Gavin Smith: The Age of Scorpio

Melia hissed and made an obscene gesture.

Brett pushed both hands into the ball of semi-solid liquid. The spacesuit started crawling up his arms, covering them and then growing down his torso. He held the visor in front of his face and the liquid suit crawled over his head to connect with it. The armoured environment bladders on the suit inflated as they took gas from the surrounding atmosphere. The suit had already connected to his neunonics and Brett adjusted the gas mix with a thought.

He had already adjusted his nano-screen, brought it in close to his body, only leaving a little outside the suit. Whenever he did this it always made his skin crawl but he knew this was psychosomatic. A screen of nanites surrounded Brett, like everyone else in Known Space, everyone who didn’t want to quickly sicken or die and could afford it. The screen prevented him from being attacked by rogue nano-swarms, provided him with a degree of privacy and stopped him from coming down with all but the most sophisticated advertising nano-viruses. Nanite pollution was so extreme in all but the most expensive enclaves in Known Space that without a screen you would be dead within days, or at very best sporting a colourful rash advertising the latest soft drink.

However, for cultures that did not have such a high level of nanite pollution exposure, the nano-screens themselves could be potentially harmful.

‘First-contact protocols?’ Brett asked. He had just realised that he’d always wanted to say that.

Melia and Eden stopped and looked at him as if he was mad.

‘What do you think happens if there’s a crew on board, arsehole?’ Eldon demanded. Brett was taken aback by the anger in his tone. Eldon was just pissed off that he had to spell this shit out to Brett. ‘We get nothing. Reining in our nano-screens is the least of our issues.’

Brett just stared at Eldon as he lifted one foot and then the other so the spacesuit could assemble the hard-wearing soles.

Eldon was holding the quick-release holster for his double-barrelled laser pistol to the thigh of the suit so it could bond, as Eden handed out the double-barrelled disc guns. The disc guns were basically electromagnetic shotguns. It fired solid-state cartridges of smart matter that split into multiple razor-sharp aerodynamic discs. Designed to be fired semi-automatically, the disc guns had a pump-action mechanism to help clear the inevitable jams. Like most brutal close-quarters weapons, they had been designed by one of the tribes of lizard uplifts. Eden held out one of the weapons to Brett. He eyed it through his visor for a while and then took it from her.

‘Just so you know,’ Eldon said, holding up a hardened biohazard container. ‘Just so you’re in just as much trouble as the rest of us if this screws up. Just so you can’t claim you had no knowledge or rat us out, this is a bucket of the most potent virals I could lay my hands on. If we get in and there’s crew, this is for them.’ Brett stared at it. He looked like he was about to object but he caught a glimpse of three hard faces watching him through darkening visors. ‘In fact, I think you should carry this.’ Eldon held the canister out. Eldon was enjoying this, starting the boy down the long road of moral compromises and disappointments that was life. He also thought he was doing the boy a favour. You want to prosper, then people are going to have to die; it was an important life lesson.

‘I don’t want to—’ Brett began.

‘Just fucking man up,’ Eden snapped at him. Brett had thought they were friends.

Brett swallowed hard and took the canister from Eldon.

‘Fuck up, you get left. Don’t hold up your end, you get left. Understand?’ Eldon was starting to feel more in control again. Also, he was never going to get tired of making this kid miserable. Brett just nodded.

With a thought Eldon fired the Swan ’s engines gently to spin the ship slowly and match up the end of the tunnel of flesh with the Swan ’s crew airlock. Compared to the jarring impact of most docking arms, this felt like a kiss.

Eden checked the readings from the sensors on the outer airlock door in her neunonic feed. ‘We’ve got a seal. Atmosphere looks fine, all within uplift tolerances, no discernible exotics, no discernible nano-activity, but I’ll run a more thorough check when we’re through…’

‘What?’ Melia asked.

‘Nothing, just it looks a bit moist is all.’

Eldon tried not to think that he’d let his clone insurance lapse. He transferred command protocols to Nulty.

‘You’ve got the Swan , Nulty,’ he said across the interface.

‘Okay, boss. Go careful.’

Eldon sent the command to open the airlock.

The sound of the water lapping against the rocks at the mouth of the cave had pushed through into her dream and gently woken her. Britha opened her eyes. Her lover’s silver skin reflected the sunlight that had managed to penetrate the sea cave. The selkie’s fine scales turned the light into a glittering rainbow pattern.

‘You slept,’ Cliodna said.

Cliodna was sitting next to her, naked as she always was, gently stroking the border where the shaved stubble on the side of Britha’s head met her long dark-brown hair.

Britha rolled onto her side to better look up at the other woman. The muscles on her back flexed, making the tattoo of a Z-shaped broken spear entwined with a serpent move as if the snake lived. ‘More like passed out,’ Britha said, smiling up at Cliodna, who smiled back, but the smile looked sad.

The dark pools of her lover’s eyes were impossible to read, so different were they from those of Britha’s own people, the ancestor folk, the Pecht as they called themselves.

Britha propped herself up on her elbow. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘I…’ the selkie started and went quiet as if she was searching for the words. The last few times Britha had visited her, Cliodna had seemed even more quiet than normal. Britha felt an ache in her chest.

‘Cliodna…’ Britha reached for her. The change was instant. Cliodna hissed, the nails that Britha liked to feel across her skin suddenly looked like claws; needle-like teeth were bared, and the selkie bolted for the back of the cave. Britha started away from her lover. She knew that the other woman shared ways with the animals, as Britha did if the ritual required it of her, but Cliodna had always seemed so gentle. Britha angrily suppressed her moment of fear. She bore her scars well. Fear was not something she could entertain even in the face of the Otherworld.

Britha pushed herself up onto her feet and made her way into the darkness at the back of the cave. She was still naked; it did not occur to her to clothe herself. Like many of her people she was more comfortable naked, she was even prepared to go to war like this. Intricate interwoven tattoos of animals whose traits she wanted, or symbols of power that could armour her, covered her upper right arm, across her muscular shoulders and down her left arm to her fingers. More tattoos curled down onto her breasts and ran up her right calf. All of them were various shades of blue, from the darkest midnight to the brightest summer sky. The woad had taken her to many places and shown her many visions when they had pierced her skin with it. She had lost days travelling beyond this land in the waking dreams it brought on.

Cliodna was crouched down hugging her legs, her long dark hair covering her features. Britha crouched down and reached for her, but Cliodna flinched away from her touch.

‘Cliodna, what’s wrong?’ Britha asked.

‘I… we’re not like you.’

‘Selkies?’

‘That’s just what you call me. To give me a name, so you can understand… We have to do things – we’re governed by different laws.’