It was an orchard. The entire khrenovuyu continent was an orchard.
A horde of spider-like bots harvested whatever the orchard was growing, ripping prodigious crop from tree limbs and propelling it into mesh nets floating above the bots’ chassis. When a net was filled, it detached from the bot and floated upward until it was snatched up by a larger bot and towed to one of the smaller ships. The assembly line transfer ultimately ended, as with the gas giants, at the docking ports of the largest transport ships.
The orchard stretched the breadth of the eastern hemisphere and all but the coldest regions at the poles, where something else grew and was harvested. Millions…no, tens of millions of the bots swarmed across the continent like ants—or maybe worker bees was a better analogy—operating in tireless, perpetual cycles.
The entire production repeated itself time and again, everywhere on the planet and in orbit above. Even the two small oceans kept their own brand of harvesters busy.
She fidgeted, propelling her chair in semi-circle arcs with her feet. “Don’t you want to know if it’s really food they’re growing and harvesting?”
Caleb gazed at her skeptically. “It’s almost certainly food.”
“I know. But what kind of food?” She held up a hand to forestall the coming retort. “Okay, almost certainly fruit. But what kind of fruit?”
He shook his head, but his expression was teasing. “I’ll get the equipment ready. We’ll go down, but we’re wearing full defensive gear.”
43
UNCHARTED PLANET
Cibatus Portal Space
* * *
‘Full defensive gear’ meant tactical suits, personal shields, Daemons and blades. The air was well within the breathable range, but Caleb insisted on taking the breather masks, too, in case…the bots expunged poison gas or something. Or the trees did.
He was well past believing he could predict all the ways the Metigens’ experiments might try to kill them.
He checked her over then allowed her to do the same to him. “This is a reconnaissance mission. We’ll see what they’re growing, take a sample to bring back if we’re able and try to get a closer peek at the bots’ operation—all without attracting their attention.”
“Damn. I was considering asking one of the bots on board for tea.”
He shot her an unimpressed look and moved to the hatch. It had surely been intended as a joke, but her tone had nonetheless been acerbic.
He’d expected her irritability to lessen once they returned to the ship and left Taenarin Aris behind, but in some ways it seemed to be getting worse. With a quiet sigh he again forced the ruminations into submission so he could focus on the task at hand.
They couldn’t find a clearing in the orchard large enough to land in, so Valkyrie descended until the pulse detonation engine rustled the leaves of the trees, and they lowered the ramp. It stretched almost vertical before reaching the ground below, but it was the best solution.
“Stay close, Valkyrie, and be ready to rescue us.”
‘I would be happy to consider it my primary mission in life, should you ever stop rescuing yourselves.’
He descended the ramp ahead of Alex with due caution, scanning the vicinity for threats. Below the treetops, line of sight became limited. The trees were arranged in perfect rows, though, so he was able to see some distance down the intersecting rows.
Alex appeared beside him as he stepped onto the soil. The air was fragrant with the aroma of…ripe fruit. It had to be. “I told you it was fruit.”
She headed for the closest tree. “Then let’s take some back. You know, for testing.”
The limbs of every tree sagged heavy, laden by an unfamiliar crop. The skin resembled that of an orange, rough and dimply in texture, but the color was the deep red of Rome apples and each one was as large as a cantaloupe.
While Alex removed a container from her pack and wrested one of the fruits from a low-hanging limb, he knelt down and drove his blade into the soil surrounding the base of the tree, then twisted it around to break it up.
The dirt beneath the surface was moist on the verge of being soaked. There was no hint of a recent rainfall aboveground, which meant an underground irrigation system. He dug deeper, searching for a pipe or—
‘Four bots are approaching your location from the southwest.’
He leapt up and peered in the reported direction. “I see two of them.”
‘The others are traversing adjacent rows. All are harvesting the crop, so their progress is slow. Not so slow as one would expect, however. They are most efficacious.’
The degree to which the bots were programmed for any activity other than harvesting was an interesting and, as of now, quite relevant question. He pulled Alex beneath the shelter of the overhanging limbs and pressed her against the trunk. “Make like the tree and don’t move.”
Her chin notched down in agreement, and they huddled quietly as the bots neared. He could no longer track the one handling their row, but one the next row over soon came into view.
Up close, the spider analogy continued to hold in most respects—other than the fact the bot was flying, of course. Eight multi-jointed legs ended in claws perfectly sized to fit around the ripe fruit. A rotund body held the flight mechanism and whatever programming they required, a latch on top secured the net, and there was little else to them.
The arms moved with impressive speed, deftly picking the ripe crop and directing it into the attached net with brutal efficiency. A single tree held perhaps fifty of the fruits and took less than six seconds to strip.
The bots made essentially zero artificial noise as they worked, and the only indication he and Alex received that one had reached their tree was the limbs shuddering as the arms tore the fruit away.
One of the limbs bounced down into Alex’s face on the rebound. She muffled a cry and jerked away, but not before one of the spidery arms pursued its prey and the claw tangled in her hair.
