Durham Red: The Unquiet Grave Read online

  Godolkin checked around him, making sure one final time that he was alone on the tower roof. Then he activated the linker and set the channel to the crypt-key used by the mutant, Judas Harrow.

  "Hear me and take heed, Harrow," he began. "I am at the Church of the Arch, on Lavannos, Shantima system. You must do what I cannot—find your sainted bitch, Durham Red, and bring her here. There is something on Lavannos that she must see."

  He paused, gazing out over Eye of God. The thin winds of Lavannos were whipping the frost into glittering dust devils along its eastern edge. "I am enclosing a sense-scan of an artefact, found buried under the monastery of Saint Lavann. She will recognise its significance, as will you. Get this message to her, Harrow. At all costs."

  He closed the transmission, and let out a long breath, watching it steam away through the mask. It was done. Suddenly, he was immensely tired.

  Nightmares or not, he needed sleep. It had been days since he had last rested. He turned away from the Eye of God and started walking back to the tower.

  When he was halfway across the roof, the trapdoor opened up from the inside. Godolkin halted, something inside him ringing a warning.

  He hadn't heard any footsteps.

  The trapdoor was a heat-lock, set level with the tower floor, the inner door at the bottom of the top flight of stairs. It could be motorised, opened from elsewhere.

  He whirled, lightening quick, and dived for cover. He was almost quick enough, but the gravity on Lavannos was light. He was still in the air when he should have been on the ground, and the shot—fired from the chapel roof—took him in the left shoulder.

  It spun him around, slamming him into the tower wall. He fell away and rolled onto his back, hands scraping at the stone. He couldn't get up.

  For a moment, all he could see was the huge, roiling ball of Mandus above him, filling the whole sky. Then it was blocked out. Godolkin squinted up through a haze of pain, into the insect eyes of a breath mask.

  Before the other three shots slapped into his chest.

  3

  Into The Fire

  There was a digital display on part of Crimson Hunter's control board, a clock showing Galactic Standard time and date. Durham Red couldn't stop looking at it.

  Eight months. She'd been out of the loop for almost eight months.

  She was hunched in the navigation throne, wrapped up in as many environment blankets as Harrow had been able to find in the ship's supply locker. There was no way she could sit upright. Even trying to do so sent barbs of pain slicing up between her shoulder blades. The spinal socket was gone, removed the day before by Harrow's trauma spider: the wound it left, however, was still in the process of healing.

  Red didn't feel as though anything were healing. Everything hurt. She'd been through enough bad times in the past, but she honestly couldn't remember feeling anywhere near as rotten as this. To say she was weak didn't even come close to describing the situation—there were times when she couldn't lift an arm. Her spine was a column of raw ache at her core, and waves of searing inner heat and shuddering cold were washing up her body, from her feet to the top of her pounding, heavy head; alternating roughly, by the display on the clock, once every four minutes.

  Hot or cold, she couldn't stop shivering. And every time she saw the clock display again, the date on it jolted her like a kick in the ribs.

  Eight months…

  She felt as though she could no longer hold onto time. It kept slipping away from her, dancing out of her grip just as she thought she had a handle on things. Time, she decided, was getting its revenge, making her suffer for trying to throw it away, all those centuries ago.

  All she'd wanted to do was drop a couple of years, let the world go by without her for a while. And look where she'd ended up.

  The rear hatch, at the back of Hunter's egg-shaped command cabin, slid open. Red turned, wincing as the motion set her head swimming. Judas Harrow was clambering in from the yacht's spinal corridor.

  He still looked fairly wobbly on his feet, and there was a large bio-dressing on the left side of his neck. Red hadn't been gentle when she'd fed from him. From what he'd been able to tell her, it was even betting which of them had needed the medicom more after that little encounter.

  Lucky for him, she'd come to her senses before she'd drained him dry. Lucky for them both, in fact.

  Harrow sat down next to her, in the command throne. "How are you feeling, holy one?" he asked softly. "Any better?"

  "Well, I haven't thrown up for at least twenty minutes, so that's a bonus." As she spoke, a tide of rubbery heat washed up from her toes and she groaned. "Sneck, Jude. What did those bastards do to me?"

