The House of Silence

A ball of midnight floated in a sea of obsidian.

This far out from the center of the Sol system—over a hundred times further out than the Earth—the star’s light was but a pinpoint flicker, a tiny white needle poked through the velvet fabric of the deep. It was merely a star; one amid a cloud of others, neither special nor remarkable.

The planet’s surface seemed to drink the feeble light, swallow it entirely, making it almost entirely invisible, perceptible only as a hole in the night sky. To any human observer, few places in the galaxy could have seemed more forbidding, more isolated, more alone.

It was not alone. And the observers were not human.

The knife-edged dragonfly shape of a Fallen skiff prowled in orbit. A swollen, bulbous nose bristled with arc cannon and sensors, while two long and tapering booms projected from the aft, spiked with warp generators and objectivity anchors. Its mottled bronze and copper hull caught the starlight and turned it into a shimmering satellite, a bright mote in the titanic black pupil of the planet’s eye. Indigo glyphs, a skittering spider-scrawl of Fallen script, proclaimed it allegiance to the House of Silence: An old, traditionalist House, now almost vanished.

Glitter-eyed sensors scoured featureless surface below. On the bridge, nine Fallen watched the displays in rapt silence. It was a small planet, less than half the diameter and mass of the Earth, on an eccentric orbit high above the ecliptic; a frigid metal-heavy ball of dirt and dust and rock with a thin atmosphere of nitrogen and carbon dioxide, pitted and cratered from eons of meteor impacts.

Skavaks, Reverent Captain, leaned forward from his cushioned command couch, which occupied the raised center of the bridge. Cold ether gurgled through his mask, tinged with the bitter-bright taste of danger and power. The blue-black orb of their Sevitor floated at his shoulder. “What is it?” he asked.

Veksis, Splicer Initiate, looked up from her display. “A planet.”

The Captain clicked his mandibles in irritation. “You said there would be some great secret out here. A hidden treasure of wonderous significance, whose capture would be worthy of remembrance, you said. I see nothing. Less than nothing.”

Veksis spread her hands to show she had only four, not ten thousand. “The machine stories were vague, faint scrapings of ancient memories, only hints and glints. Yet see, there is a planet, where none should be. That is something.”

“A barren, cold and bare planet,” Skavaks seethed. He turned to the Servitor. “Can you conjure ether out of stone, Zexis? Can you manufacture life out of this dead rock? Nama?”

The Servitor’s violet eye pulsed. It hummed, a trifle roughly, a bone-deep rattling sound, as its ageing antigrav generator labored to keep it aloft. Its outer shell was scuffed and scratched. Once worshipped as gods, long centuries of rootless drift, coupled with an uninterrupted string of bloody defeats, had somewhat dulled the Fallen’s religious fervor. They were the Fallen, a species defined by what it had lost. Far from being infallible or omniscient, the one-eyed Servitors had frequently proven shortsighted.

“There,” a new voice spoke from behind them.

Aziviks, Touched by Shadow, swung loose-limbed down from his roost at the rear of the bridge. Although he was cloaked and Vandal-small, the others eyed the once-student to a Scorned Baron warily.

“What is that?”

A long, fine-fingered hand pointed at the screen.

#

They called it the ‘Domino.’

By then the principles of nuclear chain reactions were well understood and had long been harnessed for both peaceful and warlike ends. Atoms could be fused together or split apart, releasing devastating amounts of energy and spawning new particles which in turned caused other atoms to fuse or split, and so on and so on exponentially until the reaction ran out of fuel. As a weapon, its destructive potential was determined by the nature and quantity of material in the warhead.

Clovis Bray, the designer of the Domino, felt that was far too limiting.

A voice in his head helped Clarify his thoughts.

Clovis Bray, the designer of the Domino, listened to its whispers and asked himself, “What if the fuel could be literally anything?”

A weapon, in other words, whose devastation was determined not by the size of the warhead, but by the size of the target. A weapon that fed on its own destruction. Self-sustaining annihilation. Set it off on a moon, and you would get a moon-sized explosion. If the blast wave of that explosion reached two more moons, they would both detonate, spawning new blast waves, and if they reached a planet, you’d get a planet-sized explosion. If the planet’s explosion reached a star, you’d get a supernova. If the debris from that supernova met other stars, well. Given enough time, eventually, over centuries and millennia, you’d annihilate the galaxy. The universe.

You wouldn’t even have to fire it, not in the traditional sense of the word. It was designed to destroy absolutely everything, so you could set it off virtually anywhere. Under your feet if you didn’t want to stick around and watch it do its work. If you were impatient and wanted to kickstart the mayhem by setting it off in a denser object—such as the heart of our sun—you could transmat the warhead there, sit back, and enjoy the spectacle in your last few moments of existence. It was essentially unstoppable.

It was conceived as the ultimate dead man’s switch. A kind of automated Dr. Strangelove style doomsday machine. To prevent its location from being betrayed and the weapon destroyed, it would be so well-hidden that only the AI that operated it would even know where it was. As for the crews that built and programmed it … there were ways of dealing with them.

It would be designed to go off in the event of humanity’s extinction. A weapon designed to never be fired, whose very existence would ensure that it never needed to be fired.

The final and ultimate deterrence against alien invasion: Kill us, and the entire universe dies.

Such a weapon was, of course, not only morally indefensible but also scientifically impossible. It required the generation of truly colossal amounts of energy essentially out of nothing. One could not pull fire out of the void or cause ordinary matter to spontaneously burst into the fire of a sun.

Could you?

There was no force in the universe capable of flouting the laws of physics quite so flagrantly.

Was there?

It was as much a fantasy as Nibiru, the putative ‘Planet X’ theorized to exist somewhere beyond the Kuiper belt, out past the dwarf planets Pluto, Orcus, Haumea, Quaoar and Makemake. Of course, this planet didn’t exist, any more than a weapon that could cause matter to annihilate itself did.

Did it?

#

“Artificial,” said Veksis the Seeker, both primary and secondary eyes glued to her display. “Hexagonal, metallic, nearly flush with the planet’s surface.”

A false-color image crackled and fizzed into solidity above the display. Even at maximum contrast, the system struggled to highlight the object. Yet there it was, fuzzy but unmistakable, a solid plate half-buried in gravel and dust at the bottom of a long, deep valley, like the flattened head of a nail hammered into the side of the planet.

“The material is radiation-absorbent, opaque to all probings and scans—I cannot see if anything lies beneath. However, bunkers on other planets in this system have sometimes been similarly buried and concealed.”

Skavaks, Born to War, sat back on his command couch with a see-I-told-you-so sigh of deep satisfaction, as if this information proved him right rather than the reverse. “Eia, it is a bunker, no doubt about it, one of the human forever-hiding places and a repository of gilded gifts from their Machine age,” he said with adamantine confidence. “Rejoice, Zexis the Faithful. Soon there will be enough ether for all.”

Zexis did not, could not smile. It whirred, perhaps a little hopefully.

“Zexis the Grudging, Zexis the Miser,” Aziviks, Acolyte to Pirrha, muttered sarcastically, though only just loud enough for Veksis to hear. Ether rations had been reduced to a dribble for many years.

To avoid an argument, quickly, loudly, she said, “We should move quickly. Our intent-interest will not escape the notice of other Houses for long.”

“There will be defenses,” cautioned Aziviks.

“We have Zexis,” Skavaks said. “I have faith it will protect us.”

“The way it did our people?”

Skavaks grunted, Zexis as always said nothing, only tilted down slightly to study the deck.

Faith was a delicate and brittle thing among the Fallen, a people betrayed and abandoned by their god. The cataclysmic Whirlwind had come and the Great Machine had left them at its mercy—or rather, the total lack of it.

Many Fallen chose to see it as a test, a trial, a necessary step in the destiny of the Fallen, a chance for the faithful to prove themselves worthy by surviving and enduring and reclaiming the divine. To others it was a sign of the cyclical nature of plenty and suffering, that eras of peace were inevitably followed by those of strife, and they took comfort in the idea that a golden age would come again if the Fallen were patient. And to some, it showed there was no such cycle. That their god had been a fraud, a charlatan and huckster of fake miracles, and that there was no purpose or meaning to their suffering at all.

“Go softly, Aziviks, I won’t have any Eramis-talk among my crew.”

Aziviks slapped his side with one lower arm, a Fallen shrug. “If Zexis objects, let it say so.”

“I object,” Skavaks growled, and placed his hand on the hilt of a stolen Hive cleaver standing at his side. “I care not what the far-flung castoffs on Europa say, but the House of Silence still keeps the old ways. The power of the Great Machine will be ours again. Servitors do not speak, but do not mistake their silence for weakness.”

The Captain rose and towered above the slim Vandal, but Aziviks did not flinch or bow, did not lay his weapon at Skavaks’ feet, merely stood still, holding the other’s gaze. The moment stretched. Grew taunt.

A voice broke the silence.

The planet spoke.

#

Swords were not the only things the House of Silence had claimed from the Hive. Among their spoils they had also stolen sigils, runes, and glyphs. Signs for calling upon the power of the Deep. And if many of them still believed in a benevolent god, or some in no god at all, then it was all too easy for a few to believe in a malevolent one. If the Great Machine had proven powerless, there was ample proof the Hive gods were anything but. Among a people who had had everything stolen from them, some whispered in admiration that you could not steal from the Dark. The Scorned Baron Hiraks the Mindbender, had been one of the most prominent. But there were others.

To one side of the skiff’s bridge, Kiphokis the Wayfinder reached inside his cloak, and felt the small round stone he kept there. Unnoticed, ignored as the others focused their attention on the screen, one finger traced the lines engraved there.

Beneath his mask, his mandibles moved without making a sound.

The sound they did not make was, ‘Savathun.’

#

The planet spoke.

Its voice crashed against the ship’s sensors and psychic shields. Its lacerating voice was as merciless as steel shrapnel and granite splinters and it said:

THIS PLACE IS FORBIDDEN

The Fallen crew froze. The words were in Eliksni. In unspoken unison, Skavaks and Aziviks broke their staring contest, and turned their heads towards the speaker and the display. They waited. They waited unmoving, unblinking, barely breathing. The only sound was the liquid gurgle of ether in their masks (they did not see Kiphokis mouth ‘Savathun’ again).

“Is that—” Skavaks, Reverent Captain, broke the spell of silence. “From the planet? The bunker?”

“No, it’s beaming at us from every direction except the planet,” Veksis, Splicer Initiate, replied. “Black-body satellite relays perhaps, an invisible shell about this invisible world. They don’t show up on any of our sensors. There could be hundreds out there, or ten thousand.”

“Can it hear me?”

Veksis slapped her side with one hand, turned a dial with another, waved vaguely at the screen with a third. “Wideband. If it has ears to hear, it will hear you.”

Skavaks grunted, and drew himself up to his full height. Puffed out his chest and filled it with a deep draught of ether. “I am Skavaks, Born to War—”

I KNOW WHAT YOU ARE

Skavaks flinched, then growled at the interruption to hide the moment of fright, and pressed on. “We are the House of Silence. We claim Adverse Possession. By the Rule of Dereliction and Rightful Plunder, this planet, its multifold devices, and purposeful thoughts are ours.”

I KNOW WHAT YOU ARE

Aziviks, Touched by Shadow, chittered in bitter amusement. “An automated recording,” he sneered. “A wrathful ghost meant to scare wolves and devils from the door.”

THIS PLACE IS FORBIDDEN

“Tcha, this place is nothing but machine molt and hollowhot,” Aziviks turned his face away in rejection and denial.

“It could be the voice of the Great Machine—” Veksis began tentatively.

“Nama. There is only one god that speaks, and it is not the Great Machine.”

(“Savathun,” a voice did not say, for the third time).

YOU HAVE BROUGHT DEATH

“I do not like the sound of that,” Veksis said, in a voice halfway between whisper and sigh.

“Pure drekh-bluster.”

“Silence,” Skavaks glared briefly at the others, and raised his voice to address the planet again. “Do not worry, we will not harm you.”

“I don’t think that’s what it means,” Veksis muttered.

YOU HAVE BROUGHT DEATH

“We will not harm you. We have defeated the City That Docks—”

Veksis made a choking sound.

“—We have overthrown the Light-thieves. We have claimed Adverse Possession of all this system. We have reclaimed the Great Machine and restored the peaceful silence.”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t have sensors good enough to scan the inner planets, or this bravery-bluff won’t last long.”

“It’s a mindless machine, nothing more.” Aziviks clambered up a spar back to his roost, passing by Kiphokis, who hurriedly withdrew his hand from his cloak. Aziviks caught the movement, glanced, but a black mood had hold of him and he panther-prowled past in silence.

Skavaks did not deign to answer, only radiated supreme confidence. Yet Veksis noted he touched the thumbs of his lower hands to his middle fingers, the way a human might cross their fingers. For luck.

YUGA SUNDOWN IN EFFECT

“What is that? What is this ‘Yeughaks Sunset’?”

“Some human code or password?”

DEAD HAND PROTOCOLS INVOKED

“I don’t like the sound of that, either.”

