A Skylark wounded in the wing A Cherubim does cease to sing

[Enkidu]

The continuing journeys of Delphi Ara A-1, Atar/Nesrin Khan, ward of consciousness. Chapter 1.

The Tallhares loped through the cold, midsummer snow, whirling into whorls in the torchlight of their optics. A leg of unit 8173-Helena brushed the cap of a young fir that was clinging on after the last avalanche. Helena hopped onto one leg, suspended on its gyros like a crane waiting for a fish, scanning the half-exposed, haggard canopy; still alive. A non-destructive xaser flash revealed that the young fur had the age rings of twenty one winters, as much as Sol seasons could be applied to the desolation of the Mind-world.

The Gammune formally known as Nesrin Khan reached out through the garbled links of the FTL connectome, and signed new directives into 8173-Helena and 8174-Juno to avoid disturbing the plant life as much as possible. They were, after all, guests in another's garden. The fact that the nascent biosphere of the valley still clung on meant that, somewhere, a green-fingered Gammue had kept their watch over the old geoengineering stations that had been left to rot and degrade since planetfall. Already the trees that had grown here exhibited fascinating mutagenic properties - furs with splined leaves, larch with spiral flowers - benign, or harmless mutations that did little to harm the life expectancy of the trees. Perhaps some day, when Sirius had shared the secrets of ascension to the point where they were secrets no longer, a human, not a gammuian, would walk among a meadow.



<Origin source, located. Positional data inferred. Separation - eight point three two dot one nine three nine recurring meters. Execute? > Juno spiked up, letting out a roar approximate to that of a harbour seal, waggling its manipulators like an elated dog. Its wetware was a synthetic splicing of animal improbabilities, borrowed from all over Sirius's genetic pools. With limited resources, it was simpler to weave together a nervous system from protein, carbohydrate and a tissue loom than it was to mine, grind and cut enough optronic chips to create an armature that could think for itself. Nesrin wasn't opposed - the servitors grew into all manner of fascinating character traits. Grown consciousness was energy-efficient, synthesised consciousness was energy intensive. But it was like owning a pet, or raising a child. The uncertainty was part of the point.

"Good girl. Juno, Hela', Dig it out, carefully. Don't destroy the trees, you feel me? We're still guests here." The servitors nodded, springing against their suspension. Of course they understood - they were a part of her. But Atar had made a point of never nano-mannaging their constructs. Atar held the controversial belief that Gammu's desolation would never end if the Gammu kept creating entities that couldn't think for themselves. They kept making oversights, oversights which an entity caught in neural nirvana would have little time for, but a Gammune who had ventured beyond the homeworld would have thought to clear the avalanche off the emanation chute.

Yet again, that same neglectful intelligence had taken the time to care for the trees.

The robots dug - if digging could truly be the word. They scythed their way through the snow pack, infrared lasers glinting as compacted ice and tundra flash-vaporized to steam. Helena's boot pressed a mandible into the trench, and scrabbled forwards. Ice gave way to tagia permafrost, and then to black, compacted mud, then steel, then...

<Chute accessed. Handshaking tractor relay. Expect artifact recovery in T-three, T-two, T-one...">

Helena weighed the Neural Transducer in her two-fingered plasteel hands. <"Artifact recovered. Awaiting pickup.">


It was an odd artefact, a monstrous artefact. A tissue biopsy from an unknown primate species of the K'vosh who once dwelt under the sands of Primus, expanded and extrapolated into a mechanism and caged in a container of Malvada crystal and ancient, rad-degraded superalloy. On Manhattan, it'd be highly sought after. To the K'vosh, it would have been obsolescent rubbish.

Nesrin sighed into the void. She detested her adoptive homeworld, its byzantine doctrines and ancient plots that took a millennia to ferment. Only the trees marked the passage of the ages. Nesrin preferred to move fast and break things.

This attitude had alienated her to Gammu, and, for a time, made her useful to all manner of evil who stood to profit from bending Sirius to their will. Sometimes you had to break a treasure to cannibalise its secrets. But Nesrin was tired of being a hammer.

Nesrin, and the Atar fire that shared her consciousness, wanted to build. So did the tallhares, lifting their ancient cargo above their metal bodies towards the sleeting sky.


"Bingo. Stay put, ladies. I'm coming to pick you up."


Nesrin's Osprey - an Outworlder craft bent almost unrecognisable under an armature of shimmering wiring that straddled the fighter like veins, tore through the hail and carved a contrail down towards the surface. They had work to do.

---

THE SYNDIC LEAGUES
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