by Stephen Hunt
‘How do you know the walls won’t close around us when we enter?’ snarled Steel-arm.
‘You need to think like a Heezy,’ said Sebba. ‘They made use of matter; they made use of its absence. Everything under their mastery.’
Everything under the sun, including the sun. Lana wished her present predicament felt as certain as the vanished species’ mastery of the universe. A minute later and they reached the vast, near-bottomless shaft at the other end. The glutinous spheres of machinery floating up and down its length were fair racing now, goaded into hyperactivity through the effort of controlling the dark energy recharging the system’s sun. A power so strange and endless that it literally moved the universe. Lana shivered. And I – they – want to turn this off. They were no more than specks of plankton swimming against a tsunami’s currents while dreaming their insane dreams of controlling the sea.
Even Steel-arm stood awed by the sight, rubbing at his alien ambassador’s broach as though trying to summon a genie to help them escape this trap. ‘Oh, they’ll will pay handsomely for this!’ he laughed. ‘This will be the making of me!’
Yeah, we’ll pay, if we don’t get off this world. Lana turned to Zeno and spoke low. ‘Keep your eyes peeled for a chance to make a break for it. Ditch Seth and his bandits. They’re going to get us all killed.’
‘We had better escape with that Heezy broach,’ said Zeno. ‘Or we won’t need Steel-arm’s help to get killed.’
Professor Sebba led them to the hall with the Heezy transport system. She pointed out the metal cases stored there to her base staff, issuing orders to gather up her equipment stash.
‘Nothing without my command!’ barked Steel-arm. ‘What’re you doing?’
Sebba shot the pirate commander a withering look. ‘What do you think I’m doing? These are the instruments I have been using to scrutinise and probe the Heezy’s legacy. If I am going to interface with the Heezy systems at a high level, I will need every last piece of equipment. I have never attempted such intricate research before. What were you planning to do, walk in and start shooting at the Heezy’s machines until the energy shield falls?’
‘No, witch, I was planning to stick my blade in you and your blighted underlings until one of you managed to turn off the shield.’
‘Just let us get on with it, man.’
Steel-arm spat contemptuously on the floor and stalked over to his raiders. The crew were examining Heezy artefacts accumulated from the base’s excavation work. His brutes tossed priceless objects between each other and cackled as they imagined the riches the devices would be worth to collectors. Steel-arm shoved his crew aside, yelling at them to store the priceless alien gewgaws in their equipment packs.
Professor Sebba motioned to Lana and Zeno as she slid open a silvered steel crate. Lana peered inside. A rack of embassy crystals similar to the broach that Steel-arm had commandeered. Sebba activated the devices and passed one each to Lana and Zeno. Lana quickly hid hers. As Sebba’s surviving base staff came past hauling the professor’s equipment, she quietly slipped each member of the expedition a broach. Lana noted she wasn’t handing them out to the pirates still squabbling over the alien treasure. Sneaky bitch. Not that the professor would have cared for what Lana thought, but the skipper approved. Anything to even the odds. Lana saw what else lay inside the case. A series of black pebble-sized globules held in foam mesh . . . more Heezy artefacts.
‘Matter programming instructions,’ whispered Sebba. ‘Take them. If we’re attacked by the sentinels, hurl one at the monster.’
Lana surreptitiously pocketed a handful, glancing over her shoulder as Zeno and the professor did likewise. The artefacts felt warm and jelly-like to the touch, yielding to her fingers when she squeezed. ‘What effect will these have?’
‘Not much,’ admitted Sebba. ‘But it should disrupt the sentinels for a few seconds. Their matter had been programmed to perform as sentries . . . this will instruct the machines they should be acting as something else. It will take them a few moments to prioritise which instruction set takes precedence and purge the new code.’
‘What if these blobs instruct them to turn into something even worse?’ asked Zeno.
‘Ever the optimist,’ said Lana.
The android indicated the Heezy chamber and Steel-arm’s band of raucous thugs, arguing over the treasure they had been led to. ‘Hey . . .’
