I was already throwing away the useless section of Turboraptor’s trick arm. One of the freed tentacles wove around the sword hilt, contracting the loop as tight as it would go, preventing the blade from moving. It was still inside me, but prevented from causing any more havoc. Our bodies were locked together. None of Turboraptor’s squirming and shaking could separate us.
With a care that verged on the tender, I slowly wound my last tentacle clockwise round Turboraptor’s head, avoiding its snapping jaw. I finished with a tight knot around the base of a horn.
Simon must have realized what I was going to do. Turboraptor’s legs scrabbled against the bloody floor, frantically trying to unbalance the pair of us.
I began pulling with the tentacle, reeling it in. Turbo-raptor’s head turned. It fought me every centimetre of the way, straining cords of muscle rippling under the scales. No good. The rotation was inexorable.
Ninety degrees, and ominous popping sounds emerged from the stumpy neck. A hundred degrees and the purple scales were no longer overlapping. A hundred and ten degrees and the skin started to tear. A hundred and twenty, and the spine snapped with a gunshot crack.
My tentacle wrenched the head off, flinging it triumphantly into the air. It landed in a puddle of my blood, and skidded across the polyp until it bumped into the wall below Simon. He was doubled up on the edge of his chair, hugging his chest, shaking violently. His tattoo blazed cleanly, as if it was burning into his skin. Team-mates were swooping towards him.
That was when I opened my own eyes, just in time to see Turboraptor’s decapitated body tumble to the ground. The crowd was up and dancing, rocking the stand, and crying my name. Mine! Minute flecks of damp rust from the roof panels were snowing over the whole arena.
I stood up, raising both my arms, collecting and acknowledging my due of adulation. The team’s kisses stung my cheeks. Eighteen. Eighteen straight victories.
There was just one motionless figure among the carnival frenzy. Dicko, sitting in the front row, chin resting on his cane’s silver pommel, staring glumly at the wreckage of flesh lying at Khanivore’s feet.
Three hours later, and the rap is still tearing apart Turboraptor’s trick arm. Was it bending the rules? Should we do something similar? What tactics were best against it?
I sipped my Ruddles from a long-stemmed glass, letting the vocals eddy round me. We’d wound up in a pub called the Latchmere, local it spot, with some kind of art theatre upstairs where the cosmically strange punters kept vanishing. God knows what was playing. From where I was slumped I could see about fifteen people dancing listlessly at the far end of the bar, the juke playing some weird acoustic Indian metal track.
Our table was court to six Baiter fans, eyes atwinkle from the proximity to their idols. If it hadn’t been for the victory high, I might have been embarrassed. Beer and seafood kept piling up, courtesy of a local merchant who’d been at the pit side, and was now designer-slumming at the bar with his pouty mistress.
The girl in the yellow dress came in. She was alone. I watched her and a waitress put their heads together, swapping a few furtive words as her haunted eyes cast about. Then she wandered over to the juke.
She was still staring blankly at the selection screen a minute later when I joined her.
‘Did he hit you?’ I asked.
She turned, flinching. Her eyes were red-rimmed. ‘No,’ she said in a tiny voice.
‘Will he hit you?’
She shook her head mutely, staring at the floor.
Jennifer. That was her name. She told me as we walked out into the sweltering night. Lecherous grins and Karran’s thumbs-up at our backs.
It was drizzling, the minute droplets evaporating almost as soon as they hit the pavement. Warm mist sparkled in the hologram adverts which formed rainbow arches over the road. A team of servitor chimps were out cleaning the street, glossy gold pelts darkened by the drizzle.
I walked Jennifer down to the riverfront where we’d parked our vehicles. The arena roadies had been cool after the bout, but none of us were gonna risk staying in Dicko’s yard overnight.
Jennifer wiped her hands along her bare arms. I draped my leather jacket over her shoulders, and she clutched it gratefully across her chest.
‘I’d say keep it,’ I told her. ‘Except I don’t think he’d approve.’ The studs said Sonnie’s Predators bold across the back.
Her lips ghosted a smile. ‘Yes. He buys my clothes. He doesn’t like me in anything which isn’t feminine.’
