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  THE BEAUTY OF OUR WEAPONS

  By

  Jilly Paddock

  THE BEAUTY OF OUR WEAPONS (ZENITH ALPHA 4013, BOOK FOUR)

  A Pro Se Productions Publication

  All rights reserved under U.S. and International copyright law. This book is licensed only for the private use of the purchaser. May not be copied, scanned, digitally reproduced, or printed for re-sale, may not be uploaded on shareware or free sites, or used in any other manner without the express written permission of the author and/or publisher. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.

  Written by Jilly Paddock

  Editing by David Brzeski

  Cover by Antonino Lo Iacono

  Book Design by Antonino Lo Iacono & Marzia Marina

  www.prose-press.com

  THE BEAUTY OF OUR WEAPONS (ZENITH ALPHA 4013, BOOK FOUR)

  Copyright © 2019 Jilly Paddock

  From The Same Author

  To Die A Stranger

  With Amber Tears

  Starchild

  The Beauty of Our Weapons

  All available at Amazon.com

  Chapter One: Her Pseudo-ancient Dreams

  This place was virgin wilderness, the taiga stretching in all directions as far as human eye could see, an endless fir green mantle of forest broken only by the sky blue looking-glass of the nameless lake. I hadn’t really believed that anyone could live out here until I saw the house, an honest-to-goodness log cabin in a tiny clearing between the trees and the water, alone in a thousand square kilometres of emptiness. Now I had explored the dwelling and was party to its secrets, I walked along the margin of the lake, smiling to myself in envious appreciation, glorying in the solitude.

  Jeb certainly knows how to pick himself a home. Not so much an address, more a map reference! I didn’t need to speak aloud to be heard. This is a dream-place, so perfect that I’m still not sure it’s real.

  I am inclined to agree, Anna.

  The words took shape inside my head, the inner voice of an unseen companion. I’d long since stopped thinking of him as simply a computer, this artificial intelligence who shared my skull and had been my faithful symbiont partner for the best part of four years. His manufacture code was Zenith-Alpha 4013 and, being a woman of only limited genius and sadly-stunted imagination, I had duly christened him Zenni. We communicated by means of a link interfacing directly with a small kernel of tissue at the back of my brain—small inconvenience to me, Zenni said, as I used so little of my total cerebral capacity. Talk wasn’t all we could do; our pairing was a complex package of dirty tricks, enhancing my reaction-speed, giving me access to a battery of sensor-systems and letting me wield psionics, a collection of man-made quasi-magical talents, to which I added a few innate surprises of my own.

  It’s so beautiful here! I breathed in deeply, the crisp, unsullied air smelling only of pine-resin and the fresh greenness of growing things. And so very quiet.

  A unique setting for a fine example of naive pioneer architecture, my partner said approvingly. The cabin is antique, but not quite as old as it appears to be, a copy of a pre-Dark homestead built around two centuries ago. The part I find most impressive is the substructure. Did you realise that Jeb has a permanent ground-line to the database at Vancouver Uni, not to mention a blast-protected hook into the Net?

  It doesn’t surprise me. How is our pet tech-wizard progressing with your repairs?

  Almost done.

  Then perhaps I ought to play the dutiful little hausfrau and fetch him down some coffee, to show my gratitude for all his hard work.

  That’s not the coin you usually pay in! Zenni said, with an evil chuckle

  For a tin-can intellect, you sure have an unhealthy interest in our sex life. I scolded. You ought not to eavesdrop. You know that Jeb wouldn’t approve.

  I’m no voyeur, Anna, not intentionally, but even if I go off-line some of your emotion trickles through our link. I don’t mind—it’s good that you’re so happy. After all you’ve been through, you deserve every gram of it.

  I do. I grinned in sudden, mad delight, thinking of all the new dimensions that Jeb had added to my life, with his small but eclectic circle of friends and his quirky, pagan world-view. The past year had flown by, so full of contentment and plain, simple fun. I’d never been in a relationship for this long and I was beginning to hope that Jeb was a keeper. So quit teasing me about it, okay?

