by Neal Asher
"Was that before the Tesco got hit with a missile?"
"Yeah."
"So they were still trawling then?"
"Oh yeah—Oceana Foods was still struggling to get started and there were still pollution problems with the sea farms. You couldn't fart back then without some environmentalist following you about with a gas monitor."
"Should be there in a few minutes," called Dax, now a good hundred yards ahead.
Cormac swam harder to catch up, but Dax was not slowing down; in fact, as the sand-beds beyond the reefs came into view, he began swimming harder.
"There is something wrong with your brother," said Mackerel abruptly.
"Dax!" Cormac called. "Slow down!"
Soon Dax was low over the sand-beds swimming hard just above a shoal of fish. Something was stirring up the bottom and in a moment Cormac spotted the harpoon spear shoot down, its trailing string the bright orange of instantly clad monofilament. Dax was jerked down as something two yards wide and as long as Dax was tall took off along the bottom. Some kind of huge flatfish.
"What's he got?" Cormac asked, panting as he continued to swim hard.
"Turbot," Mackerel supplied. "They're big buggers out here—crossbred with escaped sea-farm stock from Oceana Foods."
"Right."
Dax was clinging onto his harpoon as the massive fish just kept on going. Now a trail of blood was streaming from the fish.
"Dax!" Cormac called again.
"No it's not," Dax replied. "They weren't… they weren't…"
"I have summoned help," said the submind.
Suddenly the great fish jerked and shuddered, coming up from the seabed. Cormac realised the harpoon gun must be the kind that could deliver a massive electric shock. The turbot was almost certainly dead now. It slowly turned over, exposing its milk-white underside, blood clouding around it.
"No… no it… no please. I didn't mean…" Dax's voice slowly lapsed into an indistinct muttering. He just hung in the sea, still clinging to his harpoon, still linked to the dead fish.
"You must return to your hotel now," said the submind.
"I will not," said Cormac.
"Sorry about this," said the mind.
Suddenly Cormac turned and began swimming back, only it wasn't him swimming, it was the suit.
"You can't do this!" he protested.
"Assistance is coming for Dax," said the mind.
Then far ahead, Cormac saw a shape hurtling towards him, a white water trail behind it. As he watched, it swung wide, so it remained distant enough for him to be unsure, but certainly it was insectile, with many legs folded underneath.
"I hate you," said the boy, not sure whether his hate was directed at the submind controlling his suit or at that distant unknowable drone.
* * *
Cormac could not tell how many periods of sleep and rude awakening passed as the ATV travelled over rough terrain, but eventually they arrived somewhere, and the compartment was opened. Samara peered in at him for a moment, backlit by dawn sky, then reached in and slipped something over his head.
"That's braided monofilament around your neck," she said, "so climb out very carefully and be careful not to snag on anything, or your head might end up on the ground."
Cormac climbed out, unable to take his time as she kept up the tension on the glittering strand extending from her hand to his neck.
"The neurotoxin is leaving your system now, agent," she said. "Don't make any errors of judgement at this point."
"I'm not an agent," he said, though he wasn't sure why he bothered.
The ATV had been parked beside a copse of stunted and charred skarch struggling to put out leaf. Ahead, a track disappeared between a sprawl of low buildings interspersed with the occasional silo.
"Head for the door." Samara pointed to the nearest building.
He was about to nod, but thought better of that and just walked. Halting at the door he glanced back past her at Carl, but Carl was gazing thoughtfully off into the distance, his whole physical pose seeming completely wrong to Cormac.
"The door," Samara instructed.
Cormac pushed the handle down and stepped in.
It seemed some sort of control centre had been sited in this warehouse. Numerous foamstone pillars supported a smoked-glass roof. There seemed to be a lot of wiring, fibre optics and items of hardware up there. Similar wiring and optics snaked across the floor from sets of consoles gathered about two newer looking ATVs whose bodies were all sharp angles and plain faces—sure sign that they deployed chameleonware. He then realised what all that stuff up in the roof must be: a similar camouflage shield.
