The life whispered amid itself, directing its soldier motiles to move forward into the flimsy box-buildings. It searched for humans and their machinery. Finding none of either. Though there was movement, the tell-tale infrared signatures which the soldier motiles were skilfully working their way towards. At the back of the urban area, long vehicles raced away. Flyers angled round to investigate.
One of the soldier motiles was shot at. It retaliated immediately, firing back, destroying the zone where the shot had come from. Flyers swooped eagerly, raking the buildings with coherent beams of gamma radiation.
‘They’re going to destroy everything,’ Mellanie said.
‘It,’ the SI corrected. ‘It is singular. An interesting arrangement. Life that has achieved unity, not just with itself but with its machinery.’
‘I don’t care what it is, it’s still going to kill people.’
‘We know.’
Programs and power flooded through Mellanie’s inserts, activating yet more functions. She had little to do with it other than adding her wishes to the conclusion. Fabulously complex OCtattoos crawled over her skin, merging into a single circuit. Signals streamed out from her, overlaying those which fused the motiles together. Interference patterns jostled and ruptured the smooth consistency of the soldier herd’s thoughts. Riding down the disruption were new instructions.
Mellanie left her shelter and walked slowly towards the Trine’ba so she could observe properly. Poor Mark Vernon tried to warn her, so she gave him and his friends some of the Prime weapons and made sure he left, along with all Rand-town’s valiant, futile defenders.
‘It has realized something is wrong,’ the SI said. ‘Can you sense it?’
The signals spilling down from the wormholes were changing. Instead of orders, queries were trying to insinuate themselves into the soldier motiles. The Prime wanted to know what malaise was contaminating its units.
The SI maintained its interference pattern among the motile soldiers in Randtown, formulating a single reply which it sent out through Mellanie’s inserts. ‘We are stopping you,’ it told MorningLightMountain.
Mellanie was aware of the shock ripple spreading through the alien’s planet-wide thought routines hundreds of light-years away. ‘Who are you?’ it asked.
‘We are the SI, an ally of the humans.’
‘The Bose memories know of you. You are the human immotile. The endpoint of their individuality. They created you because they knew they were not perfect without you.’
Bose memories, Mellanie thought. Oh shit, that’s not good. Though maybe in a way it is, it will give my new Dudley some closure.
‘Your reading of the Bose memories is inaccurate,’ the SI said. ‘Though we will not argue with you on definitions. We are contacting you to ask you to stop your attacks on the humans. They are pointless. You do not need these planets.’
‘Neither do the humans.’
‘Nonetheless they are living on them. You are killing them. That must stop.’
‘Why?’
‘It is wrong. And you know it.’
‘Life must survive. I am alive. I must not die.’
‘You are not under threat. If you continue this aggression you will become threatened.’
‘By existing, other life threatens me. Only when I become total will I secure my immortality.’
‘Define: total.’
‘One life, everywhere.’
‘That will not happen, ever.’
‘You threaten me. You will be destroyed.’
‘We state facts. It will not be possible for you to destroy us. Nor will you be able to destroy many other civilizations which exist within this galaxy. You must learn how to co-exist with us.’
‘That is a contradiction in terms. There is only one universe, it can only contain one life. It is me.’
‘This is not a contradiction. You are simply inexperienced with such a concept. We assure you it is possible.’
‘You are betraying yourself by believing this. Life grows, it expands. This is inevitable. It is what I am.’
‘True life evolves. You can change.’
‘No.’
‘You must change.’
‘I will not. I will grow. I will learn. I will surpass you. I will destroy you, both of you.’
Mellanie was aware of a change in the nature of the signals coming though the wormholes to fall upon the planet. MorningLightMountain was giving the soldier motiles on the landing ships distinct orders, then disengaging them from its communication web. Whilst they didn’t have a great deal of independent capability, a soldier motile could certainly follow simple target instructions, and use its own combat systems without direct real-time supervision.
Sixteen flyers launched from the two landing ships. They accelerated forward at five gees. Targeting sensors swept across Randtown, bright as searchlights to Mellanie’s broadened perception.
‘Grandpa!’ she yelled.
A circular wormhole opened behind her, a tiny distortion point hovering a metre above the road that produced a curious twisted magnification effect in the air. It swiftly expanded out to a neutral-grey circle two metres in diameter. Mellanie jumped through.
Two seconds later, sixteen atom lasers intersected the empty air where she’d been standing.
Mellanie picked herself off the grass, blinking against the warm light even as she winced at the pain in her knee from a bad landing. Her skin was cooling, its platinum lustre slowly reverting to the healthy tan she maintained thanks to her expensive Augusta salon. In sympathy, her body’s shock was also receding, her racing heart slowing, the shakes calming. So much for the inserts giving her a sensation of invincibility.
Behind her, the wormhole gateway was built into a smooth rock cliff. Some kind of triangular canvas awning was stretched overhead. In front of her . . . Mellanie forgot all about bruised knees, and nearly fell over. Her balance was horribly wrong, and the land curved up over her head. Giddiness that was close to seasickness hit her hard.
‘Where the hell am I?’ she squawked.
