Artemis

by Philip Palmer

  So how did this come about? How did the beneficent flame beasts become the scourges of humanity?

  No one knows for sure. Maybe they just got fed up with us?

  Now’s a good time to remember what happened when the flame beasts declared war on the Bugs, and exterminated them.

  Such a thing – flame beasts committing genocide – had never occurred before. It was not the flame beast way to wage war on other creatures. They’re so damned powerful, there’s no point.

  But the Bugs posed a threat even to the flame beasts. And that’s why they were eradicated.

  Wasp, glass, remember?

  By this stage, of course, the Galactic Corporation was no more. But the planets run by the Clan Bosses continued to terraform new worlds with utter brutality. Trillions of alien species, including many wonderful sentient creatures, were being rendered extinct on a monthly basis, to feed the Bosses’ lust for more planets, and more power. They never accepted, you see, that things had to change once Peter Smith was gone.

  And so all these Clan bosses – all of them, twenty-five of them originally – had to be killed, or otherwise punished, and removed from power.

  And this was the trigger for the Clan Wars. The SNG were not the victims. They were the aggressors. They declared war on the capobastone and forced them to fight for their very survival. Because that was what the flame beasts had told them to do.

  Now, only one capobastone remained alive; Morgan, in his many forms. And he too had to die, or be redeemed. But preferably, die.

  Otherwise – the End of Days was upon us. Thus the flame beasts had pledged.

  I have to admit, this briefing clarified a great many things for me. Up until now, I’d found it hard to comprehend how a liberal wishy-washy democratic regime like the SNG could be so damned effective, and remorseless. I mean, Jeez, these guys even opposed the death penalty! How the fuck did they get to be so good at fighting a fucking war?

  But now, I got it. I knew why they were so desperate.

  And I found it alarming. It made me feel – what can I say?

  Things were too big. The stakes were too high. I was tired of fighting. I wanted to go home. I wanted to—

  I’m sorry. Ignore me. I always get this way. Just before a battle. Do you know that feeling? Everything is impossible. Nothing will ever be achieved. Life is pointless and we’re all going to die and everything, but everything, is a complete waste of fucking time.

  And then the killing starts, and it’s all all right again.

  Monsters erupted from the suppurating swamps of Morgan’s World and we slew them.

  That went on for some considerable time. Most of this continent was TP-blocked, and we were still a long way from our destination. The place where, according to the flame beasts, we would find the real Morgan.

  Our Minotaur was like a miniature Caracaras in terms of firepower and the strength of its hull. We sat tense in the cavernous grey-hulled cabin, surrounded by vividly terrifying array images of the hell outside. Fraser was in the pilot’s seat, with Lena as co-pilot seated to his right. I was the gunner who had a couch behind them both, and I had my own arrays showing images from the exterior mobile cameras.

  And, on these hovering screens, I saw visuals of our own squat beetle of a flying craft, assailed at every moment by gelatinous tendrilled monsters from the ghastly swamps of this planet. All our images were rendered in false colour, since the atmosphere was opaque to human vision; and the swamp creatures themselves were rendered a devilish red, which in no way reflected their real camouflaged appearance.

  But it meant they looked like devils attacking a bat-like monster above seas of blinding colour and light; an image out of Dürer as if coloured by Picasso and then infected by the mad visions of El Greco.

  And these swamp beasts were remorseless. They clung on to the hull. They spread their oozing slimed tendrils over us and tried to gouge open our ship. They spewed their gases on us, and made the metal blister. We tried flying higher – but these swamp-beasts could hop for miles into the air. And we daren’t fly so high we’d register on the radar net.

  So we just kept killing them.

  All was haze and mists and spouting methane geysers and darkly clotted clouds and fire-creatures flickering in the sooty atmosphere and volcanoes erupting angrily in the distance and the jellyfish-like swamp beasts leaping up at us and being burned off and falling and splashing back down into the poisonous bubbling morass.

  I felt like a hang-glider flying through the intestines of a very fat giant who had indulged in the eating of excrement for many years.

