Evolution

by Saunders, Craig

  Religion is hokum, Kyle and the eyes thought as one.

  Archeon and the genogun had no time for religion. It was a side effect of being created solely to destroy.

  Kyle passed some of his time out in the middle of nowhere, in roughly the centre of a mass that was once Torpa, thinking about neurotheology. Not in any definite sense, like actually having coherent thoughts on the topic, but in a slow roundabout way, a way that touched on why he thought god would get him out of this jam.

  But now’s no time for a discussion on neurotheology, thought Kyle aloud.

  “If not now” said the eyes “then when?”

  “The enlightened sowed the seed for weapons when they created robots…had god sown the seeds of religion when he created man?”

  “Who cares,” said Archeon with disdain. There was nothing out here for a weapon to achieve, and Archeon was acting like the use of such a weapon that could destroy a planet was a slur on weapons everywhere. Even Archeon was not powerful enough to destroy a planet. No one should create such a weapon unless they could create a device that could create a planet. Fortunately for the Tradition, they could. Any society that could tow a sun would find it child’s play to create a planet.

  But the Tradition would not have used the genesis weapon, surely? Not since the last Origin War had it been used. Surely they had learned their lesson. But then if not the Tradition, then who? Who would so wantonly destroy not only Orpal – that, Archeon could almost understand – but the whole of the Enlightened’s homeworld. The Tradition might have sided with the Lore against the Enlightened, but surely they wouldn’t destroy Torpa? Surely the Tradition would not turn on their symbiots.

  After all, Torpa was as important to the Tradition as it was to the humans.

  “Was that, too, left in robots?” said the eyes

  “I’m with Archeon on this one,” said the gun.

  Kyle interrupted. “Well then, how do we get out of this? Religion and philosophy are fine topics for discussion and no doubt if Orpal were here he’d agree, but religion and philosophy never got anyone out of a tight scrape before. I should know. I’ve prayed enough in my time to no avail.”

  The Lu ignored him. If that were the case, if there were a causal link, then the Ecentrists could not be the creators surely? They were too much like man.

  Floating in space, Archeon holding himself and Kyle in stasis while the debris of the broken planet bounced off him, the Lu thought.

  Like those early people who realised the sea was just god’s training ground for space…when would the Ecentrists realise? Robots were just playthings for the humans.

  The Lu spoke through Archeon. “Wait, hunter. I’m thinking.”

  “Like I said, how the hell are we going to get out of this?”

  “Whinny whinny…how the hell are we going to get out of this, boohoo,” the genogun mimicked.

  Kyle shouted “HOW ARE WE GOING TO GET OUT OF THIS!”

  “Now, Kyle, there’s no need to get uppity. All in good time.”

  “All what in good time. I’m going to starve to death by the time you figure out a way to get me out of here.”

  “Me, me, me,” said the genogun.

  “Tomorrow, Kyle. Tomorrow” said Archeon. “First things first, let’s figure out how this bloody thing works.”

  Kyle let go of the emitter. The ambient light from Archeon increased and he rotated, morphing on just the inside, so that he had a pair of hands to work with within the cocoon. He began to fiddle.

  The last weapon of the Lore, it should be pointed out, should not be left to tinker with the most powerful archeofact in the universe.

  *

  It was a mere three weeks since the battle began, before the Ecentrists had truly commited to war against the Lore and the Lore were staring at destruction.

  The new weapon the Ecentrists had accepted as a gift was used randomly and to distraction. It could not miss.

  Baal, Baal’em and Asroth didn’t stop to wonder why the socioassassin had brought them the weapon, as they didn’t wonder why the Lore would not fight back. They adapted the weapon to be fired from their ships, and as each newly modified zealot flew out from Huna the death toll increased.

  As soon as the Lore bots emerged from underspace, all the Ecentrists had to do was fire and the weapon would hunt the targets electrical signature wherever they went. The signature was unmistakeable and the weapon would exterminate with extreme predjudice.

  The Lore died on space and now below it, at the hands of both the Ecentrists and the Enlightened. There was nowhere left to hide. The Enlightened had taken their toll on the Lore’s numbers but nothing like enough to commit genocide. The Ecentrists joined the battle, the hunt, more accurately, and genocide came ever closer. The Lore were backed into a corner.

  It was an excuse, whichever way one looked at it, but the fact remained, treaty or no treaty.

  They had nothing left to lose.

  *

  The Tradition, on the other hand, liked things just the way they were. They signed the treaty with the Lore after the first great origin war and they took treaties seriously. Were the Lore ever to go to battle the Tradition would join them. This was part of their treaty. While the Tradition would not go to war against the Ecentrists or the Enlightened without adequate cause, genocide was something they could not allow. War against their symbiots, the Enlightened, was almost unthinkable, but the alternative – a universe without the Lore – was worse.

  The Tradition’s independents watched the newscasts, too. They watched the Lore die, and their componets boiled with rage. The death of a society was not something for the entertainment of the masses. The war was an abomination.

  The Lore would not fight, but the Tradition had no such qualms. There had always been the four races. Change was not something the Tradition welcomed.

