Manticore Reborn

by Peter J Evans

  "It's all right," said Harrow. "We're not staying."

  Fury leapt forwards, edges of acceleration slipping past the dampers to shove Red hard into the throne. There was no atmosphere to clog the ship's drives, no need to launch using clumsy grav-lifters. The interceptor surged up and out of the spaceport on a column of plasma fire.

  In her forward view, the opening in the shield was a narrowed eye, heavy lidded and glowing with heat. It raced towards her, past her and shrank in her rear holos as Fury blasted up and out into the black, searing skies of Chorazin.

  Antimat fire fountained out of the opening.

  Harrow stood Fury on its tail, spun it clear around and then powered towards the ground in a swooping dive that made Red's vision grey at the edges. Her forward holo filled with Chorazin's cratered ground, which dropped away at the last second, leaving the ship skimming the surface with scant metres to spare, streams of antimat bolts ripping past from the temple-lab.

  Chorazin was a tiny world, its horizon always close. In seconds Fury was too low for the phalanx turrets to track, their shots slamming into the surface in geysers of molten stone. Others tore away into the sky, hot neutrino flares dwindling in the altered holofeeds.

  A shadow fell across Omega Fury as they passed onto the dark side of Chorazin.

  Red puffed out a long breath as she sagged back into the throne. "Nice flying, Jude. I just hope Godolkin and the others were holding on tight."

  "With the dampers this low it can be something of a bumpy ride."

  "So, what now? Back to Haggai?"

  Harrow shook his head, very slightly, not taking his eyes from the holos. "We have one small matter to deal with first."

  "Hmm? What's that?"

  In answer, Harrow tapped a key, slaving one of his views to Red's holo bank.

  Over the fractured horizon of Chorazin, a shape was rising towards them. It was a vast, vertical blade of metal, its forward section gaping and studded with weapons mounts, its flanks and top bristling with enormous spines. It looked like a fish, a steel angelfish five kilometres high, its tail pouring out plasma exhaust and its guns hungry for harm.

  It was a killship, an Iconoclast dreadnought.

  "The Lamarion," Harrow reported. "It was closer to Chorazin than the other two, and as soon as your presence was reported in the temple-lab it swung about."

  "Must have thought two would be enough for Sibbecai." Red scanned her holos. "Bloody hell, he's close. Can we jump away?"

  "He'd be right after us."

  "We can't lead him to the others. Sibbecai wouldn't stand a chance." Her warning holos flared again. "Oh shit, Jude, he's got tone on us."

  The space between Fury and Lamarion became a sea of light.

  The dreadnought had opened up with every weapon it could bring to bear. Hundreds of hunger guns, partly sentient antimat cannon, had swung about to unleash bolt after bolt of raw energy in Fury's direction. Multiple laser cannons hammered out vast poles of coherent light, and fusion beams the width of roads scythed out in parallel streams of destruction. Had Fury been directly in the path of any of the dreadnought's spinal weapons it would have been incinerated in a heartbeat.

  Red felt the ship being battered as antimat fire caromed off the forcewall. "How the sneck did they manage that, Jude? Is the shadow web still on?"

  "They must be tracking our exhaust emissions."

  "Well shut the bloody drives down," she yelped. "Don't give them anything to key on."

  "I already have, holy one. We're coasting." Harrow tweaked a thruster control, and Red felt the ship change vector. "But we'll coast in a straight line until we fire a vector burn. They can work out where we'll be."

  Red nodded. They could keep jinking, feathering the drives to hide from the dreadnought between burns, but sooner or later Lamarion's gunners would get their sums right. It wasn't a game they could play for long.

  She thought furiously. "Okay, we'd better try something else. Jude, when you hammered the cooling laser, all the power went down."

  He nodded. "Of course. They drew power from all the other systems to keep it running while they switched to back-up wiring."

  "Great. Just keep these bastards off my back for a few seconds more, okay? I need some thinking time."

  "I'll try."

