The Ascendant Stars

by Cobley, Michael

  ‘I am here,’ Reski Emantes said, ‘to gain your help in rescuing the fractalised sentience of Julia Bryce.’

  ‘The leader of the Enhanced research team,’ the Construct said. ‘Ever since they were abducted by the Talavera woman we have been unable to track them. If Bryce is now a fractalised data sentience, does that mean that her physical form is deceased?’

  ‘It’s somewhat complicated,’ the drone said as it sent the Construct a databurst summary.

  The Construct went over it, tracing Talavera’s involvement in obtaining the anti-dark matter and abducting the Enhanced team. It noted Julia’s partnership with the ex-Hegemony AI Harry and their collaboration with the Glow-savvy Nicodemus in their bravura political exploits. Now, it seemed, Talavera, the anti-dark matter missiles and the Enhanced team had gone to the Great Hub, accompanied by a pair of Vor warships. The Julia sentience had been sent by Nicodemus to an automated Hegemony supply ship near the Great Hub via a data-access flow, along with a mid-cognitive AI as a guide. However, shortly after the down-port all tiernet connections suddenly ceased. But the supply ship’s ident was still registering on independent battle surveys carried out by military tracker guilds, hobbyist netcommunes who regularly sent disposable flyby probes into war zones.

  ‘And you want me to travel to the Great Hub, find this supply vessel and rescue the Julia sentience,’ the Construct said. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because Talavera is keeping her body alive, using its neural pathgrids in conjunction with the other Enhanced to run the missile launch and in-flight navigationals. If we can get her back into her own body, into her own head, perhaps she can shut the whole thing down. If not, five hundred stars and their planets and inhabitants could be obliterated.’

  The Construct saw how all the disparate pieces fitted together – the Godhead’s subtle aid to the forces of the Spiral Prophecy, their invasion of Darien guaranteeing aggressive responses from the Hegemony and the Imisil, the arrival of the remnants of the Legion of Avatars whose insensate savagery could annihilate all in its path; the revitalisation of the Vor and the Shyntanil; the attack on the Construct’s power base; the ascent of the Godhead itself and its anticipated emergence into an area of objective space where its presence would be mostly unopposed. And 500 stars that were targeted for destruction because …

  And that was the mystery, the great unknown ‘why’ that lay at the root of it all.

  ‘What is your decision?’ said Reski Emantes.

  ‘A moment … ’

  Prompted by a steady clamour of alerts, the Construct switched away from the inner chamber, dividing its cognitive awareness between the stream of battlefront feeds and the combat analyses flowing from its semi-autonomous partials. The general assessment was stark – Aggression vessels were falling back from the inner markers and their numbers were down to just over a hundred. The Garden of the Machines would be stormed by Shyntanil and Vor troops in less than fifteen minutes and the entire complex would be overrun in approximately twenty-three minutes.

  Part of it sent revised orders to the Rosa squads, another gave new commands to the drones prepping two tierships in the main launch bay, and the rest of it addressed the drone Reski Emantes.

  ‘I have decided to help you,’ it said. ‘Although you must realise that such a mission has a high chance of failure.’

  ‘That is hardly a surprise,’ the drone said. ‘Given the various Human-related hazards I’ve had to deal with recently.’

  ‘We will be travelling aboard a field-boosted tiership,’ said the Construct. ‘The first part of our flight will entail some risk as we will be acting as a diversion while my re-establisher vessel makes good its escape. Once it is safely away, our ship will set course for the Hegemony’s Great Hub. I assume that you would prefer a more robust motility unit than this one.’

  ‘I won’t really feel safe in anything less than a multiprojector battledrone,’ said Reski Emantes. ‘Something like Perseusystems Ravager 9000 would do nicely.’

  ‘My apologies, but all that is available are a few type twos and a type three.’

  ‘I’ll take the type three – at least it doesn’t look like a triangular toy.’

  JULIA

  Through flicker-lit corridors ice-bitten by vacuum she hauled the last piece of their improvised getaway, a nearly full gas canister. The round-cornered cube was held in a plastic mesh sack snap-locked to a lug on the rear of her housing. It bounced and scuffed against the ridged deck covering but the impacts exerted noticeably less drag than on her previous excursions, proof that the cells powering the deck gravity were running down. She just hoped that they were independent of whatever source was running the recharge stations she had used several times already.

