Vic reached right twin and kicked him hard. His power-assisted leg shattered the disc gun, and his clawed foot tore off half of right twin’s face.
The micro-missiles caught the P-sat just below the transparent ceiling. The P-sat exploded.
Mandibles wide open and making a hissing clicking noise, Vic fired both pistols point-blank. Right twin’s face became red steam.
Vic looked around. He was sure there were more P-sats, but he guessed they were following dead-owner protocols. The collateral damage wasn’t too bad. Some stray beams, flechettes and discs had caught passers-by, but anyone who was dead probably had clone insurance.
Scab stood up. His coat had stopped glowing but was still smoking. He kicked the lizard berserker’s corpse. The headless body had still been trying to crawl. He found the metalforma knife and picked it up. He jammed the blade into the half-and-half’s neck, neunonically ‘facing instructions to sever the hermaphrodite’s head.
‘Take their heads,’ Scab said. Vic ignored him. He was running cooling cycles on his pistols, recharging them from his internal energy supplies through the matrices in his palms. He reloaded the shotgun, though he’d used the last of his saboted micro-missile loads. At the same time he was using his neunonics to buy, and have upgraded to his spec, a new P-sat.
Scab retrieved his spit gun and the tumbler pistol. Then once the metalforma knife had finished doing its job, he picked that up and collected the three severed heads, holding them by hair, fur and crest in one hand while he licked the blood off the fingers of the other.
Some bounty killers, particularly high-profile ones, made immersions of their jobs to augment their income. Vic wondered if Jide and his crew’s experience of being killed at their hands was currently being auctioned to help cover their resurrection expenses. Neither Scab nor Vic, however, sold their experiences as immersions. The only recordings of them were audiovisual or other people’s, normally fatal, immersion experiences of them.
Scab used the metalforma knife on both the twins, decapitating them. He held all five severed heads up to show the remote cameras. The message to other bounty crews was clear. Come looking for them, you’ll end up having to get cloned.
Vic stared at Scab. Something wasn’t sitting right with him. Scab was ignoring him.
‘They’ll come after us properly prepared,’ Vic finally said, making his tone neutral, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that his suspicions were written all over his insectile face and in his pheromone secretions.
Scab shook his head.
‘Why not? The bounty from the cartel’s got to be pretty big.’
They were in the private medical facility on their own habitat. The habitat had stepped up their security in light of what had happened. Scab had done his own medical work and was in the process of purging the local systems of all medical information on himself. Vic was lying on one of the couches as his damaged internal organs and components were speedily being regrown, and his armour and hardened skin were knitted back together. The featureless white room that was the medical facility transmitted progress straight to his neunonics.
‘They won’t be cloned,’ Scab said. He made it sound like an afterthought.
‘You transmitted a scramble code for the personality and memory uplink?’ Vic asked, trying to keep his voice even. Scab just nodded. It was an expensive viral program. The uplinks were very heavily protected and had multiple redundant systems to prevent this sort of thing. ‘That’s pretty illegal stuff for Pythia.’ Personality/memory-uplink scrambling software had been on the list of proscribed ware.
‘Nothing’s illegal with enough debt relief,’ Scab said, still distracted. Then he turned to look directly at Vic with his dead eyes. ‘They had to know.’ Vic tried to meet the look but turned away. ‘It’s time for an answer.’
Scab headed towards one of the white walls. The smears of blood they had left when they first entered had long ago been eaten by nano-cleaners. Part of the wall opened for them.
The transparent piece of hull was shaped like an eye and lined with actual wood panelling. In front of it was a circular sofa upholstered in something that had once been alive and it was in no way smart. Vic was struggling to find a comfortable way to sit on it. Scab was slumped in it, smoking a cigarette, dried blood all the way up the arm of his suit jacket and raincoat.
The eye looked down on the planet. The view was either just wide enough, or had been compressed, to show the curvature of the planet against the golden light of the orange giant refracting on the particulate clouds. As Vic and Scab sat there waiting for the business acolyte to be possessed, they watched asteroids being dropped into the atmosphere. The fire of their atmospheric entry lit up part of their view.
The business acolyte was standing in the centre of the circle made by the leather sofa. He wore a collarless suit that buttoned up to the neck. His physiology suggested human, and the little skin that they could see looked human, or perhaps an oddly fashion-augmented feline. It was difficult to be sure because of the hood on the suit jacket and the featureless convex-mirrored, full-face mask.
Holography of the nano-swarm clouds in Pythia’s atmosphere appeared in the centre of the room. The acolyte was stood in the apparent storm front as lightning played across it. It was difficult to gauge the scale of it, but Vic had the feeling that the storm front was anything up to hundreds of miles across. He pursed his mandibles, not sure what he was watching.
‘I think that’s the think tank they’ve had working on our problem,’ Scab said.
The business acolyte collapsed onto all fours, shaking and gyrating in front of them. Vic couldn’t shake the feeling that he was about to experience Known Space’s oddest lap dance.
‘That is correct.’ The voice sounded like it was being agonisingly pulled from the acolyte’s larynx. Pythia had overrun the willing acolyte’s neunonic systems and was in control. ‘Trillions of tiny bits of information, the fall of entire markets to the movement of a single molecule, the—’
‘I don’t care,’ Scab said. ‘Where is it?’
The acolyte moved his head, apparently to stare at Scab. Scab’s reflection on the convex mask somehow didn’t seem all that distorted to Vic.
‘The end of the Art Wars left the Absolute in control of the Monarchist Elite,’ came the strained reply.
‘Weird fucking war,’ Scab said, frowning. Vic looked up at him sharply. He was surprised that Scab had offered an opinion, let alone seemed to have mild emotion connected to the conflict. ‘But we know this.’
‘The safest place to hold the cocoon would be at the Citadel. If Fallen Angel told you the truth, then the cocoon is on Game, probably deep below the Black Leaves as the Absolute’s sanctum is the second most secure place in the Monarchist sector. Also, according to our psych evaluation of the Absolute, he will wish to keep the cocoon close enough to play with.’
‘So it can’t be done. Only pieces are allowed on Game, and they have to have experiential augments. They’d know who and what we are the moment we left orbit,’ Vic said. ‘Can we leave it now?’ Scab just looked thoughtful. Vic shook his head. He could see what was coming.
There was a kind of quiet screeching from the acolyte. Vic stared at him. Blood ran out from under the mask. The acolyte’s body twisted and contorted further. Vic gave Scab a questioning look.
‘There is no love lost between the Absolute and the masters of the Living Cities on Pangea. They were the biggest losers of the Art Wars. They wanted to see their model of society permeate the entire Monarchist sector. If the Elder will consent to speak to you, they may aid you.’