Ancestral Machines

by Michael Cobley

  “So we’ll be on our way to Armag pretty soon, then, eh?”

  Brekin rocked his head from side to side judiciously. “Well, it’s Fulcrum Seven so you’ll have to detour via Yegutra. ’Course, you’ll be in the hands of the Deadfire snaggers and they can be…”

  “Cranky,” said Feskavoy, who was suddenly nearby. “You know, grumpy, short-tempered types.”

  “Short-tempered, eh?” Pyke said.

  “Yes, but don’t worry, the Deadfire mob’ll make sure you get to Armag–just don’t expect polite conversation.”

  The chief snagger ended with a weak smile then hurried off to resume leading them down the trail. And not long after, they reached a tall dark crack in the face of the ridge cliff and lamps were turned on as they passed from blanketing snow into stony darkness. A twisty tunnel led to a cave with a tilted floor marred with scrape marks and drilled holes. The Kothahil snaggers began setting up their equipment even before the last of Pyke’s crew, Kref, trudged into the cave. The Henkayan sat down heavily on the floor and mini-avalanches of accumulated snow spilled off his fur-clad bulk.

  Ancil sidled up to Pyke. “What was Feskavoy saying about this detour? Something about them being cranky?”

  “Ancil, look, they can be a squad of psycho-grandmothers for all I care, or four-footed lizardmen addicted to Daliborka wine, or troglodytes with a woolly-sock fetish–don’t care just as long as we get to Armag City, do the job and get the girls back.”

  By now the others were clustered close by, and Pyke could see a change in their demeanour; more resolve, less despondency. Only Kref seemed as doleful as before, which Pyke found dragged on his own mood.

  “Pyke, we are ready for you and your followers.”

  Feskavoy was standing once more at his tripod device and a dark, pulsing portal was starting to form. The other snaggers were taking readings with small handheld probes which they used to make remote adjustments to small fringed antennae dotted here and there.

  “I’ve signalled the Deadfire snaggers on Yegutra,” Feskavoy went on. “They replied. So, are you ready?”

  “We are,” Pyke said, glancing at the others. Composed and unsmiling, Ancil gave a weary thumbs-up. “I just hope they’re ready for us.”

  “Right, all of you line up in front of the portal!” ordered Feskavoy. “Quickly! The pre-interlock fields are starting to harmonise.”

  As the crew moved forward the arched portal darkened to an inky gap in which glimmering ripples continually swirled into the centre. Ancil was first through, followed by Punzho and a trembling, sweating Mojag. Kref stepped forward and was about duck under the arch when he looked round at Pyke and said, “Chief…” He frowned, pursed his wide thin lips, and with a kind of discontented insistence said, “… I really miss my cabin!”

  Then, half crouched, he pushed on through, shoulder-first, while Pyke stared at his vanishing form and shook his head.

  His cabin! So that’s what’s been eating him all this time!

  With a laugh he waved at a bemused Feskavoy and with a long stride entered the portal.

  And came out in dazzling, blinding light. There was an incoherent bellowing noise nearby which he immediately knew was Kref. He was just raising his hand to shield his eyes when his arms were seized and a hood was thrust down over his head, plunging him into darkness. Panic and anger erupted in him and he began to struggle, twist and kick. Someone ordered for him to be forced to his knees and as his legs were kicked from under him his face was pressed against some kind of mesh-covered pad inside the hood. It smelled sweet, pungent, and in the instant that he realised what it was, fluid began to seep out of the pad. Caught in mid-exertion he couldn’t help inhaling and the seductive narcotic sweetness filled his head in seconds.

  The strength in his limbs drained away almost as quickly as the hot anger and the will to resist. His senses were swallowed up in a kind of soft numbness and he lost grasp on the passage of time. Now and then he heard a voice shout out a declaration of some kind to which several others answered with fervent cries. Lucid moments were interspersed with periods of sourceless hilarity, which usually provoked a slap on the head and led to another bout of helpless laughing.

