Storming Heaven

Chapter Thirty-Five

“Why did I come here?”

Rupert, Leader of the Spacer Faction — insofar as the Spacer Faction had individual leaders — looked up at the looming shape of the captured Killer starship, before resuming his dictation. Even from such a distance — his personal starship was keeping several hundred kilometres from the Killer ship — it looked very intimidating. It was illuminated by spotlights from the human platforms assembled around the ship, like Gulliver being restrained by the Lilliputians, yet it seemed to almost soak up the light, existing as nothing more than an oddly-shaped black hole in space. It wasn’t an ill-suited analogy, Rupert knew; the rear of the starship held a tiny black hole.

“Why did I come here?” He repeated. It was a Spacer custom that all Spacers kept detailed logs and records. They never uploaded themselves into the MassMind and made themselves available to their future descendents and so it was the only form of indirect immortality they had. “I came here because I had to see it for myself. I had to know for myself. Logically, a verbal report would have sufficed, but I had to see it with my own eyes. I had to know.”

He paused, considering. “We believed at the start that the Killers were nothing more than rogue machines that obliterated their creators and went on a slaughtering spree, killing every last form of intelligent life they encountered,” he continued. “We thought that that explained everything; their insensitivity to mass slaughter, their willingness to permanently kill entire life-bearing planets and, indeed, the absence of any structures or settlements on still-living worlds. We preferred to believe that they were rogue AIs and built strong limits into our own AIs. We could have created AIs that controlled entire starships, without the need for human crews, but we refrained from that final step. We were too scared of the consequences.

“And we, the Spacers, believed that the key to humanity’s future lay in pushing the boundaries of human-machine interfacing as far as possible. We implanted and augmented our bodies with the latest technology, giving up some elements of our humanity to gain eternal life and a new perspective on existence. We believed that, in the end, we would gain the ability to link permanently into our starships, making the human race immortal. We would be able to give every human a destroyer-sized starship to use as a permanent body. It would be merely an exercise in mass production.

“And we failed, at first, to develop a brain-powered starship. The test subjects went mad. It didn’t discourage us, because others had gone through our procedures and then gone mad. The powers of a minor god are given to us by augmentation and not all could take it. Others learned to regret the loss of sex and gender, or taste and smell, and killed themselves, or took foolish risks in the belief that they were already dead. We thought that the starship project was merely experiencing teething problems. Why not? It had happened before. Every failure was eventually overcome. The remainder of the Community might tut-tut at us and question the death toll, but they used our technology as well. Their long lives and direct mental links to the MassMind came from our research.

“And now we know what the Killers actually are.

“They are their starships. They are perfect mergers between biological life forms, if rather alien ones, and massive starships. They are our dream come true. And if they did this to themselves, and went on to slaughter uncounted trillions of lives, to commit genocide against all other races… what does this mean for us? When our human-starship mergers go mad, then… does that explain the Killers?

“Are the Killers mad?

“There is no way to know,” he concluded. “Their behaviour shows either an alien mindset or complete insanity. They kill everyone they encounter; threat or no-threat, even races that could be no possible threat. We know they committed genocide against races that had barely learned to make fire, let alone nuclear weapons, spacecraft and antimatter. Are they mad to do this? I like to believe — we like to believe — that our prohibition against genocide is a universal truth, yet there are — there may be — aliens that regard genocide as morally right. Are they mad to believe such a terrifying thing? Are the Killers mad?

“And that’s why I have to come here and see their ship with my own eyes. I have to know if they’re mad, because if they are mad, it means that we too may be mad to continue to push the limits between man and machine. I have to see it for myself, even if I may see nothing that no one else has seen. I have to know…”

He made a moue of exasperation and deactivated the log with a single mental command, sent through his implants, before ordering the tiny starship forward towards the Killer ship. He couldn’t contain a hint of fear at approaching so boldly — the Spacers, too, had lost people by coming too close to the Killer ships — but he pushed it down ruthlessly, commanding his central processor to up the amount of drugs flowing through his system. It wasn’t a time to allow himself fear, or anything other than a kind of nervous interest. Who knew what he would see inside the Killer ship?

“You are cleared to approach,” System Command said, suddenly, breaking into his thoughts. Star’s End was currently occupied by thousands of researchers from all across the Community — and millions more, attending via the MassMind or direct neural feeds. They were all intent on being the first to pull yet another discovery from the alien craft, yet none of them were Spacers. Rupert had hoped that a few Spacers would volunteer to visit Star’s End, or even to study and absorb the stream of data being dumped out as fast as possible, but none had. They felt the same fear that he did, the nameless worry that the discoveries would eventually prove that the Spacers were on the verge of committing a terrible mistake in their drive for self-improvement.

