Sons of the Crystal Mind (Diamond Roads Book 1) (23 page)

Finally the flybike appears two metres off the side of the cruiser and I jump. My flight between the vehicles lasts less than a second, just long enough for the flybike to get slightly ahead. My hands skitter along the seat and for a long moment it doesn’t look like I’ll find a purchase but I just manage to grab the back end.

Immediately I’m yanked forward; my legs flail behind and air booms into my lungs. I get a good grip on the seat with my left hand, turn my eyes from the blistering wind and aim the n-gun at the cruiser’s pyramidal pads. The target sight settles. I fire.

The bolt destroys the nearest pad and the one on the far side. The cruiser wobbles and spins; I fire twice more and shred the vehicle into fiery streaks.

I grip the flybike with both hands and use the Aer controls to slow it down. The front hits the roof nonetheless and my legs are slung forward, almost jerking me loose. Debris whizzes past. One chunk hits my arm and knocks me off the bike onto the protective diamond covering the house.

I slide down the roof with my left arm on fire as heat forms a bracelet of agony around my exposed wrist. I try and get the arm underneath me to smother the flames but quickly run out of roof. Grabbing the edge before I go over, I hang as my boots swing above the garden. My burning arm convulses and I let go without thinking.

There’s a second of suspension, then jaw-snapping impact as I hit the grass. Dull pain jolts up my legs and I sprawl on my side. Two fizzing halves of a Basis interaction pad come right at me. I blast one into tiny stinging fragments and roll aside. The other smashes itself to pieces on the protective layer.

Flames crackle up my arm as the last fragments of the cruiser plink off the house and plough into the garden. I get up and stumble to one of the pools. Something clunks into the side of my head and I topple in headfirst, stunned but aware enough to hear the flames hiss out.

After that I become far less concerned. I relax into the cool depths of the water and its comforting darkness echoes the promise of oblivion. It is so calm here, so quiet. Distant submerged clunks have an inevitable quality, while the silence that follows does not bother me at all. Why in the world did I worry?

I feel tingling throughout, a curious lightness. I am dissolving. It is such hard work being Charity, being anyone. This slow dissolution is better.

The last frantic bubbles rush out of my mouth. Their multiple spheres are like all the layers of Diamond City, adrift and flowing away. Will struggling make any difference in the end? I imagine the house as it was, the garden, the surface of the pool as it ripples with my final breath…

No.

Good seduction is Harlan. Bad seduction is drowning in a decorative garden feature. I rise, rise… The surface breaks around me; there is no spluttering, just calm re-engagement. My boots find the pool bottom and the surface comes to my chest. The sweet air is reassuring, unremarkable. I take my bearings.

Above the deserted garden the flybike angles off the roof as if protruding from it. No guards approach and the air is empty of ships. Something glints in the depths of the pool and I see the cruiser fragment that knocked me out. I put my hand to the side of my head; the hand comes away bloody.

My hair is still slicked back despite the water that trickles past my eyes. I run my hands slowly over it and grip the thick wet braid as water laps gently under my breasts. Everything feels good. I begin to drift again.

I should deposit the flybike; I should… I should probably get out of the pool but I realise I barely have the strength to move my legs.

Fear of another attack gets me going. I haul myself out of the water and stagger dripping to the house. I open a doorway and stumble into the living room, where I turn and watch the diamond wall rise behind me. Before it reaches the top I’m unconscious…

34

I wake up on my back shrouded in dull pain. The time doesn’t mean anything; it’s mere numbers amid a glaze of ache and confusion. I get to my knees and retch wearily but nothing comes up.

After a while I crawl to the sofa. Leaning against the hard surface that covers it I access the house recs to look outside but there’s nobody in any direction.

I slowly get up and support myself against the wall as I climb the stairs. Mum is still unconscious in her room. I lie next to her and pull her arm around my waist as if she’s cuddling me but it flops away. I decide not to call Harlan because I don’t know who is listening. Instead I call Keris.

My call is blocked. I try Ellery. The same. Gethen. Blocked. They are all on the ifarm, which is monitored by Security, who are now controlled by Bal.

I sit up angrily, ignore the nausea and swing my legs over the side of the bed. When the room steadies, I slip down to sit on the floor. I access a med package for 30 kilos, press my burned hand into the Basis and use the other to apply cream to the wound in my scalp. As the healing tingle begins I grow four multicakes and a large glass of water. I drink it in one go and almost hear my shrivelled cells gasp in relief. I grow another glass of water, drink that as well and then munch purposefully through the multicakes.

