by Neal Asher
Cormac rubbed his eyes then turned to Gant. "How far do you estimate we are from those Theocracy landers?" He tried to keep bitterness out of his voice.
"Not far now," the Golem replied, looking ahead. "I can see the heat haze from here."
Cormac glanced at Fethan and noticed a hardening of the cyborg's expression. That same hardness had appeared in him when Mika reported that the signal from the exoskeleton had ceased. That event had occurred at the same time as the laser hit, so it seemed unlikely that Apis or the girl Eldene were still alive.
"We never really thought about it, but why did Skellor hit them?" Thorn asked.
"We're not totally sure he did," said Cormac pedantically. The massive communication over com — before it had gone dead — gave that impression, or rather what Thorn and Gant had described of it did. "But if he did, then the reason is obvious: he's knocking out all forms of space transportation prior to burning this planet down to ash."
"There you go: always the optimist," said Gant, but his effort at humour was wasted.
"You're that certain this is Skellor's aim?" asked Fethan.
"Call that scenario one," said Cormac. He glanced at Gant, and added, "The least optimistic one." He went on, "I know for certain this man will go to any lengths not to let the Polity become aware of his existence. Whatever way he sets about it, he'll want us dead." He looked now at Mika, who had been very much silent since informing them about the loss of signal. "What's your estimation?"
Mika winced at this assumption of her specialized knowledge. "He will not want to lose what he has acquired. The Polity would only take it away from him," she said, discomfited by her own reasoning and how it might apply to her.
"An assumption we have to work with," said Cormac. "Now, changing the subject, perhaps one of you can tell me what the fuck that is over there."
Gant spun, and aimed his APW. Thorn did likewise with his.
"Where?" they asked simultaneously.
"There!" Cormac gestured with the barrel of his thin-gun.
The half-seen bulky shape, crouching in trampled and pummelled flute grass that resembled a flash-frozen stormy sea, seemed to shrug with resignation at being spotted. Then it rose up on its hind legs.
"Scabble-dobble-log?" it wondered, unfolding its sets of forearms like some nightmare melding of the goddess Kali and a tarantula.
"Keep moving," said Fethan. "We're safe while it's talking. It's when you can't hear 'em you gotta worry."
"Who told you that?" Gant asked.
"Well… everyone knows that," Fethan replied, looking unsure.
Cormac observed the curving row of slightly luminous green eyes set into the white dome of the creature's head, as it watched them move on past it. When it was upright like this, those eyes were perhaps three metres above the ground. The claws terminating its multiple forearms were the size and shape of bunches of bananas, only bananas made of obsidian and sharpened to points glinting in the morning light. He had no doubt that Gant and Thorn could take this creature down with the weaponry they had, so maybe there wasn't a great deal to worry about. Then he suddenly felt very stupid, for there was something else he had forgotten about.
"Gant, Thorn, power down those APWs right now," he said. As they looked at him queryingly, he pulled Shuriken and held it ready to throw. "Something I neglected to remember is that Skellor would easily pick up the UV and radiation flash, so we might just as well be sending him an invitation to come and get us."
Reluctantly the two of them lowered their weapons and flicked certain controls on them.
"Dooble-ooble-caro-flock," the gabbleduck told them, obviously approving.
"Keep moving," said Cormac.
Soon the gabbleduck lost interest, and ducked back out of sight. As they headed on, Gant placed the two APWs in his pack, and armed himself and Thorn with two pulse-rifles instead. Almost as if something had been waiting for this, they heard huge movement in the flute grasses behind and over to one side.
"Run," ordered Fethan. "I'll try to lead it away."
"The gabbleduck?" asked Cormac as they broke into a trot.
Fethan appeared puzzled as he listened to the rushing sound. "No… definitely not. Hooder, I think. Something really big, anyway." He beckoned to Gant, and then he and the Golem split off to one side.
"Fuck," Thorn gasped out. "Gant's got the APWs."
"Gant'll be back… if they can't lead it away."
"Yeah… great," Thorn managed.
