The Age of Scorpio

10. A Long Time After the Loss

Arclight was a mess, the result of expansion without regulation. The black market in Arclight, however, was very tightly controlled by the insect-run Queen’s Cartel. Originally the hollowed-out asteroid had been a hive ship, and it was still run by ’sects, Vic’s people, though he hated dealing with them. Vic had abandoned their caste society a long time ago. In the centre of the rock he knew there would be a metal and hardened carbon-fibre, honeycomb-style construction where the augmented ’sects lived. Once upon a time, steel and carbon fibre would have extruded resin and chitin.

No part of the surface of the original rock could be seen; it was buried beneath layer after layer of haphazardly added habitations forming a massive warren that had been centuries in the making. All of this orbited a distant fading sun that nobody had ever taken the time to name.

There was no traffic control on Arclight; you just tried to find a safeish place to dock and hoped for the best. Almost the entire surface of the asteroid was covered in animated holograms, though few were still functioning properly. Many of them offered safe places to dock, though plenty of those were bottom-feeding wreckers.

The Basilisk’s comms should have been flooded with similar offers of safe haven. However, Scab had broadcast the ship’s I-dent over the Arclight ’face to let them know who was coming aboard. That significantly cut down on the time-wasters and wreckers. Even the most hardcore hijack crew was going to think twice about taking on Scab, the bounty killer who worked without clone insurance. It was times like these that Scab’s rep paid off, Vic thought. Besides, when Scab announced he was coming to a place everyone thought the same thing: Is it me he’s after? After the I-dent they started taking in reasonable bids for docking, security and privacy.

Vic was less than pleased that Scab had decided to fly the ship under his own neunonic control. Scab was stood in the centre of the lounge/main room/Command and Control of the Basilisk. He had turned most of the ship’s hull transparent and was looking all around as he put on his brown suit and did up his tie. Scab wove his way through the parasitical suburban habitats attached to Arclight, heavily armed industrial assemblers, from one Consortium subsidiary or another, slowly eating away at tethered asteroids, past ships, the lowliest jury-rigged tramp traders to the massive Consortium bulk ore/carbon haulers, past salvage tugs and sleek scout craft belonging to xeno-archaeology prospectors, down-at-heel feline pleasure barges, scrap-built reptile fighting craft – there were even Consortium navy contractor ships and a Church craft berthed there. Scab took his time taking the Basilisk in, dancing it through the busy space, flying through the aging hologramatic displays, making them distort so it looked like Basilisk was pulling the dissipating light with it.

Vic tried to ignore the ’faced warnings from craft and parts of the habitat they got too close to. It was more difficult when they were flying near enough to see batteries, with sufficient firepower to obliterate them tracking the little craft.

Scab had finished dressing and was pulling weapons more socially acceptable than the Scorpion from the smart-matter storage compartment that the ship had extruded though the floor. He unloaded, checked and then reloaded each of the weapons before holstering them. To Vic’s mind this was still, arguably, Scab dressing.

Vic had already done the same, three handguns with seven barrels between them. Light armour was clipped onto his largely hard-tech chassis to augment the built-in protection. He clipped an autonomous blade disc to his armour. It was designed to seek out the EM fields of biological life, and like most brutal short-range weapons it had been designed by lizards. Vic still wasn’t sure it was enough, not with the people they’d pissed off. On the other hand, nothing would help if an Elite came looking for them.

The Basilisk seemed to give birth to two black globes that floated smoothly on silent AG motors into the air to hover close to Scab and Vic. They had cut right back on the personal satellites’ hardware but augmented their sensor packages. The P-sats would need the augmentation to sort through the clutter inside Arclight and provide them with accurate info. Both of them could extrude handgrips, and their AG motors were more than powerful enough to carry Scab and Vic if they had to.

‘We going to talk about this?’ Vic asked. Scab ignored him. ‘Apparently not. Is there anyone we didn’t piss off back there? I mean Consortium naval contractors, the Church and the fucking Monarchist Elite? Not one mind you – one’s not enough for Scab – no, two Elite.’

