The Ascendant Stars

by Cobley, Michael

  She shied away.

  ‘I cannot be trusted!’ she said. ‘I shouldn’t be the Keeper … ’

  The Zyradin faded into the pulse and flow of the living web, the cross-tracery of root and branch, the interlocking circuit of leaf and sun and stream. Then the other presence drew near.

  You are here, Segrana said, because I chose you, you and no other – You understand the levers of knowledge – You know how to learn – You are the linchpin – Without you it will all have been for nothing.

  ‘Ye can’t put all that on my shoulders, ye can’t! … ’

  Look! – and see …

  All the powers and senses of Segrana suddenly opened up for her. Seeing was like flying through tenuous veils, an exhilarating swoop in amongst buildings, rooms, people, the streets and gardens, then out past fields, hills, forests, rivers, to …

  An underground chamber where Chel the Uvovo Seer sat upon a stone plinth, his six eyes gazing in pairs at different things. Above, a few Legion cyborgs were being fended off by energies that flashed up out of the ground. Then beneath again with Chel, who was now staring straight at her, a sixfold regard that pierced her essence.

  (All events are balanced at this point, he said to her. There are terrible futures to be avoided. Trust Segrana – she was right to choose you. Beware of losing the balance but prepare yourself to lose … other things …)

  Her vision was wrenched away, translucent images flicking past, a flickering sequence of half-glimpsed places, half-recognised faces … Greg’s mother, her features looking tired and careworn, her frown-lines more pronounced, her grey hair tied back … a tall Sendrukan hurrying across burnt ground … five still figures lying on couches, wires and tubes issuing from their bodies while enclosing visors hid their eyes … a man she felt sure was the ambassador Robert Horst, even though he looked much younger, talking with a hovering silvery saucer … Julia Bryce, ice-cold Julia, calmly standing beneath a whirling corona of stabbing needles as they steadily dismantled her …

  (This is the point, came Chel’s voice, upon which all events are balanced.)

  ** A linchpin holds the wheel upon the axle ** said the Zyradin.

  A lens gathers the light of the sun into a bright needle, said Segrana.

  ** Without a fulcrum, a lever is just a piece of metal **

  But all she could see was her memory of Segrana burning, trees on fire, veins of heat breaking through the ground, driven by the primal powers that she had unleashed while seeking to act against those invaders many days ago.

  ‘No!’ she cried, beating herself against the inner bounds of the dream-palace. Only to find herself flying beyond it, soaring at first then, assailed by guilt and a gnawing self-doubt, plummeting into gloom.

  Greg, she thought. I need to know, need to find out the truth, need you …

  Sideways whirling and hurtling through clouds of blurs and scraps of faces and pages printed with words … and there he is, stumbling along a smoky corridor aboard a failing ship. While merciless Legion cyborgs tear their way through the outer hull, ripping out the plating …

  And in another place, Theo and Rory are struggling across rain-lashed shards and boulders, harsh-lit by the actinic radiance of the warpwell revealed … Legion cyborgs rush up out of the hyperspace portal … one shows interest in the group of Humans clambering towards the opening … obedient, servile mechs glide towards them and horrible, uncertain fighting begins … Rory is snatched into the air … Theo takes the bomb from the fallen Rory … and Catriona can see his death …

  And Greg continues through the doomed vessel … finds an airlock just as a Legion cyborg finds him … but he’s inside the lock, safe before the monster reaches the hatch … and Catriona sees his death … she reaches for him, for the ship, for that place, trying to make herself manifest … and Chel is there, before her.

  ‘You cannot,’ he says. ‘You must not use it this way or all the futures fail … ’

  The truth of his words strikes her … she ducks it, sidesteps away from that ship with a sob and wail … and returns to the huge, shattered burial mound that Giant’s Shoulder has become … perhaps she can save Uncle Theo … or alter Rory’s path, helping him avoid being swept up by the cyborg … but Chel is there, hands raised, entreating …

  ‘You must not do this,’ he says again.