  Harrow looked at her warily. "I'll tell you when you're feeling stronger."

  "Oh yeah." He'd tried to tell her before, the first time she'd asked. He was less than a minute into his explanation before Red had been sick over him.

  He gave her a wan smile. "What do you remember?"

  Nothing. She remembered nothing. The last eight months were gone in a haze of distant agony and constant, suffocating need. Before that…

  "Gomorrah," she said finally, her voice little more than a whisper. "We went to Gomorrah."

  Gomorrah was a pleasure-moon. Red had found a reference to it in the ship's data banks, under "Proscribed Territories". It was the first, and indeed the only part of the planetary database she'd looked at. "To you Jude, this is 'Here Be Dragons.' To me, it's a holiday brochure."

  They had a different ship, back then. It was a larger vessel, the one they had stolen from Pyre, just before the planet had been sterilised by Iconoclast kill-fleets. Even though it was a small ship compared to most, for a crew of three it was cavernous. Wandering around it for days on end, while Godolkin made random superlight jumps, had been starting to drive her insane.

  There had been excursions; planetfalls on the way to pick up supplies, and for Red to try and find a little fresh blood, willing or otherwise. None had ended well. After a while, they had just stopped trying.

  Stars raced past, seemingly without end. Days, too. Durham Red felt the metal walls of the ship closing in on her, nearer with every hour. Suddenly, it wasn't big enough. She took to wandering through its holds and cabins, skulking about the darkest corridors, even putting on a vacuum-shroud and prowling the outside of the hull. Anything to avoid Harrow's doe-eyed devotion and Godolkin's baleful obedience.

  And then she'd discovered Gomorrah.

  Most of the worlds classed as proscribed were listed because they were dangerous; home to vicious beasts, lethal diseases and terrible natural phenomena. Gomorrah, on the other hand, was a danger to the soul. The debauches practised on the world, it was said, would drive even the most pious traveller mad with desire.

  To Red, that was the best sales pitch she'd heard in a long time.

  Harrow, of course, had tried to persuade her not to go. "It's a lawless place, holy one. All they care about is pleasure, at any price."

  "Cool." Red had already set a course by this point. "Can we go any faster?"

  The two of them had been alone on the bridge. Godolkin was at devotions in his cabin, poring over his books of scripture. Red was lounging in the command throne, shades on, high-heeled boots resting on the navigation cascade. She was picking her teeth with a combat knife, largely to freak Harrow out. By the look on his face, it was working.

  "Red, please listen. Gomorrah might sound like fun, but it's far more dangerous than that. You still have a price on your head, you know."

  Red found something with the knife, a tiny fragment of tissue or dried blood. She held the blade up to the light to inspect it. "You worry about your head, boy, and I'll worry about mine."

  "That's the point. I do worry."

  The knife whickered out of her hand and embedded itself in the headrest of Harrow's chair. "Dammit Judas, you are such a snecking drag!" She glared at him from behind the shades. "Just lighten up, willya? You're beginning to sound like Godolkin."

  "
But we shouldn't-"

  "Ah!" she snapped warningly, aiming a finger at him.

  "But—"

  "Ah!"

  He dropped it. If only Godolkin had been so easy to sway.

  Gomorrah was a revelation. It lay on the fringes of the Pan-Species Accord, and seemed totally untouched by the baleful puritanism that pervaded Accord life. In fact, the place was the complete opposite of anything Red had seen so far.

  It was a small world, about the size of Vadis, tumbling around a giant planet that seemed to consist entirely of ocean. But where that little backwater had been almost lifeless, Gomorrah seethed and pulsed.

  The pleasure-moon was belted by a single, titanic city, a thousand kilometres wide and so long that it stretched clear around Gomorrah and met itself again on the far side. Great towers thrust up from the centre of every city-block, livid with brilliant neon, holograms and whirling, sweeping searchlights. Around the towers, streets spread out in concentric rings, the buildings that crowded them offering every kind of pleasure imaginable. The sky was constantly dark, laden with sweet-smelling mist, and there was music everywhere—not the ever-present monastic chiming of the Accord worlds, but a grinding, driving sound that made Red's bones leap and thrill with the life of it. The entire planet had a beat.

