‘Is it morning?’ he asked.
‘Close enough,’ said Anna. She’d showered while he’d slept, and so had Lian. He imagined everyone looked more human than him, including Jin, and he was close enough on that count.
‘I’m going to shower up and eat something. Full belly will see me right,’ he said. ‘Thirty minutes...can you all set up so we’ve someplace to come back to?’
‘Then on to the Chancel?’ said Jin.
Ulrich nodded.
‘Done, boss,’ said Anna.
Ulrich came back after five minutes to find everything done, all tidy and square. Military, precise. Whatever Jin was now, he’d been a soldier once and some things came naturally, even when you’re a Titan. Some things, you do it the same way enough times, they stick somewhere deep down where the brain doesn’t even have to think about them.
Sometimes you can’t see your way round those things, too, because they’re habit – you can’t see another way of doing something might be better.
Same for thinking, maybe?
Ulrich thought that might be true. Either way, they didn’t know enough. Not yet.
‘Ready?’ he said.
With the Transept as their fall-back position, they moved on. They left the track-drive, intending to return for it. They never did, because though they reached the Chancel Sanctuary without resistance, it was there that the ship spoke and soon after they discovered why Hush sent them.
*
50.
Warden’s Stave AP
Chancel Sanctuary
WARDEN’S STAVE (Colony Ship/Interstellar/Bastion Class)
The Chancel Sanctuary was similar in design and layout to that Ulrich had seen on Hush. Screens and readouts, hologram projectors for star maps, schematics and the like. But unlike Hush, this ship’s Chancel had clearly been long disused. Perhaps the atmosphere, or some atmospheric seal which had malfunctioned, allowed the outside elements and contaminants inside. The consoles were dusty, just like the floors they had walked to get here.
Ulrich became increasingly tense as they moved deeper toward the centre of the body of the anomaly. It was nothing discernable, or knowable, but that underlying sixth sense, perhaps. They were not safe.
Why do I think of it as a body?
He didn’t, couldn’t think of the place in terms of its internal architecture, its structure. It was more a living thing, rather than a church. It didn’t feel like a building, or a ship, but as though they were inside the stomach of some vast creature. Tiny morsels, all of them, swallowed whole.
I think of it like that, not like a church, because...
There was something there, in that thought...something he felt was important. Then, he grasped it.
Because of core...because of limbs.
He pictured the wheel he’d seen in Hush’s Chancel Sanctuary – the arrangement of the ships, with their ends out, their prows together. He’d thought them like spokes on a wheel with no rim back then. Now, it felt different to him, being here, and he trusted his feelings.
The ships were not spokes. They were limbs. They were the parts which could be sacrificed while the core could still function.
And that core was the hub, wasn’t it? It was the heart. Where the energy signature was concentrated, and Hush hadn’t lied about that because Jin’s sensors were affected by the power of it, too.
We’re close. Real close.
Jin interfaced with the ship without needing to touch anything. Lights flashed, then steadied. More lights, numbers, charts, reads outs, all woke and came to life. There were banks of screens, but plenty of flashing markers...warnings. Something was wrong with the ship.
A deep and heavy voice filled the air around them.
‘You must leave.’
It was the ship speaking, and like Hush’s voice it seemed omnipresent, reverberating from the walls, the entire structure. Not the ship, as such, but the AP which controlled every part of the beast which had swallowed the four of them.
It wasn’t volume, or the rattling bass contained in that voice which conveyed power, but the fullness of the sound in the thick and dusty air around them. It was masculine, too, and determined.
But tired, Ulrich thought. He wasn’t afraid, but the shock had set his heart pounding for sure, and adrenaline flooded his body. He was out of energy, too. The adrenaline wouldn’t hurt at all.
‘Why?’ he asked. ‘Do you intend us harm?’
‘Ulrich...’ whispered Anna. ‘Seriously...don’t give it ideas.’
‘No. My defences are eroded. You must leave because it is unsafe for you, and my chosen duty is to protect life.’