Lana took the point. We’re well and truly trapped underground; a crew of cutthroats on one side, with a legion of murderous automatons lurking in the bedrock on the other. And top-side, there’s a jungle full of hurt and a sun counting down to a supernova.
Sebba carefully closed the case and turned to call to a group of miners in the corner packing away her equipment. ‘Be careful with the interface deck. That’s a one-of-a-kind.’
‘Let me guess,’ said Lana. ‘Borrowed from the Alliance science team before you left?’
‘Their redundancy package wasn’t nearly as generous as it should have been,’ said Sebba, in justification.
‘Working for Dollar-sign Dillard, I can sympathise.’
Sebba snorted and went to oversee her precious equipment being sorted for transport. The base crew piled gear across the dais where the Heezy version of a transport tube awaited its next consignment of passengers. Lana had a nagging suspicion that as uncomfortable as dropping down the tight well had felt, being squeezed through the depths of the underworld inside a claustrophobic alien force field – Abracadabra literally rearranging itself around her – would not be any experience tourists would pay for. What if our presence registers as trespassers with these ancient systems? We would all be left to fossilise inside the bedrock like bugs in amber.
Zeno sighed. ‘If we can get the shield down, between the upcoming supernova and the Heezy-built brothers out there, we’re not going to have a whole lot of time to find Skrat and Calder. You might have to choose. Crew or ship.’
‘That’s not a decision I’m willing to make,’ said Lana.
‘Not making the decision is pretty much the same as making it, skipper,’ warned Zeno.
I know that. Lana just wished she didn’t.
When it came to actually taking the alien transport system, the journey proved every bit as claustrophobic and terrifying as Lana anticipated. Almost as soon as she stepped on the platform, the wall lunged out at her, encasing her within rock. She caught a momentary glimpse of Zeno coming up onto the platform, but for whatever reason, he wasn’t included in her little bubble of mobile rock. Lana was catapulted alone through the underworld. She got the impression that she was traveling at an incredible velocity, although she had no way to gauge her actual speed. The spherical field held her tight, as enclosed as if she were embedded in invisible foam. Her stomach did somersaults, leaving her feeling queasy as she plunged deeper and deeper into the heart of the world. If ever there was a time to puke, captain, this isn’t it. Is the bubble rotating with me inside? Lana had almost lost track of time when she was regurgitated at velocity into a new chamber, tumbling over a transport platform and narrowly avoiding colliding with Professor Sebba, who had clearly arrived just moments before her. Lana rapidly picked herself up and moved out of the way as the android and members of the base staff were vomited out of the chamber’s rockface.
‘That ain’t never going to take off,’ said Zeno as he brushed himself down. ‘Give me an old-fashioned elevator anytime.’
The android stepped to the side as Steel-arm arrived, his crewwoman Cho clutching onto him in a very un-pirate-ish pose. Bowen glanced around the arrival chamber, identical to the one they had departed from. ‘Where’s the rest of my crew?’ he bellowed at the professor.
‘I only programmed one set of destination coordinates,’ said Sebba. ‘You watched me do it.’
‘Then where are my men, witch?’
‘They were carrying weapons,’ said Sebba, wearily, by way of explanation. ‘But without the protection of your brooch.’ She wisely didn’t mention that all of her p
eople had alien ambassadorial credentials secreted about their person. Lana was definitely warming to the patrician academic now. Did you know that traveling down here without a friendly Heezy transponder code would be a one-way trip?
‘You didn’t warn me that bringing guns would be a problem,’ growled the pirate captain.
‘How was I to know for sure? Besides, would you have left them behind if I had asked you?’
Steel-arm raised his pistol at the mission commander. ‘If I didn’t need you so much . . .’
‘But you do,’ said Lana.
‘Maybe I should kill you instead?’ said Cho, pointing at the Gravity Rose’s captain. ‘Just to make myself feel better.’
Steel-arm placed his cybernetic hand on the barrel of her rifle, lowering it towards the floor. ‘Don’t spoil the stock, Cho. Getting off this miserable rock with enough loot to buy a new ship is all I need to make me feel better.’
If looks could have killed, the alien chamber would have been in the middle of a firefight. Warmer in this chamber than our last; nearer the heart of the core, probably. Lana wiped the sweat dripping off her forehead. ‘Which way now, professor?’
