The Orphaned Worlds
Humanity’s Fire
Seeds of Earth
The Orphaned Worldsch
Published by Hachette Digital
ISBN: 978-0-748-12564-7
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2010 by Michael Cobley
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
Hachette Digital
Little, Brown Book Group
100 Victoria Embankment
London, EC4Y 0DY
Contents
MAIN SENTIENT SPECIES IN HUMANITY’S FIRE
1: GREG
2: LEGION
3: ROBERT
4: CHELUVAHAR
5: KUROS
6: CATRIONA
7: ROBERT
8: LEGION
9: KAO CHIH
10: ROBERT
11: CATRIONA
12: LEGION
13: JULIA
14: THEO
15: ROBERT
16: KAO CHIH
17: GREG
18: KUROS
19: LEGION
20: ROBERT
21: THEO
22: CATRIONA
23: KAO CHIH
24: JULIA
25: GREG
26: KAO CHIH
27: LEGION
28: CATRIONA
29: THEO
30: KAO CHIH
31: THEO
32: ROBERT
33: CHEL
34: GREG
35: KUROS
36: GREG
37: LEGION
At last, this one is for
David Wingrove,
Steadfast friend,
Ace writer
Greg Cameron
– archaeologist stationed at the Giant’s Shoulder site. After the Hegemony takeover of Darien, Greg becomes one of the resistance leaders.
Catriona Macreadie
– a former Enhanced, Catriona was chosen by the biomass sentience Segrana as its Keeper, a focus for its purpose.
Theo Karlsson
– Greg’s uncle, and former major in the Darien Volunteer Forces, Theo helped an important Enhanced team escape the Hegemony’s clutches.
Kao Chih
– a messenger sent to Darien by Human Sept, a splinter group of the lost Human colony on Pyre; his quest inadvertently helped an agent of the Legion of Avatars reach Darien.
Julia Bryce
– leader of a team of Enhanced scientists who have discovered how to use dark anti-matter.
Cheluvahar
, or
Chel
– a seer of the Uvovo and close friend of Greg Cameron.
Utavess Kuros
– the Sendrukan Hegemony’s ambassador to Darien, sent to take control of the ancient Forerunner warpwell hidden inside Giant’s Shoulder.
Robert Horst
– Earthsphere’s ambassador to Darien, falsely accused of terrorist acts, and sent down into hyperspace by the Sentinel of the warpwell.
The Construct
– a machine intelligence created by the Forerunners more than a hundred millennia ago to help fight the Legion of Avatars. It maintains a vigilant watch over the depths of hyperspace, where Robert Horst is being sent.
A Knight of the Legion of Avatars
– armoured, cyborg creature, a survivor from the war against the Forerunners. One of its mech offshoots almost took control of the Darien warpwell, but now it has to consider alternative strategies.
MAIN SENTIENT SPECIES IN HUMANITY’S FIRE
Humans
– biped mammals, binocular vision, vestigial hair, restricted range in audio/visual senses, average height 1.7m
Sendruka
– biped humanoid, binocular vision, minimal body hair, average height 2.8m
Bargalil
– hexapedal, 20% body hair, average height 2m
Henkaya
– biped with four arms, muscular upper body, average height 2.1m
Kiskashin
– tailed, ornitho-reptilian biped, rough, pebbled skin, average height 1.8m
Makhori
– amphibious octoped, multiple tentacles, large eyes, average body length 1.5m
Achorga
– insectoid, hiver, aggressively territorial, only Queens and specialised drones display intelligence, average height 1.2m
Uvovo
– small bipedal humanoid, 70% body hair, binocular vision, excellent hearing, average height 1.3m
Gomedra
– upright biped, furred, vaguely dog/wolf-like, average height 1.4m
Vusark
– pseudo-insectoid, decapedal, compound eyes, average height – 1m when walking on majority of legs, 2.1m when raised up on back legs
Voth
– biped mammal, long forearms, 75% body hair, cyborg implants common, fond of concealing garments, average height 1.4m
Piraseri
– tripedal sophonts of aquatic descent, main body a tapering torso with a backswept head fringed by small tentacles, average height 1.6m
Roug
– slender bipeds with thin limbs, possibly hairless, usually garbed head-to-toe in tightly-wound strips of dense material, average height 1.9m
Naszbur
– heavily-armoured bipedal reptiloid, a chitin shell forms a hood over the head, aggressive traders, average height 1.5m
Hodralog
– birdlike sophonts common in certain levels of hyper-space, frail physique, average height 0.8m
Keklir
– short, muscular bipeds found in most of the upper tiers of hyperspace, have wide, tapering snouts with two mouthlike openings, average height 1m
Pozu
– squat, brown-skinned species originating from high-gravity world, gloomy disposition, skilled plant technologists, average height 0.7m
The Clarified
– former Sendrukans whose personal AI has gained full control of their body due to erasure of the original persona, usually by judicial sentence, occasionally by voluntary mind dissolution.
