He had found the two pigs he had left behind in the cubbyhole. They had been caught and killed, just as he had feared. Quail’s hunters had suspended them by chains from the perforated spars bridging a corridor. They had been eviscerated and skinned, and at some point in the process Scorpio was certain that they had still been alive. He was also certain that the clothes they had been wearing—the clothes he continued to wear—were themselves made from the skins of other pigs. The twelve were not the first victims, but merely the latest in a game that had been playing for much longer than he had at first suspected; he began to feel a fury beyond anything he had known before. Something snapped; suddenly he was able to consider, at least as a theoretical possibility, what had previously been the unthinkable: he could imagine how it would feel to hurt a human, and to hurt a human very badly indeed. And he could even think of ways that he might go about it.
Scorpio, who turned out to be both resourceful and technically minded, began to infiltrate the machinery of Quail’s ship. He turned bulkhead doors into vicious scissoring traps. He turned elevators and transit pods into deadfalls or crushing pistons. He sucked air from certain parts of the ship and replaced it with poisonous gases or vacuum, and then fooled the sensors that would have alerted Quail and his company to the ruse. One by one he executed the pigs’ hunters, often with considerable artistry, until only Quail remained alive, alone and fearful, finally grasping the terrible error of judgement he had made. But by then the other eleven pigs were also dead, so Scorpio’s victory was mingled with a sour sense of abject personal failure. He had felt an obligation to protect the other pigs, most of who had lacked the language skills he took for granted. It was not simply that some of them were unable to talk, lacking the vocal mechanisms necessary for producing speech sounds, but they did not even comprehend spoken language with the same fluency that he did. A few words and phrases, perhaps, but nothing more than that. Their minds were wired differently from his, lacking the brain functions that coded and decoded language. For him it was second nature. There was no escaping it, but he was a lot closer to human than they were. And he had let them down, even though none of them had elected him as their protector.
Scorpio kept Quail alive until they were near circum-Yellowstone space, at which point he arranged for his own passage into Chasm City. He had taken the yacht. By the time he reached the Mulch Quail was dead, or was at least experiencing the final death agonies of the execution device Scorpio had made for him, crafted with loving care from the robotic surgery systems he had removed from the yacht’s medical bay.
He was almost home and dry, but there was one final discovery that had to be made: the yacht had never belonged to himself, or to any of the other pigs. The craft—Zodiacal Light—had been run by humans, with the twelve pigs serving as indentured slaves, crammed belowdecks, each with their own area of specialisation. Replaying the yacht’s video log, Scorpio saw the human crew being murdered by Quail’s boarders. It was a quick, clean series of murders, almost humane compared with the slow hunting of the pigs. And, via the same logs, Scorpio saw that the twelve pigs had all been tattooed with a different zodiacal sign. The symbol on his shoulder was a mark of identity, just as he had suspected, but it was also a mark of ownership and obedience.
Scorpio found a welding laser, adjusted the yield to its minimum setting and scorched it deep into tissue, watching with horrified fascination as it burned away the flesh, effacing the green scorpion in crackling stutters of pulsed light. The pain was indescribable, yet he chose not to smother it with anaesthetic from the medical kit. Nor did he do anything to assist the healing of the damaged skin. As much as he needed the pain as a symbolic bridge to be crossed, he needed that mark to show what he had done. Through the pain he reclaimed himself, snatched back his own identity. Perhaps he had never truly had one before, but in the agony he forged one for himself. The scarring would serve to remind him of what he had done, and if ever his hatred of humans began to lapse—if ever he was tempted to forgive—it would be there to guide him. Yet, and this was the thing he could never quite understand, he elected to keep the name. In calling himself Scorpio he would become an engine of hate directed at humanity. The name would become a synonym for fear, something that human parents would tell their children about at night to keep them from misbehaving.
In Chasm City his work had begun, and it was in Chasm City that it would continue, if he could escape from Remontoire. Even then he knew that it would be difficult to move freely, but once he made contact with Lasher his difficulties would be greatly diminished. Lasher had been one of his first real allies: a moderately well-connected pig with influence reaching to Loreanville and the Rust Belt. He had remained loyal to Scorpio. And even if he did end up being held prisoner by someone, which seemed at least likely given the circumstances, his captors would have to keep a very close watch on him indeed. The army of pigs, the loose alliance of gangs and factions which Scorpio and Lasher had webbed into something resembling a cohesive force, had struck against the authorities several times before, and while they had suffered dreadful losses, they had never been fully defeated. True, the conflicts had not cost the powers greatly—mostly it had been a matter of retaining pig-held manors of the Mulch—but Lasher and his associates were not afraid of widening the terms of reference. The pigs had allies in the banshees, which meant they had the means to expand their criminal activities far beyond the Mulch. Having been out of circulation for so long, Scorpio was curious to learn how that alliance now fared.
He nodded towards the line of habitats. “It still looks as if we’re headed for the Belt.”
“We are,” Remontoire told him. “But we’re not headed towards the Convention. There’s been a slight change of plan, which is why we put that nasty little implant into your head.”
“You were right to.”
“Because you’d have killed me otherwise? Perhaps. But you wouldn’t have got very far.” Remontoire caressed the control panel and smiled apologetically. “You can’t operate this ship, I’m afraid. Beneath the surface the systems are entirely Conjoiner. But we have to pass muster as a civilian vessel.”
“Tell me what’s going on.”
Remontoire swung the seat around again. He parked his hands in his lap and leaned towards Scorpio; dangerously close, were it not for the implant. Scorpio was prepared to believe he would die if he tried anything again, so he let Remontoire speak, while imagining how good it would feel to murder him.
“You met Clavain, I believe.”
Scorpio sniffed hard.
