The Age of Scorpio (76 page)

Everything about the house looked nicely suburban. Beth tried to suppress her contempt. She knew this was based on envy. Right now she would have given anything to live there and be oblivious to the madness that hid under the surface of the real world.

There was an estate agent’s For Sale sign stuck in the lawn with a big Sold sticker across it. The house looked empty. Du Bois didn’t curse, he just seemed to sag in the driving seat. Then the door opened. The woman coming out looked like she had been attractive when she was younger and had tried to hold on to her looks by using too much make-up and hair dye. She glanced at the Range Rover and put the box she was carrying into the back of a Volvo estate. She glanced at them again and headed back to the house.

Du Bois concentrated momentarily.

‘That’s her.’ He got out of the car and walked towards her. ‘Anna Bryant?’ She turned and stared at him. Apparently she didn’t like what she saw and backed towards the house. Beth got out of the jeep as well. ‘Mrs Bryant, I know we look a sight – it’s been a pretty rough day – but my name is Malcolm du Bois and I’m with Special Branch. We spoke over the phone.’ He reached inside his torn and battered leather coat and pulled out his warrant card and held it up for her. She stopped but still looked like she might bolt at any moment.

‘Is this to do with that?’ she inclined her head towards the noise of the sirens.

‘I’m afraid so. Can we talk in the house?’

She looked terrified but swallowed hard and then nodded. She must have worked out that it was something to do with her husband. Suddenly Beth felt absurdly guilty for the part she had played in his death.

‘I’m afraid I can’t offer you tea or coffee. We’re moving . . .’ she said, embracing platitudes to put off a difficult situation just a little longer. Du Bois assured her that was fine with a degree of impatience in his voice. ‘Why wouldn’t they let me identify his body?’ she suddenly demanded.

‘A possible biohazard issue,’ du Bois lied smoothly. It was the official cover story so the lie came easily. Mrs Bryant looked stricken. ‘When we spoke on the phone I was sure that you were holding something back. We need to know what that is, and we need to know now, I’m afraid.’ She had started shaking her head before he had finished talking.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ The lie and guilt were obvious.

Du Bois looked angry. Even so, Beth was shocked when a knife appeared in his hand and he rammed Anna Bryant back into the wall, putting the blade up against her throat.

‘Look we don’t have—’

Du Bois was astonished when Beth grabbed him by the back of his coat, spun him round and slammed him into the door frame so hard he fell to the floor.

Beth stood over him. ‘What the fuck?’ she demanded. Du Bois looked apoplectic. ‘Not everything’s about bloody murder! Do you understand me?! Now you fucking stay down there and think about what you’ve done!’ she continued before turning to the terrified Mrs Bryant.

Beth managed to calm her down and get the story from her. After she had reported him missing, after they had waited the requisite amount of time, after she had had him legally declared dead, she had seen him in the street, but he had looked odd. She had been too frightened to report it because it would have meant losing the insurance money and calling into question the house sale. She had not said anything because she assumed that he had abandoned her and the children.

Mrs Bryant had seen him go into a house on Alhambra Road opposite South Parade Pier.

There was silence as they climbed into the Range Rover.

‘You angry with me?’ Beth asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Good. I’m really fucking angry with you. Want to take it out on somebody else?’

‘Yes, I do.’ Du Bois started the Range Rover, put it into gear and drove off.

The death of the
Basilisk
had been brutal. As soon as the bulk freighter carrying the Monk and Scab – hidden in the stomach of livestock – left Pangean space, the Church frigate opened fire on the
Basilisk
.

There was no way Scab could receive any form of communication during the infiltration, but even so the name of the game was to hit the
Basilisk
so hard its comms wouldn’t have time to do anything. All the beam batteries on the port side of the frigate fired, drawing lines of light and spatial distortion to the converted Corsair-class ship. At the same time all the kinetic shot racks were also emptied. The
Basilisk
’s energy dissipation grid flared briefly before the ship burst and, to all intents and purposes, ceased to be.

