“Body.” His irritation at the insulting tone was lost under a memory of wriggling scarlet cloth. “Some bloke got caught in the vacuum.”
“Do you know who he was?”
“No!” Now he was sobering up, Jed desperately wanted to avoid thinking about it. He checked the control panel, relieved to see the atmosphere cycle was proceeding normally. The electronics at this end of the airlock were undamaged. Not sabotaged, he corrected himself.
“Jed, I’m getting some strange readings from Gerald’s suit telemetry,” Rocio said. “Is he okay?”
Jed felt like saying: was he ever? “I think the body upset him. Once he realized it wasn’t Marie, he just shut up.” And who’s complaining about that?
The control panel lights turned red, and the hatch swung open.
“You’d better get out of there,” Rocio said. “There’s no alert in the net yet, but someone will discover the murder eventually.”
“Sure.” He took Gerald’s hand in his and pulled gently. Gerald followed obediently.
Rocio told them to stop outside a series of horseshoe-shaped garage bays at the base of the rock cliff, a hundred metres from the entrance they were supposed to use to get into the asteroid. Three trucks were parked in the bays, simple four wheel drive vehicles with seating for six and a flatbed rear.
“Check their systems,” Rocio said. “You’ll need one to drive the components back to me.”
Jed went along them, activating their management processors and initiating basic diagnostic routines. The first one was suffering from some kind of power cell drop out, but the second was clean and fully charged. He sat Gerald in one of the passenger seats, and drove it round to the airlock.
When the chamber’s inner hatch swung open, Jed checked his sensor reading before he cracked his visor up. A lifetime of emergency procedure drills back on Koblat made him perpetually cautious about his environment.
“There’s nobody even close to you,” Rocio said. “Go get them.”
Jed hurried along the corridor, took a right turn, and saw the broad door to the maintenance shop, three down on the right. It opened for him as he touched the lock panel. The lights sprang up to full intensity, revealing a basic rectangular room with pale-blue wall panelling. Cybernetic tool modules stood in a row down the centre, encased in crystal cylinders to protect their delicate waldos. A grid of shelving covered the rear wall, intended to hold a stock of spares used regularly by the shop. Now there were just a few cartons and packages left scattered around—apart from the large pile in the middle which the mechanoid had delivered.
“Oh Jeeze, Rocio,” Jed complained. “There’s got to be a hundred here. I’m never going to muscle that lot out, it’ll take forever.” The components were all packed in plastic boxes.
“I’m getting a sense of déjà vu here,” Rocio said smoothly. “Just pile them onto the freight trolley and dump them in the airlock chamber. It’ll be three trips at the most. Ten minutes.”
“Oh brother.” Jed grabbed a trolley and shoved it over to the shelving. He started to throw the boxes on. “Why didn’t you get the mechanoids to dump them at the airlock for me?”
“It’s not a designated storage area. I would have had to reprogram the management routines. Not difficult, but it might have been detected. This method reduces the risk.”
“For some,” Jed muttered.
Gerald walked in. Jed had almost forgotten him. “Gerald, you can take your helmet off, mate.” There was no response.
Jed went up to him and flipped the helmet seals. Gerald blinked as the visor was raised.
“Can’t stay in that spacesuit here, mate, you’ll get noticed. And you’ll suffocate eventually.”
He thought Gerald was about to start crying, the bloke looked so wretched. To cover his own guilt, Jed went back to loading the boxes. When he had as many as the trolley could handle, he said: “I’m going to get rid of this bundle. Do me a favour, mate, start loading the next lot.”
Gerald nodded. Even though he wasn’t convinced, Jed hurried out back to the airlock. When he got back, Gerald had put two boxes on the second trolley.
“Ignore him,” Rocio said. “Just do it yourself.”
It took a further three trips to carry all the boxes to the airlock. Jed finished loading the trolley for the last time, and paused. “Gerald, mate, look, you’ve got to get a grip, okay?”
“Leave him,” Rocio said curtly.
