The Stars Like Gods Page 32

  51

  * * *

  RASU COMMAND PLATFORM

  I open my eyes.

  Open.

  Open.

  Open.

  Open….

  The frosted glass of a stasis chamber cover looms above me, over and over and over again in an endless recursion.

  Begin. This thought is singular, yet distant. A command from myself. The covers all slide open like a cascade of dominoes, revealing bright, sterile light from high above.

  8,000

  I retrieve a blade—archine, a word infused anew with consequential meaning—from a hidden pocket to my left. I know where it is because my mind is flooded by an avalanche of memories and pain and data and joy.

  I am Nika Tescarav.

  I am Nika Kirumase.

  I am Nicolette Hinotori.

  I am Anaden and SAI and kyoseil, all bound up in an Asterion soul that lives and loves and badly wants to continue doing so.

  I will die today as many times as I must so that I can live.

  I breathe in, and with the exhale absorb the knowledge entwined in every recorded tick forward of time that has led to this moment. No, not to this moment—to thirteen hours and twenty-two minutes in the past. But I sense nothing crucial has changed during the gap in time, and I know what I have to do.

  I reach up and grasp the frame, pull myself up and climb out of the stasis chamber. The Rasu will instantly become aware of the escape of the prisoners. This body has never walked, but now it must run.

  Run.

  Run.

  Run run run run run.

  Shadows of myself flit in and out of my peripheral vision, but I can only focus on my own. I search for an opening cut into a wall of the expansive lab, because the Rasu don’t use doors.

  A hulking, multi-limbed Rasu steps into my path. My legs are no more. I fall.

  The violet flame of a weapon firing sears through me. My chest explodes. I fall.

  Blinding light from nowhere and everywhere consumes me. I fall.

  Rasu orbs flood the lab with their beams crisscrossing the room in a macabre dance of death. Slicing into flesh. I fall. I’m falling for so long.

  6,618

  I crouch and sprint beneath the fire. Alarms are sounding now. I need to move faster.

  Agonizing pain rips up my spine to burn the base of my skull. I fall.

  Waves in the air form Rasu words. My routines filter, sort and translate them. Breach. Stop the specimens. Kill. Kill all.

  I fall.

  5,497

  Openings leading out of the endless lab begin to melt and seal shut. I force this newborn body to sprint ahead, but the alien metal crushes me in a vise-grip. My breastbone shatters. My heart ruptures.

  I fall.

  Fall.

  Fall.

  Fall.

  Fall.

  4,816

  I rush forward and slip through seconds before the way is shut.

  I slip through.

  I slip through.

  I slip through.

  A crude schematic of the platform floats in my mind, half scans captured by stealthed reconnaissance ships and half guesswork cobbled together by military experts and the strange new ceraffin. The schematic seems certain that the power control center is 3.2 kilometers away. Down below, into the depths.

  A maze awaits me, endless uniform hallways, each one Rasu. But I have escaped the killing floor that was the lab. I stand a chance.

  I must be quiet, but I must be swift.

  I turn left.

  Nika, you need to hurry. The Rasu are activating their defenses. If we don’t detonate the bombs soon, they’ll be able to block the power flows.

  Dashiel’s voice. It’s like a whisper in a dream. My love, my—

  —I never see why I fall.

  I climb down one of the tubes the Rasu use to transition between levels.

  I’m trying. I…we are all trying.

  I fall.

  A block-like Rasu collides with me in the tube. I fall.

  3,333

  I run left, then right. Straight ahead. The walls swim and morph, and my path is cut off. I fall.

  I backtrack. Left left left right left ahead keep going ahead. Dead end end end end end. I fall.

  2,819

  A room of Rasu. I fall in so many pieces.

  Another lab. In it the carcasses of Asterions are flayed open and spread across dissection tables. My heart breaks, and a scream rips through my throat. I want to fall, and I do.

  I run for the depths of the platform, again and again, from multiple directions and on multiple paths. Left, then down, straight, then down. Always down.