  Not since the last origin war had such an assortment of ships been seen. The Cove insurrection aside, the first origin war had seen the Enlightened, the Tradition and the Lore on one side against the Ecentrists on the other. This, the second great war, as it would become, was a sight not so fierce, but still awe inspiring.

  In the last origin war the Lore caste ships had covered known space as far as the hologen could see. Then, the Lore had been able and more than willing to fight. Now, the Lore’s presence was minimal.

  The Ecentrists and the Enlightened took one side of quadrant 45/4523900{renal}¬carp. The Ecentrists, all but Huna, amassed along the surface of space, in their massive cardinal zealots, seraphs and other classes of ship, each sentibited.

  The Enlightened stood by under space with their myriad class ships. Space itself was warped from the masses of ships.

  On the other side, not within any solar system this time but within intergalactic space, stood, or more accurately floated the Tradition – those ships that had minds of their own, and were not run by humans. The Tradition limited themselves, not to above or below space, but sank through it. Their archeogs were not the greatest ships they possessed. In fact, archeogs such as Cablas were among the smallest of their fleet. Cablas was nowhere to be seen – even for such an epoch defining engagement Cablas was superfluous.

  The great war would be replayed. The Tradition independents would not fire on its own ships, but they would protect the Lore from any attacks.

  The Lore, meanwhile, watched from under space and cowered. In their fright they called out. They were a proud society, and pride had brung them low.

  It was time for the forgotten to rise again.

  *

  Huna

  Cetee watched the hologen from her room. The Ecentrists had been kind to her since Um’lael – she must stop thinking of him as that – Habla’saem, had left. With no way to escape from Huna and no information worth having from her the gigantic trio that led the Ecentrists had left her alone.

  She spent much of her time watching the debris from Torpa float through space. The hologen would allow her to watch almost any phenomena through s
pace and time, with worm-hole technology, similar to that employed within the white hole. The time difference through space did not matter as the pictures the hologen picked up were all in real time. Had she wished she could have watched the opening battle between the Tradition and the Ecentrists live, rather than on newscast as the Enlightened were limited to. She did not wish to watch any more death though.

  She felt a pang of loss each time she looked at it, the debris spinning through space. There was no sign of Orpal, even if there had been anything left she doubted the hologen was accurate enough to convey such images. The hologen worked on a larger scale than that.

  She felt foolish that she had let Kyle go. She might not have loved him, but she had betrayed him for an old love who was dead. She felt stupid.

  Kyle was gone now, there was no going back. This was all she had left of him. The floating debris of the Enlightened’s capital planet.

  Orpal, Archeon, the Lu, all were gone like so much wheat through the harvester’s sickle.

  If the Enlightened had any idea what the Ecentrists had done they would have changed sides, but the newscasts that she had watched showed that nothing was left and there was no evidence that the Ecentrists had fired the fatal shot. The newscasters spoke with sincerity and gravity. It was an atrocity that had been perpetrated – it must have been an attack by the Lore. Or, some mused, perhaps it was the Tradition independent’s opening salvo. The weapon was of a magnitude used by the Tradition, after all. Could the Enlightened stand against the Tradition in this war? Was it time to stand down?

  Cetee was sickened. That her race had participated in a war against the Lore she could not stomach. Now, faced with their craven cowardice, she felt ashamed to be Enlightened. It was OK for them to hunt down the pacifist Lore, but as soon as they suffered a loss the first talk was to back down.

  Disgusting.

  If she could even get the news out she might be able to change the course of the war, but there was nothing she could do, she was trapped on Huna. She could not tell the Enlightened that the Ecentrists had fired the weapon that destroyed their homeworld. She did not want the Lore to be exterminated, and she could not believe the rest of the Enlightened did. She wished she could do something to change the outcome of the war.

  Gone were the days of worrying selfishly about theft. Enforced solitude aboard Huna had given her a different perspective on war. She wished now that she could do something about it.

  She stretched langurously on the chaise lounge that the Ecentrists had created for her room. She had eaten earlier, and thanks to her spliced DNA she was feeling lazy.

  She tried to dream up ways to leave Huna, but there was nothing for it. It hurt the triumvirate little to be kind to her. From what she could tell she could never leave Huna. This would be her home until she died. There was no point in worrying about the war either. There was nothing she could do.

  Still, though, she would not give up. With the freedom granted her Cetee attempted to stowaway aboard the cardinal class zealots that periodically docked, to little or no avail. The Ecentrists ships were not designed to take passengers other than gargoyles, and there was no space aboard any of the Ecentrist vessels for her.

  The Seraphs, the only class of Ecentrist ship designed to take captives, were nowhere to be seen. They had all been committed to the war.

  The only chance she stood of escape lay with Enlightened ships or with the Tradition independents, and since the independents had joined with the Lore that was an impossibility. She could hope for an Enlightened ship to come and take her away, but that was all it was – hope.

  Since the shell ship of Habla’saem had left all hope had left too.

  *

  Space. All of it. Lore Council

  A Gat Moriumthraite flapped giant wings in the sun. His genotech blood warmed in the sun’s dying radiation, and he flapped once more and lept from his aerie into the sky. The black wings looked translucent in the sun, and he flew. The dead Uon branch that had held it for so long snapped loudly, and the crack of its wings beating could be heard kilometres away. The snap and crack were the only sounds on the planet, void of all life.

