The Age of Scorpio

31. A Long Time After the Loss

The death of the Basilisk had been brutal. As soon as the bulk freighter carrying the Monk and Scab – hidden in the stomach of livestock – left Pangean space, the Church frigate opened fire on the Basilisk.

There was no way Scab could receive any form of communication during the infiltration, but even so the name of the game was to hit the Basilisk so hard its comms wouldn’t have time to do anything. All the beam batteries on the port side of the frigate fired, drawing lines of light and spatial distortion to the converted Corsair-class ship. At the same time all the kinetic shot racks were also emptied. The Basilisk’s energy dissipation grid flared briefly before the ship burst and, to all intents and purposes, ceased to be.

More than a little of the Pangean orbital station the Basilisk was docked with was also damaged. Weapon systems locked onto the St Brendan’s Fire as Pangean naval craft sought to reach firing positions in higher orbits. The Living Cities immediately lodged protests both with the frigate and with Church authorities on Pangea. The Church apologised, explained it was a Church sanction and offered to pay compensation, but behind all their apologies was the unuttered threat of sanctions. The Pangean authorities let it go.

None of which mattered to Vic. Disguised as wreckage, he was being propelled by a jet of gas towards the St Brendan’s Fire. He was wearing the finest power-assisted combat armour that debt could buy, with some illegal upgrade modifications done by Scab and himself. They had put every bit of naughty stealth technology they could find into the armour, and he was running it with minimal systems.

He watched the St Brendan’s Fire get bigger and bigger. If it moved, he, no they, were screwed, Vic thought. He’d then have to activate his P-sat, currently attached to the back of his armour in a heavy combat chassis, make his way back to a Pangean orbital habitat and try to disappear. Which would be difficult if the Church was after him.

The Church frigate didn’t move. Vic did get a little worried when the frigate started breaking up bits of rubble with its laser batteries. Fortunately he seemed to be too small for them to go after. They stopped firing on the rubble when an automated Pangean weapons platform put a warning shot across their bows.

Minute jets of gas adjusted his course. He was aiming for a weak spot in the frigate’s external surveillance, but he knew that his trajectory would have to be just right or he would be detected. Fortunately they did not have a coherent energy shield up. It was just too expensive to keep running constantly, and few people were prepared to attack the Church, let alone on their own. Once again Vic reflected on his own stupidity and cursed the existence of Scab.

Contact. The glove on his armour stuck itself to the composite hull of the religious warship. He pulled himself down onto the hull. Close by he could make out friezes of alien cityscapes designed to represent the Seeder civilisation picked out on the craft’s hull. He was pretty sure the friezes showed the fall of the Naga. Pulling himself down behind an extruded statue of one of the six-armed, wedge-headed Seeders on its cross, Vic adhered himself properly to the ship. He activated various low-power stealth systems and down-powered himself into a death-like trance, as close to suspended animation as he could get.

Vic woke. There was just a moment of disorientation and then surprise that they were in Red Space. Then fear as he saw the blackened skeletons of trees. He risked looking around. The strange and massive tree-like skeletons were everywhere. He had heard stories of places in Red Space, xeno-archaeological digs in ancient ruins, some said ruins that predated the existence of Real Space, but he had thought them just stories. He didn’t think such stories being real boded well for him.

This would be the most dangerous part of the operation, he thought. Well, this and trying to wrangle Scab’s vicious little pet. He placed a blob of a putty-like substance against the hull. It didn’t look like much but its cost must have been astronomical. After all, you’re not meant to hack the matter of armoured spaceship hulls, even if the armour is reactive smart matter.

Vic didn’t like the feeling of sinking through liquid carbon. Everything was black around him. It was like a very slow free fall following the putty, which had spread out into a thin blanket. As he fell, the liquid carbon became solid explosive-infused reactive armour above him. He had nightmarish thoughts of fusing with the armour, to be ejected when a kinetic shot hit as the armour exploded out to counter the shot’s impact. On the other hand, if the frigate’s crew detected anything, all they would see was a glitch in the armour that would need to be checked the next time they were in dry dock, presumably at the Cathedral.