“He’s gone,” Jed said sadly. “Total brainwipe this time. That corpse did for him. We can’t leave him here.”
“I will not permit him back on board. You know what a danger he has become. We cannot treat him.”
“You think this gang are going to help him?”
“Jed, he did not come here looking for their help. Don’t forget he has a homemade bomb strapped to his waist. If Capone does become unpleasant with Gerald, he’s going to be in for a nasty surprise himself. Now get back to the airlock. Beth and your sister are the people you should be concentrating on now.”
More than anything, Jed wanted another dose out of the suit’s medical kit. Something to take away the hurt of abandoning the crazy old man. “I’m real sorry, mate. I hope you find Marie. I wish she wasn’t, well . . . what she is now. She gave a lot of us hope, you know. I guess I owe both of you.”
“Jed, leave now,” Rocio ordered.
“Screw you.” Jed steered the trolley at the wide door. “Good luck,” he called back.
He forced himself not to go fast on the drive back to the Mindori. There was too much at stake now to risk drawing attention to himself by a last minute error. So he resisted twisting the throttle as he passed the fateful airlock with the corpse behind it. Rocio said the net in that section had returned to full operation and the corridor’s emergency doors had opened, but no one had found the body yet.
Jed drove under the big hellhawk and parked directly below one of its barnacle-like cargo holds. Rocio opened the clamshell doors, and Jed set about transferring the boxes over onto the loading platform which telescoped down. At the back of his mind he knew that when the last box was on board, then he and Beth and the kids were no longer necessary. And probably a liability to boot.
He was quite surprised to be allowed back up the ladder into Mindori’s airlock. Shame finally overwhelmed him when he took his helmet off. Beth was standing in front of him, ready to help with his suit; face composed so she didn’t show any weakness. The enormity of everything he’d done snatched the strength from his legs. He slid down the bulkhead, and burst into tears.
Beth’s arms went round him. “You couldn’t help him,” she crooned. “You couldn’t.”
“I never tried. I just left him there.”
“He couldn’t come back on board. Not now. He was going to blow us up.”
“He didn’t know what the hell he was doing. He’s mad.”
“Not really. Just very sick. But he’s where he wanted to be, near Marie.”
* * *
Jack McGovern drifted back into consciousness aware of a sharp, deep stinging coming from his nose. His eyes fluttered open to see dark-brown wood crushed against his cheek. He was lying on floorboards in near darkness in the most uncomfortable position possible, with his legs bent so his feet were pressing into his arse and his arms twisted behind his back. Blood was pounding painfully in his forearms. His hangover was the greatest yet. When he tried to stir, he couldn’t. His wrists and ankles were all bound up together by what felt like a ball of red hot insulating tape. An attempt to groan revealed his mouth was also covered with tape. One nostril was clogged with dry blood.
That frightened him badly, sending pulse and breathing wild. Air hissed and thrummed through his one small vulnerable air passage. It was like reinforcement feedback, making him even more aware of how dependant he was. Attempting to hyperventilate and half-suffocating because of it made his head pound worse than ever. His vision vanished under a red sparkle.
Insensate panic dragged on for an indeterminable time. All h
e knew was that when his sight finally returned along with his sluggish thoughts, his breathing was slowing. His attempted thrashing had shifted him several centimetres across the floorboards. He calmed a lot then, still wishing his hangover would fuck off and leave him alone. The memory of what had happened in the Black Bull’s toilet trickled back into his mind. He found that the tape across his mouth didn’t stop him from whimpering at the back of his throat.
A possessed! He’d been mugged by a possessed. Yet . . . he wasn’t possessed himself, which is what they always did to people—everyone knew that. Unless this was the beyond?
Jack managed to roll round onto his side and take a look round. Definitely not the beyond. He was in some kind of ancient cube of a room, a half-moon window set high up on one wall. Old store display placards were stacked opposite him, fading holophorescent print advertising brands of bathroom accessories he could dimly remember from his childhood. A heavy chain led from his ankles to a set of metal pipes that ran straight up from the floor to the ceiling.
