by T. F. Grant
“Kill me,” the man whispered through broken teeth. “Kill me, please.”
“All in good time,” Sharp-Thorn replied. “This is Sethan Calan,” he said to Bookworm. “I had thought to send him back to his people to carry out this mission, but—as you can see—he is quite damaged.”
Sethan’s right arm was missing, torn out by the roots. A leafy bandage covered the wound. His left hand had no fingers left. One of his eyes was pulped and hung out on the end of the optic nerve.
“It would be difficult to repair such damage. And to replace the lost flesh would take rather a long time.” Sharp-Thorn let go of Bookworm’s wrist.
The lassitude faded, and Bookworm staggered backward against the now closed and locked door. “Holy frecking hell,” he gasped. “You psychopathic piece of shit.”
“Psychopathic.” Sharp-Thorn laughed, a ripple of branches. “Lack of empathy, narcissism, in a Drift?” He laughed again. “You creatures of stinking flesh are nothing to us. Blood, guts, and sexual excretions. The stench of you pervading this place makes me sick. We are trapped with you. Take off your clothes.”
“Freck off.”
Sharp-Thorn did not ask again. Vines ripped the clothes from Bookworm’s body until he stood naked and trembling. He started to place his hands over his groin, but stopped. He straightened his back, lifted his gaze. “Get on with it, then,” he said.
“Oh, you think I am going to treat you as I treated him. Oh no, Dylan Meredith James, I have bigger plans for you.”
Different vines, thicker, greener, slipped out of the Drift’s body. They slid over Sethan’s head. Tiny stems grew from the vines, piercing the dying man’s skin until his head and face were one writhing mass of vines. His body started to collapse inward on itself. Sucked dry by the vines probing every inch of his skin. Sethan jerked and twitched, feeling every violation, but unable to make a sound.
Bookworm pushed back against the door. It would not budge. He was trapped here. Vines snaked out of Sharp-Thorn, quicker than Bookworm could blink. They wrapped themselves around his face, his head. Pulsing stems slid into Bookworm’s skin, between the very cells, into his head, through his skull, through the membrane protecting his brain, across the blood-brain barrier, into his gray matter, his white matter, into his neurons, into his very mind… everywhere.
Then came the sting of other vines piercing his skin all over his body. Throbbing, changing him.
“You will be my spy, Dylan Meredith James,” Sharp-Thorn’s voice echoed inside Bookworm’s mind. “I will overlay this creature’s memory onto yours. I will overlay his physical form onto yours. The physical changes will last for a half cycle, long enough for what you must do. The mental engrams will last a little while longer, but they too will fade. You are mine now, to do with as I will. And I have big plans for you.”
In his mind, Bookworm screamed, but his inner voice changed, didn’t sound like him, yet he screamed again as the two egos clashed and merged until he didn’t know where Dylan ended and Sethan started.
He was changed now, and he had a job to do.
TWENTY-NINE
Tai rested on a spent fuel canister, leaning back against the wall of the dock. Tooize and the others were inside the Damnfine, arranging their gear transferred from the Mary-May, which now lay in drydock under the auspices of Miriam Cauder’s engineers, held in reserve against the debt he owed her.
All around him, chyros, humans, and kronacs went about their business. Some returning from a scavenging trip, others preparing their vessels to go out into Hollow Space, prospecting for something to trade on Haven.
Times were lean, however. A group of Iron Council men and women jumped down from an old decaying junker. Their faces were hardened with disappointment. Another hulk found already stripped of resources.
There were fewer and fewer ships to mine for goods these days. The Venture was the best thing that had come through in half a dozen long cycles. No one knew when the next would come.
Since the Venture, only a few small probes and scout shuttles had come through. Those on Haven had learned to ignore them. Wasn’t worth the fuel and energy to get out there for those. So they just drifted, went Out Of Sight for those abandoned and banished to strip for whatever meager supplies they could find.
Kina ducked out of the scuttler and approached, lithely walking around the disgruntled group of Iron Council members. “What’s got your face down, Tai?”
