Birthright: The Complete Trilogy

by Rick Partlow

  Around the bend was the main worship center, a barrel-vaulted room with a holo of the Martian "face" and pyramids at the center, surrounded by pads for kneeling. On the ceiling was another representation of the Alpha Centauri system, and the walls were decorated by holos of the spiral arm taken by the Scout expeditions of the late 2,160's. The squad fanned out, securing the room's perimeter, found two exit doors.

  Sending half the troopers through one of the portals, I led the remainder myself down the other, into a dark, narrow passage. We were forced into a file formation, with me pulling the second position. I didn't much care for the situation---if the High Priest was indeed down this way, he'd have undoubtedly taken what was left of his acolyte guards with him, and they'd probably be waiting for us somewhere along the way.

  In the end, it was the fact that I wasn't wearing a helmet that saved me. I didn't see any thermal signature, I didn't hear any heartbeat...but near the middle of that corridor, I smelled something, something I couldn't quite pick out. My implant chemscanners identified it a moment later as stray molecules of herbal incense mixed with human sweat, concentrated from my right and somewhere above me.

  I looked up, giving me just enough warning to raise my maser as a heavy-muscled acolyte, clad in heat- and heartbeat-masking Stealth armor, dropped out of an open panel in the ceiling above me. Things slipped into slow motion as my implants took over, but the angle was wrong for a shot from the maser, and I was forced to use it to block the downslash from his blade. It was a broad, recurved knife with a blade only a few molecules thick at the edge, and it sliced through the outer casing of the maser like it wasn't there, but it caught fast in the iridium emitter shielding. I used his momentum to carry me backward, wrenched the knife out of his hand and planted a heel in his gut as my shoulders slammed against the wall.

  My kick rocked him back, but didn't do any serious damage; I was off balance and he felt like he had some serious muscle augmentation. He must have been carrying some hardwired reflexes, too, because he got off the next move before I could regain my balance. Mechanically retractable wrist sabres unfolded with a metallic "snick" from housings on the arms of his Stealth armor, and he lunged at me, whipping the right-hand blade at my head.

  I extended my implant talons with a thought and blocked his blow with my left-side blades, the serrated sabres clashing off my razor-honed talons with an almost musical tone. I could feel the strength in his oversized arm as our weapons tangled, both of us trying to pull free, and I brought up my right talons just in time to take the blow from his other set of blades.

  The muscles in my shoulders bunched up as our arms met at eye-level, like a pair of Greco-Roman wrestlers. Damn it, I cursed softly in the back of my mind. This sort of shit used to be a hell of a lot easier before everybody and his damned brother decided they needed street surgery. Still, I'd faced enemies a lot tougher than this amateur back in the war, and I was still breathing. Time to show this shithead why.

  I gambled he didn't have bone laminants and lashed out at his left knee with my right boot. There was an audible crunch, and the acolyte screamed as his kneecap disintegrated, my heel actually driving his leg digitigrade. He collapsed backward against the opposite wall of the hallway and I jumped out of the way as the trooper behind me zapped him with a disruptor shot.

  We left him where he lay, sure that even if he recovered from the effects of the maser, he wouldn't be going anywhere in his condition. Once upon a time, it would have made me sick to do that to another human being...but after nearly a decade as a cop, I wasn't quite so forgiving with my definition of humanity.

  We travelled the rest of the distance down the hallway unopposed, emerging from the hall into what seemed to be the private chambers of the High Priest. Pretty fancy for a priest, but then we Canaanites have simple tastes. The antechamber was decorated with artifacts from a dozen worlds, lavishly displayed in holographic starfields on cases smelted of pure iridium.

  A carved-wood archway led from the antechamber to the bedroom, an opulent collection of the finest furs and silks on Canaan gathered around a circular bed and a huge, real-wood desk. Seated behind the desk was a tall, well-built human male dressed in a loose-fitting, sleeveless white robe that revealed some truly big arms. His face was perfect, shaped that way by some genetic surgeon; and his long, blond hair was swept back in a well-shaped mane from a high forehead that could have held a minor brain expansion, but the most remarkable thing about this man was his eyes. They were beyond blue; they were iridescent cyan with a glint of gold in them that flashed in the room's dim light. I doubted the color was natural, though the eyes would have to be---the cult didn't believe in replacing healthy flesh with bionics, though they made heavy use of augmentative implants.

