by Alex Lamb
Leng’s avatar-bead met her in the mind-temple before she could access the images.
‘Brace yourself,’ he croaked. ‘It appears to be an advanced case of Fatigue.’
That news came like a punch to the gut.
‘Impossible,’ she said. ‘Complete homeworlds do not experience Fatigue.’
She scanned the images – they said different. The Fatigue-like symptoms were immense and unavoidable. It was by far the worst case she’d ever seen. The planet looked as if it had been rotting for millennia.
‘No!’ she said. ‘This does not happen.’ Her eyes filled with tears. ‘We have Fatigue because we cannot access our homeworld. A complete homeworld has access to the Founder Entity. When there is access to the Founder Entity there is no decay. There is only happiness, eternal and perfect. This image is wrong.’
Everything they’d ever worked for was tied up in that vision – that one day they’d finally raise the human race into loving harmony and do away with the unspeakable Monet. Then they’d all descend in rapture to the blessed homeworld and couple their Protocol hierarchy to the Founder-link waiting there.
From that day forth, peace and kindness would reign. They would love the world and the world would love them. All deviation from that happy vision would be excised instantly and cheerfully. Everyone would be cherished equally and uniformly without deviation or cessation. And it would last until the suns burned out and the galaxy turned to ash. The song of their happiness would ring out long after everything else in the universe had crumbled into dust.
Homeworlds had Founder-links. Founder-links made them immortal. That was the bedrock truth on which the universe turned. And yet the image remained. She wasn’t looking at a homeworld so much as the spent shell of one. Nada’s joy hung from a thread. What had happened here? Were their sensors malfunctioning?
‘Protection of the homeworld is even more paramount than previously stated,’ she screamed. ‘It must be protected and loved and cherished. And we must discover the cause of this … this … this …’ She stopped to flail helplessly against the wall of the crew-bulb. ‘If necessary, the joyous orb will be reseeded after the cause of its dysfunction has been ascertained! Its bounteous love will be reactivated!’
Poor homeworld! Who or what had done this? It was against the natural order of all things. It was sickening. Nada had no words.
‘On no account should the humans be allowed to further damage the planet,’ she ordered breathlessly. She had to believe there was still hope for the place. ‘Our second priority is to ensure that the vile humans do not escape.’
She twitched against the wall of the bulb and dug her fingers into its flesh as deeper surface scans came back from their scout-pass.
‘We are detecting signs that at least one shuttle landing has already taken place,’ Leng wailed. ‘Two thermal footprints in the same vicinity have been identified.’
He sent her the picture. One of the landing sites was just outside a defensive node.
Nada screamed again, long and hard this time, ripping at her face with her fingernails until her cheeks bled. The humans had already defiled their tragic, wounded heaven.
‘Research crews to the surface!’ she shrieked.
Almost as soon as her lead survey ship hit geosync, a human vessel appeared from around the back of the planet. It had avoided notice by the initial scout-pass using a carefully staged polar orbit. Her own ships had also been badly distracted.
The humans hit her survey ships with a barrage of g-rays. The four shuttles that had been released towards the homeworld were vaporised instantly along with several of her best science units.
As Nada watched in outrage, she rediscovered the tight specificity of emotion that they’d found together in the silent wastes of the Depleted Zone.
‘The humans choose this moment to suicide?’ she said. ‘Now?’
‘That is not a suicide,’ said Zilch tightly. ‘It is an attack. And that is not the ship we have been chasing. It is a new vessel. One we have never seen before.’
It must have been waiting here for weeks, at least. They’d seen no second warp-trail. There’d been no evidence – no hint of it in the Flaw. With shivering alarm, Nada began to wonder whether a long game had been played against them.
Were the humans somehow responsible for the outrageous damage the homeworld had sustained, despite its apparent age? If so, that was definitely enough cause to warrant cramming their heroes into the same ship. Had she uncovered a plot to destroy all Photurian life, and with it any hope for peace in the galaxy?
