Twenty-Five. The Goddess
“Three… two… one… ACTIVATE!”
The crowd roared their approval as the smaller of the two supplicants began to circle the other. A lithe, silver creation, with bowed, hypermobile legs, giant scimitars for arms and an eternally grinning skull for a face, it had all the advantage in speed and reaction time, and scored the first blow, slicing at its larger cousin’s mighty thigh and causing sparks to fly.
A tumbling mass of building blocks, the angular supplicant struck back within moments – a great swing of its fist catching its opponent unawares and lifting it off its feet and into a corner of the arena.
“Ten thousand rupees on the big one!”
“TWENTY thousand!”
More roars as those too close to the ring were showered in cogs and sprockets as the smaller supplicant clambered to its feet only to be walloped once more. The damage was largely superficial, of course – most of the fighting supplicants in Kaleta’s stable were bedecked in all manner of pointless mechanical gewgaws masquerading as vital components precisely for this purpose – but there was little guarantee that it would remain that way. For a supplicant to be damaged beyond repair was an undesired outcome, and a comparatively rare one, but there were several such bouts every night and sooner or later wholesale destruction was inevitable.
Despite all that he had come to swallow since entering his current service, the aide – he had no name beyond that; names were a thing to be earned – couldn’t help but find it all somewhat distasteful. Humans and their fellow organics replenished their numbers naturally, and the arena’s scrubs were experts in getting blood out of the carpet. Supplicants were another matter. As in most of the sectors beyond Albrecht, the rule of the Morticians was much weaker here than in the capital but there were certain laws that you would be a fool indeed to break, and the law against the creation of new supplicants was little needed in any case – most of the necessary knowledge had departed with the coming of the vortex, if not before.
Even when it came to their repair, the line between renovation and creation was a grey one though. Across the strip, peripatetic mendicants – organic and supplicant alike – navigated the choppy waters of one of the Concordium’s most firmly held taboos, lives lived even deeper in the shadows than their fellow citizens of the vortex, ever hoping not to catch officialdom’s short-sighted eye.
Kaleta had his own cadre of such tinkerers, and made little effort to conceal it. The Morticians proclaimed otherwise, but few argued seriously against the proposition that Caires was his, to do with what he pleased. And what he pleased was much as his forefathers of his ancient family had pleased. Bloodsports, nootropics, whoring, gambling. It seemed like the whole sector was his pleasure palace, these days.
Another roar greeted a sudden reversal of fortunes, as the nimbler supplicant caught the giant with a lucky blow that left a leg dangling. Its stricken adversary wheeled wildly on its one good leg, swinging and missing.
War, entertainment, manual labour… the aide had little idea of the original purpose of these beings, if they could even be called that. He didn’t associate with them if he could avoid it, and was even less keen to be seen to do so. He was only too aware that his own existence, as a factotum, walked a legal tightrope. When he ventured beyond these four walls, he did so with an accompanying whisper of fear and disapproval: “Cyborg!” He couldn’t even say for certain that it wasn’t true. Best not to be seen to fraternise. Be one with the organics. In Caires at least, a man such as he could just about get away with it. But as for the supplicants, he couldn’t help but wonder… did it hurt? Did they enjoy it, live for it? Or had they not been given the capacity for such emotions and sensations?
“I grow tired of this play,” Kaleta pronounced suddenly. He clapped his hands, two flubbery booms echoing out from his balcony and throughout the pits. “Bring me blood!” his shouted down to those below, amid a hail of spittle and meat, “bring me glory!”
The crowd, who had for the most part been rather enjoying the combat already presented before them, roared their agreement all the same. It didn’t pay to disagree with Kaleta’s ever shifting whims. In some ways, in an unchanging enclosed world without weather, without anything to strive for save for safety itself, the uncertainty of the hulking creature’s mood swings provided some measure of comfort against languor.
