Artemis

by Philip Palmer

Genres: General Fiction

Synopsis

Philip Palmer, the best-selling author of Hell Ship, crafts science fiction works that have earned him a reputation as one of the best in the business. In Artemis, con artist and killer Artemis McIvor took the collapse of the galactic government as the opportunity to go on a crime spree to end all crime sprees. But when the law finally catches up to her, she’s given a choice: spend the rest of her life cooling her heels in prison or accept a deadly mission to save all of humanity.

Release date: December 12, 2011

Publisher: Orbit

Print pages: 432

Sample

“Fuck you,” I said, then walked into the kitchen. Picked up the mug of scalding hot water. And threw it over my own face.

It hurt. A lot.

I could feel my skin melting.

I began to scream.



Let me back up a little. Who was I saying “Fuck you” to? Why throw boiling water over my own face? And why was I screaming
like a bratty little girl? (I can, I assure you, take a lot more pain than that without whining about it.)


To know all that, you’d have to know why I was in the high-security wing of the Giger Penitentiary on the arid wilderness
that is Giger’s Moon, in the midst of the greatest prison riot of all time.


It’s a long story. I’ll tell it when I’m ready. For the moment just stay with the basic facts. Boiling water, melting face,
girly screaming from me. And then Teresa Shalco running after me, shouting “Bitch!” and “Whore!” and other such expletives,
before punching me viciously and knocking me to the ground.


I wept and huddled, playing the helpless victim. And Shalco screamed a great number of mostly unfounded insults at me, whilst savagely kicking my prone body. It took three DR dubbers
to pull her off.


It was all going according to plan.



Giger’s Moon – I’m digressing now, bear with me – is a boon to lovers, if you happen to live on the planet of Giger.

The Moon is a third of the size of the planet it orbits. And thus appears to Gigerians as a glorious silvery orb that fills
half their night-time sky. Its surface is scarred with cliffs and craters that cast dark shadows which, to the imaginatively
minded, resemble the faces of mythical beasts. There are ruined cities up there too, and eerie ziggurats made of solid metal
which have no discernible function, like desk ornaments the size of skyscrapers. All products of the mysterious alien civilisation
that once dwelled there.


And – I love this bit!– Giger’s Moon is believed by most Gigerians to have an aphrodisiac effect that is in inverse proportion
to its size.


In other words, when there’s a full moon, the hearts of lovers will beat just a little faster.


When there’s a half moon, lust starts to really stir.

And when the moon is a thin crescent– oh boy!!!– shameless and indiscriminate carnality ensues.

Which I guess is why they call it the Horny Moon.

No one knows how Giger’s Moon became a barren wilderness. Or why its original three-legged five-headed inhabitants fled. Or
where those strange denizens of Giger’s Moon went to. Or indeed (okay, I admit I’m the only one who wonders this) whether they wore hats on any or all of their five heads.


Nowadays, the Brightside of Giger’s Moon is a vast Industrial Zone. And the Darkside of Giger’s Moon is where they house the Penitentiary. It is the second largest prison in the Solar Neighbourhood, after Pohl Pen. It houses recidivists
and sociopaths and stone cold killers. As well as all those generals and soldiers and Corporation lawyers who were so astonishingly
evil they couldn’t get pardoned in the round of judicial amnesties that followed the Last Battle.


Security here is formidably tight. No one has ever escaped from the Giger’s Moon Penitentiary.

Until now.



“Keep your head still,” said the doppelgänger robot, and I kept my head still.

The DR sprayed my scalded face with healant, and it stung like fuck. I could feel the skin becoming stiff, and I knew that
in about forty-eight hours my burned flesh would start to regenerate.


“My eyes!” I whined, “I’m fucking blind!” I wasn’t, in fact, but the dubber operating the DR was too dumb to know that. His
silver-skinned robot-puppet shone its torch in my eye and my pupils didn’t dilate; and the idiot at the controls thought that
proved something.


“Shackle her,” said the DR, and the two other DR-dubbers put magnetised shackles on my arms, pinning them behind my back.
Then they did the same with a bar-shackle around my ankles. Then they fastened an explosive collar around my neck and strapped
me to a trolley. They were taking no chances.


