by Alex Lamb
He relaxed, his craziness subsiding a little. ‘Remember, any observations from today’s contests that you wish to share can be donated at the local station. I encourage you all to watch using a wavelength and frame-rate you haven’t tried before. And my apologies in advance for any body-loss that may occur. Thank you for your time and happy watching. Let the games recommence.’
The displays fell dark and rose into the sky.
‘Ladies and Gentlewills,’ said the female announcer, ‘witness the experimental and entirely untested might of Odin Four-Three-Eight-Nine-Seven!’
A door opened on the far side of the arena and a three-metre-tall clone covered in green spiked armour strode forth from the shadows. Cheers broke out from the assembled crowd.
‘Confronting him this morning is the terror-inspiring alpha-release that is Ravana Seven-Seven-Six-Two!’
Another clone appeared, this one four metres tall in scarlet and gold, armed with four sets of shoulder cannons and limbs ending in scythes. The two combatants looked ridiculously small given the amount of space they had to fight in.
‘Audience members,’ said the announcer to the ebullient crowd, ‘please brace yourselves. Combat testing will commence in three seconds, two … one …’
The speed with which the two monsters burst into action took Will entirely by surprise. The gladiators fell on each other in an instant, the impact of their bodies filling the stadium with a weird shrieking, grinding sound. There were bursts of light and blasts of flame. Everyone sitting in the first three rows caught fire. Will was buffeted by a wave of heat and started to leap out of his chair. Moneko held him down.
‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘That always happens. The clones in the front rows sit there on purpose.’
Will gawped as Ravana blasted Odin into pieces, but that was when the fight really started. In the same second, Odin’s spikes radiated outwards, growing wings to become a swarm of independent munitions. They ripped through the air, half of them descending on Ravana and nuking him into shrapnel. The shrapnel melted and became several hundred slugs of living slime. They sprang into the air, binding to Odin’s wheeling torpedoes.
‘Holy fuck!’ Will exclaimed. ‘What are they made of?’
Whatever molecular technology comprised the gladiators made his smart-cell architecture look positively gentle.
‘Weaponised pseudo-life,’ said Moneko. ‘The same tech this planet uses to construct drones, but refined and evolved by us over thousands of rapid generations. It’s basically combat nanotech.’
Odin’s remaining weapons thundered into the ground, where they reshaped and formed themselves into a miniature citadel armed with energy weapons. As Ravana’s slugs raced towards it, Odin seared the surrounding floor until it melted. Will was forced to look away as another white-hot burst of light left his eyes flash-blind.
‘Christ!’ he blurted as his vision slowly returned.
By the time he could see again, the battle was over. Everyone in the front rows had been reduced to ash. A jagged black column thirty centimetres high was all that remained on the testing ground.
‘Odin wins by seven per cent remaining material,’ said the announcer calmly. ‘Well done, Odin!’
While Will stared at the smoking remains, Moneko faced him. Her hair was singed. Burn marks on her face were rapidly subsiding. He doubted he looked much better.
‘I wanted you to see this so that you’d understand the stakes,’ she said. ‘Those anchors I told you about? They’re the only thing stopping that from leaving this planet. Balance can’t innovate with space-based weapons at the moment because of his own axioms, so he’s concentrated on molecular tech. But what we can do now is terrifying. These are the little weapons we’re tinkering with. The ones you can watch and still live. Once the Willworld is ready, Balance will explode across this part of the galaxy. Everything in his path is going to die. And right now, the version of Balance we have doesn’t believe in the human race.’
‘What?’ said Will scowling. ‘How do you mean?’
‘He thinks it’s all a dream, remember? The human race is something to aspire to – a vision to build, not something that already is. So if you’re right, and humanity exists somewhere out there, he’s going to think it’s another trick. I doubt it’ll last very long. That’s why we’re mapping anchors, Will. So that when the locks come off, the god that leaves here is the sanest, most Glitch-compatible kind we can muster. I’m hoping you’ll help us do that, because the alternative scares me, even though my brain is part of him.’
