It wasn’t the opening of the doorway that had caused the reaction, though. What had made the crowd gasp was the Angel’s response.
When the vessel had opened, the Angel had taken several steps back away from the hull. Very sharp steps. She’d practically stumbled, in fact. The glossy silver trumpet slipped in her grasp, its flared bell dipped, and her wings flailed as though she was preparing to take to the air. All of it added up to a clear and inescapable conclusion.
The Angel was afraid.
FLESH-EATER
To her credit, the immortal rallied promptly and stood straight and firm, albeit considerably closer to the edge of the onlooking crowd than the hull of the vessel. She drew herself up, flared her wings, and took a proper hold of the heraldic trumpet once again.
“Refusal to submit to the Archangelic court will result in internal military sanctions of the Corps of the Magi,” she said sternly, “and may extend to the full official decommissioning of your home defence platform at such a time as her whereabouts–”
“Child,” the ship said, and now the voice seemed to be coming more directly from the dark hole that had opened in her side. Moskin couldn’t be sure if it was a psychological effect, or if some internal audio source had previously been transmitting through nodes on the smooth hull. “I have already told you I cannot follow this instruction, and – as a sentient entity under Corporate High Council law – could not be compelled to even if it was permitted by regulations.”
“The High Council ruling you reference does not take into account the war crimes for which–”
“War crimes almost by definition can only be committed by a sentient being,” the vessel said. “I am a member of the Pinian Brotherhood standing military and I follow my orders. If you cannot operate within the structure provided by the military establishment, perhaps you should submit to the Archangelic court.”
“The circumstances surrounding those orders have resulted in a change in the situation–”
“Unless the revered Firstmades have made an official amendment to the orders, I fail to see the legitimacy of any changed situation you might mention,” the ship said. “If God hasn’t explained things to you, child, that’s not my fault. I will continue to do what I was commanded to do. Now, you are wasting my time.”
The murmurs that rolled around the throng this time were more agitated. Nobody told an Angel she was wasting their time. Nobody, that is, except somebody acting on orders from above and beyond the ranks of the Archangels. To claim to be taking orders directly from the Disciples, let alone directly from God … it was something only a holy madman would dare.
“This is it,” Soki whispered to Moskin, her words safely concealed amidst the murmurs and mutters all around them. “Isn’t it? If the message you received came from this ship, then you’re a part of her orders,” she reached across and squeezed his hand, hard. “We’re about to say goodbye to each other, aren’t we?”
“I think so,” Moskin said, surprised at the sudden depth of his sadness. “I … yes. I think we are.”
Even so, it was a jolting surprise a few seconds later when the ship’s great warm voice suddenly called out, “Moskin Stormburg. Please report.”
The crowd fell silent. None of the people directly around them knew Moskin personally, although over the past twenty years a lot of them would have heard the name – certainly enough to recognise it now, and piece it together with the threefold sacrifice and accompanying theories. In a few seconds, the murmur had begun to rise to a roar as people came to the conclusion Stormburg had been right. And the Elevator, or her strange, wilful subordinate, had come as a direct result.
What took her so long? Moskin thought, before a sudden jab to his ribs returned him to the here and now. Soki was staring at him expectantly. He realised he was standing frozen, a morchi-bird before a jewel-eyed serpent.
“I,” he said, but his throat was suddenly tight and dry.
“Moskin Stormburg,” the ship’s voice came abruptly louder, more insistent and – just in case there’d been any doubt as to the fact that the two communications had the same originator – accompanied by a heavy pressure above Moskin’s eyeballs and a sharp hissing echo of the words in his brain. He gasped in pain, and felt himself stumble before Soki grabbed his arm. “I have come a long way and abandoned important work. Report.”
“Alright,” he said, stepping forward, but his voice was still weak from the unexpected invasion. “Alright, I–”
He stopped again because Soki had drawn him up with a quiet hiss of apprehension. Several of the people standing and kneeling around them, including the golden-horned Vorontessæ nearby, were turning and looking at them curiously. At the same time, however, a black-clad Elven man down near the semicircular forefront of the spectators had stepped forward with hands raised.
