by Stephen Hunt
‘You did it!’
‘But it wasn’t me,’ said Sebba, in shock.
Lana looked over at the two pirates. ‘Don’t tell me Steel-arm’s plan to yank the plug worked?’
‘No, I don’t think so. That’s impossible, I think it’s—’
‘—academic why it dropped,’ interrupted Zeno. ‘The sun’s still hyper-volatile and running on empty, now. We either need to stabilise the solar cycle or fly out of this system before we’re all toasted.’
Running. That sounded like a plan to Lana when sentinels began to rise as smoothly as bubbling waxworks from the floor. Summoned by Steel-arm’s weapon discharge or the professor’s interference with rebooting the star. The closest Sentinel lunged forward, wrapping both arms around the nearest miner, crushing him to death with an ear-piercing howl from the dying man, a shower of blood from the spines as he exploded in the alien vice.
Steel-arm and Cho weren’t firing their weapons at the sentinels yet. They had found another use for the rifles, forcing the staff at gunpoint to act as human shields between them and the advancing sentinel force. But the base workers weren’t going down without a fight. Even as some of them fell to their attackers, others drew out concealed gobs of Heezy programming instructions, hurling them at the guard machines. The makeshift projectiles didn’t just collide with the armoured humanoids; they impacted against their oily plated bodies, merging with each sentinel as though impaling them. After each impact the machines staggered, swinging about in wild oscillations, some of them half-melting into the rock, others teetering as their limbs changed shape, making the sentinels collapse and overbalance, pooling into bizarre abstract statues, sections of their bodies flowing away independently with a strange new purpose.
Lana pulled a projectile out of her pocket, rolling it nervously between her fingers. It doesn’t feel substantial enough to win a food fight, let alone this one.
Zeno sprinted by her side, disconnected from the professor’s console. ‘I tracked a fast ship inbound from the moon, running ahead of the fleet. The Gravity Rose. Polter must’ve spotted the shield going down.’
‘We need to get back to the surface,’ growled Lana. But there’s no way we can fight our way through this many attackers.
More sentinels advanced on the team’s mound, emerging from the rock floor and attacking around the humans’ flanks. At last Cho and Steel-arm opened fire, the cathedral emptiness around them echoing to the staccato rapid fire of hyper-accelerated projectiles. Their weapons had as little effect as the raiders’ guns outside the base’s brig. Sentinels shrugged the fusillade off like inconvenient rainfall. Lana felt an unspeakable terror at the presence of these implacable killers; almost human in form; yet so narrow-minded in purpose. Lana drew the little pebble-sized instruction sets back, flinging them at the advancing attackers. She hit one in the head and its legs turned into liquid, spilling the body across the floor, spiny arms windmilling around as it fought to re-establish control over its form. Another went down with its body morphing into a series of spheres that tried to rotate around the thrashing corpse. Her fingers fumbled for more ammunition, but she had exhausted her supply. All about her the sentinels slowly reformed, limbs drawing back into shape, the strange geometries of their mutated forms repaired back to their original purpose . . . snuffing out the intruders.
One of the sentinels came charging down the control mound’s slope. Sebba found a last ball of programming instructions and hurled it at the machine. She hit it square on. It immediately started to go into flux, but not before its spiked arm lashed out and struck the professor in the chest, sending her stumbling back in a haze of blood. Their last chance of healing the system’s sun long enough to escape fell with the woman. Sebba collapsed over her deck, moaning, hologram controls flashing indignantly as she sprawled across their interface. Behind the professor, the undulating sentinel surged forward and spilled over her body, black ichor flowing across her as though she was trying to slip into a wetsuit brought to appalling sentience. Lana could only stare on in horror as Sebba’s yells choked off, the ooze filling the professor’s throat and compressing inside her nostrils and eardrums, sending the woman thrashing to the ground, her clothes and face covered by a coursing dark second skin.
CHAPTER FIVE
Walk the Heezy’s guts.