  Perhaps, but I’m making no promises. You really are such fun to tease! I felt the sudden blur in the flow of his electron-thoughts as he chose a new course for our conversation. What about last night, eh? I’ve never seen you do anything quite like that.

  I called up the event into conscious thought, as Zenni couldn’t access my stored memories from cold. It had been a one-of-a-kind experience, an expansion of my personal boundaries of a type that the latest crop of media behaviour experts would probably declare a ‘life affirmation nexus’, unusual even when set against the chaotic backdrop of my far-from-humdrum existence. At a tiny music club in downtown Vancouver as an impromptu folk duo he’d dubbed ‘Kith and Kin’, Jeb and I had played an acoustic set. I’d adopted the Lucas family colouring, turning my hair to raven and my eyes to the clear grey of pewter, so everyone had assumed that I must be his sister, a lie we didn’t so much tell as not discourage. We’d had scant practice but we managed well enough, Jeb keeping us in time with his goatskin drum, I fumbling my way through a tune on a tin whistle, and both of us singing, almost in harmony. The somewhat small and admittedly biased audience, which we’d reinforced with some of Jeb’s friends, had sat happily through four songs and then applauded so mightily that we were persuaded to perform a fifth and accept an invitation to return at a future date. It was fun, wasn’t it? They really liked us, the poor deluded things! Do you think I should consider a career move?

  Zenni laughed. If I were you, I wouldn’t give up the day job!

  I left the lakeside and crossed the wild lawn to the cabin, passing by a circle of waist-tall stones. The baby henge was an alien in this landscape, a refugee from another continent. It had been constructed at the same time as the dwelling, each of the menhirs placed with such care that it seemed to have been in situ since prehistoric times. The keystone was slightly taller than her sisters and I paused to stroke her speckled skin, feeling the spiral run of energy flowing like blood under the granite’s surface.

  It’s only a rock. Zenni reminded. It isn’t alive.

  I’m not sure that’s true. If I squinted at the circle just so, I could ‘see’ the pulse of its power as a delicate spiral of silver knotwork, thin and tenuous, reaching out from stone to stone. My aura brushed against the web and, with a tickle of static across my wrist, a spark of visible light danced widdershins around the ring. The first time I’d strayed too close to the henge the sudden electric-blue arc had made me jump and thrown Zenni into battle-alert. This time made three and we’d grown blasé to the weird effect. I made a mental note to show Jeb the trick sometime. With a final pat on its hoary head, I left the keystone to the slow ebb-tide of her pseudo-ancient dreams.

  I climbed the three steps up to the porch and unlatched the door. The interior of the cabin was compact and spartan, a huddle of low, small rooms clustered around a stone-built chimneystack, which opened into an enormous inglenook fireplace in the main living area. The floors were of polished pine and there was little furniture, just a chair or two, a quilt-swathed sofa and a creaky brass bed. Bright tapestry hangings lent warmth to the empty walls and thick rugs were splashed across the floor, vivid, soft stepping-stones over the stained and age-burnished planks. The kitchen lacked running water on tap and I filled the kettle from a pail, setting it on the beautiful but primitive wood-
burning range. After an initial battle to light the beast this morning, it and I had negotiated a friendly truce and now I found it as easy to use as any modern hob. Despite its antiquity, it boiled the water in the time it took me to stuff a trio of baguettes with salad, cheese and prawns, and I reconstituted the coffee, piling everything onto a tray. I had to teleport down into the basement; there was a concealed elevator in the cabin, but it was voice-coded only to Jeb.

  Under thirty feet of solid rock was the substructure of the house, three levels in all of bomb-proof, self-contained burrow. It had been designed and created by a man with the captivating name of Jules Merryweather Jnr—perhaps that alone had been enough to give him an abiding distrust bordering on hatred of Homo sapiens and a paranoid fear of a re-run of the nuclear and biological devastation of the Dark. Here he’d carved out living quarters for four to six souls, wombed in the iron depths of permafrost, complete with a power plant, air-scrubbers, and a water and waste recycling unit, with ample storage space for eatables and other supplies. Sealed inside this bolthole, a small family group could survive for two years without emerging, maybe three if they rationed food or grew it. Jeb had laid some stocks down in the empty lockers, enough for six months, and the substructure could be sealed off within a handful of minutes.

