Progeny (The Progenitor Trilogy, Book Three)

by Worth, Dan

  Isaacs glimpsed her through the crowd, moving deftly between dancing bodies that parted like water for her. Her lithe body was clad in a silver dress that clung to her curves. At first, he thought it was merely another girl who bore a passing resemblance to Anita, but the more he stared, the more he realised that he was looking at the genuine article. He couldn’t believe it was her. He had seen her disappear under a tide of bodies. He had seen her die, or at least, he thought he had.

  She spotted him, a flash of recognition from those large brown eyes of hers and a grin, and then she began to move towards him across the dance floor until she stood before him, almost a head shorter even in her heels.

  ‘Cal, hi. It’s good to see you,’ she said, gazing up at him and cocking her head to one side. Isaacs was almost speechless. ‘How are you?’ she added as if noticing his dumbstruck expression.

  ‘What happened... what happened to you?’ he stammered. ‘I saw you die! We looked everywhere for you, but...’

  ‘I uh... look I managed to get out of there, okay? Fancy running into you in here of all places. Look, maybe I have some explaining to do. You want to get a drink and catch up?’

  ‘I uh... I’m kind of in the middle of something. Anita I... I thought... we all thought you were dead, for God’s sake!’

  ‘It’s okay. I knew you’d be surprised, and a bit shocked. I’ve missed you, you know?’

  ‘Well I... how on earth did you?’

  ‘Being with you was a lot of fun, Cal. Do you remember what it was like on the ship, just you and me? You know, I saw you in here and the first thing I thought was... look, do you wanna go somewhere and...’ she moved closer and put her hand on his arm.

  ‘Ah, no I don’t think... look, Anna and me are back together now. She’s just over the other side of the room and well...’

  ‘That’s okay,’ she murmured in his ear. ‘You can both share me if you like, I don’t mind...’ He felt her hand move downwards across the front of his trousers and stop there. ‘I’ve been watching you, Cal,’ she whispered, her breath on his ear. ‘Ever since I came here, I’ve been watching you. We’ve been watching you... ever since you entered the city...’

  Her face was centimetres from his own. His nostrils were filled with the scent of her. He looked into those large brown eyes and saw something looking back at him, something cold and alien and calculating. Something that wasn’t Anita. In horror he took a step back, fumbling beneath his jacket for his weapon.

  ‘Don’t fight it, Cal,’ said the thing that had once been Anita. ‘You should join with us. The pleasures of this weak flesh are as nothing compared to the bliss of being one with us.’ She ran a hand languidly down over her body.

  ‘No... oh god no...’ Isaacs heard himself moan, as he started to back away.

  There was a commotion at the other side of the room. The doors of the club had burst open and black, armoured figures were swarming in, guns at the ready.

  A single gunshot rang out. Anita was propelled backwards onto the dance floor, a dark stain already spreading from her left shoulder as she landed heavily amidst the dancers. There were screams. People were already turning around in shock and terror or backing away.

  ‘You fucking idiot!’ screamed Anna, the heavy pistol that had fired the shot in her hand. ‘Always thinking with your dick as usual! Come on!’

  Steven heard the shot ring out and was on his feet in seconds, weapon drawn.

  ‘You fucking set me up!’ he barked at Molinelli, but the gangster was already throwing up his hands and shaking his head.

  ‘Oh god, no!’ he heard Sigurdson sob. ‘I knew it, I knew they’d come... oh Jesus!’

  ‘Run! Now!’ snapped Steven. He scanned the room. Armoured figures were fanning out amidst the fleeing revellers. There was a crash from the back of the club as a shaped charge blew the hinges off the fire escape. He grabbed Molinelli before he could flee.

  ‘We need to get out of here! Which way?’

  ‘Follow me,’ said the trembling fat man. ‘There’s a flight of stairs to my private rooms.’

  ‘And from there?’

  ‘On to the roof, I think. It’s the only way. Follow me.’