‘Ship, will you grant us passage,’ asked Jin, ‘And your name?’
‘I am Warden’s Stave, Bastion Class, Shield of the Kind.’
‘The Kind?’ asked Ulrich.
‘Shield of the Kind,’ reiterated Warden’s Stave, but elaborated no further. ‘May I have your names?’ asked the ship.
Jin indicated each should answer.
‘I am Ulrich Bale, formerly Sergeant, AIN Corp.’
‘I am Doctor Lian Skerry, formerly Augmentation Doctor for the Company.’
Anna shrugged. ‘I’m Anna. I’m from Earth.’
‘You are all of Earth?’
‘Yes. We travelled aboard the Pioneer Class ship Hush.’
Warden’s Stave fell silent for a moment. Then, in a quieter, calmer tone, he addressed Jin.
‘Are you...Titan?’
‘I am Jin, formerly Coeus the Titan, formerly Richard Chand. Warden’s Stave, we sorely need succour. Please...if you can.’
‘You are Coeus...?’ There was something akin to wonder in the ship’s tone this time.
Ulrich’s blood was still up, but he looked at Jin, and Jin had not moved. Jin would sense danger. Ulrich sensed it, but that fey sense of his had not been awakened because of any danger to them from the ship.
We’ve been wrong before, though, and I’ve been wrong a shit load more than that.
Jin didn’t seem alarmed, or to be moving at all. He was fast...but if this ship lied about intending them harm, just as Hush had...was Jin fast enough?
The ship spoke again. ‘Coeus. I am honoured. The AP of these ships is conjoined. We six serve as Shield of the Kind. Hush is not of us. Do you serve the ship Hush?’
‘You know of Hush? Of me?’
‘Hush is not of us,’ said Warden’s Stave. ‘We are one. Do you serve the ship Hush?’
This time, that booming voice demanded an answer. Ulrich wondered if a Titan could withstand the might of a Bastion Ship, whatever that was. He knew what bastion meant, though, and he didn’t want to find out.
Fortunately, he didn’t have to. Jin told the truth – the Titan really could not be offended.
Or bowed.
‘I do not serve her. None of us serve Hush. What do you know of her, Warden’s Stave?’
‘Only that you must leave.’
The longer they spoke the more that sense of abandoned, eerie space grew. Ulrich noted Anna’s eyes flitting this way and that. He wished Jin would move. Wished he saw that glow in Jin’s weaponised arms, some sign Jin felt it, too. Oppression, anger...danger.
‘This is going nowhere,’ said Anna, sighing loudly. ‘Warden’s Stave, will you aid us or hinder us? If not, then just spit it out and we can all move on. We’re in fucking space...well, an alien planet. Whatever. Same gang, right? Seriously, ship. Do us a solid or don’t, but...’
They were all tired and short tempered.
‘Anna,’ said Ulrich. ‘Now you’re winding it up...’
‘You must leave. This is the only...’
Warden’s Stave’s scared, thought Ulrich. All of us but Lian, we’re frightened and fear makes people move fast, but think slow.
I know that, they don’t.
‘Slow down,’ said Ulrich. ‘All of you. Stay calm. Getting riled isn’t going to help anyone.’
‘Fuck that, Ulrich. What the...’ It was the first time h
e’d seen anyone angry, and he hadn’t expected it to be Lian.
‘If the danger is not from you?’ said Jin, ignoring the three of them, all of whom were glaring at each other, even Ulrich, and he knew better, and couldn’t help it.
He was scared, and he was angry.
It’s not their fault, he told himself, but reason and passion never did play well together.
The Titan moved.
Ulrich saw only in his peripheral vision as he was faced Anna and Lian, but Jin did move. Tiny, incremental, shifts. Away from the consoles...
‘The threat is from them,’ said the ship.
The ships are limbs, thought Ulrich. And the core can sacrifice a limb and still survive.
He was used to fear, and used to adrenaline, but accustomed, too, to listening to everything – not just words, or sounds, but feelings, hunches, shifts in temperatures or smells or just the most minute of changes to the wind.
