The Night's Dawn Trilogy (403 page)

“Remove your clothes first,” Banneth told him. “They get in the way of what I want to do.”

The initiation ceremonies, the punishments, the degradations he’d undergone for the sect—none of them prepared him for this.
Simple pain he could endure. It was soon over, making him all the meaner, stronger for it. Each time his serpent beast would
come away slightly larger, more dominant. None of that helped him now. Each garment he took off was another portion of himself
sacrificed to her.

“In times gone by, they used to say the punishment should fit the crime,” Banneth said. Kilian removed his jeans, and she
smiled thinly at his flabby legs. “An appropriate sentiment, I always thought. But now I believe it’s more fitting that the
body part should fit the crime.”

“Yes,” Kilian said thickly. That, he needed no explanation for. He had spent hour after hour mucking out the pigs as part
of his duty. All the acolytes had to do it. All of them detested the filthy squealing animals. It was an insidious reminder
of what fate ultimately greeted Edmonton sect members, no matter you were being disciplined or rewarded.

Banneth’s herd were special; developed centuries ago when geneering was in its infancy. They were originally designed to provide
organs for human transplants. A worthy project, to help people with worn out hearts or failed kidneys. Pig organs were the
same size as human ones, and it was the first practical success of the geneticists to modify porcine cells so they didn’t
trigger a rejection by their new host’s immune system. For a few brief years at the start of the Twenty-first Century the
concept had flourished. Then medical science, genetics, and prosthetic technology had raced on ahead. Humanized pigs were
abandoned and forgotten by everyone except medical historians and a few curious zoologists. Then Banneth had come across the
obscure file in some long-outdated medical text.

She had identified and traced descendants of the original pigs, and began breeding them anew. Modern genetic improvements
had been sequenced in, strengthening the bloodline. It was the raw primitiveness of the concept which appealed to her. The
sect’s use of modern technology was so much at odds with its basic gospel. Pigs and old fashioned surgery were an ideal alternative.

When an acolyte needed boosting, it wasn’t AT muscle she implanted to enhance the original human ones. Like the rest of the
porcine organs, the muscles wouldn’t cause rejection. Pig skin, too, was thicker, sturdier, than its human counterpart. Lately,
she had begun to experiment with other animals. Grafted monkey feet turned an acolyte into an efficient acrobat, useful for
gaining entry to upper-storey floors. Lighter leg bones allowed them to outrun police mechanoids. Given time and research
subjects, she knew she could match any modification used by cosmoniks and the combat boosted mercenaries so prevalent out
there among the Confederation worlds.

The surgical techniques could also be used to rectify behaviour. For example, an attempt to run away from the sect would be
easily curtailed by replacing legs with trotters. In Kilian’s case, Banneth hadn’t finalized on an effective lesson. Though
she did favour extending and re-routing his colon into the back of his throat, so that every time he wanted to shit, he’d
have to do it through his mouth. The extra tubing would give him a very thick neck. A nice irony, that. It would match his
thick head.

When he was naked, she made him lie face down on the table, then used the straps to secure him in place. Creative punishment
would have to wait. Since he blurted confirmation about a possessed, only one thing had mattered to her. She smeared a big
dollop of depilatory cream on the back of his neck, and squirted it off with a cold water hose. It left his skin clean and
bare, ready to receive the nanonic implant package.

Kilian wasn’t permitted an anaesthetic or sedative. He groaned and whimpered continually as the personality debrief filaments
pierced his brain; their brutal intrusion sparking cascades of aberrant nerve impulses that sent spasms rippling along his
limbs. Banneth sat on one of the desk bench stools, sipping a chilled, hand-mixed martini as she supervised the procedure,
occasionally datavising new instructions into the package. After nearly two hours, the first erratic impulses started to flood
back along the invading filaments. Banneth brought her AI on-line to analyse and interpret the confusing deluge of impulses.
Visualizations that were nothing more than randomized detonations of colour slowly calmed as the AI began to marshal Kilian’s
synaptic discharges into ordered patterns. Once his thought patterns had been catalogued and correlated with his neural structure,
his entire consciousness became controllable. The filaments could simply inject new impulses into the synaptic clefts they’d
penetrated, superseding any natural thoughts he had.

