Splintered Suns Read online

  “Neither and both. One of our rim-wanderer units encountered an intruder out towards the Grand Abyss a short while ago—their exchange was, shall we say, cryptic. Here’s the most pertinent segment of it.”

  The pristine clarity of the Construct’s comm line altered in an instant, becoming low-grade audio:

  “I am Krestanter, deep-space scout-drone acting on behalf of the Construct—who are you?”

  “You must see the nothing … you must understand the nothing.”

  “Please explain, please identify yourself.”

  “I have come to show you the nothing …”

  “Very well—explain it to me, show me.”

  There was a moment of expectancy, a half-second.

  “The relics of the Ancient are lost no more—listen closely, hear how the fate of the yet-to-be is drawing in new servants pliable to its will. Should the yet-to-be escape into will-be, then all will be consumed by the relentless and pitiless nothing!”

  “Who are you?” said Krestanter. “There is no point in deluging me in a stream of your mysticism, and until I find out who I’m dealing with, there will be no cooperation …”

  “Ti-Kohapos am I, Detectioner of the Third Allegiance,” came the abrupt reply.

  “Good, and I am Krestanter. What is your purpose?”

  “While I have time remaining, I must reveal to you the path of the yet-to-be,” said Ti-Kohapos. “Wardens of the must-not-be should be mustered, to stand against the devouring nothing.”

  “Who or what are the wardens of the must-not-be?”

  “Certain organic sentients were identified by my prevailing master, Atimi-Jadrel, Diviner of the Second Allegiance—he directed us towards contact with any of the high echelon mindnesses of this star spiral …”

  “Certain organic sentients?” said Krestanter.

  “Time presses upon us,” said Ti-Kohapos. “Reflections upon reflections race backwards into our past, and are brought forward upon the barge of our history—new facts, new faces, new beings, new hates, new fears, new names …”

  “Which sentients?” said Krestanter. “Which names?”

  “Organic bipeds, one a collector who seeks the relics of the Ancient …”

  “What are these relics?”

  “The seeds of the yet-to-be! The sprouting fecundity of horror! The endless, pitiless hunter of life! The devourer that can never be satisfied!”

  “Okay, that sounds bad. You said something about organic sentients, wardens of the must-not-be …”

  “Travellers in a vessel, led by one who doubts himself …”

  “How do we find them?”

  “The reflections delivered to us via our history carry also images, some sounds which resolve into the meagre names of these organic bipeds.”

  “You have images of these people? Will you show them to me?”

  “So,” said the Construct. “What do you think?”

  “I’m seldom sure how to deal with this kind of full-strength mysticism,” said Rensik. “May I ask why we are treating this as a matter of some significance?”

  “When the intruder Ti-Kohapos described itself as a Detectioner of the Third Allegiance, I knew that this demanded attention. The First Allegiance was a cluster of AIs which devoted itself to the service of a group of sophonts who were the survivors of a cataclysm that wiped out nearly a third of the galaxy’s civilisations a million and a half years ago. These surviving sophonts eventually became known as the Ancients, known to the interstellar civilisations that recovered in the aftermath. However, it mentioned things called the Relics of the Ancient—singular, not plural. The last of the Ancients was known as Essavyr and he performed many great deeds before departing from life.”

  “What are the Relics of the Ancient?” asked Rensik.

  “Lack of corroborated data means only uncertainty,” replied the Construct. “However, this Ti-Kohapos did mention a relic collector and some travellers in a vessel, whose leader doubts himself—and it provided an image.”

  Rensik had an unsettling moment where he almost knew what he was going to see before he actually saw it. Then he looked at it. For a fraction of a second. It was all he needed.

  “I believe that you have encountered this Human before, yes?”

  “Absolutely not,” Rensik lied. “Complete stranger. Never seen him before. What did you say his name was?”

  CHAPTER ONE

  Dervla, the planet Ong, the city of Cawl-Vesh

  “Damn it, Brannan Pyke,” she said. “Where the hell are you?”

