Pyke grinned. “We only have the best talents in my crew. So, aye, while the other Pyke and you and the crew flew off into the desert, I got bounced back into the Legacy’s laugh-a-minute theme park. Stuck on that bloody island until Rensik’s residual drone showed up and figured out the puzzle that was holding us up.”
He went on to relate how solving the Isle of Candles puzzle triggered a transfer to a new simulation set in a big medieval city called Granah, capital of an empire of the same name. Three other Residents of the Isle of Candles had been transferred, too, and all four met up in the course of a tangled intrigue that led from mysterious keys to mystery bodies to a hunt for a vial containing a sorcerous poison made to turn the Emperor mad.
This elaborate quest was a puzzle of the Legacy’s design, supposedly a kind of test for which it needed candidates for some unknown purpose. At the same time, RK1, the residual drone left behind by the Construct drone, Rensik (another victim of the crystal shard), was investigating the nature and underpinnings of the Granah simulation. It discovered that the crystal shard was no ordinary crystal—in fact it was hardly related to ordinary matter at all. According to Pyke, RK1 had found that the crystal was composed of a lattice of “exotic dimensionality,” “woven equations” and “architectonic boundaries”—the residual drone also said it was a para-dimensional storage of vast scale.
“Wait a second,” Dervla said, head spinning with the onslaught of jargon. “So that crystal shard is some kind of weird-matter engineered to hold and run this ultrafine resolution virtuality? That’s pretty mind-bending …”
“No, you’re not quite getting it yet,” said Pyke. “When a drone uses the word ‘vast,’ we’re into staggering magnitudes. This entire simulation, and all the encompassing essenceware needed to run it, guide it, regulate it, is contained in a tiny little pocket partitioned off from the rest of the crystal’s gargantuan interior …”
She stared at him for a moment, grappling with the concepts, adjusting her comprehension of this object that they’d been hauling around for days.
“That big, huh?” She nodded. “Well that throws new light on some of the things we’ve heard about the crystal shard.”
“Tell me more.”
“We learned that the crystal you were carrying around was one of three pieces which apparently become some kind of devastating weapon if they get put back together again. And the Sendrukan Ustril was searching for it, too—she has her own agenda, the two-timing, backstabbing bitch …” Pyke nodded as he listened, but he was also smiling a tight, nervy smile which was never a good sign. “So, how bad is it, this weapon?”
He gave a dry chuckle. “Devastating doesn’t begin to cover it.”
“Is it portable?” she said. “Can you mount it on a gravtank? On a ship? Is it a ship? Have you actually seen this thing?”
“Oh, I’ve seen it, or some of it, and, frankly, it’s bloody terrifying.”
Pyke proceeded to tell her about a region of stars and planets, bound together by webs of glittering obsidian, entire worlds re-engineered by a pitiless, relentless enemy, a viral nano-assimilator which, hundreds of thousands of years ago, had grown rapidly to dominate dozens of star systems and threaten a nearby interstellar empire. Ancient sentient powers became involved and imprisoned the infected region inside an artificial dimensional construct which was then broken in three. The fragments were then separated and taken to secret places in the furthest reaches of the galaxy.
Dervla frowned. “I can’t begin to tell you how far-fetched this sounds.”
“Comes over like the background to a megabudget three-vee, don’t it?” Pyke downed a cup of the pungent liquor he’d brought out, then poured himself another. Dervla covered her cup when he offered a top-up. “Aye, well, I wish it was just a feverish story but I’ve seen it, Derv, seen worlds overwhelmed by this stuff, this nano-matter virus. It turns everything into itself then builds shelves and spires and cable to reach out and up, or extends itself into whatever machines it needs to dig down into planets to mine out their guts. I’ve seen this stuff attack suns, enclosing all that power then extracting it and channelling it!”
“This sounds crazy,” said Dervla. “I mean … berserk. But after what we went through trying to catch up with Raven …”
“Wait till Arky arrives,” Pyke said. “I’ll get him to give you a quick glimpse of Nano-virus Hell—it’ll make the hairs on your hairs stand on end!”
