"One question, Het Langstromm," Godolkin said suddenly. "What do you know of a substance called active silicon?"
Langstromm's eyes widened. "Active silicon? I've heard of it, but only in Harvester lore... Why do you ask?"
Godolkin spent a moment weighing up exactly what he should tell this man. He wasn't even entirely sure why he had spoken, given his feelings about the Shantima artefacts. "An associate of mine has acquired an ancient data-storage device. But the core component has been corrupted."
"By age, I'll wager. Must be pre-Bloodshed, to have such a core. Where is it from?"
"I couldn't say. Do you know how such a device might be restored, or the data read?" He was aware of Harrow regarding him with some surprise, and ignored it.
The Harvester spread his hands. "To be honest, I can think of only two places one might find that kind of information. Without arousing the ire of the Iconoclast Recovered Technology Division, of course."
Godolkin snorted. "Barring them, where?"
"Well, you could try the Servers of Crucifer-"
"No!" Both he and Harrow had shouted it simultaneously. Harrow cleared his throat and forced a smile.
"It's a little out of our way."
Langstromm had taken a step back at their outburst. "In which case," he said slowly, "I can only recommend the Aranites of Lyricum."
Inwardly, Godolkin groaned. Those monsters?
Harrow was looking throughtful. "I've heard tell of the Aranites. They deal in ancient technologies... Would they help us?"
"They might." Langstromm tipped his cap back. "Depends what you offered them."
"Whatever we give them," growled Godolkin, much later, "it will be too much."
"It's almost time," said Harrow, ignoring him. "I'll decelerate while we're still well away from Lyricum, and come in on conventional thrusters. The Aranites are wary, I'd prefer not to surprise them."
"As you wish," Godolkin muttered. "I'd prefer not to be here at all."
Red made a face at him. "Jesus, Godolkin, what is it with you and these guys? Did they give you a bad haircut or something?"
Godolkin snorted. "Contrary to what Harrow has told you, Blasphemy, the Aranites are not mutants. Not in the true sense of the word."
"Shouldn't you like them better then?"
"Hardly. They are not strictly human, either. They were human, once - and it is that which disturbs me."
"They mutated themselves," said Harrow. "Godolkin doesn't like them because they took control of their own evolution, centuries ago."
Godolkin growled. "They threw away their humanity."
"Knowing the Aranites, one can only surmise they considered it an asset of little value."
"Boys, boys!" Red slapped the backs of both thrones simultaneously. "Play nice, okay? These guys might be weird, but they're going to check my crystals out for me. So no name-calling while we're on their turf."
The control board gave a low chime. "We're here," reported Harrow. "Decelerating to sublight speed."
Outside the viewports, the blazing column of jumpspace fell away, dissipating into the chill blackness of normal space. The planet Lyricum and all its wonders filled the sky.
Red gasped, jerked upright. "Holy sneck," she hissed. Godolkin felt the breath catch in his throat.
Space was full of spiders.
Lyricum was a gas-giant world far away from its sun. Its crescent covered half his view, striped with roiling bands of brown and yellow. Its rings, almost edge on to Hunter, gleamed like silver scythe-blades in the distant sunlight. And on those rings, spiders crawled.
There was simply no other way to describe them. Godolkin could see four, even from this distance. They hung like dark beads on that gleaming surface. The four he could see were at the closest edge of the outer ring, but he knew there were many more: according to Harrow, at least thirty Aranite communities walked around Lyricum.
The scale of the spiders was baffling. Crimson Hunter was heading towards one in particular, and Godolkin judged its body to be over a kilometre across. Its eight legs, rising up and out on massive joints, reached out ten times that length in every direction, and as they neared it Godolkin could see strips of yellow viewports banding each section. Even the limbs of these monsters were inhabited.
Three of the spiders were on top of the rings, the fourth clinging underneath. It was an illusion, of course: the rings were not solid. The spider-machines held position by means of gravity-anchors and thousands of constantly working thruster arrays. But the sight of them, moving step by slow step around those gleaming tracks, was breathtaking. Even Godolkin, who had seen planets burn, had no words for it.
