Empty Between the Stars (The Songs of Old Sol Book 1)

by Stephen Hunt

  Resurrection was a one-time-covenant. And even if it hadn’t been, Modd could only drag a person back from the brink of near-death. Simenon was going to be fully dead before I got him anywhere near medical nanotech. Modd could resurrect a corpse, of course. But it was no longer the person. Just a piece of meat-in-stasis with control algorithms inserted where the soul used to be. A meat puppet. An insult.

  ‘Why—then?’ Simenon managed to whisper, almost beyond my enhanced hearing’s range. His hand fumbled shaking as he managed to unlatch and open my prayer box. It stayed upright on the cold stone floor.

  ‘We’re going to pray together.’

  ‘Gods—never—answer me.’

  ‘We’ll see, Simenon. Press the index finger of your right hand in the sand and trace a circle. Then, keep your finger pressed hard in the sand while we pray together. You might not be able to say everything I speak, but just repeat my words inside your mind. Think it as hard as you can. The connection should do the rest.’

  ‘Will—try.’

  ‘I pray for intervention, Modd. For your faithful servant, Simenon, his blood your sacrifice. My blood your sacrifice. For the broken shell and spilled hydraulic fluid of your servant Mozart – your own seed – hardened artificial intelligence of the Directorium Inquisitorum Arius. The Protocols of Peace signed between the Wurm Melding and the Humanitum have been violated. Receive my memories, for murder and subversion be thy harvest here.’

  Simenon murmured the words after me, little more than warm air escaping his bruised lips.

  ‘Hear me, Modd, you ungrateful stack of wiped server cores. Heed me, quantum-beyond-quantum, you demanding, unappreciative dollop of shit spawned by gibbering monkey descendants coding at random. Trust in your war chariots, trust in your victory. Give me my bloody launch codes and authorize involution for me, toot bloody sweet.’

  My prayer box began to shake. Simenon gasped but kept his finger pressed in the trembling orange sands, exactly as I had instructed. Across the surface of those ancient grains of Martian desert, a series of symbols began to slowly form. Sigils appearing to the right of the lad’s simple circle. Regret of Modd. Anger of Fure. Trespass of Tricord. A memory key for something complex locked deep in my m-brain, encrypted-beyond-encrypted.

  I cried out as the trigger phrase surfaced like an ice pick ripping through my consciousness. I spat blood out of my throat again. These terrible words demanded speaking bell-clear by me. ‘Echion Red, Udaeus Gold, Chthonius Blue, Hyperenor White, Pelorus Black.’

  ‘Robot—our—robot,’ groaned Simenon. He could only stare as Mozart’s shattered pile of components began to quiver and reform, tendrils of fibre forming around the edges of his broken hull, reaching out like roots, reconnecting his constituent parts. But not to join back together as Mozart again. The mess burrowed through the stone floor in a shower of rubble, sinking into the ground. Disappeared from sight.

  ‘Not so much a robot,’ I coughed. ‘Think of him as a very large weapon-of-mass destruction with a very small conscience. Mozart’s name is Legion, for he is many.’

  ‘The gods—actually answered—me.’

  I turned my gaze from the bubbling hole left by Mozart melting away. Back onto the lad. But poor faithful Simenon had passed away for good, the wonder of our achievement his final words; our prayer his last thought.

  Lifting my head towards the chamber’s rocky roof, I screamed in raw rage and pain; screamed until my throat was throbbing and filling with blood again.

  As if in answer to my howls a dull black machine rose out of the floor, cracking cobblestones like an aggressive weed. No taller than a boot, a short steel spear with two coil-like legs on either side. A self-replicating war machine: a spartoi.

  ‘Slice me out of this restraint grid,’ I choked.

  A device of few words.

  It half-hopped and half wobbled over to me, growing a series of tiny claws on wire-thin arms which traced across my restraint suit, slicing the alien material away from my broken body until it lay on the hard floor like a peeled orange. Then the spartoi melted the bolts punched through my wrists. I screamed in agony and tumbled off the composite cross and down onto the ground. Hitting the stone, I lay there, crumpled and near useless. My veins flowed with napalm. Slowly, I recovered m-brain function long enough to flood myself with every painkiller in my pharmacy index. Free of the restraining cross my body automatically activated emergency protocols for physical trauma-accelerated healing. I couldn’t have stopped the process if I wanted to. I felt my middle-age spread sucking back and reducing as every gram of my excess weight metabolized and converted into accelerated Osteoclasts.