When I finish them I withdraw my hand from the floor and get up. I deposit the damaged jumpsuit and gif a new one straight on, then grow a dental block and bite into it until my mouth feels fresh and the droning ache in my teeth subsides. Pulling my hair clean, I apply a generous coat of makeup to hide the exhaustion that tightens my face then drop the dental block and stand away from Mum to hide her.

I call Balatar Descarreaux. He appears before me as a hologram wearing a newly designed, rather menacing uniform. Although his eyes glitter his face is without expression as I toss my hair and flash him a big smile.

“Bal!” I say brightly, “how are you?”

“Oh, you know,” he says. “Better when you’re fucking dead.”

“To think you were going to be my brother-in-law.”

“It’s a good thing I’m not,” he says. “Your sister is a stupid whore and you are an abomination.”

My smile freezes. Bal laughs.

“Keris Veitch thinks no one can listen to her,” he says. “However, since I arranged that encounter between Anton Jelka and the Sons of the Crystal Mind I’ve been able to put eyes and ears wherever I want. I heard everything Keris told you about the Guidance. I know who you are. I know
what
you are. You’re not smiling any more Charity.”

“Why are you doing this?” I whisper.

“Because Centria is old and greedy and pathetic. I’m not surprised Keris and those other creatures lost their grip; all we need do is hasten the inevitable.”

“I’m still alive,” I say, more pedantic than defiant.

“For now. Ellery is unconscious and after your little drama the Comms Tower Keris will know if I do anything else. I shall wait until after the merger; you’re not going anywhere.”

Be subtle.

“You support the Sons of the Crystal Mind,” I say eventually.

“Yes,” he says.

“What did the Blanks ever do to you?”

“Nothing.”

“Then why hate them? Us?”

“Because I can, Charity! Every economic system needs its pariahs. If it wasn’t you it would be the subs or some other garbage. Besides, it’s just…” he shudders, “…disgusting. Have you even got a soul?”

His words hurt because I’ve wondered that myself.

“If you had any decency,” Balatar Descarreaux says, “you’d kill yourself.”

“You’re so incompetent I’d have to.”

We cut the call simultaneously and I sit back on the bed, drained.

35

When I approach Keris’s assembly on the flybike, three red warships descend to cut me off. For a while I hover, regarding the implicit violence in their ridged faces. I could destroy at least one warship but remember then the proximity to Keris; how a stray beam could cut through her assembly, through her…

A better idea presents itself; I pull back the joystick and the flybike arcs up. The warships move closer, twitching their mighty guns but I ignore them and loop over towards Centria’s great doorway. I fly under the rotating circular assembly and pass the Comms Tower, which is whole again as if no damage had ever been done to it. I picture Ellery there, unconscious in the floor as the tiny machines of the Basis heal her.

Centria’s door is open to admit a stream of people. I soar over them and out through the huge doorway, descending to a couple of metres above the diamond road. Speeding into the train terminal, I rise to weave through the pulsing tubes and glance back but no one is following me. Soon I leave terminal behind and fly the same route I took when I flew Ursula to the golden saucer.

When I reach VIA Holdings I slow down and look around. Two warships drift with slow, calm menace. Their design is unfamiliar; square and bright blue, they sport unusually prominent cannons. There are white-uniformed guards everywhere: some stand to attention while others march in formation around the charmless architecture. Bal has learned his new trade quickly but he’s no Anton; unchallenged, I join the flow of airborne vehicles to blend in and scan the structures around me.

Soon I’m back where I started, increasingly nervous. I circle VIA Holdings again but the other vehicles dissipate and I feel exposed, as if I’m ten times my actual size. The warships are nearby so I move out of their line of sight around an oblong assembly mounted on the ceiling. That’s when I spot her.

Loren Descarreaux strides along a twenty-metre enclosed catwalk linking one of her ugly square buildings to another. The catwalk is high above the floor, the tiny figures inside a dramatic contrast to their bulky surroundings. Loren is escorted by four guards, two in front of her and two behind.

I wait for them to pass. My grip on the joystick is slippery, while my heart races like it wants to speed up time. Loren takes another step, another, another. Go on Loren, don’t look down.