‘Don’t be alarmed,’ the SI said. ‘This is the only currently unused wormhole generator in the Commonwealth that could reach you.’
‘Uh—’ Someone had really gone to town on the vast cylinder’s landscape. It was all giant mountains with waterfalls foaming down long tracts of rock. Big lakes and rivers filled the valley floors. The sunlight emerged from a single spindle running down the axis. ‘This isn’t the High Angel,’ she said.
‘Of course not.’
‘But it’s got artificial gravity. We can’t do that. Is it an alien space station?’
‘It is a human-built structure, belonging to someone of considerable wealth. The gravity effect comes from simple rotation, like the Second Chance life-support wheel.’
‘Oh, right, yeah. I didn’t do science at school.’
‘You didn’t do school, baby Mel.’
‘Thanks, good timing on the reminder, there, Grandpa. So who lives here?’
‘The owner guards his privacy. But given the circumstances I don’t expect he will protest your visit. I have now reprogrammed the wormhole to take you to Augusta. Please step through.’
Mellanie was still staring round the interior. ‘It’s fantastic. And it’s got a private wormhole?’ She smiled happily. ‘Ozzie.’
‘You will respect his privacy.’
‘Yeah, yeah.’ She stopped. The adrenaline rush which had supported her through the confrontation in Randtown was beginning to wear off. When she held a hand up there was no sign of any OCtattoo. ‘What about the convoy?’
‘They have all reached the Highmarsh Valley.’
‘But – the navy won’t evacuate them for days. That alien monster will kill every one of them.’
‘It will attempt that, yes.’
‘Open the wormhole back into the Highmarsh. We’ve got to get them out of there.’
‘That is an impractical suggestion. This wormhole is small. The Randtown refugees wo
uld have to step through one at a time. The process would take hours, and provide MorningLightMountain with a perfect targeting opportunity.’
‘Open it!’
*
Wilson’s tactical display showed him the electronic warfare aerobots launching from Treloar. Five of them flew out in a pincer movement through the smog to surround the Prime ground troops spreading out from Scraptoft. The alien positions were overlaid by webs of orange and jade as their strange communications flashed between them. Their intermittent, seemingly random, bursts reminded Wilson of synaptic discharges between individual neurones.
Stealthed sensors showed him images of the armoured Primes slipping through what was left of Scraptoft’s buildings. The way they moved told Wilson they had considerable practice with urban warfare. They’d already killed several humans who’d remained in the little costal town; using weapons that were powerful enough to take out half a building with one shot. Media reports from other assaulted worlds had shown similar atrocities. The Primes weren’t interested in taking prisoners.
Over fifteen thousand armoured aliens had poured out of the big ships to help secure Scraptoft. They were busy establishing a fortified perimeter with a ten-kilometre radius around the town. Several force field generators had been delivered by cargo flyers, along with weapons capable of shooting down any aerobot that ventured too close. At least that meant the protective formation of eight ships had finally splashed down; though the hot murky smog they’d created was taking a long time to disperse.
The four ships that had been the first to splash down had already launched again, flying back to the wormholes above the planet. Wilson didn’t like to think what kind of cargo they’d be bringing with them when they returned.
‘EW aerobots going active,’ Anna said.
The slim craft popped up over the horizon, and began jamming the sensors of the perimeter weapons. Nothing shot at them. They flew closer, and began breaking into the multifarious Prime broadcasts.
‘Son of a bitch,’ Wilson said. It was the first time he’d smiled all day. The stealth sensors showed him armoured Primes slowing down and moving about erratically; clockwork soldiers that were winding down.
‘Get the combat aerobots back in there,’ Wilson told Rafael. ‘Hit the bastards.’
The EW aerobots widened their assault, targeting the communication links between the flyers and the landing ships out at sea. It was the same effect, with flyers soaring onwards, or tumbling lazily out of the air.
A thousand kilometres above Anshun, eight Prime ships altered their descent trajectory so that they would overfly Scraptoft. The change flashed up in the tactical display.
‘See if we can EW them as well,’ Wilson said. ‘How many dedicated EW systems have we got?’
‘I can only find another seventy-three listed in the governmental register,’ Anna said.
‘I want every one of them. Get them deployed.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘If we might make a suggestion,’ the SI said. ‘It may be possible to use the surviving elements of planetary cyberspheres to produce a similar effect. The Prime signals seem remarkably susceptible to interference. Even non-military systems should be sufficient to create a reasonable degree of disturbance.’
‘Will you do that for us?’
‘Of course.’
‘Admiral,’ Anna called. ‘The starships have arrived.’
*
Anshun’s First Speaker, Gilda Princess Marden, and her cabinet were in the civil emergency centre twenty metres beneath the Regency Palace, trying to coordinate the capital’s evacuation with the navy’s requirements to deploy troops and aerobots. Consequently they had no view of the sky. Not that it would have mattered, the dreadful corrupted vapour was still swirling round the city’s force field, censoring any sight of the lights percolating through space above the planet. But other cities on Anshun were clear of obstruction, as were the millions of people caught outside the urban force fields and still struggling to reach them. Even on the sunward side of the planet, they could see the fusion contrails of the Prime ships slicing across space as they rose and fell from the wormholes. Now new lights appeared, the bright turquoise of Cherenkov radiation flaring down as if small stars had suddenly ignited in orbit. There were five of them, spaced equidistantly three thousand kilometres above the planet’s equator. The warships Dauntless, Defiant and Desperado slipped out into real space; along with the scoutships Conway and Galibi.
