The Orphaned Worlds (63 page)
And he was lying slumped against the control pedestal, now alive with glowing symbols. He’d made it somehow, and as for dying, well, he wasn’t ready for that but to sleep, to lay down his head and rest after all of that terrible effort, ah yes, what a rest that would be …
Beautiful veils of light burst up out of the stone platform, out of the patterns, wrapped him in radiance, and he knew no more.
After days of stealth and nights of guile in the shadows, he came to a rocky hillside overlooking a deep, densely forested valley some distance north of the Kentigerns, and roughly two days’ walk from the coast. He knew that the enemy machine was down there, now, and with all that he had gleaned it was imperative to find out what it was planning. His new eyes, Segrana’s gift, had shown him visions, glimpses of what had been, of oddly different events with different outcomes or involving different people. He also saw fragmentary scenes of the now, Greg on a devastated mountainside, directing construction and helping with refugees while sunset approached; Kao Chih aboard a small spaceship with two others, his face appearing oddly distorted; Catriona looking ill and distressed as she sat on a high branch with heavy rain falling through the gloom.
Then his eyes had shown him chains of strangely grey images – Greg dead and buried at the heart of a mountain, Catriona dead and buried at the foot of a tree, and himself, face-down in a river flowing down to the sea while indistinct, enslaving machines marched across the hills towards Giant’s Shoulder. Was he being warned about actual futures, or were these symbols of some other kind of conflict?
He stared calmly at the darkening forest. His task was clear – find out all he could about the bizarre tentacled machine-creature, track its course, determine its destination, then lead Greg and others there to destroy it. The consequences of failure looked to be full of dread.
By now the sun had set so he stood and started down to the valley below.
Tonight, Umara’s sky unfolded a plentiful display of purple and orange swirls while the points and glows of the forest seemed especially lustrous. Chel smiled, half-imagining a conspiracy between ground and sky to illuminate matters as he stole through the trees. Yet he had his own ploys and stratagems by which he intended to avoid detection and slip past the eyes and ears of the enemy’s machine servants.
Which had taken up sentry posts, proof of a kind that the enemy itself had come to a halt. One of the advantages conferred by his new eyes was the ability to vary certain aspects of his body’s inner workings, like heartbeat and skin temperature. Adjusting his external presence to merge with the susurrus of the forest, he crept past the gleaming lenses and pickups of war machines standing guard. He could have used the altered-air shell to be sure of complete concealment but it would have left him exhausted and vulnerable in the middle of the enemy camp.
With steady, deliberate movements he crept past the inner and outer circles of sentries, using every scrap of bush and foliage as cover. An after-dusk misty haze drifted over the undergrowth, haloing the soft glows of ineka beetles and clusters of ulby roots. Finally he reached the enemy’s lair, a sharp dip sheltered beneath a stand of larger, mature trees. Hidden by a dense, prickly syldu bush, he peered down at a great dark shadow, then gazed upon it with the eyes of Segrana …
Within the long blocky form of the factory machine rested the enemy – its shape was like a creature with a flattened carapace and a number of tentacles protruding from one end. But Chel had seen their like before, during the visions of his husking at Tapiola daughter-forest, visions of the deep past, of the great war against the Legion of Avatars. Twisted minds bound lifelong within armoured shells, beings who embraced what they called convergence, a union with machines, a cold pain and a mechanised anger that faced outwards, directed at all and any who would dare defy them …
And now he changed the intensity and focus of those eyes, shifting from the images of now to the images of after. This was a Knight of the Legion of Avatars, whose only conceivable purpose had to be the release of the Legion survivors, imprisoned in the deepest levels of hyperspace, then unrestrained retribution. But he had to know the very darkest of the consequences gathering beyond the limits of the now, he had to see …
Night’s gloom lay upon the forest, speckled with creature-glows and overlaid with an ominous hush. All six of his eyes gazed at its shadows, which trembled like a membrane, like a skin. Which dissolved into cold, black devastation, the land and the hills and ridges to the north merging into the mountains to the south, except that it was all burnt. All the forests, the meadows, the wildlife, all around for as far as he could see was incinerated to ash, black and grey wastes congealing in a steady, heavy downpour, cold, black and dead …
The vision melted back into the now, into Chel crouching behind a leafy bush, drawing a deep, shaky breath. The horror of it, even just as a potential envisaging, was almost overpowering. A part of him wanted to run far and fast and find a deep cave to hide in. But that was only the youngling in him, whereas resolve led him to start climbing down the foliage-curtained slope towards the enemy’s machine lair.