And then they are where I want them. I fly up behind Loren’s party and use level 3 to demolish a third of the catwalk. The bolt shears through so efficiently there is little sound and only one of the guards turns. He shouts and snaps his rifle to his shoulder; I reset the n-gun to level 1, fire twice and stun both of the nearest guards. The others spin around and Loren throws herself back in panic. The remaining guards try to wrestle her out of the way; as they struggle I stun all three.

I fly into the open end of the catwalk, setting the bike down beside Loren who sprawls in a shiny green dress and purple heels across her unconscious guards. Even in sleep there is something decadent about Loren, as if I’ve arrived at the end of an orgy when everyone has passed out.

I get my hands into her smooth armpits and lift, hefting her onto the flybike which wraps restraints around her dainty ankles. Jumping onto the saddle in front of her I glance back to see more guards bunched on the broken stub of catwalk behind me. They shout but their words are lost as I vaporise the catwalk roof, rise through the hole and accelerate away.

The two warships change direction towards me. I bank left and speed into a tangle of VIA structures built too close together for the warships to follow. Through windows either side I see panicked soldiers run after us but nobody shoots in case they hit Loren. I rake the buildings in both directions with white n-gun fire, carving great jagged lines through the tedious facades as my pursuers dive out of the way. Cold air rushes against the inside of my lips and I realise my teeth are bared in a snarling grin. Some of the soldiers gif flybikes but I’m out of VIA Holdings before anyone gets airborne.

My protection slumps against my back, her chest pressed against me. Ahead, a huge wall begins to grow in the archway to the next chamber so I slow and swerve into a vertical shaft. I start to descend but it’s too slow so I cut the flybike’s power. We drop at once; down, down, wind streaming my hair and Loren’s together, copper and gold, linked as we have been all along.

Aerac coordinates tell me we are near the train terminal so I reactivate the flybike and soar through a portal into the blue light of the terminal sphere. Landing on the nearest platform, I deposit the flybike and catch Loren as the vehicle subsides beneath her. I buy two tickets for the Outer Spheres and drag Loren towards the train.

Four people wait to board. I pull Loren past them and her shoes judder lightly on the platform surface. Unease emanates from the queue and I set the n-gun to level 1 as one of the men clears his throat loudly.

“You can’t just push in like that,” he says.

Behind him I see the first VIA warship squeeze into the chamber. A siren blares from it like the mournful cry of some great, mechanised beast. Everyone on the boarding platform turns, sees the warship and runs. As it begins to descend I haul Loren onto the train and drop her on the carriage floor. The doors close and shut off the electronic wail.

I am safe; train tubes are part of the Diamond City superstructure so the warship cannons won’t work against them. As the carriage begins to move I look back, smiling at the large blue shape that hovers uselessly above. A moment later the train picks up speed and quickly carries us far away.

36

Loren lies face up on a couch at the back of a small ship, her arms and legs tied. Harlan looks down at her.

“Did anyone see you?” he says to me.

“I don’t think so,” I say. “After the train I giffed a ship and flew around for a while. I dumped the ship at an empty station, got another train, repeated the whole thing and picked you up.”

“We should be all right,” Harlan says. “Centria only looks at Centria and VIA Holdings isn’t organised enough to have eyes everywhere.” He frowns. “Mind you, she could be sending Bal our coordinates.”

“How long are people usually unconscious for?” I ask him.

“I’ve never stayed around long enough to find out.”

I look out of the ship’s window at MidZone and then back at Loren.

“It’s been two hours. What does Dodge say?”

“Dodge rarely takes calls and I can rarely stand being around him so I don’t know,” Harlan says.

I should get the Basis to run a diagnostic on Loren but that will mean untying her. What if she’s got a hidden weapon like an n-gun? I go in-Aer to research unconscious states, cross-referenced with the effects of known stun weapons.

Harlan sits on the couch next to Loren, pulls one of her eyelids open and gently runs a fingertip across the exposed eyeball.

“Aarggh! Get off!” Loren screams.

Harlan laughs. I quietly abandon my complex research and hope he didn’t intuit what I was doing.

“Find anything good out?” he asks.

“No,” I say.

“What am I doing here you fucking bastard animals?” Loren yells.

“Good point,” Harlan says and turns to me. “What is she doing here?”

“She needs to answer some questions,” I say.

Loren must hear the uncertainty in my voice. She laughs.

“You ask me questions? You are a stupid little secretary who does a small bit of training with her spoiled, fat Centria friends and thinks she knows the way of Diamond City. Fuck your questions and fuck you.”

“Not very ladylike is she?” Harlan says to me. “Nice accent though.”