Sebba indicated a panel in the wall behind them, another one of the team’s makeshift interfaces. ‘That way, I believe. We have only ventured this deep a couple of times; and as I mentioned, we abandoned exploring the control levels further after my assistant was lost in a transport glitch.’
‘If it was a glitch,’ said Zeno.
‘We weren’t carrying weapons.’ Sebba motioned to her people to carry the equipment crates with them. Steel-arm and Cho took the rear, covering the prisoners with their guns. Lana didn’t know what the pirate captain hoped to achieve by threatening his human hostages. I have a sneaking suspicion that shooting a weapon down here will trigger the Heezy defence systems quicker than bad chilli through a hound dog. Another instant corridor fell away in front of the survivors, which they entered carefully, Lana and Zeno helping carry the heavy steel cases with the professor’s scientific gear. It took ten minutes to reach the end. As the passage opened out, Lana found herself standing by a doorway into a vast space; an alien cathedral, the roof above so distant that it seemed to be cloaked in mist. Massive columns rose up miles from the cavern floor, but they weren’t fixed, more like tower-sized candles composed of glutinous programmable matter, shifting and flexing as she gawked at the vista. Lana spotted crescent-shaped hills shaped from smart matter, and these, she realized, must be the alien analogue of control panels, attended by groups of bizarre creatures that bore little relation to any organic life forms Lana knew of. The most normal of these machine attendants were zeppelin-sized aerial workers drifting across the open space like ebony jellyfish, clusters of tentacles hanging from their belly and picking up smaller machines, carrying them away to be dropped off at alternative mounds. Occasionally, dark creepers extended out of the cave’s columns and merged with the zeppelins, pulsing spheres of matter passing between them, as though one side or the other was either feeding or being fed. Is this what passes for a bridge or the complex’s intestines?
‘Now I really have seen everything,’ said Zeno.
‘The attendants ignored our presence the last time we visited,’ said the professor. ‘It was as though we didn’t exist.’
I’ll settle for that. Lana glanced back towards the last two pirates. Yeah, but that was before Steel-arm grabbed the system’s attention with an impromptu display of nuclear weaponry.
‘Tell us where we need to go to lower the planet’s energy shield!’ ordered Bowen.
‘The nearest main control system,’ said the professor. ‘That hill over there is the closest candidate. I’ll need to reconfigure it for access control into the shield.’
Sebba made it sound so easy. Lana had to give her that. Whatever other weaknesses the professor possesses, she certainly isn’t lacking in confidence. They headed for the mound, fifty feet away from the chamber entrance. This is like walking on flesh. Wasn’t there some ancient fairy tale about sailors swallowed by a whale and surviving inside its guts? After they arrived, the professor and her team unpacked their precious control board, removing a glutinous dark snake of programmable matter which seemed to latch on to the professor’s control deck before winding out to the black, undulating mass of the hill in front of them. Sebba began her work, muttering. Lana could tell the moment Sebba reprogrammed the mound to accept her input . . . a swarm of the strange robotic creatures covering the mound like dung beetles abandoned the rise, rolling away towards nearby mounds.
‘How long will this damn hack of yours take?’ queried Steel-arm, swinging his pistol towards the troop of attendants scurrying away.
‘A lot quicker with your silence,’ said the professor. ‘I’m going to try to convince the complex that there is an inbound Heezy vessel on the way, and that the shields need to be dropped to avoid destroying it.’
She set about her work with a resolute look in her eye, oblivious to the nerves of her team and captors. Lana scanned the massive space for the first signs of hostile activity. Sebba’s machine, it transpired, was a combination Human-to-Heezy interface, decryption machine and on-the-fly alien DNA sequencer. Every little step required DNA-based authorization, and the deck hummed gently as it ran through the millions of combinations needed to do something as simple as open an alien program. It quickly became apparent that the professor wasn’t having much luck with this particular Herculean task.
‘Let me help,’ suggested Zeno.
‘And just what assistance are you going to be?’ asked the professor.
‘Zeno’s the one who hacked the Heezy corridor system and brought us down here behind your back,’ said Lana.
