by Mark Walden
‘We still do not know,’ Suran said. ‘There have been countless rumours of something beyond the Voidborn, something that controls their actions, but no hard evidence. We found ourselves in full retreat, fleeing from Illuminate node to Illuminate node, with no battle plan to speak of. Talon was the last of our commanders and he fought like I have never seen any other fight to stop them, but trillions of Illuminate consciousnesses were lost for ever. We made a last stand at the final active node, knowing that if we fell we would lose not just the battle but also the last remaining Illuminate consciousnesses.
‘The Voidborn attacked with such numbers that we knew they must have thrown their entire fleet at the last node and I am ashamed to say that in our desperation we sank to their level. We created an artificial super-massive black hole and in the process destroyed a galaxy in trying to stop them, three hundred billion stars, blinking out one by one. It is the single most horrific thing I have ever witnessed. We managed to destroy all but a tiny remnant of the Voidborn fleet, but still we were forced to flee before them, trying to find a hiding place for the last remnant of our people.
‘Our fastest ship made a desperate run to one of the remotest corners of known space carrying the Heart, a final compressed archive of the Illuminate as it had been before the Voidborn. The consciousnesses stored within the Heart are dormant, compressed as far as they can possibly be and stored within a near indestructible crystalline matrix. It is the last trace of our people and it is concealed from the Voidborn, we hoped for ever, floating within the molten iron core of a small blue planet in the third orbit of its rather humble star. We buried the Heart and then we slept, dormant, deep beneath the surface of the planet, waiting and hoping for a time when the Voidborn were gone and we could emerge from our long hibernation and reclaim the stars.’
‘My God,’ Stirling said, ‘that’s why they’re here. They’re not interested in Earth, just what’s hidden inside it.’
‘Yes, it would appear so,’ Suran said with a nod. ‘When we arrived, there was no intelligent life on Earth – it was the perfect hiding place – but somehow they found us.’
‘How long ago was this?’ Sam asked, feeling slightly dizzy at what Suran had just told them.
‘Around five hundred million years ago,’ Suran replied. ‘We were only awoken from our long sleep when Voidborn transmissions were picked up by our vessel’s sensors. That was twenty-five years ago. I fear we may have slept too long.’
‘The Voidborn have been manipulating humanity for thousands of years, though,’ Stirling said. ‘Why did it take so long for you to realise?’
‘The Voidborn may be utterly malevolent, but they are not stupid,’ Suran replied. ‘They acted with enough subtlety on your world that we did not detect their presence until it was too late.’
‘Why haven’t they just destroyed the planet?’ Jay asked. ‘From what you’ve said, that wouldn’t have been much of a problem for them.’
‘We don’t know,’ Suran replied. ‘Before now they’ve been utterly without mercy. They’ve never gone to such lengths to preserve life as they have done here, nor have they spent so long apparently meticulously planning their invasion. It is as much a mystery to me as it is to you, I’m afraid.’
‘So, where do we go from here?’ Sam said.
‘We have to beat Talon to his target,’ Suran replied. ‘The existence of your race is now also at risk.’
‘What is he planning to do?’ Rachel asked, sitting down on the floor and resting her back against the drop-ship’s crystalline wall. She looked exhausted – they all did.
‘I believe he’s going to destroy the primary Voidborn control node, which will in turn bring down the entire Voidborn fleet that is currently scattered across the planet,’ Suran replied. ‘That will also cut off the control signal to the sleeping masses of humanity. As I’m sure you’re already aware, the consequences of that would be catastrophic.’
‘Why?’ Mag asked, looking confused. ‘Isn’t that exactly what we want?’
‘No, breaking the Voidborn’s control over humanity is more complicated than that,’ Stirling said. ‘Our own experiments with jamming the signal have left the subjects with irreparable brain damage.’
‘So we just go on allowing the Voidborn to turn people into monsters,’ Jay snapped. ‘What happens when they release the Vore somewhere else? They’ve already taken one city – people are going to die either way.’
‘The Voidborn did not create the Vore,’ Suran said, staring at the floor, his head bowed. ‘I did.’
