The Age of Scorpio

16

A Long Time After the Loss





The flickering black wound in Red Space at the bridge point to Pythia looked soothing to Vic. Scab had made as much of the hull transparent as he could. Vic wouldn’t have minded so much but Scab had retracted the walls to Vic’s room to make the ship as open plan as possible. Vic’s psychotic partner reclined in one of the smart chairs. The light of Red Space made his naked form look like he was covered in blood.

They said that the really damaged could talk to Red Space. Vic wondered if Scab was communing. Vic, on the other hand, had red fatigue. The constant light was making him angry. He had tried to immerse as much as possible. Experiencing his favourite colonial immersions starring his namesake Vic Matto, letting experimental soundscapes wash over him. None of it was really helping.

The bridge point to Pythia was one of the busiest points in Red Space. Ships were queueing at the bridge-point beacon, sending their bids through to transponders in Real Space for their place in the line. Coming to Pythia was always expensive.

Engines glowing, the Basilisk flew down canyons of parked ships. There were vessels from all the main corporate interests in the Consortium, each jockeying for more market position despite ultimately serving the same organisation – competition for the sake of it. Odd-looking craft from the various Monarchist systems, part works of art, part throwbacks to eras that were probably mythical anyway, and part external manifestations of decadent and broken minds. Massive military ships, brooding tonnes of armoured potential violence, moving slowly and majestically through the red, the well-armed beacons tracking their movements. It would not be the first time there had been violence at a bridge point. Then the smaller ships, private yachts of the super-rich, broken-down vessels belonging to info prospectors and gamblers looking for their big break, craft so anonymous that they screamed some intelligence agency or company, a heretical sect looking for enlightenment or whatever the opposite of enlightenment was. The poorer ships containing plenty of supplies for the months or years of waiting their turn.

And bounty ships. People like us, Vic thought. Small, fast, well armed, mostly ex-military ships. If they could afford what Pythia charged then they were good, the sort of people that the Queen’s Cartel might send after them. Even before getting in-system, the Pythia bridge point was a reasonably good place to mine data, and neither Vic nor Scab could find details of any bounty on them. Vic gave this some thought. It either meant that there wasn’t one, or it had been done carefully and contracted to professionals.

On the first day they saw some junk ship come apart under the barrage of a garish Monarchist pleasure barge. There hadn’t been any reason that Vic could see. It was probably just to relieve the boredom. The Pythia bridge-point beacons responded immediately. An AG-driven autonomous suicide drone was launched. Its AI system had it dancing around the beams of the pleasure barge’s defence systems. At the same time the beacons were broadcasting their automated admonishment of the pleasure barge publicly, along with how much property damage the suicide drone was about to do and how much it was going to cost them.

The suicide drone was destroyed as it closed but not before it fired its sub-munitions, clustered high-yield lasers, which lit up the barge’s energy displacement grid, and low-yield fusion warheads, which blossomed blue against the red. Massive reactive armour plates blew out. New matter poured like sentient tar from the chagrined pleasure barge’s carbon reservoir.

‘Thank goodness they didn’t kill anyone important,’ Vic muttered as he watched the engraved murals self-etch across the pleasure barge’s new armoured skin.

It was the only interesting thing that happened while they waited, though Vic kept checking for bounty ships.

It was two days before their turn came up. Two days was pretty quick. Again Vic marvelled at the resources behind this job. It was still, however, two days of being bathed in red. Two days of Scab lying naked and unmoving on the sofa. Some of the time Vic was pretty sure that he was data-mining, but not all the time. Fortunately Scab was using the smart chair’s catheter and cleaning facilities. He was also smoking enough to make the ship smell despite otherwise excellent atmosphere scrubbers. Although furious with Scab, Vic eventually got bored and started talking to him, but Scab did not answer.

Bridging back into Real Space was cool relief.

With unaugmented vision Vic could make out the burn of the engines of other ships making for Pythia. Pythia itself was a disc of shadow deep in a cloud of particulate matter thought to come from one or more long-destroyed planets. The cloud glowed gold, illuminated by light refracting from the system’s giant yellow sun. The star had a number, probably of interest to navigation systems and ship AIs, but nobody had ever named it. Pythia was the only thing that mattered in this system.

Closer to Pythia, the planet’s long-range orbital defences let the Basilisk know that it was extensively covered. Scab ’faced his privacy bid over. Privacy was like everything else: you either fought or paid for it. When a mote of dust could spy on you, then those with the best tech and the most money got the best privacy. Vic had been told of a time where privacy was a right, before the Loss. He suspected that it was as mythical as the Naga. If there were people around to make money from it, he couldn’t understand why they wouldn’t exploit it. One of Pythia’s hospitality contractors got back to them. The contractors were one of the lesser-known branches of the mystery cult, but they seemed competent and had accepted their bid. Scab changed course and made for their habitat after clearing it with the defence systems.

‘So are you going to put some clothes on?’ Vic asked. Scab still ignored him. For f*ck’s sake, the ’sect thought, I’m supposed to be angry with him and he’s the one doing the ignoring. At the back of his head he knew this was because Scab didn’t care. They weren’t friends or even partners really; he was a resource, like the ship.

