In a single stride Akreen stepped away from the underground chamber of the Incarnalith and emerged into a stony plantless ravine. Gatuzna, ancient refuge of the Builders’ last sentient machines, was behind him, and the Ruined Road lay ahead. Stormclouds raced through the sky, but down in the sheltered ravine the air was warm and only a scattering of raindrops speckled the grey rocky sides or spattered on Akreen’s silvery-grey skin. There were no signs of animal life either so he had no means of knowing if this world was poisoned in some way. But the oval portal gate tracker was giving a definite reading–more than a mile beyond one of the ravine’s sheer cliff walls. Akreen took a couple of steps back and surveyed the imposing, uneven surface for a few moments. Then he walked a few paces further along, approached the cliff and began to climb.
The ascent took him out of the ravine’s sheltering depths, exposing him to stronger gusting breezes although nothing more than a sporadic shower was coming down. There was something satisfying about moulding his hands and feet to the cracks and slots in the rock face and steadily making his way upwards, rising out of shadow and into the light as he had already done several times in the course of this strangest of quests.
The clifftop turned into a slope of huge shattered boulders that looked as if they were once massive square-edged blocks of upheaved bedrock which had been worn and rounded by an age of harsh weather. Akreen traversed the slope by clambering around the great blocks, sometimes ducking through short tunnels formed by floodwater washing through gaps beneath the huge tilted slabs. At last he reached the top of the rise, emerged from the jumbled boulder maze and stared out at a wide hazy plain littered with the ruins of fallen cities.
[Aha, said Gredaz. The myths about the sky-palaces of Agaskri had a core of truth after all.]
[The rotted bones of another tribe of bested inferiors, Zivolin said. Gilded perches hurled to the ground.]
The latter’s comments surprised Akreen a little. As he carefully descended from the crest, he wondered if Zivolin was being overly contemptuous–or was it merely a kneejerk dismissal of the defeated?
The portal gate tracker led him downslope to the remains of a large circular building. Roofless, its walls were reduced to waist-high stumps, yet there was very little debris or rubble scattered within or nearby. Akreen followed the tracker’s quiet beeping to a central room where broad stairs curved up to an empty platform. He climbed the steps and, sure enough, when he reached the top the oval portal gate appeared. He paused for a last look at the hazy ruins of fallen palaces, then stepped through the gate.
Abruptly he was floating in icy, airless darkness. Quickly he adjusted his eye filters and a moment later he could see that he had appeared next to an immense rock surface, beneath some titanic, wedge-shaped splinters floating side by side like pieces of a vast puzzle that no longer quite fitted together. Recalling the munition-devastated ruins of the planet Gatuzna, he could see how orbital bombardments had had similar effects here, cracking this world down to its core. Convulsions had torn out the planet’s viscera, gravitational shifts altering the axial spin, with massive layers of atmosphere bleeding off into space. All that was left was this desolate sepulchre, raked by hard vacuum.
The tracker device led him across the flat expanse of rock, a weightless flight in near-zero-gee to where a square entrance led into a rib-and-column-reinforced cavern. As he drifted towards the centre, the portal gate flickered into existence.
The next world was hot, seared by the sun, scoured by sandstorms. Akreen’s journey to the next gate took him across a line of rocky hills that skirted a wide flat plain. The plain was the abode of several large insects and reptiles but what prompted a certain caution was the immense edifice that lay at the centre. Akreen was not sure if it had been grown or engineered, but it was undoubtedly the product of a singular purpose. It was a gargantuan, monstrous head, perhaps three hundred yards high. It had a thick brow and a wide heavy jaw and sat upon the plain with a forward tilt, angled a little to the side, with its cave-like eyes fixed on the horizon. Off in the distance, Akreen could make out the broken and split remnants of other massive heads.
It also appeared to be hollow, going by the shadowy shapes that moved around inside its eyes and mouth.
[The Mind-Temples of Rautantir, said Gredaz. According to some old tales, the monks sang the Endless Starsongs in shifts.]
