Sufficiently Advanced Technology (Inverse Shadows)

by Nuttall, Christopher

  The bookseller looked at him. “How do we get inside?”

  “There’s only one way in,” Dacron said. His eyes, for all of their enhancement, couldn’t peer too far into the darkened overhang. Normally, a few snoops would have allowed them a chance to see what was lying in wait, but they wouldn’t work on Darius. His implants were still completely dead. “We’re going to have to take them all out before they can get off a warning.”

  “They’ll be able to communicate mentally,” the bookseller reminded him. “Use spells to prevent them from communicating and you might be able to stop them before it’s too late.”

  Dacron nodded, mustering the spells in his mind. One advantage he did have over most humans was that he could cast spells without speaking them aloud, giving his enemies no advance warning of what he intended to do. There were definitely some benefits to being an embodied AI, even if he did feel slow and stupid compared to his half-remembered memories of the Gestalt. Carefully, he led the way towards the overhang, wondering how they believed they could keep the colony ship hidden. Up close, it was obvious that there was nothing natural about the flow of stone that had buried the starship.

  The overhang loomed up in front of him and he slipped inside, his eyes adapting to the darkness. There was a colossal opening just inside, leading to a pair of guards standing in front of a heavy metal door, very evidently an airlock from a primitive colony ship. Dacron cast the silencing spell and blinked in surprise as it refused to work properly. Bracing himself, he jumped forward, determined not to lose what remained of the advantage of surprise and sliced the first guard’s head off before he could even blink. The second guard lifted a sword, only to recoil in horror as Dacron’s monofilament blade sliced right through it and her arm. Blood spilled down to the ground as she collapsed, gasping in pain.

  “Curious,” Dacron muttered. Darius wasn’t a place that accepted women warriors, yet one of them had been a guard. He checked her rapidly, looking for anything else out of place, but found nothing. There was something about her face that made her look vaguely inhuman, yet he couldn’t identify it. A true human would probably have seen it instantly. “Does your guild accept females?”

  The bookseller shrugged. “Some women join us, or are married to men who join us,” he said, after a moment. “I don’t think we’ve ever used them as guards.”

  Dacron nodded and walked over to the airlock, hunting for the markings he knew were going to be there. All colony ships were extensively marked for later identification, a precaution that had been seen as paranoid during the First Expansion Era and prescient afterwards. It only took several seconds for him to locate a plate stating the ship’s name and destination; Clarke, heading for FAS-34234. Dacron wondered if anyone, back when the target star had finally been settled, had wondered what had happened to the Clarke and her colonists, or had they merely been relieved at the absence of any other settlers. The early days of interstellar expansion had been chaotic, with worlds claimed by several different groups, sometimes backed up by armed warships. It hadn’t been until the First Interstellar War that order had been imposed on the frontier – and even then, plenty of groups had fled well beyond humanity’s original borders. Some of them had never been found.

  He wished, just for a moment, that he still had the use of his implants. A quick check with the records on the Hamilton would have told him what, if anything, was known about the Clarke and her colonists. He might have been able to establish what sort of world they’d wanted to build, and what sort of tech level they’d intended to allow... he pushed the thought aside with some irritation. Intentions often counted for nothing when dealing with the long-term development of colony worlds. There were thousands of examples of low-tech worlds that had suffered revolutions as the younger generations asked why their parents had abandoned the technology that would have made their lives easier.

  But there had been an unseen force on Darius, manipulating and maintaining their society.

  Dacron braced himself and pushed at the airlock, forcing it open. There was no power running through the ship, unsurprisingly. Primitive though she was, Clarke should have been affected by the Dead Zone too. She was hardly powered by chemical reactions and clockwork, any more than was the Hamilton. Forcing the airlock open was difficult, even with his enhanced strength. They’d effectively turned the colony ship into a fortress, simply by leaving the airlock in place. No weapons on Darius could even scratch the hull.