Space was more and more crowded the closer they got to Pythia. Vic could see the various habitats in orbit run by the subcontracted cult of Pythia employees. They went from garish, over-the-top, neon-lit luxury hotels to zero-G coffin stacks. Shuttlecraft and heavy maintenance automatons flew between the habitats and the heavily armed orbital fortresses with their rings of weapons satellites and static AG smart munitions. Vast fields of orbital solar panels absorbed light from the star, and along with various massive power-generating stations, dipped tethers into Pythia’s cloudy upper atmosphere. Occasionally ghost fire could be seen flitting around the far end of the tethers. The tethers were the only thing other than sacrifices allowed through the atmosphere.

Scab banked the Basilisk over one of the super-hotel habitats. Vic looked down through the commercial holography displays, through the ornate transparent hull designed to look like crystal with iron supports, at the sculpted island landscape of the pool area. As they passed, the hotel’s weapons batteries tracked them across its territory. The habitat they were making for was supposed to be mid-level and anonymous. Scab hadn’t paid for luxury; he had paid for secrecy and security.

An incoming comms warning was ’faced from the Basilisk to Vic and then promptly disappeared as if it had never existed. Vic checked the Basilisk’s systems. The message had disappeared from there as well. Vic turned to look at Scab in his chair.

‘What was that?’ he demanded. At first Vic didn’t think Scab was going to say anything. He was lying perfectly still, a long head of ash on the cigarette held in his fingers. Finally Scab turned to look at him. The ash didn’t fall.

‘If I tell you, do you promise not to go on at length?’ The vibrations of his voice sent the ash tumbling to the floor, which quickly absorbed the waste.

‘It’s the St Brendan’s Fire, isn’t it?’ Vic asked, referring to the Church frigate that had tried to accost them as they were leaving Arclight. Vic crossed all four of his arms. Scab just sighed. ‘Did they say what they want?’

‘They want us to stop searching for a way to break their bridge monopoly.’

‘Which I’m comfortable with.’

‘See, I just didn’t want to have the same conversation again.’

‘Well, I’ll just do as I’m told then.’ Despite the angry clattering of his mandibles, Vic was sure he nailed the intonation of human sarcasm.

‘Good,’ Scab said. Vic was a little annoyed that Scab appeared to have missed it.

Scab put a hat and sunglasses on. In the centre of the lounge a holographic picture of an augmented, heavyset feline male appeared. Vic looked over the feline. He wore utilitarian clothes that looked heavy enough to have significant built-in armour and an energy dissipation weave. The weapons he wore on display were similarly functional – no show, just utility.

‘That Jide?’ Vic asked, and then increased the magnification of the image, paying attention to the striping on the feline’s fur. ‘I didn’t realise he was a Rakshasa.’

Scab nodded. The Rakshasa were an aristocratic warrior elite found on some of the more hidebound feline planets. As individual combatants they were very dangerous because of their warrior philosophy. As soldiers they were difficult to lead.

More detailed holographic images were appearing in the air. Rotating images showed. A human half-and-half whose slender androgynous beauty even Vic was able to admire. S/he was their kick-murder specialist, their silent killer.

Two humans, over-muscled man-plusses. They were either genuine twins, genetically altered to become twins or just cut to look the same. Obvious conflict-resolution world veterans, both of them sported significant levels of hard-tech augment. The twins were all scar tissue, metal and hardened composite. Either one of them could give me a run for my money if they know what they are doing, Vic thought.

The fifth and final member of the team was also significantly hard-tech augmented, though with some interesting soft-tech enhancements as well. The lizard was obviously a berserker. Their close-in specialist. Once berserk, he would be little more than an unpredictable scaled weapon.

‘Seeder’s sake, that’s a heavy crew,’ Vic said, wishing he could whistle through his mandibles. The ’sect ’faced to local comms and found that Jide’s crew weren’t much below Vic and Scab in the bounty-killer ratings. They specialised in taking down heavy high-profile targets. ‘Wonder who they’re here for?’ But Vic already had a sinking feeling. Scab turned to look at his partner. Scab’s milky eyes were hidden behind the lenses of his sunglasses. Vic looked at the holography and then back at Scab. He thought he detected the ghost of a smile on the human’s face. ‘They could actually do it!’

‘Then I’ll be dead and you’ll be free,’ Scab said and turned back to stare at the transparent ceiling. All around was the light and metal of busy high orbit. With a thought Scab rolled the Basilisk until their subjective up was looking down at the cloudy planet.

Vic didn’t need to download any information on Pythia; everyone knew the story. It hadn’t been called Pythia originally. It had been one of the first planets to be colonised by lost humanity. Overcrowded, its environment and resources were exhausted after centuries of habitation. Unrestricted nanite use led to overwhelming nano-pollution which first became a health risk and then a global pandemic. The solution was more nanites, a tailored viral nano-swarm designed to eat all the others and then destroy itself. However, the design team of the consumption swarm had been infiltrated by a nanite rights terrorist organisation. Instead of consuming the planet-wide nano-epidemic, it became its operating system and united it as one god-like swarm. The first thing the Pythia virus did was become a wind that blew across the planet, eating layer after layer of the planet’s inhabitants’ flesh. Flaying them down to picked-clean polished bone and then eating the bone as well. Pythia simultaneously became the planet’s only sentient inhabitant and a civilisation in its own right made up of uncountable millions of tiny individuals.

