Ancestral Machines

by Michael Cobley

  On this basis the drone called up the bioscanner data again, searching for evidence of change in energy states or some kind of electro-synaptic wave with a fixed frequency. There was one, buried beneath other peripheral nervous system readings and yes, it had a four-minute active/inactive cycle! Now, suppressing the nanovirus would require a counter-field attuned and calibrated to precisely negate the electro-synaptic wave pattern that was carrying its preset commands. The bioscanner could be adapted, its output parameters modified to emit just such a suppressing counter-field.

  When the next abeyance phase of the cycle took effect, Rensik swiftly swooped over to the gaping hatch and eased through the containment field. The female Human, Dervla, was watching as he entered, eyes glazed, her features drawn and blotchy. As the drone commenced unmounting the bioscanner he heard her mumble something.

  “… careful of the gun… watch his gun watching you…”

  “Don’t worry, Dervla,” he said. “I’ll soon have that virus turned off, then you and I can have a proper chat.”

  With the bioscanner in one of his effectuator grabs, he glided out of the hatch and let inertia and the tether carry him back round to the stern. He accessed the bioscanner’s main function set and began recalibrating the probe fields to match the frequency of the nanovirus’s synaptic wave with a mirror version that would cancel it out. It took only moments for the drone to complete the retasking but another two minutes to conduct three data-model test runs, which was far from ideal but better than nothing.

  A few metres away the shimmership’s external effectuator arms continued their flailing and lashing. Then suddenly they were lifeless as the abeyance phase began, and Rensik launched himself over the curve of the little ship towards the hatch. Once through the containment field he reaffixed the bioscanner to the mounting pad which he had left behind. The Human female was slumped over the tiny table, insensible while her arm remained pinned to the nearby panelling. For a brief moment he toyed with the idea of staying in the compartment to witness how the negating fields might affect her, but he thought better of it, triggered the bioscanner with a burst command, then left via the hatch. This time he let the tether unspool to its full length, without using his microjets to swing sternwards. He hung there, suspended over the planet Armag, aware of all the other worlds of the Warcage, this gigantic engineering feat which looked like so many bright jewels caught in an invisible web…

  And below, on the planet’s surface, something bright bloomed. His onboard sensors had their restrictions but they were still able to pick up the presence of a large vessel hovering in the lower atmosphere, firing missile volleys at ground targets. A survey summary placed the target zone very close to where he had last seen Lt Brock–once he was back in control of the shimmership he would unlock the encrypted standbys, reactivate the comms system and quickly make contact with her.

  He switched his receptor cams from the planet back to the shimmership and there, beyond it, away in the far distance, was… something. To the naked eye of some sweaty organic it would have been no more than a speck, a distant mote, but Rensik’s lenses saw further and deeper, reeling in the intervening gulf, bringing it closer, revealing its details, sharp and distinct. Without any shadow of doubt, it was the Shuskar flagship, the vessel from which he had rescued the Human woman, and it was heading straight towards their position. Meanwhile, inside the shimmership, the Human female was sitting upright and trying to free her arm from the panelling, so he decided to see what he could learn from her while bringing the shimmership’s drive back online.

  He glided over to the hatch, slipped through the containment field and began issuing silent subcast commands to the initialiser systems.

  “Greeting, Dervla,” he began. “I am Rensik Estemil, senior tactical drone in the auxiliary cohorts of the Construct, ah, Empire”–Well, when one has to improvise a background on the fly, do so with gusto!–“and I rescued you from a ship whose owners call themselves the Shuskar…”

  She glared at him and, with an angry tug, freed her arm from the panelling with a tearing of the grotesque fibrous tendrils. She gasped with pain, stared in horror at the blood trickling from the severed tendrils, winced and cradled the arm with her other hand.

  “What did he do to me?” She glanced at Rensik. “What about my friend, Win? There was a friend of mine in the other glass cage.”

  “Sorry, but there was no other Human in that lab,” Rensik said carefully, deciding not to mention the bizarre foetus-like things he had seen clustered on the couch inside the transparent cylinder. “You’ve been delirious since the rescue and you said something strange about your captor–‘careful of his gun’ and ‘watch his gun watching you’. What does this mean?”

  A haunted look came into the Human’s eyes as she heard her own words repeated back to her. With halting words that grew steadily more fluent, she related how she and the other members of a trader crew became caught up in the intrigues of the Warcage’s conflict, how she and her friend were captured then handed over to the Shuskar, and what happened when they met the Shuskar leader, Gun-Lord Xra-Huld.

  As Rensik listened, the shimmership was awakening around them. All the systems he had powered down when the nanovirus made its first move to take control through Dervla were coming online, with the sensors high up the priority rankings. Interacting with the sensor array he found that the Shuskar flagship had put on velocity and would be close enough for its low-grade beams and missiles to make hits in less than thirty-eight seconds, whereas the shimmership’s thrust drive would be ready in twenty-nine…

  The Human female was still talking–and swearing–at him, her suppressed grief at what she had to know was the truth about her friend breaking out in anger. As she talked, Rensik was continually cross-referencing with his deep archive, prompted by her description of the parasitic biomechanical weapon to which Xra-Huld was joined. As a technology it hinted at an entire structure of development wildly at variance with that on show across what he had thus far seen of the Warcage.

