The Beauty of Destruction

by Gavin G. Smith

  ‘What’s that?’ she asked.

  ‘Gravity,’ Ludwig said. He had learned how to communicate verbally. She suspected he was using a dialled-down sonic weapon application of the Elite-tech to do so. Scab hung limp in front of him, held in a coherent energy field that must have been using a significant amount of the automaton’s entangled energy feed. At least Scab wasn’t trying to thrash about. ‘There is something with a huge mass just the other side of the bridge point.’

  The Basilisk II slid through the rip into space. There was a glow from beneath the ship, manoeuvring engines compensating for the pull of gravity. At first the Monk thought they were above a vast plane. It stretched as far as they could see in all directions. The bridge closed behind them, and the ship started to rise. It wasn’t visible to the naked eye, but neunonic analysis suggested that there was a slight curvature. The Basilisk II continued to rise. The ‘serpent witch’ mind of the bridge drive’s navigation systems had brought them out very close to the object, whatever it was. It was clear that it had been constructed, despite its vast size. It had to be L-tech.

  ‘Any scans, comms?’ the Monk asked Ludwig.

  ‘Nothing,’ the automaton answered after a moment. She hadn’t liked how long it had taken the Elite to get an answer from the Yig-infected ship. Then came the realisation of what it was.

  ‘It’s a Dyson Sphere,’ she said. Talia frowned. Vic concentrated for a moment and then opened his mandibles in his ’sect replication of human surprise.

  ‘That’s like a star encased in a structure, right?’ Talia said. The Monk was a little less surprised at her sister’s knowledge this time. Her neunonics were trying to do the maths on the amount of matter involved, although it was just estimates because she couldn’t risk accessing the Basilisk II’s systems. The builders would have had to cannibalise multiple star systems for this much matter. She looked up through the transparent hull and yes, Known Space seemed lacking in nearby stars. Her neunonics had no frame of reference to plot location. They were in deep space. She suspected between galaxies. This suggested that the megastructure had been moved, somehow.

  ‘A stellar engine?’ she asked Ludwig. The machine didn’t answer. ‘Is this your home?’

  ‘I think so,’ Ludwig said. It sounded like the sort of thing an uplift would say; she didn’t like that it sounded unsure. ‘Mr Scab wishes to speak with you,’ the automaton said. The Monk glanced at the others. Vic sagged. She couldn’t read Talia’s expression, despite neunonic analysis. The Monk nodded. There was a shift in the air around Scab’s face, though he was still hanging limp in front of the cylindrical floating automaton, suspended in mid-air.

  ‘You have to let me go,’ Scab said. His tone was flat, but it still sounded the closest to desperation she had ever heard from him. It chilled her, and reminded her of just how vulnerable she suspected he truly was. ‘I need to kill.’

  Vic let out an affected laugh.

  ‘You’re not really convincing us,’ the Monk said.

  ‘I don’t think it will be you. I’m ready. I want to kill it. Shoot me like a bullet into god.’

  ‘Let him go,’ Talia surprised the Monk by saying.

  There was nothing, it was dead, inert, as far as they could tell, though even active scans wouldn’t have got through the dense shell of the Dyson Sphere. There was no activity on the surface that they could see, and the Basilisk II’s AG system was strained to its maximum tolerances with them being as close as they were. Ludwig managed to coax the truculent possessed yacht out further. They did a fast fly-by, stealthy as they could, passive scans only. Four and a half standard hours later all they had seen was a lot of smooth grey matter.

  ‘We have something,’ Ludwig said. As a precaution they did not ’face with Ludwig either, though if he was overcome by the Yig virus then his Elite-tech would easily overwhelm their neunonic security. When he fell they all fell. Part of the transparent hull magnified. They were far enough away from the sphere now that she could make out the curvature more clearly. The ship was a gnat staring at a mountain.

  ‘I don’t see it,’ the Monk said. Talia came to stand by her side, peering at the magnified part of the hull. Vic wasn’t far behind. Scab was sitting in his chair, smoking. The ship upped the magnification on the hull. The Monk’s augmented eyes could now make out a very faint red glow. The magnified square of the hull switched to the infrared spectrum. There was a faint emanation of heat from the area.