He ignored the reminder flashing on his communications board, calling him to the War Council. Whatever happened, the War Council could deal with it — or, if it was vitally important that they had a Spacer representative, they could summon his deputy to the meeting. The MassMind had called the meeting anyway, and Rupert, like all Spacers, distrusted the MassMind. It wasn’t human any longer, but a blurring between human and machine, personalities who thought they were human and AIs who knew very well that they were not. Spacers were natural loners by inclination, even before they went through the procedure that cut them away from the remainder of the human race; they saw no need for the MassMind and kept a distance between themselves and the collective entity. It was yet another cause for worry. What if the MassMind, not the Spacers, was the precursor to Killer-hood?

The tiny craft settled down on the Killer hull and locked itself firmly to the Killer hull metal. It wasn’t magnetic, but the starship was capable of clinging on to anything. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway — there was no way the starship could vanish or drift away — but he checked anyway, using habits that had acuminated over four hundred years of life, three hundred of them as a Spacer. He checked his internal equipment carefully, opened the hatch — Spacers needed no atmosphere and didn’t bother with airlocks — and stepped onto the Killer hull.

A normal human might have struggled to ignore the strangeness of the sight, or the perspective of walking vertically on a horizontal hull, but Rupert ignored it, catching sight of his own reflection in the odd hull material. It was easy to see why most humans feared the Spacers; he was tall, and half-wrapped in metal, his handful of exposed flesh treated to prevent it from feeling pain when he walked in a vacuum. Rupert, at least, was humanoid. There were Spacers who were effectively tiny spacecraft in their own right. The irony wasn’t lost on him.

He checked his internal database for the charts of the vessel, turned, and started to walk towards the nearest hatch. The Technical Faction’s researchers had done a good job of locating other access points for the scientists and had opened up nine of them, allowing hundreds of people to slip into the starship and carry out their research programs. Rupert clumped over towards the nearest access point, wrapped in a shimmering force field that kept the atmosphere within the craft, although all of the researchers either wore heavy spacesuits or personal force fields. Rupert disdained the latter. He had an internal force field himself, but it was easier to build protection into his own body, rather than rely on something that could fail at any moment. If the ship were to vent its atmosphere, it would kill anyone without proper protection…

The handful of Footsoldiers on duty at the hatch — Rupert suspected that they were there just to keep them from getting in the way of the researchers — checked his access credentials and allowed him through, although they were clearly surprised to see a Spacer. They were wearing powered combat armour, but they would be able to take it off at the end of a day, when they returned to their transports for food and sleep. They probably wouldn’t want to live in their armour permanently, even though it was theoretically possible, and wouldn’t understand why the Spacers chose to do so. They, Rupert decided, were not yet sick of being mortal flesh and blood. It would change soon, when they got older… if they lived that long. No one doubted that the Killers were still looking for their missing vessel.

He looked up, his enhanced sight picking out the running lights of a handful of Defence Force destroyers floating near the captured ship, before he stepped through the force field and into the access hatch. The gravity field twisted around him and he almost lost his footing, before finally managing to secure himself as he stepped out of the other end. The interior of the Killer starship rose up around him. He turned his great head from side to side, allowing his internal cameras to record everything he saw, even as he wondered at the absence of the mists. The first team had recorded strange alien mists, but now there was nothing, but a poisonous atmosphere. The researchers had speculated that the mists were part of the Killer biology, but no one knew for sure.

He smiled internally — his face was fixed in a loose grimace, permanently — as the results of his atmospheric scan scrolled up in front of his eyes. The Killer ship’s atmosphere seemed to be in a constant state of flux — the sensors recorded low-level energy discharges without apparent points of origin — but also seemed to match the original readings, taken during the first boarding mission. Rupert would have liked to have been on that mission, despite the danger; it would have been a worthy cause for a Spacer to take for himself, even at the risk of death. It would have been…

Rupert stopped, suddenly, as he looked further down into the ship. It was dead, or almost completely powered down, and yet… he was sure that he could hear something, a keening on the edge of awareness. It was like hearing a recording played too quietly to make out the words, but just loudly enough so that the listener knew that someone was talking. There was a sense of unrefined… potential in the air, as if the ship wasn’t dead, but merely biding its time. He shivered, despite himself, as he started to walk again. The starship didn’t feel dead to him.