The stumbling, buzzing, supplicants were dragged from the arena and swiftly replaced by two new combatants – one in a chair, turbines whirling from his wrists, the other dragging a mighty pincer to her left side, her other arm but a stump. They would be on instruction to make the battle last, the aide knew, but there was little chance that it would be more than a passing fancy for his master. The factotum steadied his tongue, lest his distaste at this bastardisation of the great star Caras’ vision become evident. Kaleta wouldn’t care one way or other – he held no light for any star, as much as he enjoyed the products of their fervour – but in this sector the Carasians had achieved hegemony long ago. To many dionísios – outsiders, honoured or otherwise – Caires was Caras. Though for others, increasingly, it was simply Kaleta. The sector and the man could no longer be separated.
Below, the aide’s eyes were drawn mercifully away from the ring and towards a group of knights, ever fused into their dull armour, as they shouted out sums of money and waved their tankards. Such… reduced creatures, the factotum thought. This had been their city, not so long ago, so he had been told. In the power vacuum that had followed the coming of the vortex, Caires had been theirs for the taking. The Knights of Dimrar and the Knights of McNeil had divided the sector between themselves, and promised an era of chivalry and honour. Instead they had warred amongst themselves, and from the ashes some ancestor of the current Kaleta had seized the city for himself. Today, the two orders mostly kept to their respective fortress-monasteries many levels below. They found few willing recruits from the city itself, the numbers of the Knights of Dimrar replenished when required predominantly by the young boys they took in raids upon the Yaforite levels, those of the Knights of McNeil mostly outsiders. What a chance they’d squandered! And now Caires was mostly this, repeated – on a smaller scale, of course – a thousand times over.
More cheers erupted as a turbine made contact with stump amid a squall of blood. The clawed Carasian barely seemed to notice, out of her iron skull on whatever drugs Kaleta’s kyrkoherds had pumped into her. Caught up in his moment of apparent glory, the other combatant dropped his guard for a moment – and even those high up on Kaleta’s balcony could readily make out the expression of horror that followed as the pincer closed in around the wings of the turbine. The crunching noise that followed was slow and horrible, though the aide chided himself for the thought. It was just an attachment, not the man’s actual body, being unceremoniously torn from its owner. But that wasn’t Caras thinking.
His master gave a satisfied snort as the crumpled remnants of the weapon were sheered clear from the fighter’s mutilated wrist, and the aide risked a sideways glance up at the grotesque behemoth upon his throne. This Kaleta had become the very embodiment of indulgence in recent years. Even the most dedicated of Rosalians would have their right arms reattached to come even close to his corpulence (or rather, the traditional reverse – but being surrounded by Carasians left one with an altered perspective on such sayings). The aide had heard more than one of his master’s other underlings and toys threatened with being crushed like a bug should they displease him, and that was likely no idle threat. Still… this had to be done, and it might as well be when Kaleta was distracted by the gruesome scene below. He wasn’t the only one who could render the factotum’s all-too brief existence yet more fleeting still. There were the Morticians to think about.
“My lord, if – if I may?”
“Hmph? What? Out with it, come on, come on…”
“Sir, yes, I… I have been entreated to remind your lordship that the Assembly,” – and here the aide paused for Kaleta’s mocking snort – “the Assembly has requested that our patrons begin leaving the premises, sir? Several hours ago, in fact, I…”
“KILL IT! DON’T JUST STAND THERE, WOMAN! Is that about the damned goblin riots again? Do you see anyone in here rioting? Anyone having nightmares? Hardly! Having the time of their damned lives!”
“It is said the dust goblins – not that they exist, of course – target those sleeping alone, my lord…”
Kaleta scoffed again. He had the chins for it. It was quite the signature sound. “Then you have my sympathies, boy! But you can tell the bloody Assembly that Kaleta’s hasn’t shut down in fourteen seasons straight, and I’m not about to do so now! Crowd control be damned. Whatever the lunatic masses are doing out there isn’t my concern. This is my pit, and my punters are honest, law-abiding citizens GO FOR THE CHEST, YOU’VE STILL GOT ONE TURBINE YOU LITTLE SHIT! Can’t get the fighters these days…”
“Your message is quite understood, my lord, I shall alert the… oh, my word, that’s really quite…”
“It’s quite nothing,” Kaleta spat, unimpressed. The clawed warrior staggered back and collapsed onto the ropes as her opponent’s head bounced once, rolled a little way, and came to a halt in the far corner of the arena. The roar of the crowd covered the sad whirring of the surviving turbine as it sliced into its late owner’s wheelchair before finally powering down. “You were in a vat the last time we had fighters worthy of the name. No style, these kids…” Kaleta yawned expansively. “These jousts today bore me, and you put ideas in my head, boy. I would to bed.”
