Molehunt (29 page)

Well, she would die either way. She cauterised the wound with her laser and jabbed a pain-go stiletto into her leg, but that took too long. As she straightened and turned the THME charged her, bellowing with rage, triumph, or high spirits.

Anneke had a nightmare glimpse of a creature the size of a bear, covered in natural body armour, talons flexing, mandibles and jaws snapping like bolt-cutters. She dived aside, narrowly missing the blurred slashing arm that ended in razor-sharp talons several centimetres long. This ex-person was demented, not augmented. That was an advantage. Intelligence was always more frightening. Anneke wondered if the mole had left them.

I'llget you for that!
flashed through her mind.

As she rolled to her feet the creature spat at her. The gob hit her in the face, narrowly missing her left eye. She cried out in pain but kept moving, ducking, picking up speed. It was only when she had pulled away, felt a momentary reprieve, that she realised she had almost been blinded in one eye. Her left eyebrow had frizzled away.

A quick glance at the scanner showed that the THMEs were trying to block off her escape route. Obviously, they knew about the docked craft. She sent a data burst to the suitcase AI on the scooter, giving it all the info she had amassed so far, including her present situation, and a warning.

Then she ran like she had never run before.

M
AXIMUS figured he had less than thirty seconds to live, which was depressing. All his grand schemes for plunging the galaxy into war and chaos had come apart in this moment. He was going to die and no one would truly comprehend the sheer magnificent audacity of his dream. Such was life, and life was unfair. Maximus expected his life to start flashing before his eyes.

Although that didn't happen, there
were
flashes.

‘We've got you zeroed, Mr Brown. Throw down your weapons and we'll make this nice and quick.'

Maximus considered putting up resistance, but these thugs might go for the seven per cent premium. That would give him some breathing time.

He slowly unstrapped and unbuckled his armoury belt and tossed it away. Their sensors would tell them when he was done. He had other devices of course, as they would expect him to. Unfortunately, this assumption on their part would make them wary about collecting the premium. It would be safer to kill him, surely they had figured that out. How many bodies did he have to leave behind to ram that message home?

A burly man with red hair and a pale freckled face stepped into view. Behind him a slight man with Asian features peered from around the bend. The other two Maximus knew were there remained out of sight. That was bad, they were starting to take him as seriously as he deserved.

‘They said you were good,' the freckle-faced man drawled. ‘They were wrong.' He spat phlegm.

Maximus wanted to kill him where he stood. The effort to refrain cost him some composure.

‘There's always someone better,' he called back.

The other man laughed.

‘Not so cocksure now, hey, Mr Brown?'

‘Fool,' hissed Freckles' companion from behind him. ‘Eliminate him now before he kills you.'

The red-haired man turned and glared at his companion, though more in perplexity than anger.

‘But he's worth more —'

Then came two bright flashes from behind Maximus's tormentors.

The Asian man leapt into view, twisting in mid-air, bringing his gun up against an unseen assailant. A third flash caught him full in the chest and vaporised a hole the size of a melon. He was dead before he collapsed. Maximus didn't know what was going on but decided he had to balance the books.

‘Hey, you!'

The red-haired man swung about, indecisive. Maximus flicked something at him, which landed on his neck, immediately starting to sizzle. The red-haired man screamed, clutched vainly at his throat, and died.

The Envoy-alien stepped into view. He eyed the red-haired corpse, noted the wound, then looked at Maximus's left hand. The fingernail of the last finger, one of the prosthetics, was missing.

‘A nerve toxin?' he surmised.

Maximus's lips twitched in acknowledgement. He had no illusions that he was in the presence of one of the deadliest killers he had ever met face to face. The creature made Kilroy look like a clumsy toddler.

‘Turpelo,' said Maximus.

Ah. One of the Prime Illegals. Efficient.'

‘What now?' said Maximus.

It was uncanny how similar this creature was to the Envoy, as though they were twins. Perhaps they reproduced asexually; some kind of cloning or budding. Hell, all insects looked alike anyway.

‘I have been hired to terminate you.'

‘Well, I guess you reached the head of the queue. I take it,' he eyed the bodies, ‘that you don't work for Myoto.'

‘That is correct.'

‘Just collecting the bounty, huh?'

‘I'm not interested in the bounty. Just in you.'

‘So what'd I ever do to you? I vaporise your mother by accident or something?'

‘You watched me die.'

‘Huh? Come again.'

‘I do not wish to kill you, Mr Black.' The creature came forward. Maximus forced himself to hold steady.

Then a bizarre thing happened. The Envoy lookalike dropped to one knee, offering Maximus his weapon. ‘I offer you my allegiance.'

For once, Maximus was speechless. ‘You're not here to kill me?'

‘I said so, did I not?'

‘Yeah, right. You did. Pardon me.' Maximus cautiously took the weapon. Immediately he aimed it at the creature's head. ‘All right, who are you?'

‘I am the Envoy.'

‘The Envoy is dead. I saw him die.'

‘You saw one of my hatchlings die. I am Many. Hundreds. I cannot die, unless a cataclysm wipes out my entire nest, spread through several star sectors.'