  There had been something on the chapter plan that she hadn't really looked at before. She'd been too busy finding a way to the Chronotech facility to worry about secondary cooling systems. Now it could be the only thing that might save them.

  She brought up the plan again, stared at for a few seconds, then switched it off. "Jude, turn us around. Get us back to the temple-lab."

  Harrow turned his head to her, looked at her for a long moment, then angled the collectives. "Don't tell me. I don't want to know."

  "You trust me, don't you?"

  "Against my better judgement, I do, yes." He eased the throttle forward, and the ship surged ahead.

  Lamarion followed, still firing, the shots getting closer as Fury's drives gave them something to aim at. Red started tapping at the weapons board, bringing up a cascade of firepower. "Okay, get us on a course that will take us hundred metres over the roof, right past the laser, then shut the drives down again. I've got to time this just right."

  "They'll have us by then."

  Red checked her holos and saw that Lamarion was still turning. "Maybe, maybe not."

  The dome and the cooling beam were right in her sights again. Red looked at it now in diagram form, radar and heat and power output, rather than open the video pickups again. In a way, it made her job easier.

  "Just like a game," she breathed.

  "Holy one?"

  "Never mind, Jude. Just hold your course for a few more seconds..."

  A counter on her board reached zero. Red triggered the cascade, sending a wave of flayer missiles towards the cooling laser, following them with streams of antimat fire from her forward cannon. She felt the launch impacts through the hull and watched the missiles streak away across the craters. They left no smoke trails in Chorazin's airless sky, just the brilliant flares of their drive emissions, shrinking into stars as they raced away. With their target set, all she had to do was wait for them to strike.

  Her job would have been easier if she'd had one more eviscerator, but flayers would have to do.

  The sky above the dome grew a constellation of stars, green sparks as the antimat bolts struck the laser's protective forcewall. Moments later the missiles struck, hammering further into the protective screen until finally one made it through.

  As Fury raced over the roof, the laser beam faltered for the second and last time.

  "Come on, you son of a bitch," Red muttered, palms slick on the controls. "Don't make me look like a bloody idiot again today, come on!"

  A hundred laser beams lanced up from the crater edges.

  Red whooped, jumping in her seat. The main cooling laser was down, shattered once and for all by the barrage of flayer missiles. But the builders of the temple-lab were too clever to trust their lives to one system, even if it did have backup wiring. Scores of smaller lasers were now doing the same job, pumping heat away from the shield and back into space.

  Smaller they might have been, but when Lamarion followed Fury over the dome they carved into its armour like knives.

  Red saw the killship falter, its drives stuttering, as the beams ripped into its belly. Manoeuvring thrusters belched flame along the sides, desperately trying to vector away from the lasers, but detonations were already sparking inside the hull. Great pieces of armour were falling away, cut free by the mighty beams, and Red could see fires starting in the open forward section of the ship.

  Killships were tough. Lamarion would survive, but as a cripple. Red leaned forward in the safety harness and put her forehead against the coolness of the weapons board. "Okay Jude, that's it. Get us back to Haggai. I've got some explaining to do."

  They were halfway to Haggai when Sibbecai made contact. "It was a valiant effo
rt, Saint, and a brave fight, but too much for us, I fear."

  "My fault," Red told him. "I bit off more than I could chew, and I got a lot of people killed."

  "No one blames you."

  "They should. I'm the one who cocked it up." She sighed and stretched in the workstation. "Helsa's going to make it, but Cormoran's going to need some new fingers. As soon as we get back to Haggai we can drop them off. How did Persephone get on?"

  Sibbecai dipped his faceless head. "Not well, Saint. Two killships was one too many. We scored some hits, but they could survive theirs. Persephone is a wreck."

  Red groaned. "I'm so sorry..."

  "All things have their time. Speaking of which, holy one, I have news."

  "What kind of news?"

  He shrugged. "I suppose that depends on your point of view. Chorazin is now considered too great a security risk by High Command, and is to be shut down immediately. Inspections of all Archaeotech facilities will be taking place over the next standard year."