9.2: IRA
Ira stared at Clath’s simulant and thought fast. Their shuttle lay out in the open with a Phote armada minutes away. If they weren’t careful, the Photes would spot them from their infrared signature alone.
‘I’m a fool,’ said Clath. ‘I didn’t want to admit this could happen. Christ, I’m such a fucking fool.’
‘Don’t go there,’ said Ira. ‘We made the best risk assessment we could – together.’
He pulled his mind back to his real body in the shuttle and brought up a scan of local space. They needed somewhere to hide and had just seconds to find it. Given the light-lag, Mark and the others still wouldn’t know what had happened for over an hour.
‘We need cover,’ he told Clath. ‘Our shuttle’s very obvious right now. Any chance we could make use of all that effective rad-shielding you were talking about? It has to be close.’
‘Let’s hope,’ she said, frantically checking her data. ‘Okay! I think I have something. We go straight up.’
Ira checked the shuttle’s top camera. It afforded them an amazing view of the nearest false-matter tether stretching away like a silk strand spun by the god of all spiders. At the top of it hung one of the ark-ships they’d spotted. From this angle he could see a large opening in the bottom, like a giant’s version of the entry portal they’d just used to explore the habitat.
‘It’s big enough,’ said Ira.
‘If the shielding on that ship is anything like the structure we were just in, it’ll be perfect. I didn’t even notice the hole was there until after we landed.’
Ira wasted no time. He severed connections with their robots and took the shuttle up as fast as he dared.
‘What about the pressure lock?’ said Clath. ‘Are we just going to leave it behind?’
‘It’s tiny,’ said Ira. ‘If they can spot that from a speeding starship, they deserve to find us.’
‘Wait! If we hide up there, how’s Mark going to know where we are?’
‘There are protocols for that sort of thing,’ said Ira. ‘Mark’s a big boy. He knows where we went and he’ll know we looked for solid cover. We just need to make sure we leave passive marker beacons he can ping with an encrypted signal when he gets close.’
‘You mean like microsats,’ said Clath.
Ira groaned. He’d just left most of their beacons on the ground.
‘Fuck,’ he said. ‘Who’s the idiot now? Still, we can manage. We just need to be careful where we station the ones we have left.’ It wasn’t a great solution but it’d have to do.
The opening in the alien ship, when they reached it, did not look how Ira had expected. For starters, the thing had teeth. And the inside was awfully dark, as if shadows clung to it.
‘Okay,’ said Ira as they slid up past the metallic jaws. ‘That’s creepy.’
‘I think it’s a retractable warp-inducer surface of some kind,’ said Clath.
‘This thing has warp?’ said Ira. ‘It doesn’t have any brollies.’
The darkness swallowed them as they flew inside. The shuttle’s searchlights played across the throat of the hole as they glided carefully upwards. The walls of the enclosure were a cryptic tangle of baroque alien machinery held behind a glossy rainbow skin of false matter. Normal starships were full of empty spaces. By contrast, this craft had been crammed tight with nothing he understood – right down to the last millimetre.
‘If this is a warp-ship, shouldn’t we be pas
sing mesohull accelerators right now?’ he said.
She shook her head. ‘Maybe they’re hidden. Or maybe this is some kind of mini-embership. I’m not sure. I can’t tell what this thing does. All the machinery looks wrong.’
‘Agreed,’ said Ira. ‘But that’s a problem for later,’ he said. ‘Surviving cats get to be curious.’
‘What do you think this hole is for?’ said Clath as their view of the moon shrank beneath them between the silhouetted fangs of the enclosure. She practically whispered. Something about the lightless space around them demanded reverence. ‘A docking bay? Drone storage?’
‘No idea,’ said Ira.
At the top of the hole, the tunnel took a sharp right, leading to a narrow passage lined with metal scaffolding. Ira flew the shuttle gingerly into the silvered darkness and parked the ship against one of the lattices. Grappling was easier than he’d expected, as if that was what the frames were for.