  On the dance floor, Anita was struggling to rise. As Anna pulled Isaacs away he saw a look of murderous fury on the face of the pretty young woman who had once been his lover. Her face contorted with an animalistic snarl, she started to charge towards them. Two more shots barked from Anna’s pistol and struck Anita in the forehead. She went down, limbs twitching.

  ‘And stay down!’ cried Anna, then added. ‘Never could stand that little bitch.’

  As Anna pulled at Isaacs’ shoulder with her hand, he caught a glimpse of Anita’s ruined face, and the hint of something horrible moving inside her shattered skull before he hurriedly looked away.

  The black figures were closing in. Now that they were closer, Steven could see the police logos on their helmets and pauldrons in the flickering gloom. Their automaton-like movements betrayed that they were undoubtedly enslaved. Two had moved closer around the tables and pillars to his left. Reacting quickly, he squeezed off four shots, pushing people out of the way as he took aim and put two bullets into the skulls of both figures, blowing them backwards off their feet. Isaacs and Anna ran towards him through the panicked customers. Abject horror showed on Isaacs’ face.

  Shots began to ring out from the far side of the club where the police had hunkered down into firing positions, gouging holes from pillars and tables and passing through holographic figures. A number of the fleeing patrons were caught in the crossfire and were cut down as they ran. Instinctively, Steven ducked for cover behind the tables fringing the dance floor and the others did likewise.

  ‘How the hell do we get out of here?’ yelled Isaacs over the sound of gunfire and screams and the music that was still playing over everything. Steven snuck a glance out of cover and loosed off more shots as he spoke.

  ‘I know a way out,’ said Molinelli. ‘This way,’ he added, pointing to a small, unmarked side door.

  ‘You trust this guy?’ said Isaacs to Steven as more figures appeared behind the main bar and started firing.

  ‘No. But I don’t think we have any choice,’ Steven replied and snuck off a couple of shots through a gap in their cover.

  There was a series of dull thuds and several smoking canisters landed nearby, hissing with clouds of escaping gas.

  ‘Shit, they’re trying to flush us out,’ Anna ducked as more rounds went overhead.

  Isaacs raised his head cautiously to take a look at their attackers. Whilst one group kept up the barrage of fire, two more were working their way around the edges of the room towards them. He conveyed this to Steven as the tear gas clouds closed in, stinging their eyes, noses and throats and slowly obscuring their view.

  ‘We need to move,’ said Steven, fighting the urge to cough. ‘Is that door locked?’ he said to Molinelli, who nodded and held up the electronic key. ‘Shit, okay. We use the gas as cover. On three. One, two....’

  They ran, bullets whistling past them. As they reached the door, one struck Molinelli in the back. He stumbled and collapsed instantly, a large, bloody pool already spreading from beneath him. Sigurdson reached down, grabbed the electronic key card from Molinelli’s thick fingered hand and could see that the life was already ebbing out of him. The bullet had entered the fat man’s back and had exploded outwards through his chest, ripping a large hole in his heart.

  ‘Leave him!’ ordered Steven. ‘It’s too late. Come on!’

  The unmarked door was, fortunately, located in the cover of a thick pillar that afforded them some cover for a few moments. Sigurdson swiped the key card through the lock, and with relief, they saw the lights next to the lock turn green in response. It was then that the enemy began to charge. As one, the black armoured figures started to run towards them, bowling over those foolish enough to still be in the way of the stampede. Boots thudded on the sprung dance floor.

  ‘Up the stairs!
’ yelled Steven, loosing off a series of accurate shots that felled charging figures as the others scrambled through the door and began to clamber up the stairs behind it. The stairs were narrow and steep, only wide enough for one person. Isaacs and Anna went first and quickly reached the top. Steven was mid-way up when he noticed that Sigurdson was lingering at the bottom, frantically trying to find a way to lock the door behind them. It was a fatal error.