‘Very well,’ Sebba conceded. ‘Plug yourself in alongside me and see if you can accelerate the decryption routines I’m running.’
Zeno stepped forward. He established a physical connection between an exposed port along his arm and the professor’s equipment. ‘Creator-on-a-stick! I’ve never seen anything as complex as the high-throughput sequencing running inside here. There isn’t a bank vault in the galaxy that could stand up to algorithmic self-assembly as strong as this juice.’
‘Don’t give those two ideas,’ said Lana, glaring at Steel-arm and his pirate companion.
‘Here is a skegging idea for you: speed it up!’ threatened Bowen.
‘I would love to,’ snapped the professor, ‘but my attempts at convincing the shield system it should turn off because there’s no further danger is being somewhat hampered by the fact there’s a whole fleet boosting towards Abracadabra.’ She waved at one of the base staff and the man brought over a data slate to project the Heezy’s sensor telemetry.
‘That’s a pirate squadron,’ said Steel-arm with more animation than he had showed to date. He hooted in satisfaction.
‘The shuttle set to guard the jump point must’ve observed the Doubtful Quasar’s destruction and sent for help,’ said Cho. ‘They’re coming for us!’
‘Just dandy,’ said Lana. ‘You really think your friends are going to be able to save you? What’re the chances your people are flying with ordinance capable of making a dent in a Heezy shield?’ None at all. And there was only one force at the Invisible Port capable of mustering such an armada. Renan Barcellos, the Pirate King himself. We’ve gone from having to deal with one psychopathic killer, to dealing with the only man brutal enough to keep the rest of them in line. Great.
‘Help us? They’ve just killed us! There is no way I can fake a friendly incoming transponder signal with every Heezy sensor tracking a real threat,’ said Sebba.
‘I agree,’ said Zeno. ‘There’s way too much attention being directed deep space-way for us to bluff a bogus friendly past the Heezy systems now.’
‘Then we’ll turn off the dark energy tap,’ commanded Steel-arm. ‘Cancel that damn supernova before the world’s fried. It be that losing its power will kill the shield too. ’
‘You’re insane!’ protested
the professor. ‘I have no idea what stopping the solar feed will do. The only use the Alliance has been able to make of that technology is burning Skein systems into cinders. We’ve never been able to successfully restart a sun. What does that tell you?’
‘That you and your blighted government stooges never knew what you were doing!’ Steel-arm jammed his pistol barrel into the side of her skull. ‘I’m a gambling man with no more chips left on the table. Kill the solar feed or I’ll kill you. I’ll take my chances that the shields will go down with the feed.’
‘Don’t do this,’ begged Lana.
Steel-arm turned his pistol to point at the professor’s leg and triggered a shot, sending her sprawling to the floor in agony, the blood splatter from the impact spraying across Lana’s ship suit. Sebba’s staff rushed to protect her; not, Lana suspected, through any great loyalty, but because without the professor’s talents the rest of them were all dead anyway. Cho jabbed her rifle towards the survivors and yelled for them to step back. Steel-arm dropped his gun barrel down, resting it against Sebba’s good leg. ‘You can die fast or you can die slow, witch, your choice!’
The professor pulled herself up, moaning, to the system interface and did as she had been told. For the first time since they had arrived on the control level, the professor’s work on the board had a visible impact. All around them the vast pillars stretching to the ceiling began to pulse; slowly at first, then increasingly urgent. From the nearest control mounds Lana heard a strange keening as mechanical attendants flooded away from the controls, heading towards the pillars, where they flung themselves against the surface, being absorbed back into the Heezy core.
‘Done,’ rasped the professor, leaning against the control deck. ‘The dark energy tap has been deactivated. From what I can see, the solar renewal cycle is still active. Too much energy was channelled into the sun – it’s going supernova and restarting whatever we do now.’ She wearily set back to work using the interface. ‘We’ve got nothing to lose. I’m going to have another pass at lowering the shields.’ Zeno helped the professor. Sebba toiled alongside the android for another few minutes, and then she stopped, startled. ‘The shield’s been dropped!’
