I think he means the ferals are humanitarians in much the same way people who eat vegetables are vegetarians.
"I know an island where they serve the most delicious long pork..."
And in this chapter: The Fourth Day (Lady Tevar and xt88 know what this means; the rest of you'll have to remain confused or check out the link above)
Coming up: STEINMAN KILLS. That, and days 5, 6 and 9.
Chapter 26:
They were marched back to the ferals’ camp. Habitat. Colony. Whatever it was, it was required a march back up through the main service tunnels that ran parallel to the main tram line. They’d doubled back through the engineering decks first – apparently, whoever the ‘coward’ was, the feral soliders? hunters? didn’t want to push their luck with him. With good reason if he had control over the environmental systems. The survivors’ hands were bound behind their backs and they were prodded onwards by staves and gun barrels. Shannon was in the lead, and only her repeated hand signals to Abigail to stay calm kept the other woman from trying to lunge at their captors and be beaten down or killed for her troubles.
Abigail had told her what it was like growing up on Darkknell. Not everything, not the worst of the things she’d done or been forced to do just to survive. But enough that Shannon understood what this had to be like for Abby. To lose, to be captured and marched off like some prize... no. She didn’t want to think about that. Not when she had other things to focus on.
Shannon’s mind was racing as she memorized the layout of the halls and the route they took towards their encampment – Abigail and Louis would be doing the same, but she was also listening to the ferals’ chatter. The ferals spoke amongst each other in Standard, but a mutated dialect of it – words were borrowed from other languages, abbreviated, pronounced differently or twisted in meaning. They obviously knew enough to talk to her; the Speaker and Dead Man both spoke Standard quite well, but knowing the ins and outs of their own private dialect could be helpful. She was picking out individuals, watching how they moved, the weapons they carried. Every so often, she would sign back to Abigail, in the hope that she'd picked up on something that the more experienced mercenary hadn't.
Gas mask – brown coat – rifle – weak right leg.
Her mind was also on the whispered, urgent voice in ear when she and the others had been caught in the grav-trap. It hadn’t come through on an open channel; it had been on an Artemis frequency. Only a ‘general chatter’ band, but it was still encoded. Whoever had used it had had experience with Artemis encryption – obviously, from
Primal (he didn’t want anyone else to hear, wanted you to know that he could do that). He’d been cogent, almost desperate in his plea.
I don’t want to kill you. But you have to stop. He’d turned them over to the masked ferals, but (
Is this a gift? Something to make us forgive and forget?) wasn’t their ally. Another player. Another agenda.
He wants something from us.
Shannon bit her lip, twisting her wrists back and forth, trying to find a loose spot in the chains. She was tired of being chased, tired of only reacting.
We’ll get out of this. Somehow. She had to believe that. She wanted to.
As a small benefit, the ferals seemed fine with leaving her, Abigail and Louis in their armour, but that hadn’t stopped them from tying the mercenaries’ hands behind their backs quite securely. Now they were being led off towards God knew what fate. Shannon remembered what the Speaker and Dead Man had said to the ‘worms’ and nothing in either man’s words gave the woman a sense of optimism. She could think of several unpleasant meanings behind their praise. Her hands continued to work at the looped chain, testing it for weaknesses. There weren’t any.
Shannon tried to catch a glimpse of Emily – she and Ramone were behind the three mercenaries and ‘safely’ out of their reach. Bargaining chips in case one of the soldiers got free. Another problem demanding part of her attention, another problem that have a solution. Not yet.
“You called them the turned,” she said aloud.
One of the nearest ferals – a man in a rebreather mask with the clear faceplate painted over, save for a strip to see through – growled, muttering something under his breath. Shannon ignored him and raised her voice. “You called them the turned,” she said again, speaking to Dead Man. “The monsters – that’s what you’re talking about?” He paid no attention to her question, but Hayes persisted. “You said we didn’t understand. How
can we if you don’t tell us?”
He paused, letting the procession move by him as he mulled his answer. “Impertinent little worm,” the party’s leader said as he faced Shannon.
“But a clever one,” she replied.