Calder yelled as he seemed to spin around, encased within the wall’s depths. Is this the world’s secret… it’s alive, a vast single organism consuming every hapless visitor who makes the mistake of landing on it? Am I passing through some vast silicon-based life form’s digestive system, following my friends into its gut? Suddenly, the invisible fist gripping him seemed to tighten, rock flowing down around his scalp, pressing in hard. His machete was still in its hand, but locked in place, immovable. This is it, then. I’m going to be absorbed, my bones ground into dust and my flesh dissolved into minerals for the world. Calder’s blood ran cold, bitterly icy. A series of images flashed through his mind. Hesperus, his primitive, formative years as prince of a lost society, a collapsed pre-machine age; losing his brothers and father, losing the war, losing his kingdom before his final, bizarre exile to the stars. So, it is true, then? You really did see your life flash before your eyes as you… were gobbed out onto a hard stone floor? He came up holding his machete, only to find Skrat, Janet Lento and Momoko arrived before him. This place doesn’t look like a digestive system – a simple oblong stone chamber without doors – but they had surely been swallowed by a world rather than a whale, ending up far from the long-buried colony vessel. He didn’t need his torch. There was light in here, a thin, diffuse illumination with no evident source.
‘Where the hell are we?’ Calder asked the others.
‘A more pressing question would be how we get out of here, dear boy?’ said Skrat. ‘We don’t seem to be over-encumbered with exits. I’ve already tried the walls and the floor. Nothing.’
‘I have two questions, if you please,’ said Momoko. ‘Who are you and who am I?’
Calder looked at the robot and groaned. ‘You’ve really picked the moment to dump your cache.’ Although given how terrified the robot had appeared back in the hunting lodge, maybe meeting the spiked knight was just the trigger the robot had needed for amnesia. Calder spun a rapid yarn, telling Momoko that it was a worker unit on the good starship Gravity Rose, charged with looking after Janet Lento and presently suffering from a memory malfunction. Calder’s tale might have been wholly tangential to the truth, but it seemed better to shortcut the conversation before their spiky, dangerous friend tracked them down again.
Calder watched the robot shuffle off to stand alongside Janet Lento, who appeared to have gone into full shock again after confronting their alien assailant. ‘Lento’s seen that creature that attacked us before.’
‘It might explain her state, but I don’t think the ticklish fellow’s organic,’ said Skrat. ‘Some kind of automated sentry. Most likely a relic of the same culture that created the field projection system which pulled us through the rock and constructed this chamber.’
‘The colonists knew where the ruins were inside the valley,’ said Calder. ‘They practically landed their ship on top of them.’
‘Curiosity is a wound waiting to be scratched,’ said Skrat. ‘That’s an old saying among my people.’
‘Never turn up to a duel with only a half-dagger,’ said Calder, staring at the machete in his hand before sheafing the blade. ‘That’s a saying on Hesperus. You know any more, or shall we see if we can get out of here?’
‘The latter, dear chap,’ said Skrat. ‘I’m presuming that you didn’t decapitate our prickly aggressor before you departed?’
‘I was lucky to get out of there with my life.’
Skrat grunted and circled the chamber again, this time with Calder, feeling for hidden doorways. There was a raised platform where the shuttle party had been disgorged from the wall. Calder approached it warily. But the wall didn’t repeat the feat, sucking them away to another loca
tion. It appeared to be just plain solid grey stone – granite or something very close to it. No sign of the advanced transport system which Skrat had theorised they had been taken by. It’s all sorcery to me. As Calder reached the furthest section of the wall it seemed to fold in on itself, stone origami worked by an invisible hand, the corridor retreating before him.
‘You’ve got a magic touch,’ noted Skrat, irritated. ‘I swear I’d tried over there before you arrived.’
‘Royal blood,’ said Calder. ‘Droit du seigneur – or maybe droit du corridor.’
‘Cheeky blighter,’ said Skrat. ‘I did tell you about my high position in the nest, did I not?’
‘I should have been king.’
‘On Raznor Raz you have to earn the title,’ muttered Skrat. He warily checked inside the newly formed passage. ‘Not be born to it.’ He tapped the walls. ‘Programmable matter, do you see? Same as the weapon that rendered our shuttle’s engine pile inert. You do realize that this is the most advanced culture that the Gravity Rose has ever encountered, and we’ve come up against some right queer old coves in our time.’
‘Dead culture,’ said Calder. Although, not quite dead enough yet for my tastes. Calder commanded the robot down the corridor, and Lento followed, obviously glad to be able to put more distance between them and their spiny attacker.