‘You did what?’ Sam said, feeling suddenly sick to his stomach.
‘You mean it was you?’ Mag said, pointing at her own face. ‘You did this to me.’
‘It was an accident,’ Suran said. ‘I was experimenting with integrating Illuminate nanites into the human central nervous system, an extension of what the implants inside your heads are doing right now. The theory was it would provide anyone who was exposed to the nanites with a natural resistance to the control signal. What I didn’t know was that there was something already inside the test subjects we retrieved from Glasgow, some form of Voidborn technology that we had not seen before. The nearest comparison I can think of is a computer virus, some form of their own nano-technology that interacted in a completely unexpected way with our own. Instead of freeing the subjects from the Voidborn, it transformed them into the Vore. Even worse than that, the creatures clearly had the ability to spread the nanites via their bite, spreading the infection to any human they encountered.’
‘Which explains why Talon only brought a couple of them to London,’ Rachel said. ‘That was more than enough to create a whole army of the things.’
‘Exactly,’ Suran said with a nod. ‘When I realised what we had created, I was horrified and I immediately ceased all experimentation, but Talon, well, he saw it differently. He saw a means to turn the Voidborn’s slaves against the Voidborn and to drive them away from the drilling sites they had set up. He released the creatures in Edinburgh and the Voidborn were forced from the city in days. When I discovered what he had done, I realised that any trace of the Illuminate I had once known in him was gone. He had to be stopped. I tried to kill him, but he froze me in my human shape in such a way that only he or another member of the Illuminate could free me. We call it form-lock. It was a process used to imprison those who had broken our laws or who were deemed a threat to society. It returned our mortality, locking us in a physical form that was vulnerable and therefore more easily controllable.’
‘Hard to lock up a cloud of vapour,’ Jay said, raising an eyebrow.
‘Indeed, but what Talon did not know was that he and I were not the only remnants of our species on the Earth. I had used Illuminate nanites to save Sam when the Voidborn implant in his head began to grow uncontrollably. I believe that is why he was able to take control of the Voidborn Mothership and help me to reverse my own form-lock. The union of Voidborn and Illuminate technology within Sam has allowed him to become an interface through which we can take control of the Voidborn. It allowed me to take control of this assault craft, just as it allowed Talon to take over the Mothership.’ He turned towards Sam. ‘I did what I did in order to save your life, but I fear that in the process I may have transformed you into a target. For that, I am truly sorry.’
Sam looked down at his own golden hand and suddenly he realised that he was never going to be quite human ever again. He was one of the last relics of a war that had lasted millions of years and that might just destroy everything and everyone he had ever known before it had run its course.
‘Where is this central control node?’ Sam asked, trying to keep the rising anger he felt from his voice.
‘Tokyo,’ Suran replied, ‘we should arrive within two hours.’
‘Tokyo?’ Jay said. ‘You’re kidding, right?’
‘No, it is a site of particular tectonic instability, which actually suits the Voidborn’s purposes well,’ Suran replied. ‘I triangulated the position of the primary control
node months ago – it was not difficult, given what we knew about the Voidborn command network. The Motherships, are, after all, merely Illuminate colony ships that have been transformed to serve the Voidborn. We knew where the primary node was – we just didn’t know how to get to it without a Mothership of our own, or how to deactivate it without killing all humans under the signal’s control. I now realise that must have been Talon’s plan all along.’
‘Do you think he’s going to release the Vore on Tokyo?’ Jay asked.
‘He doesn’t need to,’ Suran said. ‘He has a Mothership, or at least partial control of one, and that is all the power he will need. I do not believe he expects to survive the attack. This is a suicide run.’
‘What do you mean by partial control?’ Stirling asked.
‘As I explained, with Sam’s help I was able to subvert his control of this vessel,’ Suran replied. He gestured at the walls surrounding them. ‘I believe that Talon may be unable to control an entire ship. The colony vessels were never designed to be controlled by anything other than an artificial intelligence. One mind, even an Illuminate mind, would find the mental strain of controlling an entire Mothership overwhelming.’
