Free Borderlands: Unconquered by John Shirley

his heartat that. “I’ll be loyal forever, my General.”
    She nodded, as if saying, Of course, that’s just how it should be . She put her drink aside and stood up. She was so very tall . . .
    “Come on, Smartun, let’s talk to Vialle, see what he’s got for us.”
    She led him out of the headquarters office, past her deformed bodyguard, who leaned against the wall outside her chambers muttering unintelligiblyto himself.
    They walked down the scuffed concrete hall to a door marked in big red stenciled letters:
    VIALLE LAB 1
UNAUTHORIZED ENTRY IS DEATH
    Smartun followed her in, closed the door behind them, and looked around curiously. He had taken the sign on the door seriously and had never seen the lab before.
    It was a medium-large rectangular concrete room, chilly and only spottily lit. Two wallswere bare, except for a few cluttered shelves. A third wall was a tangle of transparent tubes filled with yellow and red fluid, blipping with bubbles of green and blue gases. There were a couple of rusty, mucky sinks on opposite walls, and the far wall to his right was covered by a single big screen, a flat digital monitor, which glimmered and flashed with intricate biological readings Smartun couldn’tdecipher. He assumed the readings related to the semihuman figure floating in the transparent sarcophagus just in front of the screen.
    He found he was a little afraid to approach that naked, distorted, armless figure twitching in green fluid.
    There was someone else in the room: a Bruiser bandit lying in a kind of trance on a gurney. The Bruiser was an enormous man of exaggerated musculature,bald head, most of his nose missing—it looked as if it had been bitten off. He was naked and grubby, and Smartun could smell him from ten strides away.
    Vialle looked up from studying the image his floating lozenge-shaped AI projected onto the translucent plastic table—it was an image of pulsating viscera. The AI module started to follow him as he came toward Gynella. The scientist waved the moduleback to the table and turned anxiously to the General Goddess. His long, cadaverous face was pensive, although ordinary emotion was hard to read on that skull-like visage: taut blue-tinged skin, sunken eyes, and mossy teeth. Vialle wore a bloodstained white jumpsuit, and he twined his fingers over his crotch as he spoke. “Is it true about Feldsrum, Gynella?”
    Vialle was the only one of her followersallowed to call Gynella by her first name.
    She nodded curtly. “It is, Vialle. I just got thereport in from our operative. I’m afraid our agent isn’t likely to get much farther. They’ve identified him—he’s on the run. I expect they’ll kill him.”
    “They’ll interrogate him first if they can.”
    “Yes. I paid him well, but money doesn’t buy loyalty.” She glanced at Smartun and smiled knowingly.
    He looked at the floor and tried to seem humble.
    “So,” Vialle said, wringing his hands and staring into space. “Mince Feldsrum will be here, on this planet, looking for us .”
    “Yes,” she said calmly. “Your old boss!” She chuckled.
    Smartun cleared his throat. “May I ask who this Feldsrum is?”
    She sighed. “He’s underhead of Dahl security. It appears he took our . . . appropriation of Dahl goodsa bit personally.”
    Vialle snorted. “Naturally! It made him look like a fool. Their most top-secret project, stolen from under his nose.”
    Gynella made a wry moue with her mouth. “I think what really infuriated them was when you destroyed the other prototypes.” She clicked her nails thoughtfully on the ActiTone around her neck.
    “Feldsrum!” Vialle shivered visible as he spoke the name. “I justnever thought they’d come back to this hellhole. He always said they have as little to do with this planet as possible.”
    “That’s right. Smartun made a good point in my office: too many Dahl operatives have ended up as skag snacks. It gets expensive. Leave it to me, Vialle. I just thought you