The Beauty of Destruction (60 page)

The slug-like dragon was as far away as a trader’s ship close to the horizon back home. Once she had loosed she knew that the arrow could not hit, but the arrow flew from the bow so quickly it seemed to disappear. Things were happening to the other two remaining dragons, but she remained focused on her own. There was a gout of what looked like liquid metal from a forge on the dragon’s hide. Then it lurched in the air. Then it was as though a white sun had burst from inside it, and smoking lumps of flesh rained down on the plain. There was another white sun, and another of the dragons was gone. The fourth one was lit from inside by fire as it too fell smoking from the sky. The screaming spear burst out of it, making its way back towards Teardrop. Once the weapon had terrified her. Now, in the face of the dragons, it seemed reasonable.

The stones in the circle behind her were glowing from within, lighting up the strange symbols inscribed on the rock. Lightning jumped between them.

A pale amber light sprang up around her, and then she was surrounded in white, liquid flame. She had no idea what was happening. She went down on one knee as though the fire had weight. The flame receded, though the surrounding rocks had turned into still burning molten pools. Britha was kneeling down as well; the metal of her armour looked partially melted. The boots of the armour were eating into the rock, and it started to heal itself in the way that metal shouldn’t be able to. A winged dragon curved over them and came to a stop in the sky in front of Teardrop. The Croatan warrior’s hand was outstretched, waiting for the screaming spear to return, thunder echoing over the plain as the weapon sped back to him. Tangwen reached for another arrow.

‘Tang … !’ Tangwen turned to see Raven’s Laughter wreathed in the amber light as a much smaller gout of the white liquid flame hit her. The serpents were running down the canyon walls. They wore what looked like armour made of living flesh. Some carried long, barbed-looking spears, others strange weapons that she only recognised as such because of the way the walking snakes carried them, and then because they belched the liquid fire. Despite the armour she recognised their shape. There were differences but underneath the living armour she knew they would look like her Father.

She thought of the lightning. She listened to the whispers of the spirit in the bow. Lightning leapt from the ground, from the stones, to the bow. She pulled the bowstring, lightning became an arrow, and she loosed, and she loosed, and she loosed again, and her Father’s people fell from the canyon wall. In her periphery the dragon breathed. Teardrop was engulfed in the constant stream of fire, molten rock shot up into the air. A hand reached out of the stream of liquid flame. He caught the returning spear. The amber light surrounded Tangwen again and the lightning died, as some of the remaining Naga warriors used their weapons on her. She turned, protected by the fair folk’s magic. She could make out Teardrop, a silhouette in the flames as he threw the spear into the dragon’s maw. As the amber light faded the lightning returned to her bow. Tangwen felt another change in the atmosphere. She turned to see a circle of blue light contained within the glowing stones, and in that circle a blood-red land. She was aware of the dragon drifting away from the outcrop, burning inside, slowly dropping towards the floor of the plain far below. She was aware of Teardrop’s smoking, blackened body as it fell from the now molten outcrop to hit the ground.

Raven’s Laughter glanced behind at the body and then continued firing lightning from her bow as she moved towards Britha. The raven-headed
dryw
was fighting like a demon. One arm was held high, the glowing spear in her metal fist bearing an impaled Naga warrior on the end of it. She was crushing another’s head with her armoured fist, as a third charged her. She flung the impaled Naga off her spear. Light sprang from the weapon’s tip and pierced the charging serpent straight through. Tangwen loosed, and another Naga warrior fell.

‘Go!’ Raven’s Laughter shouted. Then the amber light was again protecting her from the fire weapons. Tangwen loosed again, and again, killing those attacking the Croatan woman.

‘Tangwen first!’ Britha shouted.

Fool!
Tangwen thought. Raven’s Laughter was growing spines through her flesh. There were too many of the Naga. Britha suddenly sank to her knees, gripping her head. Screaming, though it sounded wrong through the armour, like the ringing of metal. Britha held out an open hand, and suddenly her fingers were curling around the haft of the burning, screaming spear. Tangwen saw Raven’s Laughter unclip the strange metal object which provided her shield from her belt, attach it to Britha’s armour, and then push the Pecht
dryw
towards the circle.