  "Come in, my children." The man was unnaturally calm, as if we'd been invited to join him for a late dinner. His voice was...soothing somehow, almost hypnotic, and I suspected he'd had a subsonic harmonizer installed in his vocal chords. "I am the man you seek."

  "We know who you are, Fourcade," I told him, shaking loose of the stupor his voice induced.

  "That name is no longer who I am, my child," the High Priest said. "I have given my mundane life over to the Ancients."

  I drew my Gauss pistol, shoving it under his nose. "Well, to paraphrase my old drill instructor, your can give your life to the Ancients, but your ass belongs to me..."

  * * *

  "So this is our mastermind?" Pete nodded at the High Priest as we brought the man into the outer compound. Fourcade looked a bit less regal in a neural restraint web, but he still seemed to think he was in control, and that bugged me.

  "Everything's nailed down out here, Cal," Jason told me, walking up with McIntire at his heels. Her helmet was on, but I knew it was her from her heartbeat and heat signature---and, from the heat pouring off the cooling vanes of her disruptor, she'd done more than observe. "The medics are looking after the Gomers we stunned. We didn't take any serious casualties."

  I nodded, relieved. "Get some medical crews into the temple. There's a couple bad guys in there and one's pretty busted up."

  "You can destroy our bodies, but not our resolve," Fourcade intoned solemnly. "It is our duty to prepare the race for the return of the Ancients."

  "Shut up," my brother grunted, nudging him in the shoulder with the muzzle of his disruptor.

  "Hey, Pete," I told him, scowling at the High Priest, "you wrap things up here. Jase and I'll take Mr. Wonderful back to the station and see if he's still so talkative."

  He waved at me with his helmet. "Have fun."

  I stepped toward one of the hoppers with Fourcade behind me, guarded by Jason and McIntire. My foot was on the ramp when I heard the whine of the jets, and craned my neck around to see the shuttle coming down in a tight spiral. I knew the shape of it from past experience and didn't even have to see the Patrol Service markings on it to already begin to feel exasperated.

  "Oh, shit," I muttered.

  "Kurisawa?" Jase asked, wincing.

  "Who the fuck else?" I nodded at Fourcade. "Get him inside the hopper, get the hell out of here while I try to stall." I turned to Captain McIntire. "You come with me."

  We walked back down the ramp, while Jason took the High Priest up into the hopper and closed the hatch behind them. This would be close. The shuttle grew into the big, stub-winged monster I knew it to be, kicking up a billowing cloud of dust as its landing jets sucked in air, fed it through radiation-shielded ducts in the fusion reactor and blew it out as a stream of superhot gas.

  The heat slammed down on the compound like an oppressive hand, the roar from the jets growing into a deafening whine that pounded at our eardrums. But most of my attention was focused on Jason's hopper, which was starting to slowly raise from the dirt on the cushion of air from the multiple ducted fans in its broad, flat belly. I tried to use my fervent hopes to help it rise even faster, but it did quite well on its own, nearly two hundred meters up by the time the Patrol shuttle's belly ramp extended
. A dozen Patrol officers marched down it in full head-to-toe vacuum suits, their armor plating gleaming in the light from the shuttle's landing beacons, their heavy pulse rifles held at high port.

  They formed two ranks, splitting down the middle to allow Senior Inspector Shoto Kurisawa to walk down between them. He was a tall man, about a meter-nine with a slender build that showed a lot of time spent in zero-g. His sky-blue uniform was spotless and exquisitely-tailored and his short-cut black hair was fashionably styled. You could tell immediately that he just hated coming dirtside, where he weighed too much and the air was too thick, and the weather was usually miserable. What I hated was the way his nose wrinkled whenever he set foot on my home.