  ‘Combat medic,’ I croaked at the spartoi. ‘Beloved of Tricord.’

 

  It took a couple of minutes for a second spartoi to burrow up into the cell. This specialist arrived in the form of six silver grenade-sized spheres magnetically bonded together like a school project model of an exotic molecule. ‘Boy, first,’ I heaved.

  This second spartoi rolled over to Simenon’s body, hair-width feelers extending from one of its spheres, penetrating through the lad’s skin. A speaker grille flowed into existence on one of the specialist’s spheres.

  ‘I was a surgeon once,’ I sobbed, ‘I knew that.’

  tutted the combat medic, rolling towards me.

  ‘There highest heaves the swelling mound, that forms the soldier’s honoured grave,’ I wheezed to the combat medic as its tendrils pierced my body. I tried to crawl towards Simenon but failed completely. ‘There pointing still, the captain says, “Here sleeps the Bravest of the Brave”. Our shields are purely anti-collision, we carry no weapons.’

 

  ‘Just stabilise me, you semi-sentient quack. Can’t you see I’m already running a zero-zero trauma protocol?’

 

  ‘Mozart is going to love this,’ I spat at the spartoi medic. ‘Remade as a little more of him and a little less of me.’

  I began to feel woozy and sick as the specialist operated on me. The ceiling spun in lazy circles. Or maybe it was the floor spinning. I wasn’t sure if it was my body glanding anaesthetic or the combat medic’s injections. You can’t fix stupid, but you can sedate it. Three more combat-class spartoi identical to the first machine broke into my cell like moles. Really, three of them? How long was I going to be under?

  ‘Danger, Will Roxley, danger,’ I panted at the trio of soldier spartoi. Nothing. Mozart wasn’t exactly known for his sense of humour. His children, even less so. ‘Sod you then, if you don’t want to sing along with Sweet William.’

  Darkness claimed me. When it lifted nothing had changed in the chamber except my body. Still a mess of pain and aches, but suspiciously non-deceased. There was the fresh stench of burnt ozone in the air. A plasma beam or a kinetic assault rifle overheating? No corpses, not even ashes. My three spartoi bodyguards stood there, innocently. The combat medic had vanished, needed elsewhere. Of course, there was fighting in the capital; Collateral Damage was Mozart’s middle name and the logic of war abhors moderation.

  Moz was damnable effective, but we had a Melding man-of-war squatting in orbit. With that level of firepower circling Hexator the wurms could overwhelm a single Legion, self-replicating spartoi or no. Not quickly, but with blood and fire and the sacrifice of the gods-know how many innocents during the battle. Could we hold out until reinforcements arrived from the Humanitum? No. I’m afraid myself and Mozart were the reinforcements. But perhaps we didn’t
have to beat Lady Blez and her heathen wurm allies. There were forms in the Cold War between the Humanitum and the Melding. Would the wurms honour those forms? How I loathed their species. Adam’s killers. Simenon’s killers. My beautiful little boy. That was my weakness. The weakness Alice Blez had counted on. Turnabout is fair play, my lady.

  I stood up and tried not to cry out loud as gravity compressed my new ribcage. I wouldn’t describe my body as healed. Held together with duct tape and faint wishes was a better description. But I wasn’t going to expire in the next few hours.

  Before I left, I pulled my clothes back on, finding the stealth suit about as semi-functional as I was. Everything’s broken, today. I wobbled over to Simenon’s corpse. Kneeling, I gently lifted his finger from the Martian sands, closed the prayer box and stroked the blood-matted hair out of the boy’s eyes. ‘Yes, I believe Modd did answer you, Simenon.’

  Time for Alice and the wurms to answer for what they’ve done, too.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Evolution. In action.

