Sean Williams & Shane Dix - Evergence 1 - The Prodigal Sun
Page 9
The course itself was held on the second moon of Bodh Gaya, and it was here that she received her first neural implants and was thus exposed to the glowing web-data that surrounded each and every being in the Commonwealth of Empires. To access this epiphany of information, all she had to do was touch a contact with the fake skin of her palm, and her mind would receive unimaginable tracts of data, fed directly into her cortex by the most sophisticated technology available in the Commonwealth of Empires.
Lessons were conducted from her quarters in the Intelligence dormitories, plugged directly into the vast virtual reality that comprised the college's mind-pool. She had no way of knowing if the minds she conversed with — her teachers and fellow students — were Human or artificial. Even those she suspected to possess manufactured origins were of a sort far superior to the lowly educators she had sabotaged in her childhood. Yet still she attempted to fathom them: probing their weaknesses, assaying their strengths, all the while allowing them to guide her in the ways of COE Intelligence.
Along the way she learned something of the history of the Commonwealth itself, and of the wider galaxy surrounding it: of the way Humanity had speciated following its colonisation of the stars, from the High Humans, who had transcended their biological origins and existed in isolation from the mundane Castes (themselves divided into Exotic and Pristine categories), to the Low, who eked out primitive, animal-like lives on unnoticed worlds; of the immense number of empires that had risen and fallen down the millennia, waxing and waning like tides, many of them forgotten; of the lesser — although still extensive — number of such empires currently in existence, in varying degrees of torpidity. There was so much about Humanity to learn, both past and present, and the first thing she had learned was that one could never know it all. Perhaps only the High Humans could even hope to come close, but few mundanes ever had the chance to ask them.
On completion of the Intelligence course, Roche was assigned to the Quyrend System to work as a passive agent with a team of scientists repairing a major COE information network. It was there that she learned the basic rule of AI science: that no truly intelligent mind had yet been created to equal in every way that of a mundane Human. Minds equivalent to animals had been built, and it was these that fueled all of the AIs currently in service. Empowered by vast resources of information, they might have seemed equal or even superior to a Pristine Human, but they lacked the sophistication of thought, the degree of creativity, that every individual possessed. The quest for true artificial intelligence, she learned, had floundered centuries earlier, confounded by some unfathomable failure of design and theory that no amount of thought could remedy.
It came as no surprise to learn, five years later, after ten missions in as many solar systems, that the quest for true AI had been all but abandoned. The adept minds of COE Intelligence adequately filled the gaps machines could not. Yet rumors persisted: somewhere in the galaxy, perhaps even in the COE itself, work was continuing apace on a new theory, one that would render every early model of Box instantly obsolete. The ramifications of such a rumor, if it was true, were enormous, but it was dismissed by all in authority, including — and especially — the invisible rulers of Trinity, where all Boxes were made. Only the High Humans could build such a thing, and if they did it was doubtful that they would ever allow it to be released into the hands of a mundane government.
On the anniversary of her twelfth year of service in Intelligence, Roche received word of a new mission. The head of COE Intelligence, Auberon Chase, had requested her specifically. She was to travel alone to Trinity to collect a Box commissioned by the Armada and return it to COE Intelligence HQ. The AI had been designed to meet certain demanding specifications, and was thus highly expensive, yet it would receive no special escort. It would instead travel with her along a route remarkable only for its apparent randomness. Twelve other ships would leave Trinity at the same time, however, each carrying an Intelligence field agent, thus confusing any attempt to follow her and her ward. Such extreme measures to ensure secrecy made her curious, of course, but she knew better than to pry. She knew her place. Morgan Roche's service had been diligent and faithful, though not particularly distinguished. If she could complete this mission successfully, then she imagined she would earn another promotion; if she were to rock the boat, on the other hand, she might find herself off the mission entirely, or relegated to one of the dummy ships, headed nowhere. Whether the Box was the first of a new generation of super-Boxes or nothing more than a device to decode the transmissions of the Dato Bloc, she would be better off not knowing. At the very least, she would have plenty of time to converse with this Box. Who knew what she might learn in the process? Two months on the Midnight, however, with little more than this Box for company, had been nearly enough to make her doubt even the most basic tenet of her short life. One machine at least, it seemed, she simply couldn't fathom — no matter how she tried. And neither, as a result, could she bring herself to like it ...
* * *
The voice was gentle but insistent, drifting through her thoughts, her dream. There had been shouting and panic and running — but she hadn't been able to move properly, hadn't been able to get clear of the explosion.
And pain. There had been a lot of pain.
