Godengine

by Craig Hinton

  Aklaar had also assured McGuire that he would personally ensure the success of his own mission as well. Although the nest at the Pole was small, there were undoubtedly enough supplies to share with the colonists at Jacksonville, and Aklaar would make sure that negotiations were opened up to provide a lifeline for the isolated human population until the blockade was finally broken.

  So Antony McGuire was a fairly happy man when they approached the borders of G’chun duss Ssethiissi – the Cauldron of Sutekh, according to the Doctor’s translation, although that didn’t make much more sense than the Martian version. Fairly happy until they reached those borders, that was.

  ‘Another Plague Seal?’ McGuire had seen the end of the wide and winding road that connected Sstee-ett-Haspar to the North Pole some time back, but had imagined that there would be some kind of door in the upcoming barrier. Instead, they were confronted by a wall of blue metal that stretched from left to right without any obvious break.

  Aklaar stepped forward and stroked the smooth, unmarked surface. – I am puzzled, Antony. The level of technology – the level of security – is not consistent with my knowledge of this place.’

  ‘It’s the hull of an Osirian WarScarab,’ stated the Doctor quietly. ‘An alloy of light neutronium and osmidium. Unbreakable.’ He tapped it with the end of his wholly irrelevant umbrella. ‘And unexpected. Your pacifist nest has been both busy and resourceful, Abbot.’

  ‘I do not understand, Doctor,’ said Aklaar curtly. ‘What are you implying?’

  ‘I’m implying nothing, Aklaar. I just find it... odd, shall we say, that a pacifist nest should choose to protect itself with the remains of an Osirian vessel. I would have thought that they would have found it rather blasphemous.’

  ‘Hang on, hang on,’ interrupted McGuire. ‘Who the hell are the Osirians? More aliens?’

  ‘Were, Mr McGuire, were. The Osirians were an ancient, amoral race that manipulated countless civilizations in this quadrant of the galaxy. They were cruel, aloof mental giants, but even they were horrified by one individual they bred who embodied all of those qualities in abundance: Sutekh. He destroyed his home planet, Phaester Osiris, and fled the vengeance of his peers. The final battle was on Earth, but the remaining Osirians’ bridgehead was here, on Mars. From the Martian North Pole, the Osirians finally managed to cage Sutekh on Earth. There were two other Osirians of note: Sutekh’s brother, Horus, and his sister, Nepthys. All three of them have become part of both human and Martian mythology: Ssethiis, Oras and Netysss, in your language, Abbot.’

  ‘Not only do you know our ways, Doctor, but you know our secrets as well,’ hissed Aklaar.

  ‘Oh, indeed I do,’ replied the Doctor quietly. ‘For example, the layout of the Labyrinth was based on a neural map of the Osirian cerebellum. But what currently concerns me is this barrier; leaving aside the religious connotations, since when have the pacifist caste possessed the skills and techniques to shape Osirian metal? I thought that was the right and privilege of the artificer caste.’ And then he frowned. ‘Or certain guilds of the warrior caste.’

  ‘What about the Divine Sight of Horus?’ asked Sstaal hesitantly. ‘That was forged from an Osirian star-sapphire.’

  ‘There’s quite a difference between a star-sapphire and the hull of a WarScarab, Pilgrim Sstaal. And besides, the Divine Sight would have been extruded by an artificer.’

  ‘Please, Doctor, your suspicions are unfounded,’ protested the Abbot. ‘I give you my word that I had no idea we would encounter such a barrier.’

  The Doctor sighed. ‘The universe is full of people wanting me to trust them.’

  Cleece waved his clamp menacingly. ‘Do not insult the Abbot, human. His word is his bond.’

  As the verbal fencing continued, nobody noticed Carmen Santacosta slip away into the shadows. Nobody, that is, apart from Roz, who turned and followed at a distance.

  Rachel hated hangovers. Especially a hangover that blotted out the night before. If she had to suffer, at least she ought to remember why. Then she did remember, and realized with a wave of nausea that alcohol had had nothing to do with it.

  Instead of her quarters on Charon, she was strapped to a bench in a low rock-walled room. It looked like step one of Chris’s plan had been successful: they had been captured by the Martians. She turned her head with difficulty. ‘Felice? Felice, are you awake yet?’

