G’Brozen Mav looked up, angry eyes regarding her.
“I never said that it was over!”
Sam sat back, trying to look amiably composed.
“That’s good to hear–do you have a plan?”
The Chainer leader’s grim features were unchanged when he looked over at Toolbearer Hechec.
“Gather together a ground force from any of the surviving Chainer bases, steal a heavy assault ship from one of the fleetworlds, then carry out a sneak attack on the Shuskar Citadelworld, destroy as much of their machinery as possible and… and get as much information out of any prisoners before we have to leave.”
Hechec nodded thoughtfully. “I remember this plan, my leader–you discarded it because the likely Shuskar counterattack would make an escape from the Citadelworld almost impossible.”
“Their effective fleet strength is already almost at full stretch,” Mav said. “They just do not have the trained crews to deploy more vessels, which greatly hinders their strategic advantage.”
Toolbearer Hechec nodded, his hooded features looking alert and focused. “Also, arranging diversionary strikes against one or two high-profile Shuskar installations could make them think that these targets are the sum and total of our counterstroke.”
“Excellent suggestion–which installations would be suitable?”
“The powercell factory on Ghorosh and the Mount Yalk supply silo on Pommolik–both are crucial to Shuskar supply lines and are located in the vicinity of portal gates. That makes them easier for our portal snaggers and easier for the strike forces to make a swift withdrawal.”
“How quickly can Chainer groups mount such operations?” G’Brozen Mav said.
“From orders to forward rally point, between ten and twelve hours.”
Mav nodded. “Good. In the meantime we’ll need a contingent of troops for when we reach the Shuskar Citadelworld.”
“We have a Chainer cadre on Malgin-Kog,” Hechec said. “They have been training recruits from the clan-towns for more than three string-months. The Malginori are a Muranzyr offshoot and are quite a belligerent lot.”
“They sound ideal,” said Mav. “We’ll head there, get them boarded, then fly to the fleetworld Nagolger.”
“Nagolger?” said the Toolbearer. “But would not Shankol be closer?”
“True, but Shankol has two garrisons and a full complement of combat fliers. The Nagolger multiyards are far less tactically daunting—”
“If I might make an observation,” Sam said, cutting in. “First, it’s a good plan and I like it, and second, are you sure that you have the stages of the plan the right way round?”
G’Brozen Mav frowned. “Why delay the ability to strike?”
“Why make preparations before you know what you will be facing?”
Mav’s glare softened to a glower, which was then directed at the Toolbearer. “What do we actually know about the Nagolger yard complex? Was there ever a mission profile?”
Hechec shook his head while glancing at his workstation display. “According to the archives I brought with us, there is only a survey summary and it’s over forty years old.”
“You’ll have to go to Nagolger first,” Sam said. “Send out messages to your secondary bases, set up the diversionary strikes and get your ground troops ready for embarkation–but you need to scout out the enemy positions, what your mission goal is and what it will take to reach it. Intelligence is key–without it you’ll be going in blind.”
G’Brozen Mav met her gaze and for a moment she thought he was going to refuse her suggestion, insist on following his plan, then he looked at the Toolbearer, who nodded.
“Very well,” Mav said. “We scout the area first.”
Encrypted commands were sent to a string of Chainer bases and contacts, a course for Nagolger was plotted, and everyone settled in for a long journey. Toolbearer Hechec, while analysing packets of battle and recon reports received from the base network, tried to engage G’Brozen Mav in a discussion about possible unit deployments, but Mav’s mood had turned morose for whatever reason and eventually the Toolbearer wandered off to Engineering. Sam remained on the bridge, concerned that her departure might make it seem as if she and the Toolbearer were colluding in avoiding Mav’s company. Another chilly hour passed before she realised that she actually wasn’t that concerned, so she rose and left, heading for the main hold. She could retask one of the terminals down there to keep track of Chainer reports, but that was not her primary reason for this sidetrack. It was less than a day since the ship AI told her about the sensor data being read from the cryostasis canister holding Oleg Kelitak’s body. Now that the chaos of Armag was behind them, curiosity was nagging at her, demanding to be satisfied.