He was near the bottom when he paused, sure for a moment that he’d heard voices. Keeping motionless he listened, got nothing, then heard it, one voice, a man’s. Chel finished the descent cautiously and slowly while the voice came nearer through the trees. The man was alternately yelling for help, virulently cursing his captors, and trying to cajole them into releasing him. Worst of all, Chel knew who it was – it was Gregory’s friend Rory.
‘… aye, ye better let me go ’cos if I get ma hands on one o’ they plasma cannon I’m gonnae stick it where the sun don’t shine and let rip! … aaaagh! – right, I’ll no’ need a gun, just a hammer’ll dae!’
Chel could see metallic forms emerging from shadowy curtains of creeper. Rory had been bound hand and foot then strapped to the back of one of the big combat droids. The sight was disturbing – for all the days of this long, taxing pursuit, not once had Chel seen any evidence of the Knight or its servants taking prisoners. Rory, still shouting and swearing, was being carried towards the rear of the huge factory machine where a hatch had folded open. It was easily wide enough to admit a Human lying prone, and as he watched a thick shelf with a Human-shaped recess slid out lengthways.
Chel shook his head, a Human gesture for a Human predicament. But there was no conflict in his intentions – he would have to try and save the man. With his eyes, his Seer’s eyes, he looked at the air, at the infinitesimal motes of which it was consisted, then looked for the shell of air, knowing that his perception of it would bring it into being. The strain of observation-alteration was already noticeable but he held steady as the air around him grew opaque with faint glowing swirls. At once he rose and walked straight towards the machine that bore Rory along.
He was yards away when he suddenly realised that the machines were all closing in on him from all sides. There was a flash of light, a dazzling burst, and the concealing air-shell vanished. From the back of the now-motionless droid, Rory stared in disbelief.
‘Chel! – Greg sent me to find you …’
‘I am sorry, Rory, so sorry,’ was all he could say before cold metal talons seized him and a needle slid into his neck, blackening all sight.
LEGION
Resting within the autofactory’s rebuilt storage bay, the Knight of the Legion of Avatars considered his two prisoners: one was a male of the Human species, the other the Uvovo whose steady, untraceable pursuit had been a constant irritation for days. But at that very moment when it had employed its special talent, a form of psi-cloaking, the Knight’s sensors, attuned to Forerunner methods, spotted the intrusion immediately. Then it was merely a matter of neutralising the creature before it could deploy any other trickery.
Up till now, the Knight had been rigorous in the extermination of any primitive sentients who strayed too near, whether Human or Uvovo or Sendrukan, or any of the score of other species who were part of the infantile invasion of fanatics. Now, however, as the rhythm of events picked up and his chosen strategy carried him still closer to inevitable triumph, his new prisoners presented an opportunity for an experiment in convergence. Once the appropriate controls were established both subjects would undergo a series of implants and augmentations, thereby discovering which race would be best suited to true evolution.
