Eden's Endgame
Page 27
That was where Pierre came in. He’d asked earlier why they hadn’t used Dimitri to achieve the same effect, but at the time they had taken Dimitri purely for sustenance, a catalyst for their propagation, nothing more. Besides, they needed a tech interface, and Pierre had nannites. He’d also asked them why they hadn’t considered this option before, during their brief reign of terror two million years earlier. They’d believed they could win by pure logic alone – they needed a miniscule amount of genetic material to propagate, but they abhorred organics with their clumsy and chaotic thought processes. However, the Orbs had presented a new challenge to the Machine race, requiring a new response. Logic dictated that a new strategy was needed. But to Pierre it was more than that; it was Darwinian evolution writ large, a new threat in a species’ environment that would either kill it or make it stronger. And there was the risk: he was about to try to help a dangerous force become even more powerful. The lesser of two evils? He couldn’t be sure. But he had made up his mind, he was committed.
He felt pressure on his feet, and glanced down. It had begun. Black metal vines crawled up his calves, his feet and ankles already encased. There was no turning back now. He took one last look at the Orb, at the stars he knew he would never see again this way, then closed his eyes, and held the vision of Kat and Petra in his mind, knowing he would never meet them again. The metal around his legs invaded his flesh, freezing pinpricks stabbing into him, making his upper body shake as his core temperature freefell. He opened his eyes, gasped and cried out. He could no longer feel his legs, only a wave of ice creeping up his chest. He lifted his arms in front of him, watched metal gloves wrap around his hands, and felt the ice-metal on his neck. Whichever way he analysed it, he was dying, there would be no more Pierre after this. He just had time to taste the names on his lips of the two women who had meant more to him than anyone else. He spoke their names into the echoless void.
“Petra, Kat, forgive me.”
He could no longer see, the metal ice tightening like a tourniquet around his face, freezing tendrils drilling through his skull, skewering inwards. Pierre concentrated on one last thought, with all his being, with all his will, one single line of code.
Jen stood with Ukrull and an avatar of Hellera inside her ship, watching the event as if standing in space, as if they were right there.
The Orb dwarfed the Machine asteroid. As the two neared collision, the leading surface of the Orb bled outwards, reaching out to embrace the ball of solid metal. It slowly engulfed the Machine world, their entire race, until all that was left was a slightly larger Orb. Ukrull walked forward, to the other side of the scene, and growled at it, his tail thrashing behind him. Jen knew he wanted to help in some way, but they were all powerless in this particular struggle. The Orb paused, then continued on its way, steady against Ukrull’s massive figure, stars whiplashing past in the background and foreground as it accelerated towards its next target. Jen felt her heart sink. But Hellera and Ukrull waited, saying nothing, so Jen stayed. She’d just decided to sit on the floor when a chair appeared. So, Hellera wasn’t totally pissed off with her. It didn’t look too comfortable, but Jen knew when not to be impolite, and sat down.
After what seemed like an hour, Ukrull snorted – she didn’t know what that meant, but she sat up and paid attention. The apparent movement of the stars tearing past the Orb slowed, then braked to a dead halt. She saw a single ripple disturb the Orb’s smooth surface. More followed, waves building; something was emerging. It was black.
She was out of her chair, standing next to Ukrull, staring. Cube-like black insects crawled out of an open sore on the Orb’s surface. On closer inspection they were compact flat boxes with legs, reminding her of nannites, though their actual size must have been that of small ships. Her breath quickened. Waves grew on the Orb’s surface, became tsunamis that smashed down on the giant nannites. But the Machines were unharmed, and more and more swarmed over the Orb from wounds splitting all over its surface. They scalpelled its flesh, skinned it alive, flinging swathes of gold-turned-brown matter into empty space. Jen squeezed her fists. Kick its ass, Pierre.
The core of the Orb could be seen, and it was metal. Gradually the Orb was completely shorn of its golden flesh, leaving the original black Machine asteroid shrouded in a cloud of detritus. Her only wish was that there could have been some blood as well. But she narrowed her eyes as she gauged the size of the Machine world.
“It’s grown,” she said, guessing that Ukrull and Hellera were well aware of it. The Machine asteroid morphed into the shape of a lozenge, then separated at its mid-point, creating two smaller asteroids. The process repeated itself. Four asteroids, and from her reckoning, each one was the same size as the original. Three of them flashed silver and disappeared into Transpace, no doubt in search of more Orbs. The last one hung there, not moving. A light gold spot appeared on its surface. It moved up, then down, etching a figure on the asteroid’s surface. Not a figure, she realised; writing. As it continued, both Ukrull and Jen moved aside, so that Hellera could see – not that she needed to, given her faculties – but out of deference, because the first word had spelled out her name.
Jen reckoned Pierre was somehow still there, since it was too ironic an act to use the Orb’s penchant for writing on its surface; a pure Machine intelligence would have found another way. It was a message for Hellera, but it also told Jen that Pierre had survived the process in some way. At last the message finished.
“Pierre was pretty exceptional, wasn’t he?”
Ukrull grunted.
“I didn’t really get to know him,” she said.