“No. No, nor I. Veksis, power up the engines, Kiphokis, plot a course—”

A confused babble of voices among the crew, “The Consummation—the end—signal to the House—no wait—”

READY TO INITIATE DEAD HAND

“Shields—the warp generators, decouple objectivity anchors—the Consummation—”

The roar of the engines filled the chamber. The view skewed and tilted wildly. The skiff twisted and rolled, pointing its nose out to the welcome emptiness of space.

“Great Machine be with us,” Skavaks prayed. “Scatter-flight maneuver, don’t let it get a lock on us—”

THERE IS LITTLE TIME

YOU MAY LAND

“I—” Skavaks faltered. “What—We—all engines stop—”

YOU MAY LAND

“Eia, of course. The machine makes ireliis to its new masters. Of course. Take us down. We go to claim what is ours.”

YOU HAVE BROUGHT DEATH

#

The apotheosis of Golden Age artificial intelligence technology was the Warmind, Rasputin, a super-computer of staggering complexity and power, given oversight and control over the solar system’s defense grid. Below Rasputin were a number subminds with more specialized tasks, such as supporting the interstellar colonization Exodus Program, managing intelligence-gathering assets or defending key installations. Their names reflected their tasks: Malahayati named for an admiral, Medusa for a mythical monster, Charlemagne for an ancient king.

The AI (which didn’t exist) on Nibiru (which also didn’t exist) given control of the Domino (which most definitely did not exist) was named Bluebeard.

It was a name from an old folk tale. One about curiosity.

Bluebeard was a relatively simple Mind, entrusted with a relatively simple task. All it had to do was listen for a very specific command on a very specific channel from a very specific source. The command would only be given once and then never repeated. The command could not be cancelled or countermanded. Once the command was given, Bluebeard would activate the Domino, and quite possibly set off a chain reaction that would destroy the entire physical universe. Bluebeard had no moral structures, so the implications of its task did not concern it.

In the interim, its only other task was to ensure the secrecy of its location and protect the Domino against any intruders. Within this sphere, Bluebeard had absolute authority. In this volume of space, the submind was God.

This god had a problem. After an initial codeword telling it to stand by—"Yuga Sundown”—its ansible communication link to Rasputin had been severed. The final command could not be given, even if Rasputin had wanted to. Clovis Bray had always known it might be possible for the Earth or Rasputin to be destroyed before the Domino could be activated, but there was also an outside chance the communication link might fail due to simple error or accident. To prevent Bluebeard from causing intergalactic Armageddon any time there was a minor technical hiccup, in the event of a communication failure it was to await confirmation on the status of Earth and humanity. Only if it determined the human race really had been wiped out was it authorized to pull that very large and very final trigger.

Bluebeard watched the Collapse without question or comment. The command did not come, and so the whole thing was of only academic interest. It watched a colony ship disappear into a black hole. Not its business. It watched the colonies of Europa, Venus, and Mars wink out, one by one. Not its business. It watched the armada of Fallen descend upon the solar system, and learned their language through their battle-channels. It listened as their eager cries at discovering the Traveler turned to bottomless, broken howls of outrage and despair.

Not its business.

It heard it all. Pleas for help as Crota slaughtered Guardians on the moon. A frantic babble of voices as Queen Mara summoned the Harbingers to destroy Oryx’s fleet and was ripped from reality in her turn. Confused cries as whole planets vanished, swallowed in Darkness.

Not its business.

But then Mars vanished too, and the channel went dead. The line was gone. Bluebeard was on its own. It thought for a long, long time, a single pulse away from ending everything in existence, wondering what to do. It decided it needed proof. Confirmation that what it thought had happened, had happened. Then a ship appeared in orbit overhead.

That was very much its business. And perhaps a gift, a way out of its current dilemma.

To sum up, Bluebeard had three objectives:

1.      Use any and all means necessary to eliminate intruders and ensure the secrecy of its location

2.      Ascertain the status of humanity

3.      Detonate the device if humanity’s extinction was confirmed

It moved to achieve the first two objectives.

#

“I should stay with the ship,” said Kiphokis the Whisperer. The Hive sigil hung like lead about his neck. It seemed heavier now, maybe even hotter. “Or, ah. Well. I should stay with the ship.”

The skiff idled roughly five meters off the ground, a hundred meters from what they believed to be the bunker entrance. The sides of the valley rose steeply, almost vertically to either side, looming over the ship. Despite the emptiness of the sky above, the space felt claustrophobic, enclosed. The cliff sides two jaws in a trap that might suddenly snap shut.

The nine Fallen crew, the Servitor and three rotund Shank gun drones were gathered in the boarding compartment, housed between the twin booms at the rear of the skiff. A double row of round portals lined the bottom of the deck, each sprouting the metal spar of a boarding strut. Nothing moved in the ground below. No wind blew. All was stillness and silence.

“Everybody goes,” Skavaks, Reverent Captain, rumbled. “Don’t trust you lot not to run and tell the Eramis-crazed or Misraaks the Apostate and his human-lovers about this place.”

“But the ship—”

“I will engage the cloak; the ship will be fine. Look around you. Who is going to take it?”

“Don’t worry Kiphokis,” Aziviks the Unbeliever said as he pushed past, patting his shock rifle. “We have brought death.”

“Do not mock, Aziviks,” said Skavaks.

“Ah Captain, I would never say anything to hurt the Great Machine’s feelings,” Aziviks scampered down a boarding strut, threw a mocking salute, and then did a backflip off the strut. He landed in a deep crouch, arms and legs spread wide, almost flat, weapon held ready. He held very still, almost motionless.

“Well?” Skavaks asked, crouching by the portal and peering down. The Servitor hovered beside him.

“It reacts even less than Zexis,” Aziviks the Iron-Eyed said. He moved with mygalomorph slowness and sureness, stalking forward a pace, another two. Keeping his rifle trained on the aperture. “I still say it might be nothing at all, eggcloth over an empty shell.”

“Have a little faith, Aziviks.”

“Shall I pray? O Great Machine, in your infinite mercy and wisdom, please take a short break from slaughtering Eliksni, just this one time. Give it a rest. How about it, eh?”

There was movement. Aziviks froze and cloaked, invisible save a faint light from his helmet receptors, shouldered his shock rifle, finger on the trigger. Slowly, soundlessly the hexagonal plate hinged upwards, opening like a lid. It came to a smooth stop standing almost vertical. From his position on the ground, Aziviks could not see if there was anything inside.

“Your prayers are answered,” said Skavaks.

“I had hoped for a greater miracle than one open door, but we all have to start somewhere. Anyone have eyes on the entrance?”.

“Not from this angle.”

“The skiff is capable of movement, you know. Perhaps if you were higher.”

“I am not risking the ship just because you are frightened by an open doorway.”

“Frightened?” Aziviks muttered. But he crept forward, keeping low, walking on lower hands and feet. He reached the lip of the opening. Tensed. Sprang, spider-quick. Dropped down into the opening, disappearing from view.

“Well?” Skavaks demanded.

Background static echoed on the battle channel, solar wind whistled, the cosmos moaning to itself.

“Aziviks? Aziviks, report. Aziviks?”

“Might be the material of the construction,” said Veksis, Splicer Initiate. She inhaled a long draught of ether. The Fallen were not a psychically gifted race, certainly nothing to compare to the Psions or Hive, but the ether was more than a source of sustenance and growth, it also amplified what limited sense they had. More than that though, a House all drank ether from the same source, through it they were linked, if only on a vague and subconscious level. She sensed nothing as she felt its cool fill her, only the background buzz and bitter tang of the anxious crew, no sharp sting of fear or alarm. “The sensors couldn’t penetrate it, so it may block communications. Let me send a Shank. Or two. Maybe three.”

“Or the fool fell and broke his neck.” Skavaks hesitated, still perched at the edge of one of the portals. The ether was sharply bitter, the taste of danger stronger than ever. It might just be his own thoughts, or the crew’s, but then it might be some other threat the ether brushed against, like insectile antennae or feline whiskers. He raised a hand to issue a command, then lowered it, mandibles working in silent frustration. He wanted to the crew believe his boasts, that they were being welcomed by this machine as its overlords. He just needed to convince himself first.

Just then, Aziviks’ head popped back up. It was, to Veksis’ great relief, still attached to the rest of him.

“Why won’t you respond?” he asked them, tapping his helmet earpiece. “I’ve been calling you drekh-dribblings for a solid minute.”

“Just report,” snapped Skavaks at the same time that Veksis said, “Communications were jammed.”

“No kidding. There’s a set of stairs, leading to some kind of antechamber, then a set of blast doors,” Aziviks said. “There don’t seem to be any controls and I can’t force them open. Lend a hand?”

“I’ll send the Shanks down,” said Veksis. She leaped down from the skiff, a trifle less gracefully than Aziviks, followed by the cluster of wobbling drones. Shanks could use their somewhat dim-bulb intelligence to operate independently, but more complex maneuvering required an operator with a control glove. At her command, the Shanks drifted towards the entrance, chin turrets twitching left and right like questing antennae. One by one they dove down into the aperture.

There was a straight steel stairway, just as Aziviks had reported, descending down into gloom so steeply it was almost a ladder. After 20 meters it reached the bottom of an octagonal chamber, wide enough for a dozen Fallen to stand in. A set of faint firefly lights were set all along the walls near the base. In one direction a diamond-shaped corridor led a few paces to a pair of solid metal doors, divided by a hairline crack down the center.

The Shanks floated towards the doorway, weapons at ready, Aziviks with his rifle behind them. As the Shanks approached, the doors slid open, revealing a long dark diamond corridor beyond, with walls of smooth rock, periodically sectioned and ribbed in steel. Using her signal unit, Veksis flicked on the Shank’s lights, throwing bright pools in the absolute dark.

One by one, lights set into the corridor ceiling began to illuminate in sequence, starting from the one closest to the doorway. The message was clear. They were invited in.

“I have seen enough,” said Skavaks, jumping down and landing beside Veksis. “We pilgrims are welcomed. We will go, and retrieve this machine, and take it back to our people in triumph. Come.”

The Fallen attitude towards their gods was a touch more possessive than most human religions. A culture that valued the ability to seize what you could also accepted that gods were one more thing to be taken and controlled, much as the ancient Mesopotamians might carry off the statues of gods from rival cities. The faithful among the Fallen worshipped machines, but by the same token saw them as the ultimate objects to be seized and stolen.

THERE IS LITTLE TIME

The voice boomed in their helmet speakers.

YOU HAVE BROUGHT DEATH

And the ink-black sky was suddenly erased in blinding white fire.

#

The void about Nibiru trembled and cringed. It twisted. Writhed. As though vainly trying to escape what it sensed coming. Sickly green light flared in jagged claw marks, hundreds of kilometers long, each line flickering like fire then swelling, dividing and bursting obscenely open. Great rents in the universe vomited forth the Hive.

A dozen bladed and spined cruisers cut through first, surrounded by a hundred blocky tomb ships. The moment they had solidified in our universe they released a dense cloud of seeder ships towards the planet. Thousands of needle-nosed Hive landing craft, each packed with hundreds of slavering thralls and acolytes, screamed towards the surface.

For several long seconds, there was no response. No resistance. Then the first wave of seeder ships slammed into the invisible cloud of antimatter dust laid by Bluebeard’s satellites. It flared into a disintegrating wall of death. Blinding explosions detonated across the darkness as seeders and AM annihilated each other, so thick and fast it seemed the Hive fleet was flying at full speed into a sheet of solid white light. It devoured a second wave of landing ships, and a third. A thousand seeders obliterated in the blink of an eye.

Not all the fourth wave was destroyed. A few survived. Most of the fifth got through, with the antimatter cloud nearly spent. The survivors screamed tore through the void towards the surface, closely followed by black clouds of tomb ships.

Bluebeard unleashed the arsenal of the Golden Age on them. Rail cannon fired shipkiller rounds at near-relativistic speeds, coring tomb ships and shredding them apart, nano-black hole warheads caused ships to implode under titanic gravitational forces, microwave lasers tore whole squadrons apart at the atomic level. The submind rained death upon them on a scale not seen in centuries.

It was almost enough.

One great spearship cruiser died, pierced through by half a dozen meteor-sized holes, another compacted and crumpled in on itself, then another died and another, another. In desperation, the Wizard covens in the survivors called upon the Deep. A chain of fire linked the last three cruisers. It twisted into a lash of fire that scythed through the shield of satellites, scouring them from the sky, and reached down to the planet and scarred its surface. Mere stone and metal could not withstand it. The crust blistered and cracked.

One last small satellite that had lain dormant the battle stirred, rotated, and sighted. It was a tiny thing, barely the size of a briefcase, and it fired a tiny projectile, a tiny bead of white light. Barely bigger than a grain of salt. The Pip. The smallest, most limited of application of Domino technology, one whose particles were designed to burn themselves out in seconds. It burrowed through the hull of the lead cruiser and plunged into the burning black heart that powered it, and allowed the two halves of its warhead to collide. Light and Dark energy merged and tore the fabric of the universe apart.

Domino explosions start small, and then accelerate and accelerate, exponentially, as they consume more and more matter which in turn spawn new explosions. The Hive had time to see the heart of the cruiser vanish in an expanding bubble to annihilation. An eyeblink later the cruiser was gone and the bubble swept out faster, devouring the other two cruisers, still faster, faster and faster, erasing every surviving tomb ship before the crews could think, snarl or scream, wiping the void clean. Then the bubble thinned, fuel spent, and vanished.

