But it was the large one's cross-species linguistic ability that had proven most intriguing to the Otrid Lords and, fortunately, this knowledge had not been burned away in Triton's attempted self-immolation. It was this power that the Otrid Lords had exploited, through the strands of obedience, as part of the effort to enslave the lowly sentients of this world for use as soldiers against the domed human colony.
Kwed had initially pictured these large ones as equivalent to Otrid Lords, but he had since learned this was not an apt comparison. The Otrid Lords were the finest examples of homeworld singleton segments joined to create the most formidable beings Otrid biology could produce.
But these human large ones were something else altogether, assuming they were not in fact a separate species. They were biotechnological experiments imbued with almost mystical characteristics, and each of the large ones that had been catalogued was entirely different from the others. It was believed that there were seven of these strange creatures—a profoundly unlucky number—guarding human space. What powers the remaining large ones possessed was unknown.
It was clear, however, that the important job of exterminating the singleton human species could not be completed while these beings stood in the way. With these large ones backing them, it was possible that at some point the humans could even challenge Otrid hegemony of this sector of the galaxy.
Kwed knew that the Otrid Lords had been comfortable bending the creature's will to their own as long as they had the power of the ancient captive alien to subdue him. Without that power, Triton had been judged too dangerous to be allowed to live.
At last the assembly stilled as the Otrid Lords approached the cage.
The large one's gaze followed the Otrid rulers.
Kwed focused on the large one's eyes and was as shocked to discover how apparent was the intelligence that burned from behind them. Unlike the dull eyes of other singleton species Kwed had studied, the small twin orbs conveyed great depths of information and experience.
Kwed felt a shiver of disruption in the binding of his segments.
The four Otrid Lords turned their backs to the cage and faced the warriors.
The First Lord stepped forward. Its sail segment flushed a deep maroon color and trembled as it released a cloud of spores, marking the start of its speech. Its whip arms gracefully traced the patterns of higher communication. The movements synched with the rhythmic growling that issued from its towering stalk section.
"This alien singleton's usefulness is at an end," the First Lord said. "Let us rejoice in anticipation of the creature's demise."
A murmur, expressed as a wave of rippling sail segments, passed through the warriors. This would be an execution that every Otrid would remember, Kwed realized. This day would be a part of the conquest histories forevermore, and Kwed was a part of it.
"You will witness much in the battles ahead, but do not fear the sight of such unnatural beasts as this. The galaxy is full of strange and loathsome creatures, yet from the smallest to the largest, they share a common inferiority—a single mind struggling to comprehend the higher realms of thought. They will never know the lofty perceptions that the union of four brings. They can only mimic their betters, or create grotesques such as that which kneels before us."
The large one's mouth contorted, and he emitted a loud, staccato burst of sound. Kwed did not know the significance of this form of communication, if that was indeed what it was. The large one's body language was indecipherable, but it seemed as if Triton was…amused?
It was clear, however, that the human abomination understood the language of the Otrid Lords perfectly.
With a rumble from deep within and a flush of color across the surface of his skin, the large one began twisting his thick, jointed limbs into shapes of communication. Meaning coalesced from the alien's crude motions.
Horrifyingly, the large one began speaking the language of the Otrid.
“Will…this…do…for higher…realms of thought?"
Triton's eyes blazed and a new sound issued from the large one's mouth, a high shrieking noise that sliced through the thick atmosphere. Within that shriek were other sounds, as if the large one was speaking several languages at once.
The Otrid Lords stood, stunned, facing the entrapped human large one. They stepped back, and for the first time Kwed detected a posture of indecision in the rulers of the Otrid empire.
That thought was quickly swamped, however, by a new buzzing noise rising in the background. Kwed whirled around, searching for its source, and cast his glance skyward.
A cloud was forming in the sky, a torus of swirling shapes. The great airborne mass contracted as it raced toward the Otrid assembly.
In seconds, Kwed recognized the swarm as being composed of the chitinous invertebrates that were native to the planet. The buzzing noise grew into a roar as the winged creatures plunged toward the gathering.
Before they could arrive, there was a cry of alarm from behind. Kwed turned in time to see three of the long-limbed sentients converge on one of the Otrid warriors that was posted at the edge of the assembly. The spindly aliens, still dripping muddy water from the swamp where they'd hidden, scrambled up the length of the Warrior's body. They dug the clawed ends of their legs into all four segments of the surprised Otrid warrior, leaving ragged gashes in his flesh.
Kwed's squadron instinctively moved toward this injured comrade, whip arms flailing as they hurriedly removed weapons from sheaths belted to their stalk segments. Even as Kwed raced to fight off these attackers, however, he marveled at their audacity. Since the initial invasion and occupation of this world, none of these low-intelligence aliens had ever dared rise up against an Otrid warrior.
Before Kwed could intervene, a chorus of anger and fear rang through the assembly from behind.
It originated with the Otrid Lords.
Kwed stumbled to a stop and turned back to see what could have prompted an assembly of the finest Otrid warriors to cry out as if they were newly-born singleton segments scurrying from some homeworld predator.
