The Ascendant Stars - Michael Cobley [173]
‘Perhaps – but all the parts of his plan are now coming together. It really all began with the discovery of Darien. The Godhead saw how he could very easily prod the various powers into focusing on the ancient Forerunner device with the aim of drawing all available military forces away from those areas where the crucial elements of his scheme are now ongoing. He was even prepared to allow the warpwell to be unlocked so that the Legion of Avatars could escape, which is what has happened. So while battles and destruction swirl around Darien, the Godhead has already ascended a considerable distance up the tiers of hyperspace to confront one of his most dangerous adversaries. Look.’
The shutters lifted on the two windows. Beyond was a strange grey expanse, at first glance looking like the surface of an airless moon. But then Robert saw that the surface was in continual movement, slow ripples and heaves of regular forms, geometric shapes mixed with odd curved or bulbous things which he realised were bodily extremities, noses, fingers, ears, or at least what looked very like them. They reshaped and reformed, and often faces emerged wearing all manner of expressions and emotions only to be smoothed away by the next tide of undulations. He saw swelling hills that narrowed into wavering columns, or cubes that turned into buildings that toppled/melted into transient fissures, or orbs and pyramids that broke free of the oceanic amorphouscape to float through the air until snatched back down by tentacles with mouths.
‘This is the physical aspect of the Godhead, at least his outer husk,’ said the empathic entity. ‘It’s like a great ragged continent more than a thousand miles across. We are located on one of a few hundred immutable landmarks, a kind of tower once used as a platform for defences. Now, however, we rely on others for protection.’
Above the restless surface, the ships of the Vor and the Shyntanil flew in layered echelons, black organic outlines of the former, the big diamond carriers of the latter, all moving in one great formation through the pale blue emptiness of some hyperspace tier …
Then he saw the sparkle and flash of ship-to-ship weaponsfire and in the distance an unmistakable conical, stepped edifice. The Construct’s headquarters, the Garden of the Machines, now undoubtedly being defended by the AI-craft of the Aggression.
‘So the Godhead is going after the Construct,’ he said.
‘As I said, Darien is the arena, the crucible where several fleets are now engaged in a titanic struggle, therefore the Construct presents the only serious obstacle to the Godhead’s purpose.’
Robert stared out at the distant warfare, feeling infuriated at his own incapacity.
‘You said that perhaps there was a way to stop the Godhead’s insane plan,’ he said. ‘How would we do that?’
‘It involves you and me,’ the empathic entity said. ‘Your memories of the Tanenth machine’s simulation of its creators, and my memory of the Godhead’s guilt over their suicide. And it will probably lead to our deaths.’
Robert smiled sardonically. ‘Well, personally I don’t believe that it’s over until it’s over. But let’s hear it.’
THE CONSTRUCT
The siege of the Garden of the Machines was not going well. The battlefront between the Construct’s Aggression ships and the vessels of the Vor and the Shyntanil was constantly shifting back and forth according to the rhythm of attacks and feints, surprise jumps, decoy manoeuvres, and the unseen war of datanet sabotage. In the overall aggregate could be seen the incontrovertible truth of the enemy’s gradual and inexorable advance.
The Construct was monitoring the tactics of the defence, monitoring the decision-making of the strategic cognitives and the transrational solutions of the conjecturator subminds. At the same time it was overseeing the loading of the contingency craft, the means by which a new Garden of the Machines would be established in a secluded tier far away. It was also giving instructions to the military Rosas, the commanders of the last-ditch defences. Both they