The Age of Scorpio

by Gavin Smith

  Baron Albedo, aka Clifford Sharman, had once been a nice kid from a little town in north-western Idaho who got picked on for being clever. He died on a stretch of motorway a long way from home.

  Du Bois holstered the .45, ran back to the Range Rover and jumped into the driver’s seat, throwing the shotgun in the back. A lot of the mutated people he’d shot were starting to get up. He could hear sirens and there was a helicopter in the air above them. Du Bois prayed it was police and not media.

  ‘Beth!’ he shouted. Beth jumped in. ‘They’ve got Talia.’

  ‘What the fuck were you doing?’ she demanded. He put the Range Rover into gear and gunned it forward. Du Bois ran over Inflictor Doorstep and Dracimus. King Jeremy ran for cover around the other side of the smoking van as they passed. Beth glared at du Bois. He felt her stare but did not acknowledge it. He’d failed her.

  There was no door on du Bois’s side. He reached over and pulled his seat belt on as he drove. Beth did likewise and then loaded another magazine into the hot-barrelled FAL. Neither of them noticed that the tentacle that had exploded out of the earth to bring the van to a halt had gone.

  Du Bois took the Range Rover up the bank at the side of the motorway and into farmland, taking it across country to a road that would get them heading back in the general direction of Portsmouth. As soon as they were on the road he had another one-sided conversation with himself, requesting that the police stay off his back. Then he was requesting more satellite footage.

  ‘Do you know where they are taking her?’ Beth asked. Du Bois nodded and then asked her to get something from the gun compartment in the back of the car.

  Passing over the M27, they got a chance to see the carnage they’d help create, two severe pile-ups, one each side of the motorway. The emergency services were struggling to respond. It had happened so quickly and much of Portsmouth’s fire, ambulance and police personnel would be at the site of the gunfight in Old Portsmouth. Circle influence or not, du Bois didn’t think that he’d be able to get out of this one. Someone would be hung out to dry, and publicly. You couldn’t keep blaming the Muslims. On the other hand, Europeans had been doing that since the Crusades – he of all people should know that.

  Up onto Portsdown Hill, looking down on Portsmouth and Hayling Island next to it, on the other side of the Solent the Isle of Wight, a beautiful fresh sunny day with barely a cloud in the sky. They were in a bus, he thought. How much further ahead could they be?

  Past Fort Southwick, Control started sending the satellite footage directly into his skull. Not dodgy low-resolution, spy-satellite footage, but footage from the Circle’s own satellites, though they pre-dated the Circle; in fact, they pre-dated humanity. He saw the bus pulling into the lock-up at Fort Widley from high above.

  There was no subtlety or stealth involved. Du Bois drove the Range Rover through the rickety wooden door of the lock-up in the Victorian fort, narrowly missing being impaled by splintering chunks of wood. He slammed on the brakes to avoid hitting the rear of the bus.

  Beth and du Bois were out of the Range Rover. Checking all around them. Where their eyes went the barrels of their guns did as well. Beth still had the FAL carbine; du Bois carried the .45 calibre Heckler & Koch UMP sub-machine gun that Beth had got from the gun compartment in the back of the car.

  The lock-up had the same feeling as it had the first time he had been there. Cavernous and empty. They moved through it quickly, searching. Beth found the sacrifices.

  ‘Is this what they want her—’

  ‘I very much doubt it. Focus.’

  Beth shook herself out of it. Du Bois knew that she was very much playing a part at the moment. He’d dropped some high-end skills into her head, and her natural talents and level of fitness had allowed her to keep up and integrate them quickly, but she would pay for it later with migraines that would make her wish for death, and probably with internal bleeding as well.

  He spotted misshapen footprints in the grime on the floor. He cursed himself. He should have checked this place more thoroughly. He should have been more emphatic to Control about the importance of following this up and dealing with it, regardless of whether Control needed every last resource at the moment. The footprints led him deeper into the racks of equipment and down into the tunnels that ran through the fort. He signalled Beth and she joined him. They followed the prints.