Kilian was thinking about his family, such as it was. Mother and two younger half-brothers, living in a couple of dingy rooms
in a downtown skyscraper over in the Edson dome. Years ago, now. Mother surviving on a Govcentral parent work-pay scheme;
never there during the day. All he had was the constant noise, the shouted arguments, fights, music, footsteps, metroline
traffic. At the time he’d wanted nothing more than to escape. A bad decision.

“Why?” Banneth asked.

Kilian flinched. He was sprawled on the sagging bedsettee by the window, looking fondly at all the familiar old objects that
had occupied his brief childhood.

Now Banneth stood by the doorway, regarding him contemptuously. She was brighter than anything else in the room, more colourful.

“Why?” she repeated.

A spherical wave of pressure contracted through Kilian’s skull, squeezing his thoughts out through his mouth in an unstoppable
stream. “Because I left this to join the sect. And I wish I hadn’t. I hate my life, I fucking hate it. And now I’m on your
table and you’re gonna turn me into a dog, or chop my dick off and give it to someone else to fuck me with. Some kind of crap
like that. And it’s not fair. I didn’t do anything wrong. I’ve always done whatever the sect asked. You can’t do this to me.
You can’t, please God. You’re not human. Everybody knows that. You’re a fucking weirdo freak cannibal.”

“Now there’s gratitude. But who gives a fuck about this pathetic little comfort regression you’re in. I want when you saw
the possessed.”

The pressure wave found another part of Kilian’s mind to crush. He screamed out loud as memories erupted like fountains of
acid behind his eyes. Home was coldly scorched out of existence, huge great sections of it peeling away like rotten flesh
to reveal the Vegreville chapel’s temple. Kilian had been there three days back, sent by his sergeant acolyte to pick up some
package. He didn’t know what was in it, just that: “Banneth wants it fast.”

The coven was different than before. There was a new atmosphere percolating through the dark nest of rooms. They regarded
him as a joke. His urgency to complete the assignment, to get the package and leave, made them snigger and scoff. Every time
he asked them to be quicker they delighted in delaying. They were like frisky kids at a day club who’d found a new boy to
taunt and bully.

Eventually he’d been taken to the temple where the senior acolyte told him the package was waiting. The chamber walls were
made from thousands of slim metal reinforcement rods welded together, the inside of a bird’s nest woven out of iron twigs.
Its altar was a tight-packed mound of rusty spikes, their tips all shaved down to the same length. Twin flames rose out of
the bristling metal at each end, long yellow tongues dancing in the gloom. Pews were composite roof planks nailed to a variety
of pedestals. The sect’s usual runes were still on the walls, but they were barely visible now. A single new slogan had been
sprayed everywhere: Night is coming. On the walls, on the ceiling, even on the floor.

Kilian was made to enter alone, his little escort clustering round the thick doors behind him, giggling wildly. His annoyance
dropped away as he walked quietly towards the altar, replaced by growing nervousness. Three figures waited silently for him
behind the altar, clad in black robes. These garments had none of the embellishments or pentagons usually favoured by senior
sect members. If anything it made them appear even more menacing than usual. Their faces were almost lost inside the large
hoods. Flickering yellow beams from the candles would occasionally reveal a feature within two of the hoods: bloodshot eyes,
hooked nose, wide mouth. The third hood could have been empty for all that Kilian saw. Even when he reached the altar, he
could see nothing inside that night-like cavity of fabric.

“The High Magus sent me,” he stammered. “You’ve got a package for me, yeah?”

“We certainly have,” a voice said from somewhere inside that veiled hood.

Alert now, Banneth ran the voice through an analysis program, though ordinary memories of voices were a notoriously unreliable
source for such verification programs. Nonetheless, it showed remarkable similarities to recordings of Dexter’s voice. Kilian
trembled as the hidden figure slowly held out an arm. He was almost expecting a pistol nozzle to poke out at him. But it was
just a snow-white hand that emerged from the voluminous sleeve. A small plastic container was dropped carelessly on the altar.

