The Age of Scorpio

by Gavin Smith

  It wasn’t just Britha who opened mercury eyes.

  Bress stalked out of the smoke, bloody sword in hand. Kush raised his axe; Tangwen, her dirk still in Ettin’s skull, grabbed her hand axe from her belt.

  Bress glanced down at Ettin’s body. There was a slight smile on his lips. The smile disappeared as he looked at Britha’s inhuman eyes. She stood to face him.

  ‘It’s still me,’ she told him.

  ‘For now. Your friend is dead,’ he told them, and then, so there was no confusion, ‘I killed him.’ He nodded outside. Kush, Germelqart and Tangwen turned to look. Britha did not; she had felt the violation opening. Circles of blue pulsing light, and through it living, squirming, black, bacteria-like nothings, reached for its antithesis. To what was left of Britha it was like the sky was being eaten by maggots. It sought to touch the Muileartach and make her the same as her sisters, to corrupt the last progenitor.

  ‘No,’ Germelqart said and sat down hard. Kush was praying to the gods of his childhood, forgotten until now. Tangwen started to weep again.

  Blister-like growths broke the surface of the water to the west and vomited forth monstrosities into the water and onto the land, the fruits of a womb poisoned by Crom Dhubh.

  Beneath the wicker man the water was a red froth as the captives from it were attacked from beneath the surface.

  Britha could not bear to turn to look at their failure just yet.

  ‘Will you make me kill you?’ Bress asked.

  ‘We will take our chances in the water,’ Britha told him as quicksilver tears rolled down her face.

  ‘Go lower. I have opened the way for you,’ he told her.

  Britha stepped forward, wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him.

  ‘I must kill you,’ she told him when they had finished, though she was still holding him, looking up at him. He nodded. She noticed that he was carrying the case that Fachtna had borne since he’d known her.

  Bress turned and walked into smoke and flame.

  30

  Now

  A huge gun, shining and silver, held by a monster. Muzzle flash, slide going back in slow motion, used cartridge being ejected. Then the same again. Like getting punched in the chest, hard, except you don’t die when you get punched in the chest.

  Beth gasped for breath and sat upright. She’d been killed. There was an afterlife. It looked like a motorway being negotiated at speed in a bloodstained Range Rover with spiderweb cracks in the windscreen.

  ‘Not professional. It was strange – they had skills but they acted like it was a school shooting spree.’ There was a pause. ‘Yes, download the satellite footage.’ Another pause. She was trying to recognise the voice. She’d been in a gunfight. No, that was ridiculous. She didn’t know the first thing about guns. Even as she thought that, all her knowledge about firearms became apparent to her. ‘I have the possibles. Yes, it’s likely they’ve changed the vehicle’s colour and plates.’ Another pause. His name was du Bois. He’d killed people in front of her. He wanted her sister. ‘We need to stop it. Police involvement worries me because the van’s armoured and they’re heavily armed. They’ll walk through the police but it could get Natalie hurt. That said, we need to stop them and a roadblock is the best idea I have.’ Another pause. ‘They are very resistant to damage. We need more nanite-tipped rounds.’

  Beth turned to look at du Bois. He was driving like a lunatic, weaving the Range Rover in and out of the angry traffic. He was covered in drying blood.

  ‘Understood.’ This seemed to signal the end of the conversation though he wore no headset and she hadn’t heard the other side of the conversation from the Range Rover’s speakers.

  ‘What?’ Beth managed. She didn’t feel hurt, just weak and hungry.

  ‘You have no idea, do you?’

  ‘What?’ she managed again.

  ‘Someone’s put a lot of tiny machines called nanites in you. They’re very advanced. It’s technology derived from one or more ancient alien civilisations.’

  ‘What?’ Beth wondered why he would make this nonsense up.

  ‘You’ll have to cope with the denial later. Suffice to say, unless the damage is too much or there’s too little left of your body, they will put you back together.’ He slewed the Range Rover off the hard shoulder, up the slope at the side of the road and then back down onto the motorway in front of a furious driver who was liberally using his horn to critique du Bois’s driving.

  ‘Where?’ she asked, thinking this would be easier.