More than a little of the Pangean orbital station the
Basilisk
was docked with was also damaged. Weapon systems locked onto the
St Brendan’s Fire
as Pangean naval craft sought to reach firing positions in higher orbits. The Living Cities immediately lodged protests both with the frigate and with Church authorities on Pangea. The Church apologised, explained it was a Church sanction and offered to pay compensation, but behind all their apologies was the unuttered threat of sanctions. The Pangean authorities let it go.

None of which mattered to Vic. Disguised as wreckage, he was being propelled by a jet of gas towards the
St Brendan’s Fire
. He was wearing the finest power-assisted combat armour that debt could buy, with some illegal upgrade modifications done by Scab and himself. They had put every bit of naughty stealth technology they could find into the armour, and he was running it with minimal systems.

He watched the
St Brendan’s Fire
get bigger and bigger. If it moved, he, no they, were screwed, Vic thought. He’d then have to activate his P-sat, currently attached to the back of his armour in a heavy combat chassis, make his way back to a Pangean orbital habitat and try to disappear. Which would be difficult if the Church was after him.

The Church frigate didn’t move. Vic did get a little worried when the frigate started breaking up bits of rubble with its laser batteries. Fortunately he seemed to be too small for them to go after. They stopped firing on the rubble when an automated Pangean weapons platform put a warning shot across their bows.

Minute jets of gas adjusted his course. He was aiming for a weak spot in the frigate’s external surveillance, but he knew that his trajectory would have to be just right or he would be detected. Fortunately they did not have a coherent energy shield up. It was just too expensive to keep running constantly, and few people were prepared to attack the Church, let alone on their own. Once again Vic reflected on his own stupidity and cursed the existence of Scab.

Contact. The glove on his armour stuck itself to the composite hull of the religious warship. He pulled himself down onto the hull. Close by he could make out friezes of alien cityscapes designed to represent the Seeder civilisation picked out on the craft’s hull. He was pretty sure the friezes showed the fall of the Naga. Pulling himself down behind an extruded statue of one of the six-armed, wedge-headed Seeders on its cross, Vic adhered himself properly to the ship. He activated various low-power stealth systems and down-powered himself into a death-like trance, as close to suspended animation as he could get.

Vic woke. There was just a moment of disorientation and then surprise that they were in Red Space. Then fear as he saw the blackened skeletons of trees. He risked looking around. The strange and massive tree-like skeletons were everywhere. He had heard stories of places in Red Space, xeno-archaeological digs in ancient ruins, some said ruins that predated the existence of Real Space, but he had thought them just stories. He didn’t think such stories being real boded well for him.

This would be the most dangerous part of the operation, he thought.
Well, this and trying to wrangle Scab’s vicious little pet
. He placed a blob of a putty-like substance against the hull. It didn’t look like much but its cost must have been astronomical. After all, you’re not meant to hack the matter of armoured spaceship hulls, even if the armour is reactive smart matter.

Vic didn’t like the feeling of sinking through liquid carbon. Everything was black around him. It was like a very slow free fall following the putty, which had spread out into a thin blanket. As he fell, the liquid carbon became solid explosive-infused reactive armour above him. He had nightmarish thoughts of fusing with the armour, to be ejected when a kinetic shot hit as the armour exploded out to counter the shot’s impact. On the other hand, if the frigate’s crew detected anything, all they would see was a glitch in the armour that would need to be checked the next time they were in dry dock, presumably at the Cathedral.

Vic felt himself hit the hull proper of the frigate. He spent some time in total blackness that neither his nor the suit’s optics could pierce, working via pre-programmed touch to place a circle of very powerful thermal seeds against the hull. He used the putty sheet of programmable smart matter to act as tamping and to isolate the thermal seeds from the liquid carbon, because if anyone had ever done this before then they hadn’t bothered to record the results of any chemical reaction. Even so, there was a moment of fear after Vic ’faced the detonation code to the thermal seeds when he thought he saw a faint glow though the blackness.

Vic and the sheet of programmable smart matter fell through the hole in the hull of the ship in a rain of liquid carbon. Vic landed agilely and, for someone in full combat armour, reasonably quietly, on all six limbs. No alarms went off because there was no need for alarms. Ships couldn’t be penetrated in this way. Above his head the carbon immediately started to harden into more useful armour.

