Nova War

His body was impossibly, horribly thin and scarred, his flesh like the surface of some cratered moon, criss-crossed with scar tissue and ridges of pale flesh. He looked like a medical autopsy gone horribly wrong and subsequently reanimated. A small, shrivelled penis hung between two scarred and spindly thighs, and his smile revealed sharpened yellow teeth. He wore a skullcap of soft dark cloth that didn't hide the fact his head had been recently shaved. She noticed the edges of what looked like surgical scars poking out from beneath that, too.

He stepped closer, reaching out to draw the spidery, calloused fingers of one hand over the thickening stubble of her scalp, then drawing it almost tenderly down across her cheek.

'These are your scars, not mine,' Moss said, stepping even closer. 'I like to think of each one as a reminder of a past encounter, a lesson learned. I value my scars, Dakota Merrick. I value all the memories they represent.'

She twisted away from him. She'd electrocuted him on Bourdain's Rock, and cut his throat ear-to-ear in Ascension; yet here he was again, like some unkillable thing out of her nightmares, his eyes glinting like diamonds frozen in those deep sockets.

There was still a long pale scar beneath his chin, a memento of their encounter in Severn's mog bar, when he'd set out to destroy her on Bourdain's orders.

Dakota tried to kick out at him, but the restraints held her firm.

She craned her neck as he suddenly stepped away, stooping to retrieve a large, grey-green canister from where it had been sitting on the floor, out of sight. From the way he handled it, she guessed it wasn't a light burden, even in the local gravity.

'I'll take you out that window with me, you son of a bitch!' she screamed, her throat already ragged as fear gave way to rage. 'I killed you twice before, and I'll kill you again!'

'Unlikely, given your present circumstances.' He smiled, thin lips twisting up at one corner. 'The Queen of Immortal Light wants me to ask you some questions. I have other plans of my own, however.'

He placed the canister on one edge of the gurney, only millimetres from Dakota's head. A complicated-looking pressure valve protruded from its upper end. The gurney itself was wide enough that Moss had no trouble pulling himself up onto it a moment later, twisting around until he was straddling her supine form, one knee planted on either side of her waist.

Dakota jerked her body from side to side, screaming abuse at him. She felt a moistness at her wrists and ankles and realized the restraints were cutting deeply into her flesh and drawing blood as she struggled.

Moss leaned over Dakota, and she twisted her head back until she could see daylight beyond the door-opening – anything but look at Moss's horribly scarred flesh.

'You should know,' he hissed, pale thin lips almost touching one ear, 'that I find you and all your kind… revolting. You're so – pale and wormlike. Rest assured I have no sexual interest in you.'

Dakota twisted her head around again, snapping at him with her teeth, but he kept well out of reach. He gri

'This,' he said, patting the top of it, 'contains live maul-worm grubs. A fascinating species, entirely native to Ironbloom.' He turned a small wheel on one side of the valve. There was a faint hiss and, a moment later, the scent of ammonia. The canister rattled violently under Moss's hand for a few moments, and Dakota heard a scraping sound coming from inside it.

As if something within it was trying to get out.

'Maul-worms,' Moss explained, 'are necrogenes. They're born by parthogenesis and enter this world hungry. Their birth kills their parent, and the young survive first by feeding on the rotting flesh of the parent, and finally on each other as they war for territorial dominance. Those that survive find their way into deep cave-systems, where they grow to quite enormous sizes over passing centuries. At this point, however,' he paused to pat the top of the canister, 'they are, of course, much smaller.'

He crouched over her again, his mouth next to her ear. Dakota twisted her head to one side.

'You see, when these things find their way out of the canister, the first thing they'll look for is something to eat. And I fear the only thing round here that looks edible is you.'

'Is this because of what happened in Ascension? You were trying to kill me, Hugh. I was just trying to defend my-'

'On the contrary, I should thank you.'

Dakota twisted around to stare at him, dumbfounded.

'You taught me the danger of hubris,' he continued. 'I had ignored the lessons of our previous encounter on Bourdain's Rock and allowed you to defeat me. It was a lesson I learned well.'

'It won't work,' Dakota croaked. 'Whatever those things in there are, they're an alien physiology. They'd die if they attacked me. You know that.'

'You'd be long dead yourself, by the time your flesh poisoned them,' Hugh replied. 'They're voracious, but stupid. They'd gorge themselves on you until they died.' He pulled himself up, hopping back down to the floor and reaching for his coat and pulling it back on. He left it hanging open at the front.

He then stepped over to the door-opening and looked outside before turning back to her. She craned her neck to follow his movements.

'Did you know the Bandati are fundamentally an artificial species?' he said, his tone suddenly casual. 'They adopted quite a different form some mille

He came back towards her and rested one hand on the edge of her gurney. 'They didn't have wings before that time. And yet, for all the wild experimentation that led to their present form, they have powerful taboos against making any further changes to their morphology. Which is why they've enjoyed remarkable stability for several thousand years – until recently, that is. Now their Hives fight wars amongst themselves, and ancient, destructive patterns are begi

He smiled down at her. 'There's always a pattern to the way intelligent species develop in the galaxy. They spread wildly, almost like a contagion, and very soon they fracture into new species, using technology to differentiate themselves one from another far, far faster than the process of evolution could ever provide. Humanity is very close to that point, perhaps only a few centuries or mille

'I don't understand.'

'You're not quite human any more, Miss Merrick. Did you know that? The clue was right there in front of me: your implants. So primitive, of course, but a clear antecedent to those changes which will take over your species one day, and somehow enough for the Magi ship to mistake you for one of its own. Scans show your implants have been undergoing radical changes ever since you came to this system. And so the question I now have to ask myself is – are you, in fact, still human?'

'I don't know what the hell you're talking about.'

'Your original implants are gone, and there are new, organic structures in your brain that appear to have taken their place.'

'Bullshit.'

Moss leaned in closer again. 'You're a machine-head – despised and mistrusted throughout human space, like all your kind. Your life has been a web of self-deceit and lies. Bad things happen to the people who love you. An entire colonial expedition, all dead. Your one-time lover Marados dead, and Severn too. Oh, I know everything about you, Dakota. You were a fountain of self-loathing and self-deceit during your interrogations, and it's such a shame you'll never remember most of it.'