The Beauty of Destruction

by Gavin G. Smith

  He raised his serpent head to look at her. ‘You don’t know how sad it is that he sent you,’ he said.

  ‘Where is he?’ He could hear the hate in her voice.

  ‘You know we were friends once? We could talk. I could make us tea.’

  She raised the suppressed Beretta. ‘Where is he?’ she demanded again.

  ‘You know he would never tell me.’

  The first bullet caught him in the chest. The world seemed to tip sideways and he collapsed against the couch. He could see her soaked, leather clad legs walking towards him. He could feel the bullet eating him from inside. She was standing over him now, the pistol pointed at his head. He wished he could close his eyes but nictitating membranes didn’t work that way. He remembered the city. Fire filled his vision.

  12

  A Long Time After the Loss

  The Monk’s senses desperately tried to compensate for the light and noise above. There were so many different spectrums of destructive energy on display. Successive concussive waves trying to batter them to the ground. She unclipped the coherent field generator from her belt and attached it to Talia’s, set a timer on the mechanism, and triggered it with a ’faced instruction. Her younger sister was still mostly blind and working by touch. A protective amber light surrounded Talia.

  ‘The ship.’ The ’face had come from Churchman. It took a moment for her to understand what he was trying to say. Something hit her, driving her to the ground. Bones in her shoulder broke and almost immediately started to heal. She’d been hit by a piece of the Cathedral, she realised as her sight returned, a piece of ornate masonry melting into the floor, being reabsorbed. She was appalled to feel the Cathedral shake around her.

  ‘No P-sat!’ Vic’s ’face was practically a shout. Churchman picked up Talia. She was difficult to hold in the force field but Churchman’s arms were big enough to cradle her. The Monk had her P-sat clip itself to Vic’s shoulder and she grabbed hold of him. Scab was holding onto Churchman, heading towards the Basilisk II overhead. It looked like they were rising into pure light and noise. She was receiving no tactical data from the Cathedral, she assumed her clearances had been pulled after Elodie had meat-hacked her.

  The yacht’s forward ramp was open like a mouth as Vic landed on it. She hadn’t dared to look into the light but she was aware of a focus for the Cathedral and the Church ships’ weapons, something that was acting like a prism for all that destructive energy, something shaped like a person. It made her nauseous that the Elite couldn’t be destroyed by all this fury.

  Her sight started to return. She could see her sister was lying down in the cargo bay, still encased in the amber light. Churchman was holding a struggling Scab against his neck.

  ‘Don’t kill the AI! Do you fucking understand me!’ Churchman’s amplified voice boomed. The thunder outside was dampened in part by the Basilisk II’s hull. Churchman let Scab go. The bounty killer scuttled away from him like an injured animal, his face painted in hatred.

  She couldn’t understand what was happening. The large, golden exoskeleton stood up and turned to look at her. ‘Find the Ubh Blaosc,’ he ’faced her. She felt her eyes start to hurt.

  ‘Come with us!’ Her voice was lost in the noise from outside the ship but she had ’faced him as well.

  ‘You know I can’t,’ he told her as he walked past. He went down the ramp and stepped off it, his AG motors slowing his fall. The ramp closed and it went quiet.

  The timer on the coherent energy field ran down and the amber light seeped away. Talia was trying to crawl, making a horrible moaning noise as she did. Blood was pouring from blind eyes and deaf ears. Nothing looked life threatening but her sister needed medical attention.

  ‘We need to get out of here,’ she snapped as she moved towards Talia. The tumbler round caught her in the shoulder. Her gi hardened, her skin hardened, but she felt the bullet drilling, chewing up flesh and technology, the explosion nearly tearing off her arm. She heard more reports from the tumbler pistol as she stumbled back and hit the floor. Suddenly there was a big, solid shape over her. Vic was staggering as round after round impacted into him.

  ‘Scab!’ Vic shouted.

  ‘I’m going to fucking kill her! Kill them all!’ Scab roared. Beth grabbed at the hilt of one of her bayonet-shaped thermal blades with her remaining working hand. Her medical systems were trying to repair the internal damage but she didn’t have enough spare matter for the external damage.