  They found the entrance in a storeroom. The passage was seven feet high and five wide. It looked recently dug. The walls looked fused somehow, which to du Bois’s mind wasn’t structurally sound. He glanced at Beth.

  ‘What dug this?’ she asked. Something didn’t look right. There was something more animal than human about this. On the other hand, it might have been her imagination playing tricks, what with all the strangeness of the last week.

  ‘At a guess, the same thing that drove a tentacle through solid ground to stop a van.’

  ‘Everyone wants Talia,’ Beth muttered.

  ‘Stay behind me and watch your shots. The rounds in your carbine will rip straight through people and into your sister; the ones in mine won’t. Any doubts, grab the automatic from the holster at my hip and use that instead, okay?’

  Beth nodded and tried not to think about how many rounds she had put into the air during the fight on the motorway.

  Du Bois didn’t say that if they encountered any more of the armoured six-limbed servitors they were in trouble because he had no more nanite-tipped bullets.

  They crept into the tunnel. Moving swiftly, weapons ready. Du Bois was sure he could hear noises from further down.

  It was a bump in the tunnel floor that gave it away. The walls of the tunnel, the roof and the rest of the floor were so smooth. It looked like someone had kicked up a bit of the floor on purpose. He stopped.

  ‘What?’ she asked.

  He could hear her nervousness. Most of the rest of what had happened today had happened suddenly. Her system had been flooded with adrenaline, which her new augments would know how to use very efficiently if they were anything like his. But this walk into the tunnel was giving her a chance to think. Getting her scared. Giving her mind a chance to trip her up.

  ‘Malcolm?’ Nobody called him Malcolm except his sister.

  ‘Turn back. We need to get out of here right now.’

  ‘What? But—’

  ‘Now!’ They turned and sprinted back to the storeroom and then back out into the lock-up.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Beth demanded.

  ‘I think the tunnel was booby-trapped.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘Would you prefer it if we were down there when it went off?’

  ‘What about Talia?’

  It wasn’t so much that Beth was wearing him down – she had acquitted herself well, much better than most – it was more the day itself. It had been pretty intense, particularly for an operation on mainland Britain.

  ‘I just thought, perhaps unreasonably, that looking for your sister WOULD BE EASIER WITHOUT THOUSANDS OF TONNES OF RUBBLE ON TOP OF US!’ he screamed, finally losing it. Beth held her ground and looked like she was about to shout back. Du Bois was trying to work out how unprofessional it would be to have a cigarette. Meanwhile, he searched through the available information on the Solent Sub-Aqua Exploration Club via the liquid memory of his neuralware.

  The tunnel blew. The door to the storeroom blew off its hinges; the collapsing tunnel squirted rubble out into the lock-up. Beth and du Bois were covered in dust.

  ‘Andrew Coulson, a member of the diving club and a demolition engineer,’ du Bois said, though he couldn’t really see Beth through the thick cloud of dust.

  ‘Did they have any lorry or bus drivers in the club?’ Beth asked. Du Bois thought she sounded a little sheepish.

  ‘Helen Smith, another member, had a full HGV licence, and Brian Wilcox was a retired bus driver.’

  ‘Maybe we should get out of here?’ Beth said.

  ‘What an excellent idea.’

  They
walked back to the Range Rover.

  ‘Do you know where they were going?’

  ‘I have some ideas. McGurk said that Matthew Bryant, the one you fought, was found in a cellar in a house close to the front. If there’s enough left of McGurk I’ll ask him which house.’ Beth looked at him sceptically. ‘I don’t know who or whatever they are, but they have their own access to S-tech.’

  ‘S-tech?’ Beth asked.

  ‘I’ll explain later.’ Or more likely it won’t matter, because you’ll be on a Circle operating table being vivisected, your nanites harvested, he thought bitterly, knowing she really didn’t deserve that. ‘But basically, seeding the local vermin didn’t work. And there’s a city in the way of accurate satellite thermographics, and that’s assuming they can’t counter thermographics anyway, which seems unlikely.’