Saving his breath for running, Cormac did not continue this conversation. Unlike the cyborg and Gant he did not have an option. Keeping his hand tight around Shuriken, he watched his footing and just kept going. Glancing up, he saw something boiling into the air and surmised this was from the landers, and that he was getting close. When something heavy crashed past him, he turned to throw Shuriken but desisted when that something said, "Scabber-abber-abber," accusingly and accelerated away, its gait lying somewhere between that of a cheetah and a caterpillar.
"What the hell!" shouted Thorn, when something else went growling and hissing across in front of them, its hide not quite changing fast enough to match its surroundings, so for a time there were strange misplaced animal imprints in the air. Behind them, the rushing sound in the grasses was growing louder and louder — but now much less specific, for it seemed to stretch out on either side of them as well. Suddenly Fethan and Gant were with them again, as they came out onto open ground where the vegetation had been seared and flattened, and wrecked landers formed a wall of ruptured metal carcasses and scattered engine cowlings like giant cored olives. Coming to the nearest of these wrecks, Cormac stumbled to a halt, the others stopping with him.
"APW!" he shouted at Gant, but the Golem did not seem to hear.
"Bloody hell," said Gant.
Cormac glanced at Fethan, who for the first time looked utterly perplexed. Now, turning his attention back the way they had come, Cormac realized there was something very odd about this sound: a kind of slapping vibration like… like feet? Stepping up onto an engine cowling, he saw huge movement cutting towards them through the grasses, and shapes moving fast in the purple spaces between vegetation clumps. One of these shapes now leapt from a tangle of both new and old stalks and, trailing papery fragments and coloured buds, it thumped down into a crouch before them. This first one snarled, drawing lips back from its curving white teeth, as its fellows stormed out behind it. Dracomen — thousands of them.
19
"Third to the valley of the Hooded One came Brother Egris, and seeing how Stenophalis and Pegrum had failed, he was undaunted."
The Valley of Shadow and Whispers now resembled the aftermath of an explosion in an abattoir, and if seeing that mess did not put off Egris, then he must have been stupid and deserved everything he got.
"Astride the valley, he was silhouetted black against Calypse, and did not shine in his armour of iron, as he demanded of the monster below him, 'Come forth and face me! "
The woman shook her head and drummed her fingertip against the cold page. "Bad move, Brother. You should have left it to that arsehole Nebbish."
Strangely, Egris seemed to look out of the page at her for a second, as if annoyed at her interruption, before turning his back and gazing into the coagulating darkness below him.
"The Hooded One came forth, and he smote it with thunderbolts until its scutes flamed in the air, the very ground smoked, and all that grew nearby was burned to ash."
The woman pulled her finger away from the page, because the memory fabric had suddenly warmed as Egris began using some kind of unlikely weapon it seemed idiotic to use when clad from head to foot in metal The thing he held — something like a chrome saxophone with an image-enhancer sight — hurled lightning into the shadowed cowl, causing glassy things in there to glow like filaments.
"But thunder availed him nought, and out of dying fire the monster rose to pull him down into the Valley of Shadows and Whispers, and his armour parted like butter under the knife o
f the Hooded One."
The woman paused contemplatively before adding, "And Egris spread like butter too."
Molat had no wish to have this cripple impeding him, while there was quite obviously something unpleasant moving about back there, but Aberil had kindly picked up Molat's rail-gun to replace the one he had lost to the Outlinker, before instructing Molat to help the injured man. Speelan was not exactly generous in his thanks for this assistance: every time Molat stumbled, and every time he himself stumbled, it was all put down to Molat, and Speelan regularly swore at him.
"Be silent!" Aberil slurred when this swearing became too voluble.
Speelan fell silent and bowed his head — like Molat he did not much like now looking at the Deacon's face. Whoever it was that had dropped in on them so unexpectedly, he had certainly made a mess of it.
Aberil went on, his whispering distorted by his ruined mouth, "There's something back there, and if your cursing attracts it, then I will leave you to it."
"I'm sorry," said Speelan. "I'm sorry… it hurts."
