Red Sun Bleeding

by Hunt, Stephen

  ‘Now I really have seen everything,’ said Zeno.

  ‘The attendants ignored my presence the last time I visited,’ said the professor. ‘It was as if I didn’t exist.’

  Lana wished they were ignoring her. She glanced back towards the last two pirates. Yeah, but that was before Steel-arm decided to seize the station’s attention with an impromptu display of nuclear weaponry.

  ‘Tell us where you need to go to lower the planet’s energy shield!’ ordered Steel-arm.

  ‘The nearest control system,’ said the professor. ‘That hill over there will do. I’ll need to reconfigure it as an access control for the shield.’

  Sebba made it sound so easy; Lana had to give her that. Whatever other weaknesses the professor possessed, she wasn’t lacking in confidence. They arrived at a mound fifty feet away from the entrance. The professor and her team unpacked their precious control board, removing a glutinous dark snake of programmable matter which seemed to latch on to the control system before winding out to the black, undulating mass of the hill in front of them. Sebba began to work, muttering to herself. Lana could tell she had reprogrammed the mound to accept her input… a swarm of the strange robotic creatures covering the mound like dung beetles began to abandon the rise, rolling away towards nearby mounds.

  ‘How long will this damn hack of yours take?’ queried Steel-arm, swinging his pistol about towards the swarm of attendants scurrying away.

  ‘A lot quicker with your silence,’ said the professor. ‘I’m going to try to convince the station that there is an inbound Heezy vessel on the way, and that it needs to lower its shields to avoid destroying it.’

  She set about her work with a resolute look in her eye, oblivious to the nerves of her team or captors as they scanned the massive space for the first signs of hostile activity. Sebba’s machine, it transpired, was a combination of human-to-Heezy interface, decryption machine and on-the-fly alien DNA sequencing. Every little step required DNA-based authorization, and the deck hummed gently as it ran through the millions of combinations needed to do something as simple as open an alien program. It quickly became apparent that the professor wasn’t having much luck with this particular Herculean task.

  ‘Let me help,’ suggested Zeno.

  ‘And just what assistance are you going to be?’ asked the professor.

  ‘Zeno’s the one who hacked the Heezy corridor system and got us down here behind your back,’ said Lana.

  ‘Very well,’ Sebba conceded. ‘Plug yourself in alongside me and see if you can accelerate the decryption routines I’m running.’

  Zeno stepped forward and established a physical connection between himself and the professor’s equipment from an exposed port along his arm. ‘Creator-on-a-stick, I’ve never seen anything as complex as the high-throughput sequencing running inside here! There isn’t a bank in the galaxy that could stand up to algorithmic self-assembly this strong if you decided to hack your way to riches.’

  ‘Don’t give those two ideas,’ said Lana, glaring at Steel-arm and his pirate woman.

  ‘Here is a skegging idea for you: speed it up!’ threatened the pirate captain.

  ‘I would love to,’ said the professor, ‘but my attempt to convince the shield system it should turn off because there’s no further danger is being somewhat hampered by the fact there’s a fleet boosting towards Abracadabra.’ She waved at one of the base staff and they brought over a data slate which she used to project the Heezy’s sensor telemetry.

  ‘A pirate fleet,’ said Steel-arm with more animation than he had showed to date.

  ‘The shuttle you set to watch the jump point must’ve observed the Doubtful Quasar’s destruction and sent for help,’ said Cho. ‘They’re coming for us!’

  ‘That’s just dandy,’ said Lana. ‘You think they’re going to help save you? What’re the chances your people are flying with ordinance capable of making a dent in the shield?’ And there was only one force at the Invisible Port capable of mustering such an armada. Renan Barcellos, the Pirate King himself. They’d gone from having to deal with a psychopathic killer to dealing with the only man brutal enough to keep the rest of them in line. Great.

  ‘There is no way I can fake a friendly incoming transponder signal with every Heezy sensor tracking a real threat,’ said Sebba.

  ‘I agree,’ said Zeno. ‘There’s way too much attention being paid at deep space for us to bluff a bogus friendly past the Heezy systems now.’

  ‘Then turn off the dark energy tap,’ commanded Steel-arm. ‘Cancel that damn supernova before we all fry. Maybe losing their power will kill the shield too. ’

  ‘You’re insane!’ protested the professor. ‘I have no idea what stopping the solar feed will do. The only use the alliance has been able to make of that technology is burning Skein systems into cinders. We’ve never been able to successfully restart a sun. What does that tell you?’

  ‘That you’ve never known what you’re doing!’ Steel-arm pushed his pistol barrel into the side of her head. ‘I’m a gambling man with no more chips left on the table. Kill the solar feed or I’ll kill you. I’ll take my chances that the shields will go down with it.’

  ‘Don’t do this,’ begged Lana.

  ‘Skeg him,’ said Zeno, ‘kill it and let him fry.’

