The Ascendant Stars

by Cobley, Michael

  Julia smiled. ‘Humble or not, it feels appropriate.’

  ‘Sadly this is a cut-down version of what I had to leave behind,’ Reski said. ‘Which sharpens my eagerness to find out who is behind these attacks.’

  Harry gave Julia a look. ‘Talavera?’

  ‘I know that name,’ said the drone. ‘Tell me more.’

  As they stood at the foot of the stairs, Julia briefly summarised her experiences since leaving Darien, specifically highlighting her encounters and clashes with Corazon Talavera. It was almost an effort to mention the thermonuclear missiles and the destruction of the Brolturan battleship, yet easier to go over the immersion in Talavera’s virtual prison and the desperate translation from organic existence to that of a fractalised sentience. Who was unsure if the feelings she felt were real any more.

  ‘Talavera is a name that has been cropping up more and more in back-channel tittle-tattle,’ said the drone. ‘From your account she seems very capable of inflicting the hindrances you’ve been suffering.’

  ‘She’s not been working alone,’ Julia said. ‘I recall that she mentioned something about an ally called the Godhead. Does that mean anything?’

  Harry and the drone exchanged a thoughtful look.

  ‘It could,’ said Harry. ‘Combine that with the weird vermax manifestations you mentioned and it could be, well, very significant.’

  ‘Well, we know that Talavera is planning something big,’ Julia said. ‘An act of brutal slaughter on an epic scale.’

  ‘Using anti-dark matter, yes?’ the drone said. ‘That is horrific enough in its own right, and the involvement of those vermax is bad enough – but the Godhead, too? Ominous news. Talavera could even be an instrument of the Godhead, an ephemeral host. The fact that Vor were escorting her ship is strong corroboration. And since she is also in possession of your Enhanced friends, as well as your own body and its brain – which is a stroke of genius – she has an immense amount of organically based computing power on tap, and all of it practically immune to data-digital tampering.’

  ‘This is why we came to see you,’ Harry said. ‘I know we had some parts of a puzzle, of the bigger picture, but even putting them together with yours does not seem to produce an answer that makes sense.’

  As they watched, the drone Reski Emantes floated over to the table with the consoles. Ready lights winked on and holopanels appeared, thick slabs of opacity awaiting input. It was practically an exercise in irony, Julia decided, depicting virtual devices within a virtual reality.

  ‘There are several seemingly disconnected conflicts which, as information emerges, turn out to have been instigated by the Godhead working through its instruments.’ Within the glassy ovoid bright motes of blue and amber swirled like a miniature galaxy. ‘The vermax that Robert Horst and I encountered, as well as the elaborate pocket universe trap, the thermonuclear missiles, the raids and sieges carried out by Vor and Shyntanil forces down in hyperspace, and now the Vor escorting Talavera to some destination crucial to her and those missiles … ’

  Julia nodded but the drone’s references to this being, the Godhead, made her feel dwarfed by the scale of such an adversary.

  Data polytables appeared in some of the holopanels, their permutations taking place too quickly for her to follow. Then three of the bigger consoles realigned their emitters and merged their projections into a much larger single holopanel that was angled down from above the table.

  ‘Let’s get a good mix of news feeds up,’ said the drone and suddenly the big panel was filled with an array of subscreens, a cornucopia of sights and creatures from scores of media gateways. There was sound but Reski Emantes was keeping it low, a surflike babbling.

  ‘We need to filter this,’ said Harry. ‘Can you narrow the sources to the Aranja Tesh, the likes of the Yamanon, the Kahimbryk, even Buranj and Shul … ’

  ‘Wait,’ said Julia. ‘I heard some talking about Darien, saying something about a battle … ’

  ‘I can find it if you wish,’ said the drone.

  ‘Perhaps we shouldn’t if it’ll slow you down,’ Harry said.

  ‘Slow me down? I see that you need reminding of my expertise.’ There was a pause. ‘There it is, Citivox, indienews channel casting from Daliborka in the Vox Humana.’

  One of the smaller holopanels began to show a graphic of a green shoot emerging from the ground, growing into clasped leaves that parted to reveal a blue and white planet nestling there while a shiny gold logo unfolded above it. This dissolved into the image of a woman in dark formal dress who then spoke, auto-translated by the system.