He shuffled along the floor for all of half a metre, until the chain was tight. Nothing he did after that even scratched the pipes, let alone weakened them or made them bend away from the wall. He was still three metres from the door. Bracing and clenching his arm and shoulder muscles had the solitary effect of making his wrists hurt more. That was it then. No escape.
His hangover had long abated when the door finally opened. He didn’t know when; only that hours and hours had passed. Cold arcology night light slithered in through the high window, painting the bare plaster walls a grubby sodium yellow. It was the possessed man who came in first, moving without sound, his black monk robe swirling round him like orderly mist. Two others followed him in, a young teenage girl and a sulky, adolescent boy. They were hauling a woman along between them; middle-aged, her shoulders slumped in defeat. Her chestnut hair was arranged in a pleated crown, as if she’d put it up ready for a shower; wisps had escaped to dangle in front of her eyes. It hid most of her face, though Jack could make out the broken, lonely expression.
The boy bent down and yanked the tape over Jack’s mouth as hard as he could. Jack grunted at the pulse of pain as it ripped free. He gulped down air.
“Please,” he panted. “Please don’t torture me. I’ll surrender, okay. Just fucking don’t.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Quinn said. “I want you to help me.”
“I’m yours. Hundred per cent! Anything.”
“How old are you Jack?”
“Hu . . . uh, twenty-eight.”
“I’d have put you older, myself. But that’s fine. And you’re about the right height.”
“What for?”
“Well, see, Jack, you got lucky. We’re gonna smarten you up a bit, give you a makeover. You’re gonna be a whole new man by the time we’re finished. And I won’t even charge you for it. How about that?”
“You mean different clothes and stuff?” Jack asked cautiously.
“Not exactly. You see, I found out that Greta here is a fully qualified nurse. Course, some assholes would call that synchronicity. But you and I know that’s total bullshit, don’t we Jack.”
Jack grinned round wildly. “Yeah! Absolutely. No fucking way.”
“Right. It’s all part of His plan. God’s Brother makes sure everything comes together for me. I am the chosen one, after all. Both of you are His gifts to me.”
“You tell him, Quinn,” Courtney said.
Jack’s grin had been frozen into place by the aching realization of how deep into their shared insanity he’d fallen. “A nurse?”
“Yep.” Quinn signalled Greta forwards.
Jack saw she held a medical nanonic package. “Oh Jesus fuck, what are you going to do?”
“Hey, asshole, Jesus is dead,” Courtney shouted. “Don’t you go calling his name around us, he can’t help you. He’s the false lord. Quinn is Earth’s new messiah.”
“Help me!” Jack yelled. “Somebody help.”
“Mouthy little turd, ain’t he,” Billy-Joe said. “Ain’t no body gonna hear you, boy. They didn’t hear any of the others, and Quinn hurt them a fuck of a lot more.”
“Look, I said I’d help you,” Jack said desperately. “I will. Really. I’m not bullshitting. But you gotta keep your end of the bargain. You said no torture.”
Quinn walked back to the door, putting as much distance as he could between himself and Jack in the small room. “Is it working now?” he asked Greta.
She looked at the small display on her processor block. “Yes.”
“Okay. Start by getting rid of his vocal cords. Billy-Joe’s right, he talks too much. And I need him to be quiet when I use him. That’s important.”
“No!” Jack yelled. He started to squirm round on the floor.
Billy-Joe laughed and sat down hard on his chest, forcing the air out of his lungs. It fluted weakly as it escaped through his nostril.
“The package can’t remove his vocal cords,” Greta said in a disinterested monotone. “I’ll have to disengage the nerves.”
“Fine,” Quinn said. “Whatever.”
Jack stared right at her as she leaned over and applied the glossy green package to his throat. Direct eye to eye contact, the most personal human communication there was. Pleading, imploring. Don’t do this. He could have been looking into a mechanoid’s sensor lens for the effect it had on her. The package adhered to his skin, soft and warm. He clenched his throat muscles against the invasion. But after a minute or so they began to relax as he lost all feeling between his jaw and his shoulders.
