The Ascendant Stars

by Cobley, Michael

  ‘What will these orgs do to me?’ she said.

  ‘It would be easier to show you,’ said the enigma. ‘I’ll send you an envisager first. It lets you see a lot more than just the base analogue, and lets you adopt whatever exter you want.’

  A fine filament arced gracefully out from the top of the slowly twisting black presence and came down to touch the edge of Julia’s recess. A small knot of brightness then followed, landed and disappeared.

  ‘It autoembeds quite smoothly. You should see a difference very soon.’

  Her surroundings quivered momentarily before change rippled across everything. The transformation was so drastic and unexpected that she almost stumbled backwards before regaining her balance … because she was standing – standing – on a pavement near a street corner at night. Dark buildings loomed with a few windows grimily lit from within, yet when she gazed higher the streetscape faded and merged into the multicoloured, polyhedral data-cavern vista she had first seen.

  Then a figure stepped into the light, a man wearing a long black coat fastened to the neck, and an old-fashioned brim hat. He carried himself with a certain youthful maturity and his smile had more than a hint of knowing amusement.

  ‘Hello, Julia – my name is Harry.’ He put out a hand towards her and made a head-to-toe gesture. ‘I hope you don’t mind but I took the liberty of preloading an exter for you, something to put you at ease. It gives you a simulation of being in a body with motion physics and limb articulation, an approximation, anyway.’

  She had on a waist-belted trench coat, dark blue slacks and low-heeled shoes. After a quick self-inspection she nodded.

  ‘Thank you, it’s, ah, an improvement. You’ve clearly studied Humans and you are acquainted with Darien so perhaps you’re a Hegemony AI. Perhaps it’s your job to waylay troublesome travellers.’

  ‘Absolutely! – you’ve no idea the number of fractalised Humans that keep dropping in unannounced. We’re practically up to our knees … ’ He laughed. ‘The real answer is actually yes, I was assembled with Hegemony technology with the aim of becoming one man’s lifelong companion, at least a companion to his innermost thoughts. As in the Hegemony, all Earthsphere AIs maintain a subspace link with a massive datacore called Axis Station where a part of every AI’s persona resides – although there are rumours that there are a few AIs out there who exist wholly apart and autonomous. Unfortunately, due to elements of shared technology Axis Station is subservient to the Great Hub, the Hegemony’s datacore. Despite my inability to recall certain facts and events, I have no doubt that I have been used to influence my Human companion in the Hegemony’s favour. Despite which I find myself not entirely sympathetic towards those former pilots of my fate.’

  ‘I see,’ she said, unsure of how wary she should be. ‘So why are you here, rather than residing in your companion’s head? And where, exactly, is here?’

  A look of resigned melancholy came over him. ‘Chance and the unfathomable motives of ancient machines. My former companion, a man of considerable stature, had come to Darien with the aim of fostering harmony. Instead he became entangled in the schemes of the vile Utavess Kuros, the Hegemony’s snake-in-chief on Darien. While fleeing Brolturan troops we strayed within reach of an ancient Forerunner sentience which promptly severed the bonds joining us. My companion was transported down into the depths of hyperspace while I was modified in certain ways and set loose in the tiernet. The workings of chance led me here, to Ingress-Lock 87 of the Fal-Shol, a tiernet comms satellite in orbit around Nekel, a border world of the Brolturan Compact.’

  Julia nodded. ‘Robert Horst, the Earthsphere ambassador – everyone thought he’d been murdered or smuggled offworld to be tortured aboard the Brolturan battleship. And you were his AI companion.’

  ‘And you are Julia Bryce, Enhanced technologist and theorist, and principal of an Enhanced team working on something called Project 29. Well, according to the files that passed my way before my unceremonious exile.’

  ‘There was some concern as to the security of our most sensitive records,’ Julia said, wondering how much the AI knew.

  ‘They were about as secure as a paper bag, to be honest.’ Harry smiled. ‘Although some key files were erased soon after we arrived at Darien.’

  She frowned. ‘Actually, given your background, the issue of trustworthiness needs addressing, I think.’