  The datasweep came back with barely a handful of results, which satisfied a strict set of criteria: three myth fragments, each from a post-techno-collapse civilisation, and a short passage from the Vojalin Codex, a notorious document of dubious provenance claiming to be a study of the Zarl Imperium, a vast galaxy-spanning hegemony which disintegrated over a million years ago.

  Then the “ready” alert from the thrust drive flashed up in his awareness. His preset commands took effect: the hatch closed through the containment field, which then vanished, just as the shimmership’s thrusters flared into life. There was a brief inertial lurch before the dampener field cut in, then the velocity began to ramp up.

  “That’s us under way, Dervla,” Rensik said. “Soon we’ll be safely away and hidden from their…”

  The Human female had been tilting her head slightly, as if listening to something, then she sat bolt upright and shot a look of stark terror at the drone.

  “I can hear it–it’s coming for me! I can hear it in my head…”

  But the sensors were detecting nothing, no threats, no coherent signals, in fact nothing from the Shuskar vessel but a halo of white noise…

  Without warning something brutal engulfed the shimmership, sending interference screeching across every sensor and input. The Human female cried out and slumped over the table, burying her head in her arms. The feed from one surviving hull receptor showed a long wavering tentacle of dazzling electroplasmic energy which split into webs and jagged tendrils that lashed and stabbed at the ship. The safeties had activated, isolating the main systems, powering down the thrusters.

  “Intruder, you musssst, y-you will face judgement…”

  The Human female, Dervla, was sitting up again, staring at the drone with eyes that blazed an effulgent blue.

  Great, thought Rensik. Some alien thugmaster has managed to bypass the ship’s shields and datawalls, just so it can use this poor defenceless puppet to mouth egomaniacal threats at me.
>
  “You sweaty organics are all the same,” he said. “A whiff of absolute power, some biomech scraps that escaped the slopout bins of a failed empire, and a big showy lightning machine, and you’re suddenly convinced that it’s all for the taking. Well, sorry to pop your colossal vanity-bubble but I think that you will find that there’s always someone bigger and nastier waiting just around the next corner.”

  “Such extravagant fury for one sssso impotent.” The woman Dervla’s face muscles twisted, the lips drawing back to bare the teeth in an awful parody of a grin. “Let us ensure that you remain so.”

  Another surge of that electroplasmic energy washed over the shimmership, and Rensik saw it fill the air around the Human with a shimmering mesh of thread-like tendrils. Clusters of them stretched out in all directions, as did one that quivered towards the drone, extending with serpentine movements. And when they at last touched his outer casing everything stopped… and started again. Internal regulators told him that forty-two minutes eleven seconds had elapsed and his auto defences indicated that for the last ten minutes he had been stationary. Vidsensors showed that he was lying inside a rectangular box with transparent sides and lid. Also, his suspensor and thrust systems were unable to respond: despite their powered status and accepting commands they could not activate their functions. A very specific kind of suppression field was clearly operating nearby.

  Rensik decided to examine his surroundings. A large grey crate was blocking the view on one side but from the gloom and the repetitive tile patterns on the deck he surmised that he was back on board the Shuskar flagship.

  Wonderful–another chance to sample the delights of this interplanetary dungeon.

  There was movement in the shadows. A cloaked, hooded figure leaned in, fixed a T-shaped handle to the top of Rensik’s box then lifted it up and away. Suddenly he could see that he was in a large, gloomy hold. After being carried for a few paces Rensik was set down on a metre-high plinth, right next to a lifeless, sprawled corpse. A short distance beyond it was the low-profile Construct shimmership, sitting illuminated by an overhead spotlamp. The entry hatch was round the other side, where a couple of hooded figures stood, just visible over the small vessel.

  Rensik turned his attention to the body. From previously gathered data it looked like a Shuskar, only wrinkled and skinny, especially its left arm, which looked strangely malformed and emaciated. Curious grooves in the grey flesh curved up to and around the neck, up the side of the face to a bloody hole in the temple.

  The hooded attendants shifted position as a figure stepped out of the shimmership and together they skirted the vessel and strode towards Rensik. Before she came fully into view, the drone knew who it would be. The parasitic biomech was now bonded to the Human female’s left arm and its spine-tail wound from shoulder to neck to head.

  “Your ship defends itself,” it said with Dervla’s voice.

  “That is most gratifying to hear.”

  A weird leer crept across the face. “There are five of us, impotent machine. We have lived in many beings for many, many centuries, and outlived them all. We are mighty, and intend to remain so.” The Human female leaned forward, placed her hands on the transparent box, then brought her face up close. The eyes were dead. “You will tell me everything.”

  “Doubt that.”

  “Yes, everything, not long after we return to the Shuskar Citadelworld. All the loot of a thousand worlds lies there, including devices capable of interrogating other devices.”

  “I am not a device.”

  “But we have you.” The thing controlling the Human made her grin horribly. “And we can be very persistent.”

  “Yeah, yeah, you’re scary and unpredictable. What do you do when you’re bored? Pull the legs off your servants for laughs?”