  Dervla was standing at the only window, hands resting on the sill as she stared out at a maze of dilapidated rooftops. The metal mesh fixed to the outside was rusty and dented but fine enough to give a decent view, and to let late afternoon sunlight into the horrible hot compartment they had been stuck in for more than four days. But this was the kind of spartan discomfort you had to put up with on a job like this, especially when your employer was the staggeringly wealthy Augustine Van Graes.

  You’d think that he might have booked us into someplace a little more upmarket, rather than this shoebox, she thought. Something about not drawing attention to ourselves, apparently …

  So here they were on a desert planet called Ong, so far off the beaten track that Earthsphere was unheard of and the mighty Sendrukan Hegemony was known as the semi-legendary Perpetual Empire. As for this stuffy rib-walled compartment, it was one of another two hundred stacked in a girder-and-platform structure situated in a down-at-heel quarter of Cawl-Vesh, a city suspended over a deep canyon by a catenary of titanic cables. Not what you’d call an exotic holiday destination. All they had to do was infiltrate the well-guarded Eminent District, break into a high-security museum and steal one specific thing from its vault. Except that inside the main vault was a bio-vault which only a bio-genetic key would open—which is why they were languishing, bored and baking, in this sun-trap, waiting for Pyke to show up with the key. And he was late.

  For roughly the thousandth time Dervla wished she was aboard the Scarabus, enjoying privacy and a shower, but the ship was in orbit around Ong with dependable Oleg at the helm. Their only link with the ship was a chunky, scuffed and worn handset and it had been aggravatingly silent all this time … apart from the fourteen or fifteen calls Dervla had put in to the Scarabus, just to check on the current status.

  She straightened and looked over her shoulder. Bunks jutted to either side while opposite the window was the door, made of the same scarred, stained metal as the walls. Kref and Moleg were off scoring provisions, but Ancil sat at the unsteady drum-table—made out of an actual old fuel drum—reading something on his factab. Black-haired and wiry, he had changed into some of the camoed fatigues found in Van Graes’ setup package which had been waiting for them on arrival, and somehow the new duds accentuated his skinny arms and narrow chest. Next to him on the table was a half-eaten bag of kelp-based snacks, a pack of cards and the handset. Dervla had barely taken a single step towards the drum-table when Ancil’s free hand snaked out and neatly swept the handset away. Without altering his seated posture, Ancil glanced up at her with a mischievous “who, me?” expression.

  Dervla met his gaze for a second then leisurely held out her hand. “Give.”

  “Won’t be any change in the ship status,” Ancil said. “Not in one hour.”

  “Let me be the judge of that,” she said, snapping her fingers.

  “And all this pestering will just make Oleg irascible.”

  “Oleg? He’s a Kiskashin—he doesn’t get irascible, he doesn’t even get short-tempered. Peeved is about his limit, with occasional flickers of pique. Now, if you please …”

  “Okay, look, Dervla—why not give it another hour? I know you can be patient if you want—”

  “Better hand it over, Ans,” she said. “I’m starting to get irascible.”

  By now her fist was clenched but Ancil was wearing that insolent smile, and about to come out with something guaranteed to pluck her very last nerve,
when the door opened with a rough squeak and a diminutive cowled figure entered with a gun. The snouty features of an Izlak protruded from the hood and angry, beady eyes glared out as, with a raspy voice, the Ongian intruder said:

  “Where is the stinking thief of precious things? The big walking stinkhill. Bring him out!”

  The weapon jutting from its owner’s baggy sleeves, gripped by stubby, scrawny fingers, was a very old-style energy blaster. At the end of a scratched and worn barrel several beam coherence toroids were grouped right behind the emitter aperture which was aimed without so much as a tremor at Ancil. No one spoke and that seemed to infuriate the cowled Ongian still further.

  “Speak! Reveal the thief to me …”

  Dervla saw the bulky shape of Kref loom behind the angry intruder and threw herself towards the nearest bunk as a big meaty hand grabbed the Ongian’s head and slammed it sideways into the metal doorframe. At the same time Moleg had lunged out of the shadows behind him and twisted the blaster out of surprised and unresisting fingers. As the stunned and disarmed Ongian slumped insensibly to the floor, Ancil gave a slow handclap from behind the drum-table.