Remontoire continued, “He was one of us. A good friend of mine, in fact. Better than that: he was a good Conjoiner. He’d been one of us for four hundred years, and we wouldn’t be here now if it wasn’t for his deeds. He was the Butcher of Tharsis once, you know. But that’s ancient history now; I don’t imagine you’ve even heard of Tharsis. All that matters is that Clavain defected, or is in the process of defecting, and he must be stopped. Because he was—is—a friend, I would sooner that we stopped him alive rather than dead, but I accept that it might not be possible. We tried killing him once, when it was the only option we had. I’m almost glad that we failed. Clavain tricked us; he used his corvette to drop himself off in empty space. When we destroyed the corvette, he wasn’t aboard it.”
“Clever guy. I like him better already.”
“Good. I’m glad to hear it. Because you’re going to help me find him.”
He was good, Scorpio thought. The way Remontoire said it, it was almost as if he believed it might happen. “Help you?”
“We think he was rescued by a freighter. We can’t be certain, but it looks as if it was the same one we encountered earlier, around the Contested Volume—just before we captured you, as a matter of fact. Clavain helped the pilot of the freighter then, and he must have hoped she’d pay back the favour. That ship just made an unscheduled, illegal detour into the war zone. It’s just possible that it rendezvoused with Clavain, picked him up from empty space.”
“Then shoot the fucking thing down. I don’t see what your problem is.”
“Too late, I’m afraid. By the time we pieced this together, the freighter had already returned to Ferrisville Convention airspace.” Remontoire gestured over his shoulder to the line of habitats slashed across the darkening face of Yellow-stone. “By now, Clavain will have gone to ground in the Rust Belt, which happens to be more your territory than mine. Judging by your record, you know it almost as intimately as you know Chasm City. And I’m sure you’ll be very eager to be my guide.” Remontoire smiled and tapped a finger gently against his own temple. “Won’t you?”
“I could still kill you. There are always ways.”
“You’d die, though, and what good would that do? We have a bargaining position, you see. Assist us—assist the Conjoined—and we will ensure that you never reach Convention custody. We’ll supply the Convention with a body, an identical replica cloned from your own. We’ll tell them that you died in our care. That way you not only get your freedom, but you’ll also no longer have an army of Convention investigators after you. We can supply you with finances and credible false documentation. Scorpio will be dead, but there’s no reason why you can’t continue.”
“Why haven’t you done that already? If you can fake my body, you could have given them a corpse by now.”
“There’ll be repercussions, Scorpio, severe ones. It is not a path we would ordinarily choose. But at this point we need Clavain back rather more than we need the Convention’s good will.”
“Clavain must mean a lot to you.”
Remontoire turned back to the control panel and played it again, his fingers arpeggiating like a maestro. “He does mean a lot to us, yes. But what he carries in his head means even more.”
Scorpio considered his position, his survival instincts clicking in with their usual ruthless efficiency, just as they always did in times of personal crisis. Once it was Quail, now it was a frail-looking Conjoiner with the power to kill him by thought alone. He had every reason to believe that Remontoire was sincere in his threat, and that he would be handed over to the Convention if he did not co-operate. With no opportunity to alert Lasher to his return, he was as good as dead if that happened. But if he assisted Remontoire he would at least be prolonging his arrest. Perhaps Remontoire was telling the truth when he said that he would be allowed to go free. But even if the Conjoiner was lying about that—and he did not think that he was—then there would be still more opportunities to contact Lasher and make his ultimate escape. It sounded like the sort of offer one would be very foolish to refuse. Even if it meant, for the time being at least, working with someone he still considered human. “You must be desperate,” he said.
“Perhaps I am,” said Remontoire. “At the same time, I really don’t think it’s much of your business. So, are you going to do what I asked?”
“If I say no . . .”
Remontoire smiled. “Then there won’t be any need for that cloned corpse.”
His confinement continued for a day. He felt the floor pitch and shift under him as the ship changed its thrust pattern, and when Antoinette appeared at the door she confirmed, before passing another bulb of water and a nutrition bar through to him, that they were en route back to the Rust Belt.
“Those thrust changes,” he said, peeling back the foil covering the bar. “What were they for? Were we in danger of running into military activity?”
“Not exactly, no.”
“What, then?”
“Banshees, Clavain.” She must have seen his look of incomprehension. “They’re pirates, bandits, brigands, rogues, whatever you want to call them. Real badass sons of bitches.”
“I haven’t heard of them.”
“You wouldn’t have unless you were a trader trying to make an honest living.”
He chewed on the bar. “You almost said that with a straight face.”
“Hey, listen. I bend the rules now and then, that’s all. But what these fuckers do—it makes the most illegal thing I’ve ever done look like, I don’t know, a minor docking violation.”
“And these banshees . . . they used to be traders too, I take it?”
She nodded. “Until they figured out it was easier to steal cargo from the likes of me rather than haul it themselves.”
“But you’ve never been directly involved with them before?”
“A few run-ins. Everyone who hauls anything in or near the Rust Belt has been shadowed by banshees at least once. Normally they leave us alone. Storm Bird’s pretty fast, so it doesn’t make an easy target for a forced docking. And, well, we have a few other deterrents.”
Clavain nodded wisely, thinking that he knew exactly what she meant. “And now?”
“We’ve been shadowed. A couple of banshees latched on to us for an hour, holding off at one-tenth of a light-second. Thirty-thou klicks. That’s pissing-distance out here. But we shook ’em off.”
Clavain took a sip from the drinking bulb. “Will they be back?”
“Dunno. It’s not normal to meet them this far from the Rust Belt. I’d almost say . . .”
Clavain raised an eyebrow. “What—that I might have something to do with it?”