  Meanwhile, for much of the time, Lena was staring at me with that lost look of hers. She was, in my view, getting more and more flaky.

  Maybe, I even wondered, she was getting too old for this shit.

  I stuck my tongue out at her rudely; and she jolted, as if electrocuted.

  Brigadier Fraser stood up from his pilot’s chair, and stretched his legs.

  “Want me to spell you?” asked Flanagan, and Fraser nodded. The two men swapped seats. Fraser sat opposite me. Flanagan steered for a while. I burned some more monsters.

  I noticed that Fraser was looking tired. He was old, of course. I didn’t know how old. I didn’t know much about him, of course, apart from the stories he told of wars fought and victories achieved. He had once, so I gathered, been a professor of Physics. Before war consumed his life.

  More monsters. More swamp.

  Jay emerged from her catnap and broke open some cans of soda. We all sipped. Fraser retrieved the supplies of chocolate bars. That whiled away a few minutes. Maria did her stretches, and Flanagan snuck a sly glance at her limber athletic body. As, indeed, did I.

  Then Jay started telling a story about his first girlfriend. That prompted Flanagan to tell a story about his first girlfriend. Things got a little ugly round about then. Lena accused Flanagan of being a womanising fuck. Flanagan retorted by—

  Yeah, it was ding-dong all the way from then on, but I tried to tune it out.

  And finally, we reached the volcano.

  “How about we find another way down?” I asked.

  “This is the direct route,” said Flanagan.

  We soared above the exploding spitting volcano in our bulky Minotaur. Sparks as big as our heads flashed past our craft, leaving trails of fire in their wake. The lava boiled like a pot of fiery gold below us. We hovered above the crater as Jay ran a tomograph analysis of the mantle below the simmering cauldron of red-hot rock.

  “An angry world,” said Fraser.

  “It surely is,” said Flanagan, in his Old Testament prophet voice; then he winked to give us confidence.

  And then Fraser tipped the Minotaur and we plunged downwards into the boiling lake of lava; like a moth plunging into a candle’s flame. Visual arrays showed us our projected path through the hot magma, a route that would lead down to the mantle and beyond. We were using a powerful ion drive to propel us through rock which was molten, and which grew denser and more solid the deeper we descended.

  Eventually I began to use energy cannons to burn and blast the rigid plates of planetary crust that were blocking our path. Our arrays tried to make sense of the world outside through false colour displays that showed the flowing rocks of the asthenosphere in blue, the solid substance of the tectonic plates in red, and our craft as a flashing white journeying into places no human craft should ever exist. But blue and red merged, and no images could make sense of the swirling chaos of this planetary subterranean world.

  After many terrible minutes had elapsed we breached the lithosphere and saw our white dot continue on; smashing and blasting a path through into the turbulent depths of this young world.

  And down we fell, down into the deepest depths. Fraser was focused; Flanagan was grim. Lena bore an elated look; she clearly loved the danger, and the insanity of our mission.

  Jay kept a close eye on the pressure build-up; Maria monitored the engines and our velocity. I kept plasma-blasting
anything that looked a potential obstacle; pumping further energy into this hot and volatile inner world.

  And finally we were in the planet’s outer core; at very nearly the centre of this world. And our arrays started to show us echo-images of the world that had been created within this world; Morgan’s secret base.

  “Great lair,” Flanagan observed. He’d done his homework on our catchphrases.

  Our journey to the centre of the planet was a strange and frightening one. We were like a group of deranged mariners sailing off the edge of the earth; or a party of space-travellers insanely attempting to fly through the sun. And the Minotaurs were indeed designed to be able to do just that.8 The walls of our vehicle became translucent so we could see the ductile rock ebb and flow and cling around our hull. But still we moved, tearing a path into the deep interior of this vile nascent planet; the only solid element in an ocean of iron and nickel and sulphur.

  And then we saw with false-colour visuals, floating ahead of us – Morgan’s World. And it was large, larger than I could have imagined, and almost beyond belief.

