“Tell two of the extra knives to widen out now and drop – not power – on my mark, second-wave suicide-ready.”
“Prepped, moving,” the drone said.
“Everybody else, spread further out over the next eight seconds then pop over the top and empty everything. Start moving now. Ferbin, Holse, remember; work with the suit and let it move you if it needs to.”
“Of course.”
“Will do, ma’am.”
Eight seconds.
“Now, now, now!” Anaplian called. The suits bounced them up over the long curved summit of the great ridge of blade. Light flared above them. Suddenly looking down into the chasm beneath, the exhausts of the drone’s AM-powered missiles were soot-dark spots on their visors as the suits blanked out their extreme flaring. The visors blinked red circles round their target and all four of their weapons fired. Ferbin’s kinetic rifle leapt and hammered in his hand, throwing him up and back with every pulse, the rounds tiny bright trails left in the eye. He started to twist as the recoil tried to turn him round and make him somersault all at once, the suit doing its best to compensate and keep the gun pointed at their target.
Light everywhere. Something thudded into his lower right leg; there was a burst of pain as if he’d twisted his knee, but it faded almost instantly.
The target washed out in multiple, visor-tripping bursts of light which threw shadows like barbs and thorns all over the ceiling kilometres above.
“Cease fire!” Anaplian yelled. “Calling off the drop-knives.”
“They’re stopped,” Xuss said. “Here’s their view.”
Something glowing white was falling and tumbling away amongst the curved blades, unleashing yellow sparks and leaving orange debris falling slower behind. All firing had stopped. The fiery, falling object was providing the only light there was.
“That it?” Anaplian asked.
“Pretty sure,” Xuss said. “Move on, keep checking?”
“And scan that hostile debris. Let’s go. Hippinse?”
“Took a kinetic frag,” the avatoid wheezed. “Close to getting mushed, okay. Repairing. Moving.”
“Okay,” Djan Seriy said as they all moved out across the dark trench. Far below, the molten debris was still falling. “Ferbin?” Anaplian said gently. “I’m sorry about your leg.”
“What?” He looked down. His right leg was missing from the knee down.
He stared. General Yilim, he thought. He felt his mouth go dry and heard something roar in his ears.
“You’ll be all right,” his sister’s voice said quietly, soothingly in his ears. “Suit’s sealed it and pumped you with painkill and anti-shock and it was cauterised by the hit. You will be fine, brother; my word on it. Once we’re back out we’ll grow a new one. Easiest thing in the world. Okay?”
Ferbin felt remarkably all right now. Almost happy. Mouth okay, no roaring any more. Certainly there was no pain from the wound, in fact no sensation down there at all. “Yes,” he told his sister.
“You sure, sir?” Holse said.
“Yes,” he said. “I’m all right. I feel very good.” He had to keep looking at it to be sure it had really happened, and then felt down, just to confirm. Sure enough; no leg below the knee. And he felt fine! Extraordinary.
“That thing was Morth-tech, compromised,” Hippinse told them when he got information back from the microdrone sent to investigate what was left of the machine they’d been fighting. “One of twelve, if its internal records are right.”
“What the hell’s Morth stuff doing down here?” Anaplian asked. “I don’t remember any mention of that.”
“Me neither,” Hippinse said. “Kept that quiet. Probably well intentioned.”
Anaplian made a noise like a spit.
They were flying, a kilometre apart, across the edged unfolding darkness of the Machine level, weaving past the great spherical and ring-shaped components, surfaces ridged and incised with swirling patterns like cut and chiselled gears. The Liveware Problem’s three damaged drones were keeping pace ahead, hurriedly trying to repair what they could of themselves. Turminder Xuss led the way, twenty klicks to the fore.
“Any more comped?” Anaplian asked.
“All twelve were. Two left now; we got one and the ship wasted the rest on entry.”
“Okay,” Anaplian said.
“Ship took some damage from them, though.”
“It did?”
“It was hurt on the way down,” Hippinse said.
“From Nariscene tech?” Anaplian asked, incredulous.
“It had a long way to drop, totally contained, offering perfectly predictable aiming and no eGrid powering,” Hippinse said. “Tried to negotiate but they weren’t having it. They were able to throw a lot at it for a long time. It suffered.”
