by Gary Gibson
If only she could get to see Moss. His presence stained the dataflow, and she’d sensed the twisted hatred filling his deranged mind during one of their brief moments of mutual connectivity. It had been like the anguished howl of an animal caught in a trap, insane with hunger and pain.
A moment later, Dakota had cause to reflect on just how close she had come to underestimating him.
First, the ground underfoot shifted with a tremendous jolt, almost as if she was caught in the middle of an earthquake. But she reminded herself she was standing on the inside surface of an enormous pressurized tube, not on the hard soil of a planet.
The entire ring shook again, this time with far greater violence.
Dakota tumbled, kicking and screaming, her filmsuit activating barely a fraction of a moment before she was slammed up against a wall. There was a sound like a dull crunch, and hairline fractures began to star the dull grey surface of the wall.
An intense screeching sound followed, like God’s own fingernails being dragged down a planet-sized blackboard, the howl of a mighty structure being pushed beyond its design limits. Her implants informed her that the ring – independent of the rest of the station – was undergoing rapid and forced deceleration.
The screeching got worse, and dust filled the air as buildings throughout the ring-segment began to collapse. Through this haze she saw a nearby tower come apart, its debris sliding to one side and tumbling downwards with dreamlike slowness in the failing gravity. She was crushed up against the side of some steel structure by her own inertial force, as a rain of debris tumbled down around her. She didn’t know just how long she might have before her film-suit overloaded, but she had a feeling it would be much sooner than she’d prefer.
Fresh data slid into her mind, and she discovered that Moss had triggered an emergency deceleration system she hadn’t even known existed. Powerful rockets were firing on the outside of the ring, slowing it to a dead halt respective to the hub.
She glanced back towards the spoke she’d just emerged from, and wondered what would have happened if they’d arrived just a little bit later. The spoke-shaft itself had become severed at the top, and was now crumbling downwards, but fortunately not towards her.
A building next to Dakota finally lost its fight with inertia and began to collapse. She threw herself out of the way just as a mountain of debris slammed down precisely where she’d been crouching. Dakota herself was sent tumbling sideways towards an egg-shaped structure elevated on stilts, but the gravity was now much lower than it had been just a moment before. She braced herself by grasping at the tangled ruins of its steel reinforcements as she hit, pulling herself in close to it, her film-slicked body curling up tight.
Dakota glanced upwards, and watched the ring-segment’s ceiling warp and flex as if it was made of cardboard. She finally decided to let go of the twisted metal bars, and float free.
The entire ring was now in free fall.
The derelict’s data-flow was in chaos as she worked at understanding what had just happened. The ring’s three atmosphere-sealed sections had in fact separated from each other and were drifting away both from each other and from the station they’d been connected to until just moments before. This was, apparently, a design feature introduced by the station’s architects against the threat of invasion by a subluminal Darkening Skies fleet, and Moss had found a way to trigger it. As a result, the segment containing Dakota and the derelict was headed straight for the nearby black hole.
Someone was calling her name, and she looked around wildly. Then she realized the voice was coming from an entirely different ring, carried to her through the Piri Reis, which was still locked on to her via the derelict.
She now saw Corso through the Piri’s senses, screaming her name while some malevolent-looking machine-beast moved towards him. She could make out other huddled figures a short way behind him, half-hidden in deep shadows. The machine lurched forward and Corso dashed back to join the others.
She’d told him she’d come for him, and that was true, but reaching the derelict was paramount. She would have the derelict watch over him with one tiny part of her consciousness, as there were other things she needed to take care of first. But if he could just get near the Pin, he might stand a chance.
Loose debris drifted in the air around her, and the ground beneath her feet had been transformed into one wall of a shaft kilometres deep, curving out of sight far below before meeting the opposite bulkhead. Back in the other direction, the complex containing the derelict was, by some minor miracle, still intact. She stared towards it, filled with a sudden yearning to join with it.
And in that moment, Hugh Moss was on her.
He slammed into her seemingly from out of nowhere, and she flailed helplessly as she tumbled away from him. She twisted and turned, struggling to control her path through the whirl of dust and debris that still filled the air. She hit several large chunks of machinery that came caroming through the air. Her filmsuit glowed red, and it was probably only seconds from failing.
At the same time, the derelict allowed her a glimpse of events beyond the space station itself, as seen through the lenses of the engaging fleets. One of the other two ring-sections had collided with part of the hub, causing enormous damage and resulting in explosive decompression across dozens of levels. The third ring-section was serenely spinning down towards the gas giant’s upper cloud layers. Soon it would start to burn up.
All this flashed through her mind in the same instant she saw Moss coming towards her a second time. Her overloaded filmsuit finally abandoned her just when she needed it most, sliding back inside her body through artificial pores.
A knife flashed across the space separating them, and slammed into her shoulder.
Dakota screamed.
Moss was clinging to a nearby wall like he was glued to it. She stared at him as his mouth opened impossibly wide, like the gaping jaws of a snake, a long eel-like tongue emerging from within. He howled, the sound eerie and terrifying.