  Steel-arm turned his pistol to point at the professor’s leg and triggered a shot, sending her sprawling to the floor in agony, the blood splatter from the impact spraying across Lana’s ship suit. Sebba’s miners tried to protect her; not, she suspected, through any great loyalty, but because without her the rest of them were all dead anyway. Cho jabbed her rifle at the staff and yelled for them to step back. Steel-arm shoved his gun barrel down against Sebba’s good leg. ‘You can die fast or you can die slow, witch, your choice!’

  The professor pulled herself up, moaning, to the system interface and did as she had been coerced. For the first time since they had arrived on the control level, the professor’s actions had a visible impact. All around them the vast pillars stretching to the ceiling began to pulse; slow at first, then increasingly urgent. From the nearest control mounds she heard a strange keening as mechanical attendants began to flood away from the controls, heading towards the pillars, where they flung themselves against its surface, being absorbed back into the Heezy core.

  ‘Done,’ rasped the professor, leaning against the control deck. ‘The dark energy tap’s been deactivated. From what I can see, the solar renewal cycle’s still on-going. Too much energy’s been channelled into the sun – it’s going supernova and restarting whatever we do now.’ She went back to work on the deck. ‘We’ve got nothing to lose. I’m going to have another pass at lowering the shields.’ Zeno held the professor up as she worked. Sebba toiled alongside the android for another few minutes, and then she started and stopped. ‘The shield’s been dropped!’

  ‘You did it!’

  ‘But it wasn’t me,’ said Sebba, in shock.

  Lana looked over at the two pirates. ‘Don’t tell me Steel-arm’s plan to pull the tap worked?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. That’s impossible, I think it’s—’

  ‘—academic why it dropped,’ interrupted Zeno. ‘The sun’s still hyper-volatile and running on empty, now. We’ve got to stabilise the sun or get out of this system before we’re toasted.’

  Running. That was precisely what sprung into Lana’s mind as sentinels began to rise like bubbling waxwork from the floor. Whether summoned by Steel-arm’s weapon discharge or the professor’s interference with restarting the sun was impossible to say. The closest Sentinel lunged forward, wrapping both arms around the nearest miner, crushing him to death with an ear-piercing howl on the part of the dying man, a shower of blood from the spines as he exploded in the alien vice.

  Steel-arm and Cho weren’t firing their weapons at the sentinels yet. They had found another use for them, forcing the staff at gunpoint to act as human shields between them and the advancing sentinel force. But the base staff were
n’t going down without a fight. Even as some of them fell to their attackers, others drew out concealed gobs of Heezy programming instructions, hurling them at the guard machines. The makeshift projectiles didn’t just collide with the armoured humanoids; they impacted against their oily plated bodies, merging with the sentinels as though impaling them. With each impact the machines staggered, swinging about in wild oscillations, some of them half-melting into the rock, others teetering as their limbs changed shape, making the sentinels collapse and overbalance, pooling into bizarre abstract statues, sections of their bodies flowing away independently with new purpose.

  Lana pulled a projectile out of her pocket, rolling it nervously around her fingers. It didn’t feel substantial enough to win a food fight, let alone this one. Zeno was by her side, disconnected from the professor’s console. ‘I tracked a fast ship inbound from the moon ahead of the fleet. The Gravity Rose. Must’ve spotted the shield going down.’

  ‘We need to get back to the surface,’ growled Lana. But there was no way they could fight their way through this many attackers.

  More sentinels advanced on the mound, emerging from the rock floor on the human party’s flanks. At last Cho and Steel-arm opened fire, the cathedral emptiness around them echoing to the staccato rapid fire of hyper-accelerated projectiles. Their weapons, though, had as little effect as the raiders’ guns outside the base’s brig. The sentinels shrugged the fusillade off like inconvenient rainfall. Lana felt an unspeakable terror at the presence of these implacable killers; almost human in form; so narrow-minded in purpose. Lana had her little pebble-sized instruction sets out, flinging them at the advancing attackers. She hit one in the head and its legs seemed to turn into liquid, spilling across the floor, spiny arms windmilling around as it fought to re-establish control over its form. Another went down with its body morphing into a series of spheres that tried to rotate around the thrashing corpse. Her fingers fumbled for more ammunition, but she had exhausted her supply. All around them the sentinels were slowly reforming, limbs drawing back into shape, the strange geometries of their mutated forms repaired back to their original purpose. Putting down the intruders.

  One of the sentinels came charging down the slope of the control mound. Sebba had a last ball of programming instructions and hurled it at the machine. She hit it square on, and it immediately started to go into flux, but not before its spiked arm lashed out and struck the professor in the chest, sending her stumbling back in a haze of blood, their last chance of healing this system’s sun long enough to ship out alive falling with the woman. Sebba collapsed over the deck, moaning, hologram controls flashing indignantly as she occupied their space. Behind the professor, the undulating sentinel surged forward and spilled over her, black ichor flowing across her body as though she was trying to fill a wetsuit brought to appalling sentience. Lana could only look on in horror as Sebba’s yell was choked off, the ooze filling the professor’s throat and compressing into her nostrils and eardrums, sending the woman thrashing to the ground, her clothes and face covered by a coursing dark second skin.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Walk the Heezy’s guts.

