Simon Green - Daemons Are Forever

I hefted the energy gun, grinning. “Oh, Uncle Jack is just going to love this .”

“If you can keep from blowing us all up,” Molly said dryly. “Put it away, Eddie. You can play with it later.”

I looked for a safety catch, but the gun didn’t seem to have one, so I just slipped it carefully into my jacket pocket. Molly knelt down beside one of the cyborg bodies.

“Do you think we should take one of these back with us? The Armourer could probably learn all kinds of things from the technology.”

I considered it, but shook my head firmly. “Feels a bit too much like body snatching, I think.”

“Wimp,” said Molly. She started to straighten up, and the cyborg grabbed her suddenly by the arm with one dead hand.

Molly yelled, despite herself. She tugged fiercely, but the cyborg had a death grip on her arm. I stepped quickly forward, and stamped hard on the cyborg’s chest. The armour bruised my heel even through my shoe, but the impact tore the cyborg’s hand away from Molly’s arm. It grabbed for my leg, but I’d already stepped back. Molly backpedalled away from the cyborg as fast as the thick snow would let her, cursing loudly. The cyborg sat up in the bloody snow and looked at us both with a dead, expressionless face. Silvery circuit patterns covered his brow and trailed down one side of his face. He raised one arm and pointed at us, and a thin black barrel slid smoothly out the back of his hand. I threw myself down into the hard-packed snow, and an energy bolt flashed through the air where I’d been standing, close enough that all the hair on my body stood up at once.

I rolled to one side and struggled to my feet. The cyborg rose up out of the snow in swift, jerky movements, already turning his head back and forth, checking for a new target. And yet for all of this, I never once got the feeling that the cyborg was alive. The man was clearly dead, his eyes fixed and unblinking; it was just the built-in machinery that kept him going, probably set off by Molly’s proximity.

I subvocalised the activating Words and armoured up, the silver strange matter flowing all over me in a moment. At once I was insulated from the alien world’s cold, and I felt stronger, faster, sharper. I ran easily through the deep snow, heading straight towards the cyborg. It turned quickly and shot me at point-blank range. The energy beam hit me square in my armoured chest, and ricocheted harmlessly away. I relaxed a little. I’d been pretty sure the armour would protect me, but it was nice to know. I reached out, grabbed the cyborg’s gun arm, and ripped it right out of the socket with one burst of armoured strength. The cyborg rocked on its feet, but didn’t cry out and didn’t fall. It started to raise the other arm, so I tore that one off too. It still didn’t fall, so I grabbed its head with both hands and yanked it clean off.

The eyes stared up at me, unblinking. The mouth moved a few times, and then was still. I looked at the cyborg body. It stood in place, unmoving. I threw the head away.

Molly applauded, the sound flat and small in the empty quiet. “Hardcore, Eddie.”

“He was already dead,” I said. “Or at least, I hope so. Tell you what; let’s give the other bodies plenty of room, okay?”

Molly sniffed loudly, still hugging herself against the cold. “I don’t like this place. Really. My senses are supernaturally attuned to the natural world, to the energies generated by all living things…and I’m not getting anything. I know, I know, this is an alien world, but even so … I ought to be picking up something . I’m telling you, Eddie, there’s not a living thing here. Nothing. And not just here, in this place…you’ve brought us to a dead world, Eddie. These cyborgs, or whoever they were fighting, killed everything on this planet.”

“You can’t know that,” I said. “Might have been a dead world before they got here.”

“No,” said Molly. “I can tell. They killed every living thing here, just so they could use this world as a battlefield. What kind of future have you brought us too, Eddie? And what kind of man would it produce?”

I shrugged uncomfortably. “I don’t know! You can’t judge a whole future civilisation by just one world.”

“I wonder who these people were?” said Molly. “And who they were fighting?”

“Giles said something about serving an emperor,” I said.

“Then I suppose these must be the Rebel forces,” said Molly, smiling slightly for the first time.

“Didn’t know you were a Star Wars fan,” I said, glad of a chance to change the subject.

“Just the original trilogy.”

“I never really understood about the rebel forces in those films,” I said. “I mean, they had rebel bases on rebel worlds, and starships and armies and weapons… but who was paying for it all? Where was the funding coming from? They couldn’t have had volunteers standing around on street corners, rattling collection tins and saying, Please support the rebellion . Darth Vader would have had them all shot.”

And then we both looked around sharply as the sound of approaching engines caught our ears. We looked out over the snowy waste to where the horizon disappeared in the mists, and there was Giles Deathstalker, plunging through the snow towards us at a terrific pace. Faster than I could have managed, even with my armour’s help. And above and behind him came a dozen airships, strange, elegant craft bristling with unfamiliar weapons, all of them aimed down at the running fugitive. But though crackling energy beams stabbed down from the airships again and again, somehow they never even came close to hitting the frantically dodging figure below. Giles Deathstalker was always somewhere else.

The airships swept past him, streaking through the soft pink sky, and pulled around in a wide arc that would bring them back again for another strafing run. Giles hadn’t seen me, or the Time Train, yet. He had his head down, just concentrating on running and evading his enemies. Out of the mists behind him came a small army of jade green armoured figures, trudging determinedly through the heavy snow, firing vivid energy beams after the man fleeing before them. They had no better luck than the airships, but craters were appearing all around Giles now, filling the air with a mist of vaporised snow.

I yelled at Giles, using the silver mask to amplify my voice. His head snapped around and he changed direction to head straight for me and the Time Train, ploughing through the deep snow like it wasn’t even there. His movements were almost inhumanly fast. But even with his speed and determination, it was clear that at least some of his pursuers would cut him off before he could reach us. And the airships were returning.

“Get back to Ivor,” I said to Molly. “Protect the Time Train, whatever happens. It’s our only way home.”

“Damn right,” said Molly. “This is a lousy place to visit, and I wouldn’t want to live here.”

She headed back to the engine, forcing her way through the snow, while I set off across the frozen plain towards Giles. My armoured legs slammed through the snow, sending it flying through the air to either side of me. The pursuing figures saw me coming, and yelled to each other. God knows what they thought I was. A few fired energy guns in my direction, but they didn’t even come close. And then there was an explosion behind me, and I stopped abruptly to look back.

The airships had spotted the Time Train and were attacking it with their energy weapons. A whole bunch of craters had been blasted out of the snow all around Ivor, getting closer and closer. A shimmering protective screen suddenly appeared around Ivor, and I grinned. Molly had finally got her act together. Energy beams glanced away from the screen, but every blow hit the screen like a hammer, sending ripples through the protective energies. And then several beams all targeted the screen at once…and one got through. It sliced across Ivor’s black steel side, and he screamed shrilly through his funnel.