“Mine,” somebody else said.
“You’re—”
“Motherfucker!” Ferbin heard somebody else hiss. Actually, it sounded like him.
All Ferbin knew was that he was being tumbled about and yet the gun was always pointing in the same direction whenever it possibly could and it was kicking and kicking and kicking at him, throwing him wildly back, bouncing across these dark and livid skies.
Until it all stopped.
“Hippinse?”
No answer.
“Hippinse; reply!”
It was Djan Seriy’s voice.
“Hippinse?”
Her again.
“Hippinse!”
Ferbin had blacked out momentarily due to the extreme manoeuvring. The suit apologised. It informed him that they were now sheltered with the surviving members of their group — agent Anaplian, Mr Holse and himself — behind a vane on the flank of the nearest machine sphere. The visor helpfully circled his sister and Holse, each a few hundred metres or so away, ten metres down from the scimitared summit of their protecting vane. Light glittered above, strobing over the ceiling structures.
Ferbin began to wonder how he had got here, to safety. He hadn’t actually articulated the words this thought was leading to when the suit told him that it had taken control, under Agent Anaplian’s instructions.
“Ferbin? You back with us?” His sister’s voice sounded loud in his ears.
“Ah… yes,” he said. He tried to check himself, tried to carry out a mental inventory of his faculties and bodily parts. For a moment everything seemed fine, but then he remembered his missing lower leg. “Well, no worse,” he said. In fact he felt good; still strangely, almost absurdly exuberant, and sharp; suddenly fully recovered from his blackout and seemingly ready for anything. Some still woozy part of his mind wondered vaguely how profoundly and subtly the suit could affect his emotions, and what control over that process his sister had.
“Holse?” Djan Seriy asked.
“I’m fine, ma’am. But Mr Hippinse…?”
“We lost him when he attacked the second of the two comped Morth machines. Also, Xuss isn’t answering. And the ship drones don’t appear to have survived that last tussle either. We are somewhat reduced, gentlemen.”
“Weren’t there two of those Morthanveld machines?” Holse asked.
“Both gone now. I got the other one,” Anaplian said. Every word she uttered sounded clipped, bitten off. Holse wondered if she had been wounded too, but did not want to ask.
“What now, ma’am?”
“That is a good question, Holse,” Anaplian said. “I strongly suspect if we stick our heads over this vane above us we’ll get them blown off. Also, due to the angles, there isn’t really anywhere else to go. Conversely, I have a short-range line-gun that can knock the living fuck out of anything that pokes its head or other relevant part over our side of the vane. That is our inventory, however. The Iln machine knows I have this weapon and will certainly not come close enough to let me use it. Sadly,” Holse heard the woman take a breath, “we have lost my particle gun to enemy action, the kinetics are expended or blasted, the CREWs won’t have any effect and the subsidiary missiles have either also expended themselves in the course of action or been vaped. Vaporised, I should say. Sorry, brother; sorry, Mr Holse. My apologies for having involved you in all this. I appear to have led us into a sorry situation.”
It was, Ferbin thought. It was a sorry situation. Sometimes life itself seemed like a sorry situation.
What was to become of them? And what lay ahead for him? He might die here within minutes but even if he didn’t he knew he didn’t want to be king. He never had. When he’d seen his father killed, his first instinct had been to run away, even before he’d rationalised this gut decision. He’d always known in his heart he wouldn’t be a good king, and realised now that — in the unlikely event they escaped this desperate fix — his whole reign, his entire life, would be a slow and likely ignominious winding down from this peak of meaning and possible glory. There was a new age coming and he could not really see himself being part of it. Elime, Oramen, him…
He heard Holse say, “What’s to be done, then, ma’am?”
“Well, we could just rush the bastard and die very quickly to no effect,” Anaplian said, sounding tired. “Or we can wait here until the Iln machine finishes making all the anti-matter it wants and destroys the whole world. Us first, after itself and the Xinthian,” she added. “If that’s any consolation.”
Holse gulped. “Is that really it, ma’am?”
“Well…” Anaplian began, then paused. “Ah. It wants to talk. Might as well hear what it has to say.”
“Humans,” a deep, sonorous voice said to all of them, “the Shellworld machines were built to create a field enclosing the galaxy. Not to protect but to imprison, control, annihilate. I am a liberator, as were all those who came before me, however vilified. We have set you free by destroying these abominations. Join me, do not oppose.”
“What?” Ferbin said.
“Is it saying…?” Holse began.
“Ignore it,” Anaplian told them. “It’s just being a properly devious enemy. Always unsettle the opposition if possible. I’m telling your suits to ignore any further comms from the machine.”
Yes, Ferbin thought, she controls these suits. The machine was trying to control us. We are controlled. It’s all about control.
“So, are we stuck as we are then, ma’am?” Holse asked. “It and us?”
“No,” Anaplian said. “Come to think of it, the Iln machine doesn’t need to settle for a stand-off. Last estimate we took, the required AM mass will take hours to accrete. Long before that, one of the Iln’s sub-pods will appear over that vane-sphere way back there, good sixty klicks off, and pick us off from a distance.”
Holse looked at the distant ridge line, then around at their immediate surroundings. He didn’t see how they could be got round. “How’s it going to do that, ma’am?”
“It can retreat over the horizon and circle round behind us that way,” Djan Seriy said heavily. “The Core’s only fourteen hundred klicks in diameter; horizon’s very close. Could even go right round the Core. In vacuum, wouldn’t take long for a sufficiently capable machine. I’d guess we have a couple of minutes.”
“Oh,” Holse said again.
“Yes, indeed: oh.”
Holse thought. “Nothing else we can do, ma’am?”
“Oh,” Anaplian said, sounding very tired, “there are always things worth trying.”
“Such as, ma’am?”
“Going to need one of you two to sacrifice yourself. Sorry.”
“Pardon, ma’am?”
“Then I get to do the same thing,” Anaplian said, sounding like she was trying to remain calm. “So one of us survives, for a little while longer, at least. Survivor’s suit can get them anywhere within Sursamen or back to near space. More to the point, we might just stop the world getting blown up. Always a reasonable goal.”
“What do we have to do?” Ferbin asked.
“Somebody has to surrender,” Anaplian said. “Give yourself to the Iln machine. It will kill you — quickly, hopefully — but it might just be intrigued enough to inspect you first. That first one, though, it’ll be suspicious of. Whoever goes first dies to satisfy its caution. The second — that will be me — might just get close enough. I’m already preparing all this in my head. I’m assuming the Enabler program the Oct hit the Iln machine with was one of ours. They have subtle misconstructions regarding Contact and SC that might aid our cause here, though I do have to emphasise that this is the most ridiculously long shot, and even then we’re relying on the WorldGod not being fatally injured and it being capable of unmaking all that anti-matter; an explosion based on what’s already accumulated would kill it and do a significant amount of damage to the Core. So, still hope, of a desperate kind. But you wouldn’t bet on any of this, trust me.”