Progeny (The Progenitor Trilogy, Book Three) (105 page)

Katherine struggled as the Singularity engulfed her.  She could hear Rekkid crying out and caught glimpses of him through the swarm, his thrashing form similarly enrobed in the glittering creatures.  The planet was coming apart around them.  Great pieces of the crust, half molten, were breaking away under the impact of titanic weapons hitting the surface.  Continent sized chunks of rock and the metal structures that the Shapers had covered it with, were being ripped apart.  For a split second she could see through one of the newly formed rents in the crust and saw the shapes of dozens of ships fighting with one another, the ripples of weapons fire lighting up the sky.

She could feel the horrible creatures coating her body, feel them biting and tugging at the surface of her suit, trying to pull apart the armour and get at the soft, vulnerable flesh within.  They coated her helmet, pressing themselves against the faceplate as they gnawed at it with razor sharp mandibles.

‘Don’t worry.  I’ve got you,’ said a voice.  It was Eonara.

‘Eonara!’ cried Katherine.  ‘Help us!  What’s happening!?’

‘The Arkari Navy has entered the system and is attempting to destroy the planet.  I have taken control of your suits, temporarily, and modified their armour plating to maximum levels.  It may be enough to hold off the Singularity for a moment longer.’

‘Get us out of here!’

‘I’m working on that.  I’m having one or two problems.’

She wanted to scream: ‘Why isn’t it working!?  Why isn’t it working!?’ as the Singularity drew them in.  The Shapers had devoured the data in the Shaper head, yet so far, nothing had happened, or so it seemed.  Perhaps they had failed.  Perhaps the Singularity had spotted their ruse and defeated it, and they had given it the key to true universal domination.

‘Rekkid!’ she screamed.  ‘Rekkid!  Can you hear me!?’

She felt the Shaper organisms redouble their efforts to pry apart her suit.

The ship showed Beklide the wreck.  The
Shining Glory
had been struck by a terrible force.  The entire forward section of the vessel was entirely missing, as if some great creature had taken a bite out of the manta-ray ship.  She was surrounded by an expanding cloud of debris that pointed to her own demise as well as the wreck of another vessel of greater size that had been entirely destroyed.  Only mere fragments of its golden hull remained and were steadily drifting apart inside a field of superheated gases and still glowing metals.

There was a signal from the
Glory
.  Beklide ordered the
Sword of Reckoning
to put it through to her.

‘Mentith!’ she cried, not waiting for the speaker to begin.

‘I am sorry, but no,’ said a voice.  ‘My name is Eonara.  I am an artificial intelligence of Progenitor construction.  Mentith was my friend and comrade.  I am sorry to report that he is dead.’

‘No...’ said Beklide.  She felt numb.  She had assumed that Mentith had been killed attempting to prevent the Shaper attack on their home-worlds, but it seemed that he had survived somehow, only to die here at the hands of the enemy.  Now that she had it confirmed, it still came as a terrible shock.

‘Please, I have a message of some urgency.  You must halt your attempt to destroy the Singularity with your weapons.’

‘Why?’

‘I can’t tell you.  Please, you have to trust me!’

‘How can I trust you?  I have no idea who you are.  How do I know that this isn’t some trick of the enemy?’

‘You don’t.  Please, only a few moments more.’

‘Meritarch, the Executioner Cannon is recharged and is ready for firing,’ said the ship.  The aim has been adjusted.  The second shot will attempt to bisect the planet along its polar axis.

‘Please...’ said Eonara, imploring her.

The Singularity suddenly became horribly aware that something was wrong.  It felt its grip loosen on its minions.  They refused to respond to its commands, to even acknowledge a response.  It was as if a biological creature had sudden lost the use of its extremities, as if fingers refused to move.  The sensation began to spread.  Whole star systems under its control suddenly went dark and then, one by one, whole regions of the galaxy refused to reply.

The Singularity began to conclude, too late, what had happened.  It had been tricked.  It was losing its grip on the galaxy.  Something was disrupting its communications.  Even as it fought to regain control, entire sections of its key networks started to drop offline as it began to receive reports from the creatures still under its control that their comrades had turned on them, before they too refused to respond.