‘That’s vanity bordering on monomania,’ Scab finally said. He made it sound like a sigh. ‘None of them have any interest in us. They were after either the ship or the cocoon. The Angel or Ludwig could have destroyed us whenever they wanted.’

‘Comforting. You mean they knew we were there?’

Scab just nodded, remembering when he had been reliant on senses unknown to most biological life. Senses that spread out over hundreds of thousands of miles in space. Senses that meant he could feel the slightest movement in the fabric of space/time itself. Not for the first time Scab thought of how he missed being a god of destruction. He preferred myth to what he thought of as the sordidness of flesh.

‘Has it occurred to you that the Consortium and the Church might want to know who our employers are?’

‘No, I’m a moron,’ Scab said.

Staring. In terms of human reactions this called for staring, Vic was sure of that. He didn’t blink, but staring he could do. He also let off a little fart of pheromones in surprise. Scab wasn’t known for humour, even sarcasm. Vic cursed himself: Scab’s soft-tech-augmented olfactory glands would pick up the pheromones. ‘I was not apprised of how dangerous the situation was otherwise I would have charged more.’ Vic was trying to work out the appropriate amount of time to stare to convey his shocked response. ‘Or said no,’ he finally suggested forcefully.

Scab stopped loading rounds into his tumbler pistol and turned to fix Vic with one of his looks. Vic didn’t like this look. He couldn’t quite read the expression, despite his studies and the help of onboard computer systems, but it did unnerve him.

‘It was an interesting job,’ Scab finally said. Vic did some more staring.

‘And the Church! Really?!’ Vic eventually responded. Scab had done some truly stupid things, more than borderline suicidal, and pissed off some genuinely dangerous and powerful people, but in Vic’s opinion he’d gone too far this time.

Vic followed Scab as he picked up his homburg and placed it on his pale-skinned hairless head. Part of the Basilisk’s hull opened and they stepped into the airlock. The hull sealed shut behind them.

‘I fucking hate zero G,’ Vic muttered.

‘You grew up in it,’ Scab pointed out.

‘I grew up drinking synthetic mother’s milk out of a wall nipple; doesn’t mean I don’t prefer steak.’

‘That’s just something you heard in a colonial immersion.’

The hull opened out in front of them into what looked like a bunker made of patched and corroded armour plate. They were facing five heavily armed scum. Scab had accepted their bid for docking and security. He ’faced them the amount of debt relief he was prepared to pay along with the obligatory ritual threats that went with doing business.

They stepped out of the Basilisk’s AG field and let old instincts and hard-wired zero G routines take over as they drifted towards the ceiling.

‘If the Church does take you and torture you, you can feel good about having no actual information to give them,’ Scab ’faced over their secure link.

‘What is that? A joke?’ Vic demanded. Confusion, Vic thought, he was pretty sure that Scab’s expression was one of mild confusion.

The passageway Vic and Scab took was relatively new and a luxury express route. Scab paid the high price demanded to use it. Vic guessed the fact that the tube was transparent and they could look down on the non-toll routes deeper in the labyrinth of Arclight was supposed to make them feel better. People were packed in so tightly they had to wriggle past each other. Scab could see ’sects, little more than grubs, working the packed passage as his P-sat pulled him along. As he watched, one of them started screaming as some nasty countermeasure took him out as he tried to lift a pistol belonging to a reptile wearing luminescent body-paint gang colours.

‘So why come back?’ Vic ’faced over the secure link.

‘It’s close; we’re unemployed.’

‘We could have looked for bounties from the Basilisk.’ Vic was starting to sound confused as he watched a fight break out in the packed transport tube below. It looked desperate. Someone had probably panicked and the crowd had turned on them. It looked like he was being torn apart. ‘What if Sloper had friends who saw you talking to him?’

‘Then I would imagine we’ll have to do some free killing, but I chose Sloper because he didn’t have any friends and both he and his crew were malleable,’ Scab ’faced back.

You mean programmable, Vic thought but said nothing. Then it dawned on him.

‘Seeder’s sake, Woodbine,’ Vic said. Scab looked over his shoulder in irritation at the sound of his first name, but it was one of those moments when Vic just didn’t care. ‘Are you looking into this?’