‘Thought of leaving him?’
‘Sometimes. All the time. But it would only be the face which changed. I am what I am. He’s not too bad. Except tonight, and he’ll be over that by morning.’
‘You could come with us.’ And I could just see me squaring that with the others.
She stopped walking and looked wistfully out over the black river. The M500 stood high above it, a curving ribbon of steel resting on a line of slender buttressed pedestals that sprouted from the centre of the muddy bed. Headlights and brakelights from the traffic formed a permanent pink corona across it, a slipstream of light that blew straight out of the city.
‘I’m not like you,’ Jennifer said. ‘I envy you, respect you. I’m even a little frightened of you. But I’ll never be like you.’ She smiled slowly. The first real one I’d seen on that face. ‘Tonight will be enough.’
I understood. It hadn’t been an accident her turning up at the pub. A single act of defiance. One he would never know about. But that didn’t make it any less valid.
I opened the small door at the rear of the twenty-wheeler, and led her inside. Khanivore’s life-support pod glowed a moonlight silver in the gloom, ancillary modules making soft gurgling sounds. All the cabinets and machinery clusters were monochrome as we threaded our way past. The tiny office on the other side was quieter. Standby LEDs on the computer terminals shone weakly, illuminating the fold-out sofa opposite the desks.
Jennifer stood in the middle of the aisle, and slipped the jacket off her shoulders. Her hands traced a gentle questing line up my ribcage, over my breasts, onto my neck, rising further. She had cool fingertips, long fuchsia nails. Her palms came to rest on my cheeks, fingers splayed between earlobes and forehead.
‘You made Dicko so very angry,’ she murmured huskily.
Her breath was warm and soft on my lips.
Pain exploded into my skull.
*
My military-grade retinas flicked to low-light mode, banishing shadows as we trooped past the beast’s life-support pod in the back of the lorry. The world became a sketch of blue and grey, outlines sharp. I was in a technophile’s chapel, floor laced with kilometres of wire and tubing, walls of machinery with little LEDs glowing. Sonnie’s breath was quickening when we reached the small compartment at the far end. Randy bitch. Probably where she brought all her one-nighters.
I chucked the jacket and reached for her. She looked like she was on the first night of her honeymoon.
Hands in place, tensed against her temples, and I said: ‘You made Dicko so very angry.’ Then I let her have it. Every fingertip sprouted a five-centimetre spike of titanium, punched out by a magpulse. They skewered straight through her skull to penetrate the brain inside.
Sonnie convulsed, tongue protruding, features briefly animated with horrified incomprehension. I jerked my hands away, the metal sliding out cleanly. She slumped to the floor, making a dull thud as she hit. Her whole body quaked for a few seconds then stilled. Dead.
Her head was left propped up at an odd angle against the base of the sofa she was going to screw me on. Eyes open. Eight puncture wounds dribbling a fair quantity of blood.
‘Now do you think it was worth it?’ I asked faintly. It needed asking. Her face retained a vestige of that last confused expression, all sad and innocent. ‘Stupid, dumb pride. And look where it got you. One dive, that’s all we wanted. Why don’t you people ever learn?’
I shook my hands, wincing, as the spikes slowly telescoped back i
nto their sheaths. They stung like hell, the fingertip skin all torn and bleeding. It would take a week for the rips to heal over, it always did. Price of invisible implants.
‘Neat trick,’ Sonnie said. The syllables were mangled, but the words were quite distinct. ‘I’d never have guessed you as a spetsnaz. Too pretty by far.’
One eyeball swivelled to focus on me; the other lolled lifelessly, its white flecked with blood from burst capillaries.
I let out a muted scream. Threat-response training fired an electric charge along my nerves. And I was crouching, leaning forward to throw my weight down, fist forming. Aiming.
Punch.
My right arm pistoned out so fast it was a smear. I caught her perfectly, pulping the fat tissue of the tit, smashing the ribs beneath. Splintered bone fragments were driven inwards, crushing the heart. Her body arched up as if I’d pumped her with a defibrillator charge.
‘Not good enough, my cute little spetsnaz.’ A bead of blood seeped out of the corner of her mouth, rolling down her chin.