This caused panic in the Consortium systems. Pythia had made it quickly into orbit, its unparalleled processing power allowing it to hack even the most secure military systems if they were ’faced. If they weren’t ’faced then they could still be hacked, assuming a self-replicating mote of dust could get close enough to them.

The Consortium navy blockaded the bridge points. The navy sent entire battle groups after ships containing Pythia, and hired veritable fleets of bounty ships to do the same. Pythia was tracked down and destroyed, all except for the original planet. There was a battle between Pythian-held orbital weapon systems, the Consortium navy and at least one member of the Consortium Elite at the time. Pythia was eventually eradicated from orbit.

Nobody was quite sure what to do about the planet. Destroying it was a risky proposition because nobody could guarantee that wouldn’t just spread the nanites across system space. Blockading was another possibility, but people would always try and find a way back for whatever crazy reason they thought they had. Tailored seek-and-destroy nano-swarm bombing was the only real option, but that had not worked well the first time.

Then Pythia surprised the Consortium by offering to negotiate. Pythia felt it was no different to the uplifted races. Its expansion was viral in nature, it needed to consume matter to procreate, and like all living things it wished to do so. Its attempt at expansion was just an attempt to secure such material.

Eventually a deal was brokered whereby Pythia was given free access to Known Space’s comms networks. Its signal, in the form of intelligent search programs, was carried from beacon to beacon throughout Red Space. Pythia agreed not to attempt to control systems and allowed that to be written into sophisticated comms filters that any communication from the surface had to go through. All the search programs did was try to find every last bit of information. Ever. Then bring it back to Pythia. Pythia would then sift through the information, data mining on an enormous scale, piecing together tiny disparate bits of information to make astonishingly accurate predictions. It did this without ever violating secure systems, though some of the more sophisticated AI search routines were not beyond bribing people for information.

Meanwhile, Pythia ate. It ate every building and machine on the planet, everything made by uplifted hand. It made more and more of itself. Its processing power increased. Then it started eating the surface of the planet, stripping it away.

The information supplicants paid in matter. Either the debt relief they paid went into buying more matter or they just sacrificed the biggest item they could for what they wanted to know. Each sacrifice made Pythia more capable.

The clouds in Pythia’s atmosphere were thick swarms of nanites. Breaching the atmosphere was a death sentence. The swarms would consume anything before it got close to what was left of the surface. There was some concern as to what would happen when the swarm consumed enough of the planet to destroy the magnetosphere.

Vic was looking subjectively up at the whorls of cloud in the atmosphere beneath him. Much of it looked violent. Ionisation made lightning play across the data storms that composed the think tanks for the more difficult questions that had been asked.

‘Look,’ Scab said, and part of the Basilisk’s transparent hull magnified. Vic watched as explosive bolts on orbital tethers released the carcass of a stripped parasite ship from a sacrificial orbital ship cradle. The massive ship with its insectile legs was designed to latch on to an asteroid and process the matter into carbon, which then filled the ship’s inflatable cargo bladders.

Automated tug engines flared in the night, pushing the craft towards the planet at a perilously steep entry angle. Once manoeuvred into the correct trajectory, the engines separated and started their return to the orbital cradle. Scab slowed the Basilisk to watch the ponderous ballet of the parasite ship’s last voyage. Ever a keen witness of destruction, Vic thought. As it hit the atmosphere the flare lit up one whole side of the planet’s sky. There’s an element of show to this, Vic decided. Looking around, he realised that some of the more luxurious habitats had gently tipped themselves, manoeuvring engines glowing as they did so, to allow better views for their wealthy patrons.

The ship died in fire, becoming a rain of flaming debris. The clouds swarmed across that debris, consuming it. From Vic’s perspective the clouds seemed to be lit with their own internal fire across to the planetary horizon.

‘That was our sacrifice,’ Scab told him. Vic was no longer surprised by how ludicrous their sponsorship was.

‘How long?’ Vic asked.

To an extent, time was meaningless. Everyone had their own standards depending on their home planet, and most people tailored their physiology to the planet’s day/night cycle, assuming it had one, regardless of their species’ original home. In space, people either used Consortium or Monarchist standard time.

Consortium standard time was based on a twenty-six-hour standard cycle that was apparently human basic from before the Loss. Most felines felt it was unreasonable to be expected to stay awake for two thirds of such a long period of time.

Vic had felt the familiar sense of entrapment when he heard the solid metal-on-metal sound of the Basilisk being grabbed by the high-security habitat’s docking arm. Then they had walked through anonymous corridors that could have belonged to any cleanish midrange hotel anywhere in Known Space. His own room was small but blessedly designed for ’sects. More to the point, he could pretend he had privacy from Scab – who knew, maybe he actually did. Though that thought made him itch in the back of his skull.

