The Beauty of Destruction (20 page)

‘There are consequences!’ Scab screamed at her as he
raised his good arm. She shot him in the head,
once. His trilby glowed, skin bubbled, but it wasn’t
enough to overwhelm his hat’s energy dissipation grid. The
screaming hologram disappeared.

‘I will kill you,’ she told him.
Her P-sat was covering Scab as well. Talia threw
herself out of the lounger, still panicking. Vic had his
shotgun pistol in one hand, the other laser in another,
a
third was reaching for his lizard-made power disc. ‘Don’t—’ but Vic levelled the pistols at Scab.

Ahead of them the manoeuvring engines of the
Lazerene
, one of the Church’s capital ships, were burning brightly as it hove into view in front of them, glowing, its hull bubbling as carbon reservoirs tried to regrow the damage from the constant and total bombardment it was receiving at the hands of the Consortium fleet. Suddenly the
Basilisk II
was surrounded by light as what looked like all the Church capital ship’s weapons fired on the Elite behind them. The Elite slowed, and pulsed. The Monk guessed it was cycling through physical states. Its weapons lashed out, flickering between different types of attack. Amber light appeared over different parts of the Capital ship’s hull long enough to block or lessen the Elite’s attacks. In other places rents appeared in the massive vessel’s glowing, bubbling hull.

‘Stop your attack on the AI and give me total access to the ship. Vic as well,’ Beth told Scab.

‘This is pretty good, Scab. You might not get better, but is this a good enough way to die?’ Vic asked his erstwhile partner.

Churchman was getting information from all over the Cathedral. He was aware that the Consortium ships were inside the habitat now, though still taking heavy fire from the Cathedral’s defences. The Consortium vessels were providing covering fire for troop landings. The Cathedral’s smart matter was giving birth to more of the servitors and the gargoyle statuary, which were part of the smart matter masonry, were coming to life and dropping onto ships and soldiers alike. The servitors, gargoyles, and the remaining militia fought heavy combat automatons and Consortium contractor Thunder Squads, backed by the expendable penal legions.

The electronic realm was a storm of data raids, attack software and virulent viruses as AIs and electronic warfare specialists attempted to steal the Church’s rapidly diminishing store of secrets. They would be too late, which gave Churchman some solace.

Part of his fragmented but attentive intellect was aware of the battle between the Innocent and the still wounded
Lazerene
. The capital ship had not fully recovered from Benedict/Scab’s extensive electronic attack on its systems, though much of it had been refitted.

Churchman saw the Innocent attack the city-sized ship. The
Lazerene
countered with coherent energy fields where it could. The energy demand was too high for a coherent energy field to cover an entire ship; even doing it piecemeal as it was now required it to draw on entangled energy fed to it by ancient alien crucibles orbiting in the corona of distant suns, drinking from them like vampiric scavengers. Only having a partial screen up, however, meant that the
Lazerene
’s own considerable firepower could be brought to bear on the Innocent, though the capital ship was taking a lot of fire from the rest of the Consortium fleet.

Somehow the parry and riposte of the coherent energy fields and beam weapons reminded him of jousting. He thought of St George and the dragon. He found himself cheering on the doomed dragon.

The Innocent dived into the
Lazerene
.

‘My master has a question for you.’

The sensors in the golden exoskeleton that housed his corrupted body were extensive. He was barely aware of the figure standing behind him.

‘Let him come here and ask it then,’ Churchman said, and turned around. He had been standing in a corner deep within the maintenance tunnels that ran through the rock the Cathedral had been carved out of or, more accurately, grown from.

The figure was an eight foot tall ’sect with six arms and a scorpion-like tail. It was leaning on a spear that looked similar to the type favoured by tribal lizard warriors. The figure’s voice had been female. Somehow the Consortium must have recruited a hive queen, though she had to have been extensively redesigned physiologically, as she was much, much smaller than most hive queens. She was, of course, clothed in liquid glass. Churchman loaded all his most virulent S-tech viruses into his matter, and what was left of his flesh, and all his most virulent L-tech viruses into his software and neunonics.

