Chapters (56)
- PROLOGUE
- PART 1
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- PART 2
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- PART 3
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- PART 4
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- PART 5
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- THIRTY-NINE
- FORTY
- FORTY-ONE
- FORTY-TWO
- FORTY-THREE
- FORTY-FOUR
- FORTY-FIVE
- FORTY-SIX
- FORTY-SEVEN
- FORTY-EIGHT
- FORTY-NINE
- EPILOGUE
It was a clumsy fight, both of us hampered by the weapons we held. I lunged with the butt of the Szeged, he blocked and tried to level his own blaster. I smashed it aside and kicked at a knee. He turned the blow with a shin-kick of his own. I got the Szeged butt under his chin and rammed upward. He dropped his weapon and punched me hard simultaneously in the side of the throat and the groin. I reeled back, hung on somehow to the Szeged and suddenly had the distance to use it. Proximity sense screamed a warning at me through the pain. The commando ripped out a sidearm and pointed it. I flinched aside, ignoring the pain and the proximity warning in my head, levelled the blaster.
Sharp splatter from the gun in the commando’s hand. The cold wrap of a stunblast.
My hand spasmed open and the Szeged clattered away somewhere.
I staggered backwards and the floor vanished under my feet.
—fucking Martian builders—
I dropped out of the eyrie like a bomb, and fell wingless away from the rapidly contracting iris of my own consciousness.
EIGHTEEN
Don’t open your eyes, don’t open your left hand, don’t move at all.”
It was like a mantra, like an incantation, and someone seemed to have been singing it to me for hours. I wasn’t sure if I could have disobeyed it anyway—my left arm was an icy branch of numbness from fist to shoulder and my eyes seemed gummed shut. My shoulder felt wrenched, maybe dislocated. Elsewhere, my body throbbed with the more general ache of a stunblast hangover. I was cold everywhere.
“Don’t open your eyes, don’t open your left hand, don’t—”
“I heard you the first time, Dig.” My throat felt clogged. I coughed and an alarming dizziness swung through me. “Where am I?”
A brief hesitation. “Professor Serendipity, perhaps that information would be better dealt with later. Don’t open your left hand.”
“Yeah, got it. Left hand, don’t open it. Is it fucked?”
“No,” said the construct reluctantly. “Apparently not. But it is the only thing holding you up.”
Shock, like a stake in the chest. Then the rolling wave of false calm as the conditioning kicked in. Envoys are supposed to be good at this sort of thing—waking up in unexpected places is part of the brief. You don’t panic, you just gather data and deal with the situation. I swallowed hard.
“I see.”
“You can open your eyes now.”