The Age of Scorpio

19

A Long Time After the Loss





Scab had described it as an anal tract but Vic had put that down to his partner’s natural unpleasantness. Vic preferred to think of it as walking down a massive bioluminescent artery. The translucent nature of the flesh of the floating city allowed him to see its internal workings, which looked like muscle, tissue and organs on a massive scale. He understood that felines, hairless monkeys and to a lesser extent some lizards could find this sort of thing uncomfortable, but he’d grown up in the chitinous environments of star hives which prepared him for this sort of biomechanics writ large.

They were moving along the artery/sphincter on the edge of one of the Living Cities. They did not know which one. They did not know how to differentiate or indeed if they could be differentiated.

The Living Cities were one of the most celebrated sights of the Monarchist systems and indeed Known Space, considered a triumph of bioengineering, though it was suspected that they had been built using illegal – under Church law – applications of Seeder tech.

Vic reached out to touch the flesh-like wall of the artery, running one of his upper hands down it, enjoying the sensation fed back from the tactile sensor on the mechanical appendage. Through the glowing translucent wall he could look down through the cloudless sky to the scarred grey rock of Pangea’s surface.

Tendrils hung out of the bottom of the city as it floated on massive gasbags supported by redundant AG systems. The tendrils burrowed into the surface of the ruined planet like parasitical insects. Vic knew that the tendrils would be breaking down and sucking up the very surface of the planet itself for conversion and processing as raw material. Deeper burrowing tendrils would be harnessing geothermal energy from the planet’s core. Frequent tectonic events would sever tendrils, spraying rock, heat or even lava into the sky, but the living city could always call on its massive carbon reservoirs harvested from the very matter of the planet and grow more.

Eventually Pangea would be exhausted and the Living Cities would either somehow have to move to another world or die. Other worlds were in short supply due to the limited number of systems that the Church allowed access to with their bridge technology, and the rapacious, exponential, almost viral level of expansion and colonisation of the sentient races. In other words, space was crowded, and almost every bit of it was claimed. On the other hand, even with Vic’s limited knowledge of geospatial politics, and allowing for his near-total lack of interest in the subject, he realised that breaking the Church’s monopoly could lead to the opening-up of more space to colonise.

The artery rose in a helix towards the living dome-like roof of this particular city, where massive cells photosynthesised the weak light of Pangea’s main-sequence G-type star. Some effect of the planet’s wrecked atmosphere made the star look white.

Much of the trip from Pythia to Pangea had been taken up with Scab trying to work out what the Church frigate had done to the Basilisk and upgrading the ship’s security. Elements of Pangea’s not inconsiderable navy were on the Basilisk the moment they opened the bridge from Red Space into Real Space. Security for Pangea was run by one of the largest private military contractors. Basilisk had been told to power down all weapon systems or be destroyed. Scab had done it without too much attitude – to Vic’s surprise. They had then been escorted through orbital defences comparable to Pythia’s. All of this was paid for through the export of biotech developed in the cities. Many of Scab’s soft-machine augments were derived from Living City technology. There were rumours that the Living Cities’ wealth came, in part, from illegal technology derived from their use of banned Seeder tech.

They had been extensively disarmed, much to Scab’s disapproval. There had been no chance to bid for weapons, just a blanket refusal, and it was made clear that any attempt to bring virals into the city would result in immediate death. Scab had undergone a complete blood transfusion with less than good grace. He had even cleaned under his fingernails, removing all the neurotoxins. During the docking and decontamination procedures, Scab had his cigarettes and old-school syringes of opiates removed.

They had also had to shut down their external ’face links. Any communication was going to have to be done the old-fashioned way. Their nano-screens had to be extensively reprogrammed and internalised. In short, they both felt naked, though Vic was just enjoying being in the city. The warm wind blowing through the artery somehow reminded him of a human womb immersion he had once done. It had left him wondering why the little hairless monkeys ever left.

