by Neal Asher
From her brother, Aconite felt confirmation of this, and understood in an instant that his sending of the beast against the Heliothane served two purposes: to kill his enemy and also to weaken his dangerous pet. The time frame jumped:
‘It is the only way to take it out, completely out,’ said Goron.
This time Aconite and the Engineer walked out together across the floor of one of New London’s construction bays, towards the skeleton of a giant sphere—only this time the shadow of Cowl walked beside them.
‘This was created to extend Heliothane Dominion throughout time. As a base from which to kill every last umbrathant, and finally from which to finish your brother. But perhaps now it can serve a more honourable purpose. I would wish it so.’
‘The bait seems … small.’
‘The largest fish can be hooked with the smallest fly.’
‘Will the Heliothane, as a whole, countenance the loss?’
‘Of this?’ Goron asked, gesturing to the nascent Sauros.
‘Of it all. You’ve spent two centuries on this project, and used up half the wealth of the Dominion. And just to lose it all to destroy a threat most of its citizens have never seen and many could not even comprehend?’
‘It has to be done.’
Cowl’s anger was like hot wires burning inside her skull. He was going to kill her with this and, if he did not, he would kill her later.
The tor called to everyone in the Antarctic research facility, but only Aconite intended to respond to that call. Palleque glared at the thing, but then he had more reason to hate its source than anyone else.
‘Here, I have a present,’ he said, turning to her and holding out a small glass cylinder containing white crystals. ‘We found it on Mars, in strata a billion years old, and after that on every other solid planet in the solar system, in rock of the same age.’
‘What is it?’
‘You wondered why I laughed when you said Cowl was the cause of the Nodus.’ He gestured at the cylinder she now held. ‘There were hundreds of theories on the source of that, until our interstellar probe discovered the same substance on a dead world orbiting the red dwarf, Proxima Centauri.’
‘You still haven’t told me what it is.’
‘Crystalline DNA in a protein matrix. As soon as it hits liquid water, it becomes active. In about a million years you’ve got metazoan life—and the rest is history, as they say. In the end, only one theory fits the facts.’
‘Seeding.’
Cowl released his hold and Aconite dropped to her knees, blood running from her ear and glistening over the abrasions around her throat. She glared up at her brother and tested the thick ceramal cuffs that bound her wrists and ankles.
‘How many more do you think I’d let you kill?’ she spat.
Cowl tilted his head, but said nothing. Abruptly he spun round and headed for his vorpal controls. After a moment he uttered a shriek of rage.
IN THE SKI, THE spectral display of the torbeast juddered and bled away as, unnoticed, a raft drew into the citadel’s shadow. With the energy feed severed at Sauros, a backlash rippled downtime from the city, taking no time at all, and for ever. Cowl withdrew his sharp fingers from the vorpal ovoid, and stepped back, turning his head to see lightning flashing between temporal capacitors and transformers. The sea boiled as safety trips attempted to divert the surge into the water. It was like trying to hold together a broken dam with Sellotape. Under the sea flare after flare ignited then died to dull red, stepping out in tens then hundreds then thousands towards the horizon, as geothermal generators vaporized and melted surrounding rock. Shortly after, explosions, as from depth charges, followed the same course. Inside the citadel darkness was lit up by machinery fires, then dispelled when auxiliary generators cut in. Emergency lights came on all over the structure, and Umbrathane ventured from their places of safety.
CLINGING TO THE LEDGE, in the shadow of the out-flowering walls of the citadel above, Tack gazed at the other occupants and saw how they had accumulated. The torbearer in armour had been the first, his weight dropping him directly down from the chute mouth and, with whatever strength had remained to him, he had driven his dagger into a crevice where the ledge joined the pillar. There he must have died, for Aconite had not rescued him, and over time the rust from his armour had stuck him to the ledge. After him had come others: someone wearing a long robe had fallen, the material of which had snagged on one of the knight’s greaves; arm bones had accumulated around these two, and other skeletons had become stuck to the ledge with the adipocere of decay. Occasional ornaments gleamed and weapons rusted. Tack noted a burnt-out Heliothane carbine resting against a ribcage enclosed in parchment skin, the weapon’s black metal and plastic partially melted and turned grey with salt, and wondered about the story behind that. Then, keeping his foot firm against the adhesive mine, he raised the harpoon launcher he had taken from Aconite’s armoury and fired upwards.
