Neal Asher - Cowl

With the usual chemical flash, the head of the harpoon bonded to the upper lip of the chute, and after detaching the adhesive mine Tack set the winder spinning to haul him up into the chute’s mouth. Here he stuck the mine to the floor of the chute to give himself a foothold, before detaching the harpoon and winding it all the way back into its launcher. He then gazed up into darkness.

Having little clear memory of his own descent down this pipe, Tack had consulted Nandru and was told it ran in a hundred-metre arc down from Cowl’s spherical control centre. Easy enough to climb, but not yet—he waited.

The sky was still dark with the presence of that thing and the storm it had induced. Beyond the sheltering loom of the citadel, Tack observed the dusty snowstorm of the crystalline substance hazing the surface of the sea and somehow making the waves sluggish. Within a few minutes he spotted Nandru-Wasp hurtling towards him from the direction of Aconite’s home, the robot clutching Polly underneath it like a stolen grub. Finally Tack turned and fired up into darkness, observing the glow of chemical bonding twenty metres above him. Winding the line in taut, he detached the mine and hooked it onto the shoulder strap of the weapons harness he had also acquired. There were three of these devices which, on their contact surfaces, possessed a layer of microscopic hairs much like those found on a gecko’s foot. Unfortunately, unlike the lizard’s foot, the mines were not made for repeated use and after a time would lose their adhesive quality. Hence three of them were needed for this climb. Tack had no intention of using them to blow up anything.

Nandru-Wasp flew into the shadow of the citadel, then descended to hover by the mouth of the chute. Polly, clasped firmly underneath the robot by its four spiky legs, brushed white powder from her face and eyes, before reaching out a hand to Tack. Standing with his boot on the chute’s rim, Tack used the winder’s friction control to allow himself enough slack to lean out and grasp her forearm.

‘Do you have her?’ Nandru asked. ‘I don’t want to be premature in letting her go.’

‘I have her,’ Tack replied tightly.

Nandru-Wasp released his hold, then shot up into the air with the sudden lightening in weight. Polly leapt inwards, her feet coming down on the chute’s lip, and her other hand clutching at Tack’s weapons harness.

‘OK?’ he asked.

‘OK,’ she replied.

Tack started the winder hauling them up the slope. Because of the risks he would rather have done this alone, but he just did not have the will to push Polly away. The thought of being separated from her aroused in him a feeling he had not often experienced but easily recognized. But this was a fear of a different kind.

Reaching the attachment point of the harpoon, Tack located two of the adhesive mines to serve as footholds for both himself and Polly. Then he heard a scrabbling and droning noise in the chute’s throat as Nandru-Wasp tried to find purchase there. He observed the robot finally gain a foothold, then with its four spiked legs begin to advance up the pipe. It covered four metres before, with a screeching of metal being peeled up by its foot spikes, it slid back down. This had been no part of any plan.

‘Stay there, Nandru—the noise you’re making might carry above,’ he whispered urgently.

Nandru managed to drive his spikes into the metal and hold his position. Tack detached the harpoon and fired it further up the slope again.

Cowl returned from studying his vorpal controls, utterly unreadable. Aconite glanced across to where Makali stood, then scanned around the chamber to where the woman’s pet killers were positioned. Having lost the source of his power to manipulate time inside this sphere, Cowl’s paranoia was showing. Aconite then glanced over at the chute down which Cowl had been tossing human remains for the best part of a century. With the manacles around her wrists and ankles she stood no chance of reaching that escape route, but she was sure she had heard something…

Aconite now turned her attention fully on her brother. ‘It has been a stupid and destructive conflict—Umbrathane and Heliothane killing each other over centuries in the solar system and now throughout time,’ she said, pushing herself back so she rested on her knees. ‘I don’t know which side could be judged the more guilty, as now most of them have been born to this conflict and know no different. But I do know who is guilty of most killing—and that’s you, Brother dear.’

‘Our war has been defensive!’ Makali objected, stepping forward.

‘Yes,’ Aconite hissed. ‘I’ve witnessed some of your defensive moves. I saw exactly how you defended yourself by beating a prehuman to death. What threat to you was Ygrol?’

Cowl halted before Aconite and crossed his arms. His voice then issued, as it always seemed to, from the very air around him, ‘Where are the other two?’

‘What do you think you’ll obtain from them? A way of retrieving your creature? A way of instantly rebuilding your power sources? Face it, Brother, your run is over and now it’s time to take yourself to the only place that will remain safe for you.’

‘Where are they?’ Cowl snarled.

‘What? Would you like Makali to do a bit more defending for you? Haven’t you caused enough death already? In making you, our mother thought to create a human nonpareil. Instead she only made a killer of humans. I know you, Brother.’

Cowl’s arms unfolded and dropped to his sides. It was coming now, Aconite felt—now he would kill her. Then suddenly the lights went out and the glow of a catalyser ignited high up in one side of the sphere. On the opposing side a hole blew in through it, hurling an umbrathant off the adjacent walkway, his clothing on fire. Then two more catalysers ignited, their fuse-paper glow spreading out from a central point, incandescent dust billowing in from the burning edges. Momentarily, a glimpse of a big man diving through, a stuttering of fire, and two Umbrathane, struggling to don their masks, were slammed backwards through glowing debris. Another explosion and one of the heavy tubular transformers danced out of its support framework and began to topple. Cowl moved fast, half in a dive, towards his vorpal controls, and Aconite felt sinking dread. Then in a single bright flare a fast-acting catalyser opened a hole in the floor, and high in the sphere the bonding glow of a climbing harpoon was briefly visible. Then, rising up out of the floor on the harpoon’s wire, came Meelan and Saphothere, back to back, each of them brandishing two carbines and spraying the interior of the sphere with fire. Aconite stared in horror at the holes growing in the sphere, and realized that snowing in was not the outfall of catalysis, but a white powder she recognized. And she knew what her brother intended.

‘Stop him!’ Aconite bellowed. ‘He’ll take us all down!’ Several shots slammed into Cowl’s leg, dropping him before he reached his controls. Saphothere and Meelan detached five metres above the floor, then dropped and rolled for cover as return fire tracked their progress. Saphothere dived behind the fallen transformer, spraying fire behind him without even looking, his shots spinning one of Makali’s killers in a wheel of breaking flesh, then a shield generator he had dropped activated behind him a microsecond later to absorb other returned fire. Meelan paused to take out an umbrathant who was now targeting Saphothere, and didn’t see the source of the projectile that smacked into the back of her neck, blowing most of it away and dropping her bonelessly to the floor.

‘Meelan!’ came the anguished shout from Coptic.

Yet another explosion separated a walkway from the dissolving wall and it swung out, Coptic standing on the end of it, shooting at the Umbrathane with both a carbine and his missile launcher. Returned sniping cut away one of his legs, and he shattered the source of that on the floor below. Other shots slammed into his torso, but he absorbed them and kept on firing. Umbrathane died one after another, explosions tearing them away from walkways or blowing them in tatters from whatever concealment they had found. He kept up this barrage until both weapons were empty; then the two remaining Umbrathane came out of cover and concentrated a fusillade on him. Eventually he went down, then toppled from the walkway as it jerked to a halt at the end of its arc.