Ambrecht slammed the fish down on the table at the centre of the cafeteria. It stank in the muggy heat; the windows were all sealed to keep out the eastern wind. The vast underground promethium tanks of the Selat Prime spaceport had started burning years ago when a desperate planetary defence commander had elected to blow up the entire facility rather than let it fall into traitor hands, and they were burning still. Now, when the wind blew, instead of a fresh sea breeze, it carried a toxic smog.
‘Have you lost your mind?’ The cook, Hallard, stumbled up and away from the table, spilling his beer in the process.
‘Look at it.’ Ambrecht folded his large arms and waited.
Jenner took a candle and held it close over the fish. She grunted, and the scars on her face stood out white as she frowned. ‘That’s a wrong’un and make no mistake.’
It looked like a typical Selat Cod, immediately recognisable to any fisherman or woman on Selat – and who wasn’t a fisher on Selat? It was typical, except for the two heads and fat, bulbous body. Half the body and one of the heads had pink marbled skin instead of the dull green scales that coated the rest of it. Then, if you looked closely, you saw the tail had three fins instead of two and looked stretched out, like the corpses that had fallen from the sky when that Arvus Lighter had been blown apart over the settlement during the ‘Battle for Selat’.
‘Old Nithis was right, wasn’t he?’ Ambrecht spoke slowly and softly.
‘We’re cursed,’ Hallard gasped. ‘The fish gods are angry!’
‘Not that part, you bloody fool,’ Ambrecht spat. ‘The corruption. When the traitors came, they brought corruption with them. Before he went mad, Nithis warned us.’
‘They never landed, though, right?’ Dirke was too young to be drinking with the rest of them, but given how few people were left, that sort of thing didn’t seem to matter so much anymore. ‘They came, blasted the rocket batteries and Capital and Sheringsea, then left when the mad colonel burned the spaceport.’
‘Can’t believe they thought Sheringsea was worth that fancy bomb,’ muttered Jenner, ‘and didn’t send a thing our way.’
‘They didn’t need to land,’ Ambrecht said. ‘Orbit was close enough.’
‘So what do we do?’ Hallard had refilled his mug of beer. ‘A distress signal?’
‘Like that monitoring station over at Phrex Crater?’ Jenner shook her head. ‘Just got them blasted into a thousand pieces, didn’t it? And we don’t even know who did the deed. No, we take care of this ourselves.’
‘But what can we do?’ Dirke was staring at the dead fish like it might leap up and attack him.
‘Corruption doesn’t come from nowhere,’ Ambrecht declared. ‘And we all know there’s only one place, one person, that could be responsible.’
‘Hardly a person.’ Jenner nodded, hauling herself to her feet. ‘But you’re right. I’ll get me lasgun. You lot get your cleavers. We’re going for a walk.’
‘Shouldn’t we ask Aldra first?’ Dirke pleaded. ‘She’s been around longer than anyone, maybe she—’
‘No, don’t disturb her,’ Ambrecht cut him off. ‘We’ll take care of it.’
The fabrication plant by the dock had once been home to three Tech-Priests and countless servitors; now it only held one. Soon to be none.
‘Your experiments and meddling against the natural order have done this!’ Ambrecht wrenched his cleaver out from the wiring of the Tech-Adept’s bionic arm. ‘But it ends today.’
‘Incorrect characterisation,’ The Tech-Adept trilled from the vocalizer in his chest. ‘My work is to improve the performance of your sea-going vessels.’
The only answer he got was more cleaver blows. The unaugmented humans had surprised him as he was engrossed in calibrating his microlathe, and a statistically improbable lasgun shot had crippled his power cell, rendering him unable to fight back. Now the Tech-Adept felt his systems failing. Limbic system, unresponsive. Circulatory boosters, unresponsive. His vision was flickering as his augmetic eyes suffered interruptions to their power supply. Still, he saw the excellent specimen tossed on the metal tiles approximately 35 cm from his person.
‘A fine gadhus morhua selata,’ he trilled.
‘What did you say?’ Jenner growled and aimed her lasgun for another shot.
‘It was a spell, a curse, I heard it!’ Hallard shouted.
‘You would know it as Selat Cod.’ The Tech-Adept buzzed now, words slurring as the vocalizer also started losing power. His vision went dark. ‘This one is birthing! A fascinating process, unique to this species. They reproduce by themselves. It happens every 20 years, across the planet, a wave of new piscine matter.’
‘How long since you all arrived?’ Dirke asked the others.
‘Eight? Maybe?’ Hallard swayed, the cleaver hanging loose in his hand.
‘Twelve years,’ Ambrecht replied.
‘Fifteen years,’ Jenner said, lowering her lasgun.
The door burst open, and a grey-haired old woman hobbled inside, panting.
‘Don’t do anything rash now! I heard you caught a strange cod, Ambrecht. I know how you panic.’
‘Aye, I did. Here, Aldra, rest now.’ Ambrecht let the old woman lean on his arm. ‘Two heads, awful pink skin, tail just wrong. Corruption, it has to be.’
‘Corruption my backside,’ Aldra laughed. ‘Where is it? Can’t see a bloody thing in here,’ she complained, rubbing eyes clouded with cataracts. ‘But it’s just what the cod do, they skip laying eggs and split off new cod from themselves. The strangest thing. I presume the Tech-Adept set you right?’
On the floor, oil and blood pooling beneath him, the Tech-Adept could no longer move or speak. But he heard Aldra’s words. It was all a misunderstanding born from fear. To be expected from simple fisherfolk. He comforted himself with the thought that this wouldn’t have happened if he were in a more civilised region of the galaxy. Rationality, rigorous investigation and open-minded discovery – that would always be the true way of man. He was sure of it.