‘Get me that ship,’ she ordered. ‘I want its database cores.’
She wondered how many other secrets the humans had been keeping.
10: CONFRONTATION
10.1: MARK
The GSS Edmond Dantes tore around the back of the G-class star, its hull groaning under combined gravitational and thermal stress. Even down in the habitat core, they struggled. The immersive virt couldn’t hide the thrumming of the tortured ship. Mark could feel it in his bones.
His cover manoeuvre had not been easy to pull off. The Photurian world they’d found had no moon and the in-system space around it was utterly clean of the usual debris. That meant almost nowhere to hide. So Mark had concealed his ship by diving close to the star and hiding in its glare while keeping their quantum cloaking ramped to the max.
The problem with this approach was the strain it put on the ship. The shield reduced their thermal load but was far from perfect so close to a plasma-source, which meant that Mark had to dump heat using tactical g-ray blasts aimed in directions he hoped the Photes weren’t looking.
He wished he could have spared the ship such unpleasant work but the Photes already owned local space through simple strength of numbers. They’d split their forces into two groups. A string of about fifteen ships had remained in the outer system, covering all the exit vectors in the direction of the Flaw. A larger group of about thirty had angled inwards in a loose smear, converging rapidly on the biosphere world.
Mark was having problems keeping so many Photes away from their intended goal. If they spent too much time close to the planet, Ann’s shuttle would be noticed.
To hold them back, he’d locked the Diggory into a running firefight. A deep submind copy of his identity was now running that ship almost autonomously. He disliked the set-up but there was too much light-lag and tactical flying going on to make the ship-juggling work any other way. So Mark received a horrid, surging update of the Diggory’s status every five seconds or so. It was like trying to fight a battle under a slow-motion strobe light.
It would have been better if he could have afforded more than two tight-beam relay sats between himself and the Diggory, but Palla’s models suggested that if he used any more, he’d give away his position and render his costly ploy useless.
To his mind, the only reason the Diggory wasn’t dead yet was because the Photes appeared determined not to chase it down. Despite the old scout-ship constantly harrying the approaching Photes with g-ray fire, they remained stubbornly focused on high orbital dominance of the biosphere. His attempts to lure them into dogfights had met with a spectacular lack of success.
‘Get ready for warp,’ he told Palla as they came around the far side of their solar slingshot. ‘As soon as the sun’s not hiding us, I’m swapping to warp. The combined false and real gees are going to be rough.’
‘Putting Rachel into acceleration support now,’ said Palla.
They’d slid Mark’s mentor back into unconsciousness the moment the serious manoeuvres had started, with her consent. There was no way her compromised body could withstand the stresses involved without shutdown and serious internal support.
‘Done,’ she told him.
Mark dearly hoped Rachel came through the next couple of hours okay. While their collaboration had been brief, it’d been enough to remind him of the woman’s spark.
He fired the engines and threw the Dantes back up the system towards the
rendezvous point he’d signalled to Judj. For thirty seconds, neither Mark nor Palla spoke while they fought to retain consciousness. Mark tried to ignore the freight train on his chest and found it difficult.
‘Heard anything else from the shuttle?’ he said as his brain finally cleared.
‘No,’ Palla assured him with a gasp. ‘They’re running silent … like you asked … We just have to hope they make it.’
Mark currently had Ann’s shuttle racing through the upper layers of a tropical cyclone in the planet’s atmosphere to minimise its visibility. It’d lift and burn when the time was right but they hadn’t left much room for error. Rendezvous would be tight.
He counted down to the perfect moment and fired a fresh submind update at the Diggory, ordering it to dump its remaining messenger drones as bombs. He pointed them at the opposite side of the world from where he planned to be. That way the consequences of his light-lagged orders would hopefully arrive at the same time as his own ship was passing on the other side. With luck, the threat of a few antimatter missiles hitting the planet would draw the Photes’ attention.