‘It’s interesting,’ Scab said.

‘Are you fucking mad?!’ Vic asked before realising that it was a stupid question. Though it had occurred to Vic in the past that Scab was a new iteration of sanity, a psychological evolution designed to help the naked monkeys cope. Maybe one day all humans would be like Scab. The thought had frightened Vic.

‘I was offered a good deal,’ Scab said. He almost sounded wistful.

‘Debt relief’s a bit fucking difficult to spend when some Elite’s rewritten your DNA to see what you’d look like as protoplasm!’ It had taken Vic a while to learn to shout over the interface; it was mainly a human talent though lizards were good at it as well. He had been proud when he’d finally managed it. It was very useful for conversations like this with Scab.

‘It wasn’t money,’ Scab said. He didn’t say it over the interface. He didn’t even say it aloud. Vic’s hearing through his antenna had been excellent before it had been augmented by the ’sect’s hard-tech retrofit. Scab had just moved his stained lips as he sub-vocalised it.

‘Are you using us as bait?’ Vic demanded.

He always becomes difficult to manage when he’s frightened, Scab thought.

The Polyhedron Club was specialised: it catered mainly to men of the heterosexual kink and women of the homosexual kink. Most of the six-armed, no-legged, zero-G dancers were either of the girly girl or ladyboy gender. Most of them were human though there were a few felines and one reptile. Whether it had been custom fabricated or originally something else, the Polyhedron was, as its name suggested, an area with numerous sides. The club made good use of all twenty sides of the cavernous red-mock-velvet-lined chamber: each triangle had tables and chairs with micro-hooks that could be neunonically controlled to fasten the clientele to their seats.

The supports for the superstructure provided poles for the dancers’ complex, gymnastic and erotic dances.

‘So, just to be clear,’ Vic asked over the secure interface, ‘the plan is to wait here until something bad happens?’

Scab took another suck from his drink bulb and ignored him. Vic went back to watching one of the human dancers. He was pretty sure she was attractive by human standards as he had run her through some comparison routines in his neunonics. On the other hand, it kind of spoilt the thrill of being a humanophile if they had the same amount of limbs as you.

Both of them felt the atmosphere in the room change. Their P-sats rose from where they had been hovering in one of the many faceted corners, and the club’s defence systems ’faced automated anti-violence warnings with graphic examples of the consequences to both of them if they disobeyed.

The dancers scrambled and swung out of the way. Vic could understand why as he tried to suppress feelings of hatred, anger and not a little fear. Fully armoured and armed in Thunder Squad gear, he could have taken them, of that he was sure; like this he wasn’t so sure. He couldn’t make up his mind whether or not he wanted Scab to start on them or not. It would be an interesting death for him and a fight that Vic would want to see. Scab, however, just sat at the table taking the occasional sip from the nipple of his drink bulb and annoying everyone who could smell near him by engaging in his smoking retro-vice, as he watched the two warrior-caste ’sects fly towards them.

Compared to the custom-evolved biomechanical killing machines, Scab looked positively spindly. Overlapping plates of chitin formed armour the match of high-grade military protection. It was rumoured that the armour’s energy dissipation matrix was an application of S-tech that had been bred into their line. Their lower limbs ended in bladed legs, the four upper limbs all ended in grafted weapons. Their oversized mandibles were knife-like blades attached to sinuous corded muscles designed for close-quarters combat.

The two warriors propelled themselves across the club on small armoured wings that moved so quickly they were a blur. Ideal for zero-G manoeuvring, they could be retracted into armoured chitinous sheaths. The two warriors held a human between them. He wore a white suit of some rendered linen analogue and a panama hat. Despite an androgynous quality, Vic was pretty sure the human was male. Skin grew across his eyes, adding to the expressionless look on his face.

Vic clattered his mandibles together, wishing he could whistle like he had seen surprised humans do in immersions. Even Scab raised an eyebrow. The warriors were towing a blank towards them. A very rare, very expensive and very illegal application of S-tech, it involved some kind of neural entanglement of identical clones. The neurology of blanks was altered by the ancient alien tech, allowing them to be used as transmitters and receivers. Some even whispered that it was an S-tech application developed by the Naga, the semi-mythical race of serpents, the so-called missing fifth and oldest uplifted race.