There were people busy at the consoles while others, mostly armed and clad in chameleoncloth, conducted typical army tasks with a worrying professionalism. Samara towed him over to one of the pillars, wrapped the monofilament about the foamstone and locked it off. Cormac had no doubt that the loop of filament wrapped around his neck was locked off too. Then, seeming to lose interest, she went over to stand with Carl, who was now talking to one of those working a console. After a moment she said something then pointed across the warehouse to where Skyril had handed over the case of antimatter flasks to two individuals at a set of work-benches. Carl nodded, and Samara returned to Cormac.
"Sit down," she said.
Cormac was grateful to do so, but it just had not occurred to him, which told him he still wasn't thinking straight. He sat with his back against the pillar and Samara squatted before him.
"You do understand that we knew right away that it was a trap—that the AIs wanted us to take those CTDs so they could trace them back here, Agent Cormac."
"I've already told you I'm no agent."
He glanced across and saw that Carl and Skyril were now heading over, and guessed it wouldn't be long now before the real questioning started.
"I do hope you are," she replied. "Because if you're not, I don't see any reason to keep you alive. Just like Carl says: You're either a raw recruit who was conveniently placed in the same unit as Carl when suspicion fell on him. A raw recruit, I might add, who was capable of taking down Pramer and Skyril. Or, more likely, you are a Polity agent."
"He's almost certainly an agent," said Carl, stepping up beside Samara. "He was always a bit too good, a bit too efficient and a bit too fucking moral. Much as I hate to admit it, I think they knew about me right from the start. I don't see ECS using a plain grunt for an operation like this—too much chance of it going wrong and they wouldn't want that with CTDs involved."
Samara glanced up at him. "So he's probably like you, Carl—a damned sight older than he looks."
"Well let's find out," said Carl nastily.
Cormac reached up to the monofilament around his neck and toyed with the join. It was a friction grip which, if he pulled hard enough, would slide down the line; unfortunately pulling hard on a piece of monofilament wrapped around your bare neck could lead to some nasty side effects.
"Supposing that I am an agent," he said. "Do you honestly think you could get anything useful out of me?"
Carl gazed steadily at him. "Possibly not, but we'll certainly have fun trying." He focused on Cormac's fingers at the monofilament join. "Best we get that off his neck, Samara." Perhaps in any other circumstances him saying that might have been reassuring, but Cormac knew precisely why Carl now wanted the filament removed—it was far too much of an easy way out. Samara stood up and moved round to the foamstone pillar. He considered going for her, but even as he considered it, Carl was abruptly standing over him pointing a thin-gun down at his legs. Samara unhitched the monofilament from the post, inserting its end into a neat little winding device that quickly took up the slack. A tap against another control on the device released the friction slide at his neck and the filament came loose.
"Remove it," she instructed him.
Maybe a tough ECS agent would have used the filament on his own throat to prevent any vital knowledge he possessed falling into enemy hands, or maybe such a one
would now use the filament as a weapon to bring down at least a few of his captors before he was killed. He was no agent and neither anxious to die nor to be tortured, and so he tried to delay the inevitable.
"I don't know if it's occurred to you yet," he said, leaving the filament precisely where it was, "but maybe Carl is your ECS agent. He's here now in your base…"
"Remove the monofilament," Samara insisted.
"How did he get in contact with you, by the way?"
"Remove the monofilament or Carl will burn off your kneecaps."
Since he rather expected something like this was the intention, he considered delaying further. Carl fired his gun, the ionized pulse punching into the plasticrete by Cormac's feet and spraying him with hot fragments. Cormac reconsidered. Maybe they would soften him up first with a beating, which he could survive, or with drugs… He removed the filament from about his neck.
"Stand up."
Every move in slow motion, he obeyed. Samara wound in the monofilament then tossed the winder to Skyril, who caught it and moved in behind Cormac.
"Hands behind your back."