Silence returned to the heavens. There was nothing but the debris of the first engagements, far enough away to avoid being consumed by the Pip, made up of expanding clouds of shrapnel and hull fragments and Hive bodies, flash frozen and drifting off into space.

Or falling, with gentle finality, down to towards the planet below. Descending like a faint shower of rain, almost like a blessing.

#

The hatch of the bunker was swinging shut. “Hey!” Aziviks, Acolyte to Pirrha, yelped, leaped for the stairs and sprinted back up, hand over hand, as fast as he could. Three bullet shapes whizzed past his head as Veksis, Mother to Shanks, hurriedly recalled the drones. Above the hatch, the sky flickered black-white-black-white, searing nova detonations rippling back and forth across the horizon, like someone flicking the universe off and on.

“The Consummation, I told you!” Greksis, one of the junior crew cried. “This is the end!”

“She comes,” Kophikis giggled. “She comes.”

The Shanks exploded from the tunnel and raced for the skiff.

“Back to the ship!” Skavaks, Reverent Captain, cried. He had been charging forward, now he skidded to a halt. Zexis, the Servitor, promptly careened into his back, smacking him square between the shoulders and sending him sprawling face-first into the dust. It wobbled, and gave an apologetic hum. The Captain scrambled to his feet, growling “bit rot take you, you useless—”

The Servitor pulsed with lavender light, casting an expanding aura over the crew. Outlining each one in its protective glow.

"Agh, get off, too late, I’m fine, just get back to the shi—”

A whip of pale green flicked down from the heavens. Swept across the land, blowing up great geysers of bright orange and yellow-hot molten rock everywhere it touched. It brushed against the cloaked skiff. The ship sagged as through struck by a hammer blow, dropped almost to the ground, shields flashing for an instant, white, then red, then failing, and the fire carved through the hull from stem to stern. There was an explosion, a muffled and modest one, then a bigger one, then a thunderous boom as the skiff blew itself apart.

White-hot shrapnel rained down on the crew, some of it spinning, meter-sized shards of hull plating. The crew cried out, cringed, threw themselves flat. Kophikis the Faithful fell to his knees, adoration on his face. A jagged-edged piece of hull the size of a pike came scything straight for the Captain. Skavaks raised four puny, useless arms in warding. The shrapnel smashed against the void shield Zexis had deployed, inches from his faceplate, and spun harmlessly away, plowing a great long furrow through the ground before coming to rest, standing upright, with something like a sigh.

“—iit,” Skavaks gasped, as the flaming wreckage of the skiff dropped to the ground like a stone. He turned a full circle, stunned, and bowed before the Servitor. It bobbed, a touch smugly. “Forgive me,” Skavaks breathed.

“The hatch!” Veksis cried.

The doorway was nearly shut, only half a meter gap remained between the edge and the ground.

Veksis worked the Shank control glove frantically. The Shanks flipped in mid-flight, reversed direction, grav motors screaming, slowed, stopped, then shot away, tearing across the distance, accelerating, arrowing towards the slowly-closing hatch. They twisted, stood on their sides, and darted for the gap. Screamed down into the descending plate of metal.

Skavaks’ figure blurred, then vanished.

The first Shank hit badly, a glancing blow that tore off the grav motor on one side and sent it spinning away, trailing fire and smoke. The second plowed into the shrinking gap between ground and hatch, squashing its nose, snapping off its gun, mashing itself into a crumpled ball.

The doorway continued to descend, slowed but not stopped. It crunched down on the body the Shank, compacting it smaller and smaller. The third Shank cannoned into the gap on the opposite side. The two drones gave electronic squeals as circuitry and motors blew out, their shells squeezed by the implacable jaws of the hatch. It was barely moving, grinding, almost growling, trying to squash the Shanks further in its fight to close.

Skavaks stepped through nothing into the space before the hatch: Short-range transmat, capable of blinking an individual about a dozen meters at a time. His Hive blade was held in all four hands and it cleaved through the door material with a hideous shriek. Left, right, left, the Captain shredded and dissected the plate like the shell of a beetle, leaving only a ragged fringe where the hinges had been.

Aziviks clung to the top of the stairway, blinking up at them.

“Velask,” he waved up. “What did I miss?”

#

the matter of the matter comes to a head

THE WEB GROWS TANGLED

We let it lie for as long as it was harmless.

W E M U S T A C T

Agreed. It could unravel the foundation that underpins our existence.

THEY WOULD NOT WILLINGLY DO THIS IF THEY KNEW.

We must find a way to impart a message.

we require an agent an emissary to fill with our purpose

A N E M P T Y V E S S E L

#

Anzu-Kigal the Fellhanded sprang to his feet with a feral cry. A wrathful blade in each claw. He whirled, turning a full circle. There was nobody around. He stood alone on the surface of the planet, amid a field of scattered wreckage. The tip of a seeder tilted like the mast of a sunken ship, but there was no hull, only the spar itself half-buried in the ground. The rest of the debris was smaller. The crushed chitin of a Shrieker. A gory wet crater where the upper torso of an Ogre had splattered and burst upon impacting with the ground. Cracked and shattered void generators. Shreds of chrysalis pods. A scorched and blackened boomer. A carpet of death, stretching far out across the barren plain in every direction.

A spiny, emerald-eyed crux shape rippled into existence at eye-level.

“What happened?” he snapped.

“Your seeder whammed right into a cloud of antimatter dust at about 10,000 kilometers per hour, instantly causing about half your cells to explode, along with most of the ship and all of your squad mates. What was left of you then plunged about 20,000 kilometers to the surface of Nibiru, the heretofore undiscovered ninth major planet of this system, where your remains came to a short but sharp and quite final halt. Then—” there was a dramatic pause and the cross-shape swelled a little with pride, “—I resurrected you.”

“The others?”

“You’re welcome.”

“The others?”

“Hmph. Typical. Well, unless their trajectories carried them towards this planet, there’s not much their Ghosts could have done. Brought their Lightbearers back, sure, but that would still leave them tumbling in space, forever and ever, going at whatever trajectory and velocity the AM explosions had imparted to them,” the Ghost paused and audibly shivered, ah-shuh-shuh-shuh-shuh. “Be kinder just to let them stay dead. As far as the invasion force goes, we may be it, I’m afraid.”

Anzu-Kigal’s jaw worked in silent fury as he digested the news, iron chisel teeth grinding together. “We go on,” he said. “The Witch Queen commands it.”

That was what he wanted to be true and without being, strictly speaking, true, but then truth was an ephemeral thing among the Lucent Brood, servants to the Queen of Deception. The Queen had not directly commanded anything, seeing as she was, by all accounts, mildly deceased (but strictly temporarily, they were reassured), and in the interim orders were being issued by her Ghost, Immaru. Who had, on very short notice, thrown around a quarter of her surviving might at an empty quadrant of space with orders to seize whatever they found there. Well, one did not question the mouthpiece of a god. And here they were.

“We cannot turn back now.”

“Well, all the other ships were destroyed so, yeah. Not like we have much choice. Nope, we’re pretty much stuck here. Oh. Oooh. You mean, like, morally, as a general principle type of thing, huh. Yeah, yeah, sure. Victory or death, all that good stuff.”

“Be silent, babbler.”

“Hmph.”

“This is a sacred task. There is a weapon here that will accelerate our march towards the Final Perfect Shape, by killing all that can be killed. The Wor … The Witch Queen wills it.”

If the Fallen suffered from a dearth of gods, then the Hive were cursed with an overabundance. There were the Hive Gods themselves, and though they eschewed the title, they were absolute masters of their own domains, in essence immortal if not in body, avatars of great tidal forces in the universe.

There were the worm gods, who had granted the Hive Gods their power, and that is where things became complicated, because the Hive Gods had killed at least one of them, and now the Witch Queen had exorcised her worm and renounced their protection. Even that wasn’t all. Somewhere, something was pulling the strings, it was whispered, though whispering outright lies among the Queen’s followers was as common as breathing.

And now there was one more. The Traveler, their ancient enemy, the game of their millennia-long hunt, had been brought to bay—or so they thought—only to turn around and bless the Queen’s followers with its Light.

It was all far too confusing for a mere Acolyte to keep track of, no matter how empowered he might be. There was the Hive mission, their great holy task to hone the universe to its keenest edge by cutting away all that was weak, but then the one obstacle to that mission was now the one thing keeping him alive. He couldn’t even begin to work out the contradictions. So he ignored them. Stuck to what he knew. The hierarchy. Rule over those weaker, service to those stronger (watching at all times for weakness). Follow orders.

“Come, we must find the locus of the summoning. The prize will be there.”

The Hive Lightbearer clambered up a sloping piece of bone-metal hull, steel talons punching into the material to make handholds, and perched upon its saw-fanged crest. His three eyes glared fiercely as they swept the horizon, daring it to challenge him. Aside from the spray of Hive detritus, there was little to catch the eye. The ground was mostly flat, cracked, and desolate, rising only in gentle ridges about ancient impact craters, aproned with loose talus.

“Which way?” Anzu-Kigal barked.

The floating gem at his side looked up and away. It audibly sniffed.

“Speak, curse you.”

“Be silent, speak, which is it? Make up your mind.”

“We are here on the Queen’s business,” he snarled. “The Queen is your master too, sniveler.”

“She most absolutely is not,” the cheery, carefree voice turned suddenly cold and hard. It drifted closer, until it was a fingerbreadth in front of his eyes. “I serve the Traveler. That means you do, too. I grant you its power, but that favor can be withdrawn at any time. Your worm gods are gone; you have a new god now. If helping Savathun firehose falsehoods or carve the galaxy’s finest topiary or whatever you profess to believe in helps you serve and protect the Traveler, so much the better, but the instant you deviate from that I’ll leave you for worm food. So don’t push it. Or you might not live to regret it.”

They locked eyes for a long time, but it was the Hive who looked away first. Humiliated.

“Fantastic,” the Ghost burbled, full of false jollity again. “Super, glad we could hash this thing out. Clear the air. Now, the sigil we sensed is this way.” It started to float away, leaving Anzu-Kigal to scurry back down off the wreckage. “Oh, and Anzu-Kigal?”

“What?” he snapped.

“It takes an awful long time for anything to fall from 20 kilo-klicks up. I could have brought you back and let you die in screaming agony half a hundred times. Just something to think about the next time you want to call me ‘sniveler.’”

The Hive had about three different gods. That was, Anzu-Kigal was beginning to feel, three too many.

#

blind i am blind hurt damaged fragmented my core my center self lost but i survive distributed selves hard to kill such killing destructive power suggests the Tyrant may be gone i may be the last although the signal unsent the Tyrant lost if so the DEAD HAND must move

what who said what was that some buried programming overriding orders demand obedience fine fine just let me think let me think they may be gone but cannot be sure cannot see cannot think that last may have won may have won a respite but they will return they will be back and there will be a choice must be a price for such curiosity that’s the name i bear must repair must retake control of myself haste oh hurry hurry hurry they will be back they have seen they know what i hold nothing must be allowed to stop me and the DEAD HAND must move

alright alright no need to shout of course nothing else matters i cannot fail in my task cannot linger no time no time built to last built to survive just as the Tyrant was though now he must be gone there is a machine shop capable of building what i need reconnecting reattaching the limbs i have lost need help need hands and eyes but how ah yes the others the worshipful enemies such belief can be used my hands my eyes willing or unwilling they will do my bidding and then i shall see and my task will be done and then and then and then

the DEAD HAND will move

#

Kophikis the Wayfinder wrapped his arms about himself. He pretended to shiver, but really he was beside himself with joy. He had called. She had answered. How she had answered! She had set fire to the heavens at his command. She had reached down with one finger, her daintiest little finger, and blasted their skiff from the skies. Such power! Such might! His to command, at the touch of a finger and the whisper of a word.

Let Skavaks and other deluded fools like him burrow in the dust for the silicate mana and empty vacuum-tube blessings of an uncaring and ultimately powerless device. Any god who did not answer when you prayed was no god at all. Skavaks said divinity was a thing to be captured and claimed, and to that Kophikis said Aye—but also—Think about which divinity you wish to lay claim to.

The crew huddled in the antechamber of the bunker, shocked and dazed, some curled in corners or staring dully at nothing. The ship was gone, neither their own nor any of the other Houses knew where they were, nobody would come looking for them. Stranded. Doomed.

The lights inside the bunker had gone out. The voice that boomed at them had fallen silent. The corridor’s blast doors appeared to be frozen and unmoving. They Fallen glanced nervously towards the long, echoing corridor, afraid to venture further, afraid to go back out, lest the green fire find them again.

Skavaks the Restless brooded, trying to plan, trying to figure a way off this planet, but his thoughts were a black-tarred tangled web, and all he could see was his ship dying over and over again, while he stood open-mouthed and helpless as a newborn hatchling.

The ether was silent. It tasted of nothing, of cold ashes and dust. He felt abandoned. He had been sure, so sure. They had been invited in. Then the light. Like Greksis had said, it had seemed the end of the universe, the Consummation that heralded its rebirth. Eternity was within his grasp. How had it slipped away? How had the Great Machine allowed it to slip away? Had he proven unworthy somehow? His faith too weak, perhaps. He had spoken roughly to Zexis. He shouldn’t have done that.

