Neal Asher - Cowl

‘Ygrol,’ Tacitus murmured warningly, stepping forward.

‘Far enough, Roman.’

Tacitus had not even seen the Umbrathane male move round the room to come up behind him. He froze, feeling a hand on his shoulder and the barrel of a handgun pressed against his cheek.

‘Perhaps you don’t think I’m serious.’ Without even looking in the direction she was pointing her carbine, Makali pulled the trigger. Lostboy’s head blew open, flowering around the blockish cerebral augmentation, which clattered onto the floor as he slid from his chair. ‘I’m serious.’

Flinging the games table aside, Ygrol came up with a roar, his bone club raised. Tacitus felt his mouth go dry as he saw how fast two of Makali’s fellows shot in front of her, one of them stamping on Cheng-yi’s head in passing as the Chinaman tried to rise. The first to reach the Neanderthal knocked away his club, then both umbrathants dragged him to his chair and forced him down into it. No matter how Ygrol strained he could not get up, and bellowed as Makali strolled forward to pick up the bone club and inspect it. She turned to Tacitus.

‘Where is the killer? And where is Aconite?’

Aconite almost certainly knew about the arrival of these intruders, Tacitus supposed, but perhaps she was taking needed time to prepare, so he kept his mouth firmly shut. Without taking her eyes off Tacitus, Makali brought the bone club up hard to smash into Ygrol’s face. Still seeing no reaction from the Roman, she turned on the Neanderthal and began to lay into him. As blood spattered her face and prosthetic arms, Tacitus realized that any answer he might give would not alter the outcome of what was happening here. Cowl had let Makali off the leash.

It was over in a minute, Ygrol’s broken head lolling to one side.

‘Well now,’ said Makali. ‘I guess we’ll have to see what I can do with that sword of yours.’

‘I’m here,’ spoke a new voice.

Aconite had entered the room from her research area. Tacitus could see her rage and he prepared himself to do whatever was required of him.

‘I think you’re a little late for this party,’ said Makali, inspecting the blood runneling in the circuit patterns on the bone club she held.

Aconite clicked her fingers and a sudden deep droning filled the room, along with a blast of air. Wasp rose vertically into view, its wings a blur behind it, and a glistening sting extruded into view. It drove forwards as one of the umbrathants turned towards it. He bowed over as it slammed into him, the sting going in through his chest and out of his back. Then the sting flicked and discarded him. Tacitus reversed his sword, its blade alongside his ribcage, and thrust back into the umbrathant behind him, turning as he did so. There came a gagging crunch from the man, and muzzle fire skinned the Roman’s cheekbone. The bone club became a blurred wheel in the air, before it was caught and shattered in Aconite’s massive hand. Pulling his gladius free from his dying captor, Tacitus threw it underhand, spearing its way towards Makali’s back. Then a shot smacked into his chest and he staggered back, stumbling over the umbrathant he had impaled. He saw Makali whip round, impossibly fast, catching the gladius by the handle, bringing it over her head and almost casually squatting down to drive it through Cheng-yi’s back to pin him to the floor. With teeth bared she pulled some device from her belt and aimed it at Wasp. The room whited out for a second, then the robot dropped out of the air and crashed to the floor.

‘You think we didn’t know?’ said Makali.

The same white-out again. Now Aconite falling like an oak tree.

Tacitus slid down, with his back to the wall. He stared down at his shattered body—he had done his best.

Silleck was one of the few interface technicians who had survived, and like all of them only because she had torn herself away from her vorpal controls. Now, with open wounds in her scalp and undetached nubs of vorpal glass embedded in her skull like little windows into her brain, she suffered a headache that just would not go away. Only time would cure that, as the damaged tissue of her meninges healed around the vorpal fibres entering her brain. But she would never be rid of the facility to slide into a perception that stepped one dimension above that of her fellow, un-interfaced Heliothane. Gazing across the mountainside, she observed the survivors setting up their camps for the coming night; while, sliding into further perception, she saw them preparing to do this, and their camps already made. Watching also the endless flow of the beast into the wormhole, she saw images that both repelled and fascinated her.

This ability, Goron reassured her, would prove essential in the coming years, as there were few dangers on this Earth that could slip past guards able to see into the future—if only for a few minutes. Because of this extended perception, and because her gaze kept straying back to the beast, she was the first to see it happen.

She stood and walked upslope to Goron, who sat Buddha-like on the mountainside, the section of control pillar resting on his lap. His eyes were closed, for he was either asleep or meditating. She eyed Palleque who, despite what Goron had told them all, she still distrusted as she did all fanatics.

‘It’s happening,’ she told Goron at last.

The Engineer opened his eyes and gazed towards Sauros. ‘There was always the possibility it would be endless, though not for us.’

Silleck and the rest of the survivors had been waiting for a feedback cataclysm that would have swept them away from this mountainside in an ashy wind. Now this was not to be.

Then it all ended as suddenly as it had begun. The flow of torbeast attenuated, the roar of its progress dropping away. It broke up into trailing tentacles of raw flesh and spills of putrid dead matter—and then it was gone.

‘And there it is,’ said Palleque, standing up.

Goron reached inside the control sphere and did what he had to do. Just inside the ravaged structure of the city, the three abutments began to slide towards a centre point, closing the wormhole entrance. As they drew closer, Goron shaded his eyes, though the light was not really so intense, being to the infrared end of the spectrum. Dull thunder echoed and what remained of the city deformed under an intense burst of heat.

Silleck felt the heat on her face—and in her dry eyes.

Relaying what Nandru was telling her, Polly said, ‘Aconite and Wasp were in the tor chamber when Aconite went charging out. Wasp followed her into the residential room, when suddenly some system inside Wasp cut in and it threw Nandru out. But he had time to see that Ygrol was dead—that you don’t display that amount of brain to the air without needing a body bag shortly after.’

‘Tell Nandru to describe exactly what else he saw,’ said Tack.

Polly tilted her head for a moment, and her eyes narrowed. ‘One of them held a gun to Tacitus’s head. Two were holding Ygrol down in a chair and it seems Makali had just beaten his brains out. He didn’t see the other two, though.’

‘They’re probably all dead,’ said Tack.

‘But if they are not, we have to do something for them,’ Polly replied.

Resting his carbine across his shoulder, Tack stared at her. He was sick of these Umbrathane and Heliothane eternally killing each other and dragging others into the conflict. He was his own man now and he wanted no more of it. He also did not want to be forced into a position where he himself would have to kill again. However, Aconite had arranged to have him dragged from the sea, and she had subsequently put him back together. He owed her. And, at the last, he now wanted to gain Polly’s respect—and whatever else she might be prepared to give. In that moment he felt, with a lurch, his life beginning again, and knew he could not renege on his new responsibilities. Fucking hero, he thought.