Gavin Smith - The Age of Scorpio

Mrs Bryant had seen him go into a house on Alhambra Road opposite South Parade Pier.

There was silence as they climbed into the Range Rover.

‘You angry with me?’ Beth asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Good. I’m really fucking angry with you. Want to take it out on somebody else?’

‘Yes, I do.’ Du Bois started the Range Rover, put it into gear and drove off.

The death of the Basilisk had been brutal. As soon as the bulk freighter carrying the Monk and Scab – hidden in the stomach of livestock – left Pangean space, the Church frigate opened fire on the Basilisk .

There was no way Scab could receive any form of communication during the infiltration, but even so the name of the game was to hit the Basilisk so hard its comms wouldn’t have time to do anything. All the beam batteries on the port side of the frigate fired, drawing lines of light and spatial distortion to the converted Corsair-class ship. At the same time all the kinetic shot racks were also emptied. The Basilisk ’s energy dissipation grid flared briefly before the ship burst and, to all intents and purposes, ceased to be.

More than a little of the Pangean orbital station the Basilisk was docked with was also damaged. Weapon systems locked onto the St Brendan’s Fire as Pangean naval craft sought to reach firing positions in higher orbits. The Living Cities immediately lodged protests both with the frigate and with Church authorities on Pangea. The Church apologised, explained it was a Church sanction and offered to pay compensation, but behind all their apologies was the unuttered threat of sanctions. The Pangean authorities let it go.

None of which mattered to Vic. Disguised as wreckage, he was being propelled by a jet of gas towards the St Brendan’s Fire . He was wearing the finest power-assisted combat armour that debt could buy, with some illegal upgrade modifications done by Scab and himself. They had put every bit of naughty stealth technology they could find into the armour, and he was running it with minimal systems.

He watched the St Brendan’s Fire get bigger and bigger. If it moved, he, no they, were screwed, Vic thought. He’d then have to activate his P-sat, currently attached to the back of his armour in a heavy combat chassis, make his way back to a Pangean orbital habitat and try to disappear. Which would be difficult if the Church was after him.

The Church frigate didn’t move. Vic did get a little worried when the frigate started breaking up bits of rubble with its laser batteries. Fortunately he seemed to be too small for them to go after. They stopped firing on the rubble when an automated Pangean weapons platform put a warning shot across their bows.

Minute jets of gas adjusted his course. He was aiming for a weak spot in the frigate’s external surveillance, but he knew that his trajectory would have to be just right or he would be detected. Fortunately they did not have a coherent energy shield up. It was just too expensive to keep running constantly, and few people were prepared to attack the Church, let alone on their own. Once again Vic reflected on his own stupidity and cursed the existence of Scab.

Contact. The glove on his armour stuck itself to the composite hull of the religious warship. He pulled himself down onto the hull. Close by he could make out friezes of alien cityscapes designed to represent the Seeder civilisation picked out on the craft’s hull. He was pretty sure the friezes showed the fall of the Naga. Pulling himself down behind an extruded statue of one of the six-armed, wedge-headed Seeders on its cross, Vic adhered himself properly to the ship. He activated various low-power stealth systems and down-powered himself into a death-like trance, as close to suspended animation as he could get.

Vic woke. There was just a moment of disorientation and then surprise that they were in Red Space. Then fear as he saw the blackened skeletons of trees. He risked looking around. The strange and massive tree-like skeletons were everywhere. He had heard stories of places in Red Space, xeno-archaeological digs in ancient ruins, some said ruins that predated the existence of Real Space, but he had thought them just stories. He didn’t think such stories being real boded well for him.

This would be the most dangerous part of the operation, he thought. Well, this and trying to wrangle Scab’s vicious little pet . He placed a blob of a putty-like substance against the hull. It didn’t look like much but its cost must have been astronomical. After all, you’re not meant to hack the matter of armoured spaceship hulls, even if the armour is reactive smart matter.

Vic didn’t like the feeling of sinking through liquid carbon. Everything was black around him. It was like a very slow free fall following the putty, which had spread out into a thin blanket. As he fell, the liquid carbon became solid explosive-infused reactive armour above him. He had nightmarish thoughts of fusing with the armour, to be ejected when a kinetic shot hit as the armour exploded out to counter the shot’s impact. On the other hand, if the frigate’s crew detected anything, all they would see was a glitch in the armour that would need to be checked the next time they were in dry dock, presumably at the Cathedral.

Vic felt himself hit the hull proper of the frigate. He spent some time in total blackness that neither his nor the suit’s optics could pierce, working via pre-programmed touch to place a circle of very powerful thermal seeds against the hull. He used the putty sheet of programmable smart matter to act as tamping and to isolate the thermal seeds from the liquid carbon, because if anyone had ever done this before then they hadn’t bothered to record the results of any chemical reaction. Even so, there was a moment of fear after Vic ’faced the detonation code to the thermal seeds when he thought he saw a faint glow though the blackness.

Vic and the sheet of programmable smart matter fell through the hole in the hull of the ship in a rain of liquid carbon. Vic landed agilely and, for someone in full combat armour, reasonably quietly, on all six limbs. No alarms went off because there was no need for alarms. Ships couldn’t be penetrated in this way. Above his head the carbon immediately started to harden into more useful armour.

Vic’s biggest problem now was the surveillance aspect of the ship’s internal nano-screen. His nano-screen had been augmented with the best stealth nanites that money could buy on the free market, but the Church had infinitely more resources than he and Scab did, even with the pair’s mysterious and obviously wealthy backer. Scab had sampled some of the Church Militia’s nano-screens during the fight at Arclight, and in theory Vic’s screen was supposed to belong to one of them, but he knew it wouldn’t last for long. Best get on with it then , he thought.

His nano-screen picked up someone’s approach. Vic backed into a doorway. He saw a feline in the uniform of a lay Church crew member come into the corridor, stop and then advance more cautiously as he saw the hole.

Vic, despite his current bulk, moved nearly silently behind the feline. The first the crewman knew was when Vic extended all four sword-like blades from his arms as he towered over the feline and then stabbed them into his flesh in the right places to kill him instantly.

Vic retracted the blades. He felt no real remorse for killing the feline – he wasn’t really wired up that way – he just sort of knew it was a waste and wondered if a crew member on a Church frigate had good clone insurance. The blades had held up the feline and the body started to fall when they came out of his flesh. Vic caught and then easily picked up the corpse and took it with him. No point spending time trying to hide it. He only had so much time before the ship’s nano-screen detected him.