Kwed could just make out a flurry of commotion between the scrambling warriors, and then a gap opened, revealing a new nightmare. Kwed watched in horror as a web of roots burst from the ground, like the whip arms of giants, and grasped the legs of the Otrid First Lord.
The roots moved like blind animals, thrashing around the surface until encountering prey, and then attacking in unison, clutching their victims in tight coils.
From the indoctrination sessions, Kwed knew the stubby little trees that dotted the plains revealed only their tips above ground. The vast bulk of the organism extended into the depths of the soft, damp soil.
The indoctrination had not included any mention of plant life that could attack from below.
Kwed had no time to ponder this realization. More roots burst from the ground and coiled around the First Lord. With a sudden violent spasm, the First Lord's body was ripped apart, sending a spray of gore into the sky.
Kwed bellowed in rage but the sound was smothered as the flying invertebrates fell upon the Otrid assembly like a burst of rain. Kwed took two steps forward but the swirling pests raked across his visual segment and slashed at the soft membrane of his sail segment, forcing Kwed into a crouch.
The buzzing deluge flowed around Kwed's body like fiery rivers of water.
The Otrid warrior trembled, feeling the sting of the invertebrates and hearing the cries of his comrades. For the first time since becoming a complete being, Kwed knew fear. Genuine, true fear.
It was as if the entire planet had turned against the Otrid at a mere word from the human large one.
What to do?
Kwed hunched over and stared at the ground, focusing his thoughts, securing the lines of communication between his segments. Kwed blocked out the minor stings of the invertebrates and ignored the cries of his fellow warriors, some of whom were clearly collapsing into singleton incoherence.
Concentrate.
Kwed had absorb
ed all the lessons of war and conquest from his Otrid superiors, but had never yet tasted live combat, had never been thrust into an actual fight that required independent action.
The experience focused the mind immensely.
The outlines of reality crystallized in his mind. This chaos was no coordinated attack by military forces. These were merely the instinctive thrashings of beasts brought down in the hunt, a final kick before submitting. The human large one had somehow accessed the nervous systems of these lesser beings, an impressive trick, but not one that should frighten a species of space-faring conquerors like the Otrid.
These thoughts radiated strength throughout the four segments that made up Kwed Fighting Sea. Resolve swelled inside. The solution was simple: analysis, plan, action—and the remorseless killing of foes.
The rightness of the solution nudged a shift in Kwed's perceptions of himself. There was an even deeper bond between his segments, a new alignment, as if his essential self had been elevated to a higher level.
With a calming certainty, Kwed understood where his primary duty lay.
Kwed folded his visual segment's vestigial wings over the most sensitive parts of his eyes and stood. With a bellowing shout, Kwed ran toward the restraining cage that held their captive, ignoring the bright points of pain from the flyers and dodging the roots that burst through the ground.
The Triton monster must die.
The primary necessity was to find the panel the Otrid Lords carried that controlled the reactive cage and the strands of obedience. Kwed shoved his way through the milling crowd of Otrid warriors, ignoring the shouts of alarm and calls for help.
With his mouth curled upward at the ends, the human large one emitted another sinister burst of broken, jangling sound. Kwed ignored it. It was simply one more indecipherable and barbaric human expression.
In a few moments, the abomination will be silent forever.
Kwed dodged a pile a twisted flesh that he recognized as the remains of the Otrid Second Lord. A writhing strand of root burst through the ground and flowed toward Kwed's legs, but Kwed's whip arm sliced through the air and cut through the pale root with the multi-wavelength energy burner that was part of an Otrid warrior's standard armament.
Kwed closed on the crumpled form of the Otrid First Lord and skidded to a stop. With one of his legs, Kwed rolled the corpse over. The First Lord's whip arms were coiled protectively around the small control panel. Kwed performed a brief gesture of respect to the fallen Lord and wrenched the panel free.
As a low-rank warrior, Kwed had never been given access to such a command implement, but found the interface instantly comprehensible.
Kwed felt the ground tremble beneath his feet as roots tore through the ground, seeking new victims.
The tips of Kwed's whip arms danced across the panel's interface. There would be no ceremonial dismemberment today, no lessons in the physical makeup of human large ones. Kwed initiated the sequence for immediate death.
The reaction came instantaneously.
The strands of obedience that wrapped around Triton glowed white hot as the energy of the jump gates themselves was channeled through them. The reactive metal of the cage closed in on the human large one, the shapes of restraint morphing into cutting edges that slowly collapsed into an ever-shrinking sphere.
Triton did not scream or betray any evidence of pain as the Otrid technologies ended his life. There was no release of energy or final deployment of some hidden weapon.
Kwed could not pinpoint the exact moment of Triton's demise, but after some moments Kwed noticed that the cloud of flying invertebrates had dispersed. The tree roots, so deadly only a short time ago, were slowly slithering back underground like night creatures running from the light. Kwed searched the edge of the gathering and saw the long-legged sentients scurrying back to their hiding holes in the swamp.
