Marauder (2 page)

But the zombies didn’t worry her nearly so much as the neck-tattoos on the man still searching through her satchel. They signified that he was a Freeholder and a native of Redstone, and
the tattoos represented the number of people he had killed in one-to-one combat. He wore a traditional Freehold blade on his hip, its haft wrought in a fine filigree the colour of jade and ivory,
depicting stylized human figures in close combat.

He stood up suddenly, slinging her satchel over the shoulder not burdened by his rifle, and looked down at her. ‘Can you get up?’

‘What the hell do you think?’ she tried to say, but the words emerged half-slurred. Her tongue felt like something that had crawled into her mouth for shelter and died there.

‘Fair enough.’

He leaned down, took hold of her under her armpits, then began dragging her towards the spider-truck and the waiting bead-zombies. Her boots left dark grooves in the dusty yellow soil.

He slammed her upright against the side of the truck, between two of its legs, propping her there with one hand against her shoulder. The bead-zombies had turned towards him, from which she
deduced they must both be slaved to his control.

‘It’s wearing off now, right?’ asked the Freeholder. ‘The stuff the mech shot you with?’

‘Fuck you,’ she mumbled, then coughed, though it was getting easier to talk. ‘What the hell do you want with me?’ she managed to ask. ‘And who the fuck are you,
anyway?’

‘Sifra warned me you’d be a pain in the ass,’ he replied, taking his hand away from her shoulder. ‘He wasn’t kidding.’

Megan just about managed to stand upright without his support. ‘Sifra?’ She swallowed hard. ‘
Anil
Sifra?’

One corner of his mouth curled upwards. ‘So you
do
know him.’

‘No.’ Megan shook her head. ‘No, I’m not going anywhere if he’s—’

The Freeholder sighed loudly, then hauled her over to an open hatch at the rear of the truck. She yelled in protest as he pushed her inside a cramped and windowless compartment with a metal
floor and walls before slamming the door shut.

I’m sorry, Bash
, she thought, feeling all her carefully wrought plans slipping through her fingers like so much water.
Looks like I’ve failed you again.

A few minutes later, she felt the vehicle stagger into motion. The ceiling was low enough to force her to sit bent over. Her head banged against the hard surface above her when
the truck lurched suddenly as it picked up speed, but before long it had achieved a smooth, steady rhythm, bouncing only slightly as it leaped around the tiny planetoid’s circumference.

Before long the numbness in her limbs had nearly worn off, but it was soon replaced by intense cramps. She flexed and stretched her arms and legs to try and ease the pain, but that was far from
easy in such a confined space. When she felt sufficiently recovered, she banged and kicked at the door of the cramped compartment, throwing all her rage and frustration at it, until she finally ran
out of physical energy.

She then made up for it by screaming abuse at her Freeholder captor at the top of her lungs, even though she knew he almost certainly couldn’t hear her from where he sat in the
truck’s cabin. Which was a shame, because she thought some of the insults she’d just come up with were particularly inventive.

She finally slumped down again, her rage and fury replaced by a kind of numb emptiness.

Sifra
.

How could he possibly have known she was coming here? Her plan had seemed so simple when she had first worked it out, back on Corkscrew, which lay a hundred and fifty light years distant:

An agenda clean and uncomplicated – in principle at least. But, as ever, real life in all its complexity had got in the way. Just finding a way to land undetected on
Avilon had required the negotiation of numerous deals and also the payment of bribes that had drained her remaining finances. Numerous favours had been called in. And, if not for Kazim, part-owner
and investor in several ships used for smuggling
sans de sezi
as well as being the nearest thing she’d had to a friend these past several years, she would never have got even this
far.

But, for all her preparations, there had remained the unanswered question of just how the hell she was going to get Bash out of the high-security medical facility he was supposedly being held
in. And that, added to her discovery that Sifra’s reach extended deep inside Avilon’s global security network, made her job close to impossible.

