Gridlinked (17 page)

'Big cell-welding job there,' said Dusache. 'Blake's gonna be bankrupt.'

'Now what that Hooper has,' said Corlackis, glancing at Svent, 'is a biological advantage worth considering.'

'What is it?' Stanton asked.

'A fibroid parasite that binds their bodies up like nylon rope. He's an old Hooper, about two centuries I would suggest. The parasite is, incredibly, a natural one. You see the marks on his skin? That is probably how he got it. He fell in the sea of his home planet and near got eaten alive by the leeches that live in it. I believe it all has something to do with the life-cycle there. Reusable food resources for the leeches, or some such.'

'You call getting chewed on a biological advantage?' Svent asked. 'Stick to tech - you know where you are with tech. It's not gonna mutate and eat your face off.'

All very interesting, thought Stanton as he looked at Svent. Why was it that he didn't believe a word the little mercenary said? He stood and glanced to where the Hooper was leaving the arena, then he looked down at the four men.

'I'll be with Pelter this evening in The Sharrow. Be there,' he said abruptly, and left the arena. The four watched him go, then turned their attention back to Blake as he was carried, shunted and tubed but still alive, from the bloody sand. When he was gone Corlackis turned his attention to Svent.

Svent appeared irritated. 'All right,' he said. 'Take it out of my cut… Shit, I'm gonna have words with Blake.'

Tenkian (Algin):
Born 2151 on Mars during the Jovian Separatist crisis. Originally trained in the areas of metallurgy and the then quite young science of forcefield dynamics. At age nineteen, on his graduation from VIT (Viking Institute of Technology), he was recruited by the Jovian Separatists and soon moved to their weapons division. After four years, when the Separatists had resorted to terrorism, he became disillusioned with their methods and surrendered to Earth Security on Phobos. There he served two years of a ten-year sentence, and on his release joined ECS (under some duress, it is rumoured), where he worked for six years, and was there responsible for the development of the ionic-pulse handgun. Aged thirty-two he joined JMCC, where he had an integral role in the development of the electric shear. Five years after this he is recorded as leaving the JMCC complex. Three years later he turns up on Jocasta as a designer and crafter of esoteric individual weapons. He is accredited with the 'Assassin Spider', 'Sneak Knife' and chainglass, and also with being the first to install programmable microminds in hand weapons. Most of his weapons are now con-

sidered to be collectors' pieces, and are infrequently used.

From
The Weapons Directory

They trudged along, head down into a wind that blew ice crystals like steel pellets against them. It was not possible to hurry, much as they wanted to get back to the shuttle before the weather worsened. Mika slipped on the glassy ice and Thorn hauled her to her feet. As she made to move on, Thorn held onto her and inspected her coldsuit. A simple fall and one little tear could mean the loss of a limb or even death. Flesh froze quickly at these temperatures.

After that they regained the shuttle without further mishap. Jane headed for the cabin while the outer door closed on the rattle of ice crystals. AG engaged and then a thruster fired. A faint roaring penetrated the hull as the shuttle turned against the wind. Cormac wondered just how much of a hammering this place would give the equipment they had brought. Of course, he would have to ask.

It took ten minutes before the outer layers of their suits had been heated enough to be touched without the danger of coldburn. When they removed their masks their breath billowed in the frigid air. The heaters had not yet succeeded in raising the temperature above zero Celsius. Cormac inspected the chill lens of ceramal containing the fleck of material that was the submind, then slipped it in the pouch on his suit's utility belt. He looked at Mika, who was frowning, probably at herself, and then he turned his attention to Gant and Thorn, who had now removed their gloves and were checking over their weapons.

'Don't be too ready to shoot,' he told them.

'We're always ready to shoot, old chap, but never eager,' drawled Thorn. Then he nodded to the holster on Cormac's sleeve. 'Nice little piece that. May I see it?'

Cormac looked at the holster for a moment, then, coming to a decision, he unstrapped it and passed it across. Thorn touched a finger to the frigid control panel. There was a quiet snick and a small red light blinked on, then off. Thorn removed the five-point star of chrome steel and inspected it admiringly if somewhat gingerly.