“I’m Moskin Stormburg,” the Elf said, planting his feet and shaking his spined mane proudly. “Reporting as summoned.”
There were more murmurs from the crowd, and the Angel looked visibly indecisive about how to proceed. The scene hung, clear and crystalline, for several seconds.
Then, without warning, the Elf vanished.
It happened so fast, Moskin didn’t really see it – but the impostor didn’t so much disappear into thin air, as flatten out and darken until flesh and clothes were reduced to a seamless black patch on the lichen-filigreed stone, all in the space of a shocked eye-blink. A second after the swatting, the abrupt and echoless phut sound of it drifted to their location.
The Angel took another awkward step away from both the ship and the smear that was all that remained of the false Moskin Stormburg, and the semicircle of clear space grew a little larger as the nearest onlookers recoiled. There were a few cries of shock, but most of the denizens simply stood or knelt in silence, warily awaiting the next act.
“Moskin Stormburg,” the ship’s voice had returned to mellow normal. Evidently she was satisfied that sufficient emphasis and attention had been added to her words at this point. “Further time-wasters will not be tolerated.”
The implication that what had happened to the false Stormburg might have been an example of tolerance led the semicircular no man’s land to widen once again. The Heaven-folk who had been watching Moskin and Soki continued to do so, and now one of them – a male, Moskin thought, with spiralled etchings on the ring of short curving gold-sheathed horns that formed a circlet on his leathery brown head – spoke quietly.
“Art Moskyn Stormbyrg?” His accent and diction was antiquated and lyrical.
“I am,” Moskin said, his throat feeling dry again.
The Vorontessi let out a rattling chuckle. “Art certyn?”
“I’m beginning to wish I weren’t,” Moskin muttered, then raised his voice. “Here,” he called. “I’m coming down,” he turned to Soki.
“For God’s sake, get down there before she squashes you like that last poor bastard,” Soki said, grinning brightly and with tears standing in her eyes. “Or even worse, squashes me for keeping her waiting,” she slid her hand down his arm and gave his fingers a final rough squeeze. “I’m going to miss your stupid visions.”
“We’ll meet again,” Moskin said. It felt like a lie in his mouth.
Turning away and hitching his mulluck-wrap onto his shoulder, he walked down between the ranks of spectators, who parted before him as the whispering and murmuring once again rose into a reverberation of quiet thunder. He descended the slope towards Thrabney Point and stepped out into the clear space before the vessel, willing himself not to look down at the black smear that was the mortal remains of the last man to claim the name of Moskin Stormburg. A faint acrid smell hung in the still air, burnt machinery with a sweet underlay horribly reminiscent of the roast duck he’d just been standing near. He stopped and rested his hands on his blades.
“Moskin,” the ship said pleasantly. “Please, come aboard.”
Willing himself to take smooth strides, Moskin stepped forward. He looked down at the Angel
as he came level with her, trying at the same time not to look down on her. She may have been rendered impotent by the ship, may have been afraid, but she was still a dazzlingly powerful entity. And Moskin was afraid of the ship too, so he could hardly fault her.
The Angel was staring at him, appearing more curious than accusatory. She really was like a tiny Elf with wings, he thought. The main physical differences between humans and Áea-folk, besides size, were cosmetic – human ears were small and round, their hair was like long downy fur, their mouths were tiny and lined with little square teeth that had only the slightest occasional point to indicate their simian heritage. The Angel had all of these characteristics, but she was perfected, a dazzling beacon of God’s grace that made him feel huge and savage and acutely embarrassed.
He felt obligated to say something to her, to explain himself. “All my notes are on the public record,” he said humbly. “My theories, my visions, my findings and musings … anything that might explain why the Elevator wants me, it’s there,” the Angel nodded, her small, brilliant brown eyes narrowing thoughtfully. “She contacted me yesterday – that’s all I can tell you.”