  Red frowned. "So if they're shutting Chorazin down, where's the time engine going?"

  "It took some considerable digging to discover that, Saint. But even if I could not assist you as you deserved on Chorazin, at least I can tell you this. The time engine is being transferred to the lab station Ascension, on the edge of the Manticore Gulf."

  10. ASCENSION

  Caliban was in the Chapel of Sight when he received the report, standing below the great circular viewport and gazing silently up into the centre of the Gulf. It was a view he never tired of, even though there was very little he could actually see with unaided eyes. The nearest Bastion vessel was a hundred kilometres away, close enough to see as a definite shape, but little more. Those circling it were just splinters of metal in the darkness, the rest invisible. Thousands of vessels, their formation always shifting, changing, but each holding fast on the perimeter.

  And each aiming every weapon and sense-engine they had at the Gulf's heart.

  "I know you're there," he breathed. "I can't see you, but I know you are. Do you know I'm here?"

  "Lord Heirphant?"

  He turned his head, looking back over his shoulder. One of the station's helot-workers was at the Chapel's portal, holding a dataslate.

  Caliban returned his gaze to the viewport. "I left orders that I was not to be disturbed, helot. If they did not reach you, there must be a serious fault in my chain of command. What do you think?"

  There was a faint whirring of servos from the helot. It was obviously in conflict, unsure of whether to leave or approach. That meant that it was in receipt of conflicting orders.

  Whose, apart from his own? Caliban raised a hand. "Come on, then. Let's see it."

  The worker paced forward, its footsteps measured and unhurried over the Chapel's tiled floor, and handed the dataslate to him. He glanced at its face as he took it, and saw that it had been a woman once, quite small, her white face smooth and unlined. One of her original eyes remained, looking up at him with a liquid stare, while the other was obscured by a sensory prosthesis. The dome of her hairless skull was more metal than skin.

  Caliban frowned. The worker was little more than a girl.

  He turned his attention to the slate, but couldn't help wondering what crime this creature had committed to have been subjected to alteration in such a brutal way. "A priority order from High Command," he said, mainly to himself.

  The helot tilted her head slightly, servos in her neck whining. Caliban found himself looking at her again, the tip of one finger tapping at the slate's screen. "What is your name?" he asked finally.

  "Eighty-seven A."

  "What about before? What were you called then?"

  The eye blinked, the prosthesis rotated. "I do not remember."

  "I see." He tapped the slate again. "I need to read this in private, Eighty-Seven A. Return to your duties."

  The helot turned and began to walk away with the same mechanical pace as before. Just before she got to the hatch, Caliban called out. "Helot, wait."

  She froze, steadied herself, and waited. Caliban wondered if she was nervous, if there was still room for fear in that eviscerated mind. "Helot, I am likely to be busier than usual in the next few days, and will require assistance in certain tasks. I may call on you again."

  "I understand, Lord Heirphant."

  "If I do, I shall refer to you as Elu. Now you may go."

  Caliban watched her leave, watched the portal slide shut behind her. "By God," he muttered, his eyes still on the door. "What kind of people are we, that we do that to our daughters?"

  He turned back to the viewport. "What is it you have made us?"

  As soon as he'd read the report, Caliban returned to his quarters. He had offices a few decks below the observation platform, with a small residence attached to them. The walls, under his own orders, had been extensively soundproofed, mainly so that he could have the peace he required to study or pray. This was also useful, of course, when there were likely to be noises inside his quarters that he didn't want heard by his guards.

  Swearing, for example.

  Caliban had spent a long time in the Iconoclast forces, and had joined Archaeotech division relatively late. His decades of soldiering had taught him some impressive language, blasphemies and epithets from a dozen separate worlds, and there were few that he didn't use in the minutes after he closed and locked the hatch to his private office.

