The Evolutionary Void
Page 42
Threat imminent.
Response grade one to hostile enclosure situation.
‘Halt now, or I will kill her.’
Subject beta: ‘Stay back. Back. The maniac means it. Please, stay back.’
‘Where is Oswald Fernandez Isaacs?’
Octoron citizen two: ‘I don’t know. Please.’
‘Who knows where Isaacs is?’
Three Octoron citizens, simultaneously: ‘Let her go.’
Scan reception> eight target sensors locking on.
‘I will kill her unless he is brought to me.’
Subject alpha: ‘Stop this. Let me talk to them.’
‘No.’
Enclosure threat elevated to grade five.
Response. Random target selection twelve citizens, three buildings.
Armed> Disruptor pulse. Sequential firepattern.
Armed> Ion beam. Sequential firepattern.
Scan> Level five> Successful penetration of debris cloud and atmospheric ionization. Zero immediate threat.
Surrounding sound level high.
Humans in plaza retreating. Casualties fifteen. Fatalities five.
Octoron citizen two struggling. Uncooperative.
Primary mission: option two failure. Go to option three.
U-shadow download general broadcast into local communication net.
‘This is an open message for Oswald Fernandez Isaacs. I mean you no harm. It is imperative that you contact me. I have Inigo with me. Together you can resolve the Void catastrophe.’
Subject beta: ‘Oh that should do it, you moron dickhead. I’d be rushing to call you if it was me.’ Voice level raised/condition hysterical.
‘Be silent.’
Subject alpha: ‘Aaron, this has to stop. Do you understand, you are wrecking your own mission.’
Analysis.
Claim refuted.
‘I know what I have to do. Don’t interfere.’
Subject alpha: ‘You don’t know. You’re dealing with humans. You need an emotional component in your reasoning. And you don’t have that any more.’
‘This environment is hostile to my emotion-based routines, it corrodes my rationality. They cannot be permitted.’
Subject beta: ‘Oh shit. Shit, what do we do?’
Subject alpha: ‘I don’t know.’
Alert> T-sphere establishing across Octoron. Emergence of eleven objects – distance fifty metres. Scan> Level eight> Intruders identified: adult tristage Chikoya encased in armour. Multiple-weapon hardware attached. Force fields active.
Surrounding sound level increasing – human screaming.
Subject beta: ‘Great Lady, what are they?’
Chikoya one: ‘You are the human messiah.’
Analyse: how did they know that and locate Subject alpha so quickly? Time elapsed since landing seventeen minutes.
Subject alpha: ‘I am Inigo, yes.’
Situation analysis. Chikoya engaging deployment manoeuvre. High tactical advantage in successful encirclement.
Probability of protecting subjects alpha and beta from synchronized Chikoya weapons fire: minimal. Option one: discard subject beta.
Chikoya one: ‘You have initiated a devourment phase in the Void.’
Subject alpha: ‘I haven’t been in contact with Edeard for over a century and a half.’
Chikoya one: ‘You initiated contact. You are responsible. You must stop it.’
‘All Void activity will be ended. We will see to it. Now leave Octoron.’
Chikoya one: ‘Messiah, you will come with us. Your threat to the galaxy must be ended. Come now.’
‘Not permissible. Remove yourself and your kind from this place.’
Chikoya one: ‘Your messiah comes with us.’
‘Inigo, raise your integral force field to its highest setting.’
Subject alpha: ‘What about Corrie-Lyn? Damn you, she’s naked out here.’
Subject beta: ‘What’s happening? Inigo, don’t go with those things, please. Aaron you have to—’
Alert> Chikoya weapons activation.
Multiple target acquisition.
Armed> Disruptor pulse. Sequential fire.
Armed> Neutron lasers. Sequential fire.
Electronic countermeasures. Engaged. Full power.
Armed> Microkinetics. Smart acquisition. Free fire authority.
Ceasefire.
Scan> Active Chikoya immediate area withdrawal. Redeployment. >Tracking.
Current tactical situation poor. Move. Subject alpha to accompany.
Subject alpha holding subject beta, force field extended to protect her.
‘Let go of her.’
Subject alpha: ‘Fuck you.’
Scan.
Move into Building-A. Utilize the cover it provides.
‘Come with me.’
Moving. Subject alpha, subject beta, accompanying.
Alert> Multiple target acquisition.
Greatest tactical location: stand in Building-A doorway.
Armed> Disruptor pulse. Sequential fire.
Armed> Neutron lasers. Sequential fire.
Armed> Ion beams. Sequential fire.
Armed> Microkinetics. Smart acquisition. Free fire authority.
Armed> Ariel smartseeker stealth mines. Chikoya profile loaded. Dispense.
Alert> Teleport emergence, eighteen armoured Chikoya.
‘We can’t get away. They know you’re here.’
Ceasefire.
