control. Everything had failed him. Every human agency. The demon had been a damp squib. The Path of Joseph had been betrayed. But his androids were not like the other resources. They would never let him down.
He touched his fingers to the keyboard, and a spark leaped from the terminal into him…
He was dead, but his body kept moving…
XIV
The demon was uncomfortable. To be reduced to such a lowly form after the glorious freedom of the datanets was humiliating, and confining. But the church's hagwitch had driven him to it.
It ran its hands over the terminal, getting the feel of the flesh. It would not do. He smashed the plastic casing of the machine, and reached in, pulling out a fistful of transistors, wires and metal interstices. One by one, it stuck them to its face, latching them into his skin, feeling the machine parts meld with the blood and bone.
There was a battering at the door. Someone was trying to get in.
It tore its tunic and shirt open, and scored deep lines in its chest, then shoved in the innards of the machine. Electrical currents sparked in its brain, and sped through its new, mutating body. Its heart ceased to beat, but an accumulator pumped energy into his copper-laced veins.
There were shots, and the doors jerked open a crack. Fingers appeared in the slit, and the protesting metal shutters were forced apart.
The demon found what it was looking for in Colonel Rintoon's chest.
'Come and get me, popish tart,' it shouted.
XV
Stack got the Ops Centre doors open, and strode in. He realized Chantal was with him. And Captain Finney and Sergeant Quincannon.
He held out his hand, and Chantal took it. They didn't need to say anything.
The thing standing over Rintoon's butchered corpse turned, ropes of blood flying from its face, and raised a dripping, red sabre.
'Lauderdale,' Stack shouted.
'No,' it said. 'He's not in just now, If you'd care to leave a message at the tone, I'm sure he'll kill you later.'
Chantal squeezed past, and stood face to face with the creature. Stack knew this would be a last stand for one of them.
The thing had torn itself apart and stuffed itself full of machine components. Lights winked in the ruptures in its flesh. On its shoulders, above its spindly human arms, were three-elbowed, claw-tipped waldoes, greasy with blood and oil. From its torso sprouted spikes like the one the cruiser had grown in St Werburgh's.
Stack knew what he was looking at.
'This is it,' Chantal said to the demon. 'You can't retreat any further. Your back is against the wall. You have to defend that body until it drops. Then you're lost. There's no way back into the darkness.'
It lashed out at her with a new cyberlimb it had grown out of Lauderdale's coccyx. It was like a six-foot scorpion's tail. She dodged it, and landed three sharp kicks on its chest, toes sinking in between the deadly spikes. The creature was unsteady on its feet. It was changing so fast that it couldn't adapt its centre of gravity.
Stack had his .45 out. Quincannon was slipping the safety off his automatic. The Cav men exchanged looks, and took aim.
'Come on in and get me, coppers,' it screamed.
Stack's first shots went into the thing's back near the tear through which the tail was protruding. Quincannon emptied his clip into its head. The thing swallowed the bullets and incorporated them into its body. The head was lumpy with lead now, the bullets visible under the skin like hard boils. It no longer resembled anything human.
It was laughing.
It reached down with its tail and took the sabre from its frail human hand. The blade whirled, and fastened to the limb.
The tail lashed at Chantal, and sliced across her hip. Her uniform was cut, and she bled.
She kicked again, aiming for the flesh between the metal.
Chantal closed with the creature, and hugged it. Rasping, artificial laughter sounded. A knifelike blade lunged out of Lauderdale's body and scraped past Chantal's cheek.
Stack leaped into the room, and joined the fight. He grabbed the creature's leg, tugging at it, weighing it down. Finney and Quincannon had machine pistols which they didn't use for fear of hitting Chantal or Stack. Finney picked up a wooden map-pointer, and thrust it into the creature's body. Quincannon punched it in the head.
It staggered and fell.
'Freak you,' the thing said. Chantal grabbed its voicebox, and tore it out. The component came free with a sucking noise. A rattling hiss escaped through the new mouth in its neck. Up close, Stack could see plastic-coated wires and maggotlike muscles knitting inside the creature's body. It was out of control.
Quincannon kicked its head with a heavy boot.
Stack climbed along the twisting body, and got a two-handed grip on the tail. It was wired to shock, and he felt an electrical charge for a second before it went dead as he tore it from the body.
Finney swung a heavy chair at its head, and dented the plate over the forehead with a caster.
The chair bounced off the skull and out of Finney's hands. One of the waldoes extended, claws pyramided together in a spear-point, and punched the captain in the belly. The waldo burrowed into her ribcage, ploughed up through her heart, and burst out between her neck and collarbone. The claw opened like a grapple, and the dying woman's eyes clouded. Slowly, Finney brought her hands round, and took hold of the waldo running through her. Stack saw her fingers getting a good grip. Gritting her teeth, Finney pushed herself away from the wall. The claw shook impotently and bit into her shoulder.
The waldo tore free of the creature, pulling a long string of flesh and wire with it. A spray of biofluid exploded from the uneven, stringy hole in its flesh. Finney stiffened, slipped and fell.
Chantal, one hand pressing the head to the floor, held up a glass tube of clear liquid in the other, and muttered something in Latin.
The throatless thing screamed as she poured the contents of the tube into the hole in its forehead.
'The power of Christ…' she gasped.
The creature arched. Chantal rode it, and continued her ritual. As she spoke, she slapped its face, commanding its full attention.
Inside its head, the mechanics flared and burned out. It collapsed.
Chantal stood up.
'It's gone,' she said. 'It'll never have a body again.'
'What now?'
'We pray for the souls of the dead.'
XVI
