The Beauty of Destruction (31 page)

‘Get to
the Humvee,’ Alexia managed between gasps, meaning the
ECV
. Beth
nodded and managed to stand up. She started staggering towards
the vehicle. Behind her, Alexia was trying to get her
brother to his feet. The two Ripsaw drone tanks powered
past them. She guessed they were using their upgraded, limited
AI minds to act autonomously now. She glanced behind her.
Du Bois was half staggering, half being dragged by his
sister towards the
ECV
. Then, behind them, walking out of
the clouds of red dirt, was Mr Brown. It looked
like he was reassembling his form, folding back together, collecting
himself from impossible places at impossible angles.

The Ripsaws started
firing. One was armed with a .50 calibre heavy machine
gun, the other a Mark 19 fully automatic grenade launcher.
Mr Brown was engulfed in explosions. It was like the
end of the world at the other end of the
dust corridor. Then she remembered it was. She stumbled against
the
ECV
, and used the armoured patrol vehicle to hold
herself up for a moment before climbing into the driver’
s seat and starting the vehicle up.

As she watched
Alexia drag her brother towards the
ECV
some thought was
trying to push its way through the pain translation organ
that used to be her brain. Alexia dumped her brother
into
the passenger seat. He was just about conscious. The
ECV
was in gear and accelerating the moment Alexia was in.

Beth saw movement in her side mirrors. The mangled remains of the two Ripsaw drone tanks tumbled by behind them. Then Beth remembered the outstanding business she had with du Bois. Her sidearm was still loaded with nano-tipped rounds. She drew it and put it to du Bois’s head, still steering with her other hand, the cold fury overwhelming her. He had stood there with her over her father’s corpse and said nothing. He had made it look like a suicide to cover his tracks. She felt the cold, folded steel of the long knife against the skin of her throat.

‘That’s my brother,’ Alexia hissed from the back seat.

‘He killed my father.’

It wasn’t much of a world to live in anyway. Beth started to squeeze the trigger.

Hans-Jorge Mueller had learned his skills hunting in the Teutoburg Forest, honed them in the streets of Stalingrad, and perfected them with an infusion of alien technology and his work for the Circle. Even so he had been little use. He had either been firing blind into the artificial canyons of aircraft, or been pinned down by armed quadrocopters, or prevented from getting close enough to the edge of the control tower to shoot by indirect ground fire from the
MAARS
drones. The airburst HE grenades had played merry hell with him. As soon as he had killed one drone another had replaced it to make his life difficult.

The
ECV
was over a mile away and moving away from him. It would have to turn soon, which would provide it with cover from the rows of aircraft, and from there it could break through the perimeter and lose itself among the tract housing. There was another armed quadrocopter on its way towards him. This would be his best chance, though it was still effectively a blind shot. He had never liked du Bois anyway.

He squeezed the trigger of the Steyr IWS anti-materiel rifle. The barrel flew back in its shock-absorbing hydro-pneumatic sleeve, not unlike those used for towed artillery pieces. The 15.2mm fin-stabilising, discarded sabot projectile left the smooth-bore barrel at four thousand, seven hundred and fifty seven feet per second. It would take the round just over a second to travel the distance to the
ECV
. He let the weapon settle, exhaled and squeezed the trigger again.

The first dart-shaped, tungsten carbide penetrator flew through the back of the
ECV
. It made a tunnel through their supplies, hit the rear of du Bois’s chair and blew much of his chest all over the windscreen. Only the reinforced nature of his augmented physiology stopped the hydrostatic shock of the impact from blowing all of his limbs and his head off his body.

Alexia had slid under the
ECV
’s turret to get behind Beth to put one of her knives to the woman’s throat. Her left arm was stretched out over the back of the passenger seat to steady herself in the moving vehicle. The second round caught her in the shoulder, tore through the corner of the driver’s seat, and narrowly missed Beth’s leg. Alexia’s arm was spinning around the cab.

The Pennangalan was up and walking. Her own systems had stopped the nanites from du Bois’s bullets from consuming her just below the elbow. She was hooked up to a matter IV but her arm would need to be regrown.

Ezard, still in his ghillie suit, was carrying Grace. She would live but was badly wounded and also hooked up to a matter IV.

Mueller was jogging across the runway towards them, also still wearing his ghillie suit. The enormous anti-materiel rifle had been broken down and was in a case on his back; he had a customised Heckler & Koch G3 rifle in his hands.

