Lords of Uncreation

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Adrian Tchaikovsky was born in Woodhall Spa, Lincolnshire, has practised law and now writes full time. He’s also studied stage fighting, perpetrated amateur dramatics and has a keen interest in entomology and table-top games. Adrian is the author of the critically acclaimed Shadows of the Apt series, the Echoes of the Fall series and other novels, novellas and short stories. Children of Time won the prestigious Arthur C. Clarke Award, Children of Ruin and Shards of Earth both won the British Science Fiction Award for Best Novel and The Tiger and the Wolf won the British Fantasy Award for Best Fantasy Novel. You can find Adrian on Twitter @aptshadow. BY ADRIAN TCHAIKOVSKY Shadows of the Apt series Empire in Black and Gold Dragonfly Falling Blood of the Mantis Salute the Dark The Scarab Path The Sea Watch Heirs of the Blade The Air War War Master’s Gate Seal of the Worm Echoes of the Fall trilogy The Tiger and the Wolf The Bear and the Serpent The Hyena and the Hawk The Final Architecture trilogy Shards of Earth Eyes of the Void Lords of Uncreation Guns of the Dawn Children of Time Children of Ruin Children of Memory The Doors of Eden Click here for Children of Time, the critically-acclaimed story of humanity’s battle for survival on a terraformed planet. 1. Andecka Andecka Tal Mar: Intermediary in a three-crew ship named the Skipjack, currently operating with only two because every resource was stretched right now, especially the human kind. At her back sat the world of Assur. A unique ecosystem; agricultural, scientific and mineral prospects. A population of seventy million, mostly humans but a fair number of Castigar and Hanni as well. And every vessel that could get into orbit currently lifting away as many of them as possible. Just like in the old war historiotypes. Because the old war was back. In front of her, at a distance of several hundred million kilometres, not even visible to the naked eye, the Architect. It was eating up that distance at a steady pace and Andecka’s pilot, Staven, had plotted the elegant curve of its course. This would bring it in to intercept Assur’s orbit with pinpoint accuracy, slinging it around the world, and then . . . Unmake it. Remake it. Turn the living world into dead art. Estimates gleaned from Assur’s kybernet were that around sixty-seven million people would still be planetside when that happened, best-case scenario. ‘Any word on our backup?’ Andecka’s scars were itching. The ones that ranged like lightning over her scalp, from the surgery. There had only ever been one Intermediary born naturally, and that was Saint Xavienne, who’d been killed right next to Andecka defending Berlenhof. Back then, they’d been in a hell of a bigger ship than the Skipjack, a full-on Partheni battle cruiser and it hadn’t helped a damn. Staven just grunted, and when she asked the question again he snapped, ‘If we’d had it, then don’t you think I’d have told you?’ in that sarcastic tone he used when he was frightened almost to death. The help hadn’t come. Which was a problem when your whole plan of attack was based on there being someone to play off. ‘We’ll improvise,’ Andecka said. ‘We’re dead,’ Staven decided, though he wasn’t turning the Skipjack around. The kybernet’s cheery casualty estimate was based on someone actually buying time for the evacuation to happen, and that someone apparently meant Andecka Tal Mar. Back in the old war, it had been fleets of warships, drones, every damn thing that was more useful as a momentary distraction than a refugee transport. At least this had changed for the better. Now it meant Intermediaries like Andecka. Because, of all the universe, she could try and talk to the Architect. Contact that vast and alien mind to shriek out, We’re here, like in that old kids’ mediotype story. To give it a moment’s pause. Perhaps even more . . . except with her one feeble voice she didn’t see that happening. Instead, it would get tired of her, and then turn her and Staven and the Skipjack into an interesting filigree of molecules, before going on to do the same to the planet. ‘Wait, something big came through.’ Staven’s voice was briefly on fire with hope, then dropped. ‘Not them. It’s not them.’ Andecka fought over her instruments, even as Assur receded behind them. Staven had put them on their intercept course, ready to go shout their infinitesimal complaints in the Architect’s crystal ear. ‘Then who . . .?’ The worst-case scenario was another Architect, which had happened a couple of times. Apparently there were some planets the monsters wanted extra-dead. Whatever chance Andecka had against one, she wouldn’t even be a speedbump for two. ‘Transport. Sod me.’ Staven sounded as if he was having a heart attack already, hyperventilating around the words. ‘Transport. Castigar.’ She dragged the data over to her own screen. Not what she should be focusing on right now but she had to know. ‘Damn, that’s big,’ she admitted. Not Architect sized, certainly, but she hadn’t realized the Castigar were just throwing mega-freighters like that around. She was still linked to the Assur kybernet and hopped into the conversation there, getting a full-on view of the tentacle-fringed mouth that was a Castigar head, each writhing tendril capped with a pearl-like eye and a claw. ‘They’re saying . . .’ Andecka blinked. ‘They can take two and a half million people. How can they fit . . .?’ Staven passed over the ship’s specs. She really hadn’t appreciated how big the freighter was. She’d lived in smaller cities. The human Colonies relied a lot on small transports, a relic of the days when every cubic metre of hold space had been needed to shift a rapidly disintegrating civilization. The Castigar, however, believed in bulk shipping between their worlds, and here was one of their largest vessels, over a human world perhaps for the