Evolution

by Saunders, Craig

  It mattered not. The seeds of doubt were planted. The Lore were the enemy. Um’lael Sabreme had said so. His assumed persona alone would do his work for him. The name carried weight.

  With the student classes was where the power lay within the Enlightened. They alone had the wealth to raise armies, the influence to dictate a war.

  He listened with his unreal ears for the sound of the seeds reaching for the sun, the author of its birth, and ultimate executioner. The seed should be enough. With the murder of the first of the Lore, a minor player, just a mining bot, the disenfranchised he had just preached to would take up the banner of evolution, thinking it just but merely acting as his tools for revolution. The student body would begin a war against the Lore, and all he had to do was sit back and watch. It was a truly beautiful thing.

  Just before he cut the transmission to a heated argument that was growing from the applause, Habla’saem caught a snippet of conversation from the shirkers.

  “The war’s begun, I’m telling you!”

  “Nah, it’s just a crazy.”

  “I heard it was a terium bullet. That’s standard military issue.”

  “Well? What does that mean? Half the weapons in the world are decommissioned and bored after each war. There must be a billion arms out there at a loose end.”

  “Well, even if it’s not the start of the war, where do you think the killer got the gun if not the Government?”

  “Government, smuverment. Sheez. You really think those lazy bastards are responsible for everything that goes wrong? Don’t be daft – anywhere from a billion places – some hard-up warrior probably hawking his rifle to make ends meet. You know, there’s not a conspiracy everywhere you look – that was lies madness, Colm,” a long-haired peacenik said to his dopey friend.

  The link faded, a few after-echoes confusing the end of the conversation, but it was enough. Habla’saem smiled like the proud gardener watching his hardy-perennials grow.

  He left to riotous applause.

  The boys were wrong and right. Conspiracy didn’t lie everywhere. Sometimes it told the truth, too.

  *

  Chapter Five

  Cablas – Inner sphere

  Cetee pounded down the metallic corridor, the thick whump of laser canon and the piercing whiz of projectile fire fading behind her. Her sandaled feet slapped loudly like a holiday disaster on the flooring.

  The stiletto sank backward into the sleeve of her dress, at the same instant, mid-flight, her dress changed to a full suit of body armour, no padding, and still bright red. The holmium armour, genomods containing chromatophoric cells, shifted like a shadow and she gradually blended with the walls. It became the colour of steel. Lost fire still rang down the halls around her ears, but only from the sentribots (the gargoyles were, fortunately, still busy with Kyle). A projectile, thankfully snubbed not coiled, hit the armour and whinnied off, beating her down the artery and clanging into the corridor. The corridor emerged triumphant, unscathed, from this minor engagement.

  It was a shame, but she doubted he would have amounted to much anyway. She felt a slight tug of guilt at leaving the innocent tribal behind, but, needs must, she told herself. She ran down the hall, which was, thankfully, stable. A photon blast went past her ear. The arterial tubing flashed. As she ran the tubing moved quicker. The sounds of pursuit faded.

  She pushed the piece of the emitter she’d not yet had time to examine into her dormant shoulder cannon, still ensconced against her hourglass hip (bumping as she ran). The piece had little weight, but she figured if she was being paid for it, it made no difference what it was made of, or what it was, even. She knew it was a rare piece. From what she could tell so far it was just another pointless archeofact. She could understand the collectors who sought after something useful – archaic ships, weapons, bio-art and the like – something friends could ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ at. She had no home herself, but she wasn’t immune to a bit of ooh and aahing – some of her clients lived in giant ships and houses. One or two even had planets to themselves, although they tended to be reclusive and lived on islands or under the sea, high tech defense systems dissuading all but the most persistent from ever paying them a visit. Cetee had a special pass though. She wasn’t generally welcome without an invite, for obvious reasons, but then, it was surprising how many of the rich would invite a thief into their home if it meant them getting someone else’s goodies.