“Ow!” She tried to yank away from its clutches, which sent the bot into a skittering rampage. Its arms flailed about in search of the impediment to its continued work. Another of the claws would have gouged her face if not for her quick reflexes in dodging it.
He made a note to compliment her on the move later. Survival first.
The bot’s flailing only succeeded in entangling its claw more deeply into her hair; the long locks had been drawn into a smooth knot, but now one side puffed out in a snarled mess.
“Hold still for one second.” He drew his Daemon and shot the bot point-blank in its center mass.
It fell to the ground, taking her with it. Its arms convulsed briefly then went limp.
He dropped to his knees beside her and pulled out the smaller of his blades, then grabbed the offending bot arm. He pushed it away until the claw and the strands of hair caught in it were separated. “Sorry about this.” He sliced through the ensnared hair.
“It’ll grow back….” As soon as the last strand was free, they were both on their feet—a good thing, because the bot tending to a neighboring row must have been alerted to the disturbance and dive-bombed them. Only the heavy limb-cover prevented it from tearing into them.
He ducked and spun out from under the tree, sighted down and shot it as it circled around for another pass. “Okay, that’s it. We’re leaving. Valkyrie, lower the ramp.”
‘You have garnered additional attention. Four more bots are now heading to your location from multiple directions.’
“Excellent.” They’d wandered a few dozen meters from the Siyane. Alex drew her Daemon as well, and they moved back-to-back toward the ship as the ramp lowered.
Two bots crested the tree tops and accelerated toward them. He took them both out with rapid shots. A flash of light to his left signaled Alex doing the same to a third one approaching from the side.
“At least they don’t have lasers.”
“Or poison gas.”
She spared a second to glance back at him in amusement—then swung around
and shot over his shoulder to take out the last one.
“Nice job, baby.”
She opened her mouth to reply, but it clamped shut as her eyes widened. He pivoted to see six bots speeding down the gap between the rows toward them.
His heel hit the bottom of the ramp; he motioned her up first and edged his way up backward while firing. He eliminated four of the six, reached the hatch and ducked inside. “Get us out of here, Valkyrie.”
‘My pleasure. I wouldn’t want them to scratch the hull.’
Alex gave a winded laugh, as the likelihood of the spindly bot claws being able to mar the adiamene was remote.
Hatch sealed, he hurried into the cockpit after her. “Doubt that’ll happen, but if they were alerted en masse, far larger defensive measures might have been as well.”
The Siyane accelerated upward with due speed, and they were gone before anything else could arrive to chase them.
The next planet differed only in what it grew. The plants resembled maize, but the ears harvested were nearly a meter in length. Following their adventure on the previous planet, they elected not to do the ground reconnaissance required to learn more.
Hours passed as they surveyed planet after planet in morbid fascination. Most grew varieties of food staples, but some were devoted to a kind of soft timber and several were ocean worlds where algae and other forms of plankton were collected by barge ships sporting cavernous water tanks as bellies.
All the tests pronounced the fruit they’d brought back from the surface safe for consumption, so they sliced it up and gave it a try in between planets.
The flesh was chewier than Alex expected and tasted vaguely like a pear.
Caleb was an abject wimp and waited until she’d taken a bite and didn’t keel over before he followed suit. His initial verdict consisted of a wishy-washy face, and she tossed him some sugar to sprinkle on it. He acted happy enough with the result that she did the same for the next bite.
Yep. Better.
The damage to her hair thankfully turned out to be minimal. The strands which had gotten tangled in the bot’s claw were scattered rather than all in one chunk, so now she just had way too many flyaway hairs. And a long scrape on her skull from the bot’s opening swipe.
After satisfying themselves the central rings held no further surprises, they moved to the innermost orbit. To no one’s surprise they found rocky, dense planets; their cores were being harvested by mammoth drills, presumably mining for iron and other heavy metals.
These planets were as inhospitable in their own way as the gas giants, so they watched for a few minutes before backing away.
Alex dropped her head against the headrest and covered her face with her hands. She had a headache. She’d resisted linking with the ship, because she needed to be here to analyze what they were seeing. A traitorous voice whispered in dulcet tones that Valkyrie was really the one doing all the analyzing, but she ignored it as best she could and tried to concentrate on the mystery at hand.
The numbers were beyond calculation. Well, Valkyrie could calculate them—See! the voice murmured—but the resulting totals were so large as to not carry any relatable meaning.
“Who are they feeding? And supplying? Why? We know from the superdreadnought manufacturing facility that they can conduct this level of production, but the sheer work involved is out of character with everything else we’ve seen from the Metigens out here.”
“Amaranthe.”
There he went again with his smug one-word answers—the same one-word answer. She raised an eyebrow at him in hopes of evoking a more fulsome response.
He kicked his feet up onto the dash. “At this point, I think we have to assume there exists an active universe through the master portal, one home to multiple alien species. Given all this—” he waved out the viewport “—we can also assume it’s heavily populated.
