“Clear,” Turminder Xuss announced. “Suggest staying apart, though; signalling less a risk than a tight target.”
“Copy,” Anaplian said tersely.
They dropped beneath the ceiling of the Machine level and hung, hundreds of metres apart, over a drop of about fifty kilometres to the vast blade systems lying still in the gloom below. A few tens of kilometres off, a colossal vaned shape like an enormous toroidal gear wheel filled the view, its topmost edges ridging up to the level ceiling. It seemed to sit on top of and mesh with other titanic spheres and discs all linked to still further massive shapes, and far in the distance, hundreds of kilometres away — their lower reaches obscured by the relatively near horizon of spiralled bladed complexes like immense, open flowers — enormous wheels and globes the size of small moons bulked in the darkness, each seeming to touch the undersurface of the shell above.
Hell’s gearbox, Djan Seriy thought when she saw it, but did not choose to share the image with the others.
The flickering blue-grey light — sporadic, sharp, intense — came from two almost perfectly opposed bearings, partially obscured by intervening machinery in both directions.
“That’s battle light,” Hippinse said.
“Agree,” Anaplian said. “Any ship signals?”
There was a pause. “Yes, got it, but… Confused. Broken up. Must be the other side, getting reflections,” Hippinse said, sounding first relieved then worried.
“Our direction?” Anaplian asked.
“Follow me,” Hippinse said, heading off.
“Xuss; ahead, please,” Anaplian said.
“Already there,” the drone said.
The suits tipped them so that they raced across the ghostly landscape far below with their feet leading, though the view could be switched easily enough to make it look as though one was flying head-first. Holse asked about this. “Not streamlining,” the suit replied. “We are in vacuum, so not required. This orientation presents smaller target profile in direction of travel and prioritises human head for damage limitation.”
“Ah-ha. Oh, yes; also, what holds the world up?” Holse asked. “There’s no Towers.”
“The large machines present within this space retain the structural integrity of the ceiling above.”
“I see,” Holse said. “Righty-ho.”
“Steer clear of the open Tower base,” Anaplian told them, leading them away from a great disc of darkness above. Petals of material nearly a kilometre long hung down from the edges of the gap, looking so symmetrical that at first they didn’t realise they were the result of something breaking through from above. “The ship?” Anaplian asked.
“Looks like it,” Hippinse said. He sounded puzzled, and worried again. “Supposed to leave a drone or something here.”
They flew on for another minute until Turminder Xuss said, “Trouble up ahead.”
“What is it?” Anaplian asked.
“Somebody’s fighting; high-frequency CREWs, particle beams and what looks like AM by the backsplash. From the signatures, we’re outgunned. Pull to here,” the drone told them, and their visors indicated a line across the long summit of one of the kilometres-high vanes at the top edge of one of the gigantic spheres. Light flashed immediately beyond, bright enough to trip the visors’ sight-saving function. They drifted to a stop metres beneath the ridge line of the vane, each a kilometre or so apart from the other.
“Seeing this?” the drone asked, and imposed a view on their visors of a great dark gulf of space beyond, between more of the level-filling spheres and side-tipped concave torus shapes, lit by glaring bursts of light.
The view became shallowly triangulated, offered from three different points of view, then four and five as the four smaller drones all added their perspective to that of Xuss. Three different sources of pinpoint light and sudden, harsh detonations lay between sixty-five and ninety klicks distant. Much closer, only ten kilometres from them and four down, a single object was trading fire with the three faraway sources. The co-ordinated views suggested something only a few metres across was darting in and out behind the cover of great serrated blades on a vast cogwheel beneath, firing and being fired at by its three distant adversaries.
“Those three read as ours,” Hippinse said urgently. “They’re having to fall back.”
“Can we surprise that thing just underneath?” Anaplian asked.
“Looks like it.”
“Ping one of the distants, make sure we have this right,” Anaplian said. “Xuss?”
“Done,” the drone replied. “They’re the LP’s; three remaining of four combat drones it left behind under the forced open Tower. They’re damaged, retreating.”