  The stupid hunter had impressed her. She was almost gobsmacked, and she’d seen a few sights in her time. The way he’d controlled the room, from the instant he’d leapt from the hatch; the room had been his. Blasting the guestgreeter had done it. He hadn’t bothered with fancy words (in fact, she couldn’t remember him saying anything – just popping up and without so much as an ‘excuse me, ma’am’, blasting everything with invariable indiscretion). It wasn’t her fault though. If a man in his thirties didn’t have the sense not to take on a Tradition ship (as if the sentibots weren’t enough defence, Ecentrist gargoyles, too!), chances were he wasn’t destined to live much longer anyway.

  The docking tubes were close and she had to get off the ship. The tour ship she’d come in on would be in the Juxtorian nursery by now. Besides, the tour dock was too far anyway and in the other direction from the inner sphere.

  Tour ships were slow and heavily regulated, too.

  All she had to do was steal a ship. There would be plenty begging. Anyone due to leave would have stayed to watch the ruckus. It was almost as interesting as the archeofacts she left behind. Who, anyway, would turn down the chance to watch a real live firefight?

  She remembered the journey in hadn’t taken long – the journey out seemed to be taking much longer. When the tour ship had left she’d stayed behind and mingled.

  If only the dummy hunter hadn’t turned up, she could have stayed behind until the teraphods arrived, just before the purge and the poisonous hydro-oxypilium fluid had been pumped through the inner hall like her employer had told her. No sense in telling the tribal that, though. Now she’d just have to take the first route out she could find.

  She wondered what would happen to the teraphods now their timetable was off. As she wondered, she ran, and the sounds of gunfire finally faded to nothing behind her.

  There were three ships in the docking hall as she arrived. Only one of them had its entry path down. She hopped onto it, pulling the stiletto from the sleeve of her armour as she went

  She jumped into the ship just as the first sentribots found her, gargoyles now tailing close behind. Their first salvo missed wildly. The second blast hit the hooded armour behind her ear, careening of with a sing-song ping. It stung.

  Laser fire erupted around the ship; a flat, pebblesque Caste, (something one of her collectors would no doubt enjoy). She dove, smacking her palm against the compan as she went through. She wasn’t sure, but she thought she saw the lasers rebound as if directed, shattering a coy sentribot peeking round the glossy corridor behind her, before the entry port swooshed shut.

  It was darkness itself within the ship. A sneaky, fog-bound darkness. Deceptive light came from switches on the wall. With the entry port sealed, it was the only light. It was not enough to see by, and Cetee was already half-blinded from the red-orange eyeball searing light that the lasers used by gargoyles threw out. Now the lasers couldn’t be seen and no sound of the battle she left behind reached her ears. She couldn’t hear anything from outside, not the soft deep whump of laser or the tinny whine of projectile fire.

  The walls were panelled rigantium from the look of it, sleek and smooth even magnified through her armour’s visual enhancement. The air tasted stable, if a little stale. Her armour hood retracted, leaving only a small convex covering down the left side of her head, a transparent drooping flower flopping from her left eye to her ear. A small protruberance entered her nose, too, but she didn’t gag. Taste and smell were important enough to be boosted, and for the sake of living she could put up with the slight tickling at the back of her throat w
here the armour’s sensoprod emerged.

  She stilled herself, looking around with genetically modified sight for the comroom. The afterburn of laser canons faded. Spliced with feline DNA she had little problem negotiating the tricky dark. No alarms had sounded, which was why she was no longer running. The sentribots would not destroy an unarmed ship just because she had fled into it, at least not without checking whom it belonged to first. The gargoyles were another matter. Ecentrist bots were not known for their considerate manner.

  This ship obviously had no canons, although the plating itself could at a stretch be considered a weapon. The floor dulled the sound of her sandaled feet. The holmium armour that encased them had no effect on the textures of the metal underfoot. It was dull, black and unresponsive.

  She took a couple of short left turns, pressing panels gingerly and stepping back. One hand was free. The other held the stiletto. She turned the power up on the knife, and used the brighter glow to examine the markings on the walls. They looked like markers for each room, but in no language she understood.