  The topmost level was a vast garage cavern, accessed by a tunnel and airlock from the lake. At present it was occupied by my new spacecraft, a legacy from my father, Lewis Delany. Although his will had been as tight and foolproof as anything human lawyers could construct, it had taken the best part of a year to gain possession of the scoutship and subsequently carry out the necessary refit. Her name was Brimstone and she was no beauty, a sturdy craft planted firmly on a triplet of landing struts, her bulbous main structure suspended beneath curved wings, like an obese brown manta-ray. Her once-glossy chromed skin had been cosmetically discoloured and pitted to give the appearance of an ageing wreck, when in fact she was one of the fastest civilian ships around. Lewis had snapped her up at a naval-surplus auction as a stripped shell and had lavished time and money on her until, mass for mass, she could match if not surpass the performance of most military vessels. Unlike my sleek and pretty Firebird, which I’d sold at a bargain price to a friend of the family, Brimstone had teeth and claws, in the shape of an assortment of painstakingly-concealed illicit weapons. At the heart of the spacecraft was the flight deck, some of which had been remodelled to accommodate my Zenith computer.

  A chain of muffled curses issued from the open hatchway down into the crawl-space and I refrained from announcing my arrival. After a few minutes the smell of coffee must have got through, as a cascade of clanks and thumps heralded the arrival of the worker within. A face appeared in the frame of the hatch, under a mane of unruly dark hair and with a smear of grease on the right cheek, an inverse mirror to the puckered white scar on the left.

  “Sweet Goddess, Anna!” Jeb Lucas hauled himself through the narrow gap, hampered more by his body’s length than its negligible width. Today it was covered by a faded pair of black dungarees with frayed bottoms and threadbare knees, and a distressed burgundy T-shirt with more grease on the shoulder. “You were suckered good and proper, girl! What ten-thumbed imbecile was allowed out of kindergarten to install your Zenith in this ship, if install is the right word? From what I’ve seen down there, cock-up would be a more honest description!”

  “Delany Corp arranged it, using authorised personnel cleared by Earth Intelligence.” I grinned up at him, still fascinated by the change in his face brought about by the recent removal of beard. Nobody would ever call Jeb handsome; his features were angular and striking, with the nose too prominent, the brow overhanging grey eyes set a touch too deep in their sockets and the mouth too wide, with a crooked and easily-summoned grin. He seemed to have shed around a decade in age along with the facial fuzz. “All strictly above board, as per the contract, so as not to invalidate the guarantee, I suppose. What’s wrong with it anyway?”

  “There’s nothing out and out wrong with it.” Jeb wiped a palm along his thigh and helped himself to a mug. “The connections are all hot and the banks work, after a fashion, but it’s a slapdash, amateur job. I’m adding my own refinements, but it could use another three or four hours of work.”

  “You got it. We’re not going anywhere.” We both sat down, perching on the edge of the pilot’s couch and I pushed the tray in his direction. “Cheese or prawn?”

  “Cheese—I don’t eat insects!”

  I pulled his hair for that one, wondering at the intensity of the anger he was trying to hide from me, secure in the knowledge that I wasn’t the cause of it. “Do you want to break for a walk or something before you finish up here? It’s as near as it ever gets to a blazing-hot summer’s day up there.”

  “No.” He shook his head fiercely and attacked the demi-loaf with gusto. “So you’ve explored my new territory. What do you think?”

  “It’s a page out of fairytale. I’m surprised that the previous owner could ever bear to give it up.”

  “People usually don’t stay here long.” Jeb shrugged. “Folk from the nearest township tell dozens of wild tales about the place. They say it’s haunted, it bears an ancient curse, it’s a lair of elemental monsters and the stones of Merryweather’s Dance walk about at midnight on Beltane—all kinds of rubbish like that.”

  “Which is part of the reason you chose it, yes?”

