The Age of Scorpio (67 page)

Beth moved back around to the side of the Range Rover closest to the wall. There were zombies charging in from that direction as well.

The slaved tourist whose legs Beth had blown off was grabbing at du Bois’s legs. It was annoying, and as he stamped down, breaking fingers, he knew he’d feel teeth biting into him soon.

They needed some respite. He turned back to the rear of the Range Rover and grabbed the M320 grenade launcher. He opened it, removed the grenade inside and replaced it with another type. He stamped down again as he felt teeth bite into his leg.

He moved around and fired the grenade at the remaining slaved tourists charging towards his side of the Range Rover. Flechettes filled the air briefly and turned the slaved tourists into so much meat. He would do penance for murdering the innocent later. It would not be the first time.

‘Awesome,’ King Jeremy whispered as, in his augmented vision, the blond guy’s grenade turned the zombies into a blood storm. Remembering himself, he pushed another magazine home. He was aiming, he told himself, but really he just liked firing the gun.

The first zombie slammed the passenger door shut as they charged in. The shotgun blast took him in the stomach. He was still running, dead, when the one behind shoved him out of the way. Beth shot him. The third hurdled the bodies of the others and Beth shot him at point-blank range, taking most of his face off.

The clown on their side of the road, behind the car, was firing with a clear line. Big-bore rounds tore through the other zombies charging Beth. She let the Benelli drop on its sling, grabbed the .45 from her waistband and walked forward, firing one-handed at charging zombies and then the gunman. She grabbed the front passenger door just as the .45’s magazine ran dry, and yanked it open to crouch behind it to reload as the clown behind the car fired on her again.

Du Bois appeared next to her. At first she thought that he was holding some kind of huge pistol, but her new-found knowledge corrected her as he fired the grenade launcher.

King Jeremy actually had the foresight and was quick enough to slow everything down. He watched the 40-millimetre high-explosive grenade fly from the launcher, hit the car that Inflictor was hiding behind and explode. The car was lifted into the air. Inflictor was flung back hard enough to dent the car he hit. He slumped to the ground.

‘Cool,’ King Jeremy said. He had to give the blond guy credit. He had skills.

Despite knowing their own capabilities, even King Jeremy was surprised when Inflictor got to his feet. He watched his co-member of the DAYP throw away the AR-15 – the explosion had buckled the rifle – and draw his massive .50 Desert Eagle pistol.

‘Yes! You fucking mad man!’ Then he had to duck behind the van as bullets sparked off the armour all around him. At the other end of the van, Baron Albedo was firing at the Range Rover, laughing like a lunatic.
What a fucking high
, King Jeremy thought.

Du Bois had returned to the rear corner of the Range Rover and was exchanging fire with the two clowns in cover at either end of the armoured van.

Beth was mostly keeping her head down as neither the pistol nor the shotgun were ideal weapons for engaging the clowns at that range. She was using the time to reload the Benelli.

He emerged out of the smoke and flame, running over the top of the car that du Bois had blown up, heading towards the Range Rover. Most of the clown mask was gone; underneath was some monstrous face out of a TV show but somehow rendered horribly real. He was coming straight at Beth. She levelled the .45 through the gap between the door and the car, the door battering into her legs with each impact from the running monster’s massive handgun. Beth fired the .45 rapidly, emptying the pistol into him. He staggered with every shot but kept coming.

King Jeremy hunkered down behind the van as the blond guy fired at him. From his position he could see Dracimus cowering behind a car further along the road.

‘Get up and shoot!’ King Jeremy shouted over their internal link.

‘I’m shot!’ Dracimus answered.

‘Don’t be such a fucking pussy; it can’t kill you.’

‘You haven’t been shot. It really hurts!’

King Jeremy turned to point the modified AR-15 at Dracimus.

‘Stand up and fucking shoot!’

Inflictor barrelled into the door of the Range Rover, slamming it so hard into Beth that it knocked her insensible for a moment. He opened the door and grabbed her, turning as he threw her through the air. Beth hit the ground some eight feet away. Dazed for a moment, she was quickly scrabbling for the shotgun still on its sling.

Du Bois turned to see the clown lift the massive Desert Eagle and point it at Beth.