Molat realized the man was obviously terrified that Aberil would do what he threatened, so meant every word of his apology. A gusting hiss he heard from behind, after the earlier movement in the grasses had long ceased, immediately raised other concerns in him.
"That's a siluroyne," Molat stated.
"Yes, you would know, wouldn't you?" said Aberil, looking him up and down contemptuously. "Come on, keep moving, there might be some craft still undamaged back there."
They came out into one of the ubiquitous channels, where the ground was wetter and the plant life distinctly different. Molat wondered if it was because the soil here was wetter that no flute grass grew on it, or if the ground was wetter because no flute grass grew on it. Such was the kind of chicken-and-egg conundrum that had been the speciality of those delivering religious instruction — your answer could always be wrong, and wrong answers were always punishable.
"Damn fuck you!" said Speelan, losing his footing and painfully crunching his full weight on the leg in which the pond worker girl had put a hole.
Molat restrained the surge of rage he felt at the injustice of it all. He could not afford to get angry with either of these two, as they could have him stretched on a frame with just a word… if they ever got back to safety.
"Keep your mouth closed," Aberil hissed.
Molat felt his own mouth doing exactly the opposite as he continued to gaze up into the sky. Calypse seemed now the breadth of an imaginary hand above the horizon, and the sun was gnawing at the edge of reality beside it. But these were common sights to Molat, and not what drew his attention.
"What's that?" he asked faintly, unable to find any other words.
Speelan glared at him, before turning to follow his gaze. With watery eyes in his ruined face, Aberil studied the Proctor as if suspecting some trick to distract him, before looking up as well. Molat's fascinated stare could not be broken. In the sky he was witnessing something fantastical. It was titanic, this golden ship with whole cities of instrumentation blooming on its surface, and it was knotted in something grey and incongruous, like some vast opaque topaz wrapped in the mummified corpse of some cephalopod.
"It's him," muttered Aberil. "He burnt Faith, and now he's here."
Just then, something that felt no awe of strange objects in the sky, but rather felt some gnawing hunger in its stomach at the sight of the three individuals before it, let out a gasping hiss to get their attention.
"Oh no!… No!" Molat shouted, finding himself fighting against Speelan's determined grip on him. Speelan would not let go, so Molat dragged the man along with him as he tried to flee the looming siluroyne. Subliminally he was aware of Aberil taking to his heels — not even trying to use the weapon he had appropriated. Speelan did not attempt to use his weapon either, so determined was he to cling on to Molat that he dared not unhook it from his shoulder. Fighting panic, Molat finally looked away from the monster into Speelan's terrified eyes, then he drove his fingers into their sockets.
Molat was already running when he heard Speelan scream, "No, please don't!" The gnathic crunching that followed was interspersed with further wails of, "No, don't! No!", terminated by a horrible bubbling wail. Escape was all Molat could think of, then in horror he heard the sound of the monster pursuing him, obviously not being satisfied with its meal of just one human being.
Oh no… oh no…
Perhaps it was because his terror was even greater, or perhaps due to the injuries Aberil had suffered, but Molat soon had the Deacon in sight and was fast catching up with him.
"Wait for me!" he shouted.
Aberil glanced back, but did not slow. Behind them both Molat could hear the siluroyne's grunting snarls as it pursued. He glanced back to see it clear a tall stand of flute grass and land with heavy and sinister grace. Just that glance was enough for him to realize the creature was not even exerting itself. He felt himself like something leaden and clumsy accelerated to the limit of its capacity, whilst the siluroyne kept moving in short bursts only to keep him in sight, between slowing down to a gentle lope as it studied its prey. In its nightmare features he seemed to read amusement, but that could have been his imagination.
"Shoot it! Shoot the fucking thing!" Molat shouted to the Deacon, as he got closer to him. Aberil glanced around, gasping for breath, and obviously suffering at this punishing pace. Molat pushed himself harder and reached out for the weapon slung from a strap over Aberil's shoulder. At the last moment Aberil turned slightly, aiming the snout of his rail-gun downwards. A rattling crackle and Molat felt the ground drop away from him. His legs gave way and, as he went over, he caught a glimpse of shattered bone and burst-open flesh. From somewhere came a horrible keening and whimpering and, as he tried to stand but went down again, he realized it issued from himself. A shadow then drew across him.