With the usual chemical flash, the head of the harpoon bonded to the upper lip of the chute, and after detaching the adhesive mine Tack set the winder spinning to haul him up into the chute’s mouth. Here he stuck the mine to the floor of the chute to give himself a foothold, before detaching the harpoon and winding it all the way back into its launcher. He then gazed up into darkness.
Having little clear memory of his own descent down this pipe, Tack had consulted Nandru and was told it ran in a hundred-metre arc down from Cowl’s spherical control centre. Easy enough to climb, but not yet—he waited.
The sky was still dark with the presence of that thing and the storm it had induced. Beyond the sheltering loom of the citadel, Tack observed the dusty snowstorm of the crystalline substance hazing the surface of the sea and somehow making the waves sluggish. Within a few minutes he spotted Nandru-Wasp hurtling towards him from the direction of Aconite’s home, the robot clutching Polly underneath it like a stolen grub. Finally Tack turned and fired up into darkness, observing the glow of chemical bonding twenty metres above him. Winding the line in taut, he detached the mine and hooked it onto the shoulder strap of the weapons harness he had also acquired. There were three of these devices which, on their contact surfaces, possessed a layer of microscopic hairs much like those found on a gecko’s foot. Unfortunately, unlike the lizard’s foot, the mines were not made for repeated use and after a time would lose their adhesive quality. Hence three of them were needed for this climb. Tack had no intention of using them to blow up anything.
Nandru-Wasp flew into the shadow of the citadel, then descended to hover by the mouth of the chute. Polly, clasped firmly underneath the robot by its four spiky legs, brushed white powder from her face and eyes, before reaching out a hand to Tack. Standing with his boot on the chute’s rim, Tack used the winder’s friction control to allow himself enough slack to lean out and grasp her forearm.
‘Do you have her?’ Nandru asked. ‘I don’t want to be premature in letting her go.’
‘I have her,’ Tack replied tightly.
Nandru-Wasp released his hold, then shot up into the air with the sudden lightening in weight. Polly leapt inwards, her feet coming down on the chute’s lip, and her other hand clutching at Tack’s weapons harness.
‘OK?’ he asked.
‘OK,’ she replied.
Tack started the winder hauling them up the slope. Because of the risks he would rather have done this alone, but he just did not have the will to push Polly away. The thought of being separated from her aroused in him a feeling he had not often experienced but easily recognized. But this was a fear of a different kind.
Reaching the attachment point of the harpoon, Tack located two of the adhesive mines to serve as footholds for both himself and Polly. Then he heard a scrabbling and droning noise in the chute’s throat as Nandru-Wasp tried to find purchase there. He observed the robot finally gain a foothold, then with its four spiked legs begin to advance up the pipe. It covered four metres before, with a screeching of metal being peeled up by its foot spikes, it slid back
down. This had been no part of any plan.
‘Stay there, Nandru—the noise you’re making might carry above,’ he whispered urgently.
Nandru managed to drive his spikes into the metal and hold his position. Tack detached the harpoon and fired it further up the slope again.
COWL RETURNED FROM STUDYING his vorpal controls, utterly unreadable. Aconite glanced across to where Makali stood, then scanned around the chamber to where the woman’s pet killers were positioned. Having lost the source of his power to manipulate time inside this sphere, Cowl’s paranoia was showing. Aconite then glanced over at the chute down which Cowl had been tossing human remains for the best part of a century. With the manacles around her wrists and ankles she stood no chance of reaching that escape route, but she was sure she had heard something …
Aconite now turned her attention fully on her brother. ‘It has been a stupid and destructive conflict—Umbrathane and Heliothane killing each other over centuries in the solar system and now throughout time,’ she said, pushing herself back so she rested on her knees. ‘I don’t know which side could be judged the more guilty, as now most of them have been born to this conflict and know no different. But I do know who is guilty of most killing—and that’s you, Brother dear.’
‘Our war has been defensive!’ Makali objected, stepping forward.