He moved wide to get a shot, bringing the FAL carbine to his shoulder. Behind him the gun clown who’d taken cover, the one du Bois was sure he’d shot, rose from behind the car. Too late du Bois realised his mistake and turned back to face him.

Dracimus fired. His first shots were a long undisciplined burst, but then the skills they’d hard-wired into themselves kicked in. He brought the gun under control and fired a short burst and then another. He grinned as he made the blond guy – who in his augmented view of things was his most hated goody-two-shoes superhero – dance in the middle of huge explosions of blood.

As the monstrous clown brought the Desert Eagle up, Beth knew that she’d never bring the shotgun to bear in time. The flame from the pistol’s muzzle looked enormous, and she actually saw its slide shoot back and the ejected cartridge fly out the side. Then again, but the slide stayed back this time.
Good.
He couldn’t shoot her any more.

She was dead before her head hit the ground.

King Jeremy and Baron Albedo moved across the street in a low crouch, weapons at the ready like they’d seen in films. King Jeremy went around the front of the Range Rover, Baron Albedo the back.

King Jeremy found Inflictor standing over the woman’s body. There were two massive entry wounds in her chest.

‘That was fucking insane, man!’ King Jeremy said, checking she was dead and clapping his friend on the back. Inflictor turned to look at him.
He’s probably seeing a fellow demon
, King Jeremy thought.

‘Let’s hurt it,’ he said, meaning the dead woman.

‘Er . . . she’s dead, dude.’ King Jeremy could hear sirens now.

‘Did you see that?! Did you see me fucking kill him?!’ Dracimus said as he ran across the road. He stopped to stand over the blond guy’s body. ‘Oh yeah! He’s all kinds of fucked up!’

King Jeremy resisted the urge to shoot Dracimus. He was pissed off that Dracimus, who’d been a pussy throughout the gunfight, had got the kill shot on the guy.

‘Check them for tech!’ King Jeremy barked.

‘Why, man?’ Dracimus said. Baron Albedo was already searching the blond guy.

‘Because I fucking said so. Inflictor? Inflictor!’

The demon-faced boy turned to look at King Jeremy.

‘Get the girl out of the back of the car and put her in the van.’

Inflictor nodded and went to do as he was bid.

‘King J?’ Baron Albedo said. He was holding up a small leather case. King Jeremy went over to look at it. Albedo had unzipped it by the time he got there. Inside were some vials, blood, a white fluid and some other bits and pieces that Jeremy didn’t immediately recognise. He shrugged but took the case.

‘Anything else?’

‘Not without looking harder.’

‘The sirens were getting louder. Across the road, Inflictor was tossing the heavy speakers of the sound system out of the van one-handed.

‘No time.’

King Jeremy, Dracimus and Baron Albedo ran across the street back to the van.

The top of the arcology tree falling towards the planet had become so many burning meteorites. It was quite beautiful, Elite Scab thought as he watched the flaming matter crash through the inhabited branches far below.
People who thought themselves good lied to themselves. When you’d seen it, done it, you could not deny the beauty of destruction on this scale, of mass murder, the music of screaming.

He was keeping his systems stealthed. He wasn’t going to make it easy for them when his death came, but not too hard either. They would be able to find him if they looked.

He felt calm, tranquil. He had always resisted the idea of fate. He liked to believe that he had made his own path, but he had been a slave too long, he now realised. He had thought that the inevitability of his death would feel like a trap, but it was quite the opposite. He felt liberated.

He watched the ponderous yet somehow strangely balletic approach of the massive capital ship over the planetary horizon of Game. It didn’t eclipse the G-type sun but its outline obscured a significant part of the bright star.

Thick fingers of light reached out for him, bending slightly due to the gravity well. Kinetic projectiles burned as they were shot through the bubble of the atmosphere. According to his suit’s scanners, or rather its instinctual understanding of space and the information contained in his neunonics, the capital ship had just fired every one of its AG-driven smart munitions. The munitions were accelerating to the limit of material science.

He knew the ship. It was called the
Necronaught
, a childish name to Elite Scab’s mind. A powerful AI helped run it. The AI had bonded with the crew, making the ship almost alive to them. They had a relationship with it. The
Necronaught
had wreaked havoc on the Pangean fleet during the Art Wars. It had been among the first ships through the planetary blockade and the ship most significantly responsible for the death of one of the Living Cities.

