The Ascendant Stars_Book Three of Humanity's Fire

by Michael Cobley

  ‘Heracles-ops, this is Retrieval Alpha – teams and objective safely aboard. Ready to up and out.’

  ‘Retrieval Alpha, this is Heracles-ops – acknowledged. Hold on to something – this could get rough.’

  Listening, Robert had to conceal his excitement – he was aboard the Heracles, the same ship that had been on station near Darien! But what was it doing here, in the depths of hyperspace?

  Everyone was tethering themselves to a stanchion or an anchor point, of which there were many around the ribbed metal walls. Before Robert could ask, Harriman pulled him round so he could see the pair of lines attaching him to the bulkhead.

  There was a sudden jolt that Robert felt through the floor, then another.

  ‘Restraining bolts blown,’ said the sergeant over the comm. ‘Get ready for emergency manoeuvring.’

  The inertia hit like a truckful of sandbags slamming him onto the chamber floor and pinning him there – for twenty or so hour-long seconds, relentlessly squeezing the air out of his lungs while his chest muscles laboured and the pressure seemed to be making his eyes bulge …

  Until the weight abruptly eased off, leaving Robert and the others gasping for breath as they got to their feet in something resembling standard gravity. A moment later, Robert’s propod suit suddenly lost its shell-like rigidity and flopped down to hang in saggy folds. The head of it went limp, peeled apart and slipped down to his shoulders. Breathing the air, the first smells he noticed were stale sweat and, for some reason, coconut.

  Then, without warning, Robert felt the ripple-quiver sensation that usually accompanied a hyperdrive jump. Some of the marines shook clenched fists and grinned and there was a palpable air of relief. A series of thuds then came from the rear bulkhead and an entire section swung inwards. The marine teams, laughing and joking, began to troop through.

  ‘What now?’ Robert asked the sergeant, now helmetless to reveal short-cropped silver hair.

  ‘You’re the VIP, Mr Bauer,’ he said. ‘You get to meet the captain and the ambassador so I’m sure a plan will come out of it, eh?’

  ‘Thank you, Sergeant,’ he said. ‘I’m very sorry about Chuang … ’

  ‘We do our job, Mr Bauer, and Chuang died doing hers.’

  The sergeant forestalled any further exchange by indicating the short passage with an ‘after you’ gesture. When Robert reached the T-junction at the other end the familiar stocky figure of Captain Velazquez stepped forward, hand outstretched.

  ‘Mr Bauer, welcome aboard the Heracles.’

  Velazquez’s dark green uniform was as immaculate as ever, although there was noticeably more silver in his thick dark hair. Robert almost grinned at the irony of the situation as he shook the man’s hand, recalling his own physical frailty when he was last on board this ship. When it first arrived in orbit around Darien.

  ‘I am more than happy to be away from the Shyntanil and their death obsession,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t help noticing the damage to your ship, however – what happened?’

  A strained look came over Velazquez’s features.

  ‘We suffered a surprise attack while in orbit around the planet Darien. Lost over a seventh of our complement.’ His eyes were hard, flinty. ‘I ordered an emergency jump but halfway through the transition to Tier 2 the drive fields fell out of alignment and we ended up in a very strange … domain, or continuum, with the ship leaking in a thousand places and a half-wrecked hyperdrive. As well as dozens of dead, scores of injured. If it wasn’t for your grand-uncle, Ambassador Horst, and this new ally, the Construct, we’d still be there.’

  Grand-uncle? Robert thought. How much more Wahnsinn can there be?

  ‘I believe I heard someone talking about me,’ came a voice from behind. Robert composed himself and turned … and yes, it was himself, dressed in a semi-formal suit, strolling unhurriedly towards them. Only it was himself pre-contact with the Construct. This Robert Horst was an unrejuvenated seventy-year-old, white-haired, thin-faced and wrinkled.

  ‘Grand-Uncle,’ he said. ‘I can’t tell you what it means to see you again.’ But his thoughts were whirling, recalling how he had been framed for the assassination of the Brolturan ambassador. From what Robert had heard, third-hand, Velazquez must have witnessed the immediate aftermath so how had he come to accept and trust this version? – which surely had to be one of the Construct’s sims.

