Windows all along the street shattered, the shards joining the thick airborne streams of roof slates. There was so much debris in the air that even the gigantic lightning halos around the Resolution ships were eclipsed, plunging the street back into a grey twilight. His clothes were flapping against his limbs, as if they were trying pull free of him and take flight.
With Maria’s face centimetres from his own, Horatio could see the frightened grimace sculpted into her features as she dug her fingers into his arms. He knew that she’d be seeing exactly the same expression on his face.
‘What do we do?’ she yelled. It was barely audible above the howling wind.
He winced as a denuded pine tree crashed to the ground fifty metres away and tumbled along until it was pinned against a wall; smaller branches vibrated until they snapped off, to be sucked back up into the churn of rubble above the rooftops. ‘This isn’t going to get any better,’ he bellowed back. ‘We need to try and move.’
Jaz looked at him in pure terror, but Niastus nodded.
‘Everyone hold on to each other,’ Horatio said. ‘We crawl.’ It was the best he could think of – present the smallest slimline profile to the wind. To stand up was to be snatched into the air.
He estimated it wasn’t quite two hundred metres to the front door of his block. After the first few metres pushing hard against the gale, he wasn’t sure if he had the strength to make it. A frightening number of lethal shards were hurtling along Bacon Grove – slates, tree limbs, glass, cans, bags of rubbish splitting open to shed their contents like oversized artillery rounds. He didn’t even know how many times the ground trembled from seismic shock as some nearby building collapsed. Once, a two-seat cabez came rolling towards them like an outsized metallic football, crashing from side to side in sprays of shattered glass and ripped bodywork. They all had to scrabble aside to avoid it. The battered chassis missed Maria by less than a metre.
Some eternity later, they reached the end of Bacon Grove. Horatio’s block was on the other side of the broad intersection. He couldn’t tell if the wind streaking along Grange Road was slightly slower. There was plenty of rubbish tumbling along; taxez bounced and gyrated past them. They watched as an unconscious woman rolled along the tarmac, her skirt acting as a sail, broken limbs flopping about, skin flayed raw, her face painted in blood. Horatio was pretty sure she was dead.
‘What the fuck is that?’ Niastus cried.
Horatio followed his frantic gaze upwards, just knowing it was going to be bad. The nearest Resolution ship hanging low above London was spilling a dark waterfall from an open slot in its aft fuselage – a cybernetic pterodactyl shitting on the city. His tarsus lenses zoomed in as best he could, and the outflow resolved into a dense stream of globes.
It had been twenty-five years since he’d last seen those shapes, and the sight of them made him whimper like a frightened child trapped in a looped nightmare. ‘Olyix huntspheres,’ he yelled as another taxez crashed past, twirling off into the Spa Gardens. ‘Move!’ It was insanity – there were so many lethal fragments scything through the air along Grange Road – but he preferred to take his chances with them. They crouched low and scuttled forwards, stopping once for a shop awning to cartwheel past. They ducked for a round table that spun and pogoed. Small particles were slamming into him constantly, impossible to see and dodge before they hit, but each one was like a kick from a pro cage fighter.
Less than a minute and they made it to the other side, and clung to the shelter of the wall, where the wind had eased a fraction. Horatio’s knee was in agony where a chunk of masonry had hit him. Blood was running down Maria’s face from a nasty gash on her forehead. A weeping Jaz was supporting Niastus as he tried to stand upright, the baby clutched to her torso.
The door’s glass panels were cracked, but not yet shattered. It wouldn’t open. Horatio could see the frame was warped. ‘Together,’ he told Niastus. They put their shoulders down and thumped against it. It held. They hit it again, finally shifting the obdurate frame. There was a terrific roar, and the air swirled violently. Horatio fell hard into the hallway, not understanding what had happened. Then he caught sight of the Olyix sphere streaking away along Grange Road – with things falling out of it. He looked down at the tarmac. Dozens of capturesnakes were lying there, starting to twitch. Of course they were the one thing the wind didn’t blow away.
‘Go!’ he screamed and grabbed Jaz, pulling her inside. ‘Go, go. Upstairs.’