They had been extensively checked for weapons. Most of their day-to-day stuff was fine. Illegal S-tech was completely out, so Scab left his energy javelin and the Scorpion on the ship. Both of them had had to divest themselves of some of their nastier virals and modify their nano-screens to be less abrasive. Their P-sats were fine, but they had to downgrade some of their systems a little. Scab had had to drain some of his more advanced liquid software out of his skull as well.

All this had been just over six standard cycles ago. The room that had initially been a welcome change from the Basilisk was now another small prison. Vic had exhausted most of the room’s entertainment suite’s options. After all, ’sect-on-human porn immersion was a niche market.

Vic was lying on the transforming piece of furniture that was the only place to sit, lie or sleep in the room, staring at the ceiling through his multi-faceted eyes. He had experienced reading a text file in a colonial immersion and had tracked down and tried reading one for entertainment. It had been exhausting. He couldn’t get his head round having to create the images with his own mind. Now he was just wondering if it was possible to die from boredom and self-abuse.

It took a while for Vic to realise what the tapping sound was. He only realised that it meant that someone was hitting his door wanting to enter because he’d experienced this phenomenon in the same historical immersion that he’d seen the text file in.

Vic deleted the ability to read from his current neunonic applications and ’faced an order to the room for the door to open. Scab was standing there. Vic was relieved to see that he was fully clothed in brown suit and raincoat.

‘I’m bored!’ Vic shouted at him. Scab nodded and lit a cigarette.

‘I can see that.’

‘Have they finished cogitating?’ the ’sect asked, trying out the taste of a new word. Scab almost raised an eyebrow but instead shook his head.

‘Coming?’ he asked.

The Basilisk was still docked back at the high-security habitat. Scab had reconfigured the smart-matter hull and hacked the ID code. It wouldn’t be enough to hide from the Church as they could sense the bridge-drive signature, but it might help against some of the less-than-thorough bounty killers.

They had taken one of the shuttles to a more interesting entertainment-based habitat. Vic should have been a more than a little nervous about this, but boredom had turned his mental capacities into a kind of grey-coloured slush, and a week of immersion porn made him want to touch real human flesh.

They were in a multi-level mall. The smart matter was designed to look like dark-green, white-veined marble with arched iron bridges over a vast atrium and food court. Some of the food concessions even had automaton service rather than just assembler-dispensing nipples. One of them even had sentient staff, but Vic had decided that was a little sick and demeaning for the employees, particularly when they could have found employment in one of the real-flesh brothels.

The ceiling was transparent and the habitat was tipped to look down at the planet. Looking up made you feel like you were about to fall towards the cloudy nano-swarms.

Vic was looking up, using his antenna sensors to avoid colliding with other pedestrians. His P-sat bobbed along above him, augmenting the sensor data, not that this was required for anything other than simple obstacle navigation as most of the other patrons were giving the seven-foot, hard-tech-augmented ’sect a wide berth.

Vic felt Scab stop. His P-sat had transmitted the reason why before he lowered his head and saw for himself through his multifaceted eyes. It was inevitable, Vic decided. After all, their job was to track people. Obviously they were going to find them, even if it was by random chance. Vic decided that he was not what the humans called lucky.

Jide was standing in front of Scab. There was a flicker of something on the feline’s game face. Later, Vic would run it through various analytical routines. He came to the conclusion that it was a moment of surprise. Then Jide read the situation.

The man-plus twins let go of each other’s hands and continued walking around Jide towards Vic. The lizard and the human half-and-half held back. Seven P-sats rose towards the transparent ceiling. It was only because the reactions of everyone involved were so wired that these moments stretched out, Vic thought as he backed away from the muscle-bound twins.

Jide was close to Scab, so close it looked like they had been about to bump into each other. Vic couldn’t understand why that would have happened. He also didn’t understand why his own sensors and those of his P-sat hadn’t picked up the other bounty killing team. Things weren’t making sense.

The twins closed on him. He knew that bid and counter-bid with Pythian subcontractors would be going on. Jide would presumably be asking permission for violence and Scab counter-bidding to avoid it. Vic hoped. Vic’s hand was close to the butts of his pistols but the twins were closing too fast. They wanted to mix it up with him. Vic knew that if he drew before they had permission, the habitat’s security systems would vaporise him, at best.

Vic and Scab’s P-sats were engaged in an electronic cold war with Jide’s crew’s P-sats. So far they were holding their own, as jamming signals confused sensors and countermeasures fought shutdown and control hacks.

Media P-sats came zipping across the mall towards them. A number dropped from the air as rival media providers engaged in their own electronics warfare for ratings.

The habitat’s security systems granted carte blanche permission for violence. No restrictions within current capabilities.

Jide swung at Scab. Scab placed his hands on Jide’s furry head and shoulders and jumped over the feline’s muscular arm, landing just behind a surprised Jide, face to face with the lizard berserker. The berserker was swelling, internal carbon reservoirs rapidly being converted to muscle mass as natural and artificial rage and speed-enhancing chemicals flooded its body.