‘Do you think they could have drawn more attention to us?’ Vic wondered. Scab frowned slightly.

The warriors brought the semi-comatose drooling blank to their table as another chair grew out of the floor. Mandibles clattering together produced a series of synchronised clicks accompanied by scents as they released pheromones.

‘They feel, quite strongly, that we should talk to the blank,’ Vic translated, though he was sure that Scab would have understood. Scab was staring at the warriors. Vic wondered whether or not he should tell him that staring at them or any form of intimidation was a complete waste of time. He also considered provoking a fight just to see who would win.

Finally Scab just nodded. The warrior ’sects put the blank in the chair and retreated slightly to hover in the air. Everything else in the Polyhedron had stopped: the dancers, the bar staff and the other clientele where all staring at Vic, Scab and the blank.

Single-minded, privacy-enforcing nanites went looking for the inevitable surveillance nanites to eat. As the privacy cage grew up out of the floor to encompass them, the last thing Scab noticed was a shaven-headed human woman watching them. There was something about her, something that screamed Church to him. Then the privacy field started up.

The automaton wasn’t the Absolute. The Absolute was changed. Human was no longer a word that could really be applied to it. It was a series of complex sense organs with redesigned neural pathways that could process sensations which would destroy a normal human mind and physiology. Its mind was spread holistically throughout its physical whole. It was an organism designed primarily to experience pleasure. Its physical body was buried deep in its home planet’s crust, protected by vast amounts of automated security, and provided for by automated life-support systems far from the eyes and touch of other people.

The automaton was designed to look like something from myth, to inspire awe: an idealised body of brass complete with a suitably intimidating phallus, the face of a pre-Loss ancient god made from beaten platinum and gold. It was an avatar, a messenger; it shared a fragment of its creator’s intellect and did the Absolute’s bidding. It helped keep the signal constant.

The hall in the Citadel was an appropriate place for the automaton. It was a huge, empty, echoing chamber of black marble. It was meant to look like a place where gods walked.

The cocoon lay on the cool marble floor. There was still a blue-white glow from within but it was fading. The automaton stared down at it for a long time. Finally it climbed onto the cocoon and lay down, caressing it.

One of the Absolute’s favourite toys materialised from the wall, like the cold dead marble had given birth. The Elite’s armour disappeared into his body, its absorption feeling like breathing in. The tall male-favouring hermaphrodite was no less alien and god-like despite his nominally human appearance. Expressionless, he watched the automaton’s sensual display as he walked over to the cocoon. Animated shadow followed him, making abstract but somehow terrible patterns on the floor.

‘Where is Ludwig?’ the automaton asked quietly. Its voice was the result of thousands of years of research by the uplifted races and AIs into trying to synthesise charisma and awe.

Fallen Angel closed his eyes. Sight had long since become an overrated sense. ‘He is drinking a star,’ the Elite answered, his voice deep and melodious.

‘They know it was us?’ the automaton asked. Fallen Angel just nodded. ‘Any trouble?’

‘Scab’s pale reflection was there.’

‘It is no matter; he is no longer an Elite. If he comes looking for it then he can play the Game.’

‘If the Consortium send their Elite?’

‘You’ll fight them, and stars will weep, but I don’t think they’ll risk full-scale war. They don’t have our sense of adventure. They like to control and measure their wars. Fight among themselves. That way they can be sure of the outcome.’

‘The Church?’

‘They would but don’t have Elite,’ said the automaton.

‘They have access to lot of S-tech.’

‘Embargoes are more likely, but the Consortium are as sick of their bridge monopoly as we are. We may find they are unexpected allies. No, this was one dice roll and we won.’

Fallen Angel knew that the wants and desires of the Absolute were not necessarily the wants and desires of other sentient life forms. ‘What are you going to do with it?’

‘It’s a toy. I’m going to play with it.’

The privacy field’s internal holographic projector was old but serviceable. It made them look like they were sitting at their table in deep space looking at a spiral galaxy. Vic liked it. It was retro but evocative.

