The Ascendant Stars (31 page)

Suddenly the dog jerked as its head sprouted a brass-coloured spike adorned with three small stabiliser fins. Its open jaws let out a high warbling sound before it pitched forward to spill blood on the ground. The other Vor crouched down, wary eyes scanning the surroundings for the source of the attack. The one nearest to Robert lunged in close to grab his leg and was about to drag him away when a second bolt struck the Vor in the back of the head, angled down. With a grating shriek, it sprawled on the ground, spasmed, and was still.

The rest of the Vor scattered and ran. With an effort Robert sat upright and watched their forms recede into the mists. And suddenly he realised that the rumbling was back, a low continuous
noise in the background. Then, closer, he heard a rapid, fluttery humming from above, with the sense that it was descending. Looking up, he was surprised to see the drone Reski Emantes slowing to hover a few feet above ground.

Yet the machine was markedly different from before. Although of the same basic clamshell design, its construction looked cruder, heavier, with strip-reinforced seams around the shell rims and surface panels. A short-barrelled weapon protruded from the underside, presumably the source of the bolts. The most eyecatching change was the mode of propulsion, three propellers jutting from the upper shell while a side-mounted one acted as a stabiliser.

‘As you can see,’ the drone said, ‘I have been altered. Hands, please.’

Robert held them up and a blade-tipped arm poked out of a tiny hatch to neatly sever his bonds. The blade then came loose, fell to the ground, and the metal arm folded back inside. Robert smiled as he picked up the blade, leaned over and freed his ankles.

‘Very steamcog,’ he said. ‘What’s the power source? – cells?’

‘Half my interior is full of them, curious glass valves full of white vapour and metal coils. At least I don’t have a smokestack poking out of me.’

Robert got to his feet and nodded. ‘The meta-quantal environment must have modified you in accordance with some pattern … ’

‘You should leave such speculation till later,’ the drone said. ‘The source of that rumbling noise is heading this way.’

Robert paused – yes, it was definitely louder and now coming from a particular direction, the end of the bushy vale from which the Vor and their hosts had come.

‘Can you see what it looks like?’ he said.

‘My sensors have been reduced to a crude radar,’ Reski Emantes said acidly. ‘All I can say is that it is gigantic and will soon pass this way. I suggest that you start running.’

The drone’s props tilted and it glided away towards the other side of the vale. Taken by surprise, Robert broke into a jog and
went after the drone only to find that it was still pulling away from him. He lengthened his stride, picked up the pace and soon found himself running across a pebbly strand. Ahead, the drone flew over a shallow stream and on through a gap in the trees that lined the other side. And by now the grinding rumbling was loud enough to drown out his breathing and the sound of his running feet.

The mist was thick and the rumbling was near-deafening by the time he reached the gap in the tree line. Beyond it, the trees were tall and the undergrowth thick, and through the mist he could just see a winking yellow light and hear a voice: ‘Be swift, Robert Horst!’

He almost didn’t make it. As he darted and wove between the trees, the rumbling made the ground shake and the air feel as if it was buzzing in his lungs. Engulfed in the thunderous roar of it, he saw a tree off to the right start to topple, then one to his left, then another directly ahead that brought down two in a domino effect. The ground itself started to feel spongy and unstable and up ahead he could see the drone, Reski Emantes, signal light winking, some way up a steep rocky incline. Then he lost his footing.

He sprawled, hands scraping as he tried to break his fall, and a tree slammed down directly in front of him. Spattered in grime and mud, he regained his feet, grabbed a branch and clambered over the fallen trunk, leaped down and plunged onwards. As the trees thinned out the ground rose steeply to the incline, natural stepped formations of mossy rock up which he started to laboriously climb. But only for the first three steps. The vibrations in the rock made it impossible to get a firm grip and the roar was so overwhelming that all he could do was curl up away from the brink of the ledge he was on, with hands clamped over his ears. And amid the shattering chaos of noise a great cold shadow swept over everything, swallowed all in a veil of murk before, finally, it rolled past, an immense wheel, perhaps a hundred feet high, built from dark wood and rough metal. In the heavy mist its upper rim was veiled, but on the ground it crushed boulders to rubble and
trees to matchwood. Then it was followed by another vast wheel, and a third, and a fourth. The shadows and the mists swirled and closed around it as it passed.

