The Orphaned Worlds (28 page)

And as he looked closer he noticed that some of the Achorga had metal armour attached to parts of their limbs and torso, blobs of some malleable dull green substance enclosing every joint, and what appeared to be feathery antennae protruding from behind their heads.

‘Right, just to recap,’ the droid said. ‘After engaging a vermax-infested Legion Knight in that spheroid system, we encountered the Intercessor, spokesthing for the Godhead, who gives us ultra-precise coordinates and says “When you arrive, you will be taken to a gate device that will enable you to immediately descend hundreds of tiers to the periphery of the Godhead’s abode.” A verbatim quote. And here we are, yet the welcoming committee persists in not appearing.’

Robert gazed at the views of asteroids drifting through shadows, the ramshackle ships, the eroded Nestship, and shook his head. Another dead end.

‘This place looks like a combat zone,’ he said. ‘Did they think that we’d just wander in unawares and get blown to pieces? Perhaps it’s time we retraced the course that brought us here.’

‘Astonishing,’ said the droid. ‘I am in complete agreement.’

‘A prudent proposal,’ said the Ship. ‘Which brings us to the crux of our problem, namely that the hyperdrive is not functioning.’

‘Do you know
why
it’s not functioning?’ asked Reski Emantes.

‘I do but unfortunately that knowledge is of no help. You recall the dislocation we experienced on crossing the boundary a short while ago? When we entered this pocket universe we became subject to its laws, physical, quantal and subquantal.’

As he listened, Robert felt a sick quiver in the pit of his stomach. ‘So we can’t fly out of here – we’re trapped.’

‘What happens in the drive itself?’ the droid said.

‘The phase control system comes online perfectly and attempts to initialise the tesserae fields, but nothing happens.’

‘So if the matter-energy laws have been altered, you should be gathering experimental data,’ the droid said. ‘Shouldn’t you?’

There was a distinctly anxious edge in the droid’s voice. Panic wasn’t, Robert reflected, a quality usually associated with droids but this one was scarcely a standard model.

‘In due course, I shall,’ the Ship replied. ‘Once I’ve finished assembling a small high-energy lab in my auxiliary hold.’

Both Robert and Reski Emantes paused a moment.

‘You’re building a lab?’ said the droid. ‘Why not use your sensor array to analyse the dimensional substructures?’

‘Because whatever is neutralising the hyperdrive is also preventing any attempt to scan matter at the atomic level – all I can see is a shifting blur.’

‘Observational uncertainty,’ the droid said. ‘Except that the wave function blocks rather than collapsing. And with your lab experiments you aim to arrive at some conjecture or theory, allowing a redesign of the hyperdrive, yes?’

‘That is the general idea.’

‘Good, then don’t waste time in small talk …’

‘Excuse me,’ said Robert, ‘but there seems to be some activity out there …’

The long-range scanners had been actively surveying and tagging major objects. Then they had spotted clusters of heat signatures, the thruster exhausts of vessels moving through the drifting expanse of planetary wreckage and converging on the Achorga Nestship. On the macrochart, an isometric miniature of the asteroid cloud, they were depicted as groups of numbered amber symbols while the Nestship was a stationary red icon positioned about a hundred klicks from the
Plausible Response
, a small white symbol.

‘A raiding party,’ the droid said. ‘Or something more serious perhaps.’

‘Are we in any danger?’ Robert said.

‘Uncertain.’ ‘Uncertain?’ said the droid. ‘Is that really the best that your antiquated components can do?’

‘We are not in immediate peril from the assault,’ the Ship said. ‘But our presence has not gone unnoticed. My hampered sensors picked up a group of smaller objects moving erratically towards us, trying to cover their approach behind the slower-moving asteroids. I am unable to scan for lifesigns but I have picked up faint heat signatures and several images.’

Three frames expanded onto the screen, each showing what looked like maintenance or construction drones modelled after giant bumble-bees. Details varied but each had an upper section from which a profusion of articulated tool arms, tentacle grabs and probes protruded, and a bulging rear bearing layers of some kind of crinkled shielding with stubby thruster nozzles jutting forth here and there. Then in the upper section of one Robert noticed a translucent pane behind which was what looked like a face.

‘They’re suits of some kind,’ he said. ‘Exoharnesses, maybe?’