‘No.’ I rasped it out, not believing what I saw.
‘You should have realized,’ the corpse/zombie said. Its speech had decayed to a gurgling whisper, words formed by sucking down small gulps of air and expelling them gradually. ‘You of all people should know that hate isn’t enough to give me the edge. You should have worked it out.’
‘What the sweet shit are you?’
‘A beastie-baiter, the best there’s ever been.’
‘Tells me nothing.’
Sonnie laughed. It was fucking hideous.
‘It should do,’ she burbled. ‘Think on it. Hate is easy enough to acquire; if all it took was hate then we’d all be winners. Dicko believed that was my edge because he wanted to. Male mentality. Couldn’t you smell his hormones fizzing when I told him I’d been raped? That made sense to him. But you’ve gotta have more than blind hate, spetsnaz girl, much more. You’ve gotta have fear. Real fear. That’s what my team gave me: the ability to fear. I didn’t get snatched by no gang. I crashed our van. A dumb drifter kid who celebrated a bout win with too much booze. Crunched myself up pretty bad. Jacob and Karran had to shove me in our life-support pod while they patched me up. That’s when we figured it out. The edge.’ Her voice was going, fading out like a night-time radio station.
I bent down, studying her placid face. Her one working eye stared back at me. The blood had stopped dripping from her puncture wounds.
‘You’re not in there,’ I said wonderingly.
‘No. Not my brain. Just a couple of bioware processors spliced into the top of my spinal column. My brain is elsewhere. Where it can feel hundred-proof fear. Enough fear to make me fight like a berserk demon when I’m threatened. You want to know where my brain is, spetsnaz girl? Do you? Look behind you.’
A metallic clunk.
I’m twisting fast. Nerves still hyped. Locking into a karate stance, ready for anything. No use. No fucking use at all.
Khanivore is climbing out of its life-support pod.
Timeline
2075 JSKP germinates Eden, a bitek habitat in orbit around Jupiter, with UN Protectorate status.
2077 New Kong asteroid begins FTL stardrive research project.
2085 Eden opened for habitation.
2086 Habitat Pallas germinated in Jupiter orbit.
A Second Chance
at Eden
Jupiter 2090
A Second Chance at Eden
The Ithilien decelerated into Jupiter orbit at a constant twentieth of a gee, giving us a spectacular view of the gas giant’s battling storm bands as we curved round towards the dark side. Even that’s a misnomer, there is no such thing as true darkness down there. Lightning forks whose size could put the Amazon tributary network to shame slashed between oceanic spirals of frozen ammonia. It was awesome, beautiful, and terrifyingly large.
I had to leave the twins by themselves in the observation blister once Ithilien circularized its orbit five hundred and fifty thousand kilometres out. It took us another five hours to rendezvous with Eden; not only did we have to match orbits, but we were approaching the habitat from a high inclination as well. Captain Saldana was competent, but it was still five hours of thruster nudges, low-frequency oscillations, and transient bursts of low-gee acceleration. I spent the time strapped into my bunk, popping nausea suppressors, and trying not to analogize between Ithilien’s jockeying and a choppy sea. It wouldn’t look good arriving at a new posting unable to retain my lunch. Security men are supposed to be unflappable, carved from granite, or some such nonsense anyway.
Our cabin’s screen flicked through camera inputs for me. As we were still in the penumbra I got a better view of the approach via electronically amplified images than eye-balling it from the blister.
Eden was a rust-brown cylinder with hemispherical endcaps, eight kilometres long, twenty-eight-hundred metres in diameter. But it had only been germinated in 2075, fifteen years ago. I talked to Pieter Zernov during the flight from Earth’s O’Neill Halo, he was one of the genetics team who designed the habitats for the Jovian Sky Power Corporation, and he said they expected Eden to grow out to a length of eleven kilometres eventually.