Vic felt himself hit the hull proper of the frigate. He spent some time in total blackness that neither his nor the suit’s optics could pierce, working via pre-programmed touch to place a circle of very powerful thermal seeds against the hull. He used the putty sheet of programmable smart matter to act as tamping and to isolate the thermal seeds from the liquid carbon, because if anyone had ever done this before then they hadn’t bothered to record the results of any chemical reaction. Even so, there was a moment of fear after Vic ’faced the detonation code to the thermal seeds when he thought he saw a faint glow though the blackness.

Vic and the sheet of programmable smart matter fell through the hole in the hull of the ship in a rain of liquid carbon. Vic landed agilely and, for someone in full combat armour, reasonably quietly, on all six limbs. No alarms went off because there was no need for alarms. Ships couldn’t be penetrated in this way. Above his head the carbon immediately started to harden into more useful armour.

Vic’s biggest problem now was the surveillance aspect of the ship’s internal nano-screen. His nano-screen had been augmented with the best stealth nanites that money could buy on the free market, but the Church had infinitely more resources than he and Scab did, even with the pair’s mysterious and obviously wealthy backer. Scab had sampled some of the Church Militia’s nano-screens during the fight at Arclight, and in theory Vic’s screen was supposed to belong to one of them, but he knew it wouldn’t last for long. Best get on with it then, he thought.

His nano-screen picked up someone’s approach. Vic backed into a doorway. He saw a feline in the uniform of a lay Church crew member come into the corridor, stop and then advance more cautiously as he saw the hole.

Vic, despite his current bulk, moved nearly silently behind the feline. The first the crewman knew was when Vic extended all four sword-like blades from his arms as he towered over the feline and then stabbed them into his flesh in the right places to kill him instantly.

Vic retracted the blades. He felt no real remorse for killing the feline – he wasn’t really wired up that way – he just sort of knew it was a waste and wondered if a crew member on a Church frigate had good clone insurance. The blades had held up the feline and the body started to fall when they came out of his flesh. Vic caught and then easily picked up the corpse and took it with him. No point spending time trying to hide it. He only had so much time before the ship’s nano-screen detected him.

Vic detached the P-sat in its combat chassis, a heavier and more armoured weapons platform with increased targeting and sensor capabilities. Vic immediately started receiving feed from the P-sat ’faced directly to his neunonics.

Vic went one way at a corner, the P-sat the other. Vic reached his destination first. He was standing before a plain metal door in a plain metal corridor. The door opened somewhat unexpectedly. The Church Militiaman, thankfully without armour on, stared at Vic in his full combat armour. Vic didn’t hesitate. He threw the dead feline at the human male. The Militiaman staggered back.

Vic was aware via the ’face feed from the P-sat that it had launched tiny AG-driven, hunter-killer smart rounds. They were designed to seek out and kill automatons and other autonomous weapon systems like ship-controlled P-sats.

Vic had to do as much damage to the ship’s company as he could in as little time as possible before the security systems caught up with him. He stepped into the bunk area. Everything seemed to slow down. Men and women, mostly human, mostly base gender, raced for their personal weapons. Vic drew his triple-barrelled shotgun pistol with his top left arm. With his lower right he pulled the six-barrelled rotary strobe gun from its clips on his back and swung it forward, assisted by low-powered AG motors designed to help with its weight.

The head of the guy he’d thrown the feline at disappeared as a 12-gauge slug entered it and then exploded. Another slug took a Militiawoman behind the dead guy trying to bring her ACR to bear. He moved his upper torso to the left and fired the final barrel of the shotgun. A reptile Militiawoman dived out of the way as her bunk exploded.

With a thought he triggered the strobe gun, bathing the bunk room in a flickering hellish red glow. The sound of superheated air molecules exploding ran together in a constant staccato. The rotating barrels allowed for them to cool, which meant a higher rate of fire than single- or double-barrelled laser weapons. It looked like a constant red line bisecting the room.

Red steam from boiling blood turned the room humid as the laser all but sawed people in two. Vic holstered the now empty shotgun pistol with his upper left arm while his upper right grabbed the reptile disc from its holder over his shoulder and threw it, activating its autonomous hunter-killer program. A ’face feed from his tactical neunonics would keep the disc out of the way of his other ordnance.

His top limbs grabbed his advanced combat rifle from his back as he dropped the strobe gun. The gun’s four-legged spipod unfolded and the weapon went looking for more victims.