  For in this Stygian realm beneath the planet’s surface Morgan had built a biodome the size of a major city.

  Well, why not? The surface was inhospitable and bleak. And with biodome technology so highly advanced, and hardglass domes strong enough to withstand the highest of pressures, there was no reason not to live in the depths below.

  But how could anyone bear to live here? No sun, no air, no solid ground. Just molten horror swirling around the transparent biodome. Like an iceberg made of glass floating in a sea of eerie flame.

  “They must have grown it,” Flanagan theorised. “A bubble of hardglass, blown and blown and blown, with a fusion-powered bellows powerful enough to fill a planet with atmosphere. Until the dome that dwelled in the planet’s core was the size of an Old Earth Conurbation. There must also be a pillar of hardglass reaching to the surface, for access. It’s kind of—”

  “What?” sneered Lena.

  “Marvellous.”

  “Dumb.”

  “That human beings can—”

  “Totally fucking dumb.”

  “Ah fuck you, you have no soul,” jeered Flanagan.

  “I had a soul. You sucked it. Vampire.”

  “Bitch!”

  “Can it,” I said wearily.

  Fraser met my eye. He was more than a little in awe of Flanagan, I could tell. And he was both puzzled and appalled at the impertinent way Lena spoke to the great man.

  We swam or flew or burrowed or slid, whichever it was, through the burning murk towards the dome, still navigating by ultrasonic echo-location. The cabin of the Minotaur was artificially lit, and our headlights shone at full beam, but illuminated nothing. Our velocity was formidable – for without our speed to smash open a tunnel for us through the liquid rock, we were likely to get trapped and die.

  “This is not,” I said, “one of my more picturesque missions.”

  “Doppelgängers should be doing this,” said Maria.

  Flanagan grunted.

  “I’m serious!” Maria protested.

  “ETA biodome, circa four hours,” said Lena.

  “Are we sure he’s actually in there?” asked Maria.

  “No we’re not sure,” said Flanagan, in the exaggeratedly patient tones a doctor might adopt to a mental patient who thinks he’s Adolf Hitler.

  “Well what if—”

  “SHUT UP,” screamed Flanagan.

  And for brief moment, I had a flavour of the man behind the legend. Hero or no, he had one hell of a fucking temper.

  “Easy, Flanagan,” said Lena. She looked old. Flanagan looked old. Maybe the artificial light was less than flattering for multiple-centenarians like them.

  I began to think about Douglas. I wondered how he was. I wondered if I’d ever see him again.

  My mood began to ebb. I wondered if—

  “What’s Morgan really like?” asked Billy, casually.

  “Better looking than me,” said Flanagan sourly.

  “How’d you two fall out?” Billy asked.

  “Are you all right?” Lena asked me.

  I was not all right. I was still thinking about Douglas. I was wondering what would happen if—

  I snarled at her. Actually snarled, with a flash of teeth and a gutteral growl. Lena blinked, puzzled, and I turned it into a smile. It felt false as fuck.

  What was wrong with me? I felt myself possessed by blind panic; and I fought hard to get my courage back.

  “Long story,” said Flanagan. He was still talking about himself and Morgan. I realised I’d tuned out for a few moments, lost in terror. This was bad. It was fine to have butterflies BEFORE a mission. But not now. Now when we were—

  I took a sip of water. I tried not to think about—

  “We’ve got time,” said Billy, nudging Flanagan to tell the tale.

  I forced myself back into the present moment. I realised Billy wasn’t meeting my eye. He knew I was afraid, that’s why he was chatting to Flanagan. Trying to distract me. Trying to distract them so they didn’t know how shit scared I was. Bless you, Billy.

  “Long ugly story,” said Flanagan grimly.

  “I heard you betrayed him,” Billy taunted.

  “Who told you that?” snapped Flanagan.

  “Navy scuttlebutt. We all thought you were—”

  “You were in the Navy?”

  “Yeah.”

  “The Corporation Navy?”