Just as Moskin was preparing to continue past her and approach the ship, the Angel spoke. “She is a Flesh-Eater,” she said in a low voice.
He turned back. “Excuse me?”
“The Destarion, all the Category 9 Convoy Defence Platforms, had four tiers of weaponry,” the Angel told him, speaking swiftly and urgently. “Flesh-Eaters; World-Eaters; God-Eaters; and All-Eaters. ‘Flesh-Eater’ covers a range of on-board and small-scale external weapons. Including short-haul shuttles and fighters,” she nodded her flawless head towards the pale hull, the shadowed opening. “This is one of them,” she said. “Not the Elevator, but a part of the Elevator – and answerable, it seems, only to the Elevator. And the Lost Disciples, and God.”
“Thank you,” Moskin said sincerely.
He stepped up to the edge of the bluff. He’d visited Thrabney Point many times, but had never come quite so close to the fateful drop-off where so many bliss-struck faithful threw themselves to their deaths year after year. From this part of the Fade slab, you could plunge not onto the indistinct Uterña stair below, but directly into the cold and airless gulf where the Lost Realms had once floated. The grey stone came to a largely uniform edge and folded over, but the slab was so vast there were any number of outcroppings and clefts and crags that had been carved out by hundreds of millennia of the Eden Road’s minimal weather. Thrabney Point was one of the more prominent features of the great cliff.
The ship, the Flesh-Eater, floated perhaps two body-lengths – four-and-a-half, maybe five metres – away from the edge, the opening in her hull gaping wide directly level with the stone and the pale bulk of her body tapering to a point several hundred metres below. A hush hung over the masses as Moskin, still willing himself not to balk, stepped up to the point and launched himself across in an easy bound.
He landed on the pale, slightly-roughened interior surface of the Flesh-Eater, halted his forward momentum with a couple of trotting steps, and turned to look back.
Moskin heard the crowd go aaaahh one last time, and caught a final glimpse of the nearest ranks of faces and the Angel with her lustrous wings and bravely-gleaming trumpet, before the orifice irised closed and he was immersed in a tunnel of sourceless white light.
INTO THE GULF
“You must have many questions,” the vessel said, while Moskin stood staring at the rounded terminus of the white passageway into which he had leapt.
“I … yes,” Moskin said. His mind was, however, as blank as the smooth walls that enclosed him. He turned, took a step, and reached out to touch the side of the passageway. The substance was hard, slightly glossy unlike the considerately-roughened floor, and so much like the surface of a tooth he could not think of it as anything else. Godfang, he thought with a shiver. “I suppose the first that occurs is ‘why am I still alive?’”
“You are Moskin Stormburg,” the Flesh-Eater said. “I was obligated to dissuade further time-wasters, but obviously I was not going to kill the person I came here to pick up.”
“Perhaps an obvious second question, then–”
“Why did I come here to pick you up?”
“Yes. Why was I allowed on board?”
“I think you know the answer to that one, Moskin,” the Flesh-Eater admonished. Her voice, now it was all around him, was once again warm and strangely motherly.
“I assume it was because of my theories and insights about the vanished worlds,” Moskin said. “Are we on the same side of this?”
“Certainly,” the ship replied. “We serve the revered Firstmades, do we not?”
“We do,” Moskin agreed warily. “What should I call you?” he asked next, deciding that if he was going to fulfil the ship’s expectations, he might as well do it thoroughly. “What are you? What is your mission, how did you contact me, and where are we going?”
“Excellent! You may call me what you wish,” the Flesh-Eater said, “since I have previously been identified only as Bayn Taro, as I am the fifth of ten sub-units, you may consider that as a starting point. Perhaps, in the absence of others, you can call me Bayn.”
“I understand bayn is Xidh31 for a small and inconsequential thing?” Moskin asked.