“That’s true.” He backhanded her again. The force of the blow and its suddenness toppled the young woman. He was stronger than he looked.
Shannon heard the intake of Abby’s breath; she caught the other woman’s eyes and shook her head marginally.
No. Dead Man crouched beside Shannon, gesturing for a pair of his horde – a man in a filthy bellaclava and a woman in a gas mask missing its filter system – to pull her back to her feet. He looked up at her for a moment before he stood again, running a finger gently over the new bruise on her face. “That was for being impertinent,” he said. “But the worm does have a point.”
“There’s some kind of contagion,” Shannon said. “Not just the Mists. Some infection that got loose. It’s a recombinator, isn’t it?” The different body forms and abilities – it was possible that it was simply polymorphic variation, but...
“It takes pieces,” Dead Man answered, confirming her fears. “And puts them back together. And afterwards, you’re not what you were.”
Shannon bit her lip, thinking. ‘Recombinator’ was a broad term applied to anything that took disparate genetic material to create a new organism. There were multiple forms of recombinant reproduction. Off the top of her head, she could think of at least three and those were just from Earth-stock organisms. “Where did it come from?” she pressed. “Was it something the Imperials were working on, or did one of the other ships bring it here?”
“It’s always been here,” the feral replied as he turned away, done with humouring his captive.
“Wait,” Shannon called. “One more thing. What did you do to St. Cloud? The man whose armour you’re wearing. Is he still alive?”
“Only when useful,” Dead Man said without looking back. “Something to remember, worm.”
~
Something screamed in the darkness; the sound high-pitched, warbling and getting closer. “Anytime,” Bujold whispered urgently to his companion as Lutzberg tried to seal the tram station’s doors. They’d been forced open recently and were taking their mistreatment out on the two men by refusing to shut again.
Armin’s pants had a new stain as he knelt in a tacky, almost-dried pool of dark blood. “Working as fast as I can,” he muttered back. Ah, there; the door hadn’t just been pushed open – that would have been too easy, wouldn’t it? – it had been thrust open so forcibly that it had been jarred off its tracks. Just by itself, the door weighed almost two hundred pounds and its gears had been monkeyed with, making it a very abrupt, very lethal mechanism. It also meant that whatever had flung it open hard enough to damage it had been very angry, very strong, very determined and certainly not anything that either man wanted to meet.
“Help me push it back onto the rails – that should be all we need.”
“That’s it? I thought it’d be more... complicated.”
“What, you want me to whip out a sonic screwdriver for a quantum degaussing of the local tachyon bubbles? It’s a fucking door.” Armin was grateful for the question; it let him cling to some shards of normalcy, let him vent. At the moment, it was all he had. If it kept his mind off the things lurking in the hallways, strange songs and hunting cries, he would take it. “As far as I can tell, we get it back on the tracks and it’ll either snap shut, or we can use the panel to do it. Shouldn’t be too difficult. Here, give me a hand.”
It took several tries, but between the two of them, Lutzberg and Bujold were able to force the security door clicked back onto its track. The petty officer hit the control panel, letting the door crash shut once more. He looked up and Mack gave him an approving nod. “Now what?”
Lutzberg sauntered over to the steps leading to the control booth and sat down on them, feeling the unpleasant squish of various liquids against his legs and cheeks. “We wait,” he said. “And hope that someone else makes it here, too.”
~
As they’d approached the feral enclave – it had once been a multi-level storage facility – Shannon had, at first, noticed more warnings on the walls. Amanda’s knife symbol. As they’d gotten closer, those pictographs had either been scrapped off, painted over or covered with debris.
Clearly, they don’t like their reputation. Here and there, the knives had been repainted with crude versions of light bulbs. Counter-propaganda?
No, we’re really good! That suggested that they actually cared about such things; why? To lure in other visitors? Or was it simply because no one ever thought that
they were the bad guys?
No matter what they’ve done, or what they’ll do, Shannon mused darkly as their ‘escorts’ pushed them a little more insistently, the men and women tightening their grips on their weapons and looking about with increased frequency, urging their captives on.