  It had been less than twelve hours since she and Nicko, one of Nicodemus’s net-sims, had sneaked aboard the Hegemony supply ship via a low-level stockload datalink. Once in the ship’s active system, Nicko had altered their privileges priority to gain access to a greater range of subsystems. Tapping into the nav-sensor interface, they had skimmed through the views and scans of the immediate hyperspace vicinity, including the branching towers of the Great Hub and the four patrolling Hegemony heavy cruisers. The Great Hub, the master nexus for all AIs in the Hegemony and many of its client states, consisted of a main spindle axis about a kilometre long, and at its midpoint a polyhedral structure roughly a quarter of a kilom across; from many of its grey-silver facets jutted smaller tower spindles like the main axis, all of them branching at regular intervals.

  That was their goal – with the supply ship’s comm equipment, Nicko had promised that he could find a way to get them inside, into ‘AI heaven’, as he called it.

  That enthusiastic optimism came to an abrupt end when an undetected missile struck the supply ship’s stern, destroying the main thrusters. Nicko had acted without hesitation, employing a crash priority override to have them both transferred down to secondary cores on the maintenance deck. Then he had quickly searched for a maintenance bot with a generous memstore, found one and downported Julia into it. He was in the process of picking out one for himself when a second missile hit the hyperdrive and wiped out the main generators. Nicko had to use what was available, a crawler bot fitted for hold scrubbing.

  From Julia’s perspective, her bot was shaped like an upended oval bin with a pair of wheels at the base, a sensor cluster at the top and several toolarm niches spaced around its middle. An unlovely but functional design and certainly strong enough to cope with all the lifting and moving she had done in search of parts for the escape vehicle. With the gas canister scraping along behind her she followed a branch tunnel that curved up towards the upper stern. Minutes later she entered what had been a long compartment set aside for any live crew that came aboard. The impact of the second missile had torn away the hull here and some of the surrounding bulkheads, leaving it open to the vacuum and ionic flux of hyperspace. Most of the debris had floated away but she still had to bat aside a couple of fragments on her way to a particular couch near the rear.

  The question of who had launched the attack was still unanswered, but since Talavera’s ship and its Vor escorts had been heading this way it was likely that they were the culprits.

  The gloomy radiance of hyperspace fitfully illuminated the outlines of fixed tables and wall lockers while a solitary emergency light shed a wavering blue glow from one of the remaining upper corners. As she drew near the couch she realised that there was no sign of Nicko – then one of the wall lockers swung open and a squat tracked bot inched its way out towards her. Julia was glad to see that Nicko had improvised a wheel attachment for his right side, whose track assembly was jammed.

  ‘Why are you hiding?’ she said on the short-range channel.

  ‘Hunter drone,’ Nicko said. ‘Came – looked – went.’ He ended by pointing with one of his pincer stalks at the direction Julia had returned by.

  ‘Does this ship have any hunter drones?’ she said.

  ‘None – attacker hunter
drone – we finish craft – we escape!’

  ‘Yes,’ Julia said as she tipped the gas cube out of the mesh sack. It was the work of several minutes to fix the canister to the underside of the couch and connect it to the rudimentary control system devised by Nicko. With four canisters mounted on the back of the couch Nicko had insisted that they would provide enough propulsion to reach the Great Hub.

  What they would do once they got there was a little hazy but involved finding a hatch or some other kind of access.

  The couch was still attached to the deck by a single bolt, which allowed Nicko to carry out a brief test, four momentary gusts of white vapour.

  ‘All good,’ he said as he webbed himself to the head of the couch. ‘We go now!’

  Julia manoeuvred up against the foot of the couch and deployed her strongest toolarms to haul herself up. Once in the curved seat she also used the restraint webbing to keep herself in place, then extended a long articulated limb and snaked it underneath to unfasten the last bolt. As she shifted the tooltip around to gain the best purchase, she tried to picture herself in her Human body and attempting this … and couldn’t. Am I even truly Human any more?