It then occurred to her that her only remaining option was to admit defeat and turn herself in to Avilon’s civilian authorities. She might not be able to save Bash, but it was still a hell
of a lot better than letting Sifra get his hands on her.

She managed to access the local data-net via her implants and quickly found a responsive AI representing Avilon’s civilian council. She explained to it that she had been kidnapped and gave
a brief description of her abductor and the spider-truck.

A few seconds later, the truck came to a sudden, lurching halt. She heard the hollow thump of a door opening somewhere overhead, then the sound of boots hitting the ground.

The door cracked open once more, and the Freeholder peered in at her, haloed by bright artificial daylight that hurt her eyes.

‘Don’t do that again,’ he said, holding up one fist and then flinging its fingers open. An Avilon Security ID materialized in the air, before fading after a few moments.
‘Otherwise I’ll have to knock you out for the rest of the journey.’

‘You’re . . . ?’

‘The police,’ said the Freeholder. ‘Welcome to Avilon. Now shut the hell up.’

He closed the door hard, and she heard him climb back up into the truck’s cabin. They were soon under way once more.

Well, that’s that, then.
She’d clearly walked into a trap, and a carefully prepared one at that.

She let her head fall forward on to her knees, giving herself up to hopeless exhaustion. As a result, she barely noticed when the truck finally came to a halt, a few hours later.

She squinted painfully as the compartment door opened again, letting daylight flood back in. The Freeholder reached in and grabbed the collar of her jacket, dragging her out
and depositing her in a heap on the yellow soil.

She looked around, seeing they had come to a halt in front of a vast sprawling building that looked as if it had been modelled on a fairytale castle. It sat at the centre of a few dozen acres of
carefully tended lawns and coppiced trees. It was, even by the excessive standards of Avilon’s population of the ultra-wealthy, stunningly tasteless.

‘Get up,’ said the Freeholder, as the two bead-zombies came over to stand behind him.

‘How long have you been working for Sifra?’ she asked as calmly as she could, staring up at him. She was damned if she was going to let him see how frightened she really was.

‘He told me to bring you here,’ the Freeholder grunted. ‘He didn’t say whether you had to still be in one piece.’ He gestured towards a nearby gate. ‘So how
about you shut the fuck up, and start—’

She jumped up and ran. One thing she knew about bead-zombies was that they weren’t very good at moving fast.

For the first few moments, she thought her legs might actually give way beneath her. She was still afflicted by numerous aches and cramps, and one ankle felt strangely numb. But she ignored all
that, letting her frank terror of ever again setting eyes on Anil Sifra empower her muscles to carry her away as far and fast as humanly possible.

She sped back along the same narrow road on which the spider-truck crouched. Just a few kilometres away she could see the glistening towers of Cockaigne – Avilon’s primary settlement
– rising up to pierce through the containment field more than a kilometre overhead.

The aching in her legs grew, her lungs burning in her chest like twin embers. She listened for the steady thump-thump of the spider-truck pursuing her, but heard nothing yet. Just when she began
to think she might actually make it to freedom, she heard a yipping sound from somewhere to her right, and the noise of something running up behind her.

She risked a quick glance over her shoulder, and nearly stumbled in fright. Two mogs were closing in on her from either side: half-human, half-canine hybrids, bipedal like a human being but
dumb, vicious and short-lived.

Not to mention wildly, incredibly illegal. Megan had once seen a mog rip a man’s throat out within seconds.

They were closing in on her fast, and she knew she could never outrun them. But the thought of those long snouts equipped with their rows of gleaming teeth spurred her to even greater
effort.

Damn Sifra. Damn him to hell. And damn Bash for losing his mind.

She suddenly stumbled, falling to the ground with a yell, and stuck out both her arms in a desperate bid to protect herself. The sleek grey bodies of her pursuers darted all around her, jaws
snapping at the bare flesh of her throat but never quite coming close enough. She saw, at close quarters, humanoid hands tapering into long, black claws. She screamed in panic again, convinced she
was about to die in a particularly horrible and unpleasant fashion.

