“Back on Guron I didn’t have this problem. The missionaries told me where to go and what to do. Scars aside, it was nice to have direction.”
Neither mentioned it again.
“Junkyard’s getting to me,” said Archeon. “Feels like family.”
“Graveyard’s about right, don’t you mean? “
Orpal was silent.
Encased within Archeon, the Lu’s eyes bumped against the holding solution as they walked, jiggling crazily in their Lore casing.
The shadows lengthened.
Ahead of them, four locals followed Cetee’s erractic path through the shadow, unaware of the genogun’s wielder approaching behind them, with the Lore’s last weapon in tow.
*
Cetee pushed the hood on her holmium armour back from her face, held tighter to the stilleto and unsheated the sinblade. The air inside the ship was still breathable, no matter how many years it had been left derelect. She turned her shoulder light on. The ship was too dark for even her genetically engineered eyes. The dark felt heavy too, and she could discern other smells, other than metal. Biological smells.
The walls of the ship pushed in unnaturally, the metal within warped from above by the weight of other ships. She didn’t know who built the ship originally, but it must have been one of the Enlightened races, the markings were familiar to her and the sizes were a perfect fit. She didn’t have to crane her head up or duck or crawl through any of the openings.
The stolen navicom blinked at her. From the navivom she was right on top of the piece.
She could feel eyes prickling her back, a disquieting sensation.
Then, there in front of her, the control room. Set into the compan was the next piece of the emitter! She found it unfortunate that she would have to outdo Orpal and Kyle, but the price the piece would fetch could settle any guilt she felt. Once a thief, she told herself, always a thief. She took the piece from its housing, wondering what function the piece could have served alone without its companions.
She put the piece into her shoulder bag, got a tighter grip on her stiletto and exited.
Outside she found she was right all along. Something stank.
“We’ll take that armour there, missy,” said the first man. His beard was caked with grease and his skin had an unhealthy pallour. No doubt from breathing the atmosphere unaided for so long. He was human in form but the scourge and the unbreathable air had combined to make him evolve in a way that was entirely unnatural.
Cetee crouched low and growled animalistically. The sinblade dripped venom.
The four men in front of her wore enamel armour, perhaps fed from the teeth in their heads they missed. Greasy beards flowed free above the neckline. That was the way to their heart.
“Now boys, I don’t think you want to be getting into this with me,” growled Cetee.
“Just about right, I’d say. Although yours are a touch rounder than mine, I reckon it’d fit,” said the one closest to her, fingering a laser lance and juggling animatedly around his chest, mimicking breasts.
“So it’s the armour you want is it boys? Why, there something wrong with me?”
“Nope, nothing wrong with you either. I reckon we’ll take that sinblade too.” This one motioned with his laser gun at her right hand, the blade protrubing above her fisted fingers. Her knuckles cracked in reply.
“Come and get it then,” she said.
The first man stepped forward, hand outstretched to touch the armour. Cetee pounced and took the first two with one swipe. She stopped mid-flight, then kicked the third in the throat with an armoured foot, breaking his neck. The first two clutched at their throats as they fell to their knees, bleeding little and breathing less.
The sinblade dripped venom, and the stilleto came into her left palm at a thought.
She spun one last time and drove the blade straight into the last scrapper’s eye socket.
Dust settled in the growing dark and Cetee smiled to herself a satisfied smile, coming to rest. The four scrappers lay dead at her feet but she was not alone. Looking up, at the wall of ships before her, her shoulder light picked out a shape and she jumped. It was unexpected. She turned and checked again.
No, she was right the first time. She had seen a Gargoyle.
It wasn’t alone.
*
They found the abandoned Cove ship by a different route. Archeon recognised the Cove tech where Cetee hadn’t. Despite Cetee’s years, she had never had cause to venture into Cove space before.
There was nothing here worth taking. At least, so she had thought.
While Cetee was held by the gargoyles, with one of the most valuable archeofacts in all the universe in her shoulder bag, Kyle and Archeon followed the strengthening signal on the navicom, into the ship.
“Must be a Cove ship,” said Archeon. “They’re the only Enlightened ships out this far in the universe.”
The ship smelled of decaying metals. The variety was strange, considering the planet was a ghost world.
“It’s up ahead,” said Orpal.
They entered.
*
In Kyle’s ear Orpal had gone quiet. The sudden silence was disconcerting. Kyle had grown accustomed to his incessant ramblings.
“Orpal? Orpy?”
No matter how hard he thought the words in his head Orpal wouldn’t reply. He was on his own then.
He pushed aside a buckled steel metal door. He looked down in the dark and saw the emitter’s glow on the navicom, now ahead of him.
Pushed through in the dark.
Into the comroom. Looked behind him and Archeon was gone.
Damn it, he said to himself. I’m lost and this is the only hope I’ve got of finding my way out. Stupid directional failure that I am. His gun whirred more quietly, echoing his disquiet at being left alone.
“Archeon?” he called, to no reply.
