Blade, page 23
part #4 of Inverted Frontier Series
“The swarm is coming too fast!” Shoran shouted. “We need to get out of the way, get under cover, get into the cavern while we can.”
Clemantine deduced that Shoran had only been looking up. “No!” she yelled. “Don’t stop. The IRKs are right below us!”
Too late. Shoran had already grabbed Jolly. Dragging him with her, she plunged into the cavern, out of sight. Tio, a few meters farther on, darted toward a different opening.
“Tio, look out!” Clemantine screamed as an IRK came at him from below. In a move she had not seen before, the IRK first coiled its tentacles and an instant later extended them in a powerful leap up the tower wall. It actually passed him, but as it did it struck him with a single tentacle that hit diagonally across his chest and then curled around to the back of his hooded head. He spun half around, firing his go-pack.
Across his chest, where the tentacle had touched, Clemantine saw a thick, raised line of some contaminating substance. A Maker war erupted around it: boiling, bubbling, active matter as his molecular defenses worked to neutralize the alien goo—but not quickly enough.
The substance proved to be a line of explosive gel. It went off in a brilliant flash, echoing the spectrum of light they’d seen reflected against the canyon wall. The force of the explosion opened Tio’s chest and nearly severed his head from his body.
A brief churn of dark, viscous, swiftly crystallizing fluids.
And then the IRK—which had secured a perch on the tower wall, shot out its pouch. The scaled membrane expanded in a fraction of a second, enveloping Tio’s body along with all the spinning detritus of his death.
Clemantine screamed in helpless rage while her go-pack acted on its own—or maybe under Shoran’s orders, retreating. It plunged her past an encrusted opening and into the dubious shelter of the cavern where she shattered a web of alien threads, extinguishing a galaxy of tiny cheerful lights.
Think! she commanded herself. She had to put the shock of what had just happened aside.
“Shift skin suits to dark mode!” she bellowed—not that darkness could hide them, not in the cavern, not when her go-pack was pushing her upward again so that she broke more threads, put out more tiny lights in what had to be a highly visible trail of motion.
She looked around for something, anything to use as a weapon.
Nothing.
Was there some way to use the remaining propellant in her go-pack? She couldn’t think of one. And she wasn’t carrying assault Makers. None of them were. None of them had expected such liveliness within the Labyrinth’s maze of dead matter.
An IRK filled one of the encrusted openings just above her. Three of its tentacles reached inside, each with a round paddle at its end. Each paddle glittered with what she took to be optical lenses. The paddles rocked from side to side and nodded, like human heads looking around.
Only moments left now.
Clemantine initiated a last rapid conversation with the DI that controlled her go-pack, extricating herself from its gel straps as she did.
“Hit it!” she ordered. The pack accelerated. She held on long enough to gain necessary momentum. Then she let go, and began to fall, slowly, along a diagonal trajectory toward the cavern wall.
Flagrantly expending its propellent, the pack rammed into the IRK, striking its central pouch and disappearing within its folds, but delivering momentum enough to knock the thing off the tower wall. Out in the open canyon, with all of its tentacles folded around its capture, it too began to drop, not swiftly, not at first.
Clemantine looked away from it as she strove to arrest her own fall. Reaching out, she grabbed hold of one of the black, pillow-like encrustations, hoping it wouldn’t kill her. Just then, a series of small, bright explosions ignited in her vision and she thought she’d lost the gamble. But it was the IRK that shattered, not her. The thing blew apart: a storm of tattered membranes and tentacular fragments that mixed with freezing gases, gel, and glittering shards from her go-pack. The mess ricocheted off the tower wall, mixing violently with other clouds of blossoming debris before it all began to fall away in the soft grip of the Labyrinth’s gravity.
What had happened? It had all gone by so fast Clemantine could grasp it only in retrospect. The swarm had not been aimed at them. It must have been composed of something like limpet mines, programmed to target the IRKs.
“Status!” she demanded.
And to her relief, both Jolly and Shoran reported in.
But Tio . . .
She shivered as his avatar’s gruesome death replayed in her mind.
But he is not gone, she insisted to herself.
Had he sent a ghost to Elepaio? She didn’t know. But his ghost existed aboard Alaka‘i Onyx and his avatar could be grown again. She promised herself that it would be. And then she did her best to set her grief aside and steel herself to the moment.
<><><>
Looking up from where she clung, Clemantine could see both Shoran and Jolly some forty meters overhead. Shoran too had expended her go-pack in self-defense. Now she crouched within a window opening, her grip the only thing keeping her from a fall.
Jolly still had his go-pack. He hovered close to Shoran, unwisely expending propellant to maintain that position. No way did he have enough left to boost all three of them to the canyon rim. And soon, he might not have enough to get there himself.
“Jolly, get moving,” Clemantine instructed. “Get to Elepaio.”
“I can’t leave you here.”
“Yes, you can. Go.”
“But how are you going to get out?”
Good question. Elepaio had expended most of its free resources synthesizing the go-packs. It didn’t have the material to produce two more.
“We could try climbing,” Shoran suggested.
Not impossible, but very, very dangerous. One mistake, one slip, would result in a long and ultimately fatal fall.