“How badly?”
“Badly enough. Wounded. Would have gone limping off before now if this wasn’t a desperation mission.”
“Oh, shit,” Anaplian breathed.
“It gets worse,” Hippinse said. “There’s a guard ship.”
“A guard ship?”
“Liveware Problem’s encountered. Got off a spec readout before it had to concentrate on combat.”
“What ship? Whose?”
“Also Morth. Nobody aboard; AI. From the spec, seriously capable. Power linked to the Core.”
“This wasn’t mentioned!” Anaplian insisted.
“Must be a recent thing. Point is, it’s been taken over too.”
“How?” Djan Seriy said, her voice angry.
“Must have been running same systems as the guard machines,” Hippinse said. “Comp one and you get the lot if you play it clever.”
“Fuck!” Djan Seriy shouted. There was a pause, then, “Fuck!” again.
“This, ah, ‘comped’, sir,” Holse said tentatively.
“Compromised,” Hippinse told him. “Taken over by the other side. Persuaded by a sort of thought-infection.”
“Does that happen a lot, sir?”
“It happens.” Hippinse sighed. “Not to Culture ships, as a rule; they write their own individual OS as they grow up, so it’s like every human in a population being slightly different, almost their own individual species despite appearances; bugs can’t spread. The Morthanveld like a degree more central control and predictability in their smart machines. That has its advantages too, but it’s still a potential weakness. This Iln machine seems to have exploited it.” Hippinse made a whistling noise. “Must have learned a lot fast from somewhere.”
“An Enabler,” Anaplian said bitterly. “Bet you. The Oct ran an Enabler system at the thing.”
“That would fit,” Hippinse agreed.
“What from the ship?” Anaplian asked.
Ferbin and Holse’s suits registered information coming in from one of the three drones, but they wouldn’t have known how to interpret it.
“Seeing this?” Anaplian said. Her voice sounded flat and lifeless. Holse felt suddenly terrified. Even Ferbin’s euphoria was punctured.
“Yes,” Hippinse said. He sounded grim. “Seeing it.”
Light flickered and flared ahead, bearing a few similarities to the display produced by the firefight they’d chanced upon earlier between the ship drones and the compromised Morthanveld machine, but much further away; the light was being produced from some way over the horizon and reflecting off the under-surface above, strobing and flaring across the ceiling structures with a distant slowness that seemed to imply a conflict of a weight and scale orders of magnitude above that of the earlier skirmish.
“That’s them, right?” Anaplian asked.
“That’s them,” Hippinse replied, voice low.
Ferbin heard his sister sigh. “This,” she said quietly, “is not going to be fun.”
They got there in time to see the ships destroying each other. The last action was that of the Culture Superlifter Liveware Problem: it fell into the unnamed Morthanveld guard ship – a stubby fist ramming a bloated head – and partially anni
hilated both of them in a blast of total spectrum radiation so extreme that even from eighty kilometres away it was sufficient to trip alarms in the suits.
“I’m gone!” Hippinse said, sounding like a lost child.
“Down to us now,” Anaplian said crisply. “Hippinse! You all right?”
“Yes,” the avatoid said. They were all watching the distant shrapnel of the wreck; huge pieces of ship flailing and tumbling and racing away from the explosion, their glinting, somersaulting surfaces lit by the fading radiations of the carnage as they flew away, smashing into vanes and blades and machinery and ricocheting away again, trailed by sparks and liquidic splashes of secondary and tertiary debris.
“Still got the drones?” Anaplian asked. “I’ve lost them.”
“Yes, yes; got them,” Hippinse said quietly. “They’re answering.”
“Both ships gone,” Turminder Xuss announced. “I am up close and dodging megatonne shit here. And I can see the offending article. It has the Xinthian.”
Ferbin’s blood seemed to run cold at the mention of the last word. Xinthian. The other name for the WorldGod.
“Ah, what would that mean, sir?” Holse asked.
“The Xinthian is enclosed within what looks like a fiery cage,” Turminder Xuss told them. “The offender is very small but looks extremely capable. Energy profile the like of which I have not seen before. Who’d have thought something so ancient would be so potent?” It showed them.