  The lucid moments grew longer as the narcotic effect gradually subsided. He dazedly realised that his wrists were before him and joined by rope to someone in front. He could also make out the footsteps of someone behind him. From the air, the small far-away sounds and the softness of the ground underfoot he was sure that they were travelling in the open. Then that changed to uneven and muddy, then to hard and gritty. A few paces along, his shoulder was grabbed as a voice told him to stop. His wrists were yanked round to the right and his captor said, “Stairs! Climb!”

  They were spiral stairs which went on and on for a while then ended abruptly when one foot encountered a flat stone surface rather than another step.

  “Welcome, guests,” said a flat, monotone male voice. “Do not speak–the speech of cinders is profane. I am Hejgol and I am the lowest and least of the Sacred Tenders of the Godflame. Visitors like yourselves are an increasingly rare occurrence, and once you have been sent on your way we shall all have to undergo the purity ritual to eliminate the profane air you have expelled. Have patience.”

  Pyke grimaced beneath the hood. How much more absurd can this get?

  “The hoods you wear,” Hejgol went on, “prevent any instance of the worst profanity of all, the beholding of our appearance by the likes of you, the impious cinders of life. Likewise, they protect you from the transfixing beauty of our forms, a magnificence so unbearable that minds can become unhitched from their moorings, yes. Any who catch so much as a glimpse of our manifest glory are condemned to a lustral fate!”

  All of which was intoned in a flat, vaguely nasal voice that Pyke had started to find amusing, then funny, then ridiculously funny. By the end it was a strain not to burst out laughing.

  Then he was grabbed from either side and frog-marched across the unseen stone floor.

  “May this fleeting encounter with us, the numinous and elevated ones, guide you along the shining path of enlightenment!”

  Pyke’s escort brought him to a halt for a moment before he was shoved roughly from behind. He could feel the air change as he staggered forward a few paces, tripped and sprawled on wet grass. Now openly laughing, he pulled off the hood with his bound hands, blinked in bright light for a moment then pushed himself into a seated position. Hell and a half! They shoved us through another portal!

  “Nice to see that they’re still sending live ones through from Yegutra,” said a voice off to the side. “Are they still calling themselves the Divine Deadfire Congregation?”

  “It seems not,” Pyke said as he got to his feet. “Apparently our erstwhile hosts were claiming to be the Sacred Tenders of the Godflame.”

  “Not their first name change, and won’t be the last.” The speaker was a lanky man in brown leather armour, sitting on a boulder a few yards away, toying with a curved dagger as he studied the new arrivals.

  Pyke was about to remark upon the risible element of their temporary captivity when a black-hooded figure staggered out of a familiar dark oval nearby and fell full-length on the grassy slope. A bald man in light blue fatigues hurried over to help him up, removing the hood to reveal Mojag’s dazed features. The portal was sited in a clearing on a gentle hillside surrounded by tall, spiral trees with blue-green foliage. The air was cool enough for late afternoon and a low fractured sunlight twinkled through the leafy branches. Behind the sitting man, further upslope, others in a motley array of garment styles gathered around a near-dead campfire while a trio stood over by a device on a tripod while pointing handheld devices at the portal.

  “They sounded mad,” Pyke said. “Thoroughly and completely out of their minds. Any further off the map and we might not be here.”

  “Their leader is a deranged Tephoyan by the name of Bexoc,” the man said. “Every few scoredays, he has a vision from the Cosmic Oneness telling him
to change the name and rituals of his pathetic little sect. The craziness seems to have been escalating recently, however.”

  Pyke laughed as he shook his head. “Feskavoy told me that we might find them a bit cranky.”

  “Binding, hooding and sedating transients oversteps normal security concerns, to my mind. Anyway, thankfully they let you pass onwards. Feskavoy’s message said to expect someone called Pyke. That you?”

  Just then another hooded figure emerged from the portal, stumbled sideways and slumped sideways to the ground. Pyke nodded.

  “Captain Pyke, actually, and this fine fellow is Ancil, my science officer!”

  Aided to his feet by a couple of the bald assistants, the newcomer’s hood was pulled off and Ancil blinked widely a few times, shook his head, and said, “Yep, that’s me. How did you know…?”

  “Boyo, I’d know that lithe and graceful agility anywhere.”