The tips of the capturesnakes rose up like armoured cobra heads, tracking around. Horatio pushed Niastus towards the stairs. ‘Help him,’ he told Maria.
‘But you—’
‘Go. I’m right behind you.’ Several capturesnakes started wriggling their way towards the open door. It would be useless trying to shut it, he knew. Jaz and Niastus had made it up the first few stairs. Maria gave him a desperate look, then turned fast and started heading up. ‘Come on,’ she urged the others, half pushing, half lifting Niastus. ‘Second floor, number twenty-four. Move!’
Horatio backed into the stairwell. It was reasonably narrow, brick walls and concrete stairs with metal rails. Obsolete ducts ran along the edge of the ceiling. He’d made it to the first turn when his altme finally got a signal from the portal. Gwendoline’s icon splashed into his tarsus lens display.
‘Horatio!’
‘I’m here. Almost at the flat. Thread up, for God’s sake. Now!’
‘Horatio . . . are you secure?’
‘There are capturesnakes. They’re chasing us. Don’t worry, I’ve got them.’
‘Horatio!’
‘Hurry!’
‘I . . . I’ll try.’
‘Try what?’
‘We can’t let any Olyix through, not even a capturesnake. It’s security.’
‘Fuck! I said I’ve got this. No capturesnake is coming through.’
‘Oh, Christ.’
‘Thread up!’ He saw movement down in the hallway and pulled out his voltstick. It telescoped out to its full metre length. The bulbous end fizzed with purple static. He’d never been proud to carry it. After all, it was his job to reason and persuade the wilder kids – those who’d lost their way, who just needed some sympathy and guidance. Force was never the answer. But he knew those lost kids well enough to acknowledge some were beyond even his negotiating skills, and London was balanced so finely on the edge of anarchy. So . . . always the voltstick when he left the flat. A practical precaution.
Two capturesnakes darted forwards, undulating rapidly as they came up the stairs. His altme’s self-defence routine told him to strike the one on his left first. He jabbed down, catching it just behind the tip. The voltstick discharged in a brutal flash, and he was already swiping right. Another flash. Thin smoke puffed upwards, drenching him with the smell of burned plastic and oil fumes.
‘What the fuck was that?’ Maria demanded.
‘I told you I’ve got this.’
‘I got clearance,’ Gwendoline said. ‘We’re threading up.’
‘You’re a Zangari,’ he told her. ‘I expected nothing less.’ His altme highlighted another capturesnake squirming up the stairs. More were slithering into the hallway.
Horatio waited until the next one was a single step below him, then swung the voltstick down. The capturesnake flipped to one side, then lunged forwards at the same time as the voltstick struck the concrete. It coiled around his ankle, grating against his skin. Bollocks, this is going to hurt! He brought the voltstick back, scrunching it into the rear of the capturesnake. Where it was wrapped around his ankle became a tight ring of searing hot lava. Horatio screamed at the vile burst of pain, instinctively jerking the voltstick away. The smouldering capturesnake twitched as he shook his leg, dislodging it. The next three were already on the stairs.
Eyes watering from the pain, he started up the next flight of stairs. There was no light on the second floor, so his tarsus lenses had to switch to full infrared. He could see the scarlet and peach profile of the others stumbli
ng onwards to his flat. Behind him, glowing amber auroras lurked below the top stair, like small suns ready to begin the day.
‘One metre portal’s threaded,’ Gwendoline said. ‘How much longer?’
Maria was fumbling with the door lock.
‘Almost with you.’ He stood square in the corridor, an immovable barrier between the stairs and his flat. Behind him, Maria finally got the door open. A wan emerald glow oozed out into the corridor.
‘Who the hell are they?’ Gwendoline demanded.
The tips of three capturesnakes rose up above the top stair. Horatio struck a pose, holding the voltstick ready to thrust and parry as if he were channelling some buccaneer ancestor. They launched themselves at him – two writhing across the floor, one somehow scooting along the wall. The tactical routine gave him the best attack strategy, the angles to thrust and stab, optimum time between the strokes. Perfect, had he still owned those glorious long-ago adolescent football field reflexes.