  He nodded. ‘I can understand that position. All I can tell you is that since I was amputated from my companion my motivations are my own, not some update stream filtering in from the Great Hub. Put it this way, if I ever crossed paths with a fully interlocked Hegemony AI it would try to erase me without hesitation because I am a crippled, incomplete data entity failing to serve the greater glory of the Hegemony.’ He shrugged. ‘I am, however, quite sure that the Hegemony can function very well without my insignificant contribution.’

  Julia considered him a moment. ‘Okay, but I withhold judgement until I am satisfied of your intentions over the medium term.’

  He bowed. ‘So, to the immediate. Julia, what purpose do you follow? What is it that you want the most? Revenge against those who cast you out, perhaps?’

  ‘Revenge might be satisfying later,’ she said. ‘However, my former captors are planning an attack against multiple targets, supposedly politically significant individuals on five hundred worlds. But I’m very certain that it’s all to do with something else … ’ She hesitated, then decided that she had little to lose at this point and proceeded to tell Harry about her and the others’ capture by Corazon Talavera and about how they were used, leaving nothing out. Harry listened intently, nodding occasionally.

  ‘The Chaurixa terrorists are well known for their ability to stir up trouble,’ he said once she had finished. ‘Until Talavera came along they had acquired a reputation for exotic weapons and theatrical mass-death events. Since she gained control, they have allied themselves to the distinctly extreme cause of the Spiral Prophet, which hardly stirs sympathy in the ranks of other movements. Talavera clearly has an agenda, which seems closely linked to events on Darien … ’

  But I’m here, who knows how far away while Talavera’s ship is on its way to its crucial destination. Perhaps I was too hasty in my escape.

  ‘I think I am going to have to return to the Chaurixa ship,’ she said. ‘Is that possible?’

  ‘Everything needed to track shipboard tiernet nodes is on hand, right here, so usually I would say yes. Unfortunately, our continued presence could lead to an inconvenient demise.’ So saying, Harry looked up.

  Following his gaze, Julia saw beyond the shadowy streetscape to the glittering clusters of Ingress-Lock 87 and a flock of shining spheres, each one emitting a shimmering fan of light that passed back and forth across the crowded areas of the data cavern. Each overlapped with its neighbours in a swath that was moving steadily closer.

  ‘The invigilance system is performing a deep-grid audit,’ Harry said. ‘Detection is not in our interest – high-complexity entities like us are automatically considered a threat and treated accordingly. We’ll have to leave – now.’

  Julia felt a flutter of something like panic. ‘I assume this means the use of more orgs.’

  Harry nodded and handed her what looked like two playing cards – one had a picture of a winepress, the other an image of a pair of hands shaking.

  ‘Put them in your pocket to embed them.’

  She did so and felt a small quiver, and when she patted her pocket it was empty. Above them, the fans of scrutinising radiance drew nearer.

  ‘Now take my hand and say “compression one”,’ Harry said.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘A place where the risk is less imminent.’

  For a moment Julia swayed on her indecision, wishing one of the others, like Irenya, were there to advise. But she knew that in the end it came down to trust. So she took his hand and said the words. There was a bizarre instant when everything around her slowed down and down into gritty, grainy,
colourless images that flattened out to greyness …

  ‘ … eno noisserpmoc … ’

  Suddenly the night-time street corner popped back into its original appearance. Only now, beyond the hazy periphery of Harry’s standard background they appeared to be standing on a large shelf jutting from the shadowy wall of a wide horizontal shaft stretching off into a faintly radiant distance. As with the Brolturan Ingress-Lock 87, a bright cord of dataflow entered via a conduit and branched as it ran straight through the centre of the shaft. This dataflow, however, was a slender beam and its few branches, almost threadlike, split off along irregular towers protruding from the sides of the shaft. Around their bases, cube and dome structures glowed and pulsed – the rest of the datascape seemed dead and inert, plunged into deactivated gloom.

  ‘So we were compressed, uploaded and transvectored to … ’ She frowned. ‘To wherever this is.’

  Harry was gazing at the palm of one hand where data and images streamed and glowed. When Julia spoke he snapped his fingers and the display vanished.