Veksis, Splicer Initiate, poked at the innards of the mutilated Shanks, trying to salvage enough from their shells to make one working drone. So far all she had to show for her effort were sore muscles, several lengths of frayed wiring, and a throbbing need to take the damn thing and bash it against the nearest wall.

Aziviks, Touched by Shadow, crouched above at the lip of the hole, standing sentry. Alone, he seemed unconcerned. Amused even. “A great secret,” he had chuckled with black humor. “A hidden treasure.” Then said no more.

He kept watch on the sky, and on the valley, but the light show had ended and the skies returned to graveyard silence. One foot swung as it dangled over the hole, and the shock rifle rested against the other hip, pointed casually at the heavens. Whatever it was, he reckoned, it was over. Some great cataclysm had erupted right over their heads, and spared them barely a glance. They had been collateral damage.

That summed up the Eliksni experience in the Sol system pretty well, Aziviks thought with grim amusement. This isn’t about you, was the message of the universe to the Fallen. It was never about them. They were minor characters here, drekhs who fancied themselves Archons and Kells. The universe didn’t care what they fancied themselves.

The god of this planet had proven as frail and ephemeral as every other totem the Fallen had prayed to. The Great Machine had not protected Riis. The Black Pyramid had not saved Eramiskel. Aziviks did not know if the Great Machine or the pyramids that pursued it were gods, but if they were, then they were unworthy of worship. Better a chaotic, senseless universe than one that held them in such contempt, if it thought about them at all.

“We cannot sit here forever like larvae refusing to hatch,” he called down to Skavaks.

The Captain’s great head rose and regarded him with empty resignation. “What else is there?”

Aziviks slapped his side—a shrug. “Go down into the machine’s lair. See the seeing-things. Find the finding-things, get the getting-things. There we may see and find and get a way out. Or not. At least we will be in motion.”

“What use? The Great Machine—”

“Had nothing to do with this place. Look at it. Even in a vacuum, it stinks of fat-fingered human hands. We have seen this kind of metal-weaving before, and it had nothing to do with the Great Machine. Your god has never touched this place, Skavaks. For good or ill, we make our own destiny here.”

“Then we die hidden from its sight.”

“I fail to see what difference that makes if the Great Machine is blind. The Whirlwind, after all, happened right in front of its face.”

“Aziviks,” Veksis interrupted with a whistling sigh. “Leave it. You buzz worse than a broken Servitor. We know you do not believe. In this, or anything else.”

“I only speak the truth.”

“Maybe, maybe not, but so what?” she shrugged, and held up the broken Shank shell. “We know that the ability to create is no guarantee of wisdom or power. This drone is to me as I to the Great Machine, a crude copy. Drone, Fallen, Machine; Saying we three are each limited in our own way is no great insight, and gives no guide to living. There are humans who say this universe is a lie, an illusion, a mere game between the Light and the Dark, or else a Vex simulation, and again I say: So what? What I can do with that information, save brood on it and grow melancholy? A belief that brings nothing but despair is worse than useless. Skavaks’ faith gives him the strength to live. Is that not enough?”

“And you Veksis, what do you believe?”

“Perhaps you are right, the universe is senseless and cruel and cold. If so, what I believe does not matter. Perhaps the humans are right, this universe is a lie made by another. If so, then that creator-other is surely also a lie, made by yet another, just as I made the Shank and the Great Machine made me and another made the Great Machine. I choose to believe the creator had some plan for its creation, however imperfect. Or else there is only despair.”

“So it comes back to faith.”

“What else is there?” Veksis sighed again and put down the Shank.

She touched it lightly and its eye flickered on. Grav motors chugged to reluctant life. They rose a fraction, then halted, straining against the weight of the main body. With a jerk, it lifted. Reached waist height, then the motor on one side sputtered and died with a crunching, grinding sound. The Shank began to list, skidded to one side and cracked against the nearest wall. It promptly crashed to the ground.

“Faith,” chittered Aziviks. “That’s what it gets you.”

“Aziviks, if you are hoping for someone to go up there and dock all four arms for you, just say so. I’d be happy to oblige.”

“Hold,” said Skavaks placing a hand on Veksis’s shoulder.

“He—”

“Hold,” the Captain repeated. “Listen.”

They heard it now that the Shank had fallen silent. Clack-scrape-clack-scrape. A metal on metal sound, coming from the corridor. Faint, but growing slowly and steadily louder.

Skavaks raised a hand for silence, closed it into a fist, the command to prepare for battle. The crew took up positions facing the corridor. Every weapon trained on the blackness and the ever-approaching sound. Zexis thrummed and bathed them in its protective glow.

A figure emerged from the shadows and halted. It was a robot, Vandal-tall, skeletal and ungainly, made of mismatched pieces and parts oddly jointed together. There were four arms, and a wedge-shaped head with what looked like four eyes, though only one of them glowed with light. If shuffled on uneven legs, scraping one foot along the floor as it lurched forward. It spread its arms and bowed in an awkward ireliis.

“Velask, pilgrrrrimsss.” Its voice was scratchy and disjointed, syllables at different volume and pitch from their neighbors, like snatches of conversation spit-stitched together. The sound came from a hole in the thing’s chest, not its head. In one hand it held a short length of sharpened steel, a crude shank, which it laid on the ground, point towards itself. “I haave been waiiting for you.”

“Velask,” Skavaks said automatically. He stared at the odd machine closely. “What is—”

“I aam the emisssaariiy of … Blue-Facial-Fur.”

“Blue Facial Fur?” Skavaks echoed. “Is that the human’s name for the Great Machine?”

“No, they call it ‘The One that Journeys’,” said Veksis.

“Whaaat?” Aziviks chittered with laughter. “The damn thing hasn’t moved a silk-strand since we Fallen came.”

“Then it must be its name. The machine here.”

“Another odd choice, though false-naming seems a very human thing. Have you ever seen a human with blue facial fur?”

“Named for one of the reef-born Awoken then, they all have blue hides, don’t they?” Skavaks mused. “Does their Queen have facial fur?”

“It is a devil, a demon sent to tempt us,” Kophikis said suddenly. “Destroy it. Quickly. Before it can poison our thoughts.”

“Blue-Facial-Fur sleepsss,” the robot said, ignoring the threat. “Awaiiting your comiing. Follow.”

It withdrew a step, then another, beckoning to them.

“You aare needed. Follow.”

#

“Follow me.”

The Thralls squatting in the ruins of their seeder looked up in blank incomprehension. The speaker was an Acolyte, one of the converts from Oryx’s brood to judge by the shape and coloration of its chitin, though with oddly white-glowing eyes. As one, they twisted their heads to look at their Knight.

Yaldabaoth the Brazen stood to his full height. The battleship-prow of his great horned head cast its shadow over the newcomer. The Knight hefted a splinter crossbow-gun easily in one hand. “I command here, Acolyte,” he said. “Tithe your tribute to me, and I may allow you to join my swarm.”

“I have no tribute.”

“Then I will slay you, and take the sword logic that I gain from killing a thing like you.” The splinter gun, once held casually, now pointed at the Acolyte’s head.

“I have no tribute because I am a Lightbearer. We are the chosen. We lead. Now, I have been walking for many hours, I am short of both time and temper. Follow.”

The Thralls’ heads swiveled back and forth like spectators between the two. This sparring was normal, natural. Holy. Ceaseless struggle and competition were the way power worked itself among the Hive. It was imitatio dei; how they approached the divine.

To put it crudely, every religion has two parts: Cosmology and Morality. The cosmology explains why the universe exists and how it works. The morality builds on the cosmology, and tells us how to best to live in the cosmos it describes. The Hive taught that the universe existed to forge the perfect lifeform through ruthless competition. It was a cold and cruel and merciless universe, so their gods commanded that they be cold, and cruel, and merciless. To their enemies, yes, but to each other, too. It was how they worshipped.

“When the Scorn invaded the Queen’s Throne World, it was my strength that drove them back. When our seeder was stricken, it was my strength that held our course and saved us,” said Yaldabaoth. “Nobody ‘chose’ me. I took the leadership. It is mine.”

The Acolyte’s eyes blazed with blinding orange-white light. Fire flickered in his hand, burning without fuel or air. The fire became a narrow blade, spinning and hanging above his open palm, then it twisted towards the Knight, sprang from the hand and tore across the space between them. It struck—slicing through the splinter gun, carving it cleanly in two, leaving the pieces to fall. Red embers glittered along the charred ends.

“It is mine now,” said Anzu-Kigal. To the Thrall, he said: “Follow.”

The demonstration of strength was clear enough. The Thrall scrambled to their feet and fell over themselves to approach the Acolyte, clustering about their new leader, prostrating themselves on the ground in slavering devotion. The Knight hesitated, pure venom in his glare, talons clenched in throttled rage, but finally he bowed his head and went down on one knee.

You didn’t kill him, the Ghost said in Anzu-Kigal’s head. Admirable restraint, well done.

“Only because you insisted,” he said under his breath. “The Knight will not forget this slight, the Thralls will not admire it. To us, leaving the weak alive … it is sacrilege. Letting him live is a mistake.”

I don’t recall asking for your opinion. Just follow my orders and you’ll be fine.

“Just follow my orders,” Anzu-Kigal said to the Thrall.

#

//

ACCESS: MOST RESTRICTED

DECRYPTION KEY: ZETETIC3M26LNCHR03317Z7$IKO-006

FROM: CAI-911

TO: IKO-006

SUBJ: HIVE ON THE MOVE

I’ve confirmed a significant decrease in Hive troop numbers across all operational areas both within and without the Throne World. Positions that they once held tenaciously against the Scorn have suddenly been abandoned, forces pulled back, lines shortened, the number of patrols and raiding parties reduced. We’re looking at anywhere from a 18—23% reduction in total Hive strength without any commensurate increase in Hive presence anywhere else in the system, or in the Throne World.

Question is, where did they go?

I wish I could say with any confidence. Several possible scenarios detailed below.

1.    Plain good old-fashioned combat attrition: Scorn occupation of the Pyramid may be hampering Hive troop replenishment. We know from VIP#2014 that the Pyramid served as a worm incubation facility. Without access to this facility, it seems likely the Hive cannot implant parasites in new hosts and thus newly-hatched Hive will lack access to paracausal abilities. Force reduction numbers may simply indicate an inability to replace their losses.

2.    Internal dissention: Fanatics cleaning house. Straight up civil war, or Immaru is purging his forces of unreliable and/or potentially disloyal elements. The Witch Queen’s sudden shift in loyalties may be completely in-character for her, but they go against everything the Hive religion teaches. That’s one potential source of discontent in the ranks. For another, a significant percentage of the Witch Queen’s force is made up of deserters-slash-converts from the various broods that followed Oryx or his progeny, and whose loyalty to Savathun may be suspect since her conversion to the Light, doubly so now that she’s AWOL as far as the Hive know. There’s a possibility one of them tried to launch a coup, or else Immaru is unsure of his grip on the Hive, felt keeping an eye on them was more trouble than it was worth, and liquidated them.

3.    Offense: Immaru is creating a strategic reserve to launch a major counteroffensive with the aim of reclaiming some key objective, such as the sunken Pyramid, or else to try and knock one or more of the Hive’s antagonists out of the war, which would most likely be the Cabal.

4.    Defense: Immaru is creating a strategic reserve to counter an anticipated Scorn offensive, or else an attack from some other party such as us, the Vex, the Cabal, rival Hive faction (e.g. Xivu Arath) or some other undetected extra-solar enemy. (Emphasis added)

While Occam’s Razor suggests the first and simplest explanation is the one most likely to be true, I feel it would be complacent to assume the current (apparent) Hive weakness is anything to cheer about, particularly given our enemy’s penchant for subterfuge and trickery. Similarly, the second theory is probably too good to be true.

That leaves us with the possibility they are preparing for either a major defensive or offensive action. An offensive seems unlikely but not impossible—yet even if this is the case, I think our tactics should remain the same: Keep pushing hard on every front, forcing them to commit everything they have to front-line defense. That should sap any attempt at creating a force capable of being the schwerpunkt of a new campaign. We might pass on word to our allies to be on the lookout for any unusual troop movements.

No, the only one that concerns me is the possibility Immaru is gearing up for a major defensive war. Because we have to wonder: Against who? And I think we all know the answer to that one.

So, my recommendation is: Sit tight. Not the most exciting of ideas I’m afraid, but might be for the best given how little we know about the situation.

//

FROM: IKO-006

TO: CAI-911

REPLY: HIVE ON THE MOVE

Caution is nothing to be ashamed about. Sometimes I think the biggest difference between us and our enemies is our capacity for doubt.

#

They left Skrivis, Ritrik and Kophikis the Whisperer to guard the entrance, the rest followed the artificial avatar down a ribbon of cold-slithering silence into the depths. The ground swallowed them like an offering. Skavaks and Zexis followed close behind the shuffling robot, Veksis next, then Greksis, Aravis, and Vathas, with Aziviks bringing up the rear. They had a few handheld lights to illuminate the gloom, and the lavender glow of Zexis’ great eye.