‘I know who you are,’ Dakota gasped as she drifted back down to what had been the ground. She blinked away tears and stared disbelievingly at the wide hilt of the blade in her shoulder. ‘Swimmer in Turbulent Currents. You’re not even human.’
‘Did your derelict tell you that, Dakota?’ Moss hissed. He clambered down from the wall. ‘Such a pretty thing, isn’t it? So full of promises and wonders.’
She reached up and grasped the knife hilt and tried to pull it out, but a thunderbolt of pain rolled through her like a black tide. Dakota retched, panting heavily. Moss stared at her with twisted amusement as he drew closer, hovering over her.
‘Listen to me, Swimmer.’ She swallowed hard. ‘I know everything. I know why you want to kill Trader.’
‘I couldn’t care less what you know,’ Moss hissed. ‘I’ll make galaxies burn with the knowledge inside your toy.’
From between lank, rubbery lips his tongue slid out like some crimson-black serpent, long and glistening. He ran it across Dakota’s sweat-sheened face as she twisted away from him.
‘Just like old times,’ he laughed. ‘It’s wonderful, Dakota, that you made it this far. You can’t imagine the pleasure it gives me to take so much away from you, when you were so very close to reaching it.’
His jaws opened again, the pallid skin stretching taut over the bones beneath, as he bent towards her throat. She lashed out at him but he caught her hand with ease. She screamed again at the pain from the knife still wedged in her shoulder.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw something hurtle towards them at tremendous speed.
Twenty-seven
A few hours earlier, Corso had retreated despondently, following his almost certainly futile attempt to communicate with Dakota, rejoining Schlosser and Sal Mendez at the rear of the hangar.
After a while, he and Sal had finally started talking to each other. It was obvious Sal wanted some kind of forgiveness, and although Corso was far from sure that was something he could
ever grant, given the place they now found themselves in, it struck him that there were better ways of spending possibly his last few hours of life than simply sitting in stony silence. Schlosser, however, remained mostly uncommunicative, although his eyes still tracked every movement of the machine set to guard them.
Perhaps inevitably, Sal had eventually turned the conversation to politics.
‘There’s been some negotiations with the Uchidans, and I guess that’s a step forward. But too many people still don’t trust them, and some of the deposed Senators are still popular. It turned out that the Uchidans had been holding some of our soldiers prisoners for years, ever since the massacres, and they agreed to return them after the coup. But some of them were changed.’
‘Changed how?’ Corso asked.
‘Just . . . different, somehow. They came back and started preaching to us about the Uchidan faith. Turned out . . .’ he shrugged and waved a hand ‘. . . you know.’
Corso turned to look at him. ‘You mean they were carrying Uchidan implants?’
‘Yes.’ Sal nodded. ‘But they claimed they’d had them installed voluntarily’
‘And had they?’
Sal shrugged as if to say Who knows?
‘I remember hearing stories,’ Corso replied, ‘that it was never true all the Uchidans had implants.’
Sal nodded. ‘Turns out that’s the case. Oh yes, a lot of them have the implants, but many are apparently regular people.’
‘Maybe they’re lying – like the prisoners of war.’
Sal shook his head. ‘The Senate building was stormed during the coup, and they found records of the dissections of captured Uchidans. Some of those dissected carried implants, some didn’t.’
Corso sighed heavily, catching the other man’s eye. Schlosser, meanwhile, continued to gaze unflinchingly at some point beyond the hangar. ‘Tell me, why exactly did you come here, Sal? What did they say to you, or did they force you to come?’
Sal’s gaze flicked away from his. ‘They said after everything you’d been through, a familiar face would help.’
And yet you were the one who stood by while they tortured me. Corso stared at him, speechless, and Sal’s face grew redder under that persistent gaze.
‘For God’s sake, Lucas, I don’t know how to show you how sorry I am. They told me that everything they did to you was necessary, that we had to cooperate with the Bandati or they’d shut us out. I knew what we were doing was wrong, but it wasn’t like it was us alone.’
‘The Consortium – they went along with the whole thing?’
Sal nodded, and Corso was filled with a peculiar determination.
‘Sal, I want you to listen to me. I’ve seen and heard things since that day back on Redstone which make me realize how badly things have to change. If we get out of here alive – if we do – things are going to have to be different. I was listening to Briggs back there; she might have been part of the coup, but I honestly can’t tell the difference between her and Senator Arbenz. There’s a reason the Freehold got booted from one end of the Consortium to the other. We talk self-reliance, but all we do is allow the worst, most self-serving scum imaginable to take charge of us.’
Sal laughed weakly, as if he’d just heard a slightly tasteless joke.
Corso turned to Schlosser, partly to hide his sudden disgust. ‘Do we have any idea what’s going on out there?’ he asked the trooper. ‘Is there any chance someone from the Consortium forces might actually come and rescue us?’
Schlosser shook his head briefly. ‘No word from any of the other detachments. Best scenario is they’re hiding, but scattered all over this station. Worst case, they’re all dead.’
He turned to look directly at Corso for the first time since Dantec had died. ‘You’d better give up on any idea we’re going to get out of here. As far as the Consortium is concerned, we were never even here, and that makes us very, very expendable.’
