“Ponos? I am sure that you already know what this is. But our friends at House Archival might not. This is the most powerful invention in the universe. These little vials will revolutionize human biology and development, or so I am told. Although the place where I found them seemed to have a bit of an excess of evolution, if you ask me!” Eliard laughed callously. “These are serums engineered by Armcore some decades ago, with the ability to mutate the human genome, cure disease, and make the perfect human warrior. Let’s just think about that. The sort of drug that could create the strongest army in the known galaxy—and you have the possibility to buy it.”
Something moved, out in the desert. It was one of the giraffe platforms, raising clouds of desert dust as it stalked in their direction. It was probably just searching for more oil or returning to prepare a shipment for the next transporter.
“So, the question that you lot have got to ask yourself is…” the captain continued. “How much is this Device and these serums worth to you?”
There was a crackle of returning static from the device, as clearly the message was reaching its intended audience.
“I only negotiate in person,” Eliard said with suave sophistication. “And just to make it even more exciting for you, I have a few guidelines.” He cleared his throat. “If either Armcore or House Archival attempts in any way to turn up here with an armada, or I even get a hint of soldiers, then neither of you will ever see the serum or the Device,” he snapped, his voice suddenly cold.
Irie watched as the platform-giraffe kept stomping forward over the dunes. Was it her paranoia, or was the thing actually coming straight for them?
“I have no particular interest in these serums, so I’ll smash them and no one will get them. And as for the Device? I am more than capable of strapping that to a few mega-tons of depleted warp material and blowing it up. And I’ll have time to do it if you turn up here with all of your landing ships, and probably have time to fly off planet in the fastest racer the Imperial Coalition has ever built. So. Do we have a deal, gentleman and robots?”
The static hissed and buzzed.
“CAPTAIN MARTIN,” burst out a robotic voice that Irie recognized as Ponos. “YOU ARE DISPLAYING IRRATIONAL JUDGEMENT—”
The captain made a move and pulled out one of the transmission wires, cutting off the contact with the Armcore intelligence.
“Eliard? Where is Agent Cassandra?” said the other transmission, which Irie presumed had to be from House Archival. “I don’t care what deal you make or want to make with Ponos. I just want to stop Alpha. But you cannot use even a directed channel such as this, Alpha is a self-seeded intelligence!”
“What?” Eliard said.
“Alpha has direct access to data-space! It can create bots and programs and seed data-space with its spies…”
“No, not that. What do you mean that you’re not interested in buying the Device or the serum?” Eliard said harshly, as, behind him, Irie’s head was starting to buzz with what she had just heard. That no communication channel was safe.
Because all communication in the Imperial Coalition these days relies on sending information via sub-quantum space. Or data-space. And if Alpha has free access to that…
“I promise you, we’re not. House Archival has modeled the outcome of the rise of Alpha, and it predicts the absolute extinction of the Imperial Coalition!” the spokesperson from House Archival said. “Please, can you get Agent Cassandra to speak with us? We have to find a way to communicate securely...”
“Cassandra is dead,” Eliard said stubbornly. “And I don’t give two Belgusian Land Pigs what your analysis suggests. It didn’t predict her death, did it!?” he ended on a pained shout.
“No. What? Cassandra is dead…” the House Archival spokesperson on the other end of the line was saying as Eliard snarled.
“Then, if your analysis is so terrible, I really don’t see the point in dealing with you anymore. I guess Ponos is going to be the one buying the Device and the serum from me.” He kicked the transmitter box, cutting off their voice and instead replacing the air with the sound of static, and the distant thump of the approaching platform-giraffe.
“Crapping stars,” Irie heard the captain growl, turning and shaking his arm so that the Device folded into its smaller scepter shape. “Some people will do anything to get out of a deal. Cowards,” he hissed, before he nodded to his mechanic. “Phase two. Get the Mercury Blade here, and we’ll hide the serum.”
This had all been a part of his plan, Irie knew. Negotiate for the highest price, but if there was even the slightest possibility that they would try to steal the weapon or the serum, hide it on board the Mercury and be ready to fly as soon as they arrived.
Irie’s hand whispered over her wrist computer, initiating the return protocols for the Mercury Blade to rise from the sand many kilometers away and start picking up speed as it raced toward them. But she was concerned as she typed.
“Uh, boss?” She frowned.
“Yeah, what? Is there a problem with the Blade?” Eliard looked at the approaching platform with disinterest. It was large on the horizon now, almost filling the sky as it progressed on steady legs toward them. Eliard wasn’t particularly worried about the approaching behemoth, as he was fairly sure that they were all automated these days. They would have the lowest level of drone intelligence, and probably wouldn’t even be uploading security footage if they even had biological scanners on them at all!
“No, no problem with the ship,” Irie was saying. “It was the thing that House Archival man was saying. About Alpha, and that we shouldn’t be using data-space.”
“Scare tactics,” Eliard scoffed. “He just wanted us to meekly submit everything we’ve managed to find to him and be good, scared little soldiers.” The captain shook his head. “And either way, what do I care what Alpha is capable of? It’s nothing to do with me, right? As soon as we’ve sold this stuff to Ponos then we’re out of here. The Mercury Blade is returning to a life of crime amongst the stars, you will be very pleased to hear.” He congratulated them all as the ground shook with the approaching feet.
