The Age of Scorpio

by Gavin Smith

  The fifth and final member of the team was also significantly hard-tech augmented, though with some interesting soft-tech enhancements as well. The lizard was obviously a berserker. Their close-in specialist. Once berserk, he would be little more than an unpredictable scaled weapon.

  ‘Seeder’s sake, that’s a heavy crew,’ Vic said, wishing he could whistle through his mandibles. The ’sect ’faced to local comms and found that Jide’s crew weren’t much below Vic and Scab in the bounty-killer ratings. They specialised in taking down heavy high-profile targets. ‘Wonder who they’re here for?’ But Vic already had a sinking feeling. Scab turned to look at his partner. Scab’s milky eyes were hidden behind the lenses of his sunglasses. Vic looked at the holography and then back at Scab. He thought he detected the ghost of a smile on the human’s face. ‘They could actually do it!’

  ‘Then I’ll be dead and you’ll be free,’ Scab said and turned back to stare at the transparent ceiling. All around was the light and metal of busy high orbit. With a thought Scab rolled the Basilisk until their subjective up was looking down at the cloudy planet.

  Vic didn’t need to download any information on Pythia; everyone knew the story. It hadn’t been called Pythia originally. It had been one of the first planets to be colonised by lost humanity. Overcrowded, its environment and resources were exhausted after centuries of habitation. Unrestricted nanite use led to overwhelming nano-pollution which first became a health risk and then a global pandemic. The solution was more nanites, a tailored viral nano-swarm designed to eat all the others and then destroy itself. However, the design team of the consumption swarm had been infiltrated by a nanite rights terrorist organisation. Instead of consuming the planet-wide nano-epidemic, it became its operating system and united it as one god-like swarm. The first thing the Pythia virus did was become a wind that blew across the planet, eating layer after layer of the planet’s inhabitants’ flesh. Flaying them down to picked-clean polished bone and then eating the bone as well. Pythia simultaneously became the planet’s only sentient inhabitant and a civilisation in its own right made up of uncountable millions of tiny individuals.

  This caused panic in the Consortium systems. Pythia had made it quickly into orbit, its unparalleled processing power allowing it to hack even the most secure military systems if they were ’faced. If they weren’t ’faced then they could still be hacked, assuming a self-replicating mote of dust could get close enough to them.

  The Consortium navy blockaded the bridge points. The navy sent entire battle groups after ships containing Pythia, and hired veritable fleets of bounty ships to do the same. Pythia was tracked down and destroyed, all except for the original planet. There was a battle between Pythian-held orbital weapon systems, the Consortium navy and at least one member of the Consortium Elite at the time. Pythia was eventually eradicated from orbit.

  Nobody was quite sure what to do about the planet. Destroying it was a risky proposition because nobody could guarantee that wouldn’t just spread the nanites across system space. Blockading was another possibility, but people would always try and find a way back for whatever crazy reason they thought they had. Tailored seek-and-destroy nano-swarm bombing was the only real option, but that had not worked well the first time.

  Then Pythia surprised the Consortium by offering to negotiate. Pythia felt it was no different to the uplifted races. Its expansion was viral in nature, it needed to consume matter to procreate, and like all living things it wished to do so. Its attempt at expansion was just an attempt to secure such material.

  Eventually a deal was brokered whereby Pythia was given free access to Known Space’s comms networks. Its signal, in the form of intelligent search programs, was carried from beacon to beacon throughout Red Space. Pythia agreed not to attempt to control systems and allowed that to be written into sophisticated comms filters that any communication from the surface had to go through. All the search programs did was try to find every last bit of information. Ever. Then bring it back to Pythia. Pythia would then sift through the information, data mining on an enormous scale, piecing together tiny disparate bits of information to make astonishingly accurate predictions. It did this without ever violating secure systems, though some of the more sophisticated AI search routines were not beyond bribing people for information.

  Meanwhile, Pythia ate. It ate every building and machine on the planet, everything made by uplifted hand. It made more and more of itself. Its processing power increased. Then it started eating the surface of the planet, stripping it away.