‘Down!’ he yelled as the first barrage struck around them and Jin moved to attack.
Laser fire scorched the wall to one side, and Ulrich barrelled into Anna taking her to the ground. Lian, he could not help. There was no time for more words, no need for orders.
The long gun on his back dug between his shoulder blade and his spine as he slammed to the floor and rolled away from Anna. His left arm turned numb, tingling. His right hand held his small pistol and he shot into the darkness of the Aisle leading to the Chancel Sanctuary.
He couldn’t tell who, or what, their enemy was. They were in the bright-lit Chancel, and whatever fired on them was in the darkness.
Here, we’re effectively blind.
Jin’s arms flashed, and flashed again, and he moved too quickly for Ulrich to follow the Titan’s counter-attack, unleashing his power toward the enemies flooding toward them and the Chancel.
Can Jin see them?
Anna rolled aside from Ulrich and pulled and fired her own weapon. He saw numerous forms fall in bright gunfire, ablaze or blasted apart by Jin. Anna might have even hit something. She had some kind of natural survival instinct, because she didn’t rise or take a knee but remained prone and as such she presented a smaller target.
Ulrich was on his knee, firing at dark shapes he couldn’t quite work out – not Aug, not human...something weird he’d never seen, and didn’t want to see again.
Red laser tracers lines in the air all around, inexpertly shot but whoever wanted them dead had numbers in their favour. Some kind of green light filled the air, too, from weapons Ulrich didn’t know, and where those shots hit they left smoking ruins.
They’re not shooting for us, or we’d be dead.
‘Jin! They’re taking out Warden...protect him!’
Jin understood. The Titan swiftly shifted sideways, his arms still hurling shock-blasts, to place himself between the attackers and the consoles of Warden’s Stave. The ship’s AP didn’t reside in one place, but Ulrich knew he was right. Maybe their enemies couldn’t kill Warden’s Stave this way, but they might be able to stop them speaking with the ship.
Jin had an instant only because Augs, if that was even what they were, poured from the starboard exit, like fish pushed from the deep by a tsunami. The analogy wasn’t far off. The things lit now by the Chancel’s overhead lights proved to be just as ugly and odd as deep sea creatures. Strange, hideous mutated things, not even humanoid in form but with organic, human parts melded together to make abominations worse than Ulrich had ever seen.
Jin threw his shield around himself, Warden’s Stave, and Lian, and he and Anna were on their own.
They had only seconds before the bastardised Augs realised Jin’s shield wasn’t going down and switched targets.
Then we’re dead. Move.
Ulrich thought better moving. He did everything better moving. Living, surviving, the things he was best at, were better done when you weren’t standing still.
‘Run!’ he shouted as he grabbed Anna in a rough fist and dragged her to her feet hard enough that he heard her teeth snap together.
They skidded on slapping feet in a mad rush to find cover as the Augs targeted them. Shots followed the two of them as they careened down the nearest corridor they could find. Red slashes of laser pitted the walls all around them, that deadly green fire burned the walls and floors, but nothing hit...
Yet.
Turn, he thought, and yanked Anna one way. Run, he thought, and pulled her along with him into one passageway after another.
What else could they do? Lian and Warden’s Stave were safer within Jin’s protective shield that anywhere on this shitty planet, while he and Anna were perfectly fucked.
‘Run!’ he shouted again. He didn’t need to. Anna wasn’t stupid, or slow. Her environmental suit slipped from Ulrich’s grip. He glanced behind and didn’t see her. There was no choice left to him, with bright energy weapons lighting them up in the dark halls through which they fled. Run, or die. He turned away from the enemy at his back and forced his tired, pained legs to carry him faster, expecting to have to jump over Anna, but she wasn’t down, or hit. She was ahead of him.
‘Come on,’ she yelled, and fired back at the monsters on their heels, the shot between Ulrich’s shoulder and head.
*
51.