After that, it became impossible to look directly into the sky. Fusion drives scratched huge lines of dazzling fire across the constellations as they accelerated ships and missiles at high gees. Nuclear explosions blossomed silently, swelling to merge into a nebula brighter than sunlight that braceleted the entire world. Occasionally, energy beams would penetrate the atmosphere, becoming intense sparkling pillars of violet light tens of kilometres high, lasting for a second or more. Where they touched the ground, lethal gouts of molten rock would spew up, adding to the wildfire which raced outward from the touchpoint. Huge radiation bursts inflamed the ionosphere, sending borealis storms spinning around the globe.
The battle lasted for over an hour, then the nebula faded away, its ions gusting out towards interplanetary space, cooling and decaying as they dispersed. In its wake, more Prime ships ventured out of the wormholes, again filling low-orbit space with their slender vivid exhausts. For hours, vast shoals of flaming meteorites fell to earth, trailing long ribbons of black smoke behind them.
Anyone still out in the open kept one fearful eye on the sky above, dodging the debris as they redoubled their efforts to reach sanctuary.
*
The Ables pick-up truck was bouncing wildly as Mark gunned it along the stone chip road that ran the length of the Highmarsh Valley. He was leading the little band of vehicles that were carrying the surviving members of Simon Rand’s rearguard. A couple of kilometres up ahead, the bus convoy was racing along. He couldn’t see the MG, though he knew it was up there, well in front of the buses. They had a clear communication link with Carys, the network along the High-marsh had rebuilt itself to a good thirty per cent of its original capacity.
‘We’re about at the junction,’ Carys told them. Her voice coming from the hand-held array was thin and strained. ‘Barry says it’s the road that takes us to the Ulon.’
‘What do they do?’ Mark asked Liz. ‘Do they go home?’
‘Christ knows.’ She tapped one of the icons on the array. ‘Simon, have you actually got any idea where we should be going?’
‘I believe the Turquino Valley should be our first choice,’ Simon said. ‘It is relatively narrow, with high walls, which will make it difficult for the aliens to fly in there.’
‘But it’s a dead end,’ Yuri Conant protested.
‘There’s a track out to the Sonchin,’ Lydia Dunbavand said.
‘A foot track,’ Mark said. ‘For mountain goats. Not even a 4x4 could use it.’
‘Nonetheless, that is where we should proceed,’ Simon said. ‘We just have to hang on until the navy opens a wormhole to evacuate us.’
Liz thumped the dashboard. ‘Eight hundred and goddamn seventy-sixth place on the list,’ she groaned. ‘The only thing left of us by then will be a few lumps of charcoal.’
The array flashed up a general call icon. ‘I’ve got a worm-hole open inside the Turquino Valley,’ Mellanie’s voice said. ‘It’s not a large one, I’m afraid, so it will take a long time to get everyone through. If we’re lucky we can pull it off before the Primes discover what’s happening. Simon?’
‘Heaven bless you, Mellanie,’ Simon said. ‘All right, people, you heard; convoy to proceed to the Turquino.’
‘We left Mellanie behind us,’ Mark said flatly. They’d barely reached Blackwater Crag when a huge, powerful explosion had flattened almost a third of the town. It appeared to be centred on the Ables Motors garage where they’d left Mellanie. When it happened he’d told himself that she would have found a way out, not that
he had a clue how she’d do it. Now, rather than relief, he was getting more than a little apprehensive about Mellanie Rescorai and her abilities.
‘She said she was getting help,’ Liz said.
‘Who the hell gives help on this scale?’
‘It’s either someone like Sheldon, or possibly the SI itself. I can’t think of any other way she could pull this off.’
‘God almighty, why her?’
‘Dunno, baby,’ Liz said. ‘God has a sense of humour after all? But I’m glad she’s on our side.’
‘Goddamn.’ He clenched the steering wheel, staring sulkily through the cracked, grubby windscreen. A long line of pick-up trucks, 4x4s, and buses were turning off the Highmarsh road just before the main junction, taking an even smaller track that threaded along the line of tall dark-jade liipoplars which marked the edge of the Calsor homestead.
‘Carys?’ Liz asked.
‘On the road to nowhere. I hope your little girlfriend knows what she’s doing.’
‘Me too.’
The Turquino Valley was narrow even by the standards of the Highmarsh’s northern ramparts. A near-symmetrical v-shape that began two hundred metres above the floor of the Highmarsh. Its walls had boltgrass scrabbling a little way up the lower slopes, but after fifty metres or so the vegetation and stony soil gave way to naked rock. Rivulets oozed down from the jagged heights, feeding into a fast-flowing stream which foamed along the bottom to spill out into the Highmarsh.
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