“The fourth?”
“Dead,” Hippinse said. “Slag in the trench between us and the hostile.”
“Tell them to keep doing exactly what they’re doing. Xuss; those five and a half AM missiles? Prep all but two.”
“Armed.”
“Tell two of the extra knives to widen out now and drop — not power — on my mark, second-wave suicide-ready.”
“Prepped, moving,” the drone said.
“Everybody else, spread further out over the next eight seconds then pop over the top and empty everything. Start moving now. Ferbin, Holse, remember; work with the suit and let it move you if it needs to.”
“Of course.”
“Will do, ma’am.”
Eight seconds.
“Now, now, now!” Anaplian called. The suits bounced them up over the long curved summit of the great ridge of blade. Light flared above them. Suddenly looking down into the chasm beneath, the exhausts of the drone’s AM-powered missiles were soot-dark spots on their visors as the suits blanked out their extreme flaring. The visors blinked red circles round their target and all four of their weapons fired. Ferbin’s kinetic rifle leapt and hammered in his hand, throwing him up and back with every pulse, the rounds tiny bright trails left in the eye. He started to twist as the recoil tried to turn him round and make him somersault all at once, the suit doing its best to compensate and keep the gun pointed at their target.
Light everywhere. Something thudded into his lower right leg; there was a burst of pain as if he’d twisted his knee, but it faded almost instantly.
The target washed out in multiple, visor-tripping bursts of light which threw shadows like barbs and thorns all over the ceiling kilometres above.
“Cease fire!” Anaplian yelled. “Calling off the drop-knives.”
“They’re stopped,” Xuss said. “Here’s their view.”
Something glowing white was falling and tumbling away amongst the curved blades, unleashing yellow sparks and leaving orange debris falling slower behind. All firing had stopped. The fiery, falling object was providing the only light there was.
“That it?” Anaplian asked.
“Pretty sure,” Xuss said. “Move on, keep checking?”
“And scan that hostile debris. Let’s go. Hippinse?”
“Took a kinetic frag,” the avatoid wheezed. “Close to getting mushed, okay. Repairing. Moving.”
“Okay,” Djan Seriy said as they all moved out across the dark trench. Far below, the molten debris was still falling. “Ferbin?” Anaplian said gently. “I’m sorry about your leg.”
“What?” He looked down. His right leg was missing from the knee down.
He stared. General Yilim, he thought. He felt his mouth go dry and heard something roar in his ears.
“You’ll be all right,” his sister’s voice said quietly, soothingly in his ears. “Suit’s sealed it and pumped you with painkill and anti-shock and it was cauterised by the hit. You will be fine, brother; my word on it. Once we’re back out we’ll grow a new one. Easiest thing in the world. Okay?”
Ferbin felt remarkably all right now. Almost happy. Mouth okay, no roaring any more. Certainly there was no pain from the wound, in fact no sensation down there at all. “Yes,” he told his sister.
“You sure, sir?” Holse said.
<
br /> “Yes,” he said. “I’m all right. I feel very good.” He had to keep looking at it to be sure it had really happened, and then felt down, just to confirm. Sure enough; no leg below the knee. And he felt fine! Extraordinary.
* * *
“That thing was Morth-tech, compromised,” Hippinse told them when he got information back from the microdrone sent to investigate what was left of the machine they’d been fighting. “One of twelve, if its internal records are right.”
“What the hell’s Morth stuff doing down here?” Anaplian asked. “I don’t remember any mention of that.”
“Me neither,” Hippinse said. “Kept that quiet. Probably well intentioned.”
Anaplian made a noise like a spit.
They were flying, a kilometre apart, across the edged unfolding darkness of the Machine level, weaving past the great spherical and ring-shaped components, surfaces ridged and incised with swirling patterns like cut and chiselled gears. The Liveware Problem’s three damaged drones were keeping pace ahead, hurriedly trying to repair what they could of themselves. Turminder Xuss led the way, twenty klicks to the fore.