Ah, he was beginning to see now. They didn't want him truncating the questioning by cutting his own throat, but it didn't matter if he sliced up his wrists or even cut off his hands, because they could still keep him alive. Maybe now was the time—
Carl's foot went like a swinging beam into his stomach, driving him back against the pillar. It seemed the man could read his intentions before they turned to actions. Skyril then grabbed his T-shirt and shoved him forwards, catching hold of his arms and pulling them back. Cormac went down on his knees, unable to do otherwise. Skyril looped monofilament about his wrists. He started to slump forwards, but the filament began to tighten as Skyril attached the other end to the post, so with a huge effort of will he forced himself upright again. Skyril now pulled his ankles together, looping a plastic tie about them—Cormac recognised the clicking sound as it closed. Then the man stood and stepped past him, bringing his flack gun sharply back and smashing it into Cormac's mouth. He nearly went over again, but fought to maintain position, then shuffled back up to give himself at least a little slack. He spat out fragments of tooth, felt his lip swelling and blood running down his chin.
"That one I owed you," said Skyril. He then glanced at Carl. "Want some?"
Carl shook his head. "In good time."
Skyril shrugged, holstering his flack gun, then turned back to Cormac, delivering a hard kick to his guts. Skyril then reached inside a poacher's pocket in his coat and took out a length of reinforcing rod, worn shiny by handling, and stepped in close. Three hits in rapid succession—one felt as if it had snapped Cormac's collar bone, the next slammed hard across his stomach and the next across an elbow as the previous one bowed him over. Cormac went down on his side, fighting for breath. Skyril delivered a few more kicks for good measure, then stepped back.
After a moment Cormac managed, "Aren't… you supposed… to question?"
Carl now stepped up close and squatted down. "As you well know, Cormac, this is the softening-up process. You must be brought to the point where the pain and the damage to your body is too much. We'll use psychotropics on you then, and extract every last shred of information from your head."
At that moment one of the troops came over to speak to Samara. "We've got one ready now." Cormac recognised him as one of those who had been at the work-benches where the CTDs had been delivered.
"But we should wait two hours longer before detonation," the man continued. "We've intelligence that another whole battalion is moving into Dramewood within that time."
"Carl," said Samara.
Carl grimaced in annoyance and stood. "I take it you want me to do this?"
"It's more important than him." She gestured at Cormac then turned back to the trooper. "Carl will go with you to position it," she continued. "Rindle and his squad can take the old ATV, and tell the others to get ready to move out."
"You won't be able to pull all your people out of Dramewood," said Carl.
"No, but that's a small price to pay to take out two ECS battalions," she replied.
They were going to use one of the CTDs here, on this world.
"It'll tidy up things here, too," Samara added, glancing at Cormac.
Carl shook his head. "No, I have to veto that." He gazed steadily at her. "He stays alive until we find out one way or another if he's an agent—that's essential, that's important to more operations than your one here on this world."
Samara was annoyed about that, but nodded acceptance. Cormac wondered about the hierarchy here. Samara seemed to be in charge yet Carl seemed to have some power but was being careful not to step on too many toes, like some envoy from another Separatist group.
To salve her injured pride he added, "By all means keep working on him, but don't kill him. If he is an agent he's probably high-ranking, and using the right techniques we could extract information from him for months."
Carl grinned at Cormac. "Have a nice day," then he moved off with the trooper. Cormac watched him join a group of five other troopers, one of them hoisting a heavy rucksack onto his back—a rucksack certainly containing an active CTD. They began climbing into one of the ATVs while the trooper who had originally come over now spoke to some others, who quickly began packing away equipment and heading towards the door.
"Should we burn off his face or his testicles?" Skyril wondered.
"Carl says we've got to keep him alive," said Samara.
"He's an offworlder," said Skyril.
Grimacing, she replied, "Best we do what he says, but there's a big difference between alive and undamaged." She waved a hand at him, and smirking he moved off.
"Now," she said to Cormac, "let me bring to the forefront of your mind the kind of stuff I'm going to want to know, so you'll have it ready when this all becomes too much."