  The information supplicants paid in matter. Either the debt relief they paid went into buying more matter or they just sacrificed the biggest item they could for what they wanted to know. Each sacrifice made Pythia more capable.

  The clouds in Pythia’s atmosphere were thick swarms of nanites. Breaching the atmosphere was a death sentence. The swarms would consume anything before it got close to what was left of the surface. There was some concern as to what would happen when the swarm consumed enough of the planet to destroy the magnetosphere.

  Vic was looking subjectively up at the whorls of cloud in the atmosphere beneath him. Much of it looked violent. Ionisation made lightning play across the data storms that composed the think tanks for the more difficult questions that had been asked.

  ‘Look,’ Scab said, and part of the Basilisk’s transparent hull magnified. Vic watched as explosive bolts on orbital tethers released the carcass of a stripped parasite ship from a sacrificial orbital ship cradle. The massive ship with its insectile legs was designed to latch on to an asteroid and process the matter into carbon, which then filled the ship’s inflatable cargo bladders.

  Automated tug engines flared in the night, pushing the craft towards the planet at a perilously steep entry angle. Once manoeuvred into the correct trajectory, the engines separated and started their return to the orbital cradle. Scab slowed the Basilisk to watch the ponderous ballet of the parasite ship’s last voyage. Ever a keen witness of destruction, Vic thought. As it hit the atmosphere the flare lit up one whole side of the planet’s sky. There’s an element of show to this, Vic decided. Looking around, he realised that some of the more luxurious habitats had gently tipped themselves, manoeuvring engines glowing as they did so, to allow better views for their wealthy patrons.

  The ship died in fire, becoming a rain of flaming debris. The clouds swarmed across that debris, consuming it. From Vic’s perspective the clouds seemed to be lit with their own internal fire across to the planetary horizon.

  ‘That was our sacrifice,’ Scab told him. Vic was no longer surprised by how ludicrous their sponsorship was.

  ‘How long?’ Vic asked.

  To an extent, time was meaningless. Everyone had their own standards depending on their home planet, and most people tailored their physiology to the planet’s day/night cycle, assuming it had one, regardless of their species’ original home. In space, people either used Consortium or Monarchist standard time.

  Consortium standard time was based on a twenty-six-hour standard cycle that was apparently human basic from before the Loss. Most felines felt it was unreasonable to be expected to stay awake for two thirds of such a long period of time.

  Vic had felt the familiar sense of entrapment when he heard the solid metal-on-metal sound of the Basilisk being grabbed by the high-security habitat’s docking arm. Then they had walked through anonymous corridors that could have belonged to any cleanish midrange hotel anywhere in Known Space. His own room was small but blessedly designed for ’sects. More to the point, he could pretend he had privacy from Scab – who knew, maybe he actually did. Though that thought made him itch in the back of his skull.

  They had been extensively checked for weapons. Most of their day-to-day stuff was fine. Illegal S-tech was completely out, so Scab left his energy javelin and the Scorpion on the ship. Both of them had had to divest themselves of some of their nastier virals and modify their nano-screens to be less abrasive. Their P-sats were fine, but they had to
downgrade some of their systems a little. Scab had had to drain some of his more advanced liquid software out of his skull as well.

  All this had been just over six standard cycles ago. The room that had initially been a welcome change from the Basilisk was now another small prison. Vic had exhausted most of the room’s entertainment suite’s options. After all, ’sect-on-human porn immersion was a niche market.

  Vic was lying on the transforming piece of furniture that was the only place to sit, lie or sleep in the room, staring at the ceiling through his multi-faceted eyes. He had experienced reading a text file in a colonial immersion and had tracked down and tried reading one for entertainment. It had been exhausting. He couldn’t get his head round having to create the images with his own mind. Now he was just wondering if it was possible to die from boredom and self-abuse.

  It took a while for Vic to realise what the tapping sound was. He only realised that it meant that someone was hitting his door wanting to enter because he’d experienced this phenomenon in the same historical immersion that he’d seen the text file in.

