Walking to Aldebaran

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  It’s strong, I know, but I’m stronger than I was the last time we slugged it out, and that was an even match. I am the Crypts’ darling, you metal twat, and you are going to be hearing from my lawyers. Oh, I am going to write to the editor of the Times about you, Mr Tin Tosspot, signed Angry from Stevenage.

  Iron Git goes flailing back, off balance on those silly little feet. I grip the rim of its dome with one hand and pound away with the other, bringing to bear all the leverage of my long arms and dense muscles. It staggers and I knock a handful of dents in the metal, but the clear portholes remain unbroken, made of something far more resilient than glass or plastic. Then it brings a steel fist arcing down into my jaw. I feel a tooth explode from my lips with the force, and lose my grip. It’s after me with the energy gun as I hit the floor, but I land on hands and feet and spring right back. I will sort you out, son. You’re going home in an ambulance, you see if you’re not.

  I give it a double-handed smash across the chest to unbalance it, and then go for its legs, hoping to upend it like a turtle. The Git’s surprisingly light on its toes, though, and it gets another jackhammer punch to my head that’s going to leave a bruise. Something about the mechanical advantage of its limbs and its armoured shell mean it punches even harder than I do. Probably I’m tougher, but it’s a mug’s game when I can grapple. Let’s see how those daft arms work then.

  And so I get it in a hold, one hand prying at its lid again, the other buckling the plate at the lower edge of its barrel torso. Its hands lock at my shoulder and neck, but I’m right, it doesn’t have the strength that way, better at landing quick-twitch blows than sustained effort. I grunt and strain, feeling rivets and seams start to give. Let’s open up this can and find out what colour the soup is.

  But I’ve forgotten the other arms, the little arms. My chest is right there, for them, and they unfold from the alien’s body and tear into me with a whole autopsy kit of moving blades and saws. I try to pull away when I feel them go in, but the Git is holding me tight, even if he can’t do much else in the clinch. It rips me up, carving through meat and organs and juddering off bone until I shriek with the injustice of it. I’m the Mother Machine’s favourite son. I was supposed to win. I was supposed to –

  It shifts the angle of its arms and flexes its grip, and abruptly the horrible pain of having a great gash carved in me becomes the even worse pain of having that gash widened by the appalling power of the Git’s arms working against one another. I howl my defiance, poor monster that I am, and then its servos whine with effort and it rips my arm off.

  My arm. My bloody arm, and a fair chunk of shoulder from the far side of that line it cut in me. My arm is gone. I was using that!

  It’s fair to say the fight has gone out of me. Pain and fear are now the dominant emotions holding court in my brain. The Git is up for more fight – perhaps it wants to beat me to death with the wet end. I’m not sticking around for that. I leg it, back into the Crypts. Another day, I promise Doctor Naish and her alien house guest. I let my agonised shrieks swear revenge for me: I will be back, for the whole pack of you!

  I will. I will! And yet, whenever I stop, the blood starts, as though only my constant racked shambling can keep the life inside me. As if I’m truly condemned now, to stagger through these midnight halls like the Flying Dutchman, an endless life of pointless travel. Except even that’s optimistic, because a strange feeling is creeping on me. I remember it from a long time back, a lifetime ago. Gary Rendell of Stevenage knew it, but it’s not been my companion for an age. Weakness is walking in my red footsteps, Toto, creeping closer with every step. I can’t keep going indefinitely. The strength I thought was limitless now gouts from me when I pause to take a breath, the ragged edges of one torn lung fluttering and fluting as I do.

  Toto, I… I don’t think I’m going to make it. And as you’re a figment of my imagination, I guess you’re stuffed too.

  But I can’t just lie down and die. That part of me was stripped away with the other fallible bits, like my fussy stomach. I need a place to go, and in all the Crypts there is only one Place worthy of the name.

  I can feel the Mother Machine out there, my benefactor, my torturer, waiting for another fool to step into it so it can bestow its help. Am I grateful for that help? Would I rather have died the first time? No! I have set foot on distant worlds. I have battled monsters. Although, to Neitzsche’s smug satisfaction, I may also have become one. I’m replaying my last few days and I can’t quite shake a whiff of the monstrous about what I’ve thought and done. What with the cannibalism and murder. But I was provoked, Toto.