P-sats had obviously not been allowed. Instead they were being guided to a meeting place by one of the inhabitants of the city. They all looked the same. Neutral-gendered, Vic believed they were actually grown from the city. It was nominally human, as most of the inhabitants of the Monarchist systems were, and naked, which made sense. Vic was starting to find something artistic and aesthetically pleasing about the translucent skin, the internal organs on display and the glowing violet-coloured blood that provided them with their own bioluminescence. Looking around through the arteries and the flesh of the massive city, he could see them moving around doing various tasks. It made Vic think of the nanites that suffused his own body. Scab, presumably still grumpy at being disarmed, had wondered out loud why people would want to turn themselves into glowing bowel parasites.

The helical artery brought them to the highest level of the city. Vic looked down on it. From the top the city looked like a roughly circular plain. It was constantly moving, constantly rippling. The chamber they had arrived at was the first bit of opaque flesh they had come across. The sphincter-like door opened with a distinctly organic sucking noise. Vic and Scab followed their guide through.

The boardroom table looked as if it was made from sculpted tooth enamel. The chairs had been grown from the floor and were covered in a moss-like substance.

There were two other people in the room. One of them seemed to be clothed in black glass, and was leaning against the transparent flesh of what passed for a window in the outer wall. The other was the hairless tattooed Monk from the St Brendan’s Fire. She was lounging on one of the chairs, feet up on the bone-white table.

The guide moved to one side, pushing himself against the flesh wall of the room. Scab was already moving towards the Monk. It looked like she was trying to say something.

Scab was in the air over the table. The Monk just leaned back and used one hand to flip off the chair and onto her feet. Vic sighed internally. He couldn’t be bothered.

A series of short fast strikes with clawed hands opened up a cut on her porcelain skin. Normally, neurotoxins on his filed and hardened nails would be enough to slow the Monk down and give Scab the edge, but they had been removed.

Scab stepped to the side to avoid a powerful front kick. He turned the sidestep into a sweep, which the Monk leaped over. In mid-air she straightened her leg and caught Scab a solid blow in the face, sending him staggering back across the living boardroom.

She’s good, Vic thought. Then he decided to look at the figure in black glass again.

‘Oh shit,’ Vic muttered as Scab and the Monk danced their violent dance. The figure in black glass was an Elite. Vic didn’t think it was Fallen Angel but he couldn’t be sure; with the exception of Ludwig they all kind of looked the same to him.

The Monk had closed with Scab, swinging at him with a series of vicious hooks. Scab threw himself back towards the floor. Landing with his weight on one hand, he kicked from the ground, catching the Monk on the side of the head with the toe of his spats. She staggered back but recovered quickly. Scab tried to hook his leg around her neck, but she moved with it and did a one-handed cartwheel out of the lock, landing crouched to face him.

Vic was caught between watching the Elite, who Scab would have also noticed but was ignoring in favour of violence that had a better chance of success, and the ongoing fight. The Monk was genuinely skilled rather than having augmented fighting abilities. She was experienced as well. Vic assumed she had the best soft-machine augments that debt, or in the Church’s case actual credit, could possibly buy. He was able to read where and what she was going to do because she was a very efficient and skilled fighter. Scab, on the other hand, fought chaotically. The Monk had to deal with Scab moving to where he shouldn’t, doing moves he shouldn’t and fighting with a ferocity she couldn’t match. He had a genuine desire to hurt his opponent.

Scab closed in and locked the Monk’s arm. Grinning with savage joy, Scab kneed the Monk in the head and then repeatedly struck her in the face with his fingers. He was trying to push his filed-down fingernails through her armoured skull.

It was all over now. Scab’s fingers had found her eyes. Any moment now membranes would pop and he would force the fingers into her brain, and his reputation would increase as he added a dead monk to his list of kills.