  Scab had the large, empty, smoking revolver in one hand and a straight-edge razor in the other, tears of rage in his eyes. He was moving towards Talia. The Monk was aware of waves of force battering the Basilisk II around but its internal gravity was keeping them steady.

  Vic stepped over Talia, all four arms held up in as un-threatening a posture as possible.

  ‘Please, Scab,’ Vic said quietly. ‘Is this the way you want to die?’

  Scab stopped. He stared at Vic. The rage had transformed him. He didn’t look human. It had been a long time since Beth had felt afraid like this. Scab was shaking. He screamed. It sounded like an animal in pain. Then he grinned at Vic and lifted the razor to his face. He made his smile wider and redder. Then he stormed out of the cargo area.

  The dolphin sea boiled. Some of them had made it to their cryogenic escape pods, bridge projectors opening the way for them out of the Red and into the Real. Many more were cooked.

  They had sent the Elite first. Churchman had only seen the one. He was sure it was the sleeping clone of Scab, the one that Patron had called the Innocent. The Elite had almost made it to the Cathedral undetected, moving in an exotic physical state, but there was enough L-tech in the Cathedral’s systems that they had found him. Shifting physical state again, the Innocent had tried to move through the Cathedral’s walls. The semiconductor quantum dots – effectively programmable atoms – that the smart matter was constructed of made the walls seethe. They acted like piranha on an atomic level. Impregnated coherent energy fields had torn at flesh and matter, regardless of how exotic, as the Innocent tried to push through. Ancient alien signals tried to introduce viruses to technology derived from the same ancient sources, while similarly ancient and similarly alien diseases attempted to infect modified biology. The Innocent, caught in the grips of a tailored, violence-inducing nightmare, had pulled itself free of the Cathedral’s walls and into a storm of light and force. Churchman knew that coming through the walls would have cost it. The Cathedral’s internal weapons searched for a spectrum of energy, a physical state for the bullets to sneak their ordnance through. This was not a Monarchist habitat. The Church’s access to S- and L-tech made them far from helpless.

  Then the Consortium fleets started to arrive. Patron must have had some idea of the Cathedral’s position after searching for it for all those millennia, for the naval contractor’s ships to have got there so soon after Beth had broadcast the signal.

  The Church’s fleet had already been moving into position, though many of the smaller craft were inside the Cathedral, concentrating their fire on the Innocent. Their ships were vastly superior to the Consortium’s. The Cathedral’s external weapons were brought to bear as well. It seemed like every inch of Red Space around the Cathedral was filled with beams, EM-driven projectiles, or AG-powered smart munitions.

  So much firepower had been unleashed that the first Consortium capital ship to reach the Cathedral had been destroyed in moments, its ponderous bulk silently coming apart.

  Mass drivers fired meteorites full of servitors at the Consortium vessels. Each servitor was an armoured, wedge-headed, six-limbed predator that the Seeders had created for their own defence. Their crucified image appeared on Church ships, and in Church facilities all across Known Space. Lasers and particle beam weapons cleared a path for the meteorites, and the rain of kinetic harpoons and AG-driven smart munitions that preceded them. The harpoons and fusion warheads penetrated armoured hulls. The meteorites followed and the servitors were unleashed on Consortium military contrac
tor crews.

  It didn’t matter. The Cathedral’s vast energy dissipation grid was already close to being overwhelmed. The massive habitat glowed like a neon sign, smart matter bubbling in the heat, rupturing when fusion-headed AG smart munitions made it through the defensive laser batteries. Churchman knew the Cathedral’s fall, the Church’s fall, was only a matter of time.

  He hid. He found somewhere unobtrusive to do the things he had to. Ordering the evacuation, wiping all knowledge of bridge technology from systems and minds, triggering self-destruct sequences on artefacts that just could not be allowed to fall into Consortium hands, destroying those AIs that could not escape, and murdering key personnel who knew too much – all done with a thought.