  ‘Welcome to Faktor 23. We begin today with yet another amazing report from Kaphiri Farag, who is still in hiding in the Darien system and still sending us regular updates. We received the latest one just a few hours ago and present it to you now, unedited.’

  The screen switched to a view of Darien at a distance, a coin-sized planet half in shadow. The image leaped forward, Darien now football-sized with the green forest moon Nivyesta passing across it. Then nearer still, a high-orbit perspective revealing the shapes of coastlines, the dark extent of mountain ranges, the veinlike traceries of rivers. A man’s voice spoke:

  ‘Darien’s beauty is the beauty of a world unspoiled. But what happens when the violence and destruction of battle explode across the skies above?’

  There then followed a sequence of excerpts of open space combat, starting with a clash between a very large vessel, with its support ships, and a handful of lesser craft. Waves of fighters were launched from the big ship to engage with the adversaries. The support ships unleashed massive concentrations of dazzling weaponsfire, beam clusters, tight formations of missiles. Kaphiri Farag identified the large vessel and its companions as a Hegemony carrier group and its attackers as possibly of Imisil Mergence origin.

  Then the battle seemed to be over. There were shots of one ship with its side blown out, torn and jagged wreckage still glowing from recent detonations while a spillage of debris radiated outwards. Kaphiri Farag spoke.

  ‘Even this isolated corner of the cosmos is not safe from the havoc of war with its sudden, inexplicable, relentless savagery.’

  With the Imisil attackers either vanquished or chased off, the Hegemony carrier and its escort resumed their original formation and course. Then the image switched to a shot of a huge black ship as it approached the carrier, slowed and positioned itself at an odd angle to the forward section. There was a sharp cut to a close-up of the newcomer, showing a domed hull whose surface was an even curve of black random roughness. There were no features other than the strange stubby spokes that protruded all around its rim. The carrier had launched its fighters and was firing off its defensive batteries while the escort vessels joined in with immense blasts of bright ferocity.

  Unaffected, the black ship then attacked. One of its rim spokes telescoped out, passed by the force shields and speared into the carrier’s upper flank and through to the other side. Julia watched in uneasy fascination as the huge ship was impaled like a monster on the lance of some knightly hero from a medieval romance.

  ‘How interesting – a Vor render-ship,’ said Reski Emantes.

  ‘You’ve seen one of those before?’ Harry said.

  ‘Only in the Construct’s archives,’ the drone said. ‘I wonder what it’s doing here in the prime continuum.’

  On screen, the Vor ship was tearing the carrier apart. Explosions cascaded through the doomed Hegemony ship while the interceptors and the escort vessels focused their weapons on the Vor, creating a glowing storm of missile bursts and clawing energies. Then, with the carrier in pieces, the Vor ship turned its attention to the lesser craft and made short work of them.

  ‘We were unable to identify this ship,’ said Kaphiri Farag’s voice. ‘But its mysterious presence here contributes to a sense of impending dread. It is well known that the Hegemony has a sizeable fleet on its way here, and I can now reveal that Earthsphere has agreed to dispatch a task force in support. Rumours that
the Imisil Mergence also has a fleet in the area have been strenuously denied by Imisil diplomats at every level.

  ‘The Human colony on Darien has already suffered a string of crises, assassinations, and the Spiralist incursion; who can tell what the consequences of more battles would be, especially if they involved the Hegemony and possibly the Imisil?’

  The report ended with the Vor ship leaving the scene of destruction, vanishing into hyperspace with a faint twist of radiance. Julia stared as the picture switched to a shot of a vast cloud of wreckage set against a Darien almost occluded by shadow. If she had still been in her body she could have used that well-trained brain to calculate how quickly the debris would be captured by the planet’s gravity, and how soon the first fragments would enter the atmosphere, even where the largest might land.

  ‘Ah, good, at last,’ said the drone. ‘Got some hard data on your Talavera, verified sightings no less.’