The doors into the feral enclave were barricaded, with crates and wires strung up to create a handful of empty defensive positions. There were no sentries outside – presumably those would only draw attention that the inhabitants wanted to avoid. Dead Man marched up to the sealed aperture and pounded his fist on it rhythmically. There was a pause and then a mechanical
chunk sound as the doors ground open.
Out of the opening came a waft of warm air and Shannon’s nose twitched as the odours of dozens – hundreds – of humans forced to live in a comparatively cramped space assaulted her. Figures dressed in form-concealing rags – guards? – met the hunting party, ugly rifles clutched in their arms, each robed sentry’s breath wheezing softly, stirring the tattered ends of their face-covering hoods.
“Alive,” the first guard said as Dead Man passed by it. “Not turning.” It repeated the comment as another feral moved past.
Shannon was pushed towards the second guard, the figure tilting its hood of patchwork cloth towards her and warm breath blew over her face, humid and foul. Beneath that malignant odour, Shannon could smell something else. Acrid and chemical, like alcohol, but not quite. She remembered that odour, had had it spewed into her face as she’d fought with the monstrous... ‘turned’ in the hall as its fangs slid over her helmet, its reeking breath overwhelming her air filter.
They’re infected. These people... these things here... whatever’s loose in the station, whatever got into Primal
... they have it, too. And they keep them around. God. God, what is
this place?
“Alive,” her inspector pronounced. “Not turning.”
She was given a harsh shove to move along, but resisted, turning to look back at her comrades. Abigail had been bitten by one of those creatures, Louis by that woman....
No. No, God. “Alive,” the first sentry announced.
“Much obliged,” the Darkknell replied, spitting into the shrouded figure’s face. The infected man? woman? didn’t react, but the members of the hunting party around it did, some squawking in incredulous anger before they threw Abigail to the deck, kicking at her and shouting loud enough that Shannon couldn’t hear Louis’ verdict. She made an abortive lunge to help her friend, but someone grabbed her and pulled her back. Shannon wanted to scream in frustration, unable to help Abigail, unable to stop part of herself from being mad at her ‘big sister’ for choosing that moment to piss off the natives.
You couldn’t have waited ten seconds, Abby?
A gunshot crashed painfully close to her ear and Shannon flinched. The men and women attacking Abigail cringed as Dead Man strode back into the fray, lowering Louis’ shotgun. “Enough,” the leader growled. “Not your decision, is it?”
None of them met his eyes, a couple the ferals pulling the mercenary back to her feet, none the worse for wear – most of their fury had been wasted on her cuirass and armoured legs. “Thought not,” Dead Man answered. “Come on then.”
~
As they were led through the makeshift habitat, a crowd gathered to stare at the procession, naked-faced children staring like wild animals, men and women watching from behind rebreathers, helmets and theater masks. There wasn’t much to differentiate one person from another, but Shannon noticed little details – those with more ornate or fanciful masks tended to have better clothes. Some even had jewelry and others deferred to them in speech and body language. Flames crackled out of makeshift fire pits, used for warmth or to roast food. A young boy turned a spitted, skinned rat over a small fire as what seemed to be his sister rested her head on his lap, both children watching the hunters and their captives cautiously.
A pregnant woman in a Bandui death-mask (and where did she get
that?) reclined upon several boxes stacked against the wall. Her ragged-but-colourful vest was open, exposing her pendulous breasts, nipples pierced with mismatched studs.
A man in a filthy, stained surgeon’s garb was knelt over a twitching patient, a naked young man with vivid scars on his forearm. They were ugly and clearly infected and the younger male was feverish, shivering, covered in sweat and gasping for each breath. Shannon nodded towards the scene. “Is he sick? We can help-” She was given a rough shove forwards.
“Nothing
you can do,” the man behind her sneered, then laughed. “Not yet.”
Emily tried to keep her head down, to avoid looking at the ruined husks of humans and appear meek and submissive, but every so often her eyes would shift towards the staring, eerily silent crowd. She almost stumbled when she caught sight of one individual amongst the throng. He was crouched upon a large industrial crate, an Artemis rifle resting in his arms. An engineer’s IDS-mask covered his face and sensor strips bracketing a polarized visor glowed dully as the helmet’s batteries slowly died.