‘Go! Or this is for nothing!’ Raven’s Laughter screamed. There were Naga caught in the lightning around the stone circle. Britha stumbled between the stones and into the blue fire and fell into the red world, surely Cythrawl, Tangwen thought.
Good.
The blue fire disappeared and with it the red world, leaving an afterglow in her eyes.

Tangwen loosed lightning at a Naga charging Raven’s Laughter, and it fell. The Croatan woman leapt over a spear thrust, and landed on the serpent wielding the weapon. Frenzied axe and blade blows bit through armour and into snake flesh.

Tangwen loosed lightning into a Naga warrior that had almost reached her, leaving its face a smoking hole. She dropped her bow, and grabbed her hatchet and dagger. Amber light surrounded her, the spear thrust sent her tumbling backwards, then everything was fire again. She rolled over but was struggling to get up. The protective magics didn’t quite let her touch the ground. She managed to stand and ran through the flame. The stones were glowing, smoking, trembling. Above them the sun flickered like a burning brand in the wind. The amber light disappeared. There was a warrior in front of her. She rammed her chalice-re-forged dagger into its head, forcing it to the ground. She side-stepped a low spear thrust, stepped onto a non-barbed part of the weapon’s haft, and launched herself into the air. She kneed the spear-wielding serpent in the bottom of its jutting, helmeted maw as she brought the axe down into its head with a satisfying, echoing crunch, spraying herself in its surprisingly red blood.

In the air she saw Raven’s Laughter’s barbs shoot from her flesh, impaling the surrounding Naga warriors. Almost immediately their living armour started to rot, they staggered and fell. Tangwen landed and rolled forwards under a spear-thrust. She pushed the barbed weapon away from her with the blade of her dagger, and swung the hatchet into the Naga’s neck as she rolled to her feet. The blue flame illuminated the glowing stones again. She felt warm sunlight on her skin. She could see a green land through the trod, in the circle of stones. She ran. The chariot was in the air again, taking lightning from the earth and raining it down on the Naga. The rotted Naga killed by Raven’s Laughter’s spines were climbing to their feet, turning on the other snakes. Raven’s Laughter tumbled sideways, fire burning the rock where she had been standing. Tangwen pulled the strange metal object from her belt, and leapt for the green promise in the circle of stones. Tangwen threw the magical shield towards Raven’s Laughter as she flew over the circle of blue fire, and closed her eyes.

She hit the ground hard enough to have the wind knocked from her. Then she thought of the life she carried within her, her hand involuntarily moving towards her stomach. She felt the warmth of the sun on her skin, grass against her cheek. Tangwen opened her eyes. She was lying in a circle of stones that she did not recognise, under a clear blue sky. The air felt like it did just after a summer storm.

The chariot and the Naga
Tei-Pai-Wanka
that she had enslaved when her spines had infected them with disease finished off the rest of the snakes. Raven’s Laughter went to stand over the blackened body of her husband, fused with his armour. The chariot came down to hover close to the crumbling stones in the now useless circle, the rear of the cupola splitting open. Raven’s Laughter burst into tears.

The chariot had flown across the burning Riverlands, taking Teardrop-on-Fire home for the last time. Raven’s Laughter had carried him from the chariot and into their home, the children and Oliver, all armed and armoured, watching her as she laid him down. Her eyes were red but no longer wet. The children, and even Oliver, were sobbing. They could only be allowed to do so for so long. It was clear the Ubh Blaosc was lost. She had flown over the diseased sourland that the Naga were creating, but this was their home, you had to protect your home, and she had seen the shadowy forms of the serpents close by.

41

Now

The clone had strayed too close to C&C. Yaroslav had been terrified, Lodup had seen it on his face, but the Russian security chief had risked leaving C&C to snatch the clone and bring him back. Lodup had recognised him, or rather who he was a clone of, vaguely. A Danish diver he had worked with on oil platforms off the coast of California. The clone stared blankly up as Yaroslav slowly beat him to death, a grin on the Russian’s blood-spattered face. Lodup was curled up in a ball close to where the pole that Germelqart’s head was mounted on had grown into the floor. He flinched with every blow, but he supposed it was the first time that Yaroslav had felt in control for a very long time. Lodup closed his eyes. Thought about killing Yaroslav, and not for the first time. Some of it was fear, but some of it was pity. He wanted to put the Russian security chief out of his misery. He was too frightened to act, and after all the clone wasn’t human any more, if it ever had been. Just another hollowed out, flesh satellite of the city. Also he couldn’t be sure how Siska, now little more than a brooding, predatory presence in her corner, would react. Instead he closed his eyes, and tried to find a pattern in the muttered nonsense spouting from Germelqart’s severed head.