Skrat swished his tail in an irked fashion. ‘Of course! Dollar-sign Dillard. Damn his cybernetic eyes. Every time, every time the devilish blighter does this to us. Planet-sized force fields. Programmable matter. The professor was never mining for rare ores. This is what his camp was tunnelling for.’
‘If you’re right, Dollar-sign can keep it.’
Skrat tapped the corridor as they moved down its length. ‘Opens for you but not me. Jolly racist corridors. But then, Lento was with us, and it didn’t open for her either. That must mean something, surely.’
‘It means I’ve learnt a valuable lesson from the chief,’ said Calder. ‘He’s right. Never get off the ship – never leave the drive room.’
‘One trusts that ostriches never survived the onset of Hesperus’s ice age, then,’ said Skrat.
They reached the corridor’s end. They had explored to the start of a huge cavern dotted with dark mounds, pillars stretching to a distant ceiling. It was as though every surface was alive, slowly rearranging itself into new configurations. Calder’s dark musings about being stranded inside a living organism returned. The belly of the beast. Just looking at this place and its weird living machinery, Calder knew that the terrible knight that had assailed him inside the colony vessel belonged to this landscape, had been born to it. That meant the chances of their attacker knowing how to ride the local transport system was all too high. Which way’s the damn surface? Calder glanced behind as the corridor sealed itself. He tapped the wall. It didn’t seem minded to open for him again.
‘Blast, a one way trip,’ said Skrat. ‘Never my favourite kind.’
‘Did you create this?’ asked Momoko, wonder filling its artificial voice as its head rotated, taking in the sights.
‘Not even on a good day,’ said Calder.
‘We need to go home,’ said Lento.
Calder swivelled around. This was the first thing the driver had said since he had met her that actually made sense. Her eyes were still deranged and wide, but there was something else twitching around the edges of her face; something new. Optimism? ‘You’ll be fine, Janet. Home’s exactly where we’re going.’ Hopefully.
They traversed the chamber for the best part of an hour, searching for an entrance similar to the one they had arrived by, looking for a rapid rock-ride back to the surface. They passed more curiosities in that hour than Calder had been exposed to during his entire life . . . and he had seen some outlandish creatures out on the ice sheets and glaciers. None of the things in the cavern seemed as dangerous as the machine monster, however; even though the creatures appeared to be formed from the same pitch-dark living machinery. Most no bigger than dogs, scampering across the ground, reforming into ebony statues to startle the surface visitors, packs of machines covering each mound, interacting with the oily dark layers as though feeding from the substance – as if the mounds were huge teats. Calder realised something was desperately wrong when he saw flashes of light ahead. That hollow pulse is rail-gun fire. He and Skrat sprinted wordlessly towards the source of the disturbance, Lento and the robot trailing behind. They rounded one of the oddly pulsating pillars and found a mound ahead – Lana and Zeno and a handful of base staff surrounded by advancing figures – a company of the damn alien machines. Two people, a large bearded man and an Asian woman he didn’t recognize, shot wildly into the attackers with little effect. Lana! Calder drew his machete. Someone slumped over a stand of human equipment swayed back to their feet. It appeared to be Professor Sebba, but she was slicked in the same black machine substrate covering the cavern, her face half-hidden beneath the throbbing ooze. The mess congealed around her skull, shifting, forming a helmet-shaped layer. As Calder and his companions hared towards the rise, Sebba began to issue a tinny otherworldly howl, as though her voice was distorted through a voice synthesizer; part human, part raw radio static. The creatures halted, their advance paralyzed by the sound. Calder felt his own body tingle at the noise, shivering as though receiving a series of jolting electric shocks. The bearded man swivelled his pistol in Calder’s direction and Skrat yanked the prince to the side. ‘Careful, old man, that’s Steel-arm Bowen!’
‘What, I’m meant to be afraid of some cyborg who can’t afford to regrow his arm?’
Professor Sebba raised a hand towards the ceiling, pointing, and her strange new voice vibrated across the cavern. ‘GOOOOOOOOOO!’
‘Lana!’ yelled Calder. ‘Over here!’
Lana gawked at the party’s unexpected arrival, a startled look crossing her face before quickly disappearing. ‘Keep your distance! Sebba’s been taken over by that gunk.’
‘See it all,’ vibrated Sebba’s voice. ‘Healing me. My world. My ship. My system. I will be preserved.’