“Yes my lord, very good my lord… I shall call for your bearers. Does your lordship require, ah… a new companion?”
“Regrettably, yes,” Kaleta sighed. He smacked his great lips in thought. “I think… a redhead, today. Perhaps… blind, yes. No legs.”
The aide hastily lunged for one of the ring files to his side and began riffling through its pages. “Uh, my lord, I don’t think we have a girl of that specification available at the curr–”
With some difficulty, Kaleta moved his neck towards the little factotum to his side and fixed him with a horrible leer. “Make. One.”
“Yes… very good, my lord. Does my lord…”
The aide trailed off in alarm. A number of screams and a general hubbub was cutting through from below, and now his master too clutched at his bulbous head and roared. For an all-too-brief moment of purest joy, the factotum thought that might herald the end of the horrible creature, but instead Kaleta regained his composure and wiped the drool from his lips. There was a new expression plastered across his pudding face; beatific, awed. It was an expression the aide had seen before, elsewhere, upon the faces of devout Carasians after catching sight of their new implant for the first time.
As the first surge among the psychically inclined subsided and the tsunami proper crashed in, only the aide could hear Kaleta’s fevered whisperings. “Oh… Oh yes, she returns. And what a companion indeed, my boy… I shall have her… oh yes, I shall…”
* * * * *
“Fluck!”
Makynlee flung herself over the heap of metal crates that blocked her path, surprising herself that she’d made it at all. She looked up, an uneven hole in the far wall about the size of her first still smoking. If that had hit her she would have been drapes, but the fact she was evidently still alive was but a meagre morsel of good news at this point. The boxes that were all that stood between her and certain death might well be the very cause of that death, mere seconds from now, once her assailant had been able to reload. At best they would surely collapse, leaving her exposed in this dead end. Just as likely they’d explode, covering her in the corrosive ooze that ten-to-one was inside.
She should spring to her feet, she knew, use the cover of the crates and let off as many shots with her laspistol as she could before the darkness set in and Margaret came to claim all three points. That she was alive gave strong indication that she’d already failed in her primary task, backed up by the lack of any groans, much less shrieks or shots, from Jazlynn, nor indeed any sign that the more experienced ganger was still conscious. Makynlee was a kid, fresh out of the chem-labs, with little to offer the Baneful Beldams barring her body, to be thrown into the fray as a fleshy shield for more valuable members.
She’d been full ready to do her duty, but their attackers – whoever they were – had caught them in an ambush. Clattering and gunfire in the distance made it clear that battle had been joined by much of the rest of both gangs, but she could only guess at whether she would find herself a foot shorter if she looked up above the crates to check if Jazlynn’s – she assumed – killer had stormed off in search of a more worthy target than a mere callow whitey like her. One day, in the unlikely event she survived long enough, she’d be a gang sister, maybe even a matriarch. She’s always had her eye on becoming a scoper, but they already had Camsley, who could read the tables as well as anyone, although admittedly if she’d seen this coming she’d kept her counsel. In any case, she just didn’t have the knack for it.
Still prone, pistol shaking in her right glove, her left made its way down her thigh and towards her ankle. Blood, hers, but just a flesh wound and not bleeding too profusely. Most likely she’d cut it on the crates as she’d launched herself over them. Makynlee withdrew her hand back to her belts, and she fumbled in her pockets for a needle already dosed with salve. The pain duly brought to manageable levels, she patted herself down a little further, then performed a head count.
One.
Good. The correct number, whatever arguments some of the more devout Jordanians made.