Then the Monk lost her temper. It was like a berserk rage without the augments, Vic thought. She lost an eye tearing his finger out. She headbutted Scab hard enough to break the reinforced cartilage of his nose. Then she somersaulted out of the lock. The sound of her arm spiral fracturing and dislocating simultaneously was loud enough to make Vic flinch. She screamed in pain, landed and kicked Scab in the chest.

Scab flew back across the room. The Monk leaped after him. Scab hit the wall. The Monk kicked him in the head. His skull cracked under the force of the blow. A look of fury on her face, the Monk repeatedly kicked him in the head, pulping his face and skull as he slid down the wall.

Vic was hoping this was freedom at last, but somehow Scab managed to leg-sweep her from the ground while she was too intent on turning his head to pulped meat. The Monk hit the floor and Scab axe-kicked her in the head.

‘Stop this or I will destroy them both,’ the guide said quietly to Vic. He only picked it up because his aural augments were able to filter out the sound of the fight.

‘What? If you’ve got some skills as well, then jump in, have some fun,’ Vic told the guide.

‘I will simply ask the city to flex. Everyone in the room will be crushed.’

Vic sighed. A power-assisted leap carried him easily over the table. The tall ’sect landed softly behind his partner. Scab currently had the upper hand and was standing on one of the Monk’s legs, fending off kicks from the other while trying to break her knee by punching it. He was aware of Vic behind him but had assumed that his partner had come to help.

There were a number of ways Vic could have handled trying to break up the fight, but he was feeling reckless. He grabbed Scab by the shoulders of his raincoat with his upper two arms and then flung Scab backwards.

Scab flew across the boardroom again and hit the wall. Behind Vic the Monk skipped to her feet. One of her arms hung limp at her side but she assumed a defensive stance. Scab was straight back onto his feet. Even through the pulped meat of his face, Scab’s rage was plain to see. Vic actually staggered back a few steps. This is it, he thought, but he made himself big, stretching to his full height, all four arms outstretched.

‘Are you out of your f*cking mind!’ Scab screamed. Vic had never seen him lose control like this.

‘They’ll kill us all if you don’t stop,’ Vic said. He couldn’t quite keep the tremor out of his voice. His pheromone excretions told the rest of the story about how frightened he was.

Scab’s face was contorting and he was gasping for air as he tried to control himself. The humourless and very familiar laughter wasn’t helping matters, Vic decided. Both he and Scab turned to look at the Elite. What they saw were warped reflections of themselves in the glass armour.

‘Something funny?’ Scab asked in a tone that suggested to Vic more impending violence. Good. You just kill yourself attacking an Elite, then Known Space will be f*cking rid of you and I can enjoy the sights of the Living Cities while waiting for a bounty crew to catch up with me.

‘It’s like watching a bad actor try to play you in a low-budget immersion.’

The black armour became liquid and was sucked into the Elite’s skin. He was an Elite version of Scab. He looked healthier, less gaunt. He was wearing a skin-tight, long-sleeved black top and black trousers, and his lips were stained black. The thing that unnerved Vic most about Elite Scab was that his eyes looked alive, but there was a malignancy in their life, a hatred and a madness. Vic wondered if Elite Scab had had the same neurosurgery to remove some of his more unpleasant predilections as his partner. He wasn’t optimistic about the chances of that.

‘Bollocks,’ the Monk said. It seemed to be a pre-Loss word for testicles, according to Vic’s neunonics. He couldn’t imagine why she’d choose to bring that up now. She was, however, looking nervously between Scab and Elite Scab.

‘Could I arrange refreshments for everyone?’ the guide asked, his tone neutral.

‘As soon as we have killed the copy. I have no need to subject myself to the insult of his further existence,’ Elite Scab said. Vic almost thanked him for his help in resolving the situation peacefully.

‘I thought you were the original,’ Vic said carefully. He knew he was taking his life in his hands and half-expected a thorough killing from Scab.

