The Ascendant Stars_Book Three of Humanity's Fire

by Michael Cobley

  There were brief, firm handshakes which Robert chose to see as brotherly rather than valedictory. Ten minutes later he was down in the Heracles’ high, narrow hold, climbing into the belly of the Construct scout tiership. Locked into a cradle berth, the craft’s thruster sponsons and prow-mounted, fan-shaped sensor emitter made it look like a pale blue turtle with big back legs. From his adventures aboard the Plausible Response, however, he knew that the hull configuration could be altered as and when required.

  The ambassador sim’s face was watching him from a secondary monitor as he clambered into the pilot recess and eased back in the couch.

  ‘Wish I was going with you,’ the sim said. ‘Well, in the flesh at least.’

  Robert smiled. It had taken some determined getting used to but seeing the aged appearance of his earlier self no longer sent chilly fingers up his spine.

  ‘How long?’ he said.

  The sim glanced sideways at another display for a second. ‘Ninety-eight seconds till we jump,’ it said. ‘You’ll see that most systems are on standby, and the ident has been disabled – on arrival you’ll be berth-launched with engines dead. Heracles, on the other hand, will be making plenty of wideband noise to draw off the creatures. The scout’s passive sensors will be monitoring the diversion and when your vicinity is clear the systems will be brought online and the thrusters will go for a fast burn to get you to the anomaly quickly.’ The sim gave a somewhat mischievous smile. ‘That is all. Safe journey – and see you soon.’

  The screen went blank. Robert shook his head, wondering what the sim was planning. As the seconds ticked away he could feel a tense fear building in his chest, fear and a dull dread. Perversely, he laughed and shook his head. After all the tight spots and life-or-death situations, you’d think I’d be used to it …

  The hyperspace jump caught him by surprise, the usual twist of vertigo and a ripple of indeterminate sensations. Before him, the main holoplane shrank to a standby bar while part of the cockpit quivered into transparency, showing him the hold of the Heracles. And the Construct craft was being tilted forward to point at the deck as it began to open, heavy pressure doors sliding to either side. Robert could see the drag of evacuating air making net-lashed crates shift on the wall racks.

  There was a deep grinding sound, a harsh whine, and the scout shot forward, straight out of the hold. Robert, already strapped in, was shoved back into the couch by the force of the launch. The frontal pressure eased after a moment or two, followed by an odd, muffling silence. Interior lights were muted to some console glows and a few button symbols. One status display on the secondary screen showed that the ship was spinning slowly around its axis as it flew forward at a laggard 43 metres per second.

  In the hush, thoughts pestered him. Thus far, the Construct had made two sim versions of Rosa and two of himself, so far as he knew. In Earth culture, despite several decades of embedded AI use, the creation, use and abuse of intelligent software entities was hedged around with questions of morality, both religious and secular. Robert had grown up with his AI companion, Harry, until it was expunged by the Sentinel of the warpwell on Darien. Was he really in any position to decry the Construct for creating multiple copies of data models of Human personas, even when the copies were of himself?

  Or was it about the guilt? Rosa’s death had planted a seed of guilt in him and its fruit was bitter. The Construct, for all its sophistication and millennia of accumulated knowledge, seemed to express no guilt or remorse over the destruction of its servants. The Godhead, however, had certainly been affected by the mass suicide of its creatures, the Tanenth – did that make it morally superior to the Construct?

  The minimised bar of the holoplane began to pulse then expanded back to full. From an angled frame within it, the smiling face of the ambassador sim gazed out at him – a closer look revealed that this was a rendered image, rather than a realtime feed. Robert laughed.

  ‘So you copied yourself into the ship, then,’ he said.

  ‘Curiosity is part of my persona profile,’ the sim said. ‘I wanted to get a closer perspective on those planetoids … and I have now stabilised our attitude and ignited the thrusters. We should reach the anomaly in ten minutes.’

  The undifferentiated darkness outside the viewport began to change as enhancement layers went to work. The barren, eroded, hollowed-out planetoids slowly came into view, complete with his route, a dotted line winding through them.