  ‘On the way to Southampton airport to stop the very nasty gentlemen who have kidnapped your sister from getting onto a private jet and flying somewhere even less convenient than Hampshire.’ Du Bois drifted the Range Rover across three lanes as they headed up a hill. Beth glanced behind her to see Portsmouth disappearing from view.

  ‘Those people . . .’

  ‘Who? The gunmen? They’re up ahead. Their van has changed colour and they’re driving carefully. I have a satellite link feeding me footage. At least I think it’s them. There are a couple of possibilities.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘The footage? It’s being fed directly into my head. Remember those tiny machines we discussed.’ He was clearly mad. She still had her great-grandfather’s bayonet and suddenly she was hell on wheels in a gunfight and could survive being shot. She saw the faces of the zombies one after another as she’d shot them almost instinctively.

  ‘No, not the gunmen. The zombies.’ Du Bois didn’t say anything, just concentrated on weaving in and out of the traffic. ‘They were dead, weren’t they?’

  ‘They were slaved. Normal people who had been infected with a specific type of nanite that allows someone else to control them.’

  ‘Innocent people?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Beth started to shake.

  ‘Could they have been helped?’

  ‘Given time and resources.’ After he had answered honestly, it did occur to him that it would have been better to lie.

  Beth was not prone to hysteria, or panic, or tears, but she felt a pressure in her chest and was finding it difficult to catch her breath. She was also shaking like a leaf. Du Bois spared a glance at her. He could see how pale she was, even covered in dry blood. He wished he could have this sort of response, a normal healthy response, to having just killed a lot of people who largely didn’t deserve it. Instead for him it was a very cold and clinical, some would say cynical, equation. He would kill tens and many thousands would survive.

  ‘Okay, Beth. If you concentrate you can control this.’

  ‘Control this? Control this! I’ve just committed mass murder with some fucking madman! I don’t want to control this!’

  ‘We had no choice. The death of those people was the fault of the men who have your sister. I need to know if you want your sister back.’ They were on the hard shoulder now, undertaking car after car.

  ‘You bastard.’

  Manipulative or not, he needed her help.

  ‘Undoubtedly. I need you to handle a gun. Are you with me?’ She said nothing but he noticed that the shaking had stopped.

  ‘Why didn’t we just drive away with Talia? This thing’s armoured, right?’ Beth asked, though in the heat of the gunfight it hadn’t occurred to her.

  ‘We were armed to the teeth and very difficult to kill. It never occurred to me that we’d lose.’

  ‘So they can’t be killed either?’

  ‘There are ways, and I’m carrying two now.’ He had his .45 back. It was loaded with the only magazine of nanite-tipped bullets he had. He also had the punch dagger on his belt buckle. Beth didn’t say anything.

  King Jeremy glanced in the side mirrors again. It was definitely the same Range Rover and it was closing on them fast. They must have been augmented somehow, which worried him. He’d heard rumours of other agencies that knew about the lost tech. He’d heard names like the City of Brass and the Circle but nothing more than that. If the goth girl was living tec
h, it could explain why others would be interested. He assumed they hadn’t fallen for the cosmetic changes they’d made to the van. The gunfight had been fun but he didn’t relish another.

  Dracimus was next to him in the van’s cab. He hadn’t stopped talking about the fight and shooting the blond guy. Baron Albedo was in the back looking after the girl and stopping Inflictor from doing anything to her. Jeremy was trying to decide whether or not to try and bluff it or put some more of his uploaded skills into use and drive like he was playing Fire and Gasoline. British cars were boring. He had a pretty good visual overlay to make the whole thing look cooler if he went for it. He wanted to, but getting out of the country stealthily would make life easier.

  Inflictor made the decision for him. King Jeremy heard one of the hatches on the rear window being popped.

  ‘Inflictor!’ King Jeremy screamed. His voice was drowned out by the thunder of big-bore rounds.