He looked intently at the small screen gripped in his hand as he walked through the corridors and out into the newly pitched darkness outside.
Looking up, he saw the gargoyles, Cetee in hand with their guns trained on her temple. Cetee standing their encased in ice shade covering her so she couldn’t move. Kyle tried to look kindly at her.
All she could manage was a roll of the eyes.
Oh great, the fuckwit tribal! she thought to herself. She would have at the very least tried to mouth the insult, but her lips were stuck tight.
“How nice to see you,” the leading gargoyle intoned. “You will come with us…”
Kyle turned around, and there behind him was Archeon, encased in iceshade too, stuck in his most dense form, towed on a leash by another gargoyle. He looked up, and there, too, were gargoyles. He was surrounded.
“I think you should come with us,” said the gargoyles, Baal talking through them. “Thank you for finding the pieces.”
*
Harna Gurn supposed the following progression of societies into space.
Ion engines were archaic, and thus reserved for the lower of the mathematical castes.
Fusion engines were only one level above.
Antimatter was used by the third mathematical caste, and this was the level used by the Ecentrists.
Orpal was a fifth level caste, and thus accustomed to being the sneaker up on, not the sneakee. It was through a simple bout of big headedness that Orpal didn’t hear their approach. Not until he was inside.
*
Kyle, Cetee, Archeon and Orpal were together once again. They travelled painfully slowly aboard the Seraph class zealot Azriel. Their capture had been simple. So was their destination. They travelled to Huna.
As they neared the white hole, the insipid whine of Azriel’s anti-matter engines grew louder still.
Orpal really should have heard them in the first place. Anti-matter was far from sneaky.
*
Chapter Twelve
Huna Ecentrists homeship (1/427,100,991 – Ex-sector, sept)
Orpal flexed in frustration against the o
rathnion bands holding him tethered. Even his immense strength, enough to pull his pebble frame through thirty-three gravities without breaking a sweat, could not budge them. The bands held Orpal fast, and just in case the wily old lecturer-cum-explorer thought to trick his way out jag rune dampeners clamped his spirit tight. Thought itself was a tricky process. He had tried simple calculations to test their limits but he was restricted. It had taken the first three hours and considerable strain just to figure the complex density of the Ecentrist’s ship, Huna, to which he was chained.
The calculations involved in figuring the complex density of the white hole beneath the holding bay made him fear for his life.
He was not alone in the holding bay either. Another ship, smooth caste, too, sat unimpeded, taunting him with its freedom, unbarred and merely cocooned.
It was ugly though. It had nothing on his lines. He consoled himself with that thought while he looked longingly at that unblemished egg beside him.
*
While Orpal lay chained like a great hunter’s prize below in the docking area of Huna, Archeon lay moaning quietly on a torturer’s table.
The greatest tool of torture would always be the fear that preceded it. The perfect torturer never had to resort to pain.
The Ecentrists didn’t give a damn for perfection.
Shoddy, Archeon thought, looking across the room at his instentinal capacitor. There was nothing he hated more than shoddy workbotship.
The Ecentrist Inquisitor twisted Archeon’s instentinals around its pronged manipulator.
“Are you the last?” It asked. It had asked the same question since Archeon had been confined to captivity. Robots can ask the same question many times over the course of hours. It doesn’t take long to formulate questions, even for the lowest bot on the scale – for the Ecentrists the lowest rank was a piout. For the Tradition the lowest rank would be a maintenbot. For the Lore there was no rank, merely caste ships, ranked by size, not importance. Archeon would have no rank other than weapon.
The Inquisitor held a rank one up from missionary.
“Nope,” Archeon lied again. He would have told them everything for a decent bit of fear.
“Are you the last?” It asked again. The question was tedious for Archeon, able to calculate complex equations roughly three thousand times quicker than the Inquisitor. Each question for Archeon was preceded by a pregnant pause, before the Inquisitor could ask again Archeon amused himself by figuring how many ways he could kill the Inquisitor. As it was he had to amuse himself with his imagination, as he had for thirteen years while stuck underneath Tenaphoria, before Kyle and Cetee came and saved him. Or at least, he thought, the Ecentrist zealot came to save him, turning the world to white and destroying the teraphods.
“Nope,” said Archeon with a smug chuckle. It was obvious he was lying, just as it was obvious what the truth must be.
It didn’t matter to either bot. The Inquisitor would keep asking.
Archeon was just being bloody minded.
*
In a deep cell with smooth unassailable opal walls covered in grime, Kyle reached out.
The cell was perfectly square, apart from the grime that grew in the corners. Metal should have been pristine, but age and human faecal matter had besmirched the honour of the prison’s walls.
“Shit,” he thought.
Kyle’s thoughts took a lot longer to formulate than Archeon’s and Orpal’s. Shit was all he could manage before the door finally crept open.
He prepared to leap on his captor. It was his one chance of escape.
*
Huna was comprised of eight octomants. The lower four were given over to lower drones while the upper four housed the immensities known as the triumvirate, Baal, Baal’em and Asroth. The upper octomants were each the size of a continent, large enough to house the triumvirate and allow room for movement.