  ‘Then you be the Keeper,’ she replies, distraught. ‘I know what will happen, I’ve seen the destruction that my hands made … ’

  ‘Those were the ancient powers of Segrana, powers beneath the powers,’ Chel says. ‘You think that when Segrana chose you she did not know that such a choice would come before you? She knew it would, and she knew you and therefore knew how you would choose!’

  ‘I don’t … ’

  ‘She knew that you would have the will to grasp the power,’ says the Uvovo Seer. ‘That was the prerequisite which she could not be sure … I was capable of.’ Chel smiles. ‘You see? All events are balanced at this point, this fulcrum, and the fulcrum is you. Through the Keeper, through you, the Zyradin and Segrana will attain their fusion and through you the ancient powers beneath the powers will be focused.’ He closes his eyes suddenly, and a grimace of pain passes across his features. ‘Time is against me. Enemies gather nearby. You know what must be done … the sacrifice will not be for nothing … ’

  ‘But … what is it that I must do? … ’

  He was gone, and she felt herself draw back, loosely gliding like a leaf in the grip of a determined breeze. Veils of images fluttered by as she passed by, all the pains and angers and sufferings of so many people, on Darien and in the ships fighting above the skies, all that anguish and rage, feeding itself like a circulating fountain of deadly poison. Then she was standing on the leafy floor of the dream-palace with the fragrance of the wallflowers filling her head.

  ** The time is now ** There is no better time **

  ‘I think I’m ready,’ she said. ‘Mind you, I’ve said that before and been shown the error of my ways … ’

  Even before she finished the sentence the air was full of glowing blue motes that emerged from the walls and the floor and descended from the pillared heights, swirling round her, sinking into her form. Her senses seemed to open like doors and the immensity of Segrana rushed majestically in to enfold her. Her awareness stretched out, branched and subdivided and expanded until she realised that it was time to reach downward and inward for that ancient power of powers.

  ** This power exists for a reason ** As it did in the time of the Forerunners ** They knew that the war had to be won and they knew that if all else failed a great sacrifice would be needed ** It was not needed then, but it is needed now **

  ‘This is … a hard thing to face,’ she said. ‘How can you … ’

  Past mirrors future mirrors present, but never perfectly, said Segrana. The flaws are the seeds around which great beauty can grow.

  Around her the force of Segrana entwined while the gleaming, shining motes of the Zyradin swam through them both. In her awareness she seemed to be standing over a fracture in the forest floor at the deepest, most lightless part of Segrana, her hand reaching down, beckoning, urging the powers of the ancients to arise.

  Past mirrors future.

  ** Future mirrors present **

  The power surged, and she felt its near-inchoate nature threaten to burst forth, uncontrolled, unfocused. But she tamed it, channelled it, formed it into something like restraint, something like a purpose, hot and destructive.

  ** Well done ** Are you prepared? ** To behold the mirror of the self? **

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘But I’m still going through with it.’

  Above her, in the vast and frigid vacuum of space, the cyborgs of the Legion of Avatars swept in their darkening flocks numbering hundreds of thousands, pursuing the remnants of the Hegemony and Earthsphere fleets and those other survivors. Their lust for slaughter drove them on, engulfing vessels entire, breaking them open, obliterating all signs of life, destroying, tear
ing and ripping, then onward to the next and the next. Catriona could see how this insensate horde would journey from star to star, wreaking utter havoc wherever they went, even though Theo’s sacrifice had choked off the flow of more of the insane creatures. And she knew that what was going to be done had to be done. But a small corner of her heart wept.

  ‘So … begin.’

  With herself as the fulcrum, Segrana and the Zyradin acted in synchronicity for the first time, entwining their presences through her to act upon the substructures of linear space-time. Within a domain, carefully limited by a shaping of the ancient energy, the linear mode of her own intrinsic essence was refracted and reflected over and over. In seconds she was surrounded by a growing crowd of versions of herself, each one winking into existence and all looking calm and collected. When she pushed herself up on tiptoe she could see that the crowd was growing into a throng stretching back into the cavernous spaces of the dream-palace.