She wondered vaguely why she’d thought of them, before realising that she was staring at a familiar black symbol, printed on the side of the nearest crate. Faded, but clear – the double-headed eagle of House Hawker. Was that who had set upon her and her gang? Unlikely, given that she hadn’t heard any of the familiar keening, nor the swish of wingtips against Misery’s narrow passageways, that accompanied them in their rare forays up to these levels. Instead, the symbol was a welcome one, probably a sign that the crates contained only mushrooms or carrion blocks. And if she knew House Hawker at all, they might even be empty – and instead conceal a passage downwards. Should she try to find it, abandoning her girls in the process and risk finding only a mine of some sort, maybe decades old but still primed, ready to blow the face off the first unfortunate to finally wander down this forgotten stretch of passageway? Even if not, she would surely wave farewell to her career as a ganger, and more than likely her life, if she was found to have abandoned Queen Madylei and the others, and slopping down into the lower levels was chem-pit-into-the-reclamation-tanks stuff in any case.
Nah. Best stay still. Don’t move a muscle. Catch your breath.
Who even were these fluckers? It mattered more to the older and better equipped among her compatriots, who could tailor their weaponry to their opponent as required even in the heat of battle, and she was just a sacrificial grunt with a pistol and a smile. Even so…
They were males, surely. Makynlee knew Madylei had her enemies among House Raellis, but she felt she’d know instinctively if they’d been assaulted by rivals from her own house. Who then? Males were all the same, other Raellians would tell her with a spit to the side, but that blatantly wasn’t true – even if, she had to concede, most of the gangers of the other houses on the Misery levels were united by being ever more grotesque creatures, half of them barely more bearable to look at than the shrivelled grey jizzworms that passed for the males of her own people. It was said by more generous elderly matriarchs that once, generations ago, the other houses had each at least stood for something, had some driving ideology beyond the addictions to the biosculpting that had warped their descendants beyond recognition.
Makynlee could acknowledge that, even now, many of the Maddenites possessed a certain arachnoid elegance, as they wound their skeletal way, bent double, through the passageways. And as for the Panaderans, they almost made one question one’s life choices. But the bellowers of House Vélez had grown lumpen, the gangers of House Pavoni were most often found on all fours, and the blind little Guamen weren’t even worth fighting. Members of House Soro could be little distinguished now from the fragile, sump-dwelling frogkin they’d mass-produced to act as their shields in the dark times of Science, and later bred with to their eternal impairment. The North Walkers……… Well, why the big paws? And House Federici, uplevel, well their hired chumps were easily disposed of if needs be too. There were contracts between the disciples of Jacin and Jason going back decades, her people providing the stimulants that fed the Federician lust for the chemical hits they didn’t have the wit to cook up themselves, but that didn’t engender any regard for them among her own kind. Far from it, as the little freeze-dried genital trophies that Addiryn and Layni, among others, wore on their belts attested to, each one sawn from the corpse of a Federician caught in the act of indulging their other favoured, unspeakable, habit.
And when it came to the Rickies… well, no-one liked them, not even other Rickies.
She really, really ought to re-join the fray right about now. She was totally going to do that. Uh-huh.
Instead, an anguished yowl arrested any subtle movements towards that endeavour. Cats? Fluck, that was all they needed. In her short career she had yet to face one of the hunting parties of their young toms, down from Din’s loftiest levels to indulge in bloodsports officially discouraged by the sector’s nominally ruling Cat Mother. Makynlee had met other cats in the bars and chem-dens uplevel, again mostly young males on walkabout or mercs, swaggering and arrogant but alright in their way; preferable to baseline males, that was for sure. More than one of her contemporaries, the noxious chem-labs holding limited appeal and them lacking the gunslinging skills or suicidal tendencies to join a gang, had found their way up to the Cat levels, where by all accounts – alright, by some accounts – you could carve out a decent life as one of their obedient pets if you were a good girl. It couldn’t, Makynlee knew, be the life for her. Apart from anything else they sang all the time. And the buttholes. Sweet Margaret’s teeth, the buttholes.
