Shadow of the Scorpion

3

"Cormac, Dax is back," said his mother. Again she was wearing old-style sunglasses—a habit that seemed to make her unapproachable, just like her perpetually distant tone, just like her perpetual affirmation of his name change. Cormac abandoned his p-top and school bag and broke into a run for the stair. "Don't bother him for too long—I've packed your suitcase with clothes and you need to sort out what else you'll be taking with you."

Cormac skidded to a halt at the bottom of the stair and turned. "We're going away again?"

"Yes, we'll be spending a week with Dax in Tritonia."

Cormac felt a flood of joy. Tritonia. He loved the city which stretched—with intermittent breaks—along the seabed from the south coast of Britain to France. His mother might allow him to take a haemolung out, especially if Dax went with him to keep watch. He charged up the stair yelling, "Dax!" but halted before his elder brother's door. Dax, who had lived at home until finally shipping out with the medical arm of ECS, liked his privacy, especially so since the time Cormac had charged in while he had been having sex with Marella. She had been sitting astride him naked, bouncing up and down—the image was forever etched in the young boy's mind. Cormac knocked on the door.

There was no answer for long seconds, and Cormac was about to open the door to peek inside when he heard the sound of movement from within. He waited a little longer and, disappointed, was about to head to his own room when there came a gruff, "Come in, Ian."

"Dax! We're going to—"

The sight that greeted him brought him to a confused halt. This was Dax? His elder brother had always been a big, heavily muscled young man with jet-black hair and an easy smile. This thin, haunted individual with flecks of grey in his hair, just did not seem like the same person.

"Dax," he said, but could think of nothing else to add.

Dax was still wearing the camouflage fatigues of an ECS medic—the blue uniform had been abandoned during this war since to the Prador a medic was just as much a target as any human being. He stood with his back to the window, and was smoking a cigarette—something he had once frowned upon even though body nanites could negate the adverse health effects. "You're thin," Cormac finally managed.

Dax nodded contemplatively then stared with what Cormac could only feel as a complete lack of engagement. After a moment he shrugged, shook his head, then tried a weak smile.

"It's hard out there, little brother," he said.

Hoping for some return to normality, Cormac asked enthusiastically, "Tell me about it!"

"No." No excuses, no explanation or justification, just No.

"What's it like?" Cormac wheedled.

Dax just shook his head, then after a moment turned to the window. After a drawn-out silence he said, "We'll talk once we've reached Tritonia—maybe I'll feel better then… maybe."

After another long delay, Cormac finally retreated, closing the door softly behind him.

They were going to take the hypertube in the morning, and when he was sent to bed Cormac observed his mother opening a bottle of whisky while Dax sat in strained silence smoking cigarette after cigarette. Already deft in the art of learning things he shouldn't, Cormac left his p-top open on the side table, its camera screen directed towards the two of them, the microphone functioning, all its other functions in silent mode. Retiring to his bedroom he turned on his room console, linked in, and watched his mother and brother.

"— when I'm ready," his mother was saying, "and if it doesn't get to him first."

Dax gulped his whisky as if to sate a terrible thirst, then replied, "Do you want me…?"

"No, that won't be necessary," she replied. "So are you going to tell me, Dax?"

More whisky. "What's to tell? It's a fucking nightmare out there."

"But you knew it would be."

Staring at something distant, Dax said, "Our first assignment… we set up a treatment unit for flash-burn victims. They came in with their skins coming off. We handled it to begin with, but then one of the Prador scout ships started taking out our supply ships. We handled that—using nerve blockers and anything else we could scrape together." He shrugged. "They weren't in any pain, but they just kept on dying on us. Then Prador ground troops attacked and we had to withdraw. About eight hundred of our patients we just couldn't move—it would have killed them. Our commander was green and he decided that we should leave them with nerve blockers in place. Maybe the Prador would ignore them. That commander ended up being shipped back with other wounded when one of the ECS regulars found out what he had done. Smashed him up real bad." Dax looked up at his mother. "You know what Prador do with the wounded?"

"I think I can probably guess."

"Maybe you can, but it's in the detail. They eat them alive."

"So they died, which would have happened if you had moved them. At least they weren't in any…"

Dax shook his head. "No, mother—they took the nerve blockers off first, then they ate the worst cases and spent a number of days with the remainder. They're as technically advanced as us, so they know how to keep someone alive."

"That's… horrible."