Skyril was collecting an ancient oxythane bottle with a tube wound around the top to a cutting torch. Behind him the ATV with Carl and the CTD aboard set off towards a roller door at the end of the warehouse, which opened ahead of it. The last of those carrying loads to the older ATV outside departed, and Cormac heard it start up and pull away. That left one ATV and, including Skyril and Samara, seven Separatists.
"First I'll want every AI-net access code in your possession, which I'll check at random while we speak. I'll next want everything you can tell me about the disposition of ECS forces here, inside information on contacts and the status of ECS commanders. Like, for example, who is running you, who are your contacts, and what do they look like." She pulled a palm-top out of her pocket. "I've got numerous pictures in here I'll want you to look at and identify. I know who many of them are, so if you lie, I'll find out." She gave a metallic smile. "Next I'll want you to tell me how you found out about Carl, right from the start, listing who ECS has identified in the Jovian Separatists and the double agents there."
Something quite cold and hard solidified inside Cormac at that moment. In two hours these people intended to detonate a CTD to wipe out two battalions of ECS soldiers. During the time leading up to that, Samara intended to put him through quite easily imaginable agony. But she wouldn't kill him unless it was proven he wasn't an ECS agent. They intended to take him away and continue… interrogating him for months. He must do something, and soon.
Braided monofilament…
Single-strand monofilament was usually used as a cutting weapon, but never for long since though it was incredibly tough, it could develop faults and would often break. For many applications ECS used braided monofilament because it was tough and still narrow enough for a lot of it to be packed into a small space, but it wasn't usually used for cutting. Braided monofilament would slice through flesh and, with a bit of sawing, would go through bone, but Samara had been exaggerating about the loop about his neck taking his head off if he snagged it, though certainly it would have cut in enough to kill him.
He considered how he was bound: Skyril must have put a
double loop through the friction device to go about each wrist, before running the filament back to the pillar. Certainly, the filament cutting in above and below a wrist would cause debilitating injury, severing nerves, blood vessels and ligaments, but cutting in against the hard nub of the radius bone just up the wrist on the thumb side, would still leave him with a useable hand. Of course the other hand would be useless.
Skyril dumped the gas bottle down before him, while Samara stood up and stepped back. Cormac squirmed right up against the pillar as if to get as far as he could from the torch Skyril was now lighting. The flame ignited—a blue spear searing out from a constellation of bright white dots. He played with the controls, shifting that constellation about and adjusting the shape and length of the flame, slipping it from its hole-cutting to sheet-slicing setting and back again. Then holding the torch in his right hand, he stooped over Cormac. Cormac cringed back, turning his right hand behind him to a particular angle, then stretching out the fingers of his left hand and abruptly pulling it against the loop of filament, hard.
It was the worst pain he had ever felt, but it coincided with Skyril closing a hand on Cormac's neck, crushing a knee into his stomach and bringing the torch down on his thigh. Cormac screamed, brought his left arm out from behind him and round in an arc, not wanting to see the bloody thing that had been his left hand as the edge of it slammed back up into the man's throat. Skyril lurched back towards Cormac's head, taking pressure off the knee. Cormac struck again, keeping the pressure on, pulling Skyril closer, then brought out his right hand, sufficient slack in the filament now available, and reached under the man's jacket. He found the flack gun, pulled it out only halfway and pulled the trigger. Skyril disappeared to one side, most of his guts preceding him in that direction. Samara was moving fast, pulling something tucked into her belt behind her. Not fast enough. The second shot folded her in half, one of her legs flipped up like that of some grotesque ballerina.
Up into a squat now, Cormac fired back into the pillar, severing the monofilament. He stood, brought a foot down on where the hose trailed from the gas bottle, snapping it, then kicked the bottle over. Gas mix coming directly from the bottle ignited from the guttering torch, spewing out a five-foot flame. One good shove with his foot sent it rolling across the floor towards the five others, who were only now reaching for their weapons. Cormac stooped and stepped back, going for cover behind the pillar as pulse-gun fire cut overhead and rained hot foamstone down on him.
