by Brett Patton
Matt laughed. “You don’t trust me?”
Only silence from Roth. What was he calculating? Matt wondered. How to get the Zap Gun and overcome me too?
From the shaft above, three flickering lights appeared. Matt’s viewmask tagged them all as DEMON. The new Union Mecha had caught up with them.
“No choice,” Matt said. DeMerge.
The two Demons flowed apart. Roth’s shattered Demon staggered to the side as its biometallic skin flowed to reintegrate. Matt grimaced in pain as the REGENERATION counters for his arm and CQFA reappeared in his viewmask.
“After you,” Roth said, over the comms.
Matt shook his head. He didn’t like the idea of Roth being at his back. But what choice did he have? Matt picked a corridor and ran down it, propelled by his thrusters toward their goal.
* * *
Matt and Roth descended, circling a shining vector that led down into the heart of the Arcadian cloud. There was no elevator; the corridor simply corkscrewed down for ten thousand meters into the planet.
That was so wrong. Why wouldn’t they simply sink a shaft and drop a cage down to the bottom? And where did all the other corridors lead?
The walls themselves were ancient, pure Eridani stone and dirt. They’d once been polished to a high gloss; now cracks radiated over their surfaces, and fragments of rock, some the size of boulders, lay in the middle of the floor. It was like some incredibly ancient ruin.
But how could it be more than two hundred and fifty years old? Matt thought. The walls weren’t scarred from battle or use. They were eroded away, as if over a great amount of geologic time.
Plink. Clink. Stones fell from the ceiling above Matt and Roth. He looked up. Biomechanical tendrils waved down at his Mecha. Matt yelled and crouched. But the tendrils extended no farther. They seemed content to announce their presence, nothing more.
Deeper, the dusty-static voice told Matt.
Matt shivered. This was beginning to feel like a tomb. Whether the Mecha behind them sliced their Demons to shreds, or the tendrils caught them in their web of destruction, it looked as though everything ended here today, one way or another.
Come closer, the voice said.
Down they went, at fifty, a hundred, two hundred kilometers an hour. The tags of their Demon pursuers inched closer as they descended. Matt’s sensors showed nothing ahead of him. Dodging the boulders became automatic, reflexive.
Suddenly a black opening appeared before Matt. Matt skidded on his heels, sliding into another vast, open chamber far too big for his Mecha lighting to illuminate. The only thing he could see was a vaguely curving roof in the distance, and glittering crystals lining pale, faraway walls. The crystals reflected outward seemingly to infinity, making the chamber seem almost endless.
No. Wait. Matt’s viewmask overlaid an enhanced-sensor reconstruction of the chamber. It didn’t just seem big. It was huge. The area extended beyond the sensors’ resolution range, which meant it was kilometers wide. Maybe tens of kilometers.
Or more, the dusty-static voice of the ghost in the machine came, closer than ever before.
Light rose throughout the giant underground cavern, and Matt gasped. The cavern was bigger than any enclosed space he had ever seen. It was supported throughout its length by massive columns of pale, vitrified stone and earth. Nodules glowed dull green in the columns, the ceiling, and the floor. In some places, large polished black spheres were embedded in the planet’s rock. Biometallic tendrils emerged, almost tentatively, from every surface, to wave at Matt like Aurora’s plains grass in the wind.
And it wasn’t just one endless chamber. Ahead of him, a large hole in the floor opened on deeper darkness, where more green embers glowed.
“What is this?” Roth asked. His voice was hushed, awestruck.
Matt shook his head in mute answer. This wasn’t a lab. This wasn’t a hidden military base. This wasn’t an abandoned colony. This was something fundamentally inhuman.
This was alien.
Yes, the scratchy-dusty voice said.
But that wasn’t possible. They’d never found a single alien race, even after almost three hundred years of Expansion. There were no aliens. Only humans. And HuMax. Only people.
ANTIMATTER WEAPON TARGETING, Matt’s viewmask flashed. Tags showed that the three pursuing Demons had just arrived.