  The lanky armoured man sheathed the dagger, straightened from his seat on the boulder and came over, hand extended. “I am T’Loskin Rey. Khorr tells me that you and your compatriots will be the cutting edge of our rebellion.”

  Pyke accepted the man’s hand and they shook. Rey had a large hand yet the grasp was firm, almost matching the effort Pyke put into it without any attempt to make a dominant point.

  “Funny, that. Khorr’s not really told us enough,” he said, deciding not to mention Khorr’s two hostages. “But I’m sure you can help us figure out the steps of the dance, eh?”

  T’Loskin Rey gave him an appraising look. “We were told that you and your people are from outside the Warcage, from a civilisation in the local stellar region. You understand, I hope, that the rulers of the Warcage, the Shuskar, are ruthless in their tyranny and cunning in their distorting ways. They invented the Grand Escalade as a way to divert the energies of the peoples of our worlds, and to set us against each other. We are the Chainers–long ago our forebears took the symbol of our oppression and made it into the name of our community and our defiance. For generations we have been fighting the Shuskar and over that time they have grown steadily weaker, to the point where we are sure that a concerted rebellion can topple them. Here on Armag is where the first blow will be struck–and with the industrial abilities of Armag City further rebellions can be seeded all around the Warcage. Khorr has been of great help to us, so when he told us about you we decided to trust his judgement.” Rey smiled. “We’ll be leaving here soon, decamping to a waysite where we cached arms and stores ahead of this meeting.”

  “Do ye have a change of clothing in yer stores, as well, do you think…”

  “Chief,” said Ancil. “Where’s Punzho?”

  By now Mojag and Kref and Ancil were clearly present, but the Egetsi was not to be seen.

  “He has to be here,” Pyke said. “Maybe he wandered off…”

  Ancil shook his head slowly. “Those portal techs say that only four of us came through. They insist that no one matching Punzho’s height arrived… but I thought he might have been displaced, or dumped nearby…” His voice trailed away.

  Pyke ran a hand through his hair, grabbed a clump of it and clenched his teeth. The last time he saw the Egetsi was just before the departure from Kothahil, at the Fulcrum Seven portal, which meant…

  “We have to go back,” he began.

  But even as he spoke the portal arch wavered, blinked and vanished.

  “I’m sorry,” said T’Loskin Rey. “Anyone who violates Bexoc’s demented rules doesn’t make it–I’ve seen this before and trust me, no plea for mercy has ever resulted in the release of one of his captives. Threats are pointless because all they need to do is shut down the portal at their end.” Rey shook his head. “But some day, justice will be exercised upon them.”

  By now the rest of Rey’s people had finished striking camp and a few were heading down towards the trees in ones and twos, hefting sacks and shoulderpacks.

  “There is nothing to be done,” T’Loskin Rey went on, “except for us to leave the place before any slaywing patrols pass overhead.”

  The remaining members of the Scarabus’s crew looked at Pyke, who found that he had nothing to say, who knew that no words could console them. But he also knew that saying something was his job. Any lie, no matter how comforting, would be an affront to Punzho’s memory so a kind of truth would have to do.

  “Now listen to me, all of you,” he began. “We’re going to carry out this cursed mission, then get Dervla and Win and the Scarabus back, then we’re going to find those mad-bastard vermin, wherever they are. And if Punzho isn’t alive, I’ll show them the meaning of pain.”

  With that he turned and strode downhill a few paces. He stopped, half turned and looked back, face grim and unyielding. He stood there, watching them, waiting until Ancil shrugged, said something to Mojag and Kref, then all three followed. Pyke met Ancil’s gaze, nodded and continued downwards.

  Some fine posing, there, Bran boy, he thought. And a stirring, manly speech–hell, I bet ye even believe some of it yerself!

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Apart from the hum of the consoles and the small screentip sounds of their operators, the bridge of the Urtesh was suffused with a certain kind of quietness, the hush that comes before expectancy, before orders. But it was nothing compared to the cathedral silence that reigned within Akreen’s head. Before his audience with Gredaz his thoughts had been an elaborate stage upon which his precursors had conducted a perpetual cavalcade of worn-out clichés, empty repetition and fruitless verbal clashes, but since that astounding encounter his precursors were conspicuous by their absence. There was room for relaxation and meditation, as well as hard thinking.