  The wall beside me dissolves, and I fall into space. I’ve done this part before, but this time Dashiel can’t be here to catch me. Heat and light engulf me as a cobwebbed star welcomes me into its embrace.

  Space again. Heat and light. Falling, falling forever.

  1,681

  I run up across ramps and leap down into gaps and tubes. Power begins to prickle my skin. Not long now. Rasu metal slices through me. I fall.

  I veer right, away from the growing power, a last-minute feint to buy more of me time. I fall.

  I’m gutted. I fall.

  I round a corner and surprise a bipedal Rasu. My blade is in my hand, and I lash out, slicing upward. A Rasu limb falls to the ground.

  The archine blade works!

  The companion limb barrels forward into my face and I—

  —fall.

  807

  Openings vanish as I rush for them. The way is shut.

  Shut.

  Shut.

  Shut.

  Cornered, I fall.

  Boxed in, I fall.

  Trapped, I fall.

  435

  The floor and the ceiling compress into one. I fall.

  The walls liquefy and flood the room, drowning me in molten metal. I float, fallen.

  The alarms grow louder and more urgent. Orders are barked, locations shouted out. I don’t know which ones pinpoint me. I keep running. I keep falling.

  213

  The rooms widen and grow spacious once more, filled with equipment buzzing and blinking out the language of the Rasu. I’m close.

  Equipment abandons its usual purpose for a new one. I fall to scanners and atmosphere regulators and radiation sensors.

  121

  I plummet down a tube. The longest one, and the last.

  The walls of the tube shift, and I crash to the floor far below, shattering my legs. My broken body lies there until I fall.

  I brace myself and land nimbly on the floor. My skin burns as energy washes over me. The air is electrified, and only the most robust internal protections keep my OS from frying.

  At the center of a cavernous room spins a vortex a thousand-fold larger than the one in the Rasu simex. Violet plasma roils and thrashes like a caged animal, darting out beyond the bounds only to be drawn inexorably back into the maelstrom. Rows of crystals line the ceiling, walls and floor surrounding the vortex. Tens of thousands of them, and each one is illuminated from within by a pulsing glow.

  A prick stings the base of my spine. I fall.

  I need to move but instead I watch. The vortex neither grows nor shrinks. The crystals’ pulses fall into a regular rhythm. This is steady-state. A power distribution system, feeding the behemoth that is the Rasu stronghold.

  My knees are cut out from beneath me. I fall.

  89

  Somewhere, a module controls it—a Rasu, but a Rasu functioning as a machine. Programmable and divergable.

  A row of flashing lights catches my attention. Along the left wall and dangerously close to the sea of crystals.

  Ahead of me, another is already moving toward it. The floor vanishes beneath her. She falls. I fall.

  I run. We run. We fight and dodge. Our blades slash and thrust. We fall.

  63

  I dash among my fighting and falling sisters as they clear the path for me. The fl
oor vanishes again, but I leap over the chasm and reach the bank of equipment. I look left, then right. It stretches for a hundred meters in each direction.

  How to locate the correct module? There can be no hesitation and will be no second chances. I stand flush against the equipment, where the Rasu cannot afford to dissolve the floor, and study the flashing lights, reading their output using the ceraffin’s algorithms.

  Internal power flow. Engine stabilization. Radiation shielding and conversion—

  —sixty meters away, I find it. Multi-platform power regulation. Safety controls. A sprawling array of modules dedicated to managing not this platform, but all platforms as one.

  The floor behind me rises up and consumes me whole. I fall.

  Falling becomes a feedback loop.

  34

  The floor will take us all. I run away, toward the vortex. I burn up before I fall.

  21

  I run in the wrong direction, sacrificing myself to draw the enemy’s attention for a few precious seconds. I fall.

  13

  Nika, you must hurry. There is no more time.

  And no more misdirection. I sprint for the module array.

  Pain explodes in my mind. I fall.

  Fall.