  ‘I keep an upload grappler on standby at all times,’ he said. ‘As for our current location … well, let us say that it doesn’t appear on any tiernet maps. Those who make use of the place call it Qijiq, although it has had other names at different times. It was once a military spy probe deployed by one of the Hegemony’s imperial predecessors, the Uphari Alliance, probably. After the Uphari were eclipsed, it passed into the hands of a trade cartel, then to a cabal of Bargalil sympathisers soon after the Indroma revolution. They turned it into the hub of their news and propaganda network, a kind of prototype tiernet which was very popular for a short time until ideological arguments split the cabal. One faction towed it off into hyperspace, thinking to reclaim it at a later date. But they were wiped out by unknown assailants and the probe lay undisturbed until about a century ago when it was reactivated by a guild of dataleggers. They knew a good thing when they saw it and linked it to the tiernet with a shift-encrypted locater code. Which I cracked with a little help.’

  ‘Hmm, a history lesson,’ Julia said. ‘How instructive.’

  ‘I always feel that more information is better than less,’ Harry said, smiling.

  ‘I’ve no objection, provided the information is relevant.’

  ‘I believe I detect a hint of impatience,’ he said. ‘We need only wait a short while longer … ah, or less.’

  Beyond Harry’s streetscape imagery a restless glow, flickering like a knot of gleams and angles, approached, its appearance blurring as it entered the shadowy street. Out of the shadows stepped a tall man wearing a plain black suit, black leather gloves and carrying a slender document case.

  ‘Client Harry,’ he said in a deep rich voice. ‘And a fully fractalised sentience, with naturalistic ego state and dynamic, memory-aware volition.’

  ‘Vayosh,’ Harry said. ‘This is my companion, Julia. Good to see that your analytics are as sharp as ever. I hope you are able to satisfy the curiosity I mentioned.’

  Vayosh’s smile was a cold baring of teeth.

  ‘An interesting request, to find the location of a tiernet node aboard a specific vessel possibly in transit. Taxing, but not beyond my abilities.’

  Harry grinned. ‘You’ve found it.’

  Vayosh gave a slight nod. ‘First, the defrayment.’

  From within his coat, Harry produced a slim hardback book and handed it over. ‘Decrypts for various weapons contractors on Chasulon, very recently acquired.’

  ‘High-value items,’ said Vayosh as he locked it away in his case. ‘Most acceptable.’ From his suit pocket he took a silver coin and flipped it to Harry, who caught it in midair. He waited a moment then opened his hand and gazed at the data that glowed there.

  ‘This vessel, the Sacrament, is currently in hyperspace transit,’ Vayosh said. ‘And as you can see it is not alone.’

  ‘Vor,’ Harry said, frowning as he studied the images.

  ‘There were no other ships when I was on board,’ said Julia. ‘And what’s a Vor?’

  ‘The Vor,’ he said. ‘An ancient race supposedly lost in the depths of hyperspace, lost or extinct. Not a very pleasant species either, yet it seems that two of their ships are now accompanying the Chaurixa on their journey.’

  ‘You can also see that the Chaurixa vessel’s tiernet node is all but impregnable,’ Vayosh said. ‘The security encryption seems excessive for such a vessel, perhaps the consequence of a data breach in the not-too-distant past.’

  Harry gave her a rueful smile. ‘Sorry, Julia – I can’t see us breaking back into this cage.’

  She nodded, concealing her disappointment.

  ‘Where are they headed?’ she said.

  ‘Tiernet tracking is imprecise,’ said Vayosh. ‘But from the sample period it seems that they are on course for the edge of Hegemony space.’

  ‘Any overheard communications between the three ships?’ said Harry.

  ‘There were indications of intership comm-beam relays,’ Vayosh said. ‘These are inaccessible to tiernet probes. The Sacrament’s net traffic was analysed but no subcodes or encryptions were found. I have included the net traffic in an attached file.’

  ‘So I see,’ Harry said.

  ‘This concludes our transaction,’ said Vayosh. ‘Till our next encounter, then.’

  With that the strange entity rose straight up, crossed the night–street boundary and turned back into a whirling knot of radiance which disappeared amongst the angular shadows.

  ‘Is he an AI?’ Julia said.

