“That thing was Morth-tech, compromised,” Hippinse told them when he got information back from the microdrone sent to investigate what was left of the machine they’d been fighting. “One of twelve, if its internal records are right.”
“What the hell’s Morth stuff doing down here?” Anaplian asked. “I don’t remember any mention of that.”
“Me neither,” Hippinse said. “Kept that quiet. Probably well intentioned.”
Anaplian made a noise like a spit.
They were flying, a kilometre apart, across the edged unfolding darkness of the Machine level, weaving past the great spherical and ring-shaped components, surfaces ridged and incised with swirling patterns like cut and chiselled gears. The Liveware Problem’s three damaged drones were keeping pace ahead, hurriedly trying to repair what they could of themselves. Turminder Xuss led the way, twenty klicks to the fore.
“Any more comped?” Anaplian asked.
“All twelve were. Two left now; we got one and the ship wasted the rest on entry.”
“Okay,” Anaplian said.
“Ship took some damage from them, though.”
“It did?”
“It was hurt on the way down,” Hippinse said.
“From Nariscene tech?” Anaplian asked, incredulous.
“It had a long way to drop, totally contained, offering perfectly predictable aiming and no eGrid powering,” Hippinse said. “Tried to negotiate but they weren’t having it. They were able to throw a lot at it for a long time. It suffered.”
“How badly?”
“Badly enough. Wounded. Would have gone limping off before now if this wasn’t a desperation mission.”
“Oh, shit,” Anaplian breathed.
“It gets worse,” Hippinse said. “There’s a guard ship.”
“A guard ship?”
“Liveware Problem’s encountered. Got off a spec readout before it had to concentrate on combat.”
“What ship? Whose?”
“Also Morth. Nobody aboard; AI. From the spec, seriously capable. Power linked to the Core.”
“This wasn’t mentioned!” Anaplian insisted.
“Must be a recent thing. Point is, it’s been taken over too.”
“How?” Djan Seriy said, her voice angry.
“Must have been running same systems as the guard machines,” Hippinse said. “Comp one and you get the lot if you play it clever.”
“Fuck!” Djan Seriy shouted. There was a pause, then, “Fuck!” again.
“This, ah, ‘comped’, sir,” Holse said tentatively.
“Compromised,” Hippinse told him. “Taken over by the other side. Persuaded by a sort of thought-infection.”
“Does that happen a lot, sir?”
“It happens.” Hippinse sighed. “Not to Culture ships, as a rule; they write their own individual OS as they grow up, so it’s like every human in a population being slightly different, almost their own individual species despite appearances; bugs can’t spread. The Morthanveld like a degree more central control and predictability in their smart machines. That has its advantages too, but it’s still a potential weakness. This Iln machine seems to have exploited it.” Hippinse made a whistling noise. “Must have learned a lot fast from somewhere.”
“An Enabler,” Anaplian said bitterly. “Bet you. The Oct ran an Enabler system at the thing.”
“That would fit,” Hippinse agreed.
“What from the ship?” Anaplian asked.
Ferbin and Holse’s suits registered information coming in from one of the three drones, but they wouldn’t have known how to interpret it.
“Seeing this?” Anaplian said. Her voice sounded flat and lifeless. Holse felt suddenly terrified. Even Ferbin’s euphoria was punctured.
“Yes,” Hippinse said. He sounded grim. “Seeing it.”
Light flickered and flared ahead, bearing a few similarities to the display produced by the firefight they’d chanced upon earlier between the ship drones and the compromised Morthanveld machine, but much further away; the light was being produced from some way over the horizon and reflecting off the under-surface above, strobing and flaring across the ceiling structures with a distant slowness that seemed to imply a conflict of a weight and scale orders of magnitude above that of the earlier skirmish.
“That’s them, right?” Anaplian asked.
“That’s them,” Hippinse replied, voice low.
Ferbin heard his sister sigh. “This,” she said quietly, “is not going to be fun.”
They got there in time to see the ships destroying each other. The last action was that of the Culture Superlifter Liveware Problem: it fell into the unnamed Morthanveld guard ship — a stubby fist ramming a bloated head — and partially annihilated both of them in a blast of total spectrum radiation so extreme that even from eighty kilometres away it was sufficient to trip alarms in the suits.
“I’m gone!” Hippinse said, sounding like a lost child.
“Down to us now,” Anaplian said crisply. “Hippinse! You all right?”
“Yes,” the avatoid said. They were all watching the distant shrapnel of the wreck; huge pieces of ship flailing and tumbling and racing away from the explosion, their glinting, somersaulting surfaces lit by the fading radiations of the carnage as they flew away, smashing into vanes and blades and machinery and ricocheting away again, trailed by sparks and liquidic splashes of secondary and tertiary debris.
“Still got the drones?” Anaplian asked. “I’ve lost them.”
“Yes, yes; got them,” Hippinse said quietly. “They’re answering.”
“Both ships gone,” Turminder Xuss announced. “I am up close and dodging megatonne shit here. And I can see the offending article. It has the Xinthian.”
Ferbin’s blood seemed to run cold at the mention of the last word. Xinthian. The other name for the WorldGod.
“Ah, what would that mean, sir?” Holse asked.
“The Xinthian is enclosed within what looks like a fiery cage,” Turminder Xuss told them. “The offender is very small but looks extremely capable. Energy profile the like of which I have not seen before. Who’d have thought something so ancient would be so potent?” It showed them.
Beyond where the ships had disputed, beyond where their wreckage had slowly fallen — splashing wildly across the great flowers of spiralled vanes beneath like sun-glinted rain on a forest bloom — half a horizon away but coming quickly closer, another tableau presented itself. The view wobbled, overmagnified, then grew quickly more stable and detailed as the drone and its accompanying missiles rushed closer.
The WorldGod was an ellipsoid a kilometre across and two in length, jerking and writhing within a light-splintered surround of fierce white fire extending a few hundred metres out from its mottled, dark brown surface. The Iln machine was a dot to one side, joined to this tortuous mayhem by a single strand of bright blue energy.
Beneath the Xinthian, directly over a hole in the centre of one of the immense blade flowers, a tiny bright globe was growing, throwing off intense, recurrent flashes of light.
“Beneath it,” Anaplian said, sounding like she was gulping.
“It’s generating anti-matter,” Hippinse said.
“Where are—” Djan Seriy began, then they were all hit by intense bursts of laser fire sparkling from a source above and behind them. The suits flicked about, spun, raced away, ablating layers. Ferbin found himself pummelled, too warm, breathless, and his weapon nearly torn from his arms as it twirled, aimed and fired in one absurdly fast movement that happened so quickly it left his flesh and bones aching.
“Comped Morth drone,” somebody said.