On the other hand, specifically the one caked in her own blood, this life wasn’t looking like it was going to be hers for much longer either.
“BASTAAAARDS!”
That was Braxcie, for sure, and a range of other screams, shouts and yowls brought her back to reality. Not Cats, but a cat, of sorts. Pudding, Braxcie’s loyal malkhynn, severely injured if those howls of anguish from both were any indication. That was a contract as old as any – the Cats got pliant Jacin maids, Makynlee’s people got their savage dud offshoots, and House Raellis remained in the good books of the true masters of Din. And now another roar, itself inhuman, confirmed today’s adversaries.
Beefshacks. Physically imposing – alright, terrifying, fine – but as pathetic as any male Misery had to offer all the same. Just heaps of mobile meat, muscle and rage. Vatgrown, degenerate, lacking the brains to feed themselves. Shat as they ran. It was almost tragic that the Larries had been reduced to fielding as many of these hulking monstrosities amongst their gangs as their own number. That was House Raellis’ fault, in their own little way. The Larries had relied on her kind’s chems for the muscle they knew couldn’t be obtained by bench presses and breeding alone. But contracts had fallen through, other houses had offered more rupees, and today’s Larries were featherweights with comparison to their forefathers, or even mothers.
That was what this ambush was about, then? Trying to abduct Chemiss Alyxraa and force her to pump them full of hers wares for free? Well… to relegation with that! No way were these fluckers too good to go down!
Gang Queen Madylei was having the same idea by the sounds of it. From beyond Makynlee’s hiding place came a screech that would rattle the passageways of Misery for levels around, as surely as the bells of the Catedral far above. This was a roar Makynlee had already come to know well – the gang’s leader, out of her skull on a cocktail of spazz, spunk and spank, a combat monster to rival any beefshack.
The crates behind her chose this moment to explode in a shower of metal panels and shards. Right. Long past time to earn her rupees, then. Makynlee dragged another needle out of a pocket, slammed a full dose of sass into her exposed stomach, and turned upon her assailant, laspistol blazing. She didn’t have the intelligence of a chemiss, the wisdom of a scoper, the strength of a matriarch, and she’d never have the leadership to be a Gang Queen. But she could be a meat shield, as surely as any beefshack. She’d let Jazlynn down. She wouldn’t fail her gang again.
“QUEEN SABREIGH RULES, MOTHERFLUCKERS!?” she screamed.
Her opposite number dodged most of her shots, though at least one landed with a grunt. He tossed aside his firearm as tradition demanded, and hoisted his wrench meaningfully. The Larries were pugilists to their bones. Respect demanded that a challenger standing in front of you must be taken out in close combat, where possible.
For a moment, Makynlee hesitated. Even despite their current reduced circumstances, no Larry could be considered scrawny. But this one could have passed for any ordinary civilian of the scrabbling houses, were it not for the distinctive haircut. So… He was just a whitey, like her. Probably in his first battle, and not enjoying it half as much as he’d thought he was going to. She wondered if, in his own hesitation, he was thinking the same.
The Larry spat out a gobbet of blood and teeth from where her pistol shot had made its mark.
“Bradley Lee don’t like you, miss. Bradley Lee kill you, now.”
Any thoughts of mercy sparked out of Makynlee’s mind. The way they spoke about themselves in the third person. That was unforgivable.
As he dived towards her, Makynlee feinted deftly. She fired off some shots at him from behind, saw the youth stagger, and pelted towards the passageway’s turning, tossing a choke gas grenade behind her. She reached the corner, checked she hadn’t stumbled into any mêlée as the noise of battle echoed around the level, then pulled out her stiletto knife. Bradley Lee was hardly worthy of it, but the concoction of toxins it would secrete would be at least as likely to bring him down as any number of pistol shots. And Makynlee…
…screamed, and fell to her knees. And as the word and pain of the Beatrice consumed her, she knew that she could be a gang scoper after all. Face down, she smiled, wiped the blood from her nose, and awaited the Larry cruiser with the blooded, whirling, toravore arm implant storming towards her. No point fighting back now. They’d all be screaming in a moment anyway. She shut her eyes, and concentrated on the Serious Injuries Chart. There were some fates even the greatest of seeresses couldn’t foresee. Better rolls sixes…
* * * * *
And in Arrigo, fallen Arrigo, the first Candelariasian city to rise up to the heavens and swallow the fleeing millions, and the first to collapse under their weight, supple little veras snaked their way through air pockets left amongst the debris of the flattened corridors, bringing goods and messages to the isolated settlements that carved out modest existences by erratic lamplight.