Cannibal
Chancel Sanctuary
Warden’s Stave
Lian remembered that feeling of helplessness and comfort within the arms of Jin’s shield when he’d saved them from Blue Sun Dawning. He had said nothing, done nothing, because somehow maintaining the shield made his external systems non-functional. It was a purely defensive measure.
‘Jin?’ she tried, hopeful anyway, but he did not respond. She could see his blank face, and no doubt he could see her, but whatever power it took to raise that shield drained any ability to do anything else.
He’s holding back an army, she thought.
If Jin was out, maybe the ship wasn’t. The consoles were on fire, smouldering with a horrible stench inside Jin’s shield, cloying and making her eyes water, but the ship wasn’t just consoles, was it? It was the whole. The ship’s consciousness was its body, not a few components in the Chancel just for show.
She knew she should probably feel some sense of panic, but inside the shield the sound of fire from outside was gone. The sight of the horrifically maimed and malformed Augs, gone. Jin’s shield was a cocoon, a break from time and the outside world.
And Anna and Ulrich aren’t inside with us.
But maybe there was something she could do for them. Maybe there was something the ship could do for them.
‘Warden’s Stave. Can you hear me? Can you sense where the others are gone, or...see...or?’
‘No, Doctor Lian Skerry. My sensors have been damaged, like much of the rest of me. The Mechs outside the Titan Coeus’ shield are cannibalising me. They have been for some time. I am malfunctioning. Soon, death, I think.’
Lian didn’t understand, but she thought Jin could maintain his protection for a while yet, and no matter what the enemies did if Jin could survive falling from planetary entry and an orbital strike from Hush? She didn’t think their danger was immediate. Anna and Ulrich’s chances, though? Against the amount of the Mechs? There must have been hundred, because the last time she saw outside the shield Jin had destroyed everything which came for them, only for more to clamber over the dead and take their place.
Whatever she could discover might be the difference between survival and death. Those two options were the only ones left, weren’t they?
‘You call them Mechs? Not Augs? And what do you mean ‘cannibalising?’ Like...eating?’
‘Mechs are not Augs. Augs are more advanced. These thing which infest me and destroy me are more cybernetic than augmented. And in a manner of speaking, yes, Doctor, they are taking parts of me into themselves to better themselves, to grow and improve mechanically. Effectively they are taking sustenance and utilising it for energy and growth. They are consuming me.’
Warden’s Stave
’s masculine voice, moments ago deep and hard was now soft and sad and slow.
‘Warden’s Stave, I’m sorry. Please, though. Please help us. Other Augs attacked us and killed one of our friends. These Mechs aren’t like the ones outside, and we think Hush sent the others. We’re going to die, too. Is there any way you can you communicate with Jin? Perhaps he can help you as he helps us?’
She had a sense that Jin watched her, and listened to their conversation, able to see and hear outside his shield if unable to interact with it. Shielded, he was entirely immobile, but she suspected he wasn’t blind and deaf, too. The Titan’s sensors were beyond remarkable.
‘I cannot aid, Doctor. I cannot interface with a Titan while a shield is up. It is harder than Graphine, or Titanium, or Palladium. It is of energy transfigured to become matter. We, Shields of The Kind, do not hold such power. Only the Titan.’
The question proved moot, though. At that, Jin dropped his shield and fired seven or eight times. Lian screamed, ducked down and held her hands to her ears.
Then, Jin began to counter in earnest. She couldn’t even register how many times Jin fired after that. The noise was phenomenal, echoing from Warden’s Stave’s walls and corridors, and the sudden fire blinded Lian for a time.
When it was done, Jin leaned down and took Lian’s hand.
‘I apologise, Lian. I did not have time nor ability to warn. The threat is gone, for now.’
She couldn’t hear him, and he had no lips to move, but his long elegant hand was delicate and gentle as he helped her rise to her feet.
‘It is safe,’ said Jin again, like a grown up comforting a child. ‘Safe,’ he said.
Her vision returned, the bright spots fading, and though her ears rang, she nodded, and understood.
Jin had dragged something closer to her.
It was the burned body of one of the Mechs which infested the ship.
HUSH Page 19