  After the foul language was done, Caliban took a calming breath, mentally reciting the fourth cognitive catechism to calm his mind and still his anger. Then he sat down at his desk and read the report again, just to make sure he had all the facts.

  Security inspections he could just about handle. There were procedures he would need to follow, to make sure certain data wasn't openly available, and maybe even a few lies that would need to be told. With care and suitable preparation, the scheduled arrival of Prefect Tullus and his entourage would not cause him undue concern.

  Now this. As if being considered a security risk wasn't bad enough, his station now had to play host to the very woman who was the focus of the breach in the first place. Doctor-captain Aura Lydexia was bringing her accursed time engine to Ascension.

  Caliban leaned back in his seat and tossed the slate away. Before the intrusions at Chorazin, he had been quite interested in the woman's research, in an abstract manner. Certainly there were elements of her work on the Salecah artefact that touched on some of the projects taking place in Ascension's laboratories, and Lydexia's thesis on chronoplast emissions was confirmed by much of the work Caliban oversaw. But to be told by High Command that she and her technical crew were to be transferred to Ascension and given the highest priority in terms of lab space and resources... It was intolerable. Not to mention extremely inconvenient. Caliban needed to be careful around Tullus, but the man was an Iconoclast security officiator, not a scholar. Most of the time he would have no real idea of what he was seeing on Ascension. Lydexia, however, was quite a different matter. Caliban would have to rework most of his data-storage protocols before she arrived.

  She was done in four days, just a week ahead of Prefect Tullus.

  Caliban opened a drawer in his desk and took out a sheaf of parchment and a long, silver tipped quill. It was an archaic way of working - most Archaeotechs preferred to work directly to data-engines Caliban could see the worth of that, but when there was serious thinking to be done he really needed a wide desk, some good-quality parchment and a pen.

  He held the pen over the first page for a moment, pondering the first heading, and then slowly put the pen down. He couldn't, in the time he was allotted, do this entirely alone. And who aboard this floating construction could he really trust?

  There was a comm-linker built into the desktop. He pressed a concealed key. "Operations, this is Lord Hierophant General Malchus Caliban."

  "Yes, my lord?"

  "The helot-worker Eighty-Seven A. What function does she- Does it serve?"

  There was a pause, fill
ed with muttering and the tapping of keys. "Menial duties on the observation platform and sensorium, my lord."

  Caliaban steepled his fingers. "Recall it."

  "Do you want the helot terminated, my lord? Has it displeased you?"

  "On the contrary. Have Eighty-Seven A reworked for administrative duties and sent to my quarters."

  The ops manager's reply sounded slightly surprised. "Thy will be done, Lord Heirophant."

  "Oh, and one more thing. There may be sensitive information involved. Have it fitted with a data-lock, gold level security."

  That would cost, but Caliban could afford it. And, if his suspicions were correct, he would need it badly in the next little while.

  The procurement clipper Vigilant arrived at Ascension on the morning of the fourth day, just as scheduled. Caliban went down to the docking ring to meet Lydexia as she disembarked. He took Elu with him, partly as an education for his new assistant, but mainly to gauge Lydexia's reaction to the helot. Caliban had always believed that he could tell the most about someone in the shortest time by seeing how they treated their servants.

  There were viewports on the ring, big slabs of synthetic diamond set into the walls. Caliban moved close to one as Vigilant made its final approach, and motioned Elu to join him. "There," he said to her, pointing. "See that vessel? That's Lydexia's ship."

  Elu nodded once, the servos in her neck whining softly. "I understand."

  "Remember, say nothing unless addressed directly, but record everything. You may see what I miss, so I'll be relying on you."

  "I will not fail you, my lord." The helot's voice was more flowing now, less mechanical. Some of the damage to her brain had been reversible, although much had not. She would never again be truly human, but Caliban had been assured that she was no longer in a state of perpetual suffering.

  The clipper slowed to a halt and edged sideways, nudging itself closer to the ring with bursts of its manoeuvring thrusters. Elu saw the ship's flank approaching the window and flinched.