Unlike an arm-mounted Integrated Display System, the mask-based system was used much like a tactical HUD, to allow its wearer to examine scan data without constantly shifting position. They were favoured by medical and technical personnel for just that reason – while in surgery, a doctor could call up detailed scans, pervious test data and monitor their patient’s vital signs whilst still filtering air for contaminants. Engineering IDS masks performed similar functions, though they were optimized to detect minute faults and system errors, analyze power flow through local systems, provide different scan modes and perform other helpful functions.
This mask in particular was made by Hadley-Wright. In fact, it was the current premier model; it belonged to someone from the first expedition and, like Major St. Cloud’s armour, it had been... repurposed.
Emily had always had a good memory. She’d always found it easy to remember a name she’d only heard once or to recall a number or bit of information she’d seen in passing. She remembered one of the corporation’s own ‘security consultants’ from the first expedition, a bit more vividly than that, though. He’d been young, excited about the possibility of ‘treasure hunting’ and equally excited by the thought that she might be assigned to that expedition as well. His name was Arthur Killion.
Was. Not had been.
He’d been trying to impress her one day, so he’d rolled up his sleeves to show her the tattoos he’d gotten. They were unit markings for the Decrosa City police force. Mercenary companies and corporate security firms liked to poach recruits from Decrosa; like much of the planet’s civil services, the police were only as effective as their next paycheque. As long that was a constant, they were quite ‘efficient’ – although on Decrosa that term was somewhat relative. It usually referred to their skill at suppressing food riots and generally protecting the planet’s oligarchy from the consequences of their own actions whenever the benighted masses grew unruly.
The combination of a certain amorality, ambitiousness and avarice made Decrosan police and military personnel choice pickings for many offworld security and mercenary guilds. They were easily bought, knew how to keep quiet, didn’t much care what they did or for whom they did it and their shambling husk of a government provided the basics of training before they were hired off-world, though they were often seen as little better than ‘gang-bangers with badges’. And like many gangs, Decrosan police squads liked to get tattooed to show everyone whose side they were on.
Now, on the arms uncovered by the masked man’s rolled-up sleeves, Emily recognized those same tattoos. The helmet canted towards her as Killion took notice of the petite woman, his head tracking Delphini. He remembered her, too. Killion raised two fingers to where his mouth would be, then held them out as if passing her a kiss on his fingertips.
I knew it was a mistake for them to send you, she thought over her sudden surge of revulsion and fear, trying to focus on something – anything – other than those feelings.
Even crazy, you still found a way to switch sides.
They arrived at a crude amphitheater, where a man in a stained suit waited for them, sitting cross-legged in some craft’s pilot’s seat. He wore a broken-eared rabbit’s mask of cracked porcelain, and had his fingers laced together. A young girl – like the other children, she wore nothing over her face – was sitting on the dais beside him, playing something like jacks with what looked like knuckle bones. She looked at the procession, and then up at Rabbit Mask. “I found one first.”
“Yes, you did,” the man replied, reaching down to give the girl an affectionate pat on the head. He stood and strode down to meet his visitors. “So, the little worms have come crawling at last,” his was the voice of the Speaker. Beneath the ornate mask, his eyes darted about, never staying still for long. “But such pretty little worms, aren’t they?” His attention shifted to Shannon. “And what kinds of worms have crawled into my belly?” he demanded, his gaze moving to Abigail. “Who sent you to thieve and glut upon my bones?” He moved down the line, never waiting for an answer. “What fool threw more lives into Acheron?” He paused in front of Emily, leaning in and grabbing the front of her coat, his eyes narrowing as he saw the Hadley-Wright insignia on the young doctor’s lapels and his hands shook as he shoved Delphini away.
“Of course,” his voice thickened, almost incomprehensible with barely-controlled... what? Anger? Disgust?
Fear? Rabbit Mask turned his attention to Ramone, tracing the edges of the second doctor’s own corporate insignia, tapping it with one trimmed fingernail. “Who are you?” the feral leader demanded.