  Du Bois was trying to make up his mind if it was them or not. The muzzle flashes, the roar of automatic fire and the sparks on the road helped. It looked like an entire magazine was fired. Du Bois was yanking the steering wheel from side to side, braking hard and then accelerating even harder as he tried to dodge the cars screaming to a halt or that had been hit. The cars that braked got rear-ended. One crashed into the central reservation, flipping into the lanes on the other side of the motorway. A tumbling, airborne car sideswiped the Range Rover. Du Bois fought with the vehicle, feeling two of its wheels leave the ground. He wrestled it back down onto all four.

  Inflictor ejected one magazine and rammed home another. This one had red tape around the bottom of it. He poked it out through the firing hatch and pulled the trigger.

  ‘King J?’ Baron Albedo called.

  ‘Go ahead!’ Jeremy had to shout over the roar of the gunfire. Baron Albedo moved to the firing port in the other rear window.

  Tracer fire filled the air, drawing lines of phosphorescent light between the van and the Range Rover, the lines continuing onwards as the rounds bounced off armour. There were two guns firing out the back of the van now. The second was accurate. Round after round impacted. The first was all over the place, firing at anything that moved, even cars on the opposite side of the road, causing more crashes as cars tumbled and flew through the air.

  Du Bois accelerated, trying to get between the van and other vehicles. Their side of the road was mostly clear. The opening salvo had caused a pile-up that had effectively blocked the road behind them.

  ‘This many rounds, they must be Americans,’ du Bois muttered.

  ‘What now?’ Beth demanded over the sound of bullets impacting and the vehicle’s screaming engine.

  ‘We find a way to stop it without getting your sister killed!’ he shouted back. He hoped that the roadblock would work.

  Then the ground started to shake. It shook so much that du Bois had to slow down to maintain control. He noticed that the van did the same. A crack in the motorway went shooting past – Du Bois almost crashed in astonishment. Something shot up out of the ground and grabbed the underside of the van.

  For a moment he thought they’d run over someone. Which would have been cool. They’d just leave a red smear on the concrete, King Jeremy thought. Then the van stopped.

  Seat belts bit into Dracimus and King Jeremy’s torsos. Talia had been laid on the floor and was slowly being buried in hot shell casings, her head towards the back of the van. Now her legs bent and she almost stood upright against the back of Dracimus’ seat. Baron Albedo hit her hard as Inflictor flew into the back of King Jeremy’s seat.

  There was the tinkling of spent cartridges falling to the floor. Then nothing.

  Jeremy recovered first. ‘Is she all right?’ he demanded. ‘Is she fucking broken?!’ This could not be for nothing, he thought wildly.

  ‘She’s banged up but fine,’ a dazed Baron Albedo told him.

  Du Bois had both feet on the brake as he tried to stop the Range Rover. The four-by-four left a lot of rubber on the road but stopped twenty feet short of the van.

  Beth and du Bois looked in amazement at the tentacle sticking out of the road.

  ‘Is this normal?’ she asked in a small voice.

  ‘It’s really not,’ du Bois said, his eight hundred or so years of experience proving useless now.

  There was the sound of more automotive carnage. On the opposite side of the road a large articulated lorry had jack-knifed in the road, blocking all four lanes of traffic. To du Bois’s eyes it looked like it had been done on purpose. A car swerved and shot up the bank into the air and then turned over. More and more cars hit the truck. One came straight through the lorry’s trailer. In front of the lorry a Portsmouth city bus was coming to a halt.

  Something burst out of the side of the bus. It was moving too quickly to make out clearly, but it had a wedge-shaped head, looked armoured, moved like a predatory animal but was vaguely humanoid in shape, though with entirely too many limbs. Landing on the road, it leaped at the van.

  Something hit the side of the van.

  ‘Hey!’ Baron Albedo said as Inflictor grabbed his Desert Eagle while drawing his own so he had one in each hand.

  The side of the van was torn open.

  Beth opened the passenger door of the Range Rover, climbed out and aimed the FAL carbine through the gap between the door and the vehicle. Du Bois was out of the other side, the Benelli shotgun in his hands.

  Men and women poured out of the bus at a shambling run. There was something wrong with them. With horror, Beth realised that they all looked like the thing that she had fought in the greyhound stadium. Du Bois fired the shotgun again and again and again at them. The shotgun blasts were knocking them down but not killing them, but du Bois needed the nanite-tipped bullets in the .45 for the gunmen in the van. He was pretty sure they were the DAYP.