  ‘Can we send in one of the AG submunitions?’ the Monk asked. ‘Use it for passive scans and then return to the ship and report?’ They couldn’t risk transmissions.

  ‘In theory,’ Ludwig said. ‘But like all the ship’s systems they are infected, and it will be beyond my influence unless we transmit and give away our position.’

  ‘Do you know the way back?’ Scab asked, and then took a drag on his cigarette. The Monk just looked at him. ‘Then let’s get this over and done with.’

  The Monk turned to Talia. ‘You still want neunonics? Soft-machine augments?’ Suddenly her sister didn’t look so sure of herself. Scab opened his mouth, but then didn’t say anything.

  ‘Now wait a minute …’ Vic started.

  ‘It’s not up to you,’ the Monk snapped. For just a moment Talia looked frightened.

  ‘I’m not so special out here, am I?’ she said. The Monk laughed.

  ‘I’ve no idea where here is.’ Even with all her experience she couldn’t quite get her head around how far the two of them were from Bradford. Talia just hugged her sister. For that moment she found herself feeling profoundly grateful. Her sister knew that she needed help. ‘How much do we trust the assembler?’ she asked Ludwig. The automaton reeled off some impressively large number as the probability against Yig infecting any neunonics they assembled.

  ‘Yay! Now I can be a superhero too,’ Talia said weakly. Some part of the Monk felt bad. It felt like she was polluting her sister, but she was also increasing her chances of survival. Talia’s systems would be high-end civilian/mid-range military/bounty killer – the Basilisk II’s assembler was good, but not much use for the custom illegal hard- and software that the likes of herself, Vic and Scab had within them. They would do their best to fabricate armour and weapons. She would have artificial skills provided by the software, but they wouldn’t have time to properly integrate them with her body, even after it had been augmented, and artificial skills were no match for experience and training.

  They had put Talia under and laid her on her bed. The neunonics and liquid hardware had been fed into the brain membrane through the eyes and ears, and most of the assembled soft-machine augments had been injected intramuscularly. They had left to let them grow and integrate. Talia had been ravenous when she had woken. They had run her through some simple integration exercises. Scab had started to pace impatiently. Ludwig had remained a still presence in the lounge/C&C, though Beth knew he was fighting an unseen electronic war within his own systems and the Basilisk II’s.

  Then they had put on the new armour bought from the black market habitat on the way to Black Athena. They had run diagnostics and simulations with the as-yet unused weapons systems. There was something more than a little off-putting about seeing Talia armed and armoured. The Monk suspected it was the assumption that her younger sister had no sense of responsibility whatsoever, and that giving her weapons was just an act of lunacy. Still, the softwired neunonic skills made her look at least competent. Beth was also pleased that Talia had Vic looking after her, though she tried not to think too hard about their ‘relationship’. She saw Scab casting her sister the odd strange look. She had even felt a momentary pang of jealousy, but then found herself shaking her head and smiling at the ridiculousness of it.

  Ludwig had brought the Basilisk II down as close to the Dyson Sphere as the AG and manoeuvring systems could manage. Subjectively the sphere looked like a huge, flat mountain stretching away from them in all directions. They were too close to make out the curvature. They made their way towa
rds the escaping heat as stealthily as they could.

  It reminded Beth of someone having taken a spoon to crack a boiled egg, but that was perhaps because she knew the translation of the name the Ubh Blaosc. It was a huge, ragged tear in the shell of the Dyson Sphere. From inside they could make out the faint red glow.

  ‘Plasma damage,’ Vic said, looking at the melted and fused smart matter surrounding the hole in the shell. ‘It must have had the force of a sun.’

  ‘An Elite?’ the Monk asked.

  ‘Too much even for them,’ Vic said.

  ‘The dragons breathe fire,’ Ludwig told them. Even Scab turned to stare at the automaton.

  ‘Are you all right?’ the Monk asked Talia. Her younger sister was looking uncomfortable in her skin.

  ‘It’s strange,’ she said. ‘It’s like I’m trying to get used to things that are already instinct.’