The voice continued to whisper through her half-sleep, compelling her to leave the dream behind.
With some effort, her eyelids flickered open. She squinted as the light from the yellow-hued sky stabbed at her eyes, dispelling some of her confusion, and what she had mistaken for a dream quickly adjusted itself and became a memory. Only the pain remained; in her shoulder, across her back, down one side of her face.
Then another sound, this time the snarl of engines, ripped the quiet around her. Above, through a tangle of dead, petrified branches, she saw a flyer bank sharply, turning a tight figure eight before continuing back the way it had come.
As the whine of its engines faded into the distance, two voices sounded simultaneously in her head:
And:
The figure of Maii unfolded from the narrow crack in the rock face. Cane was beside her, staring in the direction in which the flyer had disappeared.
"Without a doubt." Roche recognised Veden's voice. "And even if they didn't, it's only a matter of time."
"Perhaps," said Cane. His head was cocked, as if listening to the fading engines.
"What's going on?" The words felt awkward in Roche's dry mouth. She tried to stand but found herself unable to move her left arm.
Cane glanced down at her, the thin suggestion of a smile creasing his otherwise composed features. He reached out and helped her to her feet. Waves of agony shot from her shoulder along her arm, making her dizzy for a moment. Cane's strong hands held her firm until he was sure she had her balance.
"You okay?" he asked.
Roche noted that her arm had been strapped firmly to her side using strips of cloth from Cane's uniform. "Dislocated?" she asked.
Cane nodded. "You'll be all right."
Roche quickly checked around her and saw they had taken refuge in a long and shallow ravine. Maii was slumped against a boulder, the slight movements of her head synchronised with Veden crouching a metre away. He was scowling at Roche and Cane.
"We should be going before they come back," he said.
Roche turned to Cane. "I take it our plan didn't work?"
Cane shook his head grimly. "A couple of flyers appeared on the scene not long after we bandaged you up. They've been scouting the area ever since, so our progress has been a little slow."
"Do you know where they're from?" said Roche.
"No idea," replied Cane. "But whoever they are, they seem to be heading back toward the wreck of the lander."
"So you say," Veden hissed, rising to his feet.
Ro
che ignored him. "Let's have a proper look," she said, gesturing upward. "We can't see a thing from down here."
"Good idea," said Cane.
Veden turned away. "We're wasting time," he muttered, just loud enough to be heard.
Cane clambered up a relatively shallow section of the wall, then leaned back to give Roche a hand. With difficulty she followed him, the valise scraping against the rock face as she went. The biofilaments lacing the skin of Roche's suit were fueled by sunlight, and chilled perceptibly at the sudden exertion, but the air on her face and right hand seemed only hotter in comparison, and as dry as a furnace. The earth beneath her fingertips, completely devoid of life, crumbled into dust. It smelled of ancient spices mixed with gunpowder.
When they reached the surface of the stony plain, they crouched behind a rock outcrop to peer at their surroundings. With no suggestion of Maii's presence in her mind, Roche realised that the girl must be using Cane's senses to view the scene.
The ravine in which they had taken refuge snaked across the orange lava plain, a jagged crack three metres wide and ten deep leading upward into the foothills; not a dry riverbed, but a fracture resulting from gentle seismic expansion, the only such fracture — and therefore the only true cover — for many kilometres. Farther ahead, shadowing the horizon like bulky storm clouds, lay a range of mountains. Behind them, back the way they had come, a tower of smoke rose against the backdrop of a pink-brown sky: the wreckage of the lander, still burning. A glint of light at the base of the tower of smoke might have been the flyer, although at this distance Roche could only guess.
With pursuit so close at hand, she could understand Veden's sense of urgency, but she was grateful at the same time for the opportunity to get her bearings. Unlike the others, she'd had no opportunity to view the world upon which they had crash-landed.
The sky directly above was a uniform sand-yellow, deepening to pink toward the horizon. Running the length of the sky was a faint, white streak that Roche had first assumed to be a cloud, but was, she now realised, the planet's belt of moonlets — the Soul. The rising sun hung low in the horizon, at the base of the Soul, its light a dull orange tinged with green. Away to her left, a large cloud mass was gathering.
The axial tilt of Sciacca's World was large enough for pronounced seasons, she knew. During winter or summer, the sun appeared at either side of the Soul — above or below, depending on the observer's latitude. At other times it would be partially occluded by the orbital debris. The Soul, therefore, indicated the direction of the planet's rotation, and the displacement of the sun to either above or below geographical north or south.
With this as a rough guide, but without knowing the season, she guessed that the ravine headed roughly northeast.