It was orientated with the endcaps pointing north– south, so it rolled along its orbit. The polyp shell was smooth, looking more like a manufactured product than anything organic. Biology could never be that neat in nature. The only break in Eden’s symmetry I could see were two rings of onion-shaped nodules spaced around the rim of each endcap. Specialist extrusion glands, which spun out organic conductor cables. There were hundreds of them, eighty kilometres long, radiating out from the habitat like the spokes of a bicycle wheel, rotation keeping them perfectly straight. It was an induction system; the cables sliced through Jupiter’s titanic magnetosphere to produce all the power Eden needed to run its organs, as well as providing light and heat for the interior.
‘Quite something, isn’t it?’ I said as the habitat expanded to fill the screen.
Jocelyn grunted noncommittally, and shifted round under her bunk’s webbing. We hadn’t exchanged a hundred words in the last twenty-four hours. Not good. I had hoped the actual sight of the habitat might have lightened the atmosphere a little, raised a spark of interest. Twenty years ago, when we got married, she would have treated this appointment with boundless excitement and enthusiasm. That was a big part of her attraction, a delighted curiosity with the world and all it offered. A lot can happen in twenty years, most of it so gradual you don’t notice until it’s too late.
I sometimes wonder what traits and foibles I’ve lost, what attitude I’ve woven into my own personality. I like to think I’m the same man, wiser but still good-humoured. Who doesn’t?
Eden had a long silver-white counter-rotating docking spindle protruding out from the hub of its northern endcap. Ithilien was too large to dock directly; the ship was basically a grid structure, resembling the Eiffel Tower, wrapped round the long cone of the fusion drive, with tanks and cargo-pods clinging to the structure as if they were silver barnacles. The life-support capsule was a sixty-metre globe at the prow, sprouting thermal radiator panels like the wings of some robotic dragonfly. In front of that, resting on a custom-built cradle, was the seed for another habitat, Ararat, Jupiter’s third; a solid teardrop of biotechnology one hundred metres long, swathed in thermal/ particle impact protection foam. Its mass was the reason Ithilien was manoeuvring so sluggishly.
Captain Saldana positioned us two kilometres out from the spindle tip, and locked the ship’s attitude. A squadron of commuter shuttles and cargo tug craft swarmed over the gulf towards the Ithilien. I began pulling our flight bags from the storage lockers; after a minute Jocelyn stirred herself and started helping me.
‘It won’t be so bad,’ I said. ‘These are good people.’ Her lips tightened grimly. ‘They’re ungodly people. We should never have come.’
‘Well, we’re here now, let’s try and make the most of it, OK? It’s only for five years. And you should
n’t prejudge like that.’
‘The word of the Pope is good enough for me.’ Implying it was me at fault, as always. I opened my mouth to reply. But thankfully the twins swam into the cabin, chattering away about the approach phase. As always the façade clicked into place. Nothing wrong. No argument. Mum and Dad are quite happy. Christ, why do we bother?
*
The tubular corridor which ran down the centre of Eden’s docking spindle ended in a large chamber just past the rotating pressure seal. It was a large bubble inside the polyp with six mechanical airlock hatches spaced equidistantly around the equator. A screen above one was signalling for Ithilien arrivals; and we all glided through it obediently. The tunnel beyond sloped down at quite a steep angle. I floated along it for nearly thirty metres before centrifugal force began to take hold. About a fifteenth of a gee, just enough to allow me a kind of skating walk.
An immigration desk waited for us at the far end. Two Eden police officers in smart green uniforms stood behind it. And I do mean smart: spotless, pressed, fitting perfectly. I held in a smile as the first took my passport and scanned it with her palm-sized PNC wafer. She stiffened slightly, and summoned up a blankly courteous smile. ‘Chief Parfitt, welcome to Eden, sir.’
‘Thank you,’ I glanced at her name disk, ‘Officer Nyberg.’
Jocelyn glared at her, which caused a small frown. That would be all round the division in an hour. The new boss’s wife is a pain. Great start.
A funicular railway car was waiting for us once we’d passed the immigration desk. The twins rushed in impatiently. And, finally, I got to see Eden’s interior. We sank down below the platform and into a white glare. Nicolette’s face hosted a beautiful, incredulous smile as she pressed herself against the glass. For a moment I remembered how her mother had looked, back in the days when she used to smile— I must stop these comparisons.