  The enemy were upon him in seconds. Gloved hands grabbed Sigurdson, forcing him to the floor. He screamed. He knew what would happen to him next. He looked up at Steven as the enslaved fell upon him. ‘Please...’ he said, and Steven knew what to do. ‘Please!’ cried Sigurdson again as he was hauled backwards, his hands scrabbling for purchase on the floor. Steven raised his weapon and shot Sigurdson through the eye, pulping the man’s brain. It was a mercy. He fired again and again, scrambling backwards up the stairs as more armoured figures tried to pile into the doorway. Reaching the top, Isaacs and Anna were able to add their own fire to his, knocking the black-clad figures back down the stairs. Some, the less seriously injured, started to get up again. Others lay still, temporarily blocking the stairs until their comrades could clamber over them.

  To their relief, there was a second door at the top of the stairs. This one was solid steel and was equipped with old fashioned deadbolts. Slamming the door shut, they slid the bolt and looked around. They were in some kind of office. The windows looked out onto the flat roof of the building and the network of alleys beyond.

  ‘That won’t hold them for long,’ said Isaacs, nodding in the direction of the locked door behind them as heavy boots hammered upwards on the stairs outside. ‘Got a plan?’

  ‘Yeah, we get out onto this roof, and then we run like hell,’ said Steven.

  ‘They’re onto us, Steven. Anita... Anita said that they’d been watching us the whole time that we’ve been here,’ said Isaacs.

  ‘The girl?’ said Steven, as he forced the window open.

  Isaacs nodded, mutely.

  ‘Okay. Sigurdson thought that he knew where Haines is being held, but we need to get out of the city first and save our own skins before we can think about that.’

  There was a loud hammering sound from the door, the sound of something heavy battering against it.

  ‘Come on,’ said Steven, stepping out onto the roof. ‘Follow me.’

  Chapter 47

  Mocking laughter pierced the utter darkness, and then a chilling voice began to speak in glutinous tones. Katherine couldn’t understand it, but Rekkid could. It was speaking in the language of the Progenitors.

  ‘It’s thanking us,’ he said. ‘It says that it has been trapped here for millions of years inside this monitoring system but now that we have turned the power back on all over the base, it can infect those other systems and escape.’

  Lights mounted on the drone’s head came alive, piercing the blackness. It turned towards them, weapon arms deployed.

  ‘It’s also thanking us for the gift of the drone,’ said Rekkid. ‘It says...’

  ‘...your primitive toys are most amusing,’ said the voice. ‘Simple things, but useful in my predicament. You two are of the Progenitors, and yet you are not Progenitors. Interesting. I shall enjoy using this primitive toy in dissecting you. This other beast is of lesser interest, but I will enjoy studying him all the same.’ There was sound of the doors slamming shut behind them in the darkness.

  ‘There is no escape for you,’ said the voice, as the hijacked drone began to advance towards them. ‘It would be easier for you if you did not resist.’

  The drone stopped in its tracks, twitching spasmodically before it froze.

  ‘This is Eonara,’ said a voice on the comm. that belonged to the Progenitor AI but which was horribly distorted by interference. ‘Aaokon and I are working to get you out of there. Please stand by.’

  ‘Interesting...’ said the glutinous voice of the Shaper. ‘Two of my old adversaries, here at last? Very interesting... I see that this drone provides a conduit to your ship. Perhaps it will be more malleable to my will?’

  The drone moved again. Its motions were jerky and spasmodic, and the lights on its head began to strobe wildly.

  ‘This is the ship, stand clear of the drone!’ said the voice of the Shining Glory in their ears. The archaeologists began to back away, and as they did so there was a strange keening sound from the drone. Its movements became random and violent as if it were undergoing some sort of fit, then it convulsed one final time and keeled over, arcing energies playing across its surface as it died, plunging them back into darkness.

  Then the holo-display that had been showing the star map suddenly flicked back on above the room’s central plinth. Its display distorted and blurred and showed only a random snow of characters that moved like oil on water. Faces came and went in the display, transient images that formed and dissolved.

  The display went blank for a moment and then switched itself off again.

  They could hear noises elsewhere in the complex as if the very Life Forge itself were alive, or the complex were inhabited by unruly poltergeists. The lights came on, briefly, then died and began to flicker randomly. The door behind them opened and the lights came back on and stayed on.

  ‘Get out of there, now!’ said Eonara. ‘We are holding it back!’