‘It’s not a city,’ the severed head managed in halting English, as if it were a language freshly learned, as if he was talking through a great deal of pain.

‘What?’ Lodup whispered back.

‘It is an apparatus, a tool.’

‘What for?’ Lodup couldn’t believe what he was hearing, though he had no idea who he was talking to: a lingering fragment of Germelqart’s psyche, Lidakika, or some other fragmented mind, even Siraja, the habitat’s corrupted AI. It could just be a cruel trick.

‘Transmission. A huge machine used to focus the minds of the Seeders, one of many across the universe. It was used to help build the red realm when Earth was but cooling chunks of molten rock. It was meant for ascension. To leave the flesh behind …’

‘What are you doing?’ Siska came stalking out of her corner, her long unbound hair obscuring her face, reminding Lodup of the
Y
ū
rei
, the vengeful spirits of Japanese folklore.

‘Nothing,’ he said. Not quite willing to look up in case he saw more of the serpent in her than he wished to. He tried to push himself further into the wall.

‘Don’t speak to it. It talks for the city now. It will drive you mad.’

Lodup wanted to laugh. He just wasn’t sure that he could stop if he started.

It looked like the conn of a normal submarine, but there was no crew, which gave it a somewhat haunted feel. An AI piloted the vessel. Du Bois was thankful for the L-tech-derived machine mind’s discretion. Most of the AIs he had ever come into contact with had been quirky, to put it mildly, and he wasn’t in the mood. Thankfully his arms didn’t ache from covering King Jeremy; his augmented physiology had taken into account that he was going to be locked in this position for a significant amount of time and had made allowances for it.

‘Well, this is nice,’ Mr Brown said. ‘Though a little tense. Could I offer anyone some refreshment, or are we all too macho for that?’ He had replenished the drip bags full of synthetic morphine hanging from his T-shaped staff. The Pennangalan, her featureless silver mask covering her face, carbine in hand, remained by her master’s side. King Jeremy was staring at du Bois with a look of utter hatred. ‘I am interested to know what you are going to do when we get there. Assuming that we’re not killed out of hand.’

‘The same thing you are,’ du Bois said.

‘Which is?’ Mr Brown asked.

‘Leave. Nothing has changed,’ du Bois said. ‘If we can’t get out, then you can’t get out. Who knows, a nuclear explosion in Kanamwayso might be good for everyone.’

Mr Brown started laughing. ‘You’ve always been an amusing fellow, Malcolm. Your naiveté is only outweighed by your childish sense of
noblesse oblige
. Strange qualities for an assassin and mass murderer, don’t you think?’

‘Why don’t you shut up?’ Alexia suggested. She was leaning against the bulkhead, smoking a cigarette. She seemed to have recovered a little from the chase, and all the violence. Du Bois was used to his sister looking glamorous, though he’d picked her up off the floor after her indulgences had really got her into trouble a few times, and she hadn’t looked quite so good then. Now, however, she looked haggard, as if the last few days had aged her. ‘It’s been a long, shitty day in a very difficult week. Nobody’s happy about the situation, so let’s deal with it as best we can, but let’s deal with it quietly.’

‘See, you look rapeable, but I think you’re some kind of freak, aren’t you?’ King Jeremy said.

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake,’ Alexia muttered. Beth just shook her head a little. Du Bois would have quite liked to have pulled the trigger there and then. ‘I suppose that pistol whipping is out of the question?’ she asked her brother.

‘He does have his thumb on the dead man’s switch of a nuclear weapon,’ du Bois pointed out.

‘It’s just one ridiculous cock substitution after another with you boys, isn’t it?’ Alexia asked. Once the comment would have angered du Bois. Now he had to smile.