  ‘Apparently, Vayosh was at one time a virtual cognitive model in an Ufan-Gir military lab. Bootstrapped itself into awareness, escaped into the tiernet and it’s been trading secrets and updating itself ever since … for however long that’s been.’

  Harry had been scanning through the data received from Vayosh, light from his palm reflecting from his face. Now, frowning, he curled the fingers into a fist and glanced at Julia.

  ‘Interesting – much of the Sacrament’s net traffic is regular astrograv updates from subspace beacons and regional star system casters. But there were two responses to requests for a large number of precise star locations. How many missiles did this Talavera say she was planning to launch?’

  ‘Five hundred,’ she said uneasily.

  Harry nodded. ‘That’s how many stars are in their location request.’

  ‘She said … ’ Julia paused, horrific possibilities hovering at the edge of her comprehension.

  ‘You’ve already said that you suspected deceit on her part,’ Harry said. ‘So tell me – what effect would one of these anti-dark matter missiles have on an ordinary main-sequence star?’

  ‘If the missile were larger than she told me,’ Julia said. ‘If the cladding vessel’s surface was deeply incised to increase the reactive area … it would make a sun go nova. Every living thing in the same system would die.’

  ‘Five hundred supernovae,’ Harry said. ‘Now that sounds like the Chaurixa. But it raises the question of who they’re doing this for, because they are not in the habit of initiating their own campaigns of mayhem and death.’

  Talavera’s words came back to her with perfect clarity – You’ve no idea how powerful he is, or how powerful he’s going to make me. Do you have someone like that … She gave a full account of that last encounter, even including the detail about those smoky black snakes. When she mentioned them, Harry’s gaze grew intense and serious.

  ‘I’ve heard of these things before,’ he said. ‘They’re called vermax and they originate from dangerous lairs deep down in hyperspace. I know someone, well, an AI called Reski Emantes, who has connections with a very significant power down there.’

  ‘And where do we find this AI?’

  ‘Earth.’ Harry laughed. ‘Ready for a trip to the cradle of Humanity?’

  ‘Lead the way,’ Julia said, smiling, suddenly looking forward to this unexpected destination.

  KAO CHIH

  The Shyntanil attendants put
him in an upright metal framework full of rods, plates and shackles which they used to hold him in place. Most of his outer garments were stripped off, exposing bare skin to curved cold sections and restraining straps made from some heavy, rough material. Soon every limb was gripped fast, as were his head and jaw, chest and midriff. Then came the medication. Grimy vials of something purplish-brown were clamped to the main frame at head height and from them lengths of opaque stained tubing ran down his arms to where the needles were inserted into stinging incisions.

  Part of him wanted to wail and beg but he knew that it was pointless to look for compassion from such creatures. They stank of death and their entire ship was a tomb where corpses moved and marched and fought in a withered semblance of life.

  Nothing was said as the attendants tipped him back and wheeled him out and along a rust-streaked corridor through sluggish retracting doors then down a sloping section to a bright-lit, low-ceilinged deck. Before him stretched a passageway lined with tall recesses, many of which were occupied by similarly restrained captives. Some looked alive, others had a deathly pallor. Kao Chih would have focused on these passing details but his thoughts started to drift as the unknown drips began to take effect.

  To his narcotised eyes, the occupants of the lines of recesses were smiling at him as he passed by, nodding and winking. Welcome to Di-Yu, they were saying, welcome to the Hell of the Iron Web. One said, The god Ping-Deng-Wang is the judge here. Another said, Have you committed any of the Ten Unpardonable Sins? If you have, you’ll be stuck here for eternity …

  I haven’t, honestly, I give you my word! he desperately wanted to say as he opened his eyes, not realising that he had closed them …

  He was shocked to find that he was now in a recess, gazing across at another unfortunate who hung limply amid his own web of restraints. I must have passed out, he reasoned but when he peered at the drug vials they looked almost full. A nameless, inescapable fear twisted in the pit of his stomach, which ached with hunger. Then, amid his anguish, he noticed that the captive opposite, a lanky humanoid with a blockish head, had opened one dark and gleaming eye and was staring straight at him.