“Will tell you about him on way to Esperia.”
Jen’s heart quickened. She had mixed feelings; it was home to humanity, but she had nobody there who really cared for her.
“Wrong,” Ukrull said.
“What?” She suddenly remembered Ukrull was telepathic.
“You will see.”
Jen stood next to the screen of Ukrull’s brand new ship, which he hadn’t yet named. It had taken her nearly a day to get the full facts out of Ukrull, and now she couldn’t sleep or even sit down. Hellera had sent a clone of Gabriel to Esperia. She knew it wasn’t the real Gabriel, but part of it was him, his thoughts, his personality; whatever Kalaran had been able to download before Gabriel – the Genner Youngblood leader who was also her nephew – had blown up Sister Esma and himself into the bargain. And she was terrified of something happening to him; she’d lost too much these past few days.
Her skin itched on the inside. “Can’t we go any faster?”
Ukrull laughed, as far as she could tell. “Like old times. Want? Will hurt.”
“Has your telepathy stopped working?” Last time she’d missed Gabriel by a hair’s breadth, only to find him dead. She wasn’t going to let that happen again.
Ukrull’s forked tongue flicked over his eyes, then he kicked a control with his claw. Jen found herself on all fours, a hammering inside her skull, gut-wrenching nausea in her belly, blotches before her eyes, and a roar in her ears like a rocket engine at full thrust. She ended up curled in a ball, forehead on the cold floor, hands over her ears, but she said nothing, and bit back the urge to scream. Hang on, Gabriel, we’re coming. She swallowed with difficulty, then shouted a single word to Ukrull.
“Faster.”
Sandy was thankful Toran hadn’t harmed her, but that small vestige of gratitude didn’t stop her wishing him dead. He’d killed her husband in front of her – that was the only way she could reconcile what had actually happened – and was set to take out the remaining human leaders. But there was nothing she could do. She’d been bound and gagged in her chair most of the six days it h
ad taken his small ship to reach Esperia. She couldn’t feel the back of her head; something was plugged in there, as evidenced by periodical drops of her blood dripping onto her neck, zig-zagging down several vertebrae before they congealed. At least he’d told her his Alician name, Toran; she couldn’t bear to think of the clone as the original Gabriel, her one-time lover from those last fateful days on Earth.
But at last they had arrived back on Esperia, Toran’s ship perched on the Acarian mountain range sheltering Esperantia. She tried to see as much as possible over his shoulder as he surveyed the chaotic town scene via the ship’s viewer. It looked like a war zone, bodies scattered on the perimeter, some in small mounds. But the town buildings and streets were intact.
“They have prevailed,” he said.
“We’re not as stupid as you Alicians take us for.”
He turned to her. “No, you are not.” He returned to the scene, zooming in to see individual faces. She glimpsed Petra and Vasquez, and then flinched at seeing Blake’s corpse being carried away by four Youngbloods, Brandt leading the way.
“I do not see Micah in the crowd,” Toran said, “which means he has not yet returned. I need other targets.”
“Go screw yourself,” Sandy said.
He faced her again, framed by three frozen images on the screen. He touched a pad on the arm of his chair, and Sandy’s vision became grainy. She heard a dispassionate voice, female. With a shock she realised it was hers.
“Petra, President; Vasquez, Commander of the Militia, Brandt, leader of the Youngbloods.”
Her vision became normal again. She spat in his direction, but it failed to reach him.
Toran’s voice was flat, devoid of emotion. “Normally I would have killed you for that, before your saliva reached the floor. But I want you alive when Micah arrives, to throw him off balance. I shall wait for him.”
Sandy had turned away from Micah a long time ago, but knew he mattered to the war effort. She didn’t want to see him executed. Toran had dispatched Ramires, so Micah wouldn’t stand a chance. Besides, if he waited for Micah, Toran would have the element of surprise, whereas if she could get him to act early, Micah would arrive and maybe salvage the situation.
“He’s not coming back,” she lied. She felt a stab of pain behind her eyes. What had Toran done to her? She continued her lie, despite her vision almost shutting down, and a feeling like somebody drilling through her temples. She squeezed her hands behind her, sinking her fingernails into her palms to try and counter the pain in her head, and swallowed down an urge to retch. “Ramires told me, Micah is taking Shiva to join Hellera to battle Qorall. That ship is pretty advanced, remember?”
Toran studied her. She felt sweat run under her armpits, but the pain abated a little, and she could see again.
Toran turned back to the screen. He didn’t seem that interested in Micah. Sandy understood; Toran was a warrior, not an assassin. He would rather fight hand-to-hand against a worthy adversary; his focus on Micah was purely on Louise’s orders. Sandy stayed quiet, letting him digest the lie. Silence could sometimes shore up a lie better than further words.
“Louise told me he loves you,” Toran said, turning back to her. “That concept doesn’t mean much to Alicians; it is mostly foolishness. We Alicians care for each other, respect each other, and of course make mating decisions according to preferences. Did you know Alicians mate for life with a single partner, and such relationships endure for hundreds of years? Would any human relationship last so long? There is no such thing as infidelity in Alician society.” He turned back to his display. “You know so little about us.”