  There was the sound of gunfire from the van. The six-limbed armoured creature staggered back but did not fall. There were cries of panic from inside.

  The sliding door on the van’s passenger side slid open. Beth watched as the big one stumbled backwards out, firing a pistol in each hand back into the van. She started firing. Aim. Short burst. Correct. Short burst. Repeat. Round after round hit the big one with the inhuman face. She turned him red, firing so quickly that although they were controlled bursts it was almost like she’d emptied the entire magazine into him at once. He stumbled with every impact, bringing one of the Desert Eagles up to fire at her ineffectively. She ducked behind the door, reloaded quickly and then fired another thirty rounds in short bursts at him until he fell over.

  Then the door on the other side of the Range Rover was ripped off.

  Too many. The shotgun was the wrong weapon. He heard the rapid firing of the carbine from the other side of the Range Rover – Beth was holding up her side of things. He fired the last round from the shotgun and let it drop on its sling. By now some of them had made it to the van. He could make them out crowding around the van and dragging someone, presumably Talia, out.

  The six-limbed thing turned and looked at him as if noticing him for the first time. At least du Bois assumed it was looking; he could see no eyes on the bony, ridged, fan-like head. It bounded straight at him with surprising speed. He only just got out of the way as the door where he’d been standing moments before was ripped off its hinges. Du Bois fast-drew the .45 and at point-blank range fired again, and again, and again. The entire magazine was gone in moments. It sprawled across the tarmac, leaking some kind of violet fluid. The .45 was smoking, its slide back. Du Bois stared at the thing. He’d used all the nano-tipped rounds he had.

  Two more of them clambered out of the passenger side of the van’s cab. Unerringly Beth poured fire onto them as they tried to bring their weapons to bear. Driven by a cold rage, she was giving some thought to going over there and sawing their heads off with her bayonet when she had finished shooting them.

  Du Bois ejected the magazine from the .45 and slammed in another. Firing from one knee, he
started putting two rounds into each of the mutated people carrying Talia. They staggered and some fell, but there were too many and he had to be careful not to shoot the girl.

  He stood up, ejected the magazine, reloaded and fired again, walking towards the bus, using a different approach now – shooting them until they went down. Two more hit the ground, but they were still moving. He suspected he was putting a lot of rounds into members of the Solent Sub-Aqua Exploration Club. Another magazine hit the tarmac as a new one was slammed home. He’d grabbed more magazines from the compartment in the back of the Range Rover after the gunfight in Old Portsmouth, but after this one he only had one more left.

  The shot caught him in the shoulder, spinning him around. The ragged nano-fabric woven into the rags of his leather coat hardened, as did his skin. Had he been a normal man, the hydrostatic shock would have blown the limb off. One of the gunmen was firing through the rip in the side of the van. Du Bois turned on him, firing one-handed as he advanced, his left arm rapidly healing. Few of the shots were hitting but they had the desired effect of making the shooter keep his head down. When his left hand could move again, he pulled a fragmentation grenade out of his pocket and yanked the pin out with his right. He let the spoon flip off, his internal systems counting for him. Baron Albedo was firing as the grenade flew into the van.

  The second was down but the third had made it to cover in front of the van and was returning fire. Beth was switching between suppressing him and putting more rounds in the two on the ground to prevent them from healing.

  The van exploded. Beth prayed her sister hadn’t still been in there.

  Du Bois had already turned and was sliding his last magazine home into the .45. The bus was beginning to pull away. He started running, trying to get an angle to fire on the driver. He risked two shots but they went wide. He fired the remaining six into what he was pretty sure was the engine block, but the bus kept on going.

  He heard and his blood-screen told him that there was someone coming up behind him. He turned to see a man staggering across the tarmac, skin and flesh regrowing as he made his way towards him. Du Bois grabbed the punch dagger from his belt buckle and rammed it into Baron Albedo’s throat. The blade of the dagger disintegrated into nanites that surged through Albedo’s systems, quickly overcoming the young man’s own nanite defences as they sought ways to kill him.