He accessed the report from the Technical Faction and scanned it rapidly. They’d concluded that the starship had powered itself down to the bare minimum after the Killer had died, reserving only enough power to maintain the atmosphere and keep the black hole under control. They hadn’t detected much activity in the ship’s computer networks — which had prevented them from tapping into the system — yet did that actually mean it was dead? Rupert walked down a long corridor and looked into a vast chamber, filled with strange alien material and technology. Had the Technical Faction been wrong about the starship?

It was the work of a moment to bring up his internal sensors and scan the local area, hunting for signs of… what? It wasn’t something he could explain to himself, let alone anyone else, yet there was a freakish sense of… something lurking nearby, watching him. The sensation was overwhelmingly powerful and he ran forward, accessing his internal weapons and deploying them in battle configuration, but he saw nothing. It was as dark and silent as the grave. He shook himself, convinced that he was being silly and succumbing to night terrors, yet he couldn’t shake the impression of looming disaster.

“Enough of this,” he said, aloud, and accessed the local communications channel. The researchers had set up a dedicated communications network for the entire ship. He was a Community Representative. He should be able to talk to whoever he liked. “Get me the nearest Technical Faction representative.”

There was no response.

“The hell…?” Rupert asked, puzzled. The communications system was the most advanced that the Community could design. It didn’t fail. There were so many backups in the system that he would have to be broken down to atoms before it failed. It drew its power from his own body; it couldn’t fail unless the rest of him failed as well, and he was still alive. He rekeyed the mental command sequence and tried again. “This is Rupert, Spacer; link me to the nearest person on the ship.”

There was still no response, apart from a hint of… something, growing louder, at the edge of his awareness. He turned sharply, as if he expected something to be materialising right in front of him, but saw nothing. The sensation of being watched was growing stronger all the time. He opened his sensors and scanned the ship again, using the highest power levels at his disposal… and picked up hundreds of tiny flashes of power, flickering throughout the entire ship. The starship was coming to life.

The whole concept held him frozen for a second, and then his training and experience reasserted itself. “This is Rupert,” he repeated, as he turned to head back towards the access hatch. He would not panic. He’d been in worse situations before, although he couldn’t remember exactly where. Being trapped on an asteroid heading towards the local star hadn’t been as bad, although he remembered that it had been terrifying at the time. “I am declaring an emergency. I repeat…”

There was a burst of static through the communications network, loud enough to make his head spin, and then it cut off completely. He forgot dignity and ran forward, only to discover that the door he’d used to enter the chamber had vanished. It had been right there, but now there was nothing, but a solid wall. The starship was reconfiguring its internal structure as it brought itself back to life. He checked, quickly, to ensure that he wasn’t simply looking in the wrong place, only to have his original route confirmed. The door he’d used had vanished. He was trapped.

He turned around and boosted, searching for another way out of the chamber, but there was only one door at the far end, leading further into the ship. It dawned on him that the only reason the starship would have left it open was to lure him into a trap, but there was no other choice, but to race down it. He considered trying to blast his way out, but a simple scan of the wall material revealed that attempting to burn through it would merely cause the plasma weapons to bounce off it. Whatever it was made from, it was strong. He would have given his remaining teeth to know how it was done.

The lights flickered once, and then came back up completely, illuminating the corridor in stark relief. It was utterly bare and barren, barely large enough to allow two men to walk down side by side, and Rupert soon found himself scraping on each side of the corridor. It was closing in on him. He turned, hoping at least that he could get back to the chamber, but he was greeted by the sight of a solid black wall. The way back was blocked. He attempted to access the communications channel again, but there was nothing. The other men and women on the ship had to be experiencing the same kind of hell he was going through, discovering to their horror that the starship had come alive in front of them. By the time anyone on the outside learned what was going on, it would be too late.

Desperately, he activated his on-board arsenal and opened fire. Plasma bolts, laser cannons and particle beams flared out against the corridor walls, but they merely faded and vanished. He altered the frequency modulation of the weapons and tried again, but somehow the energy was being sucked away into nothingness. They weren’t inflicting any damage at all. The walls closed in and pressed his arms against his side, for all of his augmented strength, and then stopped. He was trapped. Rupert expected to die at any moment, but instead… in the distance, towards the end of the corridor, he saw a strange grey cloud forming out of nothing. He tried to scan it, only to get a series of contradictory results that didn’t seem to make any sense, even as the cloud advanced on him. A moment later, it swarmed over him and…

There was an instant where every augmented component in his body screamed an alarm at once, reporting endless violation of every part of his body, and then nothing, but darkness.