  ‘Don’t. Shout,’ the other whispered through gritted teeth. ‘I feel like death. How long have we been unconscious?’

  ‘No idea,’ Rachel replied. ‘I wonder what happened to Chris? Do you think he escaped?’

  Before Felice could answer, a grinding noise made her strain her head to look in front. A door was opening in the rock wall; seconds later, a Martian strode through. But he was unlike any Martian that Rachel had ever seen. Instead of ridged green body armour, he was wearing a plain brown hide tunic and kilt, and his head was helmetless. Despite Michael’s letters, it was Rachel’s first look at a ‘real’ Martian, and she was intrigued.

  Even without his cybernetic enhancements, the Martian would have proved a formidable opponent; he was well muscled and well proportioned, over seven feet of fighting reptile, his leathery skin sparkling in the overhead lighting. Tufts of black fur grew from his elbows, knees and wrists, and around his shoulders; and without his boots and clamped gloves Rachel could see he possessed surprisingly human fingers and toes. But the biggest surprise was the head. It was quite small in proportion to the rest of his body, and smooth, with tiny flaps for ears. Two cat-like yellow eyes stared at her, nictitating membranes occasionally sweeping across the slitted pupils.

  ‘I am Technician Yeess,’ he announced, his head oscillating in a snake-like movement. ‘I am here to process you.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Felice.

  ‘You are Dr Felice Delacroix,’ Yeess stated. It wasn’t a question. ‘Both of you possess technical knowledge required by the Grand Marshal. Although you may offer your services willingly, we cannot risk any... mistakes.’ He squeezed his fingers together, obviously forgetting that he wasn’t wearing a clamped glove.

  Rachel made the deductive leap rather more quickly than she would have liked. ‘Brain-washing?’

  ‘A curious term, Professor Rachel Anders, but I understand the cultural reference. The Brain-rack creates artificial neural pathways in the human mind. These pathways dominate existing thought processes and ensure obedience.’

  ‘You don’t have to do this,’ said Felice. ‘We will help you willingly – I give you my word.’

  ‘Perhaps you would help us. But we are at a vital stage in our work here. It would prove more... convenient to ensure your allegiance.’

  Rachel swallowed. This was one thing that Chris’s plan had not taken into account. She wondered what obedience entailed.

  Santacosta was standing in a small alcove back down the corridor, whispering into her watch.

  ‘Dictating your memoirs?’ Roz smiled at the look of surprise on Santacosta’s face, but that look quickly faded, to be replaced by the hard and calculating expression that Roz had caught earlier. ‘I take it that’s a long-range communicator?’

  ‘Observant, aren’t you?’ Santacosta stepped from the alcove, her body poised for a fight.

  ‘So the nightclub singer was a façade. Not a very good one, I must say.’

  ‘Good enough to fool McGuire and his party. And the Greenies wouldn’t have noticed if I’d been wearing a sign round my neck with “impostor” written on it. All they care about is their damned pilgrimage.’

  Roz was pleased that her instincts could still be relied on, but that still left a massive problem: if Santacosta wasn’t a singer, what was she? The communicator looked strangely familiar, but she just couldn’t place it. Playing for time, she continued. ‘What about Esteban? I assume you killed him.’

  Santacosta nodded. ‘Esteban was a known Greenie sympathizer; although we had no proof, we suspected that he was a member of the Martian Axis – a gro
up of human terrorists who’ve been committing acts of violence to further their cause. I couldn’t take the chance that he’d foul up my mission. Still, the Greenies got the blame; who would expect the culprit to be a harmless nightclub singer?’

  ‘You knew that the Gree-, the Ice Warriors were in the city?’

  Santacosta laughed, a rich, fruity laugh. ‘You don’t get it, do you? This entire expedition has been a set-up from the very beginning. I’m on a mission to the North Pole. When my shuttle crashed, I had to switch to the backup plan and infiltrate McGuire’s party.’

  Roz had heard enough – she had to bring this woman down hard and fast and warn the others. Spinning, she lashed out with her foot, expecting to catch the other woman in the solar plexus and bring her down.