"Please… no…" he pleaded.
But the creature had no pity — nothing in its mien or expression that was in any way Terran and Molat now knew he had been mistaken about its apparent amusement earlier. Caught in teeth like blue hatchets, Molat saw a torn and bloody pair of uniform trousers. The three-fingered claws, big as garden rakes on doubled forearms, closed around his torso and up-ended him. Over his shrill screams Molat heard a rail-gun opening up and emptying its magazine, but by then the siluroyne had eaten his legs and was crunching into his pelvis.
"If I ever possessed any inclination to religion, I think I'd find it now," said Gant, shading his eyes from the bright sunlight as he stared up into the sky.
"Ignore it, then," said Cormac. "We have to focus on our goal, and just that." But even he did not feel any great ease in that assertion. What Skellor had done to the appearance of the Occam Razor was a blatant demonstration of his power, and that he managed to hold it so easily in low orbit yet further evidence. The Occam was poised there like a giant overseer directing some huge chess game on the ground below, ready in a moment to sweep board, pieces, everything away. Cormac tried to focus his attention on the game, and specifically on one of those pieces whose abilities he now did not really know for sure.
All that distinguished Scar from the rest of the dracomen was his weapons harness, his loose fatigues, and the facial scar that had given him his name. Cormac remembered Mika explaining how the dracoman could easily have erased that scar, but had retained it for some reason of pride, and now perhaps for some means of identification. Standing upon the burnt-out carcass of a lander, Cormac studied the dracoman a moment longer before returning his attention to the wilderness stretching before them. Now, with the budding of the grasses, the formerly green landscape was tinged with washes of red, white, yellow and metallic gold. But these flowering grasses were now shaking with some approaching movement.
"Okay, what have we got out there?" he asked. He had a good idea — just wanted confirmation.
"Soldiers," replied Scar, before Gant could.
Gant glanced at the dracomen. "Looks like the whole Theocracy army is
heading our way." He looked from side to side. "We won't be able to move fast enough to get round them."
"We go through them," said Scar abruptly.
Cormac gazed down at the thousands of dracomen gathered around the landers or in the surrounding flute grass. Every one of them was indistinguishable from Scar when he had first encountered him, and many of them seemed to have similar appetites. They had found charred corpses lying amongst the incinerated landers and had obviously decided not to let the meat go to waste. The carnivorous scene appeared hugely primitive but for other dracomen checking over, with smooth expertise, the weapons they had also found. Cormac feared Mika was allowing her fascination with these creatures to outweigh her caution as she walked amongst them, scanning and sometimes even daring to take samples from them. But then perhaps she had less fear of injury now, with the alien mechanisms operating inside her body.
"Convenient that you arrived when you did," he said to Scar.
The dracoman grunted as he surveyed his fellows, then something seemed to claw at him from the inside, and he hissed before turning to Cormac again.
"You will let me live," said the dracoman, echoing Dragon's words, and Cormac wondered if it was truly the dracoman speaking.
"Polity law." Cormac gestured to the gathered dracomen. "It was a single entity that was guilty of crimes against the Polity, but I see no such single entity here."
And so it was. Before eagerly gathering up her instruments, Mika had observed to him, "Here's that missing fifty per cent of Dragon. Now we know what it meant about both dying and living."
Cormac continued speaking to Scar. "But what ECS decides to do is irrelevant at present, and genocide may yet be committed." He gestured up at the Occam Razor before scrambling down the lander to the ground. Scar and Gant quickly followed him, and the three moved over to join Thorn and Fethan, who were listening in on radio exchanges through Thorn's partially dismantled coms helmet.
"What have you got?" Cormac asked.
"Radio only," said Thorn. "Lellan's sending her army back underground. Some of her commanders are protesting, but they're doing what they're told. It would seem Lellan sees no purpose in keeping them up on the surface. From something I heard, they probably haven't enough supplies to stay up any longer. What about you?"