‘I am,’ Scab answered. There was something of the cornered animal about him at the moment, Vic thought. Scab clearly wanted to kill everyone in the room, but unusually for him – as Scab was prepared to pick fights with entire habitats – found himself horribly outgunned.

‘You’re little more than a biological machine. You were programmed to think what we wanted you to think. You’re a pale imitation, nothing more. If this wasn’t the case you’d still be able to make art,’ Elite Scab told Scab.

‘Art?’ the Monk asked incredulously.

‘Kill people in creative ways,’ Vic told her. She looked unimpressed.

‘You know what you are, messenger boy?’ Scab asked once he’d managed to stop shaking with rage. ‘Motivation, nothing more.’ Vic couldn’t read Elite Scab at all. He also didn’t understand what Scab was saying. He was missing part of the conversation. He was also sure that Elite Scab would have to be one of the Consortium Elite, and if he and Scab were about covert Consortium business then he didn’t understand why Elite Scab would be allowed to kill Scab or even what he was doing here in Monarchist space, the Living Cities’ enmity with the Game notwithstanding.

Elite Scab turned to the guide, who was speaking.

‘Since you all arrived here at the same time, we thought you might all benefit from a conversation. We can only assume that you will all have plenty of opportunities to kill each other once you are far away from Pangea, but for now there will be no more killing.’

Elite Scab nodded as if he was taking this in, but Vic recognised the signs that he was preparing to do something awful – he’d seen similar behaviour in his own Scab. There was little they could do. It was pointless attacking an Elite at the best of times, let alone unarmed. He respected the guide for standing up to Elite Scab, but it had seemed foolish to let him into the city in the first place.

‘Look, can everyone called Woodbine Scab, clone or not, please just be reasonable for a moment,’ Vic ventured.

Elite Scab looked a little bit exasperated at this, as he reached out and touched the wall of the Living City. It had taken years of research and untold amounts of debt relief to develop the Seeder-tech-derived programmable virus that coated Elite Scab’s hand, but he still made its application look casual.

The guide screamed. The City shook, convulsed; there was a palpable feeling of pain and distress that even Vic picked up on. Through the transparent flesh they saw a helical artery crushed by a convulsion of muscle, the people in it reduced to squirts of luminescent flesh and blood. The guide sank to his knees in pain. The Monk moved around the table to help him to his feet despite her ruined arm.

‘Apparently not,’ Vic said.

‘Mr Scab,’ the guide, who Vic was beginning to think was a bit more than just a guide, said to Elite Scab as the Monk helped him to a seat, ‘we of course respect your power, and you could cause us great harm, perhaps even destroy this city, but we would live on. What I don’t think you could do is destroy this city before we kill you. I wonder if you have ever been this close to destruction before?’

‘You think I care? I’ve razed planets, I’ve been worshipped as a god. I’m bored and I could kill my copy with a thought.’

‘I’m not the copy,’ Scab said quietly, dangerously.

‘I don’t think that harming us or killing your copy was what you were instructed to do,’ the guide said to Elite Scab evenly. ‘Though I confess I’m not sure of the purpose of your presence here.’

Vic could see his Scab bridle at this. There it was, the problem with being a killer god: you had to do someone else’s bidding. It was hardwired into the Elite. It had to be or they would rule Known Space or simply run amok to see if they could grow bored with the killing. Elite Scab’s features were still unreadable, but Vic guessed he didn’t like being reminded that he was a servant either.

‘You are both an unreasonable pair of f*cktards!’ Vic was surprised to find himself shouting. He was less than pleased to find that his involuntary outburst now had the attention of two of the most dangerous professional arseholes in Known Space. ‘I mean really! I know we’re all well armed and Known Space is a dangerous place, but there are other f*cking means of conflict resolution where mutually assured destruction isn’t a f*cking certainty! I mean, what? Will your heads explode if we have a conversation, or will you find yourself unable to sustain an erection for the next five f*cking years because an hour went by and you didn’t manage to kill something?! I mean really! Grow! The! F*ck! Up!’ Vic finally managed to get control of himself and waited for the inevitable killing.