Again the shrug. He held out his glass for more whisky. "After that things were moving too fast for us to set up the big portable hospitals. Mostly field work. I've seen just about every injury you can possibly imagine." He drank, shook his head. "Tough bastards, some of those regulars. When you see a guy walk up to you carrying his own severed arm, the stump cauterized by laser, and when he tells you he wants it reattached quickly so he can get back to his unit…" He paused. "Are you sure you want to hear this?"

"I want to hear. I want to know that he faced nothing trivial."

Dax drew on another self-igniting cigarette. "It's day after day after day of it. You think you're getting used to it, then find you aren't. Me and three of the other guys were sent to one location where we found two soldiers hanging from a snake tree. They'd been skinned alive, fitted with drips feeding them antishock drugs and fluids, and were still alive. Two friends climbed that tree to cut them down. Booby-trap. A thermal grenade went off and fried all four up there. I wake up hearing them screaming, and I can't go anywhere now where pork or bacon is being cooked."

Mother looked sick. She took off her sunglasses to expose raw eyes. This was affecting her badly, Cormac guessed, his spine crawling. He wished he'd left his room light on.

"Then there's the Olston Peninsular," Dax continued relentlessly. "About a hundred troops waiting for transport back to camp. They got picked up and no one really noticed there was something odd about them. They came into the camp where I was waiting to tend any injuries. They just left their transports and started opening up with their weapons. Killed four hundred before they were all themselves killed. I watched an autopsy on one of them. Cored and thralled."

"What?" his mother asked.

"Humans taken captive… I don't know the full story, there's something about an alien virus in them that makes them more durable. Part of the spinal cord and the brain removed—a metal Prador thrall unit sitting in their place."

"I don't know what to say to you, Dax."

"There's nothing to say. I'll get all I need in Tritonia."

"Editing?"

"Damned right. There's people I work with who know how to deal with all sorts of stuff they can never remember having dealt with before. I'll get the bad memories cut away, cauterised out."

Dax stood, a little unsteadily, and stretched. He turned and walked directly towards Cormac's point of view and gazed straight into the p-top screen. "And I think you've heard enough now," he said, and closed the screen down.

The moment he entered the old city, Cormac knew he was being watched by someone other than the one tailing him, for this place was known to be scattered with pin-cams. With the street map at the forefront of his mind, he scanned the row of ramshackle shops to his right, and chose a clothing shop in about the correct position. He walked over to the plastic-draped racks of streetwear, raised some of the clear film as if to inspect a suit, then abruptly turned to look behind, but his tail was good, already turning away to select some food from a vendor's display. Cormac grimaced, then entered the shop where the young girl in charge immediately approached him.

"Hi," he said cheerfully. "I need a fog robe and mask."

"We have a wonderful selection of…" She began guiding him to the racks on the left, but he stepped to the right where packs of the cheapest exchange garments lay, and selected a robe and mask—necessities here if you didn't possess an envirosuit, since acidic fogs frequently descended in the evening. She reluctantly followed him over when he held up an octagonal ten-shilling piece, then placed it down on a counter beside him. He quickly tore open the pack and donned the baggy protective robe and the mask.

"I want to get out through the back of this place," he said.

She eyed the coin, which was about five times the value of his purchase. "I don't want to be involved in anything illegal." It was a rote protest and a test to see if she could push up the price. He didn't have time for this, for the one following him would shortly be in here.

"You won't be involved in anything illegal if you let me through, though if Shelah's husband comes in here after me, things could turn nasty."

"Shelah's husband?"

"I haven't the time."

Coming swiftly to a decision she snatched up the coin. "This way."

She led him to a back room stacked with plasmel and cardboard boxes—the former bearing some burns which attested to their provenance before the end of the war. The rear door was a heavy pseudo-wood affair with numerous bolts, which she slid back. Cormac had no doubt that "Shelah's husband" would also be conducted through this same door, just as quickly, and for the same price. Afterwards the girl would slide the bolts back into place, dust off her hands, and be quite happy with her profits for the day.

An alley led along the back of the row of shops, with ruins along the other side, some of which were gradually being rebuilt into homes while others were being used as dumping grounds. Cormac dodged behind a crumbled wall, the foamstone of its upper surface had been fused glassy by the intense heat of some weapon, probably a Prador particle cannon. He slipped a small hand-held scanner from his pocket and ran it over himself from head to foot. One of the bugs—a device the size of a pinhead—lay in the collar of his envirosuit. He discarded it in the rubble heap behind him. The other bug was microscopic and bonded to the skin of his forearm so, employing another function of the scanner, he used a burst of EMR to disable it. Then he clicked over a switch on the scanner and tossed it away; a simple ECS grunt out for a stroll should have no need of such a thing. The confection of plastics, of which the device comprised, smoked then burst into flame, incinerating fingerprints and trace DNA along with itself. Now, from his sabretache, he removed a small pepperpot stun gun, and waited with his back against the war-scarred wall.