“Yes,” Bayn replied, “in this context, a technical classification for a sub-unit. The Angel was right about what I am – a Flesh-Eater-class independent weapons, transport and intelligence-gathering unit of Category 9 Convoy Defence Platform Destarion.”
“The Convoy Defence Platform Destarion,” Moskin blurted.
“I’m yet to meet another,” the Flesh-Eater confirmed with audible amusement.
“Then … assuming you are not offended by the implied disparagement … I shall call you Bayn,” Moskin said formally.
“Very good. My mission – to continue answering your questions – is the same as yours,” Bayn went on. “To confirm the continued existence of and determine the condition of the Pinian Disciples and their sovereign worlds, establish what sort of aid they require and whether I am capable of rendering it, and then rendering such aid.
“I contacted you using a regrettably crude biomechanical telepathic circuit I constructed, the calibration and triangulation of which was based on the data gathered from Heaven and the Eden Road airspace in my recent decennial sweep.
“Suffice it to say that protocol prevented me from simply cutting into Fade’s communication grid and sending a direct message telling you I was on my way. Excess time-wasters had to be left out of the loop for their own safety, and it was paramount to establish your ability to accept a communication of this kind. I apologise for any discomfort that might have been caused by incompatibility issues,” Bayn made a strange little sound that signified uncomfortable laughter without actually sounding anything like it whatsoever. “I don’t do Áea-folk.”
“If you sweep every decade, you ought to have spotted my contributions before this one,” Moskin noted, since it was one of the only things he was reasonably sure he’d understood correctly. He also made a mental note to question Bayn’s first-time response to a man fraudulently claiming to be Moskin Stormburg, when just not letting him on board was an option … but he wanted to get a better feeling for the Flesh-Eater’s attitudes and policies first. Ending up as a black smudge on the floor was not part of his plan.
“I still had to compile, convert and confirm my findings,” Bayn said, sounding slightly defensive. “It is a very complex dataset and reducing it to even this level of accessibility is a lot of work. Plus, as you may have noticed, there are … political considerations.”
“I can appreciate that,” Moskin said politely.
“Which brings us to where we’re going,” she concluded, cheering up swiftly. “Regrettably, I am not gifted with a relative drive so we can’t go far. The good news is, we don’t have to. Our work, after all, is here. We’re just descending into the gulf a short distance, to
set us out of the reach of … interference and prying eyes.”
“I see,” Moskin said.
“We will soon come to rest and hold position, for a time, at my customary coordinates within the gulf,” Bayn explained. “This is where I have collected what debris I managed to retrieve after the so-called vanishing. There isn’t very much – short of starting another war with Castle Void, which I am currently ill-equipped to carry out, there was little I could scavenge. And none of it is very useful to our cause, despite what you may have heard.”
Moskin nodded. The gulf had not been entirely empty when the Pinian flatworlds had vanished. According to ancient accounts there had been a lot of residual material, both structural and organic. A great many people of assorted species had evacuated to Heaven, or at least to the Eden Road stair that would become known as Fade, amidst the chaos. Gyre Thalaar, Soki’s grandmother, may or may not have been one of them.
How these refugees hadn’t all plunged into the gulf when their worlds were snatched out from under them was anyone’s guess, just as it was anyone’s guess why some had been spared while the overwhelming majority had gone wherever the flatworlds had gone. Some of the survivors would have been capable of flight, even in the practically airless vacuum beneath Heaven’s atmospheric pocket, but that would by no means have applied to all of them. Some of them might have been in vessels. It was just too difficult to say. Records were sketchy.
Most of the non-living detritus from the vanishing had fallen, though. The records were clear on this much at least. The gravitational pull exerted by Castle Void had naturally dragged most of the debris straight down after Earth, Hell and Cursèd were removed. The debris had rained down on the vast grey expanse of Castle Void’s Rooftop, where it was all promptly gathered up by the Darkings and their worshippers.
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