Blackstone Fortress

by Darius Hinks

  3

  Draik took a drag from his lho-holder as he followed Grekh into Precipice’s forest of cooling ducts, heat shields, cargo bays and bulkheads. It was an ugly scene – hundreds of ships and docking stations, stacked precariously and threaded with rivers of smog, smouldering slowly in the blood-glow of the Dromeplatz. Precipice was divided into four loosely defined districts: Flotsam in the north, Lagan in the east, Jetsum in the south and Derelict to the west, with Dromeplatz as a central hub, the only route from one district to another. The whole sweltering mess bristled with hundreds of embarkation points locked to the three main mooring spars – Eliumgate, Celsumgate and Orbisgate – and hunched menacingly beneath the spherical void screen was the buttress of a long-forgotten frigate, laden with weapons batteries and lance turrets, some of which were allegedly still operational. What began as a simple trading post had become a township of sorts, a gaudy powder keg fuelled by the hot, sluggish air trapped beneath the void screen. Even to a seasoned traveller like Draik, it was an unusual sight, but he was not really looking at it. All he could picture was his father’s face when he heard that his errant son had mastered a Blackstone Fortress. What would the duke say then?

  Most of Precipice’s mooring spars radiated from the central axis like outstretched arms grasping helplessly at the void, but the Orbisgate circled the whole eastern quarter of the station – the region known as Lagan. It was a crooked sphere of gantries and anchorage points. Blinking landing lights dragged it in and out of view and clouds of landers and shuttles whirled around its ports, giving the Orbisgate the appearance of an angry wasps’ nest, swarming with desperate industry.

  Grekh led Draik and Isola along one of the broader walkways, towards a hulking bulldog of a ship. It was hunched at the end of a mooring point, as dented and buckled as every other ship that battled its way through Precipice’s junkyard corona.

  There was a guard standing on either side of the landing ramp and they looked like human manifestations of the shuttle they were tasked with protecting – scowling, ogrish brutes gripping battered lascarbines. As Grekh led Draik and Isola up towards the hatch, they all heard the sound of banging coming from inside the ship, along with muffled curses and shouts. Draik was about to speak when Grekh strode in front of him and addressed one of the guards.

  ‘We need Grusel Bullosus.’

  The guard’s face was blank. Draik nodded his head in a slight bow.

  ‘Let me introduce myself. Captain Draik of House Draik. I have business here with a pilot called Audus.’

  The guard’s expression remained the same.

  Draik enunciated his next words with care. ‘There is a pilot called Audus on this ship. I need to speak to her.’

  The guard finally glanced at Draik. Then he turned away and spoke into a comms-link beside the hatch.

  ‘Grusel. Someone’s here. Says he’s Captain Draik. He’s asking after someone called Audus.’

  There was a moment’s pause, then the vox crackled into life.

  ‘Draik?’ There was another pause, then the voice came again, breathy with avarice. ‘The Terran? Wait.’

  A few minutes later the hatch whooshed open to reveal what looked like an explosion in an arms factory. There were weapons everywhere: locked to the walls, stacked in heaps, hanging in crates from the ceiling and scattered across the deck. It was a fantastic collection. Some were weapons Draik could recognise, but many were clearly of alien manufacture. Standing in the midst of all this weaponry, leaning on the doorframe as he tried to catch his breath, was a pale, blubbery heap of a man. He was topless and his grey folds of flab were glistening with sweat. His head looked like an egg, pale and hairless, nestling in a ruff of double chins, and his face appeared oddly shrunken, cowering in the middle of his jowly head. He had the wide-eyed look of the perpetually baffled. At the sight of Draik, the man stood upright, carrying his weight easily on a huge frame. Draik guessed he must be nearly seven foot tall. There was oil splashed across his pallid chest and he was clutching what looked like a piece of construction equipment – a rivet gun or a steam hammer. There was blood dripping from the casing.

  He stared at Draik, slack-jawed, taking in the well-tailored uniform and gold braiding. ‘Yeah?’ His voice was breathy and hoarse, little more than a whisper, but he was gripping the rivet gun like he was about to crush it.

  ‘Grusel Bullosus?’ said Draik.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I need a few moments alone with your guest, a pilot by the name of Audus.’

