Steel Sky (2 page)

The intruder stops at a long, narrow hallway. At the far end, a second figure is waiting in the shadows, standing rigidly at attention. The intruder takes a deep breath, then launches himself forward at a dead run, arms crossed around his head. One by one the displays light as he passes them. “
Koba’s preferred method of persuasion was electric shock . . .”
The exhibits fly by, revealing their antique curiosities and growing dark again. “
A series of executions . . . His oldest friends . . .”
The voices overlap, becoming a quiet babble. As the intruder approaches the waiting figure, a brilliant light illuminates it, scintillating off of white metal.

“
The ceremonial armor of Koba’s son — Koba the Second, also known as Kobe of the Forty Days — was never worn . . .”
The whispering voices are drowned beneath the sound of shattering glass as fists and elbows ram the display at full speed. The intruder collapses in a shower of glittering fragments. The waiting figure, an armored manikin, rocks back and forth. “
Kobe was a secret adherent of the Cult of the Winnower, which his father had tried to destroy. He commissioned the armor to evoke fears of that mythical avenging spirit . . .”

The intruder stands haltingly, brushing shards of bloodied glass from his neck and arms. “
Kobe was trying to get into the armor when the guards his father had so painstakingly trained to protect him broke down the door and held him fast while Luka Brattain, who would become the first Culminant, cut the pretender’s throat with his father’s own weapon . . .”

The intruder runs his fingers across the armor’s smooth white surface. The helmet resembles a jawless human skull, though it is sleeker, as if cast in mercury. In the blackness of the eye sockets, it is possible to see complex circuitry. The intruder takes it in his hands. The halogen lights have left it as warm as a living thing.

It fits perfectly.

VISIONS

“Watch him. Watch him very carefully.”

“What am I looking for?”

“You’re not looking
for
anything. When you look
for
something to happen, you miss what’s already happening in front of you.”

Hundreds of video images glow in the darkness, forming a patchwork sphere around the two watching figures. One is standing, a tall and bulky man in late middle age. The other, a plump boy barely sixteen years old, is seated in a large vinyl chair. Both are dressed in gray, robed uniforms, and both are completely hairless, with pale skin pitted like poorly cast metal. Shifting aquamarine lights from the monitors slide across their faces.

The man leans forward with one arm around the back of the chair and indicates a key on the console that encircles them. “If you want a close-up, press this button here.”

“Uh-huh,” the boy mumbles.

On the screens, the intruder slips off his shirt and his tights. Though shy about exposing his face, he clearly has no inhibitions about the rest of his body.

“Who is he, Father?” the boy asks as the intruder begins to remove the armor from the manikin.

“I don’t know,” the father growls. “No distinguishing marks. Good build, but not too massive. He knows the museum.” Gray eyes narrow under a protuberant brow. “And he put the helmet on before anything else. He knows we’re watching. Back us up.”

“Uhhh . . .” The boy’s hands hover indecisively above the console.

“Here!” the father says, his thick, nailless finger stabbing a key. “This button takes us to split screen and shows us the past ten centichrons.”

“Sorry.”

The father makes no reply, watching intently as tiny images scamper in reverse motion. His fingers flicker across the keys. “From the moment he entered the museum, he’s kept his face hidden, his back to the monitoring devices. He knows where they are. Every one.”

“Is that possible?” asks the son.

The father shakes his head. The ubiquitous cameras covering the Hypogeum serve their purpose, but they are decoys. The true genius and enduring legacy of his ancestor, Orcus the First, is the technology he invented to trace inverse electron residue, effectively turning any light-emitting device connected to the central power grid into a low resolution camera. Every bulb, every screen, every LCD in the vastness of the Hypogeum is a source of information that leads back to this room. It is the Orcus family’s greatest secret, their ultimate source of power. And this man knows it. Somehow, he
knows
.

“What does
this
mean?” The boy points to a blinking line travelling a crooked path from one image to another across the interior of the great glass sphere.

The father snaps out of his reverie. “That indicates an alarm signal going to the security office. There’s a clop there — this monitor here — but he’s alone, so he’s sending a call for backup.”

The father twists a knob, and the images rotate dizzyingly until a new picture comes to rest in front of them. “You see how it all connects, like a giant net?” He points to the different images. “This monitor — the call goes out.
This
monitor — headquarters picks it up, records it, sends it on.
This
monitor — instructions are received by a patrol on one of the lower decks.”

The boy nods automatically. “I see.”

The father exhales in frustration, leaning heavily on his son’s shoulder as he manipulates the controls. The boy sees nothing. Nothing at all.

THE THING IN THE CLOSET

My luck is in the toilet
, Security Officer Horsen thinks as the other clops cycle through the airlock.
As usual. Right down the old bog
.

Horsen is a bulky man, with an edges-only mustache of the sort popular on the tertiary decks. Like many clops, he joined the force in large part to wear the single stripe on his shoulder. Of course, he still has to change back to three stripes when he goes off duty, but the prestige of that one stripe is considerable, even if it is only provisional.

Horsen had become a clop to get away from the mildew and faulty wiring of the lower decks. He had dreamed of working the main concourses, patrolling in the light and warmth of the Sun. Instead, he’d pulled security duty in this old museum that he hadn’t even known existed. And now that he finally has a chance to prove himself, to earn a promotion to the upper levels by catching this intruder, he has been ordered to wait for backup.
I could handle this myself
, he thinks resentfully.
I know I could
.