  Unfortunately, it didn’t work that way. Santacosta reacted even faster, grabbing Roz’s foot before it could connect. Pulling her off balance, Santacosta sent her sprawling to the ground. But Roz was an Adjudicator, with all the martial arts skills that that office represented. Rolling to one side on the dusty floor, she leapt to her feet – and Santacosta was there again with a chop to the stomach which left Roz wheezing against the rock wall.

  And then Roz recognized the technique – Hi Shu’s Defence. She had learnt it twenty-odd years ago on Ponten IV. When a stray thought informed her that the basic moves had remained virtually unchanged since the formation of the Guild, she realized that Santacosta was fighting like an Adjudicator. Any further speculation was stopped by the stabbing pressure of two fingers against her neck: the Herzgang Manoeuvre, another Adjudicator favourite. Any more force and Roz would die of a brain haemorrhage within moments.

  ‘You’re an Adjudicator?’ But the question was Santacosta’s; she must have recognized Roz’s fighting technique at the same time that Roz had recognized hers. Roz was stunned; what was a Raven doing on Mars? She thought back to the Guild History classes on Ponten IV, but she couldn’t remember hearing anything about Adjudicator activity on Mars during the Dalek invasion. Their time had come later, once the blockade had been broken, when their base on Oberon had become the centre of the resistance movement.

  Santacosta let Roz go, but it was clear that any sudden moves would be immediately countered; and, although Roz had started the fight full of confidence, that assured self-certainty had been considerably eroded by Santacosta’s prowess. They may have both learnt the same moves and the same techniques, but Roz’s skills were dulled by nine hundred years of teaching by rote, as a succession of instructors across the centuries had forgotten the true meaning that lay behind them; Santacosta’s were fresh and original, and probably taught by the actual originators of the skills. Roz then realized where she had seen the wrist communicator before: in the museum on Ponten IV, part of a display of standard Adjudicator field equipment from the twenty-first century. Final proof, if she really needed any.

  Santacosta shook her head. ‘No, you can’t be. No Adjudicator would let herself be taken down like that. You’re just not good enough.’ Ouch. That hurt. ‘Who are you, Roz?’

  Roz knew that the situation was at an impasse; somehow, she had to let the others know what was going on, and that called for a bit of lateral thinking.

  This was going to hurt even more than the woman’s slight; Roz knew that. But she wasn’t exactly in a winning position, was she?

  Roz threw herself at Santacosta, catching her a glancing blow to the chin. Not too hard, but sufficient to get a reaction.

  Santacosta almost fell to the floor, but managed to regain her balance within seconds. That gave Roz enough time to step back, but she didn’t want to get too far out of range. She just hoped that she had gauged the other Adjudicator correctly; there was a certain move that all Adjudicators tended to think about when cornered, and that was exactly what Roz wanted to happen.

  ‘Bad move, Roz. I don’t need you, but I was prepared to let you live. I can see now that you’re too much trouble. Far too much trouble.’ As Santacosta leapt forward, Roz moved herself in a subtle and hopefully unnoticed way, taking the attack face on, but with certain muscle groups tensed. Santacosta behaved exactly as Roz had hoped; the chop to the shoulder was almost a relief.

  When it was first taught, the Cthalz manoeuvre was invariably fatal, immobilizing the autonomic nervous system and causing instant death. Unless, of course, one knew the defence. The defence hadn’t been discovered until the twenty-eighth century, so Roz knew that Santacosta was unaware of it. So she tried it.

  She wasn’t convinced that her plan had been particularly successful. Lying on the floor, unable to breathe, Roz realized that her clever defence hadn’t worked. Her heart wasn’t beating, her head felt like it was being compressed into a neutron star, and she knew that she was going to die.

  As the heavy pounding blackness poured in and swamped her thoughts, Roz found herself thinking of Chris. Was he still alive? How would he feel about her death? Would he ever know? And then she passed out, knowing that she had only pre-empted the inevitable; she would have ceased to exist anyway when the laws of time caught up with her, so dying now was only being premature.