‘I’d clap if I had use of both arms,’ said the Monk, who Vic was beginning to like and think of in relation to his egg-fertilising wand.

‘We want the bridge tech,’ Elite Scab said.

‘Who wouldn’t?’ the guide said. ‘But we do not have it.’

‘That’s not going to happen,’ the Monk said.

‘We would be prepared to offer Pangea membership in the Consortium, a senior seat on the board.’

‘We are not interested,’ the guide said. ‘And we have not acquired bridge technology since you last mentioned it a moment ago.’

This is weird, Vic thought. It was as if the Consortium was showing its hand. They had sent an Elite out with little to negotiate with. It was almost as if the Elite had been sent here to be humiliated.

‘You realise that if Pangea gains unrestricted access to bridge tech then there will have to be a military response from the Consortium systems.’

‘Well yes, and we still don’t have access to it.’

‘Don’t you get tired of being prisoners of the Church?’ Elite Scab asked.

‘You are asking the wrong people. We have all we need here.’

‘Until you’ve sucked this world dry.’

The guide said nothing.

‘You’re the Elder, aren’t you?’ Vic asked the translucent glowing man. He smiled.

‘The essence of the Lord of Pangea is contained within the cities and we are all linked. We are one.’

‘So everyone on Pangea is aware of this conversation?’ Scab and Elite Scab asked at the same time. The Elder nodded. Both looked less than pleased.

‘F*cking amateurs,’ Elite Scab muttered.

‘You’re thinking of it in terms of millions of individuals knowing your secrets, but we are as one and can be discreet when we choose. Now, you have delivered your message, though I’m not sure what it was. Please leave.’

Elite Scab’s features were unreadable as he walked to the wall, Scab following every move. Elite Scab started to vibrate – it looked like he went out of phase – and then he just pushed through the wall and out into the freezing skies of Pangea. The Elder cried out again, and the room seemed to flinch. Elite Scab was hovering outside the transparent flesh. He turned to look at them, then the exotic matter of his armour leaked through his skin like oil. The black glass material formed into its coffin-like configuration and he disappeared into the sky.

‘Well, he seemed nice,’ Vic muttered. When he looked up he found Scab looking at him. Both were then distracted by a cracking noise and a shout of pain. They turned to the Monk, who had just put her arm back into place. It looked like it was starting to heal. Scab’s face was returning to its normal dimensions as well, though it was still covered in drying blood.

‘I’m a little confused as to who you’re working for,’ the Elder said to Scab. ‘Because if you’re not working for Consortium interests . . .’

‘Then you would be the next most likely client,’ the Monk said as she sat down, grimacing slightly.

‘Though there are competing interests in the Consortium,’ the Elder said.

‘Not for something like this,’ Scab pointed out.

‘Do you have a name?’ Vic asked the Monk, feeling slightly smitten.

‘Yes. Who doesn’t?’ she answered irritably.

‘What are you doing?’ Scab asked her.

‘What does it look like?’ There was pain written across her face, presumably from the healing process. ‘I’ve worked quite hard to get to the point where I can have a reasonable conversation with you.’

‘How did you find us? I put a week-long block on the information we got from Pythia.’

‘I guessed,’ the Monk said.

‘You’re lying,’ Scab said with certainty.

‘Well, let me just explain to you all the secrets of my trade,’ she offered sarcastically.

‘We have business to discuss with the Elder here. We can’t do it with you here. Either leave or . . .’

‘What?’ Vic asked. ‘Get scolded by petulant psychopaths? The Living Cities have made it clear that not even Elite arseholes, no offence, are getting to push people around.’

‘Mr Matto is right. It seems to require a great deal of effort and indeed the death of some of our people just to get you to have a reasonable discussion.’

