The Ascendant Stars_Book Three of Humanity's Fire Read online

  Cheluvahar, or Chel – a seer of the Uvovo and close friend of Greg Cameron.

  Julia Bryce – she and her Enhanced team were coerced by Corazon Talavera into upgrading nuclear missiles for the Spiralist invasion. Now they are imprisoned in virtual prisons.

  Kao Chih – after his time on Darien, he secretly went to Pyre then partnered a Roug in a rescue mission to retrieve the Human Sept elders captured by the Tygran’s pro-Hegemony military leader.

  Franklyn Gideon – captain of the Stormlions commandery and protégé of veteran Tygran officer, Sam Rawlins. He and his men were persuaded by Theo Karlsson to throw in their lot with Darien.

  Robert Horst – Earthsphere’s ambassador to Darien, he was sent down into hyperspace to meet the Construct, who sent him on a mission to track down the Godhead.

  The Construct – a machine intelligence created by the Forerunners more than a hundred millennia ago to help fight the Legion of Avatars. It uses the mind-state patterns of Robert Horst and his daughter Rosa to create new kinds of sentient simulacra.

  Reen – Mandator of the High Index of the Roug, commander of the warvaunt vessel, the Vyrk-Zoshel.

  A Knight of the Legion of Avatars – an armoured, cyborg creature, a survivor from the war against the Forerunners. It has come to Darien and through guile and subterfuge has finally attained its long-desired goal, the unlocking of the warpwell.

  Utavess Kuros – the Sendrukan Hegemony’s ambassador to Darien. The Spiralist invasion destroyed the Brolturan battleship while Kuros was taken over by his AI companion.

  The Clarified Teshak – a senior Sendrukan official whose AI is in sole control. Although he was sent to Darien to oversee Kuros’ performance, he also has the agenda of the Clarified to promote.

  The Godhead – ancient sentience of unknown origin. Rumours abound about its nature, some suggesting that it was once a machine intelligence.

  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, mutiple 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, averge 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 hyperspace, 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

  Vor – a species of endosymbiotic parasite that rides inside a host’s brain, once upper intellect/persona functions have been removed. A very ancient race once thought extinct, it has reappeared, rejuvenated and aggressive

  Shyntanil – also known as the Twiceborn, a race that employs drastic life-extension technologies requiring re-engineering of the respiratory and nervous systems, and a temporary cessation of brain functions. An ancient bipedal species that has returned from obscurity, working alongside former adversaries, the Vor

  CIVILISATIONS

  Earthsphere (157 star systems; 873 inhabited worlds and orbitals; population 5.3 trillion) – most numerous species are Henkayans, Vusark and Humans, although Humans have been politically dominant. Despite Sendrukan brutalities, Earthsphere has remained a committed if junior partner to the Hegemony.

  Sendrukan Hegemony (112,000 star systems; 347,000 inhabited worlds and orbitals; population 815 trillion) – a vast and far-flung empire, the Hegemony maintains its cohesion through rigorous control of consensus, via doctrine and the omnipresent personal AIs. Many species come under its sway but the Sendruka are dominant.

  Aranja Tesh (23,000 star systems; 88,000 inhabited worlds and orbitals; population 107 trillion) – a loose confederation of seventeen nations, including Buranj, Korjash, Gizeka and the Yamanon Domain, which was recently invaded by the Hegemony–Earthsphere coalition, thus toppling the tyrannical Dol-Das regime.

  Indroma Solidarity (92,000 star systems, 482,000 inhabited worlds and orbitals; population 1,173 trillion) – six-limbed Bargalil are the Indroma’s most numerous sentient species. Their egalitarianism results in a suspicion of neighbouring civilisations, especially the Hegemony. They are reluctant to become involved in regional conflicts, but are perfectly capable of defending their territory.

  Vox Humana (18 star systems; 27 inhabited worlds; population 7.9 billion) – breakaway Human colonies scattered along the Earthsphere–4th Modynel border; rebellion against Earthsphere control decades ago led to severe sanctions which are still in force.

  Darien (population 3.25 million), Pyre (population 15,000), and Tygra (population 3.4 million) – the worlds settled 150 years ago by the colony ships Hyperion, Tenebrosa and Forrestal, respectively. Of the three, only Darien developed without external interference, resulting in a vibrant, heterogenous and at times fractious culture.

  The Legion of Avatars (imprisoned survivors number approximately 1.1 million) – brutally expansionist, relentlessly authoritarian society focused on the doctrine of convergence, the merging of flesh and machine into a superior kind of sentience. Those who oppose convergence are to be erased.

  PROLOGUE

  Darien Institute Data Recovery Project: Colonyship Hyperion Abstract – Retrieval of data pertinent to the struggle between the crew of the Hyperion and the ship’s Command AI; includes excerpts from core system masterlog and excerpts from journal of Vasili Surov.