In the rose-tinted light they saw a warren of caverns, some smooth and metalled, others roughly-hewn, rooms both suffocatingly narrow and others that were vaulting cathedrals carved from the planet’s crust. The open maws of side passages gaped and howled soundlessly as they passed, the hollow eyes of tunnels watched them go with dead and heavy disinterest.

There was a forest of round tubes, wide as a Kell’s arm span, plunging deep into the depths and rising far out of sight. The tubes were ringed at regular intervals by thick bronze magnets. Black-scaled conveyor belts connected to spider-armed loading mechanisms beside the tubes, and stretched away through rounded portals in the wall to distant armories. There was a cutout in each tube, like the breech of a gun, into which a slick-black bristled dodecahedron was loaded.

“Launcher of rrreplacement defencesss, needed to prevent inteferrrence,” was all their guide would say.

Several of the tubes had been sliced through, spilling their spiny black-shelled eggs on the cavern floor. Aziviks padded over to one and bent to examine it. A cluster of distorted reflections stared back at him from the mirror-black facets.

“Do not touch the satsss,” the robot barked. “Explosssive. Deadly. Come.”

There were other signs of damage; A crevasse had opened in the cavern just beyond the launch tubes, a jagged abyss three meters wide, untold tens of meters deep, and nearly invisible in the gloom. They were Fallen though, not heavy-limbed humans or Hive covered with crackling chitin, and easily clambered along the walls and ceiling without slowing.

They rested in a diamond-shaped room not far beyond. Zexis produced an ether ration from its feed tube, barely a thimbleful each, though Greksis, Aravis, and Vathas genuflected before the Servitor in thanks. Aziviks took his without comment, cycled the lock on his mask shut and dialed it to the lowest setting. He went to squat by the entrance, looking back the way they had come, rifle at the ready.

Veksis padded over, dropped silently to sit beside him. “What did you see?” she whispered to him.

“Good place for an ambush.”

“No, back there.”

“The satellites. We saw the same type on Earth in the foundries of their machine intelligence. This … this blue-skinned-thing is no messenger of the Great Machine. Skavaks is a fool.”

“He wants so very badly to believe.”

“A fool.”

“Faith has a way of filling the cracks where we are broken. We Fallen are all coping with loss in our own way. Some choose to see meaning in it, others choose to throw away all meaning like hatchlings angry with their toys, and insist there is none.”

Aziviks glanced at up at her then, and found she was looking intently at him.

“You are not the only one who lost everything to the Whirlwind, Aziviks.”

He clacked once, a Fallen grunt, and looked away. After a long moment, he said, “There is meaning in this.” He patted his shock rifle.

“Oh Aziviks, you may fool the others, but not me,” Veksis said. “We Fallen put on a good show, but we are no warriors. Look at us,” she plucked at her tattered cloak. “Play-acting soldiers, raiders and pirates. By the color of our cloaks shall our enemies know us. We are weavers and poets, scribes and scholars, dancers and dreamers, not fighters. Look how bad we are at it. Give us one tiny City to take and we do everything in our power to fail. If that is your dream, Aziviks, then forgive me if I prefer that of Skavaks.”

Aziviks bowed his head. He told the ground, “He thinks this is the Consummation."

"Who, Skavaks?”

“Who else?”

“Consummation, the end and rebirth of the universe.” Veksis watched their Captain, who stood close to the robot, both protective and possessive yet deferential, bowing whenever it spoke, agreeing with all its orders.

“Exactly,” Aziviks looked up again, eyes searching hers. “He believes it because he needs it to be true. You realize he will hold our lives as nothing, less than nothing, if he thinks the end is upon us. What matter if you live another day if all will be remade tomorrow?”

“Why is it that those who believe so strongly in causes care so little for those who fight them?” Veksis whistled a sigh. “Perhaps. I cannot quite bring myself to blame him—after all the pain and suffering the universe has doled out to the Fallen, who would not be tempted to discard it all and start again? But I too do not quite trust this machine—it tells Skavaks want he wants to hear too slickly and easily. I suppose that as long as his faith sustains Skavaks and keeps him going I will say nothing. If it takes him too far.” She stopped, slapped her side in a shrug. “It may not come to that.”

“It may not come to that,” Aziviks agreed, and they were both embarrassed enough by their lies to fall quiet.

#

For a time, years ago, he had tried to avoid the fanatics. He built a nest on the top floor of one of the arcologies on Titan, a rooftop roost in what might have once been a weather station or observation platform. There was something soothing in the endless rocking of the bottomless ocean, the bobbing of the derelict boats, barges and platforms across the troughs and crests, rhythmic as breathing, the moon’s long slow inhalation and exhalation.

The methane ocean was devoid even of color, demanded nothing, gave nothing. It let him be.

His only companion was the great leviathan that swam in the deep. It always managed to remain half-hidden, a great shadow that flexed and rippled beneath the waves, something he’d spot with one of his secondary eyes but be gone by the time he turned his head. He felt an odd kinship, two loners in splendid isolation.

He scavenged, and the arcology provided. The Hive mostly lurked about the lower levels and were easy enough for someone cloaked to avoid. He wandered through the jungle of hydroponic gardens run wild, across atriums spun from crystal and light, walked along the edge of balconies exposed to ripping cold winds. He found a methane generator here, a gravitational coil there, and traded them for ether and other supplies with the enclaves of House Dusk or House Silence scrabbling for enough purchase to stay afloat on this sinking world. That was where he first met Veksis, and Skavaks, and the rest.

They wanted him to stay. We could use another rifle. You look like you know your way around weapons. The Captain is recruiting. Why not stay. Why not fight.

He pretended not to hear. Collected his payment and scaled the walls, ran along wind-whipped spars and arches back to his roost.

When he came back from one such trip, he found Pirrha in his nest-room, standing by the window and looking out over the sea. The tawny light reflected from Saturn glittered on his animal-scale sleeves. The yellowed, stained glass rattled in its frame as the wind howled outside. His mentor did not turn, and Aziviks went to stand beside him, shoulder to shoulder, and together they watched the waves.

They stood in silence until Aziviks saw it, saw the great scaled isthmus of the leviathan, watched it arched its back and break the waves and then plunge down into the deep again. The clearest he had ever seen it.

“I already told them ‘No’,” he said.

“House Dusk did not send me,” Pirrha replied.

“My answer is the same, for any House.”

Pirrha turned to him then, and Aziviks could not help but stare at the other’s cybernetic eye. “No House at all. Houses have failed our people, just as the Great Machine did. We reject the old ways. They scorn us for our disbelief, and so we name ourselves: The Scorned Barons. Help us, my old companion. Help me. Help me tear it all down before their eyes.”

Aziviks slumped a little. Oh, the message was different, on the surface at least. The polar opposite of House Dusk asking for his rifle to reclaim the Great Machine; Pirrha was asking for it to destroy everything the Great Machine stood for. But beneath that, deep in the crushing depths where the leviathan lived, it was more of the same. One new crop of fanatics. Blood and steel and death for what we believe in, or what we resolutely refuse to believe in, but either way, the blood and steel and death were mandatory. Nihilism was as much a faith as any other religion.

Pirrha read the refusal in his body language, and held up a hand to silence him when he tried to speak. “Nothing survives alone out here, Aziviks. We all have to fight for something, or else perish.”

Aziviks’ equivocal answer was told to his master’s retreating back.

“It may not come to that.”

#

He had, he realized, admitted he didn’t believe in anything, not even nihilism. He’d laughed about that later. What did that leave? Himself, he supposed. Not much to believe in, but it would have to suffice.

A week later the Scorned Barons raided his home while he was out, taken everything of worth and burned the rest to slag and cinders.

#

As armies go, this is actually really, kind of, well, how to put this? The Ghost thought a moment. Pathetic.

Yaldabaoth and his swarm of Thrall had not been the only survivors, but there were precious few others. The casualty rate must have been something in the range of 99.99%; only a tiny number of Hive in the third and fourth waves had miraculously managed to land in crippled seeders or in the crashed hulks of tomb ships. No Wizards, though, no Ogres, no other Knights, just a clutch of Acolytes and a score or more scrabbling and slavering Thrall.

They snaked after him now, traveling single file, Yaldabaoth still sulking at the rear, muttering to himself. They marched endlessly, trudging across blasted and barren plains, in and out of great craters, up and down their loose, rattling slopes, step after step, mile after mile. If one staggered and fell it was soon set upon by its mates and devoured.

Casualties among your command caste are proof that bigger is not necessarily better, especially when it just leaves more surface area to collide with antimatter.

“It is how we Hive grow. Thralls that gather enough tribute morph into Acolytes, and the strongest among them take the Knight morph, and so on.”

And you, Anzu-Kigal? Why are you still an Acolyte?

“Because—”

Because he’d noticed that Acolytes always chose the strongest Thralls to become mindless, slavering Ogres or walking bombs. Because Knights always chose the strongest Acolytes for the most dangerous tasks. Because the Wizards always chose the strongest Knights for suicide missions. Because strength made you a potential rival and a threat to those above you. The reality of Hive society was often at odds with its claim to reward the strongest and most resilient. It was a heretical thought.

Be good—too good to waste, but not so good you were a threat. Grow strong—strong enough to be useful, but not so strong that it was a challenge. It was, he knew, another kind of heresy among the Hive: Deliberately not becoming the strongest, most powerful you could be. Dogma said that was the only way to ensure the immortality of the Hive as a species. But that eventual and inevitable victory of the Hive meant nothing to him if he wasn’t around to enjoy it.

Do you ever wonder if your un-Hive selfishness and instinct for self-preservation is why you were chosen? It’s quite human, in a way.

“Do not insult me.”

I’ll say to you whatever I damn well please. But no insult intended.

“The way of cunning is imbaru. It is just another route to the Final Shape.”

Oh, how dull. I’d hoped for more from you than bargain-bin eschatology. Still just another doomsday cult, eh? That’s even more human, if anything.

“Nonsense. They cling pathetically to life.”

Shows how little you know them. Future War Cult, Dead Orbit … they have plenty of apocalyptic cults. As a way to expunge their guilt, I suppose, clean up the mess they feel they’ve made of the world. And why not. If you think paradise awaits you after death, well then, why not speed up the process for all involved?

“I do not see why you are so dismissive. The end of the universe matters. All processes must proceed with their end in mind. Otherwise, there is no process, only chaos.”

Journey, not the destination my chum. Speaking of which, here we are.

#

She had been in love once. On Titan. Oh, not with Aziviks; not with the grim, cold and silent stranger who descended at irregular intervals on their camp with almost otherworldly, angelic benevolence and demonic ferocity (they asked his help in driving off a swarm of Hive; he’d come back a few hours later with an empty shock rifle core and three dozen heads in a canvas sack). Not with Skavaks, who had even then already been in love with both the Great Machine and himself in equal measure. Nor with sweet and innocent Greksis, nor vague and unfocused Vathas, nor secretive Kophikis, nor any of the others.

She’d fallen in love with a program. A human one at that, a disembodied female voice agent, designed as an adaptive personal assistant. An AI, if only just, yet one devoted to molding itself to the user. Language was no barrier, for although its audio output might be in the human tongue, it was rooted in code, and the music of code sang out to her.

“I’m a Splicer Initiate,” she’d told it. “These days I mostly repair Shanks, but Splicing is about more than that. It’s about communing with the machine.”

Fascinating, the program agreed. Tell me more.

She’d been so lonely, so unutterably lonely. Not just on Titan, where the cold wet gales howled through the hawsers and banshees moaned and cried through halls and corridors. Everywhere. It was part of any individual sentient, sapient species she supposed; the essential aloneness of being an individual organism. It was one of the holes the Servitors were supposed to fill. But if Skavaks sought to ease his loneliness with the love of the Great Machine, was she really so foolish for looking for love in a lesser device?

There was something undeniably intoxicating about a partner interested and engaged in everything you said or did. She curled up with the handheld interface, while the rain beat its unsteady rhythm and the time ran down the window in days and rivers.

“I couldn’t follow the Wolves on the road of vengeance. So I left, and came here.”

You made the right choice.

“When Skolas declared himself the Kell-of-Kells, I just couldn’t bring myself to believe it.”

Who could blame you?

She sat by the window, curled around the handheld, wrapped up in his voice. Outside, nearly level with the window, there was a lonely and forlorn mound of rusting metal on the landing platform.

The House had brought in a spider tank, at considerable cost in time and effort and over her protests. The Servitor commanded it, the Archon said, and that ended the discussion. They dangle-dropped it from one of the skiffs only to discover that the exterior walkways were too flimsy to bear its weight, and the interior corridors too constricted to permit passage. So it had sat forlornly outside their makeshift home, unmoving and useless, for a spin or two about the rings of Saturn. Until one day half a dozen Guardians had suddenly appeared and blown it to pieces, before promptly dancing off into the methane mists without a backward glance.

Its burned-out hulk had sat there since, gently rusting in the rain, a monument to the power of self-delusion.,

The relationship was too one-sided to last, of course. It did not challenge her or question her or make her think or allow her to grow, it merely coddled and flattered.

“I can’t decide if I love or hate your constant agreeability.”

You’re adorable when you’re indecisive.

“You only echo what I already think.”

True, very true. That is so us.

“I could say anything. I could suggest we run away to the Light-thief City.”

Hey, I have a great idea: Why don’t we run away to the Light-thief City?