Teresa Shalco, meanwhile, had fucked off. Even though she was the aggressor and I the victim, no one attempted to arrest her. Because she was the capobastone, and hence the Boss of this entire fucking prison, and was hence pretty much untouchable.


The lead DR wheeled me on my trolley down the Spoke. Past the R & R rooms. And past the F Spoke cells and through twelve sets of force fields, until we reached the Outer Hub where the prison hospital was located.


“What have we got here?” said Cassady briskly – that’s Cassady Penfold, hospital trusty, five-foot nine, ruby-haired and,
oh, my lover – as I was wheeled into the receiving area. I groaned and raised my head and looked straight at her. Cassady,
bless her, didn’t flinch at the sight of my melted face.


“Gang violence,” said the DR. “Burns on face, torso injuries, big mouth.”

“Can we use cosmetic rejuve to restore the skin texture?” said Cassady, in her usual gentle half-murmuring tones.

The DR was silent a moment, as the dubber at the other end of the virtual link considered this question. Although in truth
there wasn’t much to think about. Waste high-quality cosmetic rejuve on a recidivist? “No,” said the DR.


Then the DR picked my stretcher up with one hand with effortless strength and dropped me on to a bed. I groaned, trying to
sound as if I was in agony and filled with abject despair at having forever lost my lovely looks.


The agony part was real enough.

“Anyone else to come?” asked Cassady.

“Nope,” said the DR, and then the light went out of its eyes and it was motionless.

Now there were only two of us with functioning minds in the reception area. Me and Cassady.

The hospital reception was a large oval room with a mirrored ceiling (don’t ask me why, but it made looking upwards a dizzying
experience) and a hexagonal purple and green virtual array hovering at its heart. It also had the standard SNG pale-pastel
walls of the kind that always made me want to blaze away with a projectile gun full of primary-coloured paints. And there
were of course, carefully embedded in the walls, micro-cameras that covered every single area in the room. But it was a fair
bet no one in the surveillance centre was looking at us. Not now. Not with all the shit that was going down.


“The riot’s started?” asked Cassady.


I consulted my retinal display. “You bet your arse,” I confirmed.



There are, so I am assured, not that I give a damn about such things, many cool things about me.1

Such as for instance, my hair. Which is long and lustrous and, these days, vividly yellow-blond.

And the fact I have a scary stare that can terrify the toughest of tough guys, even though I am slight and girlish-looking.

And the many augments which my paranoid mother built into my DNA, which give me all kinds of amazing super-powers.

And my personality, which has been described by friends as “acerbic” and “sarcastic.”2

And my philosophy of life, which many feel is “immoral” and “vile,” but is based on a principle of savouring every moment
to the full regardless of consequences.


But the coolest thing about me by far, in my view, is the fact that I am the daughter of an archivist.3

Yeah, I do mean it. That really is cool.


For you see my father, from an early age, taught me all about databases. Their architecture, their hidden byways, their lock-outs and encryptions, their base codes, their security protocols. Almost
all databases you see are built on the ruins of their predecessors. So most systems can be decrypted if you understand the archaeology of that database.


It helps, too, if you have a Rebus chip, as I do – it’s a small addition to the standard brain chip implant, which allows
me to directly access databases from any quantum computer brain in shortband range.4

This is why I spent a year on Giger. Staring up, every night, at the Moon. (Which is how, by the way, I learned at first hand,
and – oh boy! – often, about the Horny Moon phenomenon.)


Dekon is the name of the QRC on Giger’s Moon. It’s linked of course to Ariel, which is the name of Giger’s own planetary computer.
(Or possibly Ariel is a clone of Dekon?)5 I spent the aforementioned year finding a way to explore the dusty corridors of Dekon’s mind. And when I succeeded, I set
up a permanent data-pathway into my implant.


Now at any moment, night and day, I can conjure up a living map of the entire prison. I can see which Spokes are locked down,
which force barriers are on Red Setting, and where the DRs are patrolling.


And this was what (lying on a trolley in the hospital reception area, flanked on all sides by pastel-coloured walls, face
burned off, next to my red-haired lover Cassady) I could now see. A prison in crisis. Inmates rioting and attacking DRs and
smashing “hidden” cameras (’cause everyone knows where those fuckers are). And then DRs being unleashed en masse from the Spoke Storage Bays to contain the riot. General chaos in the A, B, C, D, E and F Spokes, and the Outer Hub. In short,
a prison riot.