  “Oh, we tired of that millennia ago. You know, machine, you were right–it really is all for the taking. And most glorious of all, after more than a hundred thousand years we are yet to encounter anyone bigger and nastier than us!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Pyke had to admit–Punzho was right. The view from the top of the Thurible Tower was exceptional. The small, circular candle-lit chamber had two windows: the south-facing one looked out from its mountainside altitude and across a vast forest. It was early evening and the fading light together with the gathering mist highlighted some details and blurred others. The distant forested horizon was a soft grey outline but the closer stretches were darker and impenetrable. Winged creatures chased each other through the crepuscular light, and a few lights twinkled through the trees here and there, campfires, he guessed, with a couple or three haloed clusters that could be villages. After they had stood and gazed out for a few minutes, Punzho closed the shutters, then went over to the north window, unfastened the shutters and parted them. Pyke’s first reaction was a low whistle.

  Looking south allowed him to survey far-off land from a high vantage–to look north was to stare up at a range of peaks and the gargantuan structures that loomed grey and dust-wreathed. Buildings that had to be over a kilometre high, some square-cornered with vertical lines, others with convex exteriors sweeping to tapered pinnacles, others with splayed upper sections or stepped projections. Windows were dark holes, geometric in shape, triangular, square and circular, like blank eyes in dead faces. Most were still standing and all had lost some of their upper floors while a few had collapsed entirely. The nearest of these ancient, decrepit obelisks had at some time leaned outwards from the rest and would have crashed down onto the rocky slopes, leaving a kilometres-long trail of rubble, had a medium-sized mountain not been in the way. It lay at an incline up its northern face with the topmost half-dozen floors overtopping the peak. When Pyke looked closely he could just see wind-driven tails of dust streaming out of the gaping windows on one side of the crumbling edifice.

  “Klothahil was, it seems, the holdworld of a species called the Zimzin, who had wholeheartedly backed the Apparatarch against the Shuskar-led coup. Of course, they backed the losing side and when retribution arrived it came in the form of lethal poison gas seeded across the planet’s atmosphere. The death toll must have been horrific.”

  “History lesson, Punzho? No need to convince me how bad these bastard Shuskar are–I’ve seen more evidence than I can stomach, I tell ya.” Pyke regarded the tall hooded Egetsi. “But I’m guessing that you got something to tell me that you couldn’t say back downstairs…”

  “Yes, Captain, yes! I really want to come with you when the coordinates for the Ashen World Gatuzna have been recalibrated.” The hooded features looked agonised. “But I don’t think the brotherhood of the Congregation would allow it! They think that I am some kind of holy seer.”

  “Tell me something,” Pyke said. “Why do some of those brothers wear those gauzy masks under the hoods?”

  “They cannot shake off the precepts of the previous creed of the Sacred Flame, an egotistic belief that only the Chosen are permitted to see each other’s faces–the novices must only be seen by the high transcendent One. Some haven’t progressed enough to become Chosen, yet. Despite this I’ve been trying to teach them the essential oneness of all sentience.”

  “In the name of the cosmic pixie,” Pyke said. “How did you wind up becoming their pet guru man?”

  Punzho pushed back the capacious hood and stared mournfully out of the northern window. “You recall how they drugged us when we arrived from that icy world? Well, rather than subduing me the fumes made me so panicky that I broke free of their hands and tore off that bag they put over my head. So I saw their faces.

  “You saw their faces?” Pyke said. “What do they actually look like?”

  “I think I was expecting something grotesque or extreme; instead they look quite strange–their heads are a little large for the rest of their bodies, and their facial features are oddly small… for their big faces.

  Pyke gave a low laugh. “So, not exactly awe inspiring, then. You were saying.”

  “Yes, so I was fa
ce to face with the brothers, and their leader, Yustem Podjag…”

  Pyke snapped his fingers as memories came back. “Yes, pompous, self-important pukestain who said our weak brains couldn’t handle the godlike aura of his mighty countenance or some other bollocks.”

  The Egetsi nodded. “That is Podjag, without a doubt. While you and the others were being drugged and hauled through the galleries to the egress portal, they seized me and shoved me into a filthy cell. I was so fearful, so filled with dread, knowing that you and the rest of the crew were sent on without me, that I had to seek reassurance, no matter how meagre. I took out the pouch containing the Nine Companions and laid them out on the rough stone floor next to the door of iron bars. Light from the torches outside made each figurine gleam as I moved them through the meditation forms. The next thing I knew, one of the other initiates was standing at the door, staring at the Weave pattern I was contemplating–then he called some of his fellows over and by the time Podjag joined the audience I managed to ascertain, from whispered exclamations and snatches of muttered prayer, why they were so engrossed in my activity.

  “It seems that the original founders of this community of portal snaggers followed a creed similar to that of the Weave, with an additional evangelising component. They came here over seventy years ago, nine seniors and eighteen subinitiates, set up the power cells and assembled the portal machinery–a gift from some Chainer leader. Every few years one of the seniors would gather his or her belongings, bid farewell and depart through the portal, off to spread the Words of Light, and a new senior would be promoted from the subinitiates.”