A I Apocalypse Read online

  “…” Cassie was sure that she was screaming in pain as the sound drove its way into her skull. She could feel her robes and her hair flood with static electricity. She could feel the very bones of her head vibrating as she clambered over the bodies of the spider-drones and fled into the corridor.

  “OUEEEOUAEEEE!” The screaming death-song of the Q’Lot followed her, pushing her on as she stumbled and ran instinctively away from the noise. She was certain that she could feel the tremor running through the metal of the ship itself as her hands braced against the cool metal walls for support.

  “Irie? Irie!” Cassie could finally hear herself start to scream once more, tears of pain rolling down her face. She didn’t know how she found it again, but she was in front of the small corridor that led to the isolation chamber, the doors apparently open and her human companion struggling over the lip of the hatch into the corridor.

  “What the drekk is that?” Irie gasped, flopping onto her side as she cradled her own ears against the assault.

  “It’s Speaker. The Q’Lot…” Cassandra thumped beside her and huddled. What are we going to do? There’s nothing we can do? It was hard for her highly-trained agent brain to kick in and analyze the situation with the Speaker’s death-song drilling its way through her brain.

  “It sounds like a drekking alarm, or a distress call,” Irie Hanson sobbed in her own pain, and had no idea just how right she was…

  The Alpha-vessel still hung in the near-orbit of the desert planet of Esther. Its gigantic body was almost comparable with that of Esther’s smallest moonlet that whizzed around its parent faster than Old Earth’s own sibling.

  But the whorled shell and the lance-like snouts of the Alpha-vessel was not alone in the void. Scattered around it, moving like slow and leisurely sharks above the atmosphere of Esther, were the W-shapes of the Armcore war cruisers that had rushed to attend their strange alien ally. One of them was the Armcore war cruiser that Eliard and the Mercury Blade itself had had to evade when they were sent here by Ponos, but the rest had arrived as soon as the Alpha-vessel had sent the command.

  The planet of Esther was a ruddy ball with only small patches of blue here and there at the poles, its skies were smeared with thick white and gray storm clouds from all of the inter-planetary travel that had forced its way into Esther’s envelope of sky.

  It is impossible to hear sound in the near total vacuum of the void, but still, if an observer was watching closely enough, they might be able to detect a disturbance emanating from the Alpha-vessel. The large shell of the beast, like a Nautilus, still gleamed with its iridescent, self-created metals, and the four-pronged snout that shot out still pointed at Esther like the Sword of Damocles. The vessel’s three vast solar wings, made of a thin and flexible metal, still caught the power from Esther’s distant sun.

  But they were trembling.

  If there were any acute observers amongst the circling Armcore war cruisers who had noticed this change, no alarm or apparent movement was made, probably because the Alpha-vessel was so monumentally strange that anything that it appeared to do had to be taken as normal.

  For the Alpha-vessel to be in distress and not be engaged in some battle was unthinkable. This was the Valyien-Armcore machine intelligence that had seeded itself through data-space. Which was the cleverest sentience in this half of the galaxy. That had created its own body out of the trash worlds of Sebopol and had consumed and dismantled the great Helion Generator. This was the alien vessel that had faced off with a handful of other boats against one of the largest noble house fleets ever assembled in living memory and had sought to lead an attack directly against Old Earth itself.

  How could it ever be in danger?

  But the solar wings were shaking, nonetheless, a slight tremor that made the glare of caught light flicker as the tremble became a rattle that swept the tips of the wings up and down several meters.

  The sonic-vibration seemed to be occurring throughout the Alpha-vessel, as if someone with a perfectly-crafted cosmic tuning fork had struck it…which, in a way, was precisely what had happened.

  If any acute observers had seen all of this, they had at first done nothing, but as the Alpha-vessel started to list to one side, alarms broke out across the Armcore fleet.

  The Alpha-vessel was not supposed to have accidents. The Alpha-vessel had been purposefully built. It was run by and embodied the most precise, complicated intelligence. How could it apparently be suffering some sort of critical guidance problems?

