by Neal Asher
With a sigh, he stood and put the carbine aside. He then stepped over to the still burning body and with one hand easily picked it up with the cord binding wrists to ankles. He carried the body over to the river’s edge like a suitcase, swung it back and forth a couple of times and tossed it into the water. After watching it floating and bobbing as the current took it, he gazed in the direction the river flowed, towards the city.
‘Give them my regards back there, Monitor E L Trepanan.’
He headed back to the boat, whistling tunelessly.
The village consisted of dome houses fashioned of foamstone sprayed over a wooden skeleton, doors and windows cut afterward – the doors made of composite and the windows out of multi-glaze chainglass. Gazing through his monocular at this, Kraven noted the power cables running from an oblate fusion reactor, the pump station for groundwater and a satellite dish for full media connection. Here and there, some modern crawlers and Flat scooters were parked. All this was irrelevant of course. They may have taken advantage of some modern technology but the stone people were still primitive and sub-human.
Some residents were visible loading supplies into one of the crawlers – probably for an expedition on the Flat, hunting for the same star gems for which the mines in the mountains had been sunk. Some others were tending food crops in gardens cut out of the mudstone. They had no animals here, since any form of killing was anathema to them. This made the job for Kraven and his associates so much easier.
‘All quiet?’ asked Deela, standing beside him.
He glanced at the woman. She looked hot in the tight envirosuit she wore but he knew better than to hit on her. Other janglers had made that mistake.
‘Seems so,’ he replied.
She lowered the mike on her headset. ‘Status report,’ she demanded then tilted her head to listen. After a moment, she turned back to him. ‘Dreyfus and Holse are in position. Let’s do this.’ She strode back towards the crawler and he followed.
The crawler sat with its main body down on the ground and chameleonware paint turning it the same colour as the surrounding mudstone. He stepped inside after her to where Frax and another jangler waited. Frax was playing with his power whip while the other checked over their stun guns.
‘Frax,’ said Kraven, heading for the cockpit, ‘stunners only. We want them all and we want them undamaged.’
‘They might get a bit antsy,’ said Frax hopefully.
‘They’re stone people,’ interjected Deela from the cockpit. ‘They don’t know how to be antsy. But I can personally guarantee that if we lose any, Trader John will not be happy.’
‘But if we knock them out we have to carry them,’ Frax protested meekly.
He preferred to round them up and herd them into the transport and use stunners on them once they were inside. But stone people, though non-violent, could be stubborn. This would always result in Frax having to use his power whip, often with the consequence of missing eyes and other damage that cut down on the working life of the catch.
‘Stunners only,’ Kraven insisted, glancing to Deela.
Frax sighed, put his power whip to one side and picked up a stunner. The short weapon resembled a shotgun and was the weapon of choice for janglers everywhere. It fired a blast of narcotic beads that punched through the skin and rendered the victim instantly unconscious. There might be a few deaths if they hit someone old, or sick, or maybe the odd child, but that kind of loss Trader John expected.
Kraven dropped into the driver’s seat and hit start, Deela now in the seat beside him. The crawler body rose up off the ground on hydraulics and he shoved the joystick forward, taking them towards the village. Even as they approached, he saw other janglers moving in on foot. One of them had entered the garden area – probably the Marsman, Dreyfus – and he could see the stone people there dropping, unstrung puppets. By the time he entered the village, two other Janglers were putting down those around the crawler – that would be Holse and his party of janglers. Kraven brought his own crawler to a halt, then stood and followed Deela back. He took up a stunner, then followed her outside, Frax and the other jangler close behind.
Things were beginning to stir up – stone people coming out of their houses. A woman stepped out of a doorway nearby, a stunner thumped and she staggered back with her hands up to her face and keeled over.
‘Body shots, Frax!’ Deela warned.
Frax ignored her as he kicked open the door and entered the house, his stunner thumping repeatedly once he got inside.
‘That guy is going to have a bad end,’ Deela stated. She didn’t have a stunner, just stood with her hands on her hips and watched the surrounding activity. She then turned to Kraven. ‘What are you waiting for?’
Janglers were kicking open doors all along the row of houses. Kraven moved off to do his part and, as he reached his chosen door, a child stepped out. He hit the kid with his gun butt and stepped over him – the children could be useful at the sorting troughs, but they tended not to last very long, so Trader John had given instructions to leave them behind this time. The supply of induction thralls was limited at present.
Inside the house, he saw a man and woman sitting at the table and another young heavily built man standing in an open kitchen area, holding a knife. He shot that one first, the blast throwing chopped vegetables and a couple of saucepans to the floor. The man at the table began to stand when the second shot took him in the chest and flung him back against the wall. The woman was quite attractive so he waited until she stood before shooting her in the legs. He didn’t want to spoil her face – he had a private deal with a bar owner in Godrun for one of his catch.
Once sure there was no sign of further movement from them he walked over, put his weapon on the table and took a packet from his belt pouch. Opening this he took out three induction thralls and pressed one against the woman’s temple. It crunched as its bone anchors went in, the red light coming on. After a moment, that changed to amber as it scanned her skull for the correct neural networks in her brain. When it changed to green this indicated it had found them. He did the same with the man who had been at the table then walked over to the kitchen area.