This of course was why the doppelgänger robot in the hospital reception area had been switched off. The human operator was
needed elsewhere.


Meanwhile, as I was witnessing the riot in my mind’s eye, Cassady was unfastening my shackles and explosive collar with the
electronic lock-decoder I had purchased some weeks before. And when I was finally free, she passed me a roll of toilet paper.
I grimaced.


Time for the next stage in my plan.



I am not, repeat NOT, providing any visual or tactile details about what occurred during this next stage of this escape plan.

Suffice it to say: I took the toilet roll. And staggered to the john.

Once there, knowing I was unobserved, I wept hot tears on to my scarred cheeks at the thought of – things that had happened
some years before. Bad experiences that were the motive for – but we’ll get to that.


Then I stopped weeping. Got a grip on myself. Covered the toilet bowl in plastic film. Swallowed six laxatives. And awaited
the results.


And a little while later I had a scrubbed-clean cylindrical package of mouldable organic explosive. Enough to blow up a skyscraper.

I should add that this wretched thing had been there, concealed in the deepest recesses of my colon, for nearly six months.
That is what I call forward planning.




Let me go back in time a few months, and tell you how I first met Teresa Shalco. That capobastone bitch who beat me up, remember?


It was my first day in Giger. I’d been through all the scanners. They’d x-rayed and ultrasounded me; and had missed the bomb
up my arse, and the bone-claws embedded in my hands. And they’d also DNA’d me to confirm I was who I said I was. Which in
fact I wasn’t. DNA archives are so fucking easy to hack! So, officially, I was Danielle Arditti. Psychopath. Serial killer.
Assassin.


Then they dressed me in a purple overall and I stood in the Holo Hall and listened to Prison Governor Robbie Ferguson explaining
the rules of the establishment. No drugs. No drink. No sexual molestation. No gang lingo. No murdering other inmates. No fomenting
rebellion against the democratically elected government of the Solar Neighbourhood. Oh, and this was the absolute killer;
moral rehabilitation classes were compulsory.


Fuck! I’d rather be beaten and hosed down with cold water.

After the bullshit briefing, I went to the inmates’ bar and got slaughtered on cheap rum.6 And, when in my cups and dribbly with rage, I vowed to kill the entire fucking Parliament of the SNG. Shalco heard me at
the height of my rant and laughed. She told the barman to give me a free drink, grinned at me, and eyed me up.


“Danielle,” I said, introducing myself ritually, despite my drunkenness: “vangelista7 of our Beloved Family. I respect the authority of the Clan.”


Shalco held out her right hand. Her middle finger was a stump. I kissed the stump.8

“Do you fuck girls?” she asked me. I grinned, but shook my head. I didn’t, then.

“Shame.” She grinned back. She had an infectious grin. “How’s the booze?”

“It’s, um.” I took another sip of the free booze she’d given me. It was whisky, not rum. Richer and more wonderful whisky
than I’d ever drunk before.


“Four-hundred-year-old malt,” Shalco informed me.

“They spoil you guys.”

“I have some contacts.”

The prison bar was in the gym. Some nutjobs were chinning up and lifting weights around us. And then Shalco introduced me
to Bargan Oriel, who was playing solitaire at a table, while drinking a six-hundred-year-old bottle of port.


Oriel was Shalco’s quintino. He was a thin man, with a vulture’s beak nose, and a piercing stare. (He had two artificial eyes, I later learned.) He’d
been quintino of the New Earth Clanning, which was comprised of seven planets in the Alpha 4 sector of the Solar Neighbourhood. His boss,
Trajo Marol, had been a legendary monster, responsible for organising massacres on behalf of Gamers on an awe-inspiring scale.
Marol was killed resisting arrest, despite having been slipped enough sedatives to put a buffalo to sleep. Now that was a story.


Anyway! Oriel was a quiet man, who exuded an aura of control freak. He was however very charming to me, offered me some port,
and told me a series of very funny stories about his life on New Earth III.