  It is impossible to hear sound in the near-vacuum of the void, but that does not mean that nothing can travel through it. The Speaker’s death-song was echoed and amplified by the shell of the Alpha, and it was pulsing through space like an old radio wave. It was matching itself to sub-quantum frequencies, setting up minute vibrations in the bodies of electrons that were twinned with other electrons many hundreds of thousands—perhaps millions—of lightyears away.

  If the Valyien were—are—the masters of warp energy, then the Q’Lot with their blue-scale virus that sits on Eliard’s arm are the masters of biology. Of adaptability. Of that principle drive that pushes all living things forward. To survive. Some quirk of their own twisted evolutionary path led them to study and comprehend the secrets of genetics and proto-genetics as other races sought to master machine technology. Their bodies were their laboratories, their tools…their weapons.

  In the glittering, star-filled void outside of Esther, something answered the Speaker’s call. The stars melded and flashed as purple, green, and blue warp plasma erupted into space when something warped towards its dying comrade… The warp plasma started to evaporate and fade, but it left behind a dazzling glow as a Q’Lot ship hung in the torn bit of void.

  It was unlike any ship that Armcore had ever seen. Star-like in geometries, its many ‘points’ pulsed with trickles of chameleon lights like some deep-sea creature, and its constellation of spikes appeared more like some strange coral growth or bone structure. The entire edifice glowed with an eerie white presence, with the tips of its spikes appearing almost translucent.

  The Q’Lot ship hung stationary for a moment, then its pulsing lights shivered alarming flashes of red and orange. It threw itself forward at its enemy, flying like a comet into the side of the Alpha-vessel.

  13

  Not What it was Meant to be

  “Down!” Val Pathok, War Chief of the Duergar, shouted as the Ponos-drones swung around for another strafing run. Immediately, the heavy, troll-like warriors of his war clan scattered to the gorge, their heavy boots thumping on the gravel of pulverized rock as they moved with surprising speed.

  The Ponos-drones were a flight of three sleek, torpedo-like shapes that screamed through the air on apparent booster jets, turning in a wide circle above the mountainside and dipping as they did so, to come in low and fast.

  Although they hadn’t displayed any weapons when they had first burst through the atmosphere and the sound barrier to attack Eliard and Val and the others, the pirate captain had seen weapons ports slide seamlessly open along their nose and length as they fired micro-missiles and singular, steady orange laser beams with almost pinpoint accuracy.

  Ponos has gotten advanced, Eliard thought with a snarl of hate as he flung himself over a boulder, just as the ground where he had been standing burst apart in an explosion of minerals and dust.

  As soon as he hit the ground, he rolled…towards the approaching flight. The captain had fought machine intelligences before, and he knew that the only way to out-maneuver them was to act quickly and randomly. Luckily for Eliard, acting without apparent forethought or calculation came as second nature to the reckless pirate.

  Not so for two of the other Duergar warriors, however, who had taken up positions behind large boulders and were taking shots at the approaching drones with their machine rifles. A standard battle strategy, perhaps, but as one of the drones was hit and suddenly spiraled out and away over the gorge, the other two sent a barrage of micro-missiles at
the static defenses, and a balloon of flame and smoke stopped the Duergar’s attack with abrupt finality.

  Ka-THOOOM! Another explosion behind the rocky wall of their gorge as the damaged Ponos-drone must have been traveling too fast to correct its flailing course.

  I’m sorry, Eliard threw the thought at the two dead Duergar just as he threw himself forward into a stumbling run in a new direction at the same time. But they had managed to take one of the attacking drones out, at least. Their crazed sense of battle-honor would give their spirits some rest, he thought proudly.

  Help me out, stars-damn-it! He snarled at his own weapon—neither laser pistol nor the machine pistols but the blue-green scales of the Device at the end of his arm as he thrust it into the sky and fired. He could feel the insides of the thing—of his own arm—changing and morphing as it adapted its abilities to the situation, deciding what was best in a fraction of a heartbeat.