"Lyricum was a key location in the Bloodshed," Harrow whispered. "There were so many battles fought here that the debris formed rings. That's not rock and ice around the planet, that's metal."
"No wonder it shines so," nodded Godolkin.
"Guys?" Red's voice sounded very small. "I guess this wouldn't be a good time to tell you I'm arachnophobic, would it?"
They were close to the nearest spider now. Its leg, still moving upwards, formed a titan arch above them. Godolkin noticed movement on the ring below, and saw hundreds of spiderlings swarming there, each just a few dozen metres across, clambering across the debris, sorting and cutting with nimble metal limbs. Some were using thrusters to jet up from the ring to ports in the spider's sides, others were emerging from similar ports to make their descent, a constant stream.
The control board began to chirrup. Harrow reached over and touched a control.
At once, a bright panel of holographic light sprang to life between the viewports. There was a face in the panel, gazing flatly back out at them - an Aranite face, grey-white and many-eyed. Two tongues flickered out in unison to moisten the edges of the lipless, quivering mouth.
"Crimson Hunter," croaked the face. "This is Marshall Wei-Fan of the Aranite community Weaver of Paths. Your flight-plan is set and approved. Do not deviate from the plan. Failure to comply will result in critical damage."
"Acknowledged, marshall." Harrow tripped the controls back to manual and began to ease the ship around to aim at the spider's body. A maw was opening there, below the palps, a hinged entrance spilling blue light. Godolkin, whose eyes were very good indeed, spotted wide, blunt gun muzzles moving to track them on either side of it.
"Are you sure about this, Blasphemy?"
"Who, me?" Red shook her head, eyes still fixed on the scene before them. "I'm not sure about anything, not any more..."
Crimson Hunter flew on, over the silver rings, and into the mouth of the spider.
5. SELECTION
Lord Tactician Saulus, with insidious courtesy, sent along his personal shuttle for Antonia when the time for their meeting came. She had been expecting to be called to his chambers on Noamon. It hadn't occurred to her that she might have to set foot on his starship.
The shuttle was surprisingly utilitarian. Antonia knew many Iconoclasts who thought ostentation to be a fitting measure of their status and were quite prepared to take the principle to extremes. Saulus, it seemed, was a man who considered luxury to be a waste, a distraction.
She'd heard that about him. She had spent much of the past three days learning everything she could about Lord Tactician Saulus. Nothing she had discovered gave her much comfort.
There was room in the shuttle's main cabin for her, two guards, and the pilot. Antonia would have liked someone of her own along - Gordia, her most trusted bodyguard, had been prepared to fight Saulus's people to get a place with her - but there simply wasn't the space. In the end, Antonia was forced to order the woman away. "Go back to my quarters and station yourself there. Make sure no one enters until I return."
Gordia habitually wore full combat armour while at the admiral's side. Only eyes her were visible over the breath-mask. They blinked woefully. "And if you do not?"
"Then you can have the pick of my stuff." She slapped the armoured shoulder. "Go, Gordia, go! You'll make me late."
>
Only when Gordia had marched away did Antonia turn and walk down the steps into the shuttle's cabin. She heard the hatch clamshell shut behind her, the rising whine of thrusters as the pilot, sitting surrounded by a cocoon of instrument boards, began to fire the ship up.
She padded to the only other seat and dropped into it. The two guards had no seats, just a kind of socket which held them in place while standing, one to either side of her. The two men, Antonia saw, faced each other across the cabin, but each made no sign the other was there.
Or that she was. Antonia settled back into the seat, and feeling rather smaller than she was.
The tiny vessel lurched slightly as it left the deck. It had landed in Merodach's hangar, among the frigate's complement of daggerships. With the shuttle's dampers engaged Antonia felt almost no movement, but she could see the hangar deck scan past the curved viewport in front of the pilot; assault ships and deck-crew and the row of tall, arched launch-funnels. One of the funnels expanded to fill her view; there was a sudden push at her back, a strobing flicker of strip-lumes darting past on either side, and then nothing but a vertiginous grey haze: the shuttle had darted out beneath Merodach's belly and into the angel vault.