  Inside, there was a very faint smell of decay. Clarke was ancient, easily the oldest starship Dacron had ever seen, and she hadn’t been maintained in the years since landing on Darius. The metal plating on the floor was damaged, worn down by countless people and horses walking in and out of the ship; the lighting was provided by glowing magical lights, rather than the ship’s internal lighting. It gave the interior an eerie atmosphere that clearly bothered the booksellers. Many of them were already suffering from culture shock.

  Dacron mentally reviewed the plans for the DY-100 as the bookseller comforted his allies, reassuring them that their planet’s suffering would soon be over. They were presumably on the lower levels; looking back at the airlock, it was clear that they’d come through one of the personnel entrances rather than the giant cargo airlocks that would have allowed the colonists to unload their supplies and start the hard work of settling the planet. Depending on which airlock they’d actually used, they should keep walking to the right and eventually they’d discover the shafts leading up into the control deck. It was as good a place to start as any.

  “Follow me,” he muttered, and led the way down the metal corridor. The sense of two very different cultures only grew stronger as they advanced, with the strange blend of magic and primitive technology combined with the technology of the First Expansion Era. Dacron found himself wondering what someone in a Dead Zone would have thought of a Confederation starship, if one had drifted into a zone and become trapped. It would be completely beyond their comprehension. He stopped and held up a hand, just as they reached what would have been the elevator shaft. Someone was talking in the next room.

  Dacron listened, carefully, but none of the words were familiar. He’d been gifted with several different languages as well as Darius English and Confederation Standard, yet whatever language the newcomers were speaking defeated him. It was possible that it was an evolution of English, but if that were the case some of the words should have been recognisable. Or it might be something completely alien, even though that was unlikely. Only a handful of known alien languages could be spoken by humans, at least not without having their mouths altered to pronounce the words properly.

  The voices faded away in the distance and Dacron slipped forward, weapon in hand. There was no sign of anyone in the elevator shaft – and no sign of an elevator. Instead, there were rope ladders, dangling down from high overhead. It took Dacron a moment to realise that they’d stripped out the useless elevators and replaced them with ladders, forcing their people to scramble up and down the decks. They could have installed stairs...

  “It’s a security measure,” the bookseller muttered. “I’ve seen it before in a dozen castles; anyone who wants to assault the castle has to climb up the ladder, whereupon they get their heads chopped off by the defenders. Or the ropes are simply cut to make it impossible to climb up without magic.”

  “And a magician would challenge the local Pillar directly, rather than fight to take the castle,” Dacron said. He hesitated. Climbing up the robe ladders wouldn’t be difficult, but it would certainly negate his advantages. He might be stronger, faster and more resistant to damage than anyone else on the planet, yet that didn’t make him immortal. “We’ll just have to get up five levels as quickly as possible.”

  One of the other booksellers had a different question. “What is that?”

  Dacron followed his pointing finger and frowned. Running up the side of the shaft was a long thin stream of crystal, reaching up into the distance. It didn’t look like anything he recogn
ised, apart perhaps from a crystal lattice – and crystal lattices had only entered general use during the Third Expansion Era, when artificial crystals had been converted into datachips. Carefully, he touched it with his bare finger and felt an electric shock, as if power was still moving through the lattice. It seemed to have grown right out of the deck.

  “I’m not sure,” he admitted. It was definitely out of place. “But we don’t have time to investigate.”

  Taking hold of the rope ladder, he started to scramble up the shaft. It wasn’t as easy as he had thought; the ladder wasn’t secured very well, either through carelessness or as a deliberate test. There were plenty of organisations on primitive worlds that ended up with old men – or, more rarely, old women – firmly in charge, preventing them from adapting to fit with the times. Maybe there was a rule that those who could no longer climb the ladders could no longer hold authority. It would be kinder than insisting on fighting ability as a mark of status.

