The Age of Scorpio (80 page)

‘Stop!’

Beth heard the cry in the momentary lapse in the gunfire. Thinking back, she had heard the cry during the fight, but she’d been busy. It was a male voice. The hybrids around her stopped their advance but swayed, many of them baring their teeth in silent growls and drooling horribly. Beth levelled the pistol at the closest one but did not fire.

‘Please stop!’ the man’s voice said. It was a strong voice but sounded odd, like the man had something stuck in his throat. There was movement and a figure, more human-like than the rest, moved to the top of an outcrop to stand next to one of the servitors.

In the greys of her vision she could make out eyes that were dark pools. His skin was pale and scaled. His neck seemed to palpate slightly and his head was utterly hairless. Webbed fingers with sharp-looking black nails were wrapped around a staff which appeared to be made of the same bone material as the outcrops. He was clad in soaking rags which hung off him and revealed much of his pale skin.

‘You can lower your weapon. We will not attack you if you do not attack us,’ he told her. ‘I am Ezard.’

Beth nodded to him and holstered the .45. She quickly reloaded the UMP and then started pushing shells into the M4’s tubular magazine.

‘Look, I don’t give a fuck about any of this. You can have your secret war. I just want my sister.’

‘I am afraid that won’t be possible.’ He sounded apologetic.

‘Then a lot more of you are going to get shot.’ Though Beth was reasonably sure that all the ones she’d shot earlier were already starting to heal. She was also sure that she recognised a few more from the motorway. She’d last seen them lying on the ground after du Bois had shot them, a lot.

‘She has to leave here with us,’ Ezard said.

Beth just nodded, finished reloading the M4 and let it drop on its strap. She swung the UMP up and aimed it at Ezard. The hybrids stopped swaying and hunched ready to attack. The servitor next to Ezard looked about to pounce. Beth was pretty sure it could make it to her in one leap.

‘I will fucking shoot you,’ she told him.

‘Then I will heal, and you will die for a meaningless gesture. She has to come with us.’

‘Why? Why is she so important to every fucking freak in this city?’

‘This is not the Divine Mother; this is her seed,’ Ezard said. ‘All the shit in the city, the violence, the abuse, the pain, hatred, fear – all of this is pollution. The Divine Mother feels it all, and over the years it has slowly driven her insane as she sleeps. She must wake, give birth to the seed and leave this place for somewhere where there is no hatred.’

‘You’ll have to go pretty far to find that,’ Beth muttered, playing for time.

‘We are going very far away,’ Ezard told her seriously. His meaning sank in.

‘Seriously? You people are more deluded than I thought. Why her anyway?’

‘She is of the Divine Mother’s line, part of her. Within her is the code that opens the way.’ This didn’t mean anything to Beth.

‘And you know this how?’

‘The Divine Mother speaks to me in my dreams, and then I speak those dreams.’

‘Assuming I believe this, and everything’s a bit weird at the moment so why not, the problem is a little thing called consent. Whatever you think you’re doing, you can’t just go around kidnapping goths. She’s had a rough enough time recently without being held prisoner by some kind of crazy star cult.’

‘It’s okay, Beth. I am loved here.’ Talia: wan, pale, tired-looking but even in the grey light still beautiful, Beth had to admit. She was in the same hospital-like gown they’d found her wearing in the lock-up. She stepped up onto the outcrop and patted the servitor like it was a pet. Beth sighed, felt her heart drop and lowered the UMP. She saw what was coming. ‘I am to be their ship queen.’ Beth suddenly felt so very tired. The adrenaline bled from her, and she felt close to collapse and very, very hungry.

‘Talia, come on. Please, let’s just go,’ Beth managed.

‘I can’t; they need me.’

‘You have no idea what I have gone through . . .’

‘Can’t you just be happy for me? I have found my place. You will too one day.’

Shooting Talia was only a passing thought, Beth told herself as she tried to remain calm.

‘You’ve really outdone yourself this time, haven’t you? Not satisfied with abusive boyfriends who nearly beat you to death, with pimps and mobsters . . . no, you have to go and find a cult of fucking sea monsters? How are you going to top this? Date Satan?’