I disliked him immensely. He had a knack of pitching his voice so low you had to lean in close to hear him. He was impossible
to interrupt, because he left such huge pauses you could never be sure he’d finished speaking.


And he was, like so many of these guys, enveloped in self-love. I mean! If he could have fucked his own arse, he would’ve
done.


Shalco, by contrast, was exceptionally likeable. She was a big woman – tall and broad – with an appealing extrovert personality, who took her power for granted. I’d heard good things about her from the
Clan scuttlebutt sites. She was considered to be fair, and generous, and at times merciful. Though she was, of course, a Boss,
and it goes without saying that Bosses have to be tough.


And oh yes, she was tough.


The DRs broke up the party at nine p.m. and escorted us to our cells. I was in cell 2333x. The x meant it was on the twenty-fourth
floor of the cell complex. The hardglass lifts carried us up twenty at a time. A DR ushered each of us into our cell, and
closed the door behind. The doors were heavy and metal and slammed loudly when they were shut. That was for effect.


I was drunk and cheerful. It had been a sociable evening. In the course of it, I’d met a few old friends. Though they didn’t
recognise me of course, because I was taller and black-haired (not blonde) and somewhat bigger busted when they knew me. And
my eyes then were brown, not blue. And my face, of course, was quite different. My body language was maybe similar, though
I’d worked hard at that. And my voice – well. The timbre had changed. And I’d altered the rhythms of my speech, and of course
my favoured catchphrases. No more “Yo’ mollyfocker” as a term of endearment. I missed that. It was a phrase that had once
defined me.


The cell was small. A bunk, a toilet, and three hangers for clothes. I had three sets of purple overalls, in case I fancied a change. One pair of black shoes, no laces. There were still
bracket marks and screw holes on the hardmetal floor, where the torture bench had been removed and replaced by an actual bed.
The ceiling was slightly curved. It was like living inside a tin can. There were no books on the shelf, which by the way was
a breach of my human rights.9 And there was no mirror, which was also a breach of my human rights. The walls were not soundproofed, which meant I could
hear the prisoners in the neighbouring cells wanking, or talking, or even fighting. This also was a breach of my human rights.


There is a four-hundred page SNG Act of Parliament10 outlining in some considerable detail all the human rights which even the scummiest and most evil prisoners are deemed to
possess. I found it hilarious. Human rights! What the fuck are those?


At three a.m. the doors of all the cells were opened. And, or so I assumed, the corridor and cell cameras were all switched
off. I stayed put. I heard the movement of prisoners outside. The chatter of conversation, the casually muttered asides, the
occasional burst of subdued laughter. And after a while I heard, as I had been warned I would hear, the sounds of rape.


It went on all night long. The victims, I knew, would all be non-Clan. Hence, fair game. Some of them would be young – men
and women in their early twenties. (Younger prisoners had their own juvenile wing.) And it was part of Clan culture that in
prison the powerful should always abuse, sexually and in other ways, the less powerful. It was considered a form of redemption,
believe it or not – a way for Clannites to reassert their lost authority. It was a credo that disgusted me, and which I had
always failed to comprehend. But there was nothing I could do about it.


I’d covertly marked my door with a finger-scratched “V” as the DR had paused before ushering me in to the cell. V for “vangelista.” It meant I was exempt from assault. My icon of protection.


So I stayed in my cell. I listened to the screams and groans which filled half that long night. I did not sleep. It brought
back memories. But they were memories that I did not wish to endure, so I forced my mind to be blank.


I can do that, you see. I can make my mind entirely blank.

Remember this was not, none of it, my fault. Nor was it my responsibility.

So I blanked it out.



I slept for about two hours, which was all I needed. At five a.m. the prisoners returned to their cells and the doors were
closed. At seven a.m. the doors opened again and we all filed out and queued for the elevators.


The view on the way down was disorientating. The cell blocks formed a vast tower at the centre of the prison, with the elevators
on the outside. Beyond the circle I could see the Spokes which were the work and recreation areas. Beyond them, I could see
the wilderness of Giger’s Moon, grey and wasted behind the impermeable hardglass walls of the biodome.


I shared an elevator with nineteen other inmates, one of whom was a seven-foot giant. He stood very close to me, and leered
down. “You missed a good night last night, vangelista,” he said, grinning.


I ignored him.

