The Ascendant Stars - Michael Cobley [99]
Yet the machine was markedly different from before. Although of the same basic clamshell design, its construction looked cruder, heavier, with strip-reinforced seams around the shell rims and surface panels. A short-barrelled weapon protruded from the underside, presumably the source of the bolts. The most eyecatching change was the mode of propulsion, three propellers jutting from the upper shell while a side-mounted one acted as a stabiliser.
‘As you can see,’ the drone said, ‘I have been altered. Hands, please.’
Robert held them up and a blade-tipped arm poked out of a tiny hatch to neatly sever his bonds. The blade then came loose, fell to the ground, and the metal arm folded back inside. Robert smiled as he picked up the blade, leaned over and freed his ankles.
‘Very steamcog,’ he said. ‘What’s the power source? – cells?’
‘Half my interior is full of them, curious glass valves full of white vapour and metal coils. At least I don’t have a smokestack poking out of me.’
Robert got to his feet and nodded. ‘The meta-quantal environment must have modified you in accordance with some pattern … ’
‘You should leave such speculation till later,’ the drone said. ‘The source of that rumbling noise is heading this way.’
Robert paused – yes, it was definitely louder and now coming from a particular direction, the end of the bushy vale from which the Vor and their hosts had come.
‘Can you see what it looks like?’ he said.
‘My sensors have been reduced to a crude radar,’ Reski Emantes said acidly. ‘All I can say is that it is gigantic and will soon pass this way. I suggest that you start running.’
The drone’s props tilted and it glided away towards the other side of the vale. Taken by surprise, Robert broke into a jog and went after the drone only to find that it was still pulling away from him. He lengthened his stride, picked up the pace and soon found himself running across a pebbly strand. Ahead, the drone flew over a shallow stream and on through a gap in the trees that lined the other side. And by now the grinding rumbling was loud enough to drown out his breathing and the sound of his running feet.
The mist was thick and the rumbling was near-deafening by the time he reached the gap in the tree line. Beyond it, the trees were tall and the undergrowth thick, and through the mist he could just see a winking yellow light and hear a voice: ‘Be swift, Robert Horst!’
He almost didn’t make it. As he darted and wove between the trees, the rumbling made the ground shake and the air feel as if it was buzzing in his lungs. Engulfed in the thunderous roar of it, he saw a tree off to the right start to topple, then one to his left, then another directly ahead that brought down two in a domino effect. The ground itself started to feel spongy and unstable and up ahead he could see the drone, Reski Emantes, signal light winking, some way up a steep rocky incline. Then he lost his footing.
He sprawled, hands scraping as he tried to break his fall, and a tree slammed down directly in front of him. Spattered in grime and mud, he regained his feet, grabbed a branch and clambered over the fallen trunk, leaped down and plunged onwards. As the trees thinned out the ground rose steeply to the incline, natural stepped formations of mossy rock up which he started to laboriously climb. But only for the first three steps. The vibrations in the rock made it impossible to get a firm grip and the roar was so overwhelming that all he could do was curl up away from the brink of the ledge he was on, with hands clamped over his ears. And amid the shattering chaos of noise a great cold shadow swept over everything, swallowed all in a veil of murk before, finally, it rolled past, an immense wheel, perhaps a hundred feet high, built from dark wood and rough metal. In the heavy mist its upper rim was veiled, but on the ground it crushed boulders to rubble and trees to matchwood. Then it was followed by another vast wheel, and a third, and a fourth. The shadows and the mists swirled and closed around it as it passed.
If the wheels are that massive,