‘I don’t think Satan is re—’

‘The thing is, Talia, you are loved. I don’t know why you don’t think you are – maybe we aren’t as interesting as some cult living in a weird thing in the fucking Solent – but every time you do something like this it causes pain, and then we have to come and sort it out for you.’

‘I never asked you for anything,’ Talia said. Beth could still hear the petulance and wondered if this lot knew what they had let themselves in for.

‘We’re sisters.’

‘You know that’s not true, and I’ve always known.’

‘We’re sisters in every way that matters. Now, please . . . I’m tired and I want to go home, and your dad would probably like to hear from you before he dies.’

Tears sprang up in Talia’s eyes. ‘Why are you doing this to me?’

That was it. ‘To you!’ Beth was incredulous. ‘To you?’ Now angry. ‘Think beyond yourself for just one moment!’

‘Do you know what’s fucking happened to me?!’

Ezard and the hybrids were just listening. There was that air of discomfort that comes from outsiders witnessing a domestic row.

Beth took a step forward, jabbing her finger at Talia, the hybrids moving out of her way. It all came back to her. Talia’s unconscious body as she went after Davey. Seeing her own sister testify against her. Dad in his chair, the look of disappointment in his eyes. Flashes of the violence across Portsmouth to try and get her back. The people hurt or terrorised along the way.

‘You selfish fucking bitch! I keep waiting for you to grow up, to realise that there are other people in the world! That we’re not all here just to play roles in your next fucking self-destructive drama! Where . . . where . . . you try and cause as much pain as you fucking can because that’s the only way you think that you can matter to other people! You fucking victim!’ As she finished her rage bled out of her.

Talia’s face was a mask of cold fury.

‘Flush her and shit her out,’ she said imperiously.

Something like a sphincter opened above her. Hybrids dived from the bony outcrop as liquid hit her, blasting her off the outcrop like a riot cannon.

The feeling of connection to something overwhelmed her. The connection in her blood, the same shared flesh that was technology, made her feel the wakening of a massive and ancient intellect. It overwhelmed her thoughts as she was consumed.

Somewhere else.

They felt their sister through red dreams in monstrous, corrupted and insane minds. They reached for her, to make her like them. Now all could wake and grow and spore. They felt something in their seeds, some parasitical life.

The sound of metal on metal.

‘’Ere, it’s not firing. Is it broken?’

‘How can I be of assistance in my robbery and murder?’ du Bois asked as he turned to look at the man.

‘Oh, the safety’s on.’ There was another metallic click. ‘Should you be moving your head like that with a spinal injury?’

It was agony, but du Bois brought his right arm across his body so his hand was aimed at the thief.

‘Seriously mate, you’ll do yourself a mischief.’

‘You are about to shoot me with my own carbine, yes?’

‘True,’ the thief conceded and aimed the weapon at du Bois again. The shrouded snub-nosed .38 slid out of his sleeve on the hopper with a thought. He fired the revolver twice. Even the tiny recoil of the .38 was enough to cause him agony. The thief disappeared from view. Du Bois knew he had hit him. In the face and the upper right arm. The face could have been a graze though. He heard the
splash
as the thief hit the water, and then thrashing and what sounded like the mewling of a wounded animal.

‘You shot me,’ the thief squealed.

‘Funny, that,’ du Bois said from the top of the Range Rover. He was now putting all the effort he could into moving. It was agonising. ‘What do you think caused me to do that?’ he managed through gritted teeth.

Du Bois slid off the roof of the Range Rover and landed in about a foot of water. Pain lanced through him and he blacked out for a moment. He came to next to the thief. His right arm was a mess and looked like it was hanging on by only a tendon or two. The face shot was just a graze or the glaser round would have killed him.

‘You shot me!’ the thief said again between piteous cries.

‘You can go into shock, you know,’ du Bois told him. ‘Oh, never mind.’ He managed to get both arms up. The two .38s slid out and Du Bois shot the man ten times. He was dead after the first. Du Bois stared at the man with undisguised contempt. Then he slumped against the Range Rover in the water. Soon he’d be able to walk. Waves were coming up Alhambra Road now. He’d left his mark on this city. The Solent was muddy and stormy-looking under a clear blue sky.

Du Bois looked back at the dead man. Had it always been this easy for him to kill, he wondered? He had murdered the thief in a fit of temper and he knew it. Was it just a case of asking a god he knew did not exist for forgiveness and then getting on with the rest of his day?