‘Seriously now,’ du Bois told King Jeremy. ‘Please just be quiet.’

‘And she’s too ugly,’ King Jeremy said, nodding towards Beth.

‘Thank God,’ Beth muttered. ‘Maybe you should have a look under the silver mask,’ she suggested. King Jeremy glanced back at the Pennangalan, who didn’t react in any way. There was just a moment of unease on the boy’s face, and then his mask of spite was back.

‘You’re going to pay for what you did to Dracimus,’ he spat.

‘You mean young Mr Elling?’ du Bois asked. ‘You’re incapable of empathy, so don’t pretend you care about what happened to him.’

‘By the way, Inflictor … stupid name, what was he really called?’ Beth asked.

‘Kyle Nethercott,’ du Bois supplied, ‘and this here is young Mr Weldon Rush.’

‘Don’t call me that!’ King Jeremy demanded.

‘It’s just your name, darling,’ Alexia said.

‘And I don’t think you understand,’ Beth said. ‘You’re not in control here.’

‘I have a nuclear bomb!’

‘And yet you’re somehow still inadequate, but well done, very Dr Strangelove,’ Alexia said.

‘I should point out that Mr Rush may actually be unstable enough to take his thumb off the dead man’s switch if you continue mocking him,’ Mr Brown said, though he sounded more resigned than nervous.

‘Why don’t you control your ugly bitches?’ King Jeremy asked du Bois, grinning maliciously.

‘Well, this is terribly constructive. There’s nothing like having priorities,’ Mr Brown observed.

‘Why don’t you control us?’ Beth suggested to King Jeremy. ‘Pass the dead man’s switch off to a responsible adult …’

‘I’ll hold it for you,’ Mr Brown offered.

‘I’ll make them both fucking suffer, you can watch, see a prodigious imagination at work—’ began King Jeremy.

‘Weldon,’ du Bois said. He was more profoundly depressed at the state of today’s youth than seriously angry. ‘You’re not a comic book villain, you’re just an angry young man. I’m sorry that your comfortable middle class upbringing in one of the wealthiest nations on the planet was hard. I am sorry you felt like an outsider, or were bullied, alienated, had cruel or unfeeling parents, I really am, but you have to see, for your own sake, that there are more constructive ways of handling it than becoming an entitled little sociopath. I know you think that these threats sound horrific and frightening, but to us they just sound like you waving around all your insecurities.’ The expression of malice on the boy’s handsomely sculpted face faltered for a moment. It would have been funny if it hadn’t been so heartbreakingly pathetic the way he looked to Mr Brown for reassurance. Mr Brown’s expression was sympathetic, but he was nodding in agreement with du Bois. Then the mask of malice was back and du Bois knew that he had barely made a dent.

‘Fuck you and your whores,’ King Jeremy spat.

‘I’m his sister, you little freak,’ Alexia said in disgust.

Beth leant in closer to him, though still keeping him covered. Du Bois was pleased to see that her finger was back around the trigger guard and not the trigger itself, however. ‘There’s something I’ve always wanted to ask people like you,’ she told him. ‘What are you so afraid of?’

It was clear he didn’t have an answer. Or if he did he didn’t want to share it.

‘So nobody wants tea then?’ Mr Brown asked.

Du Bois wasn’t sure what it was, some change in the background noise, but he knew they were within the borders of the city. He was aware of it at a primal level, a mounting fear. He was pleased he could not see beyond the sub, any external views having been mercifully switched off. He could see his own fear reflected more openly on King Jeremy’s face. He suspected it was only due to extensive augmentation that the boy was able to cope with having weapons pointed at him, let alone deal with the city. It was a place that you needed brain surgery to work in. He half expected King Jeremy to panic, and then all this would end in a bright flash of light. He had only ever visited Kanamwayso once before. Just before the Boxer Rebellion. He hadn’t liked it then. It would be infinitely worse now the Seeders had awoken.

The sub moved quickly, far faster than a conventional sub, which unfortunately made them noisy in the water, but they had still been locked in the same position for the better part of three days. All of them were more than capable of it physically, but it would still take a toll on their bodies. It was just fortunate that they had near perfect control of their bodily functions.