“Everything,” Tai said, standing and stretching his back, still sore from his night in the clink. He’d spent most of the time there thinking about his actions—not in terms of the legality of them, but rather the point of it all. “We haven’t got enough supplies to go to the surface. We need air tanks, tools, ammo. And I don’t have a credit to my name.”
“That makes two of us.”
“How come? I paid you well enough for the last few jobs.”
“All that went in for your release.” Kina quickly held up her palm and shook her hand. “That sounded harsher than I intended, I’m sorry. I gladly paid up.” Kina stepped closer, lowering her voice. “I’ve never said this, but… since my parents died when I was a small girl, I’ve never felt like I had a family. Trying to run jobs for the Wraiths was as close as I got, but really, all I have to show from the spy business is the scars on my back.”
Kina took a breath, clearly uncomfortable with baring her feelings. “Basically, Tai, what I’m saying is you’re the closest I have to family, and I would have given everything I had to get you out… well, I guess I kinda did.” She smiled, blushing at the unusual act of telling him what she thought, and without some smart-ass quip.
Tai hugged her tight. “I’m grateful, I really am. And I feel much the same way. You’re the annoying, back-talking little sister I never had, Mother dearest declaring her womb closed for business after I popped out.”
“Not sure I can blame her for that,” Kina muttered.
Tai laughed and released the hug. “Aye, me neither. I have been something of a trial for Mother dearest.” He felt suddenly self-conscious about his public display. The most infamous thief on Haven now had a reputation to foster. “But thing is, K, we’re screwed if we can’t deal some more cash. Not just for my mother, but for us; we need supplies if we’re going to the surface.”
“I don’t like that look in your eyes. What are you planning?”
“Just gonna go see how much I can leverage off my newly found fame. I’m heading off to the Gear and Sprocket to meet with a few… old acquaintances. I’ll be back within the hour.”
He patted her on the shoulder and headed off down the dock to the elevator that would take him up to the private bar and lounge, the home of every piece of scum and villainy in the station.
A few of his rivals would be there at this time of day, which was what he was hoping for. But more importantly, he knew his mother would be there, with Hela, on a little business. She’d sent him a message about a job that he had no intentions of taking, regardless of the debt he owed her.
No, that job would have to go to someone else. He had other plans and more important species to meet.
***
Bookworm, Dylan, Sethan, he knew not which, stepped up to the rusted metal door of the Blackmarks’ level. The corridor leading to it was stained with blood and grease, creating an oily painting of death, destruction and power. The sights and smells, rich with the pungent, almost fungal fragrance of burnt Krunk rocks and the sweet cloying smoke of Spectre-D, assailed his senses, making his brain spin. Memories and recollections whirled like spirits as the Sethan ID came to the fore.
I am Sethan, he thought. Always been Sethan. He hunched his shoulders and pulled his chin into his chest. He knocked on the door, tapping out a complicated pattern, and grunted with a snarl when the spy-hole opened and the eye of that runty little freck Jezlen peered out.
“Open the damned door, runt, before I break your legs again.”
“Shit, Seth, we wondered what happened to you. The boss
is flipping out waiting on you. That bitch ain’t giving nothin’ up. You better get in there and sort ’er out. Loas is chinwagging with that furry bitch Vekan in the hold. Wants to see you as soon as you’ve got the information.”
“Well, open the freckin’ door, then, and let me get on with it.”
Dylan/Sethan lashed out a boot, sending the greasy, black-haired, pale-skinned subhuman Jezlen onto his back. The useless fool scrambled like one of those bastard Markesian bugs.
The weird sensation of everything being new—to the Dylan ID—and familiar—with the Sethan ID—clashed, mixing the two until he couldn’t figure out what to do or say. But then something that was crystal clear formed in his mind: the image of Sharp-Thorn, his thin, dark clawlike branches and vines reaching out for him. The Drift’s voice spoke to him, instructing him on his job.