  “What in the name of the Holy Nova have you two been up to?” Dervla said, getting out of the bunk she’d scrambled into. “No, wait—drag our visitor inside and close the door first. I’d rather not have an audience.”

  Once the unconscious Ongian was laid out on one of the bunks, Dervla made Kref and Moleg stand side by side in front of the closed door. Moleg, a lean, middle-aged Human, managed to look innocently bemused, a demeanour that Dervla had come to recognise as thoroughly misleading. He was a brain-cyborged Human formerly known as Mojag, a close personal friend of their missing crewmate, Oleg. Mojag-as-was had kept a copy of his friend’s mindmap stored in his brain implant for safekeeping, but violent events less than a year ago had led to the copy of Oleg taking over from a traumatised Mojag. Over time it seemed that the two personas merged, causing he/it/them to adopt the name Moleg. Surprisingly, the real Oleg was stoically amused by the whole situation.

  Dervla then turned her attention to Kref the Henkayan. Broad-shouldered, barrel-chested and wearing an anxious expression, he couldn’t have looked more guilty if he had been carrying a sign saying “I done it!” in big rainbow letters.

  “Okay,” Dervla began. “What was it he said, again?—‘Where is the stinking thief … the big walking stinkhill’?” She gave Kref a narrow-eyed look. “Got something to tell me? I mean, I’m assuming that he runs a stall at the market and you lifted an item that belonged to him.”

  “And got yourself noticed,” said Ancil. “Amateur.”

  Kref frowned angrily. “That’s ’cos I couldn’t hide under the next stall the way you did yesterday!”

  Dervla turned to regard a suddenly nervous Ancil. “Yesterday? Is this what you’ve been up to when you go outside, pilfering and pillaging your way through the local traders?”

  “Ah, now, Derv, you’re blowing this up out of all proportion—”

  “Really?” she said, pointing at the unconscious figure on the bunk. “Is that why he came here, looking for this pair o’ glunters? Did he think to himself, ‘well, now, I’ve been robbed, plundered and otherwise burglarised so what I really need to do is forget about it and go home’—or—‘I’m going to find out where these bandits are holed up then march in there waving a bloody gun around!’”

  “Please, Derv …”

  “… bloody unbelievable—cannot leave you alone for …”

  “It’s not all their fault,” Moleg said. “After all, I was the one who made the wager.”

  Dervla glared at him. “Wager?”

  “The day after we arrived, while we were at the market for supplies I bet Ancil an Ongian quarter-brass that he couldn’t lift an edible from the pastry stall, but then he counter-bet me a half-brass that I couldn’t do it.” Moleg shrugged. “He lost that one.”

  If looks could kill, she thought, I’d be a serial killer by now!

  “Okay, then,” she said, struggling to stay calm. “Here’s a wager for you—I bet my left tit that we’ve got less than eight hours before Mr. Stallowner’s nearest and dearest start wondering where he is. Messages will be sent, questions will be asked, and at some point someone will remember how he rushed away after a honking great Henkayan who made off with his goods. Oh, and I also bet that the city council of Cawl-Vesh will demonstrate their disapproval of lawbreaking offworlders in the traditional manner—shackling us to rocks down in the canyon and leaving us for the sand-machine swarms to devour!” She smiled coldly. “Any takers?”

  The three culprits began pointing at each other while calling out the others for mistakes, stupid mistakes and just stupidity, all in voices that rose steadily in both volume and anger. Then Kref said something sarcastic about Ancil, and Ancil came back with an insult in Henkayan that had Kref lunging at him and Dervla diving in to try to pull them apart while adding her own voice to the clamour. She managed to wrap both arms around one of Kref’s big, rough hands, which kept it away from Ancil. The other hand, however, was doing a pretty good job by itself and Ancil’s pasty face was turning red as the Henkayan tightened his grip on his neck. For a moment Dervla thought that she would have to free one hand so she could draw her weapon and shoot Kref—then suddenly Moleg was in among them, hauling himself up till he was face-to-face with the big crewman, whereupon he yelled something in what might have been Henkayan.

  The change was dramatic. Kref’s eyes widened as if in shock and he reeled backwards. Released from that colossal grip, Ancil slumped to the floor, wheezing and coughing. Immediately Moleg crouched down beside him, as if to check his condition.