Du Bois reloaded the .38s, not so much feeling guilty as worried by the absence of guilt. They slid back up his sleeves and he grabbed the FAL. Du Bois forced himself painfully to his feet. He managed to lean into the Range Rover and grab some more ammunition for the carbine before turning and limping towards the sea.

Gone. Separated from it. For a moment she’d felt its mind; for a moment she’d touched her sister’s mind. Then she was outside. She was in the cold and the dark, the weight of the water pressing down on her. She was too tired to fight as violent current after violent current kicked her around.

Suddenly she was sucked upwards, the force inescapable. Her lungs felt like they were being crushed. Soon it would be time to try and breathe water.

Then she was in the air but still in the water. Then falling.

Du Bois was standing nearly waist-deep in the sea, with much bigger waves on the way. The beach was covered now and the waves were over the ruined pier as he watched it rise, water pouring off it, concealing its true shape, that of a biomechanical, vaguely Piscean-shaped seed pod, larger than the largest aircraft carrier.

A hidden Seeder, here of all places
, du Bois thought. The signs had pointed towards it, but even sleeping it beggared belief that the Circle had not known. He thought back to the presence beneath the family home. His family’s own secret. Had he known?

The sky was slashed open with a blade of pulsing blue light. There was the sound of air escaping on a massive scale as it was sucked through the wound in the sky. Du Bois had thought he would be asleep and never witness this himself.

The water seethed. Writhing tentacles of all sizes breached the surface. Du Bois didn’t even flinch as one lashed out and destroyed a building on the corner of Alhambra Road.

She was awake. It wouldn’t be long before her sisters realised this. Then they would wake. Their corruption, whatever had caused the fall of the Seeders, driven them mad, would pollute the one here. When they awoke, fully, then it was over.

Beth found herself in seething water, tentacles whipping all around her. Inside her head was a roaring, a near-deafening white noise that made her want to clasp her hands over her ears, though she knew that it would give her no respite.

Fully clothed, in rough water, weapons weighing her down – she just wanted to give in and sink.

Had the frigate been patrolling in the Solent because of the so-called terrorist activity?
du Bois wondered.
Or did the Circle have a hand in its presence?
It was a Type 23, HMS
Leicester
, he thought. He saw the smoke and moments later heard the booming echo of the ship’s fore-mounted 4.5-inch gun. It fired again before the first shell had even hit.

The water exploded near her. The shock wave bounced her through the water, threatening to powder bone as the liquid magnified the force. Then again. She was not sure why she did, but she discarded the UMP, the Benelli and all her remaining ammo and started to swim. Above her part of the sky was red.

‘Fools,’ du Bois muttered to himself.

The frigate fired two Sea Wolf surface-to-air missiles. They shot out of their vertical launch tubes and headed for the seed as it rose towards the red wound in the sky. From the front of the ship two Sting Ray torpedoes sped through the water towards the flailing tentacles. From the pad at the rear of the ship, a Sea Lynx helicopter took off. It was an impressive display, du Bois thought as he shook his head.

Everything around her was fire and force. Her body was repeatedly battered, flung through the air and then driven under by successive explosions. Overpressure burst her eardrums and her bones were powdered.

The tentacle flicked out reflexively, responding to pain. It caught the frigate amidships, breaking its back, cleaving it in two with such force that the two halves crashed against each other before they started to sink, sliding rapidly beneath the muddied churning water.

The surface-to-air missiles hit the seed, battering it around in the sky, blackening and bloodying flesh designed to withstand the rigours of deep space, but it continued to rise. The energy matrices on its skin crackled with bioelectricity as it rose through the wound in the sky. Then the wound was gone.

The Lynx pilot was clearly having problems: the destruction of the
Leicester
, the strange air currents as a result of the wound in the sky and, du Bois guessed, probably just the strangeness of the whole thing. The pilot managed to steady the craft, and moments later the helicopter fired two Sea Skua missiles one after another. They impacted among the greatest concentration of tentacles. A huge amount of water was thrown upwards and some of the smaller tentacles were destroyed or severed and blown into the air. The response was inevitable, the whip-like tentacle flicking out with such force that the helicopter had disintegrated before it was driven down into the water.