Far below, in the very depths of ancient Arrigo, lived another people. They had no name, for what need did they have of one with barely a shared memory of any outsider? In the eternal blackness they could not see. While the great machinery that had once powered the sector had been silenced – crushed – these many years, their legacy to the dwellers of the Arrigo deeps was a welcome deafness, for only those who lost the sense had failed to succumb to madness. They did not smell, nor taste, for the fungi on which they subsisted offered nothing but an unbearable foulness.
Instead the pale dwellers touched, each gentle caress a subtle message – plentiful fungi here, toxic pools there, a trickle of good water here, touches to convey love, convey solidarity, convey hope and the simple joy of nearness. And now, in a single moment of blissful incomprehension, of divine revelation, the pale ones received Beatrice’s word like a slap, and winced at the pain, and shed tears in the sudden knowledge that they were not alone in their world after all.
* * * * *
And in the halls of the Onweird… God know, honestly. Left this section blank first time around and can’t for the life of me remember what the Onweird were supposed to be about, and it’s not like any of this is remotely relevant to the ongoing plot, so… Just use your imagination, really. Knees, nosebleed, etcetera.
Go back and chuck in something suitably Jewy for Bove Sector in the previous chapter if it’d make you happy, do.
* * * * *
And even far to the south, over the black waters that oozed around the largest islands of the archipelago, the wave of her word began to hit.
Near the summit of a towering creamy citadel, all graceful twisting glass to the Strip’s utilitarian blackness, half a dozen figures were assembled. One might wish to describe them as ‘colourful characters’, though this being a tangentially sport-related tale it should be noted that this would not, in this particular context, be a means of subtly indicating that they were born in Africa, but instead referred to their resplendent, if in some cases impractically limited and certainly rather tight, clothing; all vibrant purples, reds, greens… None of those present would have been able to explain quite why they dressed in this manner, or even to have particularly understood the question. It was just what felt right. It was just what they did.
“I’m telling you, I’ve never known her like this!” insisted one. “And have you ever known Ennui to be wrong!?”
A balding man who appeared to be the eldest among them puffed out his cheeks and hmm’d. “Ennui, perhaps not! Your interpretations of her visions however, at times, Scrape, have been known to be, ah --!”
“Shit!”
“Thank you, Captain Matter, I was aiming for tact there…!”
“Zircon, I swear to you, this is different! You know what she’s like, she can get a brief vision of someone’s death two days from now, and then spend the rest of the day obsessed with someone stubbing their toe next year! Sometimes it’s all so vague, but --! This is all she’s been seeing for two days now! And it’s more than that!” Scrape added, nervously, “Or, or rather, it’s no more than that, which is… Guys, look! I don’t think there’s anything else! There’s no other visions, there’s nothing outstanding! No more deaths, no more arguments, no more awkward accounts of sexual activity, no more stubbed toes! It’s like this is it!”
“Are you really sure about that!?” a woman asked mildly. “I thought there were all sorts of visions of hers you couldn’t work out!?”
“Yes, sure, and there still are, but --! Rocket-Girl, I’ve been working with Recall lately, and he’s been able to identify quite a few of Ennui’s prophesies as having happened already, and I’ve poured through my notes but I just can’t find anything major left to occur! Beatrice is back, guys! And this time, I’m not sure any of us are going to survive it!”