  AI Hardmem Decryption Status – 5th pass, 61 text files recovered

  File 61 – Daily masterlog of Command AI

  Log Period – 00:00:01 to 14:28:29, 3 November 2127

  Commentary – Dr Sigurd Halvorsen

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  13:52:21 Incursion at access point alpha 3 logged

  13:53:07 McAllister, Moseyev and Strogalev identified as primary vectors and tracked

  13:53:19 Incursion at access point alpha 1 logged

  13:54:23 Olssen, Kokorin and McBain identified as secondary sectors and tracked

  13:54:29 Counter-intrusion Protocol K4 executed

  13:55:04 Bio-units F18, F22 and F23 prepositioned

  13:56:35 Bio-units M8, M10, M11, F7 and M19 engage secondary vectors

  13:59:41 Termination of M8 logged

  14:01:17 Elimination of vector Kokorin logged
>
  14:02:21 Termination of F7 logged

  14:02:39 M10, M11 and M19 instructed to withdraw

  14:02:51 F18, F22 and F23 engage primary vectors

  14:03:43 F18, F22 and F23 instructed to withdraw

  14:04:15 Secondary vectors advance and enter prepared area

  14:04:27 Primary vectors advance and enter prepared area

  14:04:29 Counter-intrusion device activated

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  Commentary I – The foregoing is taken from the Hyperion’s masterlog, from the day of the crew’s final attempt to regain control of the ship, ten days after the emergency landing. In order to highlight the salient incidents of Captain Olssen’s attack and the AI’s ambush, 70-odd lines of system entries were excluded (see appendix A). For a more revealing account of events we turn to Vasili Surov’s journal, the unexpurgated version which was released into the public purview a few years ago. It includes several observations on the planning of the colonyship programme, some highly critical of senior government figures at the time of the Swarm War. For the purposes of this study, we shall focus on entries made by Surov directly before and after the assault. – S.H.

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  2 November 2127, 8.27 p.m.

  This morning we buried the remains of our friend and colleague Andrei Sergeyevich Vychkov. He was one of the nearly two dozen crew and colonists which that damned machine trapped and operated on, turning them into agony-wracked slaves. Despite the inhumane violations inflicted upon him by the Command AI, despite the pain he must have felt, he sacrificed himself to give us the information we need to finally put to rest that damned machine. It has been barely two days since he carried out that abortive attack with the charges. When we recovered his body, we saw how he had been executed by one of those armed flyers, and found the crude map that he had inked into his own chest, showing the Hyperion’s Achilles heel.

  We buried him on a gentle, grassy slope overlooking the sea. The sky was grey and a cold breeze blew but the rain stayed away (it is raining now – I can hear the hiss from beyond the cave mouth). Captain Olssen spoke from his Bible, Lorna, one of the Scottish women, sang something beautiful, and a few of Andrei’s close friends wept for him. I wept for him.

  Afterwards, back here in the cave, Olssen singled out me and Keri McAllister for a private talk. He had decided to move against the machine tomorrow, using the information gleaned from Vychkov’s map. It seems that Olssen and McAllister will carry out a diversionary attack through the forward bays while my group infiltrates via an emergency venting hatch sited near the stern. And trust that Andrei was right.

  3 November 2127, 11.35 a.m.

  It is almost time. All eight of us – two teams of three plus me and Andy Ferguson – are attired for war, wearing scavenged scraps of body armour and carrying a variety of weapons. Olssen and McAllister’s people have the three handguns, the beam rifle and one of the gauss pistols while we have the other gauss pistol, the one with the 80% charge. Of course, we all have the usual selection of medieval deterrents, clubs, knives, hatchets and spikes, as well as water bombs to use against unprotected power assemblies. Like the ones controlling our former shipmates.

  Olssen has just given the order – time to move out. Ferguson and I are waiting by the entrance, packs already shouldered, chatting and laughing as if we are about to go on our kanikuly, on a picnic or a vacation. Perhaps this is not such a bad frame of mind to adopt. Certainly it is better than going over old ground, speculating why the ship’s AI turned on us.

  It is now 11.48 a.m. as I put away this journal. I hope to be back writing in it this evening.

  4 November 2127

  (blank)

  5 November 2127, 9.18 a.m.

  The monster is dead, but at great cost.

  Olssen and McAllister took their teams on ahead of us. The plan was for them to approach the Hyperion and use the beam rifle to destroy all the external cameras and sensors. This was achieved. From our hiding place in the woods east of the ship, we could just make out the beam rifle’s high-pitched rasp. Soon after came Olssen’s signal for us to advance. Shouldering our equipment, Ferguson and I broke cover and jogged across to the tilted immensity of the Hyperion. The ship is leaning to starboard by about 20 degrees and while the churned-up ground is still charred from the landing ten days ago, a few green shoots are visible.

  Ferguson went first up the steep, 100-foot incline of the ship’s hull to where a large, asymmetric superstructure juts to port – this is the Hyperion’s hyperspace drive. Clambering onto the housing, we quickly found the emergency venting hatch just yards from the 30-foot-high hyperdrive stabiliser vane. Luck was with us – the vent was open, popped by system burnouts during the crash landing. With the equipment bags lashed to our waists we climbed into the vent shaft, Ferguson going first.