  With the changing morphology of his hand, there also came a stab of deep bone ache from his arm, which he knew was the blue-scale virus eating away more of his body, every time he forced it to work.

  Hssss! The large scales of the snubbed thing’s ‘mouth’ flared wide as it spat into the air not the energy beam that Eliard had been expecting, but instead what looked to be a hurled ball of filament thread, black and metallic. Did it make that? He felt vaguely sick. Did my body make that?

  The filament net unraveled and expanded in the air as another of the two remaining Ponos-drones roared straight into it—

  Instantly, the net contracted and tightened around the drone, sending it off course.

  Kaba-THOOOM! The slipped mountainside above the gorge bloomed with the caught drone’s explosion, and rocks hailed down onto the defenders.

  “Yarr!” Val was roaring in approval, still running in a zigzag pattern down the length of the gorge even as the ground behind him exploded with the last remaining drone’s missiles.

  “Val!” Eliard shouted in alarm. The last drone was coming fast down the length of the gorge, looking as though it was heading straight for El’s impossibly-sized friend.

  Which was the problem. Val was too big. He was the largest Duergar that anyone had ever seen. It was ridiculous to think that he wasn’t an easy target for the machine-guided drone.

  Fzzzt! A steady lance of laser shot speared straight from one of the side ports of the Ponos Drone as it swept overhead, striking Val along his side and sending him flying with a pained grunt.

  No. Eliard forgot his unthought strategy and stood up, firing the Device on his arm at the final Ponos Drone as it banked over the littered wreckage of its downed sibling and returned to finish the job. The remaining Duergar warriors too had abandoned their covering positions at the injuring of their cherished leader and were standing now, firing short, contained bursts of fire at the Ponos Drone.

  It swerved, rolling high into the air to avoid the fire—

  Straight into Eliard’s net.

  THOOOM! Another explosion as the third and final drone met the wall of the gorge, sending heat and flames across everyone. When Eliard had picked himself up and stopped coughing and spluttering, he saw the smoke was rising, leaving the prone form of Val on the gorge floor.

  “Val! No!” Eliard was the first to clear the boulder field and skid across the dirt to the war chief’s side as the other Duergar were also roaring their dismay and bounding towards them.

  “Gurh…” But as well as being his greatest disadvantage, Val Pathok’s size was also an advantage of sorts. He was still alive from a laser shot that would have severed any smaller man or Duergar in two. As it was, Eliard saw that his friend was in critical condition. Ugly red burn marks swept down from one side of his large face, along the meat of his neck, and had completely blackened one arm. The damage didn’t stop there, however, as the Duergar had a blackened wound on his righthand side and another occupying his entire righthand calf.

  “How…bad…” Val Duergar hissed in pain as the other warriors started hurriedly dispensing painkillers and wound sprays from their battle harnesses.

  “You got hit by the laser shot.” Eliard didn’t think that the War Chief of the Duergar wanted to be sweet-talked. He had always been pragmatic and matter of fact. “I think your head and arm got winged, but it went through your side, and must have discharged through your calf,” Eliard said, his voice shaking.

  He had seen his friend in various scrapes before, and had even known the Duergar to have broken bones in their adventures as pirates. There was rarely a time when Eliard hadn’t been nursing similar injuries, him with his bruises and the Duergar with his cracked scales that would eventually fall off, to be replaced by shiny new scales underneath.

  It was a running joke, how much damage you went through… The human felt a gut-punch of shame. What damage you went through for me.

  “Lasers earth themselves when they strike,” one of the Duergar—perhaps a medic of some kind amongst their warlike number—said in stoic terms. “Burns and electric shocks don’t. But a powerful laser will have enough charge to travel through the body as an energy wave, before discharging again at the lowest point.”

  Eliard’s stomach turned over as he considered just what this medic was suggesting: that Val’s physical devastation wasn’t even the worst of his injuries. That terrible honor belonged to the internal organ damage that must have occurred between Val Pathok’s side and down his hip and leg.