Maximus stared at the Envoy, trying to digest this. ‘You said something about allegiance …'

‘My people do not make war. We do not “mass” as humans do. But we can sense the tides of war, the pathways that produce the future. We believe you are the changer, the storm bringer. We received coded information of your activities, information we could not doubt. Anonymous information, but trustworthy. At first we were cautious, but the information synchronised with what we already knew of you. You have a full history for a stripling.'

‘You've seen all this?' Maximus asked. There was fervour to his voice he could not suppress. ‘You trust some unknown informant?'

‘We have. And whatever the source, we are good at managing information, picking the location of the wave, then riding it.'

‘And what part do you play in tonight's events? What part do you play in
my
destiny?'

‘We are the instruments of your destiny.'

‘What is that supposed to mean?'

‘Only an alien would ask that.'

‘I want an answer.'

I have given you an answer. Is it not my fault that you are an alien, and that your brain cannot recognise it.'

Having managed to survive, Maximus didn't waste any time. He stayed only long enough to effect the official transfer of power within Quesada by notifying each Clan head of his survival, then got off Reema's End. As befits an instrument of destiny, the Envoy had a sleek, fast ship waiting for him.

Within an hour they were on board the Orbital Engineering Platform, heading for the Hub. Some of its crew were still alive, but his THMEs had done their job well enough. The place was in chaos and the crew was now dispensable. The Envoy killed crew members they came across with cold efficiency and no trace of emotion.

At the Hub, Maximus hit his first snag. As he had expected, the AI was reluctant to give up its secrets to the first human who asked for them, even though few knew that this AI contained the first part of the lost coordinates.

Maximus ran a scan of the AI logs, trying to identify where the coordinates might reside. He did not expect success at this attempt. The coordinates could be anywhere. They could even be built into the hardware design pattern. In that case no retrieval software was going to work. Likewise, the coordinates could be compressed and encoded within a pattern of the countless trillions of pathways that went to make up the Old Empire AI computer's neural structure. After all, the coordinates were only kilobytes of information. Like a particular grain of sand on a beach, they could be in plain sight – yet beyond recognition – a needle in a haystack where they could be anything or anywhere.

The Envoy, while maintaining sensor readings of their surroundings, viewed Maximus's efforts impassively. After an hour of searching, Maximus threw up his hands in frustration.

‘Dammit, where are the coordinates?'

‘Who comes here?' boomed a voice.

Maximus reached for his weapon, then realised the computer had spoken.

‘I do,' he said.

A panel in the wall he thought was a screen became translucent. Inside was a holographic display of a poor family in a crude hut. Outside their window, snow fell, and a timid fire guttered in a grate. The woman, weary and thin, was breastfeeding a toddler as a six-year-old boy looked on. The man, emaciated and grey-haired, climbed slowly to his feet, pulling on a light coat. He gave his wife a resigned look, ruffled the boy's hair affectionately, and then went out into the cold night.

Maximus knew he had gone to find food and wood to keep his family safe. In his absence, the mother finished breastfeeding the little girl then huddled closer to the fire, sitting both children in her lap. When the girl started to cry she sang songs to soothe her. Then the boy asked for his favourite story, the one about the poor boy who became a prince. As the mother told the story for the hundredth time, a great and abiding love filled the little room with light and warmth. The toddler giggled, tugging at her brother's tunic.

Having lost track of time completely, Maximus suddenly shook his head to clear it and stepped back from the display. He felt badly shaken.

‘What is this?' he demanded, his voice ragged.

‘I do not know,' replied the AI. ‘I had thought you might. It was provided to me by broadcast some years ago. Facial structure analysis can provide probability matches, despite deep alterations.'

‘Turn it off. Turn it off now!'

‘Do you not wish to ask me anything?'

‘NO!' Maximus shouted. ‘Turn it off!' He fought back panic and did not know why, the image in the hut frightened him, threatening to undermine his existence. He pulled out a gun, aimed it at the screen.

‘Turn it off, I say!'

The Envoy stepped quickly forward to snatch the gun away, leaving Maximus stunned. The Envoy stared at the screen. ‘Is the boy in the screen the human who stands beside me?'

‘It is highly probable.'

Outside the window of the hut a great roaring could be heard. Flashes of light filled the sky and screaming commenced. It was a vision of the night Maximus became a slave.

‘Please, turn it off,' he said in a voice so small no one could hear it.

‘Who will find the lost coordinates?' the Envoy asked.

‘He who faces the core fear of his life.'

The Envoy glanced at Maximus, who was looking away, shivering. ‘I seek the coordinates,' said the Envoy. Instantly, the image in the screen changed, became as formless as smoke.

‘Curious,' said the AI. ‘You do not know fear. You are unlike the other seekers, all of whom failed.'

‘Why did they fail?'

‘They could not heal the wounds that made them seekers in the first place.'

‘I have no wounds. Where are the coordinates?'

‘The coordinates you seek are in the floating garden. In the eye of the Buddha …'