“I’ll pick them off from back here,” she said. “You need to be up there at his side–go!”
If hurrying up the sloping pylon had previously been a challenge to the dexterity, trying to run and gun was a nerve-jangling sprint of faith that the feet would repeatedly land on solid and secure sections of strut while he fired off beamer bursts that relied on instinct and peripheral vision. Yet his footing did not fail and precisely aimed rounds from Brock’s particle gun flickered past him, keeping attacking machines from straying into his path. Pyke kept loosing beamer shots at the bots gathering around G’Brozen Mav, despite his unpredictable aim, and got there in time to put triple-bursts through two weird snake-things and kick a third off the side of the pylon.
The Chainer leader was on his knees, holding off a large four-legged, six-tentacled machine with one length of pipe while trying to beat it back with the other pipe. Pyke ended it with two well-placed bursts, then flipped the quivering, sparking remains off the pylon with the toe of his boot.
“Timely,” said G’Brozen Mav, panting as he got to his feet. “Earlier would have been better.”
Pyke smiled, cupped a hand to one ear. “Was that heartfelt thanks I heard, delivered in a manly voice wavering faintly from the emotion of the moment? I’m sure it was—”
“More important than gratitude is the beacon,” Brock said as she joined them, pointing at a drum-shaped unit from which clumps of wires sprouted here and there. “Is that it?”
“It is,” said Mav. “Poor Grelf gave his life protecting it.”
Pyke crouched down next to it, wiped off a patina of ancient dust and tapped his earpiece. “Hey, Hechec, we got to Mav, he’s doing fine, and we’re also now the proud owners of a ‘Hi, we’re evil too!’ beacon, so any time you’re ready for a pickup is good.”
But on the headset there was only silence. Pyke frowned.
“Er, when I said any time I really meant right away…”
The faintly hissy silence continued. Pyke felt like hitting something.
“They must still be observing radio silence,” said Brock. “Actually, we’re early, going by the Toolbearer’s instructions. He said keep Mav alive for 11.9 minutes and there’s still ninety-five seconds to go.”
“You better take a look at this,” said the Chainer leader.
His outstretched hand was pointing to a glowing mass down on the floor, about a hundred yards away in the gloomy dark. Then he indicated the area around where they stood. “And down below.”
By the light of their headlamps Pyke could see shattered and twisted fragments of the sentry bots they had so recently blown apart crawling, jerkily wriggling away in the direction of that distant glowing heap. A horrible association formed in Pyke’s mind.
“How the croaking hell can all that junk be alive?” He gave Brock a hard look. “Is it alive?”
“MD-life,” she said. “Molecular-digital life. Every piece of every machine and bot down here is probably laced with exotic biocircuitry, with a scattering of low-grade AI hubs, little more than engineered RNA matrices running hunt/destroy/survive imperatives.”
Pyke shook his head. “So we blow ’em to smithereens, and later all the wreckage rebuilds itself–now that’s a tale to make Sisyphus weep!”
“We’ll be doing more than weeping,” said G’Brozen Mav. “Something is heading our way.”
The glowing heap had grown and continued to absorb additional fragments as it moved towards the small group of defenders. Pyke checked the charge readout on his beamer pistol, adjusting it for long-range accuracy, which had the satisfying side-effect of lethal one-shots at short range but unfortunately drained the cell quicker. At the same time the lieutenant was giving G’Brozen Mav her backup, a short-range slug gun, while rechecking her own particle gun, which once upon a time had been locked in a cabinet in the Scarabus’s armoury…
When he returned his attention to the oncoming menace it had entered the periphery of the headlamp that someone had clamped to a protruding stanchion. It had a grotesque resemblance to a sphinx, outstretched limbs dragging itself forward while the featureless head, composed of a mass of animated bot remnants, wobbled and lolled.
“How long now?” he said.
“Thirty-five seconds,” said Brock.