Roche turned to Cane. "That flyer," she said. "Did you get a look at its insignia?"
He nodded. "A circle, with a green cross on a white background."
"Not Armada or Dato Bloc, then." Roche frowned. "Still, whoever they are, they seem pretty eager to find us." Looking back to the wreckage of the lander, she added, "Box?"
"Anything you can tell me about this place that might give us an idea of who we're dealing with?"
"If there is a point to all of this," said Roche, "then I wish you'd get to it."
Roche interrupted. "So you're saying that the flyer was a DAOC Enforcement vessel?"
"You're sure?"
Roche's tired sigh was lost to a flurry of scalding wind that skittered off across the plain, raising a cloud of orange dust in its wake. "And you couldn't have just told me that?"
Roche shook her head. "Is there anything else you can tell me that might be relevant to us here and now?"
"They definitely landed at the wreck." Cane's words distracted Roche from the voice in her head. She faced him again, saw him squinting into the distance. "I can make out their downdraft swirling the smoke."
"You can see that?" Once again Roche was amazed at his abilities. She was beginning to wonder if there was anything he couldn't do better than she. "I don't suppose you can make out how many there are of them, can you?" she added wryly.
The humor seemed lost on Cane. "No. I'd need some binoculars to discern anything more at this distance."
She leapt on the word instantly: "Binoculars? You remember using them before the capsule?"
His eyes met hers evenly. "No. But I know what they are."
"Just like you knew how to splint my arm?"
"That was Veden's doing." Cane shrugged. "I merely assisted him."
Roche sighed. If he was lying about how much he remembered, then she could trap him — unless, of course, he was better at lying, too. In the hours she had known him, he had demonstrated nothing but trustworthiness in her presence — and had, in fact, saved her life once already. She wasn't sure whether that bothered her more or less than if he hadn't.
"Tell him we're on our way." Roche mentally prepared herself for the descent into the ravine. Her shoulder ached right down to the bone, the pain reaching from her neck to the tips of her fingers. The secure-cuffing around her wrist had left yellow-black bruises where she had hit the ground after the explosion of the lander, but the Box looked little the worse for wear. Its outer casing had been scarred quite badly from the explosion, but was otherwise intact. The handle still slotted into her hand perfectly, even though she was unable to bear its weight with her left arm.
As she clambered back down the slope into the ravine, she took one last look around at the surface of Sciacca's World. An arid moonscape, plus an atmosphere. Not a pleasant place to live by any means. But for its mineral content, it would probably never have been settled in the first place.
She failed to see why
anyone would want to come here ...
Veden and Maii were waiting for them at the bottom of the ravine. Barely had they regained their wind before the Eckandi headed off up the ragged slope, toward the foothills.
Roche took a deep breath and followed. Cane stayed with her, considerate of her weakness rather than of his own strength. She had no doubt that he could outperform the Eckandi easily, in both speed and endurance.
"Has he said anything?" she asked him, not loud enough for the other two to hear.
"About what?"
"About why he's here."
Cane shook his head. "No, but he is impatient to get to wherever it is he wants to go. That much is obvious."
"Patently." She spat a mixture of saliva and dust into the rocks. The spittle was stained red. "But why? What does he expect to find here?"
Cane shrugged. "Exercise?"
Roche glanced ahead. The set of the Surin's narrow shoulders told her that the message had been intended for her alone.
"On a prison planet?" Roche mumbled to herself.
Cane turned to her. "What did you say?"
"Nothing," she said, and kept on walking.
* * *
The day darkened, paradoxically, as the sun rode higher into the sky. Once, the flyer passed overhead again, but this time didn't turn immediately back. Her mind was fogged by exhaustion, and she could only vaguely guess that their intentions were to intensify their search by looking farther from the wreckage. Not that it mattered. With the wind lifting the dust the way it was, in another hour or so the people in the flyer were going to have a visibility factor of about zero.
To while away the time, and to distract herself from the constant pain, she tried to talk to the Box. Something more substantial — even access to a basic medical database, accessible by the contact pad in her quarters — would have been preferable, but the Box was all she had. It could add little to what she had already learned from Cane: that the lander had exploded shortly after landing, as planned; that Maii and Veden had made it to shelter in time, but that she and Cane had taken a touch of heat-flash, in addition to Roche's dislocated shoulder and bruised ribs; that she had been carried on Cane's back away from the burning wreckage like a sack of potatoes; that Cane hadn't wanted to move her at all until she had regained consciousness and had agreed to do so only after Veden had threatened to leave them behind.