  He was wondering why the Basilisk II had still not left. Then the prism of light that was the Innocent moved. Black energy lashed out from inside the light surrounding the Elite. Where it touched the wall of the Cathedral it fed on the smart matter to create a reaction. The front wall of the Cathedral, fifteen miles high, twenty miles wide, blew out. The force of the explosion destroyed Consortium and Church ships alike. The atmosphere remaining in the Cathedral became a superstorm rushing to get out. The dolphin seas stopped bubbling, immediately froze and became icebergs hurling themselves towards the cold red light outside. Manoeuvring engines burned brightly as the ships in the Cathedral were thrown around by the storm. Some were bounced off the walls, some collided with each other and a number of the smaller craft were destroyed by the flying icebergs.

  Molecular hooks anchored Churchman to the floor. Among the chaos of information he was receiving he had lost visual contact with the Basilisk II and the Innocent. There was a moment of panic but just a moment, then he found them. The Basilisk II was on heavy burn, flying against the storm, weaving in and out of huge chunks of ice and other ships, staying close to the floor of the Cathedral where most of the ice was concentrated. The Innocent was chasing them.

  ‘All ships fire on the Innocent!’ Churchman ’faced, dooming himself.

  The Monk carried Talia into the lounge/command and control of the Basilisk II. The pool was still there but the dead dolphin had been removed. Her internal systems clamped down on a surge of vertiginous nausea. Every surface of the room was either transparent or showing visual feed from the heavily modified yacht’s sensors. The fall of the Cathedral was playing out all around them. Scab stood in the centre of the room, a fixed, red, maniacal grin on his bloodied face. He still held the straight-edge razor, but the tumbler pistol had been put away, and there was a smouldering cigarette in his other hand now. He was listening to reggae, loudly. The Monk’s neunonics identified it as ‘Steppin’ Razor’ by Peter Tosh.

  The Basilisk II dropped under a newly formed ice asteroid big enough to have destroyed the ship. The storm of escaping atmosphere buffeted the Basilisk II but the AG field kept them in place as if they were standing on level ground.

  The Monk put her sister down on one of the poolside loungers. Talia was panicking, trying to flail around. She tried to calm her younger sister with touch but it was having no effect, not surprisingly. She tried ’facing a command to the ship for a sedative but found herself locked out of the systems.

  Scab brought them out of, and above, the flying ice field, sending the ship back into a dive underneath a light cruiser that was firing all its weapons at something behind them. They made it past the cruiser and then it split apart as their pursuer flew through it. Something made of light, something that all the Cathedral’s internal weapons seemed to be targeting.

  ‘There’s a fucking Elite chasing us!’ Vic screamed, the air filling with the pheromonic equivalent of the insect shitting himself.

  No, the Monk thought, it’s not chasing us. It’s playing with us. It could finish us any time it wants.

  Then the Basilisk II banked hard towards one of the enormous stained-glass windows. The Elite chasing them drew a line of destruction with its weapon, never quite touching the yacht. More of the Church ships died. They seemed intent on getting between the Elite and the Basilisk II. The Elite burst through a frigate just as the stained-glass window opened for the yacht. They shot out into Red Space, light and destruction.

  ‘He’s trying to destroy me.’ The Monk actually jumped as Churchman appeared in the lounge/C&C. He looked as he had when she had first met him. Perhaps his hair was a little longer, but he was dressed as a Catholic priest. Vic let out a little squeal and drew his shotgun pistol and shot the holographic representation of the Basilisk II’s new AI. The shotgun loads impacted the wall, but the smart matter quickly repaired the cosmetic damage. The hologram glanced irritably at the on-edge insect. ‘I have information you need. Scab is trying to wipe me and the construct containing Maude and Uday. I uploaded it into the Basilisk II’s systems.’ Then the hologram started screaming. Scab was staring at the Elite chasing them. It looked like a ghost drawn in violent energy.

  The Monk was moving. She ’faced the hack to one of Vic’s double-barrelled laser pistols, there was resistance but her hack had won out by the time she’d reached the ’sect.

  ‘Hey!’ Vic started but she’d unlocked the laser’s clip and gained neunonic access to the weapon. ‘He’s the p—’ The Monk got Scab’s attention by repeatedly firing the pistol at his right shoulder. His suit jacket’s energy dissipation grid lit up but was quickly overwhelmed and she blew a lump of steaming flesh out of his upper torso, staggering him.