  The expression on his sculpted face was beyond distaste, however, as he stomped down the ramp and strode briskly up to me. His eyes were narrowed in rage, and the veins in his neck were bulging out so violently that I expected his head to explode any second. What I found even more disturbing than his obvious anger, however, was his company on that ramp: a short, broad-shouldered woman with hard, gunmetal grey eyes and severely-bobbed brown hair, dressed in a dark, baggy business suit. She was Trina Wellesley, local Chief Investigator for the Corporate Security Force, and a perennial pain in my ass. Why she was there I had no idea---Kurisawa was a Commonwealth cop with a warrant to investigate the Cult, but Wellesley worked for the Corporate Council and her authority extended only to the mines and the housing projects.

  "Mitchell!" Kurisawa bellowed in my face. "Just what the hell do you think you're doing here?"

  I shrugged. "It was a nice night for a walk."

  "Don't patronize me, you back-country hick! I'll have you brought up on fucking federal charges! Do you have any idea how long we've been investigating these shitheads? And you've blown it all with this Goddamned stupid stunt!"

  "Maybe you should have been doing a little less investigating and a little more acting, Inspector," I shot back at him, deciding to take the offensive. "About four hours ago, these motherfuckers came after me in a chop shop in Skintown, twenty of them with military lasers, and butchered twenty-five people! So don't talk to me about your Goddamned investigation!"

  "Yes, Constable," Wellesley cut in, her tone cold and businesslike, in contrast to mine and the Inspector's. "We've heard about your little adventure in the Corporate housing area---second hand, I might add. I'd like to know how you justify shooting up Corporate property without notifying the Security Force."

  Kurisawa shook his head. "You're in deep shit, Mitchell. And don't think that your Church Council can pull your ass out of this one. You will turn over all your prisoners to my men immediately, along with all the files you've accumulated in our joint investigation, and then I'll sit down and decide if I want to bother to press charges."

  "It's amazing." I grinned, trying to keep the anger rising up in the pit of my stomach under control.

  "What's amazing?" Wellesley wanted to know.

  I looked her in the eye, gesturing at Kurisawa. "The whole time he was talking, your lips didn't even move."

  "That's it!" Kurisawa screamed, fists clenching. He drew his pulse pistol, waving it in my face. "You're under arrest, you fucking smartass! Give me your gun now!"

  I didn't even need to look behind me to know that my troops were beginning to circle around us, weapons at the ready. We outnumbered the Patrolmen, but the masers were useless against their reflective suits.

  Kill him, The Machine screamed at me from somewhere in the distance, still electrified with the adrenaline of the battle. Kill them all... Shut up.

  "I'm not going anywhere with you, Kurisawa," I said contemptuously, slapping the pistol out of his hand so fast his eyes went wide. "You can have your prisoners, but they'd better not show their faces in any of my cities again, or I'll burn them down where they stand."

  I turned away from him, betting he didn't have the testicles to shoot me in the back, and walked over to Pete, who had his Gauss machine pistol held at hip level. "Pete, get the men on the hoppers. Leave the cultists for the hard-shells. We're out of here."

  Kurisawa gave me a look of pure venom as I passed by him on the way to my hopper. "This isn't over, Mitchell. You won't be able to hide behind your men forever."

  "You'll regret this action, Constable," Wellesley said in a calmer voice. "You know you can't fight the federal government for long."

  "Pardon me, Investigator Wellesley." I paused, looking her in the eye. "I wasn't aware that you represented the federal government."

  "I'm warning you, Mitchell," she said in a very dangerous tone. "If you're hiding her from us, you'll go down with her."

  "I don't know what you're talking about," I told her stonefaced, feeling a cold lump settled in my stomach. Despite all Kurisawa's bluster, I knew that Wellesley was the more powerful of the two.

  I walked into the hopper, sat down, and let out a deep breath. Kara McIntire took a seat next to me, shrugging off her helmet.

  "That was damned dangerous," she told me matter-of-factly. I turned and looked her in the eye.

  "You," I said, "are going to my house. They're going to be watching the station---and frankly, I don't trust anyone else. You're going to stay there, under guard, until I think it's safe to move you."

  "What are you going to do?"

  "I'm going to see what our friend the High-Priest has to say," I settled back in the padded chair. "After that..." I shook my head. "God knows. At least we'll have a better idea what we're up against."

