Manticore Reborn

by Peter J Evans

  As he spoke, the inner vault hatch shuddered, and a spot of searing orange light appeared near one edge. Molten metal started to drool down the inner surface.

  The Custodes Arcanum were cutting their way in.

  9. AVENGING ANGEL

  The data-pick had completely scrambled the lightning vault's locking codes. It would be simplicity itself for Red or her team to decode the new sequence and open the doors again, since they had the pick. Anyone else would have about a trillion icon combinations to sort through.

  The Custodes Arcanum, ever practical, had simply decided to burn their way though the hatch instead.

  Red had retrieved her guns, and now watched the spot of orange light crawling down the right-hand edge of the hatch. Molten metal was already starting to pool on the deck beneath it. "What do you reckon, Godolkin?"

  The Iconoclast was with Cormoran, spraying bio-foam over the man's injured hand. "The hatch is strong, built to withstand the outputs from high energy experiments. They will not cut through in less than three minutes."

  "Three? To chop out the whole door?"

  He shook his head. "They will cut a hole roughly half a metre square, Blasphemy, and use that to throw in grenades and toxin bombs."

  Red muttered a curse. Of course the Archaeotechs would throw in enough ordnance to pulp them without ever getting into the line of fire. They weren't stupid, and their precious time engine had a forcewall around it.

  The lightning vault had no other exits, and the big transpex observation windows were near the ceiling, out of reach even if she could blow a hole in one. In terms of engineering, the vault was supremely practical, a sealed bottle in which to unleash the deadly forces of high energy physics without risking the rest of the base. It also made a very effective trap.

  She took her comm-linker from her belt. "Jude?"

  There was no reply, just a warbling pulse of static. She tried again on another crypt-key, but met with the same result. "Are they jamming us?"

  Godolkin got up, handing Cormoran his frag-carbine and picking up another. One of the dead mutants must have let it drop when the forcewall came down . "It seems likely."

  "So we're stuck."

  "Yes."

  "Bollocks."

  Cormoran was turning his hand, examining the foam coating. "Nice work, human. A pity it will all be wasted."

  "At least you will die holding a weapon, and not your own bloodied limb." Godolkin dropped his trauma kit onto the floor, and then padded over to the hatch. There was already an L-shaped slot in it at head height.

  "Predictable," he muttered darkly.

  "That's Iconoclasts for you," Red replied, watching the cutting beam's path. The molten spot began to move upwards, slowly turning the L into a U. "All right, people, here's the deal. If they can lob stuff in, that means we can fire out, and the corridor's as confined as in here. Let's do as much as we can to make life miserable for them." She checked her pistols, making sure that their yield was set high. "If anything comes through that hole, we bat it right back out again. Okay?"

  "Fiendish," said Godolkin, holding a rifle in each hand. "How long do you think we will be able to keep that up?"

  "Until we miss one."

  As she spoke, there was a shifting sound behind her, accompanied by a soft moan. Red turned to see Helsa getting up. The woman was tangled in her robes and clasping the side of her face with one hand.

  Red trotted over and helped her up. "How are you doing?"

  "I'll let you know when my brain stops trying to crawl out of my head." She squinted up at the forcewall. "Sacred rubies."

  "Yeah. Whatever that means." Red motioned her over to the hatch, noting as she did so that the square was almost complete. "Bad stuff's going to start coming out of that in a second, Helsa. I need you to stay by the lock with the data-pick, and open it up as soon as I give you the nod."

  "There's an emergency escape protocol. I can activate that." Helsa frowned, glancing behind her. "Where are the others?"

  "They won't be coming with us," said Cormoran, whirling as the spitting whine of the cutter died away.

  The square dropped away from the hatch and landed heavily on the vault floor, a slab of metal as thick as it was wide.

  Red leapt towards it and shoved a magnum though the opening, tugging on the trigger. The gun bucked in her hand, emitting a wasp like snarl as it pulsed a bolt of energy into the corridor beyond. Someone outside the hatch screamed in pain.

  She got two more shots off before somebody fired back.