Have we any idea what’ll happen when the seconds run out? he thought. Hechec and the others must surely be sending a rescue team…
His train of thought was rudely derailed when the sphinx’s head started firing at them. Luckily, the aim was wildly inaccurate, sparks and metal droplets spraying from a random scatter of impacts, and Pyke and the others were quick to return fire. No one noticed the catapulted attack bots until they started landing near their position on the fallen pylon.
“Spring-loaded death-squids!” Pyke snarled as he tracked one incoming and blew it to pieces. “What will they come back as next time? How long to go?”
“Time’s up,” Brock yelled back.
Cursing, Pyke fired off a single burst at one writhing machine as it was crawling up from between the strut-lattices, and booted another off the pylon with a well-aimed kick.
“Well, what was the skagging point of a countdown in the first place?”
“Captain! Duck!” came a deep voice that wasn’t the lieutenant.
Reflexively, he fell to his knees while craning his head to look upwards, just as Kref the Henkayan sailed past, dangling from a cable that ran straight up into the inky darkness above where a larger shadow stealthily glided.
“That’s your guy!” said Brock.
“It certainly is,” Pyke said, getting to his feet. “Now, take a moment, if you will, to watch an artist at work.”
As his flightpath drew near to the machine amalgam, the Henkayan unlimbered a stubby-barrelled grenade launcher from a back pocket, loaded a couple of shells and snapped it shut. The crawling machine collective had lost its sphinx-like appearance but it had spotted Kref’s arrival and was already trying to lob bits of itself at him. But all he did was calmly aim and fire the nade into the heaving mass of bots as he swung gracefully past. A heartbeat later there was a tearing red flash and the machine mound erupted, throwing burning chunks of scrap in all directions.
“Clearly the technique of a practised professional,” said Brock with a laugh.
Pyke spread his hands. “Taught the boy all I know!”
“Really?” she said, smiling. “Did it take you long?”
Before Pyke could formulate a scathing retort, Hechec’s voice spoke over the shared channel. “Well done, Lt Brock and Captain Pyke–you stopped a crisis turning into a disaster.”
“Just so,” said G’Brozen Mav. “Without you I would be dead and the beacon unit would probably have been absorbed into that creeping heap of filth.”
“True, true, all true,” said Pyke. “Which is why we should get medals, for me, Brock and Kref…”
“Aw, thanks, Captain,” said Kref from somewhere overhead.
“… maybe saying something like ‘For gallantry and heroism above and beyond the call of crazy-arsed eccentricity’–hey, that’s not bad…”
G’Brozen Mav patted him on the shoulder. “I’ll give it some thought.”
Pyke smiled wordlessly and leaned on a heavy cable stanchion, picking at curling patches of flaking paint while the Chainer leader went to help the recently alighted Kref attach his harness cable to the drum-like beacon unit. A moment or two later it was flying up into the shadows, reeled in by the winch in the Scarabus’s undercargo recess, which was its own self-contained airlock, though it was probably hatched open to permit direct access to the main hold.
He shook his head, struck by the oddest sense of loss he had ever experienced, a strange feeling spurred by seeing his own ship in the hands of strangers. Oh, he and the crew were back in charge, mostly, but something was gone, a curious absence at the root of things.
And I think I know what it is–all these people and connections and fights and seductions and enslaving and brute
force, and who the black savage hell knows how many centuries of blood and death and sheer fired-up ultra-evil that have been inflicted on all these worlds and all those who sail upon them–oh, and all the crazy-mad things I’ll have to do to stand a chance of getting Dervla back… somehow it’s changed how life is.
Kref was waving at him from the top end of the pylon, pointing at the snapcatch-tipped cable he was holding. Pyke waved, got to his feet and started up the pylon.
I’m no longer the master of my fate, he thought. I really need to get back to some honest, good old-fashioned law-breaking. I just have to see these Shuskar pusbags put down in the dust first!