‘I don’t like talking to proxies, and I suspect your ratings would plummet if your own kind knew you were an arachnid.’

Churchman tried to ’face broadcast the ’sect Elite’s arachnid augment to the evacuating ships, a tiny act of spite. He was not surprised to find the ’face transmission jammed.

‘You toppled the god you believed in and replaced him with science. If your god had been real, how do you think he would have felt?’

‘These are not your words, puppet. My god is real enough to me, that is all I need. He would not judge me for idols. He would judge me for the killing and all the suffering I have caused.’

The black liquid glass on the Elite’s face transformed itself to take on Patron’s features. Churchman took a step back. It meant his ancient enemy was much more closely tied to the technology of the Consortium Elite than should be possible.

‘You know this will be the last generation of bridge-capable ships …’ Churchman told Patron’s visage.

‘It does not matter, not now.’ It was his voice. ‘You actually sent for the Monarchists. You know what they are? Who he was?’

‘You have to be stopped.’ Churchman’s modulated voice was quiet.

‘I don’t think you understand how many times I have done this. I cannot be stopped.’

Churchman wasn’t sure what Patron meant by ‘how many times’ he had done this. The visage in the black, liquid glass of the Elite’s armour actually looked sad for a moment. Churchman could not help himself, despite everything he had suffered at the hands of Patron, despite the suffering Patron had wrought on countless others. He still couldn’t help but feel sorry for him.

‘I wish things had been better for you,’ Churchman told Patron’s visage. The ’sect Elite nodded under her master’s control. The large golden exoskeleton started to fall. Churchman had killed himself and wiped his mind and systems of all information that wasn’t viral before the Elite even reached him. The clawed limbs penetrated the exoskeleton’s heavy armour as if it didn’t exist. The ’sect Elite lifted Churchman’s shell off the ground and held the limp exoskeleton there for a moment. Then she started to peel him, looking for secrets. The viruses gave her a few moments pause.

‘You abuse me, wound me, disobey me, and ask me to save you?’ Scab demanded.

‘Save yourself,’ the Monk said. She didn’t like the way Talia was rolling around on the floor close to the pool. Unaugmented, and if the ship’s systems wouldn’t help, there was a real danger of her drowning in the pool.

Behind the speeding
Basilisk
II
, the
Lazerene
looked sick, its very matter warping to make it look like its leprous namesake. All of its weapons had stopped firing, though the capital ship was still taking a lot of incoming fire. Clothed in light, another one of the Church’s three capital ships was trying to get into position to help the
Lazerene
, trading fire with the Consortium fleet and aided by the Cathedral’s remaining local weapon systems. The
Lazerene
’s engines burned brightly. All of them, bar Talia, were aware of the ’face broadcast of the
Lazerene
’s ten-thousand-strong crew, screaming. They presumed it came from the Elite.

The Monk was trying every electronic warfare trick she knew to gain access to the
Basilisk II
’s systems, but nothing was working. Scab was too good at this kind of thing. She thought about trying to reason with him.

‘The AI can lead us to answers. He knows things.’ The Monk hated the pleading tone in her voice.

‘If this is enough then let’s end it here,’ Vic told his partner. The Monk was pretty sure it wasn’t a bluff.

‘Not by you,’ Scab said. ‘I won’t be killed by you.’

The
Lazerene
collided with the other capital ship, crushing some of the smaller screening ships between the two behemoths. Whether from the diseased matter that the Elite had infected it with, or from taking so many hits from the Consortium fleet, the
Lazerene
’s structural integrity finally failed. The capital ship’s back broke. Huge lumps of debris spun from it as it split, the two parts of the craft scissoring down on the other capital ship, still trying to rise through the wreckage of its sister craft.

A section of the
Basilisk II
’s transparent smart matter hull magnified part of the wreckage. The Innocent burst from it like a parasitic birth. The Elite was making straight for them.