‘Yes,’ Aconite hissed. ‘I’ve witnessed some of your defensive moves. I saw exactly how you defended yourself by beating a prehuman to death. What threat to you was Ygrol?’
Cowl halted before Aconite and crossed his arms. His voice then issued, as it always seemed to, from the very air around him, ‘Where are the other two?’
‘What do you think you’ll obtain from them? A way of retrieving your creature? A way of instantly rebuilding your power sources? Face it, Brother, your run is over and now it’s time to take yourself to the only place that will remain safe for you.’
‘Where are they?’ Cowl snarled.
‘What? Would you like Makali to do a bit more defending for you? Haven’t you caused enough death already? In making you, our mother thought to create a human nonpareil. Instead she only made a killer of humans. I know you, Brother.’
Cowl’s arms unfolded and dropped to his sides. It was coming now, Aconite felt—now he would kill her. Then suddenly the lights went out and the glow of a catalyser ignited high up in one side of the sphere. On the opposing side a hole blew in through it, hurling an umbrathant off the adjacent walkway, his clothing on fire. Then two more catalysers ignited, their fuse-paper glow spreading out from a central point, incandescent dust billowing in from the burning edges. Momentarily, a glimpse of a big man diving through, a stuttering of fire, and two Umbrathane, struggling to don their masks, were slammed backwards through glowing debris. Another explosion and one of the heavy tubular transformers danced out of its support framework and began to topple. Cowl moved fast, half in a dive, towards his vorpal controls, and Aconite felt sinking dread. Then in a single bright flare a fast-acting catalyser opened a hole in the floor, and high in the sphere the bonding glow of a climbing harpoon was briefly visible. Then, rising up out of the floor on the harpoon’s wire, came Meelan and Saphothere, back to back, each of them brandishing two carbines and spraying the interior of the sphere with fire. Aconite stared in horror at the holes growing in the sphere, and realized that snowing in was not the outfall of catalysis, but a white powder she recognized. And she knew what her brother intended.
‘Stop him!’ Aconite bellowed. ‘He’ll take us all down!’
Several shots slammed into Cowl’s leg, dropping him before he reached his controls. Saphothere and Meelan detached five metres above the floor, then dropped and rolled for cover as return fire tracked their progress. Saphothere dived behind the fallen transformer, spraying fire behind him without even looking, his shots spinning one of Makali’s killers in a wheel of breaking flesh, then a shield generator he had dropped activated behind him a microsecond later to absorb other returned fire. Meelan paused to take out an umbrathant who was now targeting Saphothere, and didn’t see the source of the projectile that smacked into the back of her neck, blowing most of it away and dropping her bonelessly to the floor.
‘Meelan!’ came the anguished shout from Coptic.
Yet another explosion separated a walkway from the dissolving wall and it swung out, Coptic standing on the end of it, shooting at the Umbrathane with both a carbine and his missile launcher. Returned sniping cut away one of his legs, and he shattered the source of that on the floor below. Other shots slammed into his torso, but he absorbed them and kept on firing. Umbrathane died one after another, explosions tearing them away from walkways or blowing them in tatters from whatever concealment they had found. He kept up this barrage until both weapons were empty; then the two remaining Umbrathane came out of cover and concentrated a fusillade on him. Eventually he went down, then toppled from the walkway as it jerked to a halt at the end of its arc.
Aconite kept her head down and dragged herself towards the slope leading down to the disposal chute, but a hand grabbed the back of her jacket and hauled her upright, a prosthetic arm looping around her neck and the snout of a carbine now pressing against her cheek. Holding this human shield, Makali gazed over to where Saphothere had concealed himself.
‘Saphothere, you’re finished now!’ she shouted.
Looking round, she saw her two comrades aiming their weapons down at the fallen transformer.
Aconite directed her attention to her brother, and saw the bullet holes through his carapace and that he was up by his vorpal controls, trailing his shattered leg. In one hand he held a small remote key, which he now pointed towards Aconite and activated. Then he discarded the key and plunged his hand into a glistening sphere.
‘No!’ Makali exclaimed, her attention swinging towards Cowl.
