Gary Gibson - The Thousand Emperors

She hesitated for a moment. ‘No, of course I don’t. But we need to find a way to fix you first. Then you can explain your side of things.’

Luc felt like she’d torn him open with claws of steel and left him to bleed to death. He stared down at her, suddenly lost for words.

Hearing a high-pitched beep to his right, he turned to see a Sandoz mechant accelerating towards him.

Instantly he ran, explosive rounds ripping chunks of wood and brick from the walls and shelves behind him, the mechant banging into walls as it came veering after him.

He was running blind now. Incredibly, Cripps still hadn’t worked out he was already long gone.

Turning a corner, he came face to face with yet another Sandoz warrior. The suited figure lunged towards and then through him, and Luc heard the warrior grunt with surprise as he slammed into the balustrade overlooking the library floor.

Luc stood where he was and made no effort to escape. There was no point in running any more.

‘Sir!’ the Sandoz yelled, staring around at Luc. ‘It’s a data-ghost!’

Luc ignored him, stepping over to the balustrade. Cripps came darting out of a doorway, pistol in hand, and stared up at him.

‘Very clever,’ said Cripps, his voice echoing as he re-holstered his weapon. ‘But wherever you’re hiding, you must know you’re only delaying the inevitable. You can’t escape through the Hall of Gates now.’

‘Why did you kill Maxwell?’ Luc demanded.

‘Because he’d become too dangerous for his own good,’ Cripps snapped.

Another Sandoz came running over to Cripps and whispered something in his ear. Cripps whipped around to glare at Luc, his face full of hatred.

‘Turn that goddamn flier back!’ Cripps screamed up at him.

‘And get my head blown off like Javier Maxwell did?’ Luc shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. Sevgeny Vasili knew who was coming to kill him – and I’m pretty damn sure you’re the one who pulled the trigger.’

Luc dropped the connection before either Cripps or Eleanor could say anything else.

He found himself back in his own body, staring up at the curved hull of the flier’s cramped cockpit.

Eleanor’s betrayal had shaken him to the core. He felt more alone than he had ever felt since he’d lost everything back on Benares as a child. The nearest thing he had left to a friend or ally was Zelia de Almeida, and he still wasn’t sure if that was better than having her for an enemy.

he sent,

Still nothing. As he’d expected.

He had gained, at most, a few minutes head-start – and even then, he still didn’t have an answer to the question he’d asked Maxwell: where the hell could he even go ?

He was alone, on a hostile world, with no way home. All he could really do until he figured something better out was find somewhere to hide where Cripps might never find him.

Switching to the flier’s external senses, he saw Vanaheim’s sun burst over its horizon, making the oceans below looks like pools of golden fire, and remembered what Maxwell had said: if his lattice could bypass the encryption on the books in his prison, what else could it achieve?

Still no answer.

He had the flier dip back down into the upper atmosphere, soon feeling it shudder around him as it bit into denser air. Before long a steady rumble sounded through the tiny vessel’s hull. He’d picked his next stop at random – an archipelago of islands dense with forest, just off the coast of a minor continent, black smoke trailing from one peak that was clearly volcanic.

Most importantly, the flier’s records indicated the archipelago was entirely uninhabited, and rarely visited. He had no idea whether Cripps or anyone else would be able to track him there, but he was all out of any better ideas.

The flier made landing in a clearing about forty minutes later, dirt and leaves tumbling down after it as it broke through the forest canopy. The soil beneath the canopy was filled with a half-light that filtered down from above.

Sweat prickled his skin the moment he exited the flier. Luc stumbled over to a boulder thick with moss and sat there for a few minutes, trying to will his heart to slow down and his hands to stop shaking. The air was thick with small, buzzing things, and all he could do was hope that none of de Almeida’s surveillance mechants were amongst them.

Thank God he’d taken the opportunity to eat something at Maxwell’s library. If he was going to hide out here for any significant length of time, his first priority would have to be locating a source of fresh water, followed by trying to work out what, amongst Vanaheim’s bio-engineered flora and fauna, might be edible.

And after that . . .

Maybe it was better not to think about after just yet.

He went exploring, making his way to the edge of a deep gorge that fell away to a river sluicing between dark granite walls on its long descent from the island’s central peak. He worked his way deeper into the forest, keeping the gorge to one side, taking care not to stumble or fall in the permanent twilight beneath the canopy.

After a while he came across a shallow cave, and had an idea.

Making his way back to the flier, he guided the vehicle back above the canopy until it spread out below him like a sea of green, then flew low until he was hovering above the river gorge. He followed the river upstream, then carefully manoeuvred the flier back through the canopy; and before long, he had parked it just inside the mouth of the cave. Even with the canopy covering the flier over, it had still felt somehow exposed. There were no guarantees the Council didn’t also have access to surveillance technology that could see through rock, but he’d take that chance.

He slept fitfully inside the flier, and found himself troubled by dreams in which he argued with Winchell Antonov. When he awoke, he could remember nothing of what they had said to each other. Staggering back outside, he worked his way downstream until the gorge flattened out sufficiently that he could cup the lukewarm water in both hands, drinking down as much of it as he could.

Upon his return to the flier, tired, grubby and still hungry, he failed at first to register that a light on one of the cockpit’s virtual panels had begun to blink. He stared at it for several moments, fatigue making him unsure if it had been blinking the whole time and he’d only just noticed it.

Tentatively, he reached out and touched the panel with a finger.

Luc let himself fall into the flier’s crash couch, a fat grin spreading across his features. It was Zelia.

he demanded.

talked to Javier? Where the hell are you?>

she sent back.

he told her.

There was a brief pause before she replied.

She broke off for a moment, then came back.

Luc listened to the buzz of life from outside the flier’s open hatch, the wind rattling the high branches of the trees shielding the mouth of the cave from view.

lot more.>

dream , but the next thing I knew Cripps had turned up out of the blue and I was being hauled off to Vanaheim to take a look at charred corpses on your behalf. I’d have to be an idiot not to make the connection.>

He remembered the fleeting vision he’d had of her wearing a contamination suit, and walking through a biome filled with corpses.

I caused that breach.>