He had reviewed what he knew of the evacuation craft, the spayed seedpods of the once-slumbering alien intellects that inhabited the sunken city. Each of them could effectively act as a colonisation ship. There were millions of frozen embryos, vast stores of human, Seeder, and what they knew of Lloigor knowledge. They were equipped with a great deal of the tech, certainly enough to start assembling what they would need if they could find the raw materials. Du Bois was sure that he could work out a way of dumping all the slave minds that Mr Brown had uploaded, and all the evil greedy bastards that he had recruited, and replace them with the minds that Hamad had stolen and Azmodeus had rediscovered. All that was missing was Talia’s genetic material to run the ship’s biomechanical navigation systems. King Jeremy had the sample of genetic material. After nearly three days of thinking on this du Bois was still no closer to solving the problem.

‘So this is your plan?’ du Bois asked Mr Brown. ‘Just have the sub take us there?’

‘Did you think I would have a password? They are alien, in the true sense of the word. Alien as any god. I personally think that you’re too small to worry about. They are possibly aware of humanity, on some level, like you are aware of a fungal infection, but your destruction was little more than a spasmodic reflex action. Your problem in this, as it is in your defiance of me, is hubris. You desperately want to matter. You don’t.’

Alexia laughed.

‘Calm down,’ Beth said. ‘We only wanted to know if you had a plan.’ He was both impressed with and grateful to his sister and Beth. This was his world, a twisted and perverse version of it in some ways, or perhaps just a more honest version, but both of them were handling it. They might not have been as inured to the violence as he was, but he knew he could trust them. Though he suspected neither of them would struggle to kill King Jeremy, or mourn for Mr Brown if it came down to it.

‘There’s nothing certain here,’ Mr Brown told them.

Something scraped against the hull. King Jeremy screamed, and du Bois didn’t like the way the boy’s thumb slipped a little on the switch. Alexia came off the bulkhead like she had been electrocuted. Beth flinched. Du Bois felt his sphincter tighten.

Mr Brown was just smiling. ‘Would you like to see?’ he asked. ‘It must be extraordinary.’ Du Bois nodded towards the boy. Under the best of circumstances it could drive someone like King Jeremy over the edge. This wasn’t the best of circumstances. ‘You’re quite right of course.’

Somehow a nuclear explosion was starting to seem like the easy way out. Something else brushed against the sub. Something about the contact reminded du Bois of an unwelcome caress.

Du Bois climbed out of the hatch and onto the bridge of the modified Virginia-class sub’s sail. He had clambered up the ladder one-handed, his Accurised .45, with the magazine of nanite-tipped bullets in it, pointing down at King Jeremy who was out next. He couldn’t risk looking around, not yet, but his peripheral vision was telling him that something was very off in the huge moon pool. The moon pool was part of the underwater habitat that the Circle had used as a base of operations to plunder the S-tech from Kanamwayso, the city of gods, the name they had given to the petrified city. The name had been taken from Pohnpeian mythology.

‘Come on, out of there,’ he snapped. He felt vulnerable now and didn’t like it.

‘It’s hard. I’ve only got one hand,’ King Jeremy whined. Du Bois had to resist the quite strong urge to slap the boy. Beth was out next, covering King Jeremy, then Alexia, who initially seemed eager to get out of the sub, and then less so as she looked around, appalled.

‘Jesus Christ,’ his sister said.

‘Keep him covered,’ du Bois said. Beth nodded. He looked around.

‘Normally the
Victoria
doesn’t dock here, it’s too busy, and we had to raise the habitat to do so, but that’s less of an issue now,’ Mr Brown said as he climbed after them with fresh morphine drips attached to his staff.

They had pushed up a number of the pontoon jetties in the huge open moon pool as they had surfaced. The
Victoria
, as the submarine seemed to be called, was now wearing the pontoons around her hull like a necklace. The light was flickering but his vision was compensating for it. Above him the rotary weapons systems looked rotted. The submersibles, the robot-like atmospheric diving suits, were all twisted and warped, as if things had grown out of their matter and pulled their way clear. On one of the larger submersibles something had grown from the condensed adamantine hull, a stillborn monster frozen in amber.