Initial preparations would begin now, ensuring biophysical compatibility with the embedded technology. In the meantime he would continue to direct the buildup of his mech army while analysing the reports from his monitor droids. The situation across the Human colony of Darien had deteriorated in the last forty-eight hours. The majority of the population of the central coastal plain had fled, either to settlements near Trond in the north, where Brolturan remnants maintained a significant presence, or south-east to the towns of the deepwater inlets where Humans were in complete control. The main city, Hammergard, was now in the hands of the Spiral Prophecy zealots, who, having put Human places of worship to the torch, were now attempting to convert the remaining Humans by coercion. Elsewhere in the south, a large force of Humans had either been wiped out by the fanatics or chased off in a rout, leaving the road to Giant’s Shoulder open. Another army of fanatics was already there and meeting heavy resistance from Brolturan troops who were holding the northern gullies, ravines and gorges leading up to the great ridge that led straight to Giant’s Shoulder. The ravines and hilly slopes had been extensively mined, while up on the promontory itself, the Hegemony ambassador, Utavess Kuros, resided with over a thousand crack troops dug in, fortified and protected by weapon batteries.
Against the poorly armed host of the Spiral Prophecy, such a garrison could probably hold out indefinitely. But when his army of modified war mechs went into attack mode, the Knight did not expect the Sendrukans to last much longer than ten to fifteen minutes.
He broke off from strategic considerations to study the operations being undertaken by the autofactory, reprogrammed with schemators from his own contingency store. The Uvovo’s body had started rejecting the embeds almost immediately, requiring genemorph treatments. The Human, however, was accepting the basal systems without a qualm.
That was when a sensor alert went off, an urgent-priority one. And when he saw what it was announcing, he checked the sensor webs for any flaws, checked the datastream for anomalies, but the processed outcome remained doggedly the same. A Zyradin, a powerful artificial psi-symbiote, the key element of the Forerunners’ citadel worlds, the being that unified each of those worlds with its accursed biomass, the sentience that directed the ferocious energies of the warpwell against the Legion’s countless warriors … the very thought, the remembrance, and now this terrible, stark fact of its existence. That it should appear on the field of battle at this crucial moment …
He paused to regain composure, to recall his duties, loyalties and warrior purpose. He also looked more closely at the locational data and felt a spike of irritation – it had appeared in that mountaintop stronghold, the insurgent hideout he had dismissed as irrelevant to his campaign. A mistake that he would take great pleasure in rectifying.
He began issuing orders to more than half his mech forces, sending them south towards the Kentigern Mountains.
‘… on our way to one of the Uvovo hideouts when a pack of them machines, those big, hefty buggers, jumped us. It was really dark in the gorge and things went mad all of a sudden. Didn’t know where Rory and the others were, and I got clouted by one o’ them which threw me on the ground. I was scared out my wits, and wounded and dizzy, I … I crawled into a hollow under a fallen tree … Guess I was lucky …’
Murcheson’s voice trailed off, shame writ openly in his face as he gazed down at a piece of strapping his fingers fiddled endlessly with. Greg felt a certain sympathy for him, but it was personal anxiety that gripped him.
‘And you’re absolutely sure that Rory’s body wasn’t with the others?’ he said.
‘After the machines were gone, I looked and looked, Mr Cameron,’ Murcheson said miserably. ‘I couldna find him – he must have been taken prisoner.’
There were four of them in the small hut, Greg, Murcheson, a Uvovo healer who was attending to his wounds, and Alexei Firmanov.
‘Are you willing to lead another search party to that same spot?’ Greg said. ‘If we can pick up the trail …’
‘Greg, the forest’s far too dangerous now,’ said Alexei. ‘We cannot afford to lose any more men …’
‘Rory’s my friend, Alexei – I can’t just abandon him.’
‘He is also
my
friend, but we must face reality! – we have to hold on here, rebuild what we can …’
‘Aye, in time for when the next Hegemony ship comes along to finish the job …’
He stopped the bitterness in midflow, leaned on the rickety wall and hung his head in despair. Was this grinding conflict going to take away every last one of his friends? Catriona, Uncle Theo, Nikolai, and now Chel and Rory … and he found himself recalling the aftermath of his father’s death and how his mother had soldiered on through it, dealing with the paperwork, the relatives, the cremation, the never-to-be-fulfilled obligations, and the outstanding debts. And the only answer she had given to his need to understand her fortitude were the words ‘Do the work now, mourn later.’