  They were over the hole now, the ship struggling with a strange interplay of gravitic forces, tiny against the backdrop of the massive rift. It began to sink into the hole, into the Dyson Sphere, into what she assumed was the Ubh Blaosc.

  Inside was vast, dark and empty, illuminated by the faint red light. She guessed there would be no atmosphere. Even with a hole this size it would take a very long time to evacuate all the air from a structure like the Dyson Sphere, but this had happened a very long time ago. The entire surface of the sphere seemed to be made up of mountainous ridges and valleys. Magnification showed the landscape consisted of segmented, organic, resinous-looking material. From their perspective the ridges climbed up the huge vertical-looking walls of the sphere’s interior, disappearing into the darkness above and below. In the red light it looked like Hell.

  ‘Is that a fucking statue?’ Talia asked. The light was coming from a fading, final sequence G-type star that looked small and distant in the centre of the Dyson Sphere. The light from the dim star was obscured by what did appear to be a massive statue, though the word didn’t really do it justice, of an ancient warrior with wings. The Monk had no idea what to make of that.

  ‘The Naga would have consumed all the matter, transforming it at a molecular level for their own purposes,’ Ludwig told them. The Monk noticed that the ship was starting to move towards the statue and the fading sun.

  ‘Then why not the statue?’ Talia asked.

  ‘He is a god,’ Ludwig said. Even Scab turned to stare at the automaton. It was not something that the Monk had ever wanted to hear a machine say.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Vic asked.

  ‘Lug,’ Ludwig told him. The ’sect opened his mandibles to ask another question. ‘Extremophile Naga spores are attaching themselves to the ship.’

  ‘Are they doing anything?’ the Monk asked.

  ‘Is there movement down there?’ Vic asked. The Monk had been thinking the same thing. Parts of the transparent hull were magnified. The mountains seemed to be shifting, parts of them uncoiling, flashes of light from engine fire as hibernating, biomechanical Naga ships started to awake.

  ‘If they know we’re here let’s speed up,’ the Monk said.

  ‘Speed up?’ Vic demanded incredulously. ‘Let’s just fucking leave!’ Movement was spreading like a forest fire beneath them.

  ‘There’s nowhere to run now,’ Scab said. The Monk glanced at him, his face in shadow, the rest of him illuminated by the faint red light.

  ‘They know something is happening but I don’t think they know exactly where we are yet,’ Ludwig said. The Monk wondered just how much the automaton had been compromised.

  ‘Can we go any faster?’ the Monk asked.

  ‘The faster we move the greater the likelihood of disco—’ Ludwig went quiet. The Monk stared at the floating cylindrical automaton. It was one of the Elite. They were capable of fighting entire fleets on their own, of destroying habitats, rendering worlds uninhabitable, and something had just made it go quiet. The air in the yacht’s lounge/C&C was suddenly filled with the funk of Vic’s pheromonic terror. She knew how he felt.

  ‘Is there safety with Lug?’ the Monk demanded. Ludwig didn’t answer.

  ‘Beth?’ Talia said, clearly frightened. The biomechanical ships, the Naga’s ‘dragons’, were separating themselves from their resin-like environment. The Basilisk II surged forwards, dramatically increasing its speed. Beth found herself using her neunonics to estimate how long it would take them to get to Lug, assuming that Lug was the statue, and how fast the biomechanical dragons would have to go to catch up with them. She abandoned it for the useless speculation it was. She had only come into contact with the Naga twice before. The first time had resulted in tens of thousands of deaths, and the sterilisation and subsequent destruction of an entire habitat. The second time it had nearly killed her. The serpent uplifts were voracious, and utterly inimical to all other forms of biological life. Suddenly this vast sphere had become claustrophobic. ‘Beth!’ Talia cried. The Monk almost snapped in response until she saw what her younger sister was pointing at. The Lounge/C&C’s carpet had developed scales. The faint red light was getting brighter. Suddenly Scab had stood up as if his armchair had just bitten him, his EM auto-shotgun in hand and his combat armour helmet growing over his head, the black visor sliding down over his face.

  ‘Seal up,’ Beth told her sister as her own helmet grew around her head. Talia’s eyes went wide.