He didn’t have time to waste. The transformation wouldn’t last, and Sethan would be Dylan again, and he didn’t want to be stuck in the heart of the Blackmarks’ HQ with blood on his hands. He reached down and hauled the scrawny Jezlen to his feet.
The kid couldn’t be older than seventeen, and he already wore the red rings of excessive Krunk rock use. His eyes twitched permanently like a carnival was going on behind those weeping grey orbs.
“Which room?” Dylan/Sethan growled.
“Number three. Be quick about it. Loas is in a pissy mood today. Already killed two of those Iron Council scum for being petulant.”
“Great, so no info from them, then? What a waste of good torture.”
“Yeah, so it’s all on you. Don’t spare the blade with this one.”
Looking up, Dylan/Sethan took in the rest of the place, already knowing what he was going to see, but compelled to look anyway, satisfying both minds. The hovel was on a level that used to be an engineering forge; everyone knew that. This particular room was more of an entrance hall, and makeshift corridors, built from cut sections of hulks and crudely welded in place, led off in all directions.
Jezlen shuffled off directly in front of him, his black solan-hide trousers glossy with the filth from the steel floor plates. Oil constantly dripped from rusting containers in the level above. That used to be a maintenance deck until Haggard and the Drifts closed it off due to hazardous leakage.
He lifted his boots and stepped around a puddle. He always hated this place. But Loas saw some use in it. Liked the old dead forge and the varied empty vats. Liked them as places to dump Iron Council scum who got in his way.
The thought conjured the smell of carrion.
Freck it, he had a job to do. No time to reminisce. He stepped through the dingy corridors until he came to another steel door, this one an old bulkhead from a Sinclair-class cruiser. It still had the old-fashioned wheel lock on the front.
When he opened the door and stepped inside, he saw her tied to the table already. It was made from an old internal-combustion engine block that once powered some of the metal-shaping machinery on this level. A single phosphorescent light swayed above her. Shadows chased her form like hungry revenants. She sobbed through the leather bit in her mouth as he stepped closer, his boots making wet squelching sounds through the blood that dripped thickly from the table.
He stopped at a small console, upon which were a series of cutting implements. He remembered these particularly well. Not just because of his fondness for their use, but of the day he found them in a hulk on the borders of the Out-of-Sight zone. An old kronac scout ship, more tree than mechanical, came through, hidden by a larger Crown dreadnought. He and Loas had raided it before the kronacs knew what hit ’em.
Even the Drifts had no idea what they had done, such was the speed of the attack. Good days those, he thought. Long before the Iron Council started hiring Wraiths to spy on them and take down their drug routes and information peddlers.
Still, this bitch would be the first in the IC’s ultimate downfall.
With the vuls provided by Vekan and the knowledge this one would give up—one way or another—the ’marks would soon rival the Cauders and eventually, if all went to plan, even the Drifts.
“Hello, Bronwyn,” Sethan/Dylan said, smiling as he picked up a six-inch Dorian-made combat knife. The Dylan ID resisted, repulsed by the sights and the smells and the soft, panicked mewling of this woman called Bronwyn wearing the uniform of Haven lawkeepers. What did the Sethan ID want with her? What did Loas want with her?
The answers came simultaneously with that thought: she knew the Wraith’s contact who worked with the Iron Council. With the contact in tow, the ’marks would know where to strike with their vuls and bring the remnants of the IC to their knees.
He leaned forward and cut away the gag. “I’ll start with your womb, then work my way up until you tell me what I want to know,” Sethan/Dylan said, despite Dylan’s desire to drop the knife and run like hell, but Sharp-Thorn’s image and voice were in his head again, mixing with Sethan’s imprinted mind, overriding Dylan’s decisions. He was a passenger in his own body now, following orders given to a man whose mind now had full agency.
In his head Dylan screamed as the knife bit into flesh and Bronwyn’s own screams reverberated around the dark walls.
And the worst thing about it was that Sethan was enjoying it.