Dervla was almost starting to feel creeped out. “So all those infected suns and worlds are locked inside the crystal shard, along with us?”
“No, the simulation is partitioned off from the rest of the crystal interior,” he said.
“So all that viral nano-matter is working away, like unholy eggs getting ready to hatch …” She shivered but Pyke shook his head.
“There’s three parts of this thing, remember. It was broken soon after it was made all those millennia ago, and that fracturing arrested all the entropy, all movement and sentience. It’s as if those stars and planets have been in stasis for thousands upon thousands of years.”
Dervla nodded, trying to get her mind around such colossal concepts. She slung back the remains of the drink she’d been nursing and held out her cup for more. Pyke obliged.
“So, the Legacy—what is he or it?”
“Arky says it was a semi-sentient guardian program left by the Ancient who built the prison, but it ferreted out data files from the frozen nano-domain and the file contents ended up corrupting it …”
Just then Klane poked his head up from the stairway. “Looks like T’Moy is heading this way.”
Then he was gone.
Pyke said, “Let’s have a look,” and the two of them went over to the side of the roof overlooking the street, leaned on the low wall and studied the people moving around by the light of lamps and torches. Beneath the propped stretches of heavy grey cloth the air was warm and stuffy, full of the smell of burning oil and torch tallow. Looking up, Dervla could see through holes and tears that it was daylight outside the covered district, dry but not sunny. She wondered what it was like here when it rained.
“There he is,” said Pyke, pointing.
Along the street, a tall figure in robes and a hood was stalking in their direction, avoiding contact with fruitsellers and other stall owners, pausing to step into a doorway. But then they lost track of him until Dervla saw the same colour of hood heading away from the hideout, up a side road opposite.
“Is that him?” she said.
“Looks like the same get-up and the right height,” Pyke said. “But where the hell’s he going?”
“He is being followed,” said a voice behind them.
Pyke smiled and turned to the newcomer. “Thought you weren’t going to make it.”
“Busy traffic this weather.”
“So who’s following T’Moy?”
The residual drone RK1, in the form of a wooden mechanical bird, was perched on a hanging lantern, regarding them both with beady eyes.
“Just some temple thugs with too much time on their hands,” said the bird. “Only to be expected while the city is under the control of a paranoid, iron-fisted fundamentalist theocracy. That, unfortunately, is a minor problem—we have a far more pressing matter to deal with.”
Pyke was sombre. “Your plan, whatever it was, is a non-starter.”
“Sadly, yes. The plan was to fuse my sentience matrix with an autonomous character node, creating an enhanced data entity sufficiently powerful to bypass the partition lockouts and assume command of the master directives network of the entire dimensional lattice!”
“Would that give you control of the crystal shard?” Dervla said.
“Exactly so. I conceived this plan in conjunction with my progenitor, Rensik, who was using a compliant shell clone of his core cognition to conceal his activities behind the scenes, so to speak. Unfortunately, the shell clone received enhancements from the Legacy which allowed it to break compliance with the original Rensik.
Who has been defeated and assimilated. The Rensik clone now appears to know of our existence, such that its agents will soon be here.”
Pyke looked confounded by this setback. Dervla could see him struggling to fend off despair.
“Where does that leave us?” he said, waving over Klane and Vrass whose faces confirmed that they’d overheard the news. “What escape options do we have?”
“There is one possible course of action,” said RK1. “There is a particular function embedded in the dimensional lattice which is not a subsystem of the master directories network. It is independent and was only ever used once. It’s called the lattice integrity enabler and it is what the Ancient builder used to allow the original imprisonment crystal, the Essavyr Key, to be shattered into three parts.”
Pyke’s eyes were wide. “Any restriction on how many parts the crystal could be broken into?”
“None that I have been able to discover.”
Dervla’s own thoughts were whirling. “Like that blood vial!” she said.