  The white-haired ambassador smiled and nodded in just the way he’d seen himself do so in playbacks. An odd shiver passed through him.

  ‘Rudy, my boy, someone had to pull your chestnuts out of the fire and since I was passing this way anyway … ’ A wider smile. ‘Besides, it seems that you have acquired a vital clue, according to the message probe your ship managed to launch before it self-destructed.’

  ‘I’m glad it got through, er, Grand-Uncle, really … ’

  ‘Ambassador,’ interrupted Captain Velazquez. ‘I must return to the bridge to deal with operational problems. Once you’ve debriefed Mr Bauer, I’ll make myself available for planning your next step.’

  ‘Very good, Captain,’ said the sim. ‘I should be in touch before very long, and again, my thanks.’

  As the captain disappeared round the next corner, Robert turned to the Construct sim.

  ‘I’m impressed,’ he said. ‘The resemblance is very close.’

  ‘Not close, exact,’ the sim replied. ‘The Construct went to a lot of trouble building the physical-traits range, not to mention the vocal-spectrum match.’

  ‘And Velazquez? He was there when I vanished after being framed for the Brolt ambassador’s assassination – how did you get him on your side when you turned up down here?’

  ‘He never believed the accusation or the reports,’ the sim said. ‘Also, shortly before the Spiral armada attack, he received a recording of the assassination from an American reporter called Macrae, which proved that it was Kuros’s Ezgara commandos who were behind it. Of course, I still had to work on him a bit, especially when it came to explaining how I was spirited away by the Construct, which was keen to make an alliance with Earthsphere. He was impressed when I told him that my personal AI had been surgically removed – well, yours! In the end the most persuasive card in my hand was the holdful of repair bots with which he was able to save his dying ship. Although it helps that there’s no way he can contact any Earthsphere bases up through the levels of hyperspace. Now, however, I would like to lead this conversation onto more pressing matters and in a less public venue.’

  The ambassador sim’s room was on the officer quarters deck. On the way there, the sim informed Robert that he did in fact have a grand-nephew called Rudy Bauer, who was the grandson of his younger brother, Werther. Robert found himself struggling to recall Werther’s face. A niggling suspicion rose and would not subside.

  The room was spacious and shadowy, broken by pools of subdued light from wall-niche downlights or small table lamps. After a vapour shower and a change of clothing into a casual grey-blue two-piece, Robert settled into a low-backed easy chair, sipping a glass of some brandy analogue as he gathered his thoughts. From across a nearby lamp-illuminated decorative table, the ambassador sim regarded him.

  ‘When you last saw the Construct,’ Robert said, ‘did you encounter my daughter, Rosa?’

  ‘There are several versions of Rosa working for the Construct in a range of capacities,’ the sim said. ‘I did speak with one or two.’

  ‘I’ve found myself wondering if she still reads her favourite book, Butterfly Wave.’

  The older sim smiled. ‘I think you meant Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Was that a test?’

  ‘The consequence of habitual caution,’ Robert said. ‘My apologies.’

  ‘I take no offence,’ said the sim. ‘I saw the report you gave to the Construct. Your account of the Tanenth virtual planet was fascinating.’

  There was a pause. Robert smiled.

  ‘But you deduced that I wasn’t being entirely forthcoming.’ He shrugged. ‘I was uncertain a
bout some of the things the Tanenth machine told me … well, not so much uncertain as overwhelmed. I couldn’t help but see it all, that defiance of colossal power, that mass suicide, in the context of my daughter Rosa’s death.’

  He downed the rest of the brandy in a single, pleasurably sharp gulp.

  ‘The Tanenth wanted to live,’ he went on. ‘I’m sure of it, but the Godhead was all of their world, alpha and omega, mother and father. And Rosa wanted to live, with all the life that was in her, but she knew that there were principles that she had to live up to. Risks that she had to take in the hope of forcing the Hegemony to alter or delay its war deployments. In both cases, the risks went against them.’

  ‘So the Tanenth machine told you something else before sending you on your way.’