The bolts clonking in the door gave him plenty of warning. He placed the fog mask against his face and felt the skin-stick bond, then pulled up the hood of his robe and just listened. The one who had been dogging his footsteps moved with hardly a sound, just the occasional unavoidable crunch of grit. It occurred to Cormac how simplistic was his trap, how obvious to anyone sufficiently trained. What would he do? What would he do if he had been trained properly?

Cormac quickly stepped out into the alley, but whoever had come through the back of the shop after him was not visible. Moving as swiftly and as silently as he could, he returned to that back door, scanned around, and noted a way through the ruins to his left. Yes, had it been him he would have taken a circuitous route to where he had detected the bug. Cormac moved down that way, checking all possible ambush points as he went, then there: the shadow of one wall on the ground before him with something moving along it. He dropped into a crouch, aimed upwards and fired at a half-seen shape.

Just clipped by the blast of neurotoxin pellets, the figure fell, swearing, and landed in an unsteady squat while groping for something under his coat. Cormac fired at the wall beside the figure, not wanting to take the neurotoxin dose up to lethal levels. As the pellets fragmented, their contents turning into a choking gas, he charged forwards to slam a thrust-kick into the man's chest. The man hit the wall behind and bounced back, whereupon Cormac side-fisted his temple and he went down like a sack of sand.

The one they had sent to follow Cormac was young, looked no older than Cormac himself, his face unlined and scattered with freckles, his hair ginger. He had been good, fast and dangerous, but not lethal. Apparently this youth was a recruit like himself, but one undergoing espionage training. The possibility of Cormac being involved in Carl's treachery had been downgraded in importance, it being decided that he should merely be watched. He was not considered sufficiently important or dangerous for a real agent to expend valuable time upon.

Cormac quickly sprayed an impermeable covering over his hands, stooped by the man, and began searching him, for this had to look like a robbery and he needed plausible deniability. All the money went into his own pockets, along with other items of value like identification and a small palm-top. A gold finger-ring and gold earring he left, since no local would steal such items where they had been digging that metal out of the ground in industrial quantities ever since the colony was established. Not here, where it had not been uncommon to use gold simply as anti-corrosion plating on other metals. He paused over the thin-gun the youth had been trying to draw. He liked the heft of the narrow, easily concealed weapon. It was an agent's weapon or equally the kind used by others about nefarious deeds. It went into his pocket too, along with some spare clips. Later, when the mission was over, he would return these items, but for now veracity was all. He considered shifting the man into a recovery position—people had been known to choke on their own vomit after a stun, but that would show any watchers that he was concerned; so leaving the man where he lay, he moved off.

Now he needed to get to The Engine Room, since that was the brief instruction given him by the voice that replied when he used the com-code obtained from a secret file concealed in Carl's palm-top amidst his weapons-adjustment programs. Whoever Cormac met there would reveal himself—or herself, since the voice had been electronically disguised—as Samara.

At the end of the alley he ducked into yet another alley, which in turn led to a square, where mounds of rubble had been bulldozed to one side and adapted blue grass was sprouting once again, though patchily, since the acid fogs stunted its growth. A statue had been hauled upright again, a scaffold built round it and repairs commenced, though no one was working on it now—perhaps the exigencies of building new homes and infrastructure being more important than the image of some long-dead dignitary.

Locating himself by the position of the still-standing clock tower, Cormac headed for a wide boulevard lined with red-leaf lime trees bearing more dead limbs than live, turned left at a scummed-over pond and caught sight of the polluted harbour at the bottom of the hill; the smell rising from there reminding him of the interior of the Prador ship. Fortunately the oceans weren't dead here, but a substantial proportion of the sea life had been killed so sometimes the shores stood feet deep in rotting detritus.

He walked down to the harbour, which unlike the city above had not taken any direct hits, but which had taken the brunt of tsunamis generated elsewhere on this world. To his left a thousand-foot-long cargo ship lay on its side, houses and warehouses crushed underneath it. Holes had been cut into its hull to provide accommodation inside, and spelt out on the blades of the two sets of twinned screws were the words "The Engine Room." He headed for the low door sliced through the rear of the hull, mounted steps leading inside over a huge drive shaft, and arrived in the Escheresque engine room where new floors and stairways had been built in level without displacing the old. Removing his fog mask he headed straight for the bar, which was set over a very retro generator of the kind not normally seen outside a museum. Glancing round, he understood how wealthy the society here had once been, for this ship had been someone's privately owned and lovingly restored and maintained antique.