  The crystal lattice seemed to split off into a handful of strands as they reached the second level, two strands heading out onto the deck while the remainder headed upwards, towards the higher levels. Dacron studied it thoughtfully, before scrambling up to the next deck, where the same pattern was repeated. Judging from what he’d seen, the entire ship was infested by the crystal lattice, technology that couldn’t have been produced during the First Expansion Era. Could it work in the Dead Zone? There was no way to know, but logically it shouldn’t. And yet he’d felt a shock when he touched it.

  High overhead, the ropes started to shake as someone descended. Dacron braced himself as the figure came into view – a tall man wearing dark robes – and lashed out with his knife. The man let out a gasp and plummeted downwards, while Dacron forgot stealth and scrambled up the ladder as fast as he could. Reaching the top of the shaft, he jumped onto the deck and straight into a group of people. A handful of swipes with his sword cleared the way for the booksellers, just before a powerful flash of magic blasted his protections. Two enemy magicians were standing in front of him. Dacron cast a second set of protective spells and then advanced forward, using the spells as a shield. A moment later, the booksellers opened fire, blowing the two magicians away. They hadn’t thought to shield themselves against physical attack.

  But then, Dacron thought, as he ran forward, who would have dared to pick a fight with a magician?

  The starship’s bridge, as cramped and primitive as it was by Confederation standards, had been turned into a command centre for the mystery group. Seven magicians rose up to fight as Dacron charged inside, throwing grenades towards their positions. Four of them managed to shield themselves before the grenades exploded, only to forget that they still needed to breathe. The knock-out gas sent them collapsing to the floor before they realised that they hadn’t managed to purify the air.

  “This used to be the bridge,” Dacron said. “Your ancestors would have commanded the ship from here before landing on Darius.”

  The compartment was a shambles. Consoles that looked hellishly outdated had been turned into tables, even though the buttons and switches would have made using them a difficult task. The Captain’s chair had been turned into a throne, with strands of crystal lattice hovering around it. It hadn’t been damaged or destroyed by the explosions, no matter how weak it looked. Dacron examined it carefully and realised why it looked vaguely familiar. It was something comparable to the advanced neural network that had been used to download him into his body. Close examination revealed that there were microscopically thin strands of crystal lattice surrounding where the Captain’s head would have been, ready to force their way into his brain. Maybe that explained the odd behaviour of the humans in the mystery group; they were puppets, worked by an unseen hand that operated at one remove.

  An outbreak of shooting caused him to look up, alarmed. “They’re trying to break back into the bridge,” the bookseller snapped. “I think they’re trying to flank us!”

  Dacron recalled the ship’s plans and scowled. Unlike a warship, which always had sealed bridges, the colony ship had no fewer than four entrances to the bridge. The airlocks were made of solid metal, but the enemy had magic. Dacron could imagine a dozen spells that would break the airlocks down to dust and allow the enemy to race inside, intent on destroying the intruders. And he didn’t have enough people to cover all of the entrances.

  “It looks that way,” he agreed, mildly. The bookseller shot him an angry glance, no doubt wondering if Dacron had led them into a trap. “Hold them off for as long as you can.”

  The bookseller rounded on him. “And what are you going to do?”

  Dacron walked back to the Captain’s chair, hoping that he was right. “I’m going to talk to the power behind magic,” he said, and sat down. If he was wrong, they were all dead. “Just hold them back as long as you can.”

  A moment later, the crystal lattice started to close in on his skull. Dacron felt it tickling at his hair, probing his skin. The technology didn’t seem to be as advanced as the monofilament strands the Confederation used, although the real question was why the crystal lattice worked at all in the Dead Zone. Maybe it was excluded specifically from its effects. Dacron felt tiny pinpricks of pain as it started to dig into his flesh, reaching through to cut into his skull and access his brain. His internal awareness was rapidly becoming a curse.

  And then the real pain began.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-THREE

  “I think they want us to go with them,” Elyria’s voice said. “Wake up.”