Scab fast-drew his tumbler pistol and shot all six rounds into Jide’s back at point-blank range. Jide’s armour and hardened flesh just about coped with the first four shots but the spinning rounds were designed to penetrate armour. The final two penetrated; secondary charges detonated inside Jide, sending the bullets spinning and fragmenting through the Rakshasa’s body.

Scab rammed his synthetic diamond-tipped smart blade metalforma knife through hardened armoured flesh and soft-machine-augmented muscle into the back of Jide’s neck, then sent the blade a neunonic command to widen and grow in the wound, the small carbon reservoir in the hilt providing the necessary matter. Scab forgot about Jide.

The twins charged. Vic’s triple-barrelled shotgun pistol appeared in the hands of his lower limbs. ’Sect knees bent in the opposite direction to the rest of the uplifted races’ knees. He bent his left leg, balancing on the right, bringing the foot up to the bottom of his abdomen. He let the twins close with him and then emptied all three barrels into the left twin’s face at point-blank range. The explosive-cored flechette penetrators turned it into a red ruin. He staggered back.

Vic’s left foot then shot out. Humans never expected kicks like this. The power-assisted prehensile claw that was his foot hit the right twin’s knee and tore through it, leaving a mangled mess of metal, hardened plastic and carbon fibre. Right twin did not scream but his leg shot out from underneath him and he face-planted into the mock marble. Vic knew that all he had done was buy himself time.

The P-sat’s cold war went hot. It turned into a strobing red shooting war as they zipped around the bridges, using them for cover while they continued screaming their electronic war across ’face connections.

Scab ducked under the blade of the berserker’s smart sickle, stepping to the side and giving his opponent the slightest push in just the right place to keep him off balance.

The half-and-half was doing a backward one-handed cartwheel, the other hand throwing explosive burrowing knives. Keyed to Scab’s EM signature, the knives’ guidance systems would take them round the lizard berserker.

Above them, one of the twins’ P-sat’s energy dissipation grids was overwhelmed. It glowed red and then exploded.

Jide just stood still.

An electronic warfare burst from Scab’s P-sat jammed the burrowing knives thrown by the half-and-half, and Scab ducked under them as the berserker turned back towards him.

Scab dropped the tumbler pistol and raised his right arm. Razor-sharp discs flew from the lizard-made disc projector strapped to his arm. Like the knives, the discs were keyed to their target’s EM signature.

As the discs opened up the tumbling half-and-half’s face and side, Scab drew his spit gun with his left hand, the gun’s ergonomic grip moulding to the contours of his hand. He jammed it into the side of the berserker’s head and with a thought started firing. The weapon’s solid-state bullpup magazine was eaten up, disappearing into the weapon’s barrel quickly, used up by the spit gun’s ferocious rate of fire. The flechette penetrators buried themselves inside the berserker’s skull, the envenomed needles fragmenting. The berserker howled and grabbed the back of his head. It would give Scab moments, but that was all.

Vic’s lower right hand flicked the triple-barrelled shotgun open. His lower left hand snatched the lizard-made power disc from its clip in the small of his back and threw it in a wide arc, transmitting target data from both himself and his P-sat. His lower left hand then slid three rounds into the shotgun. As he did this, he leaned forward and used power-assisted metal to dig his two upper arms into right twin’s flesh.

Right twin screamed as bladed fingers pushed through armour and into flesh. Vic straightened up and threw his opponent into the air. Then the bloodied hands on his upper limbs drew both his double-barrelled laser pistols. With rapid disciplined thoughts he neunonically transmitted orders to fire to the semi-automatic pistols. Right twin’s energy dissipation grid lit up, turning him into a red neon silhouette flying through the air.

Vic’s energy dissipation grid lit up as he started taking fire from one of the P-sats. Keeping one pistol on the twin, he moved the other to fire at the P-sat.

Despite his ruined face, left twin was trying to bring a short-barrelled disc gun to bear. Vic’s lower right hand snapped the shotgun pistol closed. His abdomen rotated slightly for a better shot and he fired. The three rounds left the barrels of the shotgun pistol. The sabots fell away and the miniature ramjets on the micro-missiles ignited.

Left twin got off a wild shot from the disc gun. A few of the discs hit Vic’s arm – he felt them beat armour and damage flesh and internal components. The force spun him round.

The micro-missiles from Vic’s shotgun caught left twin in the chest. Their armour-piercing heads penetrated the man-plus’s armour. The glow of their jet engines momentarily illuminated his chest cavity before exploding. It was little more than wet meat and muscle enhancement that fell to the cold hard marble.

Scab’s metalforma blade had widened enough to sever the Rakshasa’s neck and Jide’s head fell off. Scab reached behind him and caught the falling metalforma blade as it was retracting back to its normal size. The feline’s head bounced off the marble as the body toppled forward.

Scab backed away, trying to keep the wounded and angry berserker between him and the half-and-half. The berserker’s smart sickles flew out at him, the black blades moving like liquid as they reached for his flesh to cut him open. The lizard’s attacks were half overwhelming ferocity and half hard-wired randomised routines designed to make it difficult for opponents to predict them. The lizard was shredding Scab’s coat; blood had been drawn and dripped, smoking, to the cold marble. Scab drove the metalforma blade up into one of the lizard’s arms and then the other. Each time he neunonically instructed the blade to branch out to cause the maximum amount of damage, to render the limb useless. The berserker didn’t feel it. The half-and-half continued trying to circle around behind Scab.