'Chainglass blades as well. This is a custom job. A Tenkian?'

He handed the weapon to Gant.

'Yes, a Tenkian,' said Cormac.

'What's the cut diameter with the auxiliary blades fully extended?' asked Gant.

'Twenty-five centimetres,' Cormac told him.

'Fuck! You ever used it at that?'

'Once.'

'Must have taken him apart.'

'No, there's never any need for full extension against a human opponent, it was against a Thrake.' Cormac paused, groping for another conversational gambit. 'Big bastard, looks like a woodlouse, but about the size of an elephant.'

Gant nodded and continued his inspection of the weapon.

'Male bonding,' said Chaline to Mika in a stage whisper, and shook her head. Mika lost her frown and smiled before starting some work on a notescreen. Gant took the holster from Thorn and put the shuriken away.

'Not only a Tenkian, but one with a juiced-up processor as well,' he said. He passed it back to Cormac. 'A weapon like that is not cheap.' He took out a cigarette and lit it.

Cormac strapped the holster back on his arm. He appreciated the irony of his situation. It was quite possible to talk to a person, without an AI in the background to give him information on that person. It was quite possible to learn a great deal about that person too, things that an AI might not be able to tell you. What had he learnt? He'd learnt that both these soldiers wore their personal guises over a harsh professionalism: Thorn with his phoney English accent borrowed from another age, Gant with his smoking and his gruff manner. Here, he realized, were two men who had been dehumanized, and were now reclaiming that humanity. Another of Blegg's little touches. Cormac snorted to himself and thought about his last conversation with Angelina before he killed her. How had he managed to get so out of touch? In retrospect he realized he was lucky to be alive.

'Five minutes and we should be there. It's a hydroponics facility on the edge of the blast-zone. A bit hot, but the suits should handle it if there's no fallout from these storms,' said Jane.

'What about you?' asked Cormac.

'I'll have to stay here, otherwise I'll need to spend the next week being detoxified.'

Gridlirtked

It was a nice way to describe it. Cormac knew that she would probably have needed a body replacement.

'Is there any more information on the heat source?'

'Not very much.
Hubris
has picked up two heat sources of about human mass. They might be survivors.'

And if they are not? Cormac wondered.

Chaline said, 'If they are survivors, they will be very sick, being that close to the blast-site. Let's hope they're not too sick to tell us what happened to the runcible. If they even know.'

Cormac turned from her and watched Mika put her notescreen aside, then open a case on her lap. From this she removed an instrument like a flattened torch. Its wider end was inset with a small touch-panel and screen. He recognized it from one time he went on a mission to a planet that had seceded from the Polity, and where immediately the diree continents had gone to war. It was a hand diagnosticer. It covered a whole range of cases, up to just how many lumps of radioactive metal were lodged in your patient, or what poisons were in his blood, and what viral agents might be eating his face away. Perhaps now she would get a chance to use an instrument like this. Before, he had doubted the possibility.

'Coming up on the facility now.' The shuttle dipped and slowed, thrusters firing in reverse, and through swirls of snow they caught glimpses of three long buildings like half-submerged pipes.

'They are in the middle one.
Hubris
says there is a power source of some kind there, but it is not being used for heating. They must be in coldsuits. Certainly the heat levels would indicate so.'

The shuttle finally came to a halt in midair, then, using the AG and blue stabs of retro flame, Jane piloted it in as close to the building as she could. It came down into a hissing storm, the beating of ice crystals a constant drone on its hull. Even as it landed, it slid sideways a couple of metres before AG was completely disengaged and its full weight rested on the ground.

'I can't land on the other side, so you'll have to walk the length of the building. Take care, the weather is even worse here,' Jane said.

Cormac grimaced at Thorn, who grinned back before pulling on his facemask. Golem could be patronizing at times. When they had all pulled on their masks and gloves, Gant hit the door control and stepped back. The wind was howling outside and, even when the door was only open a crack, hard crystal ice hissed in and powdered every surface.

'Should we rope up?' asked Chaline.