Asroth growled with contempt. A finger prodded one piece of the emitter, tipping it over. It should have been squashed thoroughly enough for it to come out the bottom and drop through the vacuum swirling under Huna, but Asroth’s gargantuan hands were deceptively gentle.
Baal’em was gruff. Not impetuous.
“Together, we should be able to use it, don’t you think?” Asked Baal, Baal’em’s younger brother. Asroth looked to Baal’em like a younger brother should…were its elder sibling an extremely wise terium jackal with planets for feet and geological features for teeth.
“Doesn’t seem to work,” said Baal’em, almost forlornly.
“One piece still seems absent. Perhaps all are needed?” suggested Asroth to their leader. They had tried every configuration but stupid thing was still buggered.
“There are four pieces here, taken from Orpal. We obviously need the fifth to assemble it.”
“No matter,” said Baal’em. “We will win the war without the emitter.”
“But with the Cascade device we could rule the universe.”
“For now we have more pressing matters to concern us.”
“What about the one with the genogun?” asked Baal. The genogun had been one of the Ecentrists ill advised attempts to copy the Lore during the first war, a mixture of technological and biological. “How did he come by it? Pure chance, for one with the marks of the devout? I think not.”
“No sir, but he is with a missionary now. We wil find out how he came by the weapon.”
“We took the sentibitor off but the gun still refuses to speak.” Baal sounded like a jilted lover, all low intonation, a whinny baritone.
“Well, no matter. How go the tests on the Archeon?”
“Let’s ask,” said Asroth.
Baal summoned a piout. “Well?” he grumbled at the quivering servant as it appeared through the entrance to the lower octomant. “How go the interrogations?”
“Not well, Lord,” replied the piout.
Baal’em’s fat fingers clenched together into a fist. Baal noted the gesture.
“Now, Brother, we must shepard the piouts. All is not lost. We have four pieces of the emitter for little loss. One of the crew will tell us where the fifth piece resides.” The eldest of the triumvirate was the smoothest. While the two younger brothers were prone to tantrums, Baal was given to ponderous thought that matched his immense proportions. Quick thinking and gigantic girded frames did not go well together.
To the piout Baal added, “let’s see if we can’t figure out how the Lore hide from us. Take it apart if you have to.”
“Um,” replied the piout, the sensible side of stuttering. “We already have.”
*
Orpal finally re-reached the third mathematical level.
It was a great effort on his part. Orpal’s capacitors groaned, the equivalent of beaded sweat stood proud against his brow.
Six hours had now passed in captivity, and Orpal was roughly comparable to a trinumerate. Given that his original state was a quinumerate it was hardly a satificatory revelation to be able to figure pi.
Thoughts, confined to mathematical processing as they were, eluded him with the ease of a fairy dancing round a rhino. Cumbersome as it was, the thought:
No one will come for me…
Managed to stomp through his brain.
*
Cetee did though.
She snuck down into the holding bay. There was no one about. Deserted, apart from the smug shell ship sitting freely next to Orpal.
The stiletto blazed at full power, her sinblade sheathed and dormant. An armed captive, an observer would have wondered. With her armour? It was strange indeed.
Sometimes, the thief’s best tools were still the old ones. Looking around, making sure there were no monitors – there were no monitors aboard Huna, as visitors were a rarity and all but two current guests were confined within the prison sector, but Cetee didn’t know this. There was no one and no thing within sight. Since being let out of her cage and defrosted Cetee had seen no one.
Satisfied that she was unobserved, she took the orathnion
band in one hand and sawed with the other. No fiddly lockpicks were needed here.
She finally sawed through. Orpal popped up three meters and was silent.
Behind her, she became aware of the jag rune dampener buzzing quietly.
Without Orpal, Kyle and Archeon would never be free. That wasn’t part of the deal.
She flipped the dagger over hand.
She had a conscience, god damn it…
And threw. The dagger sank in. The buzzing ceased.
*
Orpal was pleased with his conclusion. I am like a ponderous rhinocerous, he thought to himself in the cumbersome language of trinary…
Then, imagine god’s pride when he has created night and day.
Imagine how pleasing such a gargantuan feat of engineering would be, the warm joy of omnipotence flowing through your own hostly veins…
And, then, to look up into your night, and see that someone had already put the stars there…
Orpal’s awoke from his enforced stupidity and screamed.
*
There came no knock at the door.
Kyle, unbound, crouched against the side of the cell, and waited for his captor to enter the room. The door swung open. Kyle pounced. He landed square upon the missionary’s back.
The door swung closed behind them and Kyle’s scream of reconition melted into Orpal’s scream of awakening. His scars burned brightly with rememberance. The missionary spoke.
“Jiall Kyle Iris, do you not remember your teacher?”
Unarmed there was nothing Kyle could do against a missionary. He beat upon its rigantium shell ineffectually with his fists.
Evolution Page 18