A Brotherhood of Crows.
Chapter 34

Several decks below Captain Pillion, through steel corridors where natural light had never once made its presence known, Dr Crucius stormed and raged.

Those who passed him kept to one side, or were simply barged aside. When he came to a door, his fist struck the opening mechanism with significant force, as if he were trying to punch the very ship itself. His eyes blazed with unrepentant fury as he marched towards his lab.

A Crow. A bloody Crow had been on the ship this entire time. He should have known, should have sensed something. Now, the incursions into his research suddenly made sense. But what could the Brotherhood of Crows want with data on an absurdity storm? What couldn’t they want? He asked himself dryly, as he reached the door to his lab, and punched in his access code, his finger jabbed into the buttons with all the force of someone squashing ants.

Upon entering, he saw that almost everything was as he’d left it before his departure for London. Almost everything, save for CSO Hitchens, hunched over Crucius’s terminal. He shot to his feet as Crucius entered, in an almost theatrical movement of fear.

“I - uh - Doctor, I hadn’t expected you back so soon, I was just -” he babbled.

“You!” thundered Crucius. His hand plunged into his pocket and found the button on one of his devices. Some unseen force seized hold of Hitchens and hurled him against the wall with a sickening crack.

“I can explain!” wailed Hitchens. Crucius pressed the button again, and Hitchens was flung violently into the ceiling, and then down into the floor. The CSO tried to scramble away, howling for help and screaming. Crucius threw him up and down a few more times, for good measure, until the other man’s howls reduced to a damp whimper.

“What have you done?” Crucius snarled. He spun Hitchens over, moving the device like a joystick, so the other man was prostrate upon the floor, facing up, unable to move. Crucius stood over him. “Why have you been stealing my research?”

Hitchens was sobbing damply. The repeated blows had shattered his nose, and blood and snot gummed around the twisted broken bones. “I...I...I was under orders! I wasn’t stealing I...I...I was just meant to keep tabs! The Captain told me to do it! Personally!”

Pillion? So, he was in on it too. No surprise given that the fool had let a Crow live in his formal quarters for Christ knows how long. “Why?”

“He didn’t say! It was for the war effort, I -” It dawned on Hitchens what had happened to his body in the last minute. “You broke my nose! You - how are you doing -”

Crucius rolled his eyes, and pressed the button again. Hitchens squawked in pain. An impression was forming on his neck, that of an invisible boot, grinding on his windpipe. “How much did you take?”

The unseen foot was lifted. “Only a few terabytes of data, just what we picked up from Madagascar! I swear it wasn’t my idea, I was just following orders -”

Crucius flung the man against a wall, and pinned him there like a mounted trophy. “Do you have any idea, any idea, what you’ve done? You’ve jeopardised countless lives, you’ve ruined hundreds of hours of research, you’ve…” Crucius let out a long, dry rasp of frustration. “Do you know what you’ve done, you insignificant little shit? Do you even know who I am?”

Tears coursed down Hitchens cheeks, mixing with the blood and snot spewing from his ruined nose. “I’m sorry, please! Please don’t kill me -!”

Crucius glanced back to his terminal. He recognised the data on screen. He’d been trying to use nonlinear equations to map out trajectory projections of the storm. By the looks of things, Hitchens had only begun to siphon off the data from his last session of work. A small relief. A thought occurred to him.

“Why now?”

“What?”

“Don’t prove yourself any more of a fool, Hitchens. I’ve been absent from this vessel for nearly twenty four hours. Why are you only pulling this data now?”

Hichens continued to sob. His breath sounded hoarse; something broken in his chest, perhaps. “I was going to come this morning, but I was rerouted to the brig. They brought in some new prisoners and I needed to oversee them through quarantine -”

“Prisoners?” snapped Crucius. “What prisoners?”

Somewhere in the bloody mess of Hitchens face, confusion showed. “Three of them, picked up by dropship...a man, a woman and a teenager, all armed. The man was unconscious and kept...fading in and out. Physically, I mean. Like he was disappearing….”

“Tell me, Hitchens,” Crucius paused, his mind working frantically to quell his anger just long enough for him to process this new information, “This man...did he have long hair, a beard, and carry a .44 calibre handgun?”

“Yes, but -”

“I see. On which deck is the brig located?”

“Deck thirty five, but -”

“And could you kindly confirm that this laboratory has access to the ships incinerators?”

“Yes, I-!”