  The staking pin slapped into the magnum's barrel and sheared the gun clean out of Red's grip. She cursed and fell back, clutching her wrist, her hand singing with pain, but as she did so Cormoran leapt forward with his frag-carbine held in one hand. He jammed the muzzle through the hole and tugged on the trigger, holding it down as he tilted the weapon left and right. Red winced at the thought of the corridor filling with a million razored fragments, a tornado of shrapnel washing out from the hatch. Anyone caught in that maelstrom would be shredded.

  This time, fire washed back in reply. There must have been an Iconoclast out there with a holy weapon, Red realised: he had taken out her magnum with a staking pin, and was now hosing the hatch with cleansing flame.

  Jets of greasy fire, stunningly hot, roared in through the square. Cormoran fell away, dropping the carbine, and before anyone else could take his place a fist sized ball of metal sailed through the opening.

  Godolkin swung the plasma rifle backhanded, swiping the grenade right through the hole and back into the corridor. It bounced once, a dull sound of metal on metal, and then blew up with a solid thump. Fire blowtorched through the opening for a second or two, then died away.

  "Helsa," Red snapped. "Get us out of here."

  The hatch had opened slowly when they had first entered the vault, sliding on powered rails. This time, explosive latches slammed the two halves of it aside, their speed dragging in a great cloud of hot smoke. Red jumped through, ducking under a shot from a Custodes on her left, slewing around as she moved to fire point-blank into the man's face. The magnum took off his head and ripped open his chest, sending the spurting carcass flying over backwards. On her right, warriors running around the corner met a stream of frag-shells from Cormoran and Helsa, while Godolkin opened up in both directions, somehow tracking targets at either end of the corridor simultaneously.

  Staking pins whined back along the passage, bolters chattering in the smoke. Red felt one breeze through her hair behind her neck and another carve a track across her left forearm. "Guys, this is way too exposed."

  Godolkin fired off another burst, ripping an armoured figure in two. "I agree, Blasphemy. But our options are limited. There are Custodes at every junction."

  "Have we got any more demo charges?"

  "Malak had the last of them."

  And Malak was lying dead on the other side of the forcewall. "Nuts," Red growled, firing into the smoke. "And it was all going so well."

  That was when the lights went out.

  For a moment, Red found herself in pitch darkness. It was so sudden, and the air in the corridor so thick with smoke and vaporised blood, that her night vision barely kicked in. For a moment, all she could see were muzzle-flashes, but even they died away as everyone found themselves as blinded as she was.

  Shapes moved around her, some close, some further away. She snapped a shot off at one of the distant ones and missed completely. "What the snecking hell's going on now?"

  A greenish glow was emanating from the open hatch, the forcewall still in place and blocking her off from the time engine. Nothing else seemed to be operating. Even the hum of the air system, so faint and pervasive that she hadn't even known it was there, had died to a whisper.

  She could vaguely see the outline of Godolkin's head as he peered about. "Blasphemy, if there was ever a time to leave this place, it is now."

  "Lead the way," she replied breathlessly, watching flashlight beams bobbing from around the left-hand bran
ch. "You're the one with the map."

  They started away, Red and Godolkin in front, Cormoran and Helsa behind, basically scuttling along backwards. They had almost reached the right-hand branch, where Red had stood when she'd thrown the demo charge, when her comm-linker chirruped.

  She snatched it up. "Jude, is that you?"

  "Holy one, I feared the worst."

  "Takes more than a forcewall in the chops to put me down." She ran a few paces ahead, peering around the corner to make sure there were no Custodes lurking around it. As it turned out, there were two, so she shot both of them. "Where are you?"

  "In flight," Harrow replied. "I've created something of a diversion, but I don't know how long it will last. Start heading for the spaceport, the way you came in. I can monitor your progress from here."

  "Jude, you're a bloody marvel. What did you do?"

  There was a slight pause, during which Red heard rumbling sounds, and a woman's voice, shrewish and high. The voice alert system, she realised. Then Harrow spoke. "I fired a nuclear torpedo at the cooling laser."

  Red almost tripped over her boots. "You did what?"

