Its three embedded workstations weren't much bigger than fighter cockpits, accessible only by sliding the thrones back and away from the controls. Once she was strapped in, though, Red could see the logic behind the control arrangement: Fury was a fast warship, designed to be thrown around the sky in a way which would have caused Hunter serious structural damage. Even the dampers were set low to facilitate high speed flight, letting the pilot manoeuvre without having to fight an anti-inertia field. The cramped, narrow command stations were built to safeguard the crew while the ship was executing high g burns and brutal changes in vector. A little claustrophobia was a small price to pay for the protection they provided.

  But that, of course, made things highly uncomfortable for the people inside the vessel. It meant that she could barely see her companions, even though they were right next to her. Most of the time she kept a couple of postcard sized comms holos open on her board, showing the faces of the two men as they worked. It stopped her feeling so isolated.

  Both screens were active now. Harrow's youthful features were creased in concentration as he tried to interpret the sense-engine returns, while Godolkin's face was relaxed, almost meditative. His eyes were half closed, the altered right one showing as a pale thread between his lids. Red knew enough about the big Iconoclast to recognise when he was in a state of complete concentration, totally attuned to the ship's controls, the vibration from its manoeuvring thrusters, the faint shifts of gravity through its decks.

  She looked back to her forward views, where kilometre high bergs of grey stone slid past.

  "There's a lot of terrain down there," Harrow ventured. "Perhaps we should land."

  Godolkin shook his head. "I'd advise against it. These shards may look solid to you, but they are rife with fractures from the planet cracker's concussion. If we attempted to set down we could end up shattering an entire segment."

  Red didn't like the sound of that. The space around Fury was already filled with debris, more than she had ever seen in one place. In a normal asteroid belt this much rock was spread around an entire planetary orbit - the general rule of thumb was that if you could see one asteroid, you wouldn't be able to see another. They would all be too far away.

  The broken world's gravity was, somehow, in equilibrium with all the other forces acting upon it. Maybe in a few thousand years all the bergs and spars and drifting mountains would begin to dissipate, but for the foreseeable future they remained horribly close. Any false manoeuvre on Godolkin's part could see one of those razor like, stone edges slicing Fury open like a knife cutting fruit.

  Abruptly, one of the holos sprang up in front of its fellows; Fury had picked up a beacon signal. Seeing it, Red practically cheered. "There." she yelped. "Guys, have you got that?"

  "I see it," Godolkin reported. Harrow was already slaving more detailed returns onto his board. Red felt Fury tip over, a shudder in the deck as the drives fired in tiny, staccato bursts.

  She wondered if Joash, still up in the infirmary, had managed to grab something.

  On Red's primary holo-screen, a crack in one of the biggest segments of planet began moving towards her, widening like a jagged black maw. Immediately, Fury started yelling. "Proximity alert." it screeched nasally. "Recommend vector change to zero-one-five! This is a priority command."

  "Shut the sneck up," Red snapped. She had hated the voice alert system as soon as she had heard it, and her feelings towards it hadn't mellowed. "Jude, haven't you been able to turn that bloody voice off yet?"

  "Apparently not," grated Godolkin.

  Between holographic views of rock strata rising past her, she saw Harrow shake his head. "I'm sorry, Red. There's a series of overrides I can't access. The Omegas must have really liked it."

  "Further proof," Godolkin ventured, "that they were all mad."

  The beacon signal was getting stronger. Holos on Red's left and right showed titan walls of frozen magma crawling past, great spars and nodules and solidified waves that had once been the molten interior of a world. At times those chaotic surfaces seemed as if they were barely moving, but it was a trick of scale: the wedges of planetary material Fury was passing between were thousands of kilometres long, and the features she saw were the size of towns, of starships.

  The shadows were deep here. This far into the ruins, sunlight that had once warmed the faces of this world's children could only cast planes of solid darkness.