With his orders en route, there was nothing to do but fly in a near-straight line with his tau-chargers running hot as the seconds counted down. Mark saw sudden warp-flashes and bursts of fire from the far side of the world before the view was occluded by the planet rushing up to meet him.
He caught sight of the shuttle making a furious burn and dropped pickup drones to seize it. They blazed from the glare of their braking, tethered the shuttle as gently as they could and boosted back up to matching velocity. Mark intercepted the lot of them three seconds later.
In the wake of his grab, he watched for tails but found none. The Photes might have launched cloaked munitions, but something about the frantic deployment of their ships told Mark that his adversaries lacked the focus to engage in such devious acts.
He opened a channel to the shuttle.
‘Ann,’ he said. ‘Is Judj okay? Any broken bones from that pickup?’
‘A couple of ribs, I think,’ Judj wheezed. He sounded grey with stress. ‘I’ll be fine, but Ann’s not with me.’
Mark blinked. ‘What?’
‘She said she’ll “catch up”,’ said Judj flatly.
‘What in eleven living colours of fuck does that mean?’ Mark shouted. ‘Catch up how?’
As they powered past the planet, he received another update-burst from the Diggory. It had expended all its drones and was now engaged in evasive manoeuvres. The ship didn’t expect to survive more than a few more minutes.
As Mark struggled to integrate the new memories, his tactical display showed him the Photurian fleet releasing another volley of shuttles into the planet’s atmosphere. This time, he had no way to stop them from landing.
‘Andromeda Fucking Ludik!’ Mark roared.
What was he supposed to do now? Just leave her there? With the enemy massing behind him, he had little choice but to continue on his current path to rescue Ira. She hadn’t exactly left him any other options. Mark was all out of tricks.
10.2: ANN
Ann walked through the cilia forest to the node’s towering interior wall, adjusted the surface adhesion of her hands and feet, and climbed up the inside of it like a gecko. Once up among the hanging ribbons of calcified matter that hung there like sheaves of stage backdrops, Ann leapt. She clambered across their surfaces, retracing the route she’d originally taken but upside down. It was harder than she’d expected. The ribbons were awkwardly shaped and resisted her grip. But given that they were designed to support the construction of machines the size of transit pods, they held her weight. She caused no obvious, visible damage, other than the odd handhold driven into their surface by her urgent fingertips.
Ann made her way back towards the remains of the drone foetus that had split open on the floor. Once directly above it, she climbed upwards until she could sit on one of the drone-cysts growing out of the closest ceiling sheet. She picked one the size of a warehouse deliverybot and perched on it to wait for company.
It took over an hour. For whatever reason, the Photes were sluggish in their response. Ann started to worry about the Dantes leaving before she could reach it. Inevitably, though, the Photes sent robots into the node to see what she’d been doing. Ann matched her infrared signature to the surroundings and chameleoned her skin. She suppressed the urge to hum songs and watched the machines as they stomped about below.
They were big, ugly, bipedal things, three metres tall with guns on their arms. She wondered if they had human brains trapped inside, locked in some futile sense of permanent gratitude. No matter. The dumb robots didn’t even bother looking up. But then again, the Photes had no reason to expect her to stay behind. Because, after all, that was a silly thing to do.
The robots wandered about, damaged some cilia skeletons and clunked back out. Ann watched and waited, full of hope, and prayed that she’d judged this right. She reasoned that to the Photes, the node would be a little like a temple. They’d want to see it in person. How could they not, even if they knew it was broken? The moment that had occurred to her, she realised she’d been presented with a rare opportunity to get personal with the enemy.
In interstellar conflicts, one seldom had the chance to engage in close-quarters combat with one’s adversaries. Usually it was more a case of massive gamma-ray bursts at dawn. That was a shame, Ann thought – something that deserved rectifying.
As hoped, four Photes came through the forest together, surrounded by six of the biomechanical warriors to clear the way for them. Ann followed their progress and wondered, not for the first time, about the extraordinary quirks in her enemies’ behaviour. Rather than just nuking the site, they had to come in person – with their suits off. Just like they had to announce their arrival or convert people instead of simply executing them. It was like fighting an army of obsessive-compulsives.