  From what she could tell, the ship wasn’t intergalactic; there couldn’t be enough engine space on such a small ship for intergalactic travel. From the look of the outside it could only be Caste four (for interplanetary and interstellar travel, at best). It was small enough for her rough unguided tour to take less than five minutes. It didn’t take long to find the comroom. She found it before her tour was out, figuring it must be in the centre of the strange ship, which it was.

  It looked abandoned, but that was for the best. She didn’t like to kill anyone if she didn’t have to.

  Detaching the cannon, which was still shaped like a shoulder bag, from her shoulder, leaving it holding the emitter and covering the door behind her, she hurried to the centre (not out of breath) and took one look at the controls.

  Gibberish.

  With a curse of fury she smashed her fist down on the comset. She couldn’t understand what any of the symbols meant and from the look of it, it wasn’t even an Enlightened ship. It wasn’t designed from her. She looked ahead, startled, as the display came up; a wireframe image of the ship. She reached out and it warped as her hand passed straight through it.

  “God damn it!” she cursed again and considered taking up the shoulder cannon and blasting the comset anyway, just to spite whatever dumb ass would drive such an archaic rig.

  “Can I help you?” came a tentative voice, not impolite, but soft, as though wary of making her jump.

  She jumped anyway and looked around. “Who’s that?”

  “I thought you would have realised, dear. I wouldn’t leave you here without provision for your escape, now would I?”

  She didn’t recognise the voice.

  She turned around. Orpal appeared.

  “Shit,” she said.

  “Indeed, you seem somewhat predicated,” Orpal granted sagely.

  At which point, Orpal kindly pointed out to Cetee that it does the soul good to restrict itself and perhaps, seeing as how she was surrounded, she would like to pay for her passage?

  She knew even before she realised. She was trapped.

  “Jesus, everyone wants a piece of my ass…” she sighed and pulled her armour off her shoulder, exposing imperfect alabaster skin underneath, specked with freckles, green to match her eyes.

  “No, no…that’s …” not what I meant, Orpal stopped himself from saying. With a shrug he thought instead, “ah, what the hell…”

  *

  Kyle took out another two sentribots. They fell reasonably well, but the last two gargoyles he’d shot (and he was sure he’d shot them, right in their leering, snarling faces) had just gotten up and carried on running. There was no way his gun couldn’t kill them. The salesman had assured him. ‘There’s nothing this gun won’t kill,’ he’d promised Kyle, on his first shopping trip on his own. Why would he lie?

  But he must have. It made no sense. Blam! – a sentribot exploded with such force the pieces knocked the gargoyle next to it tumbling down the next artery. He risked the time to tap the eargen as he was running, turning, diving, shooting. He bowled himself into the nearest artery, hopefully heading for the ship bubbles where Orpal promised he would be waiting (although by now, with so many twists and turns, Kyle didn’t have a clue where he was – he could be headed straight for the sun sphere for all he knew, the heart of Cablas). He only hoped Orpal was still there and hadn’t shafted him now he knew the hunter had failed to get the showpiece. He was pretty trusting, all in all, but what with one disappointment running into another, he was beginning to feel like an empty shell on a snail – being taken for a ride.

  “Orpal! Orpal, are you there?! Where are you, damn it?” He paused for breath, realising there was nothing behind him. In sight, anyway. He was sure he could smell stone. On second thought, he added, “OK, where am I?”

  Still no reply came.

  Stone footfalls came closer. He was nearing the edge of his limit – the adrenals his body could safely manufacture were running low. He was tiring fast. He wasn’t used to a pitched battle. Given time the gargoyles would cut him to pieces. The genogun could quite happily pop sprogs for ever, as far as he could tell, but it needed sustenance to keep it going, and Kyle was running out of adrenaline to feed it. Soon he’d be lucky if he could muster a walk. The gun had done good, even if it was no longer able to shoot stone. Perhaps the egg sacks were weakening, perhaps that was why…

  They were getting closer. Kyle’s heartbeat was gradually slowing, his breathing become less ragged; the burning in his muscles subsided. As the roar of blood sank he realised the gargoyles were closer than he had thought. His sense of preservation, even unheightened, was kicking in. The gun whirred but he tried to calm himself – save it. Find somewhere to rest if he couldn’t find Orpal.

