The force field disappeared with the faintest of pops, as of a bubble burst, its meniscus breaking into a million silver leaves dispersing on the air. The figure turned out to be a woman, who glanced at him curiously as he strode on through. He ignored her: she wasn’t Dragon and though her presence here had something to do with the sudden collapse of the field, she did not appear to be one of that entity’s creations.
‘I’m here to show you the way,’ someone said.
Crane glanced sideways, expecting to see the woman coming after him. The bird passed close overhead and, in a cloud of dust and a couple of detached feathers, landed just in front of Crane.
‘Over there.’ The bird, gesturing with one wing: ‘That’s where you go.’
Crane just stared.
The bird continued, ‘I’m Dragon’s envoy, and through me that entity has a message for you.’
Crane stared at it harder.
‘You ever played chess?’ Vulture asked.
20
Avatars: The first AIs communicated with their human masters by voice, document and VR packages, representing themselves in whatever form those masters chose. Certainly, in those years before the Quiet War, they themselves showed no initiative in this respect, probably so as not to alarm the dumb humans. As soon as the war began, AIs started to appear in those VR packages as robed figures, angels, devils, historical characters and mythic monsters, as well as other shapes and forms esoteric and strange. They also revealed their faces on screen and materialized in the laser space of early holojectors. Time passed, technology improved, and AIs became our rulers. Floating holojectors made possible walking holograms: AI avatars. AIs also used all manner of Golem, android and robot for this purpose, and use them still. Baroque automatons came briefly into vogue, then went out again—style of avatar body being subject to whimsical AI fashion. Many of the more powerful AIs can now run whole armies of avatars, projected, real, or by-blows of both. Also, what is an avatar and what is a distinct entity is a matter of much debate. Now it is rumoured that those same powerful AIs are using cloned and genetically manipulated creatures and even humans as avatars. This is doubtless true, and further blurs the line between distinct entities, and yet further makes a nightmare of definition.
— From Quince Guide compiled by humans
Tergal gazed blearily up at the patch of light, trying to understand what it meant. Abruptly he realized he was seeing the light of dawn, and, though he had felt certain he would never fall asleep on the cold metal floor so long as a monster prowled around outside, he evidently had dropped off. Anderson’s snores, vibrating their prison through much of the hours of darkness, attested to the fact that he had certainly slept.
Tergal stood, stretched, and looked around him. Five coffin shapes had been inset in the curved wall to his left. ‘What is this place, a morgue?’
For a moment Anderson’s snores stuttered out of sequence, before falling back into their familiar rhythm. Tergal frowned at him, then moved over to the hole the knight had created to get them in here. He peered out. No sign of the droon, just a damp morning seen through a stratum of mist.
‘I reckon we can—’
The ridged slope of the droon’s face slammed into the hole, clipping Tergal’s arm and sending him sprawling across the floor.
‘What the fuck!’ Anderson was up, but unsteady on his feet as the entire floor tilted. Mucal acid bubbled and fountained through the gap, but the monster could not turn its aim enough to eject the substance directly at Tergal. He rolled across the tilted floor towards Anderson, and they both backed up against the wall.
‘That was too close,’ said Tergal.
Anderson just gave him a dirty look. ‘That’s not how I like to wake up.’
‘Try finding a different profession then,’ Tergal replied.
Their metal shelter crashed back down as the droon rapidly withdrew its head. The two kept edging back along the inside wall, trying to keep out of spitting range. The creature now began crashing against the object they were in, shifting it then lifting it from the side they were crouching on. When it thumped down a second time, they both lost their footing. Tergal saw one of the coffin shapes spring open its door. A black-bearded man, wearing a one-piece loose garment of cloth, staggered out.
‘Over here!’ Anderson yelled, as he clambered to his feet again. The man looked bewildered, but as the droon tried to shove its head inside again, he moved very quickly to join them—almost like someone used to such situations, Tergal thought.
‘Right, big monster trying to get in—that figures.’ The stranger shook his head at the madness of it all. ‘My name’s Patran Thorn, by the way,’ he added.
‘Anderson Endrik of Rondure,’ said the knight, eyeing the droon’s head as it once again withdrew.
Tergal started laughing, then abruptly choked that off when he sensed the hysteria in it.
‘Anyone like to fill me in on what’s happening?’ Thorn asked smoothly. ‘I’ve been in the dark for a while.’ He winced.
‘I think your first statement already covered the situation,’ said Tergal.
Just then, a section of inner wall beside the gap began smoking, filling the room with an acrid metallic stink.
‘Have you got any nicely high-tech weapons in here?’ Anderson asked.
Thorn shrugged. ‘Not a thing.’
‘I’m only asking because I think our friend there is going to be in here with us very soon,’ said Anderson.
The droon crashed its visage into the hole again, then slammed it from side to side, enlarging the gap in the weakening metal.
‘Just a couple more like that should do it,’ Anderson added grimly.
But then, strangely, everything became still, and all the three of them could hear was the hiss of the acid dissolving metal.
‘Perhaps it’s given up,’ suggested Tergal, not believing that for a moment.
Both Anderson and Thorn gave him a doubtful look. Protracted minutes slunk by, then as one they flinched when something else appeared at the hole. Tergal stared at the woman: her white hair tied back, a sun-browned face with wrinkles at the corners of mild brown eyes.
‘I suggest you get out of there right now, and that we all be prepared to run very fast,’ she said. ‘My holocaptures aren’t going to keep that thing interested for much longer.’
Gant’s voice, but not Gant speaking …
His breath choked off and vision blurring, Cormac saw the dead soldier bring up the ugly ceramal commando knife he favoured and swipe it across, felt his AG harness fall away.
Too slow, he realized, as he mentally groped to initiate Shuriken. The throwing star shot viciously from its holster just as Gant threw him hard against the ground. Cormac bounced, consciousness ebbing, but not allowed to go by the perceptile program he pulled from his gridlink. He rolled and came up levelling his thin-gun as Shuriken dropped between himself and Gant, chainglass blades fully extended, keening high as it spun faster and faster. Now Cormac noticed that on Gant’s bare metal chest was some black tangled growth, as if someone had thrown a wad of glue-soaked human hair at the soldier.
Without much hope of a reaction, and without taking his eyes off Gant, Cormac growled, ‘Come on, show yourself, hero.’
‘Oh, I’m just a spectator, agent,’ Skellor replied.
Prompted by his own hearing and the sound pick-up in Shuriken, Cormac swung round, locating the source of that voice with a triangulation program in his skull’s hardware. Shuriken shot sideways with an air-rending shriek, and cut through those precise coordinates. At that moment Gant lunged horrifically fast. With minimum exertion, Cormac turned balletically, pumping five shots into a Golem knee so that Gant momentarily lost his balance as he tried to correct his lunge. Stepping back with that attempted correction, Cormac fired twice more, turned and stepped away. Crouching, two smoking hollows where his artificial eyes had been, Gant spun towards him, then froze.