Ragnarok 03 - Resonance (20 page)

And the slaughter began, as the Middle World reduced to two things only, for in warrior rage it is hard to hear the screaming.

Blood and death were all.

TWENTY-NINE

VIJAYA & METRONOME STATION, 2606 AD

Every war needs a name, though its survivors normally term it just that: The War. In human history there had never been a war across the stars, never mind spanning continua; but as the hunt for revenge against the Zajinets intensified, the massively non-linear dynamics of mu-space engagements, not to mention the indecipherable thought processes of the enemy, meant that for Pilots, only one name sufficed for the struggle thrust upon them.

They called it the Chaos Conflict.

And while human warfare requires dehumanising the enemy – because over ninety per cent of men and women possess strong inhibitions against killing their own species – the Zajinets were clearly alien already. The difficulty for strategic planners was in understanding them enough to predict their actions and reactions.

Roger Blackstone knew of the Zajinets' fears, thanks to Ro McNamara, and he had shared what he knew with his superior officers. The key quotation was this: ‘
They
[meaning humanity]
will allow the darkness to be born. It will spread across the galaxy, and they won't fight back until billions have perished.
'

The numbers of Pilots training for combat and adopting full-time military roles continued to increase, to perhaps two per cent of Pilots possessing ships, but that figure was a guess. Roger did not have clearance for accurate numbers. Conversely, details of his ability remained classified, because there was only one of him, along with a tiny number of Pilots with a weak sensitivity to the darkness.

Hence the importance of allies who might share Roger's
ability, even though they were confined to realspace.

On first arrival at Vachss Station, Roger had checked the residents' list and failed to find the name he was looking for. But al-Khalid had given him access to the arrivals/departures data, and it seemed that he was four standard tendays (or a Vijayan month) too late: Leeja Rigelle had departed for Earth, no return journey booked; and a certain Tannier had flown with her.

There were things to distract Roger. His work meant spending half of his time on Vijaya's surface, based in a luxurious building in Mintberg that would have done justice to Imperial Rome or Byzantium, with some high-tech embellishments. It was in many ways a Renaissance or neo-classical culture, and he came to enjoy being among the Haxigoji.

Whenever possible, he flew, coursing mu-space and filling himself-and-ship with energised elation; and when Corinne, also graduated from Tangleknot, had leave from her classified Admiralty work, she would fly to Vachss Station where they would book a suite together and not venture outside until it was time for her to leave.

Their future was a subject they avoided.

Local Haxigoji, when Roger was in Mintberg, were used to seeing him pound the streets early in their twenty-eight hour day (he had adjusted his circadian rhythms to suit), running and returning to his quarters for strength and combat training. On occasion, to their mutual benefit, he sparred with Haxigoji bannermen from the City Guard.

Working alongside Nectarblossom, he embarked on creating a training programme for Haxigoji recruits: learning how to move among humanity, deciphering their cultures, and the clues that might lead them to a darkness-corrupted human, and how to deal with the authorities when they detected such a person. Combat skills were a part of it, and Roger drilled them hard because it was more than their own lives at stake; but he also emphasised the extent to which this was a last resort.

Then there were anti-surveillance skills and the like, because once Haxigoji started living among humans, and the darkness-corrupted individuals among them understood the threat, all Haxigoji would be at risk of assassination. It should not be a high risk, since any act of violence brought attention, but it was a factor.

It took time to get the programme up and running, but by the end of two standard years, the third batch of trainees was getting ready for their final test. Partly for psychological reasons, to seal in the previous training, every intense programme needs a rite of passage on completion.

And that, for these very special recruits, was where the human prisoners came in.

On several occasions, Nectarblossom told him, ‘You should not feel sorry for them, Roger. They're not really human. Their infection makes them something else.'

‘We can cure infections,' he had answered the first time.

‘Not this one.'

Initially, for safety, Roger preferred to use non-Pilot agents of the darkness, captured on sweeps through realspace cities or orbitals. At first, those sweeps had been carried out by other Pilots on Max Gould's books, recorded as possessing a tiny portion of Roger's ability. Some of the current batch of prisoners had been detected by Haxigoji graduates of the training programme.