  Things had never been this complicated on Guron. He followed prey into the wilderness. He shot something. It died.

  This was unnatural. A hunter was supposed to take out one – that was all that was ever needed. Not a whole army.

  He couldn’t even comprehend how large Cablas was. This was a lost of a whole different magnitude. Footfalls sounded fatefully close. He started running again, when Orpal finally replied.

  “I’ve got a nice surprise for you when you get back,” Orpal finally beamed into his head. Just meaningless words, he thought, as he took another wrong turn, despite Orpal all but physically pushing him in the right direction with the eargen, beeps and whirs telling him which direction to take.

  He stopped running and tried to get his bearings. There was a stony silence.

  Then, projectiles – bouncing off the corridor. The sentribots had obviously tired of running around – they were just shooting down every corridor, hoping for a ricochet!

  “Got to get me back first!” he shouted over the din of fire, and whirling through the air loosed an egg sack down the hall toward a slightly lighter corridor.

  “Come on, come on! I’m rerouting the arteries for you,” shouted Orpal, although even Orpal didn’t know why he was shouting.

  “Blam! Blam!” his gun blurted, unasked. A thick hail blasted after him.

  Shit! Stupid! They just wanted me to return fire!

  “There, Kyle! That’s the one – you’re about thirty seconds away!”

  “What?!” shouted Kyle’s thoughts. “I’ve been running around down here for minutes now!”

  “Well, sorry,” Orpal told him (shirtily). “I’ve had company.”

  “More pleasant than mine I hope!” shouted Kyle. The corridor/artery popped him out and there was Orpal in front of him, glowing with power. Gargoyles and sentribots turned too slowly as Kyle dashed past them and onto the gangplank. The gangplank rose as soon as his feet touched it.

  Kyle lay panting, spent, on the floor. The gargoyles joined the sentribots outside the ship in a barrage of uneventful fire. Orpal didn’t even flinch.

  The gargoyles massed around the bubble, firing as one. The sentribots joined them, and p
opped perfectly accurate shots into the hull. And Orpal ignored them all.

  He blasted a hole out the bubble and leapt straight into deep space.

  He tore a hole through Cablas inner shell in the process. It was a large hole, a perfect imitation of Orpal’s sleek lines.

  Orpal left Cablas with a hail of bullets falling behind.

  Orpal tried to calm the young hunter as he sailed away. Cablas receded to a speck on the holowindow above him and he sank through the sticky layers of space until friction was just a memory and space became smooth upon his hull.

  “It’s OK. They can’t give chase,” he told the weary hunter. “You can’t move that fast when you’ve got a sun in tow… which is to our advantage. It’d pull each and every planet in the nearest solar system out of alignment and the solar system would die – the Tradition are considerate about things like that.”

  Kyle lay his head down just inside the exit hatch. He was drained from his flight and the constant demands for adrenaline his gun put upon him.

  “Just shut up and go Orpal…” he said. As an afterthought he mumbled, “I’m sorry, I didn’t get it.”

  Orpal smiled to himself. “Nope, I didn’t expect you would, my friend. But nevermind. I did.” Then he smiled a patrician’s smile just for Cetee’s benefit. Cetee glared back and shivered.

  “Don’t you want to see your surprise?” he asked, calling down the hall.

  “Nope,” replied the hunter. Fatigue dragged him under.

  *

  Space - Under

  Cablas couldn’t follow.

  It was stuck because, well, it didn’t really expect anyone to steal from it – no first or second level castes were allowed on the ship (just one example of the Tradition’s snobbery) and anything above a second level caste didn’t suffer from such crimes as theft anymore (there were always other crimes though; murder, rape, mutilation. Stupidity. Even among the Enlightened. Even among the robot races).