Calder looked closer and saw the professor’s chest had been torn open; but the wound was rapidly sealing itself, dark lines crisscrossing across exposed flesh, an invisible hand stitching the bubbling wound shut.
‘And me, witch,’ said Steel-arm Bowen, holding up a palm-sized control unit. ‘Let’s try preserving me. You’re still wearing my fine suicide collar around your neck, and I’ll fry every human cell left in your body unless you create a passage to take me back to the surface. But first, you can fill that data deck with blueprints of your Heezy weaponry. I’ve got a carrier that needs replacing.’
‘Don’t be an idiot,’ spat Lana. ‘Whatever that thing is, it’s telling us to leave. The world’s energy shield’s down now!’
‘The tramp is right. Let’s just slide void away from this hole,’ begged the Asian woman behind Steel-arm Bowen.
‘I want the treasure I’m owed, Cho. The information stored here will make the Invisible Port a dozen times more powerful than the Alliance. We’ll rule over an empire of thousands of worlds. Think of it . . . the planets under our dominion!’
Calder and Skrat disregarded Lana’s orders, edging forward. Steel-arm swung his pistol around at them. ‘Ah, Mister Skrat. And here was me thinking you were skulking away comfortable like, up on the Gravity Rose. Throw your guns down, or I’ll make your skipper dance the Thousand Volt Jig.’
‘I’m all for generating an operating profit, Captain Bowen,’ called Skrat, indicating the ring of stalled machine knights. ‘But this is simply ridiculous.’
Steel-arm thrust his suicide control unit towards the skipper. ‘Do it!’
Calder and Skrat pitched their rifles to the floor. The only thing they could use them for here was gunning down this pair of armed maniacs. Right now, that seems like a step forward.
‘Toss your blade, too, boy.’
Calder threw the machete to the ground.
‘Over there, Skrat,’ the pir
ate commanded, gesturing with his pistol. ‘Stand by Lana, and park your three strange friends, too.’
Calder and his companions crossed to stand by the skipper. As he passed Professor Sebba’s faceless body, she stepped away from the command console and the ring of machine knights dipped down to one knee, as if in obedience to her body’s every motion.
‘You haven’t learnt to obey my orders any better while you were off enjoying the jungle,’ hissed Lana.
Calder shrugged. ‘Maybe you should try stamping one of those suicide collars around my neck. I might jump quicker, then.’
‘That’s the best idea I’ve heard since we arrived here.’
‘GOOOOOO!’ what was left of Sebba crackled again. There was an element of finality in the professor’s twisted voice that Calder really didn’t want to disregard.
‘I warned you, woman!’ roared Steel-arm at the professor. ‘I just wish there was enough of you left inside there to appreciate a good shot across the bows.’ He reached for the control and sparks flew. What remained of Sebba staggered back, the black helm formed around her head shuddering, spines spiking out as though it was trying to transform into one of the deadly machine knights. Steel-arm roared with cruel laughter. ‘That shock was set on two . . . unless you want to taste ten, witch, you’ll download the blueprints for the Heezy weaponry the alliance found on Pluto. Do it, or I’ll fry every synapse left in your skull!’
The professor’s body rippled with programmable matter. Steel-arm’s cybernetic arm lurched up and over, his steel fist enclosing around his other hand’s flesh fingers, tightening around the collar control unit and crushing his natural limb in one smooth movement. Cho yelled and opened fire in the professor’s direction. The errant artificial arm swerved out from Steel-arm’s shoulder as he screamed in agony, seemingly oblivious to its owner waving the mess of his organic hand in the air. Steel-arm’s cybernetic limb closed around Cho’s neck and lifted her into the air, juddering, her feet scrambling desperately for purchase on ground that was no longer in reach. The sickening snapping sound of the female pirate’s neck crackled across the mound and a finger tightened in a death rictus around her rifle’s trigger. Steel-arm shuddered as his chest caught a chattering volley of pellets, almost shredded in half, and the corpses of both pirates tumbled to the floor. They lay there together; Steel-arm’s cybernetic limb the only thing still alive, fingers drumming the cavern floor. Black ooze flowed off the mound, undulating across the two corpses like a swarm of feeding beetles. Calder nearly choked on the foul stench as both bodies dissolved beneath the alien carpet, flesh absorbed inch-by-inch until nothing was left.