  Just as the bolt began to loosen, a squat dark shape with tapered ends glided into the apartment, emitted a couple of flash scans then flicked out a stuttering red beam.

  ‘Viral subversion! – Viral subversion!’ said Nicko.

  Suddenly the control panel was dangling on its cable across her sensor cluster as the smaller bot freed himself from his restraints.

  ‘Fire thruster, Julia – escape!’

  Next thing she knew, Nicko had launched himself off the couch, track and wheel spinning as he half-flew, half-fell towards the drone. Julia didn’t hesitate and fired the thrusters – in a sudden billowing cloud the couch rose up through the hull breach.

  It was barely clear of the ship when Julia registered a slight impact from behind. With an extendable toolarm sensor she looked back and saw the sleek dangerous drone emerging from the broken ship, some kind of launcher protruding from its casing. What had it fired? – then she saw what looked like a large-headed dart stuck in the back of the couch. A feeling like panic stirred in her – it had to be a tracking device of some sort, and was probably casting her location to every hostile within range. Quickly she reached round with another toolarm, plucked out the dart and flicked it away. The hunter drone was nowhere to be seen.

  Then she scanned the murk for the Great Hub, located its energy profile and used the thrust controller to alter the couch’s flightpath, rolling forward then tilting right and a slight leftward turn … and fired off the canisters for a two-second burst. Repeated bursts built up the couch’s velocity and Julia estimated her arrival in about ninety-five minutes.

  At least that was before a craft swooped in from behind and snatched her into a brightly lit hold. A capture-net tipped the couch with her in it onto a battered metallic deck. A jointed cargo arm moved in to snip away the couch webbing. At the same time her comm channel began picking up hums and clicks, prompting the anxious notion that some outside agency was trying to gain access to her control systems. Then she heard a voice:

  ‘ … Is that it? … Finally! Julia, are you receiving? Please say yes, otherwise we’ll have to go and search for another droid trying to make a crazed run towards the Great Hub.’

  ‘Harry?’ Something very like happy relief chimed in her thoughts. ‘So Nicodemus fixed you after all.’

  ‘Just a corrupted file,’ said Harry. ‘I’m almost embarrassed at its non-malevolent nature … ’

  At that moment a spindle-framed biped droid entered via an open hatch and crouched down before Julia, folding its rodlike limbs.

  ‘And this is?’ she said.

  ‘Nothing to worry about, Julia – it’s a good friend of Reski Emantes.’

  ‘Hello, Julia, I am known as the Construct,’ said a calm, accentless voice. ‘Or rather I am an augmented partial of the same. Reski and Harry have explained about Corazon Talavera and the missiles, and how she has enslaved your Enhanced friends in order to run her vile operation. I am here to help you gain access to the Great Hub – once inside we’ll have to improvise some way to return you to your physical form. First we have to downport you from that bot to my onboard storage.’ The spindly Construct held out one of its hands and one of its digits slid back to reveal an odd silvery stalk.

  ‘Can you open your port panel, Julia?’

  ‘Is Reski Emantes with you?’ she said.

  ‘A copy of him is piloting the fast scout we arrived in, decoying those Vor ships away for as long as possible,’ Harry said. ‘Unfortunately your activities have attracted the attention of a couple of Vor sentry drones which are closing in on your last detected position, as casted by that transponder you were carrying at one point. So, Julia, time is of the essence – I promise that you can trust the Construct. The downport will be very much like translocating via the tiernet. All very straightforward. What could go wrong?’

  ‘On past experience,’ Julia said, ‘almost anything. Very well, go ahead.’

  A small niche in her flank popped open and the Construct held the silver stalk up next to it. The stalk morphed through a number of connectors before turning into an odd cross-shaped one with two pins. Seconds later the familiar loss of colour and high resolution was followed by the frozen final image that rolled up into nothingness …

  And unfurled into Harry’s familiar night-time street corner. Julia was back in her trench-coated femme fatale exter, with a few extra details like black gloves on her hands, the sound of a saxophone playing off in the distance, while the street was a gleaming black from recent rain. When she put her hand in one of her pockets her fingers found the solid heavy shape of a handgun.