Aconite felt the magnetic lock snicking open. She looked up into the fall of white powder, then, as the manacles dropped away, drove her elbow back hard into Makali, and as the umbrathant bowed over, snatched away her weapon and sent it skittering across the floor. Now someone fired up from the chute, and one of the two Umbrathane went down on his knees, smoke pouring from his front. Saphothere stood up and tracked the second one in his flight across a walkway, blowing away pieces of him—so he never made it to cover. Aconite turned and drove her knee up into Makali’s face, flinging her upright, her face a ruin. She turned back to her brother.
From the surrounding air his voice issued in a hissing whisper, as shields activated between him and Saphothere. ‘Go’
She could see his hand in the vorpal spheroid, manipulating, moving. Aconite turned to where Tack stood beside the chute with his back against the wall, his weapon directed towards Cowl, and Polly on the other side of the chute, her handgun pointed at Makali. Almost casually, using the back of her larger hand, Aconite struck Makali, sending her sprawling, then stepped down towards the slope. She slid down and caught the edge, her bigger hand closing vicelike on the lip.
‘We have to get out of here, fast,’ she said. ‘How did you get here?’
‘Wasp-Nandru,’ Polly replied.
‘Carries the weight of two, at a push,’ muttered Aconite.
TACK OBSERVED THE CURRENT scene: Makali crawling brokenly along the floor; Cowl at his vorpal controls, operating shield generators set in the floor; Saphothere walking around outside the shields as they were flung up, then moving closer as their generators burnt out. Their number had to be finite and Tack knew that Saphothere was a tenacious killer.
‘You two first,’ said Tack, nodding back at the chute.
Aconite did not give Polly time to protest: she reached out, grabbed the girl’s ankle and tugged her yelling towards her, then sent her down the chute.
‘We’ve got twenty minutes at most, then this place is gone,’ said Aconite. ‘I’ll send the dead soldier back for you.’ She dived into the chute after Polly.
‘Saphothere!’ Tack yelled. ‘There’s no time!’
/> The man who had hunted and killed Umbrathane most of his life and who, Tack realized, must have dreamed of this moment for much of that period, did not even look round.
‘Damn,’ said Tack, firing his harpoon into the floor at his feet, then himself dropping down the chute, a friction setting on the winder controlling his descent. When he reached the opening above the sea, it was just in time to see Nandru-Wasp carrying a heavy load to the shore, sometimes skimming the surface of the water, then rising up again.
Twenty minutes before what?
Tack supposed Cowl had placed some kind of destructive device inside the citadel, probably atomic, probably powerful enough to vaporize the citadel right down to the bedrock—lunatics always provided that kind of an out. Tack was now standing balanced on two adhesive mines with his harpoon wound back into its launcher, wondering if the wasp-robot would return for him—when Makali slid down the chute and slammed into him.
One mine gave way, spinning off out into the air, but this was enough to absorb Makali’s momentum, so that when they both fell it was down to the ledge below rather than out past it. Scrabbling to gain traction, they sent stray bones spilling down into the sea. Tack dropped his harpoon launcher and tried to bring his carbine to bear, but Makali successfully knocked it aside and stabbed her fingers at his eyes. He ducked, sliding out a leg to drive his boot into her shin. She toppled, but forwards onto him, driving her forehead into his nose. He then hook-punched her in the gut, but she drove down with her prosthetic arms, demonstrating their mechanical strength. He felt his carbine ripped away from him, and through tear-filled eyes saw that his launcher had fallen to lodge itself next to a half-crushed skull. Makali now tried to turn the carbine on him, but her feet slid out from under her, her shoulder thumping against the pillar as she fell towards Tack, shots punching a line of holes through rusting armour beside him. Tack rolled, grabbing up the launcher and firing it in one move. This close, the harpoon punched straight through her, bonding with a flash to the pillar behind. Still she tried to bring the carbine to bear on him. Tack hit fast wind, and let go of the launcher, which wound itself up to her torso, its flat snout crushing into the open wound the harpoon had already made. She shrieked as she was dragged back against the wall, yet managed to fire the carbine again. Tack rolled off the ledge with her shots scoring the air above him. He had no time to turn his fall into a dive—as sharp metallic legs closed around him in mid-air.