While fighting for his life, Scab reviewed the sensor data from his P-sat. Through the fog of electronic warfare and the red glow of a rapidly overheating energy dissipation grid, it provided him with the wider picture he needed.

There was an explosion in the laser red light show above them. Vic swore as his P-sat exploded. He was firing up into the air at two of the remaining P-sats. Both were returning fire, making the ’sect’s energy dissipation grid glow bright red. Right twin was sitting up again, but Vic was pretty sure his power disc would take care of him. Then his disc changed direction.

Scab hacked the disc and gave it a new target. The flowing black blades of the berserker’s smart sickles opened him up, biting deep. Pain was just another sensation, Scab thought, one that he would have liked to be able to embrace. Getting badly cut doing it, Scab stabbed the metalforma blades up through the berserker’s reptilian maw, the blade branched out, growing inside the berserker’s flesh, hooking into it. Then Scab yanked the blade out, tearing a hole in the flesh of its maw. The berserker didn’t even feel it.

Scab screamed out as twin thermal oscillating blades cut through his armoured clothes, hardened skin and into real flesh and soft-machine augments. The half-and-half had got behind him. Scab’s altered neuro-chemistry and internal narcotics deadened pain, leaving only the strange sensation of the knives moving through his flesh like it was water, and the smell of burning flesh.

Vic’s power disc, which Scab had hacked, cut through both the berserker’s legs. As the lizard tumbled to the floor, Scab jammed the metalforma blade into his neck and then spun, trying to elbow the half-and-half. S/he ducked the elbow, but at least the blades had come out of his flesh now. Scab’s nanite and biotech medical applications tried to cope with the massive internal damage: biological systems shut down as redundant tech ones came online. Scab turned the elbow into a spin, bringing his leg up into a rear turning kick. The half-and-half flipped back out of the way.

Scab threw himself forward into a roll to get out of the way of the crippled berserker’s floor-bound attacks. The berserker continued pulling himself after Scab even as the metalforma knife grew to shovel-head size in his neck.

Another P-sat exploded in the air above them. Scab turned into a strobing neon-red grid as the half-and-half fired burst after burst from a folding laser carbine. Scab rapidly reloaded the spit gun and covered his face with his arm to protect it.

Vic sprinted towards right twin, firing one laser pistol at the man-plus, the other at one of the remaining P-sats. Right twin sat up glowing red as he fired the cut-down disc gun. Discs impacted Vic’s hard-tech armour, some making their way through. The ’sect felt no pain. He was too much machine. He just had the odd sensation of things moving inside him. Each shot sent him staggering, but he continued running forward, firing. The P-sat Vic was firing at exploded. Vic brought both pistols to bear on right twin. At the same time he finished reloading the shotgun pistol with his lower limbs and aimed the triple-barrelled weapon to the left under his outstretched upper arms and fired all three barrels. The sabots fell away as their mini-missile payloads locked on to one of the P-sats. The P-sat tried to flee, using the bridges and stanchions as cover. The micro-missiles’ miniature ram jets ignited. The electronic warfare transmissions from Scab’s P-sat prevented the targeted and locked P-sat from jamming the incoming micro-missile’s guidance systems.

Scab stalked towards the half-and-half, emptying the clip from the spit gun into him/her. The berserker crawled rapidly after him. Penetrator flechettes from the spit gun pierced the half-and-half’s armour and exploded. Those that hit flesh fragmented in the wound. Each fragment was coated in neurotoxin. Not enough to overwhelm the hermaphrodite’s internal systems but enough to keep them busy and slow him/her down.

The battery on the half-and-half’s folding laser carbine ran down as Scab tossed the empty spit gun away with a flourish. The hermaphrodite staggered as s/he tried to cope with the toxins. Scab, still glowing and smoking from the laser fire, leaped high into the air. He hit him/her in the chest with both knees, riding him/her to the ground as he repeatedly struck him/her in the face with sharpened envenomed fingernails. Fingers pierced armour and a combination of trauma and venom killed the half-and-half before s/he hit the ground. The berserker was still crawling towards Scab, reaching for him as the metalforma blade finished growing in the lizard’s neck and its head fell off. The headless corpse slumped to the cold marble.

With bloody fingers, Scab reached into his suit jacket and took out his cigarette case. He removed a cigarette and lit it.

Vic reached right twin and kicked him hard. His power-assisted leg shattered the disc gun, and his clawed foot tore off half of right twin’s face.

The micro-missiles caught the P-sat just below the transparent ceiling. The P-sat exploded.

Mandibles wide open and making a hissing clicking noise, Vic fired both pistols point-blank. Right twin’s face became red steam.

Vic looked around. He was sure there were more P-sats, but he guessed they were following dead-owner protocols. The collateral damage wasn’t too bad. Some stray beams, flechettes and discs had caught passers-by, but anyone who was dead probably had clone insurance.