  Vic deleted the ability to read from his current neunonic applications and ’faced an order to the room for the door to open. Scab was standing there. Vic was relieved to see that he was fully clothed in brown suit and raincoat.

  ‘I’m bored!’ Vic shouted at him. Scab nodded and lit a cigarette.

  ‘I can see that.’

  ‘Have they finished cogitating?’ the ’sect asked, trying out the taste of a new word. Scab almost raised an eyebrow but instead shook his head.

  ‘Coming?’ he asked.

  The Basilisk was still docked back at the high-security habitat. Scab had reconfigured the smart-matter hull and hacked the ID code. It wouldn’t be enough to hide from the Church as they could sense the bridge-drive signature, but it might help against some of the less-than-thorough bounty killers.

  They had taken one of the shuttles to a more interesting entertainment-based habitat. Vic should have been a more than a little nervous about this, but boredom had turned his mental capacities into a kind of grey-coloured slush, and a week of immersion porn made him want to touch real human flesh.

  They were in a multi-level mall. The smart matter was designed to look like dark-green, white-veined marble with arched iron bridges over a vast atrium and food court. Some of the food concessions even had automaton service rather than just assembler-dispensing nipples. One of them even had sentient staff, but Vic had decided that was a little sick and demeaning for the employees, particularly when they could have found employment in one of the real-flesh brothels.

  The ceiling was transparent and the habitat was tipped to look down at the planet. Looking up made you feel like you were about to fall towards the cloudy nano-swarms.

  Vic was looking up, using his antenna sensors to avoid colliding with other pedestrians. His P-sat bobbed along above him, augmenting the sensor data, not that this was required for anything other than simple obstacle navigation as most of the other patrons were giving the seven-foot, hard-tech-augmented ’sect a wide berth.

  Vic felt Scab stop. His P-sat had transmitted the reason why before he lowered his head and saw for himself through his multifaceted eyes. It was inevitable, Vic decided. After all, their job was to track people. Obviously they were going to find them, even if it was by random chance. Vic decided that he was not what the humans called lucky.

  Jide was standing in front of Scab. There was a flicker of something on the feline’s game face. Later, Vic would run it through various analytical routines. He came to the conclusion that it was a moment of surprise. Then Jide read the situation.

  The man-plus twins let go of each other’s hands and continued walking around Jide towards Vic. The lizard and the human half-and-half held back. Seven P-sats rose towards the transparent ceiling. It was only because the reactions of everyone involved were so wired that these moments stretched out, Vic thought as he backed away from the muscle-bound twins.

  Jide was close to Scab, so close it looked like they had been about to bump into each other. Vic couldn’t understand why that would have happened. He also didn’t understand why his own sensors and those of his P-sat hadn’t picked up the other bounty killing team. Things weren’t making sense.

  The twins closed on him. He knew that bid and counter-bid with Pythian subcontractors would be going on. Jide would presumably be asking permission for violence and Scab counter-bidding to avoid it. Vic hoped. Vic’s hand was close to the butts of his pistols but the twins were closing too fast. They wanted to mix it up with him. Vic knew that if he drew before they had permission, the habitat’s security systems would vaporise him, at best.

  Vic and Scab’s P-sats were engaged in an electronic cold war with Jide’s crew’s P-sats. So far they were holding their own, as jamming signals confused sensors and countermeasures fought shutdown and control hacks.

  Media P-sats came zipping across the mall towards them. A number dropped from the air as rival media providers engaged in their own electronics warfare for ratings.

  The habitat’s security systems granted carte blanche permission for violence. No restrictions within current capabilities.

  Jide swung at Scab. Scab placed his hands on Jide’s furry head and shoulders and jumped over the feline’s muscular arm, landing just behind a surprised Jide, face to face with the lizard berserker. The berserker was swelling, internal carbon reservoirs rapidly being converted to muscle mass as natural and artificial rage and speed-enhancing chemicals flooded its body.