What a waste
, Elite Scab thought. He was in a different physical state by the time the first beams reached him, too different for them to harm him. He took his time making his way towards the craft. He wanted to appreciate the display of firepower. He could make out the burn of other smaller faster ships making their way towards him.

He remembered the last time that he had seen a display of the
Necronaught
’s firepower, huddled in a crowded mercenary carrier broadcasting constant cries of surrender and pleas of clemency for independent contractors. He saw the bright lances reaching down from high orbit. Watched the sky become a canopy of fire as the kinetic payloads hit the atmosphere. Slowed down in his neunonics, he watched the AG smart munitions blossom into multiple sub-munitions and the wreckage of escaping craft start to rain down on the scarred rock surface. Scab, as he’d been then, had picked his escape craft based on the strength of its defences.

At some level all of them had felt the death of the Living City. Scab had disliked the violation, the suggestion that at some fundamental level there was an empathic connection between all living things. Instead he wondered if the crew of the
Necronaught
felt like gods. He wanted what they had.

He was not going to take revenge on the
Necronaught
. Those memories belonged to a different person, who should have been long dead. His ghost had been resurrected in the pathetic clone copy that even now he knew was down on the surface.

Some of the more exotic payloads tugged at him, harmed him, he supposed, as he made his way towards the ship. The shields, what most people thought were S-tech but what Elite Scab knew were L-tech, were more problematic. There was actual pain and loss. He was diminished, but he did not scream as he pulled his way through them. He was breathing hard, covered in sweat as he fell through the armour and hit the ship’s cold hard deck.

With less than a thought he sucked the sweat back into his skin. He would use the salt and water for something more useful. He stood up. To the terrified-looking crewman standing in front of him, it looked like he was clothed in black liquid glass. The crewman, a tall human, base male in gender, had seen the Elite in a moment of weakness. He died immediately.

Elite Scab released the virals and the nano-swarms, all Sand L-tech derivatives. They would be too much for the
Necronaught
’s countermeasures. He gained access to the ship’s systems through the dead crewman’s neunonics and downloaded multiple crack and control AI programs based on a template of his own personality. Each of them had an inbuilt self-destruct code but they would overwhelm the
Necronaught
’s security, possess the host AI and effectively sequester the ship.

While this happened, Elite Scab walked through the ship killing the old-fashioned way. Every time he ran an extruded blade through a crew member or legionnaire, he thought about their souls. He knew that the soul did not exist. It was an ancient idea from before the Loss that he had come across. So much more information was available to you when you became an Elite. He knew that ultimately they were all little more than biological automatons created by the Seeders, but as he watched the screaming faces of his victims appear momentarily in the animated exotic matter of his armour, it was difficult not to think that the living material of the armour was consuming their souls. What he felt sure of was that the exotic matter wanted to consume life.

He took control of the ship. He ’faced with the ship’s nano-field for an external view. The
Necronaught
was belying its dark name. It looked like it was made of light as every other ship in the vicinity fired on it. The carbon reservoirs struggled to remake the ship’s reactive armour quickly enough to cope with the multiple impacts of sub-munitions and kinetic shots. In the centre of the ship, as faces screamed out from all over his armour, Elite Scab was barely feeling the hits.

Scab ignored the rest of the fleet; instead he aimed the
Necronaught
at the surface of Game and fired all its beam weapons and the kinetic shots that the carbon reservoirs had managed to regrow at the planet’s surface.

‘Notice me,’ he whispered.

He felt the rip in time/space.
I should feel exalted
, he told himself. Angels were coming especially for him.

It was quite tranquil floating upwards in the red light through what looked like the roots of the arcology trees, except here everything, all matter, was black and skeletal with oddly exaggerated angles. The frameworks of the arcology trees looked like expressionist sculptures rendered in blackened bone. The only matter here was the trees. It seemed that you had to be of a certain size to be remembered in this red-world copy. None of the smaller details – G-vehicles, piles of assembler debris, extraneous buildings – seemed to be present, and there were certainly no other life forms, not even ghosts. With the exception of the two of them riding the cocoon, their flight capability provided by the three working AG motors, everything was still. It was like a dead world. Scab found himself liking it.