Several minutes later she was on the upper gantry of the main hold, following it round to the special storage room. Presence glows flickered on as she entered, the hatch clunking heavily shut behind her. Oleg’s cryostasis canister was shelved at shoulder-height halfway down the long narrow space, its monitor display showing black characters and symbols against pale green. She studied the sensor data, shifting the sections along by touch, studying timescale comparisons, then paused, frowning, hands resting on the canister surface.
“Ship,” she said. “Are you there?”
“Yes, Lieutenant Brock, I am.”
“These readouts… is this right, that vital signs restarted, heart and respiration, continued for nearly half an hour, then just stopped?”
“The data is correct, Lieutenant. However, core temperature is now lower than it was before this activity, and sensors are detecting compounds associated with post-death cell degeneration. There are also the first indications of muscle stiffness.”
Sam shook her head sadly. “So he wasn’t in any kind of Kiskashin pseudo-hibernation, then.”
“No. Speculation–some variants of the Kiskashin genome may have evolved post-trauma survival states which we were unable to treat and accommodate correctly due to absence of knowledge.”
“If that were so, why wouldn’t Mojag’s copy of Oleg have passed on such knowledge to Pyke or someone?” She shrugged. “Well, it’s all academic now.”
She left the storage unit, descended to the main hold floor and the recessed room with its hold controls and secondary work stations. But after nearly an hour she grew restive, recalling how comfortable that couch was up on the bridge (which was also maintained at a cosier temperature than the hold). Eventually she gave in, transferred her ongoing screen-state back to the bridge, and left the hold. G’Brozen Mav glanced up for a moment when she re-entered the bridge, sparing her only a cold and dark look before going back to the display of weaponry stats which filled his screen. As she settled back into the workstation’s couch, Sam observed the Chainer leader out the corner of her eye:
There’s no way you’ll be taking me out on a recon, she thought. All that matters is how many you leave behind to guard the ship. For personal safety you’ll take Hechec and two guards, leaving two aboard, and two I can handle. You’ll feel betrayed when you see the Scarabus lift off and depart, certainly no less than this Pyke was when you stole his ship in the first place. And I shall undoubtedly feel guilt and remorse for my own part, too, but once I’ve tracked down the drone we can and will complete the mission!
Spidery, leafless trees and bushes lined the deep, fogbound ravine along which Akreen trudged. True, it was a fabricated place left behind in the deepest recess of his mind, but it still felt as if he had been trudging along it for a weary eternity. Gredaz was leading the way, his tall, broad-shouldered form made pale by the thick, swirling fog. Not for the first time Akreen reflected upon these surroundings with a certain scorn, knowing this stark vacancy to be the only context setting that his etiolated precursors had been capable of fashioning, a harsh confining chasm.
How galling it was to be ambushed by his ancestors and then thrust down into this place. Clearly, they had been planning and preparing for such an eventuality and when Khorr had a
ttacked him his resulting incapacity was all the opportunity that they needed.
Not that they were receiving treatment any less severe than if Akreen were still fully in control. With Rajeg as spokesman, they had tried to assure Khorr of their loyalty by spilling all they knew about Gredaz and the plan for Akreen to travel to Gatuzna to meet a Zavri ancestor, a survivor from before the Great Unshackling War against the Apparatarch. Having convinced Khorr that they really were, collectively, Akreen’s precursors, and that Akreen’s self was imprisoned within, they were now leading him down into an ancient underground complex in search of the ancestor, drawn there by those faint flickers of bioelectric resonance that all Zavri emanate.
From the shifting brightness far above, Akreen could just hear his precursors, their bursts of compulsive squabbling interspersed with irascible comments from Rajeg. The expedition with Khorr had thus far not brought them anywhere near their goal. Not long ago they had reached a T-junction, followed the meagre bioelectric trace along to one side only to find the corridor ending abruptly at the brink of an immense, deep fissure that rose to open sky. And when they went back to try the other side of the junction they narrowly escaped being crushed by a corridor collapse, barely making it through. Now Rajeg and Khorr were heading along and up since Khorr claimed that he’d spotted a crude bridge spanning the gulf about half a kilometre away.