Vic’s biggest problem now was the surveillance aspect of the ship’s internal nano-screen. His nano-screen had been augmented with the best stealth nanites that money could buy on the free market, but the Church had infinitely more resources than he and Scab did, even with the pair’s mysterious and obviously wealthy backer. Scab had sampled some of the Church Militia’s nano-screens during the fight at Arclight, and in theory Vic’s screen was supposed to belong to one of them, but he knew it wouldn’t last for long.
Best get on with it then
, he thought.

His nano-screen picked up someone’s approach. Vic backed into a doorway. He saw a feline in the uniform of a lay Church crew member come into the corridor, stop and then advance more cautiously as he saw the hole.

Vic, despite his current bulk, moved nearly silently behind the feline. The first the crewman knew was when Vic extended all four sword-like blades from his arms as he towered over the feline and then stabbed them into his flesh in the right places to kill him instantly.

Vic retracted the blades. He felt no real remorse for killing the feline – he wasn’t really wired up that way – he just sort of knew it was a waste and wondered if a crew member on a Church frigate had good clone insurance. The blades had held up the feline and the body started to fall when they came out of his flesh. Vic caught and then easily picked up the corpse and took it with him. No point spending time trying to hide it. He only had so much time before the ship’s nano-screen detected him.

Vic detached the P-sat in its combat chassis, a heavier and more armoured weapons platform with increased targeting and sensor capabilities. Vic immediately started receiving feed from the P-sat ’faced directly to his neunonics.

Vic went one way at a corner, the P-sat the other. Vic reached his destination first. He was standing before a plain metal door in a plain metal corridor. The door opened somewhat unexpectedly. The Church Militiaman, thankfully without armour on, stared at Vic in his full combat armour. Vic didn’t hesitate. He threw the dead feline at the human male. The Militiaman staggered back.

Vic was aware via the ’face feed from the P-sat that it had launched tiny AG-driven, hunter-killer smart rounds. They were designed to seek out and kill automatons and other autonomous weapon systems like ship-controlled P-sats.

Vic had to do as much damage to the ship’s company as he could in as little time as possible before the security systems caught up with him. He stepped into the bunk area. Everything seemed to slow down. Men and women, mostly human, mostly base gender, raced for their personal weapons. Vic drew his triple-barrelled shotgun pistol with his top left arm. With his lower right he pulled the six-barrelled rotary strobe gun from its clips on his back and swung it forward, assisted by low-powered AG motors designed to help with its weight.

The head of the guy he’d thrown the feline at disappeared as a 12-gauge slug entered it and then exploded. Another slug took a Militiawoman behind the dead guy trying to bring her ACR to bear. He moved his upper torso to the left and fired the final barrel of the shotgun. A reptile Militiawoman dived out of the way as her bunk exploded.

With a thought he triggered the strobe gun, bathing the bunk room in a flickering hellish red glow. The sound of superheated air molecules exploding ran together in a constant staccato. The rotating barrels allowed for them to cool, which meant a higher rate of fire than single- or double-barrelled laser weapons. It looked like a constant red line bisecting the room.

Red steam from boiling blood turned the room humid as the laser all but sawed people in two. Vic holstered the now empty shotgun pistol with his upper left arm while his upper right grabbed the reptile disc from its holder over his shoulder and threw it, activating its autonomous hunter-killer program. A ’face feed from his tactical neunonics would keep the disc out of the way of his other ordnance.

His top limbs grabbed his advanced combat rifle from his back as he dropped the strobe gun. The gun’s four-legged spipod unfolded and the weapon went looking for more victims.

Meanwhile, the P-sat had taken out two crewmen it had met in the corridor with neurotoxin-coated flechettes fired from a suppressed spit gun. It had just attached a thermal seed frame to the reinforced door that led to Command and Control in the centre of the frigate.

The strobe gun was advancing, its barrels swinging back and forth, firing nearly constantly, its targeting systems finding victims sometimes with the help of info ’faced from Vic’s own neunonics.