The Orphaned Worlds (29 page)
One particular frame zoomed in on the nearby solitary Achorga – dense clumps of radiant motes rippled in multiple wounds as cracked and shattered carapace armour was straightened, joined and sealed. Then all the visible motes pulsed in unison several times and a moment later the Achorga warrior jerked into life. Robert stared, astounded.
‘Hmm,’ said Reski. ‘Tool molecules.’ ‘Except that these are rather more sophisticated,’ said the Ship. ‘Subatomic dynacognites, intricate devices assembled from elementary particles.’
‘Also known as dynes,’ Reski Emantes said. ‘Convincing demonstration of the Godhead’s ability to engineer matter. This involuted continuum is an elaborate snare; now that we’ve been lured and caught, the next stage is absorption.’
For a moment Robert recalled a visit to Paris Zoo some years back, and that section of the hothouse set aside for exotic carnivorous pitcher plants and flytraps.
Like some little bug darting through the jungles of hyperspace, we’ve fallen into a monstrous oubliette that is going to try and eat us
.
‘I am registering multiple heat sources on my hull,’ said the Ship.
‘Have you deployed nanocountermeasures?’ the droid said.
‘Yes, but they are having a minimal effect on these dyne variants.’
‘What are your scenario assumptions?’
‘Worst case.’
Alarmed, Robert shot to his feet. ‘What do you mean, worst case?’
The droid Reski Emantes glided down from the command dais.
‘Robert Horst, listen carefully. This pocket universe is an unusually cruel, if highly imaginative, prison, seeded with dynes, subatomic devices that re-engineer, or rather degrade artefact tech levels to the rudimentarily functional. They are also clearly capable of repairing and reanimating the recently dead, but oxygen loss harms cortical tissue …’
‘Sensors are offline, external monitors will fail in less than one minute,’ said the
Plausible Response
. ‘Course set for cloud periphery, thrusters engaged.’
‘… so the consciousness that comes back is to a greater or lesser degree brain-damaged.’
‘And you’re saying that this could happen to me,’ Robert said.
‘Main thrusters are offline,’ the Ship said. ‘They’re into the secondary control flow. I’ll have to start isolating subsystems.’
‘Yes,’ said Reski Emantes. ‘And because these dynes go after the most sophisticated devices, myself and the
Plausible Response
will be the prime targets. All as determined by the Godhead.’
‘So … I’ll be here, on my own, apart from a few thousand subatomic bots dedicated to turning me into a moron …’ Robert said, dread clouding his thoughts.
‘Only if you get killed, so – concentrate on staying alive. Survival first, plan of action second. Ship, is the suit ready?’
‘Yes … yyyyeesssss, apolologies for the delay. Impaired system integration, difficulty rerouting. Here is suit.’ A ceiling panel swung open and a bulky green and grey vacsuit fell in a heap on the floor several feet away. ‘I have … I have? … yes, I have used final seconds of manoeuvring thruster control to guide us along safe route to periphery. But, butbutbut … but most systems now on basic autonomics … ah ah ah, dyne intruders have breached environmental!’
‘Quickly, Robert Horst,’ said the droid. ‘Into the suit!’
‘What will happen to me?’ he said, struggling into the heavy folds, legs and sleeves which were both too small and too big.
‘You should be safe – you present no threat to them, nor are you wounded – but I am only speculating. These dynes may be operating with some kind of sentient oversight, or they could be no more than the pocket universe’s antibodies.’
‘That’s hardly comforting,’ Robert said, sealing the faceplate, wrinkling his nose at a faint musty odour.
‘I could have employed various comforting lies,’ the droid said. ‘But since they would be proven false quite soon there seemed little point.’
‘There’s no weapon with the suit,’ he said. ‘I’m defenceless.’
‘Any advanced weapon would attract unwanted attention,’ the droid said. ‘There is a twist-wrench in the right thigh pocket but I wonder if we can get something else – Ship, do you have any close-quarter weapons in the armoury?’
‘… nom-nom-nom-nom-anom-anom anomalies detected …’
‘Or even just a length of pipe would be better than nothing.’
‘… nom-nom-nom …’
‘Oh dear, it seems that my sparring partner has succumbed, as shall I very shortly.’
Robert took out the twist-wrench and hefted it in his hand. It had a satisfying weight but what use was it against subatomic invaders too small to see?
‘How long?’ he said, striving to steady his nerves.