Beyond where the ships had disputed, beyond where their wreckage had slowly fallen – splashing wildly across the great flowers of spiralled vanes beneath like sun-glinted rain on a forest bloom – half a horizon away but coming quickly closer, another tableau presented itself. The view wobbled, overmagnified, then grew quickly more stable and detailed as the drone and its accompanying missiles rushed closer.
The WorldGod was an ellipsoid a kilometre across and two in length, jerking and writhing within a light-splintered surround of fierce white fire extending a few hundred metres out from its mottled, dark brown surface. The Iln machine was a dot to one side, joined to this tortuous mayhem by a single strand of bright blue energy.
Beneath the Xinthian, directly over a hole in the centre of one of the immense blade flowers, a tiny bright globe was growing, throwing off intense, recurrent flashes of light.
“Beneath it,” Anaplian said, sounding like she was gulping.
“It’s generating anti-matter,” Hippinse said.
“Where are—” Djan Seriy began, then they were all hit by intense bursts of laser fire sparkling from a source above and behind them. The suits flicked about, spun, raced away, ablating layers. Ferbin found himself pummelled, too warm, breathless, and his weapon nearly torn from his arms as it twirled, aimed and fired in one absurdly fast movement that happened so quickly it left his flesh and bones aching.
“Comped Morth drone,” somebody said.
“Mine,” somebody else said.
“You’re—”
“Motherfucker!” Ferbin heard somebody else hiss. Actually, it sounded like him.
All Ferbin knew was that he was being tumbled about and yet the gun was always pointing in the same direction whenever it possibly could and it was kicking and kicking and kicking at him, throwing him wildly back, bouncing across these dark and livid skies.
Until it all stopped.
“Hippinse?”
No answer.
“Hippinse; reply!”
It was Djan Seriy’s voice.
“Hippinse?”
Her again.
“Hippinse!”
Ferbin had blacked out momentarily due to the extreme manoeuvring. The suit apologised. It informed him that they were now sheltered with the surviving members of their group – agent Anaplian, Mr Holse and himself – behind a vane on the flank of the nearest machine sphere. The visor helpfully circled his sister and Holse, each a few hundred metres or so away, ten metres down from the scimitared summit of their protecting vane. Light glittered above, strobing over the ceiling structures.
Ferbin began to wonder how he had got here, to safety. He hadn’t actually articulated the words this thought was leading to when the suit told him that it had taken control, under Agent Anaplian’s instructions.
“Ferbin? You back with us?” His sister’s voice sounded loud in his ears.
“Ah . . . yes,” he said. He tried to check himself, tried to carry out a mental inventory of his faculties and bodily parts. For a moment everything seemed fine, but then he remembered his missing lower leg. “Well, no worse,” he said. In fact he felt good; still strangely, almost absurdly exuberant, and sharp; suddenly fully recovered from his blackout and seemingly ready for anything. Some still woozy part of his mind wondered vaguely how profoundly and subtly the suit could affect his emotions, and what control over that process his sister had.
“Holse?” Djan Seriy asked.
“I’m fine, ma’am. But Mr Hippinse . . . ?”
“We lost him when he attacked the second of the two comped Morth machines. Also, Xuss isn’t answering. And the ship drones don’t appear to have survived that last tussle either. We are somewhat reduced, gentlemen.”
“Weren’t there two of those Morthanveld machines?” Holse asked.
“Both gone now. I got the other one,” Anaplian said. Every word she uttered sounded clipped, bitten off. Holse wondered if she had been wounded too, but did not want to ask.
“What now, ma’am?”
“That is a good question, Holse,” Anaplian said. “I strongly suspect if we stick our heads over this vane above us we’ll get them blown off. Also, due to the angles, there isn’t really anywhere else to go. Conversely, I have a short-range line-gun that can knock the living fuck out of anything that pokes its head or other relevant part over our side of the vane. That is our inventory, however. The Iln machine knows I have this weapon and will certainly not come close enough to let me use it. Sadly,” Holse heard the woman take a breath, “we have lost my particle gun to enemy action, the kinetics are expended or blasted, the CREWs won’t have any effect and the subsidiary missiles have either also expended themselves in the course of action or been vaped. Vaporised, I should say. Sorry, brother; sorry, Mr Holse. My apologies for having involved you in all this. I appear to have led us into a sorry situation.”