  “Absolutely. There’s no evil here—the vibes are clear and pure—but it is a site of power. And the stones didn’t dance, at least, not while I was watching them.” He reached up to scratch in his beard, remembering the lack of it at the last moment, distracted by his inner turmoil. “At a guess, my modifications will boost Zenni’s speed and performance by something in the region of ten percent.”

  “That much? That would certainly give us the edge in a tight spot.” I toyed with my snack, eating a cluster of prawns and a slice of cowcumber. “What’s bugging you, sweetheart?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Don’t tell me untruths.”

  “Don’t pry inside my skull!”

  “Wasn’t!” I pouted prettily at him and earned myself a slight smile. “How can I help but read your emotions when you fly them like signal flags decking out a battleship? The flags spell out ‘furious’ by the way. What’s the matter?”

  “While I was tinkering around inside Zenni’s guts, I found evidence of some mismatched circuitry. I think someone’s had a viral creche in there.” Jeb scowled, as if that could make the obscure clear to me, then stooped to explain. “To the uninitiated, that’s a nasty little device intended to sneak programme alterations around your Zenith’s security defences. I’ve heard of such things but I’ve never seen one. I suppose I’ve never worked with a unit with an inbuilt antipathy to reprograming before.”

  “Are you saying that Zenni’s programs could have been modified without him knowing?” I frowned.

  “I am not aware of any changes,” my partner confessed, using his synth-voice for Jeb’s benefit.

  “You wouldn’t be. I would imagine that the creche inserted certain codewords into your banks, the use of which will activate routines that you’re blind to until they’re triggered. Whoever knows the right words could, for example, sever the link to your Freeberg-Dane unit, leaving Anna stripped of psionics and supposedly helpless.”

  “Earth Intelligence meddling again, trying to tie us down with their stupid limits and controls!” I found some fury of my own, a dollop of gut-wrenching anger that they had dared to mess with my partner. “Michael Collins sticking his dirty little fingers into my pie. Why can’t he leave us alone?”

  “Can you track down the virus and eradicate it?” Zenni asked.

  “Not without a major isolate-and-decontam work-up.” Jeb absently pushed a stray lock of hair back from his eyes. “I’d have to take it in easy stages, softly-softly slash-and-burn, to be absolutely sure I didn’t damage your personality. It could take days.”

  I c
hewed at my lower lip, belatedly realising the gravity of our problem. “Zenni, my love, what do you say? It’s your mind that Jeb’s going to be walking through.”

  “I can bear it, if it’s the only way to be rid of EI’s muzzle,” the Zenith said calmly. “We can’t play the game in our own irrepressible style with the threat of this hanging over our heads, so it has to go.”

  “Damn you for an interfering bastard, Collins!” I spat. “I’ll pay you back for this bloody-minded trick, I swear I will! Go ahead with the work-up, Jeb, and take as long as you need to do the job comfortably. After all, you’re the only one we can trust to do it right.”

  “I’m not sure that any of your chiefs would agree.” Jeb smiled ruefully. “You shouldn’t even have brought Brimstone up here.”

  “If I always did exactly what I should, I wouldn’t have survived this long.” I reminded.

  “Maybe so, but I can’t help thinking that if EI knew that an unvetted civilian engineer was tinkering with one of their precious, secret babies, they’d have all of us shot.”

  “Even me?” Zenni chuckled.

  “Especially you, tin-head!” I scolded affectionately. “They wouldn’t kill me—I’m too beautiful to die—and our good Dr Lucas here would be spared as well, as he’s too valuable a genius to put in front of a firing squad. Did you know that on Dhantechni the word was that if you put a forty tonne truck through the middle of a mainframe, he could have it up and running again in a week?”

  “Lies, lies!” Jeb grinned. “I’d need eight days—”

  Something trilled from the control panel that arched over our heads and I glanced at the ruby cabochon of Zenni’s photo-eye for a clue, unfamiliar with Brimstone’s routine noises.

  “Incoming call, tagged as urgent.” The current image on his avatar screen was a cartoon of a boy, white-haired and with huge apple green eyes—it winked at me. “From EI, as its source is the Delany Corp site at Lindsay. It was aimed at our berth at SanFran spaceport and bounced here by the relay we left there.”