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
She had tried so hard to make the biomech Xra-Huld believe in her deceptions, working on her mask of duplicity, striving to make it plausible and versatile, able to project a persona that was alert and keen and at the same time malleable and submissive. And it had been working–in allowing the biomech parasite to think that it was seducing her, she steadily regained more and more direct control over the humdrum aspects of physical existence, walking, manipulating unimportant objects, eating, elimination, dressing. One consequence was the steep scale-back of the drug dosages, both in strength and frequency. Another was the more accepting attitude of the biomech, making what it no doubt thought were kind words and encouragements.
Then, roughly an hour before the flagship was due to land on the Citadelworld, Xra-Huld went aft to the high-security cells to question a prisoner, a thin but wiry humanoid that might have been male, dressed in rags and shackled to the cell’s overhead crisscross bars. An empty metal table stood off to one side. There seemed to be nothing untoward, no hint or sign of darker purposes. After the biomech had, through her mouth, asked a number of questions without getting any satisfying answers, Xra-Huld sighed and said, “Then let us ask the rest of you.”
Suddenly, Dervla was plunged into empty blackness, a void without sensation. Just as abruptly, with no way of knowing how long the black interlude had lasted, she was back in the cell–but now it was an exhibition of horrific butchery. The metal table had been moved to the centre and on its blood-spattered surface were numerous body parts laid out in neat rows and patterns. Drips fell from severed limbs and the head which hung above. Blood was everywhere and her arms were red to the elbows and above. The scene was vile and barbaric, overwhelming to her senses which were open and unfiltered. She gasped at the unbearable sights and began to back away, until all physical control was whisked away from her.
“We have sampled a great many sentient species across the millennia,” Xra-Huld said in her thoughts. “Experience has granted us a subtle sensitivity to the actions and ploys of our chosen hosts¸ and a keen insight into their motivations. Some species turn out to be natural, docile vehicles which can be steered and utilised without difficulty; at the other end of the scale are those whom evolution has so fashioned as to blunt our methods of subordination, whether cognitive or narcotic. The Zavri are one such race–their physical might and longevity would make an ideal host but the nature of their minds and body chemistry fosters an obstinate resistance to invasive control and authority.
“You Humans present towards the weaker end of the scale, yet you have some fascinating talents and unexpected capacities for instinctive conjecture. But never forget that our deep experience of host minds will always lay bare your artless, threadbare plans–I decided upon this little demonstration to make clear how transparent your little schemes are to me. Be reconciled to your fate as my vehicle–your subjugation is inevitable.”
After that she was back to being the hapless passenger of her own hijacked flesh. Xra-Huld went to its chambers and had its zombie-like pseudo-female attendants clean off the gore and replace Dervla’s own grubby clothes with archaic pieces of leather armour all daubed with red. Then it went out to parade itself before the Shuskar courtiers, those flatterers and grovellers, those heralds and celebrators, toadies vying with each other to deliver the most extravagant verses of praise. She had seen this kind of performance before, usually from delegations from worlds out in the Warcage, garish and flamboyant gifts from Shuskar governors painfully aware how far they were from the centres of power, the courts surrounding the Gun-Lords.
This histrionic pageant was just more of the same, and her by now habitual revulsion morphed into something cold and pitiless, the growing conviction that so many things would improve if the Shuskar were just erased from the picture. Along with myself.
There was a message from the bridge–the flagship was on its final approach for a landing on the Citadelworld, so the biomech went aft to supervise preparation for the cargo offload. The main hold was high-walled and dimly lit, with several heaps of deck-lashed crates and containers scattered around. Obedience-collared thralls brought in a series of different-sized cases, stacking them on two large pallets. Among this luggage was the mesh-sided receptacle containing the AI drone which had tried to rescue her.
You should have let me die, Dervla thought. At least I would have been spared this…
Then a pair of thralls carried in a medium-sized crate whose colour and despatcher markings seemed familiar. She stared for a moment, then recognition came–this was the crate containing the subspace scanner-caster that Bran had gone to such lengths to procure for that pus-sucking scumrat, Khorr. The grand scale of the irony was not lost on her–she had been there in the hold of the Scarabus when Khorr ambushed them with knockout vapour then stole the device, and now here she was, watching the same device being loaded up for the next stage of its journey. It was clearly of great value to Xra-Huld, but she could not recall any mention of it, or any orders relating to it–although it was possible that she had been rendered insensible when it was discussed. How would she know? How could she tell?