Just then, a sharp, high-pitched sound cut through the air. Suddenly, the creatures pulled away, crouching on the soil nearby and continuing to watch her with hungry intent. The worst thing
about them, she decided, were the eyes – because they were the most human-looking part of all.

‘Do you know how easy it would be for me,’ said the Freeholder, as he stood over her once more, ‘to just let them rip you apart?’

‘Call them off,’ Megan managed to croak. ‘Please.’

He whistled twice, pointing at each mog in turn. The creatures stood up in response, their long, pointed ears twitching as they rose from their skulls. They both turned and ran back towards the
luxurious estate.

‘Maybe this time,’ said the Freeholder, unslinging his rifle and aiming it at her, ‘you’ll be prepared to go where I tell you.’

He led her back, past the parked spider-truck, and through the nearby gate, before guiding her inside an arched doorway. Megan found herself in a cool, dark interior with
whitewashed walls and low-standing couches. Soft rugs and cushions lay scattered all around and, even though the building seemed otherwise deserted, a hidden projector filled the space with
low-resolution holograms of intertwining naked forms. The air smelled of sweat, mingled with the burned-honey aroma of
sans de sezi.
They continued on down some steps into a starkly lit
basement.

‘After you,’ he said, opening a heavy steel door and motioning her inside.

At first, Megan thought the room was empty.

The Freeholder had locked her in a basement room measuring maybe five metres by three, which was lit only by a single, faintly glowing panel in the ceiling. The walls were bare and undecorated,
the illumination insufficient to reach even the corners fully. She saw a single narrow cot pushed into a narrow recess, the dark sheets balled up and rumpled, while a spigot, with a bucket placed
beneath it, protruded from the wall facing the door.

Megan slumped against the nearby wall, letting her back slide down against bare concrete, till her head was resting on her knees. She risked accessing the local data-services again, but this
time got nowhere. This room, she realized with a sinking feeling, was almost certainly shielded against her implants.

She closed her eyes, and saw again those two mogs yearning to rip her throat out. She reopened them quickly, clenching her fists tight until the fingernails dug into the soft flesh of her
palms.

I have fucked this up so very, very badly.

Something moved on the other side of the room.

She froze, realizing with a start that what she had taken for a bundle of discarded sheets on the single cot was, in fact, a living body. Whoever it was, they seemed still asleep.

She got up and edged over to the cot, discerning the outline of knees pulled up close to the chest beneath the blankets. Reaching down with trepidation, she pulled the blankets gently to one
side, before gazing down at the smooth, untroubled face of the man lying there.

She gaped in astonishment, hardly believing her own eyes. It was Bash – Imtiaz Bashir – the very man with whom she had once shared her deepest secrets and whom she had once abandoned
to certain death.

He looked emaciated, half starved, and she lifted up one corner of his blanket to see that he was still fully dressed beneath it, although his clothes were filthy. He was in a terrible state,
but she had never been so glad to see another living being in her whole life.

He showed absolutely no awareness of her, as his eyes stared past her into some unknowable place. His expression was calm and his lips slightly parted, as if just on the verge of saying
something.

A terrible sadness came over her. Had he been suffering like this all these years, since Megan had last seen him? Was there still some part of him locked inside his head that knew where he was
or what had happened to him?

From the look of him, that possibility seemed remote.

‘I told you I’d come back for you,’ she said softly, kneeling by the cot and stroking one hand across his forehead. He smelled terrible, and she guessed he hadn’t been
bathed in quite some time.
I’ll bet they keep those mogs in better condition
.

Bash’s eyes were large and brown and quite as beautiful as she remembered them. When she had first met him, she had been struck by his size – two metres of muscular mass accompanied
by the sweetest personality imaginable. Now, much of that muscle was gone, leaving him so emaciated that Megan found herself wondering when he had last been fed.