Despite the Polyhedron’s security guarantees, Scab was still running his own checks. Privacy wasn’t as dead as people liked to claim. It was, however, very expensive.

‘I am disappointed.’ The words seemed to crawl across the blank’s features as a series of violent tics before they came rasping out of its mouth. Scab was mildly surprised that anyone would think he would care if they were disappointed.

‘So this is our mysterious employer then?’ Vic said largely for the sake of something to say.

‘What happened?’ the blank managed after a violent-looking facial spasm that made Vic sit back.

‘Doesn’t matter. It wasn’t viable,’ Scab told the blank.

The blank’s mouth opened wide. ‘I want it,’ it finally managed.

‘Whoever’s running the Monarchist systems these days wanted it more,’ Scab told the blank.

‘Two fucking Elites!’ Vic snapped, his mandibles clattering audibly.

‘Not one, because that would have been easy, but two fucking Elites.’

‘I want it,’ the blank repeated.

‘Elites are beyond my capabilities,’ Scab said. It sounded matter of fact, and only someone who knew him as well as Vic did could understand how much that admission cost him. ‘I would like to be able to kill them but I can’t.’

‘I want it,’ the blank repeated.

‘Well at least we finally have a reasonable employer,’ Vic said. The ’sect was never one to pass up an opportunity to practise his sarcasm. Only felines were better than humans at sarcasm.

The blank’s head slewed around violently to stare at Vic with the patches of skin over where its eyes should be. It turned back to look at Scab with an equally violent motion.

‘Fine. Give me back my armour and the rest of my capabilities, undo the neural surgery, but leave me free and I’ll get it for you,’ said Scab.

Vic turned to stare at Scab. His features weren’t designed to convey the horror he felt.

‘Tell me this isn’t what this is about?’ the ’sect demanded. Scab ignored him.

‘You would be a monster,’ the blank managed through a series of painful facial contortions.

‘Which is what you need now,’ Vic pointed out. The blank shook its head. It looked like it was trying to turn its neck all the way around.

‘Then I can’t get it for you,’ said Scab. ‘Once I had access to intelligence on the possible whereabouts of the aristos’ Citadel but not now.’

‘We… will… provide,’ the blank managed. A cold chill settled on Vic.

‘Even with the intelligence, the Citadel’s going to be high-end S-tech. It could be out of phase; it could even be in Red Space.’

‘We will provide.’ The repeat message seemed to be easier for the blank.

‘It doesn’t matter if you give us the tools and the intelligence; we can’t fight Elite.’ Scab was starting to sound exasperated.

‘Proliferation,’ the blank whispered. Scab stared at it for a moment, then it was Scab’s features’ turn to contort. Vic felt like moving away from him. He didn’t like Scab having emotions. Particularly negative ones like anger.

It happened quickly. Vic found himself wearing part of the blank. The top of the blank’s skull was missing. Scab was holding a smoking tumbler pistol. The sound of the shot inside the tiny privacy cage was deafening but both of their augmentations had coped easily with it. The privacy field that protected them from surveillance also protected them from the Polyhedron’s security systems. There was a reason that privacy cages were also called murder cages.

‘Impulse control! Impulse control!’ Vic screamed at him. Scab’s pale face was also spattered with bits of blank. ‘The S-tech in that guy would have cost the Cartel a fortune! Have you ever had a queen angry at you! It was just a fucking messenger!’

The ’sect was sure they would now have to fight both of the warriors waiting for them. Even as ex-Thunder Squad, starting life as a member of the worker caste had instilled in Vic a fear of the warrior caste on a genetic level. Vic drew both his double-barrelled laser pistols with his top set of arms. With his bottom right he drew the triple-barrelled shotgun pistol. Scab was placing a new round in the empty chamber of his archaic tumbler pistol. The blank was still opposite them, what was left of his head little more than a red bowl of bone and skin. Scab replaced the tumbler pistol in its holster.