Subject alpha (shouting): ‘Tell me something I don’t know.’
Exit doorway. Weapons fire impact weakening Building-A structure.
‘This way.’
Enact exit strategy.
Scan> mapping Building-A layout. Exit route confirmed. U-shadow established in local communications net, infiltrating adjacent transport capsules.
Alert> Chikoya access of Building-A.
Targeting Building-B structural load points.
Armed> Disruptor pulse. Fire.
Integral force field strengthened to resist partial Building-A collapse. Fire outbreak. Scan through smoke. Three Chikoya disabled.
Subject alpha: ‘Where do we go?’
‘We must leave the immediate area. Switch off your force field.’
Subject alpha: ‘What? In the Lady’s name you’ve got to be joking.’
‘Negative. They are tracking your presence through the telepathy effect, it is completely pervasive and leaves you exposed wherever you are.’
Subject alpha: ‘So?’
‘Switch off your force field. I will render you unconscious. If you are not thinking, your thoughts cannot betray our location.’
Subject beta: ‘Inigo! No! He’ll kill us both. He will, it’s what he does.’
‘You are no use to me dead.’
Alert> Target acquisition: Building-C rooftop.
Armed> Microkinetics suppression barrage. Fire.
Target eliminated.
Subject alpha: ‘But I can’t stop the Void if I’m unconscious.’
‘When I acquire Isaacs I will insist he switches off the telepathy effect. No one will be able to find you then.’
Subject alpha: ‘Oh sweet Lady.’
Subject beta: ‘No no no.’
Subject alpha: ‘You look after Corrie-Lyn, too.’
‘I will.’
Alert> Nine Chikoya deploying in acquisition formation.
Subject alpha: ‘Aaron, whatever’s left of the real you in there, I’m holding you to that.’
Exit capsule approaching. Landing zone designated to u-shadow. Three decoy capsules en route – safety limiters disabled.
‘You can rely on me.’
Subject alpha: ‘Very well.’
Subject beta: ‘No! Inigo, no, please.’
Scan confirmation, subject alpha force field deactivated. Targeting.
Armed> Microkinetics, minimal tissue damage mode selected, neuro-sedative tip loaded. Fire.
Subject beta: ‘No! Oh lady you’ve killed him. G
et away from me. Get away, you monster.’
Subject beta attempting to run.
Targeting.
Armed> Microkinetic, minimal tissue damage mode selected, neuro-sedative tip loaded. Fire.
Alert> Five Chikoya approaching, open assault formation.
Multiple target acquisition.
Armed> Disruptor pulse. Maximum power rating. Sequential fire.
U-shadow update: landing exit capsule behind Building-D.
Armed> Neutron lasers. Maximum power rating. Sequential fire.
U-shadow update: decoy capsules on collision vector. Mach eight. Accelerating.
Armed> Microkinetics. Enhanced explosive warheads. Free fire authority.
Armed> Ariel smartseeker stealth mines. Chikoya profile loaded. Dispense.
Alert> New targets.
Fire.
Fire.
Fire.
*
The Delivery Man’s biononics ran a last scan over the weird active-molecular vortex and the way it spun down through the quantum fields. It was an interesting chunk of superphysics technology, certainly, yet he had no idea what its function might actually be, though he suspected it was an elaborate experiment. Whatever it was, he was fairly sure it wasn’t the elevation mechanism.
His u-shadow opened a link to Gore. ‘Washout,’ he reported.
‘Yeah, me too.’
‘I’m coming out.’ There was little light in the vast cave, a few cold blue patches up amid the multitude of stalagmites eighty metres above his head. The bottom quarter of the cave had been cut smooth and flat, leaving the natural rock formations above. Even two and a half thousand years ago, when the advanced Anomine had set it up, the cave couldn’t have been a terribly practical place. That was the thing with the Anomine, everything had an aesthetic aspect.
Water dripped out of the deep fissures and off the end of the stalagmites, creating long pungent algal ribbons down the rough walls. Drainage channels had clogged, leaving dank puddles spreading across the floor. The vortex carried on regardless; moisture and murky air were never going to affect its composition or function.
As he retraced his steps along the winding passage back out to the surface, the Delivery Man was puzzled by the lack of any communication system connected to the vortex. If it was an experiment, surely they would need to monitor the results, same for a control system. Or maybe I’m missing something, he thought wearily. Maybe there is an ultrasophisticated net covering the whole planet that biononic scans are simply too primitive to discover. He was grasping at straws and knew it. The Last Throw’s sensors were good. They’d detected a hundred and twenty-four advanced devices still functional on the planet, of which the vortex was the eleventh they’d examined. If there was some kind of web linking them, Last Throw’s sensors would have revealed it.