Matt collapsed to the floor. Above him passed a single beam of perfect brilliance, sizzling the air centimeters away from his Demon’s back. Kilometers away, the chamber walls flared red and melted.
A Zap Gun. Shit!
Matt scrambled across the floor as another bolt came his way. It seared a hundred-meter-long scar in the floor, leaving behind a line of red lava. Roth fired thrusters, heading for one of the nearby stone columns. He was trying to hide.
Too late. Another Zap Gun bolt clipped Roth’s Mecha. He went crashing down to the rough floor, out of sight. Matt fired his thrusters to get away, but he knew it was pointless. The Mecha with the Zap Gun would pick him off just like Roth.
Matt’s comms snapped on. “Mr. Lowell, surrender now!”
A familiar voice. A familiar icon: MICHELLE KIND.
They’d sent her. Of course.
Matt fought back manic laughter as she continued. “Mr. Lowell, we are authorized to use deadly force.”
Was it him, or did her voice break a little on those last words?
Matt came back to ground and faced the three Demons. They burned ember-red in his thermal imagery, against the cool dark tunnel they’d emerged from. The ridiculousness of the situation suddenly struck him: their capital city was being consumed by alien ropes, but the Union had sent three Demons to arrest him.
Matt laughed, snapping on his own comms. “You think I did this?”
“It doesn’t matter!” another voice spat. Marjan’s voice. One Mecha raised his Zap Gun and aimed it straight at Matt. “You’re under arrest. Come with us now.”
“What about Newhome? Your Union? Don’t you have other things to think about?”
“We’ll sort that out later!” Marjan cried, twitching the Zap Gun barrel back toward the tunnel. From his tone and posture, Matt knew Marjan would much rather fire than have him comply.
“Who else is there with you?” Matt asked. “Mikey? Norah?”
“Captain Posada,” snapped another voice. Norah.
Matt frowned. Michelle, Marjan, and Norah against his half-crippled Demon. Roth seemed out of the fight. Matt had no Fusion Handshake, and there was no way he’d be able to aim and fire his Zap Gun before they blew him to pieces.
“Enough!” Michelle snapped. “Stand down, hand over your Zap Gun, and jettison all missile weapons. Now!”
But there was something in her tone, something that said, I don’t want to do this. I don’t know about all of this anymore.
One Mecha kept stealing glances beyond Matt, looking at the vast chamber beyond. Michelle. Michelle knew there was something very wrong here.
“Aren’t you even a little curious?” Matt asked, nodding over his shoulder at the cavern. “Don’t you want to know what’s really going on here?”
“The Union . . . always has its reasons,” Michelle said, her voice breaking.
“You think the Union built this?” Matt prodded. “Do you think any human did?”
“Enough of this shit!” Marjan yelled back, his Zap Gun twitching up toward Matt. “The Union wants you arrested. Major Kind, I will relieve you of command if you disobey this order.”
Silence fell for long moments. Finally Michelle replied, “By whose authorization, Captain Marjan?”
More silence.
“I received no changes in our orders since going underground. Answer me, Captain! Whose authorization?” Michelle prodded.
“By the Union! By common sense!”
Marjan’s voice was thin and screechy. His Zap Gun wavered from Matt and swung toward Michelle’s Demon. Midswing, Marjan seemed to realize what he was doing and pulled the barrel away.
This was Matt’s chance.
He lit thrusters one hundred percent, going forward full speed. Michelle and Marjan hardly had a chance to react before he was on them. Matt’s Demon slammed into Michelle and drove her back into Marjan. Norah sidestepped out of the way, pulling her Zap Gun out of its holster in one fluid motion.
Michelle’s thoughts ricocheted in Matt’s head as their Mecha made contact. Shrill, panicked thoughts: I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know what’s going on.
And other thoughts leaked out: Michelle still burned to take down Matt. For the Union. For her ideal, for her life. She had made it off Earth. She wouldn’t let anyone take that away from her.
But the ideal of the Union was now warring with the reality.