Crucius smiled, benignly. “Thank you. I’d say it’s been a pleasure working with you, Hitchens, but that would be a lie. I’m sure the scientific community will thank me.”

Before Hitchens could speak, Crucius pulled another one of his devices from his pocket, and pressed it. There was a pause, and then a sudden look of horror exploded into Hitchens eyes. He jerked forward, his body, still pinned to the wall, spasming violently. An outsider might have suspected he was going into cardiac arrest. The truth was that CSO Hitchens heart had simply disappeared. No one had ever died as a result of their heart vanishing, as if gobbled up by a fairy tale monster, and the ludicrous twitching of his body seemed almost apologetic to Crucius.

He disposed with what was left of Hitchens swiftly. After, he paused at his terminal, and then briefly linked the machine to his neural implant. It took less than thirty seconds to upload nineteen terabytes of data directly into a portioned off section of his mind. The data was untouchable there, but also unusable, at least until he got back to Cambridge, but that was a secondary concern right. For now…

For now he needed to figure out how Elijah Avaron had ended up on Cerberus.

He left the lab and proceeded briskly towards the nearest lift. The corridors of the ship were now a hive of activity; orders were barked over intercoms. Crew members darted past one another, some excited, some with faces set in grim determination. The deep, distant thrum of Cerberus’s thauma drives grew louder, as the ship began to ascend to higher altitude. She was preparing to Shock, which only meant one thing; Pillion was leading them into battle. Now, of all times. As he walked, Crucius thought back to the increased Chaos readings he’d picked up when he’d come shipside. He remembered the dead man on Elijah Avaron’s table; before he’d holoed in, he’d found footage of the beast that had torn through the centre of Edinburgh. A powerful, cunning creature, moving with a speed unnatural to a thing of its size. The grainy footage he’d been able to pull from security camera around Waverly had filled with awe and fear. That hulking monstrosity entered his mind again as it began to draw links, piecing together the constellation which linked the Maelstrom with the Crow, the beast and Avaron. Something like that would surely give off high Chaos readings, which meant that…

As he took the lift down, it jolted to a halt. Over the tannoy built into it, Crucius caught the words “...all hands, prepare for Shock in five...four...three...two..mark.” The world felt as if it bunched up on itself, and then exploded outwards, like a great breath forcefully exhaled, and the lift began its descent again.

The brig was on the very bottom deck of Cerberus, near her thauma drive. During flight, thauma drives generated massive amounts of heat, and thus the brig, dark, windowless, divided into narrow cell units around a central block, has all the features of an furnace. The blast of hot air as he exited the lift had been what Crucius had expected.

The squad of Marines waiting outside of the lift, he hadn’t.

There were eight of them. Two guarded the north cells, directly ahead of the lift. Two guarded the cells to the east. The remaining four stood next to the central bank of terminals, where guards could monitor the cells via hidden holo viewers. Heads, hidden behind plated armour visors, rounded on Crucius as he stepped out of the lift.

One of the marines, the closest, raised a hand. The other remained on the grip of his assault rifle, resting in a chest holster. “Stop. State your business.”

Crucius hesitated. He had expected men stationed in the brig, but not this many. He steeled himself, and slipped one hand into his pocket.

“Ah, Marine. I am here on official business from Her Majesty’s Government and I require access to -”

“Your authorisation?” snapped the marine.

“- I beg your pardon?”

“Agents of Her Majesty’s Government must present authorisation to military personnel upon request, sir,” replied the Marine stiffly. “What’s yours?”

Crucius floundered. He felt his face begin to flush, and the anger was beginning to smoulder again in the pit of his stomach. He tried another tact. “You are currently holding prisoners who have information relevant to my work. The captain has authorised me to take them into -”

“I have received no orders from the captain about prisoner transfer.” The marine cut him off. The resting hand had now tightened on the weapon’s grip.

Crucius flushed: “Step aside at once, my man. Don’t you know who I am?”

The marine shrugged, in a move that lazily brought the barrel of the rifle around to Crucius’s direction. “No. Any of you know who he is?” he called over to the other Marines.

There were sniggers from the assembled marines. Sniggers which stopped abruptly when the first Marine gave an agonised scream. He fell to his knees, clutching at his temples as is head buckled and caved in on itself like a crushed melon. Their eyes went from the dead marine to the impassive figure of Dr Crucius, clutching a slim, chrome device in his hand.

“My apologies, gentlemen,” he said, softly, “I fear this will get rather messy….”