  By the time Santacosta returned to the expedition, the niggling arguments had subsided, with everyone too preoccupied with the metal barrier and looking for some means of entry to notice her presence. The Doctor was waving his metal probe around, making it buzz and screech but without any noticeable effect, while the Greenies were kneeling in a circle and praying. This worried her; wasn’t the whole point of meeting up with the Greenies only to take advantage of their ability to open the barrier? What good was prayer going to do? Somebody on Oberon was going to pay for their woolly analysis of the situation; she swore it.

  Santacosta had known all about the impenetrable barrier for quite a while: it was the reason that she was on Mars. She just hoped that someone would open the damned thing so that she could drop the pretence and get on with her job.

  ‘Have you seen Roz, Ms Santacosta?’ the Doctor called over his shoulder, taking a second’s break from his sonic probe.

  ‘She’s answering a call of nature, Doctor,’ she replied timidly. ‘Like I was.’ God, the number of times she had used that excuse over the last five days; the others must think she had bladder problems. Still, it would all be worth it – as long as her colleagues on Oberon were on the ball, and, more importantly, somebody opened the bloody barrier.

  He turned. ‘Really?’ The suspicion was clear on his face. ‘I find that -’

  The sound took them all by surprise, a high-pitched whine that came from the reflective blue barrier. As everyone turned to locate the source, a strip of metal about two metres wide slid smoothly upwards, revealing a brightly lit but empty corridor within.

  That was the cue that she had been waiting for. She reached into her jacket -

  ‘Stop her! She’s an Adjudicator!’ It was Roz, coming towards them in a limping run. Santacosta was shocked: how could she still be alive? But it didn’t matter – the game was up. She raised her gun before anyone else had a chance to move towards theirs.

  ‘Too late, Roz. The time for playacting’s finally over.’ Santacosta pulled out a small sphere from her jacket and gave it the once-over. As she had been told to expect, it was no longer white as it had been when she had looked at it earlier – it was black, indicating that the gap in the barrier had created a window in the subspace interference surrounding the North Pole.

  Holding the sphere in her palm, she squeezed it. As it started to vibrate in her hand, she threw it onto a clear space on the ground about two metres away and watched as it started to grow. Dozens of straight black strands shot out from the sphere and rooted themselves into the rocky soil, creating a spoked wheel about four metres across. Further strands then began to develop, crossing and recrossing to link the whole thing together like a huge black spider’s web. Then the black fibres began to pulse with an eerie pearl light which ran up and down the strands in a regular pattern – just how Professor Ketch had said it would happen.
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  ‘What the hell’s that?’ asked McGuire, staring at the glowing arrangement of cables.

  ‘A Transit-web,’ replied the Doctor. ‘A portable stunnel terminus. I believe that Adjudicator Santacosta is bringing in reinforcements.’

  Santacosta dropped the giggly pretence. Thank God. ‘Very perceptive, Doctor.’ She moved towards the gap in the barrier – the best position to keep an eye on everyone – and unholstered her pulse laser.

  ‘So it’s all been an act?’ said McGuire. ‘But how? The shuttle crash -’

  ‘Was not part of my original plan, I’ll admit that. The Adjudicator base on Oberon managed to get me to Mars in a survival pod disguised as a meteorite where I met up with my squire – he was the pilot. But we made a mistake: we assumed that the invaders would ignore low-level shuttles.’

  ‘The invaders ignore nothing,’ said the Doctor coldly. ‘So your shuttle crashed, and your squire was killed. I assume that you were actually heading towards the North Pole?’

  ‘Quite right, Doctor. Thankfully, there was a backup plan – the shuttle’s flight path was worked out so that it was in the same direction as McGuire’s expedition. In the case of a crash, I was to locate McGuire’s expedition, pass myself off as a civilian, and infiltrate the group.’

  ‘But why?’ asked Esstar. ‘You are all humans, so why are you acting so clandestinely? Why aren’t you working together?’

  Santacosta sighed; these pilgrim Martians were too nice for their own good. She momentarily wished that they had all been Warriors; at least you knew where you stood with a Warrior. ‘Since the invasion, Adjudicator Intelligence on Oberon has been monitoring the inner planets closely, trying to analyse what the invaders were up to. Then, about three months ago, we detected subspace emissions from the Martian North Pole. We were very interested; especially when our scientists claimed that it represented a level of subspace technology far beyond anything we currently possessed.’