  ‘I am receiving an interesting burst of data from the Heracles,’ the shipboard sim said. ‘Visuals of the mega-creatures that are chasing them.’

  Another frame expanded to take up most of the secondary screen. It showed a succession of shots from the Heracles’ hull cams, shots that zoomed in on the immense creatures, panned from one to another, and cut to other views. Robert stared in fascinated horror, recognising their long shapes, their undulant motion.

  ‘Vermax!’

  He had encountered them on his first journey into the depths of hyperspace, in the lithosphere of Abfagul then later while riding in a sentient machine called Conveyance 289. Only they were arm-length horrors while these things were … gargantuan, serpentine monsters so black their forms seemed to blur into each other.

  ‘Indeed, yes. We know that the small ones are sent by the Godhead and its servants – I doubt that the same applies to those leviathans. At this depth they may even be the remnants of some ancestral species. Their presence here, however, offers a clue about those planetoids … ’

  The ship sim paused, its screen image frozen for an instant before reanimating.

  ‘It appears that not all of the megavermax dashed off in pursuit of the Heracles. We have managed to attract the attention of one and it is heading for us.’

  On the viewport’s data-layer a second line of dashes stabbed in from the side to intersect with their own route.

  ‘Increase speed?’ said Robert.

  ‘We are already approaching this vessel’s nominal maximum but our pursuer is easily matching it.’

  ‘So what does it want with us?’ Robert said with growing irritation.

  ‘Vermax are technivores,’ said the sim. ‘Anything composed of refined materials and laced with energy sources would be a tasty meal. And in a denuded tier like this we are like a sandwich to a starving man.’

  The planetoids were coming up fast but the megavermax was gaining by the second. Hull cams got it in shot and enhancement revealed its colossal size, bearing down on the Construct ship like the grandfather of all whales chasing a minnow.

  ‘Do something, anything!’ Robert said in a strangled whisper. ‘It’s only seconds away!’

  ‘When forced to take drastic action,’ said the sim, ‘the trick is to make it work for you.’

  The view through the viewport swung round wildly. Robert held on to the arms of the couch, even though he was safely strapped in.

  ‘We cannot outrun it in a straight race, but undertaking a spiral dodge around its body – turn one – forces it to abandon that considerable forward momentum in favour of twisting and turning in its pursuit of us. After the second loop we can use our superior acceleration to reach the anomaly with enough time to send you on your way … and that is turn two.’

  Ahead a group of eroded planetoids swam into view while the rear sensors showed a writhing mass of blackness starting to recede.

  ‘We shall be at the anomaly in 235 seconds,’ said the ship sim. ‘And you might be interested to learn that I have solved the mystery of these gutted worlds.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘They are all that remains of the Planetoid Armada of Prince Koyulta-Hidak.’

  ‘I’m sure this revelation would be a weight off my mind,’ Robert said. ‘If I were familiar with the reference.’

  ‘The Prince was the hero of an entire cycle of legends from one of the more recent subsided universes,’ the sim said. ‘In his final and ultimately tragic battle, he led an armada of three hundred – or five hundred depending on the version –
armed planetoids against a terrifying enemy called the Qaw Eveth. Translated it means Sun-Hydra. Analyses of these planetoids reveal the remains of interior workings as well as regular-shaped openings and shafts in the surface crusts … ah, a complication.’

  Robert groaned. ‘Is it catching up to us again?’

  ‘The problem lies ahead – a second megavermax has just appeared from behind one of the planetoids near our target. It appears not to have noticed our approach.’

  ‘Well, that’s a—’

  ‘Now it has. You may have to complete the journey by lifepod, I am afraid.’

  Suddenly, Robert’s couch began to descend, making a quarter-turn to the left as it did so.

  ‘What … is going on?’

  ‘A high-risk ploy,’ the sim said. ‘Which I would only put into operation were it improbable that this craft will reach the anomaly.’