  ‘No,’ said Grekh. ‘Not just talking. You need her–’

  Draik silenced him with a glare.

  Bullosus stared at Draik. He still seemed unable to close his mouth, but he saw what Draik was carrying.

  ‘Proctor credits?’

  Draik nodded.

  The landing ramp juddered as Bullosus stomped out onto it. ‘How many?’

  Draik flashed him an impressive spread of tokens.

  Bullosus stared. ‘How many?’

  The bounty hunter was not quite as dim as he appeared. Draik doubled the number of tokens. Bullosus stared at them for a few seconds longer, silently mouthing numbers as he counted. Then he nodded.

  ‘Two minutes.’ He turned and thudded back into the ship, waving them on board with his blood-splattered gun.

  They passed mounds of ammo cases and piles of firearms in the companionway before climbing down a stairwell into the hold. They paused at a door as Bullosus entered a security code. His fingers rattled quickly over dozens of digits, but Draik’s augmetic eye recorded the code, just in case it was needed later. As they stood at the door, Draik heard singing coming from the other side – a haunting melody, completely incongruous with the ship’s brutal-looking interior.

  The blast door whooshed aside and they entered the hold. The room was a long, low-ceilinged rectangle, lined with rows of thick, reinforced doors, all bolted shut. It was harshly lit and the walls were splattered with blood, giving the place the appearance of a slaughterhouse. There were more weapons scattered across a workbench, along with shackles and restraining harnesses. In the centre of the room, two guards were packing crates, lascarbines slung over their backs.

  In the corner of the room there was a mound of xenos body parts – heads, mostly, presumably taken from the Blackstone as hunting trophies that could be sold to nobles too lazy or cowardly to kill their own. The Blackstone was infested with all manner of strange beasts and Draik could only recognise one of the specimens Bullosus had collected. It looked like the head of an enormous insect, with huge, lethal-looking mandibles and a thick, pitted carapace. As he studied it, Draik recalled the name ‘ambull’ from xenology texts he had pored over as a child. Perched on top of this strange menagerie was a spherical cage, and in the cage was a living creature – a strange-looking amphibian. Draik hesitated, taken aback by the peculiar nature of the thing. It looked like a bloated, leathery toad but it had a small, perfectly human face. This grotesque animal was the source of the music. Its face was earnest with concentration as it sang and the music was eerily beautiful, more like a choir than a single voice.

  The two guards stood up at the sound of the opening door and grabbed their guns, pointing them at Draik and the others.

  Bullosus ignored them and led Draik to a doorway at the far end of the room. As he walked past the other doors, Draik heard the sound of muffled cries and banging.

  Bullosus tapped in another security code – again, recorded discreetly by Draik – and the door dropped into the floor, revealing the cell behind. It was little more than box, barely big enough to hold the woman chained inside it. Audus was cuffed to the wall, slumped against her restraints, her head hanging down against her chest. She was wearing a bulky Imperial Navy flight suit, but even without it she would have been almost as large as Bullosus – not fat, like he was, but broad and powerfully built. Draik could imagine how hard Bullosus must
have had to work to take her down.

  ‘Is she dead?’ asked Draik.

  Bullosus shook his head. He still had the same slack-jawed expression on his face but there was a trace of excitement in his voice as he replied. ‘I’m not letting this one die. Too valuable.’ He grabbed her by the throat and pushed her back.

  As Audus’ head lolled to the side, Draik saw a gunshot wound in the chest pocket of her flight suit. He frowned at Bullosus.

  Bullosus shook his head. ‘I tag ’em, that’s all.’ Before Draik could protest, Bullosus slapped her, hard, across the face.

  Audus was covered in bruises and lesions but she stirred, muttering gibberish as she stood up. She had strong, classical features and her eyes were cool and steady, locking on Bullosus with no trace of fear.

  She strained against her bonds but could only move her hands a few inches from the filthy wall. Then she noticed Draik and the others watching from the doorway and frowned. She tried to speak but her mouth was full of something. She spat a dark gobbet of blood on the floor and glared at Draik, her eyes burning.

  ‘I hope I’m worth the money.’