It was, Ferbin thought. It was a sorry situation. Sometimes life itself seemed like a sorry situation.
What was to become of them? And what lay ahead for him? He might die here within minutes but even if he didn’t he knew he didn’t want to be king. He never had. When he’d seen his father killed, his first instinct had been to run away, even before he’d rationalised this gut decision. He’d always known in his heart he wouldn’t be a good king, and realised now that – in the unlikely event they escaped this desperate fix – his whole reign, his entire life, would be a slow and likely ignominious winding down from this peak of meaning and possible glory. There was a new age coming and he could not really see himself being part of it. Elime, Oramen, him . . .
He heard Holse say, “What’s to be done, then, ma’am?”
“Well, we could just rush the bastard and die very quickly to no effect,” Anaplian said, sounding tired. “Or we can wait here until the Iln machine finishes making all the anti-matter it wants and destroys the whole world. Us first, after itself and the Xinthian,” she added. “If that’s any consolation.”
Holse gulped. “Is that really it, ma’am?”
“Well . . .” Anaplian began, then paused. “Ah. It wants to talk. Might as well hear what it has to say.”
“Humans,” a deep, sonorous voice said to all of them, “the Shellworld machines were built to create a field enclosing the galaxy. Not to protect but to imprison, control, annihilate. I am a liberator, as were all those who came before me, however vilified. We have set you free by destroying these abominations. Join me, do not oppose.”
“What?” Ferbin said.
“Is it saying . . . ?” Holse b
egan.
“Ignore it,” Anaplian told them. “It’s just being a properly devious enemy. Always unsettle the opposition if possible. I’m telling your suits to ignore any further comms from the machine.”
Yes, Ferbin thought, she controls these suits. The machine was trying to control us. We are controlled. It’s all about control.
“So, are we stuck as we are then, ma’am?” Holse asked. “It and us?”
“No,” Anaplian said. “Come to think of it, the Iln machine doesn’t need to settle for a stand-off. Last estimate we took, the required AM mass will take hours to accrete. Long before that, one of the Iln’s sub-pods will appear over that vane-sphere way back there, good sixty klicks off, and pick us off from a distance.”
Holse looked at the distant ridge line, then around at their immediate surroundings. He didn’t see how they could be got round. “How’s it going to do that, ma’am?”
“It can retreat over the horizon and circle round behind us that way,” Djan Seriy said heavily. “The Core’s only fourteen hundred klicks in diameter; horizon’s very close. Could even go right round the Core. In vacuum, wouldn’t take long for a sufficiently capable machine. I’d guess we have a couple of minutes.”
“Oh,” Holse said again.
“Yes, indeed: oh.”
Holse thought. “Nothing else we can do, ma’am?”
“Oh,” Anaplian said, sounding very tired, “there are always things worth trying.”
“Such as, ma’am?”
“Going to need one of you two to sacrifice yourself. Sorry.”
“Pardon, ma’am?”
“Then I get to do the same thing,” Anaplian said, sounding like she was trying to remain calm. “So one of us survives, for a little while longer, at least. Survivor’s suit can get them anywhere within Sursamen or back to near space. More to the point, we might just stop the world getting blown up. Always a reasonable goal.”
“What do we have to do?” Ferbin asked.
“Somebody has to surrender,” Anaplian said. “Give yourself to the Iln machine. It will kill you – quickly, hopefully – but it might just be intrigued enough to inspect you first. That first one, though, it’ll be suspicious of. Whoever goes first dies to satisfy its caution. The second – that will be me – might just get close enough. I’m already preparing all this in my head. I’m assuming the Enabler program the Oct hit the Iln machine with was one of ours. They have subtle misconstructions regarding Contact and SC that might aid our cause here, though I do have to emphasise that this is the most ridiculously long shot, and even then we’re relying on the WorldGod not being fatally injured and it being capable of unmaking all that anti-matter; an explosion based on what’s already accumulated would kill it and do a significant amount of damage to the Core. So, still hope, of a desperate kind. But you wouldn’t bet on any of this, trust me.”
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