‘Shit,’ he said.
The young man here lay face down in a pool of blood. Kraven stepped up to him and turned him over. The fool had fallen on his knife and was now coughing blood. Damn, he was big and fit and would have been perfect for the mines. Grimacing, Kraven drew his pulse gun. Stone people were sub-human, but Kraven wasn’t without feelings. Best to put this one out of his misery. He shot the man once through the forehead, burning a smoking hole through and blowing steaming brains out the back.
A moment later, as he stepped out of the house and scanned around, Kraven saw that the big transport crawler had arrived. Holse came up beside him pulling a grav-sled loaded with three bodies.
‘Good catch,’ he said. ‘Thrall count is twenty-four units.’
‘Twenty-three,’ said Kraven. He gestured back to the house he had just left. ‘One in there I’m selling in Godrun. The rest go to the mines.’
Holse glanced over at Deela. ‘You cleared it with that bitch?’
‘She’s taking her cut.’
Emily gazed out at the sunrise over Godrun, the cylinder houses casting blocks of shadow on the ground as the sun cracked through a slab of cloud over the mountains. Her arms tightly folded across her chest she closed her eyes as if in pain then opened them and shook herself. With determination, she turned away and headed over to the console against the wall in the sitting room, sat down and made a call. After a short delay, a face appeared on the screen before her.
‘Emily Trepanan,’ said the uniformed woman before her. ‘This comlink was reserved for your husband until this morning.’
‘I know, but I have to speak to someone,’ said Emily.
The woman looked bored, her attention drifting to something over to one side, probably another screen.
‘About what?’
> ‘Enders headed out to the Flat yesterday,’ said Emily, trying to keep calm. ‘I tried to contact him yesterday evening but got no reply. I’ve been trying to get a call through to you all night and there was no response…’
‘The change in jurisdiction has caused some problems…’
‘Still, Enders is one of your officers. It is your responsibility to respond to this.’
The woman swung her attention back to Emily. ‘As of just half an hour ago Enders L Trepanan is no longer our responsibility. The monitor division has been disbanded. Do you wish me to file a missing persons report?’
‘You can find him,’ said Emily tightly. ‘He has a locator beacon implant!’
‘That is no longer the responsibility of city police, and with the changeover we no longer have the time or resources to mount a search.’
‘This is crazy! You just have to ping his beacon!’
‘Do you wish me to file a missing persons report?’ the woman asked again, robotically.
‘Yes, I want you to file a report! You have to find him!’
‘The matter will be attended do. Is there anything further?’
‘Look, if you don’t have the manpower just give me his location!’ Emily wiped away angry tears.
‘That information is restricted to police personnel only, and certainly not available to those who do not have full citizenship,’ said the woman, smiling nastily. ‘Now, I have other matters to attend to. Further calls from your console will be blocked.’ The image winked out.
Emily gaped at the screen for a long moment, then put in another call. The response was immediate: a chromed face appeared on the screen.
‘Earth Embassy AI.’
‘This is Emily Trepanan. My husband went out yesterday and I’ve not been able to contact him since yesterday evening. The city police will not help me, even though they can locate him with his beacon.’
After a pause, a young shaven-headed man replaced the chromed face, ‘Hi, Emily. Do you know what Enders was doing? It was his last day…’
‘Janssen!’ Emily talked quickly. ‘He headed out to the Flat, that’s all I know for sure. But the janglers are taking stone people again and he definitely was not happy about Trader John’s release… Why are the city police being so… pig-headed?’
Janssen looked to one side. ‘I’m running a trace on his beacon now.’ He operated controls out of sight. ‘A lot of the city police and bureaucrats here are in Trader John’s pocket. The imposition of the monitor division from Earth pissed them off, beside the fact that the monitors were not citizens of this world. They are being deliberately… obstructive.’ He paused for a second. ‘There. I have it. Enders is about five miles outside the city on the River Spill. I’m sending coordinates to you now. Load them to your personal unit. I’ll pull together some men and meet you there.’
A map displaced his image, with a winking dot on the snaking course of the river. Emily stood, taking her unit out of her pocket. She pointed it at the screen and the same map appeared on its screen. She pocketed it again as Janssen reappeared.
‘Thank you, Janssen.’
‘We owe this to you both at least, though Embassy interference in local matters is now illegal. I can scrape this past during the present chaos… I suggest you just bring along the belongings you most value and can carry. We’ll take you both straight to the Embassy.’
Emily frowned. ‘Are things so bad?’
‘When I said “obstructive” I was being a little disingenuous,’ said Janssen. ‘There are people looking for pay-back and it’s getting dangerous out there. You may not be able to return to Godrun.’
‘Okay, I understand.’
‘Get moving, Emily, and go careful.’
The screen blinked out.
Dressed in a jumpsuit, a pack slung over one shoulder and a gun holstered at her hip, Emily moved fast down the stairs of the monitor station. She went through the door at the bottom into a garage with a roller door at one end and headed over to the scooter parked there. Opening one pannier, she dropped her pack inside, closed it and mounted. She started the thing, its turbine winding up to speed and the control console between the handlebars lighting up. Sorting through the options on the touch-screen, she chose one and hit it. A motor started ahead of her and the roller door began to rise.
