Neutronium Alchemist - Conflict

Twelve-T’s neural nanonics began to crash. Blocks clipped to his belt chased them into electronic oblivion. The last datavise he received was from his maser carbine, telling him the power cells were dropping out. He tried to grasp the ten-millimetre machine gun velcroed to his hip, only to find his arm shuddering; the pistonlike actuators he’d replaced the forearm muscles with were seizing up.

A missile composed of tightly whorled shadow swelled up out of the centre of the flowering blackness. Too fast for the eye to follow in real-time—certainly as far as Twelve-T’s faltering retinal implants were concerned—it shot across the chamber and bounced.

The first scream clogged the chamber’s air. One of the soldiers was crumpling up, his body imploding in a series of rapid strikes. He seemed to be dimming, as if he were caught at the middle of a murky nebula. Then his head caved in, and it was blood not the sounds of agony that went spraying across the chamber.

A second soldier convulsed, as if she were trying to jam her head down towards her buttocks. She managed a single bewildered grunt before her spine snapped.

The third victim darkened, his clothes starting to smoulder. Both of his titanium hands turned cherry-red, glowing brightly. When he opened his mouth to scream a column of pink steam puffed out.

Twelve-T had it worked out by then. There was always a translucent cloud around the soldiers as they were slaughtered, a grey shadow that flickered at subliminal speed. His disabled arm levered the machine gun off the velcro, and he turned desperately towards the source of the latest screams. His soldiers were losing it, flinging themselves at the exit hatch, wrestling with each other in their struggle to escape.

The light panels were turning a dark tangerine and begi

He’d never liked Nyvan. But what the fuck, it was his home planet. Now the possessed were going to violate it, subdue every living body. And he was the total fucking asshole who’d let them in.

Another of his soldiers was being chopped apart, haloed in quivering dusk. Pure fury powered Twelve-T’s malfunctioning body into a final act of obedience. He swung the machine gun around on the macerated soldier and squeezed back on the trigger. It was only a short burst. A blue flame spat out of the muzzle to the accompaniment of a thunderous roar. Without a neural nanonics operational procedure program to help him, the recoil was far more powerful than he expected. His shoes were ripped free of the stikpad, and he was somersaulting backwards through the air, hollering in surprise.

The universe paused.

“Shatter!” a furious voice bellowed.

The machine gun obeyed, its cool silicolithium fragmenting like a shrapnel grenade. Needle slivers sliced deep into Twelve-T’s flesh, some ricochetting off the metal casings of his replacement parts. He was flailing wildly now, trailing fantails of blood from his shredded hand.

“Hold him,” someone instructed curtly.

Qui

“Thank you, my Lord,” he whispered, humbled. Planets would truly bow before him now; just as Lawrence had prophesied.

Most of the blood had impacted on a surface, splattering wide into big smears and sticking tenaciously. Grotesque corpses drifted peacefully in the warm air streams. The remnants of the gang were in a sorry state. With four possessed in the airlock chamber and pulsing with malevolent power, their artificial body parts had either frozen or were ru

Qui

Twelve-T was sweating heavily. One of the soldiers whose arms were mostly the original organic was bandaging the gang lord’s ruined hands with strips torn from his own T-shirt.

“I admire your strength,” Qui

“Ain’t no God, can’t have no fucking—” Pain gripped his left arm, forcing him to cry out. His skin hissed as it rose in huge blisters.

“You wanted to irritate me,” Qui

Twelve-T glowered helplessly. He wasn’t used to so much pain, none of them were. Neural nanonics always protected them. That meant it was going to get bad, he realized, real bad. Unless . . .

“And I won’t allow you to suicide,” Qui

The strips of cloth bandaging Twelve-T’s hands hardened into shiny nylon. Their ends flexed up like blind snakes, then slowly knotted together.

“You’re so close to me, Twelve-T,” Qui

“You’ll make a mistake, asshole. And I’ll be around waiting for it.”

“I don’t make mistakes. I am the chosen one.”

“Holy fuck.”

“Follow me, Twelve-T. Submit to your true self and know the glory of His word. Betray your people for greed and profit. That way you will never know defeat again. My disciples fuck who they want when they want. They see their enemies burn in torment. Enjoy rewards you have never dared take before. Help me, Twelve-T. Tell me where the asteroid cops are. Shunt your gang’s money into my credit disk. Show me where the spaceplanes are that can take my disciples down to the surface. Do it, Twelve-T.”

“You won’t get down to the planet,” Twelve-T grunted. “People are too frightened of the possessed landing. There’s all kinds of weird checks going on down there. You might have beaten my troops, big deal; but you dead freaks ain’t going to turn my planet into holiday hellpark.”

“You understand nothing,” Qui

“Oh, sweet shit,” Twelve-T whimpered. Qui

“I want two things from this planet,” Qui

A small jaw muscle twitched on Twelve-T’s face.

“Good,” said Qui

Making sure every word was perfectly clear, Twelve-T said: “Go fuck yourself.” He braced himself for the retribution.