The vault had one vast cylindrical airlock at its base, big enough for a flight of killships to occupy at once. There were hundreds of smaller exits, too, and one had been cleared for Antonia's use. A few minutes later there was that burst of thrust again, the mouth of the funnel, the sensation of falling.
This time, the shuttle emerged into open space.
Stars surrounded Antonia, and the sullen grey bulk of Noamon's outer fabrication modules. Ships swarmed around the temple-station, holding position with their gravity-anchors, their main drives idling. Antonia craned her neck, counting the vessels. At least fifteen killships, dozens more corvettes and frigates, countless daggerships roving in shoals. Saulus had gathered many Iconoclast commanders to his cause, she realised. And all had brought their flagships and escort squadrons with them.
Her own flagship, the Voice of Pain, would be at Shalem now. Antonia chewed her lip, wishing she was there.
Abruptly, the shuttle changed course. A ship moved into Antonia's view; one that could only belong to Lord Tactician Saulus himself. She didn't need to see any insignia or ident codes to know that.
The vessel had been a Scythia-class destroyer at some time in the past. The outline of the original ship was still vaguely visible - a flattened, aquatic shape, with drive nacelles mounted port and starboard and a long, anvil-shaped control tower. But Saulus had modified the ship extensively, making it a thing all his own.
The ship bristled with antennae. Huge dishes were set along its flanks, communications booms projected above and below the main hull. Needle-like sensory spines poked out from between the larger modifications, making the ship look like some outlandish sea-urchin. Antonia could see hardly any weapons at all.
This was no combat vessel. It had been turned from a weapon of war into a mobile listening post. Sitting up in his control tower, Saulus would have direct access to every facet of the sector communications network, would hear every transmitted word from here to Curia. If someone dropped a wrench on Shalem, he'd know all about it.
"Still sending out those tentacles, Saulus," she growled under her breath.
The shuttle was angling in sharply, heading for the destroyer's reception portal. Antonia took a few deep, calming breaths, and readied herself for the grip of those choking limbs.
There was an honour guard waiting for her when she arrived on board, six troopers in uniform armour. They led her, wordlessly, out of the reception portal and into the wide, vaulted corridors beyond. Antonia was glad of their silence. She welcomed the opportunity to gather her thoughts without having to concentrate on idle chatter.
Instead, as all good soldiers do when faced with overwhelming odds, she observed. As the guard marched around her she watched them, gauging their level of training, of battle-readiness. She noted the non-standard weapons they carried: oddly archaic slugthrowers with wide, pitted muzzles. Chemically-propelled bullets, she decided. Inside the tactician's sensory palace they'd not risk holy weapons, when a stray staking pin could sever vital wiring, or powerguns could unleash a damaging electromagnetic pulse.
She also measured her steps against her knowledge of the destroyer's internal layout. Saulus had modified the inside almost as much as the outside, but the dimensions of the vessel remained largely unchanged. Antonia found herself climbing the steps to the control tower almost exactly when she expected to.
The steps, however, went up a lot further than she thought they would. It was only when she passed through the broad doors at their summit did she discover why.
The destroyer's bridge was missing two entire decks.
The doors closed behind her, with the honour guard on the other side. Antonia found herself on a narrow strip of deck, leading to a raised disc. The floor of the bridge, if it still was the bridge, lay ten metres below her.
Saulus was on the disc, perched on a massive command throne at its centre. Instrument boards surrounded him in a ring, alive with icons and holoscreens. Vast display panels hung from the walls, all angled to his eye-line. They flickered with maps, schematics, scrolling columns of figures.
The floor was a sea of horizontal map-screens. As Antonia drew close, she saw that the disc was transparent. Saulus could see every readout from where he sat.
There were far fewer bridge crew than Antonia would have expected on a ship this size: fifty, maybe sixty men and women walked between the screens and control boards. Their voices were hushed whispers, and there were no prayer-chants or hymns being played at all.