They normally resided, the non-Pilot prisoners, in ultra-secure facilities on one of three isolated realspace worlds; but for the test, Roger had commandeered a long-disused deep-space research station. He had wanted a place where he and Nectarblossom had total control, and got it.

Roger had not been party to the Admiralty discussion regarding renegade Pilots, but it had been decided on high that certain trusted Haxigoji would be told of the renegades' existence – to the best of Roger's knowledge, Nectarblossom was the first to learn of it – on the basis that the programme's
graduates needed to be prepared for anything, including the detection of renegade Pilots operating among ordinary humans on realspace worlds.

It was not a secret to be shared with humanity at large. The Chaos Conflict, war against the Zajinets, was open knowledge; the notion that Pilot might fight Pilot in all-out warfare, that was something to keep quiet for as long as possible.

Realspace populations needed to feel safe, and they could only continue to do so if they did not realise the extent to which Pilots felt fear, like anybody else.

And so, the prisoners.

This time around, there were in fact three Pilots, all caught while operating on realspace worlds undercover, all equipped with countersurveillance measures. Their captured tu-rings had been of great interest to Admiralty scientists. Two were caught simply because of superior concentrations of surveillance tech. The third had been recognised by a Pilot delivering goods to Göthewelt; after the prisoner was taken and fifty unconscious passers-by were revived from the smartmiasma-induced coma used in the arrest, local Sanctuary representatives had spun a story about a new Anomaly seed, rather than a darkness-corrupted Pilot. The local authorities were satisfied, and awarded a civic medal to the Pilot who had recognised the threat.

If renegade Pilots were beginning to operate undercover in greater numbers, Roger's Haxigoji trainees had better know for sure they could spot them. So this time around, Pilots would be part of the final test.

Which the trainees had better, after all of his and Nectarblossom's efforts, pass with ease.

When Roger had first boarded Metronome Station, protected by a quickglass suit, he had watched while engineers brought the lonely facility back to life, installing modern technology, bringing the station up to a stable spin and restoring warmth and breathable air, section by section, until the whole thing
might have been in its heyday, had it not been for the lack of crew.

Because of his meetings with Ro McNamara, Roger had become something of a history buff where Pilots were concerned; and so he made a private pilgrimage to the long-abandoned control room where long ago a scientist on duty, one Dorothy Verzhinski, had picked up a wordless distress call whose audio signal contained only one thing: the sound of a baby crying.

The drifting mu-space ship contained an unconscious and fading Pilot, along with the baby she had given birth to before transiting into realspace: a breach birth delivered by performing a Caesarean upon herself, using her inboard robotic tool-arms. The Pilot, saved by shuttles despatched from Metronome Station, had been Karyn McNamara; and the baby grew up to be Dorothy McNamara, named after Verzhinski, except that she hated her first name and shortened it to Ro.

By mean-geodesic time, that had occurred four hundred and eighty-three years ago. No wonder Ro remained hidden from the rest of humanity: how could anyone cope with a society that had advanced by nearly half a millennium from the one they had grown up in?

Today, on the occasion of the final test for the third run of the six-month training programme, Metronome Station was once again warm and comfortable. Roger wore only a normal jumpsuit, though a nodule of quickglass fastened against his skin would spread to cover him should it be necessary, while Nectarblossom wore a heavy white tabard, decorated with gold brocade, over a pale-blue silk-like tunic and trews: her formal best, designed to intimidate the candidates before-hand, and increase the sense of ceremony afterwards, when they were told they had passed.

Assuming they did pass.

Roger and Nectarblossom walked along a grey-carpeted central corridor, wide and tastefully lit and scented, trailed by twenty-four hopeful Haxigoji of both sexes, dressed in the
dark sleeveless jackets and breeches that served as tac uniforms, giving off a faint odour of excitement that even Roger had learned to recognise. To Nectarblossom, the scent would be anything but faint, he guessed. Then he stopped, and the recruits did likewise as Nectarblossom walked on to check the testing area.