Meanwhile, the P-sat had taken out two crewmen it had met in the corridor with neurotoxin-coated flechettes fired from a suppressed spit gun. It had just attached a thermal seed frame to the reinforced door that led to Command and Control in the centre of the frigate.

The strobe gun was advancing, its barrels swinging back and forth, firing nearly constantly, its targeting systems finding victims sometimes with the help of info ’faced from Vic’s own neunonics.

Vic fired the six grenades from the ACR’s under-barrel launcher. The first one was a controlled-replication, flesh-eating nano-swarm. The second was a viral grenade. Both were high end for the black market, but Vic had suspected when loading them that the St Brendan’s Fire’s countermeasures would be able to cope with them. The remaining four were flechette grenades which filled the air with high-velocity needles.

Vic’s two lower limbs drew his double-barrelled laser pistols. His upper and lower torsos counter-rotated as the ACR and the lasers fired, mopping up whatever the heavier ordnance had missed.

Through the ’face feed from his P-sat Vic was aware that it was now in C and C. The command crew died quickly, taken out by the P-sat’s swivel-mounted auto-shotgun firing frangible fragmentation rounds designed not to harm any of the instruments. A measured laser killed those the shotgun didn’t. The P-sat left one crew member alive in C and C.

The ACR’s magazine was solid-state, each bullet assembled in the barrel. Its bullpup magazine looked like it was being eaten as the weapon was fired. The last of the magazine disappeared up into the weapon. Vic slid another magazine home almost immediately but didn’t fire.

A Militiaman died as the strobe gun cut the bunk he was using as cover in half and then near enough did likewise to him. Another almost got his ACR to bear on Vic, but the disc cut his throat.

More than fifty were dead now. Everything was red. They hadn’t fired a single shot. Then Vic’s sensors warned him that the ship’s alarms had started to broadcast to the crew’s neunonics. Any remaining passive security systems were now active.

With a command from Vic, the spipod leaped up onto one of the few remaining bunks and fired into all the bodies to ensure they were dead. It was little more than red-light butchery.

Vic caught his returning disc and clipped it back onto its shoulder mount. He left the bunk room and made for C and C, his ACR at the ready, his lower torso swivelled so his bottom limbs could cover his rear. A few crew members showed their faces in the corridors, but bursts of bullets and beams discouraged them from getting involved. Only one fired back. Small-calibre spit pistol bullets flattened against Vic’s armour. Vic killed him to make a point. If the guy got cloned then maybe next time he would be able to work out the difference between bravery and stupidity.

As he approached C and C, Vic started getting armour integrity warnings ’faced from the suit to his tactical neunonics. It appeared that the armour was slowly being eaten away by a weaponised nano-screen turned nano-swarm. Vic sped up. He stepped over the still-glowing hole in the door to C and C, and turned to look at the tank.

The navigator looked through the green water and transparent tank wall at Vic. The dolphin had been extensively augmented with hard and soft tech. Most people also assumed that Church navigators had a degree of S-tech in them as well.

Vic’s armour was seriously malfunctioning now. He could see part of it dissolving. Soon the nanites would find a weak point in the armour, break through and start eating him.

‘I don’t have much time. Surrender control of all systems to me now,’ he ’faced on an open channel.

‘Just a moment and I think it’ll be over,’ the navigator told him.

Vic was already moving. He liked to think that he’d given the dolphin the chance to be reasonable. He opened the airlocked delivery tray, unclipped the case that Scab had given him and, steeling himself, opened it. The Scorpion was already up, its sting arched, its body language that of impending violence. The Scorpion scared Vic and always had. It was unpredictable and hateful S-tech. It could just as well decide to murder him.

‘Don’t do that. Let’s talk about this!’ Even modulated and ’faced, Vic could hear the fear in the dolphin’s voice. The nanites were through his armour. Vic screamed as they started to eat him alive. Vic dropped the Scorpion into the tray and slid it shut.

The navigator thrashed around so much that he injured himself and red clouds appeared in the water. Vic fell to the ground, his armour now all but dissolving, his exoskeleton starting to do the same.

The thrashing from the tank stopped. The St Brendan’s Fire’s systems opened themselves to him. He only just had the presence of mind to deactivate the nano-swarm while he still had flesh and components. The pain stopped almost immediately as his own systems flooded his few remaining biological organs and his mind with numbing narcotics. His systems were starting to rebuild. He would find some more raw materials in the frigate’s med bay to help him rebuild himself before the rendezvous.