  ‘There are consequences!’ Scab screamed at her as he raised his good arm. She shot him in the head, once. His trilby glowed, skin bubbled, but it wasn’t enough to overwhelm his hat’s energy dissipation grid. The screaming hologram disappeared.

  ‘I will kill you,’ she told him. Her P-sat was covering Scab as well. Talia threw herself out of the lounger, still panicking. Vic had his shotgun pistol in one hand, the other laser in another, a third was reaching for his lizard-made power disc. ‘Don’t—’ but Vic levelled the pistols at Scab.

  Ahead of them the manoeuvring engines of the Lazerene, one of the Church’s capital ships, were burning brightly as it hove into view in front of them, glowing, its hull bubbling as carbon reservoirs tried to regrow the damage from the constant and total bombardment it was receiving at the hands of the Consortium fleet. Suddenly the Basilisk II was surrounded by light as what looked like all the Church capital ship’s weapons fired on the Elite behind them. The Elite slowed, and pulsed. The Monk guessed it was cycling through physical states. Its weapons lashed out, flickering between different types of attack. Amber light appeared over different parts of the Capital ship’s hull long enough to block or lessen the Elite’s attacks. In other places rents appeared in the massive vessel’s glowing, bubbling hull.

  ‘Stop your attack on the AI and give me total access to the ship. Vic as well,’ Beth told Scab.

  ‘This is pretty good, Scab. You might not get better, but is this a good enough way to die?’ Vic asked his erstwhile partner.

  Churchman was getting information from all over the Cathedral. He was aware that the Consortium ships were inside the habitat now, though still taking heavy fire from the Cathedral’s defences. The Consortium vessels were providing covering fire for troop landings. The Cathedral’s smart matter was giving birth to more of the servitors and the gargoyle statuary, which were part of the smart matter masonry, were coming to life and dropping onto ships and soldiers alike. The servitors, gargoyles, and the remaining militia fought heavy combat automatons and Consortium contractor Thunder Squads, backed by the expendable penal legions.

  The electronic realm was a storm of data raids, attack software and virulent viruses as AIs and electronic warfare specialists attempted to steal the Church’s rapidly diminishing store of secrets. They would be too late, which gave Churchman some solace.

  Part of his fragmented but attentive intellect was aware of the battle between the Innocent and the still wounded Lazerene. The capital ship had not fully recovered from Benedict/Scab’s extensive electronic attack on its syste
ms, though much of it had been refitted.

  Churchman saw the Innocent attack the city-sized ship. The Lazerene countered with coherent energy fields where it could. The energy demand was too high for a coherent energy field to cover an entire ship; even doing it piecemeal as it was now required it to draw on entangled energy fed to it by ancient alien crucibles orbiting in the corona of distant suns, drinking from them like vampiric scavengers. Only having a partial screen up, however, meant that the Lazerene’s own considerable firepower could be brought to bear on the Innocent, though the capital ship was taking a lot of fire from the rest of the Consortium fleet.

  Somehow the parry and riposte of the coherent energy fields and beam weapons reminded him of jousting. He thought of St George and the dragon. He found himself cheering on the doomed dragon.

  The Innocent dived into the Lazerene.

  ‘My master has a question for you.’

  The sensors in the golden exoskeleton that housed his corrupted body were extensive. He was barely aware of the figure standing behind him.

  ‘Let him come here and ask it then,’ Churchman said, and turned around. He had been standing in a corner deep within the maintenance tunnels that ran through the rock the Cathedral had been carved out of or, more accurately, grown from.

  The figure was an eight foot tall ’sect with six arms and a scorpion-like tail. It was leaning on a spear that looked similar to the type favoured by tribal lizard warriors. The figure’s voice had been female. Somehow the Consortium must have recruited a hive queen, though she had to have been extensively redesigned physiologically, as she was much, much smaller than most hive queens. She was, of course, clothed in liquid glass. Churchman loaded all his most virulent S-tech viruses into his matter, and what was left of his flesh, and all his most virulent L-tech viruses into his software and neunonics.