“Our gift to Banneth. I hope it is useful.”

Kilian scooped it up hurriedly. “Right. Thanks.” All he wanted now was to get the fuck out of here. These guys were almost
as creepy as Banneth.

“I am interested that the High Magus is carrying on as though nothing is happening.”

Kilian didn’t know how to answer. He cast a glance over his shoulder, wondering if he should make a dash for it. Not that
he could ever get out of the chapel unless he was allowed to. “Well, you know how it is.” He shrugged lamely.

“I certainly do.”

“Sure. I’d better get this back to her, then.”

“The Night will fall.”

“I know.”

“Excellent. Then you will join us when the time comes.”

“My serpent beast is strong.”

A head emerged from the hood, the darkness slowly washing backwards to expose more and more features. “You’ll need to be,”
Quinn said.

Banneth froze the image. No doubt about it. Skin as white as snow, eyes infinite pools of black—though that could have just
been emotion-aggravated exaggeration. But it was Quinn.

The High Magus smiled thinly as the image hung in her mind. The fierceness which had once so animated him, and fascinated
her, was gone. If anything, he looked rather stressed out. Crinkled lines radiated away from the corner of his eyes, while
those sweet cheeks were rather sadly sunken.

She concentrated her thoughts, focusing on the personality traits of one individual.
Dexter’s in Edmonton. One of my acolytes encountered him three days ago.

Ah. Thank you,
Western Europe replied.

______

The ten ships in the convoy emerged above New California, immediately confirming who they were to Monterey’s SD command. For
once the hellhawks accompanying the frigates hadn’t raced on ahead. They were quite content to let the convoy commander break
the bad news they were carrying.

Where’s Etchells?
Hudson Proctor asked once the four remaining hellhawks had checked in.

We don’t know,
Pran Soo said.
He left us to scout round the antimatter station. He will probably emerge soon.

You’re sure the Confederation destroyed it?

The frigates were still there. They saw it explode.

A fact which the convoy commander was very reluctantly confirming to Monterey. The news was all around the asteroid within
thirty minutes, and down to New California’s cities in roughly the same timescale. Word spread across the countryside within
a couple of days. The more remote Organization asteroid settlements lagged behind by anything up to a week. The last ones
actually got to hear about it from Confederation propaganda broadcasts—who damn well weren’t going to miss that opportunity.

This time Emmet Mordden refused point blank to be the one who had to tell Al. So the senior lieutenants decided that Leroy
Octavius should be awarded the honour. Their unspoken thought as they watched him waddle out of the asteroid’s command centre
was that he too would chicken out and simply tell Jezzibella.

A lifetime juggling temperamental personalities in the entertainment industry had left Leroy wise to that option. Knowing
that Jezzibella was the only guarantee his own precious body and soul remained intact, he simply couldn’t permit her position
to be weakened. Leroy gathered his courage and went down to the Nixon Suite. Walking along the last few metres to the doors
his legs had more than a little wobble of apprehension. The two gangsters on guard outside picked up on his emotions, and
studiously avoided eye contact as they opened the big doors for him.

Al and Jezzibella were having breakfast in the conservatory, a long, narrow room with one wall made entirely of curving enhanced
sapphire, which gave a slightly bluish tint to the view of the planet and stars outside. The opposite wall had vanished beneath
a trelliswork of flowering vines. Pillars running the length of the conservatory were transparent tubes, aquariums filled
with the strange and beautiful fish from a dozen worlds.

There was only one table, a broad wrought iron oval, with a vase of orange lilies in the middle. Al and Jezzibella sat next
to each other, dressed in identical aquamarine bathrobes, and casually munching toast. Libby was limping round the table,
pouring coffee.

Al looked up as Leroy came in. His welcoming smile faded when he caught the anxiety in the obese manager’s mind. “You don’t
look too happy, Leroy, my boy. What’s eating you?” Jezzibella glanced up from her history book.

Leroy took a breath and plunged in. “I have some news. It’s not good.”

“Okay, Leroy, I ain’t gonna bite you because those wiseasses dumped a shitty job on you. What the fuck’s happened?”