Cygnus 5- The Complete Trilogy

by Alex Oliver

  Bryant had expected the weapon to be something shiny. A buried super-laser, perhaps, as impressive as the network of launchers beneath the planet’s surface. He had not imagined that he had been stepping on it, rubbing it off his hands all this time. It lay all over the city in piles--an inert green dust. It lay all over the planet, mingled in with the topsoil, carried in the winds. But now, like triggered nano, it boiled into life. Pontoth was as close as a human mouth could come to saying its name. If the veins of green rock throughout the planet were the brain of a great AI, the pontoth was its immune system. Each particle of it was in constant communication with each other and with the central intelligence of Cygnus Five, to which Bryant also was linked. He could sense its workings and its actions, therefore, as though it was a distant arm of his own body. One that he had not yet learned how to command.

  The pontoth was semi-autonomous, programmed to seek out and destroy anything foreign to itself. Its intelligence was both centralized in the planet and dispersed through the cloud…

  Bryant found it fascinating, but there was no time to study it. Activated, it formed itself into a vapor and swarmed everything on the surface of the planet that was not native, pulling it apart at a molecular level and analyzing it.

  He experienced the process as though it was part of him. He rode along as the small particles piled over Captain Onarici and his people and disassembled them. At the same time, the pontoth at the launchers was loading itself onto missiles, controlling both itself and the larger mechanical imps. Bryant scarcely noticed the targeting calculations, so fast, so effortless they might have been instinctive, but he felt the launch as though he himself was diving into space. Vacuum on his skin was delicious, full of cosmic waves and sunshine, cold and joyous and tasting faintly of nectarines.

  His pontoth dug into the boulders on which they rode and built more of itself. Some leapt off the rocks and drifted in space, going on to intercept the missiles that had begun to fall. On contact, the missiles came apart, converting themselves into a light green fog that spread outward from Cygnus 5 in a sphere of unmaking.

  Keeping track of it all was beyond Bryant's capacity, his brain fragmenting into more and more parts, the calculations needed so infinite in complexity he lost track of what was holding them together. What was this 'I' thing in the center of his data? He couldn't find the boundaries of it. Something in him was pleased to see the boulders touch the circling ships, and the ships begin to fall apart along with everything inside them.

  How many thousands of lives? He really wasn't sure he cared.

  ~

  It happened almost too fast for Aurora to follow. The piles of greenish dust they had found all over the city gathered themselves from under the door lintels and the rugs and moved like a billowing liquid up the ramp, through the entrance cave and out. The smoke of it curled round her bare ankles and felt like the touch of a snake, cold, smooth and muscular. She stiffened with a spike of fear, but it just nosed her and then flowed past.

  Only when it got outside did it become clear that this was the weapon Bryant had been convinced lay at the heart of Cygnus 5. It rolled forward like a fog, utterly unaffected by the bursts of plasma from soldiers shooting at it in wild fear. It touched those soldiers, hardened around them like a stone shell, and then the perfect green statue and the person inside it came apart together, crumbling, thickening the cloud that swept onwards to the ring of lifeboats.

  Aurora clamped her hand over her mouth and heaved, fortunate that there was very little inside to come up. In God's name! If she'd had her will, Onarici would have seen the error of his ways. His people and hers could have feasted together, pooled their resources and found a way to defeat or absorb, or turn the next wave too, and on and on until she was left in peace. This was not what she had wanted at all.

  When the lifeboats had disintegrated, the green mist turned itself into a column about a meter across and punched itself up into the sky. It rose and rose and rose, and then it was gone, through the clouds, out of the atmosphere. Presumably to deal the same fate to the super-dreadnoughts out there. She had no idea how it was moving, and at this stage she was not going to ask.

  The sun was warm on her face, the trees down by the lakeside rippled their long streamers in the breeze like ribbon dancers, and somewhere down there, a colony of mirroreyes were croaking at one another as if nothing at all had happened. Aurora walked forward, and the turf was wet under her bare feet, with a dew that shone in dazzling droplets from every blade. She was walking in the purified blood of the enemy, and it was beautiful.