  That vent is an emergency backup in the event of an overheat in the gas coolant system, and the shaft goes down to a valve manifold. Our real destination, however, was the main power coupling, which is in a part of the ship protected by armoured hatches controlled by the Command AI. Vychkov’s map shows where the vent shaft passes by a crawl space leading to an air duct which serves engineering deck 9 and the power coupling room.

  We were about 20 metres down the shaft, using a laser cutter to slice through a side panel, when we heard a loud boom from somewhere in the ship. The shaft shook but we held on to our positions. When I turned off the cutter, we could just make out the sound of gunfire as well as the structural creaks and groans of the broken ship. Unable to risk radio comms, we had no way of knowing that Olssen and McAllister had just walked into a trap rigged to explode. After an uncertain pause we resumed cutting.

  Minutes later the panel came loose and we were through to the crawl space. We squirmed along, over and past pipes and conduits, until we reached the air duct. Fortune was with us – it had a nice big inspection cover with twist-lock catches. Soon we were crawling torch-lit into the square-sided duct, hauling the equipment bags after us. It was difficult not to make any noise. The alloy panels bent and flexed audibly as we moved along and dragging the bags made a harsh scraping sound.

  We could no longer hear any gunfire by the time we reached the grilled vent in the bulkhead of the power coupling room. It was dim in there, emergency lamps glowing among the shadows of the cabinets. Ferguson loosed the catches; then, still holding the vent cover, stealthily stepped down onto a console housing, then down onto the floor. It seemed that apart from a faint machinery hum all was quiet. As I followed with the bags I saw two motionless forms lying at the other end of the room. Directly to my right was the entrance, an armoured hatch with a small window – out in the badly lit corridor another body sat slumped against the bulkhead. But they were not dead, and I should have stayed closer to Ferguson.

  He cried out something to me just then, a few words of warning that ended abruptly in a gasp and the thud of a falling body. Tall cabinets blocked my view as I yelled his name and rushed to the aisle he had taken … and saw a nightmare lurching towards me. Instead of hands the man had foot-long serrated blades; a bizarre metal cage enclosed the head, held in place several pins pierced the scalp; the mouth gaped wet and toothless and the eyes were pits of insane torment.

  I spun and dived to the equipment bags, hands immediately finding the laser cutter. Dragging it out, I dashed along the middle aisle between cabinet rows. As my fingers sought the ignition I heard a voice coming from shadows at the other end of the room – ‘Hide … run … hide … ’ – then saw a figure step into view, another tortured grotesque. A metal visor covered the man’s upper face, with a lattice mesh where the eyes would be. This one still had both hands but they were clenched and lashed up with plastic strapping which also bound three hook-tipped metal rods to the lower arms, jutting over the backs of the fists. Murmuring his warning, he moved towards me, arms raised.

  The laser cutter came to life, its beam blazing suddenly in the gloom, partly shiel
ded by the L-guard. I raised it, thinking to parry with it, but the visored slave of the Command AI slowed suddenly, lowered one of those hook clusters and without hesitation tore out his own throat. I stared in horror as blood gouted down his chest and he fell to his knees, made a wet choking sound then collapsed.

  There were dragging footsteps behind me, and a grunt of effort. Instinctively I ducked and swung the cutter round, connecting high on the other cyborg’s leg. He let out a terrible, hoarse howl and pulled away. I staggered back against the cabinets, laser cutter raised as I began to retreat. The man was bleeding profusely from the hip but still he lunged towards me, swinging those serrated blades. I dodged one and parried the other, the cutter beam slicing into the arm. My attacker screamed horribly again and spun away, blood spilling from the wounded arm. The air stank of cooked meat. The implant-slave slipped in the blood underfoot and went down. But the Command AI was still in control so he crawled in my direction, thrusting with the other blade. I stamped down with one foot, trapping it, and with the other, God help me, I kicked his head and kept kicking until he stopped moving.

  Gasping for breath, I leaned against the cabinets, surveying the blood-spattered aisle, the contorted bodies. But I could not let weariness and horror overwhelm me. I left the carnage and went to check Ferguson – he was dead, staring, his throat laid open by a single slash. I crouched down next to his still form for a moment, then I closed his eyes and went to get the thermite charges.

  The main power coupling fed electricity from the generator core to the shipwide junctions, including Upper Forward, the location of the bridge and the main AI systems. I had two thermite charges which I fixed inside the coupling compartment at either end of the exposed conduit. I set the timers and retreated to the other end of the room. As I crouched at the end of one tall cabinet I saw movement at the entrance hatch window, another cyborged crew member fumbling at the handle, which was now fully locked. It was a woman, face pressed to the window, and in the brief moment that I met her gaze I was sure that behind it was the cold regard of a machine.