Before long, three Emissaries returned to the bay, one with a variety of unidentifiable equipment strapped onto her broad back, just behind her tiny mate. The other two entered the hangar and headed straight towards the rear. Corso and his two companions shuffled back into the darkness, trying to retreat as far back between the bulky tanks as possible.
Schlosser, it turned out, had been hiding a final ace up his sleeve for precisely this moment.
He reached down and pulled out a slim black stick which had been tucked into one of his boots. He threw this directly under the broad feet of the oncoming Emissary as she thrust her trunk-tentacles between the tanks, and began reaching for them. The stick exploded noisily and the Emissary buckled at once, roaring and trumpeting with pain as one of her legs was reduced to a bloody ruin.
The second Emissary roughly shoved her injured companion out of the way, ramming her head between the tanks and grabbing Schlosser’s arm. Corso and Sal tried to hold on to him, but were no match for the creature’s strength.
Schlosser was dragged, kicking and yelling, out into the open space of the hangar. Corso assumed the beast would kill him, but instead she wrapped him up in her tentacles and carried him over to where the third Emissary waited near the entrance.
Though the injured Emissary still lay wounded by the tanks, and was clearly in some considerable distress, her two companions ignored her entirely. Schlosser, meanwhile, was proffered to the one bearing the equipment, while the one that had seized him began offloading the same equipment from its companion’s back.
‘It’s setting up some kind of framework,’ Sal mumbled, peering out around the side of a wall-mounted cylindrical tank.
The Emissary was now busy assembling a pyramidal shaped arrangement of lightweight tubes, with a variety of straps and harnesses hanging from its apex. Schlosser meanwhile continued to struggle, but was firmly pinned to the floor by his guardian’s trunk-tentacles. The injured Emissary now lay in the centre of a growing pool of ochre-coloured blood, and was clearly growing weaker. Once the assemblage was complete, its constructor took charge of Schlosser again, hauling him up from the hangar floor and dangling him inside the framework, while her companion began securing their prisoner with the straps and belts, until the trooper suspended inside the assemblage was entirely immobilized.
Schlosser kept screaming at Sal and Corso to run, but they couldn’t move with the guard-machine still hovering outside the hangar entrance. Corso knew exactly what would happen if either of them tried to make a break for it.
He watched in horror as cables emerged from a small box positioned at the apex of the pyramid of tubes. Writhing like snakes, they reached down for Schlosser and began to dig into his upper shoulders, back and skull. He screamed, a horrible, wretched sound, and blood oozed down his torso as the serpent-things worked their way deeper and deeper inside his body.
‘I know what they’re doing,’ Corso gasped, forcing bile back down his throat. ‘It’s what the Bandati were planning to do to me: take my head apart and dig out my memories.’
Schlosser now hung silent and limp, having most likely passed out.
They’re going to take our minds apart until they find me, or Dakota – or anyone they think can get them inside the derelict.
Schlosser’s body then began to jerk, as if he was being electrocuted. The Emissary tending to him stepped back, and the snakes continued to writhe around their victim.
‘Fuck this,’ Sal choked in a whisper. ‘I’m not waiting for that. I’d rather let them kill me.’
Corso grabbed at him just before Sal pushed his way out of their hiding place. ‘Wait a second, just wait. You’ll never make it. They’re standing between you and the exit, and there’s that guard-machine as well.’
‘I don’t want to fucking make it,’ Sal rasped. ‘I’m just hoping they kill me quickly. Anything . . .’ He stared at Schlosser, hanging limply from the tubular assemblage. ‘Anything but that.’
Corso realized with a shock that Schlosser’s eyes had reopened and were now staring towards them.
&nbs
p; He began to speak.
‘Don’t try and run or they’ll kill you.’ The words came from Schlosser’s mouth, but the voice sounded querulous, childlike, utterly unlike the hardened soldier Corso had come to know so briefly.
‘I take it back,’ Corso muttered to Sal. ‘If we both go different ways, maybe at least one of us stands a chance.’
‘Wait. They . . . they can hear you,’ Schlosser called over. ‘They understand what you’re saying.’ He winced in agony as the snake-machines wriggled briefly. ‘They say if you get them inside the derelict, they’ll let you go.’
‘Why should we believe them?’ Corso called back, now eyeing the Piri Reis.
‘Please . . .’ Schlosser’s eyes finally seemed to come to life, staring at them with desperation. ‘Please, you don’t know what it’s like. You really don’t. I can’t take . . .’
‘Tell them about Dakota,’ Sal muttered in Corso’s ear. ‘She’s the bitch responsible for us being here. Tell them where to find her.’
‘Shut the hell up,’ Corso snapped.
‘She’s a machine-head, you stupid shit.’ Sal stepped a little way from their hiding place and called out to the Emissaries. ‘You need Dakota Merrick. She’s the only one who can fly the damn thing.’ He pointed to Corso. ‘And if anyone knows what she’s doing right now, he’s the one.’
Corso grabbed at him, but Sal pushed him back, knocking him to the ground.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ Corso screamed up at him.
‘You know we’re both dead meat if we don’t give them something – if they can get inside his head like that, they already know it’s you they’re looking for.’