If the wheels are that massive
, he thought,
how big is the thing that rides on them?
…
and if we are wandering in some part of the Godhead’s subconscious, then what does that symbolise? What can it mean?And is there any possibility of negotiating with a sentience like this?

Out of a stretched dream of cloudy faces he drifted up to wakefulness, prompted by voices, the Shyntanil attendants’ voices. There seemed to be undertones of what passed for excitement among that desiccated species.

‘ … a moonshard against …
them
? The Ghost Gods? – a hard thing to dare … ’

‘The Highest has commanded it – their interference is disrupting His plans.’

‘But this cause we must make with the Suneye machineries – brings hazard … ’

‘Yah, hazard for them! You know how Old Irontooth thinks. Once the Ghost Gods’ refuge is smashed, the Suneyes will be … blinded! … ’

The deck lurched slightly, then more severely as a grating alarm sounded.

‘What is?’

‘Battle call! – Battle!’

The Shyntanil attendants rushed off as the cryptship quivered from external attacks. Kao Chih suddenly realised that his drug vials had not been replenished. But when he peered at them he saw that both were still about a quarter full and he could feel the body-drowse coming on again – just as a massive impact somewhere sent a violent shock through the deck, slamming Kao Chih’s framework sideways in its recess. Something snapped … and his left arm came free, at least enough to move it across his chest.

Fighting the rising languor, he knew he might not have long before he was overwhelmed by what was already in his veins. So he reached over and loosened the strap on his right arm then proceeded to extract the needle from his left arm and carefully scraped the needle tip against the dirt-streaked metal framework, trying to stop it up with dust and grime. He then stabbed the tip against the frame to crush or bend it, and gingerly re-inserted it. By now he was yawning and struggling to keep his eyelids from drooping but he managed to repeat the process with the other side, refasten his right arm strap and adjust the left one to hold the arm up before letting himself relax. Despite the shaking and jolting it was the easiest thing to close his eyes and drift off …

He awoke to a silence broken by the sibilance of breathing sleepers. His senses felt sharper, as did his mind. The vials looked almost full yet there was no numbness. Releasing his arms, he retracted the needles and saw a gummy buildup around the tips. That was when he realised that the occupant opposite had been replaced – with a Human. He was a brown-skinned man and the torn remnants of his outer garments suggested a uniform of some kind, dark blue. Drugged, he hung there, immobile, insensible.

Kao Chih lost no time in tackling his restraints, unscrewing, unclamping and unfastening himself from head to toe. On stepping out of the framework the first thing he saw was the other Humans held captive and comatose in the neighbouring recesses, as well as one further along to either side. Stunned, he observed the mix of genders and the variety of characteristics before he noticed something else, a faint clicking and rattling. Tracing it to some way along the passage, he crept nervously towards it, edging slowly up to where he could peer round into one particular recess …

A thin, white-haired, wrinkle-faced elderly man was trying to loosen one of the arm straps. He paused and glanced up.

‘Good day,’ he said. ‘Would you know how often our gracious hosts make their rounds?’

Taken aback slightly, Kao Chih said, ‘Every eight hours … I think … ’

‘Good. In the meantime could I trouble you for some assistance?’

‘I would be most happy to oblige,’ he said, quickly stepping up to tend to the various restraints. Moments later he helped the old man out of the recess then gave a respectful bow.

‘My name is Kao Chih, pilot and emissary.’

‘Are you, indeed? – I seem to recall mention of a Kao Chih being involved in an incident on Darien, something about an antique drone trying to gain entry to an old Forerunner installation … ’

Kao Chih stared. ‘How could you know about that?’