  The beacon's chime was rising in pitch as Fury moved closer to what was once the core, and the terrain of the chasm was changing again. Instead of a frozen ocean of leaping, molten stone, great voids were now appearing - first cracks and fissures, then gaping caves. Red had a sudden flashback to the surface of Lavannos, that awful planetoid that had once been Earth's moon. There were voids in that glassy, fused surface that had been kilometres deep, dozens across, their bases forever lost to the light. The largest of them, named the Eye of God by those that lived and worshipped there, might have matched the smallest of those sliding past her now.

  Finally, as Fury passed before an open void the size of a major city, the beacon's chime became a solid warble, then a shriek. Red stood it for about a second before she switched it off. "Godolkin, hit the brakes."

  Fury shuddered as the manoeuvring thrusters brought it to a halt relative to the chasm. Red looked at her starboard holo and saw points of light appearing in the darkness, tiny specks of glare deep within the cave. "What the-"

  "Warning." The voice alert system, bellowing its complaints across the bridge, sounded even more hysterical than usual. "Multiple weapons systems have acquired this vehicle. Initiate evasive action."

  Godolkin's hands were hovering over his controls. "Mistress?"

  "It's okay," she said, staring at the patterns of light glowing out there in the cave. "It's them. We've found the fleet."

  Red had last been aboard the battleship Persephone almost four months earlier, in those dark days when the mutant warrior called Xandos Dathan had tried to convince her to fight for him to bring about peace in the Accord. Peace, however, had never been Dathan's intention. Instead, he had been planning to ignite a new war between humans and mutants, at a time when the Iconoclast forces were in disarray. Had Red not discovered his plans and persuaded some of Dathan's warriors to fight against him, billions would have died.

  One of the men she had turned was Sibbecai, Dathan's commander of marines and one of the most capable tactical leaders Red had met. Along with the fleet commander Jubal, Sibbecai had helped Red turn the tide of battle around on the world of Irutrea, giving her just enough time to board Dathan's planet killing super cruiser and end the madman's plans once and for all.

  That was a debt she could never spend enough time repaying, although Sibbecai didn't see it like that. Despite Red's protestations, he merely regarded it as a duty to his Saint. The man had been a soldier of the Tenebrae before Dathan's Umbrae Nova had recruited him.

  He was there to meet her on Persephone's hangar deck after Fury had set down, with a full honour guard at his heel. As usual, he was dressed collar to boots in glossy uniform armour and a flexible carapace in dark burgundy, and he bowed low as she drew close.

  "In the name of the crimson light," he rasped, "it's true. Our Saint lives."

  That certainly wasn't what Red had expected him to say, and it caught her slightly off guard. "Come again?"

  "Forgive me, holy on
e." He straightened, bringing his face level with hers. Or rather, she thought, he would have done if he'd had a face. Sibbecai's mutation had robbed him of any recognisable features, save a double row of horribly exposed teeth. He had no lips, no nose, no visible eyes, just a ragged mass of scar tissue above the gape of his mouth.

  In terms of looks, Joash definitely did not take after his father.

  "You have not heard the rumours?" he asked. His voice was a harsh, lusty bark, but his lack of lips didn't seem to affect his pronunciation. Red had never worked that out. "I never wanted to believe them myself, but when my own people claim to have seen the proof..."

  "Rumours?" Red made an exasperated sound. "Proof? Sibbecai, would you mind just telling me what the sneck's going on?"

  "They said you were dead."

  "Lots of people say I'm dead. Wishful thinking, usually, or some smart arse trying to claim the bounty. What, are people starting to actually believe it this time?"

  Sibbecai opened his mouth to answer, but then a change came over him. It was subtle, little more than a fractional change of posture, a relaxation of the rough skin of his face. His head tilted, just slightly, towards Omega Fury.

  "I'll tell you later," he breathed.

  Red glanced back over her shoulder to see Joash emerging from the hatchway, and she smiled to herself. The answers could wait a while.