  ‘Something incredible and bizarre,’ Robert said, cradling the empty glass in his hands. ‘The machine said that the Godhead has an immense physical presence yet its location has been hidden for millions of years, deep in the abyss levels of hyperspace, shielded by mazes of psi-traps and altered physical laws. Over great spans of time, the Godhead’s mind has developed meta-quantal abilities that now allow it to extend beyond the boundaries of its hyperspace lair. Its consciousness, and parts of its subconscious, now literally stretch across several neighbouring levels around which a number of entry points are scattered.’

  ‘Entry points?’ said the ambassador sim. ‘To the Godhead’s lair or to its mind?’

  ‘I didn’t have time to question the machine before my abrupt departure,’ Robert said. ‘But my guess is that they allow access to both its mind and its real-world physical presence. Orders have to reach its underlings and I’m sure that the Godhead’s conscious awareness would demand face-to-face manifestations of its authority.’

  ‘A plausible conjecture but still conjecture nevertheless,’ the sim said. ‘Did the Tanenth machine give you directions to any of them?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Robert, taking a pen and paper from a table niche. The Tanenth machine had impressed upon his mind a sequence of symbols, along with the sound, the shape and the smell he had to recall to unlock them. After some moments he began to write, carefully reproducing the symbols as he saw them in his mind’s eye. This was the information that the cryptship’s torturer had mistakenly thought was passed to him by the Shyntanil renegades. Once they were all down, he passed the finished sequence to the sim.

  The sim frowned and looked closer at the slip of paper. ‘A very ancient script,’ he said. ‘No, it is actually a later variant from the Gha’Voh era … ’

  ‘Does it give a location?’

  ‘Oh yes, right in the Abyss, Tier 275, possibly … ’

  ‘Possibly?’

  ‘Assuming that it has not been compacted into another tier. But we’ll get there, certainly – I just need to make some adjustments to the upgrades I fitted to the Heracles’ drive.’

  ‘How long will that take?’

  ‘Seven, eight hours.’ The sim of his younger, older self stood, folding the slip of paper away in a pocket. ‘Have you thought on your tactics?’

  ‘Not sure. Since I’ve no idea what I’ll be facing, is there any point in preparation at all? As I see it, all I could reasonably expect to achieve is to infiltrate as far as safely possible, gather any useful information then find a way back out.’

  ‘How do you escape from the mind of a god?’

  Robert shrugged. ‘The way in might also be the way out, but that seems too rational for some internal psyche-terrain. I’ll just have to wait and see.’

  The ambassador sim nodded. ‘Very well. I shall take the course data to the captain and translate it for him. In the meantime I recommend that you get some rest. Your low alertness levels suggest that you need it.’

  Seven and a half hours of unbroken sleep later he was woken by a soft but insistent chiming. As he sat up the room apologised for disturbing him but said that Captain Velazquez was requesting his presence on the bridge. After another brief dip into the shower, he was told where to find the food unit and a fresh set of clothing. He dressed then went over some notes he’d made from consulting the room’s info terminal. A short while later he emerged from the ambassadorial suite in armourless combats, a jacket and leggings in a heavy dark blue material.

  It was a short walk and a two-deck ascent via lift to the bridge, where two deck guards met him and escorted him within. Autodoors parted to admit them. The bridge had a rough figure-eight layout with banks of monitors and interfaced code-techs in the aft loop while the operations dais occupied the forward section. The ambassador sim was seated by one of the screens and holoplanes that encircled the dais – he raised a hand in greeting. The captain, standing a quarter-turn away, glanced over and nodded then went back to frowning at something unseen and muttering over his lip-bead mike.

  Robert sat down in the seat next to the sim and leaned forward slightly.

  ‘Saw some interesting repair duty rosters pinned to walls on my way here,’ he said quietly. ‘And overheard a couple of revealing conversations on the state of this vessel. Just how badly was it damaged by the missile, and why did it survive when the Brolturan battleship didn’t? And how ever did it get through my rescue in one piece?’

  The ambassador sim’s affable demeanour never wavered.

  ‘You know about the Spiral crusade?’ he said.

  ‘Got a summary from the terminal in your room,’ Robert said.