Scab gave them access to the ship. The Monk split her intellect again. Scab’s viral attack on the AI and the construct that contained Maude and Uday’s psyches was represented as a hydra. She clothed herself in armour like she’d seen an actress wearing in a film about Joan of Arc, and laid into the virus with her own attack programs, symbolised by her sword. Vic appeared looking like a character played by his immersion star namesake in one of the colonial immersions Matto had been famed for. Though the real Matto had only two arms. Vic’s attack programs looked like a colonial era disc gun and twin tumbler pistols.

The Monk wondered if Vic found shooting at the Scab-faced hydra therapeutic. The beleaguered AI, badly bleeding, was attacking the hydra as well.

In the real world the Monk and Vic remained covering Scab as he flew the
Basilisk II
with his mind. The Innocent had gone. Then the
Basilisk II
’faced her all the warnings. The Elite was standing on the other side of the pool, black, liquid glass peeling from him and sinking into his flesh, revealing a beautiful Scab as a beatific young man. His transforming weapon was an oversized sword burning with black fire. The Innocent was very much awake. He reached for his uglier clone twin and started to walk across the pool’s water towards him.

The Monk ’faced another timed command to her coherent energy field generator. Talia was surrounded with amber light again. She would live, at least until the timer ran down. Then the Monk tried hard not to soil herself. The air felt electric. She dumped drugs from her internal supplies into her system, all but tranquilising herself as she attempted to cope with fear and awe enough to function. Vic was backing away from the Innocent, the air thick with his pheromone musk. With a snarl, Scab extended the energy javelin from its housing in his right arm and moved towards the Innocent like a stalking animal. The Monk suddenly found herself in control of the
Basilisk II
.

The hydra was dead. All its heads cut off. The now pharmaceutically-calm Monk checked the AI to see how much damage had been done, how much memory had been lost. The other half of her mind accelerated the
Basilisk II
, seeking the path of least resistance towards the closest beacon corridor. She manoeuvred away from the larger ships, only picking fights with the smaller, faster craft that could keep up with the modified yacht. A frigate came apart in a hail of transferred kinetic energy, exploding fusion and hard light. All the while she was staring, transfixed, at the Innocent walking across the surface of the pool.

A howl of anguish and pain. An open ’face broadcast as a carrier wave for a sonic attack and electronic warfare. Ships with damaged systems suddenly found themselves dead in space. The
Basilisk II
was thrown into shade by huge projected black wings.

Fallen Angel had come to avenge the death of Horrible Angel, his lover, and/or possibly sister. The Monarchist Elite had died at the hands of another Consortium Elite Scab clone when the planet Game had been destroyed. Behind the Fallen Angel, the Monarchist fleet was emerging from the red clouds, engaging the Consortium fleet. The Innocent paused and then continued. Scab crouched, ready to pounce. The Monk saw something moving under the carpet, like a burrowing animal. The brass scorpion burst from the smart matter floor, its stinger curving over its body. The Monk didn’t even see the sword move and bits of the scorpion were dropping into the pool.

‘I’m frightened,’ the Innocent said, as if confiding in them. There were more warning messages from the
Basilisk II
, strange information about the yacht’s structural integrity.

‘No, no, no, no, no …’ Vic said, backing away from something. The Monk knew he should have been able to control his terror with his internal drug supply. Then the Monk was aware of something else in the ship with them.

It floated in the air, a squat, roughly cylindrical automaton with various strange technological components protruding from it that the Monk knew to be L-tech. It too was clothed in black liquid glass. Ludwig, the Monarchist’s machine Elite.

The Innocent stared at the other Elite, his face twitching as if in the grips of some horrible waking nightmare. Then black liquid glass seeped from his pores, clothing him again.

Sensor information from the ship told the Monk that there was some kind of transmitted exchange going on between the two Elite. The air shimmered with ghost ordnance. Both Elite seemed to be taking care not to harm the other occupants of the ship.

Scab was crouched like an animal, staring at the Innocent, looking for a weakness and opportunity. Then the Innocent was gone through the pool room’s ceiling. Ludwig sank through the floor. Out in Red Space the two Elite cut loose at each other. Red clouds enveloped the
Basilisk II
. The last glimpse the Monk caught of the Cathedral was of it collapsing in on itself.