  Calder yelled as he seemed to spin around, encased in the wall’s depths. Was this the world’s secret… it was alive, a vast single organism consuming all hapless visitors who made the mistake of landing on it? Was he passing through some vast silicon-based life form’s digestive system, following his friends into its gut? Suddenly, the invisible field gripping him seemed to tighten, the rock flowing down around his scalp, pressing in hard. His machete was still in its hand, but locked in place, immovable. This was it, then. He was going to be absorbed, his bones ground into dust and his flesh dissolved into minerals for the world. Calder went cold, bitterly icy. A series of images flashed through his mind. Hesperus, his primitive, formative years as prince of a lost society, collapsed and pre-machine age; losing his brothers and father, losing the war, losing his kingdom before his final, bizarre exile to the stars. So, it was true, then? You really did see your life flash before your eyes as you… were gobbed out onto a hard stone floor? He came up holding his machete, only to find Skrat, Janet Lento and Momoko arrived before him. This place didn’t look like a digestive system – a simple oblong stone chamber without doors – but they had surely been swallowed by a world rather than a whale, and ended up far from the long-buried colony vessel. He holstered his torch. There was light in here, a thin, diffuse illumination with no evident source.

  ‘Where the hell are we?’ asked Calder.

  ‘A more pressing question would be how we get out of here, dear boy?’ said Skrat. ‘We don’t seem to be over encumbered with exits. I’ve already tried the walls and the floor. Nothing.’

  ‘I have two questions, if you please,’ said Momoko. ‘Who are you and who am I?’

  Calder looked at the robot and groaned. ‘You’ve really picked your moment to dump your cache.’ Although given how terrified the robot had been back in the hunting lodge, maybe meeting the spiked knight was just the trigger it had needed for auto-amnesia. Calder explained at speed to the robot that it was a worker on the good starship Gravity Rose charged with looking after Janet Lento and presently suffering from a memory malfunction. His story might have been tangential to the truth, but it seemed better to shortcut the conversation before their spiky friend tracked them down again.

  Calder watched the robot shuffle off to stand alongside Janet Lento, who appeared to have gone into mild shock again after confronting their alien assailant. ‘Lento’s seen that creature that attacked us before.’

  ‘It might explain her state, but I don’t think the ticklish fellow’s organic,’ said Skrat. ‘Some kind of automated sentry. Most likely a relic from the same culture that created the field projection system which pulled us through the rock and built this chamber.’

  ‘The colonists knew the ruins were at the bottom of the valley,’ said Calder. ‘They practically landed their ship on top of them.’

  ‘Curiosity is a wound waiting to be scratched,’ said Skrat. ‘That’s an old saying among my people.’

  ‘Never turn up to a duel with only a half-dagger,’ said Calder, staring at the machete in his hand before sheaving the blade. ‘That’s a saying on Hesperus. You know any more, or shall we see if we can get out of here?’

  ‘The latter, dear chap,’ said Skrat. ‘I’m presuming that you didn’t decapitate our prickly aggressor before you departed?’

  ‘I was lucky to get out of there with my life.’

  Skrat grunted and he circled the chamber a second time, this time with Calder, feeling for hidden doorways. There was a raised platform where they had been disgorged from the wall, and Calder approached it warily. But the wall didn’t repeat the feat, sucking them away to another location. It appeared to be just plain grey stone – granite or something very close to it. No sign of the advanced transport system which Skrat had theorised they had been taken by. It’s all sorcery to me. As he reached the furthest section of the wall it seemed to fold in on itself, stone origami worked by an invisible hand, the corridor retreating before him.

  ‘You’ve got the magic touch,’ noted Skrat. ‘I swear I’d tried over there before you arrived.’

  ‘Royal blood,’ said Calder. ‘Droit du seigneur – or maybe droit du corridor.’

  ‘Cheeky blighter,’ said Skrat. ‘I did tell you about my high position in the nest, did I not?’

  ‘I should have been king.’

  ‘On Raznor Raz you have to earn the title,’ muttered Skrat, checking inside the newly formed passage. ‘Not be born to it.’ He tapped the walls. ‘Programmable matter, do you see? Same as the weapon that rendered the shuttle’s pile inert. You do realize that this is the most advanced culture that the Gravity Rose has ever encountered, and we’ve come up against some right queer old coves in our time.’

  ‘Dead culture,’ said Calder. Although, not quite dead enough yet for my tastes. Calder commanded the robot down the corridor, and Lento followed,
obviously glad to be able to put more distance between them and their spiny attacker.

  Skrat swished his tail irritably. ‘Of course! Dollar-sign Dillard. Damn his cybernetic eyes. Every time, every time the devil does this to us. Planet-sized force fields. Programmable matter. The professor was never mining for rare ores. This is what his camp was tunnelling for.’

  ‘If you’re right, Dollar-sign can keep it.’