adjustments, and glancing at him occasionally. The cock-
pit's viewport was clear, revealing a strange vista, a dull
yellow sun the size of a coin, its amber radiance casting a
daylight crescent over a grey-brown planet which filled
about a quarter of the frame. At first sight, it seemed that
clouds of asteroids hung in spreading orbits about the
nameless world .. . until a dark, jagged object tumbled
past not far off, catching the sunlight on torn metal edges,
a faring, a section of hull. Glittering and dwindling, it fell
away into the planet's gravitic embrace.
-
'Wreckage,' said Cora, who had been watching him.
'Debris, the smashed remains of ships, combat and civil-
ian, big and small, armed and helpless. Welcome to the
Shafis System.'
Kao Chih frowned. 'You say that as if you expect me
to know what it means, but I do not.'
She arched her eyebrows. 'KC, where have you been?
I'm not a newsleech but even I've picked up a few details
about Shafis here and there. Okay, here's the short ver-
sion - which is all I can be bothered with. Shafis is a
system on the edge of the Yamanon Domain, where it
shades off into the Huvuun Deepzone, and so far
Coalition forces have fought three battles here. First
time it was with retreating remnants of the Dol-Das
fleets, then it was against an armed reconnaisance group
from some Aranja Tesh civ, probably Metraj, trying to
rescue survivors from that dustbowl of a planet. Third
time, which was just a couple of weeks ago, it was a
bunch of idiot Sageist zealots putting together a fleet to
attack Coalition positions, using the high-orbit shell
here as a staging post while trying to recruit from the
scrabblers down on the surface. Each time, the
Hegemony - and its loyal Earthsphere sidekick -
stormed in with their ships and destroyed any vessel
which offered resistance. And "offering resistance" was
interpreted pretty loosely, I hear, resulting in these pic-
turesque clouds of wreckage you see today. Along with
a few more additions to the survivors down on the
planet.'
'So why are your employers stationed here?' Kao Chih
said. 'Are they scavengers as well as revolutionaries?'
'Benefactors, KC, rescuers. Since that third battle, the
one with the holy armada, was fairly recent, it is possi-
ble that there may be survivors trapped on some of the
hulks drifting out there, which naturally interests my
employers. Who are also interested in similar individuals
down the gravity well, but orbital searches come first."
'Recruits,' said Kao Chih.
'Exactly. You're catching on.' A clunking sound came
through the hull and a rasping voice spoke over the
ship-to-ship in a language that seemed to defy the lin-
guistic enabler. Cora replied in kind and fingered several
controls, putting most of the pilot controls on standby.
'Time to meet your new masters.'
Kao Chih's bonds were rearranged and lengthened,
then, at gunpoint, he helped her wrap Drazuma-Ha* in
a sheet and together they carried the mech out through
the airlock and into a much larger one made of some
dark, flexible material which had formed an airtight
constriction around the Castellan's airlock flanges.
Hatch doors closed behind and opened ahead and Cora
gestured with her skinny gun to continue. His ankles
and wrists were now bound with two-foot-long secure
straps which made movement a chore, but he managed
to back out of the raised hatch edge, carrying his end of
Drazuma-HaThen he turned and saw that they were
in a large, well-lit hold with equipment racks, luggage
nets, upper-wall walkways, through-floor risers and
overhead cargo lifts. There was also a welcoming com-
mittee, a tall reptiloid Kiskashin and a Gomedran
garbed in grey overalls and carrying an odd figure-of-
eight device.
At Cora's direction he helped carry the quiescent
mech over to the two sentients and stood it on its end.
'Congratulations, Talavera,' said the Kiskashin in
deep-throated 4Peljan. 'A high-grade human and a func-
tioning Strigida-9 drone, just as you described. Truly,
you are my most prized procurer.'
So this is a revolutionary} Kao Chih thought.
The Kiskashin was nearly seven feet high, and
beneath a sleeveless, three-quarter-length bluefibre coat
wore what looked liked pieces of combat armour on his
arms and shoulders, grey polyhedral surfaces worn at
the facet edges, scored and pitted. Kiskashin were upright
bipeds with muscular, birdlike legs and wide-toed feet. It
was only after Kao Chih looked more closely that he
realised that the Kiskashin's arms were artificial, having
spotted the shoulder ball-joints and the fact that those
arms had a longer reach than normal.
'As always, it is an honour and a privilege to serve
your cause, Castigator Vuzayel,' Cora said, giving a
slight bow.
'And to serve your own, hah?' the Kiskashin Vuzayel
said. 'The great cause of money!' With the finger and
thumb of one articulated, armoured, six-fingered hand
he took a black velvety pouch from within his immacu-
late bluefibre coat. 'Selling souls for profit, Talavera -
few sins are as black as that in the eyes of the Great
Sower. I sometimes think about inviting you to join the
struggle, to lay down your sinful burdens and follow the
path taken by those you have already brought into my
care. But then I realise what a loss to the cause, the Writ
of Sacred Revenge, that would be so I decide to forgo
my duty, to further our greater ends.'