Mr Brown was watching a Reaper drone taking off from the cratered runway. In the darkness it was a silhouette against the backdrop of burning Tucson.

‘So does anyone have anything that could shoot that down?’ Mr Brown asked.

‘I could waste bullets shooting at it if you like,’ Ezard suggested. Mr Brown wasn’t sure he was in the mood for the American’s humour tonight.

They watched as the Reaper circled back towards the hangars and fired four Hellfire missiles. Even from as far away as they were, the multiple explosions rocked them back. They could feel the heat as bits of debris rolled past them.

‘One last fuck you from Karma, I guess,’ Ezard mused. The missiles had destroyed the spaceplane.

I really must
try and think what I did to him
, Mr Brown mused and then out loud. ‘Yes, we really could have handled that better.’

21

A Long Time After the Loss

The fashion victim with a fishbowl for a head had ’faced Mr Hat the information before he had left the strange stone construction in Red Space. The personalities in the Psycho Banks that the Church had bought to help them profile Scab had been sourced from the Monarchist systems. They had, however, been hacked by intelligence contractors working for the Consortium. Nothing too overt. The hacks were designed to subtly influence the possessing psychos to behave in a way that would provoke Scab, and to be just predictable enough that if you knew what you were looking for …

Tracking the
Templar
in Red Space wasn’t too difficult. Patron had paid to have the
Amuser
’s stealth and sensor systems upgraded. The
Templar
’s sensors were good, it was a Church ship, but the
Amuser
’s were now Consortium next generation. It didn’t hurt that the
Templar
was a larger ship. Even so there were a few tense moments, when the light cruiser doubled back on itself. The
Amuser
was no match for the Church-built ship, and for a light cruiser the
Templar
was fast, which was one of the reasons it made such a good raider. If the pirate ship did discover the
Amuser
he wouldn’t stand much of a chance and in Red Space all bets were off. Sensors didn’t work right, and Mr Hat had no idea how well his stealth systems were functioning. He imagined their effectiveness would become apparent if his ship started to de-cohere all around him.

‘So then all I have to do is steal a psychopath, one of the most revered bounty killers in Known Space, out from underneath a crew of recreational killer pirates in a state of the art Church warship,’ the diminutive lizard muttered to himself atop his throne-like control column. The faceless automatons below him looked up to check if he was uttering some divine decree. ‘Nothing,’ he told them. It didn’t happen often but sometimes he wished for someone real to talk to.

The bridge into Real Space was impossible to disguise. Anyone looking would know that a ship had just entered the Cyst system, and there were few reasons for visiting the Cyst system unless you were a combat-trained, adrenaline-seeking anthropologist. Still, the cool black of Known Space looked inviting through the blue-light-lined rip in the red gas.

As the
Amuser
emerged from the oddly cramped confines of Red Space, Mr Hat was half expecting to be destroyed by the waiting
Templar
. Nothing happened.

Manoeuvring engines took him away from the bridge point, trying to leave the residual sensor interference behind. Mr Hat knew he was exposed. He could make out the strangely small-looking gas giant with its striated bands of cloud and weather, the Cage wrapped around the planet, and beyond that the faint light of a dying star.

He drifted for a while, intelligent systems analysing passive sensor data. Two minutes in he received the incoming challenges from the blockading Consortium fleet around Cyst and got caught in their active scans, which made a mess of his own sensors for a while. He replied using a Consortium naval encryption. He did not tip them as to his knowledge of the
Templar
. Reading between the lines they were jumpy, which meant the
Templar
had entered the system and then disappeared. His passive scans made him aware that a number of the ships from the Consortium fleet had left the blockade and were saturating sectors of space with active scans. The searching ships were working in squadrons with more than enough ships to deal with a solitary light cruiser.

Mr Hat didn’t understand the play here. The bridge point was presumably unguarded to try and entice original Scab in, but then the blockade would frighten them off, and why was Benedict/Scab even coming to Cyst? It might have been where Woodbine Scab had been brought up. It might even have been where Benedict was conceived after Scab’s sect had learned how to meat-hack the biological restrictions on the inhabitants of Cyst’s gender and ability to breed. But nostalgia?

‘You are a fucking child!’ the Monk shouted at him in the smooth, black, inverse-stepped chamber inside the smart matter ziggurat. ‘I mean, do you just not understand what’s at stake?’