Scab stood up. His coat had stopped glowing but was still smoking. He kicked the lizard berserker’s corpse. The headless body had still been trying to crawl. He found the metalforma knife and picked it up. He jammed the blade into the half-and-half’s neck, neunonically ‘facing instructions to sever the hermaphrodite’s head.

‘Take their heads,’ Scab said. Vic ignored him. He was running cooling cycles on his pistols, recharging them from his internal energy supplies through the matrices in his palms. He reloaded the shotgun, though he’d used the last of his saboted micro-missile loads. At the same time he was using his neunonics to buy, and have upgraded to his spec, a new P-sat.

Scab retrieved his spit gun and the tumbler pistol. Then once the metalforma knife had finished doing its job, he picked that up and collected the three severed heads, holding them by hair, fur and crest in one hand while he licked the blood off the fingers of the other.

Some bounty killers, particularly high-profile ones, made immersions of their jobs to augment their income. Vic wondered if Jide and his crew’s experience of being killed at their hands was currently being auctioned to help cover their resurrection expenses. Neither Scab nor Vic, however, sold their experiences as immersions. The only recordings of them were audiovisual or other people’s, normally fatal, immersion experiences of them.

Scab used the metalforma knife on both the twins, decapitating them. He held all five severed heads up to show the remote cameras. The message to other bounty crews was clear. Come looking for them, you’ll end up having to get cloned.

Vic stared at Scab. Something wasn’t sitting right with him. Scab was ignoring him.

‘They’ll come after us properly prepared,’ Vic finally said, making his tone neutral, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that his suspicions were written all over his insectile face and in his pheromone secretions.

Scab shook his head.

‘Why not? The bounty from the cartel’s got to be pretty big.’

They were in the private medical facility on their own habitat. The habitat had stepped up their security in light of what had happened. Scab had done his own medical work and was in the process of purging the local systems of all medical information on himself. Vic was lying on one of the couches as his damaged internal organs and components were speedily being regrown, and his armour and hardened skin were knitted back together. The featureless white room that was the medical facility transmitted progress straight to his neunonics.

‘They won’t be cloned,’ Scab said. He made it sound like an afterthought.

‘You transmitted a scramble code for the personality and memory uplink?’ Vic asked, trying to keep his voice even. Scab just nodded. It was an expensive viral program. The uplinks were very heavily protected and had multiple redundant systems to prevent this sort of thing. ‘That’s pretty illegal stuff for Pythia.’ Personality/memory-uplink scrambling software had been on the list of proscribed ware.

‘Nothing’s illegal with enough debt relief,’ Scab said, still distracted. Then he turned to look directly at Vic with his dead eyes. ‘They had to know.’ Vic tried to meet the look but turned away. ‘It’s time for an answer.’

Scab headed towards one of the white walls. The smears of blood they had left when they first entered had long ago been eaten by nano-cleaners. Part of the wall opened for them.

The transparent piece of hull was shaped like an eye and lined with actual wood panelling. In front of it was a circular sofa upholstered in something that had once been alive and it was in no way smart. Vic was struggling to find a comfortable way to sit on it. Scab was slumped in it, smoking a cigarette, dried blood all the way up the arm of his suit jacket and raincoat.

The eye looked down on the planet. The view was either just wide enough, or had been compressed, to show the curvature of the planet against the golden light of the orange giant refracting on the particulate clouds. As Vic and Scab sat there waiting for the business acolyte to be possessed, they watched asteroids being dropped into the atmosphere. The fire of their atmospheric entry lit up part of their view.

The business acolyte was standing in the centre of the circle made by the leather sofa. He wore a collarless suit that buttoned up to the neck. His physiology suggested human, and the little skin that they could see looked human, or perhaps an oddly fashion-augmented feline. It was difficult to be sure because of the hood on the suit jacket and the featureless convex-mirrored, full-face mask.

Holography of the nano-swarm clouds in Pythia’s atmosphere appeared in the centre of the room. The acolyte was stood in the apparent storm front as lightning played across it. It was difficult to gauge the scale of it, but Vic had the feeling that the storm front was anything up to hundreds of miles across. He pursed his mandibles, not sure what he was watching.

‘I think that’s the think tank they’ve had working on our problem,’ Scab said.

The business acolyte collapsed onto all fours, shaking and gyrating in front of them. Vic couldn’t shake the feeling that he was about to experience Known Space’s oddest lap dance.

‘That is correct.’ The voice sounded like it was being agonisingly pulled from the acolyte’s larynx. Pythia had overrun the willing acolyte’s neunonic systems and was in control. ‘Trillions of tiny bits of information, the fall of entire markets to the movement of a single molecule, the—’

‘I don’t care,’ Scab said. ‘Where is it?’

The acolyte moved his head, apparently to stare at Scab. Scab’s reflection on the convex mask somehow didn’t seem all that distorted to Vic.

‘The end of the Art Wars left the Absolute in control of the Monarchist Elite,’ came the strained reply.

‘Weird f*cking war,’ Scab said, frowning. Vic looked up at him sharply. He was surprised that Scab had offered an opinion, let alone seemed to have mild emotion connected to the conflict. ‘But we know this.’