The data!  The data must have been corrupted somehow!  Those pathetic creatures that now struggled in its grasp must be to blame!  It would tear them apart!  To its horror, it found that the component organisms that made up its own core systems were now beyond its control.  As it moved to crush the Arkari and human that floated before it, it discovered that it was unable to do so, as the swarms of tiny creatures that held them began to devour one another.

It has to work.  Oh God, it has to work, thought Katherine.  The creatures were starting to pierce the outer layers of her armour and burrow inwards towards her skin.  She could feel them gnawing away.  She struggled fruitlessly and cried out in desperation.  She didn’t want to die, not here, not alone inside this suit where she couldn’t see, couldn’t touch anything, couldn’t hear anything except the sounds of those things trying to get inside and rip her to shreds or suffocate her in the vacuum, whichever happened first.

She had just wanted to be an archaeologist, spending her time digging up ancient relics and discovering the past. What was she doing here, on this hellish world at the centre of the galaxy that was collapsing around her?  She just wanted to go home...

The Shapers released her.

The Shaper swept towards Chen, and then it seemed to falter.  It hung in the air before her, as if unsure what to do next.  The cloud of silver motes convulsed.  Then it shifted backwards towards Cox.  Something was already wrong with the Admiral.  He stumbled as if drunk, as did his men. 

Cox gave a sudden cry of horror and dismay.

One of the marines raised his weapon unsteadily and shot his comrade next to him full in the face, pulping the man’s skull with the heavy laser rifle.  Then another comrade took aim at him and returned the favour, only for Cox to bat him aside with a powerful blow and an angry roar.

You are all imperfect
, said the Shaper. 
Imperfection must be rooted out and eliminated.

With that, the Shaper rushed forward and engulfed the remaining men.

Cox screamed.  He screamed even as the Shaper stripped the very flesh from his bones, and then ground those bones to dust, ripped apart his body and revealed the squid-like mass of tendrils that that filled his insides.  Finally, it tore the parasitic grub-like creature from his skull and crushed it.  The entity that had inhabited Cox’s body was very much alive during the entire process, right up until the parasite within him was disassembled, its fragmented parts clattering off the walls and floor of the bridge as it was violently destroyed by the Shaper.  The enslaved marines too, were ripped asunder, their bloody remains scattered across the bridge, and with its work complete, the Shaper disappeared back the way it had come, out of the bridge, back through the innards of the ship until it found its way back into space, where a new battle had now erupted.  The Shaper vessels now fought one another.

Baldwin felt the horrible things release her.  She stood up, gasping, and looked around.  Her men were picking themselves up off the floor.  The enslaved were still all around her, as was the carpet of insectile creatures, but they seemed to be ignoring her and her men.  Instead, they stood like statues, as if unsure what to do, as the mass of insects milled about their feet.  Then there was an awful snarl from hundreds of ravaged throats, and they suddenly fell upon each other.

‘What the hell?’ said one of the Hidden Hand.

‘I don’t know, but let’s move, people!’ said Baldwin.  ‘Come on!’

The assault teams didn’t need to be told twice.  Seizing the opportunity, they dashed from the Assembly Chamber and back out into the corridor, where a similar scene was taking place.  Enslaved fought one another in a massed brawl that filled the corridor with struggling bodies as they literally tried to tear one another limb from limb.  In the midst, at the top of the stairs that led down to the basement, stood a bedraggled man in a battered naval uniform, supporting an ashen faced Steven.  Baldwin cried out for joy.  Beneath the grime and bruises and weeks of beard growth, she’d recognise her commanding officer anywhere.  It was Haines.

‘My god, sir!  It’s damn good to see you!’

‘You too, Commander.  What just happened?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Well whatever it is, we oughta make the most of it.  You have an escape route?’

‘Yes sir, this way,’ said Baldwin, and grabbed her comm.

The
Profit Margin
raced away from the centre of the city at rooftop height as the five Shaper craft descended towards it to intercept, and then they turned on each other.  Isaacs spotted the weapons fire on his sensors, fearing that the ships had decided to take a shot at him, but was puzzled when he saw one of the sensor blips fall to earth and disappear.  Pulling the ship around in a tight turn he was amazed to see the four remaining craft blazing away at one another with their weapons as a second ship exploded and then corkscrewed to earth, crashing into the suburbs in a shower of debris.  He heard Anna exclaiming and then whooping from the weapons station.