  Moments later he was enclosed in the tiny cockpit of a lifepod, complete with U-shaped steering column, a narrow panel of glassy touch controls, and a small screen to one side. Panic gripped him, along with a weird, hazy fear. Then there was a jolt and a sudden weight on his chest as the pod leaped away from the Construct scout. The screen flickered on, showing one of the planetoids dead ahead. Almost a quarter of its outer shell was missing, a gaping ragged-edged hole exposing shadowy recesses. And an odd purplish glow.

  ‘The autopilot is set to take you into the anomaly and land where there is suitable atmosphere,’ said the ship sim. ‘Tactical updates indicate that the Heracles is about to jump out of this tier and I hope to follow, if I can evade this insistent vermax … ’ There was a burst of static. ‘Good luck, Robert Horst – it has been instructive being you … ’

  The ruined planetoid gaped before him. He tightly grasped the steering column with both hands even though the autopilot was in control. In the cockpit’s cramped silence his quick breathing seemed magnified as the pod plunged into the shadowy interior of the planetoid and swooped round to fly along the inner surface. The anomaly’s purplish glow seemed set against an uneven greyness, less than 150 kiloms away according to the side-screen display. The distance counted down and had reached just 10 kilometres when a small glittery object flew up into the hollow planetoid through a hole roughly a hundred kiloms beyond the anomaly. For a second Robert laughed out loud, sure that it was the Construct scout, then swore in shock when an area of the planetoid shell exploded inwards. Shattered pieces of rock kilometres across flew upwards amid an eruption of dust, grit and debris, and through it moved a gigantic, black serpentine form.

  The megavermax towered up and up in pursuit of the Construct scout, which sharply changed direction, diving towards the inner surface. It looked as if it too was heading straight for the anomaly.

  ‘What … are you doing?’ Robert muttered, almost wishing he had control of the pod.

  Five kilometres from the anomaly, four, three. This was insane, Robert decided as he watched the scout arrowing towards the intercept with that vast shadow hurtling in its wake. At two kilometres the Construct craft veered off, away from the anomaly and in the opposite direction to the pod. And when Robert looked over his shoulder he saw … another vermax behind him, vast, inexorable. Seconds later it collided with the one chasing the scout. Together the colossal monsters ploughed into the inner crust, throwing up a cascade of boulders and shards, more debris to add to the clouds already expanding throughout the interior.

  Less than one kilometre from the anomaly. There was no way to know what to expect on crossing into the fringes of the Godhead’s mind. Ahead the anomaly was vaguely dome-shaped, shifting restlessly, the colours within rippling from purple to green to black to brown, shot through with glittering spikes. In sudden panic, he wondered if the ship sim had programmed the pod to decelerate, just a moment before it did so at the 100-metre mark.

  The pod’s forward motion slowed to a walking-pace glide. Within the anomaly the colours had brightened to bright blues and yellows, drawn in from the darker areas, swirling together, forming what looked like an opening. The pod was a short distance away when an alarm went off inside and the small screen winked on to show a boiling cloud of blackness closing in behind. The pod’s thruster kicked in, accelerating it towards the rippling colours of the anomaly, but too late. Even as it entered the reflective ripples, a smothering, deadly, mountainous thing slammed into the pod. Robert managed to cry out for a moment before the weight of an inexhaustible voracity crushed him down into darkness.

  13

  JULIA

  Yet she did not die.

  That strange, attenuated context, provided for her by the poly-mote, the constrained, blazing bright jet that signified the torrents of Talavera’s cruel virtualities, shrank, slowly at first then more quickly. Almost as if it was falling away from her, as if she was flying up through a shining darkness.

  Then the sensation, if it could be called that, changed again. There was a bright needle lancing down out of a rushing rainbow river that hurtled into a vast, rectilinear cavern, splaying out in polychromatic cables which in turn branched into countless glittering streamlets. Glossy towers, cubes, domes and pyramids crowded the cavern walls in patterns of clusters, receiving the datastreams that glimmered and shimmered through their opaque interiors. The bright needle stabbed into one particular trench, refracted through a polyhedral lens and struck one of the hundreds of conical dimples, its fierce point building up layer upon layer of detailed symbols and patterns and glyphs and interconnections whose submicrocomplexity had no perceptible end.