“So… What are we going to do, then?!” the final woman present asked, looking helplessly from Scrape to Zircon, Captain Matter to Rocket-Girl, and finally back to Ennui, swaying slightly in her chair, white eyes staring into space.
“We’re going to not panic, Dust Devil, is the first thing we’re going to do!” Zircon insisted. “I just wish we could know why this was happening! I don’t doubt Ennui’s correct, Scrape, really I don’t! We can all see how angry the vortex is looking these recent days, and it backs up everything Mole has told us about what the Insiders are saying about the message of the dust goblins! But if what you say is true, if the Morticians have a Device, surely we’d known about it! Surely they wouldn’t be so insane as to use it again! Oh --! I wish Slab were here! The mantle of leadership weighs heavily upo–!”
“Less flappy-mouth, old man!” Captain Matter spat, meaningfully pulling up his cape. “It’s long past time we took action! There’s no way Rocket-Girl or the other flyers are getting over there while the vortex is like this, but Judder can bamf in a small team of us right into the heart of the Mortuary if needs be! I’ll round up Bloat, Victim, Vis-Kid, maybe Crypt, and we’ll blow that popsicle stand! Hit ‘em hard and fast, an–”
“Hold it right there, Captain Matter!” Rocket-Girl interjected. “Do our oaths of non-interference suddenly mean nothing now!?”
“I have to concur!” Zircon told him too. “Our forefathers gave strict instructions, a list of specific occasions when we might act -- we’d know if this was one of them!”
“Oh, yes, it was written, wasn’t it?!” Captain Matter said bitterly. “We’re no better than the football people and the damned cultists when it comes right down to it, are we!? If Scrape and Ennui are right, this is our very existence we’re fighting for!”
“Convenient for you, this, isn’t it?!” Rocket-Girl said, calmly as she could manage. “You’ve been agitating against the status quo for years!”
“This isn’t about me! But yes, you know I’m tired of us accepting our fate to rot away in this prison!!”
“Our haven!”
“It’s a fine line, woman! The Selkies take us away from our families and send us here against our will! We can’t breed, we seldom see our fifties! You may call this a haven, but I would sooner rule in hell!”
“You know what the Insiders would do to us!” Dust Devil told him quietly. “The Morticians would exterminate even the ronions on sight if they weren’t so useful for keeping the populace under control! Here, we can protect our kind! You really think the baselines would have let Orbit survive once her powers emerged? Or Blowout or Gaybomb or Progeny?! We’re safe here -- or, at least we were --!”
“We should be liberating our ronion cousins, not using their tragic existences as a threat to stop us living our own lives to the full!!”
“The ronions aren’t our cousins, Captain!” Zircon sighed. “As much as many of our number may be indistinguishable from them, only we have the Green genes! They, alas, are --mistakes! We are bound to the word of the forefathers! Oh, Captain,” the oldest of them continued, with a slight chuckle, “you think yourself so unique! In every generation there are malcontents, those who question our ways! I should know, young man, believe me! We’re not so different, you and I!”
“I can bend any atom in the universe to my will, Zircon! You can excrete a semiprecious stone once every seventy-two hours, if you’re lucky! We are not the same! Half our number have no powers at all, or cry milk from their eyes, or know where cats have been! It’s time that those of us with real gifts start leading the way! We listen to Ennui, and we take action now, before it’s too late!”
Rocket-Girl folded her arms and set her jaw. “You could get us all killed in the process! Don’t make me fight you, Dwayne!”
“I’d like to see you try, Emily!”
“Oh, for pity’s sake, children,” Zircon groaned, “let us not resort to deadnaming, please! Or to a pointless fight, we had plenty of those back in my day, too! Slab would get all “You dare mock me?!” and Flashpoint would be all “I’m thru playing your games!”, and then they’d start scrapping and Unit would come steaming in all “NO HURT FRIEND!!” and give the boss-man a clobberin’, and he’d be all “Huh -- that actually hurt!” and “How can anything so big move so fast!?”, and then anyway they’d all agree that they were more than a team, they’re a family!, and ugh -- Great days, glory days, but all so, so tedious! We are the Green Children! We are supposed to be above all this!”