  ‘Julia, over here, quick!’

  There was Harry, stepping from the shadows at the corner, beckoning her to follow. Which she did until he stopped before a glass-fronted frame from which the Construct gazed, its shiny brass and amber colouring reduced to monochrome. It was crouching in a recess off a rounded, cable-lined tunnel.

  ‘Harry, Julia, I have to be concise. Suffice it to say that I gained access to one of the Great Hub’s data towers but not without attracting unwanted attention. This is the situation – Talavera has docked at the main launch bay … ’ There was a quick image of the cylindrical Sacrament at rest within a field-contained docking bay. ‘Her underlings have finished unloading the tanks containing the Enhanced and, of course, your body, and are now starting to bring out the launchers, twenty-five of them, each holding twenty missiles. They are being stacked in neat rows so it seems likely that they will be mounted near the mouth of the bay for ease of launch.’

  Julia heard shouts from some distance behind the Construct, who paused a second then went on.

  ‘Talavera has firewalled off the Great Hub’s auxiliary and backup systems for her own use and set up an ops room at the base of sub-tower three … ’ Another image, a schematic of the Hub station and the numbering of its data towers. ‘The virtual domain maintained here contains billions of Hegemony AIs and the administrating coterie has given no indication that they know what is going on. I have inserted the pair of you into an unmonitored peripheral tract since I was unable to reach Talavera’s ops unobserved.

  ‘You are also near the base of a group of control systems stacked in order of importance. This domain is like the Hegemony itself – it is extremely hierarchic. Access to the auxiliary and backup dataflows is right at the top. Make the ascent without delay since that is the best area from which to mount an assault on Talavera’s data wall. The last update I received from the Garden of the Machines indicated that the Godhead was continuing its climb up the tiers rather than pausing to savour its victory.’ The shouts were getting closer, louder. ‘My time has run out. When next you see the Construct tell it that I was happy to serve.’

  The image vanished and was replaced by an archaic advert for soap. Julia and Harry stared at each other.
/>   ‘Don’t you think it’s odd that the Construct makes copies of itself?’ Julia said.

  ‘It makes copies of everything, apparently,’ Harry said. ‘By the way, do you like what I’ve done with the place? A little rain always gives the scene that extra sheen of noir … ’

  ‘And this?’ Julia said, holding up the compact revolver by her finger and thumb.

  ‘Now that’s a Smith & Wesson Chief 38 Special, a classic product of mid-twentieth-century gunsmithing.’ He smiled. ‘Yes, it will fire little bolts of code destabiliser. Comes in handy. Now I do believe it’s time we were on our way.’ He held up one hand to stare at his palm. A flickering glow lit up his face. ‘I’ll just raise the upper perception boundary … ’

  Suddenly there was light coming from above, a pale radiance that had no effect on Harry’s street-corner shadows. She looked up and saw an immense column like a U-shaped conduit looming overhead, its outer surface a midnight blue while from within a rich amber-yellow glow shone.

  ‘There are levels inside all the way up,’ Harry murmured. ‘With more complexity the higher it goes.’

  And there were others. At the top the U-conduit spread out, funnel-like, with clusters of faintly pulsing cables curving between it and its identical neighbours.

  ‘I made sure your exter was fitted with the same orgs as before,’ Harry said. ‘That includes the mirager, so we should be adequately disguised as we ascend.’ Smiling, he raised a hand, pointing with a forefinger whose tip was a twinkly glow.

  ‘Upload grappler?’ she said.

  ‘Very same,’ he said, holding out his other hand.

  The moment she took it they were off. Everything fell away in a multi-angled hurtling rush that went from black-blue-grey to blue-orange-yellow.

  And stopped with jarring suddenness. Their miragers immediately went to work, swathing them in faint purplish meshes. Julia quickly surveyed their surroundings, a wide platform clearly within the U-conduit column, its expanse broken into three stepped levels and scored by numerous gleaming channels. There didn’t seem to be any other entities about. Plain cubes and cylinders in soft opaque blues and greens made up a few simpler modular structures while the familiar polychromatic cord of a dataflow wound among them, branching out filaments, before curving upwards to the next level. Harry looked up and nodded.