‘Less than a minute. I have prepared a bolthole for my cognate core, a kind of last hurrah … ah, they are here.’
Trying not to panic, gritting his teeth together, Robert glanced around but saw nothing.
‘I don’t …’ He paused as he noticed a faint haze shifting around one of the ceiling glows. ‘I think I see it.’
‘I might be able to adjust the lighting – there.’
The bridge illumination flickered, took on a blue tinge, and suddenly the irresistible incursion was visible. A fine pale mist crept through the air, inward from ventules on the walls and the ceiling. Strands and strings stretched out ahead of the main drifts and Robert could see that alterations had already begun on the desks near the walls. The air around their monitor stations rippled as if from a heat haze and the casings started to change shape.
‘In a moment I shall power down and institute a full wipe. All that remains is for me to urge you to survive, Robert Horst. I regret that I was unable to anticipate this crisis.’
With that, the droid Reski Emantes settled down on the desk beside Robert and did not move again. He laid a hand on its isoscelic housing in mute farewell. Seconds later the first wisps of the invaders in their subatomic millions brushed against his arm.
He tried not to think what the dynes might be doing, tried not to imagine them biting and cutting into the materials of his suit’s exterior. His breathing was quick and shallow and fear kept his arms and legs locked, crushing the urge to wave his hands around. It would be like wrestling fog, only this fog had teeth.
A swirl of fine vapour stroked across his faceplate, leaving behind a trail of tiny droplets. As he watched, the droplets flattened and spread out into filmy coin-sized patches then, seconds later, visibly evaporated, revealing small circular patterns of spirals and triangles etched into the outer surface. Alarmed, he raised his gauntleted hands, unsure of what to look for but not seeing anything that seemed out of place.
He thought he heard clicks coming from the nearest wall and turned in time to see one of the lower panels fall forward onto the floor. Out of the exposed recess came a small boxy drone on three sets of wheels, dragging behind it a length of pipe.
‘Lateness-apologies-Horst,’ said the drone in a flat monotone. ‘Take! Scavengers-danger-arm-yourself!’
‘Scavengers?’ Robert said, reaching for the pipe. ‘How many? Have they boarded the ship yet?’ His mind was a whirl of panic. He instinctively wanted to run and find somewhere to hide but knew that nowhere was safe.
‘Five-six-seven,’ said the drone. ‘Dynes-remove-hold-security. Scavengers-enter …’
A metallic hammering at the bridge entrance interrupted the drone and Robert readied his pipe. It had a good weight, was seemingly made of a hard alloy and had been fitted with a thick semicircular blade and a gleaming spearpoint.
‘Anomalies-continue-Horst! Fight-live-survive! Expect-possible-parameter-changes …’
He was about to quiz the drone on the mysterious anomalies when something smashed into the bridge’s armoured doors. They cracked open a few inches, wide enough for a metal wedge that prised the doors apart. The first scavenger was a bulbous metallic thing, its hull a patchwork of repairs sealed with rivets and crude welds. It moved slowly on stubby creaking leg assemblies and sported a variety of arms and tool-tipped extensions. And from inside a big, gridded fishbowl helmet, a scrawny, balding man grinned at him, eyes wide, pupils shrunk to dots.
Robert’s first notion was to warn the intruder to back off but before he could the bald man worked his controls and one of the hull arms fired a cabled harpoon. In reflex he ducked, the harpoon clattered off his helmet, and the bald man shrieked with rage. In the next moment Robert’s stomach lurched, the hollow falling sensation of zero-gee. The deck gravity must have failed. As he grabbed one of the fixed desks, the scavenger glided towards him, extending about half a dozen tentacles tipped with drills and cutting pincers.
‘Delay-survive!’
A small boxy shape flew up at the scavenger’s helmet. Some hatch opened in the drone’s stern and a sky-blue knot of something shiny sprang out, unfolding into long webby tangles that wrapped themselves around the scavenger’s every limb and protuberance. Robert let out a yell of triumph but it was premature. The dyne mist still swirled around them and in a few seconds a dense fog was coagulating around the blue tangles, which then began to melt and fall apart.
‘Use-axe-Horst!’ cried the drone as it tumbled away. ‘Fight-survive-fight!’