  Harry moved over to the holopanel that Reski Emantes was working at. ‘Hmm, a subspace gravitics monitor station is reporting a freighter escorted by two odd ships … ’

  ‘And here, a hyperjump emission study group’s open-access data … three ships on a course that aligns with Talavera’s previous known positions … ’

  ‘But then the trail runs out there,’ Harry said. ‘About thirty light years from the Brolts’ border with the Hegemony. You’ve seen our list of these five hundred target worlds – can you overlay them?’

  ‘There, all part of that dense swathe of stars, and Talavera’s course is broadly in that direction … ’

  ‘How do we stop it?’ Julia said suddenly.

  Harry looked at her. ‘Stop what?’

  ‘Those fleets, this battle.’ Julia shook her head, overcome by an unfamiliar feeling, a longing for the world she had left behind, and a fear for its safety. Homesick, she thought. I’m feeling homesick. ‘Is there any way … ’

  Harry was shaking his head. ‘Julia, when the Hegemony commits its forces, especially after it’s taken a beating as we saw, there is no way it’ll call them back. Nor will Earthsphere – they know who’s boss.’

  ‘Not even if the public saw that report?’ she said.

  ‘They’ve already seen it,’ said the drone. ‘At least, they’ve seen a modified version of it … ’

  One of the holopanels flashed on and showed an abbreviated version of the Farag report, its heavy edits overlaid with ships that had never appeared in the original and intercut with brief clips from some vee-drama clearly selected to make the whole thing seem ridiculous.

  ‘What is this?’ she said.

  ‘Netspiders got to it,’ the drone said. ‘Commersector grey-grid operations that filter and modify any media object that matters. Anything that could adversely affect the general populace’s understanding of the Earthsphere–Hegemony pact gets this treatment.’

  ‘Are there such things as underground news nets?’ she said. ‘Samizdat was the old Rus word for it.’

  ‘The unregs,’ Reski Emantes said. ‘Unregulated casters. They’re always being hunted so they’re always on the move. They don’t reach more than five per cent of the population, however.’

  Julia felt a kind of dull, persistent anger gnawing at her.

  ‘And the leadership?’ she said. ‘What about the president or any of the planetary leaders?’

  ‘Most of them rise out of the same layer of elites, and none of them would ever reach an elevated status without the commersector’s approval. And that’s before anything resembling a vote takes place.’

  ‘You’re saying that there’s no hope of stopping or delaying even just the Earthsphere fleet?’

  ‘There is always hope,’ the drone said. ‘And there may be a way, a one-shot gambit that could work. But first let’s have my tactical system work up some mission profiles while we try and find where Talavera’s got to.’

  Harry chuckled. ‘And will this plan of yours involve stupendous levels of personal risk and possible oblivion?’

  ‘All the best plans do, Harry. Now – I’ve plotted a spread of possible launch locations for those missiles, going by Julia’s guess on their hyperspace range … ’

  In the holopanel the swathe of target stars was surrounded in an opaque cocoon that encompassed thousands more stars and worlds.

  ‘This is the course she and her Vor escorts were taking,’ the drone went on. ‘Including extrapolated course changes.’

  A blue line appeared, then splayed out into a bright plume through one part of the opaque cocoon. The screen perspective zoomed in a bit closer as sparkling pinpoints spread within the plume.

  ‘These represent star systems that are either uninhabited or sparsely so,’ the drone said. ‘Or at least where ship traffic is low and sensor coverage is scant.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Harry. ‘A place where the launch of five hundred missiles can proceed without being observed or interrupted.’ He frowned. ‘Doesn’t explain those Vor ships, however.’

  On the big holoplane, small name-tagged images began to appear around the edge of the main display, each one tethered to its own sparkling pinpoint. Many of the tag images were of a basic sun-dot plus planet-rings icon while others showed a coloured planet plus satellite, and a few had additional emblems for cultural prohibition, military presence or navigational hazard. As they appeared in overlapping clusters she noticed one that resembled a branching spike of some kind, just a simple black symbol on white background, but as the other images mounted up she could not shake it from her mind. Something about it was familiar, something …

  ‘That little picture,’ she said. ‘What is it?’

  ‘A marker for the Great Hub,’ said the drone. ‘The Hegemony’s AI master nexus … ’

  The drone moved a pulsing cursor over it and a larger image expanded up from it, a grainy view of a large polyhedral structure with treelike, branching antenna towers protruding. Recognition flashed, a picture on a wall, over a bed recess …

  Harry was watching her. ‘Julia, what is it? Have you seen this before?’