Good, he was moving away from the Micah topic. She decided to push him, to goad him; something she reluctantly admitted she was good at.
“What I know is you’ve also wanted to destroy us for hundreds of years. Besides, you’re a clone. How old are you, clone?”
He paused. “One year.”
She tried to detect any emotion underneath that sad statement, but there was none. He was a cipher, little more than an automaton, filled with propaganda. But he clearly wanted to be more. That was his weakness. She attacked it.
“Then you know only what you’ve been programmed to know. You’re a killing machine, that’s all.”
“I am Toran,” he said. “And I know what I am. There are almost no clones in our society, even though we have the technology, and I of all… people, understand why.”
“You have no soul, clone, you will never know love, or be loved, or even cared for.” She hated that her husband had been killed by such a creature.
He fixed her with a gaze, and for an instant she thought she detected something real about him, a flicker of bitterness.
“Then I will have no guilt over what I am about to do.”
Good. He was going to act, though she hated to think what he was going to do. At least Micah should arrive soon, taking Toran by surprise, or upsetting his plans.
He stood up, gathered several weapons together, including Ramires’ nanosword.
“This human love keeps your species weak. Yet I am curious. Do you love Micah?”
She tried to turn her head away, but couldn’t move, and her vision went grainy again, and she heard a single word escape her lips before her vision returned to normal. She needed to get him off that particular track.
“My turn to be curious,” she said. “Why the lone assassin walking amongst them? Why don’t you attack with this ship? You could do more damage.”
“Three reasons. First, values: I am not an assassin, I am a warrior, as your mate was. I fight and die with honour. Whatever else you may believe, I have Sentinel values, albeit with a different allegiance. I look my enemy in the eye before killing him. Second, psychology: a ship attacking is one thing, but a lone man walking into the midst of human society and killing its leaders creates a deeper fear. Third, there is some kind of shield around the town. I need to dismantle it.”
Sandy didn’t like the sound of that. “Why?”
“If I survive I will take ten human captives – enough to facilitate successful Alician procreation, and then leave the planet, discharging a human-tailored toxin into the biosphere. Then I shall join the other Alicians.”
“And Louise.”
“No,” he replied. “She has another mission.” He turned away from her, studied the screen again.
The way he’d said it made it seem like a secret. “What mission?”
He didn’t answer, and busied himself at the ship console.
She knew it must be important. “You said you had Sentinel values. I invoke Charok-Nor. You are going to kill me one way or the other, and you killed my mate, as you call him.”
He paused at the controls, then told her. Sandy would have shaken her head if she could have. Louise was going to see the Q’Roth High Queen; the leader of all the other Queens spread across the galaxy; the ultimate ruler of all the Q’Roth tribes. Louise was going to offer the High Queen a deal to persuade her to work with Qorall, and she had the perfect bribe to clinch the deal. If the legions of Q’Roth turned against Hellera now… Sandy stored it for later.
“And if you perish?” she asked.
“In four hours, unless I send a signal, the toxin will be released automatically.”
Sandy cursed under her breath. Micah, wherever the hell you are, hurry up and arrive!
“You Alicians truly are humanity’s bastards. I wish the Nchkani had blown Savange to pieces with us still on it.”
Toran’s face remained neutral. “The feed in your head is wrapped around your upper spine. If you pull really hard, you may break loose, but you will be paraplegic and you will transect your vagus nerve, after which you will asphyxiate within two minutes.”
He departed via the airlock.
Once he was gone, Sandy tried to let her head hang, but it wouldn’t budge very far. Then she noticed he’d left the viewer running, and she scanned the sea of faces. She’d isolated herself the last fifteen years or so, and most of
the people she saw were strangers. She’d never integrated. Now, for the first time in a long while, she felt a kinship towards them, and wanted to protect them, but there was nothing she could do. The only hope would be if Micah returned early. Reluctantly, she pondered the single word she’d spoken to Toran earlier, in response to his question about how she felt about Micah. It hadn’t been the answer she’d expected. She’d thought she no longer cared for him. Evidently she did.
Petra was busy; she had to be to stay sane. Xenic and his small Mannekhi crew rounded up the restored Mannekhi soldiers, most of whom seemed bewildered and in shock. The Steaders and Genners had largely headed back into town, but she stayed near to the spot where Blake had died. The thought stopped her cold. She closed her eyes and took three deep breaths.
She heard Vasquez’ sharp, clear voice.
“You should get some rest, Petra.”
She opened her eyes. “The Spiders have left the shield up except for the breach. Why?”
Vasquez squinted in the direction of the invisible large hole, the sun dipping towards the Acarian Mountains.
“I assume you’ve asked them?”
“Of course. They chose not to answer.” She glanced back towards the town; the Spiders had followed Blake’s body an hour ago and not returned. Brandt had said that many people had walked next to them, trying to see the fallen heroes, the first time most had ever been close to a Spider.
She took in the hundreds of Mannekhi milling about in the near distance. “What will Xenic do? Where will we put all these Mannekhi? Their ships can’t take off again.”