  ** We can delay no longer ** Remember how I taught you to retrieve that ship debris ** Bring them to Segrana and we will render them unto peace **

  In an eyeblink she went from that busy assembly to the yawning blackness of space, her form a translucent glow. Not far away one of her selves shot past, flying straight towards a ship that was under attack from a crawling swarm of Legion cyborgs. She stretched out her hand in that direction and immediately moved forward. Other Catrionas were converging and she saw how they lunged at the cyborgs, one- or two-handed, and grabbed some edge or protruding component, then in the next instant they were gone, vanished.

  Across the ship’s hull the cyborg creatures clustered around weakened points, tearing into the plating, ripping out cabling, while not yet aware of their diminishing numbers. Until a flight of Catrionas landed in the midst of a tightly packed mob of them, and disappeared along with their captives. A spasm of anger rippled through the gleaming black machine-beasts and some even seemed to detect the avenging Catrionas as they swooped in close. Cat ducked in close enough to one to close her hand around a jutting stalk tipped with a sensor cube. There was a dazzling moment that sent splinters of iciness through her …

  Then she was hanging in midair, high up in the leafy density of Segrana but beneath the canopy. Her hand still held on to the cyborg’s sensor stalk yet bizarrely there was no sensation of supporting the thing’s weight, nor did it move. Reflexively she let go and the Legion cyborg came to sudden, thrashing life as it fell away, arms and tentacles flailing, slashing and snapping at branches as it plummeted. But then it slowed and for a moment Catriona thought it would climb back up after her. Until webs of actinic energy sprang out from the nearby trees and from beneath, enfolding the cyborg in a lethal embrace. It convulsed and shuddered and sparks flowed from within its carapace while a smoky vapour leaked out here and there. Abruptly all its effectors and limbs went limp and it resumed its downward plunge, which ended with a splintering crash and a brief flare.

  Everywhere she looked the same scenario was playing out and she saw one of her selves wave to her through the trees before she was whisked away to apprehend another creature of the Legion.

  This time she appeared near one of the huge Hegemony carrier vessels which had attracted a correspondingly more numerous Legion assault. It seemed a daunting task at first since there were thousands of armoured cyborgs crawling all over the entire length of the vessel. Then she glanced over her shoulder and saw the pale host that was sweeping in with her. It was a moment made for banners and battle cries, of which there were none, apart from the yelling she was doing in her own thoughts.

  The tide of Catrionas descended upon the cyborgs in a wave that rolled down the carrier’s flank, and a similar wave of disappearances swept along in its wake. Some Legion cyborgs leaped away from the rest as the vanishing rushed towards them and it was one of these that Cat laid hands on, grabbing an overlapping plate of armour. The channelled and shaped ancient energies of Nivyesta seized them both in a flash of dislocation …

  When she appeared this time Segrana was hazy with smoke and filled with terrible noises, the crash of falling trees and the screams of panicking animals. This time she delayed relaxing her hold on the cyborg, trying to peer through the hazy gloom – but then the Legion creature began to stir, jerking and wrenching, and just as she let it go the smoke thinned before her and she saw the flickering yellow-orange of a tree on fire …

  The next time she returned the murk was thicker and orange glows could be seen all around her. On the spur of the moment she held on to the Legion monstrosity while pushing herself downward. It was a descent into darkness since the layers of smoke were shutting out the sunlight and reflected Darienlight. Blackened tree trunks were all she saw, clouds of ash drifting on hot updraughts, but she had to release the cyborg before reaching the forest floor. Webs and whips of harsh white energy tore into it even as it fought back during its tumbling fall into funereal gloom …

  With each succeeding return to Nivyesta, to Segrana, the fiery glows grew more numerous and the smoke denser. At the same time, with each new foray out into the running battles in near space there were fewer and fewer cyborg knights of the Legion of Avatars, to the point where Catriona and her host of sisters started to outnumber them. Valkyries victorious, she thought. When that stage was reached, the end came swiftly.