‘He just doesn’t care,’ Vic said sadly. The ’sect could see his point. It was too abstract for Scab. Whatever the Dark Mother had said it was all too big and was not really any of his business except for the bits where they were trying to kill him.

‘You’re a selfish little prick!’ the Monk snapped and stalked towards Scab. Vic was pretty sure she was about to attack him.

‘Beth!’ Talia said, scared for her sister. The Monk stopped.

‘How much further do you want to push this?’ Scab asked the Monk evenly.

It was clear that the Monk sorely wanted to beat the shit out of Scab. She pointed at him. ‘You’re a sociopath with reasoning power a three-year-old would be ashamed of.’

‘Don’t you want to catch him? See him destroyed?’ Scab asked.

The Monk stopped. It was written all over her face. She badly wanted Benedict/Scab dead, not least for having killed her. There was something else there as well. Once again Vic decided that humans were complicated. He glanced at Talia. She was looking nervously between Scab and her sister. The Mother was standing perfectly still.

‘Maybe it’s not as dumb as it sounds,’ Vic suggested. ‘The blockade fleets could take care of the problem for us.’ Scab was already shaking his head.

‘No, he’s not that dumb. He won’t come any closer with the ships in orbit.’

‘So then what?’ the Monk demanded. ‘We’re stuck here until the
Templar
leaves the system, or we get discovered, or we try and draw him out by making a run for the bridge point, or we sneak away in Red Space.’

‘Can’t you get closer to him in Red Space, and then, I don’t know, jump out and surprise him?’ Talia asked. Everyone turned to look at her in surprise. ‘What? I’ve been paying attention. I practically used to be a ship, you know?’

‘That only works up to a point,’ the Monk told her younger sister. ‘We can’t see the
Templar
from Red Space, so we would have to know roughly where they would be. Even then, navigating to a point in Real Space from a point in Red Space, and vice versa, isn’t an exact science without the fixed bridge points. We come back into Real Space too far away and the
Templar
gets the jump on us.’ She turned back to Scab. ‘And even with the
Basilisk
’s
upgraded weapons, and even if we manage to get the jump on them, the
Templar
is a Church warship. Besides, the
Templar
has the same bridge capability, and Benedict is aware of his dad’s tactics.’

Scab practically flinched at the sound of the word ‘dad’.

‘We force a boarding action,’ Scab told them.

The Monk looked at him, appalled. ‘They have a crew of recreational killers!’ the Monk shouted.

Scab just cocked his head as if he was trying to understand her. ‘Vic and I have a way of getting on board,’ Scab told her.

Vic sagged in his seat. He knew what Scab had in mind.

‘And if they’ve analysed how we did it last time, and come up with a counter measure?’ Vic asked desperately.

‘No,’ the Monk said, intrigued despite herself. ‘The
St Brendan’s Fire
was destroyed before we could work out how you boarded her.’

‘It’s not for the faint-hearted,’ Vic muttered. ‘And what if I don’t want to do this?’ Scab just ignored him.

‘How do we get close enough to board?’ the Monk asked.

‘Talia’s plan,’ Scab told them. ‘Except not in space.’

‘In the atmosphere?’ the Monk asked.

‘We get the
Templar
running a search pattern, one that we can predict, then we bridge out and appear next to it.’

‘How do we get it running a search pattern?’ the Monk asked. ‘You’d have to hide in the clouds, which would mean going deeper than the
Templar
, which you can’t because it’s a fucking warship, and we have a yacht, however high spec it might be. The pressure would crush us.’

‘We exceed the smart matter’s suggested tolerances,’ Scab said calmly. The Monk looked at him like he was an idiot.

‘Then we get crushed,’ she said, as though she was explaining it to a child.

‘And none of us will ever have to worry about anything ever again,’ Scab said.

‘Besides, they can just bridge into Red Space as well,’ the Monk pointed out.

‘Same problem. Without knowing where we are, we’re just playing a pointless game of hide-and-seek. We have to convince them we’re still there,’ Scab explained.

Vic didn’t like how this was going. The plan was starting to sound possible if you squinted at it just right.

‘How?’ the Monk asked.

‘We lay autonomous AG smart munitions behind us,’ Scab said.