The lock hisses open, and two clops step inside. A whiff of fumatory, the polluted air of the Hypogeum, enters with them. Clipping their respirators back on their belts, they take a deep breath of the relatively cool museum air. Like Horsen, they wear the standard clop uniform of ribbed black rubber, a sort of flexible armor, with soft guns holstered at their thighs. A shiny scarlet band runs across their eyes and around their close-shaven heads, enabling them to see in all directions at once.

Before Horsen can speak, the taller clop walks forward and growls, “Where is he?”

Horsen stiffens his spine, fighting the urge to take a step backward. He’s worked with these two before, and he doesn’t like them. Like Horsen, they wear the conditional band through their stripes, but they are secondaries. They avoid him whenever possible and speak to him only when absolutely necessary.

“What took you so long?” says Horsen. “I sent out the call over a quarter chronon ago.”

The tall one crosses his arms and looks down at him. “We were busy.”

Horsen isn’t surprised. These two seem to have a lot of extracurricular business . . . and a lot more ready cash than your average clop.

“Well, the intruder’s gone. He disappeared off the screens a few centichrons ago.”

“You lost him?”

Horsen clenches his teeth. “I didn’t
lose
him. He
disappeared
. One moment he was there, and the next he wasn’t.”

“Where did you see him last?” the smaller clop asks.

“The Koba wing. He stole the armor of Koba the Second, and
he’s wearing it
.”

The tall one nods as if this piece of information is not at all unusual. “Take us there,” he says.

Horsen swallows a profane reply. Regardless of which level they each return to when they take off their eyebands, as long as they’re on duty, this guy is the same rank as he is. Silently, he turns and motions them to follow.

The door to the Koba wing slides open with a faint whine. “I locked all the exits,” Horsen says, keeping his voice low. “The master door controls still work properly as far as I know.” He looks down each of the long hallways. “He should still be here in the museum somewhere.”

The three clops walk down the darkened halls, their slippers squeaking against the polished onyx floor. When they reach the shattered exhibit, the recorded voice begins to drone its monologue again. The tall one lifts the denuded manikin off the floor, running his finger along the indentations that have been left by so many years of supporting the armor. “What would he want with this relic?”

Horsen shrugs. “How should I know?”

A small sound disturbs them, a soft
click
. The tall clop raises a finger, hushing them. “You hear that?”

“Sounded like a footstep, maybe,” Horsen whispers. “Close by.” His heart begins to race. The intruder had looked strong.

Releasing his soft gun from its holster, the tall clop turns in the direction of the noise, and suddenly freezes. Among them a muscular figure has appeared, dressed in bone white and blood red, with a face like a skull. It is already in mid-leap, back arched and legs tensed, stretched seemingly beyond human limits. Its hand, a sleek claw of white metal, is raised above its head, sharp fingertips almost touching the ceiling. A long arc of red liquid trails from the claw. Horsen’s eyes follow the arc downward, to the chest of the tall clop.

The figure vanishes. The arc of blood holds in the air a moment longer, then spatters on the ground. The wounded clop stumbles backward with mouth agape, hands across the ribbed fabric of his jacket which has been torn apart like tissue paper. Blood pours from the wound, spreading across the cool, clean floor. A soft cry escapes his white lips as he falls into the broken exhibit.

“What in Koba’s name was that?” Horsen whispers.

“Cover my back, damn it!” the small clop says, pulling out his soft gun. A low thrumming noise radiates from its elliptical nozzle as he releases the safety. Horsen belatedly draws his own gun and activates it.

The other clop whimpers a while longer, then falls silent.

Horsen and the small clop stand back to back in the center of the corridor, guns facing outward. “What happened? Where did he go?” Horsen cries.

“Shut
up
,” the small clop whispers through gritted teeth.

With an effort, Horsen closes his mouth, trying to control his breathing. The hall is quiet, seemingly uninhabited despite the carnage. Horsen scans the walls, looking for shadows. The eyeband he wears stretches his vision to 360 degrees, making the world a red-shifted, elastic landscape. Usually the increased range of vision comforts him, makes him feel powerful. Now it is only weird and alien. The world is the color of blood.

He hears a crunch and looks in the direction of the sound. There, not five meters in front of him, a large glass fragment shifts position. Before his eyes it quivers, scraping slowly against the floor, its edge leaving a thin, white scratch in the polished stone.
He’s standing on the glass
, Horsen thinks.
He’s right there
. Holding his breath, Horsen brings his gun up cautiously. With an abrupt creaking noise, the shard stops moving. Horsen freezes.
He knows I can see him!

The room is utterly still. The shard remains unmoving.

Horsen’s blood is pounding in his ears. Sensing his tension, the other clop turns his head, looking at Horsen with eyebrows raised, but Horsen doesn’t dare look away. His gun is almost in line with the shard when it suddenly cracks in two and jumps into the air. With a cry, Horsen pulls the trigger. The sonic wave strikes an exhibit. The glass resonates, then explodes, throwing a hurricane of ringing, sparkling shards into the air.
Too slow, damn it!
Still, he continues to hold down the trigger as he sweeps the soft gun from side to side wildly, shattering the glass of the other exhibits one by one. Finally, Horsen releases the trigger.

Slivers of glass rain down on them. A carpet of shards sticks to the soles of their shoes, slippery as ice, as he and the other clop rotate around their common center, searching for the intruder. “Where in Koba’s name is he?” Horsen curses.

“He’s close,” the small clop says, his voice a ragged anchor to reality behind Horsen’s back. “We just can’t see him. He must be wearing a blender.”