  Bullosus stepped out of the cell so Draik could see Audus more clearly. ‘He just wants to talk to you.’

  ‘Grekh?’ Audus’ eyes widened as she saw the kroot. ‘You’re alive?’

  Grekh nodded, but gave no other sign he knew her, busy looking with interest at a gun mounted on the wall. It was a rifle, with long, scythe-like blades strapped to the stock and barrel. It had been left unsecured. Draik gave the kroot a warning glance.

  ‘Talk?’ said Audus, turning her glare on Draik. ‘You’d better be quick. Fatboy has plans for me. I’m valuable, believe it or not.’

  Draik nodded. ‘I can be brief. I need passage through the Dragon’s Teeth. This kroot tells me–’

  ‘Hey!’ cried Bullosus as Grekh grabbed the rifle and slammed it, butt-first, into the bounty hunter’s face.

  Things moved fast after that.

  Bullosus crashed to the floor, dropping his gun, and before he could rise Grekh turned and fired at Audus, filling the room with noise and light.

  Draik cursed. Isola had been right – he should never have trusted the alien. He whipped his splinter pistol out and pointed it at Grekh.

  The wall behind him exploded into shrapnel as the guards opened fire. Draik dropped into a crouch and returned fire, sending a guard flipping back through the air, clutching a hole in his throat. Isola took the other one down with her lasgun and there was a brief pause as Draik, Isola and Grekh looked at each other through the gun smoke, clutching their weapons. The amphibian in the cage stopped singing to stare at them.

  Audus leaped from her cell, launching herself at Bullosus, who had just climbed to his feet. Her weight bowled him over and they rolled across the floor, laying wild punches on each other as they smashed through the table and scattered weapons. The manacles at Audus’ wrists were smouldering and Draik realised his mistake – Grekh had not shot her; he had blasted her restraints off.

  ‘You can’t get past the teeth without her,’ explained Grekh as Draik pointed his pistol at him.

  Footsteps clattered overhead.

  ‘More guards,’ said Isola, training her gun on the open door. ‘Now we’ll have to explain all this to the proctors.’

  ‘Bullosus can’t go to the proctors,’ said Grekh, waving at the guns. ‘This is all stolen from Precipice. So are his captives.’

  Draik held up his splinter pistol. ‘I can use low-grade toxins. Let me do the–’

  More shots filled the air as the other two guards stormed into the room, guns barking.

  Draik ducked into the cell to dodge the blasts. When he emerged the guards were dead, holes smouldering in their jackets where Grekh had shot them.

  ‘No more killing!’ he cried as Audus punched Bullosus to the floor and reached for one of the guns hanging on the wall.

  She ignored him, but Isola was close enough to smash the weapon from her grip and send it flying across the room. Audus howled, lifted the metal workbench off the floor and smashed it over Bullosus’ head. Bullosus crumpled and lay still, blood rushing from his ears and nose.

  Draik strode across the room, grabbed Audus and threw her through the doorway onto the stairs. She bounced back onto her feet but came face-to-muzzle with Draik’s pistol.

  ‘Let me kill him,’ she said quietly, her eyes straining.

  Draik said nothing, keeping the gun pointing at her. Audus cursed and dived at him, giving Draik no option. He fired, sending her crashing to the floor with a splinter in her chest.

  Finally there was quiet. Audus was sprawled at the bottom of the steps and Bullosus and his crew were lying in a fast-growing lake of blood. The caged singer was still silent, staring at the mess.

  ‘Time to go,’ said Grekh, lifting Audus onto his shoulder with surprising ease.

  Draik looked at the other cell doors, cursing his better instincts. ‘We can’t leave them to starve, whatever they are.’

  Isola dropped to one knee and put a hand on Bullosus’ neck. ‘He’s alive,’ she said. ‘Someone will have heard all those gunshots. And when they arrive they will be keen to know how Bullosus came by his cargo. No one will starve.’

  Draik nodded, then glared at Grekh. ‘I never ordered you to start freeing people.’

  ‘Ordered?’ Grekh shook his head. ‘I am not a servant.’ He sounded confused rather than angry.

  Draik felt like silencing the kroot in the same way he had silenced the pilot, but he waved him back up the steps. ‘We’ll talk on the Vanguard.’