While the cargo pallets were being assembled, the flagship had completed its descent, micro-manoeuvring its immense bulk down between a twin row of handler surfaces which moulded themselves to the hull, cradling it as they lowered it level with an external dockside area. Heavy thuds and clanks sounded as clamps fastened their grip and adaptable access corridors affixed themselves. After a few seconds the hold doors parted with a rough grinding noise and a pair of unmanned low loaders rolled in. The hold grabs transferred the cargo pallets onto their empty flatbeds and once the guards had inspected the lies and restraints, then strapped themselves into the ride-along seats, the loaders wheeled around and headed out to the dockside concourse.
“Wars are not just struggles between armies, between weapon systems, between leaders and generals,” said Xra-Huld unexpectedly. “A war is also a clash of plans. The Chainer rebels are poor planners but their support among the planetary populations is substantial and dedicated. These other rebels, however, the ones using jamming devices to isolate their targets from portal web communications, they are cunning planners–they have trained in secret without concern for popular backing and have held on to all the darkened worlds they have seized.”
In charge of Dervla’s body, Xra-Huld left the hold and took a riser platform to the upper decks.
“What of your plans?” Dervla dared to ask. “Are they being swept aside and overthrown?”
“Neither the Chainers nor these mystery insurgents have encountered the plans that will defeat and crush them. There is a saying–no plan can survive contact with the enemy. But a truer, more accurate version would be–no plan can survive contact with another plan. When opposing plans collide, the most adaptable will triumph!”
“Your confidence sounds pretty invincible.”
“My confidence is built upon unshakeable foundations,” Xra-Huld retorted. “Our enemies do not understand the powers at our disposal–and that truth makes our plans invincible.”
Dervla could find no words to respond with. Xra-Huld clearly had an ace-in-the-hole, something that counted as a game-changer. And knowing the brute predilections of these ancient evil, soul-sucking mechanical snakes, it would be vicious, bloody and barbarous in t
he extreme. She had no idea what was needed to take down Xra-Huld and its depraved playmates, only that it would have to be some kind of king-hell-bastard counterstroke which was both inexorably mighty and unsurpassingly devious.
Oh, Brannan Pyke!–if ever there was a time for you to walk the walk as well as you gab the gab, that time has arrived. That colossal ego of yours has to get you into your big boots, strap on yer biggest gun, saddle up and ride–nothing less will do!
The little tetrahedrons raced along the concourse, tracking each other’s short-range finder signals until they converged in a shadowy corner and commenced auto-assembly. Internal flip mechanisms helped to orientate themselves correctly, three grouped around one. There were tiny clicks as sides snapped together around the base then, simultaneously, they flipped up, joining themselves fully to the central one. Inner facets folded aside and packed components shifted into a prearranged layout, taking advantage of the new interior. Connections spread through the assembly and the primary power cell kicked, initiating startup.
Rensik 2.0 became aware through alternating waves of system and substrate checks. Each successive check augmented the cognitive domains until the “itness” of the minidrone could unbind from the “itness” of the perceptible surroundings and call itself “I”. Now fully aware, Rensik 2.0 opened the data pocket marked “Urgent”; it contained a series of orders from the original Rensik, along with background summaries on species, worlds, technologies and sociopolitical structures, profiles of a few key actors, the Human female, Dervla, and the biomech parasite. Rensik 2.0 analysed the orders and the supporting material, then stealthily glided out of the shadowy corner on its roller beads. A swift sensor scan revealed no one in the vicinity so it darted across the open concourse to where a section of the balustrade had been smashed away. From the jagged edge Rensik 2.0 could survey the upper and lower levels of the huge, long docking gallery, the mounds of age-old wreckage and newer rubble strewn across the floor, and the tapering, segmented tiers of the immense, coppery tower that rose at the far end.
Ancestral Machines Page 39