‘There’s nothing to discuss, surely?’ Scab said irritably, wishing that he could smoke. ‘We want whatever is in the cocoon because it could break the Church’s monopoly on bridge travel, and they want to stop us from doing that.’

‘Actually, we want to help you steal it,’ the Monk said. She was smiling. The Elder let out a sigh.

‘You’re very pretty,’ Vic said. ‘How do you feel about ’sects?’

‘Sex?’

‘’Sects, insects. Cross-species copulation?’

‘Why?’ Scab asked.

‘Because the Absolute having access to the cocoon is as abhorrent to us as it is to you. So once we’ve stolen it, then we can start screwing each other over to see who ends up with it.’

‘Bit of a risk for you?’ Scab said, but Vic could tell he was warming to the plan. There was even the trace of a smile in the slightly upturned corner of his mouth, though Vic had to magnify his optics to see that.

‘Less of a risk than the Absolute having it. Besides, you’re overconfident to the point of having a god complex; I don’t see any huge problem in screwing you over.’

Now Scab was smiling.

‘Back off, Scab. I saw her first,’ Vic said, much to everyone’s confusion, before turning to the Monk. ‘You’re very pretty. We should totally have sex.’

‘And with reasonable conversation comes romance,’ the Elder said.

‘I’ve never had sex with an insect before. I wouldn’t even know where to begin,’ the Monk said, sounding a little surprised. She turned back to Scab. ‘Unless you want to be reasonable. We’ll pay you twice what your current employer is. You might even end up in credit.’

‘The money’s abstract now.’

‘Let’s not be too hasty,’ Vic said. ‘And it’s okay. I have immersions which would help explain,’ he said to the Monk.

‘Explain what?’ the Monk asked, confused.

‘Sex with insects.’ Vic was a little hurt that she didn’t seem to be paying attention.

‘Well, romance of a sort,’ the Elder observed.

‘Why didn’t you open with that?’ Scab asked.

‘Offers of insect sex?’ the Monk asked, more confused.

‘I would be up for that,’ Vic said. The Monk glanced at him distractedly.

‘The offer to work together and then I kill you and take what I want anyway,’ Scab said, explaining the deal from his perspective.

‘Like she had time!’ Vic cried, trying to appear gallant in front of his new interest. ‘Every time she, or the other guy, the one on Arclight, tried to talk to you, you responded with attempted and actual murder!’

‘So you’re not interested in the money then?’ the Monk asked Scab.

‘You can’t pay me what I’ve been offered,’ Scab said.

The Monk studied him. ‘I believe you. On Arclight we had hoped that familiarity and a biological link would be enough to open negotiations with you.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Vic asked suspiciously. ‘Scab, what’s she talking about?’ But Scab ignored the question and just stared at the Monk. She seemed surprised.

‘Did he not tell you that it was his son he killed in the Polyhedron?’ the Monk asked Vic.

Vic turned to stare at Scab, whose face was impassive underneath the crust of dried blood.

‘Did you not even upload my file?’ Scab asked.

‘We had hoped that murdering your offspring was as much a phase as propagating them had been in the first place.’

‘When did you kill your children?’ Vic asked.

‘Be quiet, Vic.’ Then to the Monk: ‘Stop cloning him, destroy the genetic material and his personality and memory uploads.’

‘Is that a condition of your cooperation?’

‘Was that when you killed me the last time and the ship got damaged?!’ Vic demanded.

‘Shut up, Vic. And yes, it is a condition of my cooperation.’ The Monk gave this some consideration.

‘Agreed,’ she finally said, somewhat reluctantly. Scab studied her for a while.

‘You’re good. The only reason I know you’re lying is because you agreed too quickly to kill a member of the Church. But there were no tells whatsoever.’

The Monk looked less than pleased. She shifted in her seat and leaned towards Scab.

‘I think you underestimate the importance of this.’