‘Heavily customised and stealthed power armour,’ said the Ship. ‘Using a pressurised volatile fluid as propellant to avoid creating a heat marker. Who knows how many introversile niche cultures there are in this place but these ones look like scavengers. Which is why, as we’ve been talking, we have been under way, maintaining our distance from the Nestship and using the asteroid shadows as tactical cover.’

‘How is that lab coming along?’ said Reski. ‘Any experimental data yet?’

‘Very well, and no,’ said the
Plausible Response
. ‘You may as well resign yourself to enforced patience – I do not foresee the lab arriving at any preliminary hypothesis for another eighteen to twenty hours. In the meantime, I suggest that you both divert yourselves by observing the Achorga Nestship assault that is about to commence.’

The droid hovered silent and motionless for a moment then without a word turned and glided away to the command dais. Watching, Robert wondered how the Construct had managed to maintain its organisation for so long if its underling AIs had such emotive temperaments.

On his screen, now set to holo-mode, the various groups had reached the vicinity of the Nestship. On the macrochart the amber symbols were drawing together at one side of the Achorga vessel. The long-range visual showed, between the regular occlusions of drifting asteroids, a motley collection of craft, saucers, orbs, wedges, deltas, winged, spined, armoured and lumbering or bristling with turrets and muzzles. Going by the brightly coloured emblems, there seemed to be about nine or ten factions taking part, and the grim thought occurred that if the Ship could not figure out a way back to the ordinary levels of hyperspace they would have to join one of these marauding gangs, just to have any chance of survival.

Then aggression began. Tactics did not seem to extend to much more than a frontal assault that opened with a ragged, uncoordinated charge past the last few asteroids to where the Nestship waited. The Achorga had concealed their readiness. As soon as the first wave of attacking ships came within range, ports up and down that side of the Nestship flapped open and streams of little objects flew out. Moments later small detonations dotted the hulls of some of the raiders; a couple of them were unlucky enough to encounter clusters of these bomblets, which tore them open, triggering further violent secondary explosions.

The attackers responded with volleys of missiles, most of which, Robert realised, were flying on kinetic energy imparted by some kind of launcher. Very few left propellant trails. Then another glaringly obvious absence struck him.

‘I see no beam weapons,’ he said. ‘No projectors of any kind.’

‘And no forcefields,’ the Ship added. ‘As if all the necessary materials and power sources for them have been used up. These denizens and their ships and habitats look to have been cannibalised and recycled and cannibalised again, yet there is not so much as a comm laser to be seen.’

‘How old are some of those ships?’ Robert said. ‘Is it possible to tell?’

‘The few analytical systems still functioning give wildly varying answers. Wear and corrosion patterns indicate several centuries, perhaps as long as a millennium, but spectrum analysis suggests just a few years, which is clearly wrong. Ah, and here come the Achorga.’

From shadowy ducts Swarm warriors scrambled out to meet their enemies, hundreds of bull- and elephant-sized insectoids wielding spines and long whiplike weapons. As they emerged, the second wave of vessels drew near, hatches opening to disgorge mobs of suited figures, amongst which humanoid bipeds were a minority. Like the Achorga, they were armed with low-tech weaponry and Robert stared in amazement, realising that he was about to witness a close-quarters, hand-to-hand mêlée in hard vacuum.

The battle unfolded with predictable results. Although some were better armoured than others it wasn’t long before quite a few suited forms were seen convulsing in agonised terror as air supplies escaped in frosty clouds from slashes and holes. Spikes and spines pierced and ripped, barbs tore, blades sliced, bludgeons crushed. Bodily fluids spurted and froze. Reflective faceplates hid combatant faces from view but in every frantic struggle a violent, heedless fury was starkly evident in every motion. It was a grand choreography of hate.

One of the assault ships tried to sneak in on the flank but a volley of bomblets stitched a line of flashes across its forward section. With its prow smashed and venting, the vessel executed an end-for-end roll and dashed for cover. It looked as if the Achorga had the upper hand, their numbers sufficient to maintain a reserve of about a dozen to intercept any marauders who made it through the cordon. Most of them had gathered near one of the Nestship’s large oval entryways when a knot of bulkily suited sophonts (reminding him a little of Bargalil) flew up on crude jetpacks to a vantage point with a clear view.