“Any more comped?” Anaplian asked.
“All twelve were. Two left now; we got one and the ship wasted the rest on entry.”
“Okay,” Anaplian said.
“Ship took some damage from them, though.”
“It did?”
“It was hurt on the way down,” Hippinse said.
“From Nariscene tech?” Anaplian asked, incredulous.
“It had a long way to drop, totally contained, offering perfectly predictable aiming and no eGrid powering,” Hippinse said. “Tried to negotiate but they weren’t having it. They were able to throw a lot at it for a long time. It suffered.”
“How badly?”
“Badly enough. Wounded. Would have gone limping off before now if this wasn’t a desperation mission.”
“Oh, shit,” Anaplian breathed.
“It gets worse,” Hippinse said. “There’s a guard ship.”
“A guard ship?”
“Liveware Problem’s encountered. Got off a spec readout before it had to concentrate on combat.”
“What ship? Whose?”
“Also Morth. Nobody aboard; AI. From the spec, seriously capable. Power linked to the Core.”
“This wasn’t mentioned!” Anaplian insisted.
“Must be a recent thing. Point is, it’s been taken over too.”
“How?” Djan Seriy said, her voice angry.
“Must have been running same systems as the guard machines,” Hippinse said. “Comp one and you get the lot if you play it clever.”
“Fuck!” Djan Seriy shouted. There was a pause, then, “Fuck!” again.
“This, ah, ‘comped’, sir,” Holse said tentatively.
“Compromised,” Hippinse told him. “Taken over by the other side. Persuaded by a sort of thought-infection.”
“Does that happen a lot, sir?”
“It happens.” Hippinse sighed. “Not to Culture ships, as a rule; they write their own individual OS as they grow up, so it’s like every human in a population being slightly different, almost their own individual species despite appearances; bugs can’t spread. The Morthanveld like a degree more central control and predictability in their smart machines. That has its advantages too, but it’s still a potential weakness. This Iln machine seems to have exploited it.” Hippinse made a whistling noise. “Must have learned a lot fast from somewhere.”
“An Enabler,” Anaplian said bitterly. “Bet you. The Oct ran an Enabler system at the thing.”
“That would fit,” Hippinse agreed.
“What from the ship?” Anaplian asked.
Ferbin and Holse’s suits registered information coming in from one of the three drones, but they wouldn’t have known how to interpret it.
“Seeing this?” Anaplian said. Her voice sounded flat and lifeless. Holse felt suddenly terrified. Even Ferbin’s euphoria was punctured.
“Yes,” Hippinse said. He sounded grim. “Seeing it.”
Light flickered and flared ahead, bearing a few similarities to the display produced by the firefight they’d chanced upon earlier between the ship drones and the compromised Morthanveld machine, but much further away; the light was being produced from some way over the horizon and reflecting off the under-surface above, strobing and flaring across the ceiling structures with a distant slowness that seemed to imply a conflict of a weight and scale orders of magnitude above that of the earlier skirmish.
“That’s them, right?” Anaplian asked.
“That’s them,” Hippinse replied, voice low.
Ferbin heard his sister sigh. “This,” she said quietly, “is not going to be fun.”
* * *
They got there in time to see the ships destroying each other. The last action was that of the Culture Superlifter Liveware Problem: it fell into the unnamed Morthanveld guard ship — a stubby fist ramming a bloated head — and partially annihilated both of them in a blast of total spectrum radiation so extreme that even from eighty kilometres away it was sufficient to trip alarms in the suits.
“I’m gone!” Hippinse said, sounding like a lost child.
“Down to us now,” Anaplian said crisply. “Hippinse! You all right?”
“Yes,” the avatoid said. They were all watching the distant shrapnel of the wreck; huge pieces of ship flailing and tumbling and racing away from the explosion, their glinting, somersaulting surfaces lit by the fading radiations of the carnage as they flew away, smashing into vanes and blades and machinery and ricocheting away again, trailed by sparks and liquidic splashes of secondary and tertiary debris.