  "Holy one, I'll explain later. Use the power drain to your advantage, but use it swiftly."

  The rest of Red's time in the Chorazin temple-lab was a nightmare. The closer she got to the spaceport, the hotter it became and the more still and stifling the air. The lack of power seemed to have affected the Custodes communication systems, leaving their attacks uncoordinated and sporadic, but even cut off from their leaders and wandering in isolated groups, they were ferocious fighters. They fought by torchlight, or encumbered by heavy sense enhancers, or even, in one bizarre case, by the light of burning books.

  That was the one who got Helsa, a staking pin slicing between Red and Godolkin to strike the woman in the back. Red heard her scream, and Cormoran's curse, and had to duck aside as the he swung his frag rifle around to kill the man who had fired.

  The Custodes was caught in the face by the burst of frag shells, the concentrated blasts of shrapnel chewing his skull apart. Red watched him collapse, then darted back to Helsa.

  She was on the floor, but still moving, one hand reaching round to scrabble at the staking pin in her back. It had caught her off-centre, halfway between spine and shoulder. Blood was slicking down the back of her shirt.

  Cormoran reached for the pin, but Red grabbed his hand. "Leave it. Just get her up."

  Helsa moaned through gritted teeth. "Not like this," she gasped. "Not with this filth in my back..."

  "You can pull it out back on the ship," Red snapped. "Where we can stop you bleeding to death. Cormoran, can you help her up?"

  He nodded. "I'll carry her if I have to."

  "You won't. Not alone."

  The power came back as they reached the spaceport hub, the fan of connecting tunnels that led to the docking cocoons. Lumes in the arching braces above their heads suddenly flickered back into life, and within a moment Red found herself squinting and blinking in full light. "Crap," she muttered. "Someone found the fuse box."

  There were Archaeotechs in the hub with her, probably curious students or more senior types trying to get to a ship and escape the failing base. For a long moment there was silence, a few shouts of relief, before the first Archaeotech noticed who was standing next to him, and the quiet erupted into panic.

  The hub emptied in moments, howling students bolting for their lives, robes flapping. Red swung around as she heard a heavier tread in one of the access corridors behind her, and saw two Custodes taking cover there. She brought the magnum up, but there were still too many people in the way. She couldn't get a clear shot off.

  Luckily the two troopers were faced with the same dilemma, but the hub was already clearing, and the stand-off could last a second or two at most.

  "Get into a tunnel," Red bellowed. "Quick."

  "Which one?"

  "Any one!"

  Helsa was slowing Cormoran up. Red got between him and the two troopers, holding the magnum in both hands, aiming along the top of the barrel. "Back off," she snarled at them.

  There was no chance they were going to see sense, she knew that. They were Iconoclasts, sworn to destroy her at all costs, brought up in a universe that considered her the greatest possible threat to human existence. She was their Satan, their nightmare, the blasphemous arch-mutant who would destroy them all. She was Saint Scarlet of Durham.

  It wasn't a reputation she deserved, or had ever wanted. But it would dog her until she died.

  The Custodes fired. A student next to Red shrieked and fell, a staking pin stapling her robe to her thigh. Another fell with two more buried in his chest. Red dropped the magnum and hammered forwards, shoving the last remaining Archaeotechs out of the way, and barrelled into the two troopers.

  She grabbed the head of one, slamming it with massive force into the wall, caving in his skull, and then grabbed the second one by his chest armour. His bolter went off, a deafening chatter that sent staking pins flaring past her and into the ceiling as she used her momentum to drive him over backwards onto the floor.

  Red screamed her anger into his face. He snarled back, bringing his knee up into her belly, slamming the bolter into the side of her head, but he was too close to get any swing behind it, too restricted by his armour. Red shoved his head aside and opened her mouth, letting him have a good view of her fangs before she sank them into his throat.

  He was tough, even if he was a murdering fool. He kept trying to kill her right up to the moment his heart stopped. When Red sagged back onto her haunches, blood slick on her chin, his dead eyes still held a trace of defiance.

  "Sneck," she whispered. "I'm never going to get away from you people, am I?"

