Scab nodded. ‘How long?’
‘If you exhaust the slush fund you have access to, then that will buy you a one-week info lock. After that the information will be available at an exorbitant price to everyone.’
Scab nodded. Vic assumed he was spending the rest of whatever slush fund he had access to.
The acolyte collapsed to the floor. There was bloody froth bubbling out from under the mask.
‘Is that it?’ Vic asked.
The smart-matter floor engulfed the acolyte, presumably taking him to somewhere nearby for medical attention. Scab got up and left. Vic watched him go, irritation and a feeling of helplessness combining into impotent anger. He realised it was completely psychosomatic, but he struggled to control his breathing for a moment until his augmented systems took over and administered a mild sedative. He stood up and followed Scab. There was nothing else he could really do except ’face his own bid to Pythia for information. It wiped out three quarters of his debt relief in an instant.
Vic was immersed. He had no control so he decided to lose himself in narcotic-enhanced fantasy. His only-’sect-at-a-human-orgy fantasy dissolved around him as the Basilisk managed to send him a warning signal before powering down.
Vic sat up on his unmoving bed. The door to his room was open but the ship was dark. The walls were solid. There were no areas of transparency.
He stood up and walked out into the lounge. His optical enhancements ignored the darkness. Scab was standing in the centre of the lounge, still. Vic could feel the anger. It seemed to be coming off Scab in waves. He actually took a step back. Blood dripped from Scab’s clenched fists. He had pierced the hardened skin of his palms with his fingernails.
Vic checked back over the last information from the Basilisk. They had been approaching the Pythia bridge point. It looked like someone had hacked the ship. Shut it down completely. Vic knew that wasn’t supposed to be easy. The Basilisk had the best system security they could afford and it had been extensively and often illegally augmented by the privacy-obsessed control freak that was Scab.
‘Elite…?’ Vic ventured.
The transmission had to be pretty powerful to reach their internal comms through the thick skin of the dead Basilisk. Vic actually screamed, then staggered, holding his head. Scab didn’t move, but a drop of blood leaked from his nostril and made a smoking trail through his white make-up.
‘To Woodbine Scab and Vic Matto, this is the St Brendan’s Fire. We only wish to talk. Prepare for boarding.’ The woman whose flickering image appeared in their minds was the same shaven-headed and tattooed Church monk they had seen on Arclight.
Vic felt the fear building. Scab couldn’t allow this to happen. It wasn’t in his nature. He would do something suicidal and make sure that he took Vic with him. He couldn’t abrogate control of the situation like that.
‘Scab…’ Vic started, searching for a way to talk his partner into being reasonable, but he knew that there was nothing he could say that would help.
‘Basilisk to St Brendan’s Fire.’ Scab sounded calm. He was talking out loud; only someone who knew him as well as Vic could hear the barely controlled rage in his voice. ‘Immediately return control of the Basilisk to us. If you do not, then you will find that information on the whereabouts of the bridge technology you are trying to suppress will be transmitted throughout Known Space.’
There was silence. Was it a bluff? Vic had no idea. Scab did bluff, but he also made sure that he did enough extreme shit that all his bluffs were believable.
‘St Brendan’s Fire to Basilisk. You’re bluffing. That would screw up your own agenda,’ the Monk said.
No, Vic silently screamed at her. Look at your psych profile! He will destroy it for you even it means he fails.
‘Besides,’ the Monk continued, ‘how would you transmit the information? You’re dead in the water.’
‘We made a contingency arrangement with Pythia,’ Scab transmitted.
It was the sort of thing that Scab would do, Vic decided. He planned ahead in that way.
‘We just want to talk,’ the Monk said after what seemed like a very long time. She had either bought the story or she just wasn’t prepared to risk even the slightest chance of proliferation. Scab ignored her.
At any moment Vic expected to hear the metallic clang of a docking arm reverberate through the Basilisk, but instead the systems came back up.
Scab kept the hull dark but brought up scans of the St Brendan’s Fire. The Basilisk’s weapon systems provided targeting solutions as Scab turned the ship back towards the bridge point. The Basilisk’s engines glowed as the bridge drive made a red tear in space.
17. Northern Britain, a Long Time Ago
They came out of the plains in the west, warriors who slept in mounds next to the rotting bones of their ancestors. The peoples from the lands surrounding theirs sacrificed food to them so they wouldn’t be dragged down to Annwn, the land of the dead. Riding or running tirelessly, they headed north-east and then turned south.
Their keening drove the animals before them. Prey fell quickly, slaughtered and partially consumed, their blood splattering limed faces. The lucky people in their path made it to the hill forts. Those less lucky died quickly; the Corpse People didn’t have time for anything else. All those in the hill forts could do was watch from the palisades as the Corpse People left a landscape spotted with carcasses behind them.
On the isles of madness, the wretched and the broken-minded ignored the exhortations of their priests and made their way to the water’s edge. They could hear her sleeping song. The Corpse People stopped at the top of the hill overlooking the isles. Still, silent, they truly thought themselves dead. Animals were caught in the spell of the Mother’s song. They ran towards her, into the marsh, into the water, into her slithering, somnambulant grasp.
There had been a battle here. The fort was on a high promontory that overlooked the entrance to the harbour. The fort showed signs of extensive damage. Britha reckoned it had been the giants who had done most of the damage by pulling down the timber-latticed, dry-stone walls. Parts of the rock beneath the fort’s walls were blackened and scorched – by burning oil, the ban draoi reckoned.
It looked like the Goddodin had made their stand there. Judging by the dead being fed on by crab and seagull in the harbour, they had fought hard. The fact that tattooed, moustached, shaven-headed warriors still prowled the fort’s palisade walls suggested they had succeeded in fighting Bress’s forces off.
‘It’s not that they couldn’t do it,’ Fachtna said. ‘I reckon they just didn’t think taking the fort was worth the time.’
Britha turned to look at the warrior. The sight of the wry smile on his face further angered her. She was still less than happy after his so-called boat skills and instinctive understanding of the Black River had all but got them swept out to sea. The three of them had had to paddle so hard that Britha had felt her arms were close to coming off. She wasn’t sure where she had found the reserves to carry on, but by the time they made it to shore, too tired to beat Fachtna with the butt of her spear, she was sure that she had significantly lost weight and she had been ravenously hungry again.
At the back of her mind Britha wondered if it hadn’t been Fachtna’s doing; perhaps the sea god of the Goddodin had carried them out to sea. She preferred to blame Fachtna, however. Being swept out into the fog-shrouded choppy sea had scared her. There was nothing you could do against the sea.