Silencing him was just the beginning. He was left alone as the package did its work, then the four of them returned. This time Greta was carrying a different type of nanonic package, a face-mask with several sac-like blisters on the outer surface, inflated by some glutinous fluid. There were no slits for him to see out through when she placed it over his face.
That was when the routine started. Every few hours they would return and remove the mask. Greta would refill the sacs. His face would be examined, and Quinn would issue a few instructions before the mask was replaced. Occasionally they’d give him cold soup and a cup of water.
He was left alone in a darkness that was frightening in its totality. His face was numbed by the package, and whatever it was doing prevented even the red blotches that usually appeared behind closed eyelids. That just left him with hearing. He learned how to tell the difference between night and day. The half-moon window let in a variety of sounds, mostly traffic flowing along the big elevated motorway running down the middle of the Thames. There was also the sound of boats, swans and ducks squabbling. He began to get a feel for the building, too. Big and old, he was sure of that; the floorboards and pipes conducted faint vibrations. In the day there was some activity. Whirring sounds that must be lifts, clumping as heavy objects were moved around. None of it close to his room.
At night there was screaming. A woman, starting with a pitiful wail which was eventually reduced to miserable sobbing. Each time the same, and not far away. It took a while for him to realize it was Greta. Obviously, there were worse things than having your features modified by a nanonics package. The knowledge didn’t act as much of a comfort.
* * *
The ghosts knew the Orgathé were approaching Valisk’s northern endcap, their new awareness perceiving black knots of menacing hunger sliding through the air. It was enough to overcome their apprehension towards the humans that hated them, sending them fleeing into the caverns harbouring their ex-hosts.
Their presence was one more complication for the defenders. Although the personality could watch the Orgathé flying along the habitat, it certainly didn’t know where they’d land. That left Erentz and her relatives with the entire circumference to guard. They’d already decided that it would be impossible to move the thousands of sick and emaciated humans from the front line of the outer caverns. Flight time down the length of the habitat was barely fifteen minutes, and the Orgathé emerging from
the southern endcap were joined by several new arrivals who had just entered through the starscrapers. There simply wasn’t time to prepare, all they could do was snatch up their weapons and assemble in teams ready to respond to the nearest incursion; even the way they were spaced round the endcap was less than ideal.
Wait until they get inside, the personality said. If you fire while they’re still in the air, they’ll just swoop away. Once they’re in the caverns they can’t escape.
The Orgathé hesitated as they glided down towards the scrub desert, in turn sensing the hatred and fear of the entities below. For several minutes they circled above the cavern entrances as the last ghosts fled inside, then the flock descended.
Thirty-eight of the buggers. Stand by.
Tolton shifted his grip on the incendiary torpedo launcher as Erentz told him to get ready. His sweat was making its casing slippery. He was standing behind Dariat, who in turn was at the tail end of a group of his relatives waiting in a passage at the back of one of the hospital caverns. What he thought of as his special status hadn’t exempted him from this brand of lethal madness.
He heard a lot of groaning start up in the cavern. It quickly degenerated into weak screams and shouted curses. The ghosts were flooding in, ignoring the bedridden humans to plunge deeper into the cavern network. They started to run past him, mouths open to yell silent warnings. Their movements sketched short-lived smears of washed-out colour through the air.
Then one of the Orgathé hit the entrance outside. Its body elongated, the front section pressing forward eagerly through the curving passageway, while the bulbous rear quarter squirmed violently, adding to its impetus. Those ghosts that had only just made it inside were engulfed by writhing appendages as the huge creature surged along. Their savage cries of suffering penetrated the entire endcap as their life-energy was torn away from them. The other ghosts and Dariat could actually hear them, while the humans experienced their torment as a wave of profound unease. Tolton looked down at the launcher for reassurance, only to find his hands were trembling badly.
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