The shuttle locked tight. But for the ticking of the hull, there was now only silence. Ira scanned around their ship. Above them, on the inward hull, he noticed circular hatches bearing mandala patterns – airlocks, perhaps.
‘Definitely a docking bay,’ said Ira.
‘Take a look at our sensor spread,’ said Clath, awed. ‘Look at the whole EM spectrum – all directions.’
Ira did so. From inside the tunnel, almost nothing of the outside universe could be detected, barring the view relayed by the remaining microsats they’d deployed near the entrance. The rest of the universe was utterly, eerily absent from every wavelength. It was like hiding inside the cloak of the Grim Reaper.
‘The shielding’s nearly perfect,’ said Clath. ‘If we’re not safe here, we won’t be anywhere.’
‘Let’s hope,’ said Ira, scanning the incomprehensible machinery that loomed on all sides.
The operational lighting circuits from the bubble-habitat sprang to his mind. Who knew what machinery might still be running in this place – what SAPs might be rousing to subtle, alien thoughts? He forced such notions aside and settled down to wait in the stifling, impenetrable dark.
9.3: MARK
They were about to put Rachel into surgery when the message arrived.
‘Human explorers, your journey has been a success …’
Mark swore copiously. His team was split, and by his reckoning they had only about an hour and a half to leave the system before trouble hit.
He dumped himself, Palla and Rachel into helm-space and activated the ship’s cloak.
‘I never should have okayed this,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I knew it was a bad idea to linger.’
‘Who’s lingering?’ said Palla. ‘It’s only been hours, Mark. Don’t blame yourself. Now how about we round everyone up sharpish so we can get the hell out of Dodge?’
‘Presuming we still can.’
He checked their tactical SAP and scowled as the problems revealed themselves. They had enough time to retrieve Ann’s team from the surface but not to double back for Ira’s shuttle. Worse, the part of the system where Ira lay was probably crawling with Photes already. Mark could see at least fifty ship signatures spreading out to dominate local space.
‘We have to focus on getting Ann and Judj out first,’ said Palla. She opened a warning channel to their shuttle. ‘They’re that much closer.’
‘Agreed,’ said Mark. ‘But we also need options – defences, decoys, something. This space is way too clear. Right now, we’re sitting ducks.’
‘Use my ship,’ said Rachel. Mark turned to face her, surprised.
She still lay in the hospital bed. If she was fazed by the fact that her room had vanished to be replaced by a wraparound vision of tactical space, she wasn’t showing it.
‘That’s a great idea,’ he said. ‘With the Diggory, we could at least try to draw their fire while we mount a rescue.’
‘Sure,’ said Palla. ‘But what if there are Transcended clues hiding in it? Do we care about that? Or what if the ship’s been co-opted, somehow?’
‘It’s too late to worry about that,’ said Mark. ‘I’ll run it with sandboxed subminds, if necessary. But with two ships we could set up a distraction. We actually stand a chance of getting Ira and Clath out.’ He fixed Palla with a steady gaze. ‘I’m going back for them, just so you know. Whatever it takes.’
Palla grinned. Her eyes gleamed. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Frankly, I’d expect nothing less of you, Captain Ruiz. You have a certain reputation, you know.’
‘I’ll help you understand the specs of my ship,’ said Rachel. ‘I have all the override codes and I can rig it for remote operation. Is that enough? Do you think you can fly both ships at once?’
Mark snorted. ‘Just two starships? Under only modest combat conditions? I won’t even break a sweat.’
‘Okay,’ said Palla. ‘By my reckoning, we have about twenty minutes to get the SAP control-harness together. After that, we’ll need to focus on how to hide and collect Ann at the same time.’
‘We can do that,’ said Rachel. ‘I taught Mark how to fly, remember. I know what he needs. I’m looking forward to working him, even from this damned bed. I can’t wait to see what he can do these days.’