So while they were negotiating a route through centuries-old ruined passageways, Akreen was doggedly plodding along after Gredaz. On their arrival down here, Gredaz had insisted that a pseudo-subjective context like this could be altered by focused and unflinching purpose. Which turned out to be true–the rocky-ravine appearance and the leafless trees weren’t much but were a definite improvement on the empty blank pit they were tossed into.
Occasionally he was sure he heard whispers from beyond the fog, muffled footfalls, and once a brief hoarse laugh. Gredaz insisted that these were merely after-echoes from his precursors’ presence, part of the persistent quality of Zavri memory. Akreen pondered this, unsure if it was in the long term an advantage or a disadvantage.
Suddenly Gredaz halted, stretched out his left hand, took a pace to the left, then another, which was almost enough to be swallowed utterly by the fog. Then he re-emerged to beckon Akreen and there, in a cleft in the rough black rock, was a rack of crude, narrow steps leading up.
“Our ascent begins,” Gredaz said with a bleak smile.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
At some point during his bizarre flight through subterranean darkness, Pyke was overcome by a wave of lethargy so enfolding and comfortable that he could not resist sinking into a half-sleep. As he drowsed he could just hear the annoying voice of that AI remote muttering to him in the background, occasionally breaking through with a sharp comment or a direct question.
“… do realise that as an outsider your understanding of Warcage politics and history cannot help but be minimal and fragmentary at best. You probably don’t know that the Zavri were originally allies of the Inheritors–which is how we termed ourselves, by the way; Apparatarch is a terrible name, conferred upon us by some Shuskar sycophant. We always thought of ourselves as the Inheritors since we inherited the Builders’ legacy, their dreams and concepts, the totality of their work in effect. We had a responsibility to shoulder so when those ingrates and persecutors and slavers started to go from world to world, conquering and slaughtering and spreading their lies, we had to act. We had to oppose them.
“At that time, the Shuskar were just one among a clutch of extremist factions. We did not really understand the strains of xenophobia which underpinned the creeds of those factions, only that they had come together out of a shared sense of, well, hunger for loot and slaughter is probably the most accurate summation. Their propaganda raved about a host of injustices, most of which were imagined or cooked up out of the meagrest components, cross-world regulation of trade, for example, or food production standards, and so forth. In such feeble soil was the great weed of their outrage planted, and once their war wagon started rolling few authentic justifications were sought.
“Battles raged back and forth for years, entire worlds became shattered battlefields, our greatest weapons were the Cold Regiments, cognitive combat machines, some the size of your fist, others as big as a castle and able to move under their own power. Our organic allies, like the Nakwra and the Zimzin, were almost as impressive in terms of the intricate technologies and sophisticated weaponries they were able to provide. The Zavri, with their inherent and unique biology, straddled both these disparate elements of the war effort. And it worked, and the would-be usurpers and blood-hungry marauders were steadily pushed back and back. And then, at that dig site on Keniphi, those Shuskar researchers found five sentient bioweapons buried in ancient metal caskets…”
He became aware of a brightening of the light, a smear of weak glow leaking past his half-shut eyelids, a visual nag as yet too subtle to disrupt the swaddling doziness in which the probe’s commentary was an irritating murmur.