Behind the bar a man clad in greasy overalls, with a large improbable beard bound with copper wire, said, "What can I get you, matey?" Maybe he was the owner of this ship.

"I'll have a large espresso and a brandy." One to counter the other being his theory, since he needed to stay alert here.

The espresso came from a machine that actually used real ground beans and the making of it was a lengthy process. The brandy came from an old pottery bottle. The price reflected both these sources.

"Thank you," Cormac paid without quibbling, since Olkennon had given him a generous budget. "I'm looking for someone called Samara—can you help?"

The bearded barman laughed, then repeated the words, "Looking for Samara."

"If you could explain?" Cormac enquired politely.

"Someone's played a joke on you. If you're 'looking for Samara. You're searching in vain. It comes from just after the bombing. A guy had lost his mind and was looking for Samara. He had no other details—couldn't remember—and there were thousands called Samara here in the city." He looked contemplative for a moment. "Lot of them changed their names since."

Cormac nodded his thanks and turned away to head for a nearby bench table. It did not surprise him that his contact had not given a real name or method of identification. Doubtless he was being watched in here, as he had been watched since the moment he entered the old city. He placed his drinks down on the compacted-fibre surface of the table, shed his fog robe and stretched his back before sitting so any watchers would be able to see he was wearing ECS fatigues. The barman saw, for he frowned and looked quickly away.

The espresso was good, the brandy better, but Cormac sat with deliberate fidgety impatience and scanned his surroundings. He spotted a man clad in similar robes to his own sitting at the far side of the room. He hadn't been there a few minutes ago and he had no drink before him—sloppy, and easily spotted.

As Cormac finished his coffee, three individuals entered the place and headed directly to where he sat. The two men were heavily built—the archetypal thugs employed by many criminal organisations. They either possessed boosted musculature and reinforced bones, or had serious steroid habits and spent most of their lives pumping iron. They wore a mixture of the kind of fatigues on sale anywhere and local clothing, in this case consisting of long, heavy coats and the kind of hats worn by gangsters portrayed on ancient celluloid film. The other figure was a woman in a leather tabard-like garment split up the sides of her legs to reveal black trousers and heavy trekking boots. Her face was made-up: heavy on the blue lip gloss and face powder to cover a rash of pocked scars. Her hair was black and coiled on top of her head.

With practised ease the two thugs slid onto the bench on either side of Cormac, one pressing a hand down hard on his shoulder as he made the obligatory attempt to rise. He felt something pressed against his right side and peered down at the lethal stiletto prodding him. It protruded from the thug's left arm stump. The thug to his left drew a heavy iron flack gun and rested it on one ridiculously meaty thigh, pointing it down towards Cormac's legs—a rather foolish move since if he pulled the trigger the woman now taking the seat opposite would be hit too. Stiletto still in place, the right-hand thug held a scanner over Cormac's head then ran it down his front, holding it level with his stomach for a moment before placing it on the table. The device would have detected any active bugs and would now pick up the signal from any that were activated—by spoken word, perhaps, or some other signal. The scanner also possessed a laser-interface head, so no one would be able to use laser bounce or any other distance-reading technique. It would also blur the movement of their mouths to outside view, so even a lip-reader would be unsuccessful.

"I hear you're looking for Samara," said the woman.

"Apparently I was misled," Cormac replied. "Very few people here with that name now."

"Well, you've found one of them."

He could play this game too. "But have I found the right one?" He did not need to study her too closely to know she was not one of those who had been sitting at the table with Carl, but in his briefing from Olkennon this Samara matched the description of one of those Carl had been in contact with. "Carl's descriptions of those he spoke to were somewhat vague, just as were his accounts of what was said."

"And you claim to be his partner?"

"I thought myself his partner, but whether he intended me to retain that position is open to doubt."

"Convenient, if you feared not getting your story straight."

"Well, I know enough to know that there's some payment due."

"To Carl."

"To Carl, who, courtesy of one of your people, is now breathing through a tube."

"We feel that Carl did not fulfil his side of the deal."

Cormac stared at her for a long moment, then casually said, "Is this goon going to remove his penis substitute from my side or am I going to have to break what's left of his arm?"

"You talk tough for a new recruit to ECS. Do you think you could break his arm before he skewered your liver?"

"It's not something I'd like to try," Cormac replied—deliberate retraction of bravado. "But I would like our discussion to be on a more civilized footing."