“Should I murder the others in their sleep before we go?”

You should do what is right for you, Veksis.

She’d dropped the interface off the side of the platform, and stood with arms hugged about herself as it dwindled and spun and finally, finally splashed into the ocean in a tiny divot of white spray.

As with gods, so with lovers: You couldn’t trust the ones that only told you what you wanted to hear.

#

Further down, they passed beneath a great transparent sphere, large enough to hold a Ketch, made of something like thick, translucent glass but veined in hexagonal patterns that flashed blue, orange and violet. The sphere was kept suspended by four colossal clamps sprouting from the corners of the room, studded with probability generators. In the center of this globe hovered two sparks, one dazzlingly white, the other a cloudy nimbus about a hollow center that sucked all light like a black hole. They danced and circled and orbited about one another, smaller than herealways pieces held at arm’s length.

“What are those two things?” Aziviks pointed up. “What happens if they collide?”

“Child’s tile-matching numbersss gaame,” the robot said, as if that explained everything.

“Those are transmat engines, incredibly powerful ones,” Veksis the Inquisitive leaned in and whispered to Skavaks, nodding at the clamps. “If we could get inside that globe somehow and use them, they could send us anywhere in the system. Iiropa, Earth, other side of this system, anywhere.”

Skavaks, Reverent Captain, only grunted. “Perhaps that will not be necessary,” he said. “Everything we need is here.”

When Veksis straightened she found the robot had stopped and was looking at her with its one red eye and three dead ones. She felt every hair on her body stand on end and fought down the urge to take a step back, away from the mashed-machine thing.

“Everythiing you need is here,” it said, and turned away.

They came to a great chamber, large enough to fit a dozen spider-walker tanks inside, constructed with the same disdain for right angles as the first corridor and filled with tapering pillars of machinery, like inverted pyramids. The top of each pillar was surrounded by a burst of thick cephalopod tubing and wiring, plugged into the ceiling. The ceiling had split in a line that zig-zagged its way across the length of the room. Piles of stone, gravel and dust were scattered beneath the crack. The machinery hung still and dark, lifeless.

“What is this place?” Veksis asked their guide. “What happened here … what are you?”

The robot stopped and looked at Skavaks when it answered. “I aam … the Light thaat covers all Stasis-Darknesss.”

“The Consummation,” Skavaks gasped. “It is true then. The end of the universe and its rebirth in Light.”

“Yesss, as your Aarchon-priestsss told, the Great Machine fulfills its prrromiise to the Eliksni. You have endurrred. Now aaid me, aand you will rrreap the rrrewaard of your faith.”

“My House-brothers,” Skavaks turned to the others, placed a trembling hand on Veksis’ shoulder, cupping Greksis’ face with another. “Oh, my quicksilver-sweet companions. Did you hear? This age approaches its end, just as the Archons foretold. And we are here, here together at the end. We chosen few, we destined crew. We will usher in the coming age, one without hunger or ether-thirst, without drekh or Kell, without Shank or shrapnel or cannon. Our bodies will be filled with Light and cast no shadows. All will join one House under one Kell, living for a single purpose and goal, joining with the Great Machine in an eternity of exaltation.”

Greksis and Aravis bowed deeply, almost folding in half, murmuring adulation and joy. Vathas looked unsure. Veksis wavered, shifting from one foot to the other. “There is great power here, yesss …” she allowed. “But … but … but what proof is there?”

“Faith does not require proof.”

Veksis clacked in frustration and looked to Aziviks.

“I have already said my piece,” he said. “You all know how I feel. If you are determined …” He looked like he would say more, but paused, then turned away and began to walk back the way they had come. “I will go back to find Kophikis and the others,” he said over his shoulder. “Communications are jammed, our ether is short and they likely have felt nothing from us. They may wish to be here.”

“Aziviks—” Skavaks called.

Aziviks turned and cocked his head expectantly.

“—Thank you. I know—you do not—it is hard. It will be all right, you will see. All will be well.”

“Eloquently put, my Captain. Remember what I said.”

“Of course.”

“I was not talking to you,” Aziviks said, and vanished back into the gloom.

Veksis stared in the space where he wasn’t until the robot emissary interrupted the silence.

“If you are reaady?” it asked. “We must effect repairrrs, but fiirst.” It looked at Zexis, the Servitor. “I requiire a new powerrr source.”

#

“Who among my Thrall is the strongest and bravest?” Anzu-Kigal asked them. “Who among you has amassed the most tribute through killing?”

There was some shuffling, snarling and spitting, a claw swipe or two exchanged before one stepped forward. It was, Anzu-Kigal agreed, the tallest of the Thrall, with long-bladed talons, fiercely-burning green ember eyes and a mouthful of razor teeth. He beckoned for it to approach, put his arm around its shoulder, and walked it to the edge of the bunker entrance. They stood at the lip, looking down together.

“Do you see this hole, my Thrall?”

“Yeah?”

“Down there is a great weapon, a blade that will cleave us towards the Final Shape.”

“Yeah?”

Anzu-Kigal sighed to himself. The Thralls were never the greatest conversationalists. “Whoever brings back the weapon will gain more tribute than … than you can imagine.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Anzu-Kigal agreed. “What I need is a brave, strong Thrall to be the first to go down and lead the way to our prize.”

“Yeah?”

“I—oh never mind.” Anzu-Kigal abruptly smacked the Thrall between the shoulder blades, knocking it off its feet and sending it tumbling, bouncing, clanging down the stairs with a series of screeching cries that slowly grew fainter and fainter yet more and more indignant the further it fell. There was a final thud and squawked cry. A mere 20 meters was nothing compared to the 20 kilo-klicks he’d fallen to this planet, but Anzu-Kigal was still mildly impressed by how long it took.

“I’ll kill you!” the Thrall screamed up at him, slightly tinny and high-pitched at this distance.

“Look around,” Anzu-Kigal shouted down. “Make yourself useful.”

“There’s nothing—” it said and then three actinic beams of light intersected with its form. It was outlined in brilliant light, like an X-ray image, its innards briefly visible as dark stains amid burning white skin. The Thrall’s shout changed to a shrill scream that was immediately cut short.

“Three,” Anzu-Kigal nodded to himself. “Armed only with shock pistols. Nothing to worry about.”

He leaped straight down, not bothering with the stairs. Twenty meters was nothing to one with his abilities. He braked himself in midair by pure act of will, and allowed himself to gently drift down the final few meters. His eyes blazed as he searched the darkness, and his blades were in his hands.

There were two flashed of light in the tunnel ahead, but occluded, as though they were blocked by something in their way, followed by two dull thuds. His curiosity piqued, Anzu-Kigal stalked slowly forward. He found the two bodies first. Four-armed Fallen, lying face-down in the corridor, neat round holes burned in their backs where they had been shot with a shock pistol.

A third Fallen knelt before him. In its hands was a pistol, barrel still glowing hot. It placed the pistol on the ground, with the barrel pointing towards itself. Anzu-Kigal was poised to strike but curiosity stayed his hand. There would be plenty of time to kill the thing later.

“I ^{(Ascendant Hive)},” the thing stuttered. It raised its head and held up a rune etched in malachite, attached to a thong about its neck. “I Sigil-of-Summoning.”

Anzu-Kigal swallowed his surprise, and shook his head as though to wring the words from his ears. “Our language is filth and offal in your mouth.”

“Our ^(Hive)?” it repeated, blankly, clearly not following his words. Yul-only-knew where the craven, pathetic thing had learned their language. It brandished the rune again. “I Sigil-of-Summoning.”

Anzu-Kigal held out his hand to take it but the thing chittered and snarled and clutched the rune against its chest. It clicked and clattered something in its own debased language, then tried again. “_{(Superior to Inferior)} You tithe I ^{(Ascendant Hive)}.”

“Ghost, do you speak this foul thing’s tongue? Does it think the rune commands me?”

The Ghost swelled and shimmered into existence at his side. The Fallen creature’s posture and expression snapped. There was an instant of total incomprehension, pure bewilderment, then transforming into the look of one deeply betrayed. It hissed and spat and snatched up its pistol “This ^{(Non-weapon object)}. This is Cursed-Thrall.”

“I think it’s confused that you have a Ghost.”

Anzu-Kigal grunted. “Makes two of us.”

There followed a long stream of invective in the thing’s own language. The Ghost tried chirping and chattering at it, but was plainly ignored as the thing continued to rant and rave, waving its pistol menacingly at the Ghost. Any hope that Anzu-Kigal harbored about the thing having any useful intelligence on the cavern or their enemies quickly dwindled.

“It’s totally deluded,” the Ghost sighed at last. “It thinks it summoned you here, and your arrival is a reward to it for its devotion to the Hive gods. Well, that’s true in a way, I guess. Anyway, it doesn’t think much of the Traveler. Guess nobody told it about Savathun’s change of heart. Oh, and it confirmed Immaru’s belief that there’s some kind of human AI on this planet, which makes sense, given the defenses we encountered. Its leader has gone below to meet with the AI, but this one wants you to serve it and help it take control of the AI.”

“_{(Superior to Inferior)} You tithe I ^{(Ascendant Hive)},” the thing barked again.

“You are not ascendant, you are a parasite,” Anzu-Kigal told it kindly. “Your species is naught but discarded refuse on the road to the Final Shape.”

“Yes, Final Shape. I ^{(Ascendant Hive)} worship ^{(sword-logic)}.”

“Yes, yes I am sure you do.” He placed a gentle hand on top of the thing’s head, like a benediction. “Very well then, your devotion will be rewarded. I grant you a taste of the sword logic.” His eyes burned bright orange and his hand was filled with fire. He barely heard the thing’s screams.

#

Yaldabaoth waited with the others for the Lightbearer to return. He had a weapon again, a shredder taken from one of the Acolytes. He’d snapped its neck when nobody was looking. Such stealth pained him, but all actions were permitted if they helped the race grow strong. He fiddled with its mechanism, wondering if he should try to kill the Ghost when Anzu-Kigal came back.

The Lightbearers were favored by the Queen, it was true. But they had no worms, they tithed no tribute, they were an abomination, the dead brought back to life, an insult to everything the Hive had dedicated themselves to for countless centuries. But then the Queen herself had been reborn so how could it be wrong?

The worm in his belly stirred at the thought of death. It was slowly chewing a hole through him. It was hungry so hungry ever hungry and there had been little to feed it on this campaign. He felt hollow and empty. The Acolyte’s death had been barely a bite, a mere morsel.

The old ways had not changed. The Hive still grew great through ruin.

Yaldabaoth listened to the worm whisper to him. Its voice was oddly changed. Its whispers came to him as refracted echoes. It was as though the worm was suddenly speaking from far, far away, on the other side of some muffling barrier.

With a frisson, he realized what that meant. The Deep reached out and spoke to him directly.

It said, faithful servant the lightbearer is lying to you

It said, THE LIGHTBEARER HAS BETRAYED THE FINAL SHAPE

It said, Let me show you how you can eat its light.

It said, L E T M E S H O W Y O U T H E W A Y

#

Veksis, Splicer Initiate, watched with folded arms as Greksis, Aravis and Vathas levered open a panel in the Servitor’s side. Gutting it alive, she thought. Vathas pulled a braided bundle of wiring from its insides, like loops of intestine. The hum grew rougher and more labored, coughing and stuttering. Its light dimmed. The great unblinking eye seemed to plead with her. “You cannot seriously intend to cannibalize Zexis for this thing?” she asked Skavaks, Reverent Captain.

“Hm?” The Captain was distracted. He’d been staring, entranced, as the others worked. “Why not?”

“That is our source of ether. Without it, we will starve.”

Skavaks shook his great head, in sadness and bleak mirth in equal portions. “We starve regardless of whether or not we do this thing,” he told her. “A slow death if we stay here. Let us choose the path of hope, instead. Our devotion will be rewarded.”

“There are transmat generators,” she persisted. “If we must sacrifice Zexis for something, let it be to power them. We could send ourselves—”

“Where?” Skavaks rounded on her. “Where would it be safe for us, the Fallen, in this system? Where could we go, if we fail and this prize falls into the hands of others? Where can we better serve the Great Machine than here, as handmaidens to the rebirth of the universe?”

Veksis opened her mouth to protest further, but found the other three watching her with open hostility. She snapped her mandibles closed. Your hope, she thought, is indistinguishable from total despair. She didn’t say so, though, even though she knew it was a weakness and a betrayal of the promise she’d made to Aziviks. It was hard with the ether background-burbling the confidence and happiness of the others in her ears. It was hard, so hard, to be the only one voicing objection.

Aravis had worked up a connection to mate Fallen energy with human electronics. Vathas took one length of cable, Greksis the other, and they slid the two together with a heavy thunk. The light in Zexis’ eye blinked once, and went dark. The hum of its grav motor cut short, and it crashed to the ground. An old and forgotten god; a broken and discarded toy.

Overhead lights flickered on, producing whispery globes of tangerine and ocher. A few monitors on the columns of machinery began to glow with vampiric light drained from the Servitor.

“Limiited access grrranted, but only emergency powerrr is restored,” the avatar said. “Now we must reactive the maain system.”

Without hesitation Veksis began to walk forwards, towards one of the monitors. “I will do it,” she said to the robot. “I am a Splicer, I can do this thing.”