“Now, maybe they’re unable to grow or harvest their own resources for some reason, or maybe it’s so populous they need to supplement those resources. Maybe this form of factory universe is more efficient than the other options. But as for why the Metigens are the ones doing it…I don’t know.”
‘A reasonable hypothesis would be that the Metigens are the only ones possessing the skill to engineer the system—the stars, planets and orbits at a minimum. Compared to building worlds, the harvesting itself is radically simple. Perhaps they allow their ships and machines to handle it merely as an afterthought.’
Alex nodded in nominal agreement, as most of her attention was focused on the massive transport ship passing across the upper region of the viewport.
She nudged the controls, and they shifted around to keep it in view.
“Go ahead.”
She glanced at Caleb out of the corner of her eye. “Hmm?”
“You want to follow it—or follow one of them. Go ahead, but I’m telling you, it’s going to the master portal.”
She flashed him a grin and activated the sLume drive. They didn’t need to follow this particular ship. The portal was a bustling place, and there’d be plenty to choose from. “That will still be interesting.”
Minutes later she exited superluminal. They didn’t have long to wait, as one of the transports soon approached and traversed the portal.
They followed.
They had never witnessed a ship traverse the master portal from their lobby. But they weren’t in their lobby, and this version of the master portal was as busy as the Manhattan atmosphere corridor. Dozens of the enormous ships cast tiny black dots against the mammoth structure.
There seemed to be nothing to it. Ships entered and exited in the same manner they did the smaller lobby portal, without special procedures or fanfare. Only the relative scale differed.
Easy.
She gave up the struggle and slipped into the skin of the Siyane.
The portal transformed into a double-layered plasma of ionized exotic matter—
“Alex.”
She reluctantly backed out to reality and met his gaze. “We should do this. Now is the time. We can sneak in alongside one of these ships, and no one will be the wiser.”
He stared out the viewport and didn’t respond.
“Look, we now know whoever or whatever is through there, they eat food. This means it’s a tangible, multi-dimensional, livable space with organic beings in it—humanoids, even. We’ve seen them. We won’t die simply by existing there. It’s a real place.”
“That is…an excellent point.” He blew out a breath, long and slow, and regarded her wearing an expression layered in conflict.
Finally, he tilted his head and dropped his chin low. “Okay. A peek. But be ready to turn around and high-tail it out, and long before any spindly claws get themselves tangled in your hair.”
She smiled in appreciation of his attempt at levity, but also of his willingness to believe in her when it was entirely possible she was leading them to their death.
He reached out for her, but she’d already returned to the ship. The press of his hand was a distant, faint graze upon her corporeal body.
She didn’t leave time for second-guessing. A new ship advanced toward the master portal, and she eased in a close hundred meters below it.
Alex, this is an unwise escalation of an unwise course of action. Allow me to handle the traversal.
No.
The portal grew in size until it filled her vision, then her artificial senses, then every aspect of her perception.
Electric currents sparked and leapt out toward her, tickling her borrowed skin.
A buzz grew in her elemental hearing until it blended into the crackling electricity racing everywhere.
She closed the final picometers to the shimmering, undulating barrier—
44
SIYANE
Amaranthe Gateway
* * *
They pitched bow over stern to spin out of control faster than Caleb could process what was happening.
The inertial dampeners went offline, sending h
is body and mind roiling within the confines of the restraints. Alarms flashed in garish, angry lights on the HUD. He squinted to his left, trying to find a stationary point he could focus on. “Alex?”
No response. His vision began to clear as the spinning eased to a less dizzying but more nauseating speed, and he saw her chin listing against her chest. Her eyes were closed, and blood seeped from both her nostrils. Shit.
He unfastened his harness and fell across the cockpit more or less into her lap—in the smallest of favors, the gravity plates continued to function. He lifted her chin. “Alex? Talk to me.” Still no response, but she was breathing. “Valkyrie, stabilize the ship and get us away from the portal.”
Silence.
“Valkyrie?” His voice echoed through the quiet cabin.
Fuck.
He felt along Alex’s neck for a pulse. It raced along at a perilous speed. Their spinning finally stopped, leaving the ship eerily still.
He unfastened her harness and straightened her up in the chair, then tapped on her cheeks. “Come on, Alex. Wake up.”
Her eyes flew open, wide and luminous with their artificial glow yet somehow bleary and unseeing. She groped around blindly. Her hands passed over his face and neck without stopping—
—she surged out of the chair, catching him by surprise and knocking him on his ass.
“Alex, calm down! We’re okay!” They weren’t remotely okay.
She fell to her knees, clung to the cockpit half-wall and pulled herself up, then lurched into the cabin to stumble around wildly.
He rushed out of the cockpit and tried to grab her, but she escaped his clutches twice. Damn those training lessons.
He pivoted and was lunging once more to snare her when she collapsed onto the edge of the couch and sank to the floor.
Instantly he was on his knees at her side. Blood now gushed out of her nostrils, covering her mouth and chin and soaking into her shirt.
She looked up and blinked. The synthetic glow left her irises. She immediately blinked again, and it was back.
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