  Fall.

  Fall.

  Fall.

  5

  A module dances out a pattern of light, and the melody tells me its purpose is the one I seek.

  A shock erupts from beneath me. I fall.

  4

  Ten meters. I stumble to the floor, my legs crippled from a strike I never see. I fall.

  3

  I reach the module and slice into it with the archine blade, then tear away a section to expose Rasu circuitry. I grasp a Rasu filament and open myself to it.

  Reams of alien code spiral through my mind, overwhelming my process for thirty-five nanoseconds until the new programming takes hold. Analyzes, sorts, identifies.

  Time slows, then stands still. Ones and zeroes. On and off, and the superpositions in between.

  Claws grab me and rip me away from the module. I fall.

  2

  I grasp a Rasu filament and open myself to it. I understand it now, and my programing churns ever faster, overclocking itself in a suicidal race to create the diverge code that will shut down the failsafe controls across the platforms.

  A shadow encroaches on the light of the module, and I throw myself in front of the incoming Rasu fire to protect myself. My last self.

  I fall.

  1

  I push the diverge code into the Rasu system, brute-force overwriting existing commands until the chain reaction cannot be stopped.

  As the neural web comprising my mind burns itself out and I fall, I send out a single command.

  Ignite.

  52

  * * *

  RASU STRONGHOLD

  Ignite.

  The platform Nika had infiltrated electrified in a lightning storm of silver and blue. Fissures erupted across the hull to vent waves of electricity out into space then expanded to engulf the entire structure. In seconds the remains of the hull crumbled and tumbled into the star’s embrace.

  And with it, all 8,000 iterations of Nika’s body, psyche and soul.

  Dashiel held his breath as like a lit fuse, thousands of KA bombs detonated in staccato explosions across the orbital ring of platforms, sending electricity coursing through enormous batteries already filled to the brim with power. There was nowhere for the overflow to go but out, and the battery platforms had mechanisms for such an eventuality. With the floodgates open and the safety guards off, waves of excess power poured out to the other platforms in the network.

  It took ten seconds for the energy overflows to begin to spill back into the Dyson lattice. Energy also continued to flow from the Dyson nodes, and across the background of the star’s photosphere bursts of electrical energy exploded like fireworks in the empty space between the nodes and the platforms.

  Then a node blew apart. One down, a hundred thousand or so to go.

  A series of blasts lit the battlefield pane on the Dauntless as multiple platforms shattered in rapid-fire fashion. In their wake, a section of the Dyson lattice cracked and fell into the star, destroying the structural integrity of the entire lattice.

  A new image appeared on the pane, from the far side of the star, where node after node glowed brightly and…melted.

  A solar flare unfurled, reaching out to lick at the crumbling hull of a platform. A coronagraph filter revealed the surge of plasma and EM radiation that followed in its wake, and in a few more seconds the platform had melted as well.

  The pane now struggled to keep up with the number of solar flares whipping across the star’s profile, and the Dauntless’ position 0.4 AU distant from the star suddenly didn’t feel nearly distant enough.

  A ping arrived then, and for a moment Dashiel forgot about the raging inferno burning down a stellar system.

  “Sir, our radiation shielding is at 92% capacity and rising. We can’t stay here much longer.”

  Palmer’s voice was calm and even-keeled. “Understood. Navigation, be prepared to depart the system at full speed on my mark. Ridani, care to weigh in?”

  Dashiel breathed out through his nose, trying to ignore his racing pulse. “Based on the spiking solar flare activity and parallel increase in CMEs, I suspect the massive energy pushback from the Dyson lattice has destabilized the star’s magnetic field.”

  “Is it going to erupt? Go nova?”

  “Um…no. It’s unlikely. But until the magnetic field re-stabilizes, the region surrounding the star, out to maybe an AU, will not be friendly to anything living.”

  “It’s working, then?”