‘The safest place to hold the cocoon would be at the Citadel. If Fallen Angel told you the truth, then the cocoon is on Game, probably deep below the Black Leaves as the Absolute’s sanctum is the second most secure place in the Monarchist sector. Also, according to our psych evaluation of the Absolute, he will wish to keep the cocoon close enough to play with.’

‘So it can’t be done. Only pieces are allowed on Game, and they have to have experiential augments. They’d know who and what we are the moment we left orbit,’ Vic said. ‘Can we leave it now?’ Scab just looked thoughtful. Vic shook his head. He could see what was coming.

There was a kind of quiet screeching from the acolyte. Vic stared at him. Blood ran out from under the mask. The acolyte’s body twisted and contorted further. Vic gave Scab a questioning look.

‘There is no love lost between the Absolute and the masters of the Living Cities on Pangea. They were the biggest losers of the Art Wars. They wanted to see their model of society permeate the entire Monarchist sector. If the Elder will consent to speak to you, they may aid you.’

Scab nodded. ‘How long?’

‘If you exhaust the slush fund you have access to, then that will buy you a one-week info lock. After that the information will be available at an exorbitant price to everyone.’

Scab nodded. Vic assumed he was spending the rest of whatever slush fund he had access to.

The acolyte collapsed to the floor. There was bloody froth bubbling out from under the mask.

‘Is that it?’ Vic asked.

The smart-matter floor engulfed the acolyte, presumably taking him to somewhere nearby for medical attention. Scab got up and left. Vic watched him go, irritation and a feeling of helplessness combining into impotent anger. He realised it was completely psychosomatic, but he struggled to control his breathing for a moment until his augmented systems took over and administered a mild sedative. He stood up and followed Scab. There was nothing else he could really do except ’face his own bid to Pythia for information. It wiped out three quarters of his debt relief in an instant.

Vic was immersed. He had no control so he decided to lose himself in narcotic-enhanced fantasy. His only-’sect-at-a-human-orgy fantasy dissolved around him as the Basilisk managed to send him a warning signal before powering down.

Vic sat up on his unmoving bed. The door to his room was open but the ship was dark. The walls were solid. There were no areas of transparency.

He stood up and walked out into the lounge. His optical enhancements ignored the darkness. Scab was standing in the centre of the lounge, still. Vic could feel the anger. It seemed to be coming off Scab in waves. He actually took a step back. Blood dripped from Scab’s clenched fists. He had pierced the hardened skin of his palms with his fingernails.

Vic checked back over the last information from the Basilisk. They had been approaching the Pythia bridge point. It looked like someone had hacked the ship. Shut it down completely. Vic knew that wasn’t supposed to be easy. The Basilisk had the best system security they could afford and it had been extensively and often illegally augmented by the privacy-obsessed control freak that was Scab.

‘Elite . . .?’ Vic ventured.

The transmission had to be pretty powerful to reach their internal comms through the thick skin of the dead Basilisk. Vic actually screamed, then staggered, holding his head. Scab didn’t move, but a drop of blood leaked from his nostril and made a smoking trail through his white make-up.

‘To Woodbine Scab and Vic Matto, this is the St Brendan’s Fire. We only wish to talk. Prepare for boarding.’ The woman whose flickering image appeared in their minds was the same shaven-headed and tattooed Church monk they had seen on Arclight.

Vic felt the fear building. Scab couldn’t allow this to happen. It wasn’t in his nature. He would do something suicidal and make sure that he took Vic with him. He couldn’t abrogate control of the situation like that.

‘Scab . . .’ Vic started, searching for a way to talk his partner into being reasonable, but he knew that there was nothing he could say that would help.

‘Basilisk to St Brendan’s Fire.’ Scab sounded calm. He was talking out loud; only someone who knew him as well as Vic could hear the barely controlled rage in his voice. ‘Immediately return control of the Basilisk to us. If you do not, then you will find that information on the whereabouts of the bridge technology you are trying to suppress will be transmitted throughout Known Space.’

There was silence. Was it a bluff? Vic had no idea. Scab did bluff, but he also made sure that he did enough extreme shit that all his bluffs were believable.

‘St Brendan’s Fire to Basilisk. You’re bluffing. That would screw up your own agenda,’ the Monk said.

No, Vic silently screamed at her. Look at your psych profile! He will destroy it for you even it means he fails.

‘Besides,’ the Monk continued, ‘how would you transmit the information? You’re dead in the water.’

‘We made a contingency arrangement with Pythia,’ Scab transmitted.

It was the sort of thing that Scab would do, Vic decided. He planned ahead in that way.

‘We just want to talk,’ the Monk said after what seemed like a very long time. She had either bought the story or she just wasn’t prepared to risk even the slightest chance of proliferation. Scab ignored her.

At any moment Vic expected to hear the metallic clang of a docking arm reverberate through the Basilisk, but instead the systems came back up.

Scab kept the hull dark but brought up scans of the St Brendan’s Fire. The Basilisk’s weapon systems provided targeting solutions as Scab turned the ship back towards the bridge point. The Basilisk’s engines glowed as the bridge drive made a red tear in space.