'No need,' Thorn replied. 'Only a few metres to go, and this wind's not going to pick you up.'

Chaline inspected him for a long moment before reluctantiy leading the way out. Cormac did not need to see her expression to know that she was doubtful. He had his own reservations about their safety. But he also knew that Thorn and Gant would not agree to go roped into a potentially hostile situation. They wanted to be able to
move.

Underfoot was cold-cracked plascrete skinned with ice like a layer of badly scratched perspex. This water-ice had been considerably abraded by the wind-driven crystals, and as a consequence it was not slippery. The door was only a few metres away across this surface; even so, it seemed kilometres distant as they struggled to stay upright against the blast of the wind.

'This door is jammed as well,' said Chaline, when they reached the building.

Gant and Thorn both tried it, but it did not move. Gant waved Thorn back and drew his hand weapon. Cormac noted it was standard issue JMC 54: a military version of the thin-gun he had used on Cheyne III, a pistol that fired field-accelerated pulses of ionized aluminium dust, but an effective weapon for all that.

There was an arc-light flash and the buckled and smoking door went crashing down a central aisle between rows of frozen plants. They got in out of the wind.

'Messier than Jane, but just as effective,' said Cormac.

Gant chuckled and advanced ahead of them, with Thorn at his side. He did not put his weapon away. Thorn drew his.

'Have you got a fix on us, Jane?' asked Chaline.

'Yes, I have you,' came Jane's reply.

'How far to the heat sources?'

'Approximately five hundred metres, and they have not moved. Have you found anything interesting yet?'

'Nothing so far.'

They came across the first corpse twenty metres beyond the door - or, rather, half a corpse. It lay on the floor, its lower half missing, and the top half so badly burnt it was impossible to tell if it was male or female. White teeth showed in stark contrast to the blackly incinerated face.

'Jesu!'

That was from Chaline. Gant and Thorn had seen düs sort of thing before. Mika knelt down next to the body and inspected it closely. She pushed at burnt lips to get a better view of the teeth, and the lips crumbled away. There was a gagging sound from Chaline. Mika held her diagnosticer against the belly, where the flesh had not been burnt and was like marble.

'Female, heavily radioactive. I'd say she was flash-burnt in the explosion.'

'Quick, then,' said Gant.

'Not necessarily… that's strange…'

Cormac stepped forward and looked down. 'Tell me,' he said.

'It looks like her lower half was cut away
after
she was burnt. I suppose that could have happened…'

Mika glanced up then around. There was no damage evident to the building where they were, or anywhere nearby. Cormac knelt down and inspected the corpse. He looked over to Mika.

'See there.' She pointed to the severed organs and muscle. 'That was done with a shear of some kind, after she was frozen. See? No fluids.'

Gant stooped down, next to the two of them. 'Now why would someone do that?' he asked.

Cormac knew damned well that the question was rhetorical. He stood. 'We'll find out soon,' he said. 'No need to second-guess.'

They advanced and found another corpse in a similar condition. Then they found a stack of five corpses, which looked like a sculpture made in hell. None of these corpses was burnt. Mika inspected them closely, though with some difficulty as they were frozen together.

'Hypothermia. Most of these froze to death.' She pointed at the corpse of a man right in the middle of the heap. His skin was dark blue and he was impossibly thin. 'That one is an Outlinker. He must have been in a low-G area when AG cut out. His neck is broken.'

'Yeah, but who stacked them here, and why?' wondered Gant.

Cormac wished he could give the soldier a dirty look.

They continued along, until Jane contacted them.

'One of the heat sources is moving, coming your way.'

Gant spoke up quickly. 'This isn't scientific any more. What do you recommend, Agent?'

'Get off this central aisle. We'll hide for a while and see what we might see,' said Cormac. There was no objection from Chaline; since they'd found that first corpse she had been very quiet.

They cut down a side path to a secondary aisle and crouched there behind troughs of frozen hydroponics fluid containing tomato plants, which would shatter at a touch. Both Gant and Thorn held their weapons ready. Cormac moved his hand close to his shuriken.

'Close to you now, about a hundred metres,' Jane told them.