  Once she was off the ship, she had wanted to race away, fling herself into the nearest party and never leave. Godolkin, however, had other ideas. Unlike Harrow, he never tried to persuade her to leave. He simply insisted on accompanying her everywhere, vetoing any tavern or sense-palace she tried to head for.

  They were in disguise, the three of them, with false papers and simulated brand-scars. But even with his Iconoclast tattoos hidden and his amplifier-eye covered by a data monocle, Godolkin still had an air to him that discouraged casual conversation, to say the least. More than one playful soul had started to approach Durham Red, met Godolkin's implacable gaze and suddenly found other pleasures to attend.

  After a couple of hours of this, Red had lost the small amount of patience she possessed; it had never been one of her greatest virtues. "Sneck off and leave me alone, you one-eyed lunatic!"

  They had reached a major intersection, a vast pedestrian walkway between a multi-level twenty-six hour dance-orgy and a vaulted, heaving structure that advertised itself as the Seraglio of Sybarism. SeraSym, to the more inebriated visitor. The walkway was crowded, jammed wall to wall with thousands of pleasure-seekers. At Red's outburst, however, the three travellers suddenly found themselves with quite a lot of personal space.

  Godolkin folded his arms. "Blasphemy, you told me to protect you with my life. That I shall do, even if the protection you require is from your own baser desires."

  Red threw her hands up. "Jesus, Godolkin! Right now my baser desires are the only things keeping me upright! Six weeks I've had you cramping my style, whining in my ear: 'Can't go there, it's not safe. Can't drink that, wouldn't be good for you. Can't touch him, dunno where he's been!'" She stalked a few metres up the street, then whirled back to face him. "Sneck!" she snarled. "I want to have fun! I want to forget all this, don't you get it? Why the hell can't you just let me go?"

  The warrior shook his great head. "You know nothing of this universe."

  "I know enough!"

  "Blasphemy—"

  Suddenly, Red was nose to nose with Godolkin, her face a mask of murderous rage. "You call me that one more time, you snecker, and I'll—"

  "What?" Godolkin met her gaze. Contrary to Red's earlier insult both his eyes were perfectly good, but the one that had been modified showed a weird, milky white. "What will you do? Kill me, and finally give me the peace I seek? You would be releasing me from a torment, Blasphemy."

  Everything was abruptly still, the moment crystallising around them. Red could still hear the music, the moans—could feel the beat coming up through the soles of her boots—but inside her was a strange, thrumming stillness, like a tuning fork set too high to hear.

  She was hugely, terribly angry, but there was something else in her too, creeping up cold around her heart. For that one single moment, everything was in balance, a perfect emotional fulcrum.

  Her next words were very quiet. "Don't think I couldn't take you down, Godolkin."

  He nodded. "Maybe you could. The question is, do you want to?"

  That was it. The choice was made, the balance broken. In an instant the anger was gone, swamped and replaced by that still, empty silence.

  "No," she whispered. "No, I don't want that. What I want is for you to leave."

  She could see, out of the corner of her eye, Harrow gawping at her. Godolkin frowned slightly.

  Red had to speak, before he did. She couldn't let him change her mind, not now. "Matteus Godolkin, I'm giving you an order, and you know you've got to obey me without question. Leave Gomorrah and don't come back. Don't try to find me. Don't try to protect me any more."

  She took a step back and closed her eyes. The scent-laden air of Gomorrah must have been irritating them, for they were suddenly itchy and wet. "Go on, Godolkin. I don't ever want to see you again."

  When she opened her eyes, he was already away, striding off into the crowds. In a few seconds he was gone from sight.

  Red let out a long, shivering breath. She felt as though something massive that had been leaning over her for weeks, teetering on the brink of crushing her flat, was finally being reeled back. Just one more thing to do, and she would be free.

  To do what? She wasn't sure yet, but it would be fun finding out.

  One more thing to do.