A flock of shadowy shapes burst forth from eyes and mouth, wheeling in Akreen’s direction. Even at this distance he had been spotted.
[And now they’re temples to bones and excreta, said Zivolin. No songs, no monks, only dust and these ugly beasts.]
And ugly they were. With an overall dark red colour, they had flexible, membranous wings with hooks at their tips, short whiplike tails and a pair of white eyes on either side of a rudimentary head that was all mouth. The leading members of the flock caught up with Akreen when he was still some distance from the exit portal, uttering a harsh blaring squall as they dived at him. Without breaking stride Akreen grabbed the first one to get within arm’s length, snapped its wings and flung it to the ground. Its agonising screeches drew the flock leaders back for a few moments but they soon continued their pursuit, catching up with him again.
There was a trail of bloody, broken corpses in his wake by the time the tracker led him to a hill with a flat, paved summit. The oval gate appeared and without hesitation he lunged through.
On the other side of the dark oval he found himself weightless again, but this time he was underwater, submerged in darkness. Engaging the eye filters again, Akreen saw he was floating not far from a pale curved pillar thicker than his own torso. He swam over and, close up, saw that it was a massive tapering bone. There was another just visible in the murk, curving the same way, and when he swam between them he spied a segmented line of pale fossils down below and more bones curving in from the other side, conclusive proof that he was drifting through a titanic ribcage.
When he took out the portal tracker it was indicating roughly in the same direction as the sweep of the bony remains. It wasn’t long before Akreen found the creature’s colossal skull–and the buildings and towers that had been built into and upon it, clearly when it was alive. The only ocean life currently visible were small paddling creatures and shoals of tiny swimmers with oddly hinged tails. Akreen wondered if the effects of the long-past wars had so eradicated life from this world’s seas that now only the most meagre of species could survive.
[Think what it has taken for the sentient peoples of the Warcage to survive the Shuskar, what has been erased and what had to be abandoned, said Gredaz.]
Akreen had no reply to give; instead, he searched the nearby seabed and found the portal gate opening at the foot of a giant overhang.
He fell out of the other side of the one-way gate, fell wet and dripping onto a heap of flat metallic objects. Streaming with water he got to his feet and saw that he was surrounded by mounds and drifts of battered shapeless objects in many colours. It was daylight and he was standing in the shadow of a disorganised stack of ragged, compacted cubes of some unidentifiable material, and it was clear that he had arrived in some kind of vast garbage dump. His olfactory sense was detecting oil and rust and decaying organics.
Akreen produced the gate tracker, studied the readout, then set off on a course with the sun at his back. The route followed a rough-hewn roadway along the side of a long rocky scarp which jutted above the general undulating sea of trash. The road had a shallow upward incline and the higher he climbed the greater the distances that were unveiled on all sides, and it was soon apparent that the garbage tip stretched away for as far as he could see in all directions. Could this have been a dumping ground for nearby Warcage worlds in past decades, even centuries? But observations told him that much of the trash on display was of a more recent vintage.
He continued up the rough road, which spiralled around till it reached what lay at the summit, an immense sculpture of a figure seated with cupped hands held out at chest level. It was ve
ry, very old, its details eroded by time and the elements, but it was the still, suited figure lying sprawled and face down at its feet that caught his eye. Bending to look, Akreen saw several small holes in the back of the suit helmet and when he turned the body over a desiccated skull stared up at him through the visor.
[Metal-eating parasites, said Gredaz. Chewed their way into the protective suit. The holes let in gaseous poisons, and death overwhelmed him.]
“Why have such creatures not attacked me?” Akreen said.
[You have been attacked repeatedly since our arrival here in this vast tract of junk! said Zivolin. But before they even take a bite, something makes them shrivel up and drop off. What could that be, I wonder?]
Akreen nodded in silence, understanding. The Incarnalith of Kaldro-Vryn, the potent shards of an ancient Zavri general. The Inheritor machine’s claim was that they would take over the control systems of the Sunheart, the Builders’ fabled refuge within the Warcage’s sun, and make inevitable the ousting and defeat of the Gun-Lords and the Shuskar. Of course, he was placing great trust in this promise, he knew that, which sharpened the distrust that he was keeping in abeyance for now. Assurance from unverifiable sources demanded caution, especially when they did not explain puzzles, no matter how minor.