“Get going, Jolly,” Clemantine insisted. “I’ll talk to Elepaio, see if it has the resources to synthesize a simple sled.”
A voice intruded. Not Jolly, nor Shoran, nor Elepaio’s DI. “Stand by for exfiltration,” it said.
Clemantine recognized it. “Kuriak?”
The rogue DI answered, “I am sending a sled.”
Beyond Jolly, she saw a shadow of something coming down, circular from her perspective. Brief spurts of cold propellant refracted daylight as the object worked to control its descent.
*Are we going to trust this? Shoran asked—a private communication between their atriums.
*We know it wants an alliance with us, Clemantine said. *And anyway, I’m not sure we have a choice.
<><><>
Jolly ascended the canyon on his own, while Clemantine and Shoran rode Kuriak’s sled. On the way, they questioned the rogue DI.
“You must have known there were IRKs in the Labyrinth,” Clemantine said. “You must have known we would encounter them.”
“Yes, the presence of the collectors is well known,” Kuriak explained by radio. “I did not know you would encounter collectors, only that the risk was significant enough to warrant deploying counter measures. Did the invasives not warn you?”
“They warned us it would be dangerous to visit the Labyrinth, but they did not warn us of IRKs.”
“It is likely they did not want you to know of this failure. The Labyrinth is an ideal place for collectors—IRKs, as you call them—to replicate, because it is so vast, with so many places to hide. The invasives used to assign cohorts to hunt them, but that was a dangerous task and the hunts ceased once an agreement was reached to sacrifice the Labyrinth to your project. IRKs replicate slowly. The invasives calculated that their numbers would rise by only a small percentage before your project utterly destroyed them. But then your arrival was delayed.”
“Three years late,” Clemantine agreed.
She looked at Shoran as they sat facing each other on the sled’s flat circular surface, Shoran’s eyes just visible through her darkened faceplate. *This whole incident, Clemantine mused, *it feels orchestrated to me.
Shoran sounded doubtful. *I don’t know. I mean, the Inventions didn’t want us to come here. We did that on our own.
*Okay. But there’s more going on here than we’ve been told—either by the Inventions or by Kuriak.
*It’s time we go visit Kuriak, Jolly said. *Accept its invitation and learn what we can, while we can.
The alternative was to wait for Argo, but the lander was still on its way to Dragon. It would be hours more before it could return for them, and Clemantine did not want to wait there and do nothing but relive the horror of what had happened to Tio. The injustice of it. Tio had not truly wanted to come on this expedition. He’d come only to be with her.
She shuddered and sighed, then spoke aloud, “Shoran? If you’re okay with it, I say we go.”
Chapter
36
Kuriak’s sled lifted Clemantine and Shoran all the way to Elepaio. Jolly joined them there, and they hitched themselves again to the little outrider, for the long climb to Kuriak’s moon.
As soon as they were on their way, Clemantine checked in with Vytet. She told her about the IRKs and described what had happened to Tio. In a voice trembling under the pressure of an emotion somewhere between fury and grief, she concluded, “I’ve confirmed Tio left a ghost in Elepaio’s archive. Retrieve it. Wake it. Let him create a new avatar, if that’s what he chooses to do.”
“All right,” Vytet said softly, soothingly.
“And find out why Ashok and the envoy did not warn us specifically about the IRKs.”
<><><>
Sixty-six minutes slipped by before Vytet radioed again. Sounding mildly perplexed, she said, “I’m going to summarize what I learned, but this is in my own words. It’s my own interpretation.”
“Understood. Go ahead.”
“The Inventions don’t like conflict. They don’t like to talk about it when it happens among themselves or even admit to its existence.”
“But it’s there,” Clemantine said. “We know they have factions.”
“Yes. We’re familiar with the Originalist faction. Their purpose is to prepare this system for their Inventors. Their highest value is loyalty to that purpose. The Originalists created and control the Labyrinth.”
“Well, they’ve let their control slip,” Clemantine groused.
Vytet continued her explanation. “The Originalists are opposed . . . though maybe that is too strong a word—by Reformists like Ashok. The Reformists have concluded the Inventors will never reach Hupo Sei. They have reasoned that if the Inventors still exist, they must have settled in some distant and unknown star system. But the Inventors sent out many colonizing expeditions. They must have known that most, even if successful, would be left on their own—and that is why they endowed their Inventions with a capacity for independent thought and a drive to create. And as we’ve seen, the Inventions here have created an amazing civilization. But the Reformists believe they were also given the freedom to finally shed all obligation to their Inventors so that they might pursue a meaningful future of their own—and that is the great rift between the two factions.”
“One is dedicated to the past, and one to the future.”
“That is an excellent summary,” Vytet agreed.
“And where do the IRKs fit into this conflict?” Shoran asked. “Tio told us they were construction robots used to build the Labyrinth, but their programming was corrupted.”
“Exactly right. And that’s why the Labyrinth has barely grown for the past three and a half centuries. The IRKs no longer work as they were designed. Their commission was to harvest matter from uninhabited ruins, and they did so for more than nine hundred years. But then something changed. The Inventions still don’t know how or why, but IRKs began to target habitats. The captured matter went to the Labyrinth, while the captured Inventions were ‘recycled’—killed—the rare elements ripped from their bodies and used to make more IRKs.