The woman waved her hand and the blade was retracted. She no doubt thought Cormac incapable of dealing with these two even without that blade at his gut. He felt she had just removed the one thing he could have done nothing about, though he did not want things to go that far.

"Thank you," he said. "Now, you were saying that you feel Carl did not fulfil his side of your deal. As I recollect, he gave you access to the Prador ship. He showed you where to go in under our watch." Necessary to use the "our." They would have known, or at least knew now, who had been in that foxhole with Carl.

"He gave us access—agreed," she said grudgingly.

"Therefore the deal had been fulfilled."

"The idea was for our people to go in, grab a Prador warhead, and get out again. They didn't get out again."

"Which is hardly our fault, now is it?"

"Then there's other issues." Cormac waited for her to continue. "Carl's motivation to help us wasn't all about money. He is a Jovian Separatist and believes in the Cause, in bringing about the fall of the AI autocrat and all its minions. Are you here to tell me you are the mercenary side of the partnership?"

Cormac deliberately looked uncomfortable. "No, I'm not saying that—I'm from Callisto too. But both of us follow the Cause only so far. Yes, we will help it along its way if we can, but the pay had better be worth the risk."

Her expression remained dead as she said, "I see."

Cormac could feel the thugs on either side of him sit up a little straighter and prepare themselves. Now was the time for the lure.

"But seeing how things went wrong for you, I am prepared to compromise."

"Compromise." Tone flat. She thought he was just a mercenary on the make who, seeing his danger, was trying to worm his way out of it. She would not believe what he had to say next unless that threat was removed. He let something relax inside him and adrenaline surged, screwing his stomach into a ball and seeming to pour heat down his spine. He turned slightly, to give himself more leverage. Silly thugs to sit so close. He brought his elbow back into the throat of Mr Stiletto, caught the knife hand as it came across from his choking victim, twisted and pushed down. The blade went straight through the wrist of the other thug as he brought his flack gun across. The man struggled, leaning forwards, blood spurting from the wound, but his grip was wet and slippery. Cormac took away the gun and smacked it hard against Mr Stiletto's temple, then almost as an afterthought crashed the head of the one he had just disarmed, hard, down on the table. Both of them were now unconscious, or as near enough to that state as to make no difference.

"Yes, compromise." He rested the weapon on the table, its barrel pointing towards Samara. He paused for a moment, taking steady breaths, and noted his hand wasn't shaking at all. He did, however, feel sick, but refused to throw up here, now.

He continued, "After we let your people through they screwed up and got themselves killed. We can't be held responsible for that, or at least I can't," he added. "The opportunity to get your people in that way ended when ECS put autoguns on the perimeter and moved us on. But together we could have made new opportunities hadn't one of your ill-disciplined idiots taken it upon himself to blow out Carl's lungs."

"I did not agree with that," she said. "Nor did the Central Committee."

Central Committee—interesting.

"Whatever." Cormac abruptly picked up the weapon and rested it across the crook of his arm pointing at Stiletto, who seemed to be recovering. The other one was making odd snoring sounds and Cormac hoped he hadn't hit him too hard. "The net result of that action is that Carl will face some hard questions when they put his larynx back in. I am also under suspicion. I was bugged earlier and I was being followed."

"Yes, I do know."

Of course, someone knowledgeable in the ways of subterfuge would not have let Cormac know that. This Samara wanted to appear tough and clever.

"You know?"

"I had you watched from the moment you left ECS Base Camp… Why did you use the stunner, why not kill him?"

Cormac shrugged. "I wanted it to look like a robbery and killing him would only have increased suspicion. As it is suspicion will have increased, especially when they find out I dumped the bugs."

"So why are you here?"

Stiletto revived with a grunt, so Cormac abruptly pressed the barrel of the weapon against the side of his head. "Move away slowly and go and sit over there." He nodded towards a nearby bench table. Once Stiletto had obeyed, Cormac returned his attention to Samara. "They can't run autoguns all around the perimeter. There's not enough of them here yet, and with earth-moving equipment travelling in and out the logistics get a bit untenable."

"So."

"So, after they replaced my unit with autoguns and after Carl ended up coughing up bits of his lungs, they put what remained of us—without our Golem sergeant—on a guard detail inside the ship. They actually used us as bait to draw out those Prador remaining hidden inside. We nearly died."

"So, you're pissed off about that."

"A little, not a lot—comes with the territory."

The gun wielder snorted a mixture of blood and snot onto the table surface. Cormac edged away from him a little.

"What you should be interested in is what I managed to pick up while I was in there. You see, I know precisely where there is a rack of five one-megaton warheads—all small enough to be carried by a man apiece, and I know how to get you inside to them."