  Dashiel steepled his hands at his mouth. For several seconds he stood there, transfixed by the symphony of destruction unfolding before his eyes. They’d lit the spark—one giant bomb of a spark—and now the star, one of the most powerful nuclear bombs in the universe, was taking care of the rest.

  “Ridani?”

  “Yes. It’s looking as though it’s working.”

  “Excellent. Navigation—”

  In the left quadrant of the heavily filtered viewport, a leviathan Rasu vessel that had assembled in the quiet of a few minutes ago moved toward a growing vortex in space. A wormhole.

  “Palmer, we can’t let a Rasu that size escape.”

  “No shit. Navigation, advance to weapons range of the Rasu vessel.”

  Commander Palmer (OpFlare): “All vessels still in the stellar system, open fire on the Rasu vessel opening a wormhole in Quadrant 7. Exact coordinates are being distributed now.”

  The Rasu vessel accelerated forward as the wormhole grew larger. The Dauntless followed.

  “Palmer, if we’re not careful we’ll get drawn into it—”

  “Thank you for your input. Weapons, fire.”

  Any visual sign of their weapons arcing across space was lost in the brilliance of the explosions consuming the thousands of platforms and Rasu vessels—at least until their fire impacted the hull of the leviathan in a smattering of tiny pinpricks. Had they so much as cracked the hull?

  “Again.”

  Dashiel paced in a tight circle. “We don’t need to destroy it, just distract it from leaving for long enough for the star to finish its work.”

  Beyond their encounter, the star’s activity increased precipitously. It seemed to swell, gobbling up what remained of the Dyson lattice into the breadth of its photosphere. “Which shouldn’t be long.”

  Of course, right now any solar flare that took out the leviathan was certain to destroy the Dauntless as well. Which…they could recover from, so long as they completed the mission here.

  The Rasu vessel swung away from the wormhole in their direction, and as it loomed over their comparatively miniscule ship, Dashiel had a hard time convincing himself this was a positive development.

  “Evasive maneuvers. Keep firing.”

  Kiernan never should have lamented
not getting to shoot at the enemy.

  He gritted his teeth and fought the rising pull of the spinning vortex that might be an actual black hole to swing into position and fire on a vessel so gargantuan it made the gargantuan platform he’d been so intimidated by resemble a Chizeru child’s toy.

  But he was, believe it or not, rather good at the shooting-at-the-enemy part, and the low-grade panic that had accompanied him for most of the mission ebbed away as he swept beneath the Rasu vessel in search of a weak point. Ha! But, seriously, a weapons or engine port, a cargo bay door seam…there had to be some weakness on this monstrosity.

  He fired every few seconds for good measure as he searched, hoping the vessel didn’t sprout a lumbering arm and swat away him and his gnat bites.

  Above him an array of violet crystals throbbed with light, as if they were about to burst.

  Damn. He’d found a weapons port all right. He zeroed in and unleashed the full firepower of his tiny fighter jet, cackling in delight when his weapons impacted and a few crystals cracked and broke apart. “Take that, you Rasu scum—oh, shit!”

  His ship lurched to starboard and fell into a slow roll—except he hadn’t guided it into any such roll. He tried to straighten out the motion, then tried to reverse thrusters…but he may as well be playing with a dead stick.

  The cavorting bands of the vortex grew in his viewport as his roll accelerated into a spin. The dark hull of the Rasu vessel flashed past him again and again and again. His vision began to blur, but he thought on the last pass the hull looked to be cracking in two. Maybe his shots had hit their mark….

  The last thing he saw before he passed out was the vortex rushing in to consume him.

  Tiny dots of light danced across the Rasu hull like fireflies—the impacts of hundreds of weapons from the Asterion and Taiyok fleets. The leviathan almost seemed to hesitate, as if taken aback by an attack on multiple fronts.

  A solar flare spanning a full quarter of the star’s diameter spewed out into space to destroy a dozen broken platforms and several thousand ships fleeing them. The viewport flashed white as the flare overwhelmed all filters.

  “Radiation shielding at 108%!”