  More footfalls sounded in the passageway. Red darted up and dived out of the way as another barrage of staking pins carved the air towards her, then ran back into the hub. Godolkin was waiting for her at the entrance to one of the tunnels, both rifles raised. "Blasphemy!"

  She reached down to retrieve the magnum, skidding to a halt next to Godolkin. "Is Jude there?"

  "On his way. He has been tracking us by listening in to Custodes battle reports."

  Armoured forms appeared at the end of the passageway, then ducked back as Red fired across the hub, keeping her aim high as the injured Archaeotech tried to crawl out of the line of fire. "He'd better hurry. We're going to have company really soon, and we've run out of places to go."

  Godolkin snorted. "Blasphemy, this mission has been a disaster. Harrow's paradox theory has been disproved."

  "Not yet it hasn't." She snapped off a shot, sending a Custodes spinning away with half his skull gone. "We can't give up."

  The Custodes she had bitten hadn't given up. He'd fought her to his last breath, not just trying to get away, to live, but actually to kill her. She couldn't let the time engine remain in the grasp of people like that. They'd do anything to wipe her out of history.

  "No," said Godolkin, looking back over his shoulder. "But we can retreat. Now."

  Red turned. The end of the tunnel had opened, the interior of Fury's primary airlock behind it. Cormoran was hauling Helsa across the threshold.

  "Thank Christ for that." She fired off another couple of shots, purely for effect, then bolted, Godolkin on her heels.

  The Custodes weren't far behind. She heard staking pins hit the outer hatch as she climbed in through the inner doors. "Jude, the natives are getting cross. Better punch it."

  "With pleasure," he replied over the ship's internal comms.

  Red turned to Cormoran, hearing thumps and bangs from outside as the airlock disengaged. "There's an infirmary on the upper deck. Godolkin, go with them, make sure they're both stable for the trip back to Haggai."

  "Thy will be done. Are you going to the bridge?"

  "Yeah. Can't let Harrow have all the fun, can I?"

  Judas Harrow was in the pilot throne when Red got there, surrounded by a dizzying array of holoscreens. He had reconfigured the ship's con
trols so he could fly with one hand and use the weapons and main sense-feeds with the other.

  "Bloody hell, Jude," Red gasped, leaning in from the back of his workstation. "You've everything but the kitchen sink up here."

  "It's nothing you haven't already done," he said, not looking around. Several holos ahead of him were showing views from different angles around the ship, but not in visible light. The spaceport around them was wrought from strings of light and planes of shadow. This would be his view until Fury was away from Chorazin's blinding day, and the video pickups could be used again; the world as seen in terms of gravity, radio waves and neutrinos.

  "When?"

  "You flew Fury single-handed when you rescued Godolkin and me from Brite Red."

  "Flew, yes," quoted Red. "Landed, no. Besides, I didn't have the weapons online."

  "Really?" Harrow blinked at her, looking startled. "I thought-"

  "You're doing fine," she grinned, then moved to the weapons station and slid into the throne, letting it lock her in and slide forward. "Godolkin's playing nurse, so we'd better get out of here."

  Harrow nodded. "Would you like control of the weapons, holy one?"

  "Now when would I ever say no to that?"

  Targeting holos appeared in front of her, weapons selectors to her left, ship status diagrams to her right. "You used the other eviscerator?"

  Fury had fallen into her hands with a complement of two eviscerator missiles, heavy nuclear torpedoes with a starship killing yield. The first had destroyed the Ulai refinery's power plant back on Dedanas.

  "I did," Harrow told her, tapping keys. "The cooling laser was protected by a forcewall."

  "I'm not surprised." A holo on her right flared. "Jude, they've got their weapons back online."

  Phalanx turrets were turning to track the ship. Blind in the ranges of visible light, Red could see the ripples they made in Chorazin's gravity as they moved, the flare of neutrinos growing in the heart of each firing chamber. The shadow web was still engaged, making it hard for the temple-lab's phalanx turrets to target the ship accurately, but at this range they wouldn't need to be accurate.