  She stepped aside, and let the father greet his son.

  Persephone had been eviscerated by Dathan's fusion lances during the battle of Irutrea. The entire port side had been laid open, and fires started there that had burned for days, even in the vacuum of space. Eventually, more to stop the ship's atmosphere processors ripping themselves apart to feed the flames than to save lives, Sibbecai had simply ordered the wrecked half of his vessel to be sliced off and flung away.

  Parts of the battleship had been replaced, but the view from the observation deck still showed a scene of devastation. Red looked out over what should have been a vast, delta shaped hull of armour, but much of what she could see was just gantry, lit by the hundreds of running lights she had seen from outside the cavern. Persephone was holding together, but it was in no condition to fight a battle.

  She turned away from the view, leaning back against the transpex wall. "So what happened to Jubal?"

  "We split our forces," said Sibbecai. "The last I heard he had raided a tithe fleet en route to Kassatta, so if his ships are half Iconoclast next time you see them, don't be surprised."

  "His fleet must have been in better shape, then."

  Sibbecai shrugged. "He had the experience to use them. And this fleet is gaining strength, my Saint. For now we watch and wait, but we'll be plaguing the enemy again before long."

  "I don't doubt it," Red replied, but she knew her old ally would have a long job getting his forces back up to strength. On the way into the cave she had seen six, maybe seven capital ships, including the stricken Persephone. And three of those had been frigates. If Omega Fury had been dropped into the middle of Sibbecai's fleet with murder in mind, the stealth ship could have done the Umbra Nova serious damage.

  Joash had been taken to Persephone's infirmary and was doing well. While he was being tended, Red had left Fury to Godolkin and Harrow. The Iconoclast didn't feel entirely comfortable aboard a ship full of mutants, and Harrow had wanted to get back to hunting down the voice alert's command chain. He was convinced he could still that nasal drone eventually, and Red wished him the best of luck. The sooner Fury stopped shouting at her the better.

  Sibbecai had invited Red to the observation deck, but so far they had done nothing but make small talk. Whatever the commander had to tell her, she realised, was making him intensely uncomfortable.

  There had to be a way of working around to the subject, or they would be here for a week. "So, have you heard anything about Dedanas?"

  "I have. Ulai is in chaos, as you can imagine, and High Command was not happy to discover captured Iconoclasts among the enslaved. As far as I can tell, most of the freed mutants have been extracted by Tenebrae procurement teams, and the humans are on their way. The Ulai fin has shut down all its borders in fear, and well they might." Sibbecai had begun to pace, his big arms folded. "Their goods and chattels will be forfeit to the Patriarch from this point on."

  "That's going to be tough on them," muttered Red. "Ulai's valuable, turns out a lot of gear, so my guess is they'll brush any mention of me under the carpet. But some people are going to find life a bit less comfortable from now on."

  "They built their comforts on the backs of slaves," Sibbecai replied, still pacing. "I rejoice in their downfall. I'm just sorry it cost Joash his squad." He stopped mid-pace and turned his eyeless face to the window. "And his wife."

  "Sibbecai? Where was the other squad?"

  There was a long silence. Finally, without moving at all, Sibbecai said, "Chorazin."

  "Chorazin is a rock," he told her later, in one of the mid-deck elevators, "a worthless piece of stone so close to its sun that you could melt iron on its surface, but the Archaeotechs have a temple-lab there."

  "And your people snuck into an Iconoclast base on a red-hot planet?" She whistled. "They must have had some balls."

  "It was necessary. There had been reports, rumours. Items on the Iconoclast data networks that demanded investigation. I was hunting for any information on the Dedanas mission, as you might imagine, but it was Chorazin that kept rising to the top of the pile."

  "Must have been something big." The elevator slowed to a halt. As the doors opened, Red caught sight of an indicator board next to the controls. "Hey, this is an infirmary sector. Are we visiting Joash?"

