Redemption Ark

He lunged for Remontoire, springing out of the bowl in an explosion of gel. Pipes and tubing went flying. In an instant his ill-made hands were seeking the pressure points that would drop anyone, even a Conjoiner, into unconsciousness and then death.

Scorpio came around. He was in another part of the ship, strapped into a seat. Remontoire was sitting opposite him, hands folded neatly in his lap. Behind him was the impressive curve of a control panel, its surface covered with numerous read-outs, command systems and hemispherical navigation displays. It was lit up like a casino. Scorpio knew a thing or two about ship design. A Conjoiner control interface would have been minimalist to the point of invisibility, like something designed by New Quakers.

‘I wouldn’t try that again,’ Remontoire said.

Scorpio glared at him. ‘Try what?’

‘You had a go at strangling me. It didn’t work, and I’m afraid it never will. We put an implant in your skull, Scorpio — a very small one, around your carotid artery. Its only function is to constrict the artery in response to a signal from another implant in my head. I can send that signal voluntarily if you threaten me, but I don’t have to. The implant will emit a distress code if I suffer sudden unconsciousness or death. You will die shortly afterwards.’

‘I’m not dead now.’

‘That’s because I was nice enough to let you off with a warning.’

Scorpio was clothed and dry. He felt better than when he had come around in the egg. ‘Why should I care, Remontoire? Haven’t you just given me the perfect means to kill myself, instead of letting the Convention do it for me?’

‘I’m not taking you to the Convention.’

‘A little private justice, is that it?’

‘Not that either.’ Remontoire swung his seat around so that he faced the lavish control panel. He played it like a pianist, hands outstretched, not needing to watch where his fingers were going. Above the panel and on either side of the cabin, windows puckered into what had been blue steel. The cabin illumination dropped softly. Scorpio heard the roar of the thrust change pitch and felt his stomach register a change in the axis of gravity. A vast ochre crescent hoved into view beyond. It was Yellowstone: most of the planet was in night. Remontoire’s ship was nearly in the same plane as the Rust Belt. The string of habitats was hardly visible against dayside ~ just a dark sprinkling, like a fine line of cinnamon — but beyond the terminator they formed a jewelled thread, spangling and twinkling as habitats precessed or trimmed their immense mirrors and floodlights. It was impressive, but Scorpio knew that it was only a shadow of what it had been. There had been ten thousand habitats before the plague; now only a few hundred were fully utilised. But against night the derelicts vanished, leaving only the fairy-dust trail of illuminated cities, and it was almost as if the wheel of history had never turned.

Beyond the Belt, Yellowstone looked hurtingly close. He could almost hear the urban hum of Chasm City droning up through the clouds like a seductive siren song. He thought of the warrens and strongholds that the pigs and their allies maintained in the deepest parts of the city’s Mulch, a festering outlaw empire composed of many interlocked criminal fiefdoms. After his escape from Quail, Scorpio had entered that empire at the very lowest level, a scarred immigrant with barely a single intact memory in his head, other than how to stay alive from hour to hour in a dangerous foreign environment, and — equally importantly — how to turn the apparatus of that environment to his advantage. That at least was something he owed Quail, if nothing else. But it did not mean that he was grateful.

Scorpio remembered very little of his life before meeting Quail. He was aware that much of what he did recall was second-hand memory, for although he had pieced together only the major details of his former existence — his life aboard the yacht — his subconscious had wasted no time in filling in the aching gaps that remained with all the enthusiasm of gas rushing into a vacuum. And as he remembered those memories, not quite real in themselves, he could not help but impress even more sensory details upon them. The memories might accord precisely with what had really happened, but Scorpio had no way of knowing for sure. And yet it made no difference as far as he was concerned. No one else was going to contradict him now. Those who might have been able to do so were dead, butchered at the hands of Quail and his friends.