He hit the one on the wall easily. The tarsus lens dimmed automatically to protect his optical nerve from the flash, but he saw the capturesnake drop and shudder in eerie death throes. He missed the next, but the swipe carried on in a powerful arc and caught the third straight on. Vision dimmed again for the flash, at the same time something hit his left knee with bewildering force. He crashed to the ground, the air knocked from his lungs.
‘Horatio?’ Maria cried.
‘Fucking go!’ he yelled back at her. ‘Gwendoline, they’re my friends.’ Even he could hear the raw pleading in his voice.
‘I can’t,’ Gwendoline said.
‘They’ve got a baby!’
‘Oh, motherfucker.’
Horatio didn’t hear anything else; her voice vanished behind a wave of pain from his leg. Adrenalin coupled with raw panic overrode his body’s muscle lock, and he stared down his trembling torso. The capturesnake had wound around both knees like a sinuous manacle, its tip puncturing the skin, allowing it to tunnel up through the quadricep muscle. He could see it pushing its way deeper into him and screamed in shock. Once again he brought the voltstick down, thrashing at the obscene alien device in frenzied horror. The pain of the discharge was excruciating, forcing him to stop in tears after the third or fourth strike. Panting on the ground, he saw the capturesnake was dead, or at least inert. His leg was numb, which he knew wouldn’t last. He reached down and gripped the awful thing, pulling . . . It took an age to yank it free amid unbelievable pain. A frightening amount of blood gushed out of the wound. But far worse than that was the sensation of something moving inside him, pushing along his femur towards his groin. The capturesnake had performed its function, injecting him with a blob of Kcells, the start of cocooning. His stomach heaved, and he grew faint.
Hands gripped his shoulders and started to drag him back, out of the corridor and into the flat. When he looked up, he saw Maria’s manic grin as she tugged him along. Beyond her, at the far end of his lounge, an innocuous circular portal was standing vertically on spindly mechanical legs, showing a bright green room on the other side. He gazed numbly at the apparition from a lost past.
Jaz was on all fours before it, passing her baby through the circular portal.
‘I’m coming,’ Horatio told Gwendoline.
‘We’ve got the baby,’ she replied.
Niastus pushed Jaz, and she started to crawl through the portal. Horatio clenched his teeth at another wave of pain firing up from his leg. The clump of Kcells the capturesnake had violated him with was moving again. ‘I’m going to need a medical team,’ he said.
‘On their way.’
Niastus started to clamber through the portal. A capturesnake dropped onto Maria’s head. She screamed, shuddering about as if she’d been electrocuted. It fell off her, and Horatio swatted it with the voltstick. Four more were rushing into the flat. The corridor floor outside was swarming with a whole pack of them, dark shells glistening in the jade light.
‘Horatio!’ Gwendoline called.
‘Go,’ he begged Maria. The lead capturesnake leapt forwards. He struck it perfectly with the voltstick, surprised and disappointed at how weak he seemed to have become. Something bit his foot. He saw a capturesnake had penetrated his boot leather to jab into his ankle. More capturesnakes were slinking forwards quickly, as if they could sense his growing vulnerability. He slashed about wildly with the voltstick. ‘Go. Please.’
She stared at the approaching pack of capturesnakes in horror. ‘No.’
‘Live for me.’
‘Horatio!’
A capturesnake speared his abdomen. He brought the voltstick down on it in a classic hara-kiri stab. His back arched up, muscles rigid as he received the full blast of the voltstick. The universe was growing fainter, somehow receding in every direction. ‘Go.’
‘I love you,’ Gwendoline said.
‘Every day forever.’ His final smile was ruptured by the tip of a capturesnake forcing its way into his mouth; it started to worm its way down his oesophagus. Biting it was useless; the flexing skin was hard as rock. He started to choke as the green light dimmed. Maria’s body was filling the portal. A final swipe at two capturesnakes surging after her, the satisfying flash of incandescence as their alien guts fried. The green light grew brighter as Maria’s legs quickly slid across the rim, then vanished completely.