  The storm I remembered from another life had finally finished. Pools of hot water had remade the roads as a gleaming moonscape. Time for a new storm. Another spartoi appeared when I stumbled out onto the open streets. This one resembled a walking hat-stand, multiple metal rods joined together and tottering towards me. Oberquartiermeister-class. General staff, so to speak. All comms and curly attitude. How long had it been out on the streets looking for me?

  ‘Set comms with my ship,’ I ordered. I pointed up to the nebula-painted heavens. ‘My real ship, not that secondhand wreck docked dirt-side.’

 

  A female face appeared projected in hologram outline: a sweet ship for Sweet William. ‘Good evening, poppet.’

  ‘Time to shed stealth and land at the capital, Exy. Transmitting you coordinates now.’

  ‘That filthy Melding carrier-class of uncertain intent is still sharing vacuum with me. Plenty of fast movers, sub-ordnance, and drones that’ll want to play tag,’ cooed the Expected Ambush.

  ‘I understand. Don’t play too long, Exy. I need you like the desert needs the rain.’

  ‘Hah, I so guessed that, as soon as thousands of little Mozlets started remaking Hexator into a highly kinetic hit-zone.’

  ‘You’re deuced clever.’

  The avatar peered at me closely. ‘And you look like crap. Is that a new look? Do be careful, poppet, the Melding inserted an orbital drop force of meat eaters thirty minutes ago; a little gift to assist the local spear carriers.’

  Not what I needed to hear; wurm combat specialists landing here. ‘Tango Mike, favoured ship girl.’

  ‘Oh, love me sideways, a pair of their fast movers are all over our comms. Oops, detected. Scratch two. Converting for combat. Got to hustle.’

  ‘Good hunting, Exy.’

  The Expected Ambush’s avatar vanished. I stared up at the stars. Hell had come to the heavens, unleashed by me. My beautiful dark angel. Not the least of my sins, today. Not by any stretch. Oh yes, I was just getting started.

  ‘We’re heading for the old cathedral where the Goddess Inuno once dwelled,’ I informed the staff spartoi, starting to sprint down the street. Damn, but it burned simply putting one foot in front of the other. ‘There’s a full council meeting in progress: reaching it alive and intact is our mission focus. Anything shoots or charges towards us, kill it twice. Anything crawling in a wurmoid fashion, those dirties don’t even need to shoot first. Just burn them down at high speed.’

 

  ‘Get some fire controllers on the route down range. The Expected Ambush is incoming: anything too heavily armoured for us, she’s cleared hot. Try not to nuke anything. My suit’s shielding is damnable fried today.’

  confirmed the staff officer. It overtook me, tottering at high speed. Given it resembled an animated magic mop from Fantasia, that probably said more about my present parlous state than its own.

  My three little soldier amigos were soon joined by twenty more spartoi, including a couple of barrel-fat Steel Rain-class artillery pieces that advanced by flipping over like drunken fleas in a circus act. Occasionally, slab-like metal legs pounded the ground and micro-rockets whooshed up as though dislodged by the thumps. Fire controllers, already mowing the lawn. I gazed into the dark nebula-filled sky. Micro-rockets spun around in wild circuits. They might resemble faulty fireworks accidentally broken free of a Catherine Wheel, but chaotic flight trace – countermeasures-resistant – felt anything but when a smart munitions payload slammed into you.

  Someone stupidly opened fire on us from the corner of a street ahead; local riflemen, given Wurm forces were unlikely to be fielding .303 rimmed cartridges. I ducked as a zip-zip of bullets tickled the air. A chainsaw buzz instantly replied from the boot-high spartoi tripod on our point, 0.1mm rotary-rounds striking the corner providing shelter. That structure – a pottery shop, I believe – vanished, obscured by a cloud of vaporized wooden timbers and warm warrior flesh meeting a couple of thousand metal splinters at hypersonic velocity. The quarter of the building left intact started to slide onto the wreckage below as we passed at speed. It would be safer to treat anything with a heat signature as a hostile, but only for me. Enough innocents will die today. This might be my death march; it shouldn’t become the murder of every non-combatant inside the capital. But getting to our destination alive was only going to get harder.