‘Which is why the Hunters attacked the Grendels in the hangar,’ Sam said, ‘though I wasn’t aware of telling them to do it.’
‘They would have defaulted to their most basic pre-programmed behaviours if they were not under direct control,’ Suran said. ‘Primary amongst those is the directive to protect all Illuminate life from harm.’
‘And you were just weird enough to qualify,’ Jay said, raising an eyebrow at Sam.
‘Not complaining,’ Sam said with a sigh. ‘If it hadn’t been for them, I’d be dead.’
‘So, what do we do when we arrive in Tokyo?’ Stirling asked. ‘I can’t really see the Voidborn welcoming us with open arms.’
‘I believe that I can mask our presence from their sensors,’ Suran replied. ‘To them we will look like just another one of their own assault vessels. The illusion will not be complete, but it should be enough to get us close.’
‘Then what?’ Rachel asked.
‘I have no plan for this eventuality,’ Suran said.
‘Looks like we’re going to be making it up as we go along again,’ Jay said.
‘Yeah, because that’s always worked so well in the past,’ Rachel said with a sigh.
‘We’ll come up with something,’ Sam said. ‘We always do.’
10
‘There you go,’ Rachel said, applying a small dressing to the wound on Sam’s forehead. She handed the first-aid kit to Jay, who slipped it back into his pack. ‘So that’s the girl who saved your backside in Edinburgh, then.’
‘Yeah,’ Sam said, glancing over at Mag, who was curled up with her hands round her knees in a corner of the drop-ship’s passenger compartment. ‘You should go and say hello. She doesn’t bite. Well, actually she does, but I think she’s on our side.’
‘Yeah, probably should introduce myself properly,’ Rachel said, standing up and walking over to where Mag was sitting.
‘Hi, I’m Rachel,’ she said, sitting down next to Mag. ‘Just wanted to say thanks for the help earlier.’
‘I’m Mag,’ the other girl replied with a nod. ‘I did what I did to help Sam, not because I want to be part of your little group. I think I’d have trouble fitting in, looking like this.’
‘Yeah, you’re probably right,’ Rachel said with a crooked smile. ‘What with the human-alien hybrid, golden robot and collection of teenagers with mind-control jammers implanted in their heads, I’m not sure we’d ever be able to find room for someone as weird as you.’
‘I can see why he likes you,’ Mag said after a few seconds, looking at Rachel.
‘Who?’
‘Sam,’ Mag said. ‘When I first met him, he told me all about you and how you’d saved his life when you first met. He thinks a lot of you, you know.’
‘Yeah, I feel the same,’ Rachel said, looking over at Sam, who was on the other side of the room talking to Jay. ‘We’ve all had a lot to process since the Voidborn arrived, but Sam’s had more to deal with than anyone else and he still keeps going. When we thought he was dead and I found out that he’d transferred control of the Mothership to me and not Stirling . . . well . . . let’s just say that it gave me a slightly better understanding of how much responsibility he’s carrying around the whole time. He just never shows it.’
‘I guess we all do what we have to do,’ Mag said. ‘He’s got a good heart. It’s not everyone who could see past the way I look, but it was like it didn’t matter to him at all. He saw me, not the monster.’
‘You’re not a monster,’ Rachel said. ‘I should know – I’ve met a few and, trust me, you’ll know one when you see one.’
‘Maybe, but I’m not going to be asked to do children’s birthday parties either,’ Mag said with a grim smile. ‘That’s why I came after him and Mason. I knew something was wrong about that man and I didn’t want Sam walking into a trap alone.’
‘Well, I’m very glad you did,’ Rachel said, ‘because, from what Jay tells me, if you hadn’t, London would be on its way to being overrun by the Vore right now. You might just have saved millions of lives, you know.’
‘At the time I was more focused on saving my own skin, to be honest,’ Mag replied.
‘Yeah, well, that’s how it goes most of the time,’ Rachel said with a chuckle, ‘at least in my experience.’