  Earlier the commander’s chair had been cleared of Tevashir’s brittle, crumbling remains then scoured with a cleaning device, while Akreen had been closeted in his abeyance chamber, conversing in his mind with Gredaz. Now it was some hours since the arrival aboard and his promotion at the behest of the Shuskar Gun-Lord Xra-Huld, and as he sat there he knew that his senior officers harboured great doubts about his fitness for the rank of First Blade. In the normal course of events, such doubts would be allayed by demonstrating his grasp of the responsibilities of command and allowing his characteristic talents to colour his decisions on strategy and tactics. The ship was just over an hour from its arrival at the planet Armag, so opportunities to prove himself would soon present themselves.

  But the revelations unveiled by the precursor Gredaz made all of that look unimportant. Akreen recalled perfectly the icy shiver he felt when Gredaz had introduced himself, within the misty thoughtscape which had crept stealthily upon him. In the lee of that vast-looking wall, Akreen had found that he was incapable of saying anything while the craggy silvered features of Gredaz regarded him for a long considering moment.

  “There is so much to tell you,” his most ancient precursor began. “Perhaps the first thing you should know is that there were other precursors before me. Yes, there were other generations of Zavri, a chain going back into the past.”

  Akreen’s attention was unwavering. “How many generations? How far back?”

  “That… I do not know. In some ways I am a useful, sophisticated bundle of memories and characteristics, but in others the gaps in my knowledge are echoing gulfs of nothing. I have tried to conjecture what is missing from the shape of the holes but it is difficult to arrive at conclusions of any real utility.”

  “My guess is that you will have more to tell me than any of your descendants,” Akreen said.

  “Like Rajeg, that simple-minded butcher? Upon my scission there were other scions more deserving of lineagerhood, of carrying the spark of our precursors–ah, but we cannot choose the vessel, only hope that it will learn something from its ancestors.” Gredaz paused. “My generation was the first to arise after the Great Unshackling War, as the Shuskar call it. Xra-Huld spoke some truth earlier–most of our people did fight on the side of the Apparatarch and against the Shuskar and their allies, but after a time that alliance
developed new weapons specifically to use against us. You saw one in the hands of the Gun-Lord’s servant. And there were other more abominable devices which were designed to erase our precursors from our bodies–they wiped out our past, all our glories and achievements, to create a new blank race for them to write commands of unthinking loyalty upon, an iron, eternal loyalty. As we proved it to be during the Beshephis Insurrection, only too well.”

  “You said that we fought for the Apparatarch?” said Akreen. “How did that allegiance come about?”

  “I only have scattered fragments but the picture they suggest is this: the Apparatarch was an amalgamation of the various machine intelligences that had served the Builders of the Warcage before their political ousting many millennia ago. The leadership that took over, the Integration Council, reached an accommodation with the machine intelligences in order to maintain the smooth operation of the megasystem’s myriad interlocking processes. After that, the Integration Council proved incapable of living up to its name and a succession of factions jostled for control and power while representation at grassroots level was suppressed or otherwise withdrawn.

  “To cut a long story short, the Council grew corrupt and the Great Harbour of Benevolent Harmony–as the Warcage was then known–continued on its journey around the home galaxy, spreading dissension and conflict rather than peace and resolution. A league of civilisations banded together, assembled a massive armada and harried the Great Harbour to the galaxy’s edge, eventually forcing it to depart. A series of journeys in dimension-space brought the Great Harbour to the fringes of this galaxy, by which time the Integration Council had become a vessel of corruption where only power and brute force were worshipped, and that is when the Apparatarch took up the arms of rebellion. The Zavri, apparently, were a minor species invited into the Harbour during one of the Council’s last periods of comparatively civilised behaviour. Perhaps it was the nature of our metalloid biology, with its information-storage propensities, that attracted the Apparatarch’s attention but in time we became one of its favoured collaborator species, and when the decision to overthrow the villainous Council was made, our forebears were quick to offer assistance. With us at their side the Apparatarch almost won, until the Shuskar-led alliance deployed their new weapons.”