Gavin Smith - The Age of Scorpio

He arrived naked, screaming, flayed and bloody on the cold black marble floor. It was like being born except he had been diminished. The powerful biotech implants notwithstanding, it had required every single intrusion trick he had known, and what knowledge of the Elite that hadn’t been cut out of him surgically and virally. He felt like he had been peeled back layer by layer to something raw, feral and inhuman.

He lay on the cold marble, regrowing layers of skin. Tiny nanites crawled through the pores in his skin to replace his repeatedly murdered nano-screen. He kept them close this time. This high chamber of marble was like a tomb from some xeno-archaeological immersion. There were only a few distant rays of light from some unseen source, but the light illuminated the motes of dust. Scab knew that much of that dust was nanites far in advance of any in Known Space.

He knew that the empty monolithic chamber masked the vast amounts of tech, Seeder and otherwise, that existed to support the Elite. There would be reservoirs of matter that could feed assemblers and provide solid ammunition to feed their weapons instantaneously via complex matter entanglement. Generators and controls, probably merged into the very matter of the place, to provide the defensive fields and stealth systems. Connections to the network of primordial black holes that powered Elite tech, again through complex entanglement, and presumably provided the power to keep the Citadel out of phase and in a different physical state to Real Space, assuming it was in Real Space. There would also be storehouses of forbidden S-tech, Scab imagined and half remembered.

The Scorpion was agony. It had burrowed deep into the flesh of his left arm, wrapping itself around the bones. Only the top of its back was visible, the sting twitching in and out of his skin. He could have deadened the nerve endings easily but didn’t. All sensation was a reminder of existence. The pain would end when he was finished. It was how he would know.

‘Are you a shade? Someone I’ve killed?’ The voice was beautiful, deep, resonant and so very sad-sounding. Scab rolled into a defensive crouch. The crouch in the presence of the figure that stood over him made him feel like a feral animal. Scab was fine with that. Sometimes beauty was there just to be destroyed.

The figure had a shock of the blackest hair that Scab had ever seen. Tall and so slender, he somehow looked delicate. There being no fat on him, despite his delicacy his musculature was perfectly toned. He might as well have been carved out of marble. His eyes were dark pools with stars in them. He was naked. Well, that wasn’t entirely true , Scab thought, he would have drawn his armour back under his skin.

Scab angrily drew upon his internal drug resources to subdue the feeling of awe rising in him. He knew that this was a tailored psychological response designed by the AIs and scientists who over the generations of the existence of the Elite had helped mould them into the legendary gods they were. Every movement, every mannerism designed to tell you one thing: there is no hope.

A moment of concentration and then recognition.

‘I’ve seen you before. We slew monsters and you were there.’

Fallen Angel.

‘I want the cocoon.’

‘I don’t really know what that means.’

‘The white thing you took off the Seeder ship.’

‘It wasn’t a ship, but I apologise. I have misled you. When I said that I did not know what that means, I should have said I don’t care.’

It was the tone of honest sympathy that angered Scab the most.

‘Is it here?’

‘Why would it be here?’

‘Because you brought it here.’

‘If we did, it would be because we are slaves. It will be somewhere else now.’

Scab stared at him. Still trying to shake the feeling that he was a disgusting beast in the presence of something transcendent.

‘Then you won’t mind if I have a look.’

Scab stood up and made as if to move past Fallen Angel. The Elite took Scab by the shoulder. Fallen Angel held him lightly but Scab could feel the power in the fingers. It was magnitudes above what Vic could have managed with his high-end, hard-tech augments, impressive for what was primarily soft tech. On the other hand, there had to be a price for laying a hand on Scab.

A flat palm to Fallen Angel’s wrist to knock the arm away. That almost contacted. The Elite made the moving of his arm out of the way look languid. Fallen Angel allowed the roundhouse kick to land, taking the meaningless impact on the shoulder. With Scab’s ability and soft-machine augments, he knew that the kick had more than enough power to powder bone in someone as highly augmented as he himself was. He was reasonably sure that Fallen Angel hadn’t even felt it.

Fallen Angel raised his knee level with his chin and then straightened his leg. The impact broke ribs. Scab spat blood in mid-air as the kick tore him off his feet and sent him flying backwards. He landed hard on the black marble. The noise of their violence seemed obscene in the otherwise quiet chamber.

Scab rolled back into his animalistic crouch and bared his teeth. Fallen Angel watched him, his expression a mix of curiosity and confusion. Scab ran at him, launching himself into the air, knees forward. It was an easy thing for Fallen Angel to roll under the blow.

Scab had known this. He channelled every bit of hatred, every bit of anger at being in a situation where he was so horribly outmatched, where cunning and ultraviolence would not see him through, where he wasn’t in control. The Scorpion, ancient and vile, responded.

The sting drew a long thin line of black just under Fallen Angel’s eye. This was extraordinary in itself. More extraordinary was the ancient venom in the sting actually giving the Elite’s internal antivirals a moment of trouble.

Scab landed, scampered across the floor like an animal, using one hand for support, and turned to face Fallen Angel again. The Elite touched his face and then held his black-covered fingertips in front of his eyes. The exotic matter looked like liquid as it was sucked back through his skin.

Fallen Angel was starting to look angry. He glanced at the Scorpion dug into the flesh on Scab’s left arm and hissed at it, eyes blazing. Scab actually screamed as the S-tech weapon burrowed under his skin, hiding itself completely in his flesh, brass-like living metal wrapping itself around his bones. He had to force himself to ignore the fear radiating from the Scorpion.

Fallen Angel strode towards him. Scab had to put every inch of effort into trying not to get hit. Years of experience, street fighting on Cyst, the planet that most embraced the creed of the cult of Darwin in Consortium space, every dirty trick he’d learned in the penal battalions of the Legion on countless CR worlds and what he could remember of the Elite dances. It wasn’t enough. It was a one-sided and short fight. It was like Fallen Angel was dancing with him in his sleep.

He spoke to Scab as he committed violence on him. The Elite threw a punch to his stomach that lifted Scab off his feet. For an absurd moment Scab felt that his opponent was wearing him like a glove.

‘You did not infiltrate.’

A casual axe kick fractured his skull despite it being seeded with armoured super-hardened ceramic and drove him to the marble floor again. All happening faster than the unaugmented would even be able to see.

‘We may as well have invited you.’

Picked up by the back of his neck and flung against the marble wall. Air forced out of him, replenished immediately by his internal systems, more broken ribs despite the carbon lacing. Fortunately his spine remained intact, though Scab suspected that this was calculation on Fallen Angel’s part to prolong the lesson.