‘All right.' He turned to face them. ‘Good luck, everyone. We'll call you in one by one. The exit from the testing-area is on the other side, where you'll meet up afterwards. You can do it.'

Amber eyes with horizontal slits were fastened on him. Several Haxigoji nodded: a learned human gesture.

‘Crisp,' he added, ‘you'll be first. Two minutes, and we start.'

Then he strode ahead, passed through unfolding security doors, nodded to the two heavily armed Pilots on guard – there were half a dozen others stationed at sensible locations – and passed through to what had been a viewing gallery. The entire wall to his right formed a window on space, opposite a relaxation area on the left, now transformed into a series of seven open-fronted cells. Each cell's opening glowed dull orange: inbuilt weaponry ready to blast any person or thing that tried to pass through.

Inside each cell was a single captive; and the central cell was occupied by a Pilot called Morik, the one captured on Göthewelt. He sat pale and glowering, darkness lapping strongly around him. A smartmiasma guarded him, sensitive to his biochemistry, ready to respond to a build-up of adrenaline, satanin or other precursor to physical action.

The teams of guards were highly trained, with careful procedures ensuring only one prisoner was on the move at a time. With Roger and Nectarblossom present, there was the added advantage that any change in the quality of darkness would be apparent to them. And also to the recruits they were about to test, they hoped.

Cells two and five contained guards who had been
‘volunteered' to act as prisoners; the recruits were expected to detect their freedom from dark influence.

‘Time to start,' said Nectarblossom, and summoned Crisp.

Crisp was tall even among Haxigoji, straight-shouldered as he walked to the first cell, stopped and considered the enemy for a few moments, moved to the second – this time a twitch of those shoulders indicated his amusement at the deception – and on to the next cell and the next. The prisoners this time were well-behaved, or rather subdued – during the two earlier tests, some had become aggressive – and when Crisp stopped before the cell containing Morik, he seemed rapt in concentration due to Morik being a darkness-controlled Pilot rather than ordinary human.

It took Roger over five seconds to realise that something was going wrong.

Shit!

Crisp shuddered as the darkness entered him.

‘Shut him down!' Roger shouted. ‘Shut Morik down!'

One of the guards gestured, and in his cell, Morik collapsed. But that did nothing to stop Crisp falling back onto the deck, where a tremendous shaking took hold of him, limbs thumping in some awful response to the twists of darkness around his head, and how could anyone prevent such an infiltration? If Crisp became a creature of the darkness then what did that mean for—?

Stillness.

The change had happened so fast.

‘We will honour him,' came softly from Nectarblossom's torc.

‘What?' said Roger.

Those amber eyes were matt-looking, no longer lustrous. Medical scanners opened up holo phase spaces all around, with textual annotations explaining the readings' significance, summed up by three words: Crisp was dead.

When Roger looked up, he realised that all of the cells' occupants were unconscious, including the two unfortunate
volunteers. Guards swarmed, taking up new positions. Total lockdown.

‘I'm sorry, Nectarblossom.' Roger did not know what else to say.

Morik had been careful, setting up whatever process he had used – perhaps it was similar to the way the Anomaly spread, perhaps it was something else: Admiralty analysts would be poring over data from the smartmiasma and other devices here – and aiming to influence one of the Haxigoji rather than a human, either because he thought the guards would be less likely to suspect what was happening, or because for the process to work, the intended target had to be an individual naturally sensitive to the darkness.

That latter seemed more likely to Roger. He was trained to continue thinking while danger or potential danger threatened, but all the while, sour regret and mourning swirled through him. He had been with these recruits for half a standard year, and liked them all no matter how tough he was with them, and Crisp had been one of the best.

Nectarblossom's huge double-thumbed hand clasped Roger's shoulder.

‘I'll tell the others the test is cancelled,' she said. ‘And explain why.'

She went off, ceremonial tabard rustling against the silk garments beneath, dressed for a different kind of eventuality to this tragedy, poor Crisp's body lying sightless on the deck.