  Sibbecai shook his head as he strode out of the lift into the corridor beyond, glancing back to make sure Red was following him. "This is a hot zone."

  "A what zone?"

  "A quarantine area for those with highly infectious diseases."

  Red stopped walking so quickly that she almost overbalanced. "Snecking hell."

  Sibbecai laughed and beckoned her forward. "Don't fear, Saint. There's no plague here. We thought that's what we'd found, at first, so we had this set up in a hurry, but we needn't have bothered, as you'll see."

  "Blimey, you sure know how to make a girl feel comfortable." She started on again, trotting to keep up with Sibbecai's long strides. Her boots had been cleaned by the time she reached Persephone, and she was doubly glad of that now. Whatever the commander told her, she wouldn't have felt comfortable walking around this particular deck barefoot. "So what were they doing down there? Bio-weapons?"

  "It was a possibility. Believe me, Saint, Lord Tactician Saulus wasn't the only Iconoclast working on anti-mutant weapon systems, not by a long way. Such things are supposedly banned under the auspices of the Accord, but it continues." He snorted. "On a hundred worlds, it continues."

  "So it was a weapons lab."

  "I'll show you." Sibbecai had reached a heavy, armoured doorway set into the corridor wall. He held a crypt-disc against the locking pad until Red heard magnetic latches slam back into their housings, and the doors hissed aside. Air rushed past her as it opened.

  Negative pressure, Red realised. The hot zone must have been kept at a lower pressure than the corridor outside to prevent germs from escaping.

  She followed Sibbecai inside and moved past him as he stopped to speak to a pair of medics. "He's sleeping," one of them said to him. "We've done everything we can."

  "Who?" Red asked.

  The medic who had spoken raised a hand and pointed across the chamber. The room wasn't large, and most of its interior space was taken up by something that looked very much like a high-tech coffin. Like much Accord technology, it was massively built, riveted together from plates of dark metal, and studded with a forest of feed tubes and cables. Fat pipes emerged from it at each end, snaking away into the walls. If Red listened very carefully, she could hear it humming.

  She stepped forwards and peered over the coffin's edge.

  There was a
man inside. He looked human, but the very fact that Sibbecai's people were looking after him told her that he probably wasn't. There was a bio-dressing on one side of his face, some bruising to his scalp, but these were minor injuries. Nothing that would necessitate such a complex life support system.

  The reason that he was held in the machine, however, was obvious to Red. The man was indescribably old.

  His face was sunken back over his skull, his closed eyes nested among flaccid wrinkles, his toothless mouth slightly open as he breathed. There was no hair on his scalp, just swarms of liver spots. The skin of his chest looked like damp parchment draped over bone. His fingers were like claws, his limbs like sticks. There was no muscle on him at all.

  Pulses ticked beneath the translucent skin of his neck, but they fluttered as Red watched.

  "Poor old bastard," she whispered. If she raised her voice above that, she feared the sound of it would shatter the old man's bones like china. "Did you find him on Chorazin?"

  Sibbecai came up next to her, shaking his head. "No."

  "Then where?"

  He puffed out a long, sighing breath from between his teeth. "The team I sent down to Chorazin consisted of three men and two women. One came back. This warrior, Nerichau."

  "Warrior?" Red stared at him, then turned back to the man in the coffin. "But he's-"

  "When he left Persephone he was twenty-four standard years old. By the time he got back he was closer to seventy. Now the medics can't even gauge how old his body has grown."

  Red gaped. "Holy sneck..."

  Sibbecai moved away from the device. "Before the years overtook him, he told me that he'd found the lab, the chamber where this great weapon lay. But the Iconoclasts were in the middle of an experiment, and Nerichau's team was caught in some kind of backwash. Whatever effect this weapon produced, it did this."

  Red rubbed a hand down her face. She could see what was coming. "What else did he see, Sibbecai?"

  "You seem to know already."