  Beth was staring at him blankly. ‘Are you just a madman?’

  ‘I’m not. Sorry.’

  She watched an idea dawn on his face and raised an eyebrow.

  ‘When I spoke to Bryant’s wife, she seemed to be hiding something, or holding something back,’ he said.

  They climbed back into the Range Rover as he instantly recalled Bryant’s wife’s address from his memory.

  Down the hill through Cosham, onto the Southampton Road, under the motorway, Port Solent Marina and then Portsmouth Harbour proper on their left-hand side. Across the harbour they could see the grey stones of Portchester Castle. Beth noted that du Bois was driving less like a psycho now. Admittedly the roads were busy but she knew it meant less urgency. Less urgency meant less hope.

  Du Bois turned the battered four-by-four, which was getting some stares – particularly as it was missing a door – into Castle Street. Beth noticed the nice houses down by the castle. She couldn’t even begin to imagine living here or what that world was like. It was more alien to her, almost, than the madness of the last few days.

  The air was full of the sounds of sirens. There were now several helicopters in the air. She could see one close to the Spinnaker Tower at Gun Wharf. She guessed that was over the scene of the gunfight in Old Portsmouth. The others were to the west over the carnage on the motorway.

  Some kids pointed at the Range Rover as they drove by. Beth stared back because she was too numb to think about turning away.

  Everything about the house looked nicely suburban. Beth tried to suppress her contempt. She knew this was based on envy. Right now she would have given anything to live there and be oblivious to the madness that hid under the surface of the real world.

  There was an estate agent’s For Sale sign stuck in the lawn with a big Sold sticker across it. The house looked empty. Du Bois didn’t curse, he just seemed to sag in the driving seat. Then the door opened. The woman coming out looked like she had been attractive when she was younger and had tried to hold on to her looks by using too much make-up and hair dye. She glanced at the Range Rover and put the box she was carrying into the back of a Volvo estate. She glanced at them again and headed back to the house.

  Du Bois concentrated momentarily.

  ‘That’s her.’ He got out of the car and walked towards her. ‘Anna Bryant?’ She turned and stared at him. Apparently she didn’t like what she saw and backed towards the house. Beth got out of the jeep as well. ‘Mrs Bryant, I know we look a sight – it’s been a pretty rough day – but my name is Malcolm du Bois and I’m with Special Branch. We spoke over the phone.’ He reached inside his torn and battered leather coat and pulled out his warrant card and held it up for her. She stopped but still looked like she might bolt at any moment.

  ‘Is this to do with that?’ she inclined her head towards the noise of the sirens.

  ‘I’m afraid so. Can we talk in the house?’

  She looked terrified but swallowed hard and then nodded. She must have worked out that it was something to do with her husband. Suddenly Beth felt absurdly guilty for the part she had played in his death.

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t offer you tea or coffee. We’re moving . . .’ she said, embracing platitudes to put off a difficult situation just a little longer. Du Bois assured her that was fine with a degree of impatience in his voice. ‘Why wouldn’t they let me identify his body?’ she suddenly demanded.

  ‘A possible biohazard issue,’ du Bois lied smoothly. It was the official cover story so the lie came easily. Mrs Bryant looked stricken. ‘When we spoke on the phone I was sure that you were holding something back. We need to know what that is, and we need to know now, I’m afraid.’ She had started shaking her head before he had finished talking.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ The lie and guilt were obvious.

  Du Bois looked angry. Even so, Beth was shocked when a knife appeared in his hand and he rammed Anna Bryant back into the wall, putting the blade up against her throat.

  ‘Look we don’t have—’

  Du Bois was astonished when Beth grabbed him by the back of his coat, spun him round and slammed him into the door frame so hard he fell to the floor.

  Beth stood over him. ‘What the fuck?’ she demanded. Du Bois looked apoplectic. ‘Not everything’s about bloody murder! Do you understand me?! Now you fucking stay down there and think about what you’ve done!’ she continued before turning to the terrified Mrs Bryant.