  Mother, Mother, can you hear me, your son, your creation? I’m coming, but you’re a long way away and I grow weak. Mother, they have slain me! Send help! No, there’s no help that can come in time, only vengeance. Rise from your bed in the Crypts and hunt them down. Avenge me, Mother, avenge me!

  I stop. I sway. The blood is coming out of me no matter what I do. Who would have thought the old man had so much blood in him, eh? Where was I keeping it all? The weakness, that eminently human Gary Rendell sort of a feeling, rises up in me like a spring tide, and I know I’m done. But even as I fade, I feel Mother shift in answer to my prayer. I feel her shudder to life somewhere in the Crypts to grant my final wish, and with that happy knowledge, I know I can let go.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Adrian Tchaikovsky was born in Woodhall Spa, Lincolnshire, before heading off to Reading to study psychology and zoology. He subsequently ended up in law and has worked as a legal executive in both Reading and Leeds, where he now lives. Married, he is a keen live role-player and has trained in stage-fighting and historical combat. He maintains an interest in history and the biological sciences, especially entomology.

  Adrian is the author of the acclaimed 10-book Shadows of the Apt series starting with Empire in Black and Gold published by Tor UK. His other works for Tor UK include standalone novels Guns of the Dawn and Children of Time and the new series Echoes of the Fall starting with The Tiger and the Wolf. Other major works include short story collection Feast and Famine for Newcon Press and novellas The Bloody Deluge (in Journal of the Plague Year) and Even in the Cannon’s Mouth (in Monstrous Little Voices) for Abaddon. He has also written numerous short stories. In 2016 he won the Arthur C Clarke Award, and he has been shortlisted for the David Gemmell Legend Award and the British Fantasy Award.

  SCIONS HAVE NO LIMITS

  SCIONS DO NOT DIE

  AND SCIONS DO NOT DISAPPEAR

  Sergeant Ted Regan has a problem. A son of one of the great corporate families, a Scion, has gone missing at the front. He should have been protected by his Ironclad – the lethal battle suits that make the Scions masters of war – but something has gone catastrophically wrong.

  Now Regan and his men, ill-equipped and demoralised, must go behind enemy lines, find the missing Scion, and uncover how his suit failed. Is there a new Ironcladkiller out there? And how are common soldiers lacking the protection afforded the rich supposed to survive the battlefield of tomorrow?

  A new standalone novella by the Arthur C Clarke Award-winning author of Children of Time.

  www.solarisbooks.com

  When Captain Kel Cheris of the hexarchate is disgraced for her unconventional tactics, Kel Command gives her a chance to redeem herself, by retaking the Fortress of Scattered Needles from the heretics. Cheris’s career isn’t the only thing at stake: if the fortress falls, the hexarchate itself might be next.

  Cheris’s best hope is to ally with the undead tactician Shuos Jedao. The good news is that Jedao has never lost a battle, and he may be the only one who can figure out how to successfully besiege the fortress. The bad news is that Jedao went mad in his first life and massacred two armies, one of them his own.

  As the siege wears on, Cheris must decide how far she can trust Jedao–because she might be his next victim.

  ‘Starship Troopers meets Apocalypse Now – and they’ve put Kurtz in charge... An unmissable debut.’ />
  Stephen Baxter

  ‘I love Yoon’s work! Full of battles and political intrigue, in a beautifully built far-future that manages to be human and alien at the same time.’

  Ann Leckie

  www.solarisbooks.com

  Life in space is hard, lonely and the only person you can rely on is yourself. Whether you’re living deep in the gravity well of humanity’s watery home, mucking out air vents in a city floating high in the clouds of Jupiter, or re-checking the filtration system on some isolated space station, life is hard and demanding, and life is small.

  The stories of Infinity’s End are set in those empty spaces, in futures where planets have been disassembled and reused for parts, or terraformed and settled; where civilisations have risen and fallen; where far future people make their lives anywhere from colonies hanging in the clouds of Neptune or Venus to the repurposed cores of distant asteroids; on worldlets and asteroids, inside Saturn’s rings or distant spheres and wheels, on-board ships trucking from home to home, and port to port. They're set in a future that's lived in. And they make it clear that even if we never leave the Solar System, there's life enough and room enough to live out all of science fiction's dreams.

  Infinity’s End is the future. The stories you’ll find here are the stories of your life.

  www.solarisbooks.com