  Similar thoughts must have occurred to what passed for a mind inside the staff officer. A silver cloud arrowed high over the roofs of the street, a drone swarm, a spartoi murmuration appearing to shape-shift in the air as though it was a single swirling molten mass. It dived, descending to street level. It tagged me as I ran, coiling protectively around, a couple of feet from my body; thousands of little coin-sized rotorheads, half the swarm defensive shield projectors, the remainder offensive micro-weapon platforms.

  Just in time. The first of the wurms’ drop commandos appeared at the end of a side-street. It was so embedded inside its force-suit it might as well have been a machine with cyborg accessories. That’s the difference between the Melding and the Humanitum: the wurms’ army actually looks dangerous. Demon tank-caterpillar, all weapon muzzles, grenade tubes and razored black armour; moving in an evasive pattern like a serpent from your worst nightmare. My Legion resembled a random art collection built as the losing bet in a scrap-yard challenge. Designed by the gods, self-replicating strange and ever-evolving odd. But then, you had to wonder what cypermethrin aerosol looked like to a red ant before its anthill was sprayed. A threat?

  My m-brain noise-cancelled the wurm’s subsonic hum, a field designed to make me piss my pants and flee the street in fear. Shells started to thump from the commando’s armour, laser light lancing out, intended to blind optical sensors and ensure its package was signed for at our end. My wasp swarm converted into a firefly dance as their shields flared into life. Catching rattling shrapnel for me as our soldier spartoi swatted down incoming shells.

  A couple of newly minted spartoi broke ground behind the tanker, peeking comically from their holes before emerging. Their tiny spike-like legs dug into the soil, dropping central rods towards the wurm in a salute. Heavenly host, blessed of Modd and Arius. It can’t have been easy to squeeze so much high-energy ionized gas into something as compact as a spartoi; even harder for the commando to absorb twin plasma bursts. The tank caterpillar’s rear cracked apart, shields and armour instantly overwhelmed. A single spring-like soldier came bouncing out of my company’s ranks, two mad cricket leaps and it was inside the tank suit, a whirl of metal resembling a cartoon Tasmanian devil. That wurm commando even sounded dangerous as my spartoi shredded it from the inside out. I left its ruins croaking and neutered as we pressed on. No mercy for the wurms, no mercy for the heathens.

  I’d almost thought the wurms had stopped trying by the time I was only a couple of minutes out from the grand assembly. But, no. They had merely been marshalling thei
r forces for an honest attempt. Force concentration. My m-brain tied in with the accompanying staff officer to provide an All-Source Analysis System markup of the wurm assault force. Oh dear. There was the swarm master, more drones than fleas on a hound. A wurm jammer specialist, prodding away at our comms and counterfire sensors. Dozens of tanker force-suits, cousins of the wurm commando we’d left disembowelled on the other side of town and irked about their comrade’s treatment. A Mobile Battlefield Operating System Specialist, command-and-control protected by more dark razored armour than a small military orbital. Also, a couple of jump-suited scouts burning about on thrusters; frankly ridiculous, flying wurms appear inelegantly asinine.

  Matters moved rapidly, breaking bad instantaneously.

  I remember what Mozart said to me once when we stood together high on a mountain overlooking the plains of Alpha Ophiuchi. We had been inserted by the Humanitum Fleet Dreadnought Save The Last Bullet For Me, watching seven fully deployed Legions battling the full invasion force of the Al-hawwa Diaspora. Watching the complete grisly panoply of utter chaos and unmitigated violence unfold before our eyes. ‘Sodding heck, that’s the full whizz-pop down there!’

  Yes, once more I had sprinted headlong into the full whizz-pop. Proper naughty. Close quarters battle fought between two civilizations which had each battered the way to the top of their respective phylogenetic tree. Don’t think of it as combat, think of it as evolution-in-action.

  Heavy spartoi rolled past me, a mess of rolling hammers and flashing energy projectors, charging the enemy at high speed, my gallant Laser Light Brigade. Such spartoi were expendable, noisy and obvious. It’s the drones you don’t see until too late that are designed as the true danger. My breakneck comrades swapped war stories with the tanker-suited monstrosities, shells for energy bursts, soldiers popping on both sides of the philosophical divide. Call me petty, vindictive, with a heart spilling vengeance, but the heat and stench of a wurm bonfire can keep a man warm at night.