A rapid flick through other stations showed him how widespread the destruction was.
Bloody hell.
Damn right,
Rubra said.
She’s overdosing on the fury routine, but she’s playing smart with it.
A schematic of the tube network appeared in Dariat’s mind.
Look, there are plenty of alternative routes left up to the spindle.
Yes, right now there are. But you’ll have to go back two stations before I can switch you to another tunnel. I can’t restore
power to the rail in your tunnel, they’ve fucked the relays. The carriage will have to make it there on its own power reserve.
You’d almost be quicker walking. And by the time you get there, the possessed will have wrecked a whole lot more stations.
Bonney’s thought this out well; the way she’s isolating each stretch of tunnel will break up the entire network in another
forty minutes.
So how the hell do we get to the spindle now?
Forwards. Go up to the station and walk though it. I can bring another carriage to the tunnel on the other side; that’ll get
you directly up to the endcap.
Walk through? You’re kidding.
There’s only a couple of possessed left to guard each station after they’ve had their rampage. Two won’t be a problem.
All right, do it.
The lights dipped again as the carriage slid forwards slowly.
“Well?” Tatiana asked.
Dariat began to explain.
Starscrapers formed the major nodes in the habitat’s tube network; each of them had seven stations ringing the lobby, enabling
the carriages to reach any part of the interior. Individual stations were identical; chambers with a double-arch ceiling and
a central platform twenty metres long which served two tubes. The polyp walls were a light powder-blue, with strips of electrophorescent
cells running the entire length above the rails. There were stairs at each end of the platform, one set leading up to the
starscraper lobby, the other an emergency exit to the parkland.
In the station ahead of Dariat, the possessed finished their wrecking spree and went off up the stairs to start searching
the starscraper. As Rubra predicted, they left two of their number behind to watch over the four tunnel entrances. Smoke from
the attack was layering the air. Flames were still licking around the big piles of ragged polyp slabs blocking the end of
each tunnel. Several hologram adverts flashed on and off overhead; an already damaged projector suffering from the proximity
of the possessed turned the images to a nonsense splash of colours.
Given that the fire was dying away naturally, the two possessed were somewhat bemused when, seven minutes after everyone else
left, the station’s sprinklers suddenly came on.
Dariat was three hundred metres down the tube tunnel, helping Tatiana out of the carriage’s front emergency hatch. The tunnel
had only the faintest illumination, a weak blue glow coming from a couple of narrow electrophorescent strips on the walls.
It curved away gently ahead of him, putting enough solid polyp between him and the station to prevent the two possessed from
perceiving him.
Tatiana jumped down the last half metre and steadied herself.
“Ready?” Dariat asked. He was already using the habitat’s sensitive cells to study the pile of polyp they would have to climb
over to get into the station. It didn’t look too difficult, there was an easy metre and a half gap at the top.
“Ready.”
Let’s go,
Dariat said.
The two possessed guards had given up any attempt to shield themselves from the torrent of water falling from the sprinklers.
They were retreating back to the shelter of the stairs. Their clothes had turned to sturdy anoraks, streaked with glistening
runnels. Every surface was slick with water now: walls, platform, floor, the piles of polyp.
Rubra overrode the circuit breakers governing the cables which powered the tube, then shunted thirteen thousand volts back
into the induction rail. It was the absolute limit for the habitat’s integral organic conductors, and three times the amount
the carriages used. The broken guide rail jumped about as it had while it was being tormented by the possessed. Blinding white
light leapt out of the magnetic couplings as it split open. It was as though someone had fired a fusion drive into the station.
Water droplets spraying out of the overhead nozzles fluoresced violet, and vaporized. Metal surfaces erupted into wailing
jets of sparks.
At the heart of the glaring bedlam, two bodies ignited, flaring even brighter than the seething air.
It wasn’t just the one station, that would have drawn Bonney’s attention like a combat wasp’s targeting sensor. Rubra launched
dozens of attacks simultaneously. Most of them were electrical, but there were also mass charges of servitor animals, as well
as mechanoids switched back on, slashing around indiscriminately with laser welders and fission blades as energistic interference
crashed their processors.