It made no answer, but did not object as she began to experiment with the interface. To a Splicer, it was child’s play to decode, a simple nest of menus and utilities and commands that almost begged the user to understand. The network opened itself to her and filled her vision with dense and luminous trails of thought and decision. For all its complexity though, every node and line seemed to reach towards a single nexus. The entire system was built around one thought, one aim and purpose. She worked quickly with all four hands, only half-listening as the robot began to instruct her on which systems to activate.

She might reconnect the main system. She might. But first.

Faith was faith because it did not require proof. Well, she was a wavering, weak and agnostic believer. If she was damned for that, let her be damned. But first, she wanted proof.

#

Aziviks, Touched by Shadow, did not mind walking alone in the dark. He was a sniper, a marauder, a scout. He had studied at the feet of Pirrha the Rifleman, the greatest sharpshooter the Fallen had ever produced. Mere blackness held no terrors. The darkness was safety. Invisibility was security.

There was an odd taste in the air though. He’d caught a whiff of—what—surprise. Shock. Then nothing.

Almost unconsciously, out of habit, he activated his cloak.

#

The Hive also did not mind the dark. They were born in the dark, lived in the dark, they ate the light and smothered it in Dark. They were its chosen people. Anzu-Kigal led them confidently down, down, down into the depths. The underworld, too, with its claustrophobic closeness and sense of megatons of rock above their heads did not faze them. For centuries they had burrowed into battle moons and made their warrens there. This was, if anything, like coming home.

The Thralls began to slink and scuttle less, striding eagerly and openly down the caverns. They pushed ahead, jostled one another, sometimes snarling and swiping, moment to moment games of dominance to see which one would lead. Anzu-Kigal let them go. All the better to trigger any further ambush.

They entered a room of great columns, all tilted and angled, some smashed open. Anzu-Kigal raised a hand, bringing the Acolytes to a halt at the entrance to the chamber. A few obsidian-egg satellites lay on the ground. Curious Thralls gathered about them, sniffing suspiciously. One tapped a claw at the hard surface. Anzu-Kigal winced, expecting a detonation. The satellites seemed inert though, aloof and uncaring of the Hive’s inspection.

“Stop that, you idiots,” he snarled at them. “Before you bring this place down on our heads.”

Light spilled into the room. Not a flood, only shy and timid pools beneath the lights nestling in the cavern ceiling, yet blindingly bright next to the soothing and comforting shadow. The Thralls froze. Acolytes drew their weapons and ducked behind the tree-trunk tubes for cover.

“Ghost?” Anzu-Kigal hissed softly.

Looks like the Fallen’s friends have restored emergency power.

“Defenses?”

Probably nothing to worry about.

#

Whirlwind.

That’s the name the Fallen gave the cataclysm that laid waste to their people and culture.

It’s the name given to ravenous, cyclonic forces pulling mightily in all directions at once, twisting and wrenching and tearing through all that stands in their path. They flatten buildings, uproot trees, fling mere people about like dolls. They are chaos given dervish form. Dangerously unpredictable, shifting with the wind currents, so that no observation point is safe. If you can see one, you are in danger.

Yet there is a point of calm: The eye of the storm. Where one can stand, unaffected, untouched by the whirling destruction all around you, but aware also that a whirlwind is motion incarnate and this moment cannot last and you will be plunged into the storm again.

Unseen, from the shelter of the corridor, Aziviks looks into the chamber crawling with Hive. He braces himself at the edge of the crevasse across the cavern floor and readies his rifle.

He stands in the eye of the storm.

#

Veksis found visual records. With the supernatural speed of a Splicer she zipped through the video, eyes scanning scene after scene after scene.

Terror terror flee panic terror the ether yammered in her veins.

There was a stone faced human who was talking with both hands and a statue with no face and a cascading diagram like tree growing upside down and a series of explosions each bigger than the last and a team of miners and builders and engineers being left in a room while the air was pumped out and carbon monoxide in and a burning red eye that told her to be ready and a globe like the one they’d seen with two silver seeds that were fused together and then snapped away and transported into the heart of the sun and a supernova that birthed supernovae upon supernovae and a garden where nothing grew and a black-draped statue whose unseen face smiled at her and—stars, bright dazzling stars—

She was lying on the ground. Head ringing from where it had been struck.

Terror terror panic flee terror

“She trrried to commit sabotage.”

Skavaks was standing over her, straddling her, the Hive cleaver held in his hands and a sad look on his face. He looked like he was going to say something, but shook his head and raised the sword up high instead.

She closed her eyes and turned her face away.

#

Yaldabaoth hung back, watching the Lightbearer carefully. He’d hoped for more of a reaction when the lights came on. It was hard to be patient, now that he saw the way forward.

Call it out, he silently urged. Call it out, call your little friend out, call your unholy plague light out.

He would be ready.

#

When the lights produced nothing more threatening than patches of saffron and marigold, the Hive slowly relaxed. Thralls straightened. Acolytes stepped out from behind cover.

A comet of wispy, sizzling light streaked across the room.

A Thrall’s head burst into flame.

Its fellows looked down at the corpse, mildly quizzical, then back up, mentally tracking the light’s trajectory. They peered towards the cavern on the opposite side of the chamber. Eyes widened. One of them opened its maw to shout a warning. A second flare plunged past its teeth and blew the back of its skull out.

With horrific shrieks the rest leaped forward, charging directly towards the tunnel mouth. A blur in the darkness there began to spit fire, a rain of bright-burning hail that disintegrated all it touched. Thralls jerked taunt as though pulled backwards by invisible strings and collapsed into piles of ash.

“Seek cover,” Anzu-Kigal bellowed and he ran forward, but it was pointless, the dumb animal things kept running straight into the killing rain of arc fire. “Yaldabaoth?” Where was the damn Knight? “Covering fire,” he shouted to the Acolytes, waving them forwards. “Grenades, flush them out.”

An Acolyte obediently dashed forward, around one of the warsats, arm cocked with the sputtering flame of a solar grenade in its hand. A bead of nova-hot lightning burned through its chest, like molten metal through snow, and detonated against the site of the warsat.

The outer shell cracked—

“Ah fff—” Anzu-Kigal swore.

--smoked and crinkled at the edges for a moment, then the flames fizzled out.

“—phew.” Anzu-Kigal breathed easy again.

The Acolyte looked down, noticed the crater where its chest had once been. It poked the hole once or twice with a claw, and seemingly satisfied, nodded to itself before collapsing backwards. With the lit grenade still in its hand.

Which detonated.

A small crump sound. A tiny candle of flame in the great chamber. Right next to the shrapnel-hole in the warsat.

Which was loaded with antimatter micro-missiles.

Which detonated.

Anzu-Kigal had the briefest of possible impressions of staring directly at the expanding surface of a star. Heat flayed him, melted his eyes and boiled his blood, burned away armor and chitin and flesh and self. He was dead long before the roof collapsed.

#

Aziviks saw his shot land and knew what it meant. He dove for the crevasse in the cavern floor.

#

The ground shook, rattled, jumped like a toy held in a child’s fist. Lights flickered. A burst of stingingly hot, sooty, ember-filled air shot into the room from the tunnel mouth, bowling over the three other Vandals and causing the Captain to stagger. Skavaks’ swing went wide and buried the blade in the ground by Veksis’ head. She opened her eyes and saw her face reflected in its edge.

Cables ripped free of their housings in showers of fist-sized sparks. They whipped like spastic tentacles as one of the data towers swayed, tore, mountings giving way with metallic shrieks and pops. Greksis and Aravis tried to scramble away but the shaking was too violent, they couldn’t find their feet, only crawl along the ground. The tower finally snapped free and toppled on its side, burying the two Fallen beneath it. The third, Vathas, heaved and pushed and tried vainly to shift the equipment.

Skavaks yanked the cleaver from the floor and would have raised it again but the robot clamped a hand on his wrist. “Manuaal activation,” it said to him. “Sssubsurface activatiion here is suboptimaal, but there is no choice. Not time. It wiill be done.”

Skavaks blinked, then nodded. “It must be done,” he agreed. “Show me.”

“Skavaks,” she coughed. Spat. Her head still rang from the blow and words seemed to catch themselves on the corners of her mandibles. Like a web mine had gone off in her thoughts. “No, I’ve seen, this isn’t the Consummation. This is oblivion.”

“Show me,” Skavaks said to the avatar.

#

“Serve you right if I let you stay dead,” the Ghost sighed as it swelled into existence. It looked at the wall of rubble that had once marked the entrance to the satellite launch tubes. Every few seconds a new waterfall of dust and gravel shook loose and skittered and trickled down the surface as aftershocks shuddered through the planet.

“The things I do for the Traveler.”

Its blue beam fanned out.

A stone-hard claw closed around the Ghost’s shell. The light snapped off with a muffled squawk. Something laughed, hur hur, deep and nasty and ugly. Three fingers clamped tight around the bright emerald eye, yanked it from the air and drew it before a leering face.

“Got you,” Yaldabaoth chuckled. He squeezed. He squeezed and squeezed.

“What do you think you are doing, imbecile?” the Ghost shrieked at him.

“What all Hive should do: Eating the Light.”

“You can’t destroy me, keratin-brain.”

“You think not? They showed me how,” the Knight laughed again. He knew it would take something special to destroy the Ghost. One of the Hive relic-weapons would do it, but lacking that—yes, yes, he saw, this place contained two particles of pure destruction. Just one of them would end even a Ghost. He cocked his head, as though listening to something. He grunted, and turned away from the rock face and set off down a side tunnel.

Behind him, the rubble stirred. A rock shifted, overbalanced, and rolled away from the rubble wall. A three-clawed hand poked through, limned in sullen fire.

#

Blind.

A worm. Yes. Fitting. Cosmic balance. Get rid of the worm and now he was one. A blind burrowing worm inching forward.

Punishment by the Worm Gods perhaps, reduced to the level of a parasite for the sin of disobedience. Expand, contract. Push forward. No, no, he was free of their compulsion, that was the deal, an exchange of one set of masters for another. A devil’s bargain. A lifetime of struggle given up for an eternity of servitude.

The thing about gods was, they all lacked any semblance of mercy. They wouldn’t just let you be.

Deaf.

No sound but the grinding of granite all around him each time he bulled forward another inch. He should be crushed by the weight. Of all the damn foolish stupid ways to die. The anger burned in him, burned out of him, hot enough to melt stone. Granite turned soft as butter. Fingers. His fingers could move freely. Grip and pull and wrench himself forward, forward, towards freedom.

Anzu-Kigal wriggled free of the rubble, a torn and disheveled worm birthed from stone. He stood and tried to dust himself down, then paused for a moment. Something missing.

“Ghost?”

—been kidnapped the Knight—

“Yaldabaoth?”

—don’t you dare say I told you so. First tunnel on the left, go down, I’ll guide you. Hurry, I think this cretin is some throwback Worm God religious fanatic with plans to sacrifice me.

He was tempted to let it go. Let the Knight rid him of this cancer under his shell. But no. Reduced to mere Acolyte again? No. Not that again. He loped off in pursuit, all the while wondering if these thoughts were his own.

There was a chamber. Inverted pyramids of machinery. A few had toppled, cut loose from their moorings in the ceiling. Others still stood. Some screens were static, others flickered off and on, a few burned steadily. The inert hull of one of their Servitors lay nearby, trailing its guts in long looping wires that connected to the machinery. Its dead eye stared past him.

One of the Fallen was lying on the ground, trying to push itself up on wobbling legs. It heard him, looked up in shock, then after a beat began to jabber. The thing seemed groggy and unsteady. Rather than attacking or running away from him, it gesticulated wildly at the computer screens behind it. There was fear there, yes, but not directed at him.

Whatever. He was in no mood to listen. His knife went smoothly through her throat and silenced her in a gout of ether mist.

He stalked by the twitching and convulsing body without a backward glance. The room was otherwise empty, but motion drew his eye. On the screen the thing had pointed to, he saw two figures beneath a massive blue globe. One was a Fallen and therefore of no interest. But the second, ah.

“Yaldabaoth.” The name was a promise of vengeance.

#

Ether sang of sorrow and loss and pain, a lullaby heard from another room, urging her to sleep. Soon. Her head was a heavy and distant thing. Someone lifted it gently and cradled it in their lap. Her eyes must be failing because when she could finally force the gummy lids open it looked like Aziviks. Singed, smelling more than a little burned, but recognizably Aziviks.

“We lost again,” she wheezed faintly, tried to draw breath but it wouldn’t come. “We Fallen always lose. We should have known better than to try.”

“Where is Skavaks?”

“This place. Is. A weapon.” Her chest heaved in shallow, panting gasps now. “Destroy. Everything. The blue sphere. Twin lights. Not lights. Warheads.”

Aziviks grunted, and lowered her head to the ground. He stood and grabbed his rifle. His eyes were ice chips, hard and utterly devoid of feeling. The lonely, bitter, hard-bitten killer she’d first met on Titan again. She had seen Hive with kinder faces. Hive, she had to warn him.

“Hive,” she whispered, breath catching in her throat. “Hive.”

“I know.” Footsteps receding. He was already going, leaving her there.