Kwed turned back to the smoking ruin of the restraint cage. The broken form of Triton was barely recognizable. Nothing moved, but the eyes of the human large one stared at Kwed as if penetrating the Otrid warrior to the core.
Chapter 13
Between Gods
Apollo’s array slowed as it neared Faraway’s godship. He was sending an Aspect to converse with Maelstrom, which he hoped would not be taken as a slight, especially after speaking with Talia first. But Apollo had decided the more prudent course was to keep his physical body encased in his own godship while his attention was spread between Talia, Maelstrom, The City, and the planning for system-wide defense he was working on.
A large part of his attention was devoted to absorbing the accounts of the attack on The City that Talia had supplied. He was horrified at how close the Otrid had come to winning.
The burned and scarred exterior of Faraway’s godship was testament to the fierceness of the fight.
He sent a request for permission to project his Aspect inside the ship. Since Maelstrom had no corporeal body there was no need for a face-to-face meeting, but Apollo wanted to inspect the inside of the massive craft and get a feel for the true state of things.
The godship replied with a rote acknowledgment and approval of his request. He selected the main concourse of the ship to project his image and divided himself once more, sending a part of himself into the battered godship.
A human work crew cried out in surprise and scurried away as his Aspect flared to life in front of them. For this entrance he’d scaled back the gaudier elements of his Aspect, so that now it stood a mere eight feet tall and was not nearly so luminous as those he usually projected.
“Easy, good people. A new day dawns.” Apollo reached out and tickled the blood riders in the men and women before him, raising their spirits. They gathered around him, wonder in their eyes, hopeful smiles spreading across their faces.
He stayed to converse and offer more such reassurances for a time, but grew increasingly uneasy as the performance went on. Tinkering with their emotions felt a bit crude to Apollo just then. A disquieting feeling grew inside him that he was treating them like pets, instead of the precious heritage of Earth that they were.
I’ve been away from the street-level god business for too long. Do they actually still worship us, or am I just some bizarre alien stranger to them? Would they react the same if I ignored their blood riders?
The questions sobered him, although he maintained an upbeat face for the work crew. At length he disengaged from them, handing out blessings as he left, and made his way toward the heart of the godship.
Apollo was surprised at the level of activity on board. He encountered servitor robots rebuilding a section of bulkhead, and he could see the fresh wiring running along the inner surface. Every few yards he found another pile of supplies waiting to be installed.
The people of The City had taken a bad blow, but they weren’t cowering under the dome in fear of the next attack. It heartened him that they appeared to be working hard to restore their defenses.
He made his way to the god chamber where Faraway once ran the ship. It was in the very center of the great sphere, and arriving there felt like entering the central core of some great city. Slender towers soared overhead, and structures whose functions were known only by the late god crowded in.
His Aspect stopped in the very center of the god chamber plaza. Scars crisscrossed the walls of the towers. The fighting had penetrated even this far. He saw that servitor robots were still removing elements of what could only be alien technology that the Otrid had installed after capturing the ship and enslaving Faraway.
A light began blinking in one of the structures off the plaza. He made his way to it. He entered, and doors slid closed behind him.
“Maelstrom?”
“Yes.”
“How are you, my friend?”
“I exist,” came a flat voice over the godship’s comm net.
The muted reply made Apollo uneasy. Since being elevated to a coherent pattern of thoughts held together by highly organized magnetic fields, Maelstrom had never been very go
od at modulating his “voice.” Over the centuries Apollo had sometimes felt like he’d needed a shield to filter interactions with Maelstrom.
“Talia tells me you were injured in the fight.”
“Injured? She’s softening the truth. The damage the Otrid inflicted upon me is worse than I feared.”
“How is that possible? What weapon do they have that can diminish a disembodied intelligence?”
Silence followed, as if the diminished god was forming his thoughts. In Apollo’s previous conversations with Maelstrom, the two had communicated by exchanging bursts of information across mere microseconds. Apollo found this human-speed conversation disconcerting.
“I truly don’t know,” Maelstrom said at last. “They had enslaved an alien, a creature I’ve never encountered before. I checked what archives remained in this ship after Faraway’s death, and there was no record of any sort of creature like this one. Proximity to it deconstructed me. The alien had the ability to dissolve complex systems. I could feel parts of myself being stripped away, my higher abilities dissolving altogether. I fled to the Hightower, hiding in the core of a ship mind infrastructure that Tower had built. Fortunately for me, he never completed an AI to pilot that ship, because I don’t know what I’d have done if an existing mind already inhabited the architecture.”
“I take it this is a better fit?”
“Faraway’s godship is a bit roomier,” Maelstrom replied, and Apollo got the distinct impression that the diminished god was chuckling.
“I’ll need a new name, I suppose. I’m hardly a Maelstrom of power these days. More like a tempest maybe, or a squall. I can no longer maintain my thought patterns independently, not for long, anyway. I need the neural networks of a godship or AI architecture to remain coherent. It’s quite possible I am not even as developed as the ship minds that Tower created to operate his fleet. Some days I’m able to guide this vessel like a competent captain, and others I feel like a mouse scurrying behind the walls.”
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