On the other side of the compartment Jay glanced over at the two girls chatting.
‘Can you imagine what it must have been like for her?’ Jay said to Sam, leaning his head back against the compartment bulkhead. ‘It was hard enough living through the invasion, but can you imagine what it must have been like waking up in a city filled with Vore and finding yourself . . . changed like that?’
‘I know,’ Sam said. ‘Doesn’t really bear thinking about. It’s like I told you before, I’d never have made it out of Edinburgh without her.’
‘You OK?’ Jay asked quietly, looking at his friend with a slight frown.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean about your dad.’ Jay glanced at the doorway to the forward compartment where Suran and Stirling had been talking quietly for the past few minutes.
‘That’s not my dad,’ Sam said, shaking his head. ‘He’s just the thing that was pretending to be him.’
‘I don’t think you mean that,’ Jay said.
‘How do you know what I mean?’ Sam replied, irritated.
‘Hey, chill. I’m just saying that if we’re really just about to go up against this Talon guy, maybe you want to talk to him now. You might not get the chance later, you know.’
‘I wouldn’t know where to start,’ Sam said, staring at the floor. ‘I just can’t shake this feeling that my whole life has been a lie and he knew all along and kept the truth from me.’
‘So go and get the truth now,’ Jay said, ‘while you still can.’
Sam stared at Jay for a moment and then stood up with a sigh. ‘OK, you’re right.’ He looked over at the doorway.
‘Aren’t I always?’ Jay said with a grin.
Sam walked into the forward section where Suran and Stirling were engaged in hushed conversation. Stirling glanced up at Sam as he approached.
‘I’ll leave you two alone,’ Stirling said. ‘I should imagine you have much to discuss.’
Sam watched as Stirling left the room, turning back to Suran just as the alien creature shifted into his human form.
‘Hello, Sam,’ his dad said. ‘I suppose you don’t like me very much right now.’
‘Please don’t use that face,’ Sam said, frowning. ‘It was just a mask all along.’
‘You’re wrong,’ his dad replied. ‘I used this form to infiltrate the Foundation, but it became far more than just an assumed identity to me. I spent years in this body, I fell in love with your mother in this body and then I fell in love with you and your sister. It may not
have been the life I was born to, but it came to mean just as much to me nevertheless. I’m not fighting the Voidborn to save the Illuminate any more – I’m fighting them to save humanity. This is my home now.’
‘Maybe that’s all true,’ Sam said, ‘but you’ve been lying to me my whole life. You can’t expect me just to forget that. Please, change back.’
Sam’s father stared at him for a moment and then shifted into his Illuminate form.
‘I never intended to hurt you,’ Suran said. ‘You have to understand that my people are gone. We may never retrieve the Heart, at least not before the Voidborn have destroyed it and, even if we do, we no longer have the technology to awaken them again. It could take centuries for the Illuminate to return to what it once was and maybe even then it never should. You, your sister and your mother were my new life. Everything I did, I did to protect you, not to reawaken the ghosts of my former home world.’
‘Oh, come on,’ Sam said angrily. ‘I was just a test subject to you. A baby that you could implant with unproven, probably dangerous technology. You didn’t care about me.’
‘I cared for you as much as any father cares for his child,’ Suran replied. ‘We had already adopted your sister. Your mother always wanted children, but I told her that it wasn’t possible. I didn’t tell her that it was because we were not even the same species. That would probably have been unwise.’
‘So, she never knew,’ Sam said.
‘No, there was no reason for her to know,’ Suran said. ‘What good would it have done?’
‘It would have been the truth,’ Sam said, ‘something you’re not very comfortable with, apparently.’
‘Sam, I know this is hard for you,’ Suran replied, ‘but I need your help if we’re going to have any chance of stopping the Voidborn and Talon. This war has already claimed countless trillions of lives. I will not allow it to claim billions more innocent victims. They have to be stopped, and for that I need you to trust me.’
‘That’s a big ask,’ Sam said, staring at the alien features of the creature in front of him, searching for any trace of the man he had once known. ‘Do you have a plan?’