‘I mean, what a fucking total waste of time!’ Vic continued ranting. The last time the ’sect had been this angry was when Scab had lobotomised the Basilisk’s AI because he hadn’t liked the ghost’s attitude. ‘Why aren’t you drawing weapons?’ Scab ignored him. ‘I mean, what is it with you?! You hear something you don’t like and someone, anyone has to pay! And I mean what the fuck?! The whereabouts of the aristos’ Citadel?! That’s either board-level consortium intel or one of the fucking royals turning on their own! A palace coup! Like the fucking Art War! Remember that?! What have you got us into?!’

‘I value these little talks,’ Scab said, lighting a cigarette. He took a long drag, the cigarette’s end glowing cherry-red. Vic stared at him. It was scarier because he knew that Scab wasn’t being sarcastic. He probably meant it. This was quality time with another carbon-based life form for Scab.

‘We’re doing it,’ he finally said. For a moment Vic was speechless.

‘You’re not a fucking Elite any more! We are way out of our league!’ Vic’s neunonics autonomously took the calm and informed decision to release massive amounts of sedative into his biological systems to calm him. Through the narcotic haze he started to wonder what the blank had meant by ‘proliferation’. ‘I’m not doing it. It’s suicide and since you murdered me I don’t have any clone insurance left. So die here, die there – makes no difference to me. This way it’s over quickly and I don’t have to put up with however many time units of shit-excreting fear.’

Scab nodded.

The warriors were waiting for them when the cage receded back into the Polyhedron’s subjective floor. Vic had holstered his weapons, but the ’sect was still seething with anger at Scab. However, he was no longer in control of his body. Scab had slaved him and hacked his neunonics, taking control of his body. Again. Vic was entertaining murder fantasies that he knew he would never have the courage to act out.

Scab ’faced his clean-up bid to the Polyhedron’s AI. It was accepted and the club’s security systems did not attack him.

‘Check with your queen,’ Scab told the two warriors. They were radiating impending high-order violence. The dancers and other clientele were looking for cover.

Nothing happened. Locked in his prison body, Vic was shocked. The killing would already be on Arclight’s newsfeed, which meant transmission to docked ships, who would send it to the transmitters on Red Space beacons the next time they bridged. The footage of the blank’s killing, visual, audio and possibly immersion from some of the witnesses would be available for sale throughout the Consortium as quickly as Red Space travel and light could carry it. Everyone would know that Scab, already a celebrity killer, had, for whatever reason, destroyed a very valuable Queen’s Cartel resource. If the cartel did not respond then they would look weak.

Vic experienced a sinking sensation when he realised that they would not respond. He badly wanted Scab dead right now. Instead this was just going to be another story in his partner’s legend.

Scab stood up. The micro-hooks in his brogues anchored him to the floor. His P-sat rose to hover over his left shoulder. Vic found himself following Scab as he slowly walked towards the exit.

Vic looked around the club. There seemed to be more people there now. A lot of them sat at the bar, ignoring the dancers, wearing long black coats that could cover a multitude of sins. They had the look of Church Militia. Brilliant, Vic thought.

Vic barely had a moment to think that the human male in the button-up black suit who landed in front of Scab looked familiar, before Scab stuck a metalforma blade in the guy’s face. It wasn’t so much the speed of the attack that appalled him, Vic reflected; he’d seen Scab fight before. It was how quickly he got his bid into the Polyhedron’s security systems so they didn’t blow him away. The metalforma blade grew inside the man’s head, branching out into a razor-sharp, root-like structure. The man swayed back on his anchored shoes, bobbing back and forth in the zero G.

Vic had a second to realise that the dead guy looked a little like his partner before the shaven-headed women landed in front of Scab. She was a monk. She wore brown armoured robes. She was powerfully built but all high-end soft-machine augmentation, S-tech as well if the rumours were true, moving tattoos based on Seeder symbols. She was not carrying any weapons; her hands were open. Scab levelled the tumbler pistol at her face.

‘It’s stupid to martyr yourself for a faith that doesn’t even have an afterlife,’ he told her.

‘We’re just here to talk,’ she said.