Marjan’s mind was spiky and raw like blades. Hate you, hate this, hate everything, this life, everything. Marjan had volunteered for this, and he’d vowed to kill Matt Lowell.
And now Norah was raising her weapon. He couldn’t hold Michelle and Marjan down and deal with her as well.
Merge, Matt thought.
No! Michelle screamed, in his mind.
Marjan said nothing intelligible, but his brain vibrated with rage.
The three Mecha flowed together, legs and arms becoming a mass of spiky appendages as Michelle and Marjan fought against the Merge.
But Matt didn’t need ultimate control. He focused all his energy on a single extrusion, extending a single Mecha claw from the mass of their three Demons. It shot out and grabbed Norah by the wrist. Her Zap Gun went clattering to the floor as her mind screamed in protest.
The three minds pulled Matt apart, as if he were being tortured on a rack. He groaned with the pain, and struggled to hold the Merge together. They were too strong; he wouldn’t be able to hold it for long.
But there’d be time enough for one more thing.
Matt opened his mind and showed them everything: Jotunheim. Planet 5. Esplandian. Last Rising. Rayder’s death. The shattered HuMax labs on Aurora, Utopia, and Geos.
And he asked them, Who gives the Union the right to choose someone else’s future? Is it all orchestrated from this cavern, by something else?
For a moment, Michelle wavered. The images had reached her, stunned her. But she couldn’t act.
Marjan roared and pulled away as hard as he could. Matt’s grip on the Merge melted away, and Marjan’s Demon slithered out of the main mass. Norah followed. Matt let them. This was all about speed now, not finesse.
In one malformed appendage, Matt held Norah’s Zap Gun. In the other, he held his own.
Matt raised both weapons and fired, slicing Marjan’s Demon neatly in half, and punching a giant hole in Norah’s leg joint. Marjan’s Mecha spouted superheated vapor from every single joint and slumped forward on the floor. Marjan went down hard and slumped into a keening ball. Their screaming over the comms confirmed he was still alive.
Matt turned the gun on Norah’s Demon, but Michelle forced a deMerge, sending Matt’s Zap Guns clattering harmlessly away on the floor. Even before she had completely re-formed into a humanoid Mecha, she had drawn her own Zap Gun and trained it on Matt.
“Stop!” she yelled as Matt went for his own guns. Her voice was strident, commanding.
Matt stopped. Michelle had come into a crouch. Her Demon’s talon was tense on the Zap Gun’s trigger. She had it pointed directly at Matt’s midsection.
She’s going to kill me. Simple as that. Those were her orders, and Michelle always executed her orders.
Even if she cried for him in her Demon’s cockpit, she would kill him, because he would never be simple, and things needed to be simple.
But as the moments passed, Michelle didn’t fire. Was it possible she was having doubts?
Say the right thing. Save the universe, Matt thought.
Matt opened his mouth and said, “You came from Earth and saw the stars. Don’t you want to see if there’s anything beyond humanity?”
For an instant in time, nothing changed. Michelle stood tense. Norah didn’t move. It was as if the whole world were holding its breath.
Then, softly, Michelle’s voice: “Yes.”
Michelle’s visor snapped up, and her Mecha’s talon loosened on the trigger.
“Traitor!” Norah cried, shambling forward. Her Zap Gun shuddered upward to fix on Matt.
Michelle brought her Zap Gun up as Norah fired wide. Both Matt and Michelle swept her legs with scintillant beams, and she pitched forward with a biometallic clang. Michelle picked Norah’s Zap Gun out of her fingers.
“I think I may lose some R-and-R days over this,” Michelle told Matt over the comms, her tone trying for wry humor.
“Only if you go back to the Union,” Matt said, thinking, And only if any of us get out of here alive.
The black biometallic tendrils all around them waved as if agitated now. There is only one, boomed a voice in Matt’s mind. Razor talons stroked the surface of his consciousness as his nostrils filled with dust and the prickle of static.
“What was that?” Michelle yelled.
What is here. What has always been, the voice of the ghost in the machine boomed in answer. The thing in the Mecha. The thing he’d heard from his first Mesh. The thing all Mecha pilots heard.