It was a blissed Vic who managed to sit on one of the couches and let it grow to envelope his awkward and now partially eaten ’sect frame. Blissed or not, the sight of the Scorpion dug into flesh just behind the dolphin’s artificial gill, sting buried deep in the navigator’s skin, was horrific. Its legs had grown to form what looked like a skin-tight cage clamped into the cetacean’s flesh. The navigator was still alive, his eyes full of pain.

Vic shut down the ship. There were still people in there. Those he couldn’t trap, he turned the ship’s remaining security systems on. The rest Scab could kill. Vic didn’t mind killing, but Scab actually liked to be a monster. Scab liked hide-and-seek. Vic stationed the P-sat outside the hole in the door to C and C to watch his back.

Open access showed him the St Brendan’s Fire’s rendezvous point in planetary Red Space with the Monk.

‘You’re not supposed to be able to do that,’ Vic mused. But then you weren’t supposed to be able to take a Church frigate on your own, no matter how good you were. You also weren’t supposed to be able to break a Church navigator’s conditioning so easily. You certainly weren’t supposed to get away with it, and he didn’t imagine he would.

Scab stared at the frigate. He got a very good look at the ship’s batteries, most of which were pointed at him.

‘And of course you know how to navigate in planetary Red Space,’ he said grimly.

‘It’s over. I’m sorry. It’s up to you: we can put you back into Real Space if you want, but you should know we had to destroy your ship and kill Vic. Your employer will be after you. It might be better if we kill you now.’

Scab looked down with a half-smile on his lips. ‘You have to earn the right to kill me,’ he said, and then looked at her, grinning savagely.

‘I think we’ve just done that. I’m talking about what’s best for you. We harbour no ill will towards you, but you’re a very dangerous person to leave in play as an enemy.’

‘Even for the Church?’

‘Even for the Church.’

‘I’m not your enemy.’

Vic was holding the ship in a blizzard of black ash in a red sky. He wasn’t sure what was happening, but he was reasonably sure that he was in some kind of Red Space simulacrum or echo of the planet Game. He had watched the massive blackened skeletal trees collapse like they were made of burned paper.

In his neunonics he could see Scab in his disguised form and the Monk in hers sitting on the strange coffin-shaped cocoon thing. Somehow Scab’s face behind his visor dominated the image from the ship’s external visual sensors. Vic locked weapon system after weapon system onto Scab as he counted the ways in which he hated that man. There would never be a better time than now. There was no way Scab would survive and he did not have clone insurance. Scab wanted to die – he was daring everyone in Known Space to do it – but nobody had the balls. Now with a thought Vic could kill him. No comebacks. Except. Vic glanced over at the Scorpion in the tank. The navigator that the Scorpion appeared to have fused with was staring at him.

‘Leave me something of her,’ Scab ’faced over their secure link.

He wanted to scream, weep, tear at what little remained of his flesh, thrash around, engage in all the human melodrama he’d experienced in immersions. Instead he just sagged in the couch and cursed himself for a coward. He heard the Monk ’face the St Brendan’s Fire, wondering what was taking so long.

‘I’m sorry,’ Vic ’faced her back.

The Monk’s head whipped around to look at Scab. She was moving for her bone blade. Scab grabbed her wrist. A laser cannon on one of the beam batteries fired. The Monk’s torso turned to red steam which then promptly froze. Scab was still holding her upper arm.

He stared at the St Brendan’s Fire until the forward airlock ramp lowered from the head of the craft like a mouth. With a thought Scab commanded the three AG motors to take him into the airlock.

Scab cut the fused flesh off the Monk’s severed hand and attached the warmer to it, returning it to simulated life. He stared at Vic all the while. Vic would not look at him, could not meet his murky lifeless eyes. He didn’t need to look at him to feel the disdain.

‘Why were the weapons on me?’ Scab finally asked.

‘Dramatic irony?’ Vic suggested.

Scab was not disdainful of Vic for wanting to kill him. He was disdainful of Vic for not going through with it.

Scab stripped the spacesuit gauntlet off the reanimated hand, then he put the hand on the cocoon. It was warm, and he cut the flesh to let some blood leak out onto the cocoon’s strange shell. Slowly the cocoon started to dissolve. Vic stared at it in horror.