  Beth managed to calm her down and get the story from her. After she had reported him missing, after they had waited the requisite amount of time, after she had had him legally declared dead, she had seen him in the street, but he had looked odd. She had been too frightened to report it because it would have meant losing the insurance money and calling into question the house sale. She had not said anything because she assumed that he had abandoned her and the children.

  Mrs Bryant had seen him go into a house on Alhambra Road opposite South Parade Pier.

  There was silence as they climbed into the Range Rover.

  ‘You angry with me?’ Beth asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good. I’m really fucking angry with you. Want to take it out on somebody else?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’ Du Bois started the Range Rover, put it into gear and drove off.

  31

  A Long Time After the Loss

  The death of the Basilisk had been brutal. As soon as the bulk freighter carrying the Monk and Scab – hidden in the stomach of livestock – left Pangean space, the Church frigate opened fire on the Basilisk.

  There was no way Scab could receive any form of communication during the infiltration, but even so the name of the game was to hit the Basilisk so hard its comms wouldn’t have time to do anything. All the beam batteries on the port side of the frigate fired, drawing lines of light and spatial distortion to the converted Corsair-class ship. At the same time all the kinetic shot racks were also emptied. The Basilisk’s energy dissipation grid flared briefly before the ship burst and, to all intents and purposes, ceased to be.

  More than a little of the Pangean orbital station the Basilisk was docked with was also damaged. Weapon systems locked onto the St Brendan’s Fire as Pangean naval craft sought to reach firing positions in higher orbits. The Living Cities immediately lodged protests both with the frigate and with Church authorities on Pangea. The Church apologised, explained it was a Church sanction and offered to pay compensation, but behind all their apologies was the unuttered threat of sanctions. The Pangean authorities let it go.

  None of which mattered to Vic. Disguised as wreckage, he was being propelled by a jet of gas towards the St Brendan’s Fire. He was wearing the finest power-assisted combat armour that debt could buy, with some illegal upgrade modifications done by Scab and himself. They had put every bit of naughty stealth technology they could find into the armour, and he was running it with minimal systems.

  He watched the St Brendan’s Fire get bigger and bigger. If it moved, he, no they, were screwed, Vic thought. He’d then have to activate his P-sat, currently attached to the back of his armour in a heavy combat chassis, make his way back to a Pangean orbit
al habitat and try to disappear. Which would be difficult if the Church was after him.

  The Church frigate didn’t move. Vic did get a little worried when the frigate started breaking up bits of rubble with its laser batteries. Fortunately he seemed to be too small for them to go after. They stopped firing on the rubble when an automated Pangean weapons platform put a warning shot across their bows.

  Minute jets of gas adjusted his course. He was aiming for a weak spot in the frigate’s external surveillance, but he knew that his trajectory would have to be just right or he would be detected. Fortunately they did not have a coherent energy shield up. It was just too expensive to keep running constantly, and few people were prepared to attack the Church, let alone on their own. Once again Vic reflected on his own stupidity and cursed the existence of Scab.

  Contact. The glove on his armour stuck itself to the composite hull of the religious warship. He pulled himself down onto the hull. Close by he could make out friezes of alien cityscapes designed to represent the Seeder civilisation picked out on the craft’s hull. He was pretty sure the friezes showed the fall of the Naga. Pulling himself down behind an extruded statue of one of the six-armed, wedge-headed Seeders on its cross, Vic adhered himself properly to the ship. He activated various low-power stealth systems and down-powered himself into a death-like trance, as close to suspended animation as he could get.

  Vic woke. There was just a moment of disorientation and then surprise that they were in Red Space. Then fear as he saw the blackened skeletons of trees. He risked looking around. The strange and massive tree-like skeletons were everywhere. He had heard stories of places in Red Space, xeno-archaeological digs in ancient ruins, some said ruins that predated the existence of Real Space, but he had thought them just stories. He didn’t think such stories being real boded well for him.