A Church monk was probably more than equal to dealing with Scab, particularly with all the backup she had. The militants he had noticed were now all turning to focus on them. Nobody had drawn weapons yet except for Scab. Vic was surprised that he hadn’t drawn any either. The problem for the Monk and her militants wasn’t so much Vic and Scab as the bidding war that would be required to act in the Polyhedron. In that, Scab already had the drop on them, and they would have to fight him and the club’s automated systems.

‘Stop cloning him,’ Scab told her, and with his gun levelled at her continued heading for the door, Vic following him. The Monk just watched them leave.

He had had been waiting for them as they left the Polyhedron. He had the look of home- and ship-less excess humanity. He was someone who had failed in the life of economic Darwinism but hadn’t yet got round to dying. The one resource that nobody ever seemed to run out of, the one resource that the Consortium didn’t seem to care enough about to control with artificial scarcity, was so-called sentient biological life. This was presumably why you couldn’t use human matter in assemblers, Vic mused. Then there’d be no shortage of raw material for the Consortium to control. However, most of what Vic termed human refuse tended to come with only two eyes. The ’sect was more than a little surprised when two wrinkles on the man’s head opened. Vic wasn’t sure if they were eyes or not. Each looked like a biotech collection of nerve endings forming sensory organs. Still Vic couldn’t shake the feeling that they were staring at him.

‘What the fuck?’ Vic said, wondering when his capacity for surprise would wear out. The man reached up with a small-bladed, but obviously very sharp, anachronistically-steel-bladed scalpel and cut the two eye-like organs out of his head. Blood poured down out of the wounds into the man’s real eyes. All the while he stared at Scab and Scab watched the self-mutilation. ‘Street art?’ Vic wondered out loud.

Scab looked at the man expectantly as he drew an archaic-looking syringe from his jacket and stabbed it into Vic’s armour. The vibrating power-driven needle drove itself through to original flesh.

‘What are you doing?!’ Vic cried, mandibles clattering together, the panic in his voice belied by his calm, combat-ready stance.

‘It’s a vaccine. Relax,’ Scab said. Vic felt like an animal wanting to bolt but trapped in a cage.

‘I’ve been waiting,’ the man said. ‘They told me you would come and I was to do nothing but wait.’ The ragged, gaunt, dirty nobody finished cutting out the two eye-like organs and handed them to Scab. Scab continued to watch him as he slipped the organs into the pocket of his raincoat.

‘I am nothing now,’ the man said.

Scab nodded. ‘Few people fulfil their dharma,’ he said after a moment’s reflection.

Vic watched the man collapse to the ground, his flesh slowly being eaten away. Then his virus warning went off, and he turned to look at Scab as Arclight started broadcasting a viral contamination warning. Vic knew if the virus was powerful and new enough to defeat Arclight’s countermeasures and most people’s personal defences then it would have to have been very expensive.

Scab grabbed the extruded handle of his P-sat and allowed it to pull him quickly towards the ship. Vic found himself doing the same while covering their retreat.

The expressway sealed as Arclight tried to keep some of its wealthier denizens safe. The P-sat dragged them through the lower passageways. They were still quite crowded, but it was easy to push through corpses in zero G, particularly as a lot of their flesh was missing thanks to the nano-enhanced necrotic nature of the virus radiating from Scab like a bad smell.

‘They won’t let you get away with this,’ Vic said. He knew the cartel could not leave this unanswered. ‘We’re dead the moment we set foot on the Basilisk.’ The ’sect was quite looking forward to his death. More than anything else, ’sects were about efficiency. They wouldn’t make him suffer, just snuff him out. It would be a release, swimming through corpses as a virus ate their flesh was not his idea of fun.

However, Scab had already allowed for this. The Basilisk’s recently upgraded sensors had thoroughly mapped their path into Arclight, and Scab had uploaded it into his neunonics. Since they had landed he had been planting the seeds of escape just in case things turned out bad. He had sent out stealth AI programs of his own devising to burrow quietly into the various weapons and security systems that could give him problems on the way out, be they on the station or on other ships.