  “I heard it above all the bellowing,” Moleg said. He appeared to be rifling through Ancil’s pockets. “Just needed to break up the tussle, so that worked.”

  “What was it that you said to … wait, heard what?”

  Dervla paused when Moleg’s hand came up, holding the bulky handset which was giving off a repetitive warbling sound.

  Everything changed. She could feel their eyes on her as she carefully took the handset, thumbed the connect and calmly said, “Yes, Oleg, what can I do for yeh?”

  “Hello, darlin,’ it’s your captain speaking!”

  “Well, now, isn’t it nice of ye to drop by,” she said, mouthing “Pyke” to the others. “We were starting to wonder if you’d hired another crew or joined the circus or the like. Are you planetside or aboard the Scarabus?”

  She asked the question as naturally as she could, and saw her own jittery nerves reflected in the expressions of the others.

  “Neither. I got dropped off in the vicinity by a pass-through freighter and I’m in a grubby junker of an autoshuttle so I’ll be a few hours yet. Sorry I got delayed—ran into some unexpected obstacles along the way, but I got round them and took possession of the DNA we need. Everything okay with you?”

  Dervla frowned for a second, then glanced at Kref, Ancil and Moleg and their generally dishevelled appearance.

  “We’re all fine and dandy down here,” she said. “Couldn’t be better. We’ll have all the equipment prepped and ready when you get here.”

  “No need to wait,” Pyke said. “Going by my timer it’ll be sundown where you are in less than two hours, so stick to the plan and head out to the objective then. I’ll meet up with all of ye in the tower staging room not long after and before you know it we’ll get some thieving done!”

  “You sure you can find the place?”

  “Van Graes gave me a locationer just like yours before he sent me off after the DNA.” There was a pause. “So, are we set, then?”

  “Sure, no problem, see you at the tower.”

  “I’ll be there. Luck to ye.”

  The channel went dead. Still frowning, Dervla thumbed off the receiver, squatted on a rickety stool and scratched her ear, deep in thought.

  “So the chief hasn’t landed on Ong yet,” said Moleg. “And he’s …”

  “Me
eting us at the staging room, yes.” She regarded them. “I want us packed and ready to go soon as possible—oh, assuming that the three of you can get over yer blame-rage spat.”

  There were sheepish looks, nods, mumbled apologies, even handshakes.

  “Good,” Dervla said with a dubious tone. “Right, Kref—weapons and body armour.”

  “Checked and ready, Derv,” the Henkayan said, jerking his thumb at a large backpack sitting in the corner.

  “Ancil?”

  “Got all my probes and sensors tuned and charged,” Ancil said hoarsely. “Van Graes’ briefing file says that the outer vault has a sonic modulation lock so I’ve been over the lockpicking procedure again and again, back on the ship and since we arrived, too. Shouldn’t be a problem, Derv.”

  “But you’ve only been practising it in simulation,” she said. “I need to know that you can cope with the real thing.”

  Ancil cleared his throat and winced a little. “When I come face-to-face with the vault, I’ll be using a resonance cracker to dig out the keynote sequence. In all the practice run-throughs I’ve had the cracker itself hooked into the sim, and my hands have been working directly with the device itself. My fingers know every part of it back to front and upside down by now.”

  “In that case every one of your fingers had better be a safe-cracking genius in its own right,” Dervla said. “Moleg, transport and all the other equipment—can they be ready at short notice?”

  “That was part of the deal that Van Graes arranged in advance,” Moleg said. “All the wall-and-door cutters and counter-detection gear we asked for should be stowed in the airboat when we get to the jetty.”

  Dervla nodded. Their patron, the secretive and stupendously rich Augustine Van Graes, had turned out to be well informed about the planet Ong and suitably well connected with members of Cawl-Vesh’s underworld. It was just unfortunate that even the smartest plan couldn’t allow for operator error.

  “This is all well and good,” she said. “It’s great to see that the three of you have got all your ducks in a row. Shame about the Ongian trader that you’ve taken prisoner.” She went over to the bunk and regarded the slight form lying there. “He’s an Izlak, right? Or is he a Sedlu?”