‘They’re fighting with one another in the streets!  Cal, look at this, they’re tearing each other apart!’

‘What the hell...?’ he breathed.  ‘Maria, are you seeing this?  The Shapers are fighting one another!’

‘Roger that,’ Maria replied.  ‘What do you want to do?

The comm. came to life:

‘
Profit Margin
,
Matrimony
, this is Commander Baldwin.  Please return to the LZ for pickup.  Confirm that we have Admiral Haines.’

‘Roger that Commander,’ Isaacs replied.  ‘We’re seeing the Shapers turn on one another from up here.’

‘Here too.  I don’t know what caused it, or how long it will last, but it’s given us a chance to get out of here alive.  Please hurry, we have wounded for evac.’

‘We’ll be there in a second,’ Isaacs replied.  ‘Hang on.’

High above Orinoco, a new and terrible battle now raged.  The Singularity had shared its new findings with all of the nodes that made up its consciousness.  These in turn had distributed the data to every ship, every agent and every parasitic creature in the Shaper hive-mind within reach.  None had detected the code buried within the data that subtly reprogrammed each and every Shaper organism which greedily digested the knowledge that promised to unlock their full potential.  They were now driven mad by hatred.  Hatred for the impure, hatred for their own kind, for now each and every Shaper organism only saw itself and the whole of biological life as perfect, and every other Shaper organism as inferior and unfit to survive, and so the Shaper hive-mind began to fall apart as they turned on one another.  The hundreds of Shaper ships in the Achernar system turned their weapons on each other, unleashing a fire storm on their former comrades, on the portal device itself and on the massive ship that had constructed it, which in turn fired back with a vengeance on the pathetic, inferior creatures that dared to attack it. 

The Nahabe, who had been heavily engaged against overwhelming odds, now watched in amazement as the ships that they had been so doggedly fighting suddenly turned their guns on one another.  It seem that suddenly they were unaware of the Nahabe craft that they had been trying to destroy only moments ago, instead seeing each other as the enemy.  The Nahabe pulled their ships back, and watched incredulously as the Shaper fleet began to destroy itself.

Gunderson’s men had their back to the wall.  The array had been turned into a defensive strong point.  The enslaved horde had pushed them back up the hill, until they now fought in the shadow of the concrete buildings.  Fire spat from windows and doorways, whilst others kept up their defence from slit trenches hastily dug in the ground surrounding the array. 

It was no good.  He had seen dozens of his men cut down in the first minutes.  There were simply too many of the enemy, the modifications that many of them had been subjected to made them difficult to kill.  The more massive of the alien creatures had led the charge.  Things like gigantic gorillas and others like armoured, six limbed bulls had acted as battering rams against his men, crushing them underfoot and scattering them before their comrades swarmed in after them.  The huge creatures had not gone down easily, absorbing massive amounts of fire before they fell, and not before the leaping, snarling horde behind them had broken through.

Gunderson kept on firing constantly, pausing only to eject spent magazines and slap a fresh one into place.  He saw his own death a hundred times, saw his men ripped apart or trampled, eviscerated by slashing blades or gored by armoured horns and spikes.

This was the end.  This was it.

One of the bull creatures spotted him and charged towards him, horns gleaming in the sunlight.  Gunderson kept on firing as it approached, his bullets ricocheting off its armoured skull.  He let out a yell at the thing, bellowing a defiant cry as it charged him.  He steeled himself to meet his end on the tip of those razor sharp horns... and then the creature stopped in its tracks.

Katherine’s could see out of her visor once more.  Looking around frantically she saw Rekkid floating a short distance away, while all around her the interior of the Shaper world shattered and collapsed, surrounding them both with floating debris.  Ahead, the bright torus of the Singularity still whirled, but its pace was gathering speed.  It was as if the individual motes that made up its whole were locked in some sort of terrible struggle.  Its size had increased dramatically.  The streams that had cycled to and from it through the crust had ceased to flow.  Instead, they had gathered into one place.  They whirled in a destructive dance of death, ever faster and more furious, as they attempted to annihilate one another.  The disc shuddered, convulsing with inner shockwaves that travelled outwards from the centre, where the disc had grown white hot and was wreathed in energies.