‘You just killed a Church Militiaman,’ Vic said. ‘They have a frigate here.’ He had seen the craft on the way in – sleek, violent-looking, a minimum of statuary on it, the armour engraved with the fall of the Naga. Frigates were fast. The Basilisk was faster, but the frigate horribly outgunned them and would be manoeuvring into position at this very moment.

‘The Saint Brendan’s Fire. I saw it,’ Vic said as he concentrated on the virtual map in his mind, cracking systems that were readying to fire on the Basilisk.

‘Fear and desire,’ Scab said over the interface. It took a moment for Vic to realise that his partner was talking to the security force where the Basilisk was docked. They would be under a lot of pressure from the cartel to ambush Vic. ‘Leave now and you have cartel trouble. Stay now and we’ll take you down and take you with us. Your suffering can be my hobby for a week and then I’ll turn you over to a house of pain. You won’t die so your clone insurance won’t be valid.’ And he would do it too, Vic thought. He would have to, otherwise people would not take his threats seriously in the future.

When they got to the dock the door was open and the place was empty.

The pair of them strode onto the ship. Scab had left both airlock irises wide open. He closed them with a thought and the Basilisk began to scrub out the virals, its powerful nano-screen hunting down all the new guests. The Basilisk’s skin was hardening so the external feed was coming straight through the interface along with all the sensor data. Sure enough, most of Arclight’s batteries capable of a firing solution on the Basilisk were aiming at the small craft. The St Brendan’s Fire was manoeuvring into firing position, its thrusters glowing against a background of black and neon.

‘Well, it’s been a pleasure,’ Vic said, ready to die and yet still absurdly proud of how much sarcasm he had managed to get into what he assumed was his parting shot. The ’sect felt the Basilisk disconnect from Arclight.

The night lit up as all the batteries on Arclight shifted to fire at the St Brendan’s Fire as per their hacked orders. So many batteries fired in such a small area that it looked like a grid of fiercely defined light. The ’sect was aware of the acceleration: constant sensor feed from the Basilisk made the ship seem more real than his own slaved body. The burn of the engine, the Basilisk’s own batteries firing, the racks of kinetic shots silently emptying. All aimed at the St Brendan’s Fire. The Church ship’s energy dissipation grid lit up, making it look less like a solid, more like a ship of painfully bright light. Reactive armour blew out, trying to dissipate the energy of hypersonic kinetic shots, destroying the engraved scene as the carbon reservoir struggled to replace the armour.

The St Brendan’s Fire’s manoeuvring thrusters burned bright as it tried to rise above the firestorm. Vic knew that all over Arclight security coordinators, pet hackers and weapon operators were desperately trying to regain control of their weapons. Arclight’s PR team and spin doctors would already be apologising to the frigate and assuring them that the Queen’s Cartel was not initiating hostilities against the Church.

The Basilisk soared through the fire, taking minor hits from a few opportunists in independent craft. Scab made a note of every shot and added the ships to his enormous opportunist kill file. The pursuit craft that the cartel had launched were too far away; however, all the bridge points were covered by picket ships.

‘This is Woodbine Scab in the Basilisk. If you’re going to fire then make sure you get it right,’ he told the light cruiser waiting by the bridge point he wanted. A Corsair, even one as high spec as the Basilisk, was no match for a light cruiser. The picket ship didn’t fire. The Basilisk’s bridge drive did violence to the fabric of space/time. The Basilisk left Real Space.

Only when Scab had locked the Basilisk onto the closest Red Space beacon and linked into the beacon network did he pull out the grisly objects the dead self-mutilator had given him. To Vic they were looking more and more like the eyes of some kind of properly alien species, not those of uplifted animals like themselves.

‘How’d they know you’d need that?’ Vic asked.

‘Are you going to behave if I give you your body back?’ Scab asked instead of answering the question. Vic nodded. The human gesture still felt uncomfortable but he was pretty sure that he had it down.

‘Who was the Church Militiaman you killed?’ Vic asked. Scab was staring at the alien organs pulsing in his bloody hand as he used a sophisticated neunonic surgery program to reconfigure his internal nanites in preparation for a xeno-graft surgical procedure.

‘Scab,’ Vic said.

‘I need to find the template and kill it.’ Scab said it in the same tone as everything else he said.