“Did you hear that?” Matt asked.
“Yes,” Michelle said, her voice hushed.
“What are you?” Matt said.
What we have always been: your masters, the voice said, swirling with hate.
21
SOURCE
As the voice in Matt’s mind echoed, the green glow of the orbs and crystals in the pale walls of the endless underground chamber pulsed brighter.
“I don’t have a master,” Matt said, out loud.
We have controlled/crafted you since the beginning of your history, the voice said, now sending waves of an emotion like chill amusement. The green glow seemed to pulse in time with its statements.
Sudden insight unfolded, sped by Matt’s Perfect Record calculations: this must be the connection between everything. This was where Mecha came from—an unimaginably vast cache of supertechnology from before the Union. Something profoundly alien.
This is where all your greatest achievements come from, the voice whispered, sending images of Dr. Roth and Rayder and HuMax scientists and Union researchers, all blurred and jumbled together.
But if this was the source of Roth’s technology, why had he seemed so surpised? And if the Union knew about it—and were actively hiding it—why didn’t they have their own Mecha? How had Rayder found it? And why were they all at odds?
This location is/was only one of many, the voice boomed in response. And conflict is only the most entertaining part of the plan.
And in that moment, Matt got a momentary image of something so huge, so unimaginable that his mind recoiled in instinctual revulsion. This giant cavern was just a tiny part of a network that spanned all of Eridani, riddling the crust and mantle of the planet like a giant ant farm. Its power conduits wrapped the molten core itself, drawing power from the near-infinite source of the planet.
And this was just one of a universe-spanning network of planet-sized nodes and conduits, all packed with biometallic tendrils, fractal fibers, and thinking nodes. Something had created a giant computing network and built it throughout the stars.
Too simple, the voice rasped. Concepts still small/limited.
Tendrils shot out and drilled pinprick holes in Matt and Michelle’s Demon. Their ends were like red-hot embers, burning deep into his body. It happened so fast neither of them had a chance to scream.
And, in a flash, t
hey were elsewhere.
* * *
Matt stood on an infinite plain of glowing white, under a bright pale sky. Only the thin gray line of a horizon gave any indication of distance or dimension. He couldn’t see his body. He existed as pure consciousness, stretched out on a blank canvas.
As we are, the static-dusty voice boomed. In the distance, a pale shadow flickered. The voice, a thing of razor spines and slicing claws, devouring Matt.
“Who are you?” Matt asked.
We are Omphalos. Echoes chased the voice: Nonexact. Closest concept/representation in your mind.
Omphalos. Matt’s Perfect Record brought a memory of his Ancient Mythos class in Aurora U. Omphalos was the pin on which the world turned.
Flickers of thought came from the Omphalos, shadowy representations of twisted shapes growing peacefully in the seas of a long-extinct world. No, not twisted. Just complex. Like tumbleweeds, branching and rebranching.
And they sang. They sang a dusty, lonely song, full of overtones and harmonics that carried the data of their thoughts from one plant to the next.
Like Centauri, Matt thought. The Palos. The underwater bushes that sing.
Sudden anger struck him like a blazing wind. The voice rasped. Degenerate forms! No longer part/integrated! Disunified!
Images flooded Matt’s mind, grandiose images of swarms of these plantlike things breeding and growing in giant diamond bubbles as they made their slow way across the stars. Crashing into new watery worlds and remaking them to their needs. Then discovering ways to transform themselves into forms that could live on land, in deserts, on desolate stone wastelands.
“Aliens,” Matt breathed. The reality of it all finally sank in. The Omphalos had always been there on Eridani. Here hidden throughout time. Waiting for us. Playing with us.
Something like ironic amusement washed over Matt. More than you believe/imagine.
The window into the Omphalos consciousness opened a little wider. Matt saw them swarming over inhabited worlds. Primitive furred quadrupeds looked up at the Omphalos’ dark ships as they fingered their spears nervously, in an amazingly human gesture.