  The Vanguard loomed over Precipice with a disdainful air, like a noble bird of prey perched at the centre of a stinking scrapyard, far too proud and elegant for such ill-favoured surroundings. Like everything in the Draik fleet it was sleek, lethal and gilded with Terran heraldry. It looked like the smaller, leaner cousin of an Imperial warship, with a long, graceful prow and hulking, Aradus-class plasma engines. It was only a shuttle – Draik had been forced to abandon his void ship, the Draikstar, on the far side of the debris cloud – but it was still a far more impressive sight than most of the vessels moored to Precipice. It was heavily armed and large enough to carry hundreds of servitors, crewmen and attachés. Usually, Draik would feel a sense of relief as he returned to this bastion of civilisation, but as they carried Audus up the landing ramp he was cursing under his breath.

  ‘She’s dying,’ he muttered, glancing at Isola in consternation. ‘I can’t understand it.’

  He had expected Audus to be coming round by now but, as they rushed her into the Vanguard’s commerce lounge, her heart rate was slowing at an alarming rate.

  He placed her on a couch and stared at her in confusion.

  Isola and Grekh followed him into the lounge and he waved his other attachés and crewmen away. Grekh was muttering to one of his caged insects, edgy and twitching, clicking his beak repeatedly. Isola began rummaging through the walnut-panelled cabinets that lined the room. The lounge was beautifully appointed, like everything else on the shuttle, with plush, deep carpets and a vaulted ceiling decorated with bas-relief images of Terran beasts. But it was poorly stocked compared to the full-size commerce lounge on the Draikstar. ‘Combat stimms?’ muttered Isola as she rifled through star charts and metal-clasped books.

  Draik hunched over Audus, monitoring her vital functions with his cybernetic eye. Data scrolled over the lens of his monocle – a blizzard of runes and chemical formulae. ‘The reaction should not have been this severe. Bullosus must have drugged her. And whatever he used must have reacted with the neurotoxin I used to stun her.’

  Grekh gripped his rifle, as though he could shoot the drugs out of her system. ‘If she dies, I have failed you.’

  Isola attached a medicae device to Audus’ chest and it began chiming.

  She shook her head and stared the
cupboards. ‘We have nothing left. Nothing for neurotoxins, at least.’

  ‘Return to Bullosus’ ship,’ said Grekh.

  ‘What?’ said Isola.

  ‘Find the weapon he used on her. Put it in a cool place. Her wounds will become less inflamed.’

  Isola looked at Draik with a raised eyebrow. Grekh had been making lots of similarly bizarre suggestions since Audus started to fade.

  Then Grekh noticed the splinter pistol at Draik’s belt. ‘Or your weapon.’ He stepped towards Draik, reaching out for the gun.

  Draik gripped the gun’s handle, but before he could say anything, the chiming of the medicae device became a long, drawn-out whine.

  ‘Throne!’ muttered Draik, slapping the couch in frustration.

  Isola rushed over and examined the device on Audus’ chest. She shook her head. ‘No pulse.’ She crouched next to Draik. ‘We should not be found with a dead deserter on a House Draik ship.’

  Draik shook his head, still staring at the corpse, unable to accept he had let this chance slip through his fingers.

  ‘You tried everything,’ said Isola. ‘This was not meant to be. It’s time for us–’

  ‘It is meant to be!’ Grekh looked around the lounge. ‘It is the Blackstone’s plan. Bring her back. Revive her. Restart her heart. You must–’

  ‘The Blackstone is a star fort,’ snapped Draik. He knew it was far more than that – incredibly vast, partially inhabited and full of ancient archeotech, for a start – but the kroot’s endless mythologising was grating on him. ‘It does not have plans.’ Then something Grekh had said resonated with him. ‘Restart.’ Draik rocked back onto his feet and stood, staring into the middle distance. ‘Restart, restart, restart.’

  He clicked his fingers, rushed across the room and began flinging open all the cupboards and tossing objects through the air. A bewildering collection of arcana was soon scattered across the floor: ancient-looking timepieces, plant-stuffed terrariums, gun barrels, fragments of mouldering tapestry, books on etiquette and display cases full of medals.