A spirit of anger took hold and he clambered over the deck to get within arm’s reach of the scavenger in his mechanised cara-pace. He swung the axe at the nearest protruding implement, only to have it shatter on impact. Slivers and splinters of pipe burst outward and suddenly he realised that he was holding a long spine of utter blackness – the
kezeq
shard, the alien blade with which he had fended off the vermax!
Without hesitation he hacked at the bulbous suit’s tentacles and jointed arms, chopping off drills, spinsaws and other lethal adornments, lopping off antennae and spring-loaded muzzles. As the skinny bald man screeched and gibbered his fury in an unknown tongue, Robert shoved his now disabled carapace off to rebound and spin harmlessly away. Then, as he pushed in the other direction, he noticed a strange grey wake trailing after the
kezeq
shard as he swept it through the air. Peering closer, he got the distinct impression that it was now shorter than before.
Busy little subatomic termites
, he thought.
Just chewing away at what they don’t like
.
Then he spotted the ship’s drone over at the broken doors, holding back a squat, many-tentacled intruder with bright sparks and flashes. Determined to help, he pushed off from one of the desks and sailed towards the doors. That was when the centre of the bridge floor suddenly broke open as if smashed from below, cracked pieces of decking flying up from a jagged hole out of which an Achorga warrior, perhaps the one he had seen the dynes revive, clambered. It surveyed the bridge in a moment then launched itself at him. His unthinking reaction was a neatly timed sweeping parry with the
kezeq
shard, shearing off the deadly limb-tines that were scything towards him. Dark ichor spurted from the truncated legs, which thrashed in agony. Robert already had one leg raised so that he could plant his boot on the creature’s mid-thorax and propel it away. The action pushed him backwards but only for a few feet before something large cannoned into him from the rear. There was a sharp pain. The collision made his head snap back against the inside of the helmet while at the same time something else prodded him in the lower back.
Dazed by the impact, he sensed he was being carried forward by the unseen object and tightened his grip on the
kezeq
. It was then, as he tilted his head forward, that he saw the thin, bloody metal spike jutting from his midriff. An instant of disbelief was followed by an engulfing wave of dread and horror. Then he felt the pain, and his breathing came in short gasps. Then he heard a faint hissing – the suit! – and wanted to push himself off the spike but couldn’t … couldn’t make himself move.
‘Horst! – survive-anomaly-near-Horst …’
But the drone’s voice was coming from down a long tunnel. Greyness blurred in from the edges and he realised that the dynes would remake him if he died … maybe turn him into a mad scavenger with no hair …
An awful numbness crept through his head and, as he recalled the last time he saw Rosa, he fell forward into a swirling darkness.
Baltazar Silveira’s small sleek ship was called the
Oculus Noctis
. Its living quarters, clearly designed to serve a crew of one, became a claustrophobic assault course when two Humans and a Voth tried to fit into it. And yet the ensuing aggravation scarcely seemed to affect Silveira, who maintained an amiable courtesy throughout the two-and-a-half-day journey to the Roug homeworld. Even when the disagreements explored such territory as the waste products and intestinal flora of different species. At such times Silveira, rather than get involved in the exchange of insults, would smile a thoughtful smile, while at other times Kao Chih was so offended and outraged that he did not dare to speak.
Fifty-six hours and thirty-one minutes after leaving Darien, by Yash’s reckoning, the
Oculus Noctis
dropped out of hyperspace at the edge of the Busrul system, home to the enigmatic Roug. Visual sensors showed the bright red dwarf sun, Busrul, wreathed in the characteristic veils and swirls of deepzone dust clouds, with the gas giant V’Hrant just visible as a pale grey dot. Thirty-five minutes and two microjumps later they reached the outer environs of V’Hrant, where Silveira, after studying his screens, said:
‘There is a slight problem.’
‘Is that “slight” as in jelking big,’ said Yash from the sleep recess, ‘or “slight” as in unimportant?’
‘It is certainly the opposite of unimportant,’ said Silveira.
‘Krowb … or should I say man-krowb!’
Ignoring the sniggering Voth’s scatological reference, Kao Chih leaned into the small command cockpit.
‘Exactly what is the problem, Mr Silveira?’
‘It may not be advisable to dock at the orbital, for the time being,’ the Earthsphere agent said, indicating the screen over his main console. An oblong picture opened, a view of the Agmedra’a’s greater radial wharves, currently dominated by an immense grey-blue wedge of a ship. Its upper hull was curved, the lower a succession of angular modules, and everywhere weapons ports, launcher housings, sensor clusters.