  Joshua scowled as he opened his eyes. His dreams had been strange, almost blindingly erotic. Some of the older lads in Warlock’s Bane had boasted of what could happen when one slept with an older, more experienced women, but Joshua had never really believed them. The whores were experienced – and most of them hated men. And yet making love to Elyria had been fantastic. She’d known precisely how to draw the maximum pleasure from his body. He just hoped that it had been good for her too.

  Two men were standing in the doorway, waiting for them. Both men carried swords and looked formidable. They didn’t seem to notice that both Joshua and Elyria were naked, or the fact that their clothes were in tatters, lying on the floor. Joshua moved to cover himself and then realised that it was futile. Besides, he’d had very little privacy as a child and had never developed any real sense of modesty. Having his own room in Master Faye’s house had seemed the height of luxury, but it had also been strange to sleep alone.

  Carefully, Joshua tested his magic and discovered that part of it had leaked back to him. The spell binding it, he assumed, was weakening. He kept it to himself as he pulled himself to his feet, feeling his body aching as the previous day’s exertions returned to haunt him. Elyria followed him, seemingly unbothered by her own nakedness. There was something in her eyes that bothered him, as if she were distracted by a greater thought. But what?

  “Follow,” one of the men ordered, and turned to lead the way out of the prison cell. The second man stayed behind, obviously intending to bring up the rear. “Walk. Now.”

  Joshua exchanged a glance with Elyria and then shrugged, following their captor. There was no attempt made to tie their hands, which struck him as a gesture of contempt – or overconfidence. It was impossible to tell which, if indeed it was either. They might just have kept them tied up because the Scions had left them that way after they’d brought the shuttle crashing down to the ground. Master Faye had told him what signs to watch for, when looking for someone under the influence of a controlling spell. A lack of imagination was definitely one of them.

  The interior of the colony ship was strange, a mixture of metal bulkheads and primitive – or magical – conveniences. If Joshua hadn’t already seen the Confederation space station, he suspected that he would have been in serious trouble. Producing so much metal would have been flatly impossible for Darius – and even if it had been possible, no one would have wasted it so blatantly. The entire ship had been built by a society
with a very different attitude than the one Darius had developed. Shaking his head, he looked at Elyria – and saw her studying a line of crystal that someone had worked into the metal. A moment later, the captor who was bringing up the rear prodded her mercilessly, forcing her to start walking again.

  “That’s out of place,” Elyria muttered to Joshua. “Does your society work with crystals?”

  “As jewels,” Joshua said. It was easy to make certain jewels using magic, particularly diamonds. There were even legends of swords made out of diamond, early versions of the ultra-sharp blades the Confederation had demonstrated. “I don’t think we use them for much else, apart from some cutting tools.”

  “Interesting,” Elyria said. “So why is there a network of crystal running through the ship?”

  Joshua couldn’t even begin to answer the question, but the captors stopped in front of a hole in the metal floor before he could say anything. Joshua glanced down into darkness, stretching down further than he could see. He felt dizzy and stumbled backwards, right into Elyria’s arms. Her bare breasts pushed against his back and he felt a sudden wave of desire, just before the first guard jumped into the hole and vanished. The second one motioned for Joshua to follow him.

  “No,” Joshua said. He couldn’t even see the bottom. “I won’t...”

  The guard made a motion with his hand and an unseen force shoved him back, sending him tumbling over the edge and plummeting down into the darkness. Joshua yelped in shock as he fell, certain that he was about to slam into the ground at terrifying speed, just before gravity seemed to invert around him and slow his fall to a halt. Opening his eyes – he hadn’t even realised that he’d closed them – he found himself floating in the air, just above a glowing crystalline floor. Raw magic crackled around him, daring him to reach out and draw it into his wards. He was tempted, just before a strong hand grabbed him and pulled him forward. Gravity reasserted itself seconds later and he fell to the ground. The crystal felt uncomfortably warm against his bare ass.