DARIEN INSTITUTE: HYPERION DATA RECOVERY PROJECT
Cluster Location – Main Hardmem Substrate (Tertiary Backups) Tranche – 31
Decryption Status – 24th pass, 3 video files recovered
File 3 – Implant Variant 6 (mute) Combat Proving [Subject identified as Andrei Vychkov]
Veracity – Unmodified Live Recording
Original Time Log – 18:23:14, 30 October 2127
Introduction – Dr Yelena Dobrunov
Afterword – Dr James Kelvin
>>>>>> <<<<<<
Commentary I
:
The events that took place after the emergency landing of the Hyperion 150 years ago have had a profound effect on the development of our colony. The drastic technical shortfall endured by the founders in the subsequent decades meant that only written accounts and a few printed images were passed down as a record of that grim struggle. Oral storytelling traditions amongst the First Families also helped to keep the names of Captain Olsson, Keri McAllister, and Andrei Vychkov alive down the generations. Everyone knows the story of Vychkov’s Map.
Recent innovations in data decryption, however, have allowed Institute researchers to at last extract coherent records from the
Hyperion
’s memory nodes. Among them were three videofiles made by the ship’s AI and showing progressively more effective methods of coercing its captives into obedience. The colonists it awoke from cryosleep were implanted with neural devices designed to deliver jolts of pain, thus forcing them to carry out attacks on the ship’s crew who had established an encampment several miles away.
The first videofile is entitled ‘Biounit Tolerance Test’ and shows one of the woken male colonists strapped to a couch and being subjected to increasing amounts of pain until death ensued. The second, ‘Implant Variant 3 Field Test’, shows a female colonist being directed to venture outside the
Hyperion
to recover an unconscious crew member, injured during an attempt by some of the crew to gain entry to the ship. Pain, or more accurately the memory of pain, is enough to make the colonist obey, even when the crewman regains consciousness and unsuccessfully tries to escape. Those two recordings depict horrific and distressing scenes of, in effect, torture and coercion and the Institute’s management board has decided to accord them a ‘restricted access’ status.
However, the third videofile involves Andrei Vychkov, whose tragi-heroic tale is known to all, and shows actual events as they unfolded. The Institute’s board believes that the historical value outweighs Vychkov’s personal suffering and has, with the Vychkov family’s consent, released it for public viewing by an adult audience.
In time, we hope to be able to unlock the machine mind’s OS hub, the most heavily encrypted file area, and thus lay bare whatever imperatives or directives that turned it against the very people it was supposed to safeguard. In the meantime, students and other viewers should closely watch the following recording and never forget the kind of servitude that was planned for us all – Y.D.
By night, moving through foliage, dark shapes barely visible in darkness. There is the hissing of rain, patter of droplets falling on undergrowth, the rush of wind high in the sky, and the sound of someone breathing. From the unsteady viewpoint it seems that the camera is positioned on someone’s upper body, at the chest or shoulder. Then abruptly the picture switches to somewhere high and looking down, only now the trees and bushes are quite visible in the bleached blue-grey of image enhancement while the body-heat-bright figure of a man advances through the forest. The airborne cam tracks him for a moment then pulls back and swings up to point across the treetops to where a rocky outcrop shoulders up out of the pale, leafy expanse, a dark blue mass fringed with spectral bushes. The cam zooms in on the heat signatures of two sentries on the outcrop, restless bright silhouettes.