‘Your monopoly. I think we understand the motivations of power and greed in the Seeder Church,’ the Elder said. Vic was fascinated by the display of bioelectric energy that played through his internal organs as he said this. The Monk said nothing but Vic noticed that she swallowed.

‘What?’ Scab said suspiciously. Apparently he had noticed it as well. ‘You don’t feel it’s about that?’

The Monk shook her head, a degree of defiance in the set of her mouth.

‘You actually believe the shit you peddle?’ Scab asked.

‘Did you when you were the leader of a heretical street sect on Cyst?’ she asked – somewhat combatively, Vic thought.

‘What are you bringing to the table?’ Scab asked her, changing the subject.

Instead of answering, the Monk turned to the Elder.

‘We have access to the biotechnology and enough intelligence as well as experience from the Art Wars to enable you to infiltrate the Game and hopefully get you close to the cocoon you’re after,’ the Elder told them

‘What’s in this for you?’ Scab asked.

‘The Absolute, despite his power, is a very immature lord. He is playing games of control and empire that many of us have left behind. He has too much influence over what you call the Monarchist systems as it is. With his control of the Elite, access to bridge technology would give him the power to remake the entirety of the Monarchist systems in his image. He wants it all because he will never realise that it won’t make him happy.’

‘The Absolute’s a man then?’ the Monk asked. ‘I find myself unsurprised.’

The Elder actually laughed at this. ‘You’ve no idea how much of a male he is.’

‘Are you sure you don’t just want to f*ck him over for your humiliating defeat in the Art Wars?’ Scab asked.

‘Would it make any difference to you if it was?’

‘No, but I respect honesty.’

‘This has considerably more to do with self-preservation.’

Scab nodded and turned back to the Monk.

‘So why do we need to take the risk of working with people who don’t have our best interests at heart?’

‘Because they can get you in –’ the Monk pointed at the Elder ‘– but only I can get you out.’

The plan was suicidal, Vic thought as he inspected a food bladder and watched a bioelectric charge arc from one organ, designed to store harnessed energy, to another. Despite sometimes making him feel like he was being digested, Vic loved the Living City. The Elder, who was basically just an avatar representation of the city, had given him the freedom to roam around and look at the biotechnological wonder. He was standing on an artery that curved underneath the roughly saucer-shaped domed city. Far below he saw the windswept and scarred rock of the planet’s surface, the skirt of tendrils trailing towards it.

Vic reviewed the information he’d bid for from Pythia. He would have to erase it and trust to the remaining meat in his head to remember it. If he didn’t then Scab would find it the next time he neurally audited him. It would be enough for Scab to cause Vic pain but not enough to kill him.

Jide and his crew had been on Pythia to buy information on a completely separate case. To Pythia’s knowledge there was no bounty being offered for Scab and Vic, despite what Scab had done on Arclight. Scab had found who the most dangerous crew in the area were and had picked a fight with them to make an example. He had then paid bribes to manipulate the media so it looked like Jide had come after them.

Arguably the example could have been made without destroying Jide and his crew’s chance at being cloned. Vic guessed that Scab had decided that it wouldn’t be enough. He wanted other crews to know that if they came after him it was permanent death. He didn’t want any distractions on this job.

It was too much for Vic though. Even if they got the cocoon, he still had no idea what it was about or how it connected to bridge technology. They also had the three most powerful organisations in Known Space about to squash them like bugs. They would probably let them experience the cutting edge of prolonged torture immersions first.

All of this contributed to Vic’s decision. He felt that it was the only rational thing to do, though he giggled a little, his mandibles clattered together and he got a little aroused when he thought about it.

He was going to kill Scab.

The Elite was a photographic negative, a human-shaped shadow after a nuclear explosion in the all-encompassing light.

‘Well?’ the man behind the desk asked.

‘I delivered your message,’ the Elite said somewhat belligerently. ‘Though I don’t think I understood it.’

The man behind the desk just smiled.