As he released the suited corpse it slumped onto its back and one arm slid aside to reveal a small brown book. He picked it up, brushed away encrusted dust and saw that it had a single letter or symbol on its cover. A suspicion tickled the edge of his thoughts, so he stowed the book away in a pouch that he formed at one side of his midriff. Akreen then held out the tracking device and moved around the monument to triangulate his destination. Satisfied, he approached the big seated figure and started to climb. The portal gate had formed in the cupped hands of the sculpture by the time he had hauled himself up to stand on one of the arms.
[Just a few more steps, said Gredaz. Soon we will face the enemy of our people, the enemy of all, and wrest away their power.]
“So the Inheritor machine said,” Akreen replied. “But still I do not find it entirely trustworthy.”
[Who is? said Zivolin. Sadly, there is no obvious way back, so you can either lie down next to that bag of bones down there or embrace the unknown.]
Walking along the crooked arm he reached the dark pulsing oval.
“Truth is cold,” he said. “Let the unknown beware!”
He shouldered forth into the swirling darkness… which drew him forward as before, but instead of emerging from the one-way destination gate an instant later, the moment felt stretched or suspended and the darkness seemed to contract around him, squeezing, smothering… then it eased and withdrew and opened and his outstretched leg completed that step as his foot struck a solid surface. He staggered into brightness, a broad elevated walkway of some kind, with other levels tiered beneath and above–a subsurface dock, he realised, as he saw a couple of vessels berthed along at one end, while nearer there was an impressive tower rising before him, and several humanoids gathered warily about him.
“Hey, isn’t that… er, whatsisname…”
“The Zavri guy…”
“That’s him–the Captain had us chasing after him on that smashed-up planet.”
“I think that the Captain will want to know about this–immediately.”
“Sure, Oleg, sure–I was about to, y’know…”
Akreen turned to one of the assorted bipeds as it was fumbling with a head-mounted communicator.
“You are the followers of Captain Pyke–correct?”
“That’s us,” was the reply. “Loyal followers, usually suffering for it–I’m Ancil, by the way.”
The short, scrawny Human held out his hand and Akreen gravely shook it.
“I see that this is the Shuskar Citadelworld,” he observed. “I must speak with your Captain urgently.”
“Right, I see, immediately and urgently, okay…”
There then ensued repeated calls on the communication device for a short time, then excitement when contact with Pyke was established, followed by several infuriatingly irrelevant exchanges until the Human Ancil finally broached the crucial matter.
“… well, it didn’t vanish on our side, like it did before. And you’ll never guess who walked right out of it!… What, a two-headed gorilla dressed like a clown and singing ‘The Hills of Connemara’? Well, no, as a matter of fact–it was the big silver guy, Akreen, the Zavri general…”
“First Blade,” Akreen said.
“Ah, yeah, First Blade Akreen, and he’s very keen to have a word, chief… what’s it about?… er…”
For a wordless moment Human and Zavri stared at each other before Akreen spoke. “My patience is not unlimited–inform your captain that there are vital matters that I must discuss with him in person without delay.”
The Human nodded. “Yup, that’s right, the First Blade wants a face-to-face, chief… no use swearing at me, chief, I’m just the messenger… okay, I’ll get him on that right away…”
Ancil straightened and turned to look at a tall, thin biped that Akreen did not recognise from before.
“Punzho, the chief needs you to open a portal bridge back to that last balcony, okay?”
Akreen watched with growing surprise as the tall humanoid called Punzho activated a tripod-mounted boxy device which moments later projected an oval portal gate next to the concourse balustrade. This, Akreen realised, was how he must have arrived a short while ago. That last gate in the Ruined Road sequence was like a hub-gate, according to the Inheritor machine–it should have sent him into the Sunheart but for some reason he ended up here. Which had serious implications for the last stage of his journey.