“My son will kill you you fucking savage,” Loren says.

Harlan is unmoved.

“Would this be your son who uses women as shields and runs away from the big kids?” he says.

“He controls Centria Security now. He has a whole army! He is on his way here.”

“We’re on a random flight path,” Harlan says. “He won’t be able to predict where we’re going.”

“He will if I keep telling him my location,” Loren says.

“I thought of that,” Harlan says.

Harlan rips the bindings off Loren and picks her up as if she weighs nothing. She struggles and claws but her nails seem unable to connect and her blows ricochet weakly. Her wide eyes stare at the floor but the ship is mine so she can’t gif a weapon. The hatch opens. Harlan plucks Loren off him, turns her towards the hatch and starts to push her out.

“No!” she screams.

“Stop broadcasting our coordinates.”

“All right, all right, I will do it.”

“I don’t believe you,” Harlan says.

He pushes Loren again and I watch her closely. Her terror looks genuine; I don’t think growing a crash pad has even occurred to her.

“Stop!” she cries.

“Understand this Loren,” Harlan says, “if I see any ships I don’t like the look of I will kill you. Do you understand?”

“Yes! I will stop! Please!”

Harlan lets go of Loren and she scrambles across the ship to press her back against the side furthest from the hatch, which closes. She breathes heavily as she tries to calm down, looking so pathetic I almost feel sorry for her.

“I cannot die,” she says, almost to herself, “I am too valuable.”

“We’re all valuable,” Harlan says.

“No! Some are more so. Some people don’t matter at all. I matter. I must not die. I am precious.”

I laugh at her.

“What do you want?” she says.

“Tell me about Centria,” I say.

“Centria is broke,” she spits with a slightly crazy smile.

“I know,” I say.

They both look at me, Loren warily and Harlan with new interest. His beauty is distracting; I try to block him out and focus on Loren.

“You’re using Fulcrus to blackmail Centria so the merger can take place entirely on your terms,” I say.

Loren seems to look into herself.

“It is not money,” she says. “It is something more powerful.”

I remember the last part of Mum’s message.

“Loren, what does VIA stand for?”

“Vengeance!” she screams, her eyes bright. “Vengeance Is All! VIA. See?”

“Vengeance for what?”

“I was in Centria before. They-they threw me out,” she says.

There is an unlikely moment of understanding between the three of us.

“Me too,” Harlan says finally.

“And me,” I say. “It was your fault Loren.”

Loren ignores that.

“In Diamond City are many ex Centria people with a big, big axe to grind but no one can do anything about it,” she says. “I am doing something about it because to be thrown out is the worst thing, yes?”

“No,” I say. “The worst thing is your family being decimated. The worst thing is being shot while you watch your sister burn. The worst thing is morons trying to rape you.”

Terrific energy surges through me.

“THE WORST THING IS KILLING PEOPLE,” I roar and I don’t recognise my voice. “YOU. MADE. ALL. OF. THAT. HAPPEN!”

I’m not quite in control; I could do anything. Loren looks more scared of me than she did of Harlan.

“Technically,” Harlan says, “that’s four worst things. You can really only have one.”

I giggle.

“Things like that happened to me,” Loren says.

I look at her but she stares at the floor and talks as if we aren’t here.

“Being thrown out was still the worst because it caused everything that came afterwards,” she says.

She looks lost as I cross the ship and stand over her. When I move, she flinches and light ripples over the shiny green dress. I slowly sit and she stares into my face.

“Tell me,” I say.

“I was in love with Gethen Karkarridan,” Loren says.

My surprise must show.

“I know,” Loren says. “A man like that you think how could anyone love him? He is ruthless; like a machine. But a machine with such passion, and so incredibly clever. He makes money as if it flows from his hands, thousands of kilos, millions. Patents, terms, all of it like magic implements to him. Even now it amazes me what he could do.

“Everyone does what he says; they do not even question him, while Ellery in her silence she makes it all beautiful you know? And Keris is the leader we adore. They work so well together, like a family, as if they do not need words. But strange; not… normal.

“And me, this young girl, there in the middle of it. I learned to do what Gethen could do; he was my inspiration. Other people they faded away when I compared them, then I did not think about them at all. Only him, as if he possessed me.

“I was like a part of him. He knew as well. He told me I was special: I was the first person he had met who could make money like he did. He said maybe one day I would have the power he had, but I didn’t want that. I just wanted him.