Reports of the tumult poured into the starscraper lobby where Bonney had set up her field headquarters. Her deputies shouted
warnings into the powerful walkie-talkies they used to keep in contact with each other.
As soon as the blaze of white light shone down the tunnel, Dariat started to run towards it. He kept hold of Tatiana’s hand,
pulling her onwards. A loud caterwaul reverberated along the tunnel.
“What’s Rubra doing to them?” she shouted above the din.
“What he had to.”
The abusive light died and the sound faded away. Dariat could see the pile of polyp now, eighty metres ahead. A crescent-shaped
sliver of light straddled it, seeping in from the station beyond.
Their feet began to splash through rivulets of water flowing down the tunnel. Tatiana grimaced as they reached the foot of
the blockage, and hitched her skirt up.
Bonney listened to the frantic shouting all around her, counting up the incidents, the number of casualties. They’d got off
lightly. And she knew that was wrong.
“Quiet,” she bellowed. “How many stations attacked? Total?”
“Thirty-two,” one of the deputies said.
“And over fifty attacks altogether. But we’ve only lost about seventy to eighty people in the stations. Rubra’s just getting
rid of the sentries we posted. If he wanted to seriously harm us he’d do it when the wrecking crews were down there.”
“A diversion? Dariat’s somewhere else?”
“No,” she said. “Not quite. We know he uses the tubes to get around. I’ll bet the little shit’s in one right now. He must
be. Only we’ve already blocked him. Rubra is clearing the sentries out of the way so Dariat can sneak through. That’s why
he spread the attacks around, so we’d think it was a blanket assault.” She whirled around to face a naked polyp pillar and
grinned with malicious triumph. “That’s it, isn’t it, boyo? That’s what you’re doing. But which way is he going, huh? The
starscrapers are dead centre.” She shook her head in annoyance. “All right you people, get sharp. I want someone down in each
and every station Rubra attacked. And I want them down there now. Tell them to make sure they don’t step in the water, and
be on the lookout for servitors. But get them down there.”
The image of her yelling orders at her deputies boiled into Dariat’s mind like a particularly vigorous hangover. He had just
reached the top of the polyp pile and squeezed under the ceiling. The station was filled with thick white mist, reducing visibility
to less than five metres. Condensation had penetrated everywhere, making this side of the polyp mound dangerously unstable.
Smart bitch,
Rubra said.
I didn’t expect that.
Can you delay them?
Not in this station, I can’t. I haven’t got any servitors nearby, and the cables have all burnt out. You’ll have to run.
Image relay of a deputy with a walkie-talkie pressed to his ear hurrying across the lobby above. “I’m on it, I’m on it,” he
was yelling into the mike.
“Tatiana, move it!” Dariat shouted.
Tatiana was still wriggling along on her belly as she slithered over the top of the pile. “What’s the matter?”
“Someone’s coming.”
She gave one final squirm and freed her legs. Together they scooted down the side of the pile, bringing a minor avalanche
of slushy gravel with them.
“This way.” Dariat pointed into the mist. His perception filled in glass-grey outlines of the station walls through the swirls
of cold vapour, enabling him to see the tunnel entrance. Valisk’s sensitive cells showed him the carriage waiting a hundred
and fifty metres further on. They also showed him the deputy reaching the top of the stairs.
“Wait here,” he told Tatiana, and vaulted up onto the platform. His appearance changed drastically, the simple one-piece thickening
to an elaborate purple uniform, complete with gold braid. The most imposing figure to dominate his youth: Colonel Chaucer.
A weekly AV show of a renegade Confederation officer, a super vigilante.
Rubra was laughing softly in his head.
The deputy was halfway down the stairs when he started to slow up. He raised the walkie-talkie. “Somebody’s down here.”
Dariat reached the bottom of the stairs. “Only me,” he called up cheerfully.
“Who the hell are you?”
“You first. This is my station.”
The deputy’s mind revealed his confusion as Dariat started up towards him with powerful, confident strides. This was not the
action of someone trying to hide.
Dariat opened his mouth wide and spat a ball of white fire directly at the deputy’s head. Two souls bawled in terror as they
vanished into the beyond. The body tumbled past Dariat.