  ‘Well, after the missile attack and the subsequent Spiral gunship assaults the Heracles was a near-wreck, going by the logs. A third of the generators were junk and another third were offline, as were the battle systems. Velazquez’s emergency jump was an act of pure desperation which damaged his hyperdrive and plunged them down into hyperspace. By the time I found them nearly half the ship had been surrendered to vacuum due to hull breaches and failed environment systems. Luckily, the Construct provided me with a holdful of energy and shield modules and a few combat drones which I modified to maintain shield strength at the weak points. When we arrived to collect you from the cryptship, the double- and in some places triple-layer shields made Heracles almost invulnerable. For a limited period, that is.’

  ‘How are the repairs going?’

  ‘Let us say that it’s a work in progress.’

  Robert glanced over at the captain. ‘Velazquez looks a little vexed.’

  ‘We are deep in the tiers of the Abyss,’ the sim said. ‘From my ship I sent a spy-probe on ahead to our target destination and it has just returned. The data gathered presents a daunting picture.’

  ‘Your ship?’

  The sim nodded. ‘The Construct provided a fast scout for my journey. It is berthed in the Heracles’ main hold and may soon play a crucial role in what lies ahead.’

  ‘Okay, I’m curious,’ Robert said with a smile. ‘What did the probe discover?’

  ‘Lifeforms, gigantic lifeforms,’ the sim said. ‘Some kind of multilevel signal block prevented the probe from engaging the full range of its sensors, but it did get something before it was forced to pull out.’

  The ambassador sim fingered a few bead controls on the holoplane between them and a dark image sprang into being. It was so dark that for a moment Robert thought he was looking at nothing. Then the sim adjusted the enhancement and an uneven, curved surface emerged from the gloom and as his sight acclimatised he saw that it was a planet, barren and airless. More details became apparent, great pits in the planet’s surface, terrible cracks and gouges, then the edge of one fissure kept on widening until it took up a huge area. Larger than a canyon, larger than a lake, an immense shadowy crater torn out of the planet’s face.

  The sim altered the image a little more and suddenly Robert saw it – the planet was hollow and the immense crater was actually a huge gap in its crustlike shell. The cracks and hole he had noticed earlier were just visible from the inside.

  And beyond it were the faint outlines of other rough, pitted and holed globes.

  ‘Dead worlds,’ he m
urmured. ‘Were they once inhabited?’

  ‘That is doubtful. These are smaller bodies, more like satellites or planetoids with masses insufficient to retain an atmosphere. Before the probe could carry out detailed scans it detected several huge objects moving straight towards it … ’

  In the holoplane the image suddenly swung round to encompass what looked like uniform darkness – until Robert saw immense black and shapeless silhouettes drifting across the shadowy distance. Then the holoplane went blank.

  ‘Those were the source of lifesigns, according to the sensors, but the probe was unable to scan for more. After that it returned,’ the sim said. ‘From the sensor data we know that there are roughly fifty planetoids like the one you saw, and that there is some kind of gravitational anomaly inside one of them, at the coordinates you got from the Tanenth machine. The lifeforms, unfortunately, number well over a hundred, which is the cause of the good captain’s worries.’

  ‘The solution seems clear,’ said Robert. ‘Put me in your scout, have the Heracles decoy the beasts away from the anomaly, allowing me to sweep in, disembark and enter the mind of the Godhead.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Captain Velazquez as he came round to join them. ‘The question hangs over how much stress will be generated by decoy manoeuvres and how much the chassis plates can stand. Ambassador, you said that these combat drones are the Construct’s most advanced models – do they have need of inertial dampeners?’

  ‘Ah, I see – you would rather use them aboard Heracles than deploy them against the mystery leviathans?’ The sim nodded. ‘Yes, their inertial u-fields can be merged with the ship’s, as I understand it.’

  ‘Good,’ said Velazquez, turning to Robert. ‘Mr Bauer, we’ve not had much opportunity to get acquainted but going by the ambassador’s tales you have already put yourself in harm’s way on more than one occasion on behalf of Darien and Earthsphere.’ A smile creased the man’s craggy features. ‘And I must say, I wish it were me heading for this gateway, but I am sure that the Construct was wise in choosing you for this mission. Good luck to you, sir – may God come between you and danger in all the dark places you must walk.’