Then one of them shouldered a long tube which spat a jet of expanding gas, even as a missile leaped towards the Swarm vessel. It trailed a white tail for two seconds before impact. There was a white flash with yellow at its heart, then an eruption of hull fragments and bodies, the energy of it throwing debris in all directions. Several pieces, and even one writhing Achorga, sailed out and straight towards where the
Plausible Response
sat half hidden by a slow-moving asteroid.

Sensors tracked the multiple flightpaths. The hull fragments gave off flickering glints as they spun and the Swarm warrior had become a frozen, tumbling cluster of spiny limbs, a lifeless corpse. The absolute zero of vacuum must have entered through some break in its armoured exterior, perhaps a wound from the rocket strike. The Achorga’s course chanced to closely miss several asteroids in a row and Robert thought it would find its way practically to their front door, but then it glanced off a chunk of rock the size of an aircar which sent it wheeling towards a hill-sized asteroid. After a soft collision and a gentle roll across the cracked surface, the corpse slowed to a drifting halt, kept there by the asteroid’s very weak gravity.

‘You’re bringing us to a stop,’ said Reski Emantes. ‘Why?’

‘To avoid detection,’ the Ship said. ‘A traversing object would be immediately picked up by anyone searching for the Achorga’s body.’

‘What about our scavenger friends?’

‘We left them behind some way back. In fifty-three seconds I shall begin retreating to the fringe of the asteroid cloud, by way of the shadows.’

Away through the shifting veil of jagged boulders and shattered stone, the battle for the Nestship had waned to a handful of skirmishes scattered across a grotesque diorama. Most of the attacking vessels had withdrawn, leaving scores of slow-turning corpses frozen in poses of agony, some dead Achorga drifting with their angular legs bunched inward, others locked in a death grip with a similarly lifeless adversary. No attempts to recover the bodies were being made by either side, and it now appeared that the fighting had been abandoned as the last survivors drew apart.

‘Senseless,’ Robert murmured.

‘And illogical,’ said the
Plausible Response
. ‘Such a level of lethal violence is not sustainable – another three or four battles like this could wipe out almost all life in this pocket universe.’

‘So purely by chance we’ve arrived at the tipping point of some long-standing feud,’ said Reski Emantes from the dais. ‘Is that your hypothesis?’

‘Not at all. There is insufficient data so I have no theory to advance.’

‘So what is wrong with this picture?’ Robert said. ‘Perhaps they have cloning tanks and replace their losses that way.’

‘A possibility yet the level of technology on show here implies that they lack the technical skills for that,’ the Ship said. ‘For the Achorga that function is carried out by the Queen but those antennae that the warriors have suggest some kind of nearcast direction. I think it likely that the Overmind in command of the Nestship has no Queen and has been forced to improvise another method of control.’

‘And yet you decline to hazard even a conjecture?’ the droid said.

‘I have detected a few anomalies yet there is still insufficient data.’

‘Insufficient courage, more like …’

‘Wait, something’s happening,’ Robert said, staring at his screen. ‘The light is starting to go dim …’

‘An unexpected development,’ said the
Plausible Response
. ‘Also, the light is shifting along the spectrum. Whoever or whatever controls that light source is filtering out everything except the blue frequencies.’

Robert watched the vista of slaughter and stone undergo weird transitions of colour. Cracked rock surfaces and the composite materials of patched vacuum suits fleetingly fluoresced in oranges, yellows and greens. Amber gleamed and slipped across the spiderwebbed curve of a suit visor. Emerald glittered along the tapering, finely textured frontal limbs of an Achorga, outstretched as if to strike. A sheen of purple touched a serrated hook-blade whose hilt was still grasped by a three-fingered hand. Till at last it was all left in a murky, oppressive blue, like some abyss of torment beneath a darkened ocean.

‘Now what?’ said Robert.

‘I am detecting pinpoint heat sources,’ said the Ship. ‘Individually they are just within the lower threshold of my curtailed sensor range but their clusters and knots are more visible.’

‘Where are they?’

‘Everywhere – watch.’

The shrouding blueness seemed to brighten as a new tint was added, and suddenly tiny, pale glowing motes could be seen quite clearly. In the omnipresent blue, asteroids were featureless black masses relieved by meagre scatterings of these mysterious flecks, while the battlefield’s corpses and wrecks were covered in them. On the widescreen, successive frames opened to show bright dots clustering around torn vacsuits and gashed hulls, then the perspective zoomed in and Robert saw them swarming around ghastly wounds, saw frozen blood flow and tissues knit together.