  Building me, she realised.

  Abruptly the bright spear of data winked out and she knew that she had done it. She had escaped from the virtuality prison and from Talavera!

  But escaped to where? She knew from her earlier researches that the tiernet was a consensual consequence of the myriads of connections between billions of worlds, orbitals, ships, AIs and commercial entities. Variations in code, protocols and security were considerable, which is why most worlds maintained contact with the tiernet through buffer stations. These were arrays of gatekeeper servers, usually staffed with a combination of actual sentient beings and AIs, and almost always kept in orbit. Before the polymote could have uploaded her it must have found a reasonably secure and receptive address at a buffer station within tiernet reach of the Darien system.

  The question was, what was her next step? Her view of her vicinity was in the round, reinforcing her fundamentally non-Human nature. Most of the surrounding conical dimples gave off a pale glow, some brighter than others although none was as bright as her. And in the background was a high, wavering polyphonic tone, like a far-off thousand-strong choir singing some melancholy refrain.

  Sight and sound, these were the only sensations that impinged on her awareness. Julia was disembodied, a consciousness severed from the biochemical flows and surges of organic existence, yet there was still a certain curiosity, a need for exploration and explanation. She wanted to move and she did. As her point of view rose from her conical recess a 3D grid of straight lines appeared above, an orthogonal and diagonal framework. As she watched, a small green mote zipped into one of the upper levels and emitted a flickering burst of red light. All the surrounding recesses responded with a blue radial pulse. But not hers.

  The green point began a quick descent through the grid, its purposeful motion heading in her direction. As it approached it put forth spines and hooks, not, she thought, an indication of friendly intentions. Should she try and get away? Was she capable of moving fast enough? Or was she misreading the situation out of plain ignorance? A reflexive caution made her sink back down into the conical recess, where she puzzled over her apparent lack of fear.

  The green intruder drew near, spines and hooks gleaming as they swung round to point at her. As she stared it hovered overhead for a moment or two then dived towards her.

  The next instant was crammed with blurs and uncertainty. Something black swept in, something silver flashed and the green intruder sprang apart int
o four unequal sections, which after a moment regrouped. Now there were four opponents, not one. They darted forward in pairs yet the newcomer did not back down. The blackness bellied out like a wing, repelling two green attackers while another part of that inky form thrust out a tentacle tipped with vibrating blades. One of the smaller green enemies was carved into disintegrating platelets while the other dodged past and flew straight at Julia.

  Out of the cold, low-key anxiety that she was experiencing came an abrupt bellow of fury and she lashed out with something bright and sharp. The attacker split into several even smaller pieces which immediately tried to reconstitute themselves in the image of their predecessors. A second scything blow with her uncertain weapon left only a small cloud of shimmering fragments in its wake. When she turned her attention back, there was only the black presence, a slow undulating cluster of black curves and folds. A faint nervousness returned.

  ‘How interesting – a fractalised organic sentience, lacking even the simplest org, naked to the flow, a tasty morsel for predators like that mogrifier.’

  ‘My name is Julia,’ she said in her thoughts, hoping to be heard.

  ‘Aha! – Noranglic, I knew it! Which means that you’re from that colony world, Darien.’

  ‘So what is a mogrifier?’

  ‘And you’re quite calm. That’s something of an achievement for a Human torn out of their visceral, eating, breathing existence – I’ve seen a couple of fractalised sentiences in my brief time in the flow and usually they come apart under the strain. Literally.’

  ‘Mogrifier,’ she said. ‘And “org”.’

  ‘Nor are you easily diverted,’ said the black enigma. ‘Very well – mogrifiers are the rat-jackal-cockroaches of the flow, predators with scarcely more than a meg of AI, which makes them easy to disaggregate, if you know what you’re doing. That one was a rewrite mogrifier – if it had got its hooks in you it would have converted you into a horde of copies. Still, the plague variant is worse.