  Interlude: Skintown

  Cutter's chopshop stood silent as a grave, its front entrance yawning open, the doors blown inward. Constabulary traffic barriers still stood watch without, their warning lights blinking at the abandoned street, but the blackened pockmarks scarring the outer wall and the blood stains within were the only evidence of the carnage that had played itself out only hours before.

  Sophisticated surgical equipment lay scattered in Cutter's many operatories, yet none of the local lowlifes so much as cast a sideways glance at the building. There was one unshakable law in Skintown, enforced even in death: don't fuck with Cutter. Those who'd ignored this unwritten ordinance had fallen upon unfortunate circumstances, and not even the most desperate Kick addict would test those waters.

  Despite that danger, across from the chopshop, concealed in the shadows of a blind alley, a lone figure watched. Crimson oculars scanned the building front, and a mouth filled with sharpened metal teeth curled in a smile. With a whine of servos and a creak of leather, the Skinganger moved across the street, slipping through the gaping doorway with a careful glance over his shoulder. The impact of his armored boots was a hollow sound echoing off the walls with the regularity of a heartbeat. If the ghostly noise bothered the intruder, he gave no indication of it, treading purposefully down the corridor to Cutter's operator. Surgical equipment was scattered in charred bits across the floor, but he ignored it, moving directly to a seemingly empty corner of the room.

  From a pocket of his jacket, the Skinner's one natural hand retrieved a small magnetic key. Activating its impulse, he waved it over the section of floor and immediately a square a meter on each side opened with an audible click, popping up with a hermetic hiss. The intruder used his bare-metal bionic arm to lift the weighty hatch, letting it crash backward against the wall behind it as he peered at the darkness within the hole with his cybernetic eyes.

  The hatch had covered a tunnel, which stretched down farther than he could see, a ladder mounted invitingly on one face of the passage. The Skinner shook his head doubtfully, suddenly wondering if the risk was worth the corporate scrip he'd been promised. But greed overcame fear and he lowered himself into the hatchway, barely squeezing his broad, half-cybernetic body into the hole.

  Claustrophobia gnawed at him, along with the conviction that something nasty waited for him below---something with lots of teeth and a taste for metal. Unable to see beneath him, he found solace in speed, descending the ladder as quickly as he could. Ten meters later, he emerge
d into a darkened chamber, cold and featureless even to the thermal lenses of his oculars...but for one, solitary glowing star that indicated an active power hookup. Moving carefully, one shuffling step at a time, the Skinner reached out with his natural hand and felt the contours of a switch. Flipping it upward, he was rewarded with a flood of harsh white illumination from the ceiling...and with a clear view of the chamber.

  The Skinner's mouth dropped open, his hands falling to his sides. Stretched out before him was a laboratory at least three times as big as the operating room above, packed solid with the most sophisticated equipment he'd ever seen. One whole wall, from floor to ceiling, was nothing but row upon row of interlinked holographic computer processing units---the latest, state-of-the-art technology that was as close to duplicating a sentient brain pattern as human science had ever come.

  But most of the space was taken up by a huge, transplas vat, hooked into the support equipment by dozens of feed cables. Pink biotic fluid roiled with millions upon millions of laboring nanites---self-replicating microscopic machines---all surrounding a dark, distorted mass, vaguely human shaped...and yet, somehow, not.

  He found it difficult to tear his gaze away from the thing...it seemed to draw him in. But the data spike he'd been entrusted with seemed to dig into his side through the thick leather of his jacket, reminding him of the job he'd come here to do. Fishing the obtrusive bit of crystal from his pocket, he found an input jack in the midst of the rows of computer terminals and inserted it, then stepped back quickly, wary of just what might happen next.

  Seemingly, nothing did. The Skinner relaxed, just slightly disappointed. When he'd seen the lab, he'd imagined something apocalyptic; but, as the minutes passed, he began to wonder if this all hadn't been Cutter's idea of a practical joke. When he'd been hired by the street surgeon, nearly a year ago, the job had sounded pretty screwy: if Cutter were to die, he was to use a certain code number to retrieve a data spike from a rented office across town and bring it to this place, then wait for further instructions. Instructions from whom?