The two would-be combatants both opened their mouths to respond, but were silenced by screams from Scrape and Ennui.
“Pen… Pen…!”
The others turned to Ennui in alarm. “Have --?! Is she --!? Have you ever known her speak!?” Dust Devil squawked.
“Never! If only we could understand what she’s trying to tell us!”
“Pen… Pena…!”
“Penicillin?! Pentagon!? Er, er…! Pension! Penmanship!”
“Penalty…!”
“I can see it too!” Scrape gasped. “That’s --! How?! I’m just a low-level psi, I can’t pick up anything from more -- more than a metre -- ghaah! Guts -- on fire -- must keep -- talking --!”
“Save your strength, brother Scrape!” Rocket-Girl whispered, laying a hand on her stricken comrade’s shoulder. She turned to Dust Devil. “DD, is this happening to our other telepa–”
Before she could complete the word, Dust Devil had vanished and reappeared, face red, breathing heavily. She took a moment to compose herself and realign her tit window before replying: “Yeah! Lady Sensation’s out cold, Leak’s got one hell of a nosebleed -- Even Equilibrium’s having kittens!”
“Damn! And Progeny?!”
“Er, he’s having tiny gibbons! Dear little things!”
“Well that’s not good either, that only happens when he’s picking up on extreme stress! Maybe we do need to act, Zircon! It’s not as though some of our predecessors haven’t played fast and loose wi– ”
Her older associate cracked his knuckles and tutted. “Alright, alright! Get Buchetta up here, we’ll have her open a porthole to the Mortuary! We’ll keep a close eye, and if we have to step in…!”
Zircon trailed off as Ennui groaned once more, wincing as much through the unfamiliar exertions required to emit speech as the mental onslaught provided by the Beatrice. “Sus… suspen…sion…”
“Well!” Zircon breathed. “That can’t be good --!”
And in came the wave.
* * * * *
And in Albrecht, in the Dead Levels, those Morticians still assigned to their organisation’s first duty were treated to a unique spectacle – the silent screaming of the dead, those who had chosen to spend eternity within the virtual reality of the SynIntSphere, their dreaming consciousnesses awoken by the Beatrice’s howl of vengeance to stare out in terror from the bleached skulls that housed them.
* * * * *
“ENOUGH!”
For a moment it felt to Mark as though Beatrice had addressed them one more, such was the power behind the shout and the anguish with which it was delivered. But the word came with the visual accompaniment only of the rippling strips of red fabric that flowed around the Scorpion King, as the ancient one dragged himself upright once more.
“I will defeat you, alien! I will fulfil my destiny!”
He tore towards her – powering as he did so towards a flickering blue ovoid from which the tip of a pointy black hat could just been seen and a mantra of “Lisa Walker! Jenny Majorheily-Orinova-Reuberson-Mohammed! Dana Blomquist!” could barely be heard – arms outstretched, hands clenched…
…and at the being’s feet, or where her feet would have been had she had any, knees crunching into glass, he fell. The blue light had expanded rapidly, creating a halo that knocked the old man to the floor. Mark felt it too, as it passed through him. There was little power there, but it had been enough to fell an ancient monarch with nothing more to give.
Beside him, Mark heard Lady Keturah emit a little grunt suggestive of a certain satisfaction. She nodded.
“And now… we parley…”
“Won’t work,” Mark said dully, looking up at her. “Morton couldn’t. Rohaert couldn’t.”
“She is not they, manager.”
Mark frowned… but he looked back towards the creature and now he saw what the tall Selkie had seen before him. Surrogate, against the far wall, clutching the head of Wonder. And in front of her, walking towards the creature, a girl. Shaking with fear yet compelled by something from within, crimson shirt billowing, her left hand clenched tightly over the little model right-back. Surrogate looked appalled; Tread… well, it was hard to tell. But neither could do anything to stop her. Their deity’s decisions were to be followed, even to the death. Even to her own.
“There must be a consultation, manager, if we are to survive this day. An appeal. From one goddess to another…”