  ‘Shit!’ the girl swore and ran towards her bedroom. The ship was reconfiguring, changing shape. The flexing of the smart matter hull was more sinuous than normal.

  ‘Talia!’ the Monk screamed just as her visor slid down. Her new P-sat clicked into the clip on her new armour’s shoulder. She could see the dragons burning towards the yacht now. At least they had some distance to travel from the shell to the huge warrior-shaped structure partially obscuring the faint red sun. Talia emerged from the corridor that led to the bedrooms. She was tucking what looked like a stainless steel rose into one of the compartments on her recently assembled armour.

  ‘Close your fucking helmet!’ Beth ’faced. Talia actually flinched. It was perhaps a little harsh for her sister’s first ’face communication, but at least Talia was closing her helmet.

  The yacht was heading straight for Lug’s huge open mouth. It had to be hundreds of miles high, thousands across and then it filled their vision. The floor of the yacht shifted beneath them.

  ‘The ship has fallen,’ Ludwig announced in a matter-of-fact tone. The ship was slowing. There was a flash of black light, and then Beth was tumbling through the sky heading straight towards Lug. The AG motor in her P-sat could do nothing to slow her. She was aware of several parts of the mutating Basilisk II falling away from her far below. Something took hold of her and she started to slow down. Then she became aware of the heat. Despite the late sequence of the star, despite the huge structure of the warrior in its way, they were still in the corona of a star. Her armour was right on the edge of its material tolerances. Then the heat went away. The four of them were being carried in some kind of coherent energy field projected by Ludwig, who was just above and behind them. Once again Beth found herself wondering just how compromised by the Yig virus the ancient automaton was. She was still getting AV feed from her P-sat. The fire of the dragon’s engines seemed to fill the sphere all around them.

  Hanging underneath Ludwig, approaching the huge statue, all she could really see of it was the cavernous darkness inside the mouth. Beth suddenly felt calm. Then her augmented vision illuminated the interior of the enormous head. It was filled with the same resinous material that coated the Dyson Sphere’s inner shell. There was movement everywhere on the resin. The serpent uplifts, themselves slaves to one of the hive-minds in the huge Nagaraja-class capital ships, were uncoiling from their resinous nests.

  ‘You’ve killed us, Ludwig,’ Beth said to herself. A ’face transmission wouldn’t have reached him through the E-field. She wished she could comfort her sister. Talia would be very afraid right now.

  Ludwig dropped them on the very edge of the open m
outh. The Monk had a ninety million mile drop to her back. The E-field came down.

  ‘I’ll be outside,’ Ludwig told them.

  They went through the motions. Flashes of laser light lost in the huge cavernous darkness of the mouth. The serpents, and other, scuttling, biomechanical weapons, rushed towards them. The most target-rich of environments. Not even Talia hesitated. Targeting systems told them where to aim: the closest first and then work their way out. Beth fired her hybrid EM shotgun/laser carbine combination, cycling quickly between the side-by-side weapons. Superheated flesh exploded where the laser hit. The auto-shotgun’s solid-state magazine was assembled into fin-stabilised, armoured-piercing rounds, designed to go through the serpents’ thick, armoured hide, and explode when they detected warm flesh. Her P-sat was firing its laser over her shoulder at incoming projectiles. She would save the grenades in the underslung launcher until they needed breathing space.

  Vic’s strobe gun was a scythe of red light. The rotary weapon was in his lower limbs as he swivelled his abdomen one way and then back again. His thorax swivelled independently, his upper limbs firing his advanced combat rifle. The ACR ran dry. He quickly reloaded and started firing again, the diminishing magazine looking like it was being eaten by the rifle. It was clear that he was compensating for Talia, trying to keep her safe. The Monk’s younger sister, however, was holding her ground. She didn’t have anything like the firepower of the rest of them, and was presumably only able to function through the fear due to the chemicals her soft-machine augments would have dumped into her blood, but she was firing burst after burst from her double-barrelled laser carbine.

  Scab was a picture of efficiency. One shot with his EM auto-shotgun and a serpent fell. Then the next and the next; he was moving with startling speed, his targeting systems prioritising threats. His P-sat, clipped to his armour, was stabbing out at the Naga as well.