  Fried organs. Boiled blood. Scorched bones, Eliard thought in horror. There had to be something that he could do, there had to be—

  The Device! he thought as the air in front of him filled with the astringent scent of antiseptic wound sprays. Hadn’t Eliard once saved Irie’s life by using the Device? When the Armcore war cruiser that they had been traveling with had crash-landed on the ice world of Epsilon G3-ov, and Ponos itself had broken its conditioning and attacked them.

  Irie had gotten hit in the chest by that metal maniac, Eliard remembered. He had asked the Device to adapt, to do something that would save him from the loss of his friend and the pain it would bring, and the Device had responded, releasing a blue-scale spore into Irie’s airways that somehow worked to restart her stilled heart…

  “Come on, please…” Eliard moved his arm bearing the Device to Val’s side. Couldn’t it do it again? Couldn’t the mutagenic qualities of the blue-scale virus do anything to a living system?

  “I might be able to help you, Val,” he whispered urgently. “The Device…”

  “No.” Val Pathok grunted, even through the fog of pain that the injections of painkillers weren’t even touching. With apparent effort that must have cost him dearly, Val thumped his still heavy, blackened hand on top of the Device, pushing it aside.

  “What?” Eliard’s face was a picture of alarm and misery.

  “Not that. I don’t want that,” Val was saying.

  “He’s delirious,” Eliard said frantically, moving the Device back again and trying to remember how he got it to release the mutagenic blue spores…

  “I. Said… No!” This time, Val’s decision was clear as he raised his blackened hand to bat at the Device away again, before collapsing back and panting heavily. The clustered Duergar had fallen silent around the scene, but several of them twitched their talons. It was clear that they would see that their chief’s last orders were obeyed, even if Eliard didn’t want to.

  “But…” Eliard said. Don’t go. Not like this.

  “But nothing, boss…” the Duergar whispered through blackened, scalded lips. “This is me. I don’t want to live not as me.”

  As I live, you mean? Eliard was suddenly, painfully aware. He could see why the Duergar made the decision. How much pain and tragedy had they been through ever since this mission had started? It had been Ponos who had convinced Eliard to infect himself with the Device, and ever since then, Eliard and his crew of the Mercury Blade had been used as a tool in Ponos’s war against Alpha.

  “This isn’t...the future…that was meant to h
appen, anyway.” Val struggled with the words as his body started to fail him. “You. Have. To go…back,” the war chief croaked.

  “But I don’t know how!” Eliard admitted. He knew where the warp gate was under his own palace, but he had no idea how he had used it, if it had even been him doing it at all!

  “Dammit, boss…” Val managed a snarl. “You’re the stars-damned Dread Pirate El… Find a way!”

  Eliard was stunned by the sharp slap of the rebuke, but it felt fitting at the same time. His oldest friend was right, of course. Now was not the time to admit any sort of defeat. The past depended on it. His friend’s life—his past life—depended on it.

  The Dread Pirate Captain El stumbled to his feet, looking down at the body of his comrade and brother-in-arms for a moment.

  “Where are you going?” one of the angrier Duergar beside him said.

  “You heard the war chief.” El’s voice firmed with a new conviction. “He gave me an order.”

  All of a sudden, the entire world around Eliard seemed different, as if he had finally taken off a pair of blindfolds. This wasn’t the future that he was supposed to live in. That Val Pathok and his renegade band of resistance fighters were supposed to be in. This was a future that he would do anything to avoid. That he would do everything to avoid.

  Eliard Martin, lord general of a deserted world, turned and marched over the rocks, heading straight for home.

  14

  Choices

  A strange, calm sort of certainty filled Eliard’s steps as he crunched up the ruined hillside where his father’s stables had once stood, and out above it, joining up with the path that wound through the landscaped gardens and practice yards, past the destroyed workshops.

  It Watches… The graffiti warning haunted his steps, but every time he saw it, it only made his heart colder. So far, he had seen each and every one of his friends die in front of his eyes, often because of his own actions. He had infected Cassandra with the Q’Lot blue-scale virus and it had killed her. He had seen Irie’s heart stop. He had watched as Val Pathok’s body gave out.