“S-Salvador Ramone,” the man stuttered.
Rabbit Mask gestured dismissively to the three mercenaries. “I know what they are. Brigands and saboteurs, clad in metal as if it can save them. Hired to kill and to die as long as the gold flows. But you,” his eyes flitted briefly to Emily. “And you. What are
you, Salvador-Worm?”
Ramone couldn’t meet the other man’s eyes. “I’m-I’m a doctor,” he mumbled.
Emily’s eyes narrowed as she saw the feral leader’s reaction. It wasn’t much of one; a sudden shift in his position, a change in the angle of his head. He was interested.
Too interested, and when the eyes behind the broken ballroom mask turned to her, the young woman stared down at the deck and, without prompting, said: “Emily Delphini. I’m a historian.”
In her peripheral vision, she could see her fellow survivors react, but none of them contradicted her. Ramone seemed about to, when he looked past her to one of the mercenaries and clicked his jaw shut.
Rabbit Mask tapped the badge on her jacket breast again. “It’s good you’ve come,” he mused, though he didn’t seem that interested in her response, if she even cared to give one. “History. Acheron is soaked in it, Emily-Worm. It is the lifeblood of 47. It pools around your feet, slithers up your nostrils while you sleep and it is etched onto every wall, dripping from the bulkheads like blood. History,” he repeated. “It won’t let go of you. What happened in the past reaches for you, clawing and dragging you off, filling you.” His head came up and his mad eyes glittered with a hidden smile. “I think you’ll like it here.”
He finally deigned to return his attention to the mercenaries. “Do the thieves have names?” he demanded.
“Louis Miguel Hernandez, private, Artemis Private Security Services.”
“Abigail Hutchins. The woman who’s going to kill one of your people.” The Darkknell flashed a mouthful of teeth. “Maybe more.”
Rabbit Mask touched a finger to the bandages on the woman’s neck. “I have heard this,” he said as he pressed harder, digging into the wound. “I have heard this and I have heard this. Sometimes it has come to pass, but we are still here and those who kept their word...” he drew back. “...are not.” The feral human’s only half-turned towards Shannon, as if he was bored by the entire conversation and simply running through a formality. “And your name?”
The young woman stiffened. “Shannon Melinda Hayes, corp-”
Rabbit Mask jerked as if shocked. “Hayes?” he demanded as his head snapped fully towards Shannon. “Hayes?” he repeated as the gathered crowd whispered and muttered. The leader leaned his face into Shannon’s until the worn-down tip of a porcelain rabbit’s nose was almost touched to hers, unwashed breath coming through the mask’s upturned lips.
She tried not to pull back and only partially succeeded. “Yes,” she said. “Hayes.”
His hands snapped up, cupping her face and turning her head this way and that in an inspection, but for what, Shannon had no idea. “I know this name,” Rabbit Mask replied. “I’ve heard it whispered in hushed tones. Heard it screamed. It means many things. To some of the Lost, it means betrayer, murderer. The antimessiah. To others, it means saviour and creator. Redeemer. Blasphemy and reverence. Do you understand?” He let go of the woman and stepped back. “Do you?”
“No, I-”
A flash of movement and the feral had a knife at her throat, his other hand on the back of her head, arm tensing as he kept her from pulling away from the blade. “Once, Hayes-Thief. Hayes-Sabotager. Hayes-Worm. What world do you call home? What. World?”
“Halo,” Shannon stared into the man’s eyes. “I’m a Halo.”
Rabbit Mask held the knife at Shannon’s throat for a moment longer as he looked back at her, perhaps searching for some hint of a lie. Then, he let go of her and stalked back to his ‘throne’, slumping into the chair. He stood the dagger up on its hilt, a single finger riding the point of the knife, moving it back and forth. “Thieves and worms,” he pronounced. “But clever. But pretty. But useful. They will serve.” Mad blue eyes darted back over to Shannon. “So blessed are the children.”
“So blessed are the children,” the crowd answered back, the guards shoving the five prisoners deeper into the warren.
