Bettlescroy permitted himself a sigh, through a tight, jerky smile. “Well, that would appear to be our motto at the moment, wouldn’t it? We seem to have no idea about anything.”
The Fleet Coordination Officer cleared his throat and said, “MDV nearest the projected engagement start- point reports incoming weapon blink and battle light, sir. Debris spectra so far indicating ours alone.”
Bettlescroy nodded silently. He turned to the Disk Fabricaria Control section of the bridge. The lead officer sat at attention. “Tell every second fabricaria to release its ship, immediately; random choice,” Bettlescroy told him. “One half of the remainder to let their ship go within the next quarter-hour to four hours, again randomly, and randomly in time as well, within those parameters. One half of the rest to release theirs between four and eight hours, and so on until it doesn’t matter any more. Do you under-stand?”
“Sir, most of them—”
“Will be unprepared and may not even function at all. I know. Nevertheless. Even if they have to be physically ejected by their particular fabricary, do what I have said. Have as many as possible of the most functional equipped with donated AM from the war fleet. Spare nothing; our ships can operate on fusion for a while. Not us, though; not this ship.”
“Sir.”
Bettlescroy turned to the bridge comms section and smiled coldly at the chief communications officer. “Get me Veppers. If not Veppers, get me Jasken. I know they’re missing, but just find them. Do whatever it takes.”
The comms connection was cut and the image of the silkily beautiful Legislator-Admiral Bettlescroy-Bisspe- Blispin III of the GFCF remained frozen before them.
Demeisen turned to Lededje. “What do you think?”
“He’s not my species,” she protested. “How should I know?”
“Yeah, but you must have a
Lededje shrugged. “Lying through his perfect teeth.”
Demeisen nodded. “Same here.”
She got fed up trying to finish her meal on the ground, surrounded by fawning, keening worshippers. She sighed, roared at them. A few backed off a little; most stayed where they were. Then, tearing off a haunch, she lifted wearily into the foul-smelling air, carrying the piece of leg as something to gnaw on somewhere else more private. Each wing-beat hurt, her great dark wings seeming to creak.
It was mid-afternoon by the raw chronologies of Hell, and something like fresh light shone from grey overcast that for once looked tentative rather than dark and heavy. It was as close to direct sunlight as the place ever got, and the air, though still smelling of sewage and burned flesh, was relatively clear.
The crowd of worshippers was a wide, messy torus, now filling slowly in as the people came forward to gaze on the remains of the one she had killed, possibly looking for clues regarding what might have attracted her to that lucky individual in the first place.
She had long since given up trying to tell them it was pointless.
She chose her victims, her blessed, at random. She flew high until she felt physically hungry sometimes, then just dropped, spread her wings over the first person she found. Other times she went to some particular place she’d seen before and noted, and alighted there, waiting for the first one to come to her. She varied where she went and which time of day she chose to make her kills. There was no particular pattern to it; it just happened. Not entirely at random, but not predictable so that one of these benighted wretches could arrange to collate information on where she struck and contrive to be in the right place at the right time.
Still, people had indeed made a religion of her and her daily killings. As the king of the demons had envisaged and desired, she had brought a little hope back into Hell.
She thought about stopping, sometimes, but never did, not for more than a day. She had decided at the start that she would release one of these unfortunates from their pains each day, and the few times she had tried to experiment by not killing once per day had left her racked with cramps; gut pains that left her nauseous and barely able to fly. That had only happened three times.
She still only got to release one soul on the following day; the earlier day’s unused kill didn’t seem to carry over. Any extra she killed were, as ever, resurrected, often almost instantaneously, coming shrieking back to life in their impossibly torn-open bodies, miraculously repairing and reforming themselves before her eyes, while their eyes filled with looks of uncomprehending betrayal.
The ones she truly killed departed with a look of gratitude she had come to treasure. The expressions on the faces of those who gathered round to watch were of simple envy, a sort of beatific hunger laced with outright jealousy. Sometimes she’d deliberately choose people because they were on their own or only with a few other people, just so she escaped the weight of those death-desiring gazes.
You could not reason with people in the grip of such a faith. She had tried, but failed. The truth was that she could offer them release; she was an angel who, here, really did exist, and really could offer these people what they most desired. It was not even really faith; it was perfectly reasonable belief.
She climbed into the high, clear air, chewing on the still-warm haunch of the one she’d released only minutes earlier. The crowd gathering round the body was too small to see now, lost in the scabbed landscapes beneath the drifting clouds of smoke.
Way off in the distance, something shimmered in a way that she was not sure she had seen here, ever before. Something seemed almost to shine, way over there, towards a line of small mountains, tall cliffs and acid lakes. Not with flame; with what could almost be watery sunlight, if that wasn’t an absurd idea, here in Hell, where there contrived to be light without sun. It looked like a column, like a broad, silvery pillar, half invisible, between land and cloud.
She took one last gulping bite, then dropped the haunch-bone and struck off for the distant anomaly.
The column only grew more mysterious the closer she got. It was like a strange irregular curtain of silver draped over the land; a few kilometres across, maybe one deep; a sort of semi-regular shape of what looked like a pure mirror. It had no light of its own, but seemed to reflect all light that touched it. Flying close, she saw her own dark, elongated shape flickering liquidly across its surface.
She went up through the clouds to see that the pillar extended all the way to the iron sky, tens of kilometres above. The effort made it feel like her muscles were on fire.
She dropped back through the cloud, landed. Her feet, her legs, all hurt, protesting, as they took her weight. They always did. Her legs hurt when she was on the ground, her wings ached when she was flying, and her whole body grumbled distantly when she hung upside down to rest. She just tried not to think about it.
There were some chopped-up bodies lying right beside the shimmering curtain of silver, where it met the ground. It looked as though they had been cut with a very sharp blade.
She picked up a sliced-off leg lying on the ground, threw it at the silvery barrier. It bounced off, as though it had hit solid metal. She picked the leg back up, prodded the barrier. Felt solid. She touched it with one talon. Very solid; iron solid. To the touch, it was a little cold. Again, as cold as iron or steel would have felt.
One cowering creature nearby squealed as she dragged it from the poison bush it had been trying to hide within. Its pelt was already starting to blister. The little male was emaciated; missing one trunk, one eye, his face badly scarred by tooth marks.
“Did you see this happen?” she demanded, shaking him towards the silent mirror-barrier.
“It just happened!” he wailed. “All of a sudden! Without warning! Please, ma’am; are you the one who releases us?”
“Yes. Has anything like this happened here before?” she said, still not letting him go. She knew this area a little. She tried to recall its details. Cliffs; mountains. A munitions factory set into the cliffs… over there. She could see the road that had served it, lined with petrified, very quietly shrieking statues.
“No! Never seen anything like it! Nobody here has! Please, sacred lady; take me; release me; kill me, please!”
She looked round. There were a few others, she could see now, all cowering behind whatever cover they could find.
She let the male go. “I can’t help you,” she told him. “I’ve already killed today.”
“Tomorrow, then! I’ll wait here tomorrow!” He fell kneeling at her feet, supplicating.
“I don’t make fucking