  In the air it spoke, “Yes”

  It would have said more but the one word was enough.

  Yes, Archeon finally heard. The Lore speaking to me, it thought, and a tear came to its eye. Across innumerable galaxies the Gat cried too.

  One word was invitation enough. When Archeon stopped speaking the Lore realised the extent of the Ecentrists betrayal of the Enlightened. The Enlightened’s homeworld was no more thanks to one of the Enlightened having given the Tradition’s weapons to the Ecentrists. It was enough to swing the balance. They would be pacifists no longer. The treaty was broken. They would fight back.

  The last weapon was needed.

  Exile would last no longer.

  *

  Space – ex Torpa.

  The Lu was thinking. Kyle’s was alive. Orpal was dead. Kyle was bewailing his fortunes (completely lost in space) in a muttered dream while he slept.

  Someone must have given the genesis weapon to the Ecentrists, so they could use it to blow away the Lore…The Tradition had used such a weapon in the last war, when they had defeated the Ecentrists, but this facet, that the energy beam could travel under space, was not known, even to Archeon, one of the most advanced weapons ever constructed.

  The Lu spoke with Archeon, unheard in the depths of space, while Kyle and consequently the genogun, slept.

  “It is a fearsome weapon indeed.”

  “I do not know how the Lore can survive against it.”

  “The Tradition have joined the fray, they can survive against it. It is their weapon. Was.”

  “But it will not be long before the Lore are wiped out. I fear there is no time.”

  “Make time, my friend.”

  “Yes, I will make time. It is high time I began doing what I was supposed to. What I was made for.”

  “Can you fly?”

  “Not with Kyle cocooned. I can move, but to move through space would take too long. I need a ship.”

  “Then I fear all is lost. If you cannot fly, we cannot get to Huna.

  “But I have been called.”

  “There is more you can do for your brethren and sistren on Huna than fighting in the quadrant.”

  But it was tomorrow. Tomorrow had come, and with it a reawakening of Archeon’s sole purpose.

  “I know what I must do. I must get to Huna to save the Lore. Only I can defeat the three and end this war, and only the triumvirate will know how to use the emitter. It is perfect. Perhaps if someone could get word to the Enlightened of the Ecentrist betrayal, but none of the Enlightened will listen to my brethren in times of war. The Enlightened feel they have been attacked by the Lore, as the weapon that destroyed their homeworld was Tradition independent tech, now the Lore’s allies. The cause for war deepens everyday, but the cause is false. I wish I could speak to them, let them know. That alone could change the course of the war. But that is mere wishful thinking. I know what I must do.”

  “You must instead get to Huna and stop the war from there?”

  “But I cannot fly with Kyle.”

  “Then you must leave Kyle behind. Saving the Lore from the Ecentrists must take precedence over Kyle’s life.”

  “But I cannot leave him behind to die. What am I to do?”

  Archeon was stuck. He could not leave Kyle, and without doing so he could not reach Huna in time to avert a disaster. The call from his kind bore heavily on his conscience.

  “I must wake him,” said the last weapon.

  Kyle still had the genogun attached. The Lu could move and see. Archeon could not morph, but it was tomorrow.

  “Wake up,” said the Lore bot Archeon.

  Kyle awoke. Archeon held him fast.

  The gun spoke first. “Morning, sunshine.”

  “At last it wakes!” said the Lu

  “You have arisen,” said Archeon.

  “
Why are you smiling?” asked Kyle. Archeon was grinning at him, his toothsome smile glowing in the darkness that was within. “Orpal is gone, Cetee is gone.”

  “I am smiling because they have called me back.” Archeon told him. “But I fear I cannot take you with me. I must leave you in space or my kind will die. Jiall Kyle Iris. What would you have me do?”

  *

  Torpa, ex

  Ha bla’saem’s curiosity has got the better of him. There is always a downfall for the prideful. He thought it a good idea to go and look over the ruins of Torpa.

  The socioassassin looked out through his holowindow and cautioned his ship to stay still while he thought the Ecentrists had gotten away with destroying Torpa.

  Still, he was employed and that was all that mattered. That the Lore were, by and large, harmless, did not matter. He had been employed to commit genocide and genocide the Ecentrists would have. His preference had nothing to do with it.

  Habla’saem watched through his holowindow as the parts of Torpa span through space. Debris bumped his ship. Occasionally he saw something which was recognisable. Here, a bump from part of an island, there, a push from vapourised oceans, a dust cloud, a nascent comet. The planet was falling to pieces. He allowed the collisions to take place. It could do the shell no harm.

  Enough of this, he thought.

  “Ship, take me back to Huna.”

  There was no response.

  “Ship? Ship?”

  The synthesized air still came through but there was no response.

  “Ship?”

  He put down his drink of stum. Lava solidified in the frigid air of space drifted by.

  “Ship?”

  Now he was beginning to worry.

  The lights dimmed momentarily. Habla’saem gulped as the air grew colder.