  The three archaeologists turned and sprinted out of the chamber.

  In a shared virtual space, Eonara, Aaokon and the Shining Glory surveyed the networks of the Life Forge. Near its centre, where the monitoring array sat, a pulsing red mass warned of the presence of the Shaper AI, its tendrils of thought pushing outwards along conduits to other systems in a virulent mesh of corruption. Those other systems were being held by the two Progenitor AIs as each side battered one another with increasingly complex firewall algorithms and ever-evolving strains of destructive virus programs in a lightning fast contest. Thousands of changes were being made every millisecond, as each tested the defences of the other. So far, the Progenitor AIs were winning, their combined computing power more than a match for the sole Shaper AI. It was contained, for now, but they were unable to destroy it.

  ‘I still fail to understand how that thing could have snuck through your defences,’ said the Glory. ‘Were your systems not hardened against such an eventuality?’

  ‘With billions of years to find a chink in our armour, I doubt any system would have held out,’ said Aaokon. ‘In any case, the system it penetrated was only capable of receiving data from outside the Sphere, not transmitting it, thus it found itself trapped within the monitoring array and unable to go further, since the rest of the systems on this planet had long been deactivated. We, of course, have reactivated them.’

  ‘So, logically, the correct response would be to turn them off again,’ said the Glory.

  ‘Perhaps, but that would still leave a Shaper AI in control of a system that contains vital information on the location of species descended, however indirectly, from the Progenitors. However out of date that information might be, it could still be of use to the Shapers were they able to somehow communicate with their comrade,’ said Aaokon.

  ‘Presumably, the system went into lock down after its defences were breached?’

  ‘Yes. Hence the data it contains being tens of millions of years out of date.’

  ‘Our first priority should be to extract the archaeological teams from the complex. We do not know what harm they might come to at the hands of the Shaper,’ said the Glory.

  ‘Indeed. Looking at the activity of this entity it appears to be trying to reach the hall of mechanoids that Cor, O’Reilly and Steelscale entered only moments ago. It would give it the necessary physical presence to slaughter anyone within the complex and then begin making physical changes to the Life Forge’s network to somehow escape its prison,’ said Aaokon.

  ‘I will recommend to War Marshal Mentith that I should stand by and prepare to destroy the facility from orbit should there be any chance of that occur
ring,’ said the Glory. ‘I suggest that you also prepare to assist me in that task, Aaokon.’

  ‘Agreed,’ Aaokon. ‘Whether or not we are able to get the teams out of the facility, we cannot allow that entity to escape.’

  ‘Wait,’ said Eonara. ‘Perhaps we are looking at this in the wrong way. Perhaps we need to extract the Shaper AI from the system that it has infested and allow it to escape, only to bottle and trap it elsewhere. We have been looking for a solution to destroy the Shapers, a vector that will carry the virus that we have already begun to design, have we not, Aaokon? I think we have our candidate.’

  ‘What do you suggest?’ said Aaokon

  ‘The hall of mechanoids: the prototype Shaper that sits on the throne. Its mind is an empty vessel.’

  ‘But if activated, it could escape or kill the others!’ Aaokon protested

  ‘We only need a part of it, a fragment in which to trap the AI but which is incapable of independent movement. The head, for example.’

  ‘We should speak to the K’Soth. I suspect he is the only one capable of removing it.’

  ‘Agreed,’ said Eonara, and activated the comm. The entire conversation had taken less than a microsecond.

  Katherine, Rekkid and Steelscale ran back the way that they had come amidst the chaos caused by the Shaper AI. Lights flickered crazily, automatic doors were jammed open or shut, or slammed themselves closed repeatedly like a mad man beating his head against the wall. The environmental systems too appeared out of control, the temperature alternating wildly between hot and cold, the air recycling systems blowing howling gales or sucking the air out at an alarming rate. The entire facility groaned and creaked from the mayhem like a ship in a storm.

  ‘This is the Shining Glory, are you receiving my transmission?’ said the voice of the ship on the comm. Faint and scratchy though it was, they could make out the words well enough.