  “Fuck yeah. I was your enemy for – well, shitloads of years. That’s when I wasn’t genociding planets.” And Billy grinned, his patent bald evil ugly-fucker grin. It was very provoking. Even I wanted to slap his face and I was his godsdamned girlfriend.

  Flanagan turned to Lena. “Who picked this guy for our fucking mission?”

  “I did, arsewipe,” I said.

  “He’s a fucking war criminal!” Flanagan protested, with genuine rage.

  “So are you, technically,” I gibed. Families of the many victims of the Last Battle had at one point taken out a class action against Flanagan. It rankled with him.

  “Fuck you.” Flanagan scowled, revealing his petulant side.

  “Fuck you too!” I retorted.

  “Now now,” said Lena, in what were meant to be calming tones.

  “Ah fuck you!” ”Fuck you!”

  Flanagan and I said, in unison.

  “Can we have some civility, please,” ordered Fraser. “We are on a mission to save humanity here and—”

  “Ah shut up.” ”Fuck off.” ”Mission to save humanity!”

  “Fuck you, Jock!” ”Sweet Shiva!”

  All five of us speaking at once. And Fraser glowered.

  “I’m the commander of this mission,” Flanagan pointed out. “I work best in an atmosphere of dumb insolence.”

  “Yes but—” Fraser said.

  “Nah, nah, nah-nah-nah,” said Flanagan, with provocative childishness.

  “This is not how I’m used to conducting—”

  Flanagan glared; Fraser scowled.

  There was a brief hiatus.

  Lena conjured up a virtual array and began playing computer solitaire.

  Flanagan grunted, clearly delighted to have stamped his lack of authority on things. Then he took out a book – a book! A man after my own heart! – and started to read.

  Maria rolled her eyes, expressing her disdain for everyone else in the cabin of the Minotaur, and I think she may have even sighed.

  And as for me – my moment of terror was past. Billy’s distracting tactics had worked.

  Billy met my eye. He winked.

  We continued onwards, in silence.

  And finally, after some considerable time, we nudged the biodome with our bow.

  “Fire cannons,” said Flanagan. And we began to burrow a hole in the biodome, using the plasma cannons on tight focus.

  It took another long while. But eventually the hardglass began to crack.

  And when it cracked,
the crack began to spread.

  Two hundred miles of impregnable hardglass enclosed Morgan’s base. It was impervious to heat and pressure. You could drop a bomb on hardglass and it wouldn’t break. But we had state of the art space war cannons installed on our Minotaur, and an array of Bostock batteries with enough power to run all the TVs in the humanverse for a year which, trust me, is a lot. With technology like that, you can drill through pretty much anything.

  So eventually a tiny hole appeared in the hardglass carapace.

  We carried on burning. A series of tiny cracks now appeared around the tiny hole.

  We carried on burning.

  The cracks started to spread and split open. And as the hole enlarged, dribbles of molten outer core began to flow inside the dome. Not quickly. But remorselessly. This was the way planets are forged. The slow movement of objects against each other, eventually generating extraordinary pressures.

  There was, in other words, a hole in their glasshouse. And the entire molten planet was pouring in.

  The flow became a torrent. The crack began to spread. The hardglass began to break apart. Thousands of tonnes of molten planet were spilling into the biodome. Inside, I could vividly imagine the horror as the skies spewed down death, like a monsoon in Hell. Sheets of molten iron and nickel and torrents of burning brimstone would be descending upon the shoppers in their malls and the families in their homes and the diners sipping wine in restaurants or the lovers canoodling in their beds and the soldiers killing time in their barracks. It was a planetary tsunami, inside the actual planet.

  It was only a matter of time before the entire biodome was filled and clogged with hotter-than-hot core-stuff, and all life within would long before have been boiled and burned to the most ultimate of deaths.

  “Let’s get out of here,” said Flanagan.

  However, we couldn’t.

  The Minotaur was locked in position. The melted rock had thickly clung to us, and the craft was unable to move.

  Fraser consulted the Minotaur sensors, and double-checked the manual. Eventually he shrugged. “Looks like we’re screwed,” he said, less than helpfully in my view.