But where to? Irie thought. The Trader’s Belt worlds were at war with Armcore, and Armcore was soon to be at war with Alpha. As far as she knew, the Mercury Blade was still wanted property in most of Imperial Coalition space, and that meant more Armcore or more Imperial House navies. Where does the captain want to flee to? All that was left were the pockets of the non-aligned worlds, or the complete backwaters like this planet of Shambar.
A life on the frontiers, constantly on the run, as all of Imperial space is torn apart by war? Irie hung her head to study the stone she was perched on. This was not something that she wanted for her life, was it? But then again, what did the mecha-engineer, daughter of one of the best mecha-designers in Imperial space, want? There was no way that she could get back into tournament fighting, even with Babe Ruth—her father’s design—knowing that Armcore was behind her father’s death.
It looks like I’ll be stuck on the outskirts of the galaxy too, she thought grimly, watching as the sand and dust jumped and fell, jumped and fell in time to the nearing platform-giraffe’s arrival.
Which is really, really close, she thought, as the ground vibrated once more, and she raised her head to see the massive form of the drilling platform pounding toward them. To say that it was large would be an understatement. It was many times larger than the Mercury Blade, and stood some a hundred and more meters high in the air. Great plumes of sand and dust were thrown from its feet as it ran, its four legs stabbing forward in a strangely horse-like movement so there was only ever one leg in contact with the ground at any one time. Its entire body was made of strong, rigid girders of metal and steel, with pipework and hydraulic joints scattered here and there.
Upon the thing’s back were the large containers of the precious oil, sprouting around it so that it looked vaguely like some strange, giant insect carrying its spawn on its back. The strangest part of it, though,
was the thing’s neck—an impossibly long pipe taller than then thing’s body cantilevered off from the ‘shoulders’ and held high in the air. At one end was a cruel collection of drill bits and hardened teeth, each probably the size of Irie herself, and she imagined that was what was used to drive deep down into the ground, before drinking up the precious liquid from below.
“Captain…” she said uneasily, her voice almost drowned out by the crash of the thing’s hydraulic legs. “Is that thing running at us?” Charging. They call that movement charging, a part of her brain told her.
15
Servitor
“It’s not stopping. It’s not stopping!” Irie was on her feet, making a gesture to raise her energy rifle before pausing, looking at it in disinterest. “What’s the point?” She put it back down.
The four-legged platform in front of them was charging at them. Its piston-legs were pounding up and down as it drew closer and closer, sending vibrations through the ground and up through their feet.
“What the hell is it doing?” Eliard had already activated the Device, and felt it comfortingly seize his right forearm and cover it with its shell-like scale body. Inside, he could feel the bone handle, where various depressions were perfectly spaced for his hand. All he had to do was to squeeze his fist as he envisioned just how much he wanted to kill the thing. Unfortunately, he was too confused currently to even decide what it was that he really wanted to do.
Had it malfunctioned? he thought. Was there something wrong with it?
Val Pathok was already at his side, the Judge, his own cannon of destructive power, raised and ready.
The thing made a metallic shriek and rang with warning klaxons as it got nearer, and Eliard saw the thing’s neck, or head, fly up behind it, extending to its great height. He saw what appeared to be miles of hardened metal pipework and concrete tubing, and the ugly giant teeth of the drill bits as the creature started to spin them.
“Hey! Hey! What are you doing?” Eliard was waving his arms, trying to signal to whatever camera or operator just might conceivably be in control of that thing.
It was no good. There was none. “I don’t think it’s paying any attention, boss!” Irie shouted, grabbing the captain by the arm as the platform started to bring the drill bit down, straight toward them.
BLAM! BLAM! Val let off a few shots from the Judge, which Eliard saw burst along the thing’s body, bending girders and rupturing wires, but it didn’t stop it. It lurched forward, bringing its tubular head down onto the rocky platform and smashing the drill into the hardened rock.
“Jump!” Irie was shouting, grabbing the captain again and pushing him in front of her as the ground shook and started to break apart, leaping off the edge of the rocky ledge to the sand dunes below as chunks of rock were thrown into the air.
They tumbled. They fell through the air to land with pained crashes into the desert sands below, and Eliard immediately wondered why he had thought it would be soft. It wasn’t. Sand had a way of becoming very, very solid when it wanted to be, it seemed. His ears were ringing, and his mouth was full of sand as he coughed and gasped, before realizing that lumps of rock the size of his head were raining all around. In a flash though, Val Pathok had thrown his bulk over the two smaller humans, and the rocks rattled off his scaled Duergar hide.
Above them, the drilling platform had braced its two front legs against the side of the small rocky plateau that they had been standing upon—that the transmitter had been placed upon—and its head was still carving into the rock, sending up plumes of rock-dust and making a high-pitched whining noise like all of the universe’s wasps contained in one place. Eliard saw the entire rocky plateau start to crack and shift on its seating.
“Go! Go!” he shouted, staggering to his feet as Irie ran ahead and Val followed, with the Judge still trained on the thing. They ran out across the desert, heading for the smaller rocky cove amid the sand where they had landed the Mercury Blade.