“What’s happening?” The walkie-talkie was reverting back to a standard communications block as it clattered down the stairs.
“What’s happening? Report. Report.”
There’s four more on their way up from the first floor,
Rubra said.
Bonney ordered them to the station as soon as the deputy said he sensed someone.
Shit! We’ll never make it to the carriage. They can outrun Tatiana no problem.
Call her up. I’ll hide you in the starscraper. What? Just move!
“Tatiana! Up here, now!” He was aware of all the lift doors in the lobby sliding open. The four possessed had reached the
bottom of the first-floor stairs. Tatiana jogged along the platform. She gave the corpse a quick, appalled glance.
“Come on.” Dariat caught her hand and tugged hard. Her expression was resentful, but the rising anxiety in his voice spurred
her. They raced up the stairs together.
Daylight shone through the circular lobby’s glass walls. It had suffered very little damage; scorch marks on the polyp pillars
and cracked glass were the only evidence that the possessed had arrived to search the tower.
Dariat could hear multiple footsteps pounding up one of the stairwells on the other side of the lobby, hidden by the central
bank of lifts. His perception was just starting to register their minds emerging from behind the shield of polyp. Which meant
they’d also be able to sense him.
He scooped Tatiana up, ignoring her startled holler, and sprinted for the lifts. Huge muscles pumped his legs in an effortless
rhythm. She weighed nothing at all.
The phenomenal speed he was travelling at meant there was no chance at all of slowing once he passed the lift doors; he would
have needed ten metres to come to a halt. They slammed straight into the rear wall. Tatiana shrieked as her shoulder, ribs,
and leg hit flat on, with Dariat’s prodigious inertia driving into her. Then his face smacked into silvery metal, and there
was no energistic solution to the blast of pain jabbing into his brain. Blood squirted out of his nose, smearing the wall.
As he fell he was dimly aware of the lift doors sliding shut. The light outside was growing inordinately bright.
Dariat reeled around feebly, clutching at his head as if the pressure from his fingers alone could squeeze the bruises back
down out of existence. Slowly the pain subsided, which allowed him to concentrate on vanquishing the remainder. “Ho fuck.”
He slumped back against a wall and let his breathing calm. Tatiana was lying on the lift floor in front of him, hands pressed
against her side, cold sweat on her brow.
“Anything broken?” he asked.
“I don’t think so. It just hurts.”
He went onto his hands and knees and crawled over to her. “Show me where.”
She pointed, and he laid his hand on. With his mind he could see the smooth glowing pattern of living flesh distorted and
broken below his fingers, the fissures extending deep inside her. He willed the pattern to return to its unblemished state.
Tatiana hissed in relief. “I don’t know what you did, but it’s better than a medical nanonic.”
The lift stopped at the fiftieth floor.
Now what?
Dariat asked.
Rubra showed him.
You are one evil bastard.
Why, thank you, boy.
• • •
Stanyon was leading the possessed down through the starscraper in pursuit of Dariat. He’d started off with thirty-five under
his command, and that number was rapidly swelling as Bonney directed more and more from neighbouring starscrapers to assist
him. She’d announced she was on her way herself. Stanyon was going balls-out to find Dariat before she arrived. He got hot
just thinking about the praise (and other things) Kiera would direct at the champion who erased her bÊte noire from the habitat.
Eight different teams of possessed were searching, assigned a floor each. They were working their way steadily downwards,
demolishing every mechanical and electrical device as they went.
He strode out of the stairwell onto the thirty-eighth-floor vestibule. For whatever reason, Rubra was no longer putting up
any resistance. Muscle-membrane doors opened obediently, the lighting remained on, there wasn’t a servitor in sight. He looked
around, happy with what he found. The floor’s mechanical utilities office had been broken open, and the machinery inside reduced
to slag, preventing the sprinklers from being used. Doors into the apartments and bars and commercial offices were smashed
apart, furniture and fittings inside were blazing with unnatural ferocity. Big circles of polyp flooring were cracking under
the intense heat, grainy white marble surface blackening. Wisps of dirty steam fizzed up from the crannies.