  She could not recall the last cyborg she brought back for its execution. She didn’t remember her last sortie into the great debris fields now stretching across huge swathes of space, destined to be swept up by Darien’s gravity field. She had a hazy recollection of the immense Roug ship, the one shaped like a pouncing creature, but it was like a fragment from a dream left over when she found herself sitting on the leafy floor of the dream-palace. In the dimness she could only feel a monolithic exhaustion settling over everything as those ancient and terrifying powers slowed and sank, muted and fading. Then she sensed a familiar presence trying to communicate through a vast and grinding weariness, trying to speak but failing. Then even awareness dissolved into a timeless, bodiless river without end or beginning …

  When she awoke she had aches in every limb as well as neck and back. She was lying on a pallet in a small hut, wrapped in a rough blanket that smelled faintly of herbs. She yawned, scratched an itch on her ear, thought about food … and sat bolt upright with a gasp. Tremblingly she examined her hands, her arms, legs, feet, realising with thrilling delight that she had a body again, and it was her own body!

  Suddenly, vibrantly awake, she lay there for moment then stood, tugged the blanket tight about her, and went over to look out of the solitary window.

  The view was of a cove full of trees and dense foliage, and a few boats bobbing on the waters not far from the shore. A cool breeze came in off the sea but the air was still marred by the taint of ash.

  ‘Ah, nice to see you up and about. Managed to scrounge up some clothes for you.’

  A tall, skinny woman in a tattered, patched blue jerkin and work trousers had entered with an armful of garments which she dropped onto a stool.

  ‘Where is this?’ Cat said. ‘How did I get here?’

  ‘Cradle-Veil is the Uvovo name for it, and this is our Watchtree. I’m Kirsten, by the way.’

  They shook hands and Cat introduced herself. Kirsten’s eyes widened.

  ‘The Uvovo who brought you here last night never told us who you were,’ she said, her voice lowering. ‘Were you caught up in it? What was it like?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Cat said, having a good idea of what she meant.

  ‘It’s better if I show you.’

  Still wrapped in the blanket, she followed Kirsten out onto the platform surrounding the hut.

  ‘There’s an observation platform with a good southerly outlook over the ridge,’ Kirsten said. ‘Up here.’

  A ramp led up to a roofed platform with a chest-high rail. From the moment Cat stepped onto it the sight of what lay to the south struck her like a blow, and as she approached the rail the view opened up.

 
Of the forest of Segrana, its fabulously intricate, interwoven matrix of flora and fauna, of biomass and organic life and all the towns and settlements of the Uvovo, there was nothing left. A seared, blackened desolation stretched as far as the eye could see, a wasteland of ash up from which the charred remnants of trees jutted like black spikes. It was the horror from her vision. A deathly silence seemed to emanate from it, a silence that went deep.

  Tears streaming down her face, Catriona had to lean on the railing to stay upright. Staring out at it, she could also see the twisted fragments of Legion cyborgs scattered everywhere, heat-buckled carapaces, half-melted tool arms, the strewn, torched dregs of mechanistic viscera. Chel and the Zyradin had mentioned a great sacrifice. But this was too much.

  Too much to look upon. Weeping, she slid down and clasped her knees in close while Kirsten said uncertain consoling words.

  JULIA

  It all had the unnerving semblance of improvisation. Harry told her the details of Reski Emantes’s diversion – a dozen decoy remotes emitting the energy profiles of Construct wardroids as they boarded the station via several spread-out airlocks – just a few moments before the dataform device began repatterning her for the transfer. At that moment Julia’s body was lying on a couch in one of the Great Hub’s subspace signal towers, her vacant mind’s neural pathways under the control of a task-dedicated AI, what the subservicers had called a cognition, residing in an implant embedded in her body’s brain. Once Julia’s fractalised sentience was repatterned she would be streamed into the implant, overwriting the cognition AI and taking control. She had crossed vast interplanetary distance via the tiernet, had entirely unexpected encounters, seen incredible sights and spectacles, and vied with deadly adversaries, just so she could complete the circle.

  Well, it wasn’t entirely complete – there was too much neural damage to her cortex to risk an organic transferral. Overwriting the implant was safer.