The elderly man shrugged. ‘In addition to my tasks aboard the
Heracles
, I was also carrying out observations on behalf of the Construct, who I believe you have heard of.’

Kao Chih smiled hesitantly. ‘I have. Is it possible that the Construct will send someone to rescue us?’

‘If it could do so, I would be the agent assigned to such a delightful job.’ He held out a skinny hand. ‘My name is Robert, by the way.’

Robert’s grasp was cool, dry and surprisingly firm. As they shook hands, Kao Chih mulled over what he had said.

‘Do you have any idea of where this ship is heading?’

‘They definitely seemed to have a destination in mind but they kept it to themselves.’ Robert looked around with an air of amiable interest. ‘Well, this does look like a most specific kind of predicament, I must say. But with your skills I imagine that we’ll be free and away in no time.’

‘I don’t know that I have much in the way of skills that would help us here,’ he said.

‘Ah, but this is a pivotal predicament, Kao Chih. For all these people this situation is literally life and death, wouldn’t you say?’ He gestured at the Humans in the recesses. ‘But there is also the matter of the sizeable asteroid that this cryptship is propelling up the hyperspace tiers, aided by a vessel of the Suneye Monoclan … ’

Kao Chih felt a chill. ‘The Suneye? These Shyntanil are working with them to move an asteroid?’ Then he remembered. ‘I overheard something … those Shyntanil attendants talked of a moonshard that is going to be used against some adversary called the Ghost Gods.’

Robert nodded thoughtfully. ‘Hmm, that is audacious. The Ghost Gods were one of the Forerunners’ staunchest allies, a skilful species which fought relentlessly against anti-sentient influences and other tyrants. They survived the collapse of the Forerunner civilisation and have endured the passage of millennia by concealing or altering themselves. Today they are known as the Roug and reside in the Buzrul system … does this surprise you, Kao Chih?’

‘I knew that the Roug’s ancestors were involved with the Forerunner alliance … So the Shyntanil and Suneye vessels are going to Buzrul to try to destroy their orbital city, Agmedra’a?’

‘That or strike at the cities hidden in the cloudy depths of the nearby gas giant, V’Hrant.’

Kao Chih tried to order his thoughts around this grim news. ‘What can we do to prevent this?’

‘We already tried, my shipmates and I.’ Robert indicated the quiescent Humans in their cages. ‘You see, roughly half a ship-day ago we dispatched a Construct agent on a mission into stranger realms than I would ever wish to tread, and it was soon after that we encountered this vessel and the Suneye one. Hoping to disable or destroy either or both, we mounted an assault … ’

‘I remember the impacts and the alarms,’ he said. ‘So your attack failed.’

‘Even with some radical upgrades, courtesy of myself, the
Heracles
could not prevail. We slowed them down but couldn’t seriously damage either of them and the Shyntanil were quick to launch boarding parties … ’ The older man shrugged. ‘And here we are. Now, I have to make a reckoning of the survivors so while I’m doing that I should like you to hurry around the main bulkheads and look for anything resembling a deck plan. The layout of a cryptship is always the same and the sooner we
narrow down our whereabouts the sooner we can get organised.’

‘How did you come to be so familiar with such vessels?’ Kao Chih said.

Smiling, Robert tapped the side of his head. ‘Some surprising things stored up here. Let’s get busy, shall we?’

Kao Chih hurried off on his task, thoughts full of fearful anticipation yet sharpened by the hope that the elderly Robert knew what he was doing. The storage bay with its rows of narcotised prisoners was a chilling place in both senses of the word. By the time he found the map, on a semi-corroded plaque halfway along the second wall of the bay that he came to, he was trembling from the cold. The lettering and the symbols were meaningless but it was definitely a floorplan, as Robert confirmed when he came to view it. He took one look, smiled and pointed to a pair of symbols in the lower corner.

‘Deck 18 – good! That places us directly above one of the auxiliary launch bays, which is where they keep the assault craft.’

Kao Chih’s eyes widened. ‘We’ll be escaping in them?’