  Judas Harrow was just getting his wits back. "Holy one, you can't mean that!" he cried, pointing to the place where Godolkin had disappeared. "We need him!"

  She shook her head. "No, he has to go. And so do you."

  The words hit him like a bullet. She saw him jerk back, as if they had a physical effect. "What?!"

  "You have to go too." She spread her hands. "I'm sorry, Jude."

  "I don't understand—"

  "I know." She drew close, and put a hand lightly on his shoulder. "But he was wrong. I've learned enough now. I have to go my own way. Just like you."

  With that she was off, her back to him, walking away into the night. After a few steps, something made her pause. She looked back over her shoulder, saw him standing there, and gave him a sad, tender smile.

  "Hey, Jude? It was fun, okay? Maybe I'll call you sometime."

  And that was that.

  * * * *

  There were four staterooms on the Crimson Hunter, two on either side of the spinal corridor. Red staggered into the nearest, collapsed onto the circular gel-bed and slept for two days.

  When she awoke she was hungry. Harrow must have known she would be. He was there for her, within easy reach. She took just a little of his blood this time from the wrist; his neck still wasn't completely healed.

  She lay for a long time, once he had gone, with the room's lights set very low and the gel-bed soft and warmly pulsing against her back. She had tried so hard to remember what had happened next on Gomorrah, but there was simply no memory left. There were a few, random images—heat, riding some kind of vehicle, the sweet-salt taste of blood under her tongue—but nothing coherent. Nothing strong enough to build up a picture of what had happened to her.

  Harrow might have known more, but she didn't feel strong enough to ask him yet.

  The sleep had done her good, that much was certain. The horrid shivering had abated, leaving her mildly feverish, and her back didn't hurt quite as much. The point between her shoulder blades was still tender, though. Red wondered if Harrow's trauma spider was as gentle as it could have been while wrenching the socket out of her spine.

  Her stomach flipped at the thought. She closed her eyes and thought about soft sand and warm beaches until the feeling went away.

  That, she told herself after a while, is a talent you've been using far too much of late. When the pain comes along, think about something else…

  And suddenly it s
truck her, a rolling wave of loss, loneliness and despair, tearing out from that cold, still place in her heart where the warmth used to be. It swept though her, making her cry out, struggling to get upright. "Lights," she gasped. "Lights! Get the snecking lights on!"

  The room brightened, just as Harrow burst in. "What? What's wrong?"

  "Nothing…" Red slumped forwards, sitting on the edge of the bed, scraping her hands back through her hair. "No, sneck, not nothing. I'm sorry, Judas. I don't know."

  He sighed and knelt down next to her. "You're still so weak. I know you're used to healing quickly, holy one, but this is different. You need time."

  "No," she snapped, shaking her head. "Time is the last thing I need." She giggled, suddenly, the sound was strange and eerie. "Like booze, y'know? 'I'm sorry, madam, I think you've had enough!' Oh, sneck, what have I done?" Her hands were still shaking. They fluttered around her face like moths. She couldn't keep them still.

  Harrow stood up and took her hands in his own, stopping their motion. "I'll get you to the medicom."

  "The bridge" she muttered, letting him heave her upright. "Just get me to the bridge. I need to be in the light."

  * * * *

  Jumpspace, Durham Red had decided, looked like Hades torn open.

  There were viewports on the bridge, curved, triple-walled slabs of synthetic diamond fused into the hull plating, thicker than Red was tall. The diamond had been tweaked somehow, the molecules altered to make the slabs' refractive index pretty much that of air. Red rested her elbows on a frame and stared out through a window that looked no more substantial than a candy wrapper.

  She gazed out at an infinite tunnel made of fire and lightning, and barely saw it at all.

  She had thought she'd known what it was to be tired, to be burnt out. That, after all, was the reason she'd put herself into cryosleep.

  God. She'd had no snecking clue.

  The command cabin door slid open behind her, and in the faint reflection from the viewport she saw Judas Harrow climbing in through the low, narrow door. He was holding a cup of something. "I went to the medicom," he explained, joining her at the port. "It said your electrolytes were so out of balance they were technically off the scale, and prescribed this."