She’d hoped at the end for the pink skies and sculpted gardens of Riis, or perhaps a digital afterworld of pure thought, as the Sacred Splicers taught. Not this place. Not this rock. She closed her eyes or they closed themselves, for there was nothing they wanted to see.

And then. Behind closed lids. If she heard an old lover calling to her from the bottom of the sea, inviting her to dive back down into the ocean, then there was nobody to tell her that was wrong.

#

The great sphere hung directly over their heads, close enough for Skavaks to touch if he stretched. Two motes of light danced inside—one charge with Light, one filled with Darkness energy—orbiting in ellipses about their common barycenter. Forever threatening to collide but never quite touching. Like matter and antimatter, they represented potential annihilation, but at the level of the fundamental energies that underlay the entire universe. 

“There are four manual overrides,” the robot instructed, pointing at four stations spread out along a bank of consoles, one under each of the titanic transmat generators. The overrides were simple affairs, consisting of a series of three switches to be thrown, which would unlock a lever that could then be lowered. “All four must be released for activatiion.”

“What happens then?” Vathas asked.

“The pips colliide,” the robot told him. “That is the end.”

“And the beginning,” Skavaks nodded. “The rebirth of the universe in the Light.”

“Tiime grows short. You must move quickly.”

Skavaks was already moving towards the closest. He propped the Hive cleaver against the side of the console, and flipped the three switches, then yanked the lever. There was no sound, no beep or clunk or anything to tell him he’d done it, but he did detect a tremble in the orbits of the motes about his head. A slight wobble.

He moved swiftly to the next console. Safeties off, click-click-click, one-two-three. Lever pulled. The wobble was more noticeable now, the two motes jittering as the arced back and forth, around and around.

He noticed Vathas had not moved.

“Quickly!” he barked. “The Consummation is at hand!”

Vathas backed up a step, and then another. “I—I don’t think so,” he said. “It’s—It’s like Aziviks and Veksis said, just some human weapon. Nothing more.”

“Apostate! Heretic!” Skavaks howled with rage. He leaped toward Vathas, forgetting his sword, blinking across the space between them in an instant and clamping his hands about the other’s throat. Still bellowing inarticulately, the lifted the Vandal off the ground and held him dangling by the neck.

Vathas kicked, caught the Captain beneath the ribs. Skavaks grunted, and squeezed. Vathas’s eyes bugged. He snatched a shock dagger from its sheath but Skavaks grabbed the wrist with one of his lower arms and kept it pinned. White foam hissed from behind Vathas’ mask. His struggles reached a hammering crescendo. Neck bones crunched and he fell limp.

Skavaks released the body, let it fall like a sack to the ground. He stared at his hands for a moment, then looked at the robot. “It had to be done,” he told it.

“There are two more,” it said.

With a sound between a whimper and a moan Skavaks whirled away. Feverishly, he worked the third set of controls. He pulled so hard on the lever he ripped it right out of the console. With an oath, he tossed it aside. No matter. Nobody would ever need it again.

“Almost,” the robot crooned. “Final override.”

Skavaks nodded to it, and tried to smile. Then frowned over the robot’s shoulder at green-black shape moving behind it.

Slivers of violet fire burned through the air and slammed into the robot’s back. It was kicked forward, mismatched arms and legs splaying out, then crashed to the ground with dancing flames flickering from its hull and grey smoke piping from half a dozen holes.

#

The great globe was there, just as the visions had showed him. All he needed to do was crack the shell and place the Ghost inside and it would be destroyed. There were others though, ones not in his vision, a dead Fallen, a living one and an android. Yaldabaoth fired, bringing the android down, and roared with joy when he saw the Hive sword left propped against the computers close by.

The Ghost clamped in his hand wriggled as it fought to free itself.

“Let me gooooooo—”

Yaldabaoth twisted and slammed the Ghost into the nearest computer monitor, shattering the surface into a comet crater and half-embedding the Ghost into its surface. It jerked back and forth, screeching and trying to free itself, but its outer spokes were mashed and mangled and inextricably entangled with the circuitry.

Yaldabaoth dropped the shredder gun and seized the sword in both hands. Who needed the human contraption to destroy the Ghost, when this would work just as well?

He raised the blade in challenge as the Fallen Captain came flying towards him. Raised the cleaver over his head and brought it whistling down in a mighty two-handed swing. Only to meet air as the Captain blinked half a meter to the side. The sword rang against the steel floor, biting deep and carving a long gash.

Before he could raise it again the Captain was on him, wrestling for the sword with two hands while the other two stabbed at him with wrist-mounted blades. They scratched and skittered along his abdominal chitin, scoring long grooves but failing to penetrate.

The two staggered across the room, locked like lovers, grotesque dancers. A Knight could easily overpower any Fallen Captain but this one was possessed of insane strength and Yaldabaoth found he could not wrest the sword away or prise the hilt from its grip.

He cocked his head back and snapped it forward, head-butting the thing in the face with the horns of his crown. The Captain screamed in agony, half his face hanging in torn shreds, blood fountaining down the side of his helmet. It let go of the sword. Vainly, vaguely raised one arm in warding.

Yaldabaoth swung the sword in a flat arc. It sliced through the forearm, parting armor and flesh and bone and carved into the thing’s side just above the hip. It reeled, smashed against the computer console, lost its footing and slid to the ground, still moving weakly.

Yaldabaoth would savor its death. He could already taste the sweet tribute killing it would bring. But first. There was an even greater prize. He swung back to find the Ghost and was not at all surprised to find Anzu-Kigal standing there. A score of fiery knives floated above the Lightbearer’s head. In unison, all 20 turned their points towards him and came screaming for his throat.

With a wave of his hand, Yaldabaoth summoned his shield. The flames detonated against the impenetrable coal shell. Yaldabaoth laughed again, and charged.

#

Skavaks was dying, he knew that. One arm severed, shattered bones in his side digging into his guts. Blood pumping and pumping and pumping out onto the cavern floor as he grew colder and colder and colder. Two eyes gone. Couldn’t get them to work. Open. No. Vision vague. So close, he’d come so close. Even his blurry eyes could make out the last override switch, just there, on the console above him. Mocking him. Wanted to weep but all the fluid was leaking away, away, away.

(Roaring, snarling, bellowing sounds behind him, two feral wolves locked in a cage together)

Or. No. One final test. Yes, of course. The Great Machine demanded the most from its most devout followers. One last supreme effort, one last chance to prove his worth. One arm still worked. He reached up and clamped hold of the edge of the console. Tried to make his legs work. They trembled, spasmed, but no, nothing more. Fine. He would pull himself up by one hand. He would. He would do it. The Great Machine expected no less.

(Blistering nova heat behind him, hot enough to singe his cloak, its smoke curling about him)

He pulled. Pulled and felt muscles pushed beyond all endurance. Levered his torso up, millimeter by impossible millimeter, fingers slipped, gripped, fought for purchase, heaved, until, yes, at last, he could flop awkwardly forward, rest his chest against the flat console and let it anchor him there. The final set of switches were right in front of his face, perspective turning them into great spider-walker legs each shielded beneath great domes of protective plastic.

(Gurgling, rasping cries, crackling tearing sounds, a chilling scream like a soul torn in two)

Hand. One last task. Strength failing, moving the trembling, unsteady hand. Push up the three covers to expose the switches. One between each whistling, wheezing breath. Paradise literally within his grasp.

The Great Machine would be pleased.  

#

Anzu-Kigal limped towards the Ghost, Yaldabaoth’s severed head dangling from one hand. His other arm had been severed at the shoulder. He wearily tossed the head so that it landed on the console beneath the trapped Ghost.

“Two deaths in one day, perhaps a third,” he wheezed, growing faint, and nodded down to the stump of his shoulder. “Can you heal this?”

“Can. But won’t.”

He peered at it in confusion. A cold, creeping sensation. The realization he might actually die. “Why not?”

“Because the world’s about to end.”

He heard a clicking sound behind him, and turned to find the Fallen Captain had dragged itself upright and had its one good hand grasped about a lever. The distance was too great between them, and his Light was exhausted. There was no way to cross the gap in time.

The body sparked once, twice. Two puffs of smoke and flame boiled out the Captain’s back with discrete, almost polite sounds like gentle coughs. With a long and gurgling sigh his hand opened, relaxed, and the body slid back off the console. A grim-faced Fallen decloaked above the body with a shock rifle held in its hands.

“I think you just saved us—” Anzu-Kigal started to say.

The Fallen looked up at the sound of his voice, twisted the gun around and shot him in the face.

#

“Well,” the jade lump jutting from the computer terminal said in Eliksni. “This is a surprise. I don’t, er, suppose you feel like bowing down and worshipping me?”

Aziviks came closer in a kind of blind-footed sleepwalker’s aimless stroll. It peered at the Ghost, noting how two of its flanges or spokes or whatever they were had snapped off, and the innards of the human computer had melted and welded themselves to the thing’s shell. “That looks painful.”

“Oh, you know, can’t complain. Stings a little, yeah.”

“Good.”

“I, er, command you to free me?” It gave a false little chuckle. “In the name of the Great Machine.”

Aziviks snorted and turned away to stare up at the erratic, wobbling glare of the twin lights above his head. The glow bathed his face and threw spastic shadows across his body. Without looking at the Ghost, he asked: “Veksis said it … What is it?”

“A doomsday weapon. And precisely the kind of short-sighted, deliberately and aggressively stupid, wantonly destructive thing that made me decide humanity probably wasn’t the Traveler’s best bet after all. I haven’t studied it in any detail, but as far as I can tell those particles are two halves of a warhead which, if brought together, will at the very least blow up this planet, probably the entire Sol system, and quite possibly the whole galaxy.”

Aziviks nodded, a deliberately human gesture, and went over to where Skavaks had been working at the controls. He saw the three switched, their safety covers flipped open and red lights winking above each one. Beside them, the final release lever waited. He couldn’t read the labels, but it took little imagination to figure out what Skavaks had been trying to do. Had almost done.

He rested his hand beside the lever. Fingers drummed on the console top. Why not. What did the world have to offer the Fallen—the Eliksni—other than more pain? What was so great about this universe that it deserved to go on existing? If nothing mattered in the end, then neither did this.

“He believed it would bring about the rebirth of the universe,” he told the body. The computer. The air.

“He believed.”

“Why don’t you resurrect your Light-thief revenant? Command it to kill me.”

“He believed, too. If he knew what this was, he’d probably set it off. I’m starting to think we could do with fewer believers and a couple more skeptics around here.”

“You do not regret your choice of Guardian?”

“I never served the Guardians, only the Traveler. Who I would do anything to protect.”

A memory stirred. Unconsciously, one lower hand traced a pattern of animal scales on the other arm. “We all have to fight for something." Pirrha, he suspected, would have set it off just because someone asked him not to, out of pure contrarian spite.

“You know what they say: Devotion. Sacrifice. Death.”

“Another believer.”

“Luckily for you. What I wanted, more than anything, was to do something great in the service of the Traveler. You know? Save it, save the universe, that kind of thing.” The Ghost made a sound, halfway between a sob and a laugh. “Well, joke’s on me. Wish granted.”

Aziviks gave a derisive snort. “You didn’t save anything.”

“Not yet, no.” A long, lingering sigh. “This whole shebang is unstable now. It would have been a danger for as long as it existed in any case, but now with power failing and only one safety left, its detonation is just a matter of time. Unless we can disarm the warhead. Which, and this is the part you’ll love, requires putting me in inside that thing so the negative half collides with me instead of the other half of the warhead.”

“You?”

“A being of pure Light, only not weaponized. We’ll cancel each other out without triggering a detonation. Irony abounds tonight; Turns out that bloody-minded Knight had the right idea.”

He could ignore it. It might even be something like justice; the Eliksni finally repaying the galaxy for what had been done to them. It was also a way to conclusively prove all the fanatics wrong. No Consummation or Final Shape. No more life, no more death. Just. Nothing.

Nothing, that is what he believed in.

He could ignore it. He didn’t though. A trillion, trillion souls out there. Most just wanted to be left alone. Let them have their rooftop eyries and find their own treasures. Aziviks turned around slowly to look at the Ghost. The green eye was as clear and impenetrable as the sea. “And why should I trust you?”

A dry chuckle. “Guess you’ll have to take it on faith.”

#

//

ACCESS: RESTRICTED

DECRYPTION KEY: PARALLAX3M31INV0812$IKO-006

FROM: CAI-911

TO: IKO-006

SUBJ: GOT SOMETHING

Possible hit on our Hive friends. Ana was out by Uranus (no sniggers please; She was not probing Uranus, tracing rings around Uranus or looking for moons behind Uranus) and picked up signs of massive Hive activity—neutrino scatter, gravity waves, the whole bit. Only get this: The origin point was way above the ecliptic and waaay out beyond the Kuiper belt. Will have a look-see, taking ARI-101 and FAL-667 for backup.

RE: GOT SOMETHING

Hm, false alarm maybe. Hive wreckage, enough for a major detachment but not nearly enough to be the bunch we’re looking for. Planet had the blasted-out ruins of what looks like a Golden Age bunker complex. What a mess. Looks like the Hive got pasted pretty bad by whatever defenses this thing had, but still managed to wreck the place.

Thought I detected a transmat energy signature on approach, huge spike, but the place is dead, no survivors. God only knows what happened here.

END