  Scab fast-drew his tumbler pistol and shot all six rounds into Jide’s back at point-blank range. Jide’s armour and hardened flesh just about coped with the first four shots but the spinning rounds were designed to penetrate armour. The final two penetrated; secondary charges detonated inside Jide, sending the bullets spinning and fragmenting through the Rakshasa’s body.

  Scab rammed his synthetic diamond-tipped smart blade metalforma knife through hardened armoured flesh and soft-machine-augmented muscle into the back of Jide’s neck, then sent the blade a neunonic command to widen and grow in the wound, the small carbon reservoir in the hilt providing the necessary matter. Scab forgot about Jide.

  The twins charged. Vic’s triple-barrelled shotgun pistol appeared in the hands of his lower limbs. ’Sect knees bent in the opposite direction to the rest of the uplifted races’ knees. He bent his left leg, balancing on the right, bringing the foot up to the bottom of his abdomen. He let the twins close with him and then emptied all three barrels into the left twin’s face at point-blank range. The explosive-cored flechette penetrators turned it into a red ruin. He staggered back.

  Vic’s left foot then shot out. Humans never expected kicks like this. The power-assisted prehensile claw that was his foot hit the right twin’s knee and tore through it, leaving a mangled mess of metal, hardened plastic and carbon fibre. Right twin did not scream but his leg shot out from underneath him and he face-planted into the mock marble. Vic knew that all he had done was buy himself time.

  The P-sat’s cold war went hot. It turned into a strobing red shooting war as they zipped around the bridges, using them for cover while they continued screaming their electronic war across ’face connections.

  Scab ducked under the blade of the berserker’s smart sickle, stepping to the side and giving his opponent the slightest push in just the right place to keep him off balance.

  The half-and-half was doing a backward one-handed cartwheel, the other hand throwing explosive burrowing knives. Keyed to Scab’s EM signature, the knives’ guidance systems would take them round the lizard berserker.

  Above them, one of the twins’ P-sat’s energy dissipation grids was overwhelmed. It glowed red and then exploded.

  Jide just stood still.

  An electronic warfare burst from Scab’s P-sat jammed the burrowing knives thrown by the half-and-half, and Scab ducked under them as the berserker turned back towards him.

  Scab dropped the tumbler pistol and rai
sed his right arm. Razor-sharp discs flew from the lizard-made disc projector strapped to his arm. Like the knives, the discs were keyed to their target’s EM signature.

  As the discs opened up the tumbling half-and-half’s face and side, Scab drew his spit gun with his left hand, the gun’s ergonomic grip moulding to the contours of his hand. He jammed it into the side of the berserker’s head and with a thought started firing. The weapon’s solid-state bullpup magazine was eaten up, disappearing into the weapon’s barrel quickly, used up by the spit gun’s ferocious rate of fire. The flechette penetrators buried themselves inside the berserker’s skull, the envenomed needles fragmenting. The berserker howled and grabbed the back of his head. It would give Scab moments, but that was all.

  Vic’s lower right hand flicked the triple-barrelled shotgun open. His lower left hand snatched the lizard-made power disc from its clip in the small of his back and threw it in a wide arc, transmitting target data from both himself and his P-sat. His lower left hand then slid three rounds into the shotgun. As he did this, he leaned forward and used power-assisted metal to dig his two upper arms into right twin’s flesh.

  Right twin screamed as bladed fingers pushed through armour and into flesh. Vic straightened up and threw his opponent into the air. Then the bloodied hands on his upper limbs drew both his double-barrelled laser pistols. With rapid disciplined thoughts he neunonically transmitted orders to fire to the semi-automatic pistols. Right twin’s energy dissipation grid lit up, turning him into a red neon silhouette flying through the air.

  Vic’s energy dissipation grid lit up as he started taking fire from one of the P-sats. Keeping one pistol on the twin, he moved the other to fire at the P-sat.

  Despite his ruined face, left twin was trying to bring a short-barrelled disc gun to bear. Vic’s lower right hand snapped the shotgun pistol closed. His abdomen rotated slightly for a better shot and he fired. The three rounds left the barrels of the shotgun pistol. The sabots fell away and the miniature ramjets on the micro-missiles ignited.