“I knew it. It was Ponos, I bet you,” Eliard almost howled in rage. Behind them, the platform was still intent on killing the rocky transmitter and the stone it sat on, but the captain was sure that even it would soon realize it had failed to kill the biological lifeforms.
“I don’t know, boss…” Irie gasped, out of breath. “You heard what that Archival guy said. Alpha is out in data-space. Alpha is an alien super-intelligence. It could be anywhere. It could be here. It could have overheard your communication with Ponos and them?”
“No way. Why would it be scanning Shambar frequencies?” Eliard huffed. The sand had certainly become soft when they were running through it, now. He just hoped that the Mercury Blade would get to their location soon.
“No, Eliard, you don’t understand…” Irie shouted in frustration. “That is the point. If I understand this right, Alpha is an exponential intelligence.”
“I have no idea what you just said.” Eliard ran.
“It has no physical limits. It develops its code, its memory, its learning processes—everything—in data-space, which is technically infinite. It doesn’t have to view specific little transmitters on crappy backwater worlds to understand what is going on. Alpha has the option of being so damn intelligent that it can monitor all of human data transfer at once. Think about that that means. Unlimited processing power. It has already decided just where and what exact points there are to attack that will completely disable the Imperial Coalition. It probably heard your comments about it, or about Ponos or the Device, and immediately broke the encryption on these platform things to stop us!”
“Oh.” Eliard’s feet stumbled on the sand. Is it really over? Really useless to think that we might be able to fight back? To survive?
Behind them, they heard a sound, or rather, a lack of sound. Eliard turned to see that the drilling platform had raised its head and turned to scan this way and that, rock fragments and sand still falling from its drill as it appeared to search for them, to sniff the air for them. Ever-so-slowly, he saw the thing’s legs start to move in tandem, turning around as it locked onto their route.
Thud-ud-ud-udhr…
And it wasn’t the only one.
“Captain, four o’clock!” Val Pathok barked, pointing to another column of dust approaching over the horizon, surrounding a charging, four-legged platform. Another dust cloud followed near it, and there was another on the other side of them.
The captain still didn’t want to die today, though, as he picked his feet up and ran.
“Val!” Eliard shouted, his arm flying back as he unleashed what he thought would be a barrage of energy shots from the Device, but turned out to be a three-blast of bright glowing white energy. As soon as he’d fired, he ran forward, and Val turned to fire the Judge back at the chasing platform, before turning and running also.
Whump! Eliard’s shots hit first, one missing and destroying a sand dune behind the thing, and one seeming to hit the ground beneath the things, putting it in the middle of a rising mushroom cloud of sand and dirt. The third, however, disappeared into this murk and must have been a direct hit to one of the thing’s legs, as there was another squeal of tortured metal and the thing staggered and lurched to one side.
BOOM! And then the Judge hit the hindquarters, driving its rear end to the floor like it was a buffalo being attacked by spears.
“Yes!” Eliard punched the air. But it wasn’t down. Not really. He saw the platform lurch out of the smoke and steam of destruction, now slowed to a walk, and on three legs. But each step of one of these things was the equal of many, many running strides of a human. It was still gaining on them.
And then there were the other ones, drawing nearer.
A screaming sound in the air was like a balm to his soul, though, as Eliard heard the approaching whine of the Mercury Blade. It roared faster toward them, and Irie huddled into a crouch as she directed it with her wrist computer in a wide, flaring arc around them, sending up billows of dusty before slowing to a hovering standstill.
“Get
on board. Quick!” Eliard was coughing, already leveling the Device against the wounded platform. He wanted to destroy it, if he could.
BLAP! BLAP! He sent small, sharp shots of energy at it, missing the first but hitting the second, and then BLAP! the third time as well. There was another distant screech of metal, but then silence. He had no idea if the initial thing was dead, or if there was any way to kill those behemoths of industry at all.
“Captain! The others are approaching!” Val was hanging out of the hanger, one thick arm lowered to the sands, which caught the captain as he jumped and scrambled over the closing hangar doors.
THUD
The doors banged shut and instantly, the small dust devils and vortices of sand fell to the floor of the Mercury Blade in a haze as the ship rose slowly in the air, turning as it did so. Irie was in the cockpit, making the Blade wobble as she tried to manage the engine controls and the navigation at the same time.
“Get outta there,” Eliard called, vaulting up the steps to replace her. “I need you cycling up the warp engines.”
“You don’t say.” Irie was already gone.
“Locked and loaded!” Val called as he buckled himself into the gunnery chair and pulled the targeting visor low over his eyes.
“Fire at will, Chief Gunner,” Eliard shouted, turning the bird around. Out of the viewing screens, he could see the panoramic view of what was surrounding them. Four of the drilling platforms had closed on their position and were starting to circle, their drill-bit heads raised high into the sky. The Mercury Blade was slowly turning, sending up an oval of dust screen against them, as Eliard picked the spot in the sky that he thought was their clearest run. He tilted the ship’s wheel, angled her up.
Alien Evolution (Valyien Book 3) Page 9
