Redemption Ark

Remontoire examined his feelings but nothing was out of the ordinary. He raised a quizzical eyebrow in Felka’s direction, to which she responded with a short shake of her head. She felt nothing unusual either, and she was a good deal more attuned to such matters than he was.

They continued on through normal corridors, pausing now and then until they regained the energy to continue. Eventually they arrived at a plain stretch of walling devoid of any indicators — real, holographic or entoptic — to mark it as out of the ordinary. Yet the crab halted at a certain spot and after a moment a hole opened in the wall at chest height, enlarging to form an aperture shaped like a cat’s pupil. Red light spilled through the inverted gash.

‘This is where I live,’ the crab told them. ‘Please come in.’

They followed the crab into a large warm space. Remontoire looked around, realising as he did so that nothing he saw matched his expectations. He was simply in an almost empty room. There were a few items of machinery in it, but only one thing, resembling a small, slightly macabre piece of sculpture, that he did not instantly recognise. The room was filled with the soft hum of equipment, but again the sound was not unfamiliar.

The largest item was the first thing he had noticed. It was a black egg-shaped pod resting on a heavy rust-red pedestal inset with quivering analogue dials. The pod had the antique look of much modern space technology, like a relic from the earliest days of near-Earth exploration. He recognised it as an escape pod of Demarchist design, simple and robust. Conjoiner ships never carried escape pods.

This unit was marked with warning instructions in all the common languages — Norte, Russish, Canasian — along with icons and diagrams in bright primary colours. There were bee-stripes and cruciform thrusters; the grey bulges of sensors and communication systems; collapsed solar-wings and parachutes. There were explosive bolts around a door and a tiny triangular window in the door itself.

There was something in the pod. Remontoire saw a curve of pale flesh through the window, indistinct because it was embedded in a matrix of amber cushioning gel or some cloying medical nutrient. The flesh moved, breathing slowly.

‘Skade…?’ he said, thinking of the injuries he had seen when he had visited her before their departure.

‘Go ahead,’ the crab said. ‘Have a look. I’m sure it will surprise you.’

Remontoire and Felka eased closer to the pod. There was a figure packed inside it, pink and foetal. Remontoire saw lines and catheters, and watched the figure move almost imperceptibly no more than once a minute. It was breathing.

It wasn’t Skade, or even what had remained of Skade. It definitely wasn’t human.

‘What is it?’ Felka asked, her voice barely a whisper.

‘Scorpio,’ Remontoire said. ‘The hyperpig, the one we found on the Demarchist ship.’

Felka touched the metal wall of the pod. Remontoire did likewise, feeling the rhythmic churning of life-support systems. ‘Why is he here?’ Felka asked.

‘He’s on his way back to justice,’ Skade said. ‘Once we’re near the inner system we’ll eject the pod and let the Ferrisville Convention recover him.’

‘And then?’

‘They’ll try him and find him guilty of the many crimes he is supposed to have committed,’ Skade said. ‘And then, under the present legislation, they’ll kill him. Irreversible neural death.’

‘You sound as if you approve.’

‘We have to co-operate with the Convention,’ Skade said. ‘They can make life difficult for us in our dealings around Yellowstone. The pig has to be handed back to them one way or another. It would have been very convenient for us if he had died in our custody, believe me. Unfortunately, this way he has a small chance of survival.’

‘What kind of crimes are we talking about?’ Felka asked.

‘War crimes,’ Skade said breezily.

‘That doesn’t tell me anything. How can he be a war criminal if he isn’t affiliated to a recognised faction?’

‘It’s very simple,’ Skade said. ‘Under the terms of the Convention virtually any extralegal act committed in the war zone becomes a war crime, by definition. And there’s no shortage in Scorpio’s case. Murder. Assassination. Terrorism. Blackmail. Theft. Extortion. Eco-sabotage. Trafficking in unlicensed alpha-level intelligences. Frankly, he’s been involved in every criminal activity you can think of from Chasm City to the Rust Belt. If it were peacetime, they’d be serious enough. But in a time of war, most of those crimes carry a mandatory penalty of irreversible death. He’d have earned it several times over even if the nature of the murders themselves wasn’t taken into consideration.’