The Human Ancil called to him and gestured towards the stable portal gate. Akreen glanced over the railing and saw a second gate over on one of the tower balconies, so he stepped forward–it was time that he and Captain Pyke conversed. On several topics.
The glow cubes in the ceiling were no longer working, so someone had set up a couple of lamps so that one of the Malginori medics could examine the emaciated remains of the Shuskar Gun-Lords–or rather the decrepit Shuskar that had played host to those repugnant sentient biomechs for so long.
Pyke shuddered. Who could bear such a thing? To be turned into a wrinkly, shrivelled slave. Coffin-dodgers, right enough.
Another Malginori was tending to the dozen or so cuts that decorated his hands, courtesy of the Incarnalith shards. The medic was dabbing each wound separately, first with a dab of antiseptic then with a smear of battlefield-quality skin sealant. He was nearly done when the balcony doors slid aside and a tall silvery figure stepped into the room. The Malginori reacted with lightning speed, dropping their medical instruments and producing hefty autopistols in a blink of an eye while bellowing at the newcomer to get down on his knees.
“All right, all right… I said All Right!–he’s with me.”
“But this is a Zavri warrior!” said one of the Malginori. “One of the Loyal Seven!”
“Yeah, well, fortunes of war, roll of the dice, and all that stuff–he’s helping us now. He’s a…” Pyke looked at Akreen and smiled. “Mr Akreen is our consultant on Shuskar combat tactics, so, if ye don’t mind, we’ll be doing some consulting in private.”
He made ushering gestures towards the door and the Malginori medics retrieved their equipment and left, wearing sullen frowns.
“They’re fine fellows, actually,” Pyke said. “Bit lacking on the sense of humour side o’ things, though.”
Akreen’s height made the room seem cramped somehow as he stalked over to the pitiable corpses and stared at them for a few moments. Then he looked up with those piercing eyes.
“Four of the five Shuskar Gun-Lords!” he said, clearly astonished. “Your shards of the Incarnalith! How did they accomplish this?”
Pyke frowned. “How come you know about that?… Ah, wait a second…”
“I encountered the Inheritor machine in the Gatuzna tunnels, sometime after your
departure,” said Akreen. “It had decided to use you as a host for the shards because… my mind was deranged by my precursors.”
“Erm… you’ve lost me now.”
“The host for the shards of the Incarnalith was originally intended to be me!” Akreen said impatiently. “You were given almost a third of them, and once I had recovered my sanity I received the remaining two-thirds.”
The tall silver warrior clenched his fists, brought them up to press against his forehead for a moment then lowered them. “I can hear the voice of Kaldro-Vryn demanding vengeance against the enemies of the Zavri.”
“Just wait until he really gets wound up.”
“The Gun-Lords were abominations that poisoned all the worlds of the Warcage.”
“Well, we’ve got four of the scum-sucking gougers,” Pyke said. “And we’ve routed the Shuskars’ mercenaries–last report I heard said there’s only a few isolated bands gone to ground at the basement level.”
Akreen shook his head. “I was sent by the Inheritor machine via a sequence of portals that was supposed to end at a specific destination, the Sunheart, the Builders’ refuge inside the sun. My purpose was to reach the command centre there, whereupon the Incarnalith shards would seize control of the governing systems and prevent the Gun-Lords from using the ancient drives to crash the Warcage into another sun, which the machine surmised they would do if they realised that defeat was imminent.”
Pyke nodded. “Sounds familiar–I got the same chapter-and-verse after I picked up my cargo of death-splinters, though they didn’t say anything about the Scum-Lords using the entire Warcage as a missile. All I had to do was get myself over to the Shuskars’ hangout and find a way into their command and control so the Incarnalith shards could do their thing, take over the systems and shut the Shuskar out.” He laughed bleakly. “But dear old Kaldro-Vryn had other plans!”
Akreen’s expression seemed even graver than usual. “Instead of emerging from a portal inside the Sunheart, the hub-gate sent me here because there were no other options. The implications are unavoidable–the Sunheart portal gate has been isolated from the rest of the portal network.”
Ancestral Machines Page 43