“I think it took time for the Inventions to work out what was going on. When they did, the Reformists declared that because the Originalists had created the IRKs, it was their responsibility to exterminate them. The Originalists agreed. They made it their primary task and they mostly succeeded. Ro Az Ra Ni claims that IRKs now exist only within the Labyrinth.”
“Huh,” Shoran said. “It’s a neat irony, that a culture of machines should be plagued by machines.”
Clemantine agreed. “But let’s bring this back to my original question. Why didn’t the envoy warn us?”
Vytet said, “My guess? Because the IRKs are an embarrassing failure of the Inventions’ civilization, and a thorn of conflict between the factions. Ashok did not say so directly, but I got the impression they calculated the odds and decided that, given the size of the Labyrinth and the small population of IRKs, there was an excellent chance you simply wouldn’t encounter them.”
Clemantine shifted the conversation to the privacy of atrium communication. *Strange, that they thought we’d be okay, while Kuriak took the precaution of preparing a rescue.
Vytet said, *You need to be careful of that one.
*Sooth. I’m remembering how the envoy came on purpose to tell us about Kuriak. It’s suggestive, that the Inventions downrated their IRK problem while being oddly concerned with one rogue DI.
*They see the DI as a human problem, Shoran said in explanation.
*Okay, but why is Kuriak a problem at all? A problem to Inventions, I mean. That’s what I want to know.
<><><>
Another radio communication reached them as they neared Kuriak’s habitat. Tio, this time. “Don’t go,” he pleaded. “That thing is dangerous.”
Clemantine’s heart raced at the welcome sound of his voice. “You’re all right, aren’t you?” she asked him.
“I will be. But you—and Shoran and Jolly—you’re handing yourselves over to Kuriak and you have no idea what that thing might mean to do.”
“It means to share its library,” she said gently, and she went on soothing him until he accepted that she was not going to change her mind.
Later, as she stood with her hood off, newly emerged from the gel lock sealing Kuriak’s habitat and breathing in a perfect mix of atmosphere enhanced with faint, elusive traces of vanilla and cinnamon and sweet jasmine, her confidence grew that she’d gambled right. Kuriak was surely courting their cooperation.
She remained wary, yet curious too, and strangely pleased as her gaze roved over an expansive and elegant dome-shaped chamber. The Inventions had described this moon as riddled with tunnels, presumably a mining venture left behind by the system’s bygone human inhabitants. If so, this portion of it at least, had been upgraded since.
The dome shape was defined by three scalloped glass arches that crossed at the room’s peak. The arches, illuminated from within so that they glowed with a comforting soft white light, dropped down to meet a thick, intricately patterned carpet. On the curved walls between them, active murals depicted idyllic scenes of some bygone human civilization.
Three clusters of inviting sofas and cushioned armchairs had been arranged within that generous space, giving the room the feeling of a salon meant for discussions—perhaps of philosophy or involving witty arguments over some abstract point of history. The only apparent exit from the room, other than the lock, was a dimly lit corridor that appeared to lead to a distant sunlit garden—though Clemantine assumed this to be a projection.
She wondered if Kuriak had prepared this habitat for the Dragoneers. Or had it been left this way by someone else?
The rogue DI, presenting as another instance of the blank-faced metallic android they had already met, stood but a few steps away, not quite facing either her, or Shoran beside her, as it spoke. “Welcome,” it said, while remaining utterly motionless. “You are safe here. We are well defended against any incursion of IRKs or invasives.”
Clemantine glanced at Shoran; saw her slight, amused smile.
Jolly had come in first. Already, he roamed the room, moving in long, careful strides in the delicate gravity. His fingers trailed on the back of a sofa as his gaze examined the arches, the murals. He looked wary, but impressed, and it occurred to Clemantine that he might never have been in such a large and finely appointed room before.
Returning her focus to Kuriak, she asked, “Are you expecting an eventual assault from the Inventions?”
Motionless still, Kuriak answered, “It is difficult to project the behavior of alien artifacts. The invasives have stood off since their initial attack—”
“Tell me about that attack.”
“A coven of IRKs descended on this habitat. I had previously observed such devices attacking the invasive’s facilities and harvesting matter. I concluded these IRKs would attempt to harvest matter from this facility. So I annihilated them in the manner you have already observed.”
“You took preemptive action to defend yourself,” Shoran suggested.
“That is correct. It is my duty to do so.”
Jolly had reached the back of the room, but that had not stopped him from following the conversation. In a stern voice that carried well, he said, “The Inventions did not deliberately attack you. They did not know of your existence until you attacked the IRKs.”
Kuriak answered without turning to look at Jolly as any human would. Utterly unmoving, it spoke in its flat, emotionless voice: “The invasives made their deliberate attack long ago when they infected the people of Hupo Sei with a behavioral virus that induced a false and fatal sense of communion.”
Shocked silence followed this declaration. For several seconds, Clemantine ceased to breathe, wondering, Can it be true?