A quarter of an hour later, the Delivery Man walked out into the evening sunlight. Tall cumulo-nimbus scurried through the darkening sky, splashed a pale rose-gold by the vanishing sun. From his position, high up a plateau wall, the countryside swept away to the south-east, its furthest fringes already turning to black. Several rivers traced bright silver threads across the mauve and jade vegetation. Then there was the city to the east, larger and more imposing than any of Earth’s cities even at the height of the population boom. A forest of tall towers stretched over a mile into the air. Elaborate spiked spheres and curving pyramids filled the ground between the soaring spires like foothills. Lights were still shining through windows and open arches as the service machinery maintained the city in perfect readiness for occupation.
It was completely devoid of anyone, which he’d found strangely sad, like a spurned lover. The remaining Anomine chose to live in their farm villages out in the open land. He could even see several of their little settlements amid the darkening land, flickering orange lights growing as the nightly fires were lit. He never did get that philosophy, living in the shadow of a past civilization, knowing that at any time they could simply move into the giant towers and live a life of unrivalled luxury, and challenge their minds once again. Yet instead, they rejected any form of technology beyond labour-animal carts and ploughs, and filled their days tilling the fields and building huts.
The Last Throw came streaking in over the mountains behind him, to finish up hovering a few centimetres above the succulent spiral grass-equivalent. He drifted up into the airlock.
‘This is getting us nowhere fast,’ Gore grumbled as the Delivery Man arrived in the main cabin.
‘It’s your procedure. What else have we got? There’s not too many of these things to examine.’
‘They’re all small-scale. We have to look big.’
‘We don’t know that, remember,’ the Delivery Man chided as he settled in a broad leather-cushioned scoop chair. ‘We simply don’t know what it is. That vortex I just examined. It had to be linked with the elevation mechanism.’
‘How?’ Gore snapped.
‘I think it was some kind of experiment, probing the local quantum structure. That kind of knowledge could only help to contribute to going post-physical, surely?’
‘Don’t call me Shirley.’
‘What?’
Gore ran a hand over his forehead. ‘Yeah. Right. Whatever.’
The Delivery Man was mildly puzzled by Gore’s lack of focus. It wasn’t like him at all. ‘All right. So what I was thinking is that there has to be some kind of web and database in the cities.’
‘There is. You can’t access it.’
‘Why not?’
‘The AIs are sentient. They won’t allow any information retrieval.’
‘That’s stupid.’
‘From our point of view, but they’re the same as the border-guards, they maintain the homeworld’s sanctity, the AIs keep the Anomine’s information safe.’
‘Why?’
‘Because that’s what the Anomine do, that’s what they are. They’re entitled to protect what they’ve built, same as anyone.’
‘But we’re not damag—’
‘I know!’ Gore snarled. ‘I fucking know that, all right. We have to work round this. And listening to you sitting there, whingeing twenty-four-seven is no fucking help at all. Jezus, I should have lived a fucking normal twenty-first-century life and died properly. Why the hell do I fucking bother to help you moron supermen? Certainly not the gratitude.’
The Delivery Man only just stopped himself from opening his jaw to gawp at the gold-skinned man sitting in his antique orange shell chair. He was about to ask what the problem was, then realized. ‘She’ll be out of suspension soon,’ he said sympathetically.
Gore grunted, shoving himself further back in his chair’s cushioning. ‘She should’ve been there by now.’
‘We don’t know. In the Void we just don’t know. Timeflow there isn’t uniform.’
‘Maybe.’
‘The confluence nests are functioning. She will dream Makkathran for you, she’ll be there.’
‘It’ll mean crap if we don’t find the mechanism.’
‘I know. And we’ve still got Marius to deal with when we do.’ The Delivery Man had been perturbed when the sensors showed them Marius had got past the borderguard stations. The Accelerator agent’s ship had immediately dropped back into stealth mode once it was inside the cometary belt. Currently it was lurking amid the orbital debris cloud above the Anomine home-world, watching them zip over the planet. It wouldn’t take much to work out what they were doing.
‘Ha. That dick. We can take him whenever we want.’
‘We don’t know that.’
‘It takes smarter and tougher than him to catch me with my ass hanging out.’
The Delivery Man shook his head. He couldn’t decide if the machismo was worse than the insecurity. ‘Well let’s just hope it doesn’t come to that.’
‘Oh yeah. Wishful thinking, that’s what keeps the universe ticking.’
The Delivery Man groaned and gave up.
Gore’s golden lips parted in a small smil
e. ‘The Navy teams didn’t exactly push the AIs.’
‘Uh huh,’ the Delivery Man said warily.
‘We’ve got another hundred or so of these tech highspots left to examine, right? So that’s not going to take more than four or five days if we hustle.’
‘That sounds about right.’
‘Then we do it. If we draw a blank we go to plan B.’
‘Which is?’
‘Did you know I actually knew Ozzie?’
‘I didn’t, but it doesn’t surprise me. You were contemporaries.’