'I am glad that I will continue to be of service to you,
Castigator,' Cora said unflinchingly. 'And to be paid.'
The velvety black pouch hung there for a moment,
then was whisked out of sight, stowed back inside the
coat.
'Later. First, I wish you to give our newest arrival the
extended tour of our mighty vessel, the Sacrament, show
him its most inspiring sights while the Strigida drone is
being redacted.' Vuzayel glanced at the waiting
Gomedran. 'Take it down to the examiners.'
The Gomedran bowed then stepped over to where
Kao Chih still held Drazuma-Ha * upright, the sheet
having been removed by Cora. The Gomedran
motioned Kao Chih back, then slapped the figure-of-
eight device onto the mech's carapace, thumbed its
control pad and a moment later was carrying the mech
out of the hold on his shoulder as if it weighed next to
nothing.
Kao Chih found himself being studied by Castigator
Vuzayel, pale yellow Kiskashin eyes regarding him,
occasionally tilting that narrow-snouted head to focus
one of them on him.
'I do not know what barbarous gods you Humans
worship,' he said. 'But when you make your offering in
the name of Sacred Revenge,
know that you will be
redeemed. You and the other devotees are the lucky
ones - we, the leaders of the Chaurixa, must put off the
joyous sacrifice until the Great Sower's writ has been
fulfilled, a sorrowful burden which we stoically shoul -
der. But before you begin your journey, Human, tell
your name.'
'I am called Kao Chih, sir,' he said. 'I am a freelance
chandler, so if you have any unfilled contracts I would
most happy to offer my services.'
Vuzayel laughed, a horrible grating sound.
'If nothing else, you Humans are entertaining! Go in
peace, Karrchi, the Great Sower awaits you.'
As the Kiskashin headed for one of the exits with a
heavy tread, Cora pointed with her gun at a flight of
stairs that led up to a grillwork walkway. Glumly, he fol-
lowed her directions, his thoughts inevitably focusing on
his mission to Darien and the erratic route that had
brought him to this end, the reprogramming of his com-
panion, Drazuma-Ha*, and his own conversion to these
fanatics' cause. No doubt he would face some form of
brainwashing, perhaps a combination of drugs and
sense-deprivation, or maybe even some kind of immer-
sive procedure. Whichever it was he was determined to
resist for as long as he could.
Cora prodded his shoulder with her gun then indi-
cated a pair of heavy pressure doors just along the
walkway. 'Straight through and down the ramp.'
Ankles restricted by the secure straps, he shuffled for-
ward and the doors slid aside to let them past.
'I liked the way you tried to take my place,' Cora
said. '"Freelance chandler", eh? Good title. I think I'll
adopt it now that you won't have any use for it.'
'I wouldn't plan too far in advance, Ms Talavera,' he
said, trying to sound as if he were in good spirits. 'Your
master hasn't paid you yet. But then you didn't mention
our little Ezgara problem -1 wonder why.'
Cora's laughter was light and edged with malice.
'Keep flapping that mouth and I'll have one of the aspi-
rants nerve-block it.'
Kao Chih shrugged and continued down the ramp,
which turned leftward twice. The Chaurixa mothership's
interior decor was in simple yellows and greens with
notices and signs in dark red, often hurriedly stencilled to
the walls. From a couple of location guides he discovered
that the ship had a linear module configuration, four
large hull sections built on a central axis, the drives and
engineering at the stern, the bridge and quarters in the
prow segment, while the two midsections were dotted
with a number of arcane-looking symbols utterly myste-
rious to him. He had figured out that they had docked at
the third hull module from the prow and were heading
forward to the second. Cora steered him round a couple
of corners and into the ship's spinal corridor, up steps
and through the connecting passage, and down more
steps. She then had him turn left and follow the grav-
plating track up the portside curve of the hull past a
series of opaque doors. Each door had a grey panel bear-
ing one of the symbols he had seen on the wall guides.
'I know what's going through your head, KC,' Cora
said behind him. 'You think you'll have to endure beat-
ings and torture and drugs and crazy mind-scrambling
virtsensoria . . . well, no, these people don't work that
way. These people are professionals with pressing dead-
lines and precision needs, so they're not going to waste
time trying to beat their point of view into you.'
She stopped him in front of one of the doors and the
grey panel melted into transparency. Inside was a white
surgical theatre where two masked and gowned
Henkayans were working on a bulky form bound to a
large cradle. The patient, or victim, was a Bargalil, its
six-limbed body lying still and silent.