“Still got the drones?” Anaplian asked. “I’ve lost them.”
“Yes, yes; got them,” Hippinse said quietly. “They’re answering.”
“Both ships gone,” Turminder Xuss announced. “I am up close and dodging megatonne shit here. And I can see the offending article. It has the Xinthian.”
Ferbin’s blood seemed to run cold at the mention of the last word. Xinthian. The other name for the WorldGod.
“Ah, what would that mean, sir?” Holse asked.
“The Xinthian is enclosed within what looks like a fiery cage,” Turminder Xuss told them. “The offender is very small but looks extremely capable. Energy profile the like of which I have not seen before. Who’d have thought something so ancient would be so potent?” It showed them.
Beyond where the ships had disputed, beyond where their wreckage had slowly fallen — splashing wildly across the great flowers of spiralled vanes beneath like sun-glinted rain on a forest bloom — half a horizon away but coming quickly closer, another tableau presented itself. The view wobbled, overmagnified, then grew quickly more stable and detailed as the drone and its accompanying missiles rushed closer.
The WorldGod was an ellipsoid a kilometre across and two in length, jerking and writhing within a light-splintered surround of fierce white fire extending a few hundred metres out from its mottled, dark brown surface. The Iln machine was a dot to one side, joined to this tortuous mayhem by a single strand of bright blue energy.
Beneath the Xinthian, directly over a hole in the centre of one of the immense blade flowers, a tiny bright globe was growing, throwing off intense, recurrent flashes of light.
“Beneath it,” Anaplian said, sounding like she was gulping.
“It’s generating anti-matter,” Hippinse said.
“Where are—” Djan Seriy began, then they were all hit by intense bursts of laser fire sparkling from a source above and behind them. The suits flicked about, spun, raced away, ablating layers. Ferbin found himself pummelled, too warm, breathless, and his weapon nearly torn from his arms as it twirled, aimed and fired in one absurdly fast movement that happened so quickly it left his flesh and bones aching.
“Comped Morth drone,” somebody said.
“Mine,” somebody else said.
“You’re—”
“Mot
herfucker!” Ferbin heard somebody else hiss. Actually, it sounded like him.
All Ferbin knew was that he was being tumbled about and yet the gun was always pointing in the same direction whenever it possibly could and it was kicking and kicking and kicking at him, throwing him wildly back, bouncing across these dark and livid skies.
Until it all stopped.
“Hippinse?”
No answer.
“Hippinse; reply!”
It was Djan Seriy’s voice.
“Hippinse?”
Her again.
“Hippinse!”
* * *
Ferbin had blacked out momentarily due to the extreme manoeuvring. The suit apologised. It informed him that they were now sheltered with the surviving members of their group — agent Anaplian, Mr Holse and himself — behind a vane on the flank of the nearest machine sphere. The visor helpfully circled his sister and Holse, each a few hundred metres or so away, ten metres down from the scimitared summit of their protecting vane. Light glittered above, strobing over the ceiling structures.
Ferbin began to wonder how he had got here, to safety. He hadn’t actually articulated the words this thought was leading to when the suit told him that it had taken control, under Agent Anaplian’s instructions.
“Ferbin? You back with us?” His sister’s voice sounded loud in his ears.
“Ah… yes,” he said. He tried to check himself, tried to carry out a mental inventory of his faculties and bodily parts. For a moment everything seemed fine, but then he remembered his missing lower leg. “Well, no worse,” he said. In fact he felt good; still strangely, almost absurdly exuberant, and sharp; suddenly fully recovered from his blackout and seemingly ready for anything. Some still woozy part of his mind wondered vaguely how profoundly and subtly the suit could affect his emotions, and what control over that process his sister had.
“Holse?” Djan Seriy asked.
“I’m fine, ma’am. But Mr Hippinse…?”
“We lost him when he attacked the second of the two comped Morth machines. Also, Xuss isn’t answering. And the ship drones don’t appear to have survived that last tussle either. We are somewhat reduced, gentlemen.”
Matter c-8 Page 56