Unable to cope, Dylan thought back to his days on New Earth, went to the one happy time in order to hide his unwilling actions now: his grandfather’s library. The old musty room where on many a balmy evening, he’d sit next to his ancient papa. Dylan himself was just a boy of twelve at the time, and his papa would talk to him about the many wonderful twenty-first-century novels that he and Dylan’s father—dead for three years at that point—had recovered from a mining operation on Old Earth.
The blade cut deeper, slicing flesh. Bronwyn’s body tensed against the terrible violation. Her jaw clenched down, her teeth cracking under the strain; sweat like bulbous dewdrops flushed from her skin and dripped down onto her uniform, the swaying light above catching the droplets with specular reflections.
Blood welled from the wound in her abdomen.
“Now tell me the Wraith’s name.”
No answer.
Sethan/Dylan twisted the blade and cut further upward.
Old Earth was nothing but a burnt husk, Papa had said, but in a locker within an abandoned mining facility, they found a dozen books still in their plastic wrappings. A gift to an engineer from his family far from home.
Papa would read these books to Dylan. Stories by authors whose names were long forgotten and not recorded in the migration to New Earth, lodged firmly into his mind, showing him special things, amazing things, places of imagination that he would often go to.
The cutting continued.
Bronwyn was beyond screaming now. Dylan didn’t even think she was still alive, but Sethan continued his intricate body carving until eventually, with her last breath, she spoke the Wraith’s name.
Dylan willed his body to drop the knife and run, get the hell out of there, but his job was not complete. Sethan knew this. He wiped the blood and viscera from the blade and placed it, hidden, within the denim-like jacket. Turning, he left the room, and as though the legs weren’t his anymore, Dylan watched through eyes that he shared with another mind as they headed through the dark charcoaled walls of the old forge to Loas’s private quarters.
Dozens of fellow Blackmarks skulked about their business, always making room for Sethan/Dylan. Could they see in his eyes what he had done? He certainly seemed to have garnered some degree of respect, probably out of fear.
But then, as the ’marks’ main enforcer, Sethan didn’t have to work too hard to extend that persona to the various thieves, smugglers, dealers and information brokers that haunted the shadows of this place.
He turned out of a corridor and passed through an open room where the large iron vats, shaped like upside-down bells, were kept. Molten metal dotted the room like black stalactites. Back in the day, the golden light of flowing iron and steel would have lit up this place, but now
it was a black ghost of industry.
A door led to a disused canteen, on the other side of which lay another door. Loas’s room. Time to finish his business.
THIRTY
The elevator operator, a human called Malcolm, stopped the Gear and Sprocket’s car and opened the door a crack. Tai made to move out, but the operator stalled, squinting at him expectantly through crude homemade spectacles.
“No tip for me?” Malcolm asked from behind his steel-glass enclosure.
“I got one for ya,” Tai said. “Don’t steal books from the Drifts.”
Malcolm laughed and opened the doors. “On your way, Tai. It’s a hard road losing it all to your mother.”
Tai leaned in, his gaze boring into Malcolm’s through the glass. “Ain’t nothing lost until the chits are counted.” He stepped out of the elevator and onto the balcony of the Gear and Sprocket.
Brushed steel lay beneath his feet. A platform extended around two sides of the bar. Tables set up with fancy tablecloths and flickering candles reflecting from the steel until the light seeped into the deep dark wood of the walls. All species and types sat at these tables, heads bent close together in conspiratorial whispers, deals being made, backs being stabbed, and all under the careful eye of Jack, owner of the bar, and the most respected banker on Haven.
Very few of the banks on Haven were truly trustworthy. Jack charged a high percentage for his services, but he was known for never cheating his clients. And he was choosy about which clients he took on.
All conversation stopped when Tai stepped out of the elevator.
Two dalgefs, impossible to tell apart with their flaccid skins and muscular bodies, gazed up at him from a table where a chyros squatted and sipped at a glass of bluston. A group of vuls, eating their meat raw and jabbering at each other in that yipping language of theirs, fell silent and turned to look. A solitary bresac, tall, male, with those slightly pointed ears and impossibly beautiful features, by human standards, lifted his glass of amber wine and bowed his head to Tai.