Except, she noticed, there was something different about this lot. They were shaking and clutching at each other as they approached. When they caught sight of the broken egg, one of them let out a wail.
‘My joy is faltering,’ he yelled.
‘Mine also,’ said another, gripping her head. ‘This is … is … is … sad. I am sad! Sad! Help! I am experiencing non-functional emotion!’ She slid to her knees as she stared at the long-dead egg. One of the others grabbed her and shook her violently.
‘Resist it!’ he shouted. ‘Resist! Resist! Maintain joy at all costs!’
The exchange astonished Ann. It made the Photes seem oddly vulnerable – pathetic, even. They were never sad. They were stiff, grinning creatures, full of unthinking discipline. In her experience they didn’t even talk to each other. They just smiled and destroyed.
Her surprise melted into resentment. These monstrosities had devoured the human race, sucking world after world into their hideous, pointless parody of life. Not once had they asked what people wanted. They were always so sure they were doing what was best for everyone. Why should she consider their emotions when they had no time for anyone else’s? She stuck to her plan.
Ann jumped down, straight onto the robot at the back of the group that was serving as the comms relay. She landed on its shoulders, grabbed its head and twisted it off its neck. As the automaton sank to its knees, she threw the head at one of the other machines before it could react, smashing its weapon arm into shards. Then, as she slid down the back of the relay robot, she seized its gun arm from behind and rammed her fingers into the unprotected elbow joint. Data spikes burst from her fingertips, penetrating the neural links in the hinge. Ann cycled through possible neural commands at random, producing an erratic spray of armour-piercing slugs, which she directed into the remaining guards.
The entire process was a little uneven, she thought, and had already taken two-point-seven seconds. By the time her subminds had resolved the robot’s nerve protocol there were still two functional guards, both firing into the remains of the one shielding her.
Ann ripped f
ree the forearm weapon of the relay robot, dived, rolled and leapt away as the others peppered it with munitions, spraying the cilia forest with fire and shrapnel. Ann chastised herself. By now, the alarm would undoubtedly have been raised. The ships in orbit might even be informed. If she was going to be the recipient of an orbital kinetic attack, the next few seconds would be her last.
She shot the remaining two guards and leapt for the closest intact robot head. She rammed her spikes into its spinal junction and rifled the contents of its mind for some kind of control handle that would let her stall the shuttle from leaving. In the end, she succeeded by throwing so much data at it that the vehicle slid shrieking into passive reboot.
With disaster temporarily averted, she turned to the astonished Photes. They stared at her, dumbstruck, apparently confused as to why they were still alive.
‘The Abomination!’ said one stupidly.
‘She is responsible!’ croaked another. ‘Destroy her!’
Idiotically fearless to the end, the Photes ran at her with their weakling fists raised. Even ordinary Photes were as fast as Fleet officers with killtech implants. The grown augmentations that Phote bodies acquired made them extremely dangerous by human standards. But today was not a day for being human. It was a day for relishing just how human she wasn’t.
Ann moved among them like a scythe, striking with precise, paralysing blows. The Photes toppled like bowling pins, three into unconsciousness, one into seizures and breathing difficulties. Ann turned the twitching Phote over so that he was face up and looked down into his staring, orange-speckled eyes.
‘Lucky Photurian,’ she snarled. ‘Your long journey in search of peace is finally at an end. I offer harmony and purpose, and the satisfaction of temporary usefulness in the service of the human race.’
She pressed her data spikes gently into the corners of his eye sockets while he whimpered. Her probes chased back into his skull, finding their way towards his brain. The Phote gurgled as Ann seized control of his spinal cord, severing his body from motor control and depositing her own biomechanical tissue at the junction. By the time her spikes were withdrawn, the Phote was hers to command, his face slack. What was going on in his ugly, rewritten brain right now, she could only guess.