Saulus hadn't turned, but of course he knew she was there. "Welcome to the Custodian, Het Admiral," he said, not moving from his displays. "How was your trip?"
"Something tells me you already know, Lord Tactician." She walked onto the disc to join him, and stood with her arms folded. "I'm sure I dropped a pen before I left my quarters on Shalem. Perhaps you can tell me where it fell."
"It's under your bed." He swivelled the throne to face her. "Don't frown so, admiral. I'm joking."
"One might wonder. Is there anything you don't hear on this monstrosity?"
Saulus allowed the corner of his narrow mouth to quirk up into a kind of smile. "What is it you think I spend my time doing, Het Admiral? Spying on my fellow Iconoclasts from afar? Listening in on their private conversations, their personal rituals, their..." He paused. "Illicit liaisons?"
Antonia kept her face a mask. "It isn't?"
The tactician touched a control, and the circle of boards parted. He stood up. "Admiral, my duties are as important to me as yours are to you. I serve the human race, just as you do, and I will use any methods I see fit to protect them." His expression darkened, just a fraction. "Perhaps you would do well to put your personal feelings aside and remember that."
"My apologies, lord tactician." Confrontation would only prolong this. "I find all this surveillance unnerving - it's rather like standing inside an eye."
"What an intriguing metaphor... Still, I do understand." He walked past her, off the disc. "If you'll follow me?"
"Where to?"
"Somewhere less intense."
Saulus had personal quarters just off the bridge. The lord tactician lived in conditions as austere as a monk's cell.
She followed him into a small chamber, plain in the extreme, the only furniture a few wooden chairs and a desk. There was no decoration anywhere, just the merest suggestion of vaulting at the ceiling. Otherwise the walls were unadorned, plain grey panels lit by white lumes.
Saulus gestured to the nearest chair. "Please, sit down. I can have refreshments brought, if you like."
She remained standing. "Thank you, Het, but as we've already discussed I have a new flagship awaiting me at Shalem. I'd like to be away as quickly as possible."
"Of course." He crossed the room and took a datapad from the desk. "This will
come as no surprise. I've modified my requirements in the light of Shalem's present complement." He held the pad out to her.
She took it, as she might reach out and take a hissing serpent. "You'd rob me of eight thousand shocktroopers? Then set them against each other until no more than a handful stood?" She shook her head. "No, lord tactician. I can't agree to this."
He perched on the edge of the desk. "You'll not be left short, admiral. Reinforcements are already on their way from Curia. I'd not leave you open to attack - the Omega plan is a solution to the mutant threat, not a deliberate attempt to denude the Accord of shocktroopers."
"You misunderstand me, Saulus. This isn't about the numbers." She dropped the datapad onto the chair.
"Then what is it about?" He leaned forward. "I don't want you as an enemy, Huldah Antonia. I need you as an ally."
She gaped. "A what?"
"Admiral, you have a way with your troops that most officers hunger for. You fight the way they do, and they respect you for that. High Command are wary of you, because they see unorthodox methods getting results. But I need that! Omega could fail without people like you behind it!"
"People like me? That's the whole point! If my troops respect me, it's because I respect them. Death isn't an abstract, Saulus. It's a horror, and I'll not deliver that upon my people unless I see a damned good reason for it."
His fist slammed down on the desk. "You stupid woman, can't you see what I'm trying to do here?"
"No, Saulus, I can't! All I can see is butchery - perpetrate that upon the Tenebrae, and I'll stand by you without hesitation. But to set Iconoclast against Iconoclast? Human against human? It's sickening!"
He stood, nose to nose with her. "What else would you put your faith in? Trophimus and that absurd summit of his? When the wolves are at the gate, admiral, the correct course of action is not to invite them to sit around a table and discuss which bit of you they get to eat first!" He turned away, evidently trying to control his anger. "Don't try to tell me that some secret gathering of the great and the good is the way to decide our future. With Saint Scarlet still at large, we have no future."
The Omega Solution Page 6
