Neal Asher - Cowl

‘Sauros has been evacuated,’ Theldon said without preamble. ‘Was Palleque really your primary agent?’

‘He was,’ Cowl replied.

‘Then know that he was a double agent. Goron gave him a displacement generator before the torbeast’s attack and now it seems they are the greatest of friends.’

Pain shot up Theldon’s arm from the manifold and he found he could not pull his hand away.

‘It’s true!’ he protested. ‘Something more is going on! I’m sure Goron expected things to happen as they have.’ The pain eased and Theldon took an unsteady breath. He went on, ‘I don’t know what they think to achieve, but you have been out-manoeuvred.’

Cowl’s head turned sideways, and for a moment Theldon got a hint of nightmarish shapes deep down in the pool.

‘The beast will not stop,’ said Cowl. He turned back. ‘The killer… my sister…’

Abruptly the connection broke, and the manifold sank and slowly broke apart. Theldon withdrew his hand and looked disbelievingly at the still pool. No chance of rescue now. Cowl had given him nothing, not even a chance to ask for help. Theldon turned and looked back the way he had come. Maybe he could still salvage something. Maybe, during the chaos of the torbeast’s attack, what he had tried to do could be put down to panic… inexperience.

Theldon was halfway back along the course of the stream when Palleque spotted him, and folded up the scope of the Heliothane rifle he was carrying. Theldon did not even see the source of the shot that punched a finger-width hole through his chest and blew his spine out of his back. There were never any maybes in this conflict, and very little room for doubt.

Above Cowl’s citadel the weird shapes of incipient horror continued their hideous dance. Cowl stood utterly still before his vorpal controls, his hands hanging slack against his sides. When Makali and her compatriots entered the sphere, he still did not move until Makali’s second, Scour, spoke—before she could stop him.

‘Have we killed them? Have you done it?’ he asked eagerly.

Cowl turned slowly, then stalked towards them. Eventually he came to stand still and silent before Scour. Makali herself did not move, knowing the danger of this moment. Those Umbrathane whom Cowl had brought back to his citadel were here on sufferance and under his absolute autocratic rule, being viewed by their ruler with the same contempt with which he viewed all humankind. Any who had been there for some time knew when to keep their heads down—for if Cowl suffered any kind of reversal he would take it out on those nearest to him.

Finally Cowl’s voice issued, as if out of the air, ‘The assassin escaped to the sea. Bring Aconite to me.’

‘About time we dealt with that bitch,’ said Scour.

Makali winced. As Cowl backhanded Scour and sent him sprawling, Makali willed her second to just stay on the floor and make no further move. But he was new to this part of citadel and still retained all his Umbrathane pride. He moved his hand to the butt of his handgun, his face twisting in a sneer as if about to say something.

None of the seven Umbrathane saw Cowl cross the intervening space. He was just there, jerking Scour high into the air, ripping and tearing at him. Then Scour arced away, trailing his own intestines, and hit a lambent transformer before sliding, burning and screaming, to the floor. None of the other six moved or spoke while Scour’s screams turned to groans as he cooked, unable to drag himself out of the thermal containment field around the machine. Cowl stood amongst them utterly still, as oily smoke drifted across the sphere’s interior. This stillness went on interminably, until Makali relaxed the tension gripping her body and slid her hand down to her belt, just a short distance from her own hand weapon. Cowl immediately spun round towards her, and for a moment she thought she would now die like Scour had.

Sibilant hissing drew in to Cowl, from the shadows amid the machines, and expressed from that entity in words: ‘I do not give orders twice.’

Catching the attention of her companions, Makali twitched her head towards the exit, and the five of them began backing out of the sphere. Makali followed them, pausing at the exit.

‘The torbeast?’ she asked, knowing she was now risking her life.

Cowl hissed again as his face covering began to open up.

Makali fled.

If asked who she trusted, Polly could only suggest Nandru with certainty, since his fortunes were now utterly tied to her own; and Ygrol, maybe, because he was utterly ingenuous. The word ‘trust’ did not apply to Tacitus because, though always honest and utterly straight with the others, he also coldly informed them that he was loyal unto death to Aconite, and cared not one whit if the rest of them lived or died. Cheng-yi she felt was the kind of dog you daren’t turn your back on, and Lostboy she included in her general assessment of Aconite, for most of what rested inside his skull the troll woman had put there. The heliothant herself Polly considered too complex a being to either trust or distrust. Tack she trusted even less than the Chinaman, and when she spotted her erstwhile killer sneaking out into the damp night, she took up her taser, and the Heliothane handgun Aconite had provided for her, and followed him.

Rain was now steadily pouring from a dark sky, but it was a warm downpour and Polly relished it as she fixed her mask across and tied her hair back.

Now then, is there something Mr U-gov arsehole has neglected to tell us?

‘Well, I don’t think he’s out here to smell the roses, Nandru,’ Polly replied.

I wonder what it’s to be: some sort of double cross, or is he still going after Cowl?

‘We’ll find out soon enough.’ Polly set off after the half-seen figure. The light robe Aconite had provided him with was much more easily visible than the black skin-tight clothing Polly herself wore, but nevertheless she found what concealment she could. However, Tack did not look round once as he plodded stolidly into the night.

Polly tracked him down the hill, then up one bank of the river. She ducked down behind a low boulder when at one point he halted, turning his masked face up into the rain. She noticed that his fists were clenched at his sides, then she watched him bow his head and bring the fists up and crush them against his temples. Still he did not turn round, but after a moment moved on.

Migraine? Nandru suggested.

Polly did not answer, for just then Tack abruptly turned aside and she lost sight of him. Hurrying up to the point she had last seen him, she spotted a narrow watercourse leading away from the river bed, cut down through stone. Following this, she kept catching glimpses of him ahead of her. For a second time he disappeared, but then a dim light ignited somewhere in the watercourse, and she finally came upon a tent lit up from the inside.

Perhaps he don’t like company.

Much as she appreciated how much Nandru had helped her, she sometimes wished she had an antidote for his verbal diarrhoea. She studied the tent for long-drawn-out minutes, but no movement was apparent inside it. As she considered turning round and heading home, there came a muttered curse from the interior. Leading with the barrel of her handgun, Polly ducked down and pressed through the entrance.

Tack was sitting cross-legged at the rear of the tent behind a suspended chemical light. To his left lay an empty pack and on the ground to his right, rested a Heliothane carbine. He made no move for the weapon as she entered. When Polly moved to where she could more clearly see his face, she saw that his mask was off revealing a cold, blank expression. She removed her own mask to sample the air, and saw, down in one corner of the tent, some insectile oxygenating device.