'The Chaurixa medtechs have three ways of remould -
ing minds to fit the task. There's viral programming,
where they use tailored bugs to edit and rewrite an
ordag's brain, creating new compulsions, fears and
desires, whole chunks of behaviour dedicated to carry-
ing out the mission . . .'
'What was that name you called him? Ordak . . .'
'Ordag - short for "ordained agent",' she said. 'Well,
anyway, that seems like the worst way to me. You are
yourself, you feel like yourself, but there's all these mem-
ories and instincts making you do things you don't
understand. Creepy.'
She motioned him on to the next door. The panel
went transparent, revealing a tall Sendrukan male, his
eyes blindfolded as he lay strapped to a cushioned table
while a hooded device on a segmented cable moved all
around his head as if examining it from all directions.
There was no one else in the room.
'Another way is to just simply wipe away the mind,
flatten all the characteristics, leaving aside the auto-
nomic and certain learned reflexes. Then they embed a
new persona sufficiently complex to carry out whatever
task it's needed to do.
'But some tasks can be too involved and socially
demanding for an embedded persona, so the Castigator's
clever underlings came up with kernelling - basically,
parts of the cortex are scooped out and a paraorganic
nanostructure is grown in its place, which serves as the
residence for a partial, or sometimes a full, AL'
'Efficient,' said Kao Chih, horrified but maintaining
his composure. 'In Chinese mythology there are many
hells, some as elaborate as these rooms.'
She looked at him. 'For example?'
'There is the Hell of Disembowelment where hypocrites
and tomb robbers have their bowels cut out. Or there is
the Hell of Sawing where kidnappers and those who force
good people to do bad things are sawn into pieces.'
'You're making that up.'
He shrugged. 'Chinese history goes back a long, long
way, so some things might indeed be made up. And
some may not.'
She smiled and wagged a reproving finger. 'You can't
spook me, KC. Besides, you haven't seen the rest of our
little circle of hell yet.'
The walkway led past another couple of milky
opaque doors, curving over to the starboard side, where
Cora had him stop before a set of double doors.
Through the clear panels Kao Chih saw a white room
with a few thin-legged chairs and another pair of doors.
He also saw an octopoidal Makhori laid full-length on a
wheeled trolley, its pale tentacles stretched out and still
while its torso showed regular, slow breathing. Its large,
open eyes stared blankly upwards.
'It's just been wiped,' Cora said, giving him another
prod. 'This is the augmentation area - go on in.'
He pushed through with both hands and stopped to
gaze down at the immobile Makhori.
'Sometimes missions require a strength or speed
bey
ond the abilities of ordinary organic creatures,' she
said. 'So ordags are brought here for alterations, modi-
fications, refurbs, whatever the mission calls for,
occasionally the full, customised cyber-augmentation -
heart, veins, muscle, blood and bone, from the roots of
your hair to the nails on your toes. No sense left
untouched.'
One of the inner doors opened and to Kao Chih's
surprise a Human emerged, a thin, old man in a brown
robe, grey-haired and stooped. He saw Kao Chih and,
peering, came over.
'So they got another,' he said in a creaky voice as he
held out a wrinkly hand. 'I'm Josh - what's your name,
son?'
'I am Kao Chih, sir - I am honoured to meet you.
How do you come to be here?'
'Likewise.' Josh indicated Cora, who was still holding
her gun levelled at Kao Chih's chest. 'Came here cour-
tesy of your friend's one-way service.'
'Did she put you to sleep as well, Josh?'
'Three times - I was a cranky passenger.'
Cora rolled her eyes, just as the inner doors opened.
A green-clad Henkayan entered, seized the trolley with
all four stubby hands and wheeled the insensible
Makhori away beyond the doors. A second, more
imposing Henkayan appeared, garbed in pale green,
ankle-length robes and wearing a yellow band around
his throat. His wide, tapering head was crowned with
dense purple hair coiffed into stiff, upward coils and his
large, coarse features were grinning as he approached
Josh.
'Very good, superior one, but keep up practice of
New Montana accent, become perfect. Go now to out-
fitters, they are expecting you.'
'My thanks, Compositor Henach. May the Great
Sower's will be served.' So saying, the man called Josh
straightened his posture and, ignoring Cora and Kao
Chih, strode out of the main doors. The grinning
Compositor Henach turned his attention to the new-
comers.
'Castigator Vuzayel has spoken to me,' he told Cora.
'This one is to be sent to one of the Tertiary Grace
worlds in Metraj, to assassinate a Vikantan industrial-
ist.
Cora made an impressed sound. 'So a partial aug-
menting, I'd guess.'
'Yes, and then wipe and persona overlay, not unlike
my most recent patient.'
Michael Cobley - Humanity's Fire book 1 Page 41