“… proved to be more than just resurrected war toys stinking of the grave. Oh no, as living sentient things they have minds and memories out of which they dredged blueprints detailing a weapon of surpassing specificity. Suddenly we found front-line units of the Cold Regiments were starting to suffer higher than usual losses and malfunctions–then a reconnaissance-in-force on one of the few remaining enemy sympathiser worlds was routed, and the battle that we rushed into a day later they won, convincingly. Before long we were the ones who were falling back, our combat machines were easy prey to the new Shuskar weapons, which were even capable of destroying the Zavri…”
Pyke cracked open an eye and saw grubby dilapidated corridor walls sliding past. Hah, more boring dream scenes, he thought. I would have expected my fizzing imagination to come up with something a bit wilder than that! Wake me up when it gets all shouty and fighty and mad! He cried out. Or at least meant to, or could have…
“… only took a few years before the positions were reversed and we were the ones being forced back to our holdworlds–by ‘we’ in this case I mean the alliance of we Inheritors and the Zavri, the Zimzin and a dozen other civilisations who had devoted their resources and lives to the cause. But even our staunchest allies, the Zavri, were so diminished that they could scarcely field a sizeable force any more. So when one of their leaders, Kaldro-Vryn, came to us with a sombre but strange request we could not refuse. Back then, the Zavri knew far more about the secrets of their biology than those of today. Among their many meditation techniques, for example, was one called the Encrystalling–this was capable of sending the meditator into a deep state of mental suspension and physical stasis so profound that their biometallic flesh itself transmutes into a pseudo-crystalline form, the Incarnalith as they called it. So, before our sensors, this is the metamorphosis which Kaldro-Vryn conducted and completed then, as we agreed, his remains, his Incarnalith, was despatched to our deepest, most fortified vault for safekeeping. Of course, we could not suspect the true scale of the savage destruction that the enemy would soon visit upon our worlds…”
Even though his drowsy state was warm and comfortable, still changes in his immediate surroundings continued to impinge upon his awareness. There was no longer that sense of swift, gliding motion, so he shifted an arm to peer out with bleary eyes–and it seemed that now he was descending into some huge hole or some such… honestly, whoever’s in charge really has to keep the interruptions to a minimum! Can’t they see that the good folk are trying to get some kip?
“… struck without mercy or restraint. When our military campaign was in the ascendancy we went to great pains to avoid the mass slaughter of non-combatants and the destruction of cities. But when the Shuskar and their goons became the conquerors they opted not to bother with such niceties. Military and civilian were subjected to the same brutal logic of total war, entire populations were wiped out, and especially troublesome planets became the target for the Shuskar’s most treasured weapons, the
mantle munitions. Monstrous towers capable of burrowing into the surface of a planet, tunnelling down beneath its crust then detonating their payloads with devastating effect–as with several other worlds, these vicious weapons were used here on Gatuzna, as I’m sure you have already seen…”
Pyke frowned. Still his rest was being disturbed, small inescapable alterations in the surroundings, a certain coolness that he could feel on his skin. And had the sense of motion ceased altogether? And was this a solid surface beneath his stretched-out form?
“Many millions of brave sentients died when they broke our world, when they tore into the guts of Gatuzna in search of the machines and re-matrixed stone that held our distributed intellect. We were prepared for the very worst, with concealment gambits and preservation ploys that ultimately ensured our survival, but the Incarnalith of Kaldro-Vryn was not so fortunate. The colossal forces unleashed by the mantle munitions penetrated the storage chamber, shattering the Incarnalith into thousands of fragments. So with the few resources left to us, amid the demolition of Gatuzna, we sent the chamber down into a risky vault of last resort, down into the planet’s outer core where Shuskar sensors could not see with any detail.
“We had our stealthy, clandestine bolt holes, and we managed to survive the bombardment, the planet-ripping, and the aftermath. In the subsequent millennia we have watched the Shuskar rise to prominence, then utter dominance; watched as they imposed on every world a brutal hierarchy with themselves at the pinnacle, various grades of sycophantic minions below them, and the mass of planetary populations at the bottom. And seen how they used the institutions of the Grand Escalade to divert energy and aggression into the bout tournaments, the battles, the faked grudges, the pseudo-wars pitting planet against planet. Over the span of time it has caused the grotesque de-evolution of all the system’s civilisations, the brutalising of thought and social interaction, and what was once the Great Harbour of Benevolent Harmony has become the Warcage, our prison, their grand arena where the powerless perform and fight and die for their pleasure.”
Ancestral Machines Page 33
