The Beast Arises

‘Well, yes. Sad. Anyway, before that happened, him, dying, he sent me equipment. I asked him for it. Specialist equipment. I asked for it, you see? But so much of it was damaged before I could use it. Everything went a bit crazy. Yes, a bit crazy.’

‘The magos believed from the very outset,’ Slaughter said to Daylight, ‘that the noise bursts were a form of communication. He wanted to decipher them. A drop of specialist equipment to allow him to do that was arranged, but it had been overrun by Chromes and half-scrapped by the time we got to it.’

‘Communication,’ said Daylight. ‘From the Chromes?’

‘I thought so at first,’ said Laurentis, jumping up suddenly to stretch his cramping legs. ‘Yes, yes, I did. At first. I thought we had underestimated the technical abilities of the Chromes. I thought we had underestimated their sapience. They migrate from world to world. That suggested a great capacity for… for, uhm…’

Another noise burst, a longer one, had just echoed though the darkness of the stockade and the ruined nest, and it had rather distracted him.

‘What was I saying?’ he asked them, digging his knuckles into his ears again and jiggling his head.

‘Communication?’ prompted Daylight. He remembered very clearly what had been spoken of on the bridge of the Azimuth. The noises coming from Ardamantua read as organic — boosted and amplified for broadcast, but organic. Like a voice. ‘You believe it’s communication?’ he pressed.

‘Yes! Yes! That’s what I thought! That was my theory, and it seemed a valid one. I thought the Chromes were trying to surrender, or negotiate peace, that’s what I thought at first. Do you remember me saying that, Slaughter?’

‘I do, magos,’ said Slaughter.

‘Then I thought they might be trying to compose a challenge. Then I thought they might be warning us, you know, warning us not to mess with them. Then, then I thought they might be trying to warn us about something else.’

‘Like what?’ asked Daylight.

‘Well,’ said Laurentis, ‘it doesn’t much matter, because I don’t believe it is them at all any more. Do I, Slaughter?’

‘You don’t,’ said Slaughter.

‘I think it’s someone else. Yes, that’s what I think. Someone else.’

The magos biologis looked at them both.

‘What do you think?’ he asked.

‘I think I’d like you to explain more,’ said Daylight. ‘Who do you think this someone else is?’

Laurentis shrugged.

‘Someone very advanced,’ he said. ‘Very advanced. Take gravity, for example. They are very, very advanced in that field. Gravitic engineering! Imagine! They’re shifting something. And this world, it’s just the delivery point.’

‘What are they shifting?’

‘Something very big,’ said Laurentis.

‘A moon?’ asked Daylight. Slaughter looked at him sharply.

‘It could be a moon. Yes, it could be,’ said Laurentis. ‘You’ve seen the reflection in the lake, have you?’

‘I have,’ said Daylight.

‘Whatever it is, it’s still in transition. If it’s a moon or a planetoid… well, Throne save us all. That’s a different class of everything. I mean, we can terraform, we can even realign small planetoids in-system. But shifting planetary bodies on an interstellar range? That’s… god-like. There are rumours, of course. Stories. Myths. They say that the ancients, the precursor races, they say they had power of that magnitude. Even the eldar once, at the very peak of their culture. But not any more. No one can do that any more. Not on that scale.’

‘Except… whoever the voice belongs to?’ asked Daylight.

‘Yes, well, perhaps,’ said Laurentis.

‘And who does the voice belong to?’ asked Daylight.

Noises boomed and howled. Laurentis scrabbled at his ears again like a man with headlice, and pulled a pained face.

‘That’s the real trick, isn’t it?’ he agreed. ‘Knowing that. Knowing that thing. We’d have to translate the words first, and find out what they were saying. Maybe… maybe they’re introducing themselves to us? Maybe this is a contact message. A hello. I’ve spent six weeks trying to figure that out…’

He made a sweeping gesture that encompassed his makeshift pile of devices and equipment.

‘…six weeks, working with these items, which are hardly ideal. It’s so hard to jury-rig what I’m missing. The parsing cogitators are a particular loss. And the vocalisation monitors. I’ve made do with quite a lot, actually, quite a lot, but Throne alive! What I wouldn’t give for a decent grade tech-servitor, or a vox-servitor… or… or an augmetic receiver. Cranial! Cranial implants! I never took them myself, you see?’

‘If this is contact,’ asked Daylight, ‘it’s surely hostile?’

Laurentis nodded, blinking away another noise burst with a shake of his head. ‘I mean, definitely. Definitely. But it would still be worth hearing what it had to say for itself.’

‘You would confirm a hostile intent, then?’

‘I don’t have to!’ Laurentis exclaimed. ‘Look at the rats!’

‘The rats?’ asked Daylight.