“That love you know it was so strong, like it was burning me up but I did not care. I could not sleep or think or do anything except love him and do my work for him. And when finally we did make love it was like…”

She stares back through the years, a shaky hand pressed to her brow. Her eyes are wide but her expression vague.

“Only the one time as it turned out, because Ellery Quinn loved him too and she was more powerful than me. One silly girl, what does she matter? I did nothing wrong, made no mistakes, unless you say loving him was a mistake. I don’t think so though, not even now.

“But Ellery, she… she turned all her power on me. Such horrible words; I never knew words could hurt so much. How she had been Gethen’s lover for a hundred years and would be his lover for a thousand more and I was nothing, nothing.

“When she had finished talking the guards came and took me to the door and walked me out. They put me on a train straight to the Outer Spheres with only two thousand kilos. Two thousand. After all the money I had made.”

She looks sick. I wonder who else she has told, whether even Bal knows.

“I ran,” she says. “They came after me: the subs, the nasty people. I knew nothing about how to survive out there; all my life was in Centria, which is so different. I had no preparation, no understanding.

“I made it to MidZone, but what could I do? By then I had no kilos. My skills they were in big business not practical things. I had to eat. What does a pretty girl do in MidZone when she has no money? I try not to think of it now but…

“The people they come and fuck me and-and other things and they go and… They all blur into one person with no face and the same smell. I get the money. I survive. Then others give me drugs to control me and I lose years. I don’t remember a lot, only in nightmares.

“And one day life comes back into me. I am pregnant. I do not know who by. It does not matter. I have a reason other than myself to survive. I have a short time to do something for me and for the baby.

“I get off drugs. I just… one day just do it. My body is changing and that helps. But my will, I find my will. And all that has happened makes me stronger; furious and raging and powerful now.

“I do things for money but not like before. I seduce people and drug them into giving their kilos to me. Some I kill. The kilos come quick and many. I am bad bad bad. I do not care. My soul is gone but my life is on her long journey back to the light, back to Centria.”

Harlan stares impassively at Loren who talks on, her lips wet.

“Because I blame them you know,” she says, “for what happened to me. I was punished and did nothing wrong. But that is not all.

“I see Centria from out in Diamond City: there like a person at the heart of it making these decisions that affect everybody. And I realise… these decisions are not good.

“It was strange, this learning, to know that Gethen who I admired was wrong in so many things. Because I see his hand in it, and Ellery’s. There was a pattern there and in that pattern I saw an opportunity.

“Most exes they just become nothing or die because they are weak from being in Centria. Not me. I am strong now and I know Centria. I see how to tempt Gethen with his greed and his arrogance.

“I set a trap for him. He does not know it is me. I am rich now, using my bad money to make good money. I use other people to approach Gethen.

“He is tired you see. Ellery is tired. They want to stop but they do not know how to do anything different. That is why they seek the big score.

“So I give them the big score: a whole patent system that will change itself every year so people must buy the same thing over and over, even more than now. The Basis it would never allow this but I convince Gethen a way has been found, out here in Diamond City where we do not respect his rules.

“Gethen he buys it. He does not even tell Keris, not Ellery. He buys it. And it has no worth Charity; he spends all your money on something that has no worth. Stupid no?

“Soon he realises. I tell Fulcrus to call him and make him start to pay so they shut up and stay shut up. Because if anyone were to find out the truth Diamond City would fall on Centria and all their clever guns would not keep the people out.

“Centria has always fooled us into thinking we need it more than we do. Gethen he will take me back so the secret can be kept. And so I will go home.”

She looks at us, eyes wide and smile wider, as if she has forgotten why she is here.

“Why did you attack my parents?” I ask.

Loren blinks and then blinks again.

“They were going to find the truth,” she says.

“But Bal destroyed the merger,” I say.

“Bal destroyed the wedding; the merger will still go ahead. You and your sister had become a problem because we feared what your parents might have told you.”

“My sister was burned.”

“Your sister was burned, I was burned,” Loren points at Harlan, “he was burned. Grow the fuck up.”

Be subtle
.

“What did Bal use on my mother?”

“Oh that was easy. Once we knew she was spying on us we embedded a one-time disguised file. Anyone looking at it after would just see accounts.”

I smile as if at her cleverness. She seems relieved, as if we have connected.

“What was really on the file?” I say.

“A looped vix link!”

“Of…?”

“Sleep! Me asleep!”

She laughs hugely. I laugh too but halfway through I hear my laugh become a weird howl.