“Maybe tonight?” he offered.

I ignored him. The lift stopped. The DR stepped out.

I elbow-struck the giant in his ribs, breaking several. “Speak,” I said quietly, “when you are spoken to.”

The other inmates shuffled around us to conceal the brawl from the DR’s view.


The giant grinned at me. His teeth were large and ugly. “You aren’t allowed to do that, vangelista,” he said. He was in pain, obviously, but you’d never have known it from his tone of voice. “I have the protection of the
Clan.”


I stared at him, scarily.

After fifteen seconds, he flinched.

I walked away. That round went to me.

I went to breakfast. It was synthesised mulch. The dining area had clearly once been a recreational area for dubbers. Because
in the old days, the prisoners here weren’t given food, they were just injected with nutrients. I could see the outlines where
a swimming pool had been filled in. White lines demarcated a former baseball pitch. They’d been a sporty lot, those old devils
who once had run the Giger Dungeon.


Teresa Shalco joined me at my table.

“Just to outline the rules,” she said cheerfully, as she sat down.

“Fuck you.”

“Whatever your status elsewhere,” she continued softly, “you have to earn it here. Capisci?”


She beamed nicely at me.

“Non capisco.”


Shalco continued to smile, but she didn’t mean it.

“First and final warning,” she whispered.



The following night the same thing happened. The footsteps, the doors opening, the howls of pain and regret.

At one point, I went out on to the landing and tried to differentiate between the howls of pain. To locate the worst and most
terrible howl. When I had done so, which took a long while, I walked down the corridor and entered the offending cell.


“No more,” I explained.

There were three of them engaged in the atrocity. They stared at me in astonishment. Appalled at my effrontery. Shocked at
my stupidity.


Then they came at me.

I smashed heads. I broke bones.

Then I dragged the unconscious bodies out and dumped them in the corridor. And returned to the cell to see how the abused
prisoner was bearing up after his ordeal.


He was bearing up, in my view, remarkably well. The prisoner was lean and young, and he grinned at me with open relief. “Thank
you,” the prisoner said. “That was well – fuck. Thank Christ it’s over.”


I shrugged.

“They’ll make you pay for what you just did, you do know that?” the prisoner added, sorrowfully I felt. He was young, but
he clearly knew the way of the world. Later, I learned his name: Tomas.11 But I never actually got to know him.


“Whatever,” I said.

I went back to my cell. I waited.

No one came for me. They were waiting for permission.



The following night, they had their permission.

I sat on my bunk in my cell and waited. I heard the footsteps outside the door. I heard the murmur of voices, cursingly vowing
to “split my arse” and “rip my tongue out of my mouth” and other such grisly pledges. And I heard the handle turn.


But it did not open. The door had been locked by Dekon, acting under my instructions. Thus over-riding the earlier “unlock”
signal sent by the corrupt dubber who allowed this nightly anarchy.12

I can do that, you see. I’ll explain how later.

Banging and shouting followed, and continued for some time. But the bastards couldn’t get in. And eventually they lost interest.
My lynch mob dispersed and they returned to their cells.


I hugged myself with delight – I love such moments of elegant victory – and then I slept.



Teresa Shalco joined me at breakfast.

“Who the fuck are you?” she marvelled.


I shrugged.

“You know that,” I said calmly. “You’ve spoken to my people on Ariadne?”

Ariadne was the planet where the real Danielle Arditti had served the Clan.

“They say you’re dead.”

“I don’t feel dead.”

“They say you’re a bitch.”

“They got that right.”

“You’re in the Clan, okay?” Shalco told me patiently. “So you have to accept my authority. If you have a beef with your fellow
prisoners, come to me. But don’t take the law into your own hands. Nothing happens without my permission, that’s the way of
our Family, am I right, vangelista?”


“It’s too loud. The stuff they get up to. I can’t sleep.”


She sighed, as a mother might sigh when her child has been a scamp. Shalco had a warm and comforting presence. It was tempting
to yield to the allure of her maternal loveliness. But I reminded myself she was a Boss. Hence, evil and dangerous scum.


“There’s only one way out of the dining hall,” Shalco warned me. “You have to pass through a womb to get from here to the
rec hall. And you have to go to the rec hall, because the DRs won’t let you stay in here. Oh, and by the way, the cameras will be turned off.”