Mark felt a curious surge of embarrassment at that. It was an emotion out of the deep past that had no place in a battle. In real-life terms he was now older than Rachel, so having an ex-mentor looking over his shoulder shouldn’t have bothered him. Apparently, though, some things never changed.
‘All you’ll see is a blur, Rach,’ he said with a half-smile. ‘I have more new tricks than you do years in cryo.’
‘In the meantime, I’ll clear out our robots,’ said Palla. ‘Let’s get to work.’
Mark opened a channel to the Diggory and started taking its software apart.
9.4: ANN
Ann had almost finished lowering the backup brain to the floor when the news hit.
‘Ann, you need to get out,’ said Judj. ‘The Photes are coming.’
Ann regarded the pulley system she’d rigged out of fibre-optic line and beta-conduit. She was suspended from one end of a mesoskeletal spar, balanced at forty-five degrees, ten storeys above the curving bowl of the drone’s exohull far below.
‘I can’t really do that now,’ she said, annoyed. ‘Not safely.’
She gritted her teeth as she lowered the brain another metre. An idea came to her that gave her a rush of twisted satisfaction.
‘You should go,’ she said. ‘I’ll catch up.’
Judj paused to comprehend. ‘Are you fucking insane?’ he said. ‘Catch up how? Are you going to jump out of the gravity well?’
‘Does it matter?’ said Ann. ‘I’m indisposed right now and probably wouldn’t make it back to the shuttle in time anyway. It’s better if you leave. That’s safest. And besides, there’s something I want to bring with me that isn’t super-easy to carry.’
‘Ann!’ Judj shouted. ‘I don’t have time to play games. Our exit window is about two minutes deep! We’re talking about a full system invasion.’
‘Go, really, it’s okay,’ said Ann. ‘I want you to.’
There was a long, painful pause.
‘Fine!’ he roared. ‘That’s what I’ll do, then!’
She felt a shiver of satisfaction as the subsonic rumble of an emergency take-off passed through the drone’s structure. Judj had actually left. She wasn’t sure he’d be able to do it.
After he was gone, Ann hummed to herself as she finished lowering the brain to the floor. Then she tied down her cable and descended after it, hand over hand. If she couldn’t take her prize back with her, did it matter whether she died here or at Snakepit? This place was as good as any to make an exit. And besides, this way might be a lot more fun.
She knew the Photes would spot the shuttle’s landing site from an IR surface scan. People had long since built SAPs optimised to pick out those smears of hot rock shuttles left behind them and Bock Two was bound to receive the lion’s share of their attention. So they
’d know she’d been here. Would they torch the defensive node from orbit, just to get her? She doubted it. She’d seen how the Photes acted at Snakepit and New Panama. They treated nodes like holy places. And why not? They were full of drone babies.
She’d gambled her life on the fact that her enemies wouldn’t dare damage the site even though it was long dead. She had no idea how the Photurians thought about dead homeworlds, or if they even knew that such things were possible. Given how adamant they were about everlasting joy, she suspected they’d be as confused as she was.
Instead, they’d probably be desperate to know what she’d been doing and how much she’d seen. She could use that. The Great Abomination, wandering around in the halls of their most intimate secrets, abusing their dead? Ann chuckled to herself. She wanted to see the looks on their faces before they died.
She pushed the backup brain out through the hole in the exohull and onto the cobwebbed boulevard between the dead drones. Then she sauntered back towards the landing site, leaving her prize waiting on the cracked ceramic behind her.
9.5: NADA
Nada watched her ships deploy across the system with her heart in her mouth. A mature homeworld in the frame raised the stakes of this battle immeasurably.
‘I wish to report,’ said Leng in shrill, uneven tones.
‘Start,’ she replied.
He took a few seconds to find the words. Nada watched his hands shake. He grabbed his support umbilicus and squeezed at it.
‘The homeworld appears to be in poor condition,’ he said.
Nada glared at him. ‘What? How? Have the humans damaged it already? I wish to see!’