  "Gah!" she said, shuddering. Okay, so that was some previously unencountered combination of anticlimactic and horrifying. It didn't alter the fact that there were still things she needed to do. The death dust had left her untouched. How was it telling who to spare? Was it just killing everyone outside the caves? Cause if so, Selena and her cows, camping out in their open valley were going to be collateral.

  She hit her coms button before she had time to fully process the fear, outrunning it. "Selena? Selena, are you there?"

  A tiny delay, enough for her stomach to try to crawl through her mouth again, and then Selena's voice, tinny from the tiny speaker said "I'm here. I hope you're going to tell me you've solved the food problem because milk yield for today is nonexistent."

  Sounded like the war had utterly passed her by. Good. That thought cheered Aurora up a little. What was the point of having a little sister if you couldn't spare them a bit of horror every now and again? "Actually," she said, walking further out into the sun and feeling an extraordinary sensation of blooming and tugging and bliss along every inch of her bare skin. Already, her internal organs felt happier - pains she hadn't known she had were smoothing away, and vigor seeping inward from her veins to her bones. "I think I've got something for you. I see no reason why the cows shouldn't be given the photosynthesis treatment."

  "Cows that photosynthesize?" Selena's laugh was full of the assumptions of peace. A comfort. "Well, I guess, why not? I might have to shave them for it to work, but... okay. I'll bring them in. Expect me tomorrow."

  When she signed off that call the icons for two more were queued up from Jenkins at the launcher. Before she answered, she called down to Ademola to tell him to get all those who'd had the photosynthesis shot out of the caves and into the light.

  They began trickling out almost immediately, as if they'd been waiting for the call. Soon she was mopping up the wreckage in the midst of a colony of sunbathers, as Cygnus 5's exhausted and malnourished folk stripped off and basked in renewal, exposed skin turning green even as she watched.

  "Hey," said Jenkins in answer to her next call. "Two things. I've got that woman, the kingmaker one on the line. God knows how she knows what's going on, but she wants to talk to you again. I've also got an incoming message from Admiral Keene."

  Despite everything, something still twisted in Aurora's gut at the sound of his name - something covered in hooks and spines. Now there was a man who really needed to be reduced to ash and water.

  "Is he in any position to hurt us?"

  "Not that I can see. He's leading from the back. The dust hasn't got to him yet, but he can't get to us from there, and it's closing in on him. They've lost two super-dreadnaughts already - just fell apart like sand sculptures, and the others are backing off. Couple of them been grazed by the dust and jumped out to get away. There was a kind of delayed deployment on those. This stuff is creepy. It has tactics, you know? Anyway, no. He's powerless right now."

  That gave her a certain savage satisfaction to hear. Since the entire galaxy had already seen her in her underwear, and her people were stripping down to smalls all around her, she hoiked the dress off and luxuriated in the sheer feeling of overwhelming strength the sunlight was trying to give her. "I'll speak to the woman first."

  Her bracer's tiny screen made it hard to see the woman's expression as she looked out and saw Aurora surrounded by her semi-naked people. Who knew what she thought? At th
is point Aurora wasn't sure she cared - she was done with pandering to other people's prejudices.

  But the richly brocade dressed woman just pressed her hands together and gave her a small bow. "So you're still there," she said. "I will let it be known that it is the will of Sekh Heongu that Cygnus 5 be recognized as a sovereign world, and be registered as a favored trading partner with my people."

  Aurora could guess that this was some kind of honor, but honor didn't mean much beside the thought of Lina down in the city, unconscious from starvation. "That's nice," she said. "But what we really need is food."

  The woman - presumably Sekh Heongu herself - seemed to be suppressing a smile. "Your men's ship, the Froward, is being filled with provisions as we speak. I will release them now, and they will be with you in two days. A small present with which to begin our alliance. We will talk again in more detail when you have had time to wash up."

  So she thought Aurora was calling from the bath? Not a bad assumption - one that said something about her knowledge of battle. Maybe she kept her hair that short because it was easier to wash the blood out? There would now, hopefully, be time to find out.

  Food in two days. They could kill a couple of the cows in the mean time, feed the invalids on broth while the rest of the cows got treated to live on sunlight. They'd start giving milk again, and with only the true-humans to feed it would go further. Yes, Aurora thought, misery rolling off her back like a great stone, they should make it until the food arrived. Lina, Ademola, all the Frowards, they should make it.

  Victory began to soak in, like the sunshine, knitting her back together, pouring relief and strength into her limbs. She was strong enough to talk to Keene. Hell, she had always been stronger than him, no matter what he'd done to make her think otherwise. She nodded at Jenkins' small picture in the corner of her screen. "Okay, put the admiral through."

  He looked better than he had done when he was upside down in the claws of a ship drone, frantically holding onto his underwear, but that was not saying much. There was a sallow cast to his skin and a pinched quality about his mouth that said he was mortified and frightened and furious. She wondered how fast the spreading death-cloud was moving, when it would reach him, how she would feel about it when it did.

  "You'd better get out of there, Admiral. This system's not a happy place for invaders right now."

  "What have you done to yourself now, you witch?" he peered out of the small screen at her, and she saw with a startle that of the two of them she was the more green after all.

  She laughed, because 'yes, I've turned to illegal gene-therapy,' was not the wisest response. 'None of your business,' though satisfying was too childish. "So what can I do for you?" she tried instead, hoping this was just him making a last ditch attempt to hurt her with empty words before he ran away.

  Keene nodded to someone outside his pickup range, and the next moment Aurora's breath choked inside her as three women walked into view. The first two had evidently been shoved, off-balance and wild eyed, in their gray prison jumpsuits. It took her a blink to recognize them, tired and bruised, with their hair shaved to a millimeter of stubble. But even then, Morwen's was distinctive, like a shining cap of blood. They were alive.

  The emotion that clawed its way out of her belly at the thought was so twisted she could barely recognize that either. Relief, oh God yes - joy, even - and sorrow for their state, and concern and terror as she remembered where they were. Out there in Cygnus's poisoned system, waiting to be dissolved by Five's terrible defenses.

  Aurora swallowed to work her suddenly dry mouth, and only then did she realize that the third woman wore a nursemaid's uniform, that the conical parcel in her arms was a papoose. If she looked hard at the tiny picture, she could see fingers, curling over the edge of the container. Tiny, defenseless, biscuit colored fingers. "Oh God!" her mouth said without her supervision as she curled forward to bring the screen closer, as if she could reach through it and touch. She could not be so close and not touch. She could not live and not touch.

  Keene chuckled. "Yes," he said, "I just thought you might like to see your daughter, safely back with her father. She's doing fine. She doesn't even know that you're gone."

  "Keene," Mother of God this was no time for him to gloat. She could have killed him, ablaze with certainty and protectiveness and terror. "Get her out of here. Get her out of here right now before that dust hits you. Her and all your people, get them out while you can. Don't fucking play games. Get them out!"

  The admiral drew himself up, looking terribly self righteous. "There's no need for profanity," he addressed an invisible audience, maybe imaginary, maybe watching on the news feeds. "You see what kind of person I have to deal with. My dear, don't over-react. My scientists tell me it will burn itself out before it gets here. It's just like a woman to--"

  Aurora shoved the dress back over her head, got up. "I don't have time to talk to you right now, Keene. Good bye." She shut him down and ran for the city.

  The bare rock felt warm under her feet, warm and smooth like the skin of an enormous, complex, sleeping creature. In the dark, the overweening bliss of her skin quietened down enough for her to feel more like herself again, more like a small and almost powerless human being confronted with a problem too large to handle. But she couldn't afford to think like that. She sprinted past the emaciated real humans, resting their wobbly limbs by the runnels of water, and flew inward, downward to the temple at the center.

  Everything was as she had left it - the long passage, the antechamber with its incised lines that looked like some kind of holographic system, and the wall of darkness beyond, through which Bryant had stepped like a ghost, ramming her knuckles on it as he tried to pull her through.

  "Cabrao!" She swore, smacking the unseen barrier with the flat of her hand. "Let me through!"

  Nothing. She was checking around the outer molding of the doorway for a latch or switch when she noticed a tendril of the death dust swirling back into the chamber from outside. She stood very still, as though it was a cobra, and indeed it looked very snake-like, its snub head raising off the ground, its body filling in from moment to moment.

  No, not a snake, it was a pillar. It compressed, seemed to solidify, and then shook itself. Flakes spun off and dropped to the floor as she watched it sculpt itself into a close approximation of the shape of Bryant Jones.

  "Aurora," it said, green stone eyes blank, and its voice hollow. "You're--"

  "No," she stopped it, breathing hard, not sure if she wanted to cry or scream. "No. I want in. I want to talk to you face to face."

  "There's no face left," it said, but the black wall flicked out of being under Aurora's resting hand, let it pass through, so she didn't pay a lot of attention. She closed her eyes briefly, tried to calm her breath, and then walked in.

  This was a smaller, circular chamber with little in it but a dip in the floor. In the dip she could almost guess at the shape of a human body, crouched like a stone-age burial. Patches of Bryant's brown skin and a few of the vertebrae of the arc of his spine were all that was visible of him under a fur of wires. Tendrils had grown out of him, or into him as though he were a piece of food dropped on a damp floor, colonized by long white ropes of spores.

  "No," she said again. Whispering it, she dropped to her knees and tried to touch, tried to wipe some of the outgrowths away. No, no, no. This was not her victory. Not Autumn dead and Bryant like this. "No."

  The simulacrum had refined itself in the interim. It really looked very like him now - like a lifeless green stone statue of him. It bent down and pushed her hands away with a grip as strong as a mountain.

  "No," she said again. "You've got to save Keene's ship. Autumn's on it, and then you've got to get out of there. You've got to come back to me. I love you, you bastard. I don't want to do this without you."

  The simulacrum made an almost human whine of protest. "You must not be distressed," it said, "We don't wish that. You have been on this world long enough to bear particles
of us within you, from the food and the water you have consumed. We consider you part of us now. That is not the case with the space-faring intruders. They are clearly more of a threat to us than you are."

  "If you let Autumn get away, Keene's not going to try to return. He knows the place is deadly. He's going to stay away--"

  "We cannot risk that," the tone of its voice was also improving gradually, sounding almost like Bryant - just a Bryant drained of his liveliness and irreverence and charm. "I have engineered much of the pontoth on the retreating ships to go dormant until it reaches their home-worlds. There, it will cleanse their systems. Once the invading predatory intelligent species has been wiped out, I will offer you the same choice I gave my own creators. You may lose your intelligence and live, or you may be disassembled and reabsorbed."

  So slow. She was so slow to process this, her brain so taken up with Bryant's survival and Autumn's that for a long time she couldn't connect the dots at all. When it began to gel, she backed away from the moldy, wire-shrouded thing in the floor and collapsed against a wall, laughing.

  She'd sent Bryant in here, despite his warnings, to give her tiny colony a chance of survival against half a Kingdom battlefleet, and they'd achieved victory. They’d given a little more time for her just-under-one-thousand people to live.

  And in the process they’d woken something whose plan was to wipe out all intelligent life in the galaxy. That was... she laughed again, because oh shit. For this victory she had condemned her baby, lost her lover, and had apparently doomed the entire human race. This had maybe not been the best decision of her career.

  Phoenix:

  Cygnus 5, Book Three

  Alex Beecroft