‘We have a limited amount of them,’ the Monk pointed out. They could manufacture new kinetic harpoons, given access to raw material – they were pretty much just very dense aerodynamic lumps of solid matter – and they could replenish the energy for the beam weapons from a number of different sources, but the AG smart munitions were too complex to duplicate. The Church had provided them with a full complement, but they had used a few escaping the Cathedral. The assembler on the
Basilisk
II
was good but it just didn’t have the military specifications required. ‘And even if you and Vic did get on board …’

‘I don’t want to do this,’ Vic said again.

‘You’d just get swarmed by the psychos on board. Half of whom you took down in the first place. They’ll have grudges.’

‘We don’t have to take them all out, we just have to hack the
Templar
sufficiently to allow the
Basilisk
to dock.’

‘And then I come on board and smack them all up, yeah?’ Talia asked.

‘No,’ the Mother said quietly, her voice cold and angry.

‘Your people?’ Vic asked Scab sceptically.

‘We’re not people,’ Scab told the ’sect. Vic noticed the Mother looking at Scab. He couldn’t make out the expression on her oil-like features.

‘With my skills and your knowledge of Church security protocols we’ll be able to stay alive long enough to hack the
Templar
.’

The Monk thought about this for a moment. ‘That only works if I’m on the
Templar
with you and Vic. Who’s flying the
Basilisk
, the nut jobs that live here?’ She turned to the Mother. ‘No offence.’ The Mother didn’t respond.

‘Talia,’ Scab said. Vic turned to stare at his partner. The Monk looked furious.

‘Hell yeah!’ Talia said. ‘Oh wait, I can’t fly a ship.’

‘You just said you used to be one,’ Scab pointed out.

Vic stood up, towering over the still-seated Scab.

‘No,’ the ’sect said. He could see where this was going. It had something to do with why Scab had been spending so much time merged with the ship’s smart matter.

‘Not this kind of ship,’ Talia said, ‘And I can’t remember any of it anyway.’

‘Trust me, you can do this. I will show you,’ Scab told her.

‘I said no,’ Vic repeated. Nobody listened. His feeling of resignation, the constant, hard-learned pessimism, was being replaced by something else: a feeling that he would normally control with drugs and tailored biochemistry for his own safety, but not this time.

‘You don’t engender trust,’ Talia said. ‘So, what? I get all the computer stuff in my head?’

‘No!’ the Monk shouted.

Talia turned on her. ‘I’m not a pet, you know? I’m not the ship’s fucking cat!’

‘I’ll take you into the ship and then you’ll understand,’ Scab told the girl.

‘I said no!’ Vic screamed and yanked Scab out of his seat, lifting him off the floor. Scab had his tumbler pistol in hand, the hammer pulled back, the hair trigger partially depressed. It was aimed at Talia. The Monk started to move to interpose herself between the gun and her sister, but clearly she knew she’d be too slow and froze. Vic was shaking with anger.

‘Why?’ the ’sect asked quietly to his erstwhile partner/captor. ‘Why?’ the ’sect screamed.

‘Who’s faster?’ Scab asked quietly. ‘You want to end this? We’ll end it now.’

‘Put him down,’ the Mother said, steel in her voice. ‘Now.’

Vic knew this was his time. He was so far beyond being frightened of Scab. He wanted to see what the stump of the human’s neck looked like.

‘Vic?’ Talia’s voice sounded small and frightened. He slowly lowered Scab to the floor.

‘I don’t care any more,’ Vic told his partner, flooding his system with calming narcotics. ‘Do you understand me? I don’t care.’

Scab looked over at Talia. ‘Of course you do.’ Vic followed his partner’s look. ‘When you really don’t, you’ll be free.’

‘You leave her alone, you understand me?’

‘You’ve nothing to threaten me with,’ Scab said. He glanced over at the Mother. ‘It’s all been done.’ The planetary avatar looked down. He lowered the gun. The Monk moved herself between Scab and her sister. Talia was crying and shaking.

‘I don’t think I can do this for much longer,’ the human girl managed between the sobs. The Monk was just staring at Scab with pure venom as she held her sister.

‘None of this matters,’ Vic said. Scab laughed as he re-holstered his tumbler pistol. ‘The
Templar
can’t get past the blockade,’ Vic insisted.

Scab took out his cigarette case, removed a cigarette, and lit it. Then he looked at the Dark Mother.

‘No,’ the Mother said simply. Only then did Vic realise that she had been quiet for the whole conversation because she had seen what was coming. Even Vic was horrified. ‘You don’t know what you’re asking. You’re talking about sacrificing a significant amount of the life of this planet.’ Scab took another drag of his cigarette. The tip glowed.