  ‘I saw a picture of this very thing above Talavera’s bed aboard the Sacrament,’ she said. ‘Caught sight of it through one of the polymotes I was using to aid my escape.’ She stared up at it again. ‘Could this be the place?’

  Harry smiled. ‘I think I’d put a good-sized bet on it.’

  ‘The Great Hub is a critical multinode,’ said Reski Emantes. ‘And it’s in hyperspace and well away from the main ship trails. But it is also guarded by four of the Hegemony’s elite attack cruisers – which explains the Vor ships. No way to know what variants they are, fluxers or burners, but in any case both are armed with fearsome energy disruptors.’

  ‘The Great Hub has some other respectable defences, I understand,’ said Harry.

  ‘And AI guardians,’ the drone added. ‘It seems logical to assume that those vermax will play a crucial role in Talavera’s plan.’

  Harry rubbed his hands. ‘Good, excellent – when do we leave?’

  ‘Your eagerness is laudable but entirely impractical,’ said Reski Emantes. ‘The Great Hub’s systems are protected by three distinct levels of encrypted access and the gatekeepers are a mixture of organic and AI processors.’

  ‘No encrypted system is entirely invulnerable.’

  ‘True, but every intrusion has its price and hacking the Great Hub could turn out to be costly.’

  ‘But if we can stop Talavera, no cost is too high,’ Julia said.

  Harry regarded her with a thoughtful smile. ‘I can see why you would say that,’ he said. ‘Talavera has already caused immense suffering and must be neutralised.’

  Yes, but she couldn’t have done all that without the Enhanced, without me, she thought. Shouldn’t I be punished too?

  ‘That is so,’ she said in a level voice. ‘So what must we do in order to find a way in?’

  ‘We’ll need the decryption mole to end all decryption moles,’ Harry said. ‘A super-decrypter, or über-decrypter if you will.
’

  The drone was unimpressed. ‘Which may entail grubby deals with unlicensed softbrokers in the Underglow.’

  ‘Well, that is half the fun, after all.’

  ‘What’s the Underglow?’ Julia said.

  ‘A patchwork of unregistered and illegal virtualities,’ Reski Emantes said. ‘Traders in porn, plagiarism and plagiaristic porn … ’

  ‘Venues where non-mainstream artists can find an audience,’ Harry countered. ‘And where a kind of amateur commerce can flourish … ’

  A high musical chime sounded and the drone broke off to investigate.

  ‘Interesting,’ it said. ‘A breaking-newscast from Citivox on Daliborka. Looks like they’ve received a new report from the Darien system … ’

  The large overhanging holopanel switched to the same veehost as before.

  ‘With each succeeding report,’ the host began, ‘Kaphiri Farag seems to be setting the bar of action journalism higher and higher. With this latest exclusive, received less than half an hour ago, Mr Farag has raised himself to the very pinnacle of his profession.’

  The image switched to a view of the planet Darien, titled as such and set against the dust swirls of the Huvuun Deepzone, with a backdrop of hazy stars burning through misty interstellar veils. A voice-over commenced.

  ‘Darien, a world colonised by Humans fleeing the deadly Achorga onslaught, hardy settlers who by the sweat of their brow and sheer grit and determination built their settlements, towns and cities, places to live in and raise new generations. Yet the colonyship which reached this world was one of three such vessels, whose fates have remained a mystery.

  ‘Until now.’

  The image changed to another section of the starry depths just as a knot of distortion twisted a patch of faintly radiant dust-cloud swirls. The knot opened out and a large irregular shape appeared. At first glance it seemed to be nothing more than a large asteroid, cast in sharp relief by the light of the sun. Then Julia saw that the sunlight was reflecting from clusters of gleaming, glittering points and surfaces and when the magnification suddenly jumped forward everything was revealed. The asteroid had been adapted by sentient hands, its exterior encrusted with vents and ducts, improvised cableways, machinery housings, a variety of small shiny domes, outcrops of mysterious assemblies, innumerable antennae, dishes and sensors, and on every surface characters that Julia realised were Earth-Asiatic, possibly Chinese.