Sunlight flooded in and she blinked against the glare. A ground car partially blocked the exit, two men sitting on the bonnet. They leisurely pushed themselves away from the car and began walking forwards. Emily made her calculations. Returning inside the defences of the station would only buy her a little time, and nobody would come to rescue her. She wound back the throttle, shot forwards drawing her pulse gun and fired at the ground in front of them – multiple shots splintering up hot smoking stone. One of the men dived to the side, while the other yelled and went down clutching at his shin.
She swerved for the narrow gap beside the ground car, shots from the uninjured man slamming into the scooter’s caterpillar treads. She smashed into the gap, ripping off the panniers and scraping a deep dent down the side of the car, the vehicle jerking sideways. Then the scooter began jamming. She revved up the turbine, caterpillar treads spinning and tearing up the road, sparks showering out, then with a thump that tore off the back bumper of the car she shot through. The scooter weaved as she fought for control, the street now in sight. But the scooter shed a tread, the handlebars twisted right round and it went over, flinging her to the road.
Emily shoulder rolled but still landed hard. She lay there dazed for a moment, then struggled to get up. The shadow of a man fell across her and she looked up with fearful recognition.
‘Good try,’ said Trader John, pointing her husband’s pulse gun at her. She grabbed for her own weapon and had it halfway out of its holster when the stun round hit her in the chest. Wreathed in electrical discharges her world went black.
Seated inside the spider, Trader John gazed around at the mine workings. Dust hazed the area from the conveyor shifting rubble from the sorting troughs to a spill pile. A group of stone people – mostly men – was trooping towards the mine entrance shouldering power chisels, heavy power packs on their backs. Others – mostly women – were at the sorting troughs. His mandibles open he smiled at all this busy industry.
‘Let’s go take a look down there,’ he said to his companion. ‘What do you think my dear?’
He glanced aside. Emily Trepanan still wore her jumpsuit, but the medic had cut part of it away to apply dressings to her injured shoulder and arm, while tags held together the cut on one side of her forehead. On the other side of her skull, over her temple, clung an induction thrall, its light winking green. Her mouth was open, her expression blank.
‘I think it is a good idea, John,’ she said without inflection.
John took hold of the joystick and pulled it up. The spider rose up on its legs and then began making its delicate way down the slope when he pushed the joystick forwards. Reaching the narrow valley leading to the mine entrance, stepping over strewn power cables snaking across the ground from the reactor, finally brought them to an area to one side of the sorting troughs.
‘Here,’ said John.
He lowered the spider and opened the door, stepping out. Emily opened the door on her side and walked round, moving to stand just a pace behind on his right. He gestured to her and she followed as he went over to the nearest trough. The women here were picking up chunks of mudstone and running them under the terahertz scanner. Most of these then went onto the spill conveyor, but occasionally they would toss a chunk onto a smaller conveyor running to another sorting-trough. John walked over and watched the work here, Emily close behind.
Some women were moving chunks of stone to an auto press to break them, while others were using vibro-chisels to dig out the contents of smaller chunks – the whole purpose of this mine. He watched as one woman broke open a large chunk of mudstone, ran the pieces under another scanner, discarded most of
them then handed over one piece to another woman with a vibro-chisel. Stone falling away in dust and flakes, she revealed a small misty blue ball and finally freed it. She carefully placed this in a box filled with other orbs whose colours ranged across the spectrum.
‘The women are useful for this work,’ John said. ‘But it’s not for you.’ He turned and studied her. ‘Some new clothing, I think, and a prettier thrall for that fine skull of yours.’
‘Thank you, John,’ she said.
‘Only the best for you,’ he said. ‘I don’t think your husband appreciated you as much as he should have. You know they found his body washed up near the city docks and took it to the Earth Embassy?’
‘You told me,’ she said. ‘It is unfortunate.’
‘He was a soldier before he became monitor here,’ said John. ‘He died heroically.’
‘Yes, I am sure he died heroically, John,’ she said.
Trader John frowned. ‘Aren’t you sad about that?’
‘Yes, I am sad about that, John.’
John studied her for a while then walked over to the box to pick up and inspect a pink orb the size of an eyeball.
‘Star ruby,’ he said. ‘What do you think?’
‘Never look much until they are polished,’ said Emily, but she wasn’t looking at the gem, just at his face.
‘They are wealth,’ said John, ‘and wealth translates into power.’
‘Yes, they are wealth, John.’
With a flash of irritation, he tossed the gem back in the box, eyed the stone people working here, then turned away and headed back towards the spider, Emily walking obediently behind.
Enders Trepanan’s face was just about recognisable – eyes closed as if in sleep, head tilted forwards. He had been gutted with fire – a burned-out husk – his corpse now sitting at the focus of massed medical technology. A skein of tubes and wires ran from his skull into the surrounding hardware, another skein plugged in under his jaw. His burned body had been pulled wider open for the admissions of numerous probes, pipes and clamps.