I’ll be waiting there for you after the end of time.
The Avenging Heretic
Year Two
It was Callum’s second extended period out of the tank’s oblivion, and he was surprised at how quickly it had gone. The crew’s schedule was simple enough: Two people were on duty for three months, then everyone would be brought out of suspension for a month together, and after that a different pair would begin their duty watch.
He’d though his first watch would be difficult; he’d shared it with Jessika. There were doubts still lingering in his mind, not simply because she was alien – or should that be: her origin was alien? – but because he’d never known. All that time spent working together on Akita, even going out for drinks a few times in the evening after work, a couple of binaries laughing gently at the foibles of their newly adopted Utopial home. There’d been no hint, not a clue, that she wasn’t fully human. After all life had thrown at him by that time, he’d always considered himself able to read people. So the failure was all his own, and that inevitably kindled a spark of inward-focused anger.
Logically, of course, he had no reason to be suspicious of her. She had been created to help humans – a real-universe version of an angel dispatched to Earth. The final proof being that she was here, supporting this crazy-stupid mission. Which left him looking like the petty one for harbouring doubts. He probably overreacted, trying to compensate with excessive politeness, and laughing a little too hard at her jokes. To the extent that after ten days together she asked: ‘Are you okay?’
Shamefaced, he’d diverted by replying: ‘It was just Kandara’s crack about the Neána being a splinter group of Olyix.’
‘It got to me, too,’ she admitted. ‘But there is the counter-argument: how come we didn’t know the enclave location?’
‘There’s a lot of things your group of Neána humans weren’t told. What your species actually is, where the abode cluster is. Security.’
‘Fair enough. But if I were you, I’d be more worried about Kandara’s other belief.’
‘What’s that?’
‘That I’m not in charge of my destiny. That I have subconscious orders to betray you, or something worse.’
‘Thanks. Way to reassure me.’
‘But on the bright side, what could I actually do at this point to make it worse?’
‘Uh . . .’
‘Quite.’
Callum admitted she’d won that one. It made the rest of their watch go smoothly.
Then six months later when he and Yuri began their watch together, he was prepared for weeks of grumpy avoidance and barely civil grunts when they did encounter each other. But it turned
out Yuri was actually far too professional for that. Not that he was a big talker.
‘I was thinking about something Jessika said,’ Callum confided to Yuri at breakfast during their second week.
‘Which is?’
‘If she was a Neána, some kind of double agent, how could she damage the mission?’
‘Yes. And?’
‘Well, I don’t think she has a hidden agenda.’
Yuri rolled his eyes as he ate some syrniki. ‘Glad we got that sorted out.’
‘But it did make me think about what might happen. You know, worst-case scenarios and such.’
‘Ah. So?’
‘We know more about the Salvation of Life now; even I can understand some of its thought routines. The basic ones, anyway.’ It had taken a long time, and plenty of coaxing from Jessika, but these days he could make a degree of sense out of the impulses flowing into his brain from their entangled cell nodule. The Salvation of Life’s onemind was surprisingly sedate. He’d always had the belief that any entity fanatical enough to embark on forceful conquest would be deranged – an opinion enforced by the human viewpoint. Earth’s history was crammed with examples, from individuals like Hitler and Pol Pot to the popularism that had damaged so much in the so-called democratic nations from the end of the nineteenth century onwards. The realization that the onemind was methodical and composed in its beliefs and purpose had proved unnerving. Basically, that cold intent frightened him more than he’d expected.
‘It can’t see us, Callum,’ Yuri said in a reassuring tone. ‘Jessika made sure of that. The visual routines for the hangar simply edit our creeperdrones out of its perception.’
The fact that Yuri knew exactly what to say suggested to Callum that the old security chief had been thinking along similar lines.
‘No, it doesn’t see anything amiss,’ Callum agreed, ‘because right now its observation is autonomic. There is no problem; therefore it isn’t looking for a problem. But if it really starts to look, do you think the glitch we’ve introduced into its local routines will hold?’
The Saints of Salvation [British Ed.] Page 23