“I guessed something like that might occur,” I conceded.

“Your best bet is to stay here,” Shalco said, kindly. “Let the DRs come for you. If you refuse to obey an order they’ll detain
you. You’ll go into solitary. Best place for you.”


“Why are you telling me this?”

“Hey, you’re a nice kid,” said Shalco. “I don’t want to see you hurt.”

I finished my coffee. It was, frankly, awful. “I’ll be going,” I said.

I got up. All eyes were on me.

I walked down the metal staircase and handed in my tray.

All eyes were on me.

I walked towards the exit door that was the only way out of the dining area.

All eyes were on me.

I entered the womb. A womb, by the way, is a rounded corridor of a kind you only ever see in prisons, with sealable hardglass
gatewalls at each end. When the gatewall at one end closed, the gatewall at the other end would open. Like an airlock.


This womb was wide, as broad as many actual rooms. The sidewalls and ceiling were grey, unpainted – no pastels here. And at
the far end of the womb, I could see a mill of prisoners peering through the hardglass to witness the violent altercation
that was about to take place.


There were six of them in the womb with me. They weren’t even attempting to conceal their evil intent. They just stood in
the centre of this grey cage, ominously, waiting for me.


Seven Foot Giant was one of them. He carried a knife the size of a scimitar. I guessed it had been built in the workshop,
out of stolen hardmetal.


His companion, who I mentally dubbed Big Ugly Motherfucker, was shorter, but just as broad, with a leering expression and
bad skin.


And then there was Big Black Bald Guy, a black man with a shiny bald head and a body-built physique. He wore a vest so I could
admire his bulging arms and his tattoos of women with breasts like moons.


And there were also two female Noirs who stood like shadows, dressed all in black to complement their jet black eyes, effortlessly
graceful. They were clearly ninja-trained, and were eerily focused.


And finally Three Eyes, another giant, six-and-a-half foot high, with three eyes. That meant he was from Golgotha, there’s
a fad for it there.13

Three Eyes carried a baseball bat with spikes.

I glanced behind me. The rear gatewall was now sealed. No going back. Shalco had already warned me the cameras would be out
of action. There was a window in the middle of the corridor, and through it I could see a DR store cupboard. But those DRs
were all switched off. So, it was just me and them. One against six. I’ve had worse odds.


Though not often, and I didn’t always win.

“Kiss my finger,” I told the six mollyfockers, calmly and quite politely.

“I scorn your authority, bitch,” said Seven Foot Giant, which was the gravest of insults for someone of my (alleged) Clan
rank.


“Does your penis,” I asked, still using my calm and polite voice, “look really odd? I mean, disproportionately small, compared
to the rest of your lumbering frame?”


“I scorn your authority,” he repeated.

“And how do you cope with doors? I mean, do you have to like stoop?”


“I scorn your authority, and call upon you to defend it,” he said for the third time, clearly struggling to keep himself in
check. But these proprieties have to be observed.


“I defend my authority,” I said, and that was the cue for the fighting to begin.



Ten minutes later I walked out of the womb into Spoke A.

My shoulder was stiff, from throwing a really awkward punch. My ribs hurt. My hands hurt. And I had the mother of all headaches.
But, of course, I acted as if nothing untoward had occurred. I walked into the Spoke A rec room and picked up a magazine and
started to read it. It was a geek mag, full of racy images of ion drives and rocket engines, with a little section on how
to solar surf, and a centrepage spread about building up abs without rejuve.14

Half an hour later a platoon of DRs arrived to arrest me for my breach of prison discipline. They stomped me through the Spokes,
manacled and collared, their blank silver faces conveying all the contempt and rage that their human handlers could muster.


In the scuffle which had preceded this moment, I had managed to cripple and kill all six of Shalco’s crew. Seven Foot Giant
now had a broken skull and no eyes, and was admitted to the prison hospital with no heartbeat either.15 Oh, and his scimitar was broken. I had kept a shard of it as a memento. The other five were battered, broken, and also dead.16

None of them were true-dead, however – I was too skilful for that. And there was no camera footage of the fight of course.
But dozens of prisoners had watched the combat through the hardglas