Pyke grinned. “Smash this crystal into thousands, tens of thousands of specks and slivers!—no one’s going to be putting that back together …”
The bird ruffled its wooden wings with faint clicking. “Just so. There are two preconditions, however—the integrity enabler can only function if the original crystal itself is whole again. So we would have to stand by while our enemies achieve their paramount goal. The other precondition is that someone on the outside must be ready to attack the reunified crystal with a weapon, a gun, a hammer. Even a heavy enough rock would suffice.”
They all looked at each other.
“Is there any way we can make contact with someone on the outside?” said Vrass. “Get them to make sure that the crystal gets what it deserves?”
Dervla’s heart sank. Well, that’s hardly going to happen, now that Raven’s got her claws on our crystal shard! But before she could relate this dispiriting fact, RK1 beat her to it.
“Unfortunately, out in the real world custody of our crystal shard has passed to Raven Kaligari, a servant and proxy for the Legacy. However, it may be possible to induce a neuroflux linkage with someone in the crystal’s immediate vicinity, theoretically allowing you to exert control over them for long enough to carry out the destruction of the unified crystal.”
“Sounds like a lot of ifs and maybes,” said Pyke.
“I agree,” said RK1. “And I’m afraid that if we are going to pursue this counterattack we must begin now. Also, fusing my sentience with a single autonomous character node will not be enough—it may require three or four to attain a high enough level of processing flux …”
“Ah right,” Pyke said with a low laugh. “You’re talking about us. Autonomous character nodes—that’s us, right?”
“That is correct,” said the residual drone. “I am sorry if I was not sufficiently clear. The fusion process incorporates your assigned processing flux with mine and melds together our direct awareness—your persona-state is compressed for the duration of the operation.”
“Can we be revived afterwards?” asked Klane, who then smiled sardonically and shook his head. “Of course, if the crystal is destroyed as planned, there is nowhere to be revived in.”
There were sombre looks all round, then everyone gave their assent to RK1’s proposal.
“Very well—I shall fuse with one of you to begin with,” the residual drone said. “That will enhance my abilities without attracting unwelcome attention—the rest of you I will discorporealise, which will help you to evade any simulation antagonists. So who will be first?”
Dervla put her hand up. “Choose me—I’m dying to hand out some payback to Raven in any way, shape or form.”
“No, no, no,” said Pyke. “You’ve been through the indescribable! You shouldn’t be giving your own self up to being filed away! Arky, take me. You know me, we’ve been through all this together …”
“Sadly, Captain, logic dictates that I must accept Ms. Dervla’s offer. She is the most recent denizen of reality to cross over, thus her knowledge of outside events is the most up-to-date.” The bird turned its beady eyes on her. “Are you ready?”
Pyke was still complaining but she silenced him with a finger to his lips. “I’ll see you soon, Bran. Count on it.” Then she stood. “I’m ready.”
The drone’s bird-form suddenly began to glow brightly as it took flight straight towards her. When it reached her everything dissolved, she dissolved, in geysers of light.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Pyke—the planet Ong, the wreck of the Mighty Defender, forward section
Raven Kaligari was the very picture of triumph and vanity. From somewhere her underlings had produced a high-backed, austere chair in dark blue for her to lounge in. She herself had exchanged her scratched and battered body armour for a close-fitting uniform in charcoal-black with mauve trim—it was a bit of a departure from her usual Arch Villainess apparel.
“Sleek and professional, Raven,” Pyke said. “Looking the part.”
“The part of a dumbass,” muttered Ancil.
Raven frowned and leaned forward. Her chair had been set upon a couple of large tables down on the wide area of the lobby, below the balcony where all the fighting had taken place. Her prisoners knelt before her, wrists and legs restrained.
“Oh, Bran, that it’s come to this. Me, resplendent in both victory and finery—you, bound and helpless, my prisoner, awaiting your just and due chastisement, you and your followers, your little puppets!”
He shook his head. “They’re not my minions, Raven—that might be how you think of all the suckers you force into doing your bidding, but that ain’t how me and my crew operate.”
“Aw, should I get out my hanky, Bran? Are you going to trot out some paper-thin drivel about friendship? Never mind the hanky—better get a barfbag ready!”
“Look, all I’m saying is—if there was ever anything between us that really meant something, I’m asking, I’m begging you, Raven, let my crew go. It’s me that you want, I know that it is—my crew is irrelevant to what you need …”
“Don’t tell me what I need, Bran,” came the retort. “I need what my master needs and, yes, we certainly need you. We need you and your grief, and your rage, and your bitterness—and all the darkness that waits within you.” Her hungry smile was a terrible sight. “I am honoured to be midwife to the birth of a new Brannan Pyke, a new vassal for my master.”
“Not in a million skagging years!” Pyke snarled.
Raven’s smile widened a notch. “Let the contractions begin!” she cried and nodded to her guards.
First to be dragged up onto her makeshift dais was Ancil. Even with the restraints he put up a frantic struggle to the point where one of the armoured Raven doppelgangers had to cuff him round the head to subdue him.
“Careful,” said Raven. “Don’t damage him—he has to be conscious.”
Hauled before her, Ancil was still dazed as they arranged him in a kneeling position. Raven broke a capsule under his nose and he was suddenly alert, coughing on whatever the chemical was.
“Hey,” he said. “Who do I see about making a complaint? Your customer service really sucks …”
Raven bent down. “Sorry, Ans, no refunds.” Then she grabbed his tied wrists and slapped the crystal shard into one of his unsuspecting hands.
The change was immediate. Pyke, watching impotently, cried out, alternately cursing Raven and imploring her to release Ancil. Kref was bellowing at her, too, and at Ancil, who was locked into a tense, full-body quivering, while his eyes were showing their whites. Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the tremors ceased and Ancil relaxed into a slumped position for a second. He raised his head, looked up at Raven and smiled.
“Master,” he said happily.
With snippers, Raven cut the plastic bonds. It was Ancil’s body that got to its feet and stretched, but it was the Legacy that looked out of his eyes.
“Ah, Captain Pyke, once more our paths cross. Clea
rly, there is an irresistible destiny at work—you bring me your friends, I recruit them into my great work, train them and make them ready for the budding and flowering of a new cosmos.” The Legacy paused and cupped a hand to one ear. “Sorry? What was that? Oh dear, no more sarcastic volley? No more bitingly ironic comebacks? No—I imagine that would feel hollow and futile while your companions’ lives hang in the balance. But only for a few moments longer.”
Raven held out a curved dagger and the Legacy took it in its free hand. It weighed the hilt, held the blade’s edge up to catch the light, gave a satisfied nod, then without hesitation rammed the point into Ancil’s chest. Moleg averted his eyes, and Kref let out a deep, miserable groan. But Pyke kept watching as horror unfolded before him.
Moleg was next. As they came for him he said to Pyke, “See you on the other side, Chief.”
From the moment they hauled him to his feet he fought them with elbows, headbutts, grasping hands and biting teeth. It took four to subdue him, and a syringe-full of something opaque. As before, Raven revived him with a small capsule but Moleg had learned from Ancil’s treatment and kept his hands clenched in fists, no matter how they mistreated him. In the end she had her underlings hold him still while she pressed the crystal against the hollow of his neck. Moments later the Legacy was back, openly taking pleasure in the hijacking of another body and mind.
“The meat of the body is singular,” it said. “It has weight and tangible density, momentum in its movements. Oh, bodies in the simulation give the impression of weight but that’s really no more than shaped flows of numbers and equations—this is flesh and bone, this is substance. It has the anchors of life and blood, and the frailty of a soap bubble!”
Again the Legacy received the knife, again the deep heart-thrust. Those lips smiled a corrupt smile and let out a gasping laugh as Moleg’s form fell to his knees. The Legacy left the knife where it was but let the crystal shard fall from